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1 Cardozo Women's L.J. 105 (1993-1994)
Decriminalizing Prostitution: Liberation or Dehumanization

handle is hein.journals/cardw1 and id is 117 raw text is: DECRIMINALIZING PROSTITUTION: LIBERATION OR DEHUMANIZATION? CARLIN MEYER* ... we live in a culture where many. of us must pay people both to take care of our bodies and to listen to our feelings.' The prostitute is really at the extreme end of a continuum few women ever escape... Exploited by a society that treats wo- men as second class citizens fit to be recipients of men's domi- nation and exploitation.2 If anybody should feel guilt or shame, says Lena, it's cer- tainly not me! The greedy landlords who've exploited the im- migrants and the fools in the government who don't know or care what's happening, they should feel guilty. Lena, a Russian-Israeli wife, mother, and prostitute.' If I might be so bold, I would like to retitle this panel. I would call it: criminalizing prostitution - feminist program or prop to patriarchy? For to me, the issue is not what decriminaliza- tion would do, but what criminalization and hyper-regulation of prostitution have done historically and continue to do, not merely to individual women victims of police, pimps, prosecu- tors, mobsters and 'johns, but to women as a whole. There are currently three major systems used to handle prostitution: criminalization, decriminalization, and regulation. Criminalization typically defines as illegal the exchange of sex for money, as well as a variety of associated acts such as public solici- tation, pimping, and transporting women for the purpose of prostitution. Laws typically make the act of trading sex for money per se illegal;4 several jurisdictions criminalize patroniz- * Associate Professor of Law, New York Law School. I Christine Overall, Whats Wrong With Prostitution: Evaluating Sex Work, 17 SIGNs 705, 715 (1992). 2 Belinda M. M. Cheney, Prostitution - A Feminist Jurisprudential Perspective, 18 VA. U. WELLINmGTON L. REV. 239, 244 (1988). Prostitutes are prosecuted for soliciting in a way 'respectable women' who flirt are not. They are prosecuted for running a brothel if they take money for sex in a way 'respectable women' who have sex in their homes are not. Their mistake, their punishable mistake, is that they get paid for what working women are supposed to do as part of their 'duty.' Women are supposed to have sex for love, not money. I. 3 Lena, a married Russian woman working as a prostitute in Israel's Upper Naza- reth, quoted in Anne Zeto Kaye, New Workers, Old Profession, JERUSALEMi PosT, Apr. 26, 1991. 4 Black's Law Dictionary defines prostitution as an act of performing, or offering, 105