The notion that
prostitutes do what they do out of
freedom of choice is better understood when one realizes the documented fact that over 80% of prostitutes admit to walking the streets in order to feed a
drug habit. There are other
problems as well with this notion:
"over 90% of prostitutes are survivors of incest or sexual abuse." - http://www.feminista.com/v1n5/depasquale.html
"The average age of entry into prostitution is 13 years or 14 years. These studies are outdated, since the age of entry into prostitution is decreasing"
'Prostitution: Fact Sheet on Human Rights Violations,' 1996, Melissa Farley, Ph.D., available from melifarley@aol.com).
"The Council for Prostitution Alternatives has reported that prostituted women were raped approximately once a week"
Susan Kay Hunter, 'Prostitution is Cruelty and Abuse to Women and Children,' Michigan Journal of Gender and Law, 1994 .
"A Canadian Report on Prostitution and Pornography found that women and girls in prostitution had a mortality rate 40 times higher than the national average"
Margaret A. Baldwin, "Split at the Root: Prostitution and Feminist Discourses of Law Reform," Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 1993
and finally:
"Prostitution: what is it? It is the use of a woman's body for sex by a man, he pays money, he does what he wants. The minute you move away from what it really is, you move away from prostitution into the world of ideas. You will feel better; you will have a better time; it is more fun; there is plenty to discuss, but you will be discussing ideas, not prostitution. Prostitution is not an idea. It is the mouth, the vagina, the rectum, penetrated usually by a penis, sometimes hands, sometimes objects, by one man and then another and then another and then another and then another. That's what it is."
by Andrea Dworkin, "Prostitution and Male Supremacy in Life and Death," 1997, New York: Free Press