Prostitution – A “job like any other”?
Prostitution is the oldest profession in the world. Prostitution will always exist – or will it? Weren’t people saying the same thing about slavery a few years back? And hasn’t that since been outlawed by all humanists and democratic societies? In countries like Sweden or France, people talk about prostitution in the context of human dignity – both of women and men. And they actively combat the international mafia responsible for trafficking women. Only in Germany is the sale of body and soul veiled as “sex work” and prostitution legitimized as a “job like any other” – and only in Germany did a 2002 amendment under the Social Democrats and Green Party open the floodgates to women traffickers.
Ninety per cent of all prostitutes in Germany come from the poorest countries in Eastern Europe and Africa. But even the majority of German prostitutes end up impoverished in their old age. In this book, edited by Alice Schwarzer, male and female authors provide insights into the situation, the bitter reality for women who work as prostitutes – and the feminists struggling to defend them.
