Pay for sex!
I am an Indian and ideally I should be talking about the scenario in India. However, I’ll be doing that a bit later.
There are some 15 countries around the world where prostitution is legal [1]and Netherlands is one of them. Now, allow me to present you some facts and figures about the Red Light District, Amsterdam where it is properly organized.
Read on some excerpts first.
Dana[2] (not her real name) was trafficked into Amsterdam from Bulgaria in 2008. Six months later, she escaped her captors, but decided to continue working in the windows so she could send money home to her mother and younger brother.
This one is from Wikipedia page.[3]
In December 2009, two Nigerian men were sentenced to 4 and 4½ years in prison for having smuggled 140 Nigerian women aged 16–23 into the Netherlands. The women were made to apply for asylum and then disappeared from asylum centers, to work as prostitutes in surrounding countries.
Now here are some facts about the ‘LEGAL’ industry of Amsterdam.
- Who are these women behind these flashy red windows?
- Over 92% of the women are not dutch.
- East Europeans (mainly from Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria) form the majority.
- There are a sizable population of South America women and earlier there was a considerable Thai population.
- The next obvious question is – why are they here?
- They’re here for a quick buck - almost all of them have no formal education.
- They were trafficked[4] – there are no clear figures available but some say the number could be as high as 90%.
- Some were drug addicts and easy availability attracted them to the Red District.
- How many of them are here?
- Some 25000–30000 women work in prostitution on a yearly basis.
- Even if 10% of them were forced it would mean 2500–3000 women are selling their body under pressure of someone else.
- Even if 10% of them were trafficked, some 300 women were taken away from their homes to do what - fuck for buck!
Now coming to our own nation. If you’re fainthearted please don’t go beyond this point. Don’t read any further. I am going to write things the way they are.
According to Wikipedia:[5]
In India, prostitution (the exchange of sexual services for money) is legal only if carried out in the private residence of a prostitute or others. A number of related activities are crimes, including soliciting in a public place, kerb crawling, owning or managing a brothel, prostitution in a hotel, child prostitution, pimping and pandering.
Here are some facts on prostitution in our own country:
- About 35% of the prostitutes enter prostitution before turning 18.
- Most were distressed, ill-treated by their parents or were seduced by their boyfriends and ended up in pimps’ traps.
- India is one of the biggest[6] market for prostitution in Asia with Mumbai (Kamathipura) alone accommodating 200,000 prostitutes.
- Trust me, Delhi (G. B. Road) and Kolkata (Sonagachi) are not far behind.
- Trafficking is rampant. Fairer girls from Nepal and North-East fetch more money than the ‘black ones’ from Chattisgarh, Bihar, Bengal and Orissa.
- They are hotbed for HIV and other STDs. Should I even talk about the life expectancy there?
What I have talked about is just one aspect of prostitution. A new trend of ‘Call-girls’ has emerged in bigger cities too. Superficially, it appears that the girl knows what she’s into, she understands the world around us and she has a degree of power and freedom in her hands. Unfortunately, that’s not even the tip of the iceberg. Deep down, they too suffer depression, live under a constant threat of getting caught, fear of getting abused - both physically and mentally - by the people in power.
We, Indian men, don’t like wearing condoms and for the women in brothels unprotected sex becomes unavoidable. Therefore, STDs are rampant. So are pregnancies and abortions.
In the organized brothels, the prostitutes get a tiny part of what they earn. They don’t have a say. So when she’s asked to do it, she has to do it. Look at the irony, the 5 days of periods which are a pain for a routine girl becomes 5 days of relief for a prostitute.
No matter if she speaks fluent English or the regional dialect of Bhojpuri, how can one get intimate with an unknown individual? How can a man disrobe himself in front of a totally unknown person? And how can they get an erection? Can one look into her eyes during the coitus or vice-versa? And if there happens an eye-contact, wouldn’t that be a disturbing one? And the smell?
And there is nothing she enjoys either. No woman would like to hold a complete stranger’s penis in her hands. Neither your breath on her face. The droplets of sweat that appear on her forehead during sex don’t symbolize her hard work or her labor. They are there because of her guilt, her fears, her distress and the shame. The marks that you’d leave (and those left by people before you) didn’t come up because of love. They are the synonyms of abuse.
Abuse that she’s paid for.
I haven’t done it however. I won’t do so previously. Not even at gun point.
Many thanks for reading.
Footnotes
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