Salameh 1

Lena Salameh
Debate I
Ms. Sobotka
26 November 2014
I.

Should Prostitution be LEGALIZED for those who are 18 years old or older?
Introduction
A. A woman with an education may be able to spend more time sitting in a chair
instead of lying on her back. A sound advantage, I should think quoted by Anne
Bishop, author of the fantasy novel Daughter of the Blood.
B. Definition
i. According to Oxford Dictionaries, prostitution is the practice or
occupation of engaging in sexual activity with someone for payment.
ii. Human Trafficking: the illegal movement of people, typically for the
purposes of forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation.
iii. Sex Worker: used euphemistically to refer to a prostitute.
iv. Brothels: a house where men can visit prostitutes.
v. Pimp: a man who controls prostitutes and arranges clients for them, taking
part of their earnings in return.
C. Thesis
i. Prostitution should be illegal for all ages, even 18 and older because
legitimating prostitution as work makes the harm of prostitution to women
invisible, expands the sex industry, and does not empower the women in

II.

prostitution.
Body
A. Statistics
i. Male prostitutes account for roughly 20% of the national prostitute
population.
a. A male prostitute begins their illegal work is 14 years old.
ii. The average female prostitute enters her job when she is only 16 or 17
years of age.

Salameh 2
a. They typically have shorter lives because they are subject
to the abuse from both clients and pimps. 58% of American
prostitutes reported violent assault at the hands of clients.
iii. Roughly 26% of New York City prostitutes were homeless and addicted to
illicit drugs. 90% of New York City prostitutes had to give away at least
one child to child protective services.
B. Each year, several hundred thousand women are trafficked from Eastern European
countries for prostitution in sex industry centers all over the world. The practices
are extremely oppressive and incompatible with universal standards of human
rights. The sex trade is a form of contemporary slavery and all indications predict
its growth and expansion into the 21st century (Hughes).
C. In one of CATW's studies, U.S. women in prostitution interviewed reported the
following: 47% stated that men expected sex without a condom; 73% reported
that men offered to pay more for sex without a condom; 45% of women said they
were abused if they insisted that men use condoms. Some women said that certain
establishments may have rules that men wear condoms but, in reality, men still try
to have sex without them (qtd. in Raymond).
D. Negative Effects of Prostitution
i. Leads to increases in sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS, global
human trafficking, and violent crime including rape and homicide.
ii. Sexually transmitted diseases
a. Increase in AIDS because medical authorities examined
only one of the partners in the sex act.
b. The affirmative of Prostitution would think they could
control the prostitutes health, do a routine check, and
check the people who come into the prostitution. But if one
did become infected with a sexually transmitted disease,

Salameh 3
another prostitute would replace her for the medical
checkup, using the infected woman's medical card.
iii. Human Trafficking
a. The U.S. Department of State stated "Where prostitution is
tolerated, there is a greater demand for human trafficking
victims and nearly always an increase in the number of
women and children trafficked into commercial sex
slavery."
b. According to United Nations estimates, approximately 2.5
million people are being trafficked around the world at any
given time, 80% of them women and children.
c. Today, sex trafficking is a high-tech, globalized, electronic
market, and predators are involved at all levels, using the
same methods to control prostituted women that batterers
use against their victims: minimization and denial of
physical violence, economic exploitation, social isolation,
verbal abuse, threats and intimidation, physical violence,
sexual assault, and captivity (Farley).
iv. Rape and violence
a. Violent behaviors against women have been associated
with attitudes that promote mens beliefs that they are
entitled to sexual access to women, that they are superior to
women and that they are licensed as sexual aggressors
(Farley).
b. Even today, many mistakenly assume that prostitution is
sex, rather than sexual violence, and a vocational choice,
rather than a human rights abuse.

Salameh 4
c. Although clinicians are beginning to recognize the
overwhelming physical violence in prostitution, its internal
ravages- depressions, lethal suicidality, mood disorders,
anxiety disorders, dissociative disorders, substance abuse,
and traumatic brain injury- are included.
d. Prostitution is extremely dangerous for women. Homicide
is a frequent cause of death.
III.

Conclusion
A. Prostitution should not be allowed for all ages, whether an adult or not, because it
is inherently immoral, commercially exploitative, empowers the criminal
underworld, and promotes the repression of women by men.

IV.

V.

Affirmative Cross
A. What are beneficial factors towards legalizing prostitution, and are there statistics
or facts to back up the information given?
B. What are methods used to prevent STDs from spreading caused from prostitutes?
First Negative Rebuttal
A. Sexual Assault. A pimp may force a prostitute to engage in sadomasochistic sex
acts exploitation, resulting in sexual assault.
B. Out of all prostitutes, 92% want to leave the prostitution business but cannot due
to the lack basic human services such as a home, job training, health care,
counseling and treatment for drug or alcohol addiction, exposing them to the
likelihood of being sexually assaulted to live. In addition to homicide is the
frequent cause of death.
C. The connection between rape and prostitution is that women are turned into

VI.

objects for men's sexual use; they can be either bought or stolen.
Second Negative Rebuttal
A. Prostitution is the exchange of sexual acts for money, food, rent, drugs, and other
material goods. For many women and some men, prostitution and sexual

Salameh 5
exploitation is the only answer to live in todays society. The average age for girls
entering prostitution is between 12 to 13 years old, and around 75 to 95% of all
prostitutes were sexually abused as children. 58% of American prostitutes
reported violent assault at the hands of clients, but others do prostitution due to
paying for their addiction to explicit drugs. Prostitution should be illegal due to its
misconduct of human nature for it boosts the motivation of men to buy women for
sex in a much wider and more permissible range of socially acceptable settings
like in the streets and dirty brothels.

Salameh 6

Works Cited
Farley, M. (n.d.). Human Trafficking and Prostitution. Retrieved from
http://www.psysr.org/issues/trafficking/farley.php
Farley, M. (2012, June 21). Prostitution. Retrieved from
http://www.womenslaw.org/simple.php?sitemap_id=148
Hughes, D. (1999, February 1). Legalizing Prostitution Will Not Stop the Harm.
Retrieved from http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/mhvlegal.htm
Kolodny, C. (2014, March 12). 9 Things You Didn't Know About American Prostitution.
Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/12/sex-tradestudy_n_4951891.html
The Prostitution Statistics You Have to Know. (2014, January 1). Retrieved from http://sexcrimes.laws.com/prostitution/prostitution-statistics
Raymond, J. (2003, January 1). Ten Reasons for Not Legalizing Prostitution and a Legal
Response to the Demand for Prostitution. Retrieved from
http://www.childtrafficking.com/Docs/raymond_2003_10_reasons_not_legalizing
_prostitution