Yesterday’s letter to The Post entitled “Legal brothels will regulate prostitution” absolutely disgusted me.
A little over two years ago, a group called Belts Breaking Bondage was formed on this campus to fight a growing problem affecting at least 27 million women and children around the world: human trafficking.
And I thought we had done a pretty good job of spreading the word around campus that prostitution in the United States and the world is really not OK socially and morally. But I guess we didn’t do enough to inform everyone.
This is the fastest-growing illegal industry in the world, surpassing illegal arms deals, and it’s quickly matching pace with drug trafficking, with profits soaring over $31 billion annually.
Making matters worse, millions of women are kidnapped every year and forced into prostitution for the drug cartels’ profits.
The major drug lords of the day have discovered a renewable and controllable drug: a human body.
The vast majority of women in prostitution in the U.S. and around the world are coerced and forced to sell their bodies night after night to dozens of men, and are controlled by forced drug injections (heroin, meth, crack) to get them hooked so that they can never leave their pimps and handlers.
I’m disgusted that Dan Miller spoke so wonderfully of prostitution in his letter. What kind of person thinks that it’s OK for someone to walk into a brothel and pick out the first broad he sees and say, “Let’s have sex now for cash”?
That’s the kind of money you want to use to boost a state or country’s economy? Sex money that we can use to stimulate the budget deficit, if that’s what he’s implying?
To think that someone would honestly be OK with that disappoints me that they haven’t looked into the facts about what this illegal underground trade is all about.
I suggest that before you glorify legalizing paying emotionally scarred women for sex who are forced to sell their bodies to stay alive and then profiting off of that money, you should get informed about what you’re saying.
Visit polarisproject.org, notforsalecampaign.org and humantrafficking.org to get the stats on what human trafficking and prostitution are.
It is not women doing it because they choose to. In fact, that is reserved for a very small percentage of prostitutes (less than 1 percent).
Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery. There are more slaves in the world today than existed at any point in time in the history of the world. 27 million is a low estimate of sex slaves, because of the elusiveness and illegality of the trade. However, these women (some are children) live in a brutal cycle of sex, death, and drugs that they can’t escape.
I please ask that everyone stops and thinks about what prostitution really is before choosing to support legalization. The disrespect of women and children should never ever be OK.
Leigha Kristoff is a senior studying broadcast journalism.
