Li Yinhe talks about sex

Chapter 25 How to ensure the safety of sex workers
In this world, there are almost no societies without sex workers.

The legal status of sex workers in my country puts their personal and property safety at risk.The main reason is that they cannot, like ordinary citizens, openly and promptly seek police protection when their personal safety is threatened.Criminals have discovered this opportunity, and the violations against sex workers have greatly increased.Therefore, how to protect the personal safety of sex workers, a part of citizens, has become a social issue.

People's first reaction to this is often: Isn't it safe not to do sex work?The problem is that there are almost no societies without sex workers in this world, ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign.Implementing reeducation through labor for sex workers is the current method to combat prostitution in our country.The reeducation through labor system has Chinese characteristics. It accommodates people who have not violated the law and are not qualified for sentencing, and the punishment for reeducated people is not as severe as that for those who violated the law.Punishment of sex workers is the most suitable application of the reeducation-through-labor system—those who have been reeducated have not violated the law, but they have to be slightly punished.If someone criticizes (and there are indeed foreign feminists who criticize this) that sex workers should not be arrested and put in jail because they are sex workers, they behave in a way that does not violate anyone, that they behave in a way that does not victimize We can answer: We did not put them in prison, nor sentenced them, it was just a reformatory, and they were only punished by reeducation through labor.

The issue of sex work does involve the issue of human freedom and rights, but Chinese people never raise the issue from this perspective. People are always accustomed to accepting "no rights" in the two views of "has rights" and "no rights". "the opinion of.This is because we have grown up in an environment where we have no rights in many things since we were born, so we are used to it, and we will no longer think about problems in terms of "rights".If you don’t believe me and ask someone “do people have the right to dispose of their own bodies according to their own wishes”, the first reaction of most Chinese people must be “no”.That's why there is no discussion about the rights of sex workers in China, and there is no discussion about sex work.People don't even notice that sex work itself is not a violation of China's Criminal Law.

Sociologists envision five policy options for addressing sex work and examine their pros and cons:

1. Make sex work illegal and take legal measures to completely eliminate sex work.The policy is doomed to fail, and the lack of a police force alone makes the idea of ​​decriminalization difficult to implement effectively.The social problems created by this policy (underworld meddling in illegal industries, police corruption, official corruption, etc.) biological needs and desires.

2. To decriminalize some sex work activities, such as decriminalizing sex work that only actively solicits clients.Such is the law in England.This kind of law will allow johns and high-end call girls to go unpunished, and will make the law a class-biased law instead of a fair law that treats everyone equally.

The main rationale for legalizing and controlling sex work is to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.But legalization does not prevent the spread of STDs. It also creates new problems. It makes sex work a permanent occupation, turns some short-term workers into long-term workers, and overpowers the police because they control business licenses and prevent sex work. Women change careers and blackmail them when they want to change careers.

3. Establish a "red light district" to make it easier for the police to control sex work activities.This approach also has two disadvantages. First, residents in various communities will protest "don't build a red light district in our area". So where should the red light district be built?The second is that if police control is strengthened in these areas, prostitutes will move to other areas, and it will also create a chaotic situation where people's behavior is illegal in some places and not in other places in the same city.

The best solution is to decriminalize consensual sex between adults, with or without money.The biggest advantage of this policy is that it can save a lot of police force to deal with crimes with victims.Sex workers can advertise in underground publications, find customers in massage parlors, adult bookstores, or special couple agencies, and start sex clubs.This allows those who want to seek sex workers to find them, and also enables those who do not want to seek them to avoid them.

Under China's current Criminal Law, prostitution is not a criminal offense.We should strictly follow the legal provisions of my country's current "Criminal Law" on the decriminalization of sex work, and ban administrative regulations that contradict it.It can be expected that once the process of decriminalization of sex work is completed, the personal safety of sex workers will be effectively guaranteed, and the situation of social security in this field will be greatly improved.

(End of this chapter)