15-30 year old girls are selling sex near Moolchand Metro Station right now (March 20, 11.25 PM)

okay. on another day, i would be all meh about this discussion, but im just fresh off of seeing three documentaries on sex trafficking.

prostitution is all freedom of profession and shit in theory, but in practice, it is always, always full of violence and abuse. feels kind of like the idea of communism.

somehow, even in the places where it's legal, girls end up in the hands of pimps, who take all their money, beat them up if they refuse to work, and there are also tons of abusive customers. it's all well and good and pays well until your first rape, your first beating, your first unconsented penetration.

if brothels are legalized, do you think it'll be restricted to only girls who really really want to do it? no, they'll start trying to recruit more and more helpless women and brainwash them into selling their bodies. the sort of coercive tactics and mindgames pimps and madams use preys on the most vulnerable emotions of women, and makes them enter prostitution. you don't need violence to keep a girl submissive.

they also use threats of violence against girls' families, so even when offered help, they refuse to admit they have been trafficked or cheated into becoming a sex worker.

even in highest end of call girls, only about 2% have full freedom and act on their own with no middleman. The other 98% constantly look over their shoulders, operate under pimps who may be violent, and have some form of PTSD or the other. Yes, there will be tons of surveys that get posted on reddit that say prostitutes have higher self esteem than average, but if you have to enter into a line of business most consider despicable for good reason, and stay there, you have to be very successful at deluding yourself that it's not all bad.

if people are uneducated and naive enough to not know options other than sex work, they are also uneducated and naive about STIs and condom use. it is in the interest of pimps and madams to keep the girls uneducated and naive, because unprotected sex brings in more work. also, if girls get other options, they usually end up picking those, so the pimps would like the girls to not be confident, to have low self esteem, and to remain uneducated and unskilled.

like it or not, when you're in the business of selling bodies, you end up seeing women as commodities. even if you're a woman, you start seeing women as commodities. young pussy worth so much, old pussy, so value deprecated, virgin pussy so premium cost.... beyond a point it is hard to dissociate this price tag from a person.

being anti-prostitution isn't necessarily a moral thing. it's a human rights thing.

i fervently ask everyone reading this, please don't solicit prostitutes, not even in thailand, please don't go to strip clubs, please don't call escort services. you're helping perpetuate a system that is criminally misogynist.

/r/india Thread