The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is about a woman named June who is living in a dystopian future. Her only job is to try and bear children in a household that does not want her. The bigger and more picture though is how the new country works. In the book a radical group of terrorist killed the government and the army took control making the society how they saw fit. This makes a scary image of a future where personal freedoms are lost in a need for complete security. All the people need passes and identification to move around and they live in constant fear. However it is not from enemies of the government but of the government themselves who are corrupt and evil. They get rid of who ever they think is not part of the society and there a mass suicides do to the oppressive feel of the country. This shows my big idea that security is not better than personal freedoms in the world. By being so secure you can't have feelings, you lose your humanity.
The book helped me understand my question by showing me the true evils of complete security, where as a book like Lord of the Flies would show me how bad freedom is. Also it showed me how the human spirit could be affected by no freedoms. June and the other handmaids are constantly depressed and angry at how they are treated but cannot do anything for fear of being caught. They are too secure in their own minds.
I don't know if I would recommend this book. It is written wonderfully and has great vocabulary and imagery but the story can be hard to follow and convoluted with flashbacks mid paragraph. However you really get to know June in the book and begin to sympathize with her. That said the book is absolutely depressing and dark and won't be for most readers because it never lets up through the 400 pages. If you are a fan of dark dystopian books like 1984 or Brave new world I would suggest reading this however it probably won't be for everyone.

Legality of Prostitution

Prostitution is the world’s oldest trade. It has been practiced since Ancient Egyptian times and throughout the world. It is the act of exchanging goods or money for sexual services or companionship. In the United States prostitution is an illegal and inherently dangerous occupation due to dangerous clients, abusive pimps and common drug use. However, in some countries like Sweden, Germany, Denmark and The Netherlands, prostitution is in some way legal. There are many valid points for arguments both for and against the legalization of prostitution but also many faults for both. Legalization boasts safety and tax value, while criminalization boasts less drug use and societal pride but neither seems to have a complete solution. However, based on recent studies (Sweden); Sweden’s prostitute trade has decreased substantially and seems to be the best balance of both sides. If America follows the Swedish System where the purchasing and profiting from prostitution is illegal but not the actual trade, they will not only see a decline of prostitution but a rise in health and safety among prostitutes.

The system of laws Sweden created for the managing of prostitution may seem very complex on the outside, but they are made up of three central parts. The first is a law that makes selling sexual services legal. The second part is a law that makes pimping and purchasing sexual services illegal. This means that if a man is caught with a woman prostitute, he would be in trouble with the law and not the prostitute. The final part is a support system designed to help women leave the prostitution trade if they choose to. This means that women who feel trapped our afraid can have a way out. This is the first time this kind of law system has been used since the beginnings of prostitution.

In Nils Ringdal’s Book Love for Sale he explains that “the history of the sex trade is long and complicated” (Ringdal 4). He states that the first case of recorded prostitution is found in the epic tale of Gilgamesh, written nearly 4,000 years ago. The king Gilgamesh pays a temple prostitute named Shamhat to use her attractiveness to civilize the beast-man Enkidu. In Mesopotamian times many priestesses traded their bodies for offerings from patrons to give to their gods. This continued into the Greek era where priestess from the Temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, would often take patrons into the inner sanctum where the exchange would be made and most, if not all of the proceeds would go to the temple. In Rome prostitution became an official trade with the lustful Emperor Caligula making brothels mandatory in every major roman city, with set hours, prices and standards. However, with the beginnings of the Christian church, prostitution was viewed as adulterous and sinful even though it was still widely practiced throughout Europe. In the United States, prostitution boomed in the days of the Wild West, when law enforcement was not common. However, in the early 1900s the United States of America, with pressure from Women’s Christian Temperance Movement, Enacted the Mann Act, which banned the transport of prostitutes and human trafficking, followed by mass criminalization within the states themselves. Near the end of the book Ringdal claims that laws have changed in a few states such as Rhode Island and Nevada but many remain intact.

Most activists are concerned about safety for prostitutes. They argue that if the trade was legalized, prostitutes would be able to get help from police and other health clinics. Right now in the United States, a prostitute will be arrested if she goes to the police to file a rape or physical assault. That creates a dangerous situation where pimps or clients hold all the power over the woman and she has no help or support system. The data in the United States shows that “prostitutes report being ‘horribly beaten’ by their pimps an average of 58 times a year and 80% of prostitutes have been sexually assaulted, some raped as many as 8-10 time annually” (Swift). Swift also published the startling statistic that “a Canadian Report on Prostitution and Pornography concluded that girls and women in prostitution have a mortality rate 40 times higher than the national average.” As a country that has legalized prostitution, The Netherlands boasts some interesting data too. When asked about the safety of prostitutes in the designated prostitution zones a leading Dutch official was quoted saying that she had “never heard of anyone ever being hurt, or at least seriously hurt, in a zone" (Jackson). This shows that legalization does improve the safety of the women involved with the trade. This is due to the fact that women in places where it is legal can go to the police and get the law involved, even in the Swedish system they can go to the police and have the patron arrested.

One notorious issue with prostitution is the fact that Sexually Transmitted Infections (“STI’s”) are notoriously associated with it. Legalization would help prevent STI’s by making information about protected sex available, along with condoms and routine health screenings. However critics remark that “sex is an inherently risky undertaking and anonymous sex considerably more so. Considering the fact that no prevention method provides 100 percent protection, making prostitution a crime is one of the only sure ways to reduce STI transmission” (Rich). Data in the United States shows that “only 3-5% of STDs are prostitution-related” (Swift) but it doesn’t account for the amount of prostitutes that actually have diseases. When Dawn, an ex-prostitute, was interviewed she said “the girls said that men would pay more to not use a condom. Also they said that if you got a disease, you shouldn’t tell anyone” (Dawn). This shows that the data might be misleading but legalization doesn’t offer a better scenario. STI transfer occurs when the trade is legalized mostly due to the increase in the amount of prostitutes and patrons. This means that legalization is a worse option for protecting public health than criminalization. However the Swedish system provides an answer by making the major goal to reduce prostitution.

The Swedish system of legalizing prostitution excels in the way it has substantially decreased the amount of prostitutes in Sweden. Other systems of legalization have only increased the prostitute population and criminalization doesn’t decrease it. The increase due to legalization can be seen in the data and personal accounts. When the State of Victoria in Australia legalized the brothel system officials said “there was such an explosion in the number of brothels that it immediately overwhelmed the system's ability to regulate them” (Sweden). In a University of London study, it was found that legalization and regulation led to: an increase in all facets of the sex industry, an increase of organized crime involvement, an increase in child prostitution, and an increase in human trafficking (Sweden). Human trafficking is quickly becoming one of the world’s biggest overlooked issues. It is an underground sexual slave trade, where women from poorer countries are forced or tricked into moving to other countries. There they are traded and forced to work as prostitutes. The way the Swedish system fights human trafficking is in the way it tries to help prostitutes. The Swedes have developed a program that offers prostitutes a way out of the industry with housing and job programs, which countries like the Netherlands don’t have. It means that women have a way out, in fact “60% of the prostitutes in Sweden took advantage of the well-funded programs and succeeded in exiting prostitution” (Sweden). Finally the numbers alone from Sweden show the improvements. In the capital city of Stockholm “the number of women in street prostitution has been reduced by two thirds, and the number of johns has been reduced by 80%” (Sweden). In other cities street prostitution “has all but disappeared” (Sweden). The research shows that the Swedish System works and that other forms of legalization fall short while criminalization has no real impact on the amount of prostitutes.

In conclusion, it is mind-boggling that policy-makers, law enforcement officials and prostitutes themselves cannot see the benefits and successes of the Swedish system of law. By making the sale of sex legal but not the purchasing, the Swedish laws have put prostitution on the decline and health and safety for those still in it on the rise. The United States has the ability to make the same change and it should, for all those reasons and more. It is the best solution for one of the world’s oldest problems.

   

Works Cited

Bazelon, Emily. "Why Is Prostitution Illegal? - By Emily Bazelon." Slate Magazine. N.p., 10 Mar. 2008. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. <http://www.slate.com/id/2186243/pagenum/all/#p2>.

Dawn. "Interview With A Former Prostitute And Call Girl." Interview. Video blog post. Youtube. Richard Bennett, 16 July 2009. Web. 2 Dec. 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHbK7VPmyQE&feature=related>.

Jackson, Patrick. "BBC NEWS | Europe | How the Dutch Protect Their Prostitutes." Web log                                                     post. BBC News - Home. N.p., 19 Dec. 2006. Web. 07 Nov. 2010. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6178793.st

Rich, Alex. "Point: Prostitution Should Remain Illegal." Points of View Reference Center. EBSCO, 2009. Web. 07 Nov. 2010.

Ringdal, Nils Johan. Love for Sale: a World History of Prostitution. New York: Grove, 2004. Print.

"Sweden's Prostitution Solution: Why Hasn't Anyone Tried." Women's Justice Center. Web. 03 Dec. 2010. <http://www.justicewomen.com/cj_sweden.html>. (Sited as “Sweden”)

Swift, Randall. "The Oldest Profession - Shocking Facts and Statistics About Prostitution, Page 2 of 2." Associated Content from Yahoo! - Associatedcontent.com. Yahoo! Contributor Network, 23 Nov. 2007. Web. 03 Dec. 2010.