Prostitution, What Is It Good For?
On Monday night a meeting was held for concerned residents of the city centre in Belfast City Hall about the number of prostitutes who use the surrounding area for custom.
In recent years the centre of Belfast has undergone a huge transformation with new apartment blocks rising throughout the area.
Some of these buildings are placed within the confines of the red light district which over the years has resulted in tenants being confronted by both kerb crawlers and prostitutes.
I believe that this problem is symptomatic of our rather medieval outlook on the issue.
Go-go-go-away
Prostitution isn’t something that will disappear off the radar - it is a serious issue which has existed and will continue to exist for many years.
If the problem within Belfast and other places like it is to be allievated I believe that a drastic overhaul of our view on prostitution has to take place.
Of course anything related to sexuality is taboo, even at the beginning of the 21st century.
However, if we let these issues lie stagnant then the problem will remain.
We really need to be asking ourselves why others or even we ourselves use prostitutes. There is no use discussing this privately, dialogue has to take place in public so that it can be tackled head on.
Idealistically government-licensed brothels would be a major step in the right direction, that way women can receive more protection.
In saying that how could we even begin to start addressing of illegal brothels? Even if prostitution became widely accepted within public who is to say that the problem of unscruplous pimps and sex traffics would simply disappear?
Would licensed brothels guarantee a woman’s safety too? At best, public brothels would remove some of the traffic from red light districts.
It is good that this issue has made the headlines in the UK in the past few days as it has provoked a lot of discussion, a lot more of which is required admittedly before this issue can be in anyway resolved.
Legalising prostitution would be a good first step as it would help the government to tackle the real problems which fuel it.
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January 19th, 2006 at 1:24 am
What is water good for?
What is oxygen good for?
What is food good for?
January 20th, 2006 at 8:50 am
Thanks a lot for the insight. I naively thought that legalising it would be a good idea before I read about the problems Amsterdam has at the moment.
February 23rd, 2006 at 9:20 pm
The government has no right to protect people from themselves. If people go to prostitutes and get diseases from not using condoms, that’s their problem. That’s their responsibility. The government has no business to tell us what we can and can’t do with our bodies.
January 16th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Prostitution has been not only a social problem but also starting to become a propeller of health problems. We know that its a serious problem and its hard to find solution to eradicate this. But somehow we need to act now before it affects our childrens future.
June 14th, 2007 at 8:54 am
This one makes sence “One’s first step in wisdom is to kuesstion everything - and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.”