Making Sex Work Illegal May Promote STIs, Violence

A silhouette of a person standing in the shadows

Knowing that sex workers are at disproportionate risk of violence and sexual and emotional ill health, researchers Lucy Platt, Pippa Grenfell, Rebecca Meiksin, Jocelyn Elmes, Susan G. Sherman, Teela Sanders, Peninah Mwangi, Anna-Louise Crago wanted to find out why. To learn more, they reviewed studies from 1 January 1990 and 9 May 2018 related to sex work, police, legislation, and health. The results of their work, published December 11, 2018 in PLOS Medicine, suggest that policy reform is needed to improve sex workers’ safety.

CNN reports: “Sex workers, on average, are 13 times more at risk of HIV than the general population, according to the UK-based charity Avert, which provides HIV education. This is because they are economically vulnerable, are unable to negotiate condom use every time, and experience violence, criminalization and marginalization, Avert says.”

In Moonchild, Crowley wrote, “It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse, physical or mental, stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be done with it; or fulfil it, and get it out of the system; but do not allow it to remain there and putrefy. The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills.”

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Stephanie

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