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Forced Prostitutes – The Comfort Women

The comfort women, also called military sex slaves, are women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese troops before and during the Second World War.

It was impossible to determine accurately the exact number of comfort women, but the estimated ranges were from 100,000 to 200,000.  It was generally believed that roughly 80% to 90% came from Korea, while the remaining came from Taiwan, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Burma (now called Myanmar) and the Pacific islands. 

These young women, mostly unmarried, were forced to provide sex services in the military brothels found throughout the vast Asia Pacific region occupied by the Japanese forces.  The lives of the comfort women were miserable.  They were often raped, beaten and tortured brutally.  Some of them were killed in an inhuman way by Japanese soldiers while trying to escape.

Few of the comfort women survived.  Even fewer stand out to point out the cruel behaviors of the Japanese soldiers during World War II.  The survivors suffered great pain physically and emotionally.  They fight for public apologize and compensation from the Japanese government. 

Till now, the Japanese government still denies the forced draft of comfort women, and refuses to apologize and compensate to the comfort women, saying that there were no real evidence supporting the existence of this whole issue of forced military sex slaves. 

In my opinion, the Japanese government should apologize publicly and compensate to the comfort women if such cruel behavior really existed before and during World War II. 

Legalization of Prostitution

Legalization of prostitution has been a controversial issue for many years. A few countries, like Netherlands, have prostitution legalized, while most countries still against its legalization.

Everyone has the right to choose his or her occupation. Some people like to sell their blood and organs, while some people like to be surrogate mother. Prostitution is just another way of selling body. Everyone has the right to do what he or she likes with body, so prostitution should be legalized.

Legalization of prostitution also helps to reduce discrimination. If prostitution was legalized, people would think prostitution is just an occupation. Thus, it would help to reduce discrimination against prostitutes in society.

Also, legalization of prostitution helps to increase the revenue of the government. With the legalization of prostitution, more people will participate in it. If tax was imposed on this industry, the tax revenue of the government would greatly increase. Hence, the country would be more prosperous.

However, there are a lot of disadvantages of the legalization of prostitution.

The major reason of not legalizing prostitution is that it lowers the moral tone in society. If prostitution was legalized, it would encourage more people to participate in it. Thus, a lot of social problems would be created. Adolescents are most vulnerable in their early teens; they are easily influenced by bad people. They might see prostitution as an easy way to earn money and thus be encouraged to participate in prostitution. Also, legalization of prostitution might lead to more broken families in society.

With legalization of prostitution, sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS and hepatitis B will be spread more easily. Prostitutes might carry those diseases and passed to their clients and then their clients might pass the diseases to their partners. Thus, if the control measures of those diseases were not carried out properly, then legalization of prostitution would help to spread sexually transmitted diseases in society.

Also, legalization of prostitution would cause disturbance to neighborhood. No people like to have a prostitute lives next door. Areas where prostitutes live or loiter around will surely have a bad reputation.

The following are some reasons for not legalizing Prostitution:

1. Legalization of prostitution is a gift to pimps, traffickers and the sex industry.
2. Legalization of prostitution and the sex industry promotes sex trafficking.
3. Legalization of prostitution does not control the sex industry. It expands it.
4. Legalization of prostitution increases child prostitution.
5. Legalization of prostitution does not protect the women in prostitution.
6. Legalization of prostitution increases the demand for prostitution. It boosts the motivation of men to buy women for sex in a much wider and more permissible range of socially acceptable settings.
7. Legalization of prostitution does not promote women's health.

Discrimination of Prostitution

Prostitution has traditionally been perceived as ‘bad boys’ or ‘bad girls’ and the sex industry has always been considered as one of the immoral social aspects. People engaged in prostitution can generally classify into two groups, they are forced into prostitution and they are willing to do so.

For those who are willing to become a prostitute should not blame people for discriminating them as they deserve it. They choose to stay in the sex industry as they want to earn money in a quick and easy way. Being prostitute can earn a lot of money and doesn’t require any education and skills. That is why most unskilled women get involve in this industry. But people should know that it is not a proper way of earning money as prostitution is not a legal action in Hong Kong.

People discriminate them because they had lowered the moral value of society. They are not respecting themselves and are a shame to the others. And also this would lead to the spreading of the sexually transmitted diseases.

In most countries all over the world, not only Hong Kong, are suffered from serious prostitution problem. The market demand for sexual services comes primarily from men but it is often the supply side (i.e. the women sex worker) being criticized and judged. So how about those male demander (i.e. the client)? Shall they be discriminated by others too?


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Prostitution

Introduction

Prostitution is a multibillion dollar industry. They enrich a small minority of predators , while the large community is left to pay for the damage.

1.      Definition

Prostitution, pornography, and other forms of commercial sex are a multibillion dollar industry. They enrich a small minority of predators, while the larger community is left to pay for the damage.

Prostitution is:

a) sexual harassment
b) battering
c) domestic violence
d) a violation of human rights
e) a consequence of male domination of women
 
The commercial sex industry includes street prostitution, massage brothels, escort services, outcall services, strip clubs, lap dancing, phone sex, adult and child pornography, video and internet pornography, and prostitution tourism. Most women who are in prostitution for longer than a few months drift among these various permutations of the commercial sex industry.

All prostitution causes harm to women. Whether it is being sold by one’s family to a brothel, or whether it is being sexually abused in one’s family, running away from home, and then being pimped by one’s boyfriend, or whether one is in college and needs to pay for next semester’s tuition and one works at a strip club behind glass where men never actually touch you – all these forms of prostitution hurt the women in it.

Women in prostitution are purchased for their appearance, including skin color and characteristics based on ethnic stereotyping. Throughout history, women have been enslaved and prostituted based on race and ethnicity, as well as gender.

2.      Prostitution and Civil Rights

Women in prostitution are denied every imaginable civil right in every imaginable and unimaginable way, such that it makes sense to understand prostitution as consisting in the denial of women's humanity, no matter how humanity is defined. It is denied both through the social definition and condition of prostitutes and through the meaning of some civil rights.

The legal right to be free from torture and cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment is recognized by most nations and is internationally guaranteed. In prostitution, women are tortured through repeated rape and in all the more conventionally recognized ways. Women are prostituted precisely in order to be degraded and subjected to cruel and brutal treatment without human limits; it is the opportunity to do this that is exchanged when women are bought and sold for sex. The fact that most legal prohibitions on torture apply only to official torture, specifically torture by state actors, illustrates the degree to which the legal design of civil rights has excluded women's experience of being denied them.

3.      Real-life cases

"For a great part of 1992 I lived in a beautiful apartment on Capitol Hill. I drove my expensive car. I bought lovely clothes and traveled extensively out of the country. For the first time in my 20 years as an adult woman, I paid my own way. There was no need to worry about affording my rent, my phone bill, all the debts one accumulates simply by living month to month. I felt invincible. And I was miserable to the core. I hated myself because I hated my life All the things I came to possess meant nothing. I could not face myself in the mirror. Working in prostitution lost my soul." Survivor interviewed by Debra Boyer, Lynn Chapman and Brent Marshall in Survival Sex in King County: Helping Women Out (1993), King County Women Advisory Board, Northwest Resource Associates, Seattle.

The comfort women, which is a translation of the Japanese euphemism, jugun ianfu, (military comfort women), categorically refers to women of various ethnic and national backgrounds and social circumstances who became sexual laborers for the Japanese troops before and during the Second World War. Countless women had to labor as comfort women in the military brothels found throughout the vast Asia Pacific region occupied by the Japanese forces. There is no way to determine precisely how many women were forced to serve as comfort women. The estimate ranges between 80,000 and 200,000, about 80 % of whom, it is believed, were Korean. Japanese women and women of other occupied territories (such as Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Burma and the Pacific islands) were also used as comfort women.

4.      Situation in HK

There are many places in Hong Kong which provide sex services, these include

1) bars

2) night clubs

3) massage shops

4) karaoke bars and

5) flats where prostitutes live.

1.      Prevalence in other parts of the world

- Holland, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, USA, Zambia

2.      Discrimination

3.      Legalization

Countries which Prostitution is legalized:

Reasons for not legalizing Prostitution

1.      Legalization/decriminalization of prostitution is a gift to pimps, traffickers and the sex industry.

2.      Legalization/decriminalization of prostitution and the sex industry promotes sex trafficking.

3.      Legalization/decriminalization of prostitution does not control the sex industry. It expands it.

4.      Legalization/decriminalization of prostitution increases clandestine, hidden, illegal and street prostitution.

5.      Legalization of prostitution and decriminalization of the sex industry increases child prostitution.

6.      Legalization/decriminalization of prostitution does not protect the women in prostitution.

7.      Legalization/decriminalization of prostitution increases the demand for prostitution. It boosts the motivation of men to buy women for sex in a much wider and more permissible range of socially acceptable settings.

8.      Legalization/decriminalization of prostitution does not promote women's health.

9.      Legalization/decriminalization of prostitution does not enhance women's choice.

10.  Women in systems of prostitution do not want the sex industry legalized or decriminalized.

Argument

1.Legalization/decriminalization of prostitution is a gift to pimps, traffickers and the sex industry.

What does legalization of prostitution or decriminalization of the sex industry mean? In the Netherlands, legalization amounts to sanctioning all aspects of the sex industry: the women themselves, the so-called clients and the pimps who, under the regime of legalization, are transformed into third party businessmen and legitimate sexual entrepreneurs.

Legalization/decriminalization of the sex industry also converts brothels, sex clubs, massage parlors and other sites of prostitution activities into legitimate venues where commercial sexual acts are allowed to flourish legally with few restraints.

Ordinary people believe that, in calling for legalization or decriminalization of prostitution, they are dignifying and professionalizing the women in prostitution. But dignifying prostitution as work doesn't dignify the women, it simply dignifies the sex industry. People often don't realize that decriminalization, for example, means decriminalization of the whole sex industry not just the women. And they haven't thought through the consequences of legalizing pimps as legitimate sex entrepreneurs or third party businessmen, or the fact that men who buy women for sexual activity are now accepted as legitimate consumers of sex.

CATW favors decriminalization of the women in prostitution. No woman should be punished for her own exploitation. But States should never decriminalize pimps, buyers, procurers, brothels or other sex establishments.

4.      Violence and Crime

Many of the health problems of women in prostitution are a direct result of violence. For example, several women had their ribs broken by the police in Istanbul, a woman in San Francisco broke her hips jumping out of a car when a john was attempting to kidnap her. Many women had their teeth knocked out by pimps and johns. Others had their arms or  noses broken, partially deaf in one ear  or even had a fractured skull. Their toes have been broken and their feet have been burned. There haven’t been a place on their bodies that haven’t been bruised somehow.

Table 2 below describes gender of respondents in South Africa, Thailand, and the USA.

Many women had their teeth knocked out by pimps and johns. (Melissa Farley, unpublished manuscript, 2000)


　

TABLE 1
Violence in prostitution

TABLE 2
Violence in the lives of people in prostitution

Table 3 below describes gender of respondents to violence in South Africa, Thailand, and the USA.

TABLE 3
Gender

Across the five countries, the average age was 28 years, ranging from 12 to 61 years. See Table 4.

TABLE 4
Age

Crime

About 80% of women in prostitution have been the victim of a rape. It's hard to talk about this because the experience of prostitution is just like rape. Prostitutes are raped, on the average, eight to ten times per year. They are the most raped class of women in the history of our planet.

1.      Influence to prostitutes

For the millions of women, predominantly poor, often sold off by a male family member to work off a family debt, or chosen to be the family expatriate breadwinner, the experience of sex slavery is physically and psychologically debilitating. Women often lured from their home country with promises of legitimate work are sold like cattle, imprisoned, sexually violated and returned home shamed and poor, many suffering from AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases. Many go back home to die.

　

2.      Conclusion

Legislators leap onto the legalization bandwagon because they think nothing else is successful. However, as Scotland Yard's Commissioner has stated: 'You've got to be careful about legalizing things just because you don't think what you are doing is successful.

We hear very little about the role of the sex industry in creating a global sex market in the bodies of women and children. Instead, we hear much about making prostitution into a better job for women through regulation and/or legalization, through unions of so-called sex workers,and through campaigns which provide condoms to women in prostitution but cannot provide them with alternatives to prostitution. We hear much about how to keep women in prostitution but very little about how to help women get out.

Governments that legalize prostitution as sex work will have a huge economic stake in the sex industry. Consequently, this will foster their increased dependence on the sex sector. If women in prostitution are counted as workers, pimps as businessmen, and buyers as consumers of sexual services, thus legitimating the entire sex industry as an economic sector, then governments can abdicate responsibility for making decent and sustainable employment available to women.

Rather than the State sanctioning prostitution, the State could address the demand by penalizing the men who buy women for the sex of prostitution, and support the development of alternatives for women in prostitution industries. Instead of governments cashing in on the economic benefits of the sex industry by taxing it, governments could invest in the futures of prostituted women by providing economic resources, from the seizure of sex industry assets, to provide real alternatives for women in prostitution.