Prostitution

Prostitution
By: Cassandra Bragado


I. Introduction
Women in most parts of the world are often discriminated. In their early lives as girls, women have already experience discrimination due to the biased cultures of different countries. Take the Philippines for example, majority of the households treat girls differently. Despite the same level of nutrition that both genders need, the girl is given less than what her father and her brothers are getting. When there is no enough money to sustain the children’s education, the male children are preferred over the female ones. When it comes to activities that involve strength, or any physical work, girls are often discouraged in engaging in such even though it is already a fact that some females are as good as males.
Women are often stereotyped as mothers who are abused and submissive to their husbands, mothers who are required to stay at home and do domestic work. Despite the changes that have occurred, some still consider girls as sex objects who work on clubs or bars, beauty pageant titlists, and “porn-stars.” Some still regard them as things that satisfy men’s desires.
In a country where religious, cultural, and political leaders are predominantly men, the views, practices, and some laws are interpreted in ways that perpetuate discrimination against women . And this brings about one of the issues involving women, prostitution.
The feminization of poverty along with the discriminatory norms of the society limits the access of women to work opportunities pushing them to work as prostitutes. They become workers who are suffered to a job that requires them to lose even respect for their own selves; a job that is questioned and belittled by many.
Prostitution entails a lot of sacrifices from the prostitutes but why are they considered as criminals? Prostitution in the country involves a lot of controversies. Such controversies would pertain to the oppression of women. One of which is about the crime of prostitution itself. The country’s Revised Penal Code refers to it as a crime while some laws and ordinances negate it. Some laws refer to prostitutes as criminals; others refer to them as victims while others refer to them as legitimate employees. So what is it to be? A criminal, a victim or a legitimate employee?
It is really not clear as to what should really be the treatment to these people. The one thing that is truly clear is the fact that with these laws at hand, justice is not rightfully served to women. With these contradicting laws, women have become more susceptible to injustice. Justice is symbolized by a blindfolded woman holding a scale but why is justice always out of every woman’s reach? Does the blindfold really represent that women will never see and experience justice?











II. Body

A. Philippine Laws

1. Prostitutes as Criminals

a. Revised Penal Code
Prostitution is, beyond doubt, an immoral act that should not be patronized. To some countries it is legal for persons to be engaged in the said act due to some economic purposes, but for countries such as the Philippines, prostitution is not just illegal but also a crime.

Article 202 of the Revised Penal Code, under Offenses Against Decency and Good Customs provides:

“Art. 202. Vagrants and prostitutes; penalty. — The following are vagrants:
xxx
5. Prostitutes.
For the purposes of this article, women who, for money or profit, habitually indulge in sexual intercourse or lascivious conduct, are deemed to be prostitutes.
Any person found guilty of any of the offenses covered by this articles shall be punished by arresto menor or a fine not exceeding 200 pesos, and in case of recidivism, by arresto mayor in its medium period to prision correccional in its minimum period or a fine ranging from 200 to 2,000 pesos, or both, in the discretion of the court.”
The above-stated provision relays that prostitutes, whom the law identifies as women, are criminals. The law believes that the act of these women is immoral and lewd enough to deserve a sanction. It is indecent due to the principle that a woman should only have sex within the confines of marriage. It should be done with utmost love for the one she has married. Society prescribes that sex is a sacred act that women should value it, and never do it in exchange for money. The same does not apply to men. Men, on the other hand, are biologically more sexually active than women are. It is natural for them to feel the urge of having sex, and satisfying that urge even if it means hiring women’s services.
Another point is that, child prostitutes are considered as victims while adult women who engage in prostitution are criminals under the Revised Penal Code. This shows how the unfair the law is when it comes to protecting the people. It can be inferred that the law believes that unlike children, adult women are already capable of making decisions. They are already capable of protecting themselves. The law fails to see how harmful prostitution is to all; women, children, and even to the patrons.

2. Prostitutes as Victims
While prostitutes under the Revised Penal Code are considered as criminals, the same does not hold true when it comes to Republic Act No. 9802 or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act. The two sections that are relevant to the study are Section 4, and Section 17. Section 4 of R.A. 9208 states:
“Section 4. Acts of Trafficking in Persons. - It shall be unlawful for any person, natural or juridical, to commit any of the following acts:
(a) To recruit, transport, transfer; harbor, provide, or receive a person by any means, including those done under the pretext of domestic or overseas employment or training or apprenticeship, for the purpose of prostitution, pornography, sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery, involuntary servitude or debt bondage;
(b) To introduce or match for money, profit, or material, economic or other consideration, any person or, as provided for under Republic Act No. 6955, any Filipino woman to a foreign national, for marriage for the purpose of acquiring, buying, offering, selling or trading him/her to engage in prostitution, pornography, sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery, involuntary servitude or debt bondage;
(c) To offer or contract marriage, real or simulated, for the purpose of acquiring, buying, offering, selling, or trading them to engage in prostitution, pornography, sexual exploitation, forced labor or slavery, involuntary servitude or debt bondage;
(d) To undertake or organize tours and travel plans consisting of tourism packages or activities for the purpose of utilizing and offering persons for prostitution, pornography or sexual exploitation;
(e) To maintain or hire a person to engage in prostitution or pornography;
(f) To adopt or facilitate the adoption of persons for the purpose of prostitution, pornography, sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery, involuntary servitude or debt bondage;
(g) To recruit, hire, adopt, transport or abduct a person, by means of threat or use of force, fraud, deceit, violence, coercion, or intimidation for the purpose of removal or sale of organs of said person; and
(h) To recruit, transport or adopt a child to engage in armed activities in the Philippines or abroad.”
Section 17 of R.A. 9208 provides:
“Section 17. Legal Protection to Trafficked Persons. - Trafficked persons shall be recognized as victims of the act or acts of trafficking and as such shall not be penalized for crimes directly related to the acts of trafficking enumerated in this Act or in obedience to the order made by the trafficker in relation thereto. In this regard, the consent of a trafficked person to the intended exploitation set forth in this Act shall be irrelevant.”
In the above provision, trafficked persons include those persons who are hired to engage in the business of prostitution. These persons should be treated as victims and not as criminals like what the Revised Penal Code prescribes. Consent given by these people is immaterial; it does not affect the fact that they are victims of trafficking.
3. Prostitutes as Legitimate Employees
Aside from being criminals and victims, prostitutes are viewed differently under the Labor Code. Article 138 of the Labor Code states that:
“…Any woman who is permitted or suffered to work, with or without compensation, in any night club, cocktail lounge, massage clinic, bar or similar establishments under the effective control or supervision of the employer for a substantial period of time as determined by the Secretary of Labor and Employment, shall be considered as an employee of such establishment for purposes of labor and social legislation.”
As opposed to the first two laws mentioned, under the Philippines labor laws, prostitutes are legitimate workers. The business that they are engaged to is legal. As proof to this, the government provides for laws that allow prostitution de facto, the kind of prostitution that is held in bars, massage clinics, and the likes. One good example of a law that regulates prostitution is the Code of Sanitation of the Philippines which states that:
“For halls and night clubs, no person shall be employed as hostess or cook or bartender or waiter without first securing health certificate from the local health authority.”
In addition to the code mentioned, various ordinances were also passed requiring these workers to undergo periodic checkups. One of which is the General Santos City Council Ordinance No. 35 (1969). Sections 1, 2 and 3 (a) and (b) of it provides:
“Section 1 –
No person shall engage in the occupation of hostess, or dancers in the night clubs, bars, cabarets, or dance halls, without first securing a health certificate from the City Health Officer or his (sic) authorized representative, after undergoing the necessary diagnostic tests. xxx
Section 2 –
Only persons who are in good health and free from infectious diseases as shown in the health certificate shall be allowed to engage in the occupation of hostess, or dancers in night clubs, bars, cabarets, or dance halls.
Section 3 –
(a) Hostesses, or dancers in night clubs, bars, cabarets or dance halls, are required to undergo microscopic examination of the vaginal smear every month and blood serologic tests (Wassermann or Kahn) every six months.
(b) Hostesses, or dancers in night clubs, bars, cabarets or dance halls who are suffering from infectious diseases or found positive by diagnostic by laboratory tests shall be temporarily suspended from engaging in their occupation and their health certificate revoked.”
If one tries to take a glance at the provisions of this ordinance he/she would not dare question it. But if a person would try to read between the lines, he/she would realize one thing, prostitution is not really a crime in this country, because why would they require these women to secure a clearance for STDs if they are not assumed as persons engaged in the trade of flesh. The government does not penalize it, it in fact regulates it. Clearly, the provisions of the ordinance were not made to protect the best interest of these women. The requirement under this law is obviously not related to their work. It seems that the law is ensuring that women are clean before they are handed down to their customers. The law was never created to protect these women; it was created to serve as a protection to the customers who are mostly men.

B. Foreign Laws
Unlike the Philippine laws, some foreign laws are clear as to how prostitution should be viewed. Some countries legalize it some do not. Below is a table showing some foreign countries and their policies regarding prostitution:
Country
(and related government document)
Related Current Information
Legal Status of Prostitution, Brothel Ownership, and Pimping
Related Current Information

1. Australia Prostitution: Depends
The law varies depending on the state from decriminalized to legally regulated to criminal. Click on the PLA Summary on the left to see a description of each state.
Brothel Ownership: Depends
4 states permit brothels, 1 allows as part of a containment policy, and 3 prohibit.
Pimping: Depends
"Foreign backpackers visiting Queensland have been earning money as illegal prostitutes and damaging legitimate operators, the legal brothel industry has claimed. Queensland Adult Business Association Nick Inskip said the illegal sex industry was undermining efforts by the legal industry to make a profit and uphold health and safety standards.... 'They can charge less because they are not paying GST, staff costs for managers and receptionists, or have a registered business name,' Mr Inskip said.
...One solution could be allowing legal brothels to operate outcall services, he said. But the proposal has previously been rejected by the Crime and Misconduct Commission and the state government. Queensland currently has 23 legal brothels operating in city and regional areas. Police figures show the number of prostitution offences reported in Queensland increased from 362 to 600 in 2005-06."

2. Brazil Prostitution: Legal
There are no regulations for adult prostitution.
Brothel Ownership: Illegal
Pimping: Illegal
"[R]ather than comply with an American demand that all foreign recipients of AIDS assistance must explicitly condemn prostitution, Brazil has decided to forgo up to $40 million in American support....
'Our feeling was that the manner in which the Usaid [sic] funds were consigned would bring harm to our program from the point of view of its scientific credibility, its ethical values and its social commitment,' Pedro Chequer, director of the Brazilian government's AIDS program, said... 'We must remain faithful to the established principles of the scientific method and not allow theological beliefs and dogma to interfere.'...
Mark Dybul, deputy coordinator and chief medical officer for the Bush administration's global AIDS initiative,... says the prostitution controversy is not only overblown, but is also an example of the many misconceptions about U.S. policy. 'On the ground, this isn't an issue,'... 'Part of a compassionate response involves meeting people where they are and working with them.' He added, 'Each country has a sovereign right to make decisions for themselves, and we respect that.' But to receive American aid, he said, 'it does require an acknowledgment that prostitution is not a good thing and to be opposed to it.'"

3. Canada Prostitution: Legal
Must be done in private places. Cannot be done in a brothel. Solicitation in public places is illegal.
Brothel Ownership: Illegal
Owning a "Bawdy House" can be punishable by up to 2 years in prison.
Pimping: Illegal
Anyone who "lives wholly or in part on the avails of prostitution of another person" can be sentenced up to 10 years.
"Prime Minister Stephen Harper said today... 'In terms of legalization of prostitution I can just tell you that obviously that's something that this government doesn't favour.'
Adult prostitution is not illegal in Canada, though most activities surrounding it are prohibited, 'making it virtually impossible to engage in prostitution without committing a crime,' according to the parliamentary committee's 2006 study of the issue."

4. China Prostitution: Illegal
Define as a social practice that abrogates the inherent rights of women to personhood.
Brothel Ownership: Illegal
Pimping: Illegal
"In the biggest bust of prostitution related crimes in recent years, Beijing police last week arrested 38 prostitutes, 63 Internet technicians, five gang leaders, an unlicensed medical worker, along with 45 of the prostitutes' clients. The gang attracted clients for the prostitutes by randomly sending countless messages to Internet users who were logged on to major chat rooms, forums, or through instant messages. Police say the gang sent more than seven million messages to Internet users in the past month alone. The only job of most of the gang members was to send the soliciting messages from Internet bars.
A reporter with the Beijing Daily says he received 32 on-line solicitations for the services of a prostitute in just a half an hour. Many messages purported to be from available young, female college students. Other messages directed people to blogs that contained nude pictures of women. In all the messages phone numbers were left where clients could make contact with a prostitute. Police say the youngest prostitute they arrested was just 15 years old and one of the gang members, surnamed Zhao, treated the prostitutes for venereal disease and provide [sic] them with condoms. The Beijing Daily reports that organized messaging for prostitution services remains rampant in online chat rooms."

5. England Prostitution: Legal
Must be over 18. No solicitation in public places.
Brothel Ownership: Illegal
Pimping: Illegal
Pimping law defined as "controlling prostitution for gain."
"[T]here currently are an estimated 80,000 sex workers in the UK. The question is how does society accommodate it?
The government is still considering a proposal to allow groups of up to three women to run small brothels, but is it time to just legalise prostitution completely? Or are safe tolerance zones on the streets the answer?
There is opposition to all the above proposed solutions. How many would honestly want prostitutes and their clients operating near where they live - whether in brothels or in safe zones? So what is the answer?"

6. United States Prostitution: Illegal
Illegal except for 11 rural counties in Nevada, where registration and health checks are required, and Rhode Island, where prostitution is legal but loitering in public places for prostitution and soliciting prostitution services in motor vehicles are illegal.
Brothel Ownership: Illegal
Illegal except for 11 rural counties in Nevada. Brothel ownership in Rhode Island is not prohibited if the owner does not receive the proceeds from prostitution.
Pimping: Illegal
"State attempts to regulate prostitution by introducing medical check-ups or licenses don't address the core problem: the routine abuse and violence that form the prostitution experience and brutally victimize those caught in its netherworld."
Source: http://prostitution.procon.org/viewresource.asp?resourceID=772
Originally, the table above presented 54 countries and their policies regarding prostitution. Out of 54 countries, 29 of them legalize prostitution, 19 considers it as an illegal act, and 6 regulates it.
Surprisingly, prostitution for the most part of the United States of America is illegal. It is only legal in some parts of Nevada. Another shocking fact here is that those parts of Nevada that legalized prostitution do not include Las Vegas. Despite the fact that it is labeled as the Sin City, Las Vegas considers prostitution as an illegal business. The belief that this city is pro prostitution may be due to the fact that near counties that legalized prostitution go to Las Vegas for the many brothels that can be found there.
C. Cases
Despite the issue that exists regarding the way prostitutes should be treated, these people still experience abuse in so many ways. One of these ways is the manner of how police enforcers capture prostitutes, and that is through entrapment. The said abuse of these women is evidence by the case of People vs. Bueno (No. 01378-CR, October 17, 1964) decided by the Court of Appeals. In the said case the Court of Appeals sided on the Philippine Constabulary on the method of having sexual intercourse with these women before the operation to raid a prostitution house. The court declares:
“We hereby pronounce that the arrangement so made was simply an entrapment – which must be distinguished from instigation or inducement. An inducement to commit a crime for the purpose of catching person charges with having committed the crime is to be considered as immoral. But an entrapment, which a parlance is the employment of such ways and means for the purpose of trapping or catching in flagrante delictu a lawbreaker, has to be sanctioned as means of having a law effective. In the taking of means to instigate or induce, no crime is supposed to have been committed previously, so much so that in inducing one to commit it (crime) makes the instigator or seducer a participis criminis or co-criminal. On the other hand, in the case of entrapment, there is the logical presumption and conclusion that the crime had been previously committed or continually being committed, but the authorities are having difficulties in proving it. So that such means as may be done to entrap surprise a lawbreaker is not reprehensible. It may be considered as a means to make the law work.”
In such cases, exploitation and abuse by women are very prevalent that even the law does it. Many try to conceal the truth that some law enforces support prostitution by using these women, they try to veil it through the method of entrapment.
D. Psychological Findings
The government of the Philippines considers prostitution as a crime. It imposes a penalty to those people who are involved such as the prostitutes themselves because the law believes that by doing so, prostitution can be eliminated. The government fails to realize that prostitution in every country is inevitable. Prostitution, like poverty, can never be totally eradicated. It can only be lessened. Criminalizing the act of prostitutes does not solve anything. Putting them behind bars does not make the change; it does not do anything at all.
According to psychological findings, prostitutes have a sex sickness. Prostitutes have generally slight mental, physical, and emotional abnormalities. Police action per se is not an effective approach in addressing these illnesses. Prostitutes are not and should not be seen as criminals. They cannot be rehabilitated by an unsound criminal procedure that robs them of their dignity as human beings. It is more logical to rehabilitate and re-educate them instead of imposing fines that they can easily pay.







III. Conclusion
Philippine Laws have different views on prostitution. Prostitution can be likened to slavery. Certainly, slave-like situations should not be criminalized based on gender, age or choice. The division of prostitution to adult and child becomes anomalous in cases where in adult women were brought into prostitution as children.
The law puts women prostitutes in a very complicated situation wherein they are viewed as criminals or, in some laws, as victims but their work as prostitutes is legally sanctioned. In any of these ways, however, these women experience being abused and exploited.
Based on the findings gathered, the researcher believes that prostitutes not really considered as criminals by the law and the government. They are victims; victims of poverty and time. Most people may say that these people have the choice whether to engage in the business of prostitution but as the researcher tries to see reality as it is, prostitutes are robbed of this choice – robbed by the society’s view on women.










IV. Recommendation
A. Prostitutes are not criminals
To this end, the researcher recommends that prostitutes should be relieved with any punishments, that they should not be considered as criminals by the law. The law should only criminalize the pimps and the customers or patrons of prostitution because these people do not experience the true sacrifices that women prostitutes have.
B. Change in the Definition of Prostitution
For many years, the definition of a prostitute would always refer to a woman who consistently indulges in any sexual activity for profit. Despite the changes that have occurred, this remains to be the definition that the Philippine laws adopt. Women are still belittled due to the notion that prostitutes are identified as women; they are even labeled as “putas” or whores. The definition does not take into consideration the fact that men, like women, are already involved in the business of prostitution. Men, being prostitutes, are already rendering sexual services for money. Although the study did not touch much of this aspect the researcher recommends that the laws, not just Philippine laws, should adopt a new definition of prostitutes. For others, this recommendation may not seem to matter but this very thing shows how everyone, even the law, views women as immoral beings.
C. Penalize Patrons/Customers
Other persons involved in prostitution likewise have criminal liability but it is hardly enforced. Article 341 of the Revised Penal Code provides:
“The penalty of prison mayor in its medium and its maximum periods shall be imposed upon any person who, in any manner, or under any pretext, shall engage in the business or profit by prostitution or shall enlist the services of any other person for the purpose of prostitution.”

The law is not clear as to what the penalty to the customers is. The researcher believes that they should be equally liable with the pimps or exploiters. They are one of the reasons why the number of prostitutes is growing. They use and abuse the flesh vendors.