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Argument: Governments should not set moral sexual standards regarding prostitutes

Issue Report: Prostitution

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Laurie Shrage, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy at the California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. “U.S. Feminists Split Over Berkeley Prostitution Measure”. North Gate News. Nov. 1, 2004 – “For feminists like me, punitive laws against prostitution symbolize one of [the] things I’d most like to change about our society, namely double standards of sexual morality that result in stigmatizing not just prostitutes, but many unconventional women, as sluts or whores.”

Alison J. Murray, PhD, lecturer at the University of Sydney, in the chapter “Debt-Bondage and Trafficking: Don’t Believe the Hype” of the 1998 book Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance and Redefinition – “Blanket statements about prostitution and the exploitation of women are propaganda from a political agenda which seeks to control the way people think and behave. The situations which the anti-traffickers rail against, insofar as they do exist, are a result of economic, political and gender inequalities which should be our central cause for concern. The vast range of sex industries and contexts requires an understanding of diversity and difference and a realization that prohibition and unitary ‘moral values’ are part of the problem, not the solution.”