Prostitution and civil rights

CA MacKinnon - MICH. j. gender & L., 1993 - HeinOnline
CA MacKinnon
MICH. j. gender & L., 1993HeinOnline
The gap between the promise of civil rights and the real lives of prostitutes is an abyss which
swallows up prostituted women.'To speak of prostitution and civil rights in one breath moves
the two into one world, at once exposing and narrowing the distance between them. Women
in prostitution are denied every imaginable civil right in every imaginable and unimaginable
way, 2 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 …
The gap between the promise of civil rights and the real lives of prostitutes is an abyss which swallows up prostituted women.'To speak of prostitution and civil rights in one breath moves the two into one world, at once exposing and narrowing the distance between them. Women in prostitution are denied every imaginable civil right in every imaginable and unimaginable way, 2 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,
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