Strippers, Prostitutes, and Respectability

[kılıç_mehmet]

My opinion on the matter is this:
I'll start by the legality of the whole matter.
I know this for a fact that prostitution is itself a fact of urban life.
The ranks of this profession are filled with unfortunate people, who do not have access to higher education, or to a form of employment that will allow them to earn a wage they can live above the poverty line.

So, why I think it should be legal, and is legal in my own country.
Well, to start with, prostitution is a form of untaxed income, if done illegally.
Along with that, illegal or street prostitution brings forth with it a set of serious dangers. For clients, this could come in form of STD's, and for the prostitutes, this may come in form of clients who are unwilling to pay, and those who might get violent after being asked to do so. For that reason, many street prostitutes have pimps who find them their clients, and make sure that they pay after they're done. Such individuals actually perpetrate the conditions that drove the woman who resorted to prostitution to fend for herself, and generally require a cut from her, who knows how much.
If the prostitute refuses, things get worse.
In short, state regulated prostitution allows for STD safe(with weekly checks) prostitution in state sanctioned brothels, that are owned by certain people, where the girls are payed workers.

Now, to how I view prostitution itself. I think that prostituion is the lowest forms of employment for any person. It really doesn't matter if a person becomes a prostitute by own choice. Generally, that choice isn't even theirs. Really, who would want to be humped by old horny men 24/7?
Maybe I'm exaggerating, but I've talked with a few street and brothel prostitutes and they themselves told me that life hasn't been good on them, and they're doing this simply because they have to. In short, I've never met a prostitute in my whole life who aspired to be one from childhood, like, parents will ask their kids what they want to be when they grow up, but who will really answer, I want to be a prostitute?
Or which mother would want their children to become prostitutes(although I'm sure there are certain depraved, money-crazed individuals like that...).

First of all, prostitution is the act of selling your flesh to other people in exchange for money. However, it's not a simple transaction as you'd buy bread, as there is no bread before you, but there is a person that you're going to get intimate with very soon after you pay her.
And given that sexual intimacy generally reflects a sort of privacy in our lives, we could say that prostitutes do not have such a thing. They sell their privacy to people whom they do not know. The act of prostitution is therefore considered to be in direct contrast with values which are the foundation of society. Marriage, family, relationships, and etc. This is the reason why it's never done by wealthy, middle-class or even most of the poor people, and only chosen as a last-resort "employment".
I'll ask you this question;
is your privacy and body of such little worth to yourself as to sell it to another man that places that much worth as to give you a hundred bucks for humping you for an hour? Here, the matter of choice does not justify the deed in my eyes. Prostitution is not something that should be accepted more than it is.
For our primary goal should be to eliminate the factors that lead people to prostitution, not actually encourage prostitution by stating that it isn't a bad thing after all. In my eyes, stating that prostitution is anything else but a despicable trade, is to disrespect the women that are in the business and the values that it stands in contrast with.

Now, as for stripping and etc. I've never been to a pure stripping club, where strippers are not available for prostitution like in America. In Turkey, there are no strip clubs, however, I've been to Cyprus last year, and have seen that there are strip clubs practically everywhere, in addition to casinos and other places of vice, where the strippers are also available for prostitution.
Strippers in my opinion are no different than prostitutes in one regard. They do not actually sleep with the men they dance for. However, they do still go by the way of earning money by doing nothing but showing their naked bodies to other men, although, it's not a matter of being naked either.
In my opinion, a secretary, who goes to an interview with his soon-to be boss in a revealing outfit does the same. It's not a shame on her part as an invidiual, although it still is a type of behaviour I do not condone, it's a shame on the part of the person she tries to impress. But she also does, like the prostitute and stripper, what she has to do, and that is, to earn a living by using her body, even if she doesn't sleep for her boss, or strip for him.

I do not disrespect the person that has to work as a prostitute, stripper or anything along the lines.
But this does not mean that I have to respect the profession itself. For I think that prostitution is a sign of rising unemployment, poverty, and moral collapse. If such things are said to be respectable, one does not ever look at the reasons why these things exist. They do not exist just because there is a demand for it from the part of the people who ask for services. These exist because there is a demand from the part of the people who have to work in these fields, mostly the impoverished.