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Women's groups divided over prostitution

Civil rights and women's groups are divided about the Ministry of the Interior's plan to decriminalize the sex industry.

The ministry announced in January that it would push for an amendment to Article 80 of the Social Order Maintenance Law (社會秩序維護法), which now punishes prostitutes for solicitation. There is no punishment for prostitutes' clients under the current regulations, and the ministry has said it has no intention of changing this aspect of the legislation.

"The legalization of the sex industry still needs more discussion. From a human rights point of view it is unfair to only punish the prostitutes, while their clients go free," Chiu Ju-na (邱汝娜), director of the ministry's Department of Social Affairs, said yesterday.

Since 1997, when then Taipei mayor Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) launched a crackdown on the city's brothels, women's groups have repeatedly expressed concern over the rights of sex workers and their position in society.

These groups are divided into two camps that each hold a different opinion on the sex industry. One side, led by The Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters (日日春關懷互助協會), is calling for the complete legalization of the sex industry, with no punishment for either prostitutes or their clients.

The other side, led by The Garden of Hope Foundation and the End Child Prostitution Association in Taiwan (終止童妓協會), propose that the clients, rather than the sex workers, be penalized.

"The Collective has always been pushing for legalization, decriminalization and normalization of the sex industry, and the first step to that would be decriminalization of the sex workers," said Wang Fang-ping (王芳萍), the Collective's secretary-general.

Wang said that penalizing the clients would amount to the same thing as penalizing the prosti-tutes, and that the sex trade would not go away just because of the penalties.

She discounted the public perception that prostitution was only about simple physical needs, saying it involved complicated cultural and psychological problems.

"Many clients are working-class men who cannot find intimate partners. They face great pressure and feel depressed, and prostitution has become a way for them to deal with this," Wang said.

"Many sex workers have told me that they are actually selling fantasy, rather than sex, because their customers have problems with reality," she said.

The Collective is organizing a march on Feb. 7 to call for the decriminalization of the sex industry as part of the Fourth International Sex Workers' Culture Festival.

But Hwang Shu-ling (黃淑玲), an associate professor at the National Defense Medical Center's Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, disagrees with Wang about the clients.

Hwang, who recently completed a study on prostitution, said: "In my research it can be clearly seen that men who seek sex from prostitutes range from big bosses to laborers. The clients exist in every occupation. The richer ones actually visit prostitutes more often than poorer ones."

Hwang further disagrees with Wang about prostitutes' clients not being able to find intimate partners. She has found that many clients have multiple sexual partners, and not necessarily on a paying basis.

According to Hwang, society is paying for the effects of the sex trade, and blamed the prostitutes' clients for this.

"Society is paying for prostitutes' check-ups for sexually transmitted diseases, and there are also extra costs incurred in providing shelter to underage prostitutes. The tragedy of snakeheads smuggling Chinese prostitutes [to Taiwan] is a result of the demand for prostitutes. If there's no need, there's no market," Hwang said.

She also pointed out that there was a vital difference between men who seek the services of prostitutes and men who do not.

"Men who like to pay for sex tend to think it is better to legalize the sex industry," Hwang said.

The women's groups opposing the legalization of the sex industry are planning a visit to the Ministry of the Interior today to discuss the government's position on the issue and to reassert their own opinions.

"We want the sex industry downsized, the prostitutes decriminalized, and the clients and the brothel owners penalized," Garden of Hope Foundation director Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) said.
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