Prostitution has no borders, it does not stop anywhere, and its existence hurts us all. Even when prostitution is seemingly delimited to a given zone in the city, this zone becomes a violent and dangerous “enclave” for all the city’s residents. This message can be observed in a letter that a young woman, a resident of Holon, wrote to the mayor of Holon. The entire letter was published on 24.2.16, in a Facebook page called, “Forum Holon – Now also on Facebook”. This authentic voice delivers very clearly the message we want heard.
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Mayors boast about their achievements with the help of public relations, while at the same time they, as well as the police, display powerlessness when it comes to the existence of areas in the city where prostitution thrives, with all its severe implications.
… It is so sad that this city is considered the children’s city, while they do not know what goes on here as soon as the sun sets… How they praise this city for the fabulous Adloyada shows it hosts each year, but they conceal the dreadful striptease shows to which I and many others are forced to be exposed…”
The result of the powerlessness in eradicating the prostitution phenomenon is that women cannot be safe in those areas of the city, and so all of them, all of us, become potential prostitutes, and are exposed to violence and debasement.
In the last few months that I have been working there [in a gas station in the area where women engage in prostitution]… I go out to the bus stop and wait, but with time, I understood that this is an unusual and shocking situation. From the first day that I waited for the bus for a quarter of an hour… the number of people that stopped their car by the bus stop and asked me, “How much do you charge?” cannot be counted with two hands. Of course, I leave my work uniform on, with the giant logo of the gas station, but those people are so crazed that it never helps. Because of this, I had to get an electric shocker and pepper spray, for those occasions when dubious clients came out of their cars, and being so crazed, they did not listen to what I told them. I had to take one of these self-defense tools so they would understand that I am not a prostitute and that they could not get me into their cars and carry out their evil schemes”.
The existence of areas in which prostitution exists maintains the gender imbalance, starting from the very fact that men purchase sex from women using money, to the loss of personal security of women in the public areas, and ending with women’s right and possibility to work and make a living anywhere they want without fearing for their lives.
Anyone who hears that I work in the old industrial zone makes a face and starts lecturing me about how dangerous the area is and why I work there. Why really? Because I need the money. And my question is… Why do I have to be sorry and afraid when I mention the location of my workplace? Why can’t I feel safe in all the areas of my city?”
Prostitution has no borders, it does not stop anywhere, and its existence hurts us all. This situation must change.
… Why is the situation exist for decades, and nobody takes care of it? …Why every evening when the police cars, the city’s security cars, and many others drive by, I see them looking at the horrors with a shocked expression, yet nobody is doing anything??? … I do not understand how for so many years… not only that this shocking phenomenon has not been stopped, it is growing and spreading to the nearby streets… I am not even talking about the way it portrays ‘prostitution’, and how in every corner poor young women are being seduced and solicited to make a lot of money, and prostitution is presented as something which isn’t so bad”.
We, in Women’s Parliament and the SHIN movement demand from the Knesset members to act without delay and pass the law for the criminalization of the clients of prostitutes.