Porn star Belle Knox (a.k.a. Duke University student Miriam Weeks) says that prostitution should be legal. Knox writes in Rolling Stone that because the oldest profession is criminalized, “sex workers are pushed onto the street, leaving too many at the whims of pimps and dangerous johns without access to police protection and labor representation. If only the practice was brought indoors, sex workers could have more freedom to perform on their own terms in a safe, legal environment like I do.”
Knox used research on Nevada’s legal brothels to back up her argument. “This is not just theory, but hard fact. Barbara G. Brents of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, studied the Silver State’s legal brothels for more than 15 years and found that ’employees report that they feel safe, are free to come and go and are bound only by their contract.’ In fact, 84 percent of the brothel workers her team surveyed said their job ‘felt safe,’ and no evidence of trafficking could be found.” Knox is by no means the first person to call for legalizing prostitution, but her job may mean that her opinion carries more weight than that of a sociologist, lawyer, or campaigner against sex-trafficking. “As a porn actress,” she writes, “one of the perverse tragedies of public policy I often contemplate is the fact that people can pay to watch me have sex on camera but are considered criminals if they pay to have sex behind closed doors.” You can read Knox’s article in full here.
