After watching a gut wrenching video earlier today; I was overcommed by the guilt of being of the male gender that has watched this injustice happen the world over to the women folks with so much impunity, I had to put this out there as a mirror for all men to take a look and examine what they see:
In every part of the world, when a woman is caught selling sex, she is arrested, shamed, blamed, or even in extreme cases publicly executed. But the man who initiated, offered and paid her? He walks away—his name protected, his reputation left intact. This is absolutely not justice. This is gendered violence hiding behind laws, religion, and culture all made up by men, policed by men and punished by men.
Let’s be clear: prostitution is a transaction between two people. Yet nearly every time something goes wrong, only one party pays the price—the woman.
This isn’t just about sex work. It’s about power, control, and centuries of patriarchy and ideas that should have been long discarded. It’s about how we, as societies, keep punishing women, putting them down and stigmatizing them simply for trying to survive the best and only way most know how.
Who usually initiates a prostitution encounter? The man. Who offers the money? The man. Who holds more power in the situation? The man.
But when the police come, when the courts get involved, when the community starts whispering, it’s the woman who is dragged through the mud. She is the one arrested, exposed, humiliated. Meanwhile, the buyer—the man—gets to go home to his job, his wife, his life as if nothing happened. All descent people the world over MUST agree that this is not justice no way and no how. It’s a system designed to protect male privilege then punish and subjugate females gender.
Yes, there’s been progress in places like the U.S., Canada, and the UK thanks to the feminist movement of the 1960 and others like it. But even here, until recently, prostitution arrests focused almost entirely on women. Women were thrown in jail, forced into “rehab,” had their mugshots blasted across the internet. Meanwhile, Johns got a ticket, if anything at all, and in most cases they got off clean with barely a warning.
These are countries that talk about equality—but when it comes to sex work, they still punish women for being poor, vulnerable, or simply under a male dominated system that made the laws only in the interest of the male folks.
In many parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, women are pushed into prostitution by poverty, early marriage, domestic violence, or the death of a husband. These women aren’t choosing sex work. They are choosing to live, most barely able to eke a living but saddled with the dependence of multiple children with absolutely no help at all.
Still, they face the harshest punishments imaginable—beatings, jail time, banishment, public shaming and even public execution. In some countries, women accused of prostitution are stoned to death while the men go free. This isn’t justice. This is male created and state-sponsored gender violence, something we have come to accept as normal in most societies. Such a big shame it is happening every day and not much is said about it, such stories are relegated only to the back pages of our news papers.
The root cause of prostitution are really simple and straight forward, here are some:
Poverty, Misogyny, Male entitlement, Laws that criminalize survival and protect exploitation, very basic if you really think about it.
And the biggest is hypocrisy and unfairness, the societies that blame women for selling sex never blame the men who create the demand in the first place, of-course the woman is alway the convenient scapegoat in every of those situations.
As far as I am concerned Instead of asking, “Why is she selling her body?” we should be asking: What forced her to do this, Why are there no better options, what can we collectively do to help, Why do we punish the exploited and protect the exploiters? The truth is no woman wakes up dreaming of selling her body to strangers. She does it because in most cases her family, community and society has failed her. And when things go wrong as in violence, arrests, shame , society fails her again.
Prostitution laws don’t just criminalize an act—they criminalize poverty, trauma, and female right to their body. They strip women of dignity while reinforcing male power. And when religious or cultural traditions join in, the abuse becomes even more brutal. This can be seen perpetuated more in certain countries with adherence to certain religions (We want to try to keep from naming and singling out such religions).
In many conservative or authoritarian regimes, women in prostitution are not just punished—they’re made examples of Publicly, to silence others, and to remind women where they belong.
This is about control, his is about fear, this is about keeping women in line and keeping them subjugated for myopic fear of power in the hands of women in society. We see that in societies where it is a crime almost to educate a girl child, what could be wrong with allowing a human being to educate their mind and improve themselves?
It’s time to stop looking away, it is time to act. We must Decriminalize sex work immediately to protect women from the unnecessary punishment and undue hardship such laws puts then through. And on the prevention side we should expose and hold buyers accountable—especially the rich and powerful ones, whose patronage fuels prostitution in the first place. Government and society at large must Invest in real exit programs for women and families trapped in this cycle of the horrible lifestyle of prostitution by providing the following: housing, jobs, medical, education, safety and counceling among other things. We all as society must end the cultural and religious shaming that turns survivors into criminals, at the end of the day one man’s religion ends where another’s begins. Last and not the least, we must organize, speak up, and show up for those who’ve been silenced for far too long. Whether we like it or not, we all are elevated when the least and oppressed amongst us are elevated.
Now, I do not want any one to mistake this write up as promoting prostitution, far from that it is only for us to stop and empathize for people who live with and among us that are not being justly treated. It’s about standing against a system that punishes women for surviving—and letting men get away with a slap on the wrist.
At the end of the day if we do not fight for our daughters, sisters, mothers and fellow humans….. Who will? “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” Martin Luther King, Birmingham, Alabama 1963
- MS- High Chief Christopher I. D. Wenegieme.
Aurora, Colorado USA.
October , 3rd 2025
