Taiwan Legalizes Prostitution

Yesterday, Taiwan passed legislation which would legalize prostitution on the island, overturning a law which outlawed the practice 11 years ago.  Sex workers' advocacy groups cheered, and religious groups went home and listened to Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" on repeat.

Taiwan's legal change is slightly different than those made in places like New Zealand and Germany, however. Prior to the new law, prostitution was only criminal for the mostly-female sellers of sex; the male customers could not be prosecuted.  While the Swedish model advocates criminalizing the buyer and not the seller, I've never heard of the reverse before.  It seems both grossly unfair and counter-intuitive to hold women in prostitution, trafficked or not, criminally accountable while the men who buy them walk away without penalty.  It's a law with the inevitable affect of driving up demand for sex while reducing the supply of women who will sell it.  In other words, the old law was a recipe for trafficking.      

The advocates behind this new law argued that making prostitution illegal 11 years ago has done little to reduce human trafficking or prostitution of minors in Taiwan, and that the industry is now controlled by unscrupulous gangsters.  But will legalizing prostitution now really result in these gangsters relinquishing control over their brothels? Or will it just make their thuggish enforcement and abuses of women beyond prosecution?

Detractors from the law argue that legalization hasn't reduced trafficking in Amsterdam, and that if legal reform is necessary, criminalizing the buyer and decriminalizing the seller is a better way to go than flat out legalization.  If brothels are legal, law enforcement has a harder time discovering trafficked persons and minors within them.     

What I fear the most will happen as a result of this legal change are the following:

• The deep imbalance of gender equality in Taiwan (as evidenced by the previous law) will manifest in violence against women in the new legal commercial sex industry.
• Taiwan's proximity to and relationship with China will make it an even bigger destination for Chinese women trafficked into prostitution.
• The new law will make it impossible for police to find the estimated 100,000 children who are forced into prostitution in Taiwan.

I hope I'm wrong.  I hope that Taiwan, somehow, has found that silver bullet to end human trafficking in prostitution and to stop traffickers and buyers from preying on children.  I hope this new law solves the problem.  But I doubt it will.