A fundamental human need
Amnesty’s prostitution policy document.
Zip down to page 5, and read note 2.
²As noted within Amnesty International’s policy on sex work, the organization is opposed to criminalization of all activities related to the purchase and sale of sex. Sexual desire and activity are a fundamental human need. To criminalize those who are unable or unwilling to fulfill that need through more traditionally recognized means and thus purchase sex, may amount to a violation of the right to privacy and undermine the rights to free expression and health.
Ok wait. If sexual activity is a fundamental human need, then what happens in cases where there are no prostitutes available? What would happen if all women had job options they liked better than sex work, so there just were no women willing to do it?
If sexual activity is a fundamental human need, what happens in emergency situations, like earthquakes and floods, when people have to take refuge in shelters and thus have to have their fundamental needs met? Would the Red Cross and MSF and everyone else doing emergency work be expected to provide sex partners along with water and food and shelter and medical treatment?
If sexual activity is a fundamental human need, does that mean that straight men have a fundamental right to have access to A Woman at stipulated intervals?
If sexual activity is a fundamental human need, what right do married women have to say no to marital sex? They can’t starve their husbands, so why should they be able to say no to sex just because they don’t feel like it?
Outside the ’empowered sex worker’ dreamland, there would be MANY instances where the ‘wish to fulfill that need through [less] traditionally recognized means’ would involve coercion and exploitation.
Of course, what could be MORE ‘traditionally recognized’ than treating women as property, and sex as a commodity to be traded like soy beans or bauxite?
For arguments sake, if sex was a ‘fundamental human need’, what of the rights of women whose ability to have healthy, intimate relationships is damaged or destroyed by doing prostitution either through psychological trauma or through injury, illness or disability, for example contracting a sexually transmitted or infectious disease such as HIV/AIDS or Hepatitis C? It appears that ‘the human right to sex and intimacy’ are only of concern when it comes to the rights of men.