acticed as a survival technique by desperate people with few marketable skills, many of them teenagers, with few options and who come from a background of victimization. At the other end are the highly-paid practitioners of sex for profit engaged in by talented people with plenty of options who claim they are happy with the work they have gladly chosen. It should not be assumed that all prostitutes are emotionally or morally sick, victims of sexual abuse, violence, or neglect, or oppressed by male-dominated society. (9) They may simply enjoy the work, as many of them say they do. Human sexuality is too complicated, ambiguous, and multifarious to put all its expressions into one category. Sexual practices, whether commercial or done freely, cannot be classified simply as good or bad. In every case we have to ask about the context, the meaning, and the consequences involved. The notion that any policy - legal prohibition or decriminalization - can produce only beneficial results with no bad side effects is vain. The best we can hope to find in this case is the lesser of evils. I can only confess to my own way of finding my way through this thicket of bad options....
