Editing Radical feminism (section)

===Prostitution===
{{main|Feminist views on prostitution}} 
Radical feminists argue that most women who become [[prostitutes]] are forced into it by a pimp, [[human trafficking]], poverty, [[Addiction|drug addiction]], or trauma such as child sexual abuse. Women from the lowest socioeconomic classes—impoverished women, women with a low level of education, women from the most disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities—are over-represented in prostitution all over the world. [[Catharine MacKinnon]] asked: "If prostitution is a free choice, why are the women with the fewest choices the ones most often found doing it?"<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/fempsy3.html |title=Prostitution in Five Countries |journal=Feminism & Psychology |year=1998 |first1=Melissa |last1=Farley|first2=Isin |last2=Baral |first3=Merab |last3=Kiremire |first4=Ufuk |last4=Sezgin |pages=405–426 |doi=10.1177/0959353598084002 |s2cid=145618813 |access-date=2010-05-09 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110306002439/http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/fempsy3.html |archive-date=2011-03-06 }}</ref> Radical feminist [[Melissa Farley]] conducted a 2004 study of 854 people involved in prostitution internationally, finding that 89% of respondents stated they wanted to escape prostitution but could not, 72% were currently or formerly homeless, and 68% met criteria for [[post-traumatic stress disorder]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Farley |first1=Melissa |display-authors=etal |title=Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries: An Update on Violence and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder |journal=Journal of Trauma Practice |date=2004 |volume=2 |doi=10.1300/J189v02n03_03 |s2cid=153827303 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J189v02n03_03}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last1=Farley |first1=Melissa |title=Prostitution: Factsheet on Human Rights Violations |url=http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/faq/000008.html |website=Prostitution Research & Education |date=April 2, 2000 |access-date=September 3, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051208052301/http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/faq/000008.html |archive-date=December 8, 2005 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

MacKinnon argues that "In prostitution, women have sex with men they would never otherwise have sex with. The money thus acts as a form of force, not as a measure of consent. It acts like physical force does in rape."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cpbn.org/program/intelligence-squared/episode/its-wrong-pay-sex |title=It's Wrong to Pay for Sex |date=5 August 2009 |publisher=Connecticut Public Radio |access-date=8 May 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100625230257/http://www.cpbn.org/program/intelligence-squared/episode/its-wrong-pay-sex |archive-date=25 June 2010 }}</ref> They believe that no person can be said to truly consent to their own oppression and no-one should have the right to consent to the oppression of others. [[Kathleen Barry]] argues that consent is not a "good divining rod as to the existence of oppression, and consent to violation is a fact of oppression".<ref name="Barry">Barry, Kathleen (1995). ''The Prostitution of Sexuality: The Global Exploitation of Women''. New York: New York University Press.</ref> [[Andrea Dworkin]] wrote in 1992:

{{blockquote|Prostitution in and of itself is an abuse of a woman's body. Those of us who say this are accused of being simple-minded. But prostitution is very simple.{{nbsp}}[...] In prostitution, no woman stays whole. It is impossible to use a human body in the way women's bodies are used in prostitution and to have a whole human being at the end of it, or in the middle of it, or close to the beginning of it. It's impossible. And no woman gets whole again later, after.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Dworkin|first1=Andrea|title=Prostitution and Male Supremacy|url=http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/MichLawJourI.html|website=Andrea Dworkin Online Library|publisher=No Status Quo|date=October 31, 1992|access-date=2010-05-09}}</ref>}}

Dworkin argued that "prostitution and equality for women cannot exist simultaneously" and to eradicate prostitution "we must seek ways to use words and law to end the abusive selling and buying of girls' and women's bodies for men's sexual pleasure".<ref>{{Cite journal|title=Hoffer, Kaethe Morris. "A Response to Sex Trafficking Chicago Style: Follow the Sisters, Speak Out"|journal=University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Academic Search Complete}}</ref>

Radical feminist thinking has analyzed prostitution as a cornerstone of [[patriarchal]] domination and sexual subjugation of women that impacts negatively not only on the women and girls in prostitution but on all women as a group, because prostitution continually affirms and reinforces patriarchal definitions of women as having a primary function to serve men sexually. They say it is crucial that society does not replace one patriarchal view on female sexuality—that women should not have sex/a relationship outside marriage and that casual sex is shameful for a woman—with another similarly oppressive and patriarchal view—acceptance of prostitution, a sexual practice based on a highly patriarchal construct of sexuality: that the sexual pleasure of a woman is irrelevant, that her only role during sex is to submit to the man's sexual demands and to do what he tells her, that sex should be controlled by the man, and that the woman's response and satisfaction are irrelevant. Radical feminists argue that sexual liberation for women cannot be achieved so long as we normalize unequal sexual practices where a man dominates a woman.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.catw-ap.org/resources/speeches-papers/sex-from-human-intimacy-to-sexual-labor-or-is-prostitution-a-human-right/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090201023435/http://www.catw-ap.org/resources/speeches-papers/sex-from-human-intimacy-to-sexual-labor-or-is-prostitution-a-human-right/ |url-status=usurped |archive-date=2009-02-01 |title=SEX: From human intimacy to "sexual labor" or Is prostitution a human right? |author=Cecilia Hofmann |publisher=CATW-Asia Pacific |date=August 1997 |access-date=2010-05-09 }}</ref> "Feminist consciousness raising remains the foundation for collective struggle and the eventual liberation of women".<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|title=Polis, Carol A. "A Radical Feminist Approach to Confronting Global Sexual Exploitation of Woman"|journal=Journal of Sex Research, Academic Search Complete}}</ref>

Radical feminists strongly object to the patriarchal ideology that has been one of the justifications for the existence of prostitution, namely that prostitution is a "necessary evil", because men cannot control themselves, and that it is therefore "necessary" that a small number of women be "sacrificed" to be abused by men, to protect "chaste" women from rape and harassment. These feminists argue that far from decreasing rape rates, prostitution actually leads to an increase in sexual violence against women, by sending the message that it is acceptable for a man to treat a woman as a sexual instrument over which he has total control. For instance, [[Melissa Farley]] argues that [[Nevada]]'s high rate of rapes is exacerbated by the patriarchal atmosphere encouraged by legal prostitution.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2007/Sep-07-Fri-2007/news/16519321.html |title=Panel: Brothels aid sex trafficking |author=MARK WAITE |publisher=Pahrump Valley Times |date=2007-09-07 |access-date=2010-05-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071217174035/http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2007/Sep-07-Fri-2007/news/16519321.html |archive-date=December 17, 2007 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Indigenous women are particularly targeted for prostitution. In Canada, New Zealand, Mexico, and Taiwan, studies have shown that indigenous women are at the bottom of the race and class hierarchy of prostitution, often subjected to the worst conditions, most violent demands and sold at the lowest price. It is common for indigenous women to be over-represented in prostitution when compared with their total population. This is as a result of the combined forces of colonialism, physical displacement from ancestral lands, destruction of indigenous social and cultural order, misogyny, globalization/neoliberalism, race discrimination and extremely high levels of violence perpetrated against them.<ref name="Lynne">{{cite journal |last1=Farley |first1=M. |last2=Lynne |first2=J. |last3=Cotton |first3=A. |title=Prostitution in Vancouver: Violence and the Colonization of First Nations Women |journal=Transcultural Psychiatry |volume=42 |issue=2 |pages=242–271 |year=2005 |doi=10.1177/1363461505052667 |pmid=16114585 |s2cid=31035931}}</ref>