Como seres humanos: Una mirada al proceso de legislación de la prostitución como Trabajo Sexual en el Uruguay

Abstract

Being prostitutes the highly stigmatized group, it will be important in this work to observe what the characteristics of this group were, the reasons which prompted them to organize as workers and how this process was seen from the outside.
The debate over the legitimacy of prostitution as a job is instituted for many years by different social sectors, academics and national and international policy.From the point of view of who is watching, the optics of this theme changes substantially, and that will be a point of interest to contrast and analyze the different discourses and viewpoints that exist in relation to work, prostitution and prostitution as a job.This discussion also was present at the proposed "Sex Work law" because it appeared conceptual differences between those who participated in its elaboration.
After the formation of the Association of Professional Prostitutes Uruguay (AMEPU) created in 1986, Law No. 17,515 Sex Work was created in 2002. It was the Former Deputy Daniel García Pintos who presented the draft law to regulate prostitution.Sex Work law was in the orbit of the Ministry of Interior for its control and the Ministry of Public Health for its care. "Sex work in particularly certain areas" was authorized (...)"In coordination with health authorities and police" (...) "delimited in terms of geographical areas and times” knowing “the background to provide the police authority.” This rule also regulates "the dress, as well as sex worker behavior, so it does not affect the sensitivity of families, neighborhood and becomes harmful to children or adolescents."
It is also interesting to observe whether the need for a regulatory framework to sex work is related to a need to order something that has been seen throughout the history of societies as a "social disorder that must be controlled" (Rostagnol, 2000: 89) as the anthropologist Susan Rostagnol says in her article "Fragmented Identities" or it was a regulatory framework to a work activity considered tender in our country. If this law was a real contribution, so that the prostitutes could get some of the rights that had been fighting in the course of their work, or if it damaged them too, will be one of the points to be analyzed in this work.
Unavoidable elements will be also addressed in relation to the word "work" as:negotiation and dependency relationships and labor relationships. In relation to the grade of "sex worker" will be dealt with the stigma that comes with being this type of worker in the different relationships established within this activity.