Pick up an American or British newspaper these days and it seems like the World Cup isn't a football tournament at all. You could be forgiven for thinking that visitors looking to watch a bit of soccer will be greeted by an army of skimpily clad, under-aged Ukrainian sex slaves -- sent by Madame Angie herself -- upon arrival in the country. A quick Google search highlights the international interest in Germany's sex industry.
Plug in Artemis , Berlin's new mega-brothel located just a stone's throw from the city's World Cup venue, and you'll find more than 10 pages of links. Along with feature after salacious feature about how German cities are expanding existing red light districts or erecting new ones to handle the influx of horny fans coming to Germany for football and fornication. But even before you hit the third paragraph, the articles have unleashed the moral sledgehammer admonishing readers about the immorality of prostitution.
Fully licensed brothels are discussed in the same breathless paragraph with grim estimates by human rights organizations that between 40, and 60, young women from Eastern Europe may be trafficked into Germany where they will be forced to work as sex slaves.
If you're going to write about prostitution, the rule seems to go, than it had better be negative. Forced prostitution, of course, is a very real and serious problem in Germany. But much of the foreign coverage seems to deliberately conflate the two issues. Prostition has long been legal in Germany, but the social and legal rights of prostitutes were cemented in a law that brought the profession out of the margins and into the mainstream. Legal ladies of the night here work in licensed brothels, they have work permits, they receive regular health check-ups and they pay taxes and receive benefits.
Some do in fact work in sleazy places, like the infamous bordello along the train tracks coming in to the main station in Dusseldorf where prostitutes greet delighted passengers from numbered windows. But then, the world's oldest profession has always been a bit tawdry. Of course, there is the illegal side -- undocumented women and men who have been trafficked in from Eastern Europe, Asia or elsewhere.
