Dominican hookers, gays, citizens weigh in on bill to create red light district

Santo Domingo.- The bill aimed at creating Dominican Republic’s first “zones of sexual tolerance” or red light districts again spurred heated debate among representatives of sexual workers and conservative groups present in the Chamber of Deputies’ public hearing Friday.

Members of the United Women’s Movement and the Transvestites, Transsexuals and Transgendered Community warned that the regulation of sexual work to specific zones or red light districts violates their rights and the sexual workers’ desire to surmount their condition of marginality.

“One prostitutes because we go though much need. Believe me it’s not easy to sleep with a man one doesn’t want, but when our children are passing hunger and there’s no work it’s not possible to do something else another thing,” said United Women representative Jacqueline Montero, who worked as a prostitute for 12 years until getting elected a councilwoman in the town of Haina.

Meanwhile the citizen Maria Carlos proposed that in any legislation which looks to regulate prostitution, sexual workers must be described with some other term, since that activity cannot be acknowledged as a job.