“I’ve been shot five times, stabbed 13 times — I don’t know why those men attacked me, all I know is that society made it comfortable for them to do so…” A 58-year-old survivor, Brenda Myers-Powell, shares with BBC News. Yet, she felt lucky — after all, she did know women who died while working.

Being a “working girl,” selling their bodies has become an underground network propagated and made a joke of by the digital world we live in today. Differing from the portrayal made by movies and spoken about by proud perverts, prostitution is not the glamorous, easy fix to any financial situation that many may think. However, for far too many, prostitution is the only escape from bankruptcy, homelessness, and starvation. Yet, society continues to ignorantly make its assumptions about prostitution, calling the girls sluts, whores, hookers, and call-girls; the list goes on, and with every name, every buyer, every gossip, the rope tightens around the neck of the so-called “whore,” just as the hands of her buyers, her name, slowly dragged through the mud, much like Ms. Myers-Powell was dragged six blocks in her city, unable to unhinge her clothing caught in the door of a taxi. When the car finally stopped, her face and body bled out, overwhelmingly torn by the streets, but her tight dress remained. And that was all the Emergency Room Attendants saw — that, and her name, tied to a prostitute’s life, instantly linked to the perception that she had beaten a guy, stolen his money, and gotten what she deserved, when in reality those roles were always reversed. But who is to believe the low-life prostitute? Not taken seriously or respected as is, prostitutes would not benefit from their means of bare survival being legalized.

How is a young woman safe from the harms of criminal buyers: attackers, gang-bangers, pimps, murderers? — some would argue the decriminalization of prostitution is a means of protecting “the human rights of sex workers,” so it would solve everything, right? It would save young children, from child-rape; it would have saved Ms. Myers-Powell from the five shots, and the 13 stabbings, and moreover all persons from any physical abuse and harm.

An alternate approach is the legalization of selling sex, but not of buying sex. Sweden, the first to create and abide by this law, has seen sex consumers plummet, now at 7.5% of men buying sex (half that of the U.S.), while the decriminalization of selling sex in Denmark lead to a 40% increase within seven years. Laws do need to change, but not toward more “power to the man.” Laws need no longer hurt the victim but prevent the problem instead. “Sex work” is modernized, justified slavery — a slave to the buyer, a slave to the self; let’s not make it legal.