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Women who are forced into prostitution are said to be victims of human trafficking. This takes all sorts of forms. In its worst manifestations it's poor families in places like Laos who sell their children into prostitution in Thailand. A large proportion of the prostitutes that serve the sexual tourist trade in Thailand got there this way - the family got a TV and the child got HIV (boys are sold too).
Trafficked women come to western countries too - their passports are taken away and they are forced to work with threats. Sometimes they were told they were going to get another type of job in the country but once getting there they are pushed into prostitution.
In western countries runaway kids (usually ones that have been sexually abused at home) are recruited and given a home and often an addiction and then pushed to sell their bodies for drugs. Statistics I have read show the average prostitute is beaten up about once a month - they are killed 12 to 20 times more than other women so sometimes it may be a gun to the head.
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There are some who grew up in bad neighborhoods who are forced into prostitution by johns who get them addicted to drugs and force them into prostitution and if they don't they will use physical violence against them. Some, not all. And, in some parts of the world it's much more common. They are forced by their own parents by being sold off.
It's when people say that women are forced into pornography that it gets more far-fetched. That would be far less likely.
Jens
Some may be indirectly forced by an urgent need for money, e.g. to pay for necessary medical treatment of a loved one that is not being covered by insurance.
But then again it's still their own choice to consider prostitution to be the lesser evil than not being able to get that money. I think we should respect that decision, they're emancipated adults.
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I'm not sure that the gun to the head is always quite so "proverbial". It concerns me that you would think so.
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Seems the majority of women actually want to get married.