'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits'

By Clare Chapman
Last Updated: 12:23am GMT 30/01/2005

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.
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She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

When Should I Be Tested?
After a possible HIV exposure:
An HIV test will not detect the presence of the HIV virus immediately after exposure. Statistics show that 96% (perhaps higher) of all infected individuals will test positive within 2 to 12 weeks. In some cases, this may take up to six months.

Think about this: if you got a negative test at six weeks, would you believe it? Would it make you less anxious? If so, go for it. But to be certain, you will need to be tested again at six months.
more from San Francisco AIDS Foundation
Periodic Testing:

* Many people continue to engage in some degree of risky behavior, and choose to be tested for HIV periodically (every six months, every year, or every other year.)

Since the window period for developing a positive test result can be as long as six months, it would rarely make sense to be tested more often than this.

There are clear benefits to early medical attention for infection with the HIV virus. There is little agreement on how early this must be. But if you wait longer than two years, treatment of the disease may be less effective.

* If you are beyond the six month window period from a possible HIV transmission event and were reported HIV negative by an accurate HIV test (and you are not subsequently put at risk for HIV), you can consider yourself HIV negative. There is no need to retest. However if it eases your anxiety, you may wish to take the test again periodically.

instead of people on websites looking for a quick one - you could end up with providers suckering people in that way...

I sure won't argue the use of tampons with a woman.

I was engaged to a German woman

Are you saying you have used a lot of prostitution services in the past while you were there?

Guys, how much would you spend on drinks to get laid in a nightclub with the chance you are waisting (sic) your money. Take the money and get rid of the issue before you go out. Never go out with a loaded gun, your brain don't (sic) work right.

UNAIDS reports that, at the end of 2001, an estimated 40 million people globally were living with HIV. In many parts of the developing world, the majority of new infections occurred in young adults, with young women being especially vulnerable. About one third of those currently living with HIV/AIDS are aged 15-24, most of them are unaware that they carry the virus.

The link between prostitution and the increased risk of contracting HIV/AIDS is now well established and well recognized - even in those countries for which any discussion of sexual activity has traditionally been taboo. UNAIDS reports that significantly higher rates of HIV infection have been documented among sex workers and their clients as compared to most other population groups within a country. However, when children are involved, many myths persist - both as to the child’s susceptibility to the virus and as well as to that of his or her abuser. It should be noted that the Special Rapporteur does not use the term “sex workers” in the context of children involved in prostitution.

In the years since the discovery of the HIV/AIDS virus, the demand for increasingly younger children for purposes of prostitution has continued to grow. Their abusers are no longer only paedophiles (persons, according to a dictionary definition, who feel sexual attraction towards children), but also individuals who believe that sex with younger partners is a safer option. They believe that younger people are less likely to have the virus as they have had fewer sexual partners, and some reports allege the persistence of myths in certain cultures that sex with a virgin or with a child will actually cure HIV/AIDS infection in the older partner.

^^^...I see a bunch of people trying to be morally superior..

You people suck!

...tear each other down without any logical basis...based SOLEY on my age.....

In neighborhoods where there are brothels, there are lower divorce rates.