Rebecca Mott: Prostitution Is a Human Rights Issue! Stop the Torture of a Whole Class of Women and Girls
Sep 29th, 2008 by admin
by Rebecca Mott
Sometimes it seems trying to talk about the reality of the lives/existence of prostituted women and girls is like banging our heads against a steel wall. It seems the same things are said over, over and over and there is a refusal to hear or believe.
How many voices and writings of exited prostituted women will it take until prostitution is viewed as a human rights issues, that is, as about the torturing of a whole class of women and girls?
I am so pissed off with the “choice” argument being used to dismiss so many women and girls.
I, for one, would never deny there are some women who may choose to be in prostitution. But they are very privileged and a very tiny minority, maybe around 2-4% of prostituted women.
What is “choice” when it comes to being prostituted?
- A free choice is not being prostituted in order to pay rent, to afford to care for your children.
- A free choice is not being on the receiving end of childhood abuse, whether sexual, neglect or physical.
- A free choice is not being brainwashed by the porn culture to believe that prostitution is glamourous and an easy way to make a pile of money.
- A free choice would mean the prostituted woman or girl could turn away men if they had bad feelings about them without any consequences.
- A free choice would be not being pushed by a pimp, manager or boyfriend to “just try it”.
- A free choice would mean freedom of movement and knowledge of the world outside prostitution.
- A free choice would mean there would be no need to use drink or drugs to blank out the reality.
- A free choice would means prostituted women and girls would not self-harm.
- Free choice would mean all prostituted women and girls have real self-confidence, and would n ot have to make being happy a performance.
I don’t see any prostituted women and girls I know who had free choice.
I am sick, so sick that it has to be said again about the harms of being prostituted.
How may exited prostituted women have to talk about the damage until it is believed?
Why are women who have been on the receiving end of the harms of prostitution considered liars, misguided, mentally ill, too damaged to know their own experiences to be listened to?
However much the words of exited prostituted women mount up as they describe how being prostituted has caused them massive damage, it is dismissed.
It is dismissed when they say the beatings are just “normal” for men who pay to be sadistic.
It is dismissed that it is hard to call it “rape” when prostituted women are told it is just “rough sex” or an “extra” or that gang-rape is just a party bonus for special clients.
It is dismissed that any man who makes the choice to buy a woman or girl is capable of violence or mental abuse. It is always the man’s choice whether he will be gentle or “decent”.
In the end, no man should have the right to buy or sell women or girls, just for a sexual fantasy. He does not have the right to rape, batter, torture and mentally abuse with impunity.
He has no right to take away the prostituted woman’s or girl’s human rights.
It is a human right to live a life with safey, without the threat of sexual and physical violence, without the threat of verbal abuse., without the threat of being murdered.
Dignity is a human right. Being made into real-life porn for men to wank into is not dignity.
Being a dustbin for men’s hatred of women is not dignity.
Freedom of movement is a human right, the right not to be enclosed in a brothel or trapped on the street. Much of the lack of freedom prostituted women experience comes from the sex trade convincing prostituted women and girls that the “outside world” will condemn them.
Finally, it is a human right to be fully human! Not just a fuck-object for any man who chooses to buy or sell a woman or girl.
Prostitution has no purpose that makes it worth supporting — not whilst so many women and girls are living with torture.
****
Rebecca Mott submitted this as a comment to this blog post but it’s a fine piece of writing, of the type Rebecca is becoming well-known for, and I didn’t want anyone to miss it. Thank you so much, Rebecca, for your ongoing, incredible work on behalf of the world’s women and girls.
–Heart
Thanks for publishing this, it was very draining to write, for it is exhausting having to go on over the same ground all the time.
I really you don’t too much of a backlash.
Brilliant post, and heartbreaking.
Speak it Rebecca! Awesome post
Well written, Rebecca.
In response to Hugo’s ode to absolute toleration (or attempt to be well-liked by as many bloggers as possible?) linked above, I’d direct readers to the following 53-post thread at The F Word because it provides a timely example of how Hugo is wrong.
http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2008/09/im_a_sexworker
In short:
1. A woman wrote to the Guardian that she is a sex worker and likes the job and The F Word linked to the essay.
2. A dozen people wrote to the F word that they believe ‘Lara’ likes what she does but regardless of how much “Lara” likes it, the weighty needs of the majority of prostituted persons matters more.
3. Despite not one single poster questioning Lara’s sanity or claiming she has “false consciousness” or saying she is deluded by “Stockholm Syndrome, the pro-sex work poster of the original blog entry replied, “they refuse to acknowledge her story as valid.”
Hugo promotes the same evidence side-stepping propaganda by projecting his own ‘prior’ unwillingness to believe in a minority of content sex workers onto the majority of anti-john feminists.
Here, direct from the mouths of anti-john feminists themselves, is the reality of how they see women like Lara in the context of the debate over men’s right, or not, to commandeer control of women’s bodies. Notice how it does not resemble Hugo’s ‘prior’ lack of belief in the existence of some happy sex workers.
Shea said, “but what Lara fails to see is that adopting Swedish legislation isn’t about putting her out of a job, its about protecting her and much more vulnerable women from both pimps and traffickers AND police extortion.
Jennifer Drew said, “Some women are fortunate to be able to have a measure of control over the numbers of men they sexually service but unfortunately the vast majority of prostituted women do not have this power.”
Jennifer-Ruth said, “I read Lara’s article and I believe what she says. But I also believe the words of women who aren’t so privileged…this is about making laws which protect all women in the sex trade, whether they be privileged like Lara or abused like the thousands of other women who are trafficked, have no choice and are raped.”
Kath said, “Whilst I feel for Lara, I feel compelled to point out that we do not all have the ‘right’ to do whatever we please, without considering the damage (direct or indirect) it does to other people.”
Jo said, “Lara’s story is a testament to the fact that power relations within this arrangement aren’t always that simple, but I can’t help but feel that in the long-term decriminalisation is not going to improve the lives of women who don’t have Lara’s options.”
Sara said, “I respect Lara’s right to earn her living as she chooses, and I’m glad she’s happy with what she does - however her ‘defence’ of her choices does seem to gloss over the very real problems with the sex industry. Just because she is OK, doesn’t mean there aren’t serious problems in the industry as a whole. Just because she is personally not victimised, doesn’t mean there aren’t other women who are trafficked, drug-addicted, raped and abused. That isn’t just a stereotype, as she seems to suggest - it’s reality for many women and girls.
Amy Clare said, “Women touting the benefits of being a prostitute are just making life harder for those women who are on the game because they have no other choice (either through physical force, drug addiction or poverty). Because guess whose story people believe?”
Juliet said, “If Lara decided to take up escorting because that was the only occupation she could find that would give her a decent income and time for her kids, how is that a choice?! I don’t view her as a victim, but if someone’s options are that limited, they are not making choices.”
Leigh said, “While Lara may well not be a victim, there are plenty of sex workers who ARE, and their need for whatever protection the law can provide is greater than her need for the opportunity to sell sex.”
Soirore said, “Lara may feel that she’s a sexworker and not a victim but she voluntarily works in an industry that victimises other women.
Can’t you see how much anti-prostitution feminists believe women in the sex industry (Hugo’s words) “are — take your pick — “deceiving themselves”, “working through childhood abuse issues”, “filled with a self-loathing they cannot acknowledge”?
I don’t see that sentiment expressed very often, and when I do it usually comes from formerly prostituted women like Rebecca, Suki Falconberg, Anne Bissell, Brenda Myers-Powell, and Suzy from Israel who said, “There’s no woman who wants to work in prostitution.”
I’ll wrap-up on the tale of my last interaction with Hugo over two years ago. He had written agreeing with a poster of his that “several” anti-pornography feminists have exploited their position to make money and careers for themselves (so lucrative is anti-porn feminism.) I sent an email asking for some names or evidence to back up that assertion because I knew he was antiporn and it seemed more polite than publicly calling him out for riding the popular antiporn feminist slander-wagon. He never replied.
Hear hear Rebecca - what a powerful post. I am going to print out your reply because you very succinctly state what is ‘real free choice.’ I too am sick and tired of hearing that old, old tired refrain ‘ it is a woman’s choice to enter prostitution.’
Just one thing - it is as Rebecca said a human’s rights issue but unfortunately human rights only apply to men never to women.
When I first started reading this blog, which was less than a year ago, I think, I sometimes found myself crying just because it was such a relief to find a space that felt as if it was safe for women, and safe for me, to read and think about things I felt but for many years had not dared to express because of the way people would attack me if I spoke up. It gave me courage. I saw the value of having women’s space. It seems as if it should not be necessary, because why can’t we have our say in EVERY space–as if we had as much of a right to exist as anyone else–i.e. men. And yet it is necessary, because women who are disagreeable to the male power structure are treated as if we have no right to exist, let alone say anything.
Case in point, responses to Heart, Laurelin and others in the pro-porn blog world, which yes I have been reading, as hard as that is to do. It seems that it’s not good enough for them to have the right to disagree vigorously on their own blogs, they feel a right to come here and tear up this space. They get very angry if they don’t get to do that. And so the point gets hammered home again that there is really no refuge for us except silence or invisibility. And that’s no refuge at all. I remain anonymous and I can only wonder at the courage of those women, like Rebecca and those named above and others who have put their real lives on the line to speak up.
I’m having too many thoughts to be coherent. So I’ll just post the first one that sprang into my head. It’s been said before, but it never ceases to amaze me. Why is it that the burden of proof is on women to prove that we have been hurt? It’s not just in rape. It reaches out much farther. A very (comparatively) trivial example: I remember an incident where a group of boys followed my best friend and me home from junior high school, pelting us with rocks and anti-semitic insults. (I’m not Jewish. My friend is, and people often assumed we were related because we spent so much time together.) I was outraged and scared, and when I told my parents, my father said “Oh, they just do that because they like you.” BAM–there went my sense of justice and reality out the window. Silly me–I thought that having rocks thrown at me with hateful taunts was proof enough that someone was trying to hurt me. But no, apparently I had to prove they had bad intentions and also prove there was a reason why I should not like it.
It’s the same thing with rape, sexual assault, and prostitution. What appears blatantly obvious, SO DAMN OBVIOUS that no one could see it and not scream with rage and hurt, is not obvious at all. Instead, the assumption is that it’s not harm and that women should like it, and most of them do–it’s just some neurotic fringe group that wants to believe it’s hurting them. And so, as Rebecca says, again and again those who are made to suffer are also silenced and made invisible. Well, it’s not going to work. IT’S NOT. We are going to keep punching away and punching away at this wall until we break a hole in it and the energy of billions of women breaks through and sweeps this trash away.
As I was typing that, a very big, fierce, hairy spider dashed across my rug and approached me. I gently caught her in a glass and took her outside. I hope she catches and feasts on a lot of noxious bugs! ; )
All sex workers, virtually *all* say they are there by choice, at some point. Say it’s good, or not so bad, or when they get their law degree. They have to keep trying to convince themselves.
Then at some point, if they are lucky, don’t end up in a meat grinder, dead in an alley, drug addicted to tolerate what they’ve become, whether they’re taking it on for $20 a pop or $1000, they will admit it, to themselves privately only perhaps, or like Rebecca, they’ll take it on the road.
There aren’t two groups of prostitutes, one that just love the choice and agency, and one that are victimized. They are the same women, at different stages.
We are the same woman. It’s worth your life if you don’t sell it. It turns the johns off if you don’t smile, it turns off the internet johns who are holding up the whole stinking mess and want to believe you’re loving this ‘job’; it turns off the feminists who play that prostitution is a Pretty Woman gig to keep turn their boyfriends turned on.
No-one, not prostitutes not anyone wants to think they’re just pawns. Look at Hugo. He’s dissociating like mad. He’s not going to admit he’s pimping his fantasy, so he’s going to find a rational for it. The man is pathetic.
Whoever she was, is, we who have been there know this woman is lying to to herself to keep her tenuous place in Hugo’s hierarchy. She thinks it’s all she’s got. She’s trying so hard to make herself believe. But she knows, or she wouldn’t have written that.
Let’s make sure she knows the way home. She’s beginning to look for it.
And one more thing: when they say that anti-porn feminists are allying ourselves with the right wing, that is a LIE, flat out. I defy anyone to come up with a case where the religious right ever dignified feminists with the name of allies. I posted strongly against porn on a conservative blog, and I was attacked from all sides. The house libertarian barraged me with long, hysterical denunciations. Other creepy misogynists also piled on. I said “Hey, what’s going on? How come none of you so-called Christians are rallying to my side? Whatever happened to your “chivalry” and your “we Christian gentlemen protect women”? Their response was that porn was a SIN all right, but it was because of vile feminists like me that it even existed. Porn was created by feminists encouraging women to get out of their proper place, so now the evil sluts were making men do bad things instead of concentrating on being lords and masters of their own rightful women. If women would get back in their place, porn wouldn’t be a problem. So, basically, their response was that porn was all my fault, and therefore even if I said some things they agreed with, they would never support me because I was a vile feminist, so there. Seriously, this was the kind of baloney that passed for thoughtful response.
Oh, and when I referred to Andrea Dworkin, they went into convulsions of loathing. The only people who hate Dworkin more than the pro-porn activists are the religious right. There never has been and never will be an alliance between feminists and the religious right, because they hate us more than they hate anything they could ally with us to fight.
Thanks everyone for very kind words, it does mean an awful lot to me.
Sam, it does continally amazes how women who are in the stage of “enjoying” being in the sex trade are given such a loud voice, for they are such a small minority. It saddened me that liberal feminist would listen to their voices and only reluctantly to exited prostituted women who speak out about the terrible conditions of prostitution.
They have to deadened themselves to the reality that may not they have don’t the control they say they have - so they choose to say other women are “victim prostitutes”, that should be pitied but very little of practical help to help them to exit. It is part of this disassociation that means they cannot care about the damage of being prostituted.
Sis - you are so right, that the vast majority of prostituted women and girls will say and believe that they enjoying the “job” and may say that it is empowering.
To see the reality of prostitution can be impossible when in the middle.
To know your body is a dustbin for men’s hate. To know you living inside male violence. To that you not a human only a something to fuck.
That is impossible to see the violence and degradation, if that is all you know.
It must be transformed into that you choose to be there. That it is fun and doesn’t harm anyone. That is the rest of society that is misguided and the sex trade that is right.
You are right to say that the same woman can start with that view, and gradually, slowly and often with great pain, change to viewing the sex trade as deeply damaging.
This usually happened if they are lucky enough to exit prostitution and to build themselves a safe and secure life well away from the sex trade.
Anuna - Your words are very wise.
It seemed that when women have a small space to speak about the pain that they live with due to male dominance, it is attacked. Women are not allow to speak out, they should just accept that their pain is not real. It is not pain or degradation, it is pleasure or just a joke.
Thanks everyone.
Thank you, Anuna and Sis. I can only guess about what is being said about me and Heart and others in the sexpos universe, but I will go out on a limb and say it takes the form of personal attacks and accusations about how we are controlling everything they try to do. Or something equally paranoid. I imagine that the worst comments come from male porn users- that’s always been my experience. These guys are terrified of being denied their porn. Let them tremble.
On the ‘antiporn feminists allied with the right-wing’ nonsense: I think it is very important that we repeat ourselves again and again on the disingenuoussness (spelling?) of this ‘argument’. To point it out reveals a) the true concerns of the feminist movement, b) the way in which both left and right wings are miles away from caring about women, and c) the utter dishonesty and cowardice of pro-porn attacks on feminists.
My own blog post on this can be found here: http://laurelin.wordpress.com/2006/04/25/feminists-v-fundies/
I would also like to add that posts and supportive comments such as these remind me of why I speak. Thank you very much.
“other women are ‘victim prostitutes’, that should be pitied but very little of practical help to help them to exit.”
Yeah, instead of getting adequate exit services, prostituted women are told they should be grateful for the “job” opportunities potential johns toss their way in the form of sex work because hey, money is money.
Portland’s people have risen up the past few months to demand legislators and police address the enormous pornstitution problems which plague our city. Part of the uprising congealed into a public forum held on Sept 15 that featured a panel of local experts, including Jeri Williams.
Jeri is an active citizen who works for the city in the Office of Neighborhood Associations. She is also a survivor of prostitution who got on stage in front of about 300 really pissed off neighbors and spoke of having been a prostitute in their neighborhood. I will spare you the gory details she went over in her 15 minutes except to say that after she was stabbed by a john and left for dead on 82nd Avenue, she got help from the Council for Prostitution Alternatives and changed her life around.
Jeri has a noble countenance and is a compelling speaker, but there were some people in the audience who couldn’t hear her. A pro-sex work woman from the local bad date line and a sex worker advocate from the local women’s crisis line were on KBOO radio a few days later. They read a list of the participants in the panel but only identified Jeri by her job, not as a former prostitute. Listening, I thought of the courage it must have taken jeri to spill such personal testimony of abuse in front of a simmering crowd (literally; it was suffocatingly hot in the packed auditorium), and I couldn’t fathom why they didn’t acknowledge her extraordinary contribution to the panel.
Then it came: both started complaining about how there were “no sex workers represented”, how no one tried to outreach to local sex workers, and how one sex worker in the audience told them she felt “like she had duct tape put over her mouth.” Several times throughout the program they insisted that the forum organizers had not consulted any sex workers.
Any listener who wasn’t at the forum would think they were telling the truth.
Another thought-provoking blog from Rebecca. It makes me cross when people argue in favour of prostitution because the women involved “choose” to do it. I do not think this is a valid argument, because even if the women truly had a free choice, we know from history and experiences in other countries that people will do anything if they need the money. People will for instance send their children to work down coal mines, or they will risk their own lives and health working in dangerous and dirty factories, or perhaps gamble their health by selling their “spare” body parts, in the hope they will never need them in the future. As a society, we have long since outlawed child labour, and decided that every child has the right to an education and free time to play and develop. We insist that employers have a duty of care to their employees and show due regard for their health and safety. And we ensure that the health needs of the rich do not damage the health of the poor by prohibiting trade in body parts (at least in the UK - I presume in the US too). In making such laws, we have attempted to stamp out exploitation, and rule that payment does not excuse mistreatment.
Prostitution is just another form of exploitation that has not yet been tackled; another instance where payment is currently still considered to excuse mistreatment. But purchasing another human being in order to sexually abuse them is simply not an acceptable way to treat another person, no matter that they are prepared to put up with it. There will always be people whose need for cash makes them vulnerable to predation, and who will allow themselves to be mistreated to satisfy a current need, but that does not mean it is OK to exploit those people. In a civilised society, prostitution should have no place, and it is those who pay the money who are committing the crime.