Extract
by Captain Danielle Strickland
I’ve been
immersed recently in prostitution legislation. A year and a half ago I was neck
high in a raging debate around the legalising of prostitution in Canada. Some
very vocal proponents were upholding the ‘rights of women’ to prostitute
themselves. After all – it is their body. This neo-liberal feminism (far from
the classic feminism that spear-headed abolition, women voting and the rights
of children around the world) suggests that prostitution isn’t oppression but a
profession and should be dignified with proper acceptance, education and wages
– with protection of workers rights. There is a classic case of a ‘co-operative
brothel’ operating right now (albeit illegally) in Victoria, BC on the west
coast of Canada.
The
problem is that the rhetoric around legalising prostitution sounds pretty good
(in promised form anyway)… a society that no longer judges women or uses
morality as a grid to punish those who don’t adopt a pure lifestyle… billed as
a liberation and a right – it makes opposing it sound like a puritanical rant against
the freedom of women. You’d think the only people left opposing legalizing
prostitution were a bunch of old fashioned, purist holy rollers trying to save
poor lasses from the den of iniquity and the fires of hell.
The truth
is that classic feminism rages on and presents from a women’s right
perspective, an impressive argument against legalising prostitution. Not simply
theoretical in recent years they have presented a new model many governments
around the world are adopting to combat violence and oppression against women
through sexual slavery and prostitution. It all started in Sweden.
Gunilla
Ekberg was at the helm of the new legislation that suggested (with a proper
understanding of prostitution) any society that seeks to uphold the rights of
women and children must stop it. On it’s website at the height of the
experiment Sweden had written, ‘we want the world to know that in Sweden, women
and children are NOT FOR SALE.’ Bring it. (Swedish Model of Sex Industry Reform)
This women’s right perspective suggests abolition as the only proper feminist
response to prostitution. But why? Well, it’s all about understanding
oppression. Let’s break it down:
Who are
they?
Prostituted
women are almost always oppressed women. Studies the world over suggest that
women who end up working by selling their bodies are desperate. 84% of
prostituted women in Australia (where prostitution has been legalised for 14
years in the State of Victoria – but more on that later!) said they would do
anything else if they could. They are most likely to be uneducated, from low
economic backgrounds, minorities, addicted and abused. It’s not exactly a
poster child for women’s rights. Unlike the popular media suggests prostituted
persons do not consists of young sexually liberated women choosing to exercise
their ‘right’ to sell themselves - they are overwhelmingly poor,
uneducated and neglected – suffering from abuse.
Read: Harms of Prostitution
What do they do?
Ekberg
spells it out much clearer than I can given the readership of this article
- suffice to say it’s a list of things that include rape, gang rape, oral
sex, vaginal tearing, beatings, bondage and death.
What
are the costs?
The costs
to the women themselves are astronomical. Damage to their body and their
emotions, fear, addiction (70% of women develop an addiction while involved in
prostitution), 80% suffer physical harm, 60% suffer sexual assault, 80%
emotional abuse, 70% verbal threats, not to mention post traumatic stress
disorder, death (suicide is a common death for prostituted persons), and
murder.
Read: Making the Harm Visible
The costs
to society are also shocking. Violence toward all women increases with
societies assumption that it’s completely normal to purchase women’s bodies.
Marriage breakdowns, infectious diseases, police intervention, and trauma costs
just to name a few. Not only that, but the problems of illegal
trafficking only increase with legalisation according to several studies.
Gunilla
rocks.
Gunilla
Ekberg, the Swedish social reformer who introduced brand new legislation into
the country that has upheld the rights of women and virtually eliminated the
need for prostitution, suggests that two things are necessary to change
nations. Nation changers pay attention:
1. Imagine
a better world. You can’t do what you can’t imagine. Wilberforce did it with slavery… not just change the law but changed civilization’s
acceptance of the practise.
2. Understand
oppression. That was the idea of the first blog on prostitution. If we
really understand prostitution – who they are, what they do and the
consequences of it – it’s not that hard to fight against. In fact, it would be
ludicrous not too. The down side of this point (and perhaps why it’s not often
practised) is it takes work and it gets you dirty. In order to understand
oppression you have to get close. You have to get filthy. There is no way to
understand oppression from the safety of a boardroom (even in a uniform)–
you’ve got to smell the stuff. You remember the scene in Amazing Grace (the
movie on Wilberforce) where the rich folk are taking a nice cruise and start to
smell a nasty odor? Turns out it’s Wilberforce on a slave ship and he tells
them to stop covering their noises… breath in the smell of death he says… if
you are going to support it you really ought to understand what it is. How much
of the enemy’s work is done in secret? How much of prostitution is media slick
covering the truth of the realities of violence and oppression against women?
How many closed brothel doors have we even bothered to knock on in the
desperate hopes perhaps of believing the lie so as not to have to uncover the
truth and deal with the dirty consequences?
Turns out
changing a nation isn’t so easy after all. Wanted: crazy fanatics who dream of
a better world, willing to get dirty and broken, with friends in low
places.
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