Saving Innocents or just creative spin doctoring by prohibitionist activists?
Donna Hughes Excerpt: Excerpts from ” Emancipation 2006 Saving innocents from modern day slavery a work in progress by Kathryn Jean Lopez” For a while there, during the Clinton administration, she says, her fellow feminists were more interested in “sex worker’s rights” than victims’ suffering, and won government support for their approach. And there was little prominent outrage. Hughes remembers, “During the late 1990s, all the media stories were about how empowering prostitution was, how much money the women made, how pimps were disappearing and the women were independent businesswomen, how women in India were forming unions and collectives to fight for their rights as sex workers, etc.” But, now, she notes, “the media stories more often tell horror stories of how women and girls are beaten, raped and enslaved. On the surface that may sound more depressing, but to me it is much better because it’s the truth.”
It is easy for Donna Hughes from her post as Endowed Chair at the University of Rhode Island to state how much better it is to hear stories of rape, assault and slavery. How much of that is relevant to her life other than to use as material for her latest Powerpoint or soundbytes for her latest speech. Easy for Melissa Farley to make note of each instance as a statistic for her research and studies. Easy for President Bush to read the speech from the teleprompter written by his speechwriters as he signs legislation that eliminates funding to all but specifically approved agencies towing a tight governmental political line determined by the US.
But what about the actual sex workers? The ones who the various prohibitionists claim should be rescued rather than empowered? Attempting to solve problems related to the sex industry via prohibition is never going to be a realistic approach. Rape is illegal yet it still happens. Murder is illegal yet it still happens. Rapists and murderers usually face justice and go to prison, sometimes are even executed yet the problem still exists. Right now sex workers are a marginalized community. Locked out by criminalization laws that take away the ability to organize, unionize and take steps to protect themselves. As criminals, sex workers do not have the police as allies in the fight against rape, against assault. Contrary to what prohibitionist feminists will often claim, the police do not see sex workers as trafficking victims to be rescued. Often they see sex workers as easy prey to target. As do the serial killers, the rapists, all those that exploit.
A prostitute that is raped not only often can’t get even minimal help from the police or justice system, many can’t access services from a rape crisis/sexual assault crisis center because the shelters have policies against working with “criminals”. Even those victimized by crime. Which to follow the prohibitionist/religious right/US Government ideology, these shelters shouldn’t work with the raped prostitute because she may not be looking to leave sex work, but just to access services and support from being victimized by crime. For the rape crisis program to work with the sex worker, in the views of many of the prohibitionist ideologues, is working with someone colluding with the pro prostitution lobby. Someone seeking labor rights rather than end to sexual slavery. It couldn’t possibly be the raped sex worker is a woman that has been victimized by a rapist and needs help and not judgment of her, what she does to earn money or her political views.
Serial Killers like Gary Ridgeway couldn’t ask for a better situation than a disempowered sex worker population and a public that is focusing on the “success stories” of the Bush Administration/Feminist Alliance. The current policies of the US Government and endorsed by the prohibitionist movement to oppose sex worker rights are a dream come true for abusers. A population without rights to target. A population that the government, religious right and feminist groups are proud to state they have fought to take rights away from.
Let’s remember the abstract truth. Sex workers are human beings. Deserving of the same rights as any other citizen.
Beware a government, a feminist, a religious organization that proudly proclaims it has rolled back the rights of anyone because the loss of rights is set up for abuse.
Of course to those like Donna Hughes it is better to hear the tales of abuse than to hear of rights for sex workers.
As a sex worker of any kind, I can state without question there was not a single instance that criminalization helped me in the past or in the present.
The fight to free the 17,000 trafficking victims in the US each year or the 600,000 worldwide is a noble fight. But it can not come at the expense of every other sex worker.
Sex workers are not the enemy, sex worker rights are the solution, not addition to a social problem. The actual enemies are those that exploit, those that rape, those that assault and those that profit from positions of power over a marginalized population.
