On the Dehumanization of Sex Workers

Posted on January 15, 2007 by chatombre.
Categories: Articles, General, My Art, Political, Writing.

This is a research brief that I wrote for school last semester.

———

On the Dehu­man­iza­tion of Sex Workers

by Katie Armistead

Dehu­man­iza­tion is hap­pen­ing in the world today. An exam­ple of this is the dehu­man­iza­tion of sex workers.

“Whore” is often used as a deroga­tory term; this is com­mon knowl­edge. This seems just as dehu­man­iz­ing to sex work­ers as using “gay” as a deroga­tory term is to homo­sex­ual peo­ple. This is also proof that sex work­ers are often con­sid­ered lowly crea­tures in many cul­tures today.

Many peo­ple seem to think that a per­son who is a sex worker can­not be raped. Because of this unfor­tu­nate, but com­monly held belief, sex work­ers are very rarely able to pros­e­cute rapists (Karen 145–146, Lock­ett 39–40, Gar­dener). An exam­ple of this from 2003 is a case men­tioned in a pub­li­ca­tion by the Human Rights Watch. Accord­ing to their pub­li­ca­tion, “one police offi­cer sug­gested that because a woman who had been abducted was a pros­ti­tute, her case was not rape, despite the fact that the woman reported it as rape and there was evi­dence of sig­nif­i­cant bruis­ing and other injuries.” Not only do many police offi­cers not pro­tect sex work­ers, but some­times they are the peo­ple who rape or oth­er­wise harm the sex work­ers (Lock­ett 39–40).

Sex work­ers are often harmed in other ways as well (Frundt, Times Reporter, Tjaronda, Gar­dener). Some­times a cus­tomer will become rough with a sex worker and abuse a sex worker, refuse to pay a sex worker, or pay with a check that bounces. Sex work­ers are often afraid to go to the police in these cases as well because they fear what the police will do to them (Lock­ett 39–40, Gardener).

The issue of the dehu­man­iza­tion of sex work­ers is not sim­ply a sex work­ers’ rights issue, but is a women’s rights and human rights issue as well.

“The only solu­tion to the oppres­sion of women exploited as pros­ti­tutes is a polit­i­cal elim­i­na­tion of the very notion of female sexual/economic trans­gres­sion (cho­sen or forced) by grant­ing all women the same rights, lib­er­ties and pro­tec­tions against vio­la­tion as those to which human beings in gen­eral, i.e. men, are enti­tled. All women’s rights are attached to pros­ti­tutes’ rights because the whore stigma can dis­qual­ify any woman’s claim to legit­i­macy and throw sus­pi­cion on any woman accused of eco­nomic and/or sex­ual ini­tia­tive” (Pheter­son 105).

If sex work­ers have no rights, then women do not truly have the same rights as men. Men’s rights are also endan­gered, as some sex work­ers are male. Thus, deny­ing sex work­ers their rights is endan­ger­ing human rights as a whole. Accord­ing to Tutu, such is the way with all forms of dehu­man­iza­tion; “Injus­tice [and] oppres­sion dehu­man­ize the oppres­sor as much as – if not more than – the oppressed.”

Ann Gar­dener learned quite a bit about the prob­lems sex work­ers have to face when a sex worker hired her as a com­puter con­sul­tant. One of these prob­lems is money. Because of the risks involved in being in a sex worker’s busi­ness place, the sex worker had to pay four times the nor­mal price to have Gar­dener teach her to set up and use her new com­puter. This is because Gar­dener could have been arrested sim­ply for being in the sex worker’s busi­ness place. If any police offi­cers had caught Gar­dener doing busi­ness with the sex worker, she would have been dehu­man­ized as well.

Another prob­lem that sex work­ers face is a lack of health­care (Gar­dener). Sex work does not have ben­e­fits; sex work­ers can­not acquire health insur­ance through their jobs. This is a very seri­ous issue, as there are many sex­u­ally trans­mit­ted diseases.

Appar­ently Pres­i­dent Bush has not only started a war on ter­ror, but has also started a war on sex work. Accord­ing to Auda­cia Ray of $pread mag­a­zine, in 2005, Bush “put forth a require­ment that all United States HIV/AIDS orga­ni­za­tions seek­ing fund­ing to pro­vide ser­vices in other coun­tries must pledge to oppose com­mer­cial sex work” (24–25). The orga­ni­za­tions that did not sign a writ­ten pledge lost fund­ing. This is an exam­ple of more recent attacks on sex workers.


Works Cited

French, Dolores, and Linda Lee. Work­ing: My Life as a

Pros­ti­tute. Lon­don: Vic­tor Gol­lancz Ltd, 1989.

Frundt, Tina. “Life with an Abu­sive Pimp.” Pros­ti­tu­tion.

Tamara L. Rol­eff, Ed. Con­tem­po­rary Issues Com­pan­ion Series. Green­haven Press, 2006. Tina Frundt, tes­ti­mony before the House Sub­com­mit­tee on Domes­tic and Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Pol­icy, Trade, and Tech­nol­ogy, Com­mit­tee on Finan­cial Ser­vices, April 28, 2005. Oppos­ing View­points Resource Cen­ter. Dekalb County Pub­lic Lib., Decatur, GA. 12 Nov. 2006 < http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/OVRC?locID=dkpl>.

Gar­dener, Ann. Per­sonal Inter­view. 15 Nov. 2006.

Human Rights Watch. “Cli­mate of Fear: Sex­ual Vio­lence and

Abduc­tion of Women and Girls in Bagh­dad.” Human Rights Watch July 2003. 11 Nov. 2006 < http://hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq0703/index.htm>.

Karen. “The Right to Pro­tec­tion from Rape.” Sex Work:

Writ­ings by Women in the Sex Indus­try Eds. Frédérique Dela­coste and Priscilla Alexan­der. First Edi­tion. Pitts­burgh and San Fran­cisco: Cleis Press, 1987. 145–146.

Lock­ett, Glo­ria. “What Hap­pens When You Are Arrested.” Sex Work:

Writ­ings by Women in the Sex Indus­try Eds. Frédérique Dela­coste and Priscilla Alexan­der. First Edi­tion. Pitts­burgh and San Fran­cisco: Cleis Press, 1987. 39–40.

Pheter­son, G. The Pros­ti­tu­tion Prism. Ams­ter­dam:

Ams­ter­dam Uni­ver­sity Press. 1996. P. 105

Ray, Auda­cia. “Global Sex Worker News.” $pread. Sum­mer 2005:

24–25.

Sex Work­ers Out­reach Project. 15 Nov. 2006

< http://www.swop.org.au/>.

The Sex Work­ers Project. 2006. Urban Jus­tice Center.

15 Nov. 2006 < http://www.sexworkersproject.org/>.

Times Reporter. “Call-Boys Pounce On Sus­pected Sex Worker.”

Africa News Ser­vice. March 26, 2004. Oppos­ing View­points Resource Cen­ter. Dekalb County Pub­lic Lib., Decatur, GA. 12 Nov. 2006 < http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/OVRC?locID=dkpl>.

Tjaronda, Wezi. “Ex-Sex Worker Tells of Life On the Streets.”

Africa News Ser­vice. Jan. 11, 2006. Oppos­ing View­points Resource Cen­ter. Dekalb County Pub­lic Lib., Decatur, GA. 12 Nov. 2006 < http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/OVRC?locID=dkpl>.

Tutu, Desmond. “Just call me Arch.” New Inter­na­tion­al­ist

July 1992. < http://www.newint.org/issue233/endpiece.htm>.

2 comments.

Sex Ed Links »« New Year’s Relolutions

Mohammad Khairul Alam
Comment on April 18th, 2007.

Street Sex Work­ers are Vul­ner­a­ble HIV/AIDS in Bangladesh

Moham­mad Khairul Alam
AIDS Researcher
24/3 M. C. Roy Lane
Dhaka-1211, Bangladesh
rainbowngo@gmail.com
Tell: 880–2-8628908
Mobile: 01711344997

Sex­u­ally trans­mit­ted diseases/ infec­tions — also known as STDs/STIs and once called vene­real dis­eases — are infec­tious dis­eases that spread from per­son to per­son through intimate/ sex­ual con­tact. There are dif­fer­ent kinds of STDs, Some kinds of STDs are very dan­ger­ous for human health. It can cause per­ma­nent dam­age, such as infer­til­ity (the inabil­ity to have a baby) and even death. HIV/AIDS is one of the STDs/STIs that are on the rise in sex work­ers and Injec­tion Drug Users.

Sex work is cen­tral to an epi­demic that is pri­mar­ily spread by unpro­tected het­ero­sex­ual inter­course. It is also a fea­ture of all coun­tries and cul­tures, encom­pass­ing a wide range of peo­ple and behav­iours. Sex work can involve men and trans­gen­der peo­ple, as well as women. Peo­ple who are engaged in sell­ing sex obvi­ously have mul­ti­ple sex part­ners and are there­fore highly vul­ner­a­ble to sev­eral Sex­ual Trans­mis­sion Dis­eases (STDs/STI) and HIV/AIDS infec­tion. Because they have many sex­ual part­ners, they are also more likely to trans­mit the virus to other peo­ple unless con­doms are always used. As men­tioned by AIDS researcher Mr. Anirudha Alam, “Street Sex Work­ers con­tract­ing HIV/AIDS through unpro­tected sex with HIV infected men and sex­ual abuse has become a per­sis­tent prob­lem, espe­cially in South Asia”.

Bangladesh is still a low preva­lence coun­try (HIV-infection rate is less than 1%), but there is a poten­tial for expand­ing HIV/AIDS epi­demic in the future, because the coun­try is very recep­tive to HIV infec­tion. Sex work exists at sig­nif­i­cant lev­els in Bangladesh, and con­dom use is low. In Bangladesh, sex work­ers in broth­els as well as on the streets reported rather high client turnover, by Asian stan­dards. Women work­ing in broth­els nation­wide aver­aged 19 clients a week, and street work­ers reported between 12 and 16 in dif­fer­ent cities. Con­sis­tent con­dom use is among the low­est in the region.

Street Sex Work­ers (SSWs) in Bangladesh would play a crit­i­cal role of HIV/AIDS infec­tions. Due to the types of their work, the lack of sex­u­ally trans­mit­ted infec­tions (STI/STDs) knowl­edge and low accep­tance of con­dom use, SSWs rep­re­sent a highly vul­ner­a­ble group in Bangladesh. The sharp rise in oth­ers sex­u­ally trans­mit­ted infec­tions (STIs) in Bangladesh con­tributes to the spread of HIV and may lead to a exten­sive epi­demic, as the het­ero­sex­ual mode of oth­ers STI trans­mis­sion accounts for an increas­ing per­cent­age of HIV trans­mis­sion. Stud­ies of street beg­gars con­ducted by Rain­bow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foun­da­tion & L.R.B Foun­da­tion in mid-2006s at Kam­ran­gir Char, Lal­bagh and Polashi in Dhaka city in Bangladesh sur­vey­ors con­firm the 40–45 per cent of home­less beg­gars (adult male) indulge in multi-partner sex with less than 10 per cent of them report­ing con­dom use. Street Sex Work­ers are the main sex­ual part­ners of them.

Street Sex Work­ers are closely asso­ci­ated with the tourism and trans­port indus­tries where they find a large sup­ply of poten­tial clients. They get their clients by wait­ing on the streets. Most of them run on their work sep­a­rately, though some rely on bro­kers for help in get­ting clients. The favored method of work is to wait on busy streets, which make avail­able cus­tom as well as rel­a­tive con­fi­den­tial­ity to the con­tract, as opposed to the less fre­quented local­i­ties. Bus stops, rail­way sta­tions, cin­ema halls and river-bank are the usual loca­tions where the con­tract is nego­ti­ated, from where they go to cheap hotels, under con­stric­tion build­ing, dark­ness park-place and lodges with their clients.

Day by day, Sex work is increase in Bangladesh. How­ever Ms. Roushan Ara Rekha, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of GHARONI, an expert in the field, she said, ‘On a regional basis, infected men prob­a­bly out­num­ber infected women by a fac­tor of 3 to 1 or more, since com­mer­cial sex clients, inject­ing drug users and men hav­ing sex with men have con­tributed most strongly to the rapid ini­tial growth of the epi­demic. This male/female ratio is expected to drop as the epi­demic spreads into the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion through spread of HIV from clients of sex work­ers to their reg­u­lar part­ners and spouses.’

M. C. M. Lok­man Hos­sain, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Asso­ci­a­tion for Social Advance­ment & Rural Reha­bil­i­ta­tion (ASARR) said, if we want to reduce sex trade we have to clar­ify our vision on sex work first. Tra­di­tional per­spec­tives on pros­ti­tu­tion have been repres­sive, moral­is­ing and con­trol­ling, per­ceiv­ing sex work­ers and their cus­tomers to be objects rather than active sub­jects, exclud­ing them from dis­cus­sions and deci­sions around pol­icy and legislation.

Ref­er­ence: GHARONI report, ASARR report, Sex work network

Pingback on October 12th, 2007.

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