Please read about it here and here.

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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>.

Here are some news clips that criticize this appointment:

• “The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as “demeaning to women…” Read the rest of this article

• “EVERYBODY makes mistakes. Doctors, even excellent ones, are not exempt. But a physician who consistently promotes false data so as to influence patients’ gravest personal decisions falls far outside the norm. This month, the Bush administration placed just such a doctor in a position of enormous power to affect the health of 5 million Americans. The choice is absurd and irresponsible…” Read the rest of this article

• “You would have to search far and wide to find someone more ardently opposed to birth control and other women’s rights than Dr. Eric Keroack, for whom any sex education beyond abstinence counseling is a no-no. As medical director for A Woman’s Concern, an extremist group of pregnancy health centers in Boston, he supports their decree that the manufacture and distribution of birth control is ‘demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness.’” Read the rest of this article

• “This month the president named, to head the federal office overseeing family planning programs, the former medical director of a nonprofit group that believes birth control is wrong. No, that isn’t a joke. A Woman’s Concern, a Massachusetts chain of anti-abortion, pregnancy counseling centers, states in online materials that the ‘distribution of birth control is demeaning to women (and) adverse to human health and happiness.’ AWC also believes birth control increases out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion.” Read the rest of this article

• “The antidote to stem our state’s runaway teen pregnancy rate and reduce our abortion rate is comprehensive sex education and access to birth control. Dr. Keroack’s ideologically based “medicine” of withholding information and contraception from women is yet another example of this administration’s willingness to promote politics over sound science. Suffice it to say, this appointment will be a disaster for women in Florida and the nation.” Read the rest of this editorial

• “On Monday, the federal office that oversees the nation’s family-planning program got a new boss who doesn’t believe in birth control. Eric Keroack is a Massachusetts obstetrician-gynecologist who argues that abstinence until marriage is the only healthy choice for women. Until recently, he served as medical director of a pregnancy-counseling organization that runs down contraception and gives out scientifically false health information, for instance, that condoms ‘offer virtually no protection’ against herpes or HPV. Keroack also promotes a wacky piece of pseudoscience: the claim that premarital sex disrupts brain chemistry so as to create a physiological barrier to happy marriage.” Read the rest of this article

• “‘Less than two weeks ago the American public made it clear that they want a middle ground approach to our nation’s most pressing problems,’ Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. ‘Unfortunately, this appointment says loudly and clearly that the president simply did not get that message.’” Read the rest of this article

Those are just a few articles/editorials on this, but there are plenty of others.

Also, Keroack is not even currently a certified obstetrician-gynecologist; he let his certification expire!

• “Pearson also acknowledged yesterday that Keroack is not currently certified as an obstetrician-gynecologist. That is not a requirement for the job, but HHS officials had cited Keroack’s expertise in defending his selection.” Read the rest of this article

Take Action!

You can send a letter to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt, urging him to reject this appointment through any or all of these groups (and of course, you can always write your own and send it to him as well):

• Planned Parenthood
• National Orgainization for Women
• NARAL Pro-Choice America

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007…”

Read the rest here

i am not a pretty girl
that is not what i do
i ain’t no damsel in distress
and i don’t need to be rescued
so put me down punk
wouldn’t you prefer a maiden fair
isn’t there a kitten
stuck up a tree somewhere

i am not an angry girl
but it seems like
i’ve got everyone fooled
every time i say something
they find hard to hear
they chalk it up to my anger
never to their own fear
imagine you’re a girl
just trying to finally come clean
knowing full well they’d prefer
you were dirty
and smiling
i’m sorry
but i am not a maiden fair
and i am not a kitten
stuck up a tree somewhere

generally my generation
wouldn’t be caught dead
working for the man
and generally i agree with them
trouble is you got to have yourself
an alternate plan
i have earned my disillusionment
i have been working all of my life
i am a patriot
i have been fighting the good fight
and what if there are
no damsels in distress
what if i knew that
and i called your bluff
don’t you think every kitten
figures out how to get down
whether or not you ever show up

i am not a pretty girl
i don’t really want to be a pretty girl
i want to be more than a pretty girl

Linkadge.

“The U.S. military in Iraq has imprisoned an Associated Press photographer for five months, accusing him of being a security threat but never filing charges or permitting a public hearing.”

Click here for the rest of the article

“Detainee Legislation Driven by Court Decision

Host Liane Hansen speaks to Walter Dellinger about the reasons behind the debate over detainee legislation, specifically the June 2006 Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Dellinger served as Assistant Attorney General and head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Clinton administration.”

Also tells you what’s in the Terrorism Detainee Bill.

Click Here