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Prostitution: Victims or Whores?
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. (http://action.web.ca/home/catw/attach/Ekberg.pdf)
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. (http://womensissues.about.com/od/rapesexualassault/a/Wuornos.htm)
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. (http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/mhvhealt.htm)
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
(Article: Impact of legalising prostitution – at
www.ccatw.com).
Fourteen years ago in
Australia (in Melbourne) The Salvation Army looked into the
situation and decided to support the State of Victoria’s new
initiative to legalise prostitution. I’m pretty sure it was in
an attempt (I’ve talked with the folks who made the decision
at length) to help women involved. Although this was a heart
felt decision meant to help the victims of organized crime
rackets and police corruption – it was short sighted, naïve
and perhaps one of the most tragic decisions in recent
Australian history. I’m urging Australian’s thoughtful
citizens to reconsider - it’s time to revisit the legislation.
Speaking of which – whatever happened to The Salvation Army’s
resolve to actually confront wickedness… have we really become
content to risk manage the darkness?
Banishing wickedness.
William Booth said
‘salvationism is simply this; the banishment of wickedness
from the earth.’ Wow. Storm the forts of darkness – let’s
bring them down.
We’ve come a long way baby.
Now, most Salvationists have joined the rest of the
evangelical church in a holy huddle, hidden in fancy buildings
trying to protect themselves from Dr. Evil until Super Jesus
comes back to save the day. I’m not sure when that rapture
stuff started to invade the church but boy was that a cunning
ploy of the enemy. Let’s just get the Christians on the
defense – strike fear in their hearts and watch them hide.
It’s pathetic. Try this experiment – go find the darkest place
you can think of in your area… then go and stand there. If you
stand there and listen you will hear the darkness tremble… the
darkness doesn’t tremble at you – it trembles at the kingdom
you carry. That’s right… the Kingdom of God is within you –
you may recognize Jesus but the enemy knows Him by name.
To carry on from my last
entry I’d like to tell you a story. A lady, lovely Baptist
lady who lives in the same suburb of THQ in Melbourne came to
see me one day. You see, her phone number was two digits off a
local brothel. Men wanting sex kept calling her house. Now my
friend is a recently retired, active Christian and she was
rightly disgusted by the phone calls at all hours of the day
and night. She started to get angry. One day while she was
praying the Lord suggested she might want to use her anger to
help the women stuck in the brothel. So, because her daughter
was a good friend of mine she ended up at a coffee shop near
THQ with me brainstorming about what she could do to help
women in a local brothel. I asked what her normal response to
another neighbour might be. She said, without flinching that
her normal response would be to bake some muffins, go knock on
the door and tell the person she was thinking and praying for
them in the hope of creating a relationship. Brainstorm
session over.
The next Tuesday morning we
met to pray, muffins ready. That remarkable and yet completely
normal day was heaven on earth. My lovely Baptist retired
friend walked up the street, knocked on the door of her local
brothel and thrust some very delicious home made baked goods
into the managers face – asking to meet the women. A
completely befuddled Asian man opened the door wider and
called out to some women in a back room… soon, the whole
brothel was full of women chatting over tea and muffins… if it
wasn’t for skimpy lingerie you’d swear you were at a
home-league!
Now it’s a weekly meet and
greet. The brothel folk call my friend the ‘little cake lady’
and she’s met 29 women so far, all foreign women working for
some income to send home (she’s keeping track). The manager
has even come to her local church once for a visit. Her
obedience did more than impact the brothel that day - it
shamed me. It shamed me as a member of The Salvation Army. It
shamed me even more that fourteen years ago my own people
decided to support legislation that made brothels legal in an
effort to get women in the ‘light’ but then we just left them
there. No exit programs, no visitation, no chaplaincy, no
employment training – not even one lousy little muffin!
We’ve got to get more
friends in low places. So, another member of my THQ department
and I got the local brothel list and starting knocking on
doors in the neighbourhood. Every week we go now. The doors
are wide open. Actually, as we stand outside knocking… if you
listen really carefully, you can hear the darkness tremble.
Bring it on.
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. Every good athlete knows
this. Apparently every good social reformer does as well.
Mohammad Yunis, founder of Grameen Bank and Nobel Peace Price
winner echoes the sentiment in his acceptance speech (check it
out on you tube). He believes his great-grand children will
have to see extreme poverty documented in a museum… kind of
the like the time I went to Atlanta and read about slavery in
America or the Holocost Museum in Israel. It will be hard to
believe history. Wilberforce did the same thing with slavery…
not just change the law but changed civilization’s acceptance
of the practise. That’s what all the early Salvationists fight
songs were about I think. They were about seeing the world
another way. It was about a ‘prophetic imagination’. Bruggeman
has some classic theological things to say about imagining a
better world (a classic book – please read). I wonder when we
stopped imagining. When did cynicism break the heart of the
dreamers in the Army? I want it back. I’m sick of agreeing
with the world. I may be naïve, idealistic and run the risk of
being mocked openly (instead of quietly) but I’ll be a
dreamer… I’ll run the risk of being a fanatic… if it means
God’s Kingdom come than I’ll lose my mind and let my heart
lead me – right through the darkness and into the Kingdom of
God. Release the visions again!
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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