South Africa: "We did not meet one happy prostitute."

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South Africa: "We did not meet one happy prostitute."

Postby sam » Tue Nov 09, 2010 12:04 pm

Prostitution exposes women to worst forms of abuse, write Antoinette McDonald and Angelique Arde

Happy hooker, hideous myth
http://www.timeslive .co.za/lifestyle/article750013.ece/Happy-hooker-hideous-myth
Nov 8, 2010 12:43 AM | By Antoinette McDonald and Angelique Arde

We once believed that there is a certain type of woman who chooses to be a prostitute. We believed such women enjoy it.

Privately, perhaps secretly, we regarded these women as people with low morals, a menace to society. Perversely, however, we would have argued that these women should have the right to sell their bodies.

But then we had no idea.

We do now.

Through research we did for a documentary on prostitution in South Africa, we were granted access to the private lives of women working as prostitutes. We went from meeting them in streets and in prison cells to meeting them in their homes.

The myth of the so-called "happy hooker" promotes the idea that there are women who are happy to be abused as objects. This thinking strips women - and men - of dignity and destroys lives.

Prostitution is a brutal form of violence and it is a crime against women.

Noleen, 40, was in prostitution for 15 years. She describes it as "paid rape". "It's like being subjected to rape over and over again. You get beaten up. Prostitutes are victims. They no longer have a choice."

Human rights abuses are rife in the sex industry. Every woman we interviewed had been assaulted and exploited by pimps, brothel owners and clients.

So why do these women become prostitutes? What we found was often these women had been victims of childhood sexual abuse, which serves as a form of "grooming". Drug and alcohol addiction featured in most of the women's stories, both as a push factor and a means to keep women in debt bondage.

Madri Bruwer, a social worker working with women in prostitution, told us: "Most of the women have been abused and most were abused before they began prostitution. Their logic is 'I've already been used and abused. Now I'm in control, and I'm being compensated for the sex.' Abuse provides fertile soil for prostitution."

Noleen attributes her entry into prostitution to a broken family and an abusive stepfather.

"I was 13. He used to make me touch him. After that it was easy to get into sexual relationships because I didn't see myself as pure."

Once you've examined the true nature of prostitution, you cannot in good conscience call it work. The term "sex work" becomes problematic.

The women we met told of being defecated on, spat at, sworn at, slapped, strangled during sex and made to do demeaning things. Those women who have since left prostitution describe it as damaging, dehumanising, degrading and soul-destroying.

Is this work? Should we give women the legal right to experience this abuse?

We did not meet one happy prostitute. There were women who presented themselves as okay, but we realised that they were only just coping with their lives.

They are not happy. Angry? Yes. Defensive? Almost always. Sometimes bitter, always hardened, these women are surviving, in a physical sense, at least.

But psychologically and spiritually, these women are dying a cruel and desperately lonely death.
"Your orgasm can no longer dictate my oppression"

Trisha Baptie
sam
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Re: South Africa: "We did not meet one happy prostitute."

Postby beigesilkworm » Sun Nov 21, 2010 2:58 pm

I personally think that instead of "educadtion" we should campaing for hard punishement for the jonhs.Only talking to these men won´t solve anything,they are brutal and cruel and a policy of zero tolerance would work much better...everywhere is the same story and i don´t see any man regreting for what he did or still is doing to those women....
beigesilkworm
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