There are many schools of thought about prostitution. Programs like Veronica’s Voice (see links) in Kansas City helps to enable women to leave the life of prostitution. There are also many first-world and lesser-developed world organizations that struggle for prostitution rights. Organizations like International Sex Worker Foundation for Arts, Culture and Education (ISWFACE), COYOTE (Call off Your Old Tired Ethics) in San Francisco (www.bayswan.org/COYOTE.html) and the International Union of Sex Workers work to decriminalize prostitution and improve sex workers’ lives worldwide.

Feminists, no matter their personal political bents, differ widely in their beliefs regarding the correct approach to prostitution. There is a clear distinction between forced and voluntary prostitution, according to author Jo Doezema, in her article Global Sex Workers. She asserts that the current focus on eliminating trafficking, with a “woman as victim mentality,” works against the interests of all women. There are many women, she points out, who choose prostitution as a livelihood, or are forced into prostitution by poverty. International efforts to end prostitution make no effort to protect women who must by poverty or who voluntarily choose to remain in prostitution, she maintains. She refers to the “whore/Madonna,” “good/bad” dichotomy that characterizes much of Western civilization.

Laurie Shrage in her keynote address to the “Prostitution in a Global Context — Intertwined Histories, Present Realities,” Conference held at Aalborg University in Denmark in 1999, said this about the current feminist “victim” view of prostitution most widely disseminated. “These oppositions [whore/Madonna] configure the voluntary prostitute (the active, experienced, guilty Western whore) as someone responsible for her own fate and who deserves what she gets.” This, some feminists believe, leaves women who choose to or must prostitute due to poverty sadly at risk for battery, harassment by police and murders that are not only little investigated, but little noted by society at large.

Most feminist sex worker advocates are in agreement that involuntary prostitution and sexual slavery should be abolished; however, Shrage goes further, calling for abandoning the “forced / voluntary prostitution distinction” to allow a more focused view that encompasses the legal, health and financial needs of all peoples. “Those of us not part of these organizations [grassroots organizations of sex workers] would do better to stop wondering why the sex industry exists and to focus instead on the social forces that shape it . . . .”

Prostitution takes a terrible toll on those engaged in it. However, to ignore the often tense controversies surrounding the current climate focused on sexual slavery and its very meaty funding appears to leave unexamined the real causes of sex work ― poverty and women’s worldwide oppression.

There are few studies that analyze people’s attitudes toward prostitution, probably because the typical attitude is so negative. One need only view popular culture’s attitudes toward prostitutes, where each week Jay Leno’s Tonight Show used its bully pulpit to refer to these disenfranchised women as “whores” and “hookers” to realize that prostitutes are a target of derision and hence have translated into a safe dumping ground for violence which is perpetrated against them at staggering rates.

This blog will try to avoid the polemics surrounding the prostitution debate and simply offer solutions, mainly for families of sex workers, who can be instrumental in helping workers leave the industry. We hope that we can rationally discuss varying theories as events arise; however, we take no position on the correct way to limit the system abuses of the sex industry. We only know what has worked for us to exit the industry and recover.

Inquiries

I have been so busy that this blog and my emails have gone unanswered and for those of you who have written, I apologize. I am just now catching up on my correspondence.

The question I keep hearing, from the United Kingdom to the Florida panhandle, is "Where are support groups for us, the parents and friends of those caught in the sex industry?" The answer--there is none right now.

Ours starts in Phoenix in March 2012; I am still finalizing the meeting place. We will meet once a month and hopefully build a presence. Often, because drugs are involved for sex workers, you may find Alanon or Naranon helpful to you. You CAN have a life of balance despite the bad choices others make in their lives.

Stay tuned for more frequent updates as we ramp up. We can be contacted at becauseshematters@gmail.com.

Support Group Forming for Families of Sex Trafficking Victims

At the age of 16 after my drug dealer boyfriend kicked me to the curb due my increasing heroin habit, I walked into a massage parlor in Berkeley and got a job. I wasn’t quite sure what working there entailed, but I needed money for drugs and I didn’t want to steal. There were several men and many women eager to “turn me out” and teach me what I needed to know to make money.

I hadn’t even turned 18 by the time I hit the motels of the Oakland “stroll.” The Oakland vice cops routinely “jacked me up,” slapped me around, called me names, and once left me seriously injured on the side of the street to find my own way to a hospital. Never once did the police ask my age or offer any assistance. They just found ways to harass, belittle, and intimidate all the working girls and arrest us for various misdemeanors. Life was a series of rapes, beatings, near-death experiences and days in jail here and there followed by more violence.

When the brutality of the Oakland streets became too much for me, I came to Phoenix, where the cops were like Disneyland characters compared to the Oakland police, and the pimps left me more or less alone to ply my trade.
I tell you this because today, more than 20 years after my exit from the sex industry, I still ask myself “What if?” What if my parents had known what to do when they learned about my drug addiction and subsequent slide into sex work? In 1970, there were no support groups for bereaved parents, no Naranon for the families of drug addicts, no school counselors with skill in drug use intervention. There was only my mother and father and their shamed, bewildered silence.

The reality is this — there are many, many underage children plying their trade on the streets, in massage parlors, and in topless bars. Some are trafficked; some are there to support a drug addiction; many are single mothers supporting their children at a steep cost to their self-esteem. I was fortunate. I found a way out. I had supportive parents and was able to exit the sex industry, and now, two decades later, work to help girls exit the sex trade and offer support for family members who have loved ones in the industry. That is my passion.

Because She Matters will be starting a support group for parents and loved ones of those in the sex industry. Whether they are in the industry by choice, or trafficked and held against their will, the families impacted by sex trafficking need a voice. Because She Matters hopes to be that unified voice.
We can be contacted at becauseshematters@gmail.com.

Another story of sadness and exploitation

This takes place in Acapulco.

Exiting the sex industry

Here is the link to my recent radio show on Talk Radio. The show went well and we hope that this helps bring hope to those struggling to exit the industry or who have loved ones in the industry.

My interview with Deborah Cooper on Ask A Heartbeat Blogtalk Radio went very well. Here is the link if you would like to listen.

Tomorrow night at 7 p.m. Pacific time I'll be a guest on the talk radio show title Human Trafficking: Recognizing a Predator--Protecting Your Daughter.

Here is the URL for the site. Listen and call in. We'll be glad to hear from you.