Farley, M., Cotton, A., Lynne, J., Zumbeck, S., Spiwak, F., Reyes, M.E., Alvarez , D., Sezgin, U.
Journal of Trauma Practice 2 (3/4): 33-74, 2003.
Also appears in:
Farley, Melissa. (ed) Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress. Binghamton: Haworth Press. 2003.
Researchers interviewed 854 people currently or recently in prostitution in nine countries (Canada, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, turkey, United States, and Zambia), inquiring about current and lifetime history of sexual and physical violence. Findings contradict common myths about prostitution: the assumption that street prostitution of men and boys is different from prostitution of women and girls, that most of those in prostitution freely consent to it, that most people are in prostitution because of drug addiction, that prostitution is qualitatively different from trafficking, and that legalizing or decriminalizing prostitution would decrease its harm.
INTRODUCTION
Commercial sex businesses include street prostitution, massage brothels, escort services, outcall services, strip clubs, lap dancing, phone sex, adult and child pornography (including the sexual assault of children by organized groups of pedophiles as well as non-pedophile rapists), child prostitution, video and Internet pornography, trafficking, and prostitution tourism. Most people who are in prostitution for longer than a few months drift among these various permutations of the commercial sex businesses (Dalla, 2000; Kramer, 2003).
Prostitution dehumanizes, commodifies and fetishizes women, in contrast to non-commercial casual sex where both people act on the basis of sexual desire and both people are free to retract without economic consequence. In prostitution, there is always a power imbalance, where the john1 has the social and economic power to hire her/him to act like a sexualized puppet. Prostitution excludes any mutuality of privilege or pleasure: its goal is to ensure that one person does not use her personal desire to determine which sexual acts do and do not occur--while the other person acts on the basis of his personal desire (Davidson, 1998).
The account of a woman from the United States who prostituted primarily in strip clubs but also in massage, escort, and street prostitution is typical in that it encompasses the following types of violence. In strip club prostitution she was sexually harassed and assaulted. The job required her to tolerate verbal abuse (with a coerced smile), being grabbed and pinched on the legs, buttocks, breasts, and crotch. Sometimes this resulted in bruises and scratches on her thighs and arms and breasts. Her breasts were squeezed until she was in severe pain. She was humiliated by customers ejaculating on her face. She was physically brutalized, and her hair was pulled as a means of control and torture. She was severely bruised from beatings and frequently had black eyes. She was repeatedly beaten on the head with closed fists, sometimes causing concussions and unconsciousness. From these beatings, her jaw was dislocated and her eardrum was damaged. Many years later her jaw is still dislocated. She was cut with knives. She was burned with cigarettes by customers who smoked while raping her. She was gang raped. She was raped individually by at least twenty men at different times in her life. Rapes by johns and pimps sometimes resulted in internal bleeding.
Seventy percent of women in prostitution in San Francisco, California were raped (Silbert & Pines, 1982). A study in Portland, Oregon found that prostituted women were raped on average once a week (Hunter, 1994). Eighty-five percent of women in Minneapolis, Minnesota had been raped in prostitution (Parriott, 1994). Ninety-four percent of those in street prostitution experienced sexual assault and 75% were raped by one or more johns (Miller, 1995). In the Netherlands (where prostitution is legal) 60% of prostituted women suffered physical assaults; 70% experienced verbal threats of assault, 40% experienced sexual violence and 40% were forced into prostitution and/or sexual abuse by acquaintances (Vanwesenbeeck, de Graaf, van Zessen, Straver, & Visser, 1995; Vanwesenbeeck,1994).
Prolonged and repeated trauma usually precedes entry into prostitution. From 55% to 90% of prostitutes report a childhood sexual abuse history (James & Meyerding, 1977; Silbert & Pines, 1981; Harlan et al., 1981; Silbert & Pines, 1983; Bagley & Young, 1987; Simons & Whitbeck, 1991; Belton, 1992; Farley & Barkan, 1998). Silbert and Pines (1981, 1983) noted that 70% of their interviewees said that childhood sexual abuse had an influence on their entry into prostitution. A conservative estimate of the average age of recruitment into prostitution in the U.S.A. is 13-14 years. (Silbert & Pines, 1982; Weisberg, 1985).
Clearly, violence is the norm for women in prostitution. Incest, sexual harassment, verbal abuse, stalking, rape, battering, and torture--are points on a continuum of violence, all of which occur regularly in prostitution. In fact, prostitution itself is a form of sexual violence that results in economic profit for those who sell women, men, and children. Though often denied or minimized, other types of gender violence (while epidemic) are not sources of mass revenue.
Prostituted women are unrecognized victims of intimate partner violence by pimps as well as johns (Stark & Hodgson, 2003). Although there are little research data available, agencies serving prostituted women observe that a majority of prostitution is pimp-controlled.2 Giobbe described similar methods of coercion and control used by pimps and non-pimp batterers to control women: minimization and denial of physical violence and abuse, economic exploitation, social isolation, verbal abuse, threats, intimidation, physical violence, sexual assault, and captivity (Giobbe, 1991; Giobbe, 1993; Giobbe, Harrigan, Ryan, & Gamache, 1990). The systematic violence of pimps against prostituted women is aimed not only at control, but also emphasizes the victim's powerlessness, worthlessness and invisibility except in her role as prostitute.
A qualitative distinction between prostitution of children and prostitution of adults is arbitrary and it obscures the lengthy and extensive history of trauma that is commonplace in prostitution. For example the 5-year-old incested by her father and used in child prostitution and pornography may become partially amnesic for these traumas and at adolescence may find herself drifting into prostitution and other savage relationships. The 14-year-old in prostitution eventually turns 18 but she has not suddenly made a new "vocational choice." The abuse and reenactment of abuse simply continue. Women who began prostituting as adolescents may have parts of themselves that are dissociatively compartmentalized into a much younger child's time and place.3
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