Love and Sex in the Time of Misogyny

Prostitution is commercial sexual exploitation and no, I’m not throwing women under the bus by stating this, and yes, I am a feminist. Prostitution is not a victimless crime. Prostitution is a public health issue. Prostitution is a significant part of continued and even accelerated violence against women and children. Amnesty International‘s prostitution policy, which was enacted on May 26, 2016, frames prostitution as sex work, pimps as legitimate sex business operators, and johns as deserving customers. Did Amnesty International sell its human rights soul to the highly lucrative and heavily male-dominated sex industry?

Consider this: “The commercial sex industry is sustained through violence and exploitation. Prostituted people live with the daily threat of violence. Traffickers and pimps are not the only abusers—buyers cause tremendous harm through the repeated sexual use of women and children and other physical and psychological violence. Sex buying exploits vulnerable people and hurts our communities.” (source citations at Ending Exploitation.)  The vast majority of women and children who are prostituted come from poor and marginalized communities and have histories of childhood sexual abuse. The typical age of entry into prostitution is 12-15 years of age and upwards of 90% of all prostituted women and children want to leave “the life.” And in countries that legalize/decriminalize/regulate prostitution, the demand increases as does the number of women and children (typically, again, from impoverished and marginalized communities) trafficked into prostitution.

And consider this innovative Seattle-based program on men’s accountability (and misogyny and perpetuation of the patriarchy): The Buyer Beware partnership to end commercial sexual exploitation, coordinated by the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and the Organization for Prostitution Survivors (OPS).  The Buyer Beware model emphasizes prosecuting (and educating) sex buyers and connecting prostituted women and children to services. The goal of the program is to reduce demand for commercial sex, thereby decreasing harm to prostituted persons, reducing self-destructive (toxic masculinity) behaviors of buyers, and curbing sex trafficking in our region. This is a highly enlightened approach and one that our health system—including public health—should support. For instance, standard screening questions on sexual health for health care providers to use with patients can include ones pertinent to sexual exploitation and the buying of sex, along with appropriate referrals for assistance.

In the Seattle area we have YouthCare’s Bridge Program for prostituted teens, the OPS programs for adult women seeking to exit commercial sex exploitation, and the OPS men’s accountability program “Stopping Sexual Exploitation: A Program for Men.” There is a recent and fascinating GQ article “Can we ‘cure’ the men who pay for sex?” about this program by Brooke Jarvis (February 2, 2017). In the article, Jarvis avoids straying into the current political climate as it relates to the fueling of toxic masculinity and violence against women, but she does write this tagline: “Inside a two-month program that aims to end prostitution—and help dismantle the patriarchy—by rehabilitating the men who perpetuate it.” It should be abundantly clear that this is a lofty—and essential—goal for all of us to be working towards.