Markets In Sex, Redux
People who condemn prostitution would do well to remember that there are always women for whom it offers a vastly better life than their next best alternative. I’ll let an Iranian brothel worker speak for herself on this point:
How old are you?I’m fifteen.
Why did you leave home?
One day I was coming home from school when Abbas started following me, asking for alms. Every day for a week he followed me home, but I ignored him. Then one day I answered, and my brother happened to see me. He went straight to my father. That night my father beat me until my whole body was black and blue. Then he locked me in the cellar. There were rats down there. I screamed and shouted, but no one came to help me. I thought I was going to die from fright. The next day, after my father had gone to work, my sister passed a piece of bread and some cheese to me under the cellar door. For a whole month she did that every day. For a whole month I didn’t wash or change my clothes. There was a pit in the cellar where I went to the bathroom. Finally, I broke a window in the middle of the night and managed to escape into the street. I had no chador, so I stole one from the mosque. I was on my way to the bus terminal when I was picked up by the police. At six o’clock in the morning, they took me back home. I was beaten again. This time my father hung me by my feet from the hook he used to hang slaughtered lambs. That night my sister cut me down. She said, “Go.” I said, “He’s going to kill you.” She said, “You go, I’ll think of something.” She gave me a chador and some money. I went straight to the town square, found a ride, and came to Teheran.
And what do you do now?
I work in a house. The madam I work for pays me and lets me go out for walks.
Do you want to go home?
No. Once I called and spoke to my sister. She said that my father beat her for a week after I left, so she would tell him where I was. And my mother told her that if she sees me she’ll burn me alive.
Why?
My mother says that since I am going to burn in the next life, it is her duty to set fire to me in this one.
Thanks to Daze for the link.
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=884
i think we are after the wrong people in the middle east
Ugh.
At 15, I’m afraid that neither alternative is acceptable. I doubt being a sex working in Teheran is much safer…there isn’t a lot of condom use in those kinds of countries (in fact, they are probably very hard to buy in Iran). She’ll probably just die slower, of aids.
(Sorry, I guess that probably wasn’t what you wanted to hear)
rg
A “vastly better life”? That’s a completely irresponsible statement. Yes, her home life is an abomination, but being a sex worker isn’t “saving her”.I agree with RG that the probability of her contracting AIDS is extremely high, and so is the possiblity of her being abused by customers at the brothel (physically and/or mentally).Life in a brothel there is not like a brothel in Nevada or something.I think you should consider the situation more carefully before making a statement about prostitution being some sort of saving grace. That’s like saying, “my life was horrible until I discovered crack!”
k.
Bullshit. She traded being beaten in locked dark basement full of rats and being fed under the door, for a situation where she gets paid and has the freedom to go for walks in the park. Vastly better by any reasonable standard, and she herself prefers it. Nothing remotely irresponsible about saying so.
I didn’t say her situation was “acceptable”, I didn’t say it was a grace of any kind, I didn’t say it was “saving her”, and I didn’t say a word about her long term prospects, which truly suck. I just said it was vastly better, which it is. And the point to be made here, is that who the hell are any of us to tell her she must choose the beatings in the basement?
Spare me your politically correct bullshit, people. It’s a nasty world out there, and I purely despise people who criticise the hard choices that real people have to make so that their own mothers won’t set them on fire.
Sorry, that was a little harsh of me. But this is important, and goes directly to the heart of the idea of freedom. If you want to make prostitution illegal, that means you want to make the choice for girls like this. In your superior wisdom, you want society to decide, in advance, that hooking is a fate worse than everything else that girl might face in life. That’s arrogant and (in light of the quoted story) pretty clearly wrong.
This is what makes me angry: YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO MAKE THAT CHOICE FOR OTHER PEOPLE. Every law against prostitution that you support increases the chance that some poor girl somewhere will be condemned to beatings in a basement, because you’ve made it harder for her to escape to a place where rats don’t stalk her in the dark.
(Of course I speak metaphorically; many hookers in this country are escaping things much less bad. But still, it’s not your place or mine to decide whether hooking is better or worse than a woman’s other options.)
I agree with Bacchus 100%. Her options may not be ideal, but everyone has a choice – and given these choices, I can’t say I’d choose any differently. The most important thing (or so it would seem, in this case) is imminent survival. Staying alive *today* gives you, by default, more options for *tomorrow*.
As for her parents, let’s hope I never meet them. What a horrifying thing to do to your child, regardless of your upbringing or religious beliefs.
Way to go Bacchus! Maybe her life will be short, however it apparently will be longer than if she went home.
Plus it will have some quality, albeit short.
Is her risk of catching HIV pretty high?
Yes, because if she wants to get paid then she has to leave the choice of condom use up to the customers (including the ones who say “if you won’t let me do you without a condom then I’ll pull up my pants and take my money and go home”) instead of insisting on condoms herself.
Not because condoms are hard to get in Iran.
“Every law against prostitution that you support increases the chance that some poor girl somewhere will be condemned to beatings in a basement, because you’ve made it harder for her to escape to a place where rats don’t stalk her in the dark.”
Hmm…*every* law against prostitution?
What about laws against the sorts of “prostitution” which trap girls in places where rats do stalk them in the dark? If these evil parents did almost exactly same stuff but also said “we won’t give you this bread and cheese unless you earn it by having sex with this guy we’ll let in the cellar,” or if the madam ran a rat-infested brothel and didn’t let her outside, then would it suddenly be OK…?
Or for that matter, what about harassment laws? If someone hires you to program computers/mop floors/whatever and then says “have sex with me or else you’re fired,” should that demand be illegal? Or, since the demand makes your job a form of prostitution (for example, converting a job from “mopping floors for money” to “mopping floors and having sex for money”), should there be no laws against it…?
Employment is an important and complex issue. Not every law restricting some form of it is good. Not every law restricting some form of it is bad. This applies for every trade and profession, not just hooking!
Hmmm… I think “choice” is a continuum.
In Montreal, I hear, lots of girls tend to go into prostitution for the money, and most of them quit after three months or so (do the math).
In Korean massage parlors, I hear, maybe the girls came to American for a better life, and some of them do get the better life, but the trip involves paying back a lot of money, difficulties with immigration, etc.
Sure, everyone has choices — but the spectrum of choice that a Montreal college girl has is quite different from that a Korean masseuse has.
OTOH, character counts two. Plenty of the Korean girls are more strong minded than the Montreal girls.
That said, in this particular case, given the range of choice the girl has, she might be better off where she is. What parents!
In the end, we are all in the life together…
And of course legalization is the right answer, ethically and medically. I’m with Bacchus 200% on that one.
I’m with Bacchus on this one. I’m going to put it in harsh language, so try not to get your offensensitivity going too fast, ok?
Who the fuck are you, any of you, to decide for someone else who they can have sex with of their own free will, and under what conditions they choose to make that decision?
I’m not against legalizing prostitution in the U.S. (in fact, I’m equal opportunity– bring on the male hookers!), but you’re comparing apples and oranges in this case. These Iranian girls are property– first to their parents and then to the madams they work for. They are not “choosing” prostitution, they are choosing survival. That isn’t something to applaud. They are brave to have found a way to survive in a society that would just as soon see them dead. But whether they die by their parents hands or die discarded in the street because they are no longer able to attract customers at the brothel, they are still victims. To suggest that this is “free will” is ridiculous– don’t fool yourself into thinking these girls are happy being hookers. Free will implies choice and they simply had no other choice and that is a tragedy. I sincerely doubt they even understand the concept of free will as they’ve never been taught that they have any value. It’s a sad world when a fifteen year old girl’s only choices are prostitution or death. How about we put as much effort into giving her MORE choices as we are in trying to legalize prostitution?
Lots of good points here!
John psmyth, you forgot one more example. I heard that a tiny % of university women in Japan tend to go into prostitution for the money…to spend on sex with their favorite male prostitutes. ;)
As for “under what conditions they choose to make that decision?”, who the fuck am I to prefer that people choose to make those decisions in free conditions instead of brutally coerced conditions* and therefore prefer that brutally coerced conditions not exist in the first place?
Apparently someone who’s not sensitive and politically correct, but I’m cool with that. ;)* For example, this is why sane age of consent for sex and marriage laws are important (no matter if the sex is prostitution or not). Suppose a kid’s parents say “marry this stranger we picked or else we’ll throw you on the streets!” A 16-year-old thrown on the streets is much better able to get at least a burger-flipping job and pay at least slum rent than a 9-year-old is. That’s why laws buying a 16-year-old’s “I do” as consent make tons more sense than laws buying a 9-year-old’s “I do” as consent.
I don’t think wishing someone against dying a slow death from HIV is “politically correct bullshit”. I was responding to the irresponsibility of your statement which implies that her quality of life is better. Yes, she may be safer in the present, but WHO KNOWS what goes on in that brothel? You cannot say that just because she isn’t sleeping with rats, she is a FIFTEEN year old girl who is getting fucked by johns. That is not good, by any reasonable standard.
I never once said that prostitution was wrong. I was responding to the asinine statement that her life is “vastly better” when indeed it is only a little better, at best.
Prostitution is not the issue, nor is it that she is beaten by her father. It is clearly a cultural issue, and rather than saying that her life is in any way, shape or form good for being in a situation where she is underage and turning tricks, we should look at what her OTHER alternatives are.
No, Kevin, the politically correct bullshit was the part where you labeled my statement “completely irresponsible” and presumed to suggest that I should “consider the situation more carefully before making the statement.” This is my blog, you don’t get to control the discourse. There’s a huge difference between disagreeing with someone, and telling them they shouldn’t speak their opinions (which is what you tried to do.)
And now you are trying to do it again, by claiming that “prostitution is not the issue” when, in fact, that’s what everybody else here is talking about.
Everyone: once and for all, choosing between bad options is still choosing, and it’s better than having no options at all. If you want to take options away from people, you assume a huge moral burden. Don’t forget those rats in the dark.
Yes, it’s your blog, but you should be able to make room for opinions since you welcome comments.As such, you shouldn’t be surprised if someone calls out what they think is an inappropriate statement. I understand what you are trying to say, and I understand your point. But, I think that by saying that underage prostitution is a good alternative (to anything) just doesn’t hold water, in my opinion.
Kevin, I have plenty of room for opinions. What I don’t have time for is your attempt to declare certain opinions (namely mine) to be “inappropriate”. That’s arrogant and rude, and goes way beyond mere disagreement.
Disagreement I’m fine with. And a good thing too — because if you keep saying that poor girl was better off being beaten in her basement, and that she shouldn’t have the right to decide which she likes better, we are going to keep disagreeing.
Oh, of course. She’s so much safer being a prostitute in a culture that kills women for showing their faces to strange men, let alone the kind of body parts a prostitue needs to show in order to get her job done.
To those of you saying that making prostitution illegal is removing this girl’s “choice” to sell her body for sex, show me her other options. Oh that’s right, death. Hmm, not a difficult choice at all, but than again, not really a choice either. If she’d been offered say, a safe foster home where she could continue to be a child versus selling her body to hordes of men who care more about their cars than they do about her, I wonder what she’d pick?
I have absolutely no problem with adult women choosing prostitution of their own free will from a vast array of other life choices. However, coercion of any kind removes the element of choice. And frankly, if being a prostitute is such a great life path, how come more of you aren’t doing it?
Great points, Kristina.
“They are not ‘choosing’ prostitution, they are choosing survival” would make sense no matter if their prostitution is legal or not. BTW, I heard that in Iran it’s legal if the session is registered as a “temporary marriage.” OTOH, locking your daughter up like that is illegal there, so I doubt the police paid any attention in this case (if they did, then she’d be with a social worker instead of a madam).
Likewise, here’s another example without a legalization issue clouding matters. Suppose a Third World housewife was never taught how to do any other trade or profession…and then her husband cheats on her, catches HIV, and meanwhile keeps saying “have unprotected sex with me or else I’ll divorce you.” When women and girls in this situation stay under their husbands they are not “choosing” AIDS, they are choosing survival.
Merely decreeing that “being HIV+ is no big deal,” “AIDS is just another choice,” etc. won’t help them. Making it possible for them to pick a third, less lethal, choice (expanding, not narrowing, the range of choices!) can definitely help.
Good gracious, people. Bacchus didn’t say her life was good, he said it was better. Better than constant beating and starvation. Better in the short term to be sure, and far from something any of us would choose, but better nonetheless.
Of course she is likely abused at work, and will be again when she is discarded from the profession. But the possibility of intermittent abuse and starvation is surely better than the guarantee of constant abuse and starvation. She didn’t turn down a cortege of missionaries and police standing at the door waiting to escort her into a wholesome Western life of sexual freedom and educational opportunities. Her choices are limited, I think she chose well from what was on offer, and who are we to smugly sit with our near-infinite life options and tut over the fact that she will certainly die in pain and diseased? What was she going to do, catch the 12:15 to Paddington and sign up for evening ocurses at Birkbeck?
ArmyWife: I, for one, have chosen it as a life path at least in the short term, as it happens.
“I have absolutely no problem with adult women choosing prostitution of their own free will from a vast array of other life choices. However, coercion of any kind removes the element of choice. And frankly, if being a prostitute is such a great life path, how come more of you aren’t doing it?”
Good points. Hmm…as for “if being a prostitute is such a great life path,” I’m reminded of Kristina’s point
“How about we put as much effort into giving her MORE choices as we are in trying to legalize prostitution?”
Lemme guess, those additional choices (foster care, orphanage, domestic violence shelter, boarding school, etc.) wouldn’t involve fucking children so some people just aren’t interested in them. :/
You know, like when a Maasai girl hits menarche and her traditional father says “you can’t live with me anymore, either marry this guy I picked or be homeless.” Some people think she needs a third option like boarding school. Some people would rather go on about how great marrying and raping a 12-year-old is. Fortunately, some of the people who think she needs a third option are Maasai fathers and chiefs themselves!
Following this thread with interest, I have to ask of those who are taking offense to the opinion that a fifteen year old girl choosing prostitution over death is no real choice at all:
How would legalizing prostitution in this country help this fifteen year old girl if she were an American citizen? Are you advocating making prostitution legal for minors? Or is she supposed to put up with her father’s beatings until she’s eighteen and then become a hooker?
As Linda so eloquently explained, these girls need options like foster care and boarding school, but they’re not going to get it because it’s not in the best interests of the people make the rules. The same men who are paying for this girl’s services would also murder her if she were their own daughter. It’s hypocrisy. The social and cultural system she’s living with say she is a commodity and, as such, she will continue to be treated as less than human for the rest of her life until or unless she is given some other choice.
As a comparison, to say this girl has a choice is to say an eighteen year old kid in prison has a choice between being gang-raped by everyone in his cell block or being “owned” by one man who will protect him. Is that truly choice? Is that free will? Of course, the kid in prison has done something to land himself there while the girl in Iran’s only crime is being born female.
I’m not at all smug on this subject. As a woman, it’s but for the grace of God that I don’t live in a country where my choices are hooking or death. How can any woman be smug about that?
Bacchus, you are a wonderful soul and I thank you for your uncompromising position!
Kristina, your example of the inmate being forced to choose between cell-block gang rapes or being the “prison bitch” for one inmate is very much on point. Obviously neither alternative is freely chosen, but very likely the person in that situation still has an opinion as to which is better. There’s still a choice to be made. I’m saying, you and I (and society) don’t have the right to make that choice for anyone. Of course we should do whatever we can to offer a third, better choice, but that’s not the point I was making here.
There’s a breathtaking arrogance to the assertion that choosing prostitution over death “is no real choice at all.” It’s worse than the apocryphal “let them eat cake” remark. “The peasants have no bread, and are forced to eat garbage lest they starve.” “Garbage?They might catch plague! We must outlaw the eating of garbage at once. Society ought to provide those poor peasants with cake!”
Bah.
Are you even reading everything I write? In the last post I said that I understand your point. I am not trying to be arrogant or rude and I am also not trying to say anything other than that particular statement, made PUBLIC, is going to have some sort of emotional impact on certain people.
Her situation is, indeed, better. Not “vastly” better as you had originally stated. And I don’t believe I ever said she didn’t have the right to choose (you are putting words in my mouth), but she is not exactly in a place to make rational decisions (being underage, in addition to being terrified for her life). I just said that having that as an only option is very unfortunate and sad.I agree with Kristina’s metaphor wholly. I really wouldn’t called it a choice at all, therefore I am not saying that we should be making anyone’s decisions for them. Yes, the less amount of suffering would be preferable, but could hardly be called quality of life in any way. And there are too many variables involved to make any sort of blanket statement based on a brief interview with someone, don’t you think? I am glad that this is a lively topic. It is an issue that is obviously very emotional.
First, thanks for fixing the duplicate post problem! :) On to the actual topics now…
“There’s a breathtaking arrogance to the assertion that choosing prostitution over death “is no real choice at all.” It’s worse than the apocryphal “let them eat cake” remark. “The peasants have no bread, and are forced to eat garbage lest they starve.” “Garbage? They might catch plague! We must outlaw the eating of garbage at once…”
Inaccurate analogy. Kristina never said that the kid should be arrested for prostitution, nor that the kid shouldn’t have done what she did under those circumstances.
“…”Society ought to provide those poor peasants with cake!””
What on earth do you have against Kristina’s statements that the girl deserves *more* choices instead of just one or two almost equally brutal options? Sure you pay lip service to “a third, better choice” but then immediately mock it. Is it that the idea of a kid doing math homework in an orphanage is less “erotic” than the idea of a kid getting raped in a brothel?
I thought this was a blog about sexy stuff (like National Penis Month, phone sex bloopers, prostitution by freely consenting adults, etc.), not a blog about blind hatred of everything nonsexual… :(
p.s. Yes, the customers are raping that poor kid even if she could have chosen getting eaten by rats instead. You know, like the way we don’t call “rape at gunpoint” an oxymoron. Remember when Matisse said “Unless someone is holding a gun to your head (or the head of your child), you’re making a choice” instead of saying something like “if someone is holding a gun to your head, you’re still making a choice between that someone’s demands and the bullet”?
“There’s a breathtaking arrogance to the assertion that choosing prostitution over death ‘is no real choice at all.'”
Honestly, Bacchus, I simply do not understand how you can call me arrogant, especially when you preceded that comment with “Obviously neither alternative is freely chosen.” How is what I said– prostitution vs. death is no real choice– different from you saying neither is a free will choice? Without free will, there is no ability to choose, it is only an illusion. It is the proverbial rock and a hard place, the lesser of two evils, Cylla and Caribdis.
Do you think that fifteen year old Iranian girl is thinking, “Thank goodness I have a choice.” or do you think she’s thinking, “What other choice do I have?” You say we, as a society, don’t have a right to make that choice for anyone (anyone, regardless of age?)– and fine, I’ll support the notion that we don’t have right to take girls out of brothels and put them back with parents who will kill them. Forget our rights– what are our obligations? Are we only obligated to legalize prostitution so these girls can escape parental abuse? Or are we obligated to go beyond that and find a way to not only stop the abuse but also protect them from all abuse, including what amounts to forced prostitution?
I’m an idealist– in an ideal world, a prison inmate wouldn’t have to choose between gang-rape or prison bitch; in an ideal world, fifteen year old girls wouldn’t have to choose between prostitution or death. In an ideal world, victims would be protected. Obviously, it’s not an ideal world and I never once suggested either should be condemned for doing what they have to do to survive in the hell they live in. All I said is that we should give attention and effort to providing these girls with MORE CHOICES than prostitition. That is possible, believe it or not. Frankly, I think it is incredibly arrogant and a blatant disregard for humanity to say, “Well, at least she has a choice.”
I also find it curious that my question as to whether legalized prostitution should be a viable “choice” for abused fifteen year old American girls hasn’t been addressed. Or are child prostitutes only something we should support in other countries?
Seeing as everything else has been covered, I’ll pipe up and say that when Marie Antionnette made the comment about bread and cake, cake was actually cheaper than bread, due to goverment price controls artificially inflating the cost of bread. Problem is, everyone simply assumes she was being a stupid, out of touch noble.
I’ll step in for a second to say that Iran is the only country in the middle east to have a state-sponsered condom factory. A course on sex education is mandatory before marriage.
The root of the problem is the culture of the middle east. Until arabs wake up an realize they are living in the 20th century, most of the women in those countries will continue to be treated like livestock or worse.
The root of the problem is a bunch of horrible customs, not just “the culture of the Middle East.”
Convincing someone to give up a horrible custom like “honour killing” is one thing. Convincing them to give up their whole entire culture (“honour killing” *and* shish kebabs *and* the Persian or Arabic language *and* the popularity of mint-flavored condoms and so on) is much more difficult and less necessary. I’d rather try to do the former, because it’s more likely to work. And I like shish kebabs. ;)
Besides, cultures and subcultures overlap a lot and contradict each other a lot, even the ones in the Middle East. There is no one “culture of the Middle East” in the first place (for example, Iran and Turkey are not an Arabic countries*).* They speak Persian in Iran, not Arabic (give or take a few immigrants and students of foreign languages). Arabic is more closely related to Hebrew while Persian is more closely related to Hindu. Sure, Persian uses the Arabic alphabet, but it’s using a foreign alphabet the same way Zulu uses the Roman alphabet.
While overly broad, “the culture of the middle east” does hit many of the worst countries in terms of treatment of women. Of course, it leaves out some of the hideous african countries where some of sex practices seem designed specifically to spread AIDS.
In this country (the US, that is) we’ve conquered most of the rights issues faced by women. Yes, there’s a bit left to do but examples like this one show exactly how far we’ve come compared to the rest of the world.
I’m an old-school feminist: precisely equal rights. Period. Every society that gives women the rights of men has experienced a profound increase peace and prosperity.
My point was that just blaming “the worst countries” won’t help solve the problem as much as blaming the actual perpetrators will.
For example, everyone in the story which started this thread is Iranian: the girl, her abusive parents, the madam, the rapists, etc. Just blaming “the Iranians” lumps the victim in with the people abusing her!
Treating a sub-Saharan African country as a monolith is even sillier, given that the current national borders are mostly lines between what was English land, what was Belgian land, etc. instead of between what was Yoruba land, what was Hausa land, etc.
For example, in Kenya:
mainstream Maasai elders praise FGM as authentic
mainstream Gikuyu elders call FGM archaic
mainstream Swahili elders call FGM barbaric (in both the new “barbaric = disgusting” sense and the old “barbaric = foreign” sense)
So if one says “Kenyans are so hideous, they do FGM” then one’s being unfair to progressive Maasai people, all but a few radical-reactionary Gikuyu people, and practically every Swahili person.