the nia project>prostitution>what is prostitution?
What Is Prostitution?
In describing women who have been involved in prostitution as women abused through prostitution, the nia project is clearly stating the belief that prostitution is a form of abuse and violence against women. We do not accept the notion that prostitution is 'sex work' and that women can be 'sex workers'. This implies that prostitution is a legitimate form of employment, which individuals are free and able to leave as and when they wish. Prostitution is not a form of work or employment, it is the selling and buying of women's bodies and sexualities by and for men, an institutionalised form of rape and control that commodifies women in much the same way as trafficking, pornography, and some advertising.
In taking this view, the nia project does not, in any way, believe that women who are involved in prostitution should be judged, but rather that judgement should fall on the system and the men who abuse them.
The sex act within a context of prostitution is not the same as having sex in an intimate, equal, safe relationship / interaction. A woman involved in prostitution has more in common with a woman who has been raped than she does with a woman who has freely had sex with her partner. Rape is the sexual violation of one person by another (usually of a woman by a man), in which the rapist controls his victim through the use of physical force, manipulation, and threats. Within the context of prostitution, the rapist, or buyer of sex, has sexual intercourse with a woman against her will, 'but subcontracts the intimidation and violence to another man, the pimp' (Parker, 2004: 7). That is, most of the threats, intimidation and manipulation of the woman have been carried out by another man prior to the act of rape. In a study of women involved in prostitution in Canada, 90 percent of the women interviewed said that they had been physically assaulted, with 67 percent saying they had been threatened with a weapon. The women suffered broken bones, concussion, stabbings, and cuts, as well as rape and other sexual assaults (Farley and Lynne, 2004: 116).
Force does not only take the form of physical assaults, however. For some women, the path into prostitution may not involve physical violence, as this woman explains, 'the coercion I faced did not involve physical force. Instead the coercion was emotional and psychological in nature. This included socialisation as a sex object, fear of never being accepted in the straight world after being a 'whore', induction into the sex world 'family' (one that accepts those not accepted elsewhere, and a closed system that is difficult to leave)' (Lee, 2004: 63).