 |
|
Challenging the Adult/Child distinction in
theory and practice on prostitution. Sheila Jeffreys. International Feminist Journal of Politics. November 2000. As a result of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the rights of the child there has been an increasing interest in the issue of child labour, and particularly child prostitution, in the 1990s. There has been considerable unanimity amongst human rights agencies and NGOs as to child prostitution and trafficking being violations of human rights and that they need to be eliminated. There has not been such unanimity on the prostitution and trafficking of adult women. In fact in the last 10 years there has been some backing away from the United Nations understanding of the unacceptability of prostitution as exemplified in the preamble of the 1949 Convention against Trafficking in Persons which states that ‘prostitution and the accompanying evil of the traffic in persons’ are ‘incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person’ (United Nations 1949). This retreat has centred on the notion that only some kinds of prostitution need to be considered harmful, i.e. ‘forced’ prostitution and ‘child’ prostitution. So-called ‘free’ prostitution is said by organisations such as Anti Slavery International, for instance, to be legitimate ‘work’ which needs to be accepted as such (Bindman 1998). I shall suggest here that attempts to separate out child from adult prostitution, in order to end the former whilst maintaining the latter, cannot be successful. I shall critically analyse some of the arguments advanced as to the difference between child and adult prostitution, such as that child prostitution is more psychologically and physically damaging than adult prostitution and that whereas adult women can consent to prostitution, children cannot. I shall argue that all forms of prostitution, child and adult, fit very well into United Nations understandings of harmful traditional practices and need to be understood as such. I shall begin by illustrating how the child/adult distinction is being understood and employed presently in the international human rights community. The distinction in action The distinction, as it has been employed within the human rights
community in the 1990s, is based upon the definition of a ‘child’ that
is offered in Article 1 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child i.e.
‘every human being below the age of eighteen years unless, under the law
applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier’ (United Nations
1989). Marriage usually confers majority on a young person and countries
differ in the ages at which marriage is permitted. The age of consent
differs too, and where countries do not have specific laws outlawing the
use of girls under 18 in prostitution then the age of consent will become
the effective age at which prostitution abuse becomes legal. The notion
that 18 is the age at which a person leaves childhood comes from western
understandings. In the west the age to which children are being kept in
education and away from the adult responsibility of earning a living is
being constantly raised, in order to decrease youth unemployment and
inculcate more sophisticated skills. In poor countries children are
expected to make an economic contribution to their families at much
earlier ages and western notions of ‘childhood’ are not necessarily
accepted. The practical implementation of the child/adult distinction can be seen
in the number of conferences that took place in the late 1990s on various
forms of child, as distinct from adult, prostitution. The most significant
was the World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children,
Stockholm, Sweden, August 1996. In a message delivered to the Congress,
Nelson Mandela expressed his abhorrence of the sexual exploitation of
children who are ‘our most treasured asset. They are not ours to be used
and abused, but to be loved and nurtured. Their well-being is ultimately
the well-being of an entire nation’ (Mandela 1996). The child/adult
distinction he makes could be taken to suggest that once these children
reach their eighteenth birthday, though they may still be exploited in the
sex tourism industry which is currently developing apace in South Africa (Saayman
1998), they are less treasured and their well-being less important. The
Congress was the result of the lobbying of an organisation, based upon the
child/adult distinction, set up to oppose child sex tourism in Asia, ECPAT.
This acronym originally meant End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism and
has been changed in response to growing concern at internet child
pornography and other forms of child prostitution to End Child
Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking. Whilst the Convention on the Rights of the Child outlaws commercial
sexual exploitation of children below 18, in effect, when child
prostitution is discussed, it is often pre-pubertal children that are
understood to be the objects of concern.
A good example of this concentration on very young children was
provided at the European Commission conference entitled ‘First European
meeting of the main partners in the fight against child sex tourism’ in
November 1998. It was a conference embedded in the Brussels Travel Fair
and aimed at the tourism industry. The centrepiece of the conference was a
video clip made by the NGO Terre des Hommes with funding from the airline,
Lufthansa. The clip is meant to educate potential child sex abusers on
longhaul flights against abusive behaviour. The video clip showed
children’s toys, teddy bears and train sets, and gave ages of 4 and 7
for the victims. Only one age, 13, bore any relation to the most usual
victims of sex tourism. This representation of child sex tourism as the
abuse of very young children will limit the effectiveness of the video
education campaign. Moreover it will serve to establish the greatest
possible distinction between child and adult prostitution. As Julia
O’Connell Davidson, co-author of the ECPAT regional reports on child sex
tourism (O’Connell Davidson and Sanchez Taylor 1996), and I pointed out
at the conference, the vast majority of the ‘children’ abused in child
sex tourism are young teenage girls who are integrated into the bars and
brothels of destination countries and used by situational abusers i.e. men
who neither know nor care how young the girls are. It has been pointed out to me by Melissa Farley, co-author of a most
important paper on the damaging effects of prostitution upon women (Farley
et al. 1998), that the term ‘sex tourism’ is a euphemism which can
conceal the harm done by prostitution tourists and represent it as being
about fun and entertainment. I shall, therefore, be using the term
‘prostitution tourism’ rather than sex tourism in this article. The construction of a distinction between child and adult prostitution
by a major human rights organisation can be found in the International
Labour Organisation report on prostitution in SE Asia entitled The Sex Sector (1998), which suggests that prostitution is so
important economically to the countries of SE Asia that there might be
arguments for recognising and legitimising it. However, the report
specifically seeks to distinguish between child prostitution, which must
be ended, and the newly legitimate adult sex industry. Lin Lean Lim,
author of the report, says that child prostitution is ‘an intolerable
form of child labour’ whereas ‘in the case of adults, prostitution
could be considered an occupation or a form of work, in the case of
children it is a totally unacceptable form of forced labour’(Lim 1998:
175). The ILO’s stand is the clearest attempt so far by a UN body to
seek to establish the child/adult distinction in relation to prostitution.
Child
prostitution is integrated into the adult prostitution industry If child prostitution were a discrete phenomenon, the idea that it could
be eliminated whilst leaving adult prostitution intact might make some
sense. One reason to be doubtful of the ‘discrete’ nature of child
prostitution is that it seems to have increased precisely in line with the
overall increase in the international sex industry. The ILO report
comments that child prostitution is on the rise everywhere in the world.
This is at a time when prostitution is being more accepted and becoming
more profitable in the same countries in which child prostitution is
increasing. Feminist anti-prostitution activists and theorists such as Kathleen
Barry (1995), have demonstrated that prostitution has undergone a process
of industrialisation since the 1960s.
In this process, prostituted women and children have come under the
control of big business in the western world as prostitution has been
legalised and normalised. The
trafficking of women for prostitution internationally has become much more
organised with criminal and business networks making very serious profits
from the practice (De Stoop 1992). The ILO
report supplies powerful evidence to suggest that prostitution is
being organised on a quite new scale and integrated into national
economies in significant ways in the last decade. As Lin Leam Lim
comments: Prostitution
has changed recently in some SE Asian countries. The scale of prostitution
has been enlarged to an extent where we can justifiably speak of a
commercial sex sector that is integrated into the economic, social and
political life of these countries. The sex business has assumed the
dimensions of an industry and has directly or indirectly contributed in no
small measure to employment, national income and economic growth. (Lim
1998: vi) The sex industry in SE Asia is estimated in the report to account for
from 2-14% of regional economies. There is no evidence that
industrialisation and normalisation of the sex industry will help to
eliminate child prostitution. In fact there is considerable evidence of
the reverse. There is evidence from Australia to support the notion that child
prostitution increases in line with the prostitution industry in general.
A recent ECPAT report on child prostitution in Australia concluded that
child prostitution was rising all over the country, but particularly in
the state of Victoria, which was the first to legalise licensed brothels
in the 1980s and has the most industrialised sex industry in the country
at this time (ECPAT 1998). The estimated value of the ‘adult industry’
in Australia by market analysts is 1.8 billion Australian dollars (Elias
1998). It is possible, then, since the growth of the sex industry seems
coterminous with an increase in child prostitution, that any attempt to
eliminate child prostitution, whilst protecting the growing economic
contribution arising from the exploitation of those who have reached their
eighteenth birthday, will be unsuccessful. It seems particularly inappropriate to treat child prostitution as a discrete problem which can have a
discrete solution, when the degree of integration of child prostitution
into the regular systems of prostitution in countries in South East Asia
and the Caribbean, for example, is recognised. As the reports of Julia
O’Connell Davidson and Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor for ECPAT on child
prostitution tourism point out, child sex abusers who deliberately seek
out young children are a very small number of those using children (under
18) in prostitution tourism destinations (O’Connell Davidson and Sanchez
Taylor 1996). The majority of
prostitution abusers are indigenous men and both they and prostitution
tourists use teenagers in prostitution as a routine part of their
prostitution abuse, neither seeking children, nor, in many cases,
recognising or remarking the extreme youth of those they abuse.
The reports demonstrate that young teenage girls are entirely integrated
into the brothels and sex-related bars of Asia. Sex
tourists represent a steady and lucrative demand for prostitutes and many
of the people who are likely to be sacrificed to this demand are under the
age of 18. In virtually every society, the prostitution ‘labour
market’ feeds upon the dispossessed and the disempowered, and alongside
migrants, children (especially poor children and female children) are one
of the most economically,
socially and politically vulnerable groups in the world.(O’Connell
Davidson and Sanchez Taylor 1996, Venezuela: 4) Lim also remarks that the child prostitution abusers are, for the most
part, ‘situational child sex abusers’ and do seem to be much more
significant in numbers than those who deliberately seek out children to
abuse. As Lim comments, ‘The commercial sex sector makes children
available to situational child sex abusers, who appear to be increasingly
taking advantage of the situation’ (Ibid: 179). O’Connell Davidson and
Sanchez Taylor in their report on child prostitution and sex tourism in
Costa Rica comment, ‘Accounts of clients’ attitudes and behaviour
provided by both adult and child prostitutes suggest that many men quite
simply do not care whom they have sexual intercourse with. It is the
activity, rather than its object, which is valued’ (O’Connell Davidson
and Sanchez Taylor 1996, Costa Rica: 14). For those men who are
essentially indifferent as to the age of the girls they exploit, the main
criteria for selection are body type and racialised identity, so that
females anywhere between the ages of 14 and 30 can be attractive to them
(Davidson and Taylor 1996, South Africa: 23). Though the convincing
evidence from O’Connell Davidson and Sanchez Taylor of the integration
of child prostitution into the adult industry leads me to question whether
child prostitution can be ended without tackling adult prostitution, these
authors do not reach such a conclusion themselves, and still retain a
child/adult distinction in their work. The ILO report shows the significance of child prostitution within the
regular prostitution industry very clearly too. In one major brothel
complex in Indonesia, 1/10th of workers were below 17 and of
those 17 and above, 1/5th became prostitutes under 17. A 1994/5
survey of Indonesia’s registered prostitutes found 60% aged 15-20 (Lim
1998: 7). In Malaysia of the women and girls rescued by police from
brothels 1986-90, 50% were under 18 and the rest 18-21 (Ibid: 173). A Thai
study found that 1/5 of prostituted women and girls started working 13-15.
The study report states that there is an increasing traffic in underage
girls from ethnic minorities and from neighbouring countries. Child
prostitution is also on the increase in China, Viet Nam, Lau PDR, and
Myanmar. In Cambodia, according to a 1995 report, 1/3 of prostituted
females were 12-17 years old. Estimates of numbers of very young
prostituted females are hard to gain, Lim points out, because very young
girls tend to be hidden from public view (Ibid). The clear conclusion from
such statistics would seem to be that prostitution is based upon the
sexual use of very young women or girls in poor countries. Tourism
exacerbates the problem of child prostitution in many countries but the
children are already integrated into the indigenous prostitution industry.
Nonetheless, on the same page in the ILO report on which the above
statistics are detailed, Lim notes that ‘It must be recognized that
there are crucial differences between adult and child involvement in the
sex sector’(Ibid). This remark does seem to be in contradiction to the
evidence that suggests child prostitution is an integral part of
prostitution. In the Australian state of Victoria, where brothels are licensed and
regulated, child prostitution seems to be well integrated into the legal
industry too. Child prostitution was discovered in one of the licensed
brothels in August 1999 as a result of a police investigation prompted by
a newspaper expose. Two men and a woman were charged in relation to 5
girls as young as 15, with inducing children into prostitution and forcing
them to remain there, and trafficking a drug of dependence (Forbes 1999). The legalized industry depends upon a public perception of
the distinction between child and adult prostitution but in fact the
distinction can be as unrealistic in rich western nations as it is in
South East Asia. The integration of young teenagers into the prostitution industry seems particularly evident in male prostitution. A 1999 collection of reports on research from a number of countries suggests that prostituted males start younger than females and have a shorter shelflife. The author of a study of French male and travesti prostitution remarks: ‘While entry into sex work can occur in a variety of ways and at different stages in life, the majority of respondents in this study began to sell sex between the ages of 12 and 17’ (da Silva 1999: 43). A study of 91 prostituted men in Cardiff, UK, found that the average age was ‘slightly under 18’ with a range from 15-23. The authors were confident that this sample ‘includes nearly all the workers regularly selling sex in the area’(Davies and Feldman 1999: 3).
There is evidence in several of the reports that the legalisation of
prostitution does not preclude forced child prostitution. Wim Zuilhof
explains that brothel prostitution was accepted in government policy in
the Netherlands, though kept formally illegal, from the 1970s. Amsterdam
has developed into a central cog in international paedophilia networks and
in Rotterdam too, boys under 16 have been traded and forced to have sex
with clients (Zuilhof 1999: 31). Child prostitution, if we include within this phenomenon the abuse of
young people 12-18 years, is now a significant part of the prostitution
industry and is likely to provide, therefore, a large part of its profits.
There is a growing demand from customers in South East Asia for children
because of fears of HIV transmission. Children are considered less likely
to be infected or their use is seen as therapeutic in the treatment of
sexually transmitted disease (Human Rights Watch 1994). If those concerned
to end child prostitution include within their brief teenage girls and
boys, then there seems no reasonable possibility of them realising their
goal until they challenge prostitution in all its forms. The
harm of child prostitution to its victims is different from adult
prostitution only in degree The ILO report specifies as the basis of its distinction between child and adult prostitution, the great physical and psychological damage suffered by children from sexual exploitation. However when these forms of harm are examined it is not clear that they are distinct from the harms of adult prostitution. The difference may be one of degree. The damage of child prostitution is described in a 1996 ILO report as follows: Commercial
sexual exploitation is one of the most brutal forms of violence against
children. Child victims
suffer extreme physical, psychosocial and emotional abuse which have
lifelong and life-threatening consequences.
They risk early pregnancy, maternal mortality and sexually
transmitted diseases. Case-studies
and testimonies of child victims speak of a trauma so deep that many are
unable to enter or return to a normal way of life.
Many others die before they reach adulthood (Lim 1998: 177). Children are said in the ILO report to suffer post-traumatic stress
disorder, and the dangerous results of the practice of dissociation which
damages attachment and self-esteem. They are likely to self-injure, to
feel guilt, shame and worthlessness.
However, research into prostituted women’s experience shows that adult
prostituted women display very similar physical and psychological damage
from their prostitution abuse. A 1994 study of 68 women in Minneapolis/St.Paul
who had been prostituted at least six months found that half of the women
had been physically assaulted by their purchasers and a third of these
experienced such assaults several times a year. 15% of the women had never
contracted an STD, not including AIDS.
31% of the women had experienced at least one episode of pelvic
inflammatory disease. 46% of the women in the Minneapolis study had
attempted suicide and 19% had tried to harm themselves physically in other
ways (Parriott 1994). Almost all the women in this study categorized
themselves as chemically-addicted, with crack cocaine and alcohol used
most frequently. Dissociation is a mind/body split employed to protect the self from the
violation of the abuse. One thing about which prostitution researchers
with diverse political agendas agree, is that prostituted women, as well
as children, dissociate to survive (McLeod 1982, Hoigard and Finstad
1992). Dissociation is routine and achieved by various means documented by
prostitution survivors, drink, drugs, cutting off. This dissociation may
be learnt by prostituted women to survive childhood sexual abuse or in the
early stages of prostitution abuse. Research on prostituted women suggests
that between 60% (Silbert and Pines 1981) and 90% (Giobbe 1990) have
experienced child sexual abuse, though there are different interpretations
in the literature as to the directness of the connection between such
abuse and entry into prostitution. Those who do not learn the technique of
dissociation survive less well (Vanwesenbeeck 1994). The effects of
dissociation are to injure women’s relationships with their bodies and
their selves and their relations with others. Some feminist researchers
have identified the effects of prostitution abuse as resembling
post-traumatic stress disorder. This range of symptoms of trauma,
originally associated with combat veterans, has also been found in the
victims of child sexual abuse (Herman 1994).
Melissa Farley uses the notion of PTSD to investigate the effects
of prostitution abuse (Farley et al. 1998). Adult prostitution survivors speak of guilt, shame and feelings of
worthlessness just as the child victims do.
One of the prostituted women interviewed by Hoigard and Finstad in
Oslo described her experience of seeking a sexual relationship whilst in
prostitution, thus: You’re
a piece of shit, and you make yourself sick. You get pissed off, and you
get bitter. You don’t see it as sex, you see it as something awful,
something disgusting. I’ve thrown up during sex, just started throwing
up without thinking that it’s been awful. It’s just happened. (Hoigard
and Finstad 1992: 109) Two women in this study are quoted at length on the difficulties of
carrying on a life outside prostitution, such as taking exams and standing
up and speaking at meetings when they feel they are still, underneath the
facade, the persons who were prostituted.
They feel they live a double life. One wrote: I
use tampons all the time. Even when I’m not having my period. It’s
because I’m afraid of stinking. I never sit too close to people. I wash
my ears ten times a day because I’m afraid guck is running out of them.
(Ibid: 113) Another said that her emotional relationships failed because when embarking on them she starts ‘hating myself, my body is filthy’ (Ibid: 113). Eveline Giobbe, founder of the prostitution survivors’ organisation
WHISPER, Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt, defines
prostitution as ‘bought rape’. She
found that prostitution survivors who contacted the organisation suffered
harms similar to those that result from other forms of sexual violence
such as negative effects on their sexuality, flashbacks and nightmares as
well as lingering fears and deep emotional pain that often resembled
grieving (Giobbe 1991: 155). One commented: I
feel like I imagine people who were in concentration camps feel when they
get out... It’s a real deep pain, an assault to my mind, my body, my
dignity as a human being. I feel like what was taken away from me in
prostitution is irretrievable. (Ibid: 156) Another effect Giobbe identifies is suicide. She reports that figures
from public hospitals show that 15% of all suicide victims are prostitutes
and one survey of call girls revealed that 75% had attempted suicide. The research findings as to the harm of prostitution are challenged by
some individual prostituted women who speak of how prostitution is, for
them, a good and reasonable job. One
example is Annie Sprinkle who has made a career out of promoting
prostitution publicly, (Juno
1991). In order to understand such protestations it is important to apply
to prostitution the insights that feminist researchers have developed
about ‘minimisation’ in relation to other kinds of violence against
women. Liz Kelly and Jill
Radford point out that women victims of violence in many forms such as
domestic violence and sexual harassment, tend to say that ‘nothing
really happened’ and minimise consistently the extent of the abuse and
the harm they suffer (Kelly and Radford 1996).
The pressure to minimise can be exacerbated by economic dependence
on the continuation of the abusive behaviour as in prostitution. In all the ways in which prostitution can be seen as harmful to children
it can also be shown to be manifestly harmful to adults. Children will in
some cases be more severely affected, such as in the actual ripping of
flesh and damage to organs wrought by use of particularly small vaginas
and anuses. Children’s bodies can be particularly damaged by pregnancy
and young girls are particularly at risk of HIV/AIDS as a result of
inadequate vaginal secretion causing more trauma to the vaginal walls
(Human Rights Watch Asia 1994). But adult women are also likely to suffer
unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and resulting damage
to their reproductive systems. This physical damage seems also to be a
matter of degree. There is another aspect of child prostitution which is identified by
commentators as damaging and which does not seem, on examination, to
distinguish child from adult prostitution. This is the involvement of male
victims. Though young men are involved in adult prostitution this is
seldom seen as a matter of particular concern by commentators. In fact gay
male commentators often represent male prostitution as harmless (see the
chapter ‘Homosexuality and prostitution’ in Jeffreys 1997). But one
reason advanced in the ILO report for why child sex tourism should be a
particular concern, is that it involves boy children. Lin Leam Lim
comments that child sex tourism is more serious than adult sex tourism
because it involves boys and ‘has been responsible for a palpable
increase in the violation of not only young girls but also young boys’
(Lim 1998: 183). This special concern for the sexual violation of boys
compared with girls may be a reflection of the higher social status of
boys. This concern is apparent in the media in the furores constructed
around what is called ‘paedophilia’,
usually interpreted specifically as the abuse of boys, compared with the
degree of concern directed to the much more common sexual abuse of girl
children in the home. Such heightened social concern for boys might
indicate an awareness that the sexual abuse of boys is more damaging to
the status quo than the abuse of girls (Jeffreys 1982). Abused girls fit
even more easily into the role of sexual subordination ordained for them
in male supremacist culture than those who have not been abused, whereas
abused boys are likely to have their masculinity, or male dominant status,
undermined. It is ironic that the ILO report considers child prostitution involving
boys to be particularly abusive considering that the report points out
that boys are less likely than girls to experience coercion. The degree of
coercion is high for girls but ‘prostitution involving boys rarely tends
to be coercive… Boys involved in commercial sex, especially those in sex
tourism, are more likely to do so as a matter of “choice” or through
peer pressure, and the links with clients are more casually made’ (Lim
1998: 174). Children,
unlike adults, are seen as unable to ‘choose’ Another understanding which is used to support the child/adult
distinction, is the idea that adult women ‘choose’ prostitution
whereas children are not in a position to ‘choose’. Lim explains: The
vulnerability of children has been the principal motivation for measures
to protect them, and is one of the crucial factors distinguishing child
prostitution from adult prostitution. Experts
have pointed out that vulnerability is a function of the
bio-physiological, cognitive, behavioural and social changes that
determine the growth and maturation of a person from infancy to adulthood.
Even when a child is physiologically developed, he or she may not have the
cognitive, psychosocial or emotional capacity, or self-perception, to make
a voluntary choice to enter prostitution.(Ibid: 174) Lim suggests that though some commentators say that all prostitution is
a problem ‘Another
view, however, is that adults can voluntarily go into prostitution as the
occupation of their choice…morals aside, prostitution offers much higher
incomes than other available alternatives for poor women with low levels
of education, and that working conditions…are actually quite decent’
(Ibid: 174). ‘Children, and certainly younger children’, Lim says, are
unable to make such a decision. Prostitution exploits their
‘immaturity’ and ‘helplessness’. Many women, however, may
‘voluntarily’ go into prostitution and ‘have some ability to
negotiate the terms of their employment’ whereas this is not the case
for children who are ‘commonly sold, trafficked, tricked or injured, and
force and coercion are used to confine them’ (Ibid). The ILO’s positive stance towards the position that prostitution can
be an occupation of choice, shows the influence of a pro-prostitution
lobby that has developed in the western world in the 80’s and 90’s
from sex industry lobbyists, some prostitutes’ collectives, and sexual
libertarian theorists (see Jeness 1993; Bell 1994; Chapkis 1997; Nagle
1998). Some prostituted women, such as the Australian Alison Murray, for
instance, claim to speak for the majority of prostituted women and men in
praising the admirable qualities of prostitution as a job and that it is
willingly chosen. She states,
‘most sex workers…do the job willingly and do very well out of it
relative to other occupations’ (Murray 1998: 62). It is precisely the
distinction between ‘forced’ and ‘free’ prostitution based upon
the notion that adult women may exercise the free will of an individual
and ‘choose’ prostititution or ‘consent’ to it, that is causing
the most serious division between different groups of feminist activists
and theorists concerned with prostitution (Jeffreys 1997). Anti-prostitution activists who come from feminist anti-violence
struggles or are survivors of prostitution are critical of the concept of
‘choice’, pointing out that economic coercion renders the idea of free
choice untenable, as do other constraining circumstances that act upon
women’s lives. The Freedom and Justice Centre in Minneapolis, stresses
that the constraining circumstances are the same for women and children
who are all: ‘…delivered into prostitution by rape, battery, child
sexual abuse, educational deprivation, poverty, race discrimination, sex
discrimination, class discrimination, and war’ (Freedom and Justice
Center 1998). Women are not free agents, anti-prostitution activists point
out, operating on a level playing field upon which they rationally choose
prostitution over other occupations for the advantages it offers (Barry,
1995). Women, as Andrea Dworkin has argued, constitute an oppressed class
of people whose subordination has historically been symbolised in their
exchange as sexual and reproductive servants and slaves between men (Dworkin
1983). In all societies and particularly those, often the destination of
prostitution tourists, which retain the most severe forms of male
dominance, women and girls have low social status. They experience sexual
abuse in childhood and adulthood which can rob them of self-esteem,
independence or the chance to marry, or (in the west) render them homeless
or cut them off from support (O’Neill 1996). They can be seen as less
worthy of education or an economic liability. Women and girls are taught
that the possibility of their sexual use is their only economic asset.
They are born into societies in which a demand for commercial sexual
access to their persons by men, represented in the fact that they are
likely to be offered money whilst just going about their daily business,
marks them out as sexual objects and men out as abusers. Those who use the
argument of ‘choice’ without reference to the constraining factors
created out of the material power differences between men and women, might
be criticised as overly individualist in their approach. It should be understood that the liberal theorists and sex industry
apologists who endorse
the idea of prostitution as ‘choice’ for adult women, may not always
confine such arguments to children. Heather Montgomery, who researched
child prostitution in a tourist resort in Thailand, rejects the argument
that children are more vulnerable than adults when prostituted. She is
critical of what she sees as the sentimental way in which child
prostitution is regarded. She accuses those professing to be concerned
about child prostitution of being actually sexually titillated by it
‘Although sex with children is widely condemned, it is still an issue
which causes great, if appalled, curiosity… A call for action at the end
of a newspaper article or an NGO fund raising leaflet, does not obviate
the suppressed excitement of many stories’ (Montgomery 1998: 142). She
sees the children as having agency in precisely the same way that
pro-prostitution lobbyists seek to invest adult prostituted women with
agency. The
children that I knew did have “a sense of decision and control” and to
deny them this is to deny the skilful way that they use what very small
amount of control that they do have. The search for victims of child abuse
sometimes obscures the acknowledgement of children’s agency. (Ibid: 146) She sees arguments as to the damage done to children by prostitution as
being ethnocentric and relating to particular Freudian understandings
about sex and identity which may not be appropriate in other cultures. For
the Thai children she studied, Sexuality
was never identified with personal fulfillment or individual pleasure…
For the campaigners against child prostitution, however, the
conflation of sexual and personal identity is key. Prostitution, they
argue, damages children, not necessarily because of its physical risks but
because it damages their identity. If sexuality is abused, the child is
“ruined” and often unable to be rehabilitated into society.(Ibid: 147) The damage the children suffered was not related to the sexual content
of the abuse but to attendant obvious problems such as ‘bruises, STDs or
drug use’. She does not believe that ‘Western models of psychology can
always be applied directly to children in other countries and still be
useful’(Ibid). The idea of ‘choice’ is applied to children also by some
pro-prostitution prostitutes’ collectives. In the ECPAT report on child
prostitution in Australia, ‘sex work organisations’: …also
put forward the argument “that many young people choose to enter sex
work and regardless of what changes are put in place, some will continue
to sex work”. The young person’s right to choose was stressed by most
sex work organisations and they felt society should “value” and
respect the young person’s choice to engage in sex work if that is their
choice. “We need to provide specialised services to those who want to
continue as well as to those who want to exit”.(ECPAT 1998: 55) Approaches to prostitution which concentrate on choice, instead of
recognising the harm in men’s sexual abuse of all those used in
prostitution are, inevitably I feel, being adopted to justify all forms of
sexual exploitation. Those who wish to stress that adult women may
‘choose’ to be used as mouths, vaginas and anuses in prostitution
should bear in mind that these arguments are and will be so appropriated. When child prostitution is distinguished from adult prostitution on the
grounds of ‘choice’ then the effect is the abandonment of adult women,
many if not most of whom will have experienced prostitution abuse or other
sexual abuse before the age of 18, to their fate. The prostitution
survivors’ movement which is organised in the US around facilities set
up by feminist activists to offer refuge to prostituted women and
reeducation to the male abusers, such as SAGE in San Francisco and
Breaking Free in Minneapolis, is concerned that the sympathy extended to
whoever are identified as children and deserving to be recognised as
victims should also be extended to adults. Child
prostitution as ‘sex work’? The ILO is in the process of continuing its wrongheaded view of
prostitution as legitimate ‘sex work’ in its new convention on the
Worst Forms of Child Labour adopted in June 1999. This convention includes
child prostitution in its definition of intolerable forms of child labour
but in so doing effectively recognises prostitution as work. Article 3 of
the convention states that the term ‘the
worst forms of child labour’ include ‘the use, procuring or
offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or
for pornographic performances’ (United Nations 1999). My argument here that child prostitution should not be seen as
‘work’ does not necessarily mean that I oppose all forms of child
labour. Prostitution is quite unlike other forms of ‘work’ in many
crucial respects and needs to be treated differently (see my chapter on
prostitution as work in The Idea of
Prostitution 1997). For example, the degree of violence associated
with prostitution, including rape and murder, the health effects such as
fatal disease, pregnancy and abortion distinguish prostitution from other
forms of work. The fact that the everyday acts of prostitution,
penetration during which the victims dissociate to survive, is seen by
many commentators and survivors as violence in and of itself (Giobbe 1991,
Hoigard and Finstad 1992), distinguishes prostitution. Prostitution is
gendered in a way in which other forms of work are not in that the
consumers are overwhelmingly male, and the victims, as the ILO report
points out even in relation to child prostitution, overwhelmingly female.
The object of the work is the use of the inside of women’s or
children’s bodies to which the only analogous forms of work are,
perhaps, organ sale and reproductive surrogacy. It arises from the
historical subordination of women, in which women’s bodies are exchanged
for sexual use either within marriage or outside. The exchange of men for
sexual use, it should not need pointing out, has not formed the basis of
patriarchal societies. Whilst other forms of child labour may become
legitimate forms of work for adults and in certain conditions, strong
arguments can be made that this can never be the case for prostitution.
Approaches to prostitution from labourist perspectives, such as that of
the ILO, tend not to take into account the understandings of what
constitutes sexual violence and its effects that emerge from feminist
anti-violence struggles. When prostitution is understood as sexual
violence then it is hard to accept that it should be seen as just a job
like any other. Campaigners against both adult and child prostitution have taken issue
with the idea that prostitution should be called ‘work’. One reason is
that calling prostitution ‘work’ suggests that it can be freely
chosen, and because such a notion is so very unsuitable for the poor and
marginalised in the rich world let alone the vast majority of those abused
in prostitution who live in the poorest parts of the world. Shivananda
Khan, writing on men who sell sex to men in India and Bangladesh, argues
against the term ‘sex work’ because it: …seems
to carry a sense of choice, suggesting that sex work is just another job,
something that can be left at any time. It oversimplifies what is a
complex issue and dehumanizes the struggles that the vast majority of male
and female sex workers go through just to survive. For the vast majority
of people, sex work or whatever name you give it, is a survival strategy.
For most, it is a practice enforced by poverty, degradation, homelessness,
hunger and powerlessness, a form of slavery to economic, social and
cultural deprivation, stigmatization and marginalization. (Khan 1999: 196) He suggests that the term ‘sex work’ derives from a Western
construction of sexuality which can ‘lose sight of local realities and
languages, local sensibilities and constructions’. Use of the term can
‘end up creating frameworks that have nothing to do with the realities
of people’s lives, how they see the world and themselves, and how they
survive’ (Ibid: 196). John Pitts, writing about child prostitution in the UK also cautions
against use of the idea that prostitution is ‘work’. He explains that
prostituted children have been referred to as ‘workers in the sex
industry’ in order to ‘avoid stigmatizing’ them but, ‘This
euphemism, though kindly meant, merely serves to obscure the enormity of
the violation’. It also
suggests that ‘their work is freely chosen whereas it is better seen as
powerfully determined by negative experiences and reduced circumstances
which constrain young people to act in ways which are inimical to their
best interests’. Concerns about the age of consent, he argues, ‘divert
us from the far more complex and important question of the ‘conditions
of assent’, the circumstances under which such consent is given’
(Pitts 1997: 152). The liberalising attitudes towards prostitution of the last decade,
represented in the idea that prostitution should be seen as ‘sex
work’, have had the effect in some European countries of reducing police
enthusiasm to prosecute prostitution offences. The effect of this
liberalisation on child prostitution is that it inevitably gets subsumed
within that tolerance and treated with less seriousness. John Pitts points
out that in the UK there was a ‘de facto creation of ‘tolerance
zones’ in many UK cities, in which the police, in effect, manage rather
than prosecute prostitution’. The problem with such ‘tolerance’, he
says, is that, within these zones, the duty of the police to ‘protect’
children and young people falls into abeyance’ (Pitts 1997: 152). David
Barrett also argues that increasing tolerance of men’s prostitution
behaviour towards adult women in the UK extends to children too: ‘Adult
prostitution often receives a neutral response from agencies involved in
dealing with it. This same neutrality appears to generate a similar
passivity when children are involved (Barrett 1997: 161). Legalisation of prostitution in the form of licensing brothels, as
exists in the state of Victoria in Australia, does not solve the problem
of child prostitution but may make it easier to hide it away, and harder
for young people to escape. David Barrett argues that laws in the UK
restricting access to massage parlours to those over 18 have not helped in
eliminating child prostitution. On the contrary: Existing
in a brothel or an off-street parlour in a sink neighbourhood, under the
control of a pimp who has probably made the child drug dependent, where
physical violence is commonplace, is virtually impossible for an
unsupported young person to escape from.(Barrett 1997: 163) Prostitution
as a harmful traditional practice In the same ten years in which there has been an increasing concern with
the rights of the child and child sexual exploitation there has been an
increasing sophistication and effort directed to the elimination of what
the United Nations has called ‘harmful traditional practices’. The
1995 UN Factsheet on Harmful Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of
Women and Children lists prostitution under ‘violence against women’
as one form of such harmful practice (United Nations 1995). When
prostitution is considered as a harmful traditional practice the creation
of a distinction between child and adult seems particularly inappropriate.
In the factsheet there is no such distinction, nor indeed a distinction
between ‘forced’ and ‘free’ prostitution. The idea of a forced
rather than free harmful traditional practice does not fit well with
United Nations understanding of what constitutes such a practice. Harmful
traditional practices are ‘consequences of the value placed on women and
the girl child by society. They persist in an environment where women and
the girl child have unequal access to education, wealth, health and
employment’ (Ibid: 5). Traditional cultural practices ‘reflect values
and beliefs held by members of a community for periods often spanning
generations’ and they are for the ‘benefit of men’ (Ibid: 3). Such
practices ‘persist because they are not questioned and take on an aura
of morality in the eyes of those practicing them’ (Ibid). Prostitution
fits into the definition of such practices very well. Prostitution is,
after all, often referred to by apologists as ‘the oldest profession’
suggesting a weight of tradition. Prostitution is not only unquestioned by
many, but actually regarded as legitimate, presently, by the ILO.
Such support certainly lends an aura of ‘morality’ to the
practice. Prostitution, like the other harmful traditional practices
listed by the United Nations such as child marriage, domestic violence,
female genital mutilation, is certainly a threat to the health of both
women and children. It is also very clearly for the benefit of men who are
the customers and most usually also the traffickers, pimps and
‘businessmen’ who make most of the profit.
The 1997 Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women,
Radhika Coomaraswamy, explains that ‘Certain customary practices and
some aspects of tradition are often the cause of violence against women’
and ‘Besides female genital mutilation, a whole host of practices
violate female dignity’ (Coomaraswamy 1997).
She explains that ‘Blind adherence to these practices and State
inaction with regard to these customs and traditions have made possible
large-scale violence against women’. All of these comments suit the
acceptance of men’s prostitution abuse of women in many western
countries. As Coomaraswamy explains, the attempts by states to modernize
their economies, precisely the project that the ILO report addresses,
often leaves abuses of women’s rights in the form of harmful traditional
practices intact. States
are enacting new laws and regulations with regard to the development of a
modern economy and modern technology and to developing practices which
suit a modern democracy, yet it seems that in the area of women's rights
change is slow to be accepted. (Coomaraswamy 1997) Indeed, in relation to the harmful traditional practice that is
prostitution, it would appear that economies are to be developed directly
from the harmful practice itself. State acceptance or promotion of the
commercializing of a harmful practice should surely be seen as in direct
contradiction to those UN documents which explicitly require the
elimination of such practices. The Convention on the Elimination of all
forms of Discrimination against Women, for example, enjoins States Parties
to: …take
all appropriate measures… to modify the social and cultural patterns of
conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of
prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the
idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on
stereotyped roles for men and women. (United Nations 1979: art.5(a)) Many of the justifications advanced for the continuation and acceptance
of men’s prostitution abuse sound, on examination, very similar to those
advanced in support of other traditional practices which damage women. On
cultural arguments that are advanced to support harmful traditional
practices, Arati Rao advises that we consider several questions in order
to assess their reasonableness: First,
what is the status of the speaker? Second, in whose name is the argument
from culture advanced? Third, what is the degree of participation in
culture formation of the social groups primarily affected by the cultural
practices in question? Fourth, what is culture anyway? (Rao 1995: 168) Arguments as to the acceptability of prostitution as the foundation of
economic advance, should be evaluated in this light. They suit the
interests of criminals/ businessmen involved in the trafficking and
commercial exploitation of women and children. The social groups most
affected by the practice of prostitution, prostituted women and women in
general have had extremely little participation in the construction of the
sexual cultures of the countries in question. What is culture anyway? In
relation to prostitution it could be seen as the culture of male sexual
dominance which is being globalised through commercial exploitation. Men’s
prostitution behaviour is the problem Those who use women, children and young men in prostitution are
overwhelmingly male. O’Connell Davidson and Sanchez Taylor do mention a
form of female prostitution tourism analogous to the male version which
they say they discovered in some prostitution tourist destinations. They include female sex tourists amongst the client groups
involved in child prostitution tourism in both Goa and Venezuela
(O’Connell Davidson and Sanchez Taylor 1996 Nos 4 and 5). Their evidence
for this phenomenon, however, is anecdotal and does not pay much attention
to the considerable differences between what they define as female
prostitution tourism and that which is engaged in by male tourists.(1)
There seems to be no evidence to suggest that there is any serious demand
to use men and children in brothel and street prostitution in the way in
which men use women, girls and boys. Feminist and some gay male theorists have pointed out that men’s
prostitution behaviour towards women, children and young men is a way of
expressing the sexuality of male dominance, a sexuality that confirms
masculine status (Millett 1975; Dworkin 1981; Barry 1995; Jeffreys 1997;
Kendall???? Stoltenberg
???).(2) Though economic need and racism play large parts in the creation
of the international prostitution industry it is founded upon men’s
demand. Cynthia Enloe argues
that prostitution constructs masculinity saying that ‘Tourists, colonial
officials, international technocrats and businessmen, and soldiers have
long been the internationalisers of sexualised masculinity’ (Enloe
1992:25). Aida Santos who has
written and worked against prostitution tourism and military prostitution
in the Philippines argues that those who accept that prostitution is
inevitable are saying that ‘sex, however it is obtained, either by
coercion, commercialization or even seduction, is a male right’ (Santos
1995:38).(IOP p315) All measures that seek to ameliorate the dire effects of men’s
prostitution abuse upon women and children without targetting the male
abusers run the risk of seeming to accept that the abusive behaviour is
inevitable and natural, or a traditional practice which it would be too
difficult to challenge. Attempts to end child prostitution whilst leaving
adult prostitution intact might appear to be based upon some notion that
men’s prostitution behaviour is unstoppable, perhaps a biological
necessity, which can only be channelled into ‘harmless’ directions.
Adult women are seen as responsible for their abuse in prostitution and
either as unharmed or choosing to be harmed, whilst children are seen to
be off limits. In fact men’s prostitution abuse is not ‘natural’
behaviour but the result of the idea that such sexual abuse of women and
children is vital for men’s health, enjoyed by women, a right of
manhood. Aggressive,
compulsive, risk-taking masculine sexual behaviour is recognised by a
Panos Institute anthology as the driving force behind the global AIDS
epidemic. AIDS
and Men argues forcefully, with evidence from many countries where the
epidemic is particularly rampant, that male sexual behaviour in which
‘men are much more likely to take risks than responsibility in their
sexual behaviour’ (Foreman 1997: 36) is not biologically but socially
constructed and must be changed if the AIDS related destruction of mostly
women and children, is to be stemmed. The editor, Martin Foreman, asks
‘whether millions of men across the social and geographical spectrum can
be persuaded to see abstinence, fidelity and the use of condoms as
desirable and viable alternatives’ to their learnt masculine patterns
(Ibid: 35). He argues that men ‘need the opportunity to discuss what it
means ‘to be a man’, why they use their penis, mouth or anus in
certain ways’ (Ibid: 45). He stresses the importance of the men ‘who
hold the reins of power in society’ the ‘parliamentarians, religious
leaders, newspaper editors and broadcast producers, as fathers and
husbands’ using their influence and resources to open up the debate on
how men can change because these men are the ‘custodians of tradition’
(Ibid). The abuse of women and children in prostitution emerges, like the AIDS
epidemic, from the sexual behaviour of male dominance, and it is equally
destructive in its effects. Cath Hayes and Ian Trafford argue in relation
to child prostitution in the UK that the cause of child prostitution is
men’s demand and it is that that needs to be changed. Although
there are many factors which may leave some young people vulnerable to
involvement in prostitution, prostitution only exists because there is a
demand. It is increasingly
being recognised that child prostitution only exists because there are men
willing to pay to abuse children (Hayes and Trafford 1997: 61). Instead
of trying to create a false distinction between child and adult
prostitution it might be
better to approach prostitution in the same way the Panos Institute study
suggests approaching AIDS, with the reconstruction of male sexual
behaviour on a global scale. As CEDAW demands, harmful attitudes and
traditions based upon women’s subordination should not be tolerated, but
cast aside. Men’s right to use women and children in prostitution is, I
suggest, one of these, and a particularly damaging one. Endnotes: (1) One form of evidence they offer is phoning up several escort agencies in Venezuela to ask for women and see whether the owners/receptionists were surprised. They were mostly unfazed and the authors use this to conclude that ‘female sex exploiters are not unknown in Venezuela’. Another piece of evidence was that a prostituted woman ‘told us that she had, on one or two occasions, been asked to service foreign couples’ (O’Connell Davidson and Sanchez Taylor 1996 No 5: 27). Threesomes of this kind are not necessarily evidence of women’s independent desire to use women in prostitution but may emerge from men’s interests in ‘swinging’ and simulated lesbian sex (Jeffreys 1990). Where sexual relations did take place between single women tourists and local teenage boys and men they did not, the authors point out, necessarily involve payment and could be seen by the women as romantic. O’Connell Davidson and Sanchez Taylor argue that the women’s behaviour is exploitative, because of the extreme imbalance of power involved and racist. Whilst all of this is may well be true for those women tourists who do go to resorts to engage in sexual relationships with local men and teenagers, it is likely that the women’s behaviour can be distinguished from that of the men who take part in the international sex industry in many ways.
(2)
The understanding that the industry of prostitution is created from the
demand of men and from a construction of male sexuality arising from male
dominance is not necessarily undermined by the creation in recent decades
of a sex industry directed at lesbians. I have argued elsewhere (Jeffreys
1993), that this industry results from the attempts of women already in
prostitution to seek less abusive situations and of some lesbians to
develop for themselves a sexuality modelled upon gay male sexuality and
including the privileges, previously restricted to men, of using women as
sexual objects (see also Kappeler 1990). Statements by prominent lesbian
theorists and practitioners of the new lesbian sex industry as to lesbians
learning their new sexuality from gay men, or advice to them to do so, are
numerous (see Bearchell 1983; Nicholls 1987; Smyth 1992). Pat Califia,
doyenne of the sadomasochist sex industry, writer of lesbian pornography
and great admirer of gay male sexual culture is now ‘transitioning’ to
become a gay man (Hawker 2000). Bibliography. Barrett, David. 1997. “Conclusion: Where from here?” In David
Barrett (ed.) Child Prostitution in
Britain. Dilemmas and
practical responses, pp158-170. London:
The Children’s Society. Barry, Kathleen. 1995. The
Prostitution of Sexuality. New
York: NYU Press. Bearchell, Chris. 1983. Why
I am a gay liberationist: Thoughts on Sex, Freedom, the Family and the
State. Resources for Feminist Research.
Vol. 12. No. 1. Bell, Shannon. 1994. Reading,
Writing and Rewriting the Prostitute Body. Bloomington, Indiana:
Indiana University Press. Bindman, Jo. 1998. “An International Perspective on Slavery in the Sex
Industry”. In Kamala
Kempadoo and Jo Doezema (eds.) Global Sex Workers. Rights,
Resistance and Redefinition, pp65-68.
New York: Routledge. Chapkis, Wendy. 1997. Live Sex
Acts. Women performing erotic labor.
New York: Routledge. Coomaraswamy, Radhika. 1997. Report
of the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women. da Silva, Lindinalva Laurindo. 1999. “Travestis and Gigolos in
France”. In Peter Aggleton (ed.) Men
Who Sell Sex. International Perspectives on Male Prostitution and
HIV/AIDS, pp41-60. London: University College London. Davidson, Julia O’Connell and Jacqueline Taylor. 1996. Child
Prostitution and Sex Tourism. (6
reports) 1. Costa Rica, 2. Cuba, 3. Thailand, 4. Goa, 5. Venezuela, 6.
South Africa. Bangkok: ECPAT International. Davies, Peter and Feldman, Rayah. 1999. “Selling Sex in Cardiff and
London”. In Peter Aggleton (ed.). Men
Who Sell Sex. International Perspectives on Male Prostitution and
HIV/AIDS, pp1-22. London:
University College London. De Stoop, C. 1992. They
are so sweet, Sir. The Cruel
World of Traffickers in Flipinas and Other Women. Leuven, Belgium:
Limitless Asia. Dworkin, Andrea. 1981. Pornography:
Men Possessing Women. New York:Perigree. Dworkin, Andrea. 1983. Right-Wing
Women. The Politics of Domesticated Females. London : The Women's
Press. ECPAT Australia. 1998. Youth for
Sale. ECPAT Australia’s National Inquiry into the Commercial Sexual
Exploitation of Children and Young People in Australia.
Collingwood, Victoria: ECPAT Australia Inc. Elias, David. 1998. “A growing interest in women, sex and money”.
The Age.
19 November. Enloe, Cynthia. 1992. “It takes two”.
In Sandra Pollock Sturdevant, and Brenda Stoltzfus. Let the Good Times Roll:Prostitution and the U.S. Military in Asia.
New York:New Press. Farley, Melissa et al. 1998.
“Prostitution in Five Countries: Violence
and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”. Feminism
and Psychology, Vol 8, No 4 pps 405-426. Forbes, Mark. 1999. Two held after raid on brothel. The Age 14 August 1999. Foreman,
Martin (ed.). 1999. AIDS and Men. Taking Risks or Taking Responsibility?
London: The Panos Insitute and Zed Books. Freedom and Justice Center. 1998. Fundamentals of Prostitution.
http: //www.angelfire.com/mn/fjc/fundamentals.html Giobbe, Evelina. 1990. “Confronting
the Liberal Lies about Prostitution”. In Dorcen Leidholdt, and Janice
Raymond (eds.) The Sexual Liberals
and the Attack on Feminism. New York:Pergamon Press. Giobbe, Evelina. 1991. “Prostitution: Buying the Right to Rape”.
In Ann Wolpert Burgess (ed.) Rape
and Sexual Assault III. A
Research Handbook. New
York: Garland Publishing, Inc. Hawker, Philippa. 2000. “In
touch with feminist side”. The
Age. Today p3. Melbourne 2 May. Hayes, Cath and Trafford, Ian. 1997.
“Issues for Voluntary Sector Detached Work Agencies”. In David
Barrett (ed.) Child Prostitution in
Britain. Dilemmas and practical responses, pp59-75. London: The Children’s Society. Herman, Judith Lewis. 1994. Trauma
and Recovery. From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror.
London: Pandora. Hoigard, Cecilie and Finstad, Liv. 1992. Backstreets. Prostitution, Money and Love. Cambridge: Polity. Human Rights Watch/Asia. 1994. A
Modern Form of Slavery. NY: Human Rights Watch. Jeffreys, Sheila. 1997. The Idea
of Prostitution. Melbourne: Spinifex. Jeffreys, Sheila. 1982.
“The Sexual Abuse of Children in the Home”. In
Scarlet Friedman and Elizabeth Sarah (eds.) On
The Problem of Men, pp56-66,. London:
The Women’s Press. Jeness, Valerie. 1993. Making it
Work: The Prostitutes’ Rights Movement in Perspective. New York:
Aldine de Gruyter. Juno, Andrea. 1991. “Interview
with Annie Sprinkle”. In Angry
Women. RE/SEARCH, 13. San
Francisco: Re/Search Publications. Kappeler, Susanne. 1990. “Liberals,
Libertarianism, and the Liberal Arts Establishment”.
In Dorchen Leidholdt and Janice Raymond (eds) The
Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism.
New York:Pergamon Press. Kelly, Liz and Radford, Jill. 1996.
“‘Nothing really happened’: the invalidation of women’s
experiences of sexual violence”. In
Marianne Hester, Liz Kelly and Jill Radford.
(eds.) Women, Violence and
Male Power. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Khan, Shivananda. 1999. “Through a Window Darkly: Men who sell sex to
men in India and Bangladesh”. In Peter Aggleton (ed.) Men Who Sell Sex. International
Perspectives on Male Prostitution and HIV/AIDS, pp195-212.
London: University College. Lim, Lin Lean (ed.). 1998. The Sex
Sector. The economic and social
bases of prostitution in Southeast Asia.
Geneva: International Labour Office. Mandela, Nelson. 1996. Message to the World Congress. http://www. oneworld.org/news/partner_news/aug96_children.mandela.html Mcleod, Eileen. 1982. Women
Working: Prostitution Now. London: Croom Helm. Millett, Kate. 1975. The
Prostitution Papers. St. Albans, Herts: Paladin Books. Montgomery, Heather. 1998. “Children, Prostitution and Identity: A
Case Study from a Tourist Resort in Thailand”. In Kamala Kempadoo and Jo
Doezema, Jo (eds.) Global Sex
Workers. Rights, Resistance
and Redefinition, pp139-150.
New York: Routledge. Nagle, Jenny (ed.). 1998. Whores
and Other Feminists. New York: Routledge. Nicholls, Margaret. 1987. “Lesbian
sexuality: Issues and Developing Theory”.
In Boston Lesbian Psychologies
Collective (eds.) Lesbian
Psychologies. Illinois:
University of Illinois Press. O’Neill, Maggie. 1996. “Researching Prostitution and Violence:
Towards a Feminist Praxis”. In Marianne Hester, Liz Kelly, Jill Radford
(eds.) Women, Violence and Male
Power, pp130-147.
Buckingham: Open University Press. Parriott, Ruth. 1994. Health Experiences of Twin Cities Women Used in Prostitution: Survey Findings and Recommendations. Unpublished. Available from Breaking Free, 1821 University Avenue, Suite 312, South, St. Paul, Minnesota 55104. Pitts, John. 1997. “Child Prostitution in Britain. Causes, Practice
and Political Responses”. In David Barrett (ed.) Child Prostitution in Britain. Dilemmas
and practical responses, pp139-157. London: The Children’s Society. Rao, Arati. 1995. “The Politics of Gender and Difference in
International Human Rights Discourse”. In Julia Peters and Andrea Wolper
(eds.) Women’s Rights, Human
Rights: International Feminist Perspectives. New York: Routledge. Raymond, Janice. 1998. Legitimating
prostitution as sex work: UN Labor Organization (ILO) calls for
Recognition of the Sex Industry. Coalition Against Trafficking in
Women. Saayman, Melville. 1998. “Sex Tourism in South Africa and its
Implications”. Paper
delivered at Leisure Studies Association 4th International
Conference. The Big Ghetto. Gender, Sexuality and Leisure. Leeds
Metropolitan University. Silbert, M.H. and Pines, A.M. 1981.
Sexual child abuse as an antecedent to prostitution. International
Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect 5, 407-411. Smyth, Cherry. 1992. Lesbians
Talk: Queer Notions. London: Scarlet Press. United Nations. 1995. Harmful
Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children. Fact
Sheet no 23. United Nations. 1949. Convention against the Traffic in Persons and
Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. United Nations. 1979. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women. United Nations. 1989. Convention on the Rights of the Child. United Nations. 1999. Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour. Vanwesenbeeck, Ine. 1994. Prostitutes'
Well-Being and Risk. VU University Press: Amsterdam 1994. Zuilhof, Wim. 1999. Sex for Money between Men and Boys in the
Netherlands. In Peter Aggleton (ed.) Men
Who Sell Sex. International
Perspectives on Male Prostitution and HIV/AIDS, pp23-40. London: University College London.
|