In Indien ist die Debatte genauso polarisiert wie bei uns
Veranstaltung der Prostitutionsgegner und Helfer Industrie mit Feministin Gloria Steinem und Ruchira Gupta von Apne Aap (on our own)
www.apneAap.org |
www.aawc.in bekannt durch:
Finanzierungsskandal,
Medienpropaganda,
Sexworker Zeitung...
Und Gegenstimmen der Sexworker-Hilfsvereine
www.durbar.org ,
www.sangram.org und Menschenrechteaktivisten in der Presse ...
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem
Gloria Steinem was among those who acknowledged working for a C.I.A.-financed organization as head of Independent Service for Information (ISI) at the communist-sponsored World Youth Festival in Vienna 1959
http://dangerousminds.net/comments/now_ ... _cia_asset
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/books ... d=all&_r=2&
[PRO SEXWORK] Moralistic assumptions
Shohini Ghosh
[She made the film 'tales of the Night Faeries' about DMSC.]
Gloria Steinem's “feminist approach” to trafficking and prostitution is not shared by all feminists. Many of us do not believe that abolishing sex work will stop trafficking, nor do we think that the two are synonymous. The conflation of sex-work with ‘trafficking' stems from the moralistic assumption that women can never voluntarily choose sex work as a profession and are always ‘trafficked' into it. This idea has been conclusively challenged by the sex workers rights movement that has tirelessly argued that trafficking (that is induction into the trade through force, coercion or deception) is a crime whereas the exchange of sexual services between two consenting adults is not.
Just as all sex work is not linked to trafficking, all trafficking is also not linked to sex work.
While it is certainly true that many women (and children) enter sex-work under violent and exploitative conditions, this is no different from other livelihood occupations in the unorganized sector such as agricultural and domestic work, construction and industrial labour. Ironically, those who demand the abolition of sex work to stop trafficking do not make the same argument for domestic work despite the fact that conditions, wages, working hours, levels of exhaustion are far worse for domestic workers.
It has been repeatedly pointed out that the
statistics on 'trafficking' have no basis in a rigorous methodology, scientific evidence or primary research. A study undertaken by the Special Rappateur on Violence Against Women demonstrated the extreme difficulty of finding reliable statistics since so much of the activity happens underground. Consequently, 'trafficking' statistics are derived from figures relating to sex-work, migration and even numbers of “missing persons”. By failing to distinguish between sex-work, migration and trafficking, ‘abolitionists' like Steinem only serve to make the gender-neutral term synonymous with the female migrant.
Ironically, some of the best work on ‘trafficking' in India is being done by the Self Regulatory Boards of the Durbar Mahila Swamanyay Committee (DMSC)
www.durbar.org which emerged out of the famous STD/HIV Intervention Project (SHIP) in Sonagachi, now an internationally acclaimed model sexual health project. The DMSC considers sex-work to be a contractual sexual service negotiated between consenting sexual adults and demands decriminalization of adult sex-work.
If feminists like Gloria Steinem and organizations like Apne Aap want to end trafficking in sex-work, their best bet is to recognize sex-work as labour, support its decriminalization and empower the sex-worker to fight exploitation, coercion and stigma.
www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-nation ... 285941.ece
[PRO SEXWORK] Need for a nuanced debate
Dr Kumkum Roy
Director of the Women's Studies Programme at the JNU
Gloria Steinem's talk was organised by the Women's Studies Programme, JNU, in collaboration with Apne Aap, and we had hoped that it would be an occasion for discussing the complexities of the issues involved. However, there were clearly differences in perspective—while there can be no disagreement that involuntary trafficking is a serious issue, the fact that women (and men) may have few choices in several situations, and may then ‘choose' options that may not be in tune with the ideals of middle-class/upper caste women (and men) needed to be explored rather than dismissed.
In the open discussion that followed Ms Steinem's presentation, there were several participants who agreed with her positions. However, others pointed out that there were certain simplistic assumptions involved. For instance, Ms Steinem and Ruchira Gupta of Apne Aap refuse to recognize that unionized sex workers are voicing their own opinions—these women are dismissed as puppets of pimps and brothel owners—a gross simplification in view of the sheer numbers of women across the country who have unionised in a bid to claim human rights and dignity.
Other voices of dissent pointed out to the need to look at issues of poverty and labour in general, and locate sex work within that context, and/ or within a larger context of violence rather than homogenise all prostitutes/ sex workers. While side-stepping rather than engaging with these questions, one of Ms Steinem's responses was that she would not mind if prostitutes, as she chooses to designate all sex workers, paid income tax—at the same time she advocated a strategy of penalizing but not criminalizing the client—how these were to be achieved remained unclear.
We, in the Women's Studies Programme, feel the need for a far more nuanced discussion and debate on these issues—one in which women who express a different point of view are not dismissed as being in a denial mode. Given that some of these issues were raised in the open discussion and in the concluding remarks, it would have only been fair that some of these found reflection in the reporting on the event.
www.theHindu.com/news/national/article3287164.ece
[PRO SEXWORK] The false asumptions of the feminists
Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad, Sangli.
www.sexworker.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=113879#113879
[CONTRA PROSTITUTION] Up against the epidemic of trafficking
Neha Alawadhi
“Prostitution is not inevitable, it is only about unequal distribution of power,” said author/activist Gloria Steinem talking about “Feminist approaches to combating sex trafficking and prostitution” here in NEW DELHI on Monday 2. April 2012.
Speaking at a Press conference and later at an interaction with students of Jawaharlal Nehru University, she spoke about the dynamics of human trafficking based on her experiences. “Today we face an epidemic of sex trafficking. More people are being pushed into it than even the slave trade,” said Ms. Steinem.
According to the
statistics provided by Apne Aap, an NGO that fights sex trafficking worldwide, the number of child victims trafficked globally for sexual exploitation or cheap labour is 1.2 million annually. The National Human Rights Commission estimates that almost half the children trafficked within India are between the ages of 11 and 14.
Corroborating these facts, Ms. Steinem said: “
The average age for children to be pushed into sex trafficking is between 12 and 13 in the United States and between 9 and 12 in India. The perception is that very young children are less likely to have AIDS.” Quoting from her experiences in different countries, she said women who are trafficked suffer a great deal because of patriarchal structures and religions.
Speaking about the situation in India, Apne Aap Women Worldwide founder president Ruchira Gupta pointed out that socio-economic causes contribute a great deal towards sexual exploitation and trafficking of women in India. “
90% of trafficking in India is internal, and those from India's most disadvantaged social economic strata including the lowest castes are particularly vulnerable to forced or bonded labour and sex trafficking,” she said.
Ms. Steinem agreed saying that the less “valuable” women who are not expected to maintain the “purity” of a class, caste or race are the ones most likely to fall prey to human trafficking worldwide.
Speaking about the legal aspect of human trafficking and the legalisation of prostitution in some regions, Ms. Steinem said: “
Body invasion [sie meint wohl penetrierenden/aufnehmenden Geschlechtsverkehr* ] is the most traumatising act…it should not be legal to sell the bodies of other people.”
She also rubbished the idea that prostitution was the oldest profession, which is propounded by supporters of legalising prostitution. “It is one of the oldest oppressions, not oldest professions,” she said.
An Apne Aap fact-sheet pointed out that in India trafficking laws are not comprehensively laid out, especially with regard to the trafficking of children. “The Indian Penal Code addresses issues of buying and sale of minors, importation of girls etc…
The Goa Children's Act (2003) is the only Indian statute that provides a legal definition of trafficking and is child specific,” it said.
Ms. Steinem plans to travel to parts of villages in Bihar and in Kolkata with Apne Aap to look at issues of sex trafficking and prostitution in these areas.
www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3276106.ece
* Andrea Dworkin theorised vaginal penetration by a penis as imperialism.
www.lauraAgustin.com/in-india-gloria-st ... quarreling
[PRO SEXWORK] Rescue as identity marker for under-employed middle-class women.
Helping Women Who Sell Sex: The Construction of Benevolent Identities
Laura María Agustín
www.rhizomes.net/issue10/agustin.htm
This Pan-Indian study has different age findings:
source
[CONTRA PROSTITUTION] Body invasion is de-humanising
Gloria Steinem
When I'm meeting with women and girls in prostitution in my own country as well as some countries of Europe, Africa and here in India, I've always asked
what they would like for their daughter. So far, the answers have not included prostitution.
That's especially striking given the profound differences in their lives, from Manhattan call girls to women in the brothel line-ups of Sonagachi; from women in the counties around Las Vegas, the only places in the US where prostitution is legal, to bar girls from the villages of Ghana and the scheduled castes in Bihar where women are consigned to prostitution by birth. Indeed, the same seems to be true of prostituted males who serve male clients.
The truth seems to be that the
invasion of the human body by another person – whether empowered by money or violence or authority -- is de-humanising in itself. Yes, there are many other jobs in which people are exploited, but prostitution is the only one that by definition crosses boundary of our skin and invades our most central sense of self. I know this is a subject that needs much more exploring, but I want to indicate it in shorthand because I think it's the source of the misunderstanding in these two letters in response to a lecture I gave at Jawaharlal Nehru University on April 2.
I did not say -- nor do I think, as Shohini Ghosh supposes -- that sex trafficking and prostitution are “synonymous.” Though both are created by the same
customers who want unequal sex, they represent crucial differences in a woman's ability to escape or control her own life. However, I would not equate prostitution with domestic work, as she does. That ignores the damage and trauma of the body invasion that is intrinsic to the former and should never be part of the latter. Also I don't think “consenting adults” is practical answer to
structural inequality. Even sexual harassment law requires that sexual attention be “welcome,” not just “consensual.” It recognizes that consent can be coerced.
In addition, Kumkum Roy criticizes me for not using the term “sex worker.” I know this term is common in AIDS policy and academia, but it turned out to be dangerous in real life. For instance, in places as disparate as
Germany and Nevada in the US, government used the idea that prostitution is “a job like any other” to withhold welfare and unemployment benefits from women who failed to try it. Only protests by women's movements ended this form of procurement. As a popular term, I notice that prostituted girls and women say “survival sex,” as more descriptive as well as a breach of human rights.
Finally, I devoutly wish that unions had improved conditions in brothels, kept children out of prostitution and lessened disease and violence, as they promised to do, but in fact, there has been a huge increase in trafficking, girls in prostitution have become younger and younger, and there is no independent evidence of lowering rates of AIDS.
What the idea of unions has done is to enhance the ability of the sex industry to attract millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation for the distribution on condoms, despite the fact that customers often pay more for sex without condoms, and it has created a big new source of income for brothel owners, pimps and traffickers who are called “peer educators,” I understand that that the traffic of women and girls into Sonagachi has greatly increased.
But there is good news. The old polarization into legalization and criminalization is giving way to a more practical, woman-centered and successful Third Way: De-criminalize the prostituted persons, offer them meaningful choices, prosecute traffickers, pimps and all who sell the bodies of others, and also
penalize the customers who create the market while educating them about its tragic human consequences.
Those are turning out to be goals on which many people work together.
www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3287212.ece
[CONTRA PROSTITUTITION] Gloria Steinem speaks on the Feminist Approach to Combating Sex Trafficking and Prostitution
for Apne Aap's 10th Anniversary, New Delhi 2. April 2012.
[...] Up to now, the dialogue has been falsely polarized as legalization versus criminalization. The women-centered reality is that people with the least power are arrested and people with the most power are not. A third way is not to arrest the women but to provide real alternatives to women and to penalize and rehabilitate customers and use the full force of the law against those who buy and sell the bodies of others.
...
we have discovered in the U.S., that the average rapist has raped 14 times
...
Second, is the equally patriarchal but secular and “masculine” idea that freedom and democracy and even human rights are defined as the maximum
sexual availability of females to males – under male terms. This view doesn’t have the cultural force of religion behind it, but it does have
the force of the huge sums of money in the sex industry, and also the
ubiquitous power of pornography that normalizes the sexual domination of women. It’s different from erotica, as is embedded in the word itself. Porne means female slaves, while eros, which means love, has an implication of mutual pleasure and free choice.
...
pornography is as different from erotica as rape is from sex -- [feminists] have been condemned as anti-sex by the secular patriarchal groups, and some women have been punished by exclusion from this patriarchal, secular, academic and political world.
...
Meanwhile some secular feminists have come to support commercialized sex – even
legalized prostitution and sex trafficking as “facilitated migration” – and feel that if they don’t, they will be criticized by the patriarchal left or will be taking survival sex or even a form a sexual freedom away from some prostituted women.
...
First, it’s hard to find any activists who think that a prostituted woman should be arrested. She is the victim, not the criminal. Yet that has been the practice of law enforcement, and has only strengthened brothel owners and trafficker who can accurately say that jail is a prostituted woman’s only alternative.
...
A prostituted woman is often rejected by a biased world, has her own
Stockholm Syndrome to overcome, and has such low self-evaluation that attempting anything else seems hopeless. That is especially true if, like many, she has been sexually abused as child and has come to believe she has no other value, or if she belongs to a group that has been historically prostituted. But it is a tribute to the human spirit – both among activists and prostituted women – that in my country, groups like GEMS
www.gems-girls.org and in yours, groups like Apne Aap, are seeing women transform from objects to self-willed human beings.
...
Fourth, women’s movements and some enlightened countries are focusing on the market without which none of this would exist: the men who pay to get sex under unequal conditions. They are by no means the majority of men. Most studies have shown that
a third of men or less patronize prostitutes; thus prostitution and sex trafficking are neither natural nor inevitable. They are functions of inequality combined with a false view of “masculinity.” Prostitution is not the oldest profession, it is the oldest oppression.
I cannot emphasize enough how important this realization is: prostitution is not an inevitable or natural part of human nature. Think of the eras before when, say, rape – or even monarchy or smoking – were considered inevitable or even normal. Now, what is succeeding are efforts to penalize those who buy another human being, and also to give them the facts of the harm they are doing to others -- and to themselves.
Fifth, the centerpiece of the prostitution industry itself –
legalization – has completeky failed to deliver on its promises of no underage prostitution or less violence or less disease. For instance: the 10 counties in Nevada where prostitution is legal turned out to be places where sex trafficked and underage girls are taken to be broken in. I saw once that food being thrown over the high fence by a neighbor to feed the women kept behind it. In
Germany, where prostitution is legalized and called “hospitality work,” women h[a]d to show they applied and were willing to take such jobs before getting unemployment benefits.
[ Das ist eine völlige Fehlinformation resultierend aus alten reißerischen Pressemelungen kurz nach der Einführung des ProstG, als es noch keine Ausführungsbestimmungen der Arbeitsagentur gab, die später höchstrichterlich bestätigt wurden (Urteil 07. Mai 2009 vom Bundessozialgericht Kassel Az.: B 11 AL 11/08 R. // This is total misinformation resulting from old news stories, when the new liberal prostitution legalisation legislation were enforced and not all details were known locally related to job and social security agencies. Later that was officially dismissed by the national employment bureau and confirmed by highest court ruling that there is no link between receiving social benefits and necessity to compulsory take on sex work. (ruling federal court at Kassel, Mai 7th, 2009 Az.: B 11 AL 11/08 R)
www.sexworker.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=55927#55927 Ann. Marc ]
The same thing happened with welfare in Nevada. Only massive efforts by women’s movements stopped this obvious use of legalization as a form of recruitment.
In 2003, the mayor of Amsterdam where prostitution is famously legal said, “it appears impossible to create a safe and controlled zone for women that was not opened to abuse by organized crime.” It also hasn’t been possible to independently document any diminishing incidence of AIDS or child prostitution despite payment to brothel owners and keepers to distribute condoms, and despite claims of so-called unions that claim to bar children. Where I have been on Sonagachchi for instance, I have looked inside doors and seen the children, who theoretically are being kept out. But then, unlike Bill Gates, I did not announce that I was coming.
Nor do studies show that indoor prostitution is less traumatizing than outdoor, or that buzzers in rooms prevent injury by sadistic customers. The overall rate of life expectancy for prostituted women is comparable to men in combat. Indeed it turns out that body invasion is even more traumatizing than beating. Our skin is our defense, our body is our domain and sense of self.
Sixth: While it may or may not be legal for an individual adult women or man to sell her or his sexual services --
providing they pay income tax -- it should not be legal to sell the bodies of others. Thus pimps, brothel keepers and certainly traffickers should be pursued with the full force of law.
In Sweden, Norway ad other Scandanavian countries, it is not illegal to sell sex but it is illegal to buy it. This is not irrational, it is simply a recognition of unequal power ad thus unequal responsibility.
It is crucial to understand that only this recognition of reality has resulted in a lessening of prostitution and sex-trafficking.
We have reached a crucial place in history.
We know that prostitution is bot inevitable, that it is a function of unequal power and the cult of gender that perpetuates it. Yet in my country, there are girls and women-especially women of colour and Native American women, who are
tattooed with a pimp’s distinguishing mark so other pimps will be warned away; sometimes a tattoo that is itself a code. We have a long way to go. And we must at listen and never think there is only one or even any pre-determined solution.
...
[T]he
Ku orthe San in Africa where rape and prostitution were unknown. Indeed, their language didn’t even have gender. Women and men, people and nature, were linked rather than ranked. Women controlled their own bodies and fertility. That way of life accounted for 95 % of human history. What we think of as inevitable-gender roles-accounts for less than 5 %.
www.apneaap.org/news/events/gloria-stei ... tion-apne-
[CONTRA PROSTITUTION] Zur Feminismus/Prostitutions-Debatte in Deutschland siehe Alice Schwarzer und Sandra Maischberger:
www.sexworker.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3601
www.sexworker.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9324
