There’s an extremely important interview with a trafficking/prostitution survivor in the Irish Examiner. So many of my experiences mirror what this eloquent, brave woman describes. Here’s an excerpt
“Under Irish law, the abusive nature of prostitution has been allowed to flourish unhindered and it is a living hell for the women struggling to survive within it. It is primarily for the sake of these women, but also for all of us who want to live in a gender-equal society, that I am gladdened to see the Irish Government finally pledge to tackle this issue.
“I only hope that they go the right way about it, which is to criminalise the purchase of sex, because nothing will change for prostituted women and girls until the commercialisation of female bodies is dealt the hammer-blow it so richly deserves.
“To those who would say legalisation would make prostitution safer: I think the same thing any former prostitute I’ve ever spoken to thinks, which is that you may as well legalise rape and battery to try to make them safer. You cannot legislate away the dehumanising, degrading trauma of prostitution, and if you try to, you are accepting a separate class of women should exist who have no access to the human rights everyone else takes for granted.”
Related articles
- A Small Window: Survivor Rebecca Mott (survivorsconnect.wordpress.com)
- How a Holocaust Survivor Can Help Prostitution Survivors (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
- The Invisible Man (stellamarrundercovercallgirl.wordpress.com)
- Who’s a Prostitution Expert? (stellamarrundercovercallgirl.wordpress.com)
“You cannot legislate away the dehumanising, degrading trauma of prostitution, and if you try to, you are accepting a separate class of women should exist who have no access to the human rights everyone else takes for granted.”
That right there nails it. And it’s a sentiment that, with a minor extrapolation, could be used to describe the condition for billions of women worldwide living under misogynist regimes.
Thanks for posting this article — very interesting, particularly as it’s from an Irish publication.
Thanks so much for reading and for your deep support. FreeIrishWoman, the author of this article, is so brilliant.
absolutely she is! What’s particularly interesting to me is that she’s writing from a culture where the Madonna / whore dichotomy can heavily factor into heterosexual interactions — on every level, in nearly every setting.
I started following your blog after you popped by mine a month ago, and each post I read on either your blog or those you’ve linked to, brings up SO many emotions. I’ve suspected the abusive nature of paid sex for years, be it prostitution, exotic dancing, pornography or any of it’s other manifestations, but to hear the abuses described by the women victimized by it firsthand is sobering, scary, and oddly strengthening. I was secretly, sexually abused as a child myself and, while I had the resources available to be able to avoid explicitly selling myself as an adult, there were still implicit sales of all sorts that took place. I’m suddenly realizing there still are for that matter, mainly having to do with a love-for-silence bargain. To find your brave voice speaking up…to find all these other women’s voices speaking up…makes something in my stomach finally go harder and braver, too. Thank you so much for taking your voice back from them. I just discovered that Secret Diary Of A Dublin Callgirl has stopped posting due to unrelenting harassment. It scares me a little. Please don’t you go silent too.