Tag: prostitution

Comfort women was the name given to those who became sex slaves to the Japanese military between 1932 and 1945. The Japanese set up brothels to serve the soldiers. It is estimated that between eighty thousand to two hundred thousand women were forced into sexual slavery. The vast majority (approximately 80 percent) were Korean, but the ethnicities varied. Some women were Japanese, some Taiwanese, Filipino, Indonesian, or from other Pacific Islands (Soh, 1997; Yoshimi, 2000). Some Dutch women living in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) were also forced to become “comfort women.” It is estimated that 80 percent of the women were between fourteen and eighteen years of age when they were forced into sexual slavery (Hicks, 1994). “Comfort women” were intended to improve the morale of the Japanese troops and promote military discipline. The justification for the brothels was that by providing free sexual release, the soldiers would then not sexually abuse women in occupied territories. During the Nanjing Massacre of 1937 it was estimated that twenty thousand women were raped. In a ludicrous attempt to avoid similar publicity, the Japanese also believed that by “providing” sexual activity, they could control the transmission of sexual diseases by regulating the brothels (Hicks, 1994; Yoshimi, 2000). The more bizarre argument from sanctioning and organizing sexual slavery of women was that the organization of comfort stations would prevent rape in public by the soldiers. The Japanese soldiers who abused the enslaved women did not use the term “comfort women.” Instead the women were called “pii” (pronounced “pea”). The word is from the Chinese meaning goods or articles. In slang terms, it refers to the vagina and is considered disparaging (Yoshimi, 2000). Many of the women and girls taken to comfort stations were deceived and lured into service by promises of money, easy work, and education. Comfort stations were organized to efficiently “serve” the troops as well as the officers, ignoring the inhumane conditions and torture endured…Women who worked in the stations reserved for officers were sexually assaulted frequently than those in stations used by enlisted men. In most cases, Korean women were sent to be raped by the enlisted, while Japanese women were used by the officers (Pyong Gap, 2003). Korean women reportedly averaged twenty to thirty men a day, with one report citing as many as sixty men in one day (Yoshimi, 2000). If a woman refused the sexual overtures, she was beaten savagely. Additional forms of violence were not uncommon in the comfort stations. Soldiers, fueled by alcohol, often went on violent rampages, beating the women, brutalizing them during rapes and destroying the little property the women had with them.

Parrot, Andrea & Cummings, Nina. Forsaken Females: The Gobal Brutalization of Women. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2006, (p. 8 – 9)

So the justifications were:

-if the men had open access to legal prostitution they wouldn’t rape

-if the men had open access to legal prostitution, STI rates would go down

-if the men had open access to legal prostitution, they’d be happier/have better morale

Isn’t that exactly the rhetoric used now to make a case for legalized prostitution ala Dutch model?

(via mediumtrip)

YEP. AND NOW, INSTEAD OF “COMFORT WOMEN” THEY ARE CALLED “SEX WORKERS”. AS IF BULLSHIT EUPHEMISMS ERASE WHAT THEY REALLY ARE: SLAVES.

(via randomstabbing)

Slavery By Another Name: Sex Work and the “Empowerment” Charade in Gender Studies An Open Letter On Sexual Subjugation and Intellectual Rationalization by Sunsara Taylor

antiplondon:

Some people say that it is wrong to call for the abolition of
pornography, prostitution and the entire global sex industry. They claim
that doing so only further stigmatizes the women—and very young
girls—who are bought and sold and denies these women—and these very
young girls—their “agency.” Instead of abolishing the sex industry,
these people insist, we should be “empowering” women and girls to
“reclaim sex work” and we should be fighting the sense of shame that is
imposed on these women and girls for the “work” that they do.Outrageously, a great many of those making this argument are
concentrated in the “Gender Studies” departments at universities and
colleges throughout this country and therefore have disproportionate
influence over the thinking of young people who are concerned about the
oppressed conditions of women throughout the world.To those who make this argument, and to all those influenced by it, I pose the following:

During the many long and bitter years of outright chattel slavery in
the history of the United States, did Black people suffer not only
physical brutality, cruelty and disfigurement on a mass scale, but also
tremendous psychological trauma, shame, and humiliation as a major part
of that experience?

Undoubtedly!

But, does that mean that those generations of enslaved people needed
to be “empowered” to make the most of their situation within the
confines of slavery? Did they need to be counseled and told not to feel
so ashamed or devalued just because they were enslaved?

Or did they need people, millions and millions of people, to fight
and to sacrifice to put an end to the back-breaking, spirit-crushing
crime against humanity of slavery and, in that process, to repudiate the
ideology and culture of white supremacy and Black inferiority which was
not only promoted by the U.S. ruling class but which also inflicted
deep scars on the psyches of the oppressed themselves?

For anyone with any sense of history and a conscience, the question answers itself.

Applying the same basic standard today, it is simply immoral to
refuse to stand up against and demand the abolition of the global sex
industry which dehumanizes, degrades, tortures, exploits, traumatizes
and brutalizes millions of women and very young girls each year—and
which fosters a culture where all women are demeaned, degraded, devalued
and endangered. Beyond that, it is impossible to conceive of putting an
end to the stigma and the shame that is heaped on women who are used
and degraded in the sex industry while simultaneously rationalizing and
defending this very industry as it daily treats these women (and very
young girls) as nothing more than human chattel.

Slavery By Another Name: Sex Work and the “Empowerment” Charade in Gender Studies An Open Letter On Sexual Subjugation and Intellectual Rationalization by Sunsara Taylor

Slavery By Another Name: Sex Work and the “Empowerment” Charade in Gender Studies An Open Letter On Sexual Subjugation and Intellectual Rationalization by Sunsara Taylor

antiplondon:

Some people say that it is wrong to call for the abolition of
pornography, prostitution and the entire global sex industry. They claim
that doing so only further stigmatizes the women—and very young
girls—who are bought and sold and denies these women—and these very
young girls—their “agency.” Instead of abolishing the sex industry,
these people insist, we should be “empowering” women and girls to
“reclaim sex work” and we should be fighting the sense of shame that is
imposed on these women and girls for the “work” that they do.Outrageously, a great many of those making this argument are
concentrated in the “Gender Studies” departments at universities and
colleges throughout this country and therefore have disproportionate
influence over the thinking of young people who are concerned about the
oppressed conditions of women throughout the world.To those who make this argument, and to all those influenced by it, I pose the following:

During the many long and bitter years of outright chattel slavery in
the history of the United States, did Black people suffer not only
physical brutality, cruelty and disfigurement on a mass scale, but also
tremendous psychological trauma, shame, and humiliation as a major part
of that experience?

Undoubtedly!

But, does that mean that those generations of enslaved people needed
to be “empowered” to make the most of their situation within the
confines of slavery? Did they need to be counseled and told not to feel
so ashamed or devalued just because they were enslaved?

Or did they need people, millions and millions of people, to fight
and to sacrifice to put an end to the back-breaking, spirit-crushing
crime against humanity of slavery and, in that process, to repudiate the
ideology and culture of white supremacy and Black inferiority which was
not only promoted by the U.S. ruling class but which also inflicted
deep scars on the psyches of the oppressed themselves?

For anyone with any sense of history and a conscience, the question answers itself.

Applying the same basic standard today, it is simply immoral to
refuse to stand up against and demand the abolition of the global sex
industry which dehumanizes, degrades, tortures, exploits, traumatizes
and brutalizes millions of women and very young girls each year—and
which fosters a culture where all women are demeaned, degraded, devalued
and endangered. Beyond that, it is impossible to conceive of putting an
end to the stigma and the shame that is heaped on women who are used
and degraded in the sex industry while simultaneously rationalizing and
defending this very industry as it daily treats these women (and very
young girls) as nothing more than human chattel.

Slavery By Another Name: Sex Work and the “Empowerment” Charade in Gender Studies An Open Letter On Sexual Subjugation and Intellectual Rationalization by Sunsara Taylor

Why activist Ruchira Gupta refuses to use the term ‘sex worker’

antiporn-activist:

Gupta also realises how, over the years, sensitive subjects get glossed over with problematic vocabulary. “We do not use the term ‘sex worker’ anymore because we believe it’s so inherently exploitative that we do not want to define it as work under any circumstances. So, we use the term ‘prostituted child’, because there is no such thing as a child prostitute—someone did it to the child. And we use the term ‘prostituted woman’. We realise the patriarchy of the system that is exploiting the vulnerabilities of these girls and women.”

Posted for Josie.

Why activist Ruchira Gupta refuses to use the term ‘sex worker’

genderaldistaste:

Just wanna let you all know that as an ex prostitute, there is no such thing as a “swerf” and the closest thing TO a sex worker exclusionary feminist would be those that silence and ignore the massive stats of unconsensual/forced women and sex workers that want to leave the industry, and amp up the voices of willing sex workers as the most important instead xoxo

genderaldistaste:

Just wanna let you all know that as an ex prostitute, there is no such thing as a “swerf” and the closest thing TO a sex worker exclusionary feminist would be those that silence and ignore the massive stats of unconsensual/forced women and sex workers that want to leave the industry, and amp up the voices of willing sex workers as the most important instead xoxo

…my horror at the idea of legalized prostitution is not that it doesn’t work as a rape deterrent, but that it institutionalizes the concept that it is man’s monetary right, if not his divine right, to gain access to the female body, and that sex is a female service that should not be denied the civilized male. Perpetuation of the concept that the ‘powerful male impulse’ must be satisfied with immediacy by a cooperative class of women, set aside and expressly licensed for this purpose, is part and parcel of the mass psychology of rape. Indeed, until the day is reached when prostitution is totally eliminated (a millennium that will not arrive until men, who create the demand, and not women who supply it, are fully prosecuted under the law), the false perception of sexual access as an adjunct of male power and privilege will continue to fuel the rapist mentality.

Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape
(via feministe-radicale)