The Reality of Prostitution - CEASE / Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation

Prostitution is sometimes referred to as the world’s oldest profession. The term ‘profession’ puts it on a level with other forms of labour and gives it a dignity which it does not deserve.

Historically, prostitution has always been associated with slavery, poverty and destitution, though in recent years we’ve constructed the mythical Pretty Woman and Belle de Jour types: ‘happy hookers’ who allow us to avoid acknowledging the reality of women making their bodies available for the sexual use of paying men. This fantasy reimagines prostitution as something empowering and faintly glamorous for women seeking wealth, independence and even fun – when, in reality, it’s devastatingly harmful to a woman’s physical, mental and emotional health and wellbeing.

“I may as well have been a plastic doll. After they had their way, I would lose my appeal and they’d dispose of me.”
Rhiannon, Sex Trade Survivor¹

“I got to the point early on in prostitution where I saw being happy as simply unrealistic, and I was right. I didn’t know any women who were happy in prostituion and I didn’t meet any in later years either. There are no ‘happy hookers’ in my experience.”
Rachel Moran, Sex Trade Survivor²

Physical violence

Not a single person with any working knowledge of prostitution would deny the stark fact that it’s incredibly violent.³ Women in the sex trade have the highest rates of rape, physical assault, and homicide of any group of women ever studied. It’s been estimated that women involved in street prostitution are 60 to 100 times more likely to be murdered than are non-prostituted women.⁴

“The johns – the clients – are violent. I’ve been shot five times, stabbed 13 times. I don’t know why those men attacked me, all I know is that society made it comfortable for them to do so. They brought their anger or mental illness or whatever it was and they decided to wreak havoc on a prostitute, knowing I couldn’t go to the police and if I did I wouldn’t be taken seriously.”
Brenda Meers Powell, Sex Trade Survivor⁵

In the UK, it’s estimated that around 89 prostituted women have been murdered in the last 10 years (although this figure is thought to be conservative).⁶ The 2014 report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Prostitution describes violence experienced by women in the sex trade as “near pandemic.”⁷

A 2002 study interviewing women in the Merseyside sex trade found that 43% had been sexually assaulted, 36% had been raped, 43% had been threatened with a weapon, and 13% had been kidnapped.⁸

A 2004 study commissioned by the UK Crime Reduction Programme (CRP) reported that just over half of the 133 prostituted women surveyed “had been forced to have sex or been indecently assaulted and the perpetrators were most often the male clients (81%) and / or a boyfriend / pimp / partner (23%).”⁹

“The violence in prostitution is complex. It’s not just being hit, kicked and raped… It is psychological and verbal… physical… sexual… material… financial.”
Tanja Rahm, Sex Trade Survivor¹⁰

Exploitation

Wherever there’s a demand for prostitution, there’s a lot of money to be made – at least by the third parties who profit from other people’s sexual exploitation. Many prostituted individuals are under some form of third-party control from traffickers, pimps, brothel owners or abusive partners, at least at some point. “Most researchers agree that control of prostituted women by pimps involves understanding the ‘wants’ of these women and controlling those wants through the use of threats, intimidation, and violence.¹¹

“It is universally accepted that those in command of greater fiscal resources are in a dominant position over those who are not, and the reality of women’s entry into prostitution due to financial hardship has been uncovered in prostitution research globally… Therefore it is obvious that there is exploitation here.”
Rachel Moran, Sex Trade Survivor

Rape

Normally, rape involves a person being sexually violated against their will; but as one woman in the sex trade observes, “[w]hat others see as rape, we [i.e. women in prostitution] see as normal.”¹² Here, some form of payment is given in order to secure a person’s consent to be sexually violated. Payment thus becomes a form of coerced consent: it dissolves the usual respect for the other person’s sexual autonomy and boundaries. As radical feminist Julie Bindel points out, “[i]f prostitution is ‘sex work’, then by its own logic, rape is merely theft.”¹³ The idea that being in prostitution is enjoyable is laughable to those who’ve had much experience of it. An unpublished flier from the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective (NZPC) suggests that people in the sex trade should take a break, “when every client makes your skin crawl, when your jaw aches from clenching your teeth to prevent yourself spitting in the bastard’s face . . . [or] when you can’t stand what you see when you look in the mirror.”¹⁴

As researcher and clinical psychologist Dr.Melissa Farley observes: “Sex buyers don’t acknowledge the humanity of the women they use for sex. Once a person is turned into an object, exploitation and abuse seem almost reasonable.”15 The sex buyer feels an inevitable sense of power and entitlement,so that even the flimsy boundaries that women in prostitution put up (“in order to be able to stand it” as sex trade survivor, Rachel Moran puts it) are regularly violated.¹⁶

“I guess the big thing is the control aspect of it. When you’re with a prostitute, you have control over what happens. You get to have control over what you do, when, how, in what order, and I like that.”
Sex Buyer¹⁷

Addiction and Homelessness

Substance abuse is a common ‘coping mechanism’ that people in prostitution use to deal with the reality and shame of the work, or with loneliness or the effects of previous abuse.¹⁸ Alcohol Research UK and Eaves. Alongside trauma from previous experiences of sexual abuse, drug addiction and homelessness are significant causal factors when it comes to engaging in on-street prostitution.

Many of the people who engage in UK street prostitution have no stable accommodation and “typically spend their days on a friend’s floor, in squats, crack houses or, occasionally, at a ‘client’s home.”¹⁹ Class A drug addiction is almost universal among those in street prostitution.²⁰There’s an increasing trend for men to ‘pimp out’ their partners in order to fund both of their drug addictions.²¹.

For those struggling with severe mental health problems and drug abuse, prostitution is often a last-ditch option for survival. Unfortunately in terms of physical and mental recovery and social rehabilitation, it’s also the most damaging.²²

Psychological violence

Regardless of whether people enter prostitution ‘by choice’ – indeed regardless of the form it takes (i.e. street prostitution or high-end escorting) – there is extensive evidence that, added to the high physical risks, being in the sex trade leads to profound damage to a person’s mental and emotional health.²³

Research indicates that the emotional distress typically experienced by prostituted women is “off the charts”, and includes depression, suicidality, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and substance abuse.²⁴ Rates of psychological dissociation, where the mind detaches from the current emotional or physical state, are also high.²⁵ As sex trade survivor Rachel Moran explains, “the core skill of a prostitute’s ‘work’ is learning to stay outside of herself for her own sake.”²⁶

In a study of prostituted women across nine different countries, 68% were found to be suffering from PTSD – “a prevalence that was comparable to battered women seeking shelter, rape survivors seeking treatment, and survivors of state-sponsored torture.”²⁷

“Prostitution has this way of stealing all the dreams, goals and beautiful essence out of a woman. During my years in it, I didn’t meet one woman who enjoyed what she was doing. Everyone was trying to get out.”
Woman Prostituted for 19 Years²⁸

Since it’s unnatural for a person to allow herself to be sexually violated by a stranger, our reflex response to such an experience is psychological dissociation, where the mind detaches from the current emotional or physical state.²⁹ As Rachel Moran explains, “the core skill of a prostitute’s ‘work’ is learning to stay outside of herself for her own sake.”³⁰

In the long term, dissociation erodes women’s sense of identity, self-esteem and psychological stability, making it extremely difficult for them to from fully recover – even after exiting prostitution.³¹ The challenges of recovery are also complicated by “the cyclical nature of trauma, substance abuse, PTSD, and other mental health issues…”³²

“The overriding feeling when reflecting on the experience of prostitution is simply this: loss. Loss of innocence, loss of time, of opportunity, credibility, respectability, and the spiritually ruinous loss of connectedness to the self.”
Rachel Moran, Sex Trade Survivor