f yeah janice raymond

Janice Raymond is Professor Emerita of Women's Studies and Medical Ethics at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She has published feminist work on topics including prostitution, transsexualism, and reproductive technology. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women.

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It is not co-parenting, and the inclusion of the male in equal parenting responsibilities, that will restore (among other imbalances) the lack of female friendship, because then presumably women will be free not to hate or be ambivalent about other women. Rather, co-parenting under present conditions, enhances male supremacy because it gives men more power than they now have; this time, emotional presence and power within the family. To continue to ignore women's lack of power in all other social institutions and to prescribe male parenting as the solution to our oppressive "sexual arrangements" is a lop-sided vision indeed.

Janice G. Raymond. "Female Friendship: Contra Chodorow and Dinnerstein." Hypatia 1.2 (1986). 37-48.

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As long as women acquiesce in the formation of... what I would name hetero-reality—the channeling of female love, power, and energy into men—nothing will change radically. Until women "mother" women to love and care for other women, the system of hetero-reality will not be transformed.

Janice G. Raymond. "Female Friendship: Contra Chodorow and Dinnerstein." Hypatia 1.2 (1986). 37-48.

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Governments in the North should examine their own development agendas in which the hiring and exploitation of migrant labor from poorer countries has become an avenue for trafficking, sexual exploitation and cheap labor.

Janice G. Raymond et al. A Comparative Study of Women Trafficked in the Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles, and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation in Five Countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States). (2002).

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Governments should also recognize that trafficking is not merely a migration crime or a simple labor violation, but a violation of basic human rights, no matter at what age the violation. Considering that an overwhelming number of adult women in systems of prostitution were recruited as children, there should be no artificial dividing line in policies and legal reforms that treat only the sexual exploitation of children as a crime but not that of adult women.

Janice G. Raymond et al. A Comparative Study of Women Trafficked in the Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles, and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation in Five Countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States). (2002).

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There is a crucial difference in advocating for decriminalization of women in prostitution and decriminalization/legalization of the industry. [We support] decriminalization of women who are the victims of the sex industry because no woman should be penalized for her own exploitation. However, to advocate decriminalization of the sex industry is to legitimize pimps, recruiters and traffickers as a class of respectable businessmen, and to tolerate men buying women for “sexual services.”

Janice G. Raymond et al. A Comparative Study of Women Trafficked in the Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles, and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation in Five Countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States). (2002).

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Legalization of prostitution has been justified as a public health measure, to protect women in the sex industry through work regulations, and as a method of containing trafficking and child prostitution, harm to women and the expansion of the sex industry. In the state of Victoria in Australia, rather than controlling the sex industry and its harm to women and children, the system of legalized prostitution there has promoted unregulated expansion of brothels and sex clubs, increased criminal involvement in the industry, and an increase in child prostitution. Women who must be licensed are driven into the violence of street prostitution to preserve their anonymity. Advertisements line the highways in states such as Victoria, Australia, offering women as objects for men’s sexual use and teaching new generations of men and boys to treat women as subordinates.

Janice G. Raymond et al. A Comparative Study of Women Trafficked in the Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles, and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation in Five Countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States). (2002). Internal citations omitted.

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The necessity to link prostitution with trafficking legislation is demonstrated in countries that have legalized or regulated prostitution, where the highest numbers of women from the South, and countries in financial crisis, are trafficked for prostitution. There is good evidence that countries such as the Netherlands and Germany, both of which have recognized prostitution as work and as an economic sector, are precisely the countries that experience higher rates of women trafficked into the country for prostitution.

Janice G. Raymond et al. A Comparative Study of Women Trafficked in the Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles, and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation in Five Countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States). (2002).

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Attempts to make prostitution a form of legitimate and legal “sex work” do not help to end trafficking. Legalization gives the sex industry larger market share, increased market stability, and the incentive to expand — all factors that enlarge the flow of sex trafficking worldwide.

Janice G. Raymond et al. A Comparative Study of Women Trafficked in the Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles, and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation in Five Countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States). (2002).

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The global sex industry promotes trafficking. It also promotes prostitution. In advocating for anti-trafficking legislation, it is important not to legitimate the commercial sex industry. Initiatives that are designed to give women and girls real alternatives to prostitution — financial help, education, shelter, health care, employment — are better anti-trafficking measures than proposals that keep women in the sex industry, such as decriminalizing the pimps and buyers, and requiring women in prostitution to be registered and undergo health checks. Such measures ultimately protect the sex industry, not the women in it.

Janice G. Raymond et al. A Comparative Study of Women Trafficked in the Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles, and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation in Five Countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States). (2002).

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So-called safety policies in U.S. brothels did not protect either Russian/NIS or U.S. women from injury and harm, even where brothels and clubs supposedly monitored the buyers or used “bouncers.” Half of the Russian/NIS women, in fact, thought that they might be killed by one of their clients.

Janice G. Raymond et al. A Comparative Study of Women Trafficked in the Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles, and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation in Five Countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States). (2002).

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When asked what they hated most about prostitution and how they survived, the Russian/NIS women consistently described hating that they had been broken spiritually and physically by degrading sexual acts and abusive conditions. Many still carry an excruciating burden of humiliation and shame. Some tried to ply men with drugs so buyers “would forget about sex altogether.” Others used drugs and alcohol to dull and deaden their feelings. Women who reported drug use before entering prostitution also reported a history of sexual, physical and mental abuse prior to as well as within prostitution. Thus, their drug use must be seen in the context of this accretion of abuse. Respondents interviewed in the U.S. country report also stated that prostitution worsened their drug habits, ultimately trapping them further within the sex industry.

Janice G. Raymond et al. A Comparative Study of Women Trafficked in the Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles, and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation in Five Countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States). (2002).

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Indonesian respondents [trafficked women] said that they also suffered physical punishment when they made mistakes or tried to run away, with pimps and bodyguards using belts, wooden baseball bat-like sticks, fists and hands. Some of the Indonesian sex establishments enlisted military men and police officers to safeguard their businesses. Methods of isolation were part of Indonesian respondents’ daily lives in the sex industry, along with withholding of money. Women only received 1/3 of the money they earned, and even this share of their earnings was collected and retained by the pimps who held it for them. Some of the Indonesian respondents reported that they had been raped by pimps and family members of pimps.

Janice G. Raymond et al. A Comparative Study of Women Trafficked in the Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles, and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation in Five Countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States). (2002).

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As Jean D’Cunha writes, to fully grasp how integral violence is to prostitution, it is necessary to understand the sex and sexuality of prostitution and its determinants. Traditional rationalizations of prostitution argue that male sexuality that is repressed can result in the rape of “good” women and erode the family structure. Therefore, a class of women is needed who are paid and publicly sexualized, as a kind of venereal safety valve for men who would otherwise violate other “innocent” women.

Janice G. Raymond et al. A Comparative Study of Women Trafficked in the Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles, and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation in Five Countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States). (2002).

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Trafficked and prostituted women in the sex industry suffer the same kinds of violence and sexual exploitation as women who have been battered, raped and sexually assaulted. The difference is that when women are subjected to this same kind of violence and sexual exploitation in prostitution, it is viewed as “sex,” and often tolerated as part of the “job.”

Janice G. Raymond et al. A Comparative Study of Women Trafficked in the Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles, and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation in Five Countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States). (2002).

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The reported results of violence against women in prostitution are particularly significant because they indicate high levels of violation, harm and trauma, and the fact that prostitution — although not often recognized — is a form of violence against women. The ambivalence, on the part of many researchers, NGOs and governments, to view prostitution as violence against women parallels an earlier disregard and neglect of the harm done to battered women on the part of those who believed that if women made the “choice” to stay in abusive relationships that “it couldn’t be that bad.”

Janice G. Raymond et al. A Comparative Study of Women Trafficked in the Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles, and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation in Five Countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States). (2002).

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Some [trafficked women] left the Philippines on tourist visas, and a few had proper documentation. Legal recruitment and documentation, however, did not prevent their sexual exploitation, nor did it render women safe. As Aida Santos concludes, making prostitution legitimate work and “protecting” women with “sex work” contracts cannot solve sexual and physical abuse. To assume that sexual exploitation is simply a labor problem, or a violation of contract, is to ignore the experiences of thousands of trafficked women with legal papers who were harmed and violated.

Janice G. Raymond et al. A Comparative Study of Women Trafficked in the Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles, and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation in Five Countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States). (2002).

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Since women trafficked to Japan were recruited by the Yakuza, women lived in constant fear, so much so that one woman who had left Japan to return to the Philippines felt obligated to return to Japan to fulfill her so-called contract, despite the severe violence to which she had been subjected.

Janice G. Raymond et al. A Comparative Study of Women Trafficked in the Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles, and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation in Five Countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States). (2002).