LOOK AT THAT 92% STATISTIC! LOOK AT THE AVERAGE AGE A FEMALE BECOMES A PROSTITUTE. You are not the one listening to the class of people most affected by the sex industry. 92% of women want to get out of prostitution, and would if not for their social and economic status, as I said in the post you so ignorantly replied to.Â
If I were supporting the sex industry would you tell me not to have an opinion then too? Or is it just when I say men shouldnât be able to have unlimited access to womenâs bodies due to their economic and hegemonic position in society? Of course you wouldnât ask that if I were supporting the sex industry, because feminism has been infiltrated by neoliberalism, capitalism, and men. Youâre told that any critical opinion or analysis of structural social problems is a critique of an individualâs âchoice.â Do you know a single thing about the sex industry or its victims? Or does the dogma âdonât criticize anythingâ spare you from educating yourself?
Here, let me do the research for you:
It is extremely clear that persons engaged in prostitution are not happy with their unfortunate choice of profession. Countless studies report that over 80% of prostitutes say they wish to get out of prostitution. This information does not explain why women do not get out of prostitution. There is plenty of statistically based studies on prostitutes reporting reasons why they do not quit their jobs and do something legitimate.
About 40% of prostitutes are former child prostitutes who were illegally forced into the profession through human trafficking or once were teenage runaways. Many of the runaways fled because their homes were abusive, poor, or did not approve of them. There is a nationwide trend of increased frequency of child prostitution as a result of runaways. Many men feel that they are safer from AIDS if they have sex with younger prostitutes, increasing the market for younger prostitutes. 60% percent of children reported missing as a result of running away become prostitutes for some period of time to survive.
Many of these children are youths who fled their homes because of a parent or guardians disapproval. This accounts for the origins of many of the male prostitutes that walk the streets. Males prostitutes account for roughly 20% of the national prostitute population. The average age at which a male prostitute begins their illegal work is 14 years old. Male prostitutes usually do not have pimps as they usually work independently. This allows them to leave prostitution more easily at an average age of 25 years.
Female prostitution statistics tell a completely different story. The average female prostitute enters her job when she is only 16 or 17 years of age. Female prostitutes leave prostitution less frequently than their male counterparts. This is mainly because a smaller proportion of them work for pimps. They typically have shorter lives because they are subject to the abuse from both clients and pimps. 58% of American prostitutes reported violent assault at the hands of clients.
With a higher instance of physical violence perpetrated against them, female prostitutes are more likely to get murdered. In a period of five years in Newark, New Jersey, 14 homicide victims were known prostitutes. That is an incredibly high figure in a city of 280,000 residents with an average annual murder rate of 7 homicides per 100,000 persons.
Roughly 26% of New York City prostitutes were homeless and addicted to illicit drugs. They had to resort to prostitution to serve their addiction to hard drugs like crack, cocaine, and heroin. 90% of New York City prostitutes had to give away at least one child to child protective services.Â
This is a common occurrence across the country and contributes to the incidence of children without parents. According to the United Nations, there are approximately 311,600 orphans in the United States alone. There are no statistics that indicate the proportion of orphans who are born of prostitutes; however, it is clear that prostitutes would contribute to that figure.
Summary of  research and clinical findings regarding violence in all types of prostitution-95% of those in prostitution experienced sexual harassment that would be legally actionable in another job setting.-65% to 95% of those in prostitution were sexually assaulted as children. -70% to 95% were physically assaulted in prostitution-60% to 75% were raped in prostitution  -75% of those in prostitution have been homeless at some point in their lives. -85% to 95% of those in prostitution want to escape it, but have no other options for survival.-68% of 854 people in strip club, massage, and street prostitution in 9 countries met criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder or PTSD. -80% to 90% of those in prostitution experience verbal abuse and social contempt which adversely affect them.(Melissa Farley, 2004, Prostitution is sexual violence. Psychiatric Times. http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/sexual-offenses/content/article/10168/48311).
Summary of  research and clinical findings regarding violence in all types of prostitution -95% of those in prostitution experienced sexual harassment that would be legally actionable in another job setting.-65% to 95% of those in prostitution were sexually assaulted as children. -70% to 95% were physically assaulted in prostitution-60% to 75% were raped in prostitution  -75% of those in prostitution have been homeless at some point in their lives. -85% to 95% of those in prostitution want to escape it, but have no other options for survival.-68% of 854 people in strip club, massage, and street prostitution in 9 countries met criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder or PTSD. -80% to 90% of those in prostitution experience verbal abuse and social contempt which adversely affect them.(Melissa Farley, 2004, Prostitution is sexual violence. Psychiatric Times. http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/sexual-offenses/content/article/10168/48311).
The bulk of the sex industry involved pimps and other sex industry entrepreneurs controlling women and girls, often by moving them from places in which they have family and friends into locations in which they have no systems of support.Movement is also essential because customers demand novelty. (Dorchen A. Leidholdt, 2004, Demand and the Debate,New York: Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/Leidholdt%20Demand%20and%20the%20Debate.pdf).
Who is in Prostitution?âMany are school drop-outs from abusive families, often bearing children from adolescent relationships. Many have kids and grandparents to take care of. They face real financial pressures. But given their backgrounds, their options are limited.â(Thuli Madonsela & Cathi Albertyn, 2009, Sexual Offences: Adult Prostitution,South Africa: South African Law Reform Commission. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/Madonsela%20Albertyn%20Sexual%20Offences%20Adult%20Prostitution.pdf).
âThe hold that pimps and the street culture have over prostituted youth is too powerful to be displaced by traditional social services or brief interventions. Â There is no curriculum that can provide an abused and frightened 14-year-old girl with the cognitive ability and refusal skills to outthink a 26-year old offering love, money, and to take care of her.â(Debra Boyer, 2008, Who Pays thePrice? Assessment of Youth Involvement in Prostitution in Seattle,Seattle: Human Services Department. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/Boyer%20Who%20Pays%20the%20Price.pdf).
âSeventy percent of the subjects felt that [childhood] sexual abuse affected their decision to become a prostitute.â(Mimi H. Silbert & Ayala M. Pines,1983, Early Sexual Exploitation as an Influence in Prostitution,Social Work. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/Silbert%20Pines%20Early%20Sexual%20Exploitation%20in%20Prostitution.pdf)
In prostitution, demand creates supply. Â Because men want to buy sex, prostitution is assumed to be inevitable; therefore itâs considered ânormal.â A sex buyer said, âBeing with a prostitute is like having a cup of coffee, when youâredone, you throw it out.â (Melissa Farley, Emily Schuckman, Jacqueline M. Golding, Kristen Houser, Laura Jarrett, Peter Qualliotine, &Michele Decker, 2011, ComparingSex Buyers with Men Who Donât Buy Sex: âYou can have a good time with the servitudeâ vs. âYouâre supporting a system of degradation,âReport at Psychologists for Social Responsibility Annual Meeting, Boston. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdfs/Farleyetal2011ComparingSexBuyers.pdf).
A sex buyer explained that in prostitution, âshe gives up the right to say no.âAnother man told us that he clarifies the nature of his relationship to the women he buys: âI paid for this. You have no rights. Youâre with me now.â (Melissa Farley, 2007, âRenting an Organ for Ten Minutes:â What Tricks Tell Us about Prostitution, Pornography, and Trafficking. Pornography: Driving the Demand for International Sex Trafficking,Los Angeles: Captive Daughters Media. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/FarleyRentinganOrgan11-06.pdf).
Women in prostitution in Kolkata told me they service twenty to thirty men a day on average, with no choice over the sex or the men.  So do the math.  Each womanâŠservices as many as 8,000 men a year⊠(Catharine MacKinnon, 2011, Trafficking, Prostitution, and Inequality,Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdfs/MacKinnon%20(2011)%20Trafficking%20Prostitution%20and%20Inequality.pdf)
The sex buyer seeks her subordination to his wishes, to turn her intohis masturbation fantasy by depersonalizing her, by disappearing her name, her identity her feelings. Â He replaces her identity with the one he needs for his fantasy. (Melissa Farley, Emily Schuckman, Jacqueline M. Golding, Kristen Houser, Laura Jarrett, Peter Qualliotine, & Michele Decker, 2011,Comparing Sex Buyers with Men Who Donât Buy Sex: âYou can have a good time with the servitudeâ vs. âYouâre supporting a system of degradation,â Report at Psychologists for Social Responsibility AnnualMeeting, Boston. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdfs/Farleyetal2011ComparingSexBuyers.pdf)
Ninety percent of prostituted women interviewed by WHISPER(Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt)had pimps while in prostitution.(Evelina Giobbe, 1987, WHISPER Oral History Project, Minneapolis, Minnesota).
In Milan, Italy in December 1997, police uncovered a gang that was holding auctions of trafficked women from the former Soviet Union. The women were stripped, displayed and sold for an average price of US $1000. Traffickers and pimps use extreme violence to control their women. In Italy, police report that one woman in prostitution is murdered each month. In two cases, women who resisted were killed as means of terrorizing and controlling the other women. (Donna Hughes, 2000, The âNatashaâ Trade: The Transnational Shadow Market of Trafficking in Women, Journal of International Affairs. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdfs/natasha_trade.pdf).
Physical Abuse and Trauma
The abuse that is constant in prostitution, indeed endemic to it, requires dissociation from yourself and the world to survive.  You may create another self, give her another name; she is the one who goes out and does this âworkâ and may defend doing it⊠Being subject to constant rape, beaten to stay, prevented from looking into other options, sustaining the trauma of a war zone or a torture chamber, needing drugs to keep doing itâis this what you mean by employment?  (Catharine A. MacKinnon, 2011, Trafficking, Prostitution, and Inequality,Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdfs/MacKinnon%20(2011)%20Trafficking%20Prostitution%20and%20Inequality.pdf).
âIn the process of selling my body, I was shot five times, stabbed more than 13 times, beaten unconscious several times, had my arm and nose broken, had two teeth knocked out, lost a child that I will never see again, was verbally abused, and spent countless days in jail.â (Brenda Myers-Powell, 2008, Is Paying for Sex Really WorthIt? No. Prostitution exploits many womenâs deep pain,Ebony.http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/Survivor%20-%20Brenda2.html).
A 1982 study of 200 women in San Francisco prostitution found that 70%had been raped by the men who bought them on average 31 times. (Mimi Silbert & Ayala Pines, 1982, Occupational Hazards of Street Prostitutes, Criminal Justice and Behaviour).âAbout 80% of women in prostitution have been the victim of a rape. Itâs hard to talk about this because the experience of prostitution is just like rape. Prostitutes are raped, on the average, eight to ten times per year. They are the most raped class of women in the history of our planet.â(Susan Kay Hunter and K.C. Reed, 1990,âTaking the side of bought and sold rape,âSpeech at National Coalition against Sexual Assault, Washington, D.C.).
A Canadian Report on Prostitution and Pornography concluded that girls and women in prostitution have a death rate 40 times higher than the death rate for all women in Canada.(Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution, 1985, Pornography and Prostitution in Canada).
A Canadian Report on Prostitution and Pornography concluded that girls and women in prostitution have a death rate 40 times higher than the death rate for all women in Canada.(Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution, 1985, Pornography and Prostitution in Canada).Psychological TraumaSixty-eight percent of 827 people in several different types of prostitution in 9 countries met criteria for PTSD. The severity of PTSD symptoms of participants was in the same range as the PTSD of treatment-seeking combat veterans, battered women seeking shelter, rape survivors, and refugees from state-sponsored torture. Symptoms of PTSD are acute anxiety, depression, insomnia, irritability, flashbacks, emotional numbing, and being in a state of emotional and physical hyperalertness. (Melissa Farley, Ann Cotton, Jacqueline Lynne, Sybille Zumbeck, Frida Spiwak, Maria E. Reyes, Dinorah Alvarez& Ufuk Sezgin, 2003, Prostitution & Trafficking in Nine Countries: An Update on Violence and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Journal of Trauma Practice. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdf/Prostitutionin9Countries.pdf).
Almost three-quarters (71%) of the women we interviewed had clinically significant symptoms of dissociation.A primary function of dissociation is to handle the overwhelming fear, pain and to deal with the systematized cruelty that is experienced during prostitution (and earlier abuse) by splitting that off from the rest of the self.(Melissa Farley, Nicole Matthews, Sarah Deer, Guadalupe Lopez, Christine Stark& Eileen Hudon, 2011, Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women,Minnesota: Prostitution Research & Education and Minnesota Indian Womenâs Sexual Assault Coalition. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdfs/Garden_of_Truth_Final_Project_WEB.pdf).
Korean women in prostitution had severe PTSD and other psychological symptoms that reflected extreme emotional distress.(Young-Eun Jung, Jeong-Min Song, Jihye Chong, Ho-Jun Seo, & Jeong-Ho Chae, 2008, Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Mental Health in Women Who Escaped Prostitution and Helping Activists in Shelters,Yonsei Medical Journal).
Racism makes Black women and girls especially vulnerable to sexual exploitation and keeps them trapped in the sex industry. It does this by limiting educational and career opportunities for African-Americans in this country.(8) It does this through a welfare system that has divided the poor Black family. If a mother works, or her childrenâs father contributes to their support, her check and food stamps are cut by that amount.(9) Thus, poor Black women are left alone to find for themselves and their children on inadequate Aid to Families with Children(10) grants.
Racist stereotypes in the mainstream media and in pornography, portray Black women as wild animals who are ready for any kind of sex, any time, with anybody.(11) Additionally, strip joints and massage parlors are typically zoned in Black neighborhoods,(12) which gives the message to white men that it is alright to solicit Black women and girls for sexâthat we are all prostitutes. On almost any night, you can see them slowly cruising around our neighborhoods, rolling down their windows, calling out to women and girls. And we got the message growing up, just like our daughters are getting it today, that this is how it is, this is who we are, this is what we are for.(13)
Many people have said that prostitution is tolerated in the Black community.(14) They are wrong. We do not tolerate prostitution; it has been imposed upon us. It has been imposed upon us since the days of slavery, when the master came out to the field and chose whichever Black woman he wanted to have sex with.(15) Light-skinned slaves, known as âfancy girls,â were sold at high prices in the marketplace and later ârented outâ or sold to brothels.(16)
Today, middle-class white men from the suburbs drive through the ghettos of America to pick out whichever Black women or girls they want to have sex with, as if our cities were their own private plantations. No, prostitution is not tolerated in the Black community any more than African-American slaves tolerated it on the plantation; it is imposed upon us.
Once a Black woman gets into prostitution, it becomes harder for her to get out than for a white woman. Racism in the courts results in Black women paying higher fines and doing more jail time than white women.(17) Racist probation officers and child protection workers can create nearly impossible case plans for Black women, setting them up to fail and resulting in their being returned to jail or losing custody of their children.(18)
Native women and girls disproportionately experience risk factors for entering the sex industry such as a history of sexual abuse, poverty, racism, and substance abuse. What is called âsurvival sexâ by some is actually prostitution due to poverty, intimidation, and fear. Many of the Native women in prostitution in North America were trafficked into prostitution while they were children.(Sarah Deer, 2010,Relocation Revisited: Sex Trafficking of Native Women in the United States,William Mitchell Law Review. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/Deer%20Relocation%20Revisited.pdf)
For many, the experience of prostitution stems from the historical trauma of colonization. Imposing a sexist and racist regime on First Nations women, colonization simultaneously elevated male power within the colonized communityâŠ(Melissa Farley, Jacqueline Lynne & Ann J. Cotton, 2005,Prostitution in Vancouver: Violence and the Colonization of First Nations women,Transcultural Psychiatry, 42, 242-271. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdfs/ProstVancouver.pdf).
_____________________________________________________
From another paper (downloaded; I donât have the link atm):
Adults working in prostitution reported the following(1):Â
82% had been physically assaulted;
83% had been threatened with a weapon;
68% had been raped while working as a prostitute;
84% experienced current or past homelessness.
Another study of adult prostitutes found the following (2):
73% had been raped, 71% since entering prostitution.
In 84% of rapes, the rapist was a stranger to the victim.
In 27% of rape cases, there were multiple assailants. The average number of
44% of rapes involved the use of a weapon.
73% of prostitutes reported being sexually assaulted as adults in situations unrelated to prostitution. Most of these were violent stranger rapes with physical injuries. (2)
70% of prostitutes were victims of sexual assaults by customers. (2)
Only 7% of sexually assaulted prostitutes sought counseling, and only 7% reported the crime to police. (2)
2/3 of prostitutes reported being physically assaulted by customers and 2/3 reported being beaten by pimps. (2)
50% of prostitutes reported being kidnapped by pimps; 76% were beaten by pimps; and 79% were beaten by customers. (3)
Venereal disease and suicide attempts are the two greatest health risks for juvenile prostitutes. (4)
(1) Farley, Melissa & Barkan, Howard. âProstitution, Violence Against Women, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.â Women & Health, 27(3): 37-49. 1998
(2) Silbert, Mimi H. âCompounding Factors in the Rape of Street Prostitutes,â Rape and Sexual Assault II, ed. Ann W. Burgess. New York: Garland Publishing, 1988.
(3) Giobbe, Evelina. âStatement of WHISPER Action Group Members.â WHISPER, Vol. 6(1-2).
(4) Schetky, Diane H. âChild Pornography and Prostitution,â Child Sexual Abuse. Brunner/Mazel, 1988.
40% of street prostitutes are women of color; 55% of those arrested are women of color; 85% of prostitutes sentenced to jail time are women of color.(1)
2/3 of prostitutes in one study were from families of average or high income, though as adults they lived in poverty.(2)
(1) Â Brock, Nakashimaand Thistlethwaite, Susan. Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. 1996.
(2) Â Silbert, Mimi H. âTreatment of Prostitute Victims of Sexual Assault,â Victims of Sexual Aggression. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1984.
_____________________________________________
Do your own research. Pimps and johns prey on and abuse vulnerable women and children. I am allowed to call for their punishment and the protection of their victims, even if Iâm fortunate enough to not be a survivor of their crimes.Â
