[Screenshot taken of this commentary]
“In a study submitted at trial with 854 women in 9 countries, including Canada, 89% of women interviewed said they wanted out of prostitution. In another study submitted at trial conducted in the downtown eastside of Vancouver, 95% of prostituted women interviewed said they wanted out of prostitution“
Here are some statistics of what goes on in porn and the industry from an LA based survivor organization
Also read: Why Sex Work Isn’t Work
Also a reminder that “sex work” is not a neutral or objective term but a liberal one (tied in with economics) that specifically comes out of the 1970s United States pro-prostitution movement and is about an ideology that promotes the sex industries by using language to gloss over its harms:
Many in favor of the legalization of prostitution refer to it as “sex work” and employ concepts such as “consent,” “agency,” “sexual freedom,” “the right to work,” and even “human rights” in the course of making their defense.[1] Consider some of the common claims defenders of legalization advance: sex work is work just like any other form of work, only the social shame and stigma around sex prevent people from seeing it as such;[2] many (most) women[3] who sell sex chose to be there, so we should respect their choice and agency, after all they are in no different a position than someone who chooses a minimum wage job without better alternatives;[4] women choosing to sell sex is an example of sexual freedom and rejecting repressive norms that limit women’s sexuality,[5] so we should respect their sexually autonomous choices to sell sex for a living. - Why Sex Work Isn’t Work by Lori Watson
Also, many of the formerly prostituted do not support being called “sex workers” or them being prostituted being called “sex work.”
“In January 2014, 61 South Asian victims and survivors of prostitution as well as women’s groups representing communities marginalized by caste, class and ethnicity and antitrafficking organizations helping girls and women “trapped in bonded labour and other forms of servitude” wrote to Mlambo-Ngcuka to protest the new UN Women policy of avoiding the word prostitution.
“We do not want to be called ‘sex workers’ but prostituted women and children, as we can never accept our exploitation as ‘work,’ ” the letter signers wrote. “We think that the attempts in UN documents to call us ‘sex workers’ legitimizes violence against women, especially women of discriminated caste, poor men and women and women and men from minority groups, who are the majority of the prostituted.”
They are still awaiting an answer from UN Women, Gupta said.
Censoring comment about violence against girls and women is not new in the Commission on the Status of Women or in the UN more broadly. Nafis Sadik, the outspoken executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, from 1987 to 2000, said in an interview in 2013 that there had been numerous attempts to silence her, often from pressure by governments.” — Prostitution: A Word That UN Women Does Not Want to Hear | March 31, 2015
Cherry Smiley’s AWAN address
to the 55th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW)
at the UN in 2011.
“Please be aware that the term ‘sex work’, which is found in your public policies and documents, came out of the US sex trade of the 1970’s. It was invented with the particular aim of normalising and sanitising prostitution for the public and for lawmakers in particular, and you have done a great service for those who profit from prostitution by your acceptance and adoption of it. Simultaneously you have also – inadvertently, we acknowledge – levelled a painful insult against us. We are, all of us, sex-trade survivors; the living witnesses of a dehumanising trade, and any acceptance of our abuse as ‘work’ further dehumanises us.“ — Open Letter from Survivors, Alliance of Women for the Abolition of Prostitution
Rachel Moran on the terms "Sex Work" and "Sex Worker".
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