Amnesty is confused
Amnesty International has a report on the physical assault, exploitation and sexual harassment that refugee women face as they reach Europe.
Governments and aid agencies are failing to provide even basic protections to women refugees traveling from Syria and Iraq. New research conducted by Amnesty International shows that women and girl refugees face violence, assault, exploitation and sexual harassment at every stage of their journey, including on European soil.
The organization interviewed 40 refugee women and girls in Germany and Norway last month who travelled from Turkey to Greece and then across the Balkans. All the women described feeling threatened and unsafe during the journey. Many reported that in almost all of the countries they passed through they experienced physical abuse and financial exploitation, being groped or pressured to have sex by smugglers, security staff or other refugees.
But that’s sex work. Surely Amnesty views it as their right, as well as the right of the smugglers, security staff and other refugees.
A dozen of the women interviewed said that they had been touched, stroked or leered at in European transit camps. One 22-year-old Iraqi woman told Amnesty International that when she was in Germany a uniformed security guard offered to give her some clothes in exchange for “spending time alone” with him.
“Nobody should have to take these dangerous routes in the first place. The best way to avoid abuses and exploitation by smugglers is for European governments to allow safe and legal routes from the outset. For those who have no other choice, it is completely unacceptable that their passage across Europe exposes them to further humiliation, uncertainty and insecurity,” said Tirana Hassan.
Abuses? Exploitation? That sounds very sex-negative. How can Amnesty International call an opportunity for sex work “humiliation”?
Smugglers target women who are travelling alone knowing they are more vulnerable. When they lacked the financial resources to pay for their journey smugglers would often try to coerce them into having sex.
At least three women said that smugglers and those working with the smugglers’ network harassed them or others, and offered them a discounted trip or a shorter wait to get on the boat across the Mediterranean, in exchange for sex.
Well what’s the problem? It’s sex work, which Amnesty thinks should be totally legalized for pimps and johns as well as the sex workers.
Hala, a 23-year-old woman from Aleppo told Amnesty International,
“At the hotel in Turkey, one of the men working with the smuggler, a Syrian man, said if I sleep with him, I will not pay or pay less. Of course I said no, it was disgusting. The same happened in Jordan to all of us.”
“My friend who came with me from Syria ran out of money in Turkey, so the smuggler’s assistant offered her to have sex with him [in exchange for a place on a boat]; she of course said no, and couldn’t leave Turkey, so she’s staying there.”
But it’s just sex work. Sex work is pleasant, enjoyable work, which meets men’s inherent need for “intimacy.” How can it be disgusting? Why did her friend say no?
Nahla, a 20-year old from Syria told Amnesty International
“The smuggler was harassing me. He tried to touch me a couple of times. Only when my male cousin was around he did not come close. I was very afraid, especially that we hear stories along the way of women who can’t afford the smugglers who would be given the option to sleep with the smugglers for a discount.”
He has a need for “intimacy” like any other man. He’s just exercising his right to try to get some.
Reem, a 20-year-old from Syria who was travelling with her 15-year-old cousin:
“I never got the chance to sleep in settlements. I was too scared that anyone would touch me. The tents were all mixed and I witnessed violence… I felt safer in movements, especially on the bus, the only place I could shut my eyes and sleep. In the camps we are so prone to being touched, and women can’t really complain and they don’t want to cause issues to disrupt their trip.”
If they would just think of it as sex work, and the men groping them as potential sources of income, everyone would be happy.
Sounds like you cannot see any difference between sexual coercion and sex work.
Which is so weird, because we can easily appreciate the difference between voluntary work and involutary servitude, in bascially any nonsexual endeavor.
Oh dear. What a silly post.
(emphases mine)
From the alleged leaked Amnesty International Policy Document on Prostitution.
It’s not a silly post.
The point, of course, is that all sex work is a result of coercion. That some forms of coercion might be more dispersed, background and implicit, but coercion nonetheless. One does not have to know one is being coerced in order to be coerced. It’s a kind of brainwashing.
It’s interesting that the overwhelming majority of sex workers are women, don’t you think Silent Bob? Why do you think that might be? Seems to me a lot like some form of socially coercive phenomena is in play, like, oh I don’t know, patriarchy? The sort of system that treats female bodies like property? That’s how it seems to me, at any rate.
Emily @ 2
So, to make sure I understand your assertion, voluntary sex work is a contradiction in terms, that seems plausible as an argument. Consider women who use sex to gain some advantage in business for example, are they also victims of patriarchial coercion?
There is no confusion as Silentbob has pointed out. Amnesty has never supported the abuse of women, sexual or otherwise. It supports the right of women and men who choose sex work to do that work without intimidation by the state. That is all. Nobody ever suggested that all women should do sex work, or be forced or coerced into it or enjoy it. Merely that for those who do choose it, it should not be illegal. This post is beyond silly, it is grossly trivialising.
It’s interesting that the overwhelming majority of sex workers are women, don’t you think Silent Bob? Why do you think that might be?
Why do you think this is the case? I am sure a majority of sex workers are women, but not overwhelmingly by any means. Why there should be a majority of women in sex work? Because there is a bigger market for women than for men.
Oh, the majority is overwhelming all right; unless you are excluding prostitutes from the definition of sex workers, or including their pimps? Sex work that most men undertake is very different to the ‘sex work’ that women are far too frequently coerced into. In most cases where men are involved in ‘sex work’ they aren’t the ones actually having sex, are they? They are selling other people.
Now try to think why there is a “bigger market for women than for men“…
Got it, yet?
Something to do with straight men’s feelings of entitlement? The lack of other prospects/sources of income for women? Coercion?
Oh, the majority is overwhelming all right; unless you are excluding prostitutes from the definition of sex workers, or including their pimps?
Do we know that? I am including prostitutes and there are huge numbers of men and boys working as prostitutes. I would think that more women do, but overwhelming?
Why is there a bigger market for men buying sex? I should think, like any market, because there is more money to be made that way, because there are more customers.
There are always other prospects for prostitutes who are not forced into the work, but they rarely pay as well or fit in as well with the chosen lifestyle. One of the mother’s at my son’s school is a prostitute, for example, but she could just as easily work in a shop, or hairdresser, and, in fact, sometimes does.
The only data I can find in a very quick search is here:
http://www.fondationscelles.org/en/
That claims a majority of 80% -20% female -male, which is admittedly big. I guess whether it is ‘overwhelming’ will depend a bit on interpretation. 20% of a market, one in five, still seems significant to me.
Pinker – if you don’t see a ratio of 4 to 1 as overwhelming, what would it require to be overwhelming? Does it not count until you reach a 99% ratio? Or would 99% even count as overwhelming?
Sorry for messing up your nym. My computer automatically changed it and I didn’t notice before I hit post.
Pinker – if you don’t see a ratio of 4 to 1 as overwhelming, what would it require to be overwhelming?
Well, I have done a straw poll and it seems that most people agree with you so I will concede. I guess I didn’t want lose sight of the fact that there is a significant minority or prostitutes who are men.
And I quite like ‘Pinker’.
Significant minority I will agree to. I don’t think anyone here wants to deny that fact.
One thing that strikes me, though, is the comment about women being able to make more money in prostitution. That’s true for many cases. When I was younger, and rather striking (though I didn’t know it at the time), I could have entered the high-class call girl trade and made a lot more money than I currently make teaching college biology. That’s part of the problem. We are not valuing the work women do properly, and are viewing her more as an object of pleasure. Jobs traditionally seen as women’s work – social work, for instance – are often highly skilled and important to the economy and the well-being of the country, but are not well paid. Teaching has decreased in prestige and pecuniary compensation since it became dominated by women, as has librarian, secretary, etc. A woman shouldn’t have to enter prostitution to be able to make a decent living.
It’s not a silly post at all. People who’ve done prostitution and people who study it have documented time and again that consent and safety are always illusory. It’s also impossible to deny that it is a very highly gendered enterprise and that it is a reflection of patriarchy.
It’s not difficult at all to imagine a one of those refugees taking a smuggler or security officer up on his (almost surely his) offer and thinking “hey it gets me what I need and I like sex, so no skin off my nose. Deal” How is that different? How can it be that the very same exploitative behavior on the part of the putative punter is acceptable depending on the woman’s reaction to the coercion?
It makes sense to focus policies on protecting those must vulnerable who, by definition, do not have those privileges even if some do. I follow the lead of former prostitutes who say that nothing can ensure consent or safety except for shutting down demand.
I’m confused by some of the commenters.
If “have sex or I won’t boat you across this sea away from dangers I did not create” is coercion, why isn’t “have sex with me or I won’t give you money, which you need to cover expenses I did not impose upon you?”
I don’t go in for the whole “sex work is always coercion” thing, in part because I think it misses the point. WORK is coercive. That’s why we set limits on what work you can legally employ someone to do, and under what conditions.
The only question is whether we want to live in a world that accepts and normalizes the idea that sex should properly be in the class of “things people do because they and their children are hungry.”
I’m not sure of what I think of arguments that address that head on and answer yes, but I am definitely sure what I think of arguments that rely on some fantasy vision of the future in which prostitution is some hallowed career somehow separate and different and better than the baseline concept of “having a job because you need to pay for shelter.”
Patrick – definitely. Although I love my job, and it is a career I prepared myself for over a period of many years, the reason I go in every day on someone else’s schedule is because there is a certain coercion in the way our society is set up. Work or you don’ t eat. Work or your children don’t eat. Work or you die. Loving what I do in general does not mean that I want to do every part of it, or want to do it every day, or would choose to do things the way I am doing them if I didn’t have to eat.
Sex work is the same way, except what I do allows me a lot more autonomy and freedom, and doesn’t expose me to dangerous diseases or get me beaten up (at least, not yet! With the number of shooters in colleges, we can never be sure anymore, but in prostitution, it’s much higher probability of abuse). I didn’t go into my field out of desperation – I was able to make choices about where and for whom I would work. This isn’t always (and maybe not often) the case with sex workers, even if they chose their career because it sounded better than other options.
I think sex workers should not be regarded as criminals, but the people who trade in them? I think they are the problems. And a society that leaves so few options for these women is also criminal.
@RJW #5
Yes, they are. Especially considering that we are not far removed from the time when it was quite acceptable (even amusing in some circles) for secretaries to be routinely stroked, pinched, fondled, etc by their bosses.
I don’t go in for the whole “Sex work is only coercion because WORK is coercion”, because of the whole difference between selling access to your skills and access to your body.
And the ability to withdraw consent to either.
Of course there are exceptions, and some women obviously enjoy the particular sex work they do, they are doing it entirely from choice, and are living in a welfare state where they have no problems getting enough money to cover the bills with some left over for pleasure. But the existence of women who enjoy what they do in no way implies that it is therefore alright for everyone else in the trade.
Ask a doctor, or a lawyer, or a plumber – “Would you rather have your career than live on adequate unemployment benefit?” Most people would answer “Yes” because they enjoy what they do, and studied hard (often accruing debt) in order be able to do it. But ask them “Would you still answer “Yes” if you could only keep your job by having sex with the board of management every day?” and see how they answer…
Sex ‘work’ is different, because of the ‘sex’ part – calling it ‘work’ is like calling slavery ‘work’ and saying that because most people work in order to pay the bills, slave ‘work’ is the same.
Prostitution is an anomaly precisely because of attitudes towards women and sex, and so has systematically been illegal and the workers worse than unprotected.
There is absolutely no way that prostitution should be regarded as a criminal act by the prostitute – that has led to absurdities and horrors whereby police arrest thirteen-year-olds for committing a crime, and let their rapists go free.
No-one should be free to abuse someone just because that someone is being paid by them, and in civilised countries we have laws about who can be employed and in which kind of work, for how long and how much; health and safety legislation; and a government-run fund into which we all pay so that if (when) any of us become unemployed for any reason, we should have access to enough money so that we and our children don’t starve. The principal is a good one (often undermined by the greedy right-wing whenever they get power back) and should be enough that no woman need go into any kind of sex work, particularly street prostitution.
As for brothels, they can only work fairly if run as a co-operative by the prostitutes themselves. No-one else should be allowed to profit from their earnings, but I think that they would be safer than working individually. It should be illegal to make money off the earnings of someone else’s sex work; and I’d be all for making visits to brothels licensed and registered, so any abuse can be swiftly dealt with. End anonymity and freedom from prosecution for those buying sex.
I can understand (and value) the divide of opinion.
But this notion that work is inherently coercive needs to be ditched. It’s an equivocation.
What we mean when we refer to ‘coercion’ regarding the context of sexual abuse is distinctly different to what we mean when we refer to ‘coercion’ being inherent in any form of paid work.
I’m a software developer. An expectation of the job is that, on occasion and when something critical comes up with a client, I may have to sacrifice a weekend to get something done. I’ll be compensated in additional leave and goodwill. But it’s an expected part of the job that if I am in any way able to come through – even using remote access if I’m not in the country – that I will do so.
My job pays for rent and groceries. So, in a very mild and non-typical sense of usage, this can be considered a form of ‘coercion’.
This is a very different thing to the much more typical usages. For example, having taking someone in a dangerous situation where they lack personal security, and then offering them personal security in trade for sex, is highly coercive thing to do, in a sense that agrees with common usage.
If I were to say that my job oppresses me the same way that the victims of sex traffickers are oppressed by their pimps and Johns, I think that everyone here would agree that this would be an incredibly offensive, contemptible thing to try and whine about, and that my analogy was impossibly broken in every way that actually matters.
This notion of saying that all work is coercive, and that therefore all sex work MUST be coercive, is making that exact same argument except in the other direction. It’s less obnoxious only because it is being made in the interest of standing up for people who genuinely are abused and mistreated. But despite this laudable goal, the analogy is still false.
It’s an equivocation and a distraction.
I’m very sympathetic to completely decriminalizing and regulating sex work for all parties involved, including employers and customers. I think that driving sex work into the dark makes abuses more likely, and bringing it into the light makes abuses less likely. To my understanding, this is exactly what has happened since prostitution was legalized here in New Zealand in 2003 – although I am by no means an expert, so could be mistaken about this.
However, I also understand the problems that come about when you make sexual services into a formally recognized commodity within a culture that routinely sexually objectifies women as non-people. It’s a very small step from making a commodity out of the service to making a commodity out of the person providing the service. Sexual objectification means that sex workers are uniquely vulnerable to being coerced (in the sense of *actual* coercion) behind the scenes into going through with sex work that they don’t want to do, and then lying about their consent when asked.
So we shouldn’t pretend that sex work is just like any other kind of work – there are unique dangers and challenges to deal with regarding sex work precisely because it is sex work.
So I agree: There is a very real problem here that deserves to be spoken about. There’s plenty of sound material to work with in having that discussion.
The equivocation that 1) all work is coercive, 2) all sex work is work, 3) therefore, all sex work is coercive, 4) all sexual coercion should not be tolerated, 5) therefore all sex work should not be tolerated is unsound in a way that is pertinently misleading regarding the context of the discussion at hand. That line of argument should be dropped in favor of lines of argument that are sound and not misleading.
It’s Friday afternoon here and I’m tired and have had a pretty average week, so may be especially dumb at the moment. Who has argued this again? Specifically where?
@Rob
Patrick touched on the idea earlier when he raised the issue about how “WORK is coercive” in a context where we were talking about sexual coercion – an equivocation, because it made things seem that what sexual coercion and working to make a living were fairly comparable in this setting (they aren’t). After that, tiggerthewing continued on from that theme.
Neither Patrick nor tiggerthewing expressed the equivocation quite as baldly as I did, or with the direction or intent that I did. In my section at the end, which you quoted, I intentionally exaggerated the equivocation to make it as obvious as possible. Which is precisely why I didn’t want to attribute it to anyone specifically.
Daniel, I have to say I drew a different conclusion than yours from reading the same posts. Tigger especially specifically rejects the notion in their first sentence. True, Patrick and in reply to him iknklast do flirt with the concept, but they also draw a clear distinction between autonomous work, albeit with the coercion of no work no food and the sort of coercion that (most) sex workers and some others may face, coupled with that lack of fundamental autonomy.
@ 19 tiggerthewing
Yeah, it’s nice to moralise. But the real world is more complex. For example…
Do you realise you just said this hypothetical prostitutes’ collective should not be allowed to hire security staff (or accountants, or cleaners, or interior decorators…)?
Do you realise you just said that if a woman becomes a prostitute to provide for her elderly, ailing mother, the elderly, ailing mother should be prosecuted as a criminal?
Etc., etc.
Alas, Amnesty has to operate in the real world, and not some idealized hypothetical construction.
@24: I understood that the concept is not to prevent women from _spending_ their own money, however acquired – the collective being discussed should be able to hire cleaners etc. – but to prevent pimping; what tigger is discussing is making it illegal to _employ other people as prostitutes_, i.e. they get fucked and you get paid. Tiggerthewing did not say any of those things and doesn’t have to “realise” anything.