Paying for sex and other historical setbacks

Macu Gimeno

The Feminist Platform of Valencia

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"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute".

Rebecca West

When I was young the world of prostitution was unknown to me. I lived through Franco’s dictatorship when sex, like so many things, was a taboo subject. In those days you didn't see semi-naked women in the streets or on the roadside. Its space was confined to the city’s Chinatown or the illegal clubs. That barrio chino that I knew from my grandmother, and that I had to cross quickly, passing by the women that we used to call fulanas, or ‘tarts’. They were Spanish women, very few were migrants.

As the years passed I became aware of the poverty and humiliation they were subjected to. I didn't know whether they did it voluntarily, but I thought it was shameful that someone would pay to have sex with women that had to exhibit and expose themselves to all kinds of violence. They were bodies without identities, bought by men.

In those years there was also the constant harassment that we all suffered in the form of touching, catcalls, insults and flashing. Going to the local cinema became a mission which I undertook armed with a big safety pin, which my mother taught me to use if I needed to. But my biggest fear was not that something would happen to me, but that everyone would think that I had allowed it to happen. That would have meant I was a slut, a whore. I thought I would end up like those women from the barrio chino.

"Rape entered the law through the back door, as it were, as a property crime of man against man. Woman, of course, was viewed as the property". 

Susan Brownmiller

Relationships with men were based on power and sexual domination. I started to see society differently, to understand what patriarchy was. I felt the hatred in my flesh; the humiliation of sexual assault, that "everything is permitted because you're a woman ", a slut, a whore. I realised that even my most progressive male friends defended women’s supposed freedom to prostitute themselves, and fantasised about submitting women to their will. These days it still happens to me quite often.

"Prostitution is a matter of equality, not sex. It is not a body or sex that men buy, but rather the traditionally masculine fantasy of domination".

Beatriz Gimeno

Far from disappearing, the prostitution industry has continued to grow over the years, to the great profit of the pimps and mafias rather than the women. The face of prostitution today bears little resemblance to those years, although it remains founded in the same patriarchal society, where men have the quintessential right to objectify and buy women’s bodies.

Globalisation, war, the refugee crisis, poverty and hunger are all powerful weapons for today’s human traffickers, who take advantage of the most vulnerable people in these situations - women and children – in order to enslave them. Spain is a paradise for these mafias.

"Human trafficking is not a gender-neutral crime...it disproportionately affects women, not only because they make up the majority of its victims, but because the forms of exploitation they are subjected to are usually the most severe, especially in trafficking for sexual exploitation". 

Action plan against Trafficking in Persons for Sexual Exploitation.2015-2018, Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality

These organised crime networks exist because of the demand from the sex buyers. Some 20% of men in Spain admit to having used prostitutes. Half of them suspect that the prostitute may be a minor. All of them think that the situation of the women who they pay and fuck has nothing to do with them. They buy them, use them and toss them aside. Nothing else matters to them. Over the years I have discovered shameful things about the tastes of sex buyers: pregnant women, minors, the voiceless and vulnerable. They don't want to know about the rapes, kidnappings, beatings and isolation.

"Prostitution in itself is not innate to women, but is based on the social construction of women as beings that are owned by and serve others. Defined by their erotic sexuality and reproductive capacity, all women’s bodies and sex are for the sexual pleasure of others".

Marcela Lagarde

According to official data, 80% of human trafficking victims in Europe are women, of which 95% are sexually exploited. Regarding the percentage of women that supposedly prostitute themselves "voluntarily", the published figures range from 10 to 20%.

"I love my job, I feel free. I prefer this to working for some businessman".

Antonella, prostitute since the age of 15 (El Diario, 23/10/ 15)

Talking about the rights of this percentage of women must not make us forget the brutality of the slavery that the rest are subjected to. We aren’t allowed to talk of rescues, or of any other morality that prevents me, as a human, from turning a blind eye to slavery.

Prostitution continues to be a forbidden subject in feminist debate. We need to focus on issues that unite us, not divide us. We don't make progress because we continue to ignore the fact that, without the men that pay for sex, prostitution, and therefore trafficking,  would not exist.

While the debate continues to be sealed off, the number of prostituted women and children grows, and men use prostitutes to celebrate special occasions. It is difficult to talk about equality while this continues.

"Boys are taught that having lines of naked girls at their disposal is their right and that women do not matter. If this is not a school of inequality then what is?"

Ana de Miguel

According to the UN, prostitution is the second most profitable business in the world. Over 4 million people are trafficked every year, generating 5-7 billion U.S. dollars in profits. Here in Spain that means 370 million in annual profits for the mafias and pimps; poverty and violence for the prostituted women.

If you are a man you can pay to rape a woman. You can buy her dignity, her life, whatever you want. Looking back, I have the impression that we have made very little progress. The sexual assaults that I talked about earlier continue to be habitual. Everyday violence that we have to put up with, simply for being women. Where is the limit?

Translation by Ben Riddick

Original article in Spanish at http://tribunafeminista.org/2016/09/pagar-por-sexo-y-otras-involuciones-historicas/