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/

The prostitution of women: democracy's harem

Ana de Miguel Álvarez

Professor of moral and political philosophy at the University of Rey Juan Carlos

20/01/2015

The start of a new year is a time to take stock and make resolutions, so it is a good chance to reflect once again upon one of society’s most controversial issues: the prostitution of women.

Let us begin with two facts. First, all forecasts indicate that prostitution is on the increase in Spain, a society supposedly committed to equality. Second, this growth comes at the expense of thousands of increasingly younger girls, brought in from some of the world’s poorest, most sexist and least developed countries.

In the face of these facts, there is a tiresome tendency to spread the message that prostitution is just "a job like any other" and should therefore be regulated. But before we act, there is a lot to think about. And when it comes to thought, philosophy can help us to analyse and question reality through critical reflection.

Of course this demands dedicating time to the subject at hand. Philosophy does not accept thinking through slogans and stock phrases such as "prostitution has always existed, so the best thing is to regulate it", or "there’s nothing we can do about it, others have tried and failed". The last thing philosophy does is accept such a fatalist and traditional worldview. Nor does it accept the idea, as publicised in the media, that submission to the market is somehow rebellious or transgressive; leading people to declare that "everyone uses their body to work", or "I make a living on the streets too". Philosophy demands that we criticise these ideas and put them to debate. To sit down and think!

Let us begin by thinking about what questions we should be asking about prostitution, which is so often depicted positively in films and in the media. The first question is one of definition: What is prostitution?

Before we can discuss it, we need some concepts that allow us to see the reality of prostitution. The official definition is “the practice of engaging in sexual relations in exchange for payment”, and in a world where money is the supreme value, what could be wrong with that? This definition works to normalise prostitution and is convincing because it follows neoliberal logic: all of us buy and sell something. There are even people and organisations that claim to be staunchly anti-capitalist and anti-system yet, somewhat paradoxically, defend the trade of women's bodies as a progressive and transgressive cause. To them I put the question; if using prostitutes has always been the norm for men, just as it was for their fathers and grandfathers, what exactly is being transgressed?

Philosophy’s critical intent can lead us to question the official definition of prostitution, just as Socrates questioned the youth on how to define ‘justice’. A new definition is needed because the emphasis on "exchanging sex for money" actually disguises two of its fundamental real-life features. First, the key fact that prostitution is gendered: the vast majority of prostitutes are women, and almost all consumers are men. Second, the fact that what is sold is not 'sex', but a certain type of sex: a man using a woman's body for his own pleasure. The old definition must change because it falsifies and hides this reality. It is useless because it prevents us from seeing the truth.

Let us look at this alternative definition: prostitution is a regulated practice which grants men, as a group, access to women's bodies.

Access to the body for rent is granted to men ‘as a group’, because all men are entitled to stand in line for it. Prostitution is a public service, democracy's harem. It is true that money is required, but that condition does not invalidate the accessible, open-to-everyone character of the prostituted woman. Access is ‘regulated’ because the transaction is by no means natural or spontaneous, but one that follows a set of established and respected rules: the prostitutes are required to be in a particular place, and a price is established for a particular service.

Open access to women's bodies is guaranteed in almost every part of the world. Wherever a man may travel, from Valencia to Pernanbuco, Taiwan to Egypt, it is enough to stop a taxi driver and ask a simple question: "Where can I find a woman around here? Where are the girls? You know what I mean". The universal language of patriarchal society means he will be understood. The symbolic meaning of ‘woman’ could not be expressed with any more simplicity, achieving the kind of clarity and distinctiveness that René Descartes attributed to ‘self-evident’ truths.

Prostitution as an international, globalised institution is based in supporting every man’s right to satisfy his sexual desires in exchange for a variable quantity of money, no matter who it affects or what the consequences might be. If families from those countries most devastated by inequality and sexism sell their daughters into prostitution, that is not the clients' problem. Maybe they are in too much of a hurry to get home to their own families and daughters to care.

Philosophy also asks us to question the concept of humanity that underlies the institution of prostitution. The normalisation of buying sex teaches men, fathers and adolescents alike, that their own pleasure is the arbiter of what is good and bad; that ‘money buys you the right to rent another human being to manipulate for a while’. Now we can see prostitution emerge as a great school of human inequality, in which the boys and girls play very different roles to the ones they thought they played in class, when they all appeared equal behind their desks. In prostitution the girls become "fresh, beautiful, very young", sometimes offered up as insatiable sluts, other times as childish and submissive, but all of them bodies that men have the right to access. What the hell, why not? They're only women after all.

What kind of men are being made each day by this education in Spain’s brothels?

I want to end with a message to men. There is a very big difference between the trafficking of women and other problems that we find to be equally, or even more, morally repugnant. Try as we might, individuals cannot just choose to end hunger, gun trafficking, rape and war today. But it is in the hands of every individual man to put an end to prostitution. It would be enough if every man chose not to go out and buy a woman’s body today, just as women have chosen all of their lives; and here we are, we haven't died. It is men, our companions, who finance the pimps and mafia networks with an incessant demand for prostitutes. How many men got up this morning, looked in the mirror and said "I deserve to treat myself. What shall I have today? A black woman? A Chinese girl maybe...Wait, I’ve got it! A blonde, or how about a...”

The futures of so many girls being born today, all over the world, depend on every individual man and his one simple decision.

Translation by Ben Riddick

Original article in Spanish at http://www.huffingtonpost.es/ana-de-miguel-alvarez/la-prostitucion-de_b_6501688.html

I was prostituted in more than 40 clubs in Spain: this is how I started a new life

It's been nine years since I left that world behind. I often bump into men that paid me for my body.

AMELIA TIGANUS  9 JUL 2016 

Between the ages of 18 to 23 I was prostituted in over 40 nightclubs all across Spain. But what makes a prostitute?

I was born in Galati in Romania into a traditional, middle-class family. I was the oldest of two sisters. I never lacked food, shelter and education. In those days my aspirations were to work and start a family, but at the age of 13 everything was ruined when they raped me. I knew that I would never be a 'good' woman again, and they blamed me for what happened: "What was she even doing there dressed like that, all on her own?” they said.

The rapes continued and, as I was nothing more than a whore, my "no" was worthless. If it had been worthless before, now it was worth less than nothing. I learned that it was worse to resist and better to keep quiet and not answer back. One day I thought: “That's just the way things are, and it's already done now anyway. And that's how I want it to be". I empowered myself through sex and that made everything easier to deal with, psychologically. From that moment on my attackers and I started to act like colleagues.

When I was 17 and a half I would have sex with any man that crossed my path. The model that we 'bad women' were shown and had to follow, and that still exists in Romania, was of the prostitute empowered by money and possessions. So when a man offered to introduce me to a pimp who could help get me to Spain to work as a prostitute, I accepted. After looking me up and down, the pimp decided to "give me a chance" and paid the man 300 euros. He sold me.

I stayed in an apartment for six months until I turned 18. Refusing sex with the men that passed through that apartment meant we weren't good enough whores to be worth the opportunity to leave the country, so we had sex with them all.

As soon as I turned 18 they got me a passport and I travelled to Spain. We arrived at a town called Guardamar del Segura in Alicante, where they were renting an apartment. Every afternoon a taxi would take us to a small roadside club 6 km away, and bring us back at daybreak. My first night was horrific. I had slept with a lot of men before, but this was different. We had two minutes to compete between us and win over a client. We each tried to be the best puta of them all to gain privileges and recognition.

I cried a lot on that first night. The clients didn't care much; at times I thought they were even enjoying it. My pimp reminded me that as soon as I started to earn money, I would have to pay off the contracted debt, starting with 50% of my earnings. That wasn't fair.

One day he got a call to warn him that the police were planning a raid that night, so he had to give us back our passports to avoid raising suspicion. In the taxi my heart started to thump as I thought: "you have to escape! When will you ever have your passport in your hand again?" I asked three clients for help and one of them agreed to take me to Torrevieja...to another club in Alicante. There, I kept on crying. I watched myself fall apart, without the will, reason or strength to bear it all.

Everything changed one day when I called a friend in Romania, who told me he wanted to come to Spain to work, have a good life and start a family. That gave me lots of encouragement. I told him I was going to rent an apartment, pay for his ticket and save up some money so we could live a decent life while we both looked for work. Every step took me closer and closer to my dream of freedom. I rented an apartment near Burgos, I made the house look nice, did the shopping and prepared the food. It looked like a home! I was very, very happy because I'd made it. Without another thought I threw away all the clothes that I wore as a prostitute.

He came to Spain, became my boyfriend and everything was perfect. Until I realised that I couldn’t get any work, money was running out, and he was making no effort to look for a job. My dream was coming to an end. My lover boy (as these types of pimps are known) used to say that it wasn’t fair, that he also suffered a lot, but there was nothing for it: I had to go back to the clubs. "At least you have that opportunity to earn money" he said.

So that's how I returned to the clubs, in despair. My mind, body and soul were in pain, but there was no other option. I started to get used to suffering and violence. I stopped thinking so that I could not feel.

Thousands of men go to these clubs to drink and exchange for money for sex. Most of them are married or in a relationship. Although they are of all ages, the young people tend to go in groups to celebrate something. They are not good clients; they demand hard sex like in the porn movies, but for a low price.

Then there are the men between 35 and 55 years old who usually go alone, or with a couple of others. They can be divided into two categories: firstly, the ones that want to show their manliness and their sexual potency in front of the other guys. They get worried and need to believe that paying to fuck a stranger is an act of humanity, so they can go home in peace. I learned to how to put on an act, to lie and say whatever they wanted to hear. Because what they all had in common, every last one of them, was that they didn't want to see the person behind the puta.

Then there were the solitary weirdos who usually paid a lot of money to leave the club and go to their house or hotel. They are the men that hate women, and the only place where they can go to channel their hatred is the world of prostitution. I tried my best to avoid them but more than once, with the money as the only motivation, I agreed to go with them. On those occasions I was very scared and I saw my own death before me. At least two girls didn't come back from one of these visits. Sometimes I think about them and wonder what happened to them. What if they had been murdered, and nobody found them or their killers? A woman's life is not worth as much as a man’s, but a prostitute’s life is worth even less. We are just 'anyone' and 'no one', so it doesn't matter.

One day, tired of everything and seeing that my loverboy wasn't going to keep his promise, I told him I was leaving prostitution for good. He pressured me for two weeks to change my mind, but when that didn’t work he came to the club, dumped two big black rubbish bags full of my clothes and things, and he left.

Later I saw an opportunity and I took it. I asked a young client to take me to his house for a few days to rest and look for a job, and he accepted. It was good for him because he got free sex. After two days I found an advert in the paper for a waitressing job. I called, went to the interview and started the next day. I was very scared. Everything seemed strange. The daylight, the people, the voices, the laughter. I had to readapt to normal life after five years of living under the red-light. Things went very badly with the man who took me in, and he ended up with a restraining order for stalking and threatening me with death. However, I realised that being a victim of your partner in a couple is even worse than being a victim of a sex buyer. After that I began to change into a new person.

It’s been nine years since I left the world of prostitution, and I was very lucky to find a job, in a town very close to the last club where I worked. My emotional wounds are very deep, but little by little I have made progress and begun to heal. Feminism has a lot to do with it – and especially my soulmate Graciela Atencio, director of Feminicidio.net ,an organisation I have participated in. When I understood that what had happened to me was more than just a personal story, but the story of women, I was finally free of all the shame, blame and stigma that weighed me down, and I could start to recover.

Now I see the clients from the outside, as they go about their everyday lives. I often bump into men who paid to have my body back then. But the other women only see men, friends, brothers, neighbours, sons...they never see sex buyers; they create a hidden reality. They feel very safe and legitimised in what they do; happy to enjoy their privileges and the women at their disposal. Private and public women.

Two years after leaving prostitution, I met the man who would become my husband, and with him I learned how to have an equal, respectful and non-violent relationship. Today I consider myself to be recovered, although sometimes I have nightmares and have to sleep with the light on, because waking up in the dark gives me panic attacks and anxiety – I don’t know where I am. In the darkness I don't know if I'm being raped, or in that roadside club, facing death, when you know your only escape is to keep quiet.

Translation by Ben Riddick

Original article in Spanish:
 http://verne.elpais.com/verne/2016/06/29/articulo/1467190903_598354.html

Sonia Sánchez - 'No woman is born to be a whore'

In this interview Sonia Sánchez, a former prostitute and the author of Ninguna mujer nace para puta ('No woman is born to be a whore'), explains why prostitution is a form of exploitation and violence against women, and can never be a legitimate job.

Sonia uses the word ‘puta’ (the Spanish equivalent to ‘whore’) because “it doesn’t disguise the sexual violence and abuse” that women suffer in prostitution.

She never tires of telling the story of how she left her home province of Chacao for Buenos Aires in search of work at the age of 17, only to become one of the estimated 4 million women and girls sold into prostitution each year.

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"How did you end up becoming a prostitute?"

It was prostitution that came to me; through lack of food, a job, a home, and a good education. That's why I implicate the state and the government. They made me into a puta because my economic, social and cultural rights were violated, allowing me to be abused by others.

"Why does prostitution exist?"

It exists because of the men who go whoring; our husbands, priests, judges and politicians. Without the demand there wouldn't be putas, and without putas there wouldn't be prostitution, and without prostitution there wouldn't be human trafficking for sexual exploitation. I would tell the governments not to legalise prostitution, that it is violence against women.

"What would you say to those who claim that prostitution is a job like any other?"

If you are a puta I wouldn't say anything to you, because I was there myself, and in order to survive the concentration camp of prostitution, I had to maintain the lie that it was work. I would tell the governments that they must not regulate this massive violence towards women; that they were elected by the people to uphold our rights, not to create laws that legitimise violence. Because prostitution is violence.

You say that prostitution left you without a voice and that you lived through this stage in your life in a haze. How did you escape?

By expressing the anger that I had inside me - which is not the same as hate. The only thing that prostitution didn't manage to destroy was my capacity to love, and that is how I could start to reconstitute myself as a rebellious and disobedient women. Today I can say that this is my body and I can speak for myself, and not as a mouthpiece for others.

I don't use the word puta to humiliate or label women. I use it because it doesn't disguise the violence, but makes it visible.

What would you ask of society? How could the people around you have helped?

I would ask society to stop being complicit in this violence because everyone, whether you take action or not, is involved. It would be good if we started to question the division between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people; between what happens in the home and out in the street.

And what would you say to the women that practice prostitution voluntarily?

That I understand them because I've been there, and I know that when a woman becomes a prostitute, it is through physical and psycholgical violence. In order to survive she has to lie to herself, and on behalf of others. But above all, I would tell them to find themselves, because when you are made into a puta, you are hidden from yourself. I would ask them to look for that rebellious and disobedient woman inside who can say 'enough is enough", because they are not in control of their own lives. And I would say ‘work to overcome what you fear’’, because there is a lot of fear.

Translation by Ben Riddick

Original interview in Spanish here.

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Watch Sonia Sánchez's talk for TedX here:

The New Politics: The Neoliberal enthusiasm for the prostitution business

By Cruz Leal Rodríguez 02/04/2016

Barcelona City Council seems intent on regulating prostitution, to protect the rights of women who enter the sex trade voluntarily. This has provoked a counter-movement lead by four female mayors from the metropolitan area, and several feminist groups, spearheaded by the Women's Democratic Movement (MDM).

This political struggle has sparked a media debate over the regulation of prostitution, amid a flurry of accusations and political point-scoring from all sides. Some of the accusations are probably true, and this is partly what politics (both New and Old) is about; political actors will use whatever measures within reach to defend and broadcast their convictions, and gain hegemony over opposing ideas. Whether they genuinely believe that their ideas are better for society, or are simply toeing the party line; we must remember that political parties are shaped by ideologies, and they may have to perform ideological contortions to defend their policies. Therefore, I welcome the debate.

I hope that it continues and deepens; that it reveals prostitution for what it really is, in all its complexity. Asking who it benefits, how it works and what its function is would be a good start. I hope it is explained and understood, that data and statistics emerge, and that the myths are dispelled. I want everyone to have so much information on the topic that it becomes impossible to shrug off and ignore. Just repeating that well-worn refrain that "something must be done" is not enough. We must question ourselves and what society accepts as a normal, natural and inevitable 'lesser evil'.

The debate must take to the streets and spread by word of mouth. It should force us to take up a personal stance, and ask the uncomfortable questions that challenge cosy acceptance of the problem.  

We should understand that the debate only exists because of politics, and feminist policies on equality are not compatible with a neoliberal perspective that commercialises bodies for the market.

The one thing that all the different camps agree on is that “something must be done” about the problem. Perhaps they even share an understanding of its magnitude. After all, prostitution qualifies as a "wicked problem", to use a social planning term. Yet social scientists never apply this term specifically to prostitution; despite the fact that the problem is deeply ingrained, growing and made even more complex by globalisation. Despite the fact that it affects the whole of society, and that the majority of its victims are women and girls: around 40 million of them. On the other side of the equation, the consumers of prostitution are almost all men, leaving open the possibility that some are social workers or policy makers themselves. It is essential to view prostitution as a "wicked problem" because of the serious consequences it has for all of us, even if it risks upsetting the social scientists. It allows us to see prostitution for what it really is: an immense problem that affects everyone.

The discrepancy between all the possible 'solutions' is what drives the debate, and constitutes the very essence of politics. Political decisions reflect ideological viewpoints and always have social consequences. We decide how we should approach a problem and where to begin; how many people will be affected, who stands to lose or gain and who we should favour. Political decisions are charged with symbolism and meaning. Making a wrong decision, or abstaining, has even greater consequences than making the right decision. Not deciding is implicitly a decision in itself.

If we approach prostitution as a problem that can be solved, and not as something inevitable, we must ask ourselves about the causes. And when it acquires the magnitude of a "wicked problem" - globalised, involving significant economic interests, rooted in inequality - we must also ask ourselves about the causes of the causes. We must recognise that complex problems require complex solutions that rely on social complicity. Those solutions will provoke reactions and resistance, require different levels of intervention across different frames of time, and the results are not guaranteed. We need, not only innovative and imaginative policies, but also the resources necessary to implement them.

Above all, we must realise that rejecting the wrong policy is just as important as choosing the right one. Because the wrong decision only worsens the problem and allows it to fester, until it becomes lodged in the imagination as a natural, unavoidable fact of life. In social policy a bad decision outweighs a good one; an error is more costly, frustrating and undoes the work of previous interventions. In fact, this is how most social problems reproduce and multiply; what begins as an injustice ends up as a naturalised and normalised system of exploitation.

That is why I hope the debate keeps on growing. After all, it owes its origin to the feminist movements that first demanded the right not to be prostituted, exploited, and be forced to sell the only thing they possessed: their own bodies. It was the eruption of neoliberalism in the sixties that introduced the myth of free choice based on consent; the idea that becoming a prostitute was a matter of individual choice, independent of any social context, and therefore a legitimate job option.

Barcelona City Council's stance on regulating prostitution has been ambiguous and biased over the last few years, so this recent controversy may help to clarify the different positions. At one point, to appease neighbours' complaints, the council opted to issue fines to prostitutes; later admitting that very few of them were actually collected. It was a hypocritical gesture; in reality its position, without openly expressing it, was in favour of regulating prostitution. That is why they tolerated the barrage of promotion from both the public and private media, which presented prostitution as a legitimate business. Over the years there has been a deluge of news stories about the advantages that prostitution offers over other jobs. A good salary, excellent working conditions, the possibilities of integration with family life, professional status… with such high praise, it’s a wonder we don’t all consider prostitution to be the best career option available. It was presented as a highly respectable job by the media, who repeatedly called for the introduction of training and professional standards in the industry. In connivance with the pimp lobby, they treated prostitution as if it were a public service; even calculating its contribution to the GDP and tax revenue.

The tourist guidebooks refer to Barcelona’s reputation as a highly popular destination for buying sex. It’s as if we ought to be proud of our city being branded this way; as though it was part of our cultural heritage. Come and enjoy our sunshine, Mediterranean gastronomy, a visit to the Sagrada Familia...and at the end of the day, why not let your hair down with one of our famous putas? The complete tourist package.

The controversy unleashed will allow, for a moment at least, a space for abolitionist arguments to spread. Feminism has evolved and incorporated class struggle. In an increasingly conservative and regressive society, its original causes continue to be valid. The patriarchy is adapting to the times and aligning itself with the neoliberalism that supports it. Any new policies based on collective ideals are discredited by the neoliberal values of individualism, privatisation and competition.

In the face of this, feminism's commitment to the abolition of prostitution represents a defence of human rights. This includes the rights of prostitutes; not on the basis of what they do, but because they are people. This is why feminists are urgently calling for policies that aim to solve the problem, rather than accept it as an unavoidable ‘lesser evil’.

Policies that only aim to reduce harm do not go far enough; they must also legitimately aspire to eradicate prostitution. Policies must treat prostitution as a “wicked problem”, and institutions must make a sustained commitment to providing the resources needed to implement them. All government actions must be based in equality; with policies that support, empower and offer alternatives to women in prostitution, whether or not they want to leave it. There is no room for shortcuts or half-measures; prostitution is a gender issue that must be viewed from a feminist perspective. Feminism’s ideology can only be of the left, and can never fit into the right-wing neoliberal framework.

We must listen to the voices of everyone involved; which includes prostitutes, those who want to leave prostitution, and all the women who never want to become a prostitute. The sex trade is an institution that affects society as a whole. We need informed opinions that are based on the values of peaceful coexistence and tolerance, not hypocritical and selfish individualism. To analyse and understand the problem, we must establish processes of mediation. This would allow society itself to contribute to sanctioning the users of prostitutes, promote change in how young people are socialised, and develop different attitudes to sexuality.       

          

If we aim to abolish prostitution, the debate must be centred on the consumer and the demand. It is not only a matter of issuing penalties to consumers; society must denounce the act of buying sex itself. We must hold the users of prostitutes to account, as we would with any abuser. Buying another person’s body should not be accepted as a natural, harmless and inconsequential act. We need a truly innovative change of policy direction; one that shifts the spotlight away from the prostitutes’ motives, and on to the silent, accepted consumer and his demand for a degrading sexuality. And we need to hear the voices of all the men who oppose these practices, yet remain silent. If we want to combat the sexual objectification of women in our culture, these men must speak up and explain why they reject it.

We must expose the fallacies and myths constructed around a sexuality that is based on consumption, and ruled by the sacrosanct market. When prostitutes are given no other alternative, we cannot justify the trade in women's bodies (or parts of their bodies) with the illusion of ‘free choice’. Having to sell sex for survival does not constitute freedom of choice. But we are free to take affirmative action, and oppose the normalisation of sexual exploitation in our society. In this case, the most radical choice is to say NO.

For the new policy makers, I leave you with some words from the renowned militant feminist and political activist, Beatriz Gimeno:

“Supposedly left-wing feminists often use prostitution as a metaphor for the free market: an ideologically neutral space in which transactions and contracts are negotiated.

The regulation of prostitution can only be defended from a neoliberal position. Its principal supporters are the businessmen that profit from it, and the right-wing politicians who have freed themselves from conservative moralising. Neoliberals have been very quick to realise that regulation is perfectly coherent with their policies. (...) This is why supporters of regulation avoid ethical questions and simply confirm prostitution’s existence as something inevitable; allowing a certain part of it to be permitted, subject to licensing and taxation..."

Translation by Ben Riddick

Original Spanish article - La nueva política y el entusiasmo neoliberal por la emprendiduría prostituyente

The woman who sold women

By Lydia Cacho 18/02/2014

At an international event to discuss detailed strategies to eradicate slavery, our table was dedicated to considering how to weaken the criminal economy of trafficking. We were joined by the Australian director of the Global Network of Sex Worker Projects (NSWP).

Following a presentation by a financial expert, she took the microphone and explained that she had been a prostitute in the past. She then proceeded to attack all of the organisations across the world that rescue victims of human trafficking.

She said there was some kind of conspiracy among human rights advocates; to take the right to sell their bodies away from young people and women. And she tried to discredit those who have saved thousands of children from being exploited for sex tourism in Southeast Asia.

It was clear that the event had been sabotaged, but for the English organisers it seemed politically incorrect to rebuke the sex industry advocate. Later, an Interpol expert explained to us, behind closed doors, that this woman was suspected of promoting brothels in which there was clearly slavery of very young women.

It remained a conversation in the corridor; at the slightest attempt to open it to discussion, we were accused of moralising over women's right to use their body however they see fit.

A few days ago Mexican newspaper El Universal revealed that the Mexico City authorities had arrested Alejandra Gil, known as the "Madam of Sullivan". While posing as a defender of sex workers’ rights, she was actually part of a well-established network of sexual slavery. According to the wide-ranging Attorney General investigation she exploited 40 women, who were threatened with violence and death.

Some young women managed to escape and report this supposed sex workers’ rights activist; and their testimonies revealed the strategies used by human traffickers across the world, in response to new laws to eradicate the trade.

Evidently, not all activists that defend human rights from within the sex industry are traffickers. However, there are many survivors of the sex trade that, once inside the criminal industry, choose to be part of it. They convince themselves that now its their turn to exploit a new generation of youths, normalising the trade as a false form of economic freedom controlled by third parties.

We have seen the industry of exploitation win hundreds of both low and high-profile cases; such as that of the Trevi/Andrade clan who, supported by the entertainment industry, emerged triumphant and even more famous after destroying several young lives.

Because legal systems are much faster-moving institutions than cultural norms, the culture of violence in our society impedes the progress of justice and the fight against crime.

There is a perverse logic at work here, which confuses debate and prevents understanding of the slave trade’s complexities. Labour exploitation in the interest of economic progress has been normalised over centuries, contributing to the creation of a false discourse that justifies economic, race and gender inequalities as being inevitable.

In other words, our culture has been permeated with the notion that exploitation, poverty, class discrimination, racism, and sexism are unavoidable and should therefore be assimilated. Most sex traffickers argue that they provide security, income and freedom to prostitutes, which gives them the right to economic retribution and control over their "employees".

Nobody said it would be easy to determine how each human being should assume their partial freedoms; or work out how and why millions of people who grow up with violence go on to reproduce it, and come to see abuse as something deserved.

No one said it would be easy to identify the psycho-emotional components and the emotional and psycho-sexual manipulation that lead someone to be enslaved, and to believe that they deserve this abject condition.

Rafael Barret said: "If Good does not exist, we’ll have to invent it". The same could be said of Freedom.

Slavery cannot be eradicated without throwing the spotlight on every group that insists on justifying the sale of human beings as an economically profitable business. As we have seen in the recent case of the "Madame of Sullivan", the traffickers are sat at the table that defends the freedom to enslave, disguised as freedom of choice.

Translation by Ben Riddick.

Original Spanish article, 'La mujer que vendía mujeres'