SARCASM AND STIGMA IN THE WORLD’S OLDEST PROFESSION

There have been a number of positive responses to an article on prostitution written by Manori Kalugampitiya in the Ravaya newspaper some time ago. Many of these are, perhaps unsurprisingly, from men. Women, seen from the point of view of conventional morality, would tend to be critical, or would readily distance themselves from ‘tarts.’ In a country where most women silently accept official insults – such as being told what to wear when they visit schools to pick up their children -- this is hardly surprising.

The writer states that the article was a follow-up to a radio station’s discussion of prostitution and massage clinics, most of which in the public mind are merely fronts for brothels. Some of the opinions voiced ran contrary to hers; in short, they were an outright condemnation of the world’s oldest profession and those affiliated services.

There was a picture of a young woman’s face accompanying the article, with the following slogan at the top: “I choose the job that suits my needs.” Printed below, in smaller letters, was the following: “I’m working for myself on my own terms. I am a strongly-independent person. I want to be accepted by my peers. And I’m a sex worker.”

I wish everyone labouring at some nine to five (or, more often nowadays, nine a.m. to nine p.m. or nine am today to nine a.m. tomorrow) jobs could tell the same so confidently. This doesn’t mean that the slogan fits every sex worker in the world. But it is certainly a startling new point of view about a much-derided and shadowy profession.

You Tube has many videos -- ranging from professional documentaries to amateur movies -- on the subject, and it’s highly illuminating to sit through them. In one video, a Liberian woman in the country’s worst slum says she sells her body to feed her children, since her husband died in the civil war.

It reveals a forbidden, fascinating world, ranging from the heavily-made up, sexily dressed and relatively affluent sex workers featured in videos from North American cities, from highearning, sophisticated ‘call girls’ anywhere to destitute ‘street walkers’ (North American affluence is relative, of course. One documentary highlights a group of sex workers living in a New York junk yard. One haggard woman, a heroin addict, tells about her jaw being broken by a drunken client. She goes to the police and is told that she brought it upon herself by living and working in such a dangerous environment. They didn’t help her in any way).

But, whether they are alluringly dressed professionals or hungry mothers in hand-me-downs, they all face one social attitude all over the world – sarcasm and stigma. The writer has analysed the hows and whys of this problem in its many aspects, and I don’t intend to discuss them here as I can agree with them in their broad outlines.

One nagging problem in this context is that the subject can’t be discussed in rational terms. If you broach the subject, people turn coy, or want to know why, as if you have opened a Pandora’s box of dark secrets and fantasies. In my entire life, I have met just three people who admitted to buying sex (all of them lower-income people), and I don’t think I’ve moved in exotic circles of sexless people. There, I’m obviously referring to men. As for women, you can’t mention either sex or sex workers for fear of being misunderstood in general conversation (or for fear of being taken for a pervert). With either sex, any hint that you have ever been to a sex worker could ruin your image, life and respectability forever).

And yet, the subject needs urgent discussion if current prejudices are to be brought down at least to manageable levels. In this context, surfing through those You Tube documentaries mentioned above can be a big learning experience. There are interviews with sex workers (both male and female, though in this discussion we have mostly women in mind).

There are many reasons as to why people choose this profession. Sometimes, prostitution is a product of economic circumstances. There are many instances from 20th century history alone when women resorted to prostitution to feed themselves and their families – from destitute housewives in Italy and Germany during and after WWII, to poverty-stricken South Vietnamese women during the Vietnam War. Contemporary examples can be found in many third-world countries and, in the first world as well.

But that isn’t the entire story. In India, as these videos reveal, prostitution sometimes is tied to caste and is hereditary. There is one village in North India where almost an entire village engages in the sex trade. These aren’t the posh call girls of India’s big cities. Rather, they are poor women in city slums or remote villages.

While many attitudes come forth, it is striking that some Indian sex workers talk with dignity about their profession. “That’s how I managed to earn money to buy all this,” one middleaged village woman says, showing with pride the shiny kitchen utensils in her small room. In another video, one of few ‘success stories’ (in another village) has visitors coming in to admire her two-storey house with its middleclass comforts and satellite TV.

In a video made in Pakistan, a sex worker allows an intimate glimpse of her small apartment in a poor neighbourhood in Karachi. She has stopped sending her son and daughter to school because she fears that, being educated, they’ll discover what their mother actually does for a living. From Uganda, there are sex workers speaking of their rights, and police harassment (The Government officials reportedly asked their Ugandan counterparts, during their recent meeting, why Ugandans are so obedient. They should look up these videos).

It is hard to understand people who choose a profession managed by pimps, racketeers, with arrangements sometimes amounting to slavery, dealing with drunken customers and police harassment, including rape, with high risks of infection, and with income levels that keep them permanently poor. And yet, you can’t help feeling a grudging respect. (It’s no different than, say, someone giving up a job to become a three-wheeler driver, another job with high harassment, risk and abuse levels or, indeed, policemen. In what way is that a better job, for all the outward manifestations of pomp and glory? The police are usually at the mercy of politicians and earn the contempt of the public). Maybe there are rewards within these professions impossible to understand by looking at them with rose-tinted glasses, or unconcealed

One nagging problem in this context is that the subject can’t be discussed in rational terms. If you broach the subject, people turn coy, or want to know why, as if you have opened a Pandora’s box of dark secrets and fantasies

disgust.

In any case, the writer continues to expand on her initial article, drawing from readers’ reactions. The latest (on June 30) discusses the pros and cons of legalising prostitution, plus the possibility of de-criminalisation and its effects. These are worthwhile topics, and surely need some comments from this column as time and space permits.