How exactly, you ask, do women lose by the word trafficked? Quite simply, I worry that it plays into the feeling that some prostituted women aren’t  real victims. Because hey, patriarchal, individualist societies look for every possible way to make women feel responsible for their own rapes, paid or not. It’s a lot easier for the public to sympathize with someone who was held hostage by a pimp than with a young women who entered the pornstitution industry because she could not pay the bills. After all, I rose from poverty by working three part-time jobs, so if she can’t get enough money to feed herself and her child by working 80 hours a week, that’s her problem. She shouldn’t have had the kid in the first place if she couldn’t take care of her.

Even underage girls who come from abusive homes are blamed for their sexual abuse, sometimes by their own parents, as shown in the film par-excellence Very Young Girls. If someone has in mind an image of a girl kidnapped and held hostage, how is she then to understand lap-dancing as also trafficking? (As a side note, lap-dance is really such a euphemism. We need a Mary-Daly-esque word for the abusive violation it really is).

I have become increasingly concerned that the language of the abolitionist movement is confusing the public. Why not just say we are anti-prostitution rather than anti-trafficking, except that the former is more socially acceptable? If one sees virtually all forms of prostitution as trafficking, again, why not just say one is anti-prostitution instead of using the more obfuscating term of trafficking? Of course, the terms trafficking and slavery can also be related to labor slavery. Some people don’t see themselves specifically in a movement to abolish prostitution but rather to end all forms of slavery. I have absolute empathy for the  male migrant farm laborers, but I think it’s wrong to put their injustices in the same category as sexual slavery/prostitution. Do labor trafficking victims have PTSD rates the same as those of survivors of state-sponsored violence? I don’t think so. Are labor victims routinely sneered at, seen as bringing the violence on themselves, seen as not really experiencing violence? No, people on both the political left and right sympathize with their plight. Once out of forced labor, how are male trafficking victims’ relationships with others affected? Do they feel absolute dread, a tingling sensation in the back of the throat, along their spine, when having to interact with an unknown male? Female labor victims may feel this, but this is because of female-specific verbal, physical and sexual aggression that was part of their trafficking.

I have spent time in the mainstream anti-trafficking movement, and I find the people involved to be well-intentioned. I’m just not sure that their tactic of combining labor trafficking and sex trafficking is useful. Nor am I convinced that women benefit from the term trafficking, though I am willing to be persuaded otherwise.

We have different definitions of gender.  Queers and postmodernists, as well as the LGBTQ movement as a whole, sees gender as something that happens in one’s head. Various items and activities are assigned to each gender. If one hangs out in radical circles and has never strongly fit in with fellow members of her sex (in the case of women: not wearing make-up, being very into sports, not knowing “how” to dress, etc), she may start to question whether she is actually a woman. In the past, she might have been deemed a lesbian. Now, she may still be regarded as not “a proper” woman, but she has the option of not being woman-identified (note that this is NOT the same as “identifying as a woman.” Being woman-identified means identifying with women as a social class, not choosing to identify as a woman in your head). Instead she can say she’s not actually a woman at all. Thus, we end up with houses where different people, largely women, end up wanting to be called “zhe,” “they”, “hir”, etc and precious energy is spent making sure there is respect for each person’s pronoun of choice.

Feminists see gender as an arrangement of power between two social classes. This plays out differently in different places. Some examples include: rape, battery, incest, child marriage, FGM, and female infanticide. Although male supremacy takes different forms in different cultures, it still exists. The ones oppressed are still women.  How spending time making sure others use the preferred pronoun assists in dismantling this system, I do not know.

Additionally, feminists are angry that the prominent, male-based LGBTQ movement erases lesbian feminism. Today’s generation of women is taught to believing they cannot love other women unless they are “born that way”. Yet, we know that both women and men’s sexuality is capable of change. Indeed, lesbian existence more generally is erased under the LGBTQ label. There tend to be special groups for the other letters of the alphabet, but the needs that lesbians have, as women loving women in a patriarchal society, are completely dismissed by LGBTQ groups.

The vast majority of people self-identify as non-gendered are FAAB. It is important to look at who is doing what to whom. All of us are assigned a sex at birth and are forced into gender roles to go along with it. But, it is females who get the raw end of the deal, because virtually every part of  modern society is male-dominant, male-centered, and male-identified. Men have nothing to gain by seeing themselves as ‘non-genedered’ and a whole lot of entitlement to lose. But women are using this stance as a kind of personal escape route in an attempt to get out of the position of fuck-object. Additionally, demanding respect for one’s pronoun choices may be the first time a woman actually voices demands on her behalf.  Being vocal about one’s choice of gender is a way to feel empowered without having material power.

Personal solutions don’t bring down the system. Some, if not many, of the women who declare themselves outside of the gender binary do so at least  in part because they know just how brutal the system of gender hierarchy is. They want it to end, but how does one do that? Declaring oneself outside of the gender binary can make sense from this perspective. However, one has to ask what this is doing to really threaten power structures of oppression. Is a man not going to rape a woman because she self identifies as genderqueer? Somehow, I don’t think so. And when she is raped, she will still be raped as a woman.

This is because, under male supremacy, women are fuck-objects.  When men are raped, they take the social role of women as a rape victim. Men know this; to take but one example, a man raped in Abu-Grahib said a male soldier drew a woman on his back before he raped him. To the rapist, this man was socially male. It wouldn’t have mattered one iota whether this male “identified” as outside the binary; this would not have stopped his rape. (Keep in mind the likelihood of an individual male being raped in a male-prison is the same as a female being raped under what we currently call free conditions).

It’s much, much harder to think about creating a broad-based social movement to end the subordination of women to men than to make the personal choice to identify as outside the gender binary. The feminists that I know do not fit into some stereotypical feminine ideal, but they  don’t say doing so in itself is a political act. Not shaving one’s legs or wearing make-up, etc. are forms of individual of resistance that can help give women the self-respect to work on attacking larger political institution. But for that, we need an actual social movement.

None of us “consent” to gender. An argument I sometimes hear from trans* folks is that by not calling them whatever they wish to be called, people are imposing their will on them without their consent. I find this argument absolute ludicrous. As I have discussed previously, the entire argument in favor of “consent” uses an anti-feminist framework. Consent is not of importance under conditions of inequality. There are those who believe it’s perfectly fine for women to consent to being murdered and used for porn, as I learned recently (if you want details on that quote, email me). Next, none of us chose our gender, nor did we choose to be born under male supremacy, white supremacy, and capitalism. What is important is how we behave in our attempts to change such conditions.  Couldn’t it also be said that forcing women to accept people raised as men into our bathrooms is non-consensual? But somehow, the idea of women’s consent holds no importance in this case. Consent is a favorite word of rapists, and feminists reject it.

Feminists are not enforcing the system of gender by stating that women and men are social groups; it is male supremacy that creates the caste system in which women are fuck-objects. To bring down the system we need to dis-identify with it; in other words, women need to identify with their own social group. Men need to admit they have privilege and work with other men on figuring out the root sources of male entitlement and domination. (HINT!! Rape culture needs to stop! Men need to stop owning women’s bodies, whether via rape or FGM).

Once again, I ask you: how can we bring down patriarchy if some women won’t even say that they’re women? A social movement cannot happen until we name and describe reality. The gender we are is one such (social) reality. Getting together with other women to talk about our lives may not be as much fun as “fucking” with gender (who is the one getting fucked, I wonder?), but it is essential in working towards an egalitarian society.

For more on how patriarchy operates as a structural system, I recommend Marilyn Frye’s Politics of Reality and Allan Johnson’s The Gender Knot.

Earlier this year I read and reviewed Rachel Lloyd’s absolutely excellent book, Girls Like Us.  For those not in the know, Lloyd is the founder of GEMS, the only alternative to incarceration for young women convicted on prostitution charges in the state of New York. Young women (up to age 21, I believe), may be provided housing by GEMS for a short period of time, or they may be mandated to attend the programming, say, twice a week. There are support groups where the women are open about their struggles; GEMS staff also provide assistance finding jobs, going back to school, and making sure the women have proper identification/social security cards, items their pimps often steal.

Despite my love of GEMS, and in spite of the fact that I was glued to this film, I have some real problems with the paradigmof Very Young Girls.

The opening ten minutes of a film are supposed to reel the viewers in and foreshadow what will happen in the film. In the opening scenes of Very Young Girls, we are introduced to young women who have attended GEMS, but we are also shown footage from two pimps’ home video.  They go out and find a girl to get in the car with them. One of them proudly says to the camera:“This is before. We’re gonna show you the aftershot, after she get made, she get paid, you understand?” The girl–and I use the word girl, because she really is that young–looks absolutely terrified. One of the pimps berates her, “You can fuck for free but not for money?!” Because obviously, all the girl is good for is fucking, whether paid or not. We see the grooming process at work here, as the pimp says, “You’re gonna make me money by selling your what?” And she answers, “I’m gonna make money by sellin’  myself.” (So much for the idea that women don’t feel their bodies are sold while prostituted).

Since the girl refuses to be sold, the pimp slaps her, but not without a warning that, “I’ll be back.” How can a girl, or a grown woman for that matter, carry on with her life after knowing there are men around willing–wanting–to make money off her very being? How can she live knowing her “no!” will not be respected?

This is how it is for young women on the street; there is always the fear that their pimp will find them; the threats of murder they frequently receive are backed up by actual assaults. At one point in the film, a GEMS staff member poignantly notes, “I  haven’t had to attend a funeral…yet.” Pimps, such as the ones described above, are a major reason why the women end up dead–or if lucky, “only” beaten ’till they pass out.  However, the johns also play a major role in why these women end up dead, with severe pelvic trauma, PTSD, and on and on and on.

We also are shown footage of a john school, where men convicted on prostitution (johnstitution?) charges can attend an eight hour class, after which the charges against them will be dropped. A woman with the criminal justice department gets up to speak, during which a man interrupts by raising his hand and saying, “Question: When is the break?” The other men in the room laugh approvingly. The disrespect shown towards women (a man spoke previously and was not interrupted) is heartbreakingly obvious. But then, prostituted women already knew that.

My main problems with the film come after the opening segment. The entire focus is on the women! If someone doesn’t know anything about sexual slavery, this film might be a good place to start. However, I believe the men are represented more in the following trailer than they are in the movie as a whole:

All of the girls shown in the movie are under 18 when they entered prostitution. In some cases their entry was by physical force as in the case of Nicole, shown at the end of the trailer above, who is arrested after being inducted into sexual slavery and gang-raped by a group of men. Other women are running away from abusive home lives; pimps drive around looking for easy prey:  these girls are it.

The director, Schisgall, chronicles the struggles the girls go through after entering GEMS.  The pimps have become a father-figure to the girls, someone who provides the illusion of love they never had while in their parents’ home. As in any relationship, there are warm, fuzzy moments, which are easy to cling to as a girl struggles to exit the life with no money, no clothes, and often no identification. If under 18, she may not even be allowed at local homeless shelters. It is obvious to the outside viewer that the pimps are  manipulating these girls; thus, the fact that the young women are so easily swayed into seeing the good sides of these men, even to the point of leaving GEMS to go back to them, may seem ludicrous to viewers who lead more privileged lives.

Hearing the individual stories of the young women in the film is powerful. However, when Schisgall focuses on the relapse into prostitution of one of the girls, attention is diverted away from the capitalist, male supremacist system she lives under. It would have been nice to see Schisgall provide more of a systemic analysis of not only the girls’ behavior, but also that of men. What in our society tells men it’s okay to rent a woman’s vagina, anus, mouth, and hands?  What function does this play in keeping patriarchy going?

While I think this movie definitely provides good discussion material for home showings, the discussion is going to end up being about the girls and possibly their mothers (for whatever reason,their fathers are never shown in this film). I also fear that the focus on underage girls who are depicted as having absolutely no options but to enter prostitution will lead middle-class folks to believe that that’s all very sad, but those older girls (really just a few years older in many cases), well, they’re a different story. They CHOSE IT!

I know after the film was released, GEMS received a wealth of support, both material and via volunteers. For this, I am very, very happy. However, feminists point out that women are the ones who end up doing the caretaking work after other girls and women endure male violence. Amerikans are happy to give money to GEMS, but would they give money to an organization such as End Demand Illinois, that takes a more systemic approach to the hell of prostitution? Are Amerikans, and well-intentioned people around the world, ready to hold men accountable for their actions? Are we going to hold employers accountable for discriminating against women? Are we going to hold  the government accountable for not providing adequete subsistance to those on welfare? Many prostituted women end up on welfare, perhaps because they experience PTSD worse than that of combat veterans.

Holding a movie screening and discussion is a start to discussing male violence against women, and showing Very Young Girls is a good way to support GEMS. But we need to demand again and again that the focus be turned to the system of patriarchy and capitalism rather than any one person’s individual choices.

I also realize that exercise, as in, taking time out from one’s day to perform specific exercises, is rather classist. Like “working on a tan,” the emphasis on a thin body is part of the way women with money can differentiate themselves from those of the lower classes. If one must work all day and then cook, and take care of one’s own children when is there time for formal exercise? Additionally, if one is just scrapping by, it is unlikely she will have the money to work out at a gym. Thus, she will not have access to all the various equipment to work the different muscle groups that a more wealthy women will have access to. True, she can go running (again, if she has the time), but in the long term, running is very bad for the knees. I know women who have even had to have surgery on their knees due to their frequent running.

However, exercise can be dangerous for women in other ways than simply damaging the body in ways that can only be repaired by expensive surgery. For women who have the time and money, exercising in a gym sounds lovely….in theory. However, as most gyms have both male and female participants, the gym experience can be  outright hellish. At the gym I used to attend, one of the male employees did things such as mock the women’s exercise classes and come up to various women absorbed in reading while exercising to make suggestive comments. Most horrifically, though, on more than one occasion, this man entered the women’s locker room, claiming he thought no women were in it (yeah…that makes sense). Of course, half-nude females were horrified that this man would just walk in, marking his territory in this way.

I wanted to complain to the manager about this man….but then I found out, this man was the gym’s manager.

Like other women, I have been pursued by men while just trying to work out. Often this is in ways that are very frightening. Men may not understand this fear (unless they actually listen to women, that is) because there is always the threat of violence behind even moderate sexual harassment from men. How are we to know which men are going to go on to assault us? And really, why would men think women go to the gym….to get dates?! Um, what about those of us who are already in a relationship? Are celibate and/or lesbian? Just not interested in dating right now? Or actually at the gym to get a workout? But no–every place is one to hook up with women under male supremacy.

I can recall a young woman attending my high school who said she stopped going to the gym because of the way men would drill their eyes into her.  This is totally inappropriate behavior to direct towards any woman, not to mention one under eighteen. Do women drill holes with their eyes into men they find sexually pleasing? Not likely, and if this does occur, it isn’t going to carry the same very real threat of violence that a fixation from a man does.

I no longer belong to the gym, but I enjoy going for walks. The problem with this is that I have to be careful where I walk. Not only that, but I have to always be on guard for who is around me. The place where I live is surrounded by hiking trails. I would love to go exploring these, but I’m not about to do so by myself, especially not while listening to music. It really is too bad because some of these places are so very peaceful. And yet, I know at least one woman who was stranger-raped in this area, which makes every man I see feel all the more scary.

I feel a great deal of anger at men for creating this system where I have to be afraid when just walking outdoors.

In summary, men benefit from imposing exercise on women in that, more often than not, women internalize shame for not exercising or not having the “right” body, BUT if we do exercise, reaping the feel-good rewards of it, we are likely to experience sexual harassment, at a minimum, from men.

I am interested in hearing your stories about the role exercise plays in your life. Have you been part of an all women’s sports team, which in turn helped you build camaraderie and sisterhood? Has taken martial arts given you strength? Whether your experiences are similar or different than mine, I’d love to hear your story.

Noam Chomsky is perhaps the most well known of men on the left. I have listened to quite a few of his talks as well as perused his essays online, and I very much enjoy his work. He really limits his scope, though, to U.S. foreign policy, even though he professes a libertarian-socialist economic tradition.

Awhile ago, I came across a response to someone who had asked him about domestic violence. I, of course took this to be a question about men’s violence against women. Instead, it was about the state perpetuating violence against its own citizens. Yet for women, most violence is truly domestic, meaning coming from inside the home. Chomsky could have mentioned that some groups, including women, live under much more of a state of terror than do, say white men, but he chose not to. This is a major critique I have of his work: he treats all citizens as though they are equal, unless, say, he happens to be talking about undocumented folks, but then undocumented women and men are treated the same. He repeatedly mentions the probability of environmental catastrophe, but leaves out that in parts of the world that have been impacted by environmental catastrophe, such as Haiti, women have experienced the worst effects. Come to think of it, I don’t recall him even mentioning the rapes by U.S. soldiers against women in countries “we” have invaded…or the rapes of male U.S. military personnel against their comrades in uniform.

I feel like asking, “Don’t women count….anywhere?”

And then I saw the video below where Chomsky speaks out against porn. FINALLY!!!!

And then I wondered: if he gets it, why, oh why doesn’t he use his privileged position to speak out to other leftist men? If they’re going to listen to any leftist, surely it would be Chomsky.

Recently, someone sent me the following video of Chomsky discussing how out of touch leftists are with the problems of “the population.”

In it, he berates various groups, including feminists, environmentalists, and gay-rights activists for being post-materialist and not being in touch with the concerns of the people, who are just striving to put food on the table. Chomsky is making unwarranted assumptions here. One is that “the Left” is not also composed of the same people who are struggling to survive. Certainly, there are more privileged leftists, himself among them, but people who are homeless are often highly political, too.

I tend to agree that fighting for same-sex marriage is not a fundamental issue for most people. Most people aren’t lesbian or gay and frankly, Amerikans are a conservative bunch (not to mention that the fight for gay marriage itself advances a conservative agenda). I have trouble believing the fight for transsexuals to get into female-only spaces is really a priority for most of the population, despite what transsexual advocacy groups profess.

My main problem, though, is that once again he is lumping “the population” into one group, making no distinctions about the 20% or so of Amerikans now reliant on food stamps to eat. Since women are paid less than men, it only makes sense that more women would be on food stamps than men, especially women who are not partnered with men. What about all the women turning to selling the only thing they have–their bodies–to put food on the table for their children? What about battered women for whom it is very difficult to leave, at least in part because their partner has made them reliant on his income? What about the fact that women have a “double-shift,” doing unpaid work at home after coming home from a paid job? Not to mention that stay-at-home fathers actually do less housework than fathers that work!

Women are more than half the population, so it is high time our issues get addressed as  the stresses facing “the population.”

I feel like a lot of what feminists, do is vent, because there simply aren’t a lot of victories for us, and there’s a whole lot of dead female bodies and intense female pain. Perhaps this is why so many women attempt to ignore men’s violence against us; if male supremacy is a thing of a by-gone era, my brother isn’t hurting anyone by getting a lapdance. If women are no longer subordinate to men, my sister must have done something wrong to get those black and blue marks on her neck. However, I question how many women actually are ignorant about men’s violence. I think it takes a lot of effort to attempt to ignore the violence in front of your face. Is it more work to ignore it or to fight it? Which one pays off more–for both the individual as well as for the group? Food for thought…

For better or worse, I have never gone along with the  “ignorance is bliss” set described above. Thus, I decided to splurge my $$$ and attend the Woman’s Day of Action at Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Unfortunately, the WDoA was not advertised, or at least not advertised clearly, on official OWS sites. I do not blame the organizer’s for this; for events that matter to people (read: men and those with male-identification), events have a way of getting out. Seems anything with the smell of “woman” is not going to be placed front and center. Hell, we can call women cunts, sluts, whores, pussy, sex-kittens, cumdumsters, or, at best, “girls,” but never Women. When no one wants to say it, it’s a damn powerful word, and one to reclaim, in my opinion.

I arrived at Grand Central Station and meandered around for a bit. I recalled reading in Rachel Lloyd’s book of a teenage girl running away from an abusive home who found a pimp within minutes upon arriving at Grand Central. Of course, he presented himself as a kind man offering a girl in the cold a free meal. As I glanced at the men around me, I wondered who was there looking for prey.

In my case, though, I had friends to meet. And a warm place to stay in the city.

As I walked over to the rally with my friends, I regretted not bringing feminist fliers. There were already women passing out some, but none of them highlighted the sex industries to the best of my knowledge.

My friends and I arrived a bit late; I’m not sure how many speakers had already taken their turn, but we arrived just in time to be informed that women-only tents are oppressive to gender-noncomforming and trans individuals. Indeed, the speech we arrived to hear talked more about trans individuals than female-born persons, who are actually most people who pass as women.

Then a male-to-transsexual person spoke. This person mentioned that Transgender Day of Remembrance had just passed; once again, turning the attention away from women.  If transfolks JUST had a day of mourning/recognition of loss, can’t non-trans women have one damn afternoon to talk about our own issues? Honestly, it probably wouldn’t matter so much if transgender/transsexuals attended events for women (assuming they’re not womyn-only), if they didn’t always have to turn the attention to themselves. Trans issues do not benefit women, and therefore need to be discussed elsewhere. Women who support transgendered persons or identify as such are free to attend the many, many thriving trans events, centers, and festivals to discuss their issues. Feminism shouldn’t be about women begging to get a turn at the table.

Since I’m in Bitter, Angry, Man-Hating feminist mode, and unabashedly so, I’ll continue: The M2T also talked about “survival sex work”done by (really, TO) transsexual individuals. Of course, this happens, and it is through this survival method that transfolks are often murdered. Yet born women, too, engage in “survival sex work,” and in much higher numbers than the transsexual community. It is unclear to me why the M2T who spoke thought “sex work” should be decriminalized. Presumably, members of the trans community would be murdered in small numbers if everything that happened to them was legal. Or at the very least, they wouldn’t be arrested. I do support the decriminalization of people selling sex; they absolutely should not be arrested. But as it stands now, in the U.S. prostituted women are 4 times more likely to be raped by cops than arrested by them.

Furthermore, prostitution is de facto legal in the U.S. Porn is legal, strip clubs are legal (with rules varying in some counties), and massage parlors and escort services are listed in phonebooks throughout the country. While there were women from the a women’s socialist group carrying signs saying “Unionize sex workers!” I am not against this. Women should be free to form unions. Will it make one iota of difference in how men treat them? Oh, I forgot, men have SO much more respect for women once we’re joined together in unions!!! In countries where unions for prostituted persons do exist, almost none of them actually join the union. Because they don’t want to believe they are really in this, like as a REAL JOB for any length of time. What women want most is to GET OUT. And it is our job as feminists to provide compassion, acceptance and material support if we have it to exiting women.

There is nothing shameful about being in “the life.” The shame lies belongs to the sexual predators, more kindly known as “johns.”

There were definitely some fierce women at the rally (here’s one), and I enjoyed hearing them speak. However, I wish one of them had specifically addressed the sexploitation industries.

After the speak-out, the mixed-gender group marched to Liberty Square, which should probably renamed Tyranny Square, as it is closely guarded by cops. We were even escorted by male cops on our march. (Even if the organizers had planned this event to be womyn-only, I somehow doubt the NYPD would have obeyed). I did hear from someone else there were women-officers present, but I did not personally see them. It was fun to do the chants, but I left the city feeling disappointed. We need Women’s Days of Action much larger in size than this one and spread throughout the country, and the world. We need more womyn to be outspokan man-haters, women who will gain a cult-like following as in the case of Valerie Solanas. This is not to say ALL women need to be man-haters, but just as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King played off of each off, so can militant women and less man-hating ones.

This isn’t sexy work.* But then, we were always meant to be more than sex-objects.

Love,

An enraged feminist

* I got this line thanks to Itoro Udofia’s piece in the radical feminist publication Rain and Thunder.

P.S. I’m still glad I went to the rally/march, and I may have more to add about the thoughts it brought up for me at a later point.

And yet, I also find myself wondering why there is no  Day of Remembrance for survivors of the Longest War ever, the War on Women.

I know, I know the answer to that: because women are not yet respected. If we were respected, there would already be such a day, or perhaps such a day would not be needed, since men would be overflowing with respect for women, and women for one another.

Yet, I can’t help but envision what a Remembrance Day for Women might look like.

We could celebrate all that’s been done to combat men’s war on women.  We could celebrate the women in our lives by taking them on picnics. Perhaps this picnic could take place at a playground, so children, especially, girl children, would have the time of their lives. We could  create unique badges of honor proclaiming how each woman in our life has helped us.. We could also have different medals for being survivors of various types of men’s violence–and there would be no shame in wearing them, for there would be no shame in being a survivor. The shame belongs firmly to the perpetrators; this is something we would all know in every cell that runs through our beings.

I’m sure women have many, many more ideas than these. But I imagine something celebratory and non-competitive. Something where no woman would walk away feeling alone or less-than.

As I said previously, this day would not be about fighting and winning, but about celebrating. It would be about giving us energy to continue our hard work in the Battles we fight everyday, small and not-so-small.

I know we have International Women’s Day, but what about a day to celebrate us…to acknowledge our history as survivors and thrivers?

As we don’t currently have this Veteran’s Day, why not call attention to the women survivors of male violence this Veteran’s Day? We should also include women military personnel who have had to endure male sexual violence while in the military. Carolyn Gage writes about her own idea for doing such here. At least at one point in time, women weren’t staying hydrated in order to avoid walking to the latrines alone at night, where they were likely to be raped. And what about the prostituted women used by members of the arms forces? Are these women to be forgotten while we memorialize the men who raped them? Just recently, I learned about women from China being sent to U.S. forces in Iraq for sexual servicing. And as shown in the video above, the occupation of Iraq has made it easier for Iraqi men to prey on Iraqi women as well. I, for one, in no way want to take part in memorializing the men who participated in raping women while abroad or who take pride in making it easier for other men to rape women.

When all is said and done, as the human race, we have a lot of remembering to do. One thing to keep in mind is this: What is remembered is in itself political.

This post was inspired by a conversation with a friend in an airport. An announcement was made that there would be a special room to honor vets–this was not on any holiday that I am aware of–and she pointed out that survivors of the Longest War in history were being excluded.

“I want to give an example of Stark’s brilliant stream-of-consciousness, literary and spot-on accurate portrayal of PTSD. This is an excerpt from the chapter titled “Age Twenty-five.” A little backstory: When the heroine was ten her father made her wear a purse, where he would put the nickels he gave her after sexually abusing her. Now, she is in a women’s bookstore attempting to purchase a feminist novel:

“Sarah rings me up That’ll be 1.95 with tax I give her two dollars five cents is your change she drops a nickel so shiny and bright into my hand I freeze the nickel rolls off my hand onto the counter I stare at it I want to tell someone something the nickel circles itself on the counter looking for a place to settle I don’t move What’s going on Tara says somewhere over my shoulder I stare at the nickel spinning in a spot next to the pile of bright pink A Room of One’s Own bookmarks I shake my head I don’t want them to think I’m crazy don’t want them to know a nickel dropped out of the sky into my hand made me want to die Keep the change I grab the book walk under the shimmering crystal into the street”

Read the rest of Gage’s write-up here.

If you haven’t checked out the website Sisters Underground, you really ought to. They have a link to a Powerpoint Presentation strategizing ideas for the movement. We need you!

Even if you’re not a podcast kind of gal, I highly recommend listening to Meghan Murphy’s radio documentary on the medicalization of women’s sexuality.  In the first part, a woman talks about how sex, specifically PIV sex is being used to promote health. In the case of cancer, women who have PIV are told they are healthier than lesbian or celibate women. The media messages are everywhere, as you’ll be reminded in this interview. Radio broadcasting doesn’t get much better than this.

PLUS: Looking for something more than male-run occupations? Looking for ending capitalism in a more effective manner? Check out DGR’s ideas, and help make them go viral! Another up-and-running site, focused purely on the bringing feminism to the “occupy” movement, is OccupyPatriarchy.

Imagine, if you need to imagine, growing up in a home with an alcoholic mother, one who swallows pills while you’re right in the room. Rather than ask for help, she encourages your young, teenage self, to go out clubbing, so she, unbeknownst to you, can die. This is the world that Rachel Lloyd, author of  Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale, an Activist Finds her Calling and Heals Herself
grows up in. Girls Like Us is the best book I’ve read in a quite some time. It’s around 250 pages, but the reading goes quickly, at least if you’re like me, and not sickness nor homework can make you put the book down!

For those of you for whom the name “Rachel Lloyd” does not ring a bell, Lloyd is the founder of the organization GEMS. GEMS assists girls and young women in getting out of “the life,” a name commonly used to refer to the world of paid rape (i.e. prostitution). While most of the book focuses on the individual stories, struggles, successes, and relapses, of girls in GEMS, what makes the book so powerful is that Lloyd interweaves her own tale of sexual exploitation and trafficking to make her points clearer.  While arguing against the glamorization of pimping, she also explains that girls stay with their pimps for a reason. Indeed, Lloyd asks: why is it that the feminist movement no longer blames women for staying with batterers, but still sees women as making a choice to stay with a pimp? She also points out that pimps provide girls with things they desire, material things such as food, clothing, and shelter, but also a feeling of home. She describes girls who are found by pimps the first hour they get off the train after running away from a home that was not really a home. Pimps do not have to provide adolescents and pre-adolescents with much for them to feel cared for. Indeed, one GEMS participant describes going to a “fancy restaurant” for dinner; Lloyd later finds out the restaurant is Red Lobster, a popular chain restaurant in parts of the U.S.  As I have been in an abusive relationship(s), this analogy made a lot of sense to me. Not everything was bad all the time. But eventually there becomes a point where the cons outweigh whatever one is getting from the relationship.

While Lloyd does describe pimps as an integral part of the lives of the girls she works with, it is important to note that not everyone who is prostituted has a pimp. Sometimes women end up prostituting themselves, for any of a myriad of reasons, most especially money, mental illness, and addiction.  This may occur after pimping. I don’t want readers who have prostituted themselves for money or any other reason to feel badly reading this, as selling one’s body simply could not happen if there wasn’t a demand for it. Nor if women weren’t solely seen as The Sex Class.

Lloyd discusses choice in a brilliant way. After leaving a mother that could not take care of her, Lloyd ends up spending all day in a German city, desperately attempting to find a job.  As she is not old enough to legally work and can only speak a word or two of German, she gets turned down from absolutely every place she looks for work. Without money and desperate for food, she sees a sign that says, Girls, Girls, Girls. This is how Lloyd makes the “choice” to work in a strip club–only until she can earn enough money to go back to her mother–but ends up meeting her pimp, JP, there (75).

Lloyd writes, “For a long time I’ve felt guilty about the way I entered the sex industry.” She has been told straight out that since she was “older” than most of the girls she works with (seventeen) “obviously she made a choice (77).” This kind of judgement is exactly what survivors fear from telling “square” people.  This is not even to mention how harshly women judge themselves for their “choices.” That is why Lloyd tells the young women of GEMS that they need to forgive themselves in order to alleviate their profound sense of shame. Lloyd says to them, “Whatever you thought you had to do to survive or stay alive, it’s okay (77).”  She does note that it’s easier to see the girls lack of choices as just that when looking at them from an outsiders perspective; when looking at one’s own life, it’s easier to say, “why didn’t I do X, Y, or Z?”

Lloyd’s book focuses on underage girls, even though Lloyd herself fights for abolition for all women and prostituted persons. She wonders why there are people–and I have encountered them as well–who think it’s perfectly fine for a 16-year-old to make the “choice” to enter the sex industry, when most parents are wary to give their car keys to a child that age (80)! Even if an adult woman does “choose” to enter the sex industry, there is no way she can no what she is getting herself into, or how she will never quite fit into the square world again.  Always, there will be a wall, thin as glass, between you and the outside world.

For example, when Lloyd began working at the strip club, she had no idea this would eventually lead her to JP, who attempts to kill her on several occasions. With a knife at her throat, Lloyd must repeat that she loves JP and will not be unloyal. This begins at 3:14 a.m. and she must continue repeating the words, knife at throat, until 8:30 in the morning (151).

Lloyd describes another near-death experience, when a man she is seeing, Mike, drives her to a ditch in an attempt to murder her. However, she begs him to believe her when she says there is no one else she is seeing, and he “relents”–by making her take her shoes and socks off and run after the car for well over an hour. Lloyd’s feet are covered in blood by the time this exercise is over. Once back on the road with Mike, she runs out of the car and escapes to the police station.  The police bring in Mike, but he makes up a story that she likes rough sex, and male cops being male cops, they buy it (122). Notably, there is a woman officer at the station who believes her, but she is not able to make the cops arrest Mike. Nor is she able to make Mike give back all of her savings he stole, which he now claims are his.

Although Lloyd leaves out many of the details of her time in the life, these stories by themselves are obviously incredibly disturbing. What kind of person would just say “prostitution should be decriminalized!” after reading this book, I find myself wondering. And yet, Lloyd has faced criticism from the left, apparently for being too religious. I find this extremely odd, because Lloyd rarely discusses religion, and certainly doesn’t preach it to her readers. If one actually reads her book, one will see she finds people who care about her in the church community. This acts as a crutch for her to move forward with her  feminist and progressive, passions. This is not to say finding a higher power isn’t helpful to her, as it is to many people–including women and men in groups such as A.A.

I worry those who read this review will believe it is another incredibly depressing book about sex trafficking. But despite the horrors Lloyd so eloquently articulates, she is not only a survivor, but a thriver. She starts GEMS out of an act of desperation–you’ll have to read the book to find out all the details–but she now is able to provide the kind of support she would have wanted to get out of the life to female  youth in NYC.

Oh, and Lloyd writes in her Acknowledgements: Thanks to my mother for supporting me in telling my story. I love you much and always, and I’m so glad we have the beautiful relationship  that we now have. I’m proud of you and thankful you’re my mom. Truly.

It’s nice to know that some relationships are mendable.

As someone who has never had to enter the sexploitation industries, I sometimes question my own role in the movement to end modern day slavery. As sociologist David Karp writes of depression,”The only way anyone can ever get something is to be it and experience it exactly as those who live it do. Cognition alone of a human experience always falls short of understanding. Moreover, when it comes to human pain and suffering, why would anyone be emotionally predisposed to truly get it (1996:42)?”

I very much agree with Karp’s analysis here. There is no way someone who has not undergone a certain experience can truly understand what it’s like. I’m not saying that prostituted persons are a monolith, or that they agree about everything. This is not true of any group, including civilians in a war zone. What I am saying is there is a certain insider knowledge that those of us who have never experienced life in this war zone will never have. Rachel Lloyd, founder of GEMS, discusses this in her book, Girls Like Us. She talks about the girls/young women being more trusting of her because she is a survivor; at one point, she describes a group session where the girls start telling various stories about their time in the life, the awful things their pimps did to them, and so forth. They are comfortable talking about this because they all “get it.” There is no judgement here, especially judgement surrounding the P-word.

I recognize there are survivors who are okay with the use of the p-word (see here and here), but I have also heard the term “paid rape victim,” used. While prostituted  is meant to show something was done to you, if not by an individual than due to the force of money, there still is tremendous hatred of the prostituted class, and I recognize not every exited women, including those who identify as abolitionist/radical feminists, prefers this term. Referring again to Lloyd’s book, she discusses learning the phrase, “commercially sexually exploited child/youth” (CSEC for short) and discusses her attempts to get media reporters to use this friend in place of “ex-child prostitute.” A prostitute, she explains, is what somebody is, and that allows for an identity that can never be shed. Indeed, Lloyd tries fervently to shed her past by returning to school after dropping out at the age of thirteen; she ends up overcompensating (her words) and goes on to very quickly earn a Masters.

The hatred of prostituted women is everywhere, at the same time sex-for-money is glamorized on television and in movies. For example, when I search in my school database for a particular article about what women paid as escorts said about the men who paid them, what I come up with instead are articles about the (supposed) “psychopathology of the prostitute.” ALL the articles focus on the women whose bodies are in the marketplace and what is wrong with THEM; not a single one comes up looking at the buyers, though I know a few such studies do indeed exist. If women in the life are the ones with the problem, what does this say about who our society values? Need one even ask?

Because so many people–almost everyone, really–does judge former or current women in the life–why should women who have exited the paid rape industries trust me, a woman who has faced her own set of sexual traumas, but none that rival being raped and gang raped several times a week? When a female social worker employed in a drop-in center that works with women in the life  jokingly calls herself a whore because of the perfume she is wearing and says, “that’s not what I do to pick up a date,” referring to how the women she’s working with make money, why should a never-been-prostituted women be trusted?

I very much think the abolitionist struggle should be survivor run-and-led. I have seen it as my place to enhance survivor voices. However, is it not always preferable to be with one who has been through similar experiences, because there is so much that can’t be explained in words about the experience? About the anger at self and others and the total injustice, the way the men who did those things to you will never ever be bought to justice and there are no ways to describe the rage…

These is where my thoughts are right now. I hope survivors especially will reply to this one.