sex industry

Le Papier ne Peut pas Envelopper la Braise (Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers)

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:54:00 +0000

[Paper Cannot Wrap up Embers] provides a numbing portrait of the everyday lives of young Cambodian women who have been forced into prostitution in the aftermath of decades of war and genocide. Their lives are characterized by drug abuse, chronic health problems, and violence and brutality experienced at the hands of their “clients.” The film opens with scenes of a girl crying and shows the women sleeping and eating lunch with their babies at their sides.

As is common for documentaries these days, the film is not narrated and consists entirely of interviews and scenes of women going about their daily lives: eating, sleeping, putting on make up, and taking “ma” (methamphetamine) in order to anesthetize themselves enough to go to work. In the absence of contextualizing narration, and lacking an understanding of the recent history of Cambodia, it was difficult for me as a viewer to feel I had more than a very superficial understanding of the socio-political situation that has prompted such poverty and misery to become part of daily life. Instead I was simply struck by the overwhelming resignation felt by most of the women.

The women understand the reason this has happened to them is because they were born poor and they don’t see any way out of it. This is the most striking and disturbing aspect of [Paper Cannot Wrap up Embers]. Even as the women describe enduring horrific situations (and there are many in this film), they tend to do so with either an air of detachment or else with raw physical pain, as in the scene when one of the women comes back from a painful abortion and can’t stop crying, saying “It feels like my uterus has been ripped to shreds.”

In one of the few mentions of the Khmer Rouge, one woman’s mother stops by the brothel and describes how much worse poverty was during that time: “You think your life is tough? You have to put up with it! If you’d been born under the Khmer Rouge, you’d have starved to death or been executed. Today you sell yourself to buy rice by the kilo. When will all this end? I feel helpless.”

This documentary is difficult to watch because it leaves the viewer feeling helpless as well. Part of me wishes they would have ended on a more hopeful note, or suggested ways for the viewer to get involved to better the lives of these women. Films like this can be overwhelming to some people and make them prefer ignorance because of the feeling of powerlessness over the situation.

On the other hand, I think the filmmaker portrayed the situation honestly and realistically, and sometimes reality is very painful to watch. I hope [Paper Cannot Wrap up Embers] inspires some viewers to learn more about life in Cambodia and about the global problems of prostitution and sex slavery. If nothing else, perhaps it offers a shred of dignity to these women by giving them a medium through which they can speak for themselves.

Written by: Liz Simmons, September 21st 2009

Briarpatch Magazine: The Gender & Sexuality Issue (March/April 2009)

admin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:41:00 +0000

Edited by Dave Mitchell

At first glance, Canada's Briarpatch Magazine reminded me of American feminist magazine Bitch; the content is similar, the overall message is similar, and, hell, even the font in the logo seems similar. What I love about Bitch is that although it’s an American magazine, it covers issues from all over the world, so I can keep up on feminist issues all over just by checking in one place. Briarpatch does not cover such a distance, as it seems to be primarily a Canadian-focused magazine; however, I still learned a lot about some of Canada’s different subcultures.

This issue was billed as “the gender and sexuality issue,” so the topics covered were about polyamory, sex working and transsexual issues. First, I learned about Canada’s health care system in relation to transsexuals undergoing or wanting to undergo gender reassignment surgery. Unlike the United States, Canada has a government-funded health care system. It is apparently extremely difficult to get coverage for something such as this type of surgery. This was an interesting, in depth look at one man’s personal journey through this ordeal. It was inspiring, yet also sad with the hoops he had to jump through in order to become the gender he felt comfortable with.

Briarpatch also educated me about sex workers in Canada through an interview with Kara Gillies, co-founder of both the Canadian Guild for Erotic Labour and the former Toronto Migrant Sex Workers Advocacy Group. Gillies also does work for Maggie’s, an organization run by sex workers. Maggie’s includes all aspects of sex work in their attempts to advocate for these workers’ rights, such as individuals involved in pornography, phone sex workers, and dominatrixes, to name a few. It is Gillies' work with Maggie’s that is the primary focus of the article.

The most interesting thing I learned from this was that in Canada, the act of prostitution itself is actually not illegal and never was. What is illegal is negotiating for services in a public place or even somewhere that’s open to public viewing such as parked or moving cars or bars. So it’s fine to go and do the deed elsewhere but not to discuss anything such as protection, payment, or even specific services beforehand if it’s in a public area. But you also can’t technically go anywhere because your work site, if used for this purpose, could be classified as a ‘bawdy house’ and under the bawdy house law, that’s illegal too. In addition, if you participate in someone else’s activities, it falls under the procurement law. This means that you can’t do such things as advertise someone else’s services or even offer to protect them personally. But, again, the actual act of prostitution is totally legal!

This, too, was an inspiring although frustrating piece because while some of the facts were new to me, unfortunately, the overall story and public perception seems to be the same all over. On the whole, I enjoyed getting an in-depth look on another country’s struggles with the same issues as are faced in the United States, and Briarpatch was a very enjoyable read.

Written by: Jen Klee, September 6th 2009

The Chez Girls

admin — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 21:23:00 +0000

By Tyler Ondine Whitman

Parler Media

"Stripping isn't evil, it's just a thing some girls do to get by." Or is it? The overly glamorized life of strippers tells society about the money and the desire, but Tyler Ondine Whitman tells about another aspect that is often swept under the rug.

Whitman is trying to tell an untold story – with over 100 photographs and only about six-ten pages of actual writing, she captures the perfect mix of rawness and emotion needed to portray what life as a stripper is like. These photos show the true bodies of women, who are actually living the life that is only characterized on television or in photos. They aren't perfect bodies modified by plastic surgery, but, rather, they show aspects of all women of the world: large breasts, small breasts, curvy, thin. "When I came face to face with the dancers – I was shocked – none of them looked like airbrushed Barbie dolls. They looked so real."

Whitman breaks down the happenings behind the closed doors of strip clubs. She tells about the possibility of making an extra $20 here or there (all you have to do is give a client a handjob), and she talks about the prospects of Vice busting in. The most heartbreaking aspectis when we learn what Whitman faces when she becomes close with one girl: some of the strippers thought they had no where to turn, no other job prospects.

The photos are real. The grainy, black and white images are almost haunting. They depict the daily life and work of a stripper: counting her money, swinging around a pole, getting dressed, displaying her body for all to see. "I'd never actually seen a lap dance. She laid it out."

Written by: Megan Blair, July 2nd 2007

$pread Magazine

admin — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 12:43:00 +0000

$pread

There is perhaps no profession as stereotyped, demonized, discriminated against, glamorized, unregulated and controversial as sex work. As a person who lives in a liberal bubble, I was shocked to hear a segment on a local radio station the other day that asked male listeners if they would ever date a stripper. The callers’ responses were appalling; one particularly vicious man called in and proclaimed he’d “rather date a murderer than a stripper.”

This is why $pread Magazine is so important. Created by three women, it lives up to it’s tagline of “illuminating the sex industry” in a smart, realistic and entertaining way. Its content is comprehensive - including stories, news, interviews, film/music/book reviews, art, classifieds, a resource guide, comics, advice and more.

Features in $pread include those giving practical advice, such as “The Healthy Hooker” who, in this issue, was about condom use. The article gives the basics on using male and female condoms, as well as advice on what to do when or if (for a variety of reasons) you do not use one. Strategies include “getting him off quickly” (so as to diminish length of time exposed to risk), “stay wet and relaxed” (to avoid tears, which increase risk of infection) and “get immediate treatment” (from a doctor).

Other features offered insight into specific types of sex work. The cover story, “American Brothel, A Photo Essay," features the working women of a legal Nevada whorehouse. The photographs were candid, and the story was interesting. For instance, did you know that some brothels, by way of earning taxable income, support the economies of several small towns where the mining livelihood has died? Yet, the prostitutes aren’t allowed in the towns after 5pm without a sheriff or brothel manager as an escort. They also can’t go to a doctor, at any time, without an escort.

Diverse, global and down-to-earth, $pread is informative for a wide range of readers: sex workers, feminists, johns, academics, activists and beyond. Whether self-claimed or not, this is a feminist magazine and learning more about the real lives of the women and men in this industry should be a part of every feminist’s mission.

Written by: Amy Miller, June 29th 2007

Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work

admin — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 00:01:00 +0000

Edited by Melissa Hope Ditmore

Greenwood Press

Five thousand words, much less the 500 allowed here, are insufficient to review critically and appreciate properly a reference work this exciting, valuable, unique and scrupulously edited. Into two sturdy, attractive-looking and easy-to-use volumes, Melissa Hope Ditmore has assembled 341 entries from 179 experts from fields and perspectives as disparate as criminal justice and sex worker activism, pop culture studies and Asian history, musicology and English literature, cinematic studies and international health, and performance art and social services. Intriguing information is presented regarding persons such as Ah Toy, Candy Barr, J. Edgar Hoover, Catherine Mackinnon, Annie Sprinkle, and Emile Zola. Well-informed essays about the structure and function of prostitution and sex work have been contributed for cities such as Bangkok, Havana, and New York, and in geographic regions such as Australia and New Zealand, the 19th-century American West and Southeast Asia. Specific sex industries in times and places as different as Imperial Russia, Medieval Europe, Vietnam-era Thailand, and pre-Revolution Shanghai are examined in often surprisingly close historical detail. Many contributors have analyzed the “labor forms” that sex work and prostitution can take, as the anthropologist Luise White has dubbed them, such as street-walking, massage, brothels, outcall and escort services, and the venues at which they can occur - including cribs, bars and cafes, display windows, highway-stopovers, dormitories, and barracks.

“Sex work” is defined as encompassing “prostitution,” but also including "phone sex, pornography, stripping, and erotic dancing,” The Preface, Introduction and many other sections and introductions thereto make immediately evident the participation of bell-boys and blues singers, cab-drivers and clients, priests and police chiefs, alongside the expected madams, pimps and providers of sexual services. Many of the relevant mental, sexual, and public health precursors and consequences are also done justice in entries that cover sexually transmitted diseases, Tenofovir, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, microbicides, and abortion. Representations in the form of stigma, poetry, cinematic (s), exploitation, music, zoning, guidebooks and many, many feminisms make these two volumes especially useful for academics and theorists. Although selling for $225, institutions, departments, libraries, organizations and collectives will find immediate usefulness in the broad array of subjects, personalities, statutes and issues covered here quite succinctly, including primary documents, poems and song lyrics, for example, to the “House of the Rising Sun.”

In only 819 pages, and with equal parts authority and freshness, a dazzling array of intellectual, political, medical, historical and sexual concerns have been covered. Colonialism, AIDS, religion, the Internet, globalization and migration and mobility are each explored in always sober, often lively prose. Remarkably few typos mar the text, and its presentation has been augmented by helpful appendices and indexes, and by many black-and-white photos, movie stills and drawings.

The editor, contributors and advisory board members are to be congratulated also for having responsibly walked that razor’s edge of attempting to write and edit fairly about something as protean as sexual networking, something that so vividly reveals tensions between structure and agency, Church and State, labor and capital, exploitation and choice, horror and love.

Reviewer’s disclaimer: The fact that the reviewer contributed five entries to this collection has not influenced the content of his review, which was written solely to obtain a free, review copy he could not otherwise afford (or live without).

Written by: Lawrence James Hammar, Ph.D., June 18th 2007

Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalised Prostitution

admin — Thu, 10 May 2007 11:37:00 +0000

By Mary Lucille Sullivan

Spinifex Press

Mary Lucille Sullivan attempts to tackle the world's oldest profession, but provides more questions than answers. When the State of Victoria in Australia became one of the first governments in the world to legalize prostitution in 1984, both residents and the rest of the world wondered how this radical law would affect women's role in this underground, but very active workforce. Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalised Prostitution investigates whether the ladies of the night in Victoria are expanding or diminishing the sex industry. With politics and morals to divide and conquer, Sullivan leaves her readers more confused than enlightened.

Sullivan, who holds a PhD in political science from the University of Melbourne, has previously explored this forbidden topic in What Happens When Prostitution Becomes Work: an update on legalised prostitution and contributed to Not for Sale: Feminist Resisting Prostitution and Pornography. Sullivan's clear, direct and well-polished language offers no flowery, hidden messages for her audience to interpret. Like a true professional, she lays down the facts as she sees them, in most cases anyway.

The main downfall of Sullivan's lengthy text is the lack of supporting data, which is a must for any researcher. In "Setting the Framework," she begins to explain her purpose for studying prostitution in Victoria. She states, "'Sexual services ranks highest of all personal service industries in terms of revenue (reaching as high as 80 per cent) and drives the overall growth of this economic sector in general." There was no explanation of where this information came from, whether it only affects Victoria, how recent is the research or what kind of "sexual services" was she referring to. Did I also mention that this is all in the first chapter? Yes, she does raises questions about legalized prostitution, but also leaves readers wondering in places where they shouldn't be.

A more shocking example that begged for facts was her perspective on "sadomasochism as torture." Sullivan studies Susan Hawthorne's own research in S&M/B&D for lesbians. She explains, "Throughout her work, Hawthorne has documented the horrific treatment of lesbians who are tortured in families, in prisons and in mental asylums, explaining how in many countries being lesbian still carries an immediate jail sentence." Where was the evidence that either the author or Hawthorne backs up to prove that bondage play is indeed a danger to lesbians? Which women claimed to be tortured? How does S&M affects Victoria and most importantly, what does sadomasochism have to do with legalized prostitution? The list of questions keep growing, but there are no answers.

Sullivan's determination to explore prostitution laws in Australia should be applauded. However, her lack of necessary data makes her come off as a prude, amateur researcher publishing a first draft that others will mistake as a scholarly text. If she would have just backed up her theories like anyone else in her field, Sullivan's book wouldn't have fallen short from its true potential.

Written by: Stephanie Nolasco, May 10th 2007