Re: Insecurity of pro-legislation of sex work lobby

[Guest guest]

Dear Forum Members,

Re: /message/9213

Trafficking in persons is a malady everyone unequivocally condemns.

While we need to focus on apprehending and punishing (read arresting and

convicting) perpetrators, counseling and reintegrating the victim to mainstream

society is equally crucial.

Coming to the candle light vigil at Bangalore there are some aspects of it that

are obviously striking - that the vigil focused only on “trafficking and its

strong linkages with commercial sexual exploitationâ€; that there is a

deliberate effort to conflate trafficking with prostitution thus trivializing

other purposes for which persons are trafficked; and finally that there seems to

be an objection when the primary stakeholders viz., sex workers wish to

participate in the vigil and enlighten the said general public about the other

side of the debate (for that is what all this seems to be brought down to – a

debate).

To say that sex workers come from pro-prostitution outfit is stating the obvious

since people from whichever profession they belong to would come out and stand

by their livelihood option if there is large scale misrepresentation happening

about them in public.

Here of course comes the question of choice. We all do make choices in eking our

livelihood and the higher we are in the social rung, the more options we have.

Women from the lower strata do have limited choices and there admittedly are

factors which make a person choose sex work. It is not as if women walk out of

their homes and take up sex work as it is. But having tried several options, at

a specific point in life, they opt for sex work. We need to understand this in

the light of an Engineer opting for a clerks’ post in a bank or a Science

graduate selling insurance policies. Not everyone gets to take up a livelihood

that they enjoy doing or had dreamt of in their childhood. So should we damn the

sex worker for not playing the victim or crucify her for attempting to change

the “script†by saying she has chosen the profession?

Now if you ask me whether I wish my daughter to enter into sex work I will have

several responses (why is it that we need to have only one answer to a

question?) I will say - a. No, I do not wish her to enter it as there is a lot

of violence in sex work that needs addressing, b. I will wish my daughter to

have better education and better quality of life than I (now isn’t it what

every parent in the world wishes for their children? Or are sex workers meant to

be different?), c. I want to provide good education to my daughter and when she

becomes an adult she will decide what her livelihood option would be. Now why

should we hold a sex worker responsible for not giving a socially (or should I

say morally) acceptable response to this question?

Coming to the aspect of insecurity – it begs the question about who is

actually feeling insecure? A group convinced prostitution should be eradicated

seems unsettled that a group of sex workers who have the right to have a say in

the deliberation, have dared to question their convictions. Remeber, the vigil

was taken out in public and not in the privacy of a conference hall where the

question of " gate crashing " may be more aptly applied. From the story posted,

sex workers seem to have held their ground after all.

The truth of the matter is that prostitution per se is not violence against

women (then we are denigrating every sex worker who says she chose it as a

livelihood option) but there is a lot of violence in sex work which needs

stringent responses from all of us. Prostitution is not akin to slavery, but

there is slavery like conditions in sex work that needs removing.

Truth does not threaten anybody, for it is not burdened with the responsibility

of whether it is “acceptable†/ “palatable†or not. But what is

threatening is an attitude that does not respect a person’s choice of living.

It is this all-pervading attitude that dehumanizes sex workers and lays the

blame for every social evil at their doors, repeatedly questioning their

resilience to establish their agency, while this is exactly what

“rehabilitation†efforts strive to achieve - to empower the victim of

trafficking to lead an independent life.

The difference is that while the former regains her agency while still being in

sex work, the later has to opt out of sex work as a prerequisite.

In solidarity

Sreeram

Sreeram Varadadesikan

e-mail: <setlurs01@...>