Aspasia of La Libertine’s Salon raises what perhaps too many people, thinking it’s a just snarking, might dismiss
“Why do cops and prosecutors feel this compulsion to hold up a victimized prostitute as the only reality of a prostitute and hence, a reason why the profession should be abolished, when they don’t do the same in other cases where (usually) female-male sexual relations are involved? Why don’t cops and prosecutors who deal mostly with married, monogamous male-on-female domestic violence cases ever say, ‘Marriage is not a victimless crime. Look at this woman, really look at her. She looks like every other woman–a victim of her upbringing, a victim of her circumstance and now a victim of the government’s policy.’ Because, hey, that is very often the case in het dv cases. I know many women who have been abused by husbands who came from homes where their father abused their mother and perhaps the daughter thought, ‘oh, this is how married couples are supposed to interact’.”
Thing is, actuarially speaking when it comes to risks to women’s life and health domestic violence in heterosexual domestic relationships really is high — well below cancer and heart disease but right up there with all other causes. So it’s not so much that the risks of sex-work are overrated as the risks of non-sex intimate relationships are drastically underrated.
Funny how it’s just the nature of the twittery vs. substance fallacy that people (myself not excluded) would get all frissiony about the safety of sex-workers (oooh,sex crimes… as if most violence against prostitutes occured during commercial sex) without bothering to put it in the context of the safety of all women in relationships.
(Via Amber Rhea.)
Submitted by 2541 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-11-29 13:46.
Hello figleaf. But how do you know what is a 'high' rate or what is 'underrated' when you don't have a reliable baseline? In evaluating statistics, you have to know the basic rules, and we don't, here. Who represents the norm? Maybe you're right, but I need to see how you got there.
Best, Laura http://www/nodo50.org/Laura_Agustin
[Hi Laura. I have no idea what the actual numbers are -- and I agree it would be good just to figure out how to figure them out. The point, however, is that one of the arguments used against sex work is that sex-workers (by which at least in the States is usually meant visible, subsistence/streetwalker prostitutes) are subject to a great deal of violence. Aspasia, responding to that assertion raised a point about domestic violence. I then mentioned that perhaps *because* sex-work is stigmatized there's a general tendency to sensationalize violence against sex-workers and deemphasize domestic/intimate violence. In other words it's not so much the exact figures or even the exact ratio so much as it's the differential bias against violence in "approved" and "disapproved" contexts. Thanks. --fl]