Margo DeMello, reflecting on why a Nova Scotia NGO's initiative to humanize sex workers in the minds of the public is important.
Stepping Stone’s executive director, Rene Ross, points out that every time a prostitute is killed—sex workers have a mortality rate 40 times higher than the Canadian national average—media accounts emphasize that the victim was a prostitute, but not that she (or he) was also a mother, daughter, friend or, for example, animal lover. By thinking of sex workers only in terms of their stigmatized occupation, we don’t have to care about them as people.
In New Mexico, where I live, the remains of eleven women (and the unborn fetus of one) were found buried on a mesa outside of Albuquerque in 2009. The women had disappeared between 2003 and 2005, and most, according to police, were involved with drugs and/or prostitution. Why did it take the police so long to find the bodies of these women, and why do their murders still remain unsolved? Some observers have suggested that because the women were—or were alleged to be—prostitutes, there was less pressure to find them after they went missing, or to solve their murders once their bodies were found. As long as the victims were sex workers, then the non-sex worker public can feel safe in the knowledge that they are not at risk. We know that prostitution is dangerous, so it’s expected that some of them will die grisly deaths, and be buried like trash on a mesa outside of town.
Source: Sociological Images
Yeah, it's really important to portray sex workers as people. Not just because they're actually people but because enough people seem to think they're not people that a) some people think it's really ok to rob, rape, assault, or murder them, and b) waaaaay too many other people who don't actually commit those crimes seem to agree that, yeah, it's ok to do that stuff to them. Because, as Green River serial killer Gary Ridgway put it, "I thought I was doing you guys a favor, killing, killing prostitutes ... Here you guys can't control them, but I can."
While researching this post I learned that Ridgway dumped the body of one of his victims near the parking lot of the hospital where my daughter was born -- just a nine minute drive from my neighborhood.
If that victim had been the only one, and if Ridgway was the only criminal who calculatedly chose sex workers, then maybe this wouldn't be a big deal. But as DeMello says in her article being a sex worker is 40 times more dangerous than the average job -- more dangerous than coal mining, more dangerous than crab fishing in the Bering Sea. They're people. They should be treated like people, not garbage.
Tags:
Wow, what an absolutely
Submitted by Peter K (not verified) on Wed, 2012-02-15 08:41.Wow, what an absolutely stunning and and correct post. I have seen how the people who work in the sex industry are looked down upon and viewed as somehow less than human simply because of what they choose to do with their lives, like somehow it is acceptible to judge them based solely on that criteria alone. I have seen TV shows and articles written about the subject and either the men and women are treated as social diseases or as jokes.
I have met and partied with strippers that had higher moral standards than women I have met in church who would not waste a day with getting to know you before bedding a guy down for the night. These same 'wholesome' women seem to take perverse pleasure in denigrating other women simply for what they wear our how they earn a living. A stripper values her tools.
It is no surprise to me that in a puritanical society like the one we live in that a woman (or several) in this line of work that goes missing is not missed or noticed. When we learn to respect the individual and ignore the label I think our society will be much better off.