The Question of Rescue (Sex Work)
Hi all,
The Question of Rescue
By MATT STEINGLASS
New York Times
July 24, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/magazine/24ENCOUNTER.html?
(Full text of article is behind the cut tag.)
In early May, when the government of Brazil rejected
$40 million
in American AIDS financing because of restrictions the
United
States would have imposed on groups that work with
prostitutes,
Rosanna Barbero gave a quiet cheer. She had been there
before.
Barbero is the head of Womyn's Agenda for Change, the
leading
advocacy organization for sex workers in Cambodia. WAC
teaches
the country's many prostitutes to organize and to
improve their
working conditions, and it has spun off a sex workers'
union
that now claims 5,000 members. Starting in 2001, the
U.S. Agency
for International Development supported Barbero, with
about
$73,000 over three years. Then in 2003 Congress
mandated that
any organization receiving U.S.A.I.D. assistance
declare that it
''does not promote, support or advocate the
legalization or
practice of prostitution.'' Technically, WAC doesn't
do any of
this, but in practice, it would have had to break with
the sex
workers' union. Barbero went to the union's elected
leaders --
five women and two srey sros, or
transvestite/transsexuals -- to
ask what they thought she should do.
''They said don't take the money,'' she recalls. ''I
remember
one said: 'Do they think we're worse than dogs? How
can they
tell us all this time that we have to stand on our own
two feet,
and now suddenly say they can't work with us?'''
Barbero, 40, is a diminutive Australian with a
singsong accent,
a warm, informal, hippie-ish air and a gift for the
creative use
of obscenity -- something you acquire, apparently, in
her line
of work. When she first came to Cambodia in 1992, she
had no
intention of working with prostitutes; she was doing
research
for her thesis in Asian studies. What she found was
that
peacekeepers and aid workers affiliated with the
United Nations
were fueling a sudden explosion in prostitution.
Assessing the
situation, she came to see sex work as an
understandable, if far
from ideal, response to poverty: ''If you have
nothing, what do
you do? You sell sex. That's what's left.''
WAC is a kind of nonjudgmental, antiauthoritarian
sanctuary for
these women. Its headquarters, a double-decker barge
moored on
the Tonle Sap River, was previously a floating
discotheque --
one of those, in fact, where Barbero used to watch
U.N.
peacekeepers cruise for girls. Now a visitor might
find anywhere
from a half-dozen to 50 women sitting in a circle on
the dance
floor, holding a meeting. Some might be prostitutes
discussing
how to avoid being raped, while others might be
laid-off
seamstresses brainstorming about a campaign against
Levi's. (WAC
also works with garment workers.)
''This is one of the most amazing things you'll ever
see,''
Barbero told me on one visit, pointing to the
anti-Levi's
garment workers, who were working on a mobilization
strategy.
''You can't do a demonstration in Cambodia. So they've
decided
to form a girl band.''
By tacitly accepting sex workers' choice of
livelihood, WAC
stands on one side of a growing divide among aid
groups. Since
the U.S.'s policy shift, more and more of the other
groups
working with sex workers in Cambodia are what are
often known as
''rescue'' organizations. The rescue groups, like Agir
Pour les
Femmes en Situation Precaire and the Christian
evangelical
International Justice Mission, contend that sex work
is
virtually always oppressive and that many or most
prostitutes
are trafficked into the business against their wills.
Both
organizations investigate brothels for evidence of
trafficking
and assist the Cambodian police in carrying out
spectacular
raids, springing prostitutes into safe houses where
those who
wish to leave sex work are given vocational training,
often as
seamstresses. The two groups receive substantial
U.S.A.I.D.
money.
These raids are controversial. After one A.F.E.S.I.P.
rescue on
Dec. 7, an unidentified mob attacked the group's safe
house and
spirited the rescued sex workers back to the hotel
where they
had been working. Some days later, the unrescued women
protested
in front of the U.S. Embassy, claiming they had not
wanted to be
rescued at all. The protest appeared to have been
stage-managed
by the hotel's owners, but it illustrated how hard it
is to
determine whether sex workers are in brothels by
choice or under
duress.
No one questions the rescue groups' bravery, but many
criticize
their strategy. Rescue groups focus on prostitutes who
are
''trafficked'': those who are under-age, have been
tricked into
sex work or are held captive by force or in debt
bondage. But
such cases are a minority. A 2002 U.S.A.I.D.-backed
study found
that 20 percent of the sex workers the researchers
encountered
directly were trafficked. But because of sample bias,
the
study's author, Thomas Steinfatt, says that he thinks
the
countrywide percentage is much lower. Another study of
Vietnamese migrant sex workers, who make up about half
of the
prostitutes in Phnom Penh, found that 94 in 100 had
sought out
the work aware of the conditions they would be working
in.
Barbero supports freeing children and women held
forcibly but
finds most other rescue operations futile: ''You're
rescuing
somebody and putting them back into the same
situation'' that
drove them to sex work in the first place. The
Cambodian Women's
Crisis Center acknowledges that of 48 trafficking
victims it
helped return to their homes in 2004, some 40 percent
have
already gone back to sex work. As for vocational
training,
Barbero says, sex workers ''are all pretty damn sick
of 'We'll
put you in front of sewing machines 14 hours a day and
make you
a better woman.'''
If rescuing sex workers isn't the answer, what is?
Barbero's
response is an odd mixture of realism and utopianism.
Realistically, she argues, Cambodian women will never
have an
alternative to the sex industry until the economy
improves. But
like many in the antiglobalization movement, she
faults the
policies of the International Monetary Fund, the World
Bank and
the World Trade Organization for the country's
poverty. Barbero
has a quixotic faith that different global-development
policies
could lift Cambodia out of the economic misery that
drives women
to sex work.
Whatever the merits of its global politics, WAC is
widely seen
as the most effective organization in its field in
Cambodia. In
concert with the sex workers' union, WAC helps sex
workers
protect themselves from violent clients and predatory
policemen.
And it helps them reach out to hospital workers so
they aren't
refused when they seek treatment for sexually
transmitted
diseases. If Barbero had taken U.S.A.I.D.'s
antiprostitution
pledge, she would have sacrificed the quality that her
constituents most value: a willingness to accept them
as they
are.
As U.S.A.I.D. forces the pledge upon antitrafficking
and
anti-AIDS organizations, an increasing number are
starting to
protest: in May, 171 N.G.O.'s signed a letter opposing
it.
Congressional supporters of the pledge seek to keep
U.S.A.I.D.
money from ''groups who promote prostitution
overseas,'' as
Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania,
recently
wrote to the secretary of state. Rosanna Barbero
hardly sees
herself in that description; she says she hopes to see
the
Cambodian sex industry disappear, but she holds that
this will
be impossible until the country's overall welfare
improves.
''You're sitting in the West in a comfortable
situation, and you
think of those girls, Oh, they have to [have sex with]
10 men a
day, how disgusting,'' she told me the first time we
spoke. ''As
a woman, you think, How awful. But after years of
developing
friendships with sex workers, I see them as unsung
heroes. Most
of us, to survive in the awful situations that they've
had to
survive in, we probably couldn't do it. We have never
been in a
situation where we've had to consider, Do I sell my
body or
not?''
Matt Steinglass is a writer based in Hanoi.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
I'm bringing this up because a couple of women who I know in Michigan have individually told me recently that they are seriously considering sex work for economic reasons. That kind of blows me away. I'm loyal to my friends and I care about them, and I hate that things have gotten bad enough that they face such choices, but beyond that I have no idea what to think.
Thanks,
Lorrraine
The Question of Rescue
By MATT STEINGLASS
New York Times
July 24, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/magazine/24ENCOUNTER.html?
(Full text of article is behind the cut tag.)
In early May, when the government of Brazil rejected
$40 million
in American AIDS financing because of restrictions the
United
States would have imposed on groups that work with
prostitutes,
Rosanna Barbero gave a quiet cheer. She had been there
before.
Barbero is the head of Womyn's Agenda for Change, the
leading
advocacy organization for sex workers in Cambodia. WAC
teaches
the country's many prostitutes to organize and to
improve their
working conditions, and it has spun off a sex workers'
union
that now claims 5,000 members. Starting in 2001, the
U.S. Agency
for International Development supported Barbero, with
about
$73,000 over three years. Then in 2003 Congress
mandated that
any organization receiving U.S.A.I.D. assistance
declare that it
''does not promote, support or advocate the
legalization or
practice of prostitution.'' Technically, WAC doesn't
do any of
this, but in practice, it would have had to break with
the sex
workers' union. Barbero went to the union's elected
leaders --
five women and two srey sros, or
transvestite/transsexuals -- to
ask what they thought she should do.
''They said don't take the money,'' she recalls. ''I
remember
one said: 'Do they think we're worse than dogs? How
can they
tell us all this time that we have to stand on our own
two feet,
and now suddenly say they can't work with us?'''
Barbero, 40, is a diminutive Australian with a
singsong accent,
a warm, informal, hippie-ish air and a gift for the
creative use
of obscenity -- something you acquire, apparently, in
her line
of work. When she first came to Cambodia in 1992, she
had no
intention of working with prostitutes; she was doing
research
for her thesis in Asian studies. What she found was
that
peacekeepers and aid workers affiliated with the
United Nations
were fueling a sudden explosion in prostitution.
Assessing the
situation, she came to see sex work as an
understandable, if far
from ideal, response to poverty: ''If you have
nothing, what do
you do? You sell sex. That's what's left.''
WAC is a kind of nonjudgmental, antiauthoritarian
sanctuary for
these women. Its headquarters, a double-decker barge
moored on
the Tonle Sap River, was previously a floating
discotheque --
one of those, in fact, where Barbero used to watch
U.N.
peacekeepers cruise for girls. Now a visitor might
find anywhere
from a half-dozen to 50 women sitting in a circle on
the dance
floor, holding a meeting. Some might be prostitutes
discussing
how to avoid being raped, while others might be
laid-off
seamstresses brainstorming about a campaign against
Levi's. (WAC
also works with garment workers.)
''This is one of the most amazing things you'll ever
see,''
Barbero told me on one visit, pointing to the
anti-Levi's
garment workers, who were working on a mobilization
strategy.
''You can't do a demonstration in Cambodia. So they've
decided
to form a girl band.''
By tacitly accepting sex workers' choice of
livelihood, WAC
stands on one side of a growing divide among aid
groups. Since
the U.S.'s policy shift, more and more of the other
groups
working with sex workers in Cambodia are what are
often known as
''rescue'' organizations. The rescue groups, like Agir
Pour les
Femmes en Situation Precaire and the Christian
evangelical
International Justice Mission, contend that sex work
is
virtually always oppressive and that many or most
prostitutes
are trafficked into the business against their wills.
Both
organizations investigate brothels for evidence of
trafficking
and assist the Cambodian police in carrying out
spectacular
raids, springing prostitutes into safe houses where
those who
wish to leave sex work are given vocational training,
often as
seamstresses. The two groups receive substantial
U.S.A.I.D.
money.
These raids are controversial. After one A.F.E.S.I.P.
rescue on
Dec. 7, an unidentified mob attacked the group's safe
house and
spirited the rescued sex workers back to the hotel
where they
had been working. Some days later, the unrescued women
protested
in front of the U.S. Embassy, claiming they had not
wanted to be
rescued at all. The protest appeared to have been
stage-managed
by the hotel's owners, but it illustrated how hard it
is to
determine whether sex workers are in brothels by
choice or under
duress.
No one questions the rescue groups' bravery, but many
criticize
their strategy. Rescue groups focus on prostitutes who
are
''trafficked'': those who are under-age, have been
tricked into
sex work or are held captive by force or in debt
bondage. But
such cases are a minority. A 2002 U.S.A.I.D.-backed
study found
that 20 percent of the sex workers the researchers
encountered
directly were trafficked. But because of sample bias,
the
study's author, Thomas Steinfatt, says that he thinks
the
countrywide percentage is much lower. Another study of
Vietnamese migrant sex workers, who make up about half
of the
prostitutes in Phnom Penh, found that 94 in 100 had
sought out
the work aware of the conditions they would be working
in.
Barbero supports freeing children and women held
forcibly but
finds most other rescue operations futile: ''You're
rescuing
somebody and putting them back into the same
situation'' that
drove them to sex work in the first place. The
Cambodian Women's
Crisis Center acknowledges that of 48 trafficking
victims it
helped return to their homes in 2004, some 40 percent
have
already gone back to sex work. As for vocational
training,
Barbero says, sex workers ''are all pretty damn sick
of 'We'll
put you in front of sewing machines 14 hours a day and
make you
a better woman.'''
If rescuing sex workers isn't the answer, what is?
Barbero's
response is an odd mixture of realism and utopianism.
Realistically, she argues, Cambodian women will never
have an
alternative to the sex industry until the economy
improves. But
like many in the antiglobalization movement, she
faults the
policies of the International Monetary Fund, the World
Bank and
the World Trade Organization for the country's
poverty. Barbero
has a quixotic faith that different global-development
policies
could lift Cambodia out of the economic misery that
drives women
to sex work.
Whatever the merits of its global politics, WAC is
widely seen
as the most effective organization in its field in
Cambodia. In
concert with the sex workers' union, WAC helps sex
workers
protect themselves from violent clients and predatory
policemen.
And it helps them reach out to hospital workers so
they aren't
refused when they seek treatment for sexually
transmitted
diseases. If Barbero had taken U.S.A.I.D.'s
antiprostitution
pledge, she would have sacrificed the quality that her
constituents most value: a willingness to accept them
as they
are.
As U.S.A.I.D. forces the pledge upon antitrafficking
and
anti-AIDS organizations, an increasing number are
starting to
protest: in May, 171 N.G.O.'s signed a letter opposing
it.
Congressional supporters of the pledge seek to keep
U.S.A.I.D.
money from ''groups who promote prostitution
overseas,'' as
Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania,
recently
wrote to the secretary of state. Rosanna Barbero
hardly sees
herself in that description; she says she hopes to see
the
Cambodian sex industry disappear, but she holds that
this will
be impossible until the country's overall welfare
improves.
''You're sitting in the West in a comfortable
situation, and you
think of those girls, Oh, they have to [have sex with]
10 men a
day, how disgusting,'' she told me the first time we
spoke. ''As
a woman, you think, How awful. But after years of
developing
friendships with sex workers, I see them as unsung
heroes. Most
of us, to survive in the awful situations that they've
had to
survive in, we probably couldn't do it. We have never
been in a
situation where we've had to consider, Do I sell my
body or
not?''
Matt Steinglass is a writer based in Hanoi.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
I'm bringing this up because a couple of women who I know in Michigan have individually told me recently that they are seriously considering sex work for economic reasons. That kind of blows me away. I'm loyal to my friends and I care about them, and I hate that things have gotten bad enough that they face such choices, but beyond that I have no idea what to think.
Thanks,
Lorrraine