Friday, January 22, 2010

Behind the myth of the "happy hooker"


HTP Community Comment:


The so-called "nation wide survey" referred to here was conducted by Melissa Farley, IIRC, and has severe methodological problems. To put not too fine a point on it, Farley mostly interviewed prostitutes who were in rescue organizations. A similar analogy would be studying marriage by only interviewing women who were in shelters for battered women.


Prostitution is, in many ways, a bad job. It is NOT, however, synonymous with slavery or trafficking as the author of the above article makes out. Bad and tenacious science which greatly exaggerates the dangers of prostitution does nothing to help us to stop trafficking as it reroutes anti-trafficking resources into, essentially, anti-vice programs.

- Dr. Thaddeus Blanchette, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro


From the Global Post:

By Kate Transchel

Generating an estimated $32 billion dollars annually, human trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal activity in the world today. It is also the most lucrative. According to a 2005 International Labor Office (ILO) report, just a single female held for sexual exploitation yields an average of $67,200 annually in Western Europe and North America.


A multitude of recent studies try to explain why women get snared into the trade in flesh. Researchers point to poverty, chronic unemployment, domestic violence and drug addiction as the primary “push factors.”


But sadly, there isn’t enough discussion of the real root of the problem — the men. Human trafficking is basically international sexual terrorism perpetrated against women and children on a mass scale by men. It is their demand for illicit or predatory sex that generates huge profits for the slavers and leaves behind the tortured minds and broken bodies of those women and children they violate.


According to a 2008 study by the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, the majority of men who buy prostitutes do so in order to obtain sex they are uncomfortable asking for. As one interviewee put it, “I want to pay someone to do something a normal person wouldn’t do. To piss on someone or pay someone to do something degrading.” The same study revealed that johns subscribe to a tremendous amount of denial — 87 percent thought women choose prostitution, “just like any job,” and 64 percent believed that the women they bought were sexually satisfied by the encounter.


Read the full article

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:22 PM

    The so-called "nation wide survey" refered to here was conducted by Melissa Farley, IIRC, and has severe methodological problems. To put not too fine a point on it, Farley mostly interviewed prostitutes who were in rescue organizations. A similar analogy would be studying marriage by only interviewing women who were in shelters for battered women.

    Dr. Thaddeus Blanchette, FFederal University of Rio de Janeiro

    Prostitution is, in many ways, a bad job. It is NOT, however, synonymous with slavery or trafficking as the author of the above article makes out. Bad and tendacious science which greatly exagerates the dangers of prostitution does nothing to help us to stop trafficking as it reroutes anti-trafficking resources into, essentially, anti-vice programs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dr. Blanchette is entitled to his opinion, but I am wondering why HTP chose to feature his unsubstantiated criticisms and assumptions as part of the post, rather than leaving them in the comments section. By giving Blanchette a prominent position to deride the survey by Dr. Farley, HTP is in essence advising readers to disregard the article itself. Hardly what I would consider a responsible editorial decision.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dear Spartacus,

    I will substantiate my criticisms, if you like. Farley's work has been thoroughly critiqued by many social scientists and other people involved in the anti-trafficking debate. The best critique has been offered up by Ronald Weitzer, here:

    http://web.archive.org/web/20060111065947/http://www.woodhullfoundation.org/content/otherpublications/WeitzerVAW-1.pdf

    If you would like to discuss Weitzer's critique or would like to know more of mine, I'd be happy to discuss it.

    The tldr version is that Farley cherry-picked her respondents.

    ReplyDelete