Using Prostitutes is Abuse Against Women

I have had the pleasure of meeting & working with, in my domestic violence advocacy work - a number of former escorts and/or strippers. Most are quite intelligent having been drawn into a world they had no idea how to get out of.

Almost all of them suffer from permanent, irreversible damage to their reproductive system.

Almost all of those I know tell me while they didn't abuse alcohol or street drugs - they did abuse prescription drugs in order to deaden their emotional connection to the men they "serviced."

Almost all had their pat "stories" to tell their clients to help sanitize the paid rape.

All said to me they lied to their clients about how "great" they were or how much they enjoyed the session and what they did for a living.

Almost all suffered from some form of poverty, and after leaving "the business" now have: post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, mood and dissociative disorders as consequences of prostitution.

All needed a lot of help to leave that life.

I have come to understand that prostitution in ANY form is: sexual harassment, rape, battering, verbal abuse, interpersonal violence, a violation of human rights, sexual abuse, a consequence of male domination of women and a means of maintaining male domination of women. I include cybersex in this as a form of mental and emotional RAPE.

I don't care what ex-clients say or their attempts to santize their "needs." If someone gets to the point they need to go to a prostitute - they should call a therapist first. It changes the way these "hobbyists" look at and deal with ALL women (even the 'normal' ones).

Using prostitutes is sexism and violence against women. It's selfish and it's sick.

Yes, I am angry at how women are treated and made to feel its ok to sell their bodies to regain some "power" over men. Or that anyone would do something so intimate with another person they just met 5 minutes ago and thinks its o.k. because they are "paying for a service."

This past summer I attended to a number of domestic violence work conferences & meetings around the U.S.; some where we sought to establish stricter penalties for the clients of sex workers. All too often the arrests are on the supply side while the demand side gets a pass. Supply side is where the money is but demand side will not stop until we, as a society, make it clear to our lawmakers that the laws in place need to be enforced and penalties stricter. John Schools should not just be for the clients of streetwalkers but the clients of high-end escorts or massage brothels as well.

While prostitution in Israel isn't illegal - its wrong. It's VIOLENCE against women and violence against the sacred nature of sex and your own body.

Women trafficking to Israel drops sharply

Report compiled by Knesset division reveals no women smuggled into Israel caught since beginning of 2007, but infiltration of asylum seekers grows dramatically
Yael Branovsky

The smuggling of women for prostitution and of drugs from Egypt into Israel has dramatically declined since the IDF has taken over the border nine months ago.

However, the infiltration rate of asylum seekers through the southern border has significantly increased over the same period, a new report compiled by the Knesset's Research and Information Center revealed Sunday.

The report was drafted ahead of a joint discussion of the Committee on Drug Abuse and the Subcommittee on the Trafficking of Women set to take place Monday.

According to the report, since the beginning of 2007, 898 people were smuggled through the border from Sudan, 430 were smuggled from Eritrea, and about 40 of the infiltrators caught were from Georgia, Romania and Turkey.

The report stated that no women were caught being smuggled into Israel to serve as prostitutes in the last nine months, but head of the shelter for victims of women trafficking in Israel Ruth Davidovich claimed that some 30 women were currently staying at the shelter, and that most of them were smuggled through the Egyptian border.

The committee members are scheduled to discuss the urgent need for a fence to be constructed along the border to stop the infiltrations and smuggling. Other topics on the agenda would be the frequent violent clashes between Israeli security forces and the smugglers, and the need to boost forces on the Jordanian border, which is also exposed to smuggling.

The report stressed that despite Israel's substantial efforts, the border remained volatile, with smugglers becoming more sophisticated and using more technologically advanced methods.

SOURCE