| Reviews / Comptes Rendus | Labour/Le Travail, 54

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Kelly Gorkoff and Jane Runner, eds. Being Heard. The Experiences of Young Women in Prostitution (Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing and Winnipeg: RESOLVE (Research and Education for Solutions to Violence and Abuse) 2003)

THIS BOOK is based on 45 interviews with women from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba who were or had been involved in prostitution before age 18. Almost three quarters entered prostitution at fifteen years old or younger. The chapters address the experience of the women in relation to the exploitation and violence they suffer through prostitution, their entry into prostitution and the reasons for it, the way prostitution constructs identity for the youth involved, health issues, experience of confinement, and other responses to youth prostitution in order to work out what should be best practice. The book is directed towards solutions.

Though the experience of what the authors refer to as "Aboriginal" girls and women is not drawn together in one place in this book, it is clear both that Aboriginal women are the majority of prostituted youth in the areas where the research was carried out, and that their experience of exploitation contains some different and particularly worrying elements. Twenty-five or 57.7 per cent of the interviewees were of Aboriginal descent. These Aboriginal girls and women were most likely to see entry into prostitution as ordinary because they lived in areas of the city where prostitution took place and had family members and friends involved. They were most likely still to live at home instead of being homeless. They were twice as likely to face violence from the police. They experienced racism as an extra form of violence in prostitution. Aboriginal women were most likely not to have been able to exit prostitution and to still be working on or off the street. Of the over 50 per cent of all interviewees who took drugs, twice as many were Aboriginal. The numbers and experiences of Aboriginal prostituted women certainly suggest, as the authors point out, that prostituted girls become vulnerable not just because they are female, homeless, and destitute but because they suffer racism and exclusion. The prostitution of these Aboriginal girls might reasonably be considered to be a form of racial discrimination. The percentage of Aboriginal girls suggests, too, that arguments that prostitution can be women's "choice" are seriously flawed. Why would greater numbers of Aboriginal girls "choose" to be prostituted?

The common experiences recorded in research on the lives of adult women in prostitution were very evident in this research. Child sexual abuse was a common experience of the interviewees. Of the 33 who volunteered the information that they had experienced childhood abuse, 91 per cent were victimized sexually. Fifteen had had children while in prostitution and nine had lost custody of their children. The researchers did not ask specific questions about experience of violence but a great deal of information was volunteered on this subject nonetheless, and it confirms other research findings on the sheer weight and variety of extremely serious violence that prostituted women suffer. The women described being close to being murdered or having a partner murdered, and being raped and beaten repeatedly. They were likely to see this violence as normal or to be expected. They described becoming "numb or desensitised to the violence." (73) Twenty-two women reported violence from intimate partners, including in eleven cases being pimped by them. More than half reported violence from "bad dates," i.e. customers. The latter violence included "being stabbed or cut, raped, gang-raped, raped at gun point, forced to engage in degrading sexual acts, choked/strangled, beaten, kidnapped, stalked, gun held to head, tied up, tortured, beaten with objects such as baseball bats or crowbars, and run over." (75) One reported a customer "cut me from asshole to belly button." (75) Women talked about being abused so much that they stopped caring about their bodies or about safety. The researchers argue that the everyday and pervasive nature of the violence these women faced from all the males they had contact with needs to be considered when working out how to help women exit.

The most fascinating chapter is by Pamela Downe with "Ashley-Mika" about the "social identities" of girls in prostitution. This is very helpful for understanding why it is so hard to help girls to get out of prostitution. The girls formed their identities through prostitution. They often had a poorly developed sense of their own worth and turned "to street communities, drugs, pimps and dealers to develop personal identities and an enduring sense of place and belonging." (47) This raises problems for the non-judgmental approach that caregivers tend to adopt which is to "accept the girls for who they are." As Downe points out, we need to know how they have come to be "who they are" and indeed, though Downe does not say this explicitly, it may be necessary that they should be encouraged to become someone else rather than "accepted for who they are." The girls spoke of being "nothing" because of prostitution, of being profoundly dissociated from their bodies. But nonetheless they gained a sense of community in sexual exploitation and "the cultural currency that led them to feel as though they belonged somewhere." (50) The sense of belonging and community filled the emotional gaps they had from abusive childhoods and abandonment and made it difficult to exit despite the terrible losses that these young women suffer in prostitution. As Downe comments in relation to programs designed to help girls to exit, "We are, after all, trying to replace years of social networks that not only functioned as a background to these young women's activities but informed how these women situated themselves in the world." (61)

This chapter led me to consider the problem presented by those pro-prostitution spokeswomen from "sex work" organizations who claim to have experience of prostitution and consider it to be just fine, to be ordinary work and women's 'choice.' Some of the spokeswomen who argue thus will have entered prostitution just as the girls in this book did, and have formed prostitution identities in the same way. Their willingness to be critical of prostitution is likely to be restricted by this identity formation. Their defences of prostitution need to be approached critically when they appear to ignore or downplay the sort of very serious harms recorded in this volume.

In the book's "Dedication," the participants in the study are described as "proud and formidable." The book's contents do not suggest that this is a suitable description. But these positive terms in the dedication do suggest a contradiction in this volume. The editors say that the research team had different perspectives as to whether youth should be seen as "victims, as agents, or as a combination of both." (24) Thus a mixture of terminology is used in the book. Some researchers use the term "sex trade" while others thought this did not "capture the abusive and exploitive nature of prostitution," and used exploitation. Others thought the term "exploitation" too victimizing. This confusion relates to the problem I describe above, of knowing what weight to give to those who give a relentlessly positive slant to prostitution or seek to downplay the seriousness of the abuse involved. A pro-prostitution perspective requires terms such as "sex trade" and "agents." But it flies in the face of the severity of the experience described here. The young women are in a war zone. To whom are they formidable? Not to the men who cut them up.

The final two chapters are on solutions. One suggests that the negative effects of compulsory detention mean this is not a suitable solution. However this is a controversial issue at present in Canada with various provinces currently introducing legislation allowing compulsory detention in response to arguments from parents of dead children that detention can save lives. The final chapter points to the importance of services directed specifically towards prostituted youth rather than generic services for homeless youth. It argues that housing is fundamental to getting girls out, combined with state financial support, particularly during the crucial years 16-18 when girls tend to fall through the gaps of welfare services.

What is puzzling about the final chapter on solutions is the failure to mention that men can change their prostitution behaviour. There seems to be an implicit assumption behind this research that men's prostitution behaviour is inevitable and unquestionable. Thus the only solution to the awful violence and degradation of these young women's lives is to seek to help them to exit, one by one. But the gaps will be filled. Though the services designed to facilitate exit are limited to "children," because adult women are considered to "choose," many of the women in adult prostitution started as just the young girls whose stories are contained here. The industry of prostitution creates the harm and creates a need for more women and girls for men to buy. Though the authors say in the conclusion that a social change perspective is needed rather than "piecemeal" solutions, it is not envisaged or recommended that the buyers should change or that their behaviour can be penalized. The book's record of violence and abuse is so strong that it provides powerful evidence for the need to end men's prostitution abuse rather than continuing just to extract girls, one at a time, from the industry.


Sheila Jeffreys University of Melbourne

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.