Prostitution: A Worldwide Business of Sexual Exploitation

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Many people think that prostitution is a free choice but Melissa Farley thinks differently. She thinks this because of all the research that is done on prostitution, most of the women are in it because when they were young children they were beaten or sexually abused themselves. Because that happened to the young girls, they think that they are worthless and they go to the only thing that they have ever known, prostitution.

On the view of this issue I believe the same as Melissa Farley. Before reading the article in Seeing Ourselves by John J. Macionis and Nijole V. Benokratis, I already knew that most women did it because of bad childhoods and they thought that they were worthless, but I didn’t know the extent to why they thought they way that they did. I never thought of tanning salons and massage parlors prostitution. I knew that rape happened at these kinds of places, it can happen anywhere, but I never knew that people prostituted there.

Prostitution reflects the intersection of race, sex and class oppression. It reflects race in the studies we read about in Seeing Ourselves. It says that “women of color are overrepresented in prostitution(172)’.  “96 percent of White European American, more than half of the women in strip club prostitution are women of color(172).  It reflects sex in a way that it’s alright for the women to become prostitutes. Their pimps tell them that they’ll make a lot of money and have nice things, but they accually get almost to nothing except for beatings. The girls think that it’s the only way to live and they don’t feel like they are good for anything except sex. When the girls are young before even going into the world of prostitution they are raped and molested, by family members or acquaintances. All they know from a young age is sex. Class oppression also plays a big role in why a girl is in prostitution. If a girl is poor and has little to no money, and was abused as a child whether it be sexually, mentally, or physically, she has a much larger chance of ending up in prostitution than a wealthy girl who has everything she wants or needs. In a lot of countries, including out own, a lot of the high-up wealthy people looks down on the poor. They see them as doing nothing with their lives and the wealthy accept prostitution more for the poor than they do themselves.

Decriminalization and legalization differ. The way that they differ is that decriminalization says that it’s not totally criminal act to have sex for money, clothes, food, or housing but in a way its not the right thing to do either. Legalization is saying that it’s okay for young girls to go out and have forced sex with men to live. Farley is opposed to this because a girl should never be forced to have sex for money, clothes, food, or shelter. She should never have sex unless she to wants it. I agree with her on this position because young girls and women should have options. They need to know that they are worth something and they they aren’t a nobody and they can do something amazing with their lives. By LAURA

Invisible Privilege

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Privilege is often invincible because people who are privileged tend to be a part of the majority. Using race as an example people who are black, or Hispanic tend to use their race as a defining role in whom they are. When asking a white person in our culture who they are, they are less likely to use their race to define themselves. In the same context if you were to ask a white person living in Jamaica, or even possibly in a black community, or anywhere where being white is not the majority; they would be more like to use their race as a role description.  In an article I read called White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack the author, Peggy McIntosh says  “ White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.”  A good example of this is in chapter 21 of the book Seeing Ourselves when the author discusses how Andrea does not realize that having only one light turned on , on a dark day doesn’t make sense.  She does not realize that having lights on and using electricity is a privilege and an expense.

Andrea was uncomfortable in Jewel’s home because she had never been exposed to a lifestyle so different from her own. I do believe that such differences can be overcome, but it takes a lot of work in order to do so, especially for a young child. The parents have to educate her in the fact that she is privileged and that her lifestyle is not how everyone else lives. It is very hard for an eight year old child to understand that people have different life styles than their own, but over all for society I believe it is beneficial to teach the younger population about such differences. If people were to understand early on in life that people live differently than they do, then maybe the world would be a better place. Those children would hopefully grow into adults who are more compassionate and accepting of other peoples’ ways. For Andrea it was a bit of culture shock and she experienced it in an ethnocentric way which                         is understood for an eight year old. I think that Andrea’s mother could have tried more to help her understand why Jewel’s house was so different from her own and maybe she did try her best. I do think that people can overcome such differences especially when the privileged party becomes aware of their privileges. “As a white person I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage” (McIntosh, 1989)

The public school system in our society is very much a topic of privilege. I went to Lenox High School and I had a friend much like Jewel, she also went to school using a relatives address and not her own.  I did not realize it as much when I was a child, but I realize now how privileged I was to have attended such a wealthy school system. I was shocked at first when I saw some other schools in the county and how little resources they had. The schools here in Berkshire County are still not a millionth as bad as some of the schools across the country are, especially in poor communities. It is a shame that education has to be that way.

Amy Trombley

Resource:

McIntosh Peggy. White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.  Wellesly College Center for Research on Women. Wellesly, MA.  1989 p. 10-12

Invisible Privilege

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                Privilege is often invisible to people because when someone is used to a certain lifestyle they are less likely to realize what they are experiencing is a privilege. People who are born into money would be a category of people who may not be aware of privileges that they have. These people who already have money from a family business or simply a family fortune often just replace their parents at the business. They do not have the experience of working hard towards a certain lifestyle. They do not worry about how their children will grow up or if their children are attending a bad school due to a bad community. People who have more privileges have fewer worries and therefore do not often realize these privileges.

                In the reading it was very clear that Andrea was very uncomfortable in Jewel’s Newark house. To Andrea, simply having two or more bathrooms was not a privilege or a luxury it was just the way their house was. When Jewel showed Andrea the second bathroom which was located in the middle of the basement made of four pieces of wood Andrea just didn’t understand, as the authors says,  “Jewel’s pride was my daughter’s terror.” Another example was that when Andrea first entered the house she couldn’t understand why, on such a dark day, only one light bulb in the house was on. To many people lighting has moved from having a functional use to be used more for decoration, and in many houses lighting is very abundant. I think that in some cases social differences as described in this reading can be overcome. If the friendship was merely between the mothers in this situation I feel that the friendship could have gone on because they were two grown women that were able to appreciate and recognize the differences in their lifestyles. But in this case the two young girls were the close friends. As the author says, “It was unreasonable for two eight-year-old girls to be able to negotiate each other’s worlds.”  I think that because the two young girls were so young and their lifestyles were so different that many aspects of each other’s lives would make the other girl uncomfortable.

                An element of privilege in my own life was attending a private school throughout middle school. While in the school I hated that I did not attend a public school like many of my friends. But now I understand that it was a privilege to attend the school because of the smaller class size. When I went to a public school in high school I found that it wasn’t as easy to get one on one help by the teachers because of the amount of students they were teaching. This did affect my relationship with others because transitioning from a small private school to a public school was in many ways difficult. Most of the student in the school had already established “clicks” and there seemed to be little room for new people.

Thinness

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Thinness seems to be a very big obsession in society now a days. Different races all seem to be striving to be thin as their role models, TV and famous people are. In the book I found that the numbers were definitely very large in the different races striving to be thin. I think that the way the book makes it seem is everyone wants to be perfect and have a certain look as the people they recognize do. I believe this is very unhealthy and people should not perceive thinness as a good thing, but rather to be healthy and thin would be much better than being too thin and unhealthy and wanting to be something that you can not become. BY ERIN

Thinness

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Looking at chapter 7, Cultural Obsession with Thinness: African American, Latino, and White Women by Becky W. Thompson, we learn of the three theoretical models used to explain and treat eating disorders. The biomedical model offers great insight medically about binging, purging and starvation. However if fails to actually help the person. It ignores social, historical, and cultural factors that we know play a role in this disease. The psychological model uses a combination of biological, psychological and cultural issues however still ignores, race, lesbian and the working women/poverty.

Thompson claims that through her studies she finds that many of these women if not all of them use their eating disorder as a coping mechanism. Could be to deal with having been sexually abused, being poor and the every day stresses of that life, being gay or suffering from racism and the feeling that they need to fit in with the “skinny white girl”. While I find all of these issues absolutely true to playing a role in why girls suffer from this awful disease, I do feel that Thompson missed a few crucial points! It is also possible that girls and women who believe they need to be thin may not have had a serious trauma in their life. They may suffer from extremely low self esteem. They may not have a horrible home life but it may also not be very supportive either. For me personally, I suffered with body image as a teen. I was athletic, never overweight nor underweight and short. As young girls that’s what we do. We look at other girls and compare ourselves. We look at the awful mass media that we can’t escape and compare ourselves to them. Thankfully I had a supportive mother and father who told me I was beautiful and distracted my mind with much more important aspects of life. As I just mentioned Mass Media, also has an effect on this disease. The media needs to focus, focus, focus on health, health, health, and stop defining people as either being thin, average, or overweight. Those are negative mantras that we focus on and we know that when we focus on negativity we get negativity. If the media and society as a whole were to focus on the words healthy and went from there, I would like to think that would have a more positive effect on our young men and women today who suffer from body image issues.

I included a link that I thought was an interesting read.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-religion-thinness/201001/stop-criticizing-your-body-and-start-critiquing-our-cultures-devot

Thinness

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Seeing Ourselves chapter 7 is titled Cultural Obsessions with Thinness: African American, Latina, and White Women by Becky W. Thompson.  In this article Thompson explores three theoretical models used to explain eating disorders.  The first of these models is the biomedical model, claiming there are scientific ties to physiological reasons for eating disorders.  The second model is psychological model claiming eating disorders are more a matter of the pysche.  The third model is Gender Specific and Cultural stating that eating disorders are primarily found in women and those targeted by cultural ‘bullying’.  I believe that regardless of gender, race, class or experience, anyone with an eating disorder fits into all three of these models.  If a patient suffering from an eating disorder was to be treated with all three models in mind, I believe they would recieve a well rounded and helpful treatment.  As few as one of these three models or as many as all three could contribute to an individuals illness but at some point a patient will probably experience all three.  It is a matter of mind, body or spirit and this is used to break down or explain many dilemmas. 

The article also ties sexual abuse to eating disorders.  This part was extremely new and interesting to me.  In todays media it is most typically the relation of culture and what is described as “beauty” that plagues individuals and most often is what leads one to an eating disorder.  Before this article I had not heard of the research linking sexual abuse to eating disorders.  It absolutely makes sense and I believe deserves much more attention.  Typically, when a victim has experienced abuse he/she tends to feel disembodied or senses loss of control over the body.  This means any weight gain or loss does not affect them in a way it would another individual with a “normal” connection to the body.  Ongoing sexual abuse can also lead to the victim feeling as if their being less sexually attractive may help to stop the abuse.  If a young woman developing hips and breasts could cut down on their size by starving herself, the victim may feel she could lose appeal to the abuser. 

Racism and classism contributes to eating disorders in an interesting and newly researched way as well.  Certain races are expected to be thin and some are expected to be “plump”.  Many ethnicities have strong cultural ties to food.  How can women feel included without consequently gaining weight?  When it comes to class order, families climbing the social ladder usually attend many social functions laden with very delicious foods.  Who could resist?  However, as the class order of the family rises, they are seen more in the social structures of their community so the push to be good looking, thin and well dressed increases.       BY ELIZABETH

Thinness

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The three theoretical models: biomedical model, psychological model and gendered are used to explain and treat eating disorders. The biomedical model is somewhat harmful and doesn’t really explain exactly why people have eating disorders. Like the book said it doesn’t explain social, historical and cultural factors which are important to look out when researching eating disorders. The psychological model does look at and examine the biological, psychological and cultural factors, but doesn’t look at why maybe women of color; lesbians or working class women have eating disorders. And the third model used to explain eating disorders is gender which has to do with explaining why mostly women or someone with social problems that maybe have sexually based issues may have eating disorders. I do believe that this model is one that maybe most effective in explaining eating disorders. I think that mostly Caucasian and African American’s is the most common race to have issues with eating disorders. T.V and the news have a lot to do with eating disorder issues also. The thought that thinness is the in and having a little meat on your bones is out, puts more women at risk to make themselves starve or throw up. Seeing models on T.V look so thin and pretty a lot of young girls want to look just like them, and some girls think in order to do that they have to stop eating completely.

Like explained in the book 61% of sexual abused women also have eating disorders. They are closely related because people that have been sexually abused use binging as a coping mechanism. Instead of thinking about the pain of being sexually abused the block it out by not eating. I also think it can go both ways. People that have been sexually abused end up becoming obese because they use eating too much as their coping mechanism.

Racism and class is also a factor in eating disorders. Families that may have children close of age, and maybe one is skinner than the other, may put them at risk of having an eating disorder. Expecially if family members have comments like “Wow she’s prettier because she’s skinner” can have a big impact on the way people feel. BY Caroline

Caroline

QUESTION ON PROSTITUTION

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Blog discussion 4 Prostitution

This blog discussion is based on chapter 31 of the book Seeing Ourselves, the article PROSTITUTION: A WORLDWIDE BUSINESS OF SEXUAL EXPLOITATION by MELISSA FARLEY.
Answer and discuss the following questions:

Many people believe that prostitution is a free choice. Farley argues that this belief is false. Why? What is your view of this issue? How does prostitution reflect the intersection of race, sex and class oppression? In terms of the legal and status of prostitution, how do decriminalization and legalization differ? Why is Farley opposed to both? Do you agree or disagree with her position?

The students who are assigned to answer these questions are asked to do an original posts and comment on the posts of another student. Other students may comment on these posts. The instructions for these discussions are found on the class Moodle site.

Women and the Birth of Sociology

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Women are said to be “written out” of sociology’s history because they were once recognized for their work but they are not recognized as much now. They were all well known public figures at their time. Some of them were even more popular then the men of their time. These women had several things in common. They all published several books, studies, and theories. Several of them researched the problems of race and inequality. They also all visited the Hull House which was the working base of most of the Chicago women. It is important to recognize women role in society because we are trying to make a more equal society. Women worked very hard to make this world the way it is and they deserve to be recognized for it. BY MADELINE

Privilege

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1. Privilege is often invisible because those that are less privileged than others often work just as hard, if not harder, than those that are privileged which leads some to believe that they would be equally privileged. Categories of people that are more likely to be aware of privilege are the people that are not privileged themselves.
2. Andrea was so uncomfortable in Jewel’s Newark home because her home was much smaller than any home she had been in, and also much darker due to lack of lights in the home. The people at her home talked in unfamiliar ways. The whole home and situation was just so much different than anything that she was used to. I think that people can overcome the social differences described here. I think that there just needs to be an understanding of the differences and why there were these differences that Andrea and Jewel were not aware of.
3. Elements of privilege in my own life are that I attend college and my parents help me to pay. Not all parents have money to help support their children, which may lead to smart students not being able to attend college. Knowing this has affected my relationship with others because I know that I am lucky in this way and that others are just as able to attend things such as college, but just aren’t privileged enough to be able to. BY MOLLY