Monday, October 26, 2015

Prostitution: Being Raped for a Living (from @Truthdig)

Prostitution: Being Raped for a Living (from @Truthdig)
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Tim Nolan said...

BALTIMORE—The reduction of another human being to an object and the glorification of male violence, whether in war or prostitution, are romanticized by popular culture. It is difficult to challenge the lies disseminated about “sex work” and “military virtues.” Those who counter the dominant narrative, even if they speak from long personal experience, are drowned out. Speaking the truth about war or the truth about prostitution is lonely and often futile.

Rachel Moran, who was a prostituted woman in Ireland for seven years, has done in her book “Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution” what I attempted to do in my book “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,” about the reality of war. And she has endured very similar responses. Women and girls who are being prostituted—like war correspondents and soldiers addicted to the rush of battle, the hypermasculinity and the adrenaline highs that come with war—have often dismissed her, unable to examine the darkness and tragedy of their own lives. Mass culture has largely shut out her and others who speak the truth about prostitution, just as it shuts out those who speak the truth about war. The manufactured illusion of heroes or glamorous call girls plays to a culture that celebrates the commodification of human beings. Those who have escaped the clutches of prostitution or war, often struggling to cope with trauma, guilt and shame, are reticent to resurrect in public the nightmare that will hound them for the rest of their lives.

October 26, 2015 at 7:05 AM

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