There was a very interesting radio programme recently about PTSD. It interested me because some people say that prostitution gives you PTSD. Dr Bessel van der Kolk was interviewed by Jon Ronson on his show Things Fell Apart (Series 2 Episode 6). Dr Bessel van der Kolk wrote the bestselling book The Body Keeps the Score.
Vietnam veterans often suffered from PTSD. Other professions too, firefighters were mentioned. Prostitution wasn't mentioned once. Dr Bessel van der Kolk said he didn't like it when the terms PTSD and trauma are overused and trivialized.
Melissa Farley has said that PTSD is common among prostitutes. Other psychologists have criticised her methods. It could be that PTSD is common among drug addicts, both male and female, sex workers or not. A minority of sex workers are drug addicts, so if you look in the right places and pretend they are representative of prostitutes in general you could make out that prostitution gives you PTSD.
Julie Bindel wrote an article about sex work in New Zealand. She talked to Sabrinna Valisce. Sabrinna wrote about the trauma of another woman that she witnessed in an escort agency but not about any trauma that she had herself. Yet she went along to a psychological health professional who diagnosed her with PTSD. She wrote that she had had an unhappy childhood, so maybe that was the trauma. However, it seems so many people want to think that sex work gives you PTSD.
Louise Perry in her book states "And we know that no one is going to get PTSD from making coffee". She is saying that if you are a woman and your boss asks you for something sexual like oral sex then you could get PTSD. In her mind that means that sexual favours for your boss are different from other favours such as making the coffee. Sex is different from any other activities.
That is not comparing like with like though. A woman is not going to get PTSD from being asked to wear makeup or high heels, which is the comparison you could make to making the coffee. She could get PTSD if she was conscripted into the army or falsely imprisoned as happened to sub postmasters. Being forced to have sex with the boss is on the same level as being conscripted or imprisoned. Women do have sex with their bosses though, as with Monica Lewinsky, and nobody was saying she was threatened with job loss or refusal of a good reference, so it's different for different people.
Now we have something called complex PTSD. I have just been hearing about teachers who get complex PTSD.
There is an Australian MP called Georgie Purcell who used to work as a stripper and says she has or had PTSD. She's not saying she had it because of the job as a stripper, she's saying she got it because of how people treated her after it was revealed that she used to be a stripper.
Another thing that Melissa Farley is saying is that prostitutes have a higher level of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). She did a study of "66 women who were clients of four agencies that offered services to women escaping prostitution in San Francisco, Chicago, and Toronto, Canada". 41 of the women were of African and/or Caribbean descent. 22 were transwomen.
It doesn't say how many of them were drug addicts. If they were all drug addicts then the injuries could be due to the lifestyle of drug addiction, homelessness and perhaps also street-based prostitution. They certainly could not be described as representative of prostitutes in general. Especially not of prostitutes outside America. In the US paying for sex and selling sex are illegal. How do they think that putting people in prison is going to solve anything?
Their mean age of entry into prostitution was 21. So that seems to contradict the quite common view "But the average age for entry into prostitution is 13/14. That's true for research in America as well as Europe." I found this recently on Mumsnet but I have heard it before. "This has been debunked but no one will let go of it."
Sarah Champion is an MP and she said in parliament on 19/06/2019 that prostitutes suffer from PTSD.
"Modern slavery for sexual exploitation is happening right here in the UK on an industrial scale. The impact on victims is devastating."
"Research by the European Commission [Walby et al 2016] shows that victims experience sexual brutality that causes serious damage to health and wellbeing; vaginal injuries that lead to sexually transmitted infections and HIV; and high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression."
"It is slavery through prostitution in the UK, and it is happening on our watch."
The research that she is talking about wasn't done by the European Commission, in fact the European Commission gives a disclaimer. "The information and views set out in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Commission. The European Commission does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this study." The main author is Sylvia Walby. I have written elsewhere on this blog about her.
Sarah Champion quotes Sylvia Walby almost word for word from page 14. Walby invites us to 'See chapter 4 for further details'. If you look in chapter 4 you will see research that shows some prostitutes in some countries are harmed. For example, the research by Silverman et al. 2011. It was done in Mumbai. Not only does it have no relevance to the UK but it doesn't say anything about PTSD. I am still trawling through the research but it doesn't seem to be backing up either Walby or Champion's claims.
Recently on Woman's Hour someone asked how men can enjoy watching pornography when they are watching a woman being traumatised. However, although I have come across videos where the woman is unhappy, with the vast majority of pornographic videos women are not being traumatised. I don't watch videos where women are being traumatised and neither do the vast majority of men and teenage boys.
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