[IPSM] Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress - Melissa Farley , in Montreal Thursday, Sept. 22

[martin dufresne]

Prostitution and sex trafficking are severe forms of violence against women

Psychologist and author Melissa Farley will be in Montreal Thursday
September 22 to give a talk - in English - entitled "Renting an organ for 10
minutes - What johns tell us about prostitution." Farley is being brought to
Montreal by the grassroots Concertation des Luttes contre l'Exploitation
Sexuelle (CLES). Both will speak Thursday Sept. 22 at 7:30 p.m. at the
Comité social Centre-Sud, 1710 rue Beaudry, Montreal (2 blocks North
of the Beaudry Metro station). Admission is free. Her speech will be
translated and distributed. Questions and answers will benefit from
simultaneous translation.

Melissa Farley is a psychologist who has done a decade of research in ten
countries, including Canada. Her work and that of 30 other writers, appears
in a recent book, Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress, (2004,
Haworth Press). Her solidly feminist analysis springs from listening to the
experience and demands of over 850 women, men, transgendered people and
children who are either trapped in or have escaped from the prostitution
network. She has especially documented the abuse of Native women by
prostitution networks in Western Canada and quoted First Nations women
when she testified in Ottawa earler this year.*

In the context of neoliberal corporations and governmental organizations
that glamorize and benefit economically from a global sex industry, Melissa
Farley speaks about the colonial, racist, and sexist nature of a system
predicated on a male buyer that "transforms women into his own masturbatory
commodity."

She, and women in prostitution, refer to the right to NOT be prostituted,
and encourage us to go further than merely offering a "condom and a cup of
coffee," and take a united stand against all forms of oppression.

A response to the propaganda minimizing the reality of "sex work," Melissa
Farley's research and writings document the psychological and physical harms
to women in all prostitution, whether legal or illegal, whether indoors or
outdoors.  Farley is affiliated with the nonprofit organization Prostitution
Research Education, which offers data on the rates of physical assault, rape
and murder that continue to be inflicted on prostituted individuals,
including in the countries where prostitution is legally ordained.

At a time when a federal parliamentary standing committee* is discussing a
possible legalization of procuring and of the street solicitation imposed on
all women by "customers," Melissa Farley notes that Sweden has legally
challenged men's constant sexual access to women and girls via prostitution/
trafficking, while at the same time avoiding further legal stigma to those
in prostitution. Farley is especially concerned about the millions of
dollars spent for the political promotion of the business of sexual
exploitation under the guise of safer sex education and condom distribution.

Advocating for real choices for women among a range of options, Farley draws
on her research to identify and denounce the social constraints that push
women into the prostitution system: child sexual assault, racism, poverty,
wife battering (including rape), lack of decent jobs and affordable housing,
sexual harassment on the job, the oversexualization of girls, etc. - facts
everyone needs to know to prevent further deterioration of women's living
conditions by the self-interested decisions of pimps and politicians.

Her material can be read at http://www.prostitutionresearch.com

*Farley's testimony before the federal committee on solicitation is online
at
http://www.parl.gc.ca/infocomdoc/38/1/SSLR/Meetings/Evidence/SSLREV18-E.HTM