Our Bodies, Ourselves (154 page)

All sex workers are at risk of violence—from pimps, from clients, from bosses in the porn industry, and from the police.

When I turned 18, I worked as an exotic dancer. There were several cases of women, myself included, getting attacked by clients after our shifts or if we went outside to have a cigarette. In my case, it was a client that we saw quite regularly and knew by name. The boss found out when I showed up for work with bruises, and he told me that if I reported the client to the police not only would I lose my job, but that the police wouldn't care because I was just a stripper. He then gave me three nights off with minimal pay so my bruises could heal enough to be covered with special body makeup. He was more concerned about losing money from clients than he was about the safety of his employees.

Sex workers who are prostitutes (especially those who are not free to insist on condom use) risk contracting sexually transmitted infections, including HIV and hepatitis. Most health studies so far have focused on sex workers as vectors of disease rather than as disease victims.

Sex workers, especially those who are transgender, have little or no protection from police harassment and lack police protection when victimized by crimes such as robbery, battery, and rape. The criminal justice system currently prosecutes sex workers, while the johns (those who hire sex workers) most often go free.

Activists have organized to fight the exploitation and violence many sex workers face and to change public perceptions so that police come to view prostitutes as victims instead of criminals. Some activists work in the streets to protect and to free women who are caught in sex work. They seek to create better economic opportunities for women, and campaign to eliminate the sex industry entirely. One example of such activism is the Minneapolis group called Breaking Free (breakingfree.net). An excellent film about this kind of work in Chicago is
Turning a Corner
(see Recommended Resources). See also “The Sex Trade and Feminism,” an interview with DePaul University professor Ann Russo, and other articles available on womenandprison.org/sexuality.

Could legalization or decriminalization of prostitution reduce the levels of violence and health risk faced by some sex workers? In some countries and places in the United States, such as Nevada, prostitution has been legalized. This puts sex work under state regulation and thus hypothetically ensures better working conditions. However, legalization creates a two-tiered system, in which only U.S. citizens get to register, get tested for STIs, receive safer sex materials, and work in marginally safer environments. Sex workers who are not citizens (some immigrants, for example, and those who have been trafficked) would not necessarily be covered by even these minimal state protections.

Sex workers have organized in the United States and Europe to advocate for decriminalization, the abolition of all laws that punish sex workers. In what is known as the Swedish model, some decriminalization groups seek laws that would make it illegal to be a customer of a sex worker or to engage in sex trafficking, pimping, or owning brothels. Such laws, which aim to reduce the demand side of prostitution, would put the johns, rather than the sex workers, at risk of being arrested and fined. Others believe that only complete decriminalization of all parties involved in sex work could create safer working environments. As of 2011, only a handful of U.S. states have ended the practice of prosecuting minors under age eighteen on prostitution offenses and instead focus on offering them protection and access to services.

The most important step in ending violence against women is to stop people from using violence to get their way. For some women, learning
self-defense boosts physical and emotional self-confidence. The actual use of these skills when we are in danger is a choice made at a particular moment. We each make the best decision we can based on our resources and knowledge at the time.

The study of self-defense includes many activities: assertiveness training, exercise, and boxing and other sports that promote self-confidence, self-knowledge, and self-reliance. Self-defense is not simply responding to violence with violence. Self-defense classes may help us think clearly if we are under attack, so that we can mobilize our thoughts, assess the situation, judge the level of danger, and then carry out the response we have chosen.

I have experienced such profound changes in my self-image and in the way that I see the world and relate to people that I really can't separate my study of self-defense from the rest of my life.

© Rex Raymond / IMPACT Personal Safety

Myths can prevent us from defending ourselves effectively against a physical assault. These include the belief that we do not know how to defend ourselves, or that the assailant is invulnerable. Women have defended themselves against attacks through both resourcefulness and force.

Street techniques, which depend upon surprise and causing damage, do not work as well against repeated assault by people with whom we live. Other skills developed in the practice of self-defense may be useful. As we develop abilities to think quickly and clearly, and to find sources of help, we will be able to consider how we might resist or minimize the abuse or how we might eventually leave the abuser and the violence behind us.

Over the past forty years, women have focused much effort on the problem of violence against women and have made great progress.

We have talked openly about our experiences, built rape crisis centers and shelters, advocated for changes in laws, been joined in our efforts by men, and become recognized as part of the international public health and human rights movements. We have also influenced other survivor movements, such as the one working on abuse by clergy. For more information about the history of the movement to end violence against women, see “Ending Violence Against Women: A Brief History” at ourbodiesourselves.org.

There is still much to be done. We need to:

• Recognize that violence against women is a risk throughout the life span, and advocate to
make necessary services available to women of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds.

© Belinda Gallegos / 1199SEIU

Women take part in the Brides March Against Domestic Violence in New York City in 2010. The march was started ten years earlier in remembrance of Gladys Ricart, who was murdered by an abusive former boyfriend on the day she was to marry her fiancé.

• Speak out against the messages in our society that glorify and encourage violence, domination, and exploitation.

• Teach and model nonviolence.

• Intervene whenever we see the seeds or expression of violence against women, realizing that our silence helps to perpetuate it.

• Strengthen family, community, and neighborhood sanctions against violence as opposed to relying exclusively on the criminal justice system.

• Work to maintain a strong network of services for all of us who are at risk of and who have survived violence.

• Insist that our government officials take violence against women seriously and make it a key part of their agendas.

We must pursue our vision of a violence-free world loudly and clearly. Noeleen Heyzer, the former executive director of what is now known as the United Nations Development Fund for Women, describes that vision:

Imagine a world free from gender-based violence: where homes are not broken into fragments; where tears are no longer shed for daughters raped in war, and in peace; where shame and silences break into new melodies; where women and men gain power and courage to live to their full potential.
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CHAPTER 25
Environmental and Occupational Health

Every day I see research linking chemicals that pollute our environment with adverse effects on women's reproductive health, from infertility to birth [impairments] to early puberty in girls.…I am convinced that countries that do not protect the Earth will not protect their women, and countries that do not protect their women will never protect the Earth. The time has come for the U.S. to enact policies that do both.

—Alison Ojanen-Goldsmith, in “young Feminists—Poison Earth, Poison Woman: Making the Connection.”
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W
here and how we live and work have a direct impact on our health. We absorb chemicals, toxics, and other manufactured
hazards found in the home, workplace, and environment through the air we breathe, the products we apply to our skin, the substances we come into contact with, and the food we consume.

Occupational health and environmental health are sometimes considered separate fields of study, and different government agencies deal with each: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) focuses on workplace health and safety, while the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) works to protect the environment at large. Yet many of the problems in both arenas are similar and overlap. For example, chemicals that put workers at risk in a manufacturing plant are likely also to contaminate water supplies and threaten air quality. So decreasing the use of toxic substances in the workplace protects not only workers, but also people who live nearby, as well as consumers who purchase products made at the plant.

Occupational and environmental hazards affect many aspects of our health, resulting in a myriad of cancers, neurological disorders, allergies, and behavioral changes. In 2010, the President's Cancer Panel (PCP) stated, “The true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated. With nearly 80,000 chemicals on the market in the United States, many of which are used by millions of Americans in their daily lives and are un- or under-studied and largely unregulated, exposure to potential environmental carcinogens is widespread.”
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An increasing body of scientific evidence points to the connection between the health of our environment and our reproductive health and the health of our children, including elevated rates of cancer in reproductive organs, premature births, miscarriages, and birth impairments. In keeping with the focus of this edition of
Our Bodies, Ourselves
, this chapter focuses on the impact of environmental pollution on women's reproductive and sexual health.

Children often experience worse effects than adults exposed to the same damaging substances. Children are smaller and have more vulnerable immune systems, and their metabolism, physiology, and biochemistry are different from adults', so these contaminants can cause greater damage to the nervous system, brain, reproductive organs, and endocrine (hormonal) system. Fetuses and babies are much less able to metabolize and inactivate dangerous contaminants. Many sensitive and important chemical and hormonal processes take place from conception through adolescence and can be interrupted or affected by harmful exposures. Perversely, some of the worst chemicals and contaminants in use today are present in children's products, toys, and foods. As the number and concentration of chemicals have increased, so has the number of childhood illnesses: Leukemia, brain cancer, and other cancers linked to environmental carcinogens have increased more than 20 percent since 1975.
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