Prostitution is not like just any other job.
In memory of Adelina Sejdini. A hero.
If there is one occasion where I have seen a majority of men really fight for a woman’s right is for their “right” to prostitute themselves. But is this really a “right”? The term “sex worker” has taken hold and some people defend it to show off that they are open-minded and not moralistic. First of all, I question why the term “moral” has taken a negative connotation in our world. Perhaps that is the root of all our ills. I write this article in memory of someone who used the word “morality” a lot, to explain what was her life’s purpose.
Last November 5, was a sad anniversary, that of the death of Adelina Sejdini. In an extreme gesture of protest, Adelina presented herself at the Viminale, the seat of the Italian Prime Minister and of the Ministry of Interior, and set herself on fire: hospitalized, she was discharged, then a few days after she returned to the Viminale again, for a lonely protest. In a live video on Facebook, she explained that she applied for Italian citizenship because in Albania she was a dead woman, but she never received that document which would have allowed her to have rights and which would have allowed her to have subsidies, as she suffered from cancer and was considered invalid. The Italian state, on the other hand, had decided to consider her a ghost, an "xxx citizen", which means nothing. Not only it means nothing but painfully reminds you of x rated movies. Desperate, that day she arrived at Ponte Garibaldi, she watched the Tiber flow and then threw herself underneath. Adelina, whose real name was Alma, has helped many women to free themselves from the traumatizing spaces of prostitution. Her nightmare began when she was 17 when she was kidnapped in her hometown, raped in a bunker and sent to Italy on a rubber dinghy, along with other Albanian girls. For years Adelina fought for her and the other girls' liberation, she did an admirable job, arresting 40 exploiters. However, her work was not enough to make her voice worthy of being heard by the Italian state. Sadly, she died before realizing her dream of creating a reception centre for victims of trafficking and opening a textile factory where the girls would work, many of them know how to sew.
In a documentary titled “Non ora” by Andrea Liquidara, she tells her story. Adelina uses the word “morality” and pronounced by her that word shows up in all its glory. She says that her morality commands her to help others. I question whether is there anything moral about using empty slogans such as “sex is work” just to sound sophisticated and open-minded. Have these people ever reflected on the nature of this “work”? The thing is that those who are against prostitution, like me, are not so concerned with the morality of the woman who does this job. The judgment of immorality is not on her per sè, it is on the fact that sex should not be at any time a transaction. Adelina says that not even once she experienced pleasure while being a prostitute, she had her first orgasm only when she felt safe and experienced love. No matter the amount of propaganda on normalizing prostitution, I cannot buy the lie that selling your body is just like any other job.
In what other field of work, the more inexperienced you are the more you get paid? In prostitution, experience is a disadvantage. A young woman who sells her virginity online can make a fortune, but a 40-year-old woman with vast experience will earn very little. Is a client ever asking for the most experienced employee or for the youngest girl available? Would you prefer an experienced plumber or an apprentice to fix your toilet? Even, fashion models, for example, who are usually very young must learn the job to make the best of their career. An inexperienced model usually works for free until she has an impressive portfolio. This is not the case in prostitution, where the younger a prostitute is the more she will get paid. Is a woman just like a car that is more expensive the fewer kilometres it has travelled? Really?
In order for work to be work, we need labour to be performed, so a service to be given or a product to be produced. Therefore, labour is a prerequisite of work. But this is not really the case with prostitution. Because you can be drugged or drunk to the point of unconsciousness, and you can still be sold. You might participate, but you don’t have to. Your body can be used for ‘sexual acts’ even without your cooperation. The minimum condition is only that you have body temperature, and that you are alive. You are not necessarily performing any labour, you are a product yourself.
If prostitution is a normal job, would any boss comfortably ask you to sleep with customers as part of your job description? Would sex be just like any other task? Truth is that sex trade supporters are also annoyed when asked whether they would let their kids get into prostitution. They claim that they wouldn’t also like their kids to be a shop assistant or a lawyer, but would they stop their actual kids from doing one of those jobs? Prostitution is the only ‘occupation’ that responsible parents would refuse to allow their teenagers to do, even for a limited time. Another interesting thing about the hypocrisy of people against the abolitionist approach is that many researchers and lawmakers are ready to expose themselves to occupations in various industries when they are required to make professional recommendations about those occupations and industries. Prostitution is an exception to this. In recent decades, a battery of academics and lawmakers who insist that “sex work is work” has emerged. But none of them challenges themselves by actually doing prostitution for a month, a week, or even a day. How come? Also, the State wouldn’t allow that. No job centre sends women to ‘jobs’ in prostitution. Even in countries where citizens must accept any available work in order to access unemployment insurance, sex work isn’t among the options. Not even in New Zealand or New South Wales, which have purportedly transformed the sex trade into a standard service industry. In Germany, a young woman was referred to a brothel in 2005, and the negative response to this embarrassing but unique case continues to this day.
Also, is there any other job that requires the same level of extensive psycho-social rehabilitation? Sure, there are a lot of dehabilitating jobs out there. My dad is a construction worker. But I doubt he would ever need long-term psychological rehabilitation to start functioning normally again after he leaves his job. There are many physically and mentally challenging jobs, but none of them requires tens of millions of dollars in rehabilitation budgets. For example, in Israel, there was only one issue that sex trade supporters and opponents agreed on: that massive rehabilitation budgets must accompany the “Sex Buyer Act”.
It is interesting that when men defend prostitution as a women’s right and as a freeing tool they always cite high-end escorts. It would be great to know, first of all, why prostitution is predominantly a female occupation. I guess men love sex just as much as women, perhaps even more. Why they don’t deem it normal to prostitute themselves to get some extra cash then? I find it also very weird that most of the people that defend sex work are also convinced anti-capitalists because equaling sex and work would actually subject women to use their bodies the most they can in order to make enough profit. Also, I’d like to know how many of those escorts come from a family that has supported them emotionally and/or financially. In any case, escorts make up only a tiny fraction of the prostitution phenomenon and, in order to defend the false “right” of a few girls in the European metropolises to get some extra cash in fancy hotel rooms, we forget that the majority of women are forced to sex. I won’t be defending a minority when the majority is reduced to slavery.
There is also much talk about “consent” these days. People assume that if we legalize sex work this will be safer and women will be in charge. Consent relies on three pre-conditions: the freedom to choose a sexual partner, the freedom to select the nature of the sexual activity, and the freedom to choose the timing. If any one of these conditions is missing, sex is forced. That is why even as a married couple, forcing your partner to have sex is equal to rape. In the context of prostitution, none of these three conditions exists. Women in prostitution do not really choose their clients; they do not choose the timing; and, in most cases, they have hardly any freedom to determine the nature of the acts performed.
As Inna Shevchenko, the President of FEMEN International Association, an international feminist protest group, said “Legalisation does NOT reduce violence. Women who bring charges against pimps and clients will bear the burden of proving that they were ‘forced.’ How possibly can a prostitute prove that she was forced to become a victim of sexual violence if this has happened in her recruitment or is part of her ‘working conditions.’ Violence is the nature of sex industry. It is a cruel lie to suggest that decriminalisation or legalisation of the whole industry will protect prostitutes. It is not possible to protect someone whose source of income exposes them to the likelihood of being raped on average once a week.”
I know that “morality” isn’t the coolest term nowadays. It is judgmental in a society that does not like “judgment” at all. It is a society that wants unlimited freedom but then suffers incredibly from not being able anymore to discern what is good and what is not. But there is nothing freeing about prostitution. Adelina said she used to wish to lose her memory so she could live a life that did not demand her to help so many others, that she could finally think only of herself. I think it is demanded of us to not only keep her memory alive but to not look elsewhere when our consciousness tells us that there are many things about prostitution that do not sit right. That there is nothing cool about covering indifference with a light of “acceptance”.
Vilma Djala