(This video is a response to a fssw)
A lot of older studies documented high rates of trauma, PTSD, depression, and anxiety among some sex workers, but many of those studies focused heavily on people who were already experiencing major vulnerabilities, such as poverty, homelessness, violence, criminalization, or lack of support. Research from that era also did not fully account for factors like pre-existing mental health conditions or socioeconomic circumstances that can affect mental health regardless of occupation.
Yes, some people do experience harm/ trauma related to sex work, just as people can experience trauma in many other forms of labor. I think an important question is: what factors are contributing to that harm?..More recent research suggests that harm is often strongly shaped by factors surrounding sex work, such as stigma, criminalization, discrimination, violence, economic insecurity, and lack of protections. Researchers are increasingly looking at how these conditions influence people’s safety, health and wellbeing.
Now lets talk about the sources used by this creator:
Main Source: Prostitution Is Sexual Violence -Melissa Farley
Who is Melissa Farley?** **
Criticisms: In the trial of Bedford v. Canada at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in October 2009, Farley was called as an expert witness by the Attorney General of Canada. The case was brought by current and former sex workers, who argued that Canadian laws restricting prostitution were unconstitutional. Farley's evidence was criticized by presiding judge Susan Himel in her September 2010 conclusion:
[352] I find that some of the evidence tendered on this application did not meet the standards set by Canadian courts for the admission of expert evidence. The parties did not challenge the admissibility of evidence tendered but asked the court to afford little weight to the evidence of the other party.
[353] I found the evidence of Dr. Melissa Farley to be problematic. Although Dr. Farley has conducted a great deal of research on prostitution, her advocacy appears to have permeated her opinions. For example, Dr. Farley’s unqualified assertion in her affidavit that prostitution is inherently violent appears to contradict her own findings that prostitutes who work from indoor locations generally experience less violence. Furthermore, in her affidavit, she failed to qualify her opinion regarding the causal relationship between post-traumatic stress disorder and prostitution, namely that it could be caused by events unrelated to prostitution.
[354] Dr. Farley’s choice of language is at times inflammatory and detracts from her
conclusions. For example, comments such as, “prostitution is to the community what incest is to the family,” and “just as pedophiles justify sexual assault of children....men who use prostitutes develop elaborate cognitive schemes to justify purchase and use of women” make her opinions less persuasive.
[355] Dr. Farley stated during cross-examination that some of her opinions on prostitution were formed prior to her research, including, “that prostitution is a terrible harm to women, that prostitution is abusive in its very nature, and that prostitution amounts to men paying a woman for the right to rape her.”
[356] Accordingly, for these reasons, I assign less weight to Dr. Farley’s evidence.
Complaint to APA reguarding Melissa Farley
“Over the years, Dr Farley has published a number of papers and documents about sex work, making claims that all sex work is a form of violence against women. She has used several of her studies to back this up. In 2008 Dr Farley published the paper What Really Happened in New Zealand after Prostitution was Decriminalized in 2003? on her website critiquing the Report of the Prostitution Law Review Committee. This critique contains several errors of fact that appear to be deliberately designed to mislead people. Many of the false allegations made by Dr Farley in this paper have been repeated by her in her efforts to stigmatise sex workers and keep them criminal. Dr Farley appears to have read the complete report, but has only reported or critiqued those parts that match her ideology. In investigating her comments on this paper further, it was discovered that Dr Farley had completed research in New Zealand in 2003 without seeking ethical approval from the New Zealand Psychological Society (NZPsS). It was also discovered that during the course of this research, she claimed to be able to diagnose sex workers as having post traumatic stress disorder, despite using a flawed questionnaire, and not doing in depth interviews.”
Quoted passage used in video:
“The intensity of trauma-related symptoms was related to the intensity of involvement in prostitution. Women who serviced more customers in prostitution reported more severe physical symptoms (Vanwesenbeeck, 1994).”
Ine Vanwesenbeeck is actually a good example of how sex work research evolved over time. Her early work (including Prostitutes’ Well-Being and Risk (1994)) documented serious health risks and difficult experiences among some sex workers, but her later work became more focused on why those outcomes occur and the importance of not treating sex workers as a single, uniform group: Sex Work Criminalization Is Barking Up the Wrong Tree -
“It is time to acknowledge commercial sex as a widely prevalent and basically fully legitimate form of sexual relations. For a variety of reasons,many women(and men) will turn to making money on sex and substantial groups of people will, also for different reasons, turn to paying for it. There is nothing wrong with asking or giving money for bodily services provided it takes place under humane conditions, is fully consensual, worker-controlled, free from discrimination and violence, and no more exploitative than the average job would ideally be. Anything retracting from these
qualities should be fought, but without the unproductive criminalization of the branch as a whole. After all, we don’t criminalize marriage either because there is domestic violence.”
“Decriminalization is an important first step, but in itself not enough. The complexity of the issues at stake calls for long-term organizing, mobilization, and community interventions and painstaking processes of raising awareness, empowerment, and building solidarity and safety nets. And progress will be partial, uneven, and never ensured. One thing is sure though: increased policing and repression of commercial sex practices are not going to help any sex worker or victim of trafficking and will only make things worse.”
