Rehabilitation: such an old-fashioned concept. If you want out, that’s different

I’ve been thinking about the different kinds of help sex workers are offered. The old-fashioned term still being used around the world is rehabilitation. – surprising, really, since the moralism behind it is so overt. That is, to talk about rehabilitation is to say that one’s present self is a mess, one is living some wrong way, one is self-harming and so on. Within that frame, rehabilitation means We will help you get clean and healthy. That’s good if you feel unhappy about your present lifestyle yourself – morally, I mean. The usage meant to replace rehabilitation talks about Exit Strategies, but media reporters repeat the old clichés with gusto. In a report from Korea, purveyors of rehabilitation admitted no one wants what’s on offer:

. . . Months of harsh police crackdowns on red-light districts in Jangan-dong in northeastern Seoul have succeeded in driving more than half of brothels there out of business. . . But what has been neglected is the rehabilitation of those who were “laid off.”
. . . “More than 110 prostitutes have been summoned and instructed to visit a rehabilitation center to look for a new `legal’ career,” . . . But according to a rehabilitation center run by Dongdaemun Ward Office, no prostitute has submitted to undergo either rehabilitation programs or consultation.

The office runs under an annual budget of 800 million won ($602,000), providing former prostitutes with rehabilitation programs. “We expected the number of consultation-seeking sex workers to increase but it hasn’t,” a ward official said. “We speculate prostitutes whose workplaces were disrupted continue to sell their bodies in secret rather than seek new lives and jobs through rehabilitation programs.”Rehabilitation Absent in Brothel Crackdown, Korea Times

One would hope this might have made Rescue Industry personnel pause to think, yet one described as a ‘campaigner’ said: “Most prostitutes are forced to borrow money from pimps or private lenders to be employed. At the beginning, they used the money to beautify themselves without realizing it would lead to a self-made, inescapable pitfall. When they realize it, they find themselves in heavy debt. That’s why despite crackdowns, they have no choice but to engage in the sex business to repay their debt.”

This describes a contributing factor, of course, but look what another ‘official’ says next: “The government has asked police to encourage arrested prostitutes to take optional rehabilitation programs. We need to come up with measures mandating the programs.”

Delightful – forced rehabilitation for women who don’t know their own minds.

5 thoughts on “Rehabilitation: such an old-fashioned concept. If you want out, that’s different

  1. Pingback: Rehabilitation | Rescue Industry | Sex workers | Prostitution … tuition university

  2. Thaddeus Blanchette

    Talking to johns as I do, I can say that the concept that there’s something fundamentally WRONG with a prostitute is fairly well distributed even among them.

    It’s quite hard to take seriously, actually. According to the vast majority of the guys I’ve talked to, IRL and on the ‘net, a prostitute is “sick” for selling her body. When I say, “Look I don’t believe this, but if it’s true, what does that make you for buying sex from a sick person?” I get extremely negative reactions.

    So it’s not surprising to me that societies still talk of “rehabilitation” with such naturalness. When even the clients of prostitutes believe this crap, the guys who deal with them in a much more up front and personal fashion than most rescuers, then one knows it’s hegemony.

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  3. Cliente X

    Same happens here, in Spain. Street prostitutes are fined by authorities in some towns (as Guadalajara), but they can avoid the pay if they go to a “rehabilitation” programme.

    This kind of initiatives are brought by the abolitionists organizations, which are the real beneficiaries: they get a lot of subventions in order to rehabilitate the prostitutes, money that mainly is wasted due to the very low effectiveness of those policies. Simply they CAN’T ACCEPT that these girls really don’t want to be re-educated, abolitionists prefer to live in their world of illusions than in the real life.

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  4. Cliente X

    Well, Thaddeus, here you have a john. And I think that in general prostitutes are not sick or wrong at all! In fact I belive that they live a much more healthy and natural sexuality than most people, and some of them are the cleverest persons I have ever met.

    But it’s not only me. I have meet many other clientes of them, and they agree with me. They are also friends of the girls, and have not just sex with them, they also go to eat, to dance, to shop, to watch movies, they have “normal” rellations with them.

    If you ask me I’d answer you that rehabilitation is needed, yeah… but not for the girls: it’s needed for the neighbours that hesitate them, journalists and politics that speak in such a bad way of them and specially the feminists that want to change their lifes against their will.

    Btw, if u are so interested in know what johns think, I suggest u to visit my blog (link on my name). It’s in spanish but I can understand written english reasonably well.

    Reply
  5. Pingback: Sex Work and “Human Trafficking” in Canada II: Poverty and Opportunity « Dented Blue Mercedes

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