If Tracy Connelly were alive today and living in France, it’s possible she might have found a way out of prostitution. She would have at least known that the society she lived in cared enough to want to help her out. But Tracy lived in Australia and was murdered on July 21, by a man suspected of buying her for prostitution on a street in Melbourne.
Australia, like France, has ratified Article 6 of the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, which requires member states to take ”all appropriate legislative and other measures” to deal with the ”exploitation of the prostitution of women”.
But there is little assistance available here to help women like Tracy free themselves from that life. A small number of struggling support services get by on negligible government funding, even though there are an estimated 26,000 people involved in prostitution here.
But from next year, after the passage of legislation in the French parliament on December 4, women in France will likely find government agencies ready to assist them to leave the sex industry if they choose. Read entire article here. As published in The Sun-Herald Dec 15 2013.
See also: ‘Buying Sex should be banned in Australia’, Meagan Tyler, The Conversation, December 4, 2013
’10 myths about prostitution, trafficking and the Nordic model’, Meagan Tyler, Feminist Current, December 8, 2013
Demand Change: Understanding the Nordic Approach to Prostitution’
2 Responses
I think it’s very significant that MTR managed to get this wonderful piece published, but not just because of the generally anti-feminist Australian media. It’s an extraordinary piece because it’s part of a range of public comment MTR makes on issues affecting women and girls. As far as I know, there’s no other commentator in Australia who includes critical analysis on prostitution within their broader comment on violence against women. I wonder why this is? Could it be that prostituted women are not yet seen as victims equal to our sisters facing domestic violence? I think this piece is important for the message it sends that forgetting prostituted women in our comment on VAW issues is no longer appropriate or warranted. Prostitution is wholly part of the same schema of violence that women and girls face, and it’s about time it was mentioned regularly and openly so we can combat it along with other abuses. It’s respectful and proper to write about prostitution along with other human rights issues, I think, and great that MTR does so.
Many people think they are in the business of empowering women with ‘sex work’, yet all they are doing is formalizing the commodification of women.
There is a serious stronghold of folk who are heavily invested in keeping women prostituted. Such a serious investment means there is the most to gain by campaigning here, the most backlash but also the most illuminating needs to be done here..
These people might call themselves feminists but they are nothing more than pimps and sexists, keeping women as a second class citizenry to be used, abused, purchased and sold.
Similar to the boys who mansplain, pimps are protecting their entitlement to sell women’s bodies. Women will never be equal to men whilst any of us are still being sold. Women must have better economic choices than this.
Backlash = success. Lets keep talking!