“Prostitution is about men doing things they want to women’s bodies, not women doing what they want to their bodies, women don’t choose to be in prostitution, it chooses them.” Mickey Meji

Sigma Huda is a senior lawyer of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, appearing before the Appellate Division Bench for the last 49 years. Sigma has founded/ co-founded as many as 28 organisations; she is a former UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in persons especially women and children for the term 2004 to 2008; Former twice elected to Bangladesh Bar Council. In this episode she is in conversation with Mickey Meji, a feminist, abolitionist, and human rights and gender activist. She has significant professional and personal experience in issues surrounding the sex trade as well as the system of prostitution and its harms. Mickey is the lead survivor activist and advocate in South Africa advocating for anti-sex trade laws that benefit the women who are bought, sold, and exploited in the system of prostitution. She is the founder of Kwanele, the first survivor movement in Africa, former advocacy manager at Embrace Dignity, a feminist human rights organization, and has founded the SESP Survivor Empowerment & Support Programme.

Huda and Meji outline the main legal approaches to prostitution that different countries have taken, and the consequences associated with them. They focus on where prostitution is legalised and the role the state plays in such countries, where states act effectively as pimps, complicit in violence against women, and profiting from such violence.

Survivor Empowerment & Support Programme - SESP

Rachel Moran is an Irish survivor of prostitution and abolitionist activist. In this episode she and psychologist and radical feminist Melissa Farley discuss the role of the buyer within prostitution and what his money really buys.

The focus of the episode stands in the switch of perspective we should have when we talk about prostitution. We often talk about the woman who is bought or sold, when really we should be focusing on the people who have the choice of selling and buying women's bodies: pimps and sex buyers.

LINKS:

Stupro a pagamento - Rachel Moran

Paid For - Rachel Moran

Prostitution and trafficking in Nevada - Melissa Farley

Prostitution, trafficking and traumatic stress - Melissa Farley

Melissa’s NGO website: Prostitution Research and Education

Article Melissa mentions, which they wrote together: Consent, Coercion, and Culpability: Is Prostitution Stigmatized Work or an Exploitive and Violent Practice Rooted in Sex, Race, and Class Inequality?

Dr. Ingeborg Kraus is a German trauma-therapist, feminist and abolitionist, specialised in treating trauma in prostitution.

Rebecca Mott is an English poet, writer, activist and survivor of prostitution.

In this episode Doctor Ingeborg Kraus and poet Rebecca Mott explore the topic of trauma in prostitution. They speak about what it means to have post traumatic stress disorder, dissociation and communication issues for survivors and for prostituted women. And how trauma itself can be the root of vulnerability that leads women into prostitution.

If you want to support Rebecca Mott’s activism please visit her blog and consider donating at this link: https://rmott62.wordpress.com/

Trauma and prostitution