Traducción del vídeo "Una carta desde el barrio rojo. ¿Por qué abolir la prostitución?".

El proyecto audiovisual "Una carta desde el barrio rojo. ¿Por qué abolir la prostitución?" es una iniciativa originada y desarrollada por la Plataforma Abolicionista de Salamanca y que fue lanzada el 24 de septiembre de 2020 en razón al Día contra la Trata y la Explotación Sexual (23 de septiembre).

En ella participaron creativamente Carmen de Marte Radfem (@marteradfem) como directora, editora y creadora del guion; Elena de The New Suffragettes (@thenewsuffragettes) como traductora al inglés, creadora del guion y encargada de la recolección de datos; María de Psicología Feminista (@psicologiafeminista) y Lucía S. M. (@luspm) como dobladoras (Voz 1 y Voz 4, respectivamente), junto con Elena y Carmen (Voz 2 y Voz 3, respectivamente).

Publicado el 28 de septiembre de 2020.

"A LETTER FROM RED-LIGHT DISTRICT. WHY ABOLISHING PROSTITUTION?"

Traducción por Elena (@thenewsuffragettes) y revisada por Patricia Soler (@paaattiiiii).

Based on the letter sent by the German prostitution survivor Huschke Mau to Manuela Schwesig, the Federal Minister of Family, Seniors, Women and Youth from 2013 to 2017 in Germany.

Prostitution in Spain is prohibited but regulated at the same time, which makes it the third country in the world in demand for prostitution and the first in Europe, according to ONU (United Nations) data.

According to ONU, 39 % of Spanish men has consumed prostitution at some point. That is almost 4 out of 10.

It is estimated that there are currently around 350.000 prostituted women in Spain, of which 80 % are foreigners in a situation of irregular migration from Brazil, Colombia, Nigeria, Romania, Russia and Ukraine. Data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

According to the United Nations and Nacional Police more than 90 % of prostituted women come from human trafficking for sexual exploitation purposes.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that for every identified smuggling victim there are 20 more unidentified.

Dear ma’am Minister:

I would like to ask you to dig into brothels’ reality, instead of keep listening to those people telling the happy and self-affirmed prostitutes’ tale.

What would happen if prostitution were legalised or regulated?

First of all, I would like to briefly introduce myself: I am a prostitution survivor, and I have been a prostitute for 10 years. So, I know what I am talking about. The reasons why I got into prostitution were several: a difficult biological family, which involved not only physical but sexual violence, towards my mother and myself, so I ended up traumatised. By that time, the massive spread tales of happy prostitutes, an inevitable financial need and the lack of social and psychological help lead me to take that decision.

Prostitution has been legalised and regulated in some european countries like Germany (2002) and the Netherlands (2000).

The supporters of this model defend the idea of “women freedom to choose what they want” and the need of decent work conditions for them.

But, if it is an absolutely free choice, why it is only an option for women?

And yes, if you want to hear it, I started voluntarily; I am one of those many cited volunteer prostitutes. But, ma’am Minister, is it voluntary when a person traumatised by child abuse takes this decision? For me, prostitution was like a “promotion” where I learned that, as I am a defenceless and rightless girl, I will be sexual abused, and therefore, at least I could take money for it and could ensure my survival and limit the abuse.

94 % of human trafficking victims for sexual exploitation purposes are women and little girls.

If now you think that I can be a sad isolated case, I am sorry, but I must have to contradict you. In those 10 years I met a lot of prostitutes, and there was not even one of them who had not been abused as a child, hit or raped as an adult. With psychological stress, bringing back their trauma over and over again through prostitution and with a destroyed self-esteem due to violence. That is how I have seen a lot of prostitutes.

Between 80 % and 95 % of prostituted women have suffered sexual violence before getting into prostitution.

It is estimated that more than 67 % of prostituted women suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder, worse than the post-traumatic stress of veterans from Vietnam War.

These are the realities of the red-light district, ma’am Minister, which only refer to volunteer prostitutes. And they also suffer their post-traumatic stress, dissociation, addition to alcohol and drugs, because they cannot put up with it. I do not want to talk about the 90 % of all the prostitutes in this country that are not German. You can imagine how are the circumstances in which they live in.

In a 2010 report, after the legalisation of prostitution in Germany and the Netherlands, it is explained that these countries (and also Spain) have become the sexual exploitation main destinations of the smuggling victims coming from South America.

A few months ago, I wrote an open letter because I could no longer put up with the happy and self-determined prostitute stories. […]. Why do you so rarely hear about all of this? For starters, because the pro-prostitution lobby intimidates us (since I published the letter I have been receiving evil emails, I have been insulted and threatened); and, secondly, because the survivors are so traumatised that they can’t even talk. I urgently beg you to find out about who is behind the pro-prostitution lobby.

After the establishment of regulatory model in Germany, only 44 women out of 400.000 got registered as autonomous workers. What is the situation of the remaining 399.956?

Besides, you should know that a lot of women that are not prostitutes, are yet affected by prostitution, because the sex buyers (that are their husbands) bring to the bedroom what they have learned in the brothel: depreciating women, buying and torturing them.

Society is brutalized, ma’am Minister, it is an endless loop: if prostitution is legalised, demand increases (because men learn that it is okay to buy women’s body, transgressing limits and abusing through power). Human trafficking increases to meet the demand (with which there is even more women trafficking) and the acceptation of a society with prostitution increases as well. Then the demand increases again, etc.

In accordance with the doctor Ingeborg Kraus and with official police data, prostitution has increased by 30 % (until 2016) since its legalisation in 2002.

Nowadays, 4 out of 10 Spanish men have paid to get access to women’s bodies. Do you know what crosses their minds, ma’am Minister? I know it because I have experienced it in a brothel’s room, and the men that today gently shake their hand with you, tomorrow spit on a prostitute’s face during the act, enjoy their asphyxia when they make them shallow the sperm and learn to feel pleasure torturing women.

There are several ways of exploitation that definitely deny basic human rights and women’s safety. For example, the “Verrichtungboxen”, which literally means “things that you do in a cattle house”. They are like the cattle houses, without water, sinks or any kind of security.

Please, do not allow this! You are a member of the Child Protection Agency, you cannot want that due to abuse and violence, traumatised girls become prostitutes that have to experience their trauma over and over again. If there is legalisation, men learn that prostitution is okay. Do you want to live in a society like this? That cannot be you view!

It is estimated that prostituted women in Germany must render service to 6 men before start earning money.

There will never be a society with sex equity as long as men can buy women and can abuse of them. And there is no “clean” prostitution.

At an open day event in the Frankfurt’s red-light district, men massively lined up at the doors of the brothels, even knowing that that zone was controlled by a known criminal organization called Hell’s Angels.

I urgently beg you to get information from more sources than the defenders of prostitution (who are generally the owners of the brothels or are controlled and financed by them). Dig deeper into the swamp and you will find the human traffickers and the organised crime; also listen to psychotherapists specialists on trauma and survivors. The prostitution lobby does not represent us, prostitutes and exprostitutes. This lobby consist of no more than 100 people, who does not represent us, but it intimidates us and work against our interests.

The Spanish Penal Code confront prostitution in only two of its articles (art. 187 and 188) in which it only criminalizes prostitution when the victim is underage, has a disability or an illness or, if is an adult, is in a vulnerable or violent situation or when the victim is being prostituted by someone else (what is called in Spain “tercería locativa”).

We don’t want to do this work. We don’t need any legalisation. We don’t need those who support that we do not want registration or an obligation to use a condom, etc.

How could they know if the victim finds herself in a vulnerable situation if she is being instructed, threatened or coerced by the pimp?

Or if the victim doesn't have any kind of economic and psychological help to get out of prostitution, or if she finds herself in a situation of irregular migration?

The best option for us would be not to do this anymore. And that every men who abused us was punished. We need alternatives. We don’t need an increase of the destructive and dehumanizing forces controlled in the brothels (and in society).

Dear ma’am Minister, it hasn’t been that long since I quit: three years. I had my first “client” when I was 18. Do you know what I needed the most during the 10 years I have been in prostitution where I have been hit, raped, retraumatised, depreciated, dehumanized, sick in body and spirit? Help. And a society sensitized on what is happening, which understands that I am not enjoying life and having fun due to the brothel’s abuses.

I have never met a prostitute who does it voluntarily. I have never met an exprostitute without post-traumatic stress. Every woman I know has been destroyed in prostitution. Please, do not be fooled by the pimp lobbies’ lies any longer. Talk with people who are not controlled by men who get profits of the “supplying” of their brothels with human trafficking victims and with traumatised women. Talk with people who are not controlled by the mafias that bring those women to their brothels.

Is there a choice when the other options are to die or not to eat?

Can women choose freely in a patriarchal system?

Please, abolish prostitution, it is inhumane and beneath human being. And if you can’t, choke it as much as it is possible. Do not let continue a situation that has turned many regulatory countries into “The Golden” of sex buyers and pimps. As the Minister you cannot wish that for women. This is happening every day, and with that, there are also men that torture, mistreat and learn to depreciate women that are not prostituted. They are among us.

Please, don’t give up, do not disengage yourself from it. We need abolition.

Yes, we need abolition. And now we are talking to you: Spanish Ministers, mayors and mayoresses from big and small regions, to everyone who can make a difference: regulationism proposes recognizing prostituted women as sex workers and legitimize their exploitation. It is a model that implies turning the sex buyer into a client and the pimp into an entrepreneur.

There is only one way which has been effective and beneficial for prostituted women above sex buyers and pimps’ interests, and this way is the abolitionism: penalization and sanction of sex buyers, pimps and lobbies with fines and jail sentences. Meanwhile it would help prostituted women and victims of this system with psychological assistance, economic help, education and training to be able to find a job.

The abolitionist model has been established in Sweden for 20 years now, and it has been recently established in France. The number of prostituted women in Sweden has considerably decreased, from 20.000 to 200 approximately, and more than 6.000 sex buyers sanctioned during this period.

Listen to us, listen to the survivors, to the women and girls in a poverty situation that today are considering prostitution as an option, to those as us who face, every day, the rape culture. Listen to those women who were abandoned in ditches, who were forgotten, those who lie in graves without a name.

We must abolish the slavery of 21^st century. We must abolish prostitution.

For the abolition of prostitution.

Plataforma Abolicionista de Salamanca.