Sunday, June 27, 2010

No link between working in prostitution and post traumatic stress

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I have had some reactions on my blog which purport to say that working in prostitution causes irreversible psychological damage, or as they say this, post traumatic stress. The funny thing is that this is absolutely not the case!!!! I can empirically prove that working in prostitution in itself has no negative effects on emotional well being. But for me personally, it doesn't answer the question if it is okay then to have sex with a person who detests having sex with you (as in my case by visiting prostitutes). And it doesn't mean that there are no problems with human traffickers or exploitation and the such (always worrisome). And I don't make this claim to provocate people.

I'll provide some links to reports with some quotes.

The first report by Charrlotte Seib from New Zealand:

Seib, Charrlotte (2007) Health, well-being and sexual violence among female sex workers : a comparative study. [QUT Thesis]
abstract
pdf

Quotes:
"Sex workers interviewed in 2003 (after legalisation) were compared to a prior study of this population conducted in 1991 (before official regulation of the sex industry). Further, in-depth analysis of the 2003 cohort compared sex workers employed in legal and illegal sectors, to assess violence, health status and job satisfaction. Methods: Cross-sectional, convenience sampling was used to collect data from female sex workers in 2003."

"In general, it appears that the majority of sex workers enjoyed at least as much job satisfaction as women working in other occupations. It also appears that this sample had equivalent mental health to women from the general population, although the sub-group of illegal workers generally had poorer health."

The next report (with the quotes retreived from prostitution.procon.org):

Sarah Romans, MD, et al., in the Feb. 2001 Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry article "The Mental and Physical Health of Female Sex Workers: A Comparative Study," wrote:
"There were no differences in mental health... or in self-esteem... between the two groups [female prostitutes and females who weren't prostitutes].... Overall, despite any personal problems arising from the particular nature of their work, these women described as adequate relationships with partners, friends and work colleagues. Two papers have suggested that sex workers have high rates of psychological symptoms; however, both used convenience samples and lacked a comparison group making interpretation of the results difficult. Our results challenge prevailing ideas that sex work and psychiatric morbidity are inevitably associated."

A Dutch report:
Evaluatie opheffing bordeelverbod - De sociale positie van prostituees 2006 (by Helga Dekker, Ruud Tap and Ger Homburg)
Here's the link

This report which studied 354 prostitutes in the Netherlands gives in my opinion a surprisingly good representation of indoor prostitutes if you look at their workplace and background.

Quote (translated from Dutch from page 81):
"The emotional well-being, measured on the 4DKL-scale for distress, doesn't stand out in a negative way compared to that of other women. Prostitutes in privéhuizen [brothels without bar] and window prostitutes do show a little higher degree of distress, which can point at stress, for example by overload, problems or unpleasant events in life."

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