Patricia Mukhim
I am quite sure that our honourable MLAs and other respectable citizens don’t consider sex work to be appropriate for a society guided by rigid tenets of right and wrong and which unequivocally expects women/girls to be the epitome of respectfulness ( ba don burom). In fact to qualify to belong to that hallowed space of “thei don burom” (woman of virtue) one has to follow a strict code of conduct such as (a) not laughing out loud (b) not wearing certain kinds of clothes (c) not arguing or debating when men are speaking (d) not meddling in politics which is ‘traditionally’ a male domain as men are believed to be the khat-ar bor (endowed with the 12 times the strength of a woman).
Like in any other patriarchal society, women in a matrilineal society too are expected to nurture the family; the hearth and home and be the primary care giver. Am not so sure that this gender construct can be dismantled any time soon, because women themselves act out these socially and mentally embedded roles in order to be accepted as part of society. To break the norm is to suffer ignominy and even be called a traitor to the tribal value systems. Not that men follow those tribal values, but then we have to remember they are judged by different sets of yardsticks. After all they are men! And in a society where the moral compass used for men is different from that used to track women, sex work is taboo. But no one cares to find out why a woman is forced into this trade.
It would have been a more productive debate if the MLA who raised the question about Khyndailad (Police Bazar) being a pick up point for sex workers had also consulted some of the leading women NGOs such as North East Network or the Meghalaya State Commission for Women since these institutions would have facts and figures about the probable numbers of women engaged in sex work; their socio-economic profiles; their marital statuses et al. That would have turned the debate into a more compassionate and non-judgmental one. But the tone and tenor of the question itself betrayed the mindset of the questioner – MLA. He does not like the fact that any woman, more so a Khasi woman should be reduced to a sex worker.
With poverty growing in Meghalaya and the number of women-headed households on the rise sex work is inevitable and if the state cannot offer an alternative livelihood then it also has no right to judge and penalise a sex worker. Men should use the lenses of compassion and ask themselves which woman would be happy to be involved in sex work. No woman can possibly want to be sexually assaulted (for that is what it is) by some stranger night after wretched night If she does it, it’s because she has no options left. Hence you have a Sonargachi in West Bengal and 8 other red light areas in the metros of this country.
Sadly the point of the Assembly debate was more about stigmatizing sex work and proposing a set of legislations that would end the sex trade without considering what alternative livelihoods these women will take up when that source of income is snatched away from them. Besides, as long as men solicit sexual services from women, sex work will continue. Pious Christians who pooh pooh the idea of sex work should know this trade was mentioned in the Bible and hence is as old as humankind. It didn’t start yesterday. And if the idea of discussing this in the Assembly is to criminalize sex work then the MLA has to think again!
Sex work or prostitution is legal in India. However, the act of soliciting customers in a public place or owning or managing a brothel or running a prostitution racket in a hotel as is happening in some seedy hotels of Shillong are illegal. If the concerned MLA is pointing towards a full-fledged prostitution racket where the police are not taking action then he has a point. But this machinery is so well-oiled that it is unlikely that the racket will be exposed and the perpetrators arrested.
The UNAIDS a United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS a joint venture of the United Nations family which brings together the efforts and resources of 11 UN system organizations to unite the world against AIDS estimates that there were 657,829 prostitutes in the country in 2016. In an article published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) titled, “Invisible and Uncounted: Sex Workers in India,” one sex worker rues that there is no room for respect or acceptance towards the profession as sex workers. When she approaches schools with sufficient income and all the required documents, her 5-year-old child is still denied admission. Although there is no legal requirement to provide the father’s name or documents, one school used it as an excuse to deny her child’s right to education. And when a pregnant sex worker needs to have her delivery, the hospital gives her the lowest priority, even in an emergency.
In Meghalaya we have very little work done in surveying how many women actually earn their livelihood through sex work. Also because we are a society that is not open about a lot of issues related to sex, it is difficult to track how many sex workers could be suffering from HIV-AIDS. In the Thai capital, Bangkok the hospital for sexually transmitted diseases is the most visible one and women have no shame about going there to get themselves tested. It will take us eons to accept that sex work is also work and those engaged in that work are vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases and HIV-AIDS.
In international circles and the United Nations, the term ‘sex worker’ is used to refer to all adults of 18 years and above who sell or exchange sex for money, goods or services. If the woman is an adult and engages in sex work according to her own volition she cannot be criminalised. Its only when a minor girl is being used by some pimp and sold for sex that it amounts to the crime of trafficking in humans and a violation of the POCSO Act. If there are circumstances where a person has been coerced into selling sex and is doing so gainst her wishes, that transaction is not sex work and the person is not a sex worker. Trafficking or sexual exploitation of minors and women against their wishes cannot be conflated with sex work. Sex work is usually classified as ‘direct’ (open, formal) or ‘indirect’ (hidden, clandestine, informal). Direct sex workers identify themselves as sex workers and earn their living by selling sex. Indirect sex workers usually don’t rely on selling sex as their first source of income. Some of them camouflage their sex work by working as waitresses, hairdressers, massage girls, street vendors, or girls such as in Thailand who are used to promote a liquor brand in the red light areas. Such women do not want to be identified as sex workers.
These days, the advocates of sex workers say that the word prostitution because of its negative connotations should be replaced by the words ‘sex work.’ Leaving the semantics aside, it is time for the Government to actually conduct a study and find out the number of women dependent on sex work and having done that to try and to rehabilitate these women in some livelihoods. The last thing that anyone should do is to point fingers at sex workers. Let’s not be holier than thou while discussing sex workers. And as I said earlier, no woman would opt for sex work if she had another option.