Crashing Back to Life

I have going through, crashing through trauma for quite some time now.

Each day I wake with my body shaking, my mind full of despair – but all the time there is a deep desire to force my way forward.

This is not depression, I have no wish to fall away – this is deep trauma, and is just a natural reaction to the poison put into me by punters, people’s ignorance of what it is and was to be prostituted, the sex trade profiteers and the utter lack of any justice for the prostituted.

Trauma is not a mental illness, it is a healthy reaction to extreme abuse/torture and having no justice.

No-one is born into trauma, trauma is forced into us by terrible events that can be natural, by man-made disasters, by man-made wars, and by man-made violence.

It is thought that the prostituted have some the higher rates of trauma, higher than soldiers in the front-line, higher than domestic violence, and higher than most rape survivors.

I always wonder why that is news, or even a surprise – could it be by not looking at the conditions of the prostituted, then it become easier to ignore our trauma?

For I see understanding and empathy for many women and girls on the receiving end of male violence – but a constant turning away from the prostituted.

I see understanding and political action for men and women who are tortured by a State – but a refusal to acknowledge that prostitution is a form of torture.

Could it be that the prostituted are still considered to non-humans, so cannot have real trauma? – if not, I cannot see another logical reason that our trauma is made invisible.

I need to know why rape is considered to worse than death when done to the non-prostituted, but rape to the prostituted is made into a non-crime?

I need to why torture is horrific when done to a political prisoner, but the exact same torture plus rape is just leisure or entertainment when done to women inside the sex trade?

I need to know why chicken in battery farms get more sympathy and passionate anger than women in crowded brothels or the horrific conditions of the porn industry?

I do not expect answers, maybe just the endless cliché reasons or turning away, the usual justifications that do nothing to end the pain of no justice or even being considered fully human.

That is the surface reason that all the prostituted live with trauma – knowing our right to be human is still a long way off.

I know and understand what it is to be raped outside of prostitution.

I know and understand it can and will feel as if you have been stripped of your humanity – but most victims of rape regain their right to be considered to be human, many never truly lose it.

This is because many rape victims are believed by friends and those who campaign to end rape.

Rape is seen as a crime – it is rarely punished – but it is considered a terrible event.

Strangely, the more a woman or girl is raped the less she is believed, and the less human she is seen.

Maybe that is some answer to why raping the prostituted is made to be nothing.

For most of the prostituted are raped by hundreds if not thousands of punters – we are raped beyond statistics, beyond remembering the men’s faces, beyond the body ability to hold pain.

But our rapes are non-existent, it becomes just who we are.

We cannot be raped for we are sex-crazed, we force men to use us as sex-dolls.

We cannot know rape for we do not feel pain like real women, we have no sense of shame that real rape victims have.

It cannot be rape if we took the money or gifts, it is not rape if we go on to another punter after.

These are a few of the millions of reasons given for ignoring the constant raping of the prostituted – reasons used as a silencing tool.

No wonder the prostituted are drowning in trauma.

Please be more radical about listening to the prostituted.

Hear their trauma and stop turning away.