http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/beware-right-wings-%e2%80%9csex-slavery%e2%80%9d-agenda-say-chicago-sex-workers/ a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice Sat, 22 Nov 2008 02:45:06 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/beware-right-wings-%e2%80%9csex-slavery%e2%80%9d-agenda-say-chicago-sex-workers/#comment-26672 Cassandra s. Person Wed, 20 Aug 2008 02:54:05 +0000 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/?p=2351#comment-26672 As a practicing psychiatrist in a public clinic in Manhattan, I had many prostitutes as patients. Their most urgent need was survival from the regular violence they suffered at the hands of their "Johns" (tricks) and their pimps. Most of them were b eaten, brutalized, burned, robbed and raped regularly. They were not well paid after deducting the costs of their emergency medical treatment. All of them just hoped and prayed to stay alive long enough to find a way to get out of "the business". These women were real human beings-someone's daughter, someone's sister, just like you and me. Except that they are captives in a brutal cage they cannot escape,while we are free agents. Psychiatrists do reality really well, the better we are, the better we do that. Prostitute are people with the right to dignity and agency in their own lives. I helped those I could to escape to freedom and safety. What have the rest of you done to date? Your silence is complicity. There are no innocent bystanders. As a practicing psychiatrist in a public clinic in Manhattan, I had many prostitutes as patients. Their most urgent need was survival from the regular violence they suffered at the hands of their “Johns” (tricks) and their pimps. Most of them were b eaten, brutalized, burned, robbed and raped regularly. They were not well paid after deducting the costs of their emergency medical treatment. All of them just hoped and prayed to stay alive long enough to find a way to get out of “the business”. These women were real human beings-someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, just like you and me. Except that they are captives in a brutal cage they cannot escape,while we are free agents. Psychiatrists do reality really well, the better we are, the better we do that. Prostitute are people with the right to dignity and agency in their own lives. I helped those I could to escape to freedom and safety. What have the rest of you done to date? Your silence is complicity. There are no innocent bystanders.

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