"Prostitute" (Wiki) - "Prostitution is the business or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute or sex worker"
Continuing my "AVP" theme, another inaccurate and offensive term that is in regular use is "child prostitute", as detailed in the above recent report.
Do readers think:
a) Children can voluntarily plaster themselves with make up, dress themselves up with skimpy clothes and tout themselves around red light districts looking to provide sexual services for money?
b) Some children get ensnared in paedophile gangs, get drugged, raped, and passed around other child sex offenders and paedophiles to be raped and abused, for the "pleasure" of these paedophiles and child sex offenders, and for the profit of whoever is leading these gangs.
If you answered a), get off this blog - there are others more 'appropriate' for you elsewhere!
If you answered b), ask yourselves then, after reading the definitions above, why not only the media, but UK legislation itself, calls victims of paedophile gangs "child prostitutes" and not "prostituted children"?
Just two words, swapped around, but a whole heap of difference in their meaning.
Why is it so hard for the media to see this?
Why the hell is legislation itself in the UK still referring to "child prostitutes"?
Reading through the Sexual Offenses Act 2003 , anyone under the age of 18 is considered a "child prostitute" (as opposed to the legal age of consent, 16)!
Would it not be infinitely more accurate, to rename victims of this crime who are under sixteen as a "prostituted child", and other victims who are either sixteen or seventeen (over the legal age of consent) as "underage prostitutes"?
Of course it would - so why again does the media, legislation, and society generally as a whole still call children who are exploited, abused and raped in this way "child prostitutes"?
As a society, we really need to start watching our language
'Language is very powerful. Language does not just describe reality. Language creates the reality it describes - Desmond Tutu'
Hi Richard,
ReplyDeleteConcisely and powerfully written. APV bang to rights!
What does Jersey law say?
Is it equally offensive ? ..... or is "child pimping" not even an offence ?
Thank you :)
DeleteGood question and one I haven't been able to find online. Will find out & include as a response on here, will be interesting to see...
Hi Anon, I have a reply regarding the term "child prostitute", as below
Delete"I do not think that I have ever come across the term child prostitute in a Jersey Statute and I do not think that I have ever come across an offence which would amount to living off earnings of a child who was being abused and misused in this way"
So not in Jersey Law....
Prostitute" (Wiki) - "Prostitution is the business or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute or sex worker"
ReplyDeleteEven by this usually accepted definition, a pimp or handler may prostitute a child, but a child could not be a prostitute without being the real recipient of the money, and they rarely, if ever, are. They are used as a financial commodity by an adult handler and as a sexual commodity by the person the handler ultimately gains money through. The child is a slave to the abuse by both.
A reply to my complaint about the above story from the Standard -
ReplyDelete"Dear Mr Bougeard
Thank you for making the effort to write about this issue. I do not think readers of the article would infer anything but that the children were allegedly controlled by the men currently facing trial.
The reference in the headline to ‘child prostitute ring’ is about the men and their alleged activity in the prostituting of girls; it is not a reference to the children themselves.
I appreciate that it is important to be accurate on these matters but I do not believe our report was misleading."