Interview with Kathleen Maltzahn

From the sex industry's perspective - and that of the men who use this industry -
women are the raw materials of an industry. Trafficking teaches us this.

I remember the first time I visited a strip bar in Manila.

I was 22, and had just arrived in the Philippines for a 15-month stint with a human rights group. The bar was in Ermita, then the tourist red-light district, and I walked in expecting to see the sad lonely men that everyone told me visited the Philippines for sex tours.

They were there - from Australia, Germany, the UK and beyond - but they were not the only men there. As I sat in the bar, two good-looking, young Australian men walked in.

They were, to borrow Mr. Howard's phrase, relaxed and comfortable. They weren't tragic old men needing a little comfort. They were young men choosing to visit the bar because they could. I've been forced more and more to acknowledge the fact that many men demand sex as a right regardless of the impact on the women and children they use.

Upon returning from the Philippines, I worked first with women in street prostitution, and now, with Project Respect, have worked with women in brothels.

Some people talk about prostitution as something women do, as somehow about women. Project Respect is built on the understanding that while women in the sex industry are important, the sex industry is not essentially about them.

From the sex industry's perspective - and that of the men who use this industry - women are the raw materials of an industry.

Trafficking teaches us this.

Where women's choices and hopes coincide with what the sex industry wants, it will use them.

Where there are not enough women willing to do what the industry wants, when it wants, women's choices are irrelevant - some elements in the sex industry will always make sure that men do not have to go without women to buy.

Project Respect works from this understanding. It sees prostitution, like a whole range of other practices, as something that aims to extend men's choices and power, at the expense of women's wholeness and happiness.

It's a controversial position, but then so is any position that questions men's right to anything - whether its money or property or jobs - and somehow questioning men's rights to sexual access is more controversial than any other area.

Confronting men's violence when it is minimized and unacknowledged is disturbing.

At the same time, though, things shift, and that makes it worth it. We have had some success in changing the law and we work with more and more women who want to get involved in challenging the violence they experience. www.projectrespect.org.au