Sexual Exploitation and the New Guideline
At the recent Western European Leaders’ Workshop in the Netherlands, Susanne Langer, Eva Amundsdotter, Leah Thorn, and I led an early-morning topic group on sexual exploitation and the addition to the Requirements of RC Teachers (Guideline D.2.) in the 2017 Guidelines for the Re-evaluation Counseling Communities: “to have counseled enough on the sexual distresses that society has installed on them (as on all of us) to not engage in sexual contact for money or other forms of compensation or otherwise collude with the exploitation of anyone who is compelled or driven to offer such contact by violence, threat, force, economic conditions, or oppression.”
Susanne took overall leadership of the group, and each of us shared our perspective on why the addition to the Guideline and the work on sexual exploitation are important to us. Then people discharged on the Guideline.
Here is some of what I said in the group:
For many years I have campaigned to end sexual exploitation by the sex industries. The sexual exploitation of women and girls, or of any person who is forced into these industries or ends up in them because of oppression, needs to end. What happens to people in the sex industries, mostly women and children from oppressed groups, is vicious. Also, these industries make sexual violence and male dominance seem normal, and promote sexist, racist, and classist messages that affect how all women and girls, and people from all other oppressed groups, are viewed and treated. This must end.
At this point in history, as societies are collapsing and economic survival is becoming more challenging, more of us are vulnerable to ending up in the sex industries. And as these industries expand in their pursuit of profit, more of us are manipulated into becoming consumers of them and colluding with their exploitation. This compromises our integrity. We need to unite to make big changes in the world, and the compromising of our integrity, and how this makes us feel separate, undermines our ability to do that.
Young people can’t avoid having contact with the sex industries. These industries intentionally target young people, at younger and younger ages, to both get them involved in the industries and make them consumers of them. This affects young people’s ability to forge close relationships with one another and leaves them feeling confused, alone, and bad about themselves. It destroys lives.
In the wide world, the sex industries are a controversial and confusing issue, and restimulation often guides policy and debate. The people who are exploited by the industries (not those profiting from them) are usually oppressed by sexism, racism, and/or classism, and when people take a stand against the industries it can look like they are targeting people in these groups. The sex industries use this to confuse people—for example, by putting women forward to defend the industries and make it look like attempts to end the industries are attacks on these women.
It is important to me that we in the RC Communities have said that we want a world without the sex industries—that it is not okay for sexual exploitation to continue in this way and that we need to discharge on where we are vulnerable to colluding with, engaging in, or defending these industries.
It is vital that we don’t abandon one another. It is never okay to blame anyone for their distresses or the circumstances they end up in because of oppression and early hurts. This is particularly true with regard to the sex industries, as we are made to feel so bad and ashamed for our struggles related to them. It is understandable why we struggle, especially given our oppressions and the intentional targeting by these industries, but it is also not okay to abandon one another to the distresses or the harmful behaviours that can stem from them.
The new requirement for RC teachers is an opportunity to compassionately stand alongside one another as we say lovingly and firmly, “This is not okay.” We get to free one another from our earliest and hardest distresses and help each other live our lives with integrity. This won’t always be easy, but it is our path to re-emergence and liberation.
London, England
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of women
(Present Time 192, July 2018)