JustThinking | prostitution 2

Banishing wickedness | Danielle Strickland

William Booth said ‘salvationism is simply this: the banishment of wickedness from the earth.’ Wow. Storm the forts of darkness - let’s bring them down.

We’ve come a long way baby. Now, most Salvationists have joined the rest of the evangelical church in a holy huddle, hidden in fancy buildings trying to protect themselves from Dr. Evil until Super Jesus comes back to save the day. I’m not sure when that rapture stuff started to invade the church but boy was that a cunning ploy of the enemy. Let’s just get the Christians on the defense - strike fear in their hearts and watch them hide. It’s pathetic. Try this experiment - find the darkest place you can think of in your area… then go and stand there. If you stand there and listen you will hear the darkness tremble… the darkness doesn’t tremble at you - it trembles at the kingdom you carry. That’s right… the Kingdom of God is within you - you may recognize Jesus but the enemy knows Him by name.

To carry on from my last entry I’d like to tell you a story. A lovely Baptist lady who lives in the same suburb as THQ in Melbourne came to see me one day. You see, her phone number was two digits off a local brothel. Men wanting sex kept calling her house. Now my friend is a recently retired, active Christian and she was rightly disgusted by the phone calls at all hours of the day and night. She started to get angry. One day while she was praying the Lord suggested she might want to use her anger to help the women stuck in the brothel. So, because her daughter was a good friend of mine she ended up at a coffee shop near THQ brainstorming with me about what she could do to help women in a local brothel. I asked what her normal response to another neighbour might be. She said, without flinching that her normal response would be to bake some muffins, go knock on the door and tell the person she was thinking and praying for them in the hope of creating a relationship. Brainstorm session over.

The next Tuesday morning we met to pray, muffins ready. That remarkable and yet completely normal day was heaven on earth. My lovely Baptist retired friend walked up the street, knocked on the door of her local brothel and thrust some very delicious home-made baked goods into the manager’s face - asking to meet the women. A completely befuddled Asian man opened the door wider and called out to some women in a back room… soon, the whole brothel was full of women chatting over tea and muffins… if it wasn’t for skimpy lingerie you’d swear you were at a home-league!

Now it’s a weekly meet and greet. The brothel folk call my friend the ‘little cake lady’ and she’s met 29 women so far, all foreign women working for some income to send home (she’s keeping track). The manager has even come to her local church once for a visit. Her obedience did more than impact the brothel that day - it shamed me. It shamed me as a member of The Salvation Army. It shamed me even more that 14 years ago my own people decided to support legislation that made brothels legal in an effort to get women in the ‘light’ but then we just left them there. No exit programs, no visitation, no chaplaincy, no employment training - not even one lousy little muffin!

We’ve got to get more friends in low places. So, another member of my THQ department and I got the local brothel list and starting knocking on doors in the neighbourhood. Every week we go now. The doors are wide open. Actually, as we stand outside knocking… if you listen really carefully, you can hear the darkness tremble. Bring it on.

Read part 1 of this three part series on theRubicon.

Writer: Capt. Danielle Strickland is currently the Social Justice Director of the Southern Australia Territory. She digs traveling, reading, running, speaking, basketball and movies. Her passion is grace, mercy and justice… and all the stuff in between. Her favourite question is ‘how hard can it be?’ and most of her days are spent answering it.

7 Comments to JustThinking | prostitution 2

1. Great story!

   I’ve been thinking since my comment on the last post. My concern about legislating against prostitution was that we risk demonising the victims rather than the oppressors. If I remember rightly there was agreement, and we decided that legislation should be aimed at the johns and the pimps/madams, especially in situations where the workers have been ‘procured’ in shady circumstances.

   That still didn’t satisfy me though. There’s a problem that runs deeper than simply acknowledging all the participants in the industry.

   I think the problem is (partly) linguistic, and your posts betray this Danielle—we call the activity ‘prostitution.’ Even though we want to hold the johns and brothel owners responsible, we still name the industry after the least powerful person in the equation.

   To put it simply, when somebody says ‘ban prostitution’ I immediately think of prostitutes, not the major players. The language points to the ‘least of these’ in the equation.

   So far I’ve assumed that prostitutes are women who are oppressed by men. I don’t know the statistics there, but there is another linguistic problem that makes this more a female issue than a male.

   Once upon a time men who were nurses were called ‘male nurses’ as opposed to their female counterparts, who were ‘nurses.’ Conversely, you could go to see the ‘doctor’ or the ‘female doctor’. ‘Actresses’ are now ‘actors,’ ‘widowers’ are ‘widows’ and ‘Mrs Captain’ is just ‘Captain.’ Yet prostitutes who are male are still ‘male prostitutes.’

   My point—the language we use makes decrying ‘prostitution’ a specifically anti-woman activity.

   If I sound a little 1990s please forgive me! I wonder if we need to rethink the language we use here. How do we differentiate the activity often performed under duress by women and the associated industry? Can we change our language so the blame doesn’t fall on the victim? And how do we make this more of a male problem than the current masquerade?
Cameron Horsburgh on December 11th, 2008

2. An extraordinary piece Danielle! Friendship Evangelism at its best. We get so hung up on the “sex” bit of the sex industry don’t we? It’s very Victorian and retentive but crazy when you think about what the early SA was doing in this regard.

   Great to see you making a call on this rapture rubbish too. Burn your Tim LaHaye “christian novels” and dodgy DVD’s comrades and get back to the real battlefield.

   I’m looking forward to Part 3!
Bruce Redman on December 11th, 2008

3. There’s a brothel right down the street from our corps that we recently learned about. I’ve been trying to think of something “spectacular” to do to get in there and “bring it down”…and yet the action taken in your story here, in all its simpleness, might just be that “spectacular” idea I’m looking for…thanks for sharing.
Alison on December 11th, 2008

4. In one of Joy Webb’s books I read about her, in full army uniform, playing at the Playboy Mansion. Have we forgotten that Jesus was in trouble with the established church for being out there with ‘those kind of people’?

   Maybe every Corps should adopt a brothel and live the gospel? Maybe we should stop preaching from the pulpit and live the gospel?

   Of course that is easy to type and not always as easily lived!
Mark on December 11th, 2008

5. Cameron - about the language stuff. I think you are right… I refuse to call ‘prostituted persons’ workers… I believe prostitution itself is an oppression and an exploitation of power… so, I will not validate the so called ’sex industry’ by calling it ‘work’ - I think it does a tremendous amount of damage to the women who are oppressed and in the clutches of sexual exploitation. Not to mention the damage done by increasing demand (that will be part 3) by suggesting that ’sex’ is a valid industry.

   the other comments are great… I really believe it’s about presence. It’s all about presence. The problem with presence is it takes time to be present… we’ve got to carve out the time in our highly functional lives for presence in the dark places.

   thanks folks for the feedback.
   Grace
   D
Danielle Strickland on December 12th, 2008

6. i know a saint in the philippines who does just that almost every day (well, without the muffins)… i was with him one day when he got a call from one of the brothel owners, who was anxiously checking that he was still going to show up that night. a brothel owner concerned about her workers’ spiritual well-being, go figure!

   i think my friend would agree with you that the doors are wide open, and he too wonders, where are God’s people?

   thanks for this.
grace on December 14th, 2008

7. Check out”happy endings” a doc film on Asian massage parlors in RI where prostitution is legal. Check the blog and youtube channel and leave comments. Sign up on the website to get updates on the release.
   http://www.happyendingsdoc.com
   http://happyendingsdoc.wordpress.com
   http://www.youtube.com/happyendingsdoc
happy endings on December 15th, 2008

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