Selling Sex


October 12, 2007: Rani Mukherjee does a Julia Roberts in her latest film, Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, playing “the hooker with a heart of gold”; in early 2004, Kareena Kapoor played the unsophisticated and street-smart Chameli, a prostitute from south Mumbai. What do these films have in common? Big names and big budgets. The list of actresses who have played prostitutes onscreen is as long as it is varied: Shirley MacLaine, Jodie Foster, Mira Sorvino, and Kim Basinger among others in Hollywood; Shabana Azmi, Rekha, Sushmita Sen, and Neha Dhupia are some of the many Indian women who have done the same.

But contrary to the common perception of the lewd, garishly made up woman selling sex on the street, popular cinema tends to glamorise and romanticise prostitutes. Typically, the onscreen prostitute has an unrealistic love life, usually involving an encounter with a handsome, rich man who then suffers a dilemma—should he save her? Shouldn’t he? He usually does. Audiences are won over; the film becomes a box office hit. Pretty Woman and Chameli, for instance, grossed $11,280,591 and Rs 32,877,358 respectively in their opening weekends.

Unfortunately, neither movie portrays real life prostitutes. “Men claim to love us too,” says Jayanti*, who has been a sex worker for 19 years. “They promise to marry us, as long as we give them our earnings. Once the money stops, they leave. Sometimes when we refuse to give them our earnings, they threaten to tell our families back home what we’re doing.” Besides dealing with partners who betray, sex workers have to survive threats from street gangs, and rape and violence from police officers.

According to the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act of 1956, sex workers are victims: they cannot be arrested. The Act can only be used against traffickers, pimps, and other agents and facilitators of commercial sexual abuse of women and children. In reality, most cases are booked against the women victims. “With the help of NGOs, some sex workers now know that they cannot be penalised. But most of the younger ones are still unaware,” explains Smita*. Smita*, also a sex worker, has been working with a collective called Sadhana Mahila Sangh for four years. She adds that the police threaten to arrest such women if they do not have sex with them.

Brutal facts such as these get glossed over in blockbusters; and while some documentaries—for instance, Turning a Corner and Four Years in Hell—do make an effort to expose as much as possible about the world of prostitution, they too distort the truth. Born into Brothels by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman focuses on the lives of children in Sonagachi, Kolkata’s notorious red light district, and seems to accuse the mothers of being negligent through footage of them cursing and fighting. What it silences is the affection and concern these women have for their children: “Being a sex worker and a mother, I can say that we are more protective as mothers than can be imagined,” says Swapna Gayen, secretary, DMSC (Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee), Kolkata.

Changing such perceptions requires a complete overhaul of the system. We must allow sex workers equal status not just legally, but socially. The wider debates spring from the language of human rights. “We protest against the various forces of mainstream society that deny us the right to liberty, security, fair administration of justice, respect for our lives, discrimination, freedom of expression and association,” declares VAMP (Veshya AIDS Muqabla Parishad), a collective of 5,000 women in prostitution from seven districts in western Maharashtra and north Karnataka.

In this context, legalisation is something that is constantly deliberated. It could work well in cities like Kolkata and Mumbai, where red light areas are clearly demarcated and thriving spaces. The entire family in plunged into prostitution or trafficking of some sort; families accept, to some extent, the “dirty” work the women do because it brings in money. For this, they are protected. In Bangalore, however, such spaces do not exist and sex workers often find themselves without a support group; in fact, their families are seldom aware of the dual lives they lead. Here, legalisation would segregate and restrict human movement, branding the women as “immoral” and socially unacceptable.

“Decriminalisation, that is, the removal of criminal status from the selling of sex, is a more viable option,” explains Byatha N. Jagadeesha, an advocate with Alternative Law Forum, an organisation that works in research and litigation for marginalized groups. Decriminalising does not legitimise the role of the brothel-keeper or pimp, but it recognises the right of the woman to be in the practice of sex work, and to be free of violence and stigma. A film like Born into Brothels gives “a one-sided view of the lives of sex workers in a third world country” and, as Gayen puts it, “may do a lot of harm to the global movement of sex workers for their rights and dignity. It can even have an impact on their hard-won victories for rights, unstigmatised healthcare and access to resources.” Both DMSC and VAMP have been campaigning for decriminalisation and thus an end to police brutality.

But while human rights continue to be a primary discourse among NGOs, sex workers, and even lawmakers, the Indian public seems interested only in the stories of onscreen prostitutes. It is AIDS and drug addiction that make for drawing room conversation; any real concern for sex workers and their issues seems absent. “People might feel some sympathy for us after watching those films, but it ends there,” Jayanti* complains. This is why the clearly marketed “social dimension” of popular prostitute films needs to evolve and translate into active work for their rights.

*Names changed to conceal identity