Iraqi Refugees and “Survival Sex”?

Posted on December 31, 2007

I just read a Reuter’s report about how young Iraqi women refugees in Syria are turning to the world’s oldest profession to survive, or at least that is what the article suggests. It starts off describing a club near Damascus with “a score” of Iraqi women on the stage in “in tight, shimmering gowns” and then sitting at tables with Arab men - the “hungry eyed” variety.

Except for the tight gowns not coming off it sounds like a “Genleman’s Club” in almost any US city. The article says these women have no other options. Well, they could go home to Iraq - now that most of it is safe, at least as safe as most of the middle east. Certainly safer than Pakistan.

But really, these young women are doing nothing that American women also do, many not out of desperation and poverty but to pay for college. Many of the dancers in gentlemen’s clubs are co-eds who find that dancing at night pays much better than flopping burgers. They are still free to quit and seek other employment but there is no shortage of young women who will take these jobs. How is that any different than Syria?

Certainly there is prostitution going on in some of these situations, both here and in Syria. That is as they say the oldest profession. As long as men are willing to pay for sex there will be women who will be paid for sex.

The article also talks about arraigned marriages and sham marriages that are little more than prostitution. Again, is this different that a silicone enhanced woman marrying an 80 year old millionaire? Or a Hollywood “starlet” marrying a producer in hopes of monetary gain?

Yes there is poverty, in Syria among the Iraqi refugees as in many other parts of the world and yes in those places women turn to the “sex business” to make a living. But, it is not just poverty that drives them.

Certainly it is not just the war that has caused this, it was going on long before the Iraq War started and will continue long after we are all dead.

» Filed Under Media Bias, World politics