Word: sexed
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...Bolivia's unloved," says Yuly Perez, Vice-President of the National Organization for the Emancipation of Women in a State of Prostitution (ONAEM in its Spanish initials), the sex workers' union. "We are hated by a society that uses us regularly, and ignored by institutions obligated to protect...
...latest violence against Bolivia's sex workers is not surprising. Although the Supreme Court in 2001 legalized prostitution, which is widely practiced nationwide, the oldest profession has not gained the relative social acceptance it enjoys in some European countries. Instead, women and men in the sex industry have become scapegoats for everything from broken homes to the rising HIV-infection rate...
...Indeed, the Supreme Court ruling requires that the Ministry of Health take full responsibility for the sex workers' safety and medical services. But the government has turned a blind eye to the recent events in El Alto, and has ignored the demands of the prostitutes. That, says the union, has left its members no option but to put their clients' health at risk until their security is guaranteed. Some sex workers have gone as far as mutilating themselves and sewing their lips together in order grab the nation's attention...
...strikers see their action as part of a larger battle to make society understand that the sex workers are poor people struggling to survive, and not prostitution entrepreneurs. "People think the point of our organization is expand prostitution in Bolivia," says ONAEM's Perez. "In fact, we want the opposite. Our ideal world is one free of the economic desperation that forces women into this business." But in the meantime, her group "will fight tooth and nail for the rights we deserve...
...backlash against prostitution could escalate, however. El Alto officials are determined not to reopen any brothels within a 1,600-foot radius of schools, and there are rumors of similar citizen protests planned for the cities of Cochabamba and Sucre. The sex workers are hoping that the public health risk posed by their action forces the authorities to back down. But by refusing to undergo the medical checkups required to be able to work legally, it also potentially opens them to further police action...