I always feel as though I need to highlight that I am not equating sex work with sexual assault by any means.

Doezema and Kempadoo's book is very eye-opening in that it is working to end the stigma against the sex industry while also challenging much of the baggage that comes with it. 

More cheery stuff for this holiday season, sorry, it's just what I have been working on of late. More about sex and racism.

"To some scholars, the racial/ethnic struggling within visible in the global sex industry highly resembles the exoticist movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries "labelling the anthropological Other as exotic legitimated treating the peoples of the 'third world' as fit to be despised- destroyed even...while concurrently constituting them as projections of western fantasies" From Exoticism in the Enlightenment by G.S. Rousseau and Roy Porter. In Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, Redefinition by Jo Doezema and Kamala Kempadoo, p. 10

"A man in prison will, without injury to his masculinity, rape another inmate who is young, thin, fair, and vulnerable enough to be taken for 'feminine', a soldier will sometimes rape not only women and children but also conquered men to assert himself as conqueror."

Florence Rush, in Don't Tell: The Sexual Abuse of Boys by Michel Dorais, p. 114

"When a child is forced at an early age to respond to the sexual needs of others, the development of (the child's) personal identity is compromised...A child's being reduced to the rank of sexual object to be used by an adolescent or adult will ultimately introduce a doubt...: could it be, perhaps, that this alone is what (the child) is for? In this way, (children) may learn to concentrate on the sexual needs and desires of others to the exclusion of (their) own "

 Dorais p111

"Through the Indian residential school system, many First Nation children suffered neglect and physical, sexual and psychological abuse while enduring harsh living conditions under the pretense of gaining an education. As a result many children experienced personal and cultural degradation that lasted a lifetime for many of them.

The survivors often believed these experiences to be traumatic and resulted in long-term negative impacts across many areas of their lives such as relationships, parenting, health, mental health, beliefs and coping. Many of the survivors were left without any supports or help to heal from the traumas they experienced in the Indian Residential School (IRS) system. In some cases, the survivors didn’t recognize some of their problems as being connected to the Indian Residential School experience. As the survivors had families of their own they unintentionally placed their children at risk of being exposed to these same long-term negative impacts. In doing so, they transmitted their trauma and its effects to their children who were often unaware of their parents’ experiences in the Indian Residential School system. This transmission of trauma is known as intergenerational trauma transmission and it has negative long-term impacts across the generations.

Today there is more awareness of the serious negative experiences that the survivors of the Indian Residential Schools were exposed to, trauma and its impacts, and the ability to transmit trauma across generations. As survivors and their families speak out about the trauma there are opportunities available using cultural and counselling supports to heal from their soul wounds."

http://www.anishinabek.ca/irscp/irscp-health-resources.asp

This interests me- as a Jewish North American my life has been basically privileged and safe however intergenerational trauma is something to think about. I think it's important to consider in the Israel/Palestine situation.