Gender Issues: Women and Sex
Greenberg 1
Charmaine Greenberg
Professor Macolm
Introduction to Gender Issues
26 September 2010
Women and Global Sex
Women having sex in this world by force or by choice is something that has been going on
since the beginning of time. Women from every country have been taken advantage of in some
sort of way, even if it wasn’t the actual act of intercourse. There are times when men from all
walks of life, get the feeling that women were placed on this earth to fulfill their sexual pleasures
and that is it. There were two excerpts in the essay, (“A Topography of the Global Sex Trade.”)
that stood out to me, and I would like to comment on them.
“Some women take the route into sex work voluntarily, others not, it is true, but there is a
large grey zone in between these two conditions, a vast field of negotiation, on which I focus on
my attention (Biemann 411.) It is sad to know that some women have never been given the
opportunity to know what it is to be a beautiful woman, and to know that we are not sex objects.
This is heartbreaking, because; some girls are sold as sex slaves as early as five and ten years
old. For most of these young girls, imagine what they feel about themselves by the time they
reach the age of fifteen? Imagine the amount of sexual transmitted diseases some will have
encountered by the age of eighteen, how many pregnancies some will have aborted or children
some will have by the age of twenty-one and imagine what her self-esteem will be at fifty.
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With all that these women have and will endure, I know that there is always going to be
at least one woman who feels that there is hope for her life, and she will have a victorious
moment when all of this is over. That leads me to my second favorite excerpt. “We respect
these
Charmaine Greenberg
Professor Macolm
Introduction to Gender Issues
26 September 2010
Women and Global Sex
Women having sex in this world by force or by choice is something that has been going on
since the beginning of time. Women from every country have been taken advantage of in some
sort of way, even if it wasn’t the actual act of intercourse. There are times when men from all
walks of life, get the feeling that women were placed on this earth to fulfill their sexual pleasures
and that is it. There were two excerpts in the essay, (“A Topography of the Global Sex Trade.”)
that stood out to me, and I would like to comment on them.
“Some women take the route into sex work voluntarily, others not, it is true, but there is a
large grey zone in between these two conditions, a vast field of negotiation, on which I focus on
my attention (Biemann 411.) It is sad to know that some women have never been given the
opportunity to know what it is to be a beautiful woman, and to know that we are not sex objects.
This is heartbreaking, because; some girls are sold as sex slaves as early as five and ten years
old. For most of these young girls, imagine what they feel about themselves by the time they
reach the age of fifteen? Imagine the amount of sexual transmitted diseases some will have
encountered by the age of eighteen, how many pregnancies some will have aborted or children
some will have by the age of twenty-one and imagine what her self-esteem will be at fifty.
Greenberg 2
With all that these women have and will endure, I know that there is always going to be
at least one woman who feels that there is hope for her life, and she will have a victorious
moment when all of this is over. That leads me to my second favorite excerpt. “We respect
these
Cited: Kirk, Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. ed. 5 New York: McGraw-Hill, Irwin, 2010