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Inside Lebanon’s Harrowing Sex Industry
Past the lens of “super night clubs” and “exotic dancers” is a harrowing industry that imprisons women and forces them into work that strips them of their basic dignity.
When BBC Pop Up landed in Beirut, we fled to the website, sharing our own stories and accounts of living in Lebanon. What came out of it however was a series of stories and tales that left us hanging our heads in shame.
One of these is this, prostitution and sex trafficking in Lebanon. A 22 minute long documentary emerged that highlights the very real problem of prostitution that many men are guilty of endorsing, without giving a second thought to the realities that these women face.
BBC Pop Up met with Toni Hanna, the owner of a super night club (which seems like another sugar-coated name for a pimp), he describes life at his club and the girls that work there.
The girls are “the perfect girl for every man. A beautiful girl, not smart” he says as he laughs smugly. He continues to talk about their lives, being locked in the hotel from 5 AM to 1 PM “for their own protection”, to which he (proudly) agrees it mimics being locked in jail. “Whoever cares shouldn’t come here” is how Hanna justifies it, but the flaws in this argument are clear.
Ironic, since he says it is his job to protect them, and laughs sarcastically while he says “he treats a hooker like a lady.” What he (intentionally) overlooks is the sex trafficking problem these Eastern European women face, the confiscation of passports and trauma they later face due to being forced into this barbaric industry.
Another side to this damning documentary is the sex work of Syrian refugees, who, though not forced by a pimp, feel they have no other choice than to work to feed their families. One woman says she is full of regret, and if her family in Syria found out, it would be as if she buried her own mother.
A police operation highlights attempts to arrest pimps and the women. Is it fair that these women, who are forced into work and often vulnerable, are arrested too? It is shocking that the women can be theoretically punished just as harshly as the pimps, given the facts of the situation.
Why is prostitution still conceived as consensual intercourse?
We often think of rape as a dark stranger in an alley-way type violent intercourse, but we must look at the facts. Most of the time, rape is committed by someone known to the victim, and non-consent is more than screaming and shouting. Victim precipitation (to blame the victim) is a concept that dates back centuries, and consent is more than just saying “yes” or “no”. A principle under English law states that consent is about what’s going on in the mind of the victim. Surely given the facts of sex trafficking, the confiscation of passports, and jail-like accommodation of the women, rape encompasses prostitution?
Watch the full documentary here:
This problem is one that we turn a blind eye to, often shaming women based on this work even though we should know better, and stereotyping foreigners, particularly Eastern European women. As Toni Hanna unwillingly points out, he treats hookers as women, and forgetting that hookers are women that have been forced into the trade, or turned to prostitution as a last resort for survival.
When BBC Pop Up landed in Beirut, we fled to the website, sharing our own stories and accounts of living in Lebanon. What came out of it however was a series of stories and tales that left us hanging our heads in shame.
One of these is this, prostitution and sex trafficking in Lebanon. A 22 minute long documentary emerged that highlights the very real problem of prostitution that many men are guilty of endorsing, without giving a second thought to the realities that these women face.
BBC Pop Up met with Toni Hanna, the owner of a super night club (which seems like another sugar-coated name for a pimp), he describes life at his club and the girls that work there.
The girls are “the perfect girl for every man. A beautiful girl, not smart” he says as he laughs smugly. He continues to talk about their lives, being locked in the hotel from 5 AM to 1 PM “for their own protection”, to which he (proudly) agrees it mimics being locked in jail. “Whoever cares shouldn’t come here” is how Hanna justifies it, but the flaws in this argument are clear.
Ironic, since he says it is his job to protect them, and laughs sarcastically while he says “he treats a hooker like a lady.” What he (intentionally) overlooks is the sex trafficking problem these Eastern European women face, the confiscation of passports and trauma they later face due to being forced into this barbaric industry.
Another side to this damning documentary is the sex work of Syrian refugees, who, though not forced by a pimp, feel they have no other choice than to work to feed their families. One woman says she is full of regret, and if her family in Syria found out, it would be as if she buried her own mother.
A police operation highlights attempts to arrest pimps and the women. Is it fair that these women, who are forced into work and often vulnerable, are arrested too? It is shocking that the women can be theoretically punished just as harshly as the pimps, given the facts of the situation.
Why is prostitution still conceived as consensual intercourse?
We often think of rape as a dark stranger in an alley-way type violent intercourse, but we must look at the facts. Most of the time, rape is committed by someone known to the victim, and non-consent is more than screaming and shouting. Victim precipitation (to blame the victim) is a concept that dates back centuries, and consent is more than just saying “yes” or “no”. A principle under English law states that consent is about what’s going on in the mind of the victim. Surely given the facts of sex trafficking, the confiscation of passports, and jail-like accommodation of the women, rape encompasses prostitution?
Watch the full documentary here:
This problem is one that we turn a blind eye to, often shaming women based on this work even though we should know better, and stereotyping foreigners, particularly Eastern European women. As Toni Hanna unwillingly points out, he treats hookers as women, and forgetting that hookers are women that have been forced into the trade, or turned to prostitution as a last resort for survival.
