ABSTRACT
There are two dominant images of a sexually exploited young person. In both, the young person is female. Firstly, there is the ‘young female prostitute’, a mediadominated stereotype of a young woman hanging over the opening door of a man’s car, on a dark and lonely street. She is either wearing high heels or long, over the knee, boots. She is always wearing a short skirt. Usually she is white, although sometimes she is black African/Caribbean. Rarely, if ever, is she Asian. She is always a ‘shadow’, an image set against the dim lighting of an urban street. Then, alternatively, there is the damaged, vulnerable, abused girl in the
corner of a bare room. Again, she is usually white, although sometimes in these cases, the ethnicity is less transparent. Often there is a door opening, a man about to step towards her. Invariably there is a tear on her cheek, and, unlike her counterpart who dares to venture out into the streets on her own, her face shows fear and dread. These two conflicting stereotypes dominate the public view of sexually exploited children and young people. The former, the girl on the street, is designed to lure the reader into the story through the promise of sex. The latter lures the reader into the story through conjuring fear, sympathy and outrage at unacceptable abuse. As with all stereotypes, there are some truths in these representations of
young people’s circumstances. Some young women do solicit, some are trapped in isolated rooms, but these are not the only stories. These dominant images are limited as they overlook the varied and complex forms of exploitation and
men, and when they do address race, it is often with a focus on white girls being abused by ‘foreign’ men. There are many different circumstances and situations impacting on boys and girls, young men and young women from a range of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, many of which remain unidentified or under explored. Some feminists have challenged the dominant gendered discourses that have
traditionally focused attention on white young and adult women. Others have challenged the attribution of certain ‘places’, such as the public domain as ‘male’ against other places: the private domain as ‘female’. For example, some studies have shown differences between black and minority ethnic young people’s use of education and social services provisions (Mirza 2007). Others have highlighted how boys can spend time in traditionally ‘girls’ spaces, such as bedrooms, while girls can spend time in ‘boys’ spaces such as streets and parks (McRobbie 1991, Skelton and Valentine 1998, Alder and Worrall 2004). However, little has changed the dominant understanding of gendered infor-
mal economies, crime and violence which still appear to create over-simplistic polarisations of the criminal male offender, who operates in the public domain, against the female victim who is trapped within the private domain (Kinnell 2008). This means that some of the complexities and nuances that do take place between men and women, boys and girls in a variety of different settings are overlooked. In this chapter I want to explore some of these complexities. I look at find-
ings from research and practice to consider how sexual exploitation is gendered. I address how our understanding of exploitation can change when we free ourselves from overarching assumptions that are maintained through binary oppositions that polarise men/boys as perpetrators against women/girls as victims. By breaking away from this limited opposition, we can be more open to awareness of boys and young men being sexually exploited by both men and women. I also look at work that explores the issues for sexually exploited minority
ethnic young people, addressing some of the concerns that have been raised about identifying the needs of young people concerned and about making services accessible to them. Finally I look at how practice might encourage young people to participate in
the development and management of research and in services targeted to meet their needs. I look at some of the different attempts to access voices of sexually exploited young people, considering the problems and achievements of this work.
