Resisting Rape Culture

The Hebrew Bible and Hong Kong Sex Workers

Nancy Nam Hoon Tan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367544980
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000178630
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Studi biblici

Resisting Rape Culture tackles controversial and harrowing rape myths prevalent in rape culture: namely that sex workers do not get raped, and that they are deserving victims of sexual violence. Commonly, sociocultural discourses depict sex workers as morally deficient and promiscuous, having sex with multiple clients in exchange for payment. Consequently, they are often considered deserving of rape, sexual assault and other forms of abuse, or as people who should expect to receive such treatment. In a way, the Hebrew Bible contributes to such stigmatization of and discrimination against sex workers, given first, its authority and second, its negative portrayals of prostitutes as outsiders.

This cutting-edge book describes the rape culture in Hong Kong, focusing on how Hong Kong Christians interpret the Bible concerning prostitutes, and in turn how this affects the treatment of sex workers. Arguably, when interpretations malign the prostitutes in the Bible, and do not critique how the Bible portrays these women, we promote the stigmatization of sex workers and, in doing so, normalise and trivialise sexual discrimination, abuse and violence, ultimately promoting rape culture.

1 Introduction

On 12 October 2017, the High Court of the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong convicted a male shipping clerk, Mr Gary Leung, to 11 years’ imprisonment for raping a sex worker and stealing HK$1600 (US$205) and her mobile phone.¹

On 1 December 2016, Leung approached a sex worker’s flat, allegedly for services. The sex worker let him in and when she turned her back to him, he pulled out a knife to threaten her. He bound her wrists and ankles and raped her. When, after this, the doorbell rang, he took off with her money and mobile phone. Her neighbour called the police after hearing the commotion and realising what had happened. Leung was caught after the police circulated a photograph of him taken from CCTV. The jury, composed of three men and four women, reached their verdict within one hour, finding Leung guilty on two counts: rape and theft. Leung persisted in his denial of both charges, claiming that there had been an agreed transaction to role-play “rape” for the agreed amount. The (female) judge rejected an appeal for a lighter sentence, because evidence from Leung’s mobile phone proved that the crimes of rape and theft had been premeditated. The history of searches on Leung’s phone showed that, before he committed the crimes, he had researched how to rape and rob a sex worker. After the crimes, he also searched for updated police reports on rape and theft within the victim’s district. The judge justified the “harsh” sentence in terms of a “deterrent” and deemed the accused “shameless” for his actions towards the sex worker who was extremely vulnerable and trying to do her job. Throughout the court hearing, the sex worker’s identity was confidential and protected. The procedure and the outcome indeed deserve praise.

On the Facebook page for a local Chinese online news service, a post reporting on this trial was met with many responses that praised the verdict and denounced Leung.² Comparatively speaking, about one-third of the comments, however, may be considered negative. There were comments saying that Leung deserved the sentence because of his stupidity, rather than his criminal behaviour. Moreover, there were many comments that used strongly derogatory language towards the victim. That is, some comments, while seemingly agreeing with the sentence, consistently used demeaning language for the sex worker, making judgements about her on account of her profession, as opposed to emphasising her status as a victim of violence. Several comments also questioned the severity of the sentence, not considering the judge’s verdict in this particular case to constitute a “deterrent”. Many responders to the report regarded the overall outcome of the investigation, as well as the verdict and its general reception, quite positively, but on scrolling through the responses from the public, positive comments such as “such crimes deserve heavy penalties” were persistently interspersed with negative ones, downplaying the seriousness of rape when the victim is a sex worker. I argue that such comments are a significant indicator that a largely unexamined rape culture continues to exist alongside more measured attitudes.

When I interviewed Ms Sherry Hui, the coordinator for the Jei Jei Jai³ Association (hereafter JJJ), a non-governmental organization (NGO) for sex workers, I asked whether sex workers now feel safer and more confident with the judicial system. Hui replied that sex workers were happy with the outcome, but considered this particular sex worker to have been comparatively lucky. Many of the sex workers, she told me, have had similar or worse experiences of sexual violence but chose not to report them. The Hong Kong sex workers reasoned that Leung was convicted because he was an ordinary clerk. Making an example of someone like him was much easier than if a culprit were to be someone of social standing, with a more respectable career, such as an engineer, a doctor or a successful entrepreneur. Such a man, they believed, would probably not be prosecuted at all. This indicates that among sex workers, trust in the judicial system is still limited.

Before I proceed, let me explain that I take “rape culture” to refer to the social phenomenon whereby—for some people—the crime of rape is excused while victims are both blamed and stigmatised. What I have described above indicates how a significant sector of the Hong Kong public responded to reports of the trial and verdict by emphasising the culprit’s stupidity and that the sentence passed on this rapist was too harsh. This shows a clear belittling of the crime of rape. Some of the attitudes suggest that Leung was stupid and careless rather than vicious and criminal; others suggest that he does not deserve such a heavy penalty. Some comments reflect that since “sex is what sex workers do”, what Leung did does not constitute rape or should receive a lighter sentence. Hence, some comments jeered at Leung for having to serve a penalty over a sex worker “of all persons”. This reflects the attitude that rape is excusable or pardonable in certain cases; it is not even a crime for “those and such as those”. But rape is a grave and violent crime regardless of the social status, wealth, cognitive ability, ethnicity or profession of the perpetrator. And the effects of rape are damaging for any victim regardless of their social status, wealth, cognitive ability, ethnicity or profession. A sex worker can be and often is a victim of rape and a sex worker’s trauma and rights to justice should be equally acknowledged and respected.

Particularly at issue here are two rape myths: 1) that sex workers do not get raped (i.e. sex workers get paid for sex and as long as they get paid, they can be subjected to any sexual act); and 2) that sex workers deserve to be raped because of their profession (i.e. sex workers are not entitled to the rights and privileges of others, because they are less moral and less worthy). Persons who express such opinions, explicitly or by implication, seem not to understand that in sex work, permission for, and agreement to, the kind of sex services offered are negotiated and remain paramount before, throughout and after the service. Any action compromising or violating what has been agreed and permitted infringes consent and is a crime. Unfortunately, the responses on social media indicate that rape myths continue to propagate the notions that women, and men, too, get raped because they “asked for it”, by virtue of their appearance or their behaviours. And often these notions are created and determined by the perpetrator’s gaze. Perpetrators can still and often do what they wish, or feel entitled to be sexually aggressive, because rape cultures continue to tolerate and even to support and facilitate such attitudes. Sex workers, in particular, suffer from such attitudes to their detriment. Sex workers, in particular, have no right to “cry rape”. Those who disregard or despise sex workers and their rights do not understand what the judge was saying when she asserted the truth that sex workers are vulnerable to rape because of their profession.⁴

Rape myths are transmitters of violence and injustice and sex workers are particularly vulnerable to physical, including sexual, violence. They are also less likely than many other victims to seek out legal defence. The Hong Kong sex workers’ continuing distrust in the ability of the judicial system to defend their cause in the event of rape or other sexual abuse shows that rape myths continue to hold sway. I hope this volume will make a significant contribution to confront and curb the perpetuation of such damaging falsehoods.

1.1 Purpose of the book

This book focuses on prejudice against sex workers, using well-known Bible texts about “prostitutes” (see below) and data collected with sex workers in Hong Kong. It tackles a pernicious and dangerous rape myth: namely, that women perceived to be promiscuous because they have multiple sexual partners, and sex workers in particular, deserve to be stigmatised, punished and even raped. I have used the word “perceived” here because it is often the case that a court of law defends an alleged perpetrator as long as doubt can be raised that the victim (called the “complainant”) has behaved in a way that indicates or implies consent. If that can be proven, then an alleged perpetrator is not found to be a criminal, even when evidence against them may be strong.⁵ When such a case is dismissed, the victim is left exactly as before and possibly even worse—because a court and maybe the public, too, have dismissed or condemned them, causing feelings of rejection and dejection.

As may be gauged from the case cited above, as well as from some of the public responses to this case, sex workers, by virtue of their profession, are at high risk of sexual violence. Moreover, sex workers’ accounts of ill treatment are often disbelieved, they rarely seek legal defence and those who perpetrate violence against them are hardly ever brought to justice. Some of this can be accounted for by poor treatment from police who often serve as the first responders to a crime. Sex worker NGO Zi Teng records that in Hong Kong, from January to April 2019 alone, there were nine cases where male police officers forced sex workers to service them, 268 cases of arbitrary arrest, as well as seven cases of indecent assault and threats.⁶ Sex workers often choose not to make any report of the injustice they suffer because of stigmatization and because they fear not being believed or considered worthy of justice.

The aim of this book is to raise awareness of this unjust situation, and also to take my guild of biblical interpreters to task for how they have interpreted the word “prostitute” in the Bible in such a way that many readers continue to stigmatise sex workers and—perhaps unwittingly—to promote their victimization. Scholars and general readers of the Bible need to acknowledge that this sustains rape culture, and then find ways to identify and resist unjust and oppressive practices, including when they are targeted at sex workers. This is both a feminist and a human rights issue.

This study examines the Hong Kong context. Recently, Hong Kong gained international attention when over a million protesters took to the streets on 10 June 2019, protesting against the extradition bill and the ever-increasing presence and control of the Chinese government in the region. The protests continue, despite the threat of the epidemic of Coronavirus (COVID-19), arising in January 2020. Hong Kong was once a British colony, but in 1997 was recognised as a Special Administrative Region of China. It has been an important international economic centre and financial hub but its significant economic status has become compromised due to the ongoing protests. “West meets East” has often been used to describe Hong Kong and it is characterised as a place with a Western outlook but as Chinese at its core.

While I was still teaching at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, I embarked on a project of reading passages of the Hebrew Bible with female sex workers in the city. I focused on biblical passages where words from the Hebrew root znh, translated as “prostitute”, occur.⁷ In this book, I use the word “prostitute” to refer to those occurrences in the Bible, and “sex worker” to refer to those whose profession is selling sex. I started out on this project by volunteer-teaching English for JJJ in 2012–13. The project is inspired by Avaren Ipsen’s, published in her monograph Sex Working and the Bible, where Ipsen reads stories about prostitutes from the Bible with female sex workers who are also activists in the San Francisco Bay area.⁸ Her project uses the voices of contemporary sex workers to speak about and for the prostitutes in the Bible. Hence, where biblical authors and many interpreters might suppress prostitutes’ voices, the sex workers of San Francisco make them heard. Because sex work is widely criminalised in the USA, where laws are often “informed by the Bible”,⁹ Ipsen’s project embodies activism and aims to debunk the negative force of many biblical interpretations.

The Hong Kong context is different from that of California in a number of ways. In Hong Kong, sex work is not criminalised and is governed by laws that claim to regulate violence and maintain societal ethics. Moreover, the female sex workers I have come to know through JJJ do not identify themselves as activists, nor are they familiar with the Bible and the stories in it.¹⁰ The outcome of my first reading of 1 Kings 3:16–28 (“The Judgment of Solomon”) made me realise how biblical interpreters and commentators and even the biblical authors themselves missed the mark completely in their portrayal of sex workers. I am persuaded that this is because they do not know about sex work or the lives of sex workers, and I have raised this in an earlier publication.¹¹ In this book, through standpoint theory (explained below), I am evoking the voices of Hong Kong sex workers to reinterpret three Bible stories. My purpose is first, to highlight how ignorance has promoted discrimination and rape culture; second, to enhance understanding about sex work and sex workers’ lives; and third, to actively challenge and rectify sex worker stigmatization and victimization.

1.2 Standpoint theory

Standpoint theory has its origins in feminist studies. It developed when philosophers and theorists acknowledged the success of feminist studies in pointing out that socio-political and economic power structures are involved in generating knowledge. As a consequence, knowledge is no longer regarded as objective and representative of reality.¹² On the contrary, perspectives from marginalised groups in a society generate more realistic, accurate and valuable information with regard to knowledge.

Sandra Harding in her book The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader, elaborates as follows:

Standpoint theories argue for “starting off thought” from the lives of marginalized peoples; beginning in those determinate, objective locations in any social order [that] will gen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Rape culture and sex work in Hong Kong
• 3 Sex workers read Tamar
• 4 Sex workers read the story of the two prostitutes and King Solomon
• 5 Sex workers read Gomer and the female prostitution figures in Hosea 1–3
• 6 Summary and conclusion
• Selected bibliography
• Subjects and authors index
• Biblical texts index