This year, the film “Anora” swept the Oscars (winning five awards) after previously claiming the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. What is the film about?
It tells the story of a sex worker from Brooklyn who seizes the opportunity to live a Cinderella fairy tale when she meets and marries the son of a Russian oligarch. When the father learns of the marriage, he pulls out all the stops to have it annulled. All reviews refer to her as a “sex worker.” And we repeat this term ourselves, sanitising the reality: it’s just a job. It seeps into our subconscious (and conscious mind) as simply work – you do it, get paid, leave, and everything’s fine.
Four days after the Oscars ceremony, news from the occupied north informs us that in Gerolakkos (an area filled with sex factories), a 25-year-old woman was found dead at the venue where she worked and lived. Her name was distinctly Greek. Political parties and organisations in the occupied territories spoke of sexual slavery. “We have zero tolerance for sexual slavery and human trafficking. This death is not just a loss of life but the bloody result of systematic violence and exploitation,” stated the women’s organisation of the Republican Turkish Party (RTP) in their announcement.
MP Dogus Derya said in a speech that sexual slavery has continued for 25 years in the occupied territories, with women registered as students but forced into prostitution. She mentioned websites where women are “advertised like merchandise,” speaking of organised sex tourism in the occupied areas. The Independence Path party called for the closure of nightclubs, emphasising that women working in these places under conditions of coercion are “victims of sexual slavery,” not sex industry workers.
Even before the death of the 25-year-old became known, colleague Tonia Stavrinou had highlighted in a post the glamorisation of prostitution. “The attempt to beautify a harsh system of exploitation, using terms of free market, labour rights, and sexual freedom, has been vigorously promoted in recent years… At its core, this idea covers up and whitewashes an inhumane trade from which organised crime profits internationally.”
She references a report by Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, which documents the factors that drive a woman into prostitution: extreme poverty, past abuse, substance dependency, lack of education, stereotypes about the “value” of women’s bodies, and myths about male sexuality.
So Anora, like A.M. in Gerolakkos, did not choose what they did. Prostitution is not simply a job.
