For this week’s blog post, I will be writing about a loss memoir, “Missing Sarah”. The book is a narrative based on Sarah, who is one of the many missing women from Downtown Eastside, Vancouver who were murdered. It was written by Sarah’s sister, Maggie De Vries and was written with the help of using Sarah’s journals, in which she has written about her life struggles and has shared her honest thoughts as being a sex worker and a drug addict. In this blog, I will be examining how sex workers are portrayed in the media.
By reading this book I get to know a sex worker’s perspective on how they are mistreated by the society. In many parts of the book when Sarah was in the position of speaking through her journal, she mentions that the work she does is because it has come down to it and she has no other option left for a source of income. The source of income she gets is really important for her because without the money, she is unable to buy the drugs which help her to keep functioning. The mistreatment of this community can also be seen in chapter five of the book “Sex Work in Vancouver” where Maggie writes, “To this day, prostitutes are pushed from one neighborhood to the next…” (Vries 95) this statement by her suggests that sex workers are not looked at as normal human beings and are not accepted in any neighborhood as they are shunned out. However, in the same chapter Maggie writes, “In most industries, regulations are made, processes put in place, through consultation with those concerned. Because our society has deemed sex workers unacceptable, it does not occur to us to consult with sex workers when making decisions” (Vries 96), by saying this she has singled out a valid point on which society turns a blind eye, which is the discrimination against sex workers. The discrimination occurs against sex workers in the sense that they are not consulted by the government when actions regarding them are being taken place and therefore the outcome of the policy adopted by the government has inefficient outcome.
Media is also an important part of the society who plays a vital role in building an opinion about someone or something. In other words, media has the power to shape people’s opinions by the way they broadcast the news. This is looked upon by Wing as he looks at how a white suspect is portrayed in the news versus how a black suspect is portrayed in the news. In the article “When The Media Treats White Suspects and Killers Better Than Black Victims”, there has been an example given of two suspects belonging to different skin color. Michael Brown is a black teenager who was brutally shot by a police officer, and the claim of him assaulting a police officer was shown in the media as “Police: Michael Brown Struggled With Officer Before Shooting” with a picture of him having apparently an expressionless face whereas the article shows a picture of the headline of a white suspect involved in shooting. The white suspect’s headline states “Theater Shooting Suspect Was Brilliant Science Student“ with a smiling picture of him. This suggests that white suspects are given a positive image compared to the black suspect.
In my opinion, the discrimination against the sex workers and the discrimination against the blacks have an analogy as they both are given a negative image. This leads to labeling them as bad people of the society for which they have to face consequences such as police brutality and discrimination. However, media, who has a considerable power in today’s world should use its power to create a positive image of them and avoid biasness towards certain kinds of people just to gain attention towards their business.
Works Cited:
Vries, Maggie De. Missing Sarah: a Memoir of Loss. Penguin Books Canada, 2008.
Wing, Nick. “When The Media Treat White Suspects And Killers Better Than Black Victims.” Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo!, 14 Aug. 2014, sports.yahoo.com/media-treats-white-suspects-killers-182442973.html.