My Rights By Joseph Parker, Clinical Director The Lola Greene Baldwin Foundation I am not a prostitute. I am not a "thing" for other people to use and hurt. I am a human being. I am a child of God, made in the image and likeness of God. Nothing that ever has been done to my body or my mind can change that. While being prostituted, I sometimes hurt others. I cannot take that back, but I must remember that I was living under very abnormal, stressful conditions. Who I was in that situation is not who I am now. I have the right to privacy about my past. Discussing it with people who have no legitimate need to know just feeds their fantasies and prejudices, and helps no one. I have the right to decide how my limited supply of life energy is used. I can refuse excessively intrusive "therapy". I have the right to reject "healthy" changes in my life that cost more energy than I can afford. Many people have chosen to hurt me, and people like me. I must respect their choices about who they decided to become. No matter how much I cared about parts of who they were, or who they could have been, I have the right not to waste my energy trying to make them different. During my time in prostitution, I lost people I cared about to insanity and death. I will remember the parts of them I was able to know. I will pray for them if I can. I will honor their memory by doing my best to survive, to live a good life, and to be a good person. If a time comes when the treatment available to me no longer helps, when the pain and tiredness is too great, and I have no energy left, I have the right to die. Copyright 2004, Joe Parker Permission is hereby granted to reproduce this paper in its entirety, in any form or quantity needed, for any purpose except for sale, on condition that this copyright information is included