Blow is totally feminist though
Published by R. Mildred August 10th, 2006 in Feminism, Sex, What Patriarchy?, Lick My Jackboots of LoveAll oppressive systems utilise mutually exclusive dichotomies.
The plutocracy for instance will often lambaste the poor for not being able to work or think their way out of the badly paid job they work long hours at, the working class’ is that they’re just not showing enough initiative, why when I was their age I was already on my way to earning my first million!* And if the working classes take a look at the system and say “fuck this” and start resorting to crime because that earns more money for less actual work (though with increased risks of course) they’re evil and lazy, why I never had to break the law to make my money.**
Of course every rich person has killed someone, whether directly or as a result of their mad scrabble to be even richer than the Jones’s in the Mansion Ranch next door (across the mile or so of estate that separates the Right people from each other), but that is as of nothing versus those poor folk who ignore concepts like property rights in their mad scramble to survive in system that actively wants to kill them.
Same goes the for the Aryanocracy or Heteronormitivity, Mexicans are, on the one hand, lazy feckless criminals, and on the other hand, evil scheming bastards who are going to take over the world by picking lettuce illegally for 10 cents an hour, and homosexuals are, if they’re not all “I’m queer, I’m here, get used to it”, then they’re obviously ashamed of their lifestyle choice, and obviously agree that it’s just plain wrong, and if they actually are all into pride and outness, then they’re shoving their immoral lifestyle into everyone’s face, and perverting the children† in the process.
Oppressive systems are of course like this naturally, they’re basically ginormous collections of various interlocking and symbiotic memes, and thus subject to selective pressures, those systems of oppression that didn’t set up a series of contradictory concepts which enabled people who didn’t fit into any one predefined stereotypical manner of behavior to be screwed over just as much as those that did, was destroyed or surpassed by better systems of oppression, who could oppress so much better and thus continue to give the oppressor classes their wonderful privileges without fear of the oppressed classes breaking the system from within due to something crazy like consistency and fairness.
Now you may have noticed that certain themes tend to run through the various systems of oppression I mentioned, the plutocracy always states that, no matter what the working class do, they’re still inherently lazy because they’re not rich and no matter what homosexuals do, their sexuality is still inherently icky.
A similar theme runs through the patriarchy in regards to sex, sure, on the one hand women are supposed to be asexual and do not want to have sex under any circumstance, but on the other hand men have a Y-chromosome given right to have sex whenever and however they please.
How does The Patriarchy square that circle? Oh, just a little thing called the Rape Culture.
Now I’ve written before about how the only patriarchally approved form of sex is rape, this is because rape is an act which, by definition, involves a person not wanting to have sex but some guy having sex with them anyway, to the rape culture and patriarchy this is perfect, you have a man having sex but they’re not having sex with an actually sexual person, and in such a traumatic and violent manner that the person who has had sex thrust upon them may even end up giving up consensual sex all together.
This is why the most visible rape culture concept you’ll likely see is the whole rape victim blaming thing, which works by a bunch of guys and patriarchal tools coming along and talking about the many ways in which, obviously, the victim did something wrong, like how they gave their prima facie consent to be raped by doing something crazy like leaving the house, or going to college, or joining the military or drinking alcoholic beverages.
Now such talk is of course insane, you can’t be raped and have been at fault, you can’t go out and get raped, that would imply that it was in some way a consensual act, and rape cannot be a consensual act, ergo you cannot go out and “get” raped, the very idea is nonsensical.
But the point is to conflate consensual sex with rape, so that activities or behavior that occur primarily because a woman is not hiding her sexual nature and may even want to do something as crazy as want to have consensual sex with someone, such as dressing “like a slut” (or just being a stripper, prostitute, porn star etc… a member of the rape class basically) or drinking (a major part of most human mating rituals in the first world), inherently also imply that a woman wants to be raped too, because obviously there is no distinction between consensual sex between two (or more) people who really want to have sex with each other, and a man masturbating using a woman’s body.
Now the distinction between consensual sex and rape is simply that, with consensual sex we have two (or more) people who really want to have sex with each other, while with rape you have one guy who feels it necessary to prove his manliness by fucking someone who either A) actively doesn’t want to have sex or B) doesn’t struggle too hard.
Now note that I mentioned people who want to have sex with each other, as Bitch|Lab pointed out, mutuality is key here (the only really important thing when it comes to sex positive feminist views towards any sort of sex), everyone has to actively want to have sex with everyone else involved or it’s not sex by the sex positive feminist conception of sex, the idea that if a person doesn’t object too loudly then it’s not rape is rejected by sex positive feminism as an entirely patriarchal line of rape enabling bullshit.
Which brings me around to the never ending argument that’s been going on at Pandagon between prostitutes waving the banner of “choice” and “sex positive feminism”, a gay man who needs his blow jobs on demand and the “radfems” who the other two groups think hate prostitution because prostitutes have sex for money, whereas they actually hate prostitution because prostitutes have sex for money.
OMGWTFBBQ, I hear you cry (nice pronunciation btw), people not getting the subtle nuance of an argument? Surely not!? You ask, confused and scared at this strange new world you’ve glimpsed in which nuance appears to be too much for some people to handle.
Next you’ll tell us that people have been whipping out Dworkin as an insult for reasons other than allying with right wingers during the 80s against porn and prostitution, you joke.
Heh.
Which is really the only reason anyone should point to Dworkin and radfems as a bad thing, their thinking and writing, and more importantly their legal work making date rape a crime and all that, are pretty sound and they can shit internal consistency, what with them having such stuff up the wazoo and then some.
That they allied with the right-wingers and have since been demonised by the patriarchy and feminists alike should really stand as a testament to how making deals with the right wing are going to end up with you getting screwed over.
Of course, it’s technically a fight over the legalization of prostitution, but if it was then there’d be questions asked like “does legalization actually help the most vulnerable and abused prostitutes?” and stuff, not “I deserve the right to sell my body for cash and enable the patriarchy because I am able to get other work, and this is feminist and empowering because I say so”, which is nice, because women should feel empowered enough to be so moulitsas± in public, however that doesn’t in anyway make the moulitsas argument any less… moulitsas.
Because prostitution is wrong, and here’s why…
Now KH, the main legalisation pusher in that thread, is convinced that prostitution is not coercive, and htat prostitution is just another form of sexual choice - like blowjobs and engaging in consensual sex. Now her main reason for this is based on a long winded bit of academic masturbation, which starts off with this little gem:
Nonetheless, the following discussion will focus on a narrower sense of the term more in line with its use by major historical philosophical writers and contemporary theorists alike. This usage will rule out, by stipulation, such things as mere disapproval, emotional manipulation, or wheedling.
So basically she holds her position by playing semantics with some wording using the wanky academic concept of “coercion”. Uhuh, that’s philisophically sound, that everyone else uses the term in the normal way to mean methods of manipulation that include emotional manipulation, as well as socio-economic manipulation, is beside the point, she has redefined “is” to justify her profession and that’s the end of that (I am of course using a magical term that her academics had to actively point out they weren’t using, which I made up entirely, of course).
We know that prostitution is coercive in the normal, as opposed to the “Could I make it any more clear that I’m really reaching for justifcations here?”, sense of the word coercion from the most basic economic concept of supply and demand.
Now everyone knows supply and demand, hell it’s all most libertarians and right wingers know about economics, but due to supply and demand, a suppler with a monopoly in something can jack their prices sky high because they don’t have to worry about competition undercutting them, they’re the only supplier in town and so if anyone wants to buy their produce, they need to pay those prices and thus have no real bargaining power, unless demand is almost non-existent.
If the dynamic then becomes a matter of needs versus wants, the power imbalance becomes even more pronounced, because the person who needs something is in a position where, unless there’s a serious bounty of supply for that needed stuff, they have no choice but to pay what ever they have to obtain it, and if the supplier merely wants their money, because for instance they’re rich already and are now just amassing a huge money filled swimming pool for their own personal amusement, then they can turn the person who needs down, refuse to sell them anything, if the person who needs tries to haggle or pay less than is being asked, and so the person with needs gets screwed over more often than not because it is dangerous to even risk trying to haggle or negotiate a better price.
Now obviously a person who relies on prostitution to pay their bills and to just generally live is not in the superior bargaining position compared to the john who use them, who neither need them nor are particularly pressured to use any particular prostitute – not only can johns haggle but they have the ability to dictate terms to the prostitute who has a huge force (hunger, the luxury of having a place to sleep).
Prostitution is clearly a buyer’s market, and prostitutes are sellers, inherently degraded by their lack of power even when their profession is something they’ve entered into by “choice”.
The prostitute needs the money for their survival, and the john merely wants to have sex with a woman, and so a pressure is put on the prostitute to perform when they do not want to and/or how they don’t want to.
Now despite the fact that when a woman is having sex when/how she doesn’t want to, it’s not sex, it’s rape, which is coerced sex, KH still sits stubbornly by the concept that there’s nothing coercive about having sex for money.
Now I think I get what she’s sort of going on about, I do, one you get past the whole fucked up semantics BS, there is the whole “If someone offers you a million dollars to eat shit, you can refuse” thing, no one’s actively forcing the prostitutes to have sex when/how they don’t want to.
Well, except the socio-economic conditions inherent to prostitution of course.
Now the more eagle eyed among you may have noticed that an argument that basically says “Well if she had sex with him and chose to be a prostitute, then she wasn’t raped, she consented” and automatically erases the fact that the prostitute did not want to have sex then/like that, which is always rape, duh.
And yes B|L, this was put forth by a person claiming to be a sex-positive feminist. Sans any of the various contexts that I needed to be informed about after the Bussel flamewar, Bussel sounded like the sort of anti-fem I hear much too often, lording the right to be victimised while slamming feminists with some really randomised citations (that’s the anti-fems btw, after you add in a shit load of context to Bussel you find out that she’s wasn’t actually lording the right to be victimised, she’s just moulitsas). Yes it’s fucked up that I’m more familiar with common anti-fem arguments than Moulitsas feminist ones (I’m looking at you Levy).
But as I was telling my crack dealer this morning, I’m a fucked up kinda gal.
Anyhoo… If a woman isn’t able to consent it’s rape, If she was willing at one point but changes her mind later on, it’s rape if you don’t stop guys, even if she’s a prostitute/pr0nstar/stripper, it’s still rape if she doesn’t want to have sex with you.
DUH!
Now you may have noticed I used a word which usually gets the prostitution legalisers aggravated; “degrade”.
This is not me saying “oh, they have sex for money, they’re being degraded”, I’m saying that someone has to play pretend that they’re enjoying themselves while having sex with a person to whom they are not physically attracted to is being dehumanized.
One of the words used to support various sex-negative concepts under the cover of sex-positive feminism is “empowering”, stripping is “empowering”, being just (as in no life outside of being a stay at home mother, not as in being any kind of mother is something less in and of itself) a stay at home mother who caters to your “manly” guy’s every whim while ignoring your personal wants and needs is “empowering”, being a prostitute is “empowering”.
Now the funny thing is that out of those three, stripping is probably the only one that even approaches being “empowering”, because the thing is that, no one tells her how she does her routines, that’s her choice and her choice alone (I think, I could be wrong), the woman who’s trapped in that abusive marriage (and what else would you call a marriage in which a woman unilaterally takes on the stresses of a family while the husband complains about how she isn’t satisfying his every sexual whim often enough?) and the prostitute don’t’ even have that level of freedom in their “empowering” profession.
Yes yes, I suppose a prostitute can turn down clients, but again there’s that matter of really needing the money that means that’ll happen in extremis only.
And while she’s on the clock she is not herself, not sexually, not personality wise either, a john doesn’t just hire a prostitute’s body for an hour or an evening, he hires her personality as well, she hires someone who’ll laugh at his lame ass jokes and smile and go “oh it’s so big and hard” at appropriate moments.
It’s a trope borne entirely of the abrahamic faiths’ belief in a mind/body duality that creates this idea that sex is a purely physical thing that is somehow separate from the mental/spiritual aspect of a person, it isn’t, it can’t be.
Which is why the term “empowering” is such a classic case of doublethink when used in relation to prostitution, A prostitute is not doing what they want to do sexually, they’re doing what the john wants to do sexually irregardless of what the prostitute feels about that particular act.
It may not be rape if a woman does an act that bores them to tears and through which they have to pretend to be enjoying themselves, but it’s certainly not “empowering”, the precise opposite in fact, it’s dehumanizing.
And the amount of time, work and money that has to go into a prostitute’s body during her career is also another aspect that robs the whole thing of it’s empowering aspect, the closest equivalent to the dehumanizing nature of prostitution is shitty things in the service industry, those bullshit jobs where not smiling at all times when customers are present is a good way to get fired, those jobs are also dehumanizing, no question about it, but at least in most of those jobs I can get off work, and then eat and drink myself fat, or not get a face left because I’m getting old, and the next morning I can go into work, fat or wrinkly or ugly as sin, and as long as I remember to smile between 7 and 6 everyday, I still get paid.
But a prostitute has to go to the gym and stay trim, has to get the cosmetic surgery if possible, otherwise they’ll suffer a drop in customers, and the only empowering thing about either of the service industry jobs, the money you get from them, starts to dry up.
And the higher paid the hooker, the more crap they need to do to stay a high paid hooker, until their bodies are 80% silicon/collagen, 19% water and 1% themselves, at all times.
And as I’ve written previously, another trick oppressive system use is to turn a person from an individual, into a role, a job, a duty.
The Lovage song Sex (I’m a) notes this fact actually, where the chorus has a man going “I’m a man” over and over again, while a woman replies with all the roles she can be, “I’m a bitch”, “I’m a hooker”, I’m a little girl”, “I’m your mother”, “I’m a blue movie” the female half of the dialogue goes, never matching the man’s definitive statement that he’s just “a man.”
The core principle of feminism is that women are people, not roles, not jobs, people, and while people can take on roles when they want to, they can only take on roles as an expression of their personhood, and jobs that gradually subsume more and more of a woman’s personhood beneath their need to earn money, going so far as to disfigure her appearance so that men can better masturbate with her, are not feminist.
Now are y’all ready for the Big, Bad, horse molesting “But” to this whole tawdry affair?
But…
None of that matters a damn in the prostitution legalisation debate.
Whether prostitution is legalised has to be all about whether legalisation or decriminalisation helps stem and stop abuses in the industry, nothing more and nothing less, that some women decide to have sex for money is irrelevant to the legalisation debate, yes they should be called on their patriarchal bullshit when they call prostitution feminist or sex-positive, but the moral debate that broke out on pandagon has nothing to do with whether prostitution should be legalised, the debate should always be “can this or that legal change help those women who are being abused in an industry that is already illegal but exists anyway?”
And my personal stance is that the answer to that question is highly situational, which is were I feel Dworkin and most prostitution fighters, whether for or against legalisation, err heavily.
Universal attitudes to legalisation/decriminalisation are foolish, I could see it possible that in some locales, prostitution could be legalised and give prostitutes and shit load of much needed legal rights and protections that will be used to their benefit, and legalisation doesn’t forego attacking the root cause of prostitution – patriarchy – not by a long shot.
But then again legalising prostitution anywhere within a few hundred miles of Yale, Harvard or Duke will do nothing more or less than essentially legalise rape, the police simply won’t arrest, the juries won’t convict, the worst possible thing in the world you could do for prostitutes in that particular socio-political environment is legalise prostitution, even decriminalisation would rely too much on the local police not being out and out misogynists who joined the police force because they really like beating poor people with their batons (which they fiddle with constantly).
So it depends, if there is a good reason to think that legalisation in some form will be helpful within a particular social context, then by all means, I’ll have your back.
Just don’t tell me that prostitution is empowering, or feminist, or about you being sexually free, just don’t, I hate people who can’t even be bothered to lie to me well, cheap lies won’t do anything but piss me off.
It’s about the money, so say it’s about the money, there’s no shame in admitting that.
* Because they already had the massive amount of starting capital that is absolutely needed, due to that being how economics works, to make even more money (money being entirely unlike tribbles and all) in our great “meritocracy”, and their bags of inherited cash also allowed them to survive the first couple of false starts, like those times they ran several businesses into the ground through raw incompetence for instance, which strangely enough never get mentioned in those great tirades against the incompetence of poor people that asswaste failure right-wingers are so fond of.
** Of course this is largely true, when you can throw money at the politicians to change the laws so that all those handy cost saving schemes (like incredibly lax health and safety regulations) are perfectly legal, not to mention hire the lawyers and accountants who know all the little legal loopholes that enable them to never pay taxes and to avoid breaking the letter of the law while bending the law’s (and the workers’) spirit into crazy pretzel shapes that inexplicably never quite break it (though onlookers are always amazed that it doesn’t, “how can anyone or thing contort themselves like that?” they often ask, as though the answer is ever going to be anything other than “because they’re paid to hyuk hyuk hyuk…”) and thus the rich, strangely enough, never quite break the law.
† Who seem to go to way too many pride parades and gay bars than would seem credible if the constant paedophilic obsession of homophobes is to be believed. One can only assume that wingers raise their children in gay leather bars. Actually, now that I think about it, that would explain rather a lot really.
‡ I’m thinking of using Kos’ name as a term to replace the morally questionable terms “moron”, “idiot”, “retard”, “mong” and “dumb”, as in “my god, that was really moulitsas” or “Stop being moulitsas and get a move on”. To put it into a relative context, the bush administration is really really, incredibly moulitsa.
Yours is a nice socialist take on the issue, and I like how you manage to it from that point of view.
A word on the autonomy of strippers to do their routines; most strip clubs have strict guidelines on what’s expected of a stripper in her stage act. Usually this looks like stipulations on how many pieces of clothing have to be removed by certain points in the set, and it often spills into her off-stage time with quotas on how many drinks she has to try and make men purchase for her.
The most common coercion is the desperation of other strippers, because if men know they can get their dicks sucked during a private dance with one stripper then the others are forced to do more to compete for men’s money. As the woman in this article points out, “I can’t tell you how many times I have struggled to pay my stage fees after a night of hearing, ‘Why should I get a lap dance from you when another girl will give me oral sex for the same price?’ “ I used to get served free beer in a strip club so I hung out there a lot in my teens, and I heard one girl after another say what she wouldn’t do only to see them squat onto men’s opened beer bottles and shove a high heeled shoe into her vagina when the money men (in the shoe case three boys) offered was too much to pass up.
For all its many good points, your essay would be stronger if it included discussion of pimps and drug dealers, often one and the same. It’s estimated 90% of prostitutes in the United States are pimped out and the role of drug addictions in forcing women into prostitution cannot be overstated as substance addictions are almost a universal in prostitution. A colleague of mine who works with prostituted women in England is convinced that without proper drug treatment there can be little headway made in helping prostitutes meet their goal of getting out of the life because the pimps have got them hooked.
The fabulous Jill Sobule has a song on her most recent album about the sex trafficking problem in Tel Aviv and drug addiction:
I dream of my country
I think of my mother
I send her what I can
She thinks I’m a waitress
She’s proud I’m a waitress
In the promised land
They promised me work
And they promised me TV
They promised I’d never get bored
I’m back on the stairway
I’m higher than ever
They promised that I could get more
Good post. I’m not sure what KH’s narrow definition of coercion was, and I’m unwilling to trawl all the way through that thread to find out.
The thing with prostitution for me is that proponents of legalisation alwalys seem to be conjuring an image of Laurie from the first series of the West Wing, but my mental image is always more in terms of human trafficking and malnourished teenagers.
Thank you R. Mildred.
In spite of the fact that each of these women knew the women gone missing before her had probably been murdered by a john, she still turned up to her stroll. That’s choice? Two pages of missing, murdered prostitutes from ONE small neighbourhood in one city in one short defined period of time. Take a look at these faces. See the empowerment.
http://www.missingpeople.net/
“And while she’s on the clock she is not herself, not sexually, not personality wise either, a john doesn’t just hire a prostitute’s body for an hour or an evening, he hires her personality as well, she hires someone who’ll laugh at his lame ass jokes and smile and go “oh it’s so big and hard” at appropriate moments.”
She still has to pay for her own dinner though. I was watching one those titillating documentaries that have become so popular on British TV recently, which are supposedly examinations of prostitution, escorting, swinging or whatever but are really an excuse to get porn and sexploitation on our TV screens late at night. Anyhow they interviewed an escort and her john who had hired her out for four hours. After talking warmly about the girlfriend experience he was having and how he would like to try a few different things with her “maybe anal sex”, it turned out the john had made her split the bill. It just summed up how these men view the women they use: he’s happy to stick his dick up her ass, but feed her, no way.
Very nicely argued, R Mildred. Your arguments were wasted on KH.
I’m not so sure that in all contexts it’s a buyer’s market. even in Asia, where men I’ve known have gone to the bars to find what is euphemistically called “bar girls,” it is very obvious that, if you don’t do things their way, it’s the highway. E.g you never just walk in and wave cash, not in these establishments. (there are plenty where you do, though). In the ones sailors frequent, you go in and you engage in a courtship ritual of sorts.
You must buy overpriced, watered down fruity drinks, of which the girl gets a cut. You don’t touch unless you are invited. You are dangerously drunk? Mamasan throws you out. You otherwise simply look ugly, if the girl, in talking with you while drinking, spies someone more attractive, you’re history. Someone else will come along, of course. But she’s not your first choice.’
And, of course, what gets missed in _all_ of this, is not that we think that the radfems are zeroed in on people having *sex* for money, but that they are zeroed in on that and won’t explain or don’t persuade others why this matters in a way that makes it far more important to worry about that than to worry about people — all of us — who are forced to work at anything for money every day.
we all are forced to work for money.
now, personally? I know why the radfems feel this way. They think that porn, prostitution, and rape are the belts that power the engine of Patriarchy.
Great!
I really don’t have anything to say because we fundamentally disagree. We don’t share one iota of anything that is worth getting together and having a beer over.
I dont’ feel bad about that at all because i feel that the things I do are helping make a better world. And all the pissing and moaning from pony, sam, etc. about my lack of feminist street cred means exactly what I paid for their opinion: 0$
They don’t respect me, my heart is shattered and broken.
And I can feel quite comfortable about all that because I have taken the time to figure out how they think. They don’t bother to do the same. Thus, I get the added bonus of knowing that I am taking the high road and they aren’t. They in trun get to feel smug by mischaracterizing our positions and refusing to listen. The old engaged falliblistic pluralism post I made on the blog in response to the Alas sex wars recently.
And, disillusioned though I may be, I will go to my early grave knowing that the side that is at least trying to hold the door for reconciliation — as shot through with msitaken and hurthful rheotric as it is sometimes — is doing a better service to feminist goals than are those who shut the door and pretend that it is open, if only we would agree with their views.
Thank you for this post, R. Mildred.
In addition to Delphyne’s comment, I’d like to stress that, as is often but rightly said, prostituters also buy something else from the women they use: their silence. It is that silence that allows them to impunibly keep being invisible “johns”.
French photographer Marc Helleboid, who did an exhibition about “the clients in question” explained how hard it had been to convince his subjects to let him capture even their shadow (one of them wouldn’t even let him photograph his hands). A work on silence and obscurity.
Compare this to the thousands of voyeuristic albums and documentaries who show prostituted women under every angle, and you have the very image of the power imbalance inherent to sexual exploitation.
“prostituters?”
>who the other two groups think hate prostitution because prostitutes have sex for money, whereas they actually hate prostitution because prostitutes have sex for money.>
Not really, no. Well, again, I can only speak for myself: I can certainly see the socioeconomic argument much better; thing is, quite a lot of kinds of work (to greater or lesser degrees, arguably) suck quite badly; are degrading and underpaid and dangerous and dehumanizing. And some lines arguably are open to greater levels of exploitation and abuse than others. As you point out, migrant work, for one; or let’s say working the kill floor at a slaughterhouse; or hello the garment industry.
Yet no one singles out the -kind- of work, in these instances; well, maybe some vegetarians/animal rights activists wrt the slaughterhouse I suppose. But still: we gotta eat; we gotta wear clothes; and probably someone -has to- buy all those little trinkets that are made in some locked warehouse in a Third World country I expect.
> inherently degraded by their lack of power
–I mean, who the fucking fuck -isn’t?-
Yet sex is -different.- Different different different; and no, I do not believe that murky shit about the sex itself isn’t factoring in the anti-arguments. How could it not do? We’re as steeped in “sex-negativity,” culture-wise, as we are with misogyny and racism and classism and everything else.
-My- problem is when people–particularly feminists–”speak for” sex workers when they’re clearly more than capable of speaking for themselves. And I’m far from convinced that much of the sheer nastiness that was happening there and elsewhere wasn’t in fact because these womens’ very existence offended some people and still does.
I’m more than willing to believe that the bulk of sex work is -not- happy happy joy joy; hell, I hear as much from a number of sex workers. But it’s really aggravating to witness the ways in which these -people- become -symbols.- If nothing else, how ’bout stepping back and letting the women who’re actually -doing- the work speak for their damn selves for five minutes?
My adaptation of prostitueurs (as opposed to prostitué(e)s), a term used by abolitionist feminists in Québec and France. Without prostituters (pimps and johns), there are no prostituted (women, children, men).
RM,
So, if I’m following your argument correctly, the starting point would be “coercion is coercion whether it’s physical or economical”. Since a woman is raped whenever she is coerced into having sex that she would not otherwise have, the sex that prostitutes have out of need for money is always rape.
However, it seems to me that if we follow that logic through, we can say that “forced labour or servitude occurs whenever a person does work that they would not otherwise do”, which seems to me to be squarely in line with your characterization of rape. If that is true, then any work that people do solely to get money is unfree work. Therefore, for example, the miserable phone survey job that I only work because I need the money to feed myself is morally equivalent to having a gun shoved in my back to force me to work.
Given the premises that lead you to the first conclusion, the second one seems to me to necessarily follow. Would you agree, or is there some point in there where you would say the argument breaks down, such that it is true for prostitutes, but not for people in any other type of work?
Re: The idea that prostitution = rape because its sex that the prostitute doesn’t want to have.
– I’m sorry, but there is consent. If a prostitute says, “I’ll do Y for X amount of money”, she has has consented to sex under those conditions. Consent while demanding that certain preconditions are met, otherwise sex isn’t going to happen, is still consent.
– OK, but supposedly a prostitute simply can’t refuse any offer of money for sex, because they’re supposedly all so strung out, so poor, so psychologically desperate, that tricks have total power over them. The thing is, that really isn’t true about all prostitutes or all sex workers. It might be true of the kind of prostitutes interviewed by Melissa Farley, but the thing is, that is far from representative of all prostitutes. Of course, getting the antis to admit that maybe Farely was looking at only the poorest most desperate sex workers and that maybe it can’t be extrapolated out to the entire sex industry is like getting Young Earth Creationists to admit that they don’t really have proof the Earth is only 4000 years old. No use arguing with people who believe they’re not only entitled to their own opinion, but their own facts as well.
Re: The idea that prostitution = rape because its sex that the prostitute doesn’t want to have.
– I’m sorry, but there is consent. If a prostitute says, “I’ll do Y for X amount of money”, she has has consented to sex under those conditions. Consent while demanding that certain preconditions are met, otherwise sex isn’t going to happen, is still consent.
Not that simple, having already made the agreement, she would have to be insanely secure in her financial situation to even try to stop the sexual encounter midway through if she changed her mind midway through the preagreed activity.
And if she’s having sex she doesn’t want to do, it’s rape, by definition. And if you have sex for money often enough, and your ability to continue eating is incumbent on you having sex with people for money, such a situation will happen, because a prostitute only has as much power to refuse a client as she has savings in the bank.
And for the higher paid hookers, who’s client base is even more dependent on word of mouth than the lower paid ones, pressure is on to make sure that every one of her clients goes away satisfied, for the referrals, so she’ll bite her lip and shut up if it’s not too horrible.
And then when you ask her a few weeks later whether she enjoys her work, the incident when she was raped but didn’t say anything won’t be mentioned strangely enough, due to the most basic form of selection bias, why would anyone want to focus on that when thinking of their day job? She’ll still have to it tommorrow because rents due soon, and anyway, she didn’t say anything at the time so maybe there was nothing wrong eh? Life’s not all peaches and cream after all… And so the next time it happens (and it will happen again, because life isn’t all peaches and cream) she’ll continue to stay quiet, and the time after that, and so on and so forth.
And this is the well off prostitutes and escorts remember, so well off that their work isn’t always non-consensual. And when the most notable thing is that some women in a profession aren’t always raped and physically forced into that profession, I some how find myself unable to really say: “Yes, this is a highly feminist profession and should be made legal at once!”
Maybe I’m just deficient in someway though.
Of course, getting the antis to admit that maybe Farely was looking at only the poorest most desperate sex workers and that maybe it can’t be extrapolated out to the entire sex industry is like getting Young Earth Creationists to admit that they don’t really have proof the Earth is only 4000 years old. No use arguing with people who believe they’re not only entitled to their own opinion, but their own facts as well.
So do the antis make up the interviews with the poorest prostitutes? because otherwise the last sentence is a non-sequitur.
And tell me: why on earth would we make laws that make the lives of people who say their life is pretty good already easier while ignoring the rampant abuse of their less well off sisters?
generally speaking, making laws that aren’t set clearly to help the worst off, those who are most prone to abuse First, and then worry about how those laws affect those who aren’t the eternally screwed over and pissed on later, if you have time, is getting it all assbackwards - That’s why I state that the moral arguement in hte legalisation/decriminalisation debates is a redherring regardless of who’s right, it doesn’t matter if such activities are right or wrong (the moral debate is just interesting, because it allows me to examine my preconceptions and join up the oppressive dots in various ways), what matters is if such laws will help the most at risk, help protect them somehow where they are currently unprotected from the social acceptance of sex work as “neccesary”.
That’s why antis don’t really give the well off prostitutes much time, because who cares if one woman earns $450 an hour? What does that have to do with the unarguable problem here, the existence of lotsa 20 bucks a blow crackwhores who are violently abused by their pimps and their johns?
And come on, the whole of the pro’s arguement is based on them enjoying their work so much, and it being so great, illegalisation hardly seems to be hurting them at all dammit (and I’m really disappointed about that btw, how dare high class whores not suffer for having sex), so what’s their problem? (Aside from social validation of course - and they can get in line behind the homosexuals, enviromentalists and communists if that’s their problem.)
I’m sure there are multiple layers of irony in that last para, but I’m just too tired to go there right now.
Here’s my opinion from the blue, blue sky right now:
1) I’m willing to listen to any criticism of the industry, etc., but only from the sex workers themselves; at minimum, from people who used to do it. That includes people who are currently abolitionists; however, any dovetailing of an anti-prostitution agenda with any other anti-some-other-aspect of sexuality a la radfem automatically loses credibility points for me.
2) I refuse to “otherize” sex workers, whether by blaming, shaming, or condescension. They get enough of that red-letter shit as it is; I fail to see how adding to that stigmatization in -any- way furthers a feminist agenda.
them’s my sentiments and I’m sticking by ‘em.
…which, on that note, I am reading at least one woman who -does- seem to think that law enforcement is in fact a problem; I tend to take her word for it.
And anyway this maketh not the sense to me: if you’re saying prostitution runs rampant regardless of the law, which it clearly does, then whom exactly is it harming if you decriminalize? The women? Really. I mean, how exactly is this supposed to work? As it is, if you’re abused on the job you have no legal recourse; no union; no insurance; no “rights” and regulations.
Working at this here computer is boring as shit but not degrading because I’m not pretending to work.
Y’all take your time figuring that out.
…and I’m reading another woman who has no particular truck with the women who find stripping “empowering;” as with everything, it comes down to class; she makes no bones that it -is- all about the money for her, that she and her co-workers (stripping) view the clients quite cynically; that she does find it dehumanizing on the whole.
And yet she’s also a far cry from the image of the helpless drudge that keeps cropping up in the anti’s portrait-painting: she’s funny and tough and smart and likes sex (yeah, the rough, “degrading” stuff, too) just fine, thank you. and just got her own apartment for the first time. and seems to agree that in fact as problematic as her line of work is, she sees plenty of parallels with other badly-paid, exploitive lines of work that require lots of contact with dodgy people. Substance abuse counselling, say.
The only difference is that yes, once you’ve worked in the “industry” there is a red-line stigma circle around you.
which personally I am thinking that all the pissing and moaning and violin-backed handwringing and talking right over the actual people and crap about “human fleshlights” and other lovely imagery used by the folks supposedly -on their side-? Doesn’t help. Not one little tiny teeny bit.
I’d post the link here if I didn’t think it’d attract the usual creepy folks bent on proselytizing.
or calling her a “man,” or a patriarchy-enabler, or whatever the fuck else excuse it is for not actually just sitting down and shutting the hell up and listening for five seconds.
and nowhere in there is there any suggestion that yes, please, keep it illegal; certainly a story about a recent trip to the hospital without insurance kind of suggests otherwise, at minimum.
The latter of which, frankly, if y’all could let the fuck up on who blows whom and what the semiotics of this or that or the other means long enough to notice, hey, health insurance! that’s a problem for everybody! including and maybe especially lots and lots and lots of women! not to mention the working classes! gee, maybe THAT might be a feminist issue we could all get behind! –that, that, you know, could be interesting.
but christ jesus forbid we actually all unite on anything. ever. Peoples’ Front of Judea, VIVA!
I’m not interested in any discourse with people who talk like you do Belle, name-calling and defamining, dismissive remarks and talking *about* people behind their backs.
You’ve got nothing to say I’m interested in hearing. Nothing to add that is informed on the situation but this one sex trade friend whom you keep waving around. I’ve done both, and I can speak without fear that my reputation as a raging sexbot will be affected by telling the truth.
Personally I had hoped for law school. But I hear that’s a crapper too. Still, it’s a lot better than sucking some guy’s dick and putting on a show for people like you so you can cling to your illusions.
“And if she’s having sex she doesn’t want to do, it’s rape, by definition. And if you have sex for money often enough, and your ability to continue eating is incumbent on you having sex with people for money, such a situation will happen, because a prostitute only has as much power to refuse a client as she has savings in the bank.”
“And for the higher paid hookers, who’s client base is even more dependent on word of mouth than the lower paid ones, pressure is on to make sure that every one of her clients goes away satisfied, for the referrals, so she’ll bite her lip and shut up if it’s not too horrible.”
Well, its apparent that you have a very broad definition of “rape”. Apparently, if a prostitute isn’t enjoying every minute of it but nonetheless consents to go along with it because, well that’s the nature of the job, she’s being raped. Never mind that said prostitute herself might not define what happened as rape or as non-consensual, simply as not enjoyable.
“So do the antis make up the interviews with the poorest prostitutes? because otherwise the last sentence is a non-sequitur.”
Not a non-sequitor in the least. No I don’t think they made up the results of the study, and the findings are probably true for the groups that they studied. The problem is, you’re simply don’t understand or are willfully ignoring the selection bias inherent in that study. The study was only of the poorest, most desperate street prostitutes, yet the study failed to provide any proof that 1) this represents most prostitution, and 2) that the study could be generalized to other populations of sex workers. Nevertheless, this study is generalized to be the final word on all sex work, even situations quite remote from the ones in the study. This is what I mean by cherry-picking your own “facts”.
“That’s why antis don’t really give the well off prostitutes much time, because who cares if one woman earns $450 an hour? What does that have to do with the unarguable problem here, the existence of lotsa 20 bucks a blow crackwhores who are violently abused by their pimps and their johns?”
I have yet to see any proof that 20 bucks a blow crackwhores are more common than the $300/hour escorts. That’s not a hypothetical – if I wanted to hook up with a prostitute right now, I’d go over the listings on a site like Lovings.com, not go driving around looking for crack addicts to abuse.
“And tell me: why on earth would we make laws that make the lives of people who say their life is pretty good already easier while ignoring the rampant abuse of their less well off sisters?”
“generally speaking, making laws that aren’t set clearly to help the worst off, those who are most prone to abuse First, and then worry about how those laws affect those who aren’t the eternally screwed over and pissed on later, if you have time, is getting it all assbackwards”
I’m not sure exactly what laws you’re advocating, but if you’re saying that we need laws that willfully conflate prostitution that is freely entered into with outright sexual slavery, then you’re being more than a little heavy-handed. And if you’re deliberately being heavy-handed, deliberately coming down hard on sex workers “who’s life is pretty good” or their clients, then I think it speaks volumes about your motives, which seem to be about something other than simply helping oppressed women.
Rmildred:
“So do the antis make up the interviews with the poorest prostitutes? because otherwise the last sentence is a non-sequitur.”
No one’s saying that they make it up whole cloth. IACBlue was talking about misrepresenting the experiences of street prostitutes as if they are the experiences of all sex workers.
Even when you’re talking the third world, you’re talking vastly different experiences. But boy, everyone surely likes to orientalize and believe that ever single third world sex worker is some kind of helpless victim.
My neighbor, Norma, came here as a mail order bride. Most of her friends were sex workers in the Philipines. While they often talked about wanting to meet an American and come to the states, about half of her friends, when they had the opportunity, simply didn’t do it. For all kinds of reasons, no doubt. But even when meeting men who fell in love and gave them an engagement ring, the difficulty of leaving their homeland was too much to bear. Or, they simply realized they liked thier lives: the independence and modernity compared of living in the city and having things like television, make up, entertainment, and things they considered sophisticated compared to live in rural Philipine villages.
I’m reminded also of a neighbor from Guam who worked as a ‘long time’ girl with a business man who made frequent trips to Guam on business. he’d buy her time for a week to a month. No, he didn’t bang her 24/7. instead, he did things like go on picnics with her extended family, take her out dancing, yadda yadda.
He wanted someone with whom to do these things and he cared about whether she got off.
But you wouldn’t know that kind of thing existed in, of all places, the third world.
Who knows what is representative. And we’ll never know if no one wants to go out and actually do the reeding and research — and listening.. I operate under the assumption that the bulk of prostitution is not at all happy happy joy joy. But what is annoying is the way that, for ideological reasons, people want to smother a complex picture of the lives of women and the operations of capitalism, racism, and patriarchy.
–
Since no one *can* know what is likely to happen under decrim or legalization, the answer is to work with the sex workers to find out what *they* want.
That is what Carol Hanish meant by consciousness raising. Get to gether with women, talk about experiences and figure out what in those experiences were *political problems*. Then, work together to come up with solutions.
If the fear is that legalization will turn out to help only those who are already doing well, then the answer is to get off our asses and form activist networks, organizations, etc that can prevent that.
One answer might be to establish a licensing fee and all the funds will be to form a professional association/union (modeled on the work of feminists who talk about service type unions work considered conventionally women’s work). The license fee would be very modest and the professional association would be run by sex workers themselves, not do gooder white middle class feminists who come in and run it for the good of the working girls.
Pony, you’ve said really nasty shit to friends of mine as well; it goes both ways. And nothing on the public Internets is “behind one’s back.” I am capable of having more than one feeling about any given person at once. I also sometimes change my mind. And back again, as well.
And it’s actually a number of friends and acquaintances, for the record, but whatthefuckever.
Bull. I have no idea who your friends are. As for really nasty shit? It was directed to the individual, or to the issue; it was about the individual or the ISSUE; it was in response to a request for comment or…?
Learn to tell the difference between a personal insult and rhetorical style. If you would, you’d have a lot less problem with certain posters, and IBTP overall.
>I have no idea who your friends are.
No, dear, I know you don’t. But -I- do.
The crack whores weren’t born crack whores. Most of them got that way for two reasons:
The pimps addict them, and those that aren’t eventually addict themselves in order to live with what they’re doing, in order to be ABLE to do what they’re doing. Yes even the $300 an hour whores. LOL what a joke. You hold that out like their some kind of something to look up to. They sliiiiiiiide, and disappear, get STDs, fat, saggy tits. They were only $300 a day whores for a year of at all. They get older, they get beaten and it doesn’t heal right or the plastic surgeon can’t fix it quite good enough and they have to do things they don’t want to to do to get their next hit. And they become the women in the link I posted.
I’m getting the feeling you’ve got a real sickening classist attitude here. There’s those Pretty Woman $300 a day whores and then there’s those disgutin’ crack whores, you think.
They’re the same woman. Your sister, both of you a member of the sex class.
I might think you had a point Pony, if I thought you knew what the hell you were talking about. Where’s your evidence that said $300/hour escorts are run by pimps? Where’s your evidence that escorts inevitably turn into addicted street prostitutes? Are you speaking from your own experience or that of somebody you know? I think you’re just confusing any worst-case scenarios that you can dream up with the actual facts about escorting.
“I’m getting the feeling you’ve got a real sickening classist attitude here.”
And I get the feeling that you’re a nasty little shit that uses a smug sense of moral superiority as an excuse to talk down to people. Am I supposed to feel in some way shamed by your spiteful and shitty response? I feel quite the opposite, actually.
Please, do tell me more about what I think.
slip. she had–well, I’m sure she’ll tell you herself what her experience was.
doesn’t especially preclude the rest of your speculation, though.
and really, I shouldn’t have bothered. oh, well.
I’ll have to tell my male acquaintances who work as “sacred intimates” that they’re–well, what is it now? honorary members of the sex class? incipient crack hos? nonexistent? irrelevant?
…and finally, i love that someone who worships at the altar of Twisty is calling someone -else- on their classism (which I no doubt have; but at least I’ve never explained to the rest of the world that “no one can afford to have kids;” at least not if we all want to keep dining in four-star restaurants we can’t. “we.”)
Bitch|Lab threw up: “IACBlue was talking about misrepresenting the experiences of street prostitutes as if they are the experiences of all sex workers.”, proving her willful refusal to bother actually looking at decades worth of available research. I’ll ask again for someone to tell me why they think Isin Baral, Merab Kiremire, Ufuk Sezgin, and Melissa Farley were not allowed to interview legal prostitutes in a legal Turkish brothel and to confront what the very fact that they tried to conduct interviews in a legal brothel means to the illogical, uneducated lies being spread about researchers cherry-picking street prostitutes. And that’s just one study confirming the results of hundreds of studies on prostitution before it, but it happens to be one recent study posted online.
In other words, you’re wrong, Bitch|Lab, about your belief in a grand conspiracy among hundreds of prostitution researchers from around the world over decades to intentionally skew their research out of their deep-seated hatred of sex and/or prostitutes.
What’s even more amazing is that the prostitute-hatred you’re only too happy to slap onto me and hundreds of social workers, feminists, psychiatrists, domestic violence counselors, social researchers, AIDS activists and women’s rights NGO workers is a prostitute-hatred you resolutely refuse to attach to men who use prostitutes. It seems in your worldview, everyone, including most international feminists, harbors intense sex negativity and hatred of sex workers except pro-prostitution feminists like you and prostitute-using men.
You want people to believe researchers, social workers and non-pro-pornstitution feminists always hate sex workers but tricking men don’t and can often be very kind and sweet and generous. The sheer outrageousness of that sentiment stands as its own testament.
While I’m here, let me just say that I’m very tired of the very tired argument that any attempts to help the overwhelming majority of prostituting people who say they want out immediately will result in prostitution “going underground”. This is true of every criminal enterprise that hurts people, but it’s less true for prostitution than most other crimes.
I’ve been studying weapons trafficking routes because they’re often similar to human trafficking routes, and what I’ve seen is that there’s not a huge market for men seeking to purchase $50,000 AK47s or other advanced military weaponry. There are no multi-page ads for military weaponry in the Village Voice, no multi-page “weapons” section in the phone book advertising rocket launchers. Weapons trafficking is as underground as underground gets because, unlike prostitution, it does not rely on a steady stream of income from the average working class man. Prostitution can never go as underground as weapons trafficking because the bulk of prostitute (ab)users are not wealthy underground fighters/terrorists but the ordinary men in our lives; brothers, husbands, co-workers, fathers, bachelor-party goers, small business owners, grandfathers, actors, boyfriends, college boys, etc.
I sense the real point of the “Don’t do anything or it will go underground!” hysteria is mostly to foist the blame for what prostitute-using men do to prostitutes onto anyone who tries to stop the violence and abuse of the most raped class of women in the world. The implication is that it would be my fault a pimp killed one of his ‘cows’ because I refused to ignore the devastation of women and girls he’s making buckets of money from, and it’s an effective a form of extortion. We’ve got no less than millions of women trapped in circumstances where they are literally held as slaves and raped multiple times every day and the threat from pimps, filtered through the well-greased public relations and media channels of the legal pornstitution industry, is that if anyone tries to help these rape victims then the pimps are really going to torture and rip those bitches to shreds in retaliation and you’ll never find the bodies.
If a 13-year-old girl was being incestuously raped be her violent father who says any attempts to remove her from his custody would result in her murder, is the proper course of action to let him keep raping her? If violent anti-abortion men say they will keep murdering abortion doctors until they get their way of ending the legal right to abortion, does this mean pro-choice feminists have blood on their hands for the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian because they did not cave to extortionist demands of increased violence in an already very violent atmosphere?
Feminists should not cave to the demands of murderous, raping pimps on the threat that they’ll become more murderous and more raping of the women they’re already murdering and raping in unrivaled numbers, especially when prostitution can’t go as neatly underground as the pimp apologists claim because that’s not where the bulk of tricks are found.
Pony:
Life at Enron
Well, the abortion bit is in fact an interesting parallel, in that I see similarities between the arguments of people who want to outlaw it altogether and the prostitution abolitionists; and the rejoining argument that it’s not gonna go away no matter what you do.
and, too, the very very passionate, imagery-laden arguments, the outrage on behalf of the innocent, the sense of urgency, of good vs. evil…
Sam,
You write excellent pornography. Thanks!
” I’ll ask again for someone to tell me why they think Isin Baral, Merab Kiremire, Ufuk Sezgin, and Melissa Farley were not allowed to interview legal prostitutes in a legal Turkish brothel and to confront what the very fact that they tried to conduct interviews in a legal brothel means to the illogical, uneducated lies being spread about researchers cherry-picking street prostitutes. ”
Total non sequitur, Sam. Just because they tried to interview women in a legal brothel doesn’t mean they actually did so. And its not like these Turkish brothels were the only legal brothel situations they could have looked at. There’s legal prostitution in Amsterdam, Australia, and Nevada as well.
In any event, I’ll say again that you are overgeneralizing one study to be the final word on any and all sex work situations. The way they went about the study isn’t even the correct way to go about studying a large complex phenomenon, anyway. There should be a number of studies, each involving a different population of sex workers. Only when you actually have convergent data that are true across different areas of sex work can you start validly making generalizations. I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t cut it to say a survey of the poorest street prostitutes can be generalized to escorts, to women in legal brothels, to strippers, to porn actors, or any of the myriad other different kinds of situations under the broad heading of “sex work”. Your response that “well, they tried to talk to some prostitutes in a legal brothel” is simply a non-response.
You say the results replicate other studies of sex workers. Here’s a challenge – find one peer-reviewed study that demonstrates that the findings of the Farley, et al study are also true strippers, porn actors, or escorts.
I also take issue with the sensationalistic claim that most North American sex workers are trafficked in from other countries and not mainly people who were born or already resident here, or that most sex workers are “run” by a pimp. Again, your proof?
You see, without some real numbers or independent verification, I have to take what you say on faith. And quite honestly, considering your clear underlying biases and agenda, I won’t accept a thing from you merely on faith.
Pony…(et all)
Well, I am one of the sex workers Belle speaks to, though not the above mention one, and I have received my fair share of venom from radical feminists despite the fact that I do honestly believe in helping women who want out of any aspect of the profession out, and do my part to help them. However, I do not want out, I do have the luxury of being able to walk out or turn down a job if I want to, and I realize that does make me a lot better off than many women in the sex industry as a whole. I don’t have to put up with bullshit, so I don’t, but I know that is not the case for everyone, not by a long shot. However, there is the tendancy on the radical side to only look at the misfortune of the street level prostitute or woman who was forced into any other aspect of the business (stripping, porn) and use them, and them alone, as the ‘image of the sex worker’; desperate, abused, often drug addicted and under educated and subject to countless acts of degradation and rape. Well, not all of us are in that boat…and those who are not are unlikely to subject ourselves to statistical studies or interviews or even talk about anything because of the legality issues, the immediate judgement, and the basic disrespect we receive from just about everyone, including our so-called “sisters” who only have our “best interests in mind”…
If that really were the case then our ’sisters’ would not insult, downgrade, attack and dehumanize us for NOT fitting the stereotype they are looking to propogate as the whole of the women involved in the sex industry, which is exactly what happens. I’ve been treated worse by anti-sex work proponants and radical feminists than by any guy who ever paid for ‘access to my body’, and that is the flat out truth.
And personally, I would love to have insurance!
Wouldn’t we all…
Since Sam is so fond of linking to Farley’s study, its only right that I should point to a journal article critiquing it:
“Flawed Theory and Method in Studies of Prostitution Violence Against Women” by Ronald Weitzer (Violence Against Women 1(7): 934–949, July 2005).
ICB: I am already stealing that link for my blog… (swipe!) Thank you!
Weitzer:
“strangled (20%vs.6%)”
What job apart from prostitution leaves you open to a six percent possibility of being strangled in a six month period”
Anybody?
Then there’s the 14% chance of being slapped, punched or kicked. Of course that’s off-street prostitution, street prostitutes have a 47% chance of that happening to them in a six month period.
“slapped, punched, or kicked (47% vs. 14%)” Weitzer, 2005
That’s a great link IACB.
“What job apart from prostitution leaves you open to a six percent possibility of being strangled in a six month period”
prison guard?
orderly at behavioral health facility?
schoolteacher?
housewife?
(ok - that was in bad taste…but during one particularly bleak 7 year period I averaged about one strangling-to-blackout every six to eight months.)
I’m sure someone has statistics somewhere.
AP:
Oh, go ahead and add ANY employee at a prison or behavioral health facility…
Renegade and anti-princess;
Cite? We have Weitzer’s own figures here for the prostitutes strangulation, let’s have yours now for those occupations.
And yes, Curious; Thanks for that study.
So that’s the kind of science it takes to get a Masters in biology!
Six percent of prison guards and teachers get strangled every six months? You’re being funny. Except you’re not funny at all.
delphyne:
no one is saying there is no violence in the realm of the sex industry, in fact, most people admit there are many sex workers who are treated badly, often. however, they do not represent ALL sex workers, especially those considered “higher end” or those working by choice, whose main problem is if not the often outright illegal nature of their work, then the oh, failure of others to see them as people capable of making career choices for themselves.
To be rather blunt and callous about it, if I decide, willingly, to be a cop, I know full well it is possible I will be hurt, maybe even killed, by a bad or insane person. You think that women who do choose any aspect of sex work do not have the same thought? You bet we do.
then whom exactly is it harming if you decriminalize? The women?
RICO laws are the only thing that allow the police to attack the large pimping rings - there’s a wonderful PDF on the ‘nets somewhere about a huge bust in, I think it was Atlanta, that used RICO laws on some pimp who’s AKA was batman.
The prostitutes who pimps keep are generally so dependant on the prostitution ring and so afraid of being punished in someway that IIRC, Batman would often get his more privelaged hookers to administer punishments, largely in the form of physical beatings. Expectin the prostitutes themselves to complain loudly enough about mistreatment, and then for the police to actually care or not be in the pockets of the pimps to actually help the abused prostitutes
full legalisation is a tricky tight rope to walk, it has to be the right kind of legalisation, one that is appropriate to the social conditions that the legalisation is being applied to. Which means that there will be situations in which it won’t be applicable what so ever - large areas of hte middle east for instance, or Utah.
Decriminalisation makes tons of sense and is hell of a lot easier to apply - punishing prostitutes for getting caught upin the rape culture never made much sense except as a way for society to feel good that it’s looking like it’s keeping the sluts in check.
Oh, go ahead and add ANY employee at a prison or behavioral health facility…
But they all get rape privelages so it doesn’t count, if prostitutes get the right to rape their johns as a side benefit of their professions then fine, they’re comparable.
http://www.paramedic.org.uk/news_archive/2003/12/News_Item.2003-12-31.2031/view
http://www.icn.ch/matters_violence.htm
Violence against women is not limited to sex workers…how about nurses? Or someone who just happens to be female? Or, well, you do not even have to be female, you just need to work in a dangerous field…like…medicine???
Not good enough Renegade. The comparison was strangulation. We all know there’s violence.
Cite EXACTLY.
And in order to know if your comparison is a good one Renegade, please also don’t neglect to add if there were circle jerks going on while the physicians and nurses were performing…er…working.
R. Mildred,
I think you are referring to this (via Rad Geek).
Quote of note:
Pony-
It’s not a contest. I have already agreed that violence occurs in sex work. I (and others) have also stated violence occurs in other more mainstream professions as well, and it does. I do not see much difference between someone getting strangled and someone getting their trachea punched in, sorry. Violence is violence.
And the main point of iamcuriousblues linked study is that often studies used to fuel certain arguements are biased or far from fully accurate, which is true, on both sides, but it seems you all missed that part.
Iamcuriousblue, you avoided the two points in bringing up the pimp/manager refusal by not answering the question I posed. Why do you tnink they were turned away from the legal brothel when 1) it is claimed researchers were seeking out the most abused prostitutes but surely those will not be found in a legal brothel and 2) legalization is supposed to make prostitution more open to checks and regulation but that has most certainly not been the results of prostitution legalization in Turkey?
Renegade Evolution, I would like to respond to you more fully but the last time a sex worker blogger told me, “Take my life as an example, please” I made the mistake of doing just that and got called all sorts of nasty names for it. Thanks but no thanks on that lose-lose proposal, I’ll stick to not overly concerning myself with individual anecdotes as much as with the global portrait of prostitution as a whole and how that plays out on average to women’s great detriment.
“I also take issue with the sensationalistic claim that most North American sex workers are trafficked in from other countries
Where do you think this was stated, because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t?
On the mud flung wildly on the wall that is the comparison of prison guards, psycho ward patients, and schoolkids:
Prisoners and mental patients are being held against their will by people they would rather be 1,000 miles away from and never have to see again. Tricks pay explicitly to bring prostituted women closer to them so they can enjoy doling out the violence they had in mind when soliciting. Prisoners, patients, schoolkids may lash out at power-wielding authority figures because they are held captive in a powerless position, but tricks use their powerful position to bring women to him as he commands the ability to inflict abuses on powerless others.
I know why prisoners get violent at their jailors, but why men get so routinely murderous of the women they demand play the role of ever-ready sexbot whores is beyond my comprehension unless I put it into the same misogynist framework that makes men think less of women who dress sexy. This duality of men wanting sexy women and sexy pay-per-fuck prostitutes around and then despising them to the point of violent-suffused hatred when women agree to provide The Sexy that men demand is where I think the crux of the prostitution debate lies.
“Weitzer:
“strangled (20%vs.6%)”
What job apart from prostitution leaves you open to a six percent possibility of being strangled in a six month period””
Where are you getting the “six month period” part? That’s nowhere in the Weitzer paper. The statistics by Church, et al and Lowman & Fraser that Weitzer is quoting refer, if I’m not mistaken, to prostitutes who have ever experienced these kinds of violence on the job.
No *I* didn’t miss anything. That’s the point of my comment;
Weitzer shit his pants.
Renegade Evolution,
what iamcuriousblue linked to is not a study, it is a “commentary” (in Ronald Weiger’s own words) on various articles and studies about prostitution.
Sorry: Weitzer, not Weiger.
“Violence occurs” is not the same as “there is a much higher (or lower) risk, on average, for violence to occur”. Hence the necessity to have statistical evidence.
Jimmy: you are correct, it is a compilation of several studies, my bad, I appologize for the miss wording. It happens.
Sam:
“I would like to respond to you more fully but the last time a sex worker blogger told me, “Take my life as an example, please” I made the mistake of doing just that and got called all sorts of nasty names for it. Thanks but no thanks…”
Well, I generally try to avoid name calling. I, like everyone else here in the Peoples Republic of Bloglandia, speak my mind and take crap for it. Nothing new. I merely stand by the fact that while there are sex workers who are hurt and treated badly and forced into it, there are sex workers who are not, and one cross section of sex workers is rarely indicative of the lives of all of them.
Since every study ever done on prostitution reveals the immense amount of violence prostitutes face compared with other populations, is Wietzer claiming there has never been any quality research on prostitution? That’s specious, and it reminds me of blowhards who say stuff like, “I’m neither right nor left politically, I’m above all that” in its easy curmudgeonly thrashing of everything and everybody else as inferior to their glorious selves.
I was expecting the Wietzer commentary to be really good but it wasn’t. All research should be heavily scrutinized, but when I got through the limp-wristed contentions to the end and saw him say “it’s not clear if their arguments encompass male and transgender” I knew the jig was up.
The second sentence of the Farley study abstract mentions “We interviewed 475 people (including women, men and the transgendered)” before offering a chart breaking down such details as the study in the USA being 75% women, 13% men and 12% transgendereds. How did Weitzer miss that in his comb-through discrediting attempt?
The beefs Weitzer have with the study are not very substantial, such as the fact that humans are conducting the research and there is no such thing as an unbiased human being. Of course people are biased, and good for the researchers presenting their view that prostitution is violence against women because that’s important to know, but Weitzer becomes a prick when he says ex-prostitutes conducting research can’t be trusted to meet his masculinity-defined impartiality standard where psuedo-scientific claptrap about absolute objectivity is praised so ex-prostitutes can contribute nothing of worth. No doubt Weitzer considers himself a stoic and manly 100% neutral and impartial observer.
Check out this bit of fuckery where Wietzer falsely accuses Farley & Co. of conducting interviews with prostitutes who have been arrested to supposedly seek the most abused samples, but a-okays research done on arrested tricks. No prostitutes were arrested or interviewed in prison in any of the studies criticized.
(the false blame) “Generalizing from prostitutes in custody to the population of prostitutes is also improper,just as with other types of incarcerated offenders.”
(the hypocrisy) “Martin Monto, who has studied more than 2,300 arrested customers, has found that most of them did not accept rape myths or other justifications for violence against women.”
*Here’s another Wietzer assertion that prostituted women are useless for all kinds of info gathering as they are too biased to conduct their own research and too…what?…to have their testimonies about johns believed: (about a study by Janice Raymond on tricks attitudes) “Note that she did not interview even one customer. All of the information about “prostitute users” comes from the “prostituted women.”
The only thing missing on the end of that sentence is, “those unreliable, biased hoes.” Adding insult to injury, Wietzer refers back to the arrested tricks study as proof that the prostitutes Raymond interviewed don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about when it comes to “men’s attitudes and treatment of women in prostitution.”
Also, maybe someone can explain to me how interviewing sex workers in a Thailand “beauty parlor which offered a supportive atmosphere” is somehow cherry-picking the most dejected and abused prostitutes. Why would someone think child prosti-tots, trafficking victims, and drug addicted sex workers would frequent such a beauty parlor more than free-willed sex workers?
Pimps are not an urban legend, people. They are real and they are sadistic, money-hungry motherfuckers.
“Iamcuriousblue, you avoided the two points in bringing up the pimp/manager refusal by not answering the question I posed. Why do you tnink they were turned away from the legal brothel when 1) it is claimed researchers were seeking out the most abused prostitutes but surely those will not be found in a legal brothel and 2) legalization is supposed to make prostitution more open to checks and regulation but that has most certainly not been the results of prostitution legalization in Turkey?”
I don’t know what point you’re trying to make here, Sam. Your implication seems to be that because one legal brothel owner in Turkey refused entry to the researchers, this somehow implicates all legal sex work anywhere, and in some way validates the generalizability of Farley’s study. Those conclusions, of course, are total non sequiturs.
I’m not going to waste my time speculating on what the above brothel owner was trying to hide. Maybe he or she was hiding abuse or maybe he or she just didn’t want unknown people snooping around. I don’t know much about the legal brothel situation in Turkey in general, and would not be surprised if the legal brothel system there was totally corrupt.
In any event, if Farley really wants to study legal brothel workers, there are legal brothels in Nevada, Australia, and several European countries. No indication that Farley or her colleagues even bothered to look elsewhere when they were turned away from the above-mentioned Turkish brothel.
“‘I also take issue with the sensationalistic claim that most North American sex workers are trafficked in from other countries’
Where do you think this was stated, because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t?”
You certainly imply as much here:
“Prostitution can never go as underground as weapons trafficking because the bulk of prostitute (ab)users are not wealthy underground fighters/terrorists but the ordinary men in our lives; brothers, husbands, co-workers, fathers, bachelor-party goers, small business owners, grandfathers, actors, boyfriends, college boys, etc.”
“Renegade Evolution, I would like to respond to you more fully but the last time a sex worker blogger told me, “Take my life as an example, please” I made the mistake of doing just that and got called all sorts of nasty names for it. Thanks but no thanks on that lose-lose proposal, I’ll stick to not overly concerning myself with individual anecdotes as much as with the global portrait of prostitution as a whole and how that plays out on average to women’s great detriment.”
In other words, you’ll willfully ignore anybody who’s experience goes against your preconceived notions about sex work. One person taking their own life as an example is an individual anecdote, but many sex workers telling anti-pornstitution feminists that the antis take on sex work doesn’t speak to their experience adds up to a pattern you shouldn’t be ignoring.
Pony writes:
“No *I* didn’t miss anything. That’s the point of my comment;
Weitzer shit his pants.”
Well, I certainly can’t argue with flawless logic like that. [lol]
“limp-wristed contentions”
and yes, lord knows that’s what feminism’s always been all about, particularly radical feminism: ignoring/dismissing womens’ stories of personal experience in favor of “objective” studies and statistics.
and yes, that makes perfect sense: someone (who, now?) might call you nasty names if you engage the woman seriously; therefore, ignore.
nobody else ever gets called nasty names, mind. and the fact that someone, somewhere else (who, now?) called you a nasty name means that therefore, you can totally dismiss this other person. brilliant!
Full legalisation is a tricky tight rope to walk, it has to be the right kind of legalisation, one that is appropriate to the social conditions that the legalisation is being applied to..
Decriminalisation makes tons of sense and is hell of a lot easier to apply - punishing prostitutes for getting caught upin the rape culture never made much sense except as a way for society to feel good that it’s looking like it’s keeping the sluts in check.>
Well, see, now that I totally agree with.
“Where are you getting the “six month period” part? That’s nowhere in the Weitzer paper. The statistics by Church, et al and Lowman & Fraser that Weitzer is quoting refer, if I’m not mistaken, to prostitutes who have ever experienced these kinds of violence on the job.”
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/322/7285/524?
maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=violence prostitutes&andorexactfulltext=
and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT
“Half of prostitutes working outdoors and over a quarter of those working indoors reported some form of violence by clients in the past six months.”
…that, and of course, -nothing- is going to be a terrific solution all by itself.
as has been mentioned hither and yon, it might be nice to maybe reframe all this in a way that says, okay, say we agree that for many people, prostitution is often no more than the best (if that) of several really grim choices.
so how ’bout focusing more on those other “choices?” and the whole context which leads to that frame-up to begin with?
decriminalize, as you say; work on the much harder task of bringing about a society in which there’s -genuinely- free choice for everyone. -Not- just about how and whether to have sex, either; I mean, because this is the bottom line here, yes? –how one is to eat, provide and clothing and healthcare and other basics for oneself and one’s loved ones; to say nothing of the “higher” needs (nod to Maslow). -Then- maybe we’d have a better idea of whether sex work is “inherently” degrading or not.
meanwhile, i gotta say that overwhelmingly this here looks like just a lot of people working out their own personal shit via the–ooops!—objectified figures of the poor, voiceless prostitutes.
’cause see, if you -ignore- the actual prostitutes speaking up right here? even as you claim to be on the side of the (abstracted, mass body of) all prostitutes/women everywhere? that, too, is objectification.