Thanks to Harpy reader heykoukla, who emailed me today on the subject of the British sex-work blogger Belle de Jour, pointing me to a recent post on Belle’s blog about the recent Shapely Prose post quoted far and wide, entitled “Schrödinger’s Rapist.” The SP post is itself worth reading, on the subject of the near-constant low-level awareness of sexual violence women live with. If only I could say the same for Belle’s, wherein her general agreement with the SP post is qualified by the following:
If you’re reading my blog, then you know I’m a long time, dyed-in-the-wool A-number-1 Fan Of Men.
I’m glad she got that out of the way, though I can’t imagine myself saying I’m a Fan of Women because I’m a feminist (it would be absurd, right?), but no matter. Onwards:
Let me state for the record that if being a man was easy, hookers wouldn’t exist. Fact.
She gives no support for this statement and I’m not even sure what this means. Is it her contention that men seek the comfort of sex workers to… escape the violence of the outside word? Baffling.
But fear not: her idea is that the problem here really truly is privilege, because otherwise there is, in her view, no basis to the claim that women face a particularly high level of physical danger:
Bottom line, it takes a particular kind of self-consciously middle-class gynecentric view of the world to imagine that the only physical danger men face is in a war zone. As someone who has lived in more than a few dodgy neighbourhoods – because sponging off my parents was categorically Not An Option – and been privy to the secrets and fears of my male friends, I do not think they have it easier than we of the XX-type. Different, yes. Easy, no.
Ooooohkay. You can sort of imagine how it goes from there. But I’m not really interested in doing just an interblogular hit piece today. No, what’s interesting to me about this sort of thing is how it dovetails with my general skepticism of feminist discourse surrounding sex work.
Let me emphasize here that I am talking about how “feminism” talks about sex work, not the culture at large. Because let’s be clear: in a patriarchy, sex workers don’t get bonbons for being sex workers. They get ostracized and degraded as less than human. As a recent reminder of this: “Belle de Jour” is of course a pseudonym, and she recently identified herself in the press. It appears to have been under some duress, though she hasn’t said explicitly that she was “forced” to come out.
But once I am safely ensconced in conversations with people who agree that sex workers are entitled to human dignity (a regrettable minority), though, I find it hard to get behind the general sort of “chosen sex work” banner that Belle and her ilk espouse. Not for nothing, but I’ve never heard the sort of “sex work is a valid choice” argument come from anyone who wasn’t young, white, cisgendered and relatively well-educated. That is to say: privileged, and thus relatively able to call on certain defenses when necessary. And I don’t understand, and am not sure I ever will, because believe me I have tried, the impulse to insist that this perspective be permitted to enter into a conversation about women’s exploitation. In other words: if she isn’t being exploited, bully for her, but I am not sure why this is relevant to a discussion, say, of human trafficking. And yet there it always is.
I would catch a lot of hell in the feminist blogosphere for this kind of statement, however, or at least some of the fora I frequent. Because at the end of the day, these people say, if I don’t embrace sex work, I am slut shaming those engaged in it.
This confuses me. See, I come back again and again to the same old question: is there a feminist obligation to defend sex work writ large as a practice, or is it merely that feminism demands the defense of sex workers as human beings?
It will come as no surprise to anyone that I fall on the latter side of the fence. While I absolutely would support the “right” scheme for the legalization of sex work – i.e. a scheme designed around the founding principle that humanity does not fly out the window the moment one engages in sex work – it is because I believe the people who engage in sex work deserve the same dignity as anyone, not because I think of sex work as a particularly liberatory practice. Personally, I do not understand how the liberation of women, or anyone else for that matter, can possibly be connected to a practice that contructs their bodies as ones for hire. Yes, I would agree that “sexual purity” is overly personalized and fetishized in this society, and I do not advocate that we start setting out rules for what kinds of consensual sexual behaviour are acceptable. Not only is it offensive to do so, it would be unenforceable anyway.
But: I think if the abortion rights fight has shown us nothing else, it is that the body, in this culture, still matters. What I mean by this is that for all our training in deconstruction and inscriptions, at the end of the day feminism still values the integrity of women’s bodies. I really think it is hard to argue that anyone’s body ought to be leverage in a negotiation. It simply shouldn’t. Call me an idealist, tell me I am using the master’s tools. But I cannot look at any person and think to myself: there’s something I could rent.
It strikes me that in a world where we were all considered fully human, nothing tied very closely to our bodies would be for rent or sale. You may say that sex is just work, but the connection between my work and my body begins and ends with my fingertips. Sure I use my brain, my legs to walk there, but other than that, it demands very little of me.
Of course we all live in a world that is capitalist, and people have to eat, I agree. I guess I just don’t know that feminism can sign up for capitalism quite so easy. As a professor of mine once said in another context, this notion that it’s okay to express value in dollar signs turns the world into eBay. And I like eBay for cheap jewelry, I guess, but I don’t particularly want to live there.
See, to come back to Belle: I think of her view as a somewhat purely capitalist one. she’s just earning a living! It’s economically sound! (Paging Levitt and Dubner!) Why are people so uptight about it? The danger is illusory, or at least exaggerated by people who want to keep women’s sexual agency in check!
I guess all I have, for that sort of thing, is this: I think your concern is misdirected. If you want to go after the Christian right for wanting to rescue you as “fallen women,” I’m on your side. I will defend your right to safety no matter where you are and what you are doing. But I will also continue to consider the people who purchase these services as engaging in an essentially objectionable activity. I will continue to consider the commodification of human beings essential to the continued practice of sex work, and I will lament that commodification. And if that makes me the uncool kid on the playground, so be it.
Well, but JennyK, it seems to me that arguing that we can’t regard sex as “special” also expects people to conduct their sex lives in a way that doesn’t reflect undesirable social paradigms.
But… but… what about the *menz*?!?!
*ducks*
No, really, I’m actually serious here, hear me out! It feels like sex work conversations–especially more theoretical, abstract ones, where what’s at issue is one’s overall or default judgment–at times become unnecessarily divisive, as perhaps also with porn and work/family balance (eg: Linda Hirschman!) because attention is fixed on morally evaluating women’s *responses* (collectively or individually) to a situation of structural oppression. As opposed to, say, what men are doing to actively perpetuate that oppression, or what men and women might do to *actively* ameliorate that specific structure (which may have little to do with the responses women make ‘to get by’ while responding to it).
I suppose what I mean is: we can talk about the category ‘sex work,’ but for every sex worker that’s going to comprise a series of perhaps deeply-personal interactions, about which we, as outsiders (to her/him, if not to sex work), have only a very partial view. We can speak to the marginal external influence those interactions might have on the larger culture, perhaps–the way they are *likely* to reinforce/reinscribe patriarchy, etc.–but for the worker involved, those 3rd-party effects will likely not be the main concern, and it’s hard to fault her/him for that. We all make the compromises we feel we have to in this flawed world, &c.
Compare: ‘sweatshop labor’; focusing on the *labor* side of this invites scrutiny to how each worker marginally drives down the prevailing wages of others, &c., and the morality of their compromises & choices. As opposed to, say, ‘sweatshop business practices.’
And so: what is the added benefit to having a ‘general’ view about, or a default moral presumption concerning, ‘sex work’ *instead of* the demand side: ‘buying sex’ / ‘buying women’s bodies’ / ‘trafficking’ / whichever aspect of the issue is being discussed? What extra mileage is gained, even in a theoretical, explanatory sense, by the moral evaluation of the (mostly female) workers’ choices, when we know that in each case there’s always a particular history and reasons and every ‘general’ view is going to necessarily abstract away from that?
I’m not saying these choices aren’t apt objects of moral evaluation; sure they are, like every aspect of our lives.
But if:
A- the best levers for cultural change through critique are on the demand side or through institutional reform; and
B- evaluating those choices as an outsider is difficult to pull off while staying abstract, for in fact similar reasons to why ‘buying women’ is problematic in the first place (= treating a person as an instantiation of a general class rather than an essentially unique *person*);
then perhaps the pragmatic approach is–especially in, e.g., online fora which by their nature are liable to misreadings and misunderstandings–one that reserves general and abstract moral evaluations for the aspects of the situation where that abstraction is least likely to go astray: the demand side, collective action towards institutional reform, that sort of thing.
Is that an acceptable sort of ‘what about the menz?!’ interjection? Sometimes maybe it’s the right response (eg rape: why don’t they stop raping!?), as opposed to a refusal to take women’s interests seriously, no? Or am I totally off base here?
Or also: what MischiefM just said.
x.trapnel – I think we could all hold hands and agree more quickly if we looked at the johns, sure. But it sounds like what you’re saying is “Why don’t men stop objectifying / commodifying / exploiting women?”, and I think that (for me at least) we all start from that general framework. I mean, I would be really surprised to see a commenter on this post actually say something to the contrary. So, for me at least, the reason we’re not focusing on the demand side is because the debate (between pro-sex work and anti-sex work feminists) is on the supply side. I could be mistaken, but if I am it will make me sad.
yvanehtioj: yeah, maybe I’m just saying ‘Why can’t we all just along?’ But I wonder sometimes about whether this is, really, a debate: when the claims are cashed out in terms of specifics–ok, is this person’s action wrong; would it be better to do this? well, what about this person’s?–it doesn’t seem like the ‘big picture’ positions imply different answers at all!
And if that’s the case–if this is about *framing* as opposed to more fundamental disagreement–then I think what I said is more than just a plea to hold hands and sing ‘kumbaya’; because if so, the problem really is one of the discourse itself.
or rather: because there IS a real debate to be had about WHAT (policy changes, cultural interventions to discourage men buying sex, etc.) changes are, in fact, *effective*, and I’m just not convinced that this meta-debate over framing has any concrete implications for that debate.
No, it’s not just about framing. There are posters here who are arguing that sex work can change the paradigm of patriarchy, by changing what sex means on an individual (and eventually social? This part I’m not so clear on) level, and there are posters who believe that sex work just reinforces established social norms. That’s a real difference, not a framing issue. The fact that we’d all prefer an ideal world where the question of sex work wasn’t so contentious because there were not such limiting social norms in place doesn’t negate the importance of the actual debate taking place.
[trigger warning]
Wow, so many amazing comments. Some have asked, how is commodifying sex different than commodifying any other physical labor that requires the use of one’s body? Is sex somehow “special?”
My thoughts on this are a work in progress, but my instinct is yes. And the comparison I keep coming back to is the difference between rape and other violent, but non-sexual crimes. Being beaten and mugged involves non-consensual contact, it’s a violation, and it is likely to cause physical and emotional pain. But, in all honesty, if I were beaten and mugged on the street, although I’d be traumatized, I’d also be grateful – at least I wasn’t raped. There’s something about rape that I particularly fear. I’ve also worked in the past with survivors of rape and sexual assault. Some of these women were also physically abused. Yet many articulated a special trauma associated with the rape, like it was the ultimate form of domination.
I’ve come to believe that there’s something about the sexual aspect that differentiates a violent, non-sexual crime, from a violent sexual one. So too, it seems to me, there’s something about the sexual aspect that differentiates consensual, non-sexual, physical work from consensual, sexual physical work. I think sex work, even when it’s “voluntary” still ends up being harmful in a unique way to the worker.
Maybe the difference or culprit is the patriarchal context that sex comes wrapped up in. If so, are we, to paraphrase PS, reifying that context by continuing to treat all things sex-related as “special” or “different?” Maybe. But here’s the thing. As others have said, there are relatively few women who are arguably performing sex work voluntarily compared to the legions who are forced into it for various reasons (trafficking, economic need, etc.) If I need to continue to treat sex as special/different to highlight the plight of the legions to the detriment of the few, if I have to temporarily espouse the patriarchal ideas that make people squeamish about voluntary sex work in order to help those who are forced into sex work, I don’t really see that I have a choice. I think there are many, many angles of attack against the patriarchy. Forgoing this particular one (refusing to treat voluntary sex work as different than as any other form of physical labor on the grounds that it is only currently treated differently because of patriarchal underpinnings) for the time being isn’t going to lose us the war.
(Caveat: it’s been a horrible, horrible day and I have no idea if anything I wrote even makes sense anymore.)
Tall-in-Heels, you make a lot of sense. My feelings are similar.
The consent issue is a little tricky, but this is why I introduced it: I think the concept of “enthusiastic consent” is very powerful. Instead of understanding consent as acquiescing (not saying no, not fighting, not resisting), we should understand it as “Yes! More! Right there!” and so on. Consent is about female desire and enthusiastic participation. Prostitution actively opposes that model.
I know it seems silly to add my voice to a 100+ comment thread to say ‘this post is why I read and support Harpyness,’ but…this post is why I read and support Harpyness
And please excuse the emoticon typo. I am not winking at a serious and thoughtful discussion of the problematic feminist discourse around sex work.
@Spark – I don’t think that it does, necessarily. Enthusiastic consent doesn’t necessarily mean “consent with joy” or “consent with desire” but it does mean “deliberate consent on purpose” — my understanding is that joy and desire are context dependent. Again, people have sex for all sorts of reasons, not all of which are joyful or desirous and I don’t think that contradicts the concept of enthusiastic consent. You can enthusiastically consent to have sex for money — it’s just that in that case your primary motivation is the money, not the sex (we have arrived at the point of agreeing that it is possible for people to consent to be prostitutes, right?).
@barqiel: I dunno. I took Spark’s use of the word enthusiastic to mean “with joy” because it better separates out those situations where someone may voluntarily do something because of pressures beyond their control. You definition is problematic to me because the clarifying terms “deliberate,” and “on purpose” do nothing to distinguish between a situation where a woman consents to sex for money only because she’s desperate and broke, and one where a woman consents to sex for money because she loves money and has no romantic or “special” notions about sex. Both women are arguably deliberately consenting on purpose to the sex act, but only the latter is arguably consenting enthusiastically.
@tallgirl – I understand where you’re coming from. My view of the term comes from my interpretation of the originating essay in Yes Means Yes and the clarifying metaphor therein. Perhaps there is a phrasing in between mine and Spark’s that would work better. I really don’t think that sexual desire is necessary to enthusiastically consent to sexual activity and “joy” is a very nebulous concept to me that I’m nervous using for something like this. Perhaps it would be better to say that enthusiastic consent entails interest in doing something, no matter what that interest is motivated by (desire for sex/desire for money/desire for companionship/etc.). If you’re not interested in doing x but do it anyway to avoid the consequences, that’s not enthusiastic consent, but if you’re interested in doing x then I think consent can be enthusiastic regardless of why you’re interested. Is that less problematic? And if not, do you think that there’s another way to distinguish between the two women you mentioned?
@baraqiel: yes, that’s less problematic to me.
Yes, when I wrote that I was thinking “with joy,” but what I really mean is sex for its own sake. People have sex for all kinds of reasons, but other than it being a pleasure in itself, are any of them really good? I’m not criticizing people who have sex out of different motivations! Just thinking out loud about how we understand/express female desire and consent.
What a great discussion.
I don’t think that saying “Sex work harms women” is counter-intuitive to believing that in another context, sex work would be just like any other work. I believe that in a post-patriarchal world, sex work won’t be a big deal. As in, there will be very little demand for it, but it will exist without moral value, just like waitressing. I do not think that having sex for money, in a vacuum, is necessarily exploitative.
That said, this is clearly no vacuum. The difference between wearing a short skirt regardless of patriarchy’s thoughts on my legs and believing that sex work* should not be considered a morally neutral profession is found in the effect each has. My short skirt does not add on to the patriarchal wagon the way sex work does. Short skirts may offend some, they may titillate some, and perhaps misogynistic comments will be made. But ultimately my short skirt (or whatever) affects me, and my skirt and my person do not encourage the patriarchal ramifications others may create. My short skirt is neutral, just a piece of cloth.
Sex work, because it involves a john, does more than that. In the patriarchy, Sex is not like waitressing and vaginas are not like hands, so (even if in an ideal situation my vagina would be as valuable as my hand) in this patriarchy the purchase of a vagina, or renting of a vagina or hiring, becomes the purchase of the person. Even if it doesn’t have to be so in theory, it is, here and now. So while it may not matter in theory that sex work can potentially be seen just like non-sex work, in reality the hiring of a vagina becomes the purchasing of a woman in the mind of the john. In the minds of mainstream western culture, too. Believing that it is acceptable to buy a person is deeply amoral.
While I don’t usually advocate adjusting our lives to account for the amoral practices of criminals (i.e. I wear short skirts even if it means some rapist will think that makes it ok to rape me), sex work explicitly affirms the purchase of the female body as morally acceptable and, indeed, normalizes the patriarchal perception of the female body as an object for the use of men. So sex work is not wearing a short skirt regardless of the patriarchal perception of what that skirt means, but more like wearing a short skirt, getting raped, and then telling the rapist and police that it was ok that you got raped because you chose to wear a short skirt. It’s entirely self-defeating. In my little analogy, the sex work is not either the wearing a short skirt or the getting raped, it’s the victim justifying to her rapist that their violent act was justified, not violent, and indeed expected.
Because even if a sex worker chooses her choice, she is working with a clientele that still views her as a purchasable commodity. Participating in an economic exchange that hinges on the commodification of the female body is a fucked up thing to do. Not only is it not liberating, in this world it simply re-inscribes the patriarchal assumptions of the john that this societal structure (women as commodities) is natural and good for women–because Belle du Jour is getting paid and happy about it, it was ok to buy her–> it is ok to buy women–> women are things I can buy–> things aren’t people–> women aren’t people.
Talking about the sex workers who are men, by the by, is as useful as talking about women who rape men. Rape, regardless of gender, is a fucked up terrible thing. But talking about Men Raping Women is talking about a social problem that is pervasive in its frequency and the resulting mindset. Though the rape of men by women is equally disturbing on an individual basis, as a function of society it’s irrelevant. Talking about sex work as a social issue means talking about women servicing men.
*I use the term to refer to situations like the one mentioned in PS’s comment–those women who are able to choose their choice, inasmuch as we have any choice in society. Other women, who are forced into prostitution because of economic, physical, or any other reason are not sex workers but sex slaves, and this comment is not about them. Engaging in prostitution cannot be immoral if you have no other choice.
@Spark – I maintain that having sex to give pleasure to people you love is a good reason. But…like I said, I’m trying not to get into the “are blowjobs oppressive” conversation. Regardless, even if consenting enthusiastically to prostitution isn’t any good as you say, I do think it’s possible. I had a lot of stuff here about how I find the question of unfettered, enthusiastic consent to be thorny but that’s some serious thread drifting.
“People have sex for all kinds of reasons, but other than it being a pleasure in itself, are any of them really good?”
@Spark: I have been thinking about the same thing. I have to admit that I like the idea of sex being “special” (i.e., something above a financial or commercial transaction). Even if this specialness is just a societal construct, I’m not really sure what’s wrong about that, at least in theory. In my mind, the problems don’t arise so much from deeming sex as “special;” it’s more how we put that into practice – the different standards for men and women based on patriarchal strictures. Down with the patriarchy, obliterate the double standards, please! But does that mean we can’t – as a society – conceptualize sex as a special way for consenting human beings (no matter what gender or sexual orientation they identify as) to connect in an intimate manner for physical and/or emotional pleasure, or for companionship? The idea that sex is something that we ideally don’t want commercialized or treated like any other job resonates with me. I don’t want to think or feel about sex the same way I think or feel about writing a legal brief, or digging a ditch. And I don’t necessarily think we need perceive it that way to curtail the use of sex to hurt women and other marginalized groups.
I mean, I understand the argument that when human beings have true and full bodily autonomy, that necessarily includes the right to sell those bodies for sex. I see the logic in that. So I guess I understand the argument that if I don’t support a woman’s right to sell her body for sex, I don’t fully support a woman’s right to have full bodily autonomy. But I also believe (as to many things) that “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” Maybe for me the commoditization of sex falls into that latter category? Maybe I don’t support full bodily autonomy for anyone when it comes to selling sex? Huh…
I am very late to this, but it took me years to articulate why I think sex work is problematic and not feminist at all, in spite of everyone claiming it’s empowering.
I finally figured it out at I Blame the Patriarchy, when Twisty/Jill talked about how, in a patriarchy, women are the sex class. That was the aha! I needed.
As members of the sex class, our entire worth is determined by how much men want to fuck us. In the patriarchy, we are all commodified flesh, no matter what other talents we have to offer, and we all have a price (has anyone read douchebag Michael Noer’s lovely treatise on wives and prostitutes?).
In this patriarchy, our purpose is to be fucked, and if that leads to pregnancy we become incubators and then child carers and hopefully MILFS. Since we are only valuable to the patriarchy for those purposes, once no man wants to fuck us, we are worthless.
In that context, when a woman chooses to take up sex work, she is essentially saying to the patriarchs “You’re right! I am only worth as much as you’re willing to pay for fucking me!”
And that choice hurts other women, because it adds grist to the patriarchy mill, especially if she also identifies as feminist. The patriarchs are happy to shame her for her immorality, but will also pat her on the back for accepting her natural role and standing up to those unnatural women who refuse to participate or, God forbid, wish to enjoy sex on their own terms.
The sex class concept also explains perfectly why sex work is often more lucrative (at least short-term) than most so-called women’s work. It’s a cookie for accepting the patriarchy’s terms, only that cookie is also full of HFCS and trans fats, and will probably kill you.
I’m not reading the comments but I just want to tell you, Pilgrim Soul, thanks for coming out in the feminist blogosphere as someone who is against this, which I know is hard to do. Thanks.
I am so sick of “feminists” like you nitpicking sex workers because we like men and we’re not afraid to show the other side of the coin.
Get over yourself and maybe try getting laid.
Thank you, Sequoia, for your well-reasoned and insightful rebuttal. I am now firmly convinced that sex work is 100% A-OK in every circumstance and merits absolutely no scrutiny. Of course, that was only half due to your response. The other half was the deep-dicking. Cleared my mind right quick.
@Sequoia – ahaha, haha, hahahaha! Oh man. Is it bad that I find that comment, after a 121-comment thread of thoughtful, reasoned debate on a very slippery subject, to be incredibly hilarious?
Anyway, moving on from that…adding my thanks, Pilgrim Soul, for tackling this. I think I agree most with Cimorene’s take – in a perfect, P-free world, I could see sex work being performed, purchased, and viewed as no different from any other physically demanding job. But we don’t live in that world. I don’t think I’m inclined to condemn sex workers who “choose their choice,” but neither do I feel obligated to support them, and in this world, I wouldn’t say that it’s a feminist choice.
@Sequoia: Does that mean I have to be a sex worker in order to like men? Or just that because I like men I should have been charging for sex all these years? Please set me straight! There might still be hope for me yet!
I’m not sure if anyone will see this anymore, but just in case, there was an article about this in the Comment is Free section of the Guardian that I just came across. It has a lot of statistics about the number of prostitutes exposed to violence, etc.: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/17/belle-de-jour-tanya-gold
SO many good points, and a hearty ‘amen’ to mischiefmanager’s points. (And HAH to PhDork @ 11/18 7:35pm)
I fall into the category of folks who see sex work as being totally doable and fine in a non-patriarchial world. I also think that it *can* be fine in our current world, but a small group of happy, emphatically consenting sex workers isn’t the solution to the many unhappy, here-because-of-no-comparable-choices sex workers. Regardless of your opinion of the Belles du Jour, we as a society need to do a hell of a lot more to support sex workers who don’t want to be doing sex work.
Acting as though we’re in the world we want to have isn’t going to magically create that world, to be sure. However, we can act as though we’re in that world *and* work to create it.
To the extent that some forms of sex work can reinforce patriarchial norms, that’s an additional area to work on. To the extent that some forms of sex work can radicalize our notions of femininity and power, that’s work already done.
@Endora, thanks for that article.
I didn’t want to derail the discussion before about feminist theory and sex work. A news story came up about an ongoing court case in Australia in which a prostitute was sexually assaulted whilst with a client, the news story is here:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/17/2745159.htm
Maybe this is because I grew up in a community where the vast majority of workers (male, at least) worked in fields that were physically demanding and where their primary requirement was an able body, I guess it’s a little strange to me that people would argue that “one’s body shouldn’t be for hire.” There are millions of people who work in jobs where the primary demands are physical, not intellectual. Where bodies, not abilities, are what you pay to show up and do work. This includes higher brow and more socially acceptable fields like dance or performance art or evens ports, although those fields usually require more special training and talent than most others.
The failure to connect the idea of work itself with the use of one’s body comes off, at least to me, as a white collar blind spot.
Unless you object to manual labor and dancing and professional sports, it seems to me your issue is not so much the commodification of human bodies, but rather the commodification of sex. Addressing concerns over human bodies IN GENERAL being treated as a commodity sounds more high-minded, I guess, than saying you are concerned over human bodies being monetized for sex in specific. But the latter is the real concern, and I think it’s disingenuous (even if it was a bias you weren’t aware of) to argue otherwise…no matter how much more palatable it makes your argument seem, to yourself and everyone who agrees with you.
Please note, my argument is neither for or against sex work. Rather, it is stating that I think you have misstated and/or misunderstood your own concerns on the topic.
Katie, I have to admit, your comment bothers me. Perhaps you are entitled to more blue-collar street cred than I am, but I doubt it. In any event, it is generally a poor choice of argumentative tactic to claim your opponent does not know her own mind. I have noted in the past you have a habit of doing this in the comments here. If you have a problem with what the poster has written, you’re entitled to your opinion, and entitled to air it here, but making claims about who and what the posters are is a bit much, and I’d like it if you did not continue to do that. Understand I am trying to be civil.
Nonetheless, to the substantive point buried in your ad hominems: I do think we already draw a line between some kinds of monetization of bodies and others, to the point that we do not allow people to monetize their internal organs. We do not allow them to do it, I think, because we believe in certain degrees of physical integrity. This foundational belief in physical integrity similarly animates our ideas about consent – if we did not believe in physical integrity at all, we would not need to obtain the consent of others when we chose to enter someone’s body. That is, we believe in the inviolability of the person’s physical presence. What I am trying to say by that is that I think so long as you believe that bodily integrity is important, and I think it is – there is a problem with sex work, when it takes the form of someone contracting away their physical inviolability.
So I still think my problem is the commodification of human bodies, yes. Highminded or not.
Katie, I’m so glad you’re here to lecture us again about our white collar blind spots. We’re lucky we have a woman of your tremendous experience and penetrating insight to enlighten us.
Of course, if you’d read the comments thread, you’d realize that most of what you’ve said has already been raised by other commenters–the difference being that they did it as part of a thoughtful, civil exchange of ideas rather than dismissing or devaluing the opinions of others or personally insulting Pilgrim Soul.
Based on this and your past comments, you seem to be incapable of discussing any issue raised on this site without personally attacking the writers. You are welcome to discuss the issues at hand, but the ad hominems need to stop, or your commenting privileges will.
My problem with both of the posts that I’ve criticized here is that I feel they contain unexamined class privilege. Part of the idea of privilege is that it can lead otherwise good, smart and intelligent people to fail to fully examine their arguments or misstate their arguments, because of a blind spot or bias due to their personal experiences. It isn’t about who has more credibility, and I apologize if I have come off as condescending. I will try to frame any future critique in a better way, although I have been struck by the fact that for the most part, no critique seems to be welcome here.
We don’t allow people to monetize their internal organs. This isn’t true. While thus far, we don’t allow people to sell their organs legally, we do allow women to have surrogate pregnancies for money. In fact when it comes to reproductive organs, as long as we’re talking exclusively about reproduction, out internal organs are absolutely monetized. It is in fact a highly lucrative field.
I think the issue of consent is what is key for me. If you are consenting to the work you do, without coercion or a personal sense of exploitation, I don’t see the point of my criticizing you for the work you do. I feel my efforts are far better spent in ensuring that sex workers, and women in general regardless of their sexual practices, are seen as people and are better able to have sex safely and without fear or being assaulted or coerced.
The clarification you gave (even if I disagree with it) definitely helps to clear up some of my uncomfortable feelings about the post in general. However, the response in general made me feel like the Harpyness blog is not open for criticism, and that if I don’t agree, I should just keep my mouth shut. All I can do at this point is to ask that you please accept my apologies if I came across as rude. I sincerely feel that sometimes some of the writers on this blog do not fully explore their privilege and it comes across in their writing. That is not an attack, but constructive criticism. If you are willing to believe that I mean that without snark or snootiness, I hope that this is a critique you are willing to at least consider, and not shoot down entirely.
Katie, the problem isn’t with your disagreeing with us. We frequently disagree with commenters–and each other–in the comments. The problem is that many of your comments come across as hostile, condescending and they essentially boil down to “well, the person who wrote this is totally privileged and shouldn’t be talking about this, whereas I am not privileged and will tell you all about how wrong you are!” You can disagree without being confrontational or belittling us.
If you think we’re always writing from a place of privilege and our opinions are wrong-headed, that’s your right–although I’d remind you that this being the internet, you don’t actually know that much about us. This was particularly striking to me when you accused Pilgrim Soul of being a white collar elitist who needed you to challenge her about the realities of blue-collar life. Bear in mind, you actually don’t know anything about her upbringing.
Katie, I think what people are trying to tell you is this: you are in no place, in this context, to tell me what my background is or where I am coming from. You assume I come from a white collar or professional background. You are utterly incorrect. I assume you assume this because I come across as someone who has spent a lot of time in school. I have. You are correct to divine that I am no longer working class. But I occupy that seat with a pretty strong double-consciousness on that score. Of course, that doesn’t mean I am always right about the working class, but it does mean I have significant access to that framework, it was a framework that was seminal to my upbringing, and it is not as simple, to me, as the bare assertion that “working class people know they have to sell their bodies.” I think they would describe it differently. I may be wrong, but that’s exactly my point: neither of us has the authority to speak for the so-called working class, particularly as I understand you to be a twentysomething white woman with a masters’ degree.
As to the blog generally: if you were a more regular reader, you would know that the bloggers here have varying views on any number of things. Including what our privilege means and how it affects our blog. Now, I have less of a problem with the fact that you disagreed with me than I have with the way you did it. We try to be civil here. Often we fail, but we nonetheless request that you not (a) assume you know my class history; and (b) address everyone as though you had some superior access to a better feminism. None of us do. That is why we specifically call our blog a “Pursuit.” Not an endgame. But in order for us to continue the pursuit productively, we demand of our commenters a degree of good faith.
@Katie, I realise going over 100 or so posts is time consuming. In earlier discussion the commenters did have difference and divergent opinions.
If you go to the earliest posts, there is a wide ranging discussion about the issues you raise: equivalence of sex work with all other forms of legal paid work (be it blue, white, green or pink collar), whether it is sex work itself or all paid legal work that is alienating when it becomes commodified, whether or not it is labour power (ie the acts that the persons enter into a contract for) or the actual person that the “john” is hiring, bodily autonomy, issues around social conceptions of sex and how they can play out in this discussion..
I’m still thinking about the issues after having some of my ideas challenged, so I don’t have a particularly coherent opinion yet.
As an aside, who do mean by the “we” when you speak about surrogate pregnancy and profiting from that? Do you have any further information about this?
In Australia, a surrogate is unable to profit from volunteering to undertake a pregnanct for another individual/couple. Australia also has laws against paying for blood donations and organ donations as well.
I’m not 100% sure of all the statutes in the US (and I’m making the assumption that is where you are from), but I understand that there are different statutes depending on the jurisdiction, and in some jurisdictions there are similar laws enacted as currently in Australia.
But then once the issue of profiting/earning a wage from surrogacy comes to the fore, the earlier discussion/arguments about sex work could also be applied to the issue of surrogacy for profit.
“If you are consenting to the work you do, without coercion or a personal sense of exploitation, I don’t see the point of my criticizing you for the work you do.”
What makes you think that discomfort with sex work is rooted in hostility towards the sex worker? Pro-prostitution/pro-porn folks always make that accusation, even when critics of sex work explain why they have a problem with it. Whether or not sex workers consent to their work, ALL WOMEN are still members of the Sex Class. For this I blame patriarchy (not sex workers).
ETA: In summary: I have a problem with the fact that women’s bodies are in such high demand. I have beef with the buyers, not the sellers.
@Mackey – Katie’s right, in the U.S., surrogacy and egg donation are extremely lucrative (someone put an ad in my school paper a few months back soliciting an egg donation for $70,000, with specs about the desired donor — and apparently that price was on the low end).
I suspect that a big part of the distinction between the two (surrogacy/prostitution) is who exactly you’re selling to and what you’re allowing them to do. When you sell your ovaries/uterus, you’re allowing people who want children to have children (a generally positive thing). When you sell your vagina, you’re allowing a man to feel like he can force women to have sex with him if he’s powerful/moneyed enough (a generally negative thing).
But perhaps there’s a whole other distinction that I’m missing, like that surrogacy doesn’t actually require you to touch the client, only the doctors.
Also, I think it’s ironic that PSoul and the rest of us are classist for suggesting that high-class call girl Brooke Magnanti is short sighted – and privilege-blind herself – when she claims that prostitution doesn’t hurt anyone.
I find it a little rich that this:
and this
can come from the same person who wrote this:
I would suggest that, as you pointed out, it’s unwise to presume you know the class status of strangers.
Hexy, I see why you read it that way, but I actually don’t say anything about their class background in that passage. The first two are visible characteristics, by and large, and the last two – well, I suppose I am assuming cisgender, but the education level is usually touted by the speaker as “evidence” that they are not stupid or unreflective. (Note: I don’t think the uneducated are stupid or unreflective; I do think being educated gives you access to vocabulary and resources you otherwise would not.)
To clarify, I’m certainly not claiming either that the “working class” or whatever you’d like to call it is in agreement on this issue – I do think in general many of them would say the idea that “to work” is to choose between alternate paths to personal fulfillment, or that choice of profession means you have ALL choices open to you, is “what rich people think” – but simply relaying admittedly completely anecdotal evidence that I don’t hear this rhetoric from other kinds of women (and sex workers!). It’s a weak statement because it’s anecdotal, but it’s not speculating on the class background of strangers.
Race is not always a visible characteristic, and depending where you are it may not even be one most of the time. I have certainly heard the “sex work is a valid choice” sentiment from a large number of sex workers who are not white, not young, not cisgendered, and not necessarily well-educated (or at least not well-educated prior to entering the sex industry). But then, I know, spend time, and communicate with a wide range of sex workers.
I don’t think discussion of privilege can really be divorced from class.
Yeah, Hexy, I gotta admit, you’ve latched onto one of the sentences in my post I think was rather ill-considered and I’m not really gonna bother to wholeheartedly defend that particular statement. I don’t love the anecdotal nature of it, and I think “sex work is a valid choice” is not really the argument I was trying to identify.
I know what you are trying to get at by saying privilege is not separable from class, and yet, it is still the case that say an upper-middle-class black person lacks racial privilege, and that’s what I meant to say here. I know that one privilege inflects and affects another, of course. But that’s not what I intended to apply in the above.
Also, your point re race not always being visible is of course well-taken. I was careless above.
If I were to rephrase it after the discussion I’ve had here and elsewhere, I think I would say something, again rooted in my experience which is not as limited as I suspect you suppose – I worked with sex workers rights’ activists while a student – that the argument that sex work is liberating is one I only see from the white/cisgendered/etc. Mostly because other kinds of people engaged in sex work tend to be more exposed by the risks attendant to it simply by lacking certain privileges, and so tend to speak of it in a more qualified and dare I say tethered to reality sort of manner.
There are, indeed, as you say, a large variety of people involved in sex work, and I have no desire to erase that. But, and again I am speaking somewhat anecdotally here, I am concerned that going into sex work is presented by certain advocates (the people I am referring to, sloppily, as white/educated/etc) as simply a path to personal fulfillment, because when they do that, it seems to me they obscure and negate other factors involved, including poverty and other barriers. I’m thinking, for example, of the disproportionately large number of First Nations women in Canada engaged in sex work, who are also disproportionately the victims of people like Robert Pickton. (See e.g.: this article on aboriginal women in Canada.) While it is true that removing the stigma on sex work might help them, somewhat, as the author points out, they were doubly erased by also being aboriginals. They come from economically disadvantaged communities. And they are largely the sex workers I have spoken with outside of the rich white paradigm I am presenting, and none of them have said they think of it as a liberating practice. Many if not all wanted to get out of the trade as soon as possible. I guess what I am saying is that I don’t see them served by the Belle de Jour paradigm, and that if I am, as a feminist, interested in liberation, then I think my first allegiance has to be to them over a Brooke Magnanti.
One other clarification of a line you didn’t bring up but which seems to have sparked people’s ire: when I talk about my work ending at my fingertips, I do not mean to imply that I occupy some superior moral sphere by “using my brain” or whatever dismissive euphemism there is. What I mean to do there is say that look, I know that everyone has to work, but all work is not the same. All work does not demand as much of us. Miners inhale incredible amounts of toxic chemicals; slaughterhouse employees lose fingers and sometimes limbs. I do not think that a just world allows some people to take those risks while others do not. For example, one of the things I keep thinking about as we have these discussions is an old line of Dworkin’s (yeah, I know, some people hate her, but humour me here): “Women willing to let other women do the so-called sex work, be the prostitutes, while they lead respectable professional lives in law or in the academy, frankly, make me sick.” Obviously that doesn’t go for anyone in this thread who is, in fact, a sex worker, but I do worry about it among so-called “allies” of the sex workers’ rights movement. I do worry about it among young women who call it a choice but say they simply would demur themselves out of “preference.” That, to me, seems a cop-out.
Here is a tiny bit of personal experience about enthusiasm for money= enthusiastic consent. I used to dance at various “upscale” strip clubs, and three times in my life I’ve accepted giant sums of money for sex. About $2000 for an hour or so. And I must say- it was seven years ago and I am still incredibly screwed up. I have sex with my gorgeous, awesome, feminist husband about four times a year. Even though I was incredibly happy to make so much money, and the guys weren’t jerks or anything like that, and I’d also had one-night stands meeting guys in bars so I’d had casual sex- there was something really really really horrible about the experience. I still can’t put my finger on it, but even though I was pretending to enjoy it, etc., it felt like I was being raped. Even though the guys thought they were being good lovers, weren’t treating me violently or aggressively, etc. For survivors of rape, I apologize and don’t mean to trivialize your experience. I know that I made my choice and brought my situation on myself. But, if given the chance to do over, not only would I have not turned the tricks, I would not have danced at all. I would have found another way to go to college at NYU- had a million roomates, eaten ramen noodles, took out more loans, etc.
I am coming to this discussion pretty late and it seems that not all 144 comments are coming up on this page, so apologies if I am repeating something previously stated.
First of all, thanks Anonymous Ex-Dancer for your post. I am a rape survivor and I do not find your comment trivializing in the slightest.
The problem I have with the “all work is exploitive” and “it’s all physical labour” is that it completely misses the psychosomatic implications of a sexual exchange and particularly the psychological implications of being penetrated. Whenever a guy tells me that prostitution is just another kind of work, I ask him if digging ditches is freely interchangeable with being fucked in the ass. This usually elicits a garbled response and a hasty retreat.
What bugs me about Belle de Jour’s claim that prostitution is not only viable but glamorous, fun, sexy and fulfilling is that she will not do it under her real name. If you’re a sincere advocate Belle, then pony up and advocate.
Now of course, we know her real name and her “real job” and we are supposed to buy more deeply into the idea that being a hooker is cool because she’s an academic. Wow! A SMART chick likes to hump for cash, so it can’t be exploitive, right? So why has she not left the academy for this wonderful career path with all it’s perks? Could it be because she is actually exploiting our collective patriarchy-induced sexual repression to make herself into a Paris Hilton-style celebrity?
It’s empowering for the more privileged among us, in that we realize it, for us and many people we know, it wasn’t the “exchange” or the “sex” that empowered us, it was the realization that it didn’t hurt us. Yes we did it out of choice.
What matters is a legal right to justice. Legal right to sue or press charges if you have been violated, not only for rape, but for theft of services, and all other manner of things. Stigma effects that, it effects the poorest sex-workers the most. We don’t have much stigma, we can hide, we can drop out of the life and take up office jobs (btw, high school drop out, didn’t graduate college right here. not “educated”, just well-read, minor disabilities.)
3) Legal right would also cover clients, so if they have been set up and robbed, they are able to recover losses and get justice.
4) We are able to identify and alert authorities to abuse among our friends, coworkers, and others in the life who may be being coerced or threatened. As it is now, we are afraid of being charged, of attracted police attention – whether that attention is them wanting to arrest us or rape us. We don’t want them to know us until we have full protection under the law.
We think it will take destigmatizing it, especially to other feminists, in order to get it decriminalized, so women who are more easily victimized have a voice and a chance. Chances we – the sex-workers with blogs – already have.
It’s not for us, we know we are lucky, we want the other ones to get lucky too. Or we want them to feel secure that if someone tries to rape them, or rip them off, they can call the police and get service – service where they are respected – not service where the police answer your complaint that you were robbed or beaten, and they take the opportunity to take an extra-careful look around your house – that you didn’t even want to let them into in the first place.
Do you know what that’s like? Have you ever had to call the police, and hope they bother trying to catch they guy while praying that they don’t start nosing around too much? The fact that a sex worker would have to hide things around her apartment, or change her appearance to be taken seriously as someone who is a real victim is classist at the least, in even the best light.
If she is raped, should she have to worry about closing out the windows on her computer because the police may see something on the screen? – should she have to worry about that, hiding evidence of her “crime” before she calls for help? Do any of you non-sex-workers? If you don’t have to worry about hiding your crimes before calling the police if you’ve been raped, and if I don’t have to worry about it if I am, then neither should she.
And it’s great that everyone is having a calm dialogue, but right now, somewhere there is a woman bleeding from her vagina as she takes the time to tuck away the condom packages she bought earlier and shuts off the screen showing her online advertisements for “adult services”.
If you were raped, would you worry about hiding the box of condoms? Or would you not even think of it until the defense tried to use it to prove it was all consensual?