Prostitution / Sexwork

The following discussion of thinking and teaching about
prostitution/sexwork took place on WMST-L in April 2002. Because
of its length, it has been divided into four parts.  Of related
interest may be the 1995 discussion Prostitution in Film.
For additional WMST-L files available on the Web, see the
WMST-L File Collection.

PAGE 1 OF 4

Hi All,

I am putting a new course together on sex work and human
trafficking/smuggling.

I would like to know about ways that you have found for dealing with anti
sex-worker attitudes in the classroom. It seems that regardless of the
readings we do, the specific topic being covered, etc., some students have
extremely negative attitudes toward sex-workers.

For example, I have heard a student express the sentiment that all
prostitutes should die of AIDS because they are evil.

These strong feelings seem to greatly impair some students' ability to
comprehend and deal with the actual content of the reading/video under
consideration.

Does anyone have any successful tactics/approaches for getting past the
knee-jerk hatred to learn about the issues involved in sex work?

Please reply privately and I'll post the responses to the list.

Thanks.

Molly Dragiewicz
Women's Studies and Cultural Studies
George Mason University
mdragiew  @  gmu.edu

I had a fruitful discussion of this very topic in a class on writing for the
alternative and community press this afternoon. One of my students lives on
the South Side of Chicago and wanted to write an article about prostitutes
working in the vacant lot next to the home where she lives with her mother
and child. My student was quite moralistic about these sex workers in her
neighborhood and had been talking about doing a story for a few weeks. I had
encouraged her to write something, but told her to get information from all
perspectives: the sex workers, people living in her neighborhood, law
enforcement officials (whom she says allow the prostitution to go on as kids
walk to school past the lot), experts on the topic of sex work and urban
communities.

Today she came to class and said she had begun an interview with one of the
prostitutes, a cross-dressed man. She said the prostitute made a remark to
her about her clothes (a compliment, she said) and she used the opportunity
to ask if she could have an interview. She was able to ask a few questions
before her bus came.

She wants to continue her interviews with more sex workers and neighbors,
and I suggested that she think carefully about the economic conditions for
the prostitutes in her neighborhood as she proceeds. Do they do this work out
of choice, because it pays the most money, because they are not trained to
do anything more lucrative? The question of economics got her thinking. I
then asked her to query the neighbors on where the real problem may lie (or
perhaps what bothers them most): the prostitutes or the johns they attract
to the neighborhood?

As we discussed these questions, another student in the class said "at the
risk of being condemed as immoral, I worked as a stripper for two years in
my teens and I did it because it was a lot of money for a half-hour
work-out." She said she avoided the sex work that could have ensued and
simply danced, and that she was able during this time to shop in the more
expensive districts of Chicago and drop $100 on a light lunch. She said she
got out of the work because she decided she didn't want to stay in proximity
to some of the danger that went with the job.

The sudents then brought up a documentary two of them had seen about an
aging stripper being rejected by club owners because her looks were no
longer youthful.

I think the key must be to ask students to put aside their prejudices
(growing from general fears of sexuality, perhaps) and think about sex
workers as people like them, perhaps without their economic or educational
privilege (not that my students in downtown Chicago have a great deal of
privilege in either realm!).. I certainly saw a huge change in my inquiring
student when she began to consider the issue from the prostitutes' point of
view.

I know there are publications about this topic and would like to see a
bibliography if anyone has one, as I suggested to my student that she read a
few sources on the realities of sex work before writing her piece.

Ruthe Thompson
Roosevelt University
430 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago

One that I would recommend is _Sex Work_ by Delacorte and Alexander.

I took this listing for it from abebooks.com
<http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe/BookSearch>

Delacoste, Frederique and Alexander, Pricilla, Eds. Sex Work: Writings By
women in the sex Industry
Pittsburgh, PA and San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1987 Pb. VG- 349pp; sticker
back; name fep; wear extremities; rubbing; scratching . Bookseller
Inventory # 025700
Price: US$ 8.50 convert currency
Presented by Priceless Books, Urbana, IL, U.S.A.
order options

Dear Molly and all,

I teach the issue of prostitution in a Sexual Politics subject and
trafficking for prostitution on an International subject. I teach in
Melbourne, Australia, where brothel prostitution is legalised and the
attitudes of many parliamentarians are extremely liberal as to men's
sexual prerogatives to access women. The pro-prostitution politics of the
state governments here that legalise brothel prostitution tend to be
represented as being for the welfare of the prostituted women, but in
fact it is the sex entrepreneurs (once called pimps) that suddenly have
the opportunity to create huge profits. In my state there are 300 illegal
to 100 legal brothels (according to the Adult Entertainment Industry
Association). Street prostitution is still illegal, and it is extremely
hard for women to work for themselves without being forced into brothels
to make profits for the industry.

Thus my students do not tend to express negative attitudes towards
prostituted women at all. They are much more likely to argue, as the
media has taught them, that prostitution is a 'choice' and 'work' for
women. My position, and I am involved with Coalition Against
Trafficking in Women Australia, is that men's abuse of women in
prostitution is a form of violence against women and a violation of
women's human rights.  My position is put in my book _The Idea of
Prostitution_, Melbourne: Spinifex 1997. This starts with a history of
feminist work against trafficking in first half of 20th century and
goes on to look at how the understanding that prostitution was an
abuse of women was changed by sexual revolution, sexology and certain
prostitutes' rights groups which argued in 80s for prostitution to be
seen as work, particularly COYOTE in San Francisco. I then put forward
arguments against prostitution being seen as work, as sex, or as
choice and argue that it should be seen as violence and a human rights
violation. I use the work of organisations like SAGE in San Francisco
which make arguments from women who have been prostituted that
prostitution is commercial sexual violence.  I end with a chapter on
the controversy internationally over trafficking now, in which the
very powerful sex industry view that prostitution is just work and
trafficking should be seen as migration for labour, is winning out.

An organisation that represents legal brothels here in
Victoria would like to be able to import Asian prostituted women more
easily. I suspect this is because these women are cheaper and more
controllable. They put it politely, arguing for 'exchanges' with brothels
in Asia. It may be that it is hard to find enough Australian citizens
prepared to enter brothels despite lots of propaganda such as in women's
mags (owned I suspect by publishers who also publish porn) that
prostitution is a terrific job for a woman. In Victoria, in a recent
case, 40 Thai women in debt slavery (they had to be penetrated by 500 men
for free) were kept in a hotel behind bars. But apparently they
'consented' because they signed contracts in Thailand. These are the
women who would be seen as 'migrating to labour' under the understanding
that prostitution is just work.

I think an argument can reasonably be made that those students who are
not themselves prostituted but make the 'choice' argument are
expressing hostile attitudes to prostituted women though believe they
are showing they are not prejudiced and are supportive of prostituted
women. However they can be seen to be separating themselves out
i.e. they personally do not 'choose' to be prostituted but there are
some women who happen to do so and are quite different from them. The
'choice' argument can be seen as victim blaming. Like battered women
who 'stay' prostituted women 'choose' to stay in prostitution. It can
also be seen as classist since most students want good jobs in which
sexual harassment policies protect them from men's unwanted hands and
penises on and in their bodies.  However in prostitution sexual
harassment, precisely those unwanted, often hated, hands and penises
in and on their bodies is what prostituted women are paid for. So
prostituted women are abandoned, by the choice argument, to receive
precisely what professional women are pretty desperate to remove from
their workplaces.

I very deliberately do not use the language of 'sex work'. This
language makes it impossible to see the violence of prostitution, the
emotional dissociation to survive, the vomiting, eating disorders,
post traumatic stress symptoms (see Melissa Farley's work), unwanted
pregnancies and abortions, loss of children to care of state or
fostering, suicides, cutting, etc. (One marvellous book on
prostitution as violence is _Backstreets_ By Cecilie Fingard and Liv
Finstad in which prostituted women speak of being made to feel as if
they are shit). Such language does not allow us to see what is
different about commercial sexual violence in which unwanted sex and
sexual harassment are bought.

Much more could be said and this is probably not the place for it. My
book has a large bibliography and more can be found on Melissa Farley's
prostitutionresearch website and on the international CATW website.

In sisterhood,

Sheila J.

On 04/09/02 06:04 pm, "Ruthe M. Thompson" <ruthomps  @  ATTBI.COM> wrote:
> Today she came to class and said she had begun an interview with one of the
> prostitutes, a cross-dressed man.

Does this person really identify as a "cross-dressed man"?

> The question of economics got her thinking. I then asked her to query
> the neighbors on where the real problem may lie (or perhaps what bothers
> them most): the prostitutes or the johns they attract to the neighborhood?

Are those the only choices? And when you say "neighbors" - are you
automatically excluding sex workers as neighbors?

> I think the key must be to ask students to put aside their prejudices
> (growing from general fears of sexuality, perhaps)

Or working-class people. Or immigrants. Or single mothers. Or transsexuals.

> and think about sex workers as people like them, perhaps without their
> economic or educational privilege (not that my students in downtown
> Chicago have a great deal of privilege in either realm!)..

This assumes (1) students are not sex workers and that sex workers
never take a Women's Studies course, and (2) being a sex worker is
universally horrible and extremely deplorable, rather than the
conditions under which they work often are. Neither is true.

> I know there are publications about this topic and would like to see a
> bibliography if anyone has one, as I suggested to my student that she read a
> few sources on the realities of sex work before writing her piece.

I created this pamphlet for an action (the hookers' demonstration
at an anti-prostitution seminar in Portland) last year (note: open
the pamphlet with Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 or higher; print page 1
and 2 back to back and fold in the middle):
 http://transfeminism.org/conspire/pdf/2001-04-01-flier.pdf

I also have a 'zine which includes this pamphlet, titled "Instigations
from the Whore Revolution: A Third Wave Feminist Response to the Sex
Work 'Controversy'": http://eminism.org/zines.html

Other online resources I recommend are
 Meretrix Online (by Magdalen Meretrix, the author of "Turning Pro")
 http://www.realm-of-shade.com/meretrix/
and
 BAYSWAN (by Carol Leigh, who coined the term "sex work")
 http://www.bayswan.org/

As for an academic analysis of prostitution, I like Julia O'Connell
Davidson's "Prostitution, Power and Freedom" even though I disagree with
some of her assumptions.

By the way, I was going to give a lecture about the whore revolution
at a liberal arts college in New York, but they canceled at the last
minute (they called me today, only three days before my planned flight)
because the president of the college felt it was inappropriate and
uneducational and pulled the funding - I thought about going there
anyway to spite them, but I concluded that it was not worth my time.

Emi K. <emi  @  eminism.org>

--
http://eminism.org/ * Putting the Emi back in Feminism since 1975.

On 04/09/02 11:50 pm, "Sheila Jeffreys" <s.jeffreys  @  POLITICS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU>
wrote:
> Street prostitution is still illegal, and it is extremely hard for
> women to work for themselves without being forced into brothels to
> make profits for the industry.

Are you therefore calling for an immediate legalization of all
forms of prostitution, including street walking (under which sex
businesses are regulated by the same labor and commerce laws that
regulate other industries)? If not, why?

> My position, and I am involved with Coalition Against Trafficking
> in Women Australia, is that men's abuse of women in prostitution
> is a form of violence against women and a violation of women's
> human rights.
[snip]
> I then put forward arguments against prostitution being seen as work,
> as sex, or as choice and argue that it should be seen as violence and
> a human rights violation

There is a huge *slip* here - in the first, you are arguing that
the *abuse* of women in prostitution is a form of violence (indeed!).
In the second, you suggest that prostitution itself - regardless of
the presence or absence of abuse, exploitation, or unconsentual acts
- as violence. This slipperly slide shows that anti-prostitution
feminists share one thing in common with rapists: that they do not
understand "yes means yes, no means no." While rapists argue in court
that prostitutes can't get raped, anti-prostitution feminists argue
that prostitutes can't avoid being raped - both arguments exonerate
those directly responsible for the act of raping.

> I use the work of organisations like SAGE in San Francisco which
> make arguments from women who have been prostituted that prostitution
> is commercial sexual violence.

SAGE cooperates with the law enforcement, which means that it gains
its "clients" by threatening prostitutes (I've never met a prostitute
who likes to be referred to as "prostituted women"; this phrase only
makes sense when you are talking about the actual sex slavery) that
unless they go through its program they will go to jail. Under this
threat, it then demands women to accept and internalize its
anti-prostitution message - that prostitution is inherently horrible
thing, and that they were duped into prostitution in the first place.
Talk about women being kidnapped, brainwashed, and trapped in an
abusive system through enormous power differential! If anti-prostitution
feminists were to seriously assist women wishing to leave the sex
industry, they need to end their collusion with the law enforcement.

Here is a small portion of an interview I recently did with a prostitute
who survived SAGE's program: "At one point a case manager referred me
to a group called SAGE. I was told that SAGE offered a supportive place
for sex workers and survivors. What I found however was a 'support group'
that focused on shaming and blaming prostitutes out of the industry lead
by a charismatic and manipulative ex-prostitute and recovering drug addict
who worked with the law enforcement to further criminalize prostitution
and who use the media to further scapegoat sex workers. I left the group
early, thanks to my growing awareness of the patterns that tipify abusive
group power dynamics." (to be presented as part of my paper at NWSA 2002)

> In Victoria, in a recent case, 40 Thai women in debt slavery (they
> had to be penetrated by 500 men for free) were kept in a hotel behind
> bars. But apparently they 'consented' because they signed contracts
> in Thailand. These are the women who would be seen as 'migrating to
> labour' under the understanding that prostitution is just work.

In Victoria, is this kind of business arrangement (that workers are
kept in a hotel behind bars until they perform certain amount of task
- any kind of task, that is) legal? Under the understanding that
prostitution is just work, I would think that what you describe is an
oppressive and probably illegal treatment of workers by the management.

> The 'choice' argument can be seen as victim blaming. Like battered
> women who 'stay' prostituted women 'choose' to stay in prostitution.

How is it "victim blaming" to acknowledge that battered women have
the agency and that when they decide to stay within an abusive
relationship rather than leave immediately there may be good reasons
for them to do so? Are you suggesting that if someone actually "chose"
to stay in an abusive relationship, blame should follow next time she
is beaten? Do you think that if someone actually "chose" to turn some
tricks, she should be blamed for being raped?

> It can also be seen as classist since most students want good jobs
> in which sexual harassment policies protect them from men's unwanted
> hands and penises on and in their bodies. However in prostitution
> sexual harassment, precisely those unwanted, often hated, hands and
> penises in and on their bodies is what prostituted women are paid for.
> So prostituted women are abandoned, by the choice argument, to receive
> precisely what professional women are pretty desperate to remove from
> their workplaces.

Of course prostitutes deserve to be protected by sexual harassment
policies - unconsentual touches are violation of their rights, and
not part of their jobs. It is not "the choice argument" that abandons
prostitutes without these rights enjoyed by other workers - it is
the legal system that treats prostitutes as less than workers, refusing
to enforce laws and regulations that other industries must comply.

I would also think that it is classist to suggest that work done
by working-class women are really not work because their rights as
workers are not protected as well as that of their middle-class
counterparts.

> I very deliberately do not use the language of 'sex work'. This
> language makes it impossible to see the violence of prostitution,

This language was coined by sex workers because they needed to view
their work as work in order to (1) call for respectful treatment of
sex workers in the society, (2) confront exploitative environments
surrounding the sex industry as workers. You began discussing violence
within prostitution economy (which does happen, as it does in any
other industry), and jumped to equating prostitution to violence.
Not mention that "sex work" involves much more than simply
prostitution...

> Such language does not allow us to see what is different about
> commercial sexual violence in which unwanted sex and sexual
> harassment are bought.

Again, your rhetoric shows me that you share the same mentality as
men who think it's okay to sexually harass women because women's
right to consent does not matter.

I do not buy "choice" argument either, because it is not particularly
useful to reduce the issue to "choice." But "sex work is work"
position is not the same as the "choice" position, as it has the
potential to address abuse within the prostitution economy as the
exploitation of workers' rights and challenge conditions that make
workers vulnerable to such abuse, such as poverty, sexism, racism,
homophobia, transphobia, anti-immigrant policies, neoliberalism,
etc.

Emi Koyama <emi  @  eminism.org>

--
http://eminism.org/ * Putting the Emi back in Feminism since 1975.

A collection of articles that do not automatically ascribe sex-workers to be
victims or deviants, but instead looks at the problem and promise of work in
the sex industry across a number of cultures, can be found in:

Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doesema (1998) Global Sex Workers: Rights,
Resistance, and Redefinition. Hew York, London: Routledge.

Dr. Claudia Malacrida
Department of Sociology, SS 956
University of Calgary
Fax: (403) 282-9298

The documentary by Vicki Funari and Julia Query titled _Live Nude Girls
Unite!_ about strippers unionizing in San Francisco is especially useful for
getting students to see beyond their prejudices.  It's available from First
Run/Icarus Films, www.frif.com


Adrienne McCormick, PhD
Assistant Professor of English
Director, Women's Studies Program
SUNY Fredonia
Fredonia NY 14063
716/673-3851: office
716/673-4661: fax
adrienne.mccormick  @  fredonia.edu

Another approach could be to expand the definition of
"sex worker" by including in the discussion some forms
of modeling, acting (simulating sex acts for pay), and
dance. I am a belly dancer, and while my work would not
be rated R, it certainly contains a sexual/erotic
aspect. Belly dancers often have to contend with
consumers/audience members who assume the dance is a
mild kind of sex work.

Anne Carson
Cornell University Library
Ithaca, NY 14853
arc3  @  cornell.edu

For a discussion by sex workers themselves see, "The Vindication of the
Rights of Whores," edited by Gail Pheterson and Margo St. James,
distributed by Seal Press.
Diana Scully, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology/Director of Women's Studies
Virginia Commonwealth University
Box 843060
Richmond, VA 23284
dhscully  @  vcu.edu  804-828-4041

For another discussion by sex workers themselves, see:

Bell, Laurie (ed.).  _Good Girls, Bad Girls:  Feminists and Sex Trade
Workers Face to Face_.  Toronto:  The Seal Press, 1987.

Jennifer L. Rexroat
Doctoral Candidate and Instructor
Gender and Women's Studies Concentration
Department of Political Science
University of Illinois at Chicago
1007 West Harrison Street (MC 276)
Chicago, IL 60607-7137
Phone:  (773) 381-5388
Fax:  (773) 381-5399
E-mail:  jrexro1  @  uic.edu
Web:  www.uic.edu/~jrexro1

Some good web resources to check out:

Exotic Dancers Alliance
http://www.eda-sf.org/

Prostitutes' Education Network  http://www.bayswan.org/penet.html
They have a section specifically geared for student researchers

Other print resources:

Whores and Other Feminists. Ed. Jill Nagle. Routledge, 1997.

Danzine, a zine by and for the ladies, editor Teresa Dulce YOu can order
back and current copies from:  http://www.danzine.org/

Also Pat Califia's "The City of Desire: Its Anatomy and Destiny" in Public
Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex

Impropriety is the soul of wit--Oscar Wilde

-------------------------------------
Doreen Piano
English Dept
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 43403
email: dpiano  @  ev1.net

one of the best books on sex work that I've read is  _Whores and Other
Feminists_ by Jill Nagle 1997. At amazon The Women's Review of Books says:
"Approximately three dozen sex workers join Campbell to plumb the
sex-for-money nexus for its feminist meanings. In chorus, they proclaim a
gleefully sex-positive approach to topics that have long troubled
feminism.... They delight and they frustrate, these 'proud whores.' Their
insights leave the ruminations of my cohort of sex-worker feminists in the
dust."


Rebecca

Rebecca Tolley-Stokes
Catalog/Reference Librarian
Assistant Professor
Sherrod Library  70665
East Tennessee State University
Johnson City, TN 37614-1701
(423) 439-4365  Fax: (423) 439-4410
tolleyst  @  mail.etsu.edu

As an alternative (and far a less popular view as it
does not vindicate the rights of men to buy and use
women) book list on prostitution, I would suggest:

Barry, Kathleen. _The Prostitution of Sexuality_. New
York: NYU Press, 1995.

Giobbe, Evelina. "Prostitution: Buying the Right to
Rape." In _Rape and Sexual Assault III. A Research
Handbook_. (Ed) Ann Wolpert Burgess. New York: Garland
Publishing Inc., 1991.

Jeffreys, Sheila. _The Idea of Prostitution_. North
Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 1997.

I would also recommend Jill Leighton's testimony of
her experience in prostitution at
http://home.att.net/~rhiannonn/jill_leighton.htm

And also Escape, which is an educational organization
against prostitution, pornography, and all other forms
of sexual exploitation. They are at:
http://www.escapeprostitution.com/

Increasingly, there is a celebratory stance on the
so-called sex-work by the feminist movement, as well
as the proliferation of books with accounts of happy
hookers and so forth. Whilst I believe that feminism
is diverse and we don't always agree with one another,
I think we all agree on one thing: the validation of
women's experience. No doubt there will be women who
claim to be happy and chose prostitution as a job, but
I am against the tidal wave of silencing the
oppositional view that prostitution is the sexual
slavery of all women.

best regards,
Joyce

"I have come to believe over and over again that what is most
important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the
risk of having it bruised and misunderstood." - Audre Lorde