Prostitution / Sexwork

PAGE 2 OF 4

"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."

Attempts in Melbourne, Australia, to unionise 'sex workers' failed
because the women did not want to see themselves as in the industry
long-term. They were aiming to get out. Does this say something about the
circumstances that informed their 'choice' to enter the industry?

I find the above response to the exploitation of working class women
pretty unfortunate. I don't think just telling women that prostitution is
empowering does anything to help women harmed by it. It is not 'classist'
to identify harm and act to end the circumstances (gender and class
oppression) which create it! I would never argue for a moment that the
kids I went to school with who were channelled into the standard working
class jobs were 'choosing' this. They/we weren't given a choice. I would
say a person who argued that we were empowered in our limited choices
didn't care about us our advancement.

Since when was it progressive and feminist to argue for a status quo
backed by big business (the 'sex' industry)? Is the girl working at
McDonald's (another multi-billion dollar industry with exploitative
conditions) also a feminist working class heroine? I don't understand
where this glorifying of sex work comes from.

Students' negative attitudes to 'sex workers' are probably just another
form of victim-blaming. The answer is not to insist that the victim is
empowered and self-actualising, but to address the actions of the
perpetrators (who so far in this duscussion have escaped scrutiny, even
though it is they who created this exploitative industry in the first
place).

-----
Heather Benbow
Department of German and Swedish Studies
University of Melbourne VIC 3010
Australia
Ph: +61 3 8344 5202
Fax: +61 3 8344 7821

On 4/11/02 1:04 AM, "Heather Merle Benbow"
<benbow  @  MYRIAD.ITS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU> wrote:
> "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."
>
> Attempts in Melbourne, Australia, to unionise 'sex workers' failed
> because the women did not want to see themselves as in the industry
> long-term.

Of course, with the kind of prejudice that exists in the society, often
intense working conditions, and lack of long-term security, it is not
surprising that many women do not want to stay within the sex industry
long-term.

And unionization may not be the best strategy - for example here in
Portland, Oregon (city with more adult entertainment businesses per
capita than anywhere else), most clubs are small family-owned ones,
and hire very few workers - which would mean they are more readily
replaceable. Even with the union bashing, women working at Lusty
Lady were lucky because they had the status as employees to begin
with - most clubs treat workers as independent contractors, which
makes unionization impossible. And, yes, self-identified feminists
pulling their legs does not help either.

There could be other ways to empower sex workers, simplest of which
is enforcing the labor and civil rights laws on sex businesses just
the same way other businesses are regulated. Californian legislature
passed a law that require clubs to grant employee status to nude
dancers, although it currently lacks enforcement (someone has to sue
the club, and the government is not doing it). We need to also support
decriminalization of prostitution so that workers can openly organize
(currently, simply sharing safety and health information among
prostitutes may be construed as abetting prostitution, which is a
crime), and challenge societal attitudes toward sex workers in general.

Throwing up hands because unionization in sex industry (just like in
many other industries where workers are treated as independent contractors)
is difficult is not feminist. Women working in these industries (i.e.
not just sex industry, but other places where unionizing is difficult)
have organized and resisted exploitation, and they need the support of
middle-class women, including academic feminists.

> I find the above response to the exploitation of working class women
> pretty unfortunate. I don't think just telling women that prostitution is
> empowering does anything to help women harmed by it.

I never stated that prostitution is empowering; in fact, I had a big
argument with Carol Queen (author of "Real Live Nude Girls") about
this at the last Sex Workers' Conference in Olympia. My criticism was
that by telling sex workers that sex work is inherently empowering,
she was making invisible the exploitation and abuse of workers by the
management, and making it easier for them to further the exploitation.
By labeling someone "anti-sex" for having legitimate grievances
against their working conditions, whether the work involves sexual
act or not, Queen's pro-sex feminism renders sex work as primarily
sex as opposed to work - and thus her argument is counteractive
and anti-worker.

What I do not understand is why anti-prostitution feminists would
conflate the working-class sex worker feminism I am advocating for
with simplistic "pro-sex" statements like "prostitution is empowering."
That is not something I said, nor even hinted in my last post; you
invented it out of nowhere (see the abstract of my paper for NWSA
at http://eminism.org/academic/2002-nwsa-prostitution.html ). What is
truly unfortunate is that anti-prostitution feminists refuse to listen
to the actual working-class sex worker feminists, and instead only
argue with middle-class "pro-sex" feminists like Carol Queen and think
they've done enough. I have even been told by a staffer at an anti-
prostitution group (Council for Prostitution Alternative, now LOTUS)
that all "prostitued women" (again, the term despised by most prostitutes
that I know) are so severely beaten that their brains are damaged
and therefore what they say is not important.

> It is not 'classist' to identify harm and act to end the circumstances
> (gender and class oppression) which create it!

Yes! That is exactly what I was arguing for - rather than scapegoating
prostitution, feminists need to confront poverty, violence, sexism,
racism, neoliberalism, prison industrial complex, "war on drugs," etc.
as they (and not the sexual acts themselves) are what make sex workers
vulnerable to exploitation.

> Since when was it progressive and feminist to argue for a status quo
> backed by big business (the 'sex' industry)?

Again, I was calling for the whole whore revolution (see my web site,
http://eminism.org/readings/supporthookers.html ) rather than a status
quo; anti-prostitution feminists who single out prostitution displace
the problem onto sexual acts when in reality we need to be confronting
economic and political systems that make workers vulnerable to abuse
and exploitation. That is not to mention how anti-prostitution groups
such as SAGE (in San Francisco) and Lola Greene Baldwin Foundation
(in Portland) collude with the law enforcement to regulate and dictate
women's lives (Lola Green Baldwin is a name of a police officer - how
typical).

> I don't understand where this glorifying of sex work comes from.

I don't understand where you got this either, because nobody on WMST-L
has so far "glorified" sex work. You are making a classical "straw
person" argument, and have not even began to dispute *anything* I said
in my last post. And I doubt that you can dispute this one either.


Emi Koyama <emi  @  eminism.org>
Founder, Student Hookers Association, Portland State University
--
http://eminism.org/ * Putting the Emi back in Feminism since 1975.

Like Joyce, Sheila, and Heather, I too find the nearly-unquestioned
prevalence of the "sex work" perspective among women's studies academics
very depressing.  I know Joan will probably cut off this thread fairly
soon, but I wanted to echo one point that these women made which I hope
will appeal to the liberal, let's-hear-all-sides impulses of many
listmembers -- and that is that if any perspective is being
almost entirely silenced and drowned out in the contemporary WMST
"debate" (such as it is) on this issue, it is the radical feminist
critique of prostitution and pornography.  (See Adriene Sere's excellent
essay on this theme, "Sex and Feminism: Who is Being Silenced?"; I don't
have the url handy but a Google search on her name and the title will pull
it right up.)

The following cannot be said too many times: the radical feminist critique
of prost/porn is not a moral criticism, or indeed any kind of criticism,
of the women.  Perhaps the most fundamental theme of this critique is that
prostitution, including pornography, exists because men, as a class,
demand that there be a sub-class of women (and children, and men, and
transgender people--but mostly women) who are available for their
unconditional sexual service.  It does not exist because millions of
little girls across the globe wake up one day and say to themselves,
"gee, what do I want to be when I grow up?  doctor, lawyer, construction
worker, teacher?  No, no . . . I think I'll be a PROSTITUTE!"  It also
does not exist because men desire and need "sex"--there's plenty of sex
elsewhere.  It exists because they desire and demand sex *of a certain
kind*--the kind they don't have to ask for or negotiate about, the kind
they can have with a class of person defined as degraded and inferior, the
kind where "the customer is always right" and always get what he pays
for.  This is why, in my view, unionizing and organizing and whatnot
cannot ultimately redeem the kinds of harm done to women in
prostitution.  If women in prostitution really had power and choice about
what they were doing -- well, then they wouldn't be in prostitution at
all (I'm convinced that is true in 95+% of cases, and plentiful research
bears that out) -- but even if they were, then it simply wouldn't
"work" for men.  They wouldn't be getting what they came for, as it were.

I urge people on this list who are inclined to buy the "sex
work" perspective -- especially those who have not really read feminist
critiques of that view but have bought the portrayals of those critiques
advanced by others -- to do their homework before making up their minds
for good.  The following are some *excellent* places to start:

Parker, "How Prostitution Works"
http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/parker-how.html

Clarke, "Do Men Really Need Prostitution?"
http://www.feminista.com/v2n3/clarke.html

Clarke, "Consuming Passions"
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/Porn/SexualFascism/dc/conpash.html

Hughes, "Men Create the Demand, Women are the Supply"
http://www.feminista.com/v4n3/hughes.html


Rebecca Whisnant
University of Southern Indiana

This is one of those discussions that can polarize us faster than you can
say "censorship."  There are two or more genuinely feminist views on this
issue.  My sense is that they are irreconcilable. I don't think that
characterizing one side as "liberal, let's-hear-all-sides impulses of many
listmembers..."
as very helpful any more than pointing out that the anti-sex work crowd has
some strange bedfellows (forgive the pun) like the Christian Fundamentalist
Right and religious orthodoxies of all varieties.

There is a tremendous range of opinion not only among feminists but also of
the women involved in it.
Personally, I don't think it's a great career option but one thing I've
learned from having been very active debating and speaking about this issue
since the 1980s, is that we are never going to convince someone whose mind
is made up.  Lots of us have spent a lot of time thinking about this: each
of us comes down on the side of the issue that reflects one's beliefs,
background, etc.

It's not that anyone here is accepting sex work unquestioningly but rather
that we were trying to respond to the original inquiry.


Rosa Maria Pegueros, J.D., Ph.D.
Department of History
    & Women's Studies Program
217C Washburn Hall
80 Upper College Road, Suite 3
University of Rhode Island
Kingston, RI 02881
         E:mail: pegueros  @  uri.edu
         Phone:(401) 874-4092
         Fax  :(401) 874-2595
Web pages:
http://www.uri.edu/personal/rpe2836u/
http://nick.uri.edu/artsci/wms/pegueros.htm
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Never another season of silence."  --Susan B. Anthony
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Greetings!

Did anyone happen to see "Judging Amy" this past Tuesday night on CBS?

Part of the show's story line was about a woman who worked as an "exotic
dancer", and her daughter's effort to get her to change her line of work

In short: the legal issues were that such a profession is not prohibited
by the Constitution.

The story didn't go into feminist discussions about exploitation or any
other aspect of the "work"; the daughter was embarrassed by her mother's
work. It was an interesting, albeit superficial treatment of the topic.

An aside: About two years ago, I had a student report about the
negotiation of roles between various kinds of dancers, and their
"clients" in a "gentleman's club", for example, the negotiation of what
happens during a "lap dance", fees, and acts, and such. Most interesting
to me was the profound objectification of the clients who came to the
club, by the dancers. Not surprising, just a confirmation of all the
theoretical stuff about such exchanges between dancer and client.

Joan

--
!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!
Joan I. Biddle Ph.D.
Sociologist
LTC, USAR (ret)
jandjb  @  erols.com
jbiddle  @  straxmobile.com
joan.biddle  @  us.army.mil
^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^

On 4/11/02 8:15 AM, "Rebecca Whisnant" <rsw  @  EMAIL.UNC.EDU> wrote:
> that is that if any perspective is being
> almost entirely silenced and drowned out in the contemporary WMST
> "debate" (such as it is) on this issue, it is the radical feminist
> critique of prostitution and pornography.

Silenced and drowned? Being defeated and obsoleted by others due to its
faulty logic or unpersuasive rhetoric is not "silenced"; I've had to
hear plenty of this position that you call "radical feminist" analysis
of prostitution, and concluded that, like its anti-pornography, anti-S/M,
anti-transsexual, anti-butch/femme, universalizing, oppression-ranking,
and sexual hierarchy politics, it is a convenient tool for mostly white
middle-class feminists to pretend that they are working for all women,
including working-class women and women of color, while remaining
oblivious to their own complicity in the oppression against these women,
and without working toward the actual processes (e.g. decriminalization,
immigration reform, drug policy reform, trans civil rights) necessary to
bring about the changes working-class sex worker feminists demand.

Speaking of silencing, Sarah Lawrence College has just canceled my
speaking engagement. I was going to speak there on April 13 about the
sex worker feminism and the idea of the whore revolution from the third
wave feminist perspective, but the president of the college singlehandedly
withdrew handing, labeling it "inappropriate and uneducational." This
happened on April 9, only three days before my planned travel. If I had
more energy and I wasn't in the process of moving right now, I would have
gone anyway to call attention to this specific act of "silencing." As a
radical feminist concerned about the silencing of women's voices, what
do you think about this?

> The following cannot be said too many times: the radical feminist critique
> of prost/porn is not a moral criticism, or indeed any kind of criticism,
> of the women.

I've been told "false consciousness" many, many times. If that is not a
criticism of where I am and my views, what is it?

> Perhaps the most fundamental theme of this critique is that
> prostitution, including pornography, exists because men, as a class,
> demand that there be a sub-class of women (and children, and men, and
> transgender people--but mostly women) who are available for their
> unconditional sexual service.

Prostitutes do not provide unconditional sexual services any more than
other workers provide eight hours of "unconditional" work. They only
provide conditional sexual services.

This once again proves my argument that radical feminist critics of
prostitution have rapist mentality: that prostitutes are and must be
always available to any man unconditionally.

> It exists because they desire and demand sex *of a certain
> kind*--the kind they don't have to ask for or negotiate about, the kind
> they can have with a class of person defined as degraded and inferior, the
> kind where "the customer is always right" and always get what he pays
> for.

Clients must ask for and negotiate about services they receive. Only
people who think that they don't have to are anti-prostitution feminists
and rapists. Anti-prostitution feminists participate in the definition
of prostitutes as degraded and inferior. In addition, one of the barriers
to having better negotiation about services is the illegality of
prostitution (neither the worker nor the client can explicitly negotiate
the exact acts traded without breaking the law, risking arrests). What
are you doing to help change this situation?

"I've never been felt as dirty and used as when I was told how dirty
and used I had been/ like I'm a pawn in someone else's theory about
me" - from "difference," a piece performed at "Intercourse: A Sex and
Gender Spoken Word Recipe for Revolution 2001."


Emi Koyama <emi  @  eminism.org>

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

--- emi <emi  @  SURVIVORPROJECT.ORG> wrote:

> Silenced and drowned?

When radical feminists are excluded from discussion, I
would consider that to be silenced.  Here's a link to
the article by Adriene Sere:
http://www.saidit.org/archives/jul01/mediaglance.html

> I've had to
> hear plenty of this position that you call "radical
> feminist" analysis
> of prostitution,

Yes, it's very important to hear plenty of this
radical feminist stuff before you conclude that it's
bullshit.  Unfortunately I haven't heard plenty of the
radical feminist position, and a lot of younger women
haven't either.  I took a lot of gender & sexuality
classes in grad school & I didn't read *any* rad fem
critiques of prostitution.  I might have believed that
it was just a "mostly middle-class white" thing too,
if I hadn't learned on my own about the strong
international movement against trafficking in women &
girls.

In Sisterhood,
Angie

I thought I'd toss in another angle here. For those who are interested
in the way sex work can connect with issues of global capital, see:
http://www.awigp.com/default.asp?numcat=sextour

It's a series of articles on sex tourism in the Caribbean in which both
sex workers and johns are interviewed. I suggest it because those
students who are unable to see certain complexities in their own back
yard may be able to read these accounts and revise their own
perspectives both locally AND globally.

Thank you to everyone who has participated in this discussion.

All the best,
Jennifer Harris
York University
Toronto
jharris  @  yorku.ca

> issue.  My sense is that they are irreconcilable. I don't think that
> characterizing one side as "liberal, let's-hear-all-sides impulses of many
> listmembers..."
> as very helpful any more than pointing out that the anti-sex work crowd has
> some strange bedfellows (forgive the pun) like the Christian Fundamentalist
> Right and religious orthodoxies of all varieties.

Just to clarify, I did not mean to ridicule what I called the "let's hear
all sides" approach.  Personally I'm all for that approach; that's why I'm
a philosopher committed (against all odds) to the possibilities of
rational discussion of these and other seemingly intractable issues.

What came out as the sarcasm in my post was directed not at the genuine
impulse to "hear all sides," but at the fact that what passes for hearing
all sides usually, as a matter of fact, *excludes* radical feminist
critiques of pornography and prostitution.  I would bet my salary that if
you did a survey of all undergraduate women's studies students in the last
decade who have done any reading about prost/porn in their WMST classes,
you'd find WAY more who had never read these critiques (as Angie just said
was true in her classes) than who had never read the "sex work" analyses.

I also did not mean to suggest that everyone who accepts the "sex
work" view does so unquestioningly or without having seriously considered
the alternatives.  I just think it's a significant risk, given what I
still firmly believe is the silencing within academic women's studies of
these alternatives.

Rebecca

The feminist critique of prostitution is sound, but it ignores that many
women will go into sex work.  They may have no choice, they may want the
money it provides, they may prefer it to whatever else is available to
them.  Whatever the reasons, once a woman is doing sex work, she deserves
our assistance, our understanding just the same as any other form of
work.  After all, many of the other jobs women do are to prop up men's
egos, stroke them, make them feel good, etc, but there is a special
condemnation for women who do sex for money that has nothing to do with any
feminist analysis of the industry.  i have observed this bias time and
again.  It easily turns into the women vs ladies bit.

marge piercy hagolem  @  c4.net