I have been planning to blog about this for a while but then a blogger whose work I follow beat me to it. Here are the opening paragraphs of his brilliant long post on the subject:
By now I am getting extremely annoyed with a certain discourse around sex work that has become popular amongst some sectors of the North American (and occasionally European) left. Originally a discourse that was limited to lifestyle [and predominantly male] anarchists, as well as a few hippy sex fetishists, the political assertion that sex work is liberating, and that the liberating potential of sex work should be treated as part of a radically progressive politics, is now being embraced by the broader left-wing population and gaining the support of so-called feminists, socialists and communists who should know better. Indeed, the unqualified pro-prostitution position is being treated by some as a litmus test for numerous radical commitments as it is now attached to, and turned into a falsely essential component of, feminism, queer and trans liberation, and other anti-oppressive political positions.Before going any further I want to emphasize that I believe that sex workers should have the right to unionize and that prostitution should be decriminalized. The normative status of sex work, the so-called “oldest profession”, in capitalist society is clearly a result of patriarchal hypocrisy that preaches sexual puritanism on one hand and then reinforces this puritanism by, on the other hand, allowing sex to proliferate on the black market and in especial sites.
Choice feminism insists that every “choice” should be equally respected and valid. Of course, it’s easy to forget how many choices are made because no other option is available and how often oppressive systems coerce people into enthusiastic participation in their own oppression. More and more often, I see my blogroll polluted by posts from pseudo-feminists that condemn any critical analysis of prostitution as anti-feminist and non-progressive. It is especially annoying to read something like the following on a feminist site:
When I was working in public health, I heard about an amazing Brazilian anti-HIV campaign called Maria Without Shame, which featured pictures of a sex worker accompanied by slogans like: “You need have no shame, girl. You have a profession.”
Notice that this “amazing” campaign is addressed exclusively to women. Also, observe how the word “profession” is being used in this context. Of course, the pseudo-feminist who gushes about the campaign is not in the least concerned why a patriarchal society with horrifying levels of poverty like the Brazilian society is so interested in selling prostitution as a legitimate and respectable profession to its women.
Instead of “celebrating sex work”, I believe we should analyze the underlying causes of prostitution and address them. This cannot be done unless we drop the inane “every choice is valid” kind of reasoning.
Clarissa's Blog 
They key phrase here is ‘unqualified pro-prostitution position’, emphasis on ‘unqualified’. I firmly believe prostitution should be legalised, because as long as it is made/kept illegal:
1. Prostitutes have no legal purchase for themselves
2. They are regularly exploited for ‘cut’-money, sexual favours, and gratuitous violence by policemen (and others) who threaten to expose or arrest them for what they do.
3. Trafficking becomes hard to prevent because kidnapped children (of both sexes but mostly women, a small fraction intersex or transgendered) or adults (almost all women) are all pushed underground, where the industry functions.
4. Given the extreme social stigma and exclusion accorded to prostitutes and their families in most parts of the world, perhaps the least the state can do is legitimise what is often their only source of income.
Having said this, however, I’m at a total loss why sexual liberation is being conflated with paid sexual labour. This sounds like a throwback to the naively moronic ideas from our grandparents generation, that women (and men) who enjoy sex a great deal make the unconstrained choice to be a prostitute. Getting paid for your hobby, as your Dean would have said, Clarissa. They magically failed to see, I think, that most prostitutes were dirt-poor, malnourished, subject to violence, and didn’t seem to be the happily frolicking people they imagined.
I should add, however, that I don’t think prostitution should be pityingly ‘tolerated’ only amongst people who no other recourse of earning a living. Any affluent person who wishes to sell his or her sexual services should be free to do so.
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Any affluent person who wishes to sell his or her sexual services should be free to do so
What do you mean by ‘tolerated’ only among group X? If it’s legal, it’s legal for everybody and the opposite. People, who feel contempt for rich sex worker, feel the same for poor one beneath the surface. And the opposite, if you look inside.
I am interested whether you think there is inherent difference between selling sex vs selling labour as uni prof, a construction worker or a farmer. As far as I know, society always treated it as different, even in the new age with great birth control the stigma is huge. I feel a difference, but of course I am a product of my culture too.
Also, this affluent or not person (a woman in 99% – (*) ) is free to sell herself, but should in your opinion decent people treat her choice the same as being schoolteacher? To be honest, I wouldn’t be able to and on many feminist blogs I would be deemed not a feminist for that, but why treating it the same is the ideal? I honestly for a moment thought about that and don’t really see the reason. Because women do it? Then let’s help them (as a class) to have more different opportunities. I wouldn’t want to date a man, who used to be a sex worker either. Huge part of my reaction is my upbringing, social codes, I know, but is it the only reason?
(*) Clarissa wrote men sell themselves as much as women, but I hope you understand what I refer to here. One could push limits of “sell themselves” so far that they become meaningless, there are better expressions for different cases.
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I understand complete your focus on women. Men and women both sell their bodies and souls for many things, but explicit prostitution in a heterosexual patriarchy tends always to be dominated by women.
To answer your first two questions:
Condescending ‘tolerance’ exists outside the scope of legal prostitution. it’s the attitude, adopted by some charities, NGOs and certain kinds of feminists, that the act of prostitution itself — and not the associated violence and exploitation — is ‘disrespectful’ of women. Only women who have no alternative (and possibly also no self-respect) left would become prostitutes. These women should not be condemned for their forced choice, but must be ‘saved’ from their profession.
Personally, I dislike the smug bossiness of this attitude. I’d say let these women decide themselves whether they need to be ‘saved’, or whether they’d prefer to carry on with legal safeguards against harrassment.
The difference between selling sex and selling labour, I’d say, is largely a social construct drilled deep into our cultures, but it is perhaps also helped by the fact that sex is much more difficult to physically alienate as a commodity from the producer. What I mean is, one can buy bread, code, clothes, books et al without coming anywhere near the producer of these goods, but this is impossible when the commodity is sex (except in pornography).
Finally, el, I don’t think you deserve to be castigated for treating a schoolteacher or banker differently than a prostitute. That is an example of shallow, ultimately useless zero-effort activism of our times that thinks ignoring realities of how people are culturally trained to behave towards each other and shouting themselves blue in the face with politically correct punchlines is the way forward. It is not. I doubt the people who tell you off treat their bosses and their domestic help the same way, or their mothers and their mothers-in-law for that matter. Equality like that simply does not exist. The question is, do you respect a person as a full human being, even if you dislike them, do not approve of their occupation, feel wary of their religion, and so on. If you do, then you’re better than most people who insist they treat everyone equally, but wouldn’t dream of sharing a cuppa with their poorer neighbour.
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wow. I could not agree more but I have never been able to explain it this clearly. Thank you.
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“Pseudo-feminist”? Wow. I might have actually addressed your post and tried to have a conversation with you if you hadn’t slung that crap at me.
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What a weird comment.
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I think this is one of those issues where people see things in black and white. Those who oppose prostitution think EVERY person who sells sex is being forced to do so. Those who support it think EVERY person who sells sex is doing it out of his/her own free will. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle. I think that sex work should be legalized, but that the conditions that cause people to be forced into prostitution should be ameliorated.
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My thoughts exactly.
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Er… I don’t think either one, and neither do many sex worker rights activists whose writings I’ve read. Does this person look like someone who thinks that “EVERY person who sells sex is doing it out of his/her own free will”? http://deepthroated.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/traffickers-remain-in-business/
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Most people talking about the subject, have no idea what they are talking about, so it’s just a retarded debate. David Gendron is a good example of that.
I am not in favor of legalization, but then again, as long as there is capitalism, some women will be driven into prostitution.
But I rather fight against capitalism and the state, then to fight in favor of another system of opression.
You should never be able to buy the body of a woman or of a man (women also use men as prostitutes in the South).
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“You should never be able to buy the body of a woman or of a man (women also use men as prostitutes in the South).”
– I agree with that. People who don’t understand what kind of self-violation one has to go through in order to have sex with a partner they don’t desire are people who don’t understand the first thing about human sexuality.
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“are people who don’t understand the first thing about human sexuality”
And abstinence education and horrible pop culture, including “sex positive” one, only enlarge their numbers. Many men honestly think it’s natural for women not like sex, that she doesn’t desire anybody anyway, and most men think women are more indifferent to sex than men, which I find hard to believe myself.
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A guy dumped my friend once because she had orgasms ( with him.) He was convinced that women are incapable of having them, so he was sure she was faking. In the end, he said he couldn’t be with such a liar. 🙂 🙂
This is an absolutely true story.
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Very sad story. But you once said men love women, who love sex. You see, not always so.
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Yes, this guy was a very freaky exception. This is what makes his story so funny.
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Can I have her email or something. 🙂
But joke aside, I hate to hear that men think about sex all the time, while women are supposed to be less into it. I think it is a big pile of bullshit. Maybe men are more open about it (and I would say a lot stupid about the issue in my opinion). Maybe women are more shy in general? But then, that could lead you to think they are hypocrites about it. Most couples are men with women, so something is wrong with that narrative.
If I would only think about sex, I would have kill myself a long time ago (you can figure out why).
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See my comment below to David, it’s not shyness, I am not shy but even can be very aggressive in life in general, it’s like this Cinese torture of water drops, messages falling on woman’s head from childhood all the time!
David wrote below:
*I have had trouble with this my whole life.*
Yet I bet most women have it worse, don’t you expect it to leave a mark? Add a fear of pregnancy and rape to the mix and it’s a wonder some women can overcome the “great” training.
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“Yet I bet most women have it worse, don’t you expect it to leave a mark? Add a fear of pregnancy and rape to the mix and it’s a wonder some women can overcome the “great” training.”
-Let’s not get too dramatic here. Most people in the world are perfectly capable of leading happy and fulfilled sex lives. Sex is a basic necessity, like food, water or sleep. You can mess with a person’s psyche all you want but, in most cases, their physiological needs will overcome the conditioning.
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*their physiological needs will overcome the conditioning*
In many cases only up to a certain point with the end result, as in a proverb, “neither fish nor meat”.
RE food, lots of (mainly) women have unhealthy approach to it: yo-yo dieting, making a scene of Michele Obama’s dinner in McDonalds (because of many calories), talking about diets a lot, “I shouldn’t eat it”, “guilty pleasure” of chocolite and …, etc. At Pandagon Marcotte wrote quite a lot about it.
Besides, unlike food and sleep, people can live up to 100 with zero sex. It is different for many people, in sex physiological needs may be twisted and killed with shame & fear and… I really view, feel it differently. The most important part in sex is the brain, unlike stomack for food and even for food if one wants to lose weight, one stops feeling hungry (for some people).
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“Besides, unlike food and sleep, people can live up to 100 with zero sex.”
-No, they can’t and they don’t. When the conditioning is too strong, people still experience sexual release when they sleep. St. Teresa of Avila described intensely sexual experiences she had as a nun and that for centuries were attributed to God’ intervention.
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I meant without sex with another person.
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Well, of course, people can live without shrimp but they can’t live when no nourishment is available, not just shrimp.
Anybody who wants to make fun of me for using shrimp in this context, go ahead. 🙂
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*leading happy and fulfilled sex lives. Sex is a basic necessity*
is different from finding release only in sleep OR be unable to truly enjoy with a partner. Shrimp is only 1 kind of food, which I’ve never tasted and I love lots of dishes, so it’s more like a specific kind of sex position.
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My point is that sexual release is a basic human necessity and your body will get it one way or another, whether you want it or not.
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I have another idea for a blog post for you: food & women in USSR now and today. Was it like in USA? Or in general messages, if any, women got RE food.
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That’s a great idea for a post. Thanks for the suggestion. I don’t know how things are right now in FSU because I haven’t been back and probably never will but, historically, the situation was radically different.
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Many men honestly think it’s natural for women not like sex, that she doesn’t desire anybody anyway, and most men think women are more indifferent to sex than men, which I find hard to believe myself.
Yes, this is certainly what I was taught. My mother has to this day reminded me that, as a teenager, she did not appreciate it when boys she went out with did not know to keep their hands to themselves. She says that she is afraid that she did not teach this to her sons well enough, when we were teenagers in the 1950’s and 1960’s. My father reinforced the same message, telling me that women do not enjoy sexual relations the way men do.
He also, of course, made sure that I understood that women were pretty, and it was OK to look at them; but if you had even a fleeting thought of sex while you were looking, it was a sin.
I have had trouble with this my whole life.
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” My father reinforced the same message, telling me that women do not enjoy sexual relations the way men do.”
-My father gave me these lectures, too. Of course, it was kind of hard to take them seriously, given that I was a woman and he wasn’t, so what did he know?
You are absolutely right in that such puritanical upbringing does untold damage on people’s lives. You managed to find liberation from this propaganda but how many people did not?
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I am not sure that I have found liberation from this. But the discussion is too complex for a comment thread, I think.
My father’s discussion was based on the bible. I am not going to take time to look up chapter and verse, but one critical quote was “Whosoever looketh upon a woman in lust hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” (KJV, of course)
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At school and partly even now – it’s not that a girl / woman won’t enjoy naturally, it’s being told “don’t let him”, “it’s too early for you”, “I knew this great first love couple and then she became pregnant and he left her and she left school” (a true story from my relative, a school teacher). It stays with you, as if if you kiss or more, you do something kind of shameful (for a woman) that you don’t want others (his friends, classmates, etc) know. Even here Clarissa without intending added salt with “if you enjoy, he’ll leave you” story. 😦
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Yeah, but who needed this jerk in the first place when there are crowds of great, normal guys all over the place? 🙂
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“You should never be able to buy the body of a woman or of a man (women also use men as prostitutes in the South).”
Customers of prostitutes don’t buy bodies — it’s what medical schools do post mortem. That dramatic exaggeration apart, why precisely should those informed adults willing to sell sexual favours not be able to do so? The world would be a more democratic place if people just stopped shoving their personal moralities and ideologies down everyone else’s throats.
And Clarissa, your reactionary comments are good for the popularity of your blog, but the ignorant sanctimoniousness of this following comment stinks to high heaven. How could you *possibly* know whether sleeping with someone they don’t desire is so deeply traumatic to every single woman on the planet? And what on earth — apart from the usual defence of “this is my blog and I will say what I want” — gave you the idea only your opinions about human sexuality are valid?
As someone who has known several poverty-struck prostitutes personally — as clearly neither of you have, and if you have I’m shocked at your continuing attitude — I’m appalled at the unsupported generalisations being trotted out here.
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“The world would be a more democratic place if people just stopped shoving their personal moralities and ideologies down everyone else’s throats.”
-If we are to talk about “dramatic exaggeration”, I really fail to see how expressing my own opinion on my own blog equals to shoving them down anybody’s throat and defeating democracy in this way. 🙂 🙂
“And Clarissa, your reactionary comments are good for the popularity of your blog”
-You found me out, the horror, the horror! 🙂 Am I to blame that a nice, feel-good story about baba Motia’s pink pantaloons or my sociology exam in Ukraine is of a lesser interest to people than the prostitution issue? It isn’t like you commented all that much on those stories either.
” How could you *possibly* know whether sleeping with someone they don’t desire is so deeply traumatic to every single woman on the planet?”
-I never said that this only applies to women. I was talking about people in general. I have never concealed my interest in psychoanalysis and the fact that my worldview is based, in large part, on it.
“And what on earth — apart from the usual defence of “this is my blog and I will say what I want” — gave you the idea only your opinions about human sexuality are valid?”
-The psychoanalytical theory.
“As someone who has known several poverty-struck prostitutes personally — as clearly neither of you have”
-I’ve known many people who have sex with people they don’t desire. They call it “marriage” or “relationship” but it’s the same thing, in my view.
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Did you deliberately pretend the comment about shoving ideas down people’s throats was directed at you so you could trot out that tired line about your opinions on your own blog? Because that would actually be sort of funny, like a self-ridiculing joke 🙂 .
There could be no possible way that is a genuine mistake, since that part came before I addressed you, and was clearly meant for the other commentator I quoted.
And since you enthusiastically celebrate your right to write what you wish on a domain you pay for, your audience reserves the right to not comment on posts which you might feel are ideologically linked to those they DO comment on, but which inspire absolutely no interest in them whatsoever =)
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This a bit confusing, but you quoted me. Then again, Clarissa quoted the same part as you did, so I guess she felt you were talking to her.
I am not sure why you would be mad in here. I am not trying to shove opinions down anybody’s throat, I was just sharing my opnion. You did the same thing. The only difference is that you have an opinion that is different from mine on the subject, so you reacted that way.
But we can hardly have a disscussion if you will jump on somebody, just because they have an opinion that is not yours.
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Oh, it wasn’t addressed to me? Sorry for going off at you, then. 🙂
The problem is that I don’t see the comments the way you do. I look a them from my Dashboard and it’s very difficult to notice who they are addressed to. So I keep trying to respond to comments not addressed at me. I don’t know how to resolve this issues right now because the dashboard makes it as difficult as possible.
Sorry once again! I now feel stupid.
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“You should never be able to buy the body of a woman or of a man (women also use men as prostitutes in the South).”
This is a conservative-statist pro-police-repression premise. My position cas be sum up in these topics:
1) Women should never have to sell their body to anybody, so we should fight against capitalism and the State to eradicate that, without using violent police repression.
2) Police repression against non-crimes is criminal: this includes voluntary adult prostitution, even if this is exploitative.
3) Actually, in the great majority of cases (I don’t talk about sex slaves and child prostitution, which are criminal), voluntary adult prostitution is nowhere to be close of the worst exploitatives jobs for women, so prostitution is a lesser evil than many “honest and socially beautiful slave-salary jobs”.
4) Without monogamy and the conservative anti-sex propaganda, the sex market *(and the prostitution) will practically disappear, except for ugly and poor bachelors.
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can be sum up…
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«than to fight in favor and not then to fight», sorry
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I know that part, but not by heart. There are some good quotes in the bible in my opinion (really), but this is not one of them.
If this is true, I will so much burn in hell. Like everybody else……
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Not to get all theological here, but I think this is a great quote that actually excuses adultery. The point is that adultery is unavoidable. So everybody has committed it already in their heart. Which is why nobody is justified in criticizing others for engaging in it.
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No, it doesn’t excuse adultery since the idea is not to let yourself *dwell on* it. A look is OK, noticing the beauty is OK, but letting yourself look again and again or think with lust of her again & again is forbidden.
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el and Clarissa: What it meant for me as a teenager was that whenever I saw a female who attracted me, I trained myself to avert my eyes and block the feelings. I still have this habit; I cannot seem to break it at all. Of course, it gets me comments/compliments from women to the effect that I do not “leer” the way many men do, and that I do not “undress women with my eyes” as many men do. I am still pretty much completely unable to fantasize about sex, unless I am reading erotic text. Pictures do not help, although I enjoy nude pictures in such venues as Penthouse or other such magazines. (Playboy, not so much. The pictures are just too artificial seeming.) But I cannot use them to generate sexual fantasies.
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That sounds very sad. Thank you for sharing. I think it’s important that people know how much this kind of conditioning hurts people irrespective of their gender.
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Clarissa, I found this conversation interesting: http://therumpus.net/2011/01/%E2%80%9Cpussy-fever%E2%80%9D-loves-%E2%80%9Clocker-29%E2%80%9D/ It’s “A Conversation with Cheryl Strayed, who is against sex work, and Antonia Crane who agitates for sex worker rights, about sex work and feminism.”
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In addition to food in USSR, what about fashion there? Did it change? Why and how? I’ve recently found some great material on fashion:
http://feministfashionbloggers.blogspot.com/2011/07/roundup-13th-july-fashion-feminism-and.html
I mean number 10. Kjerstin Gruys, which talks RE capitalism and fashion.
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Sorry, the last idea for 2 additional posts: body image in general (the ideal looks for both genders, which is connected to food) and ads in USSR. It’s very interesting and unlike burqas hardly anybody writes about it.
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How could there be advertisement in the USSR???
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There was TV later and radio with newspapers all the time, no? Another post: the kinds of programs on radio and TV and RE newspapers in USSR then. 🙂 I loved watching “In the world of animals” in my childhood, surely there were films and concerts sometimes?
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Advertisement only exists when there is capitalism. In the planned Soviet economy, advertising anything made no sense. There was a shortage of absolutely everything (unless one lived in Moscow). In short, there was no media influence on people’s perception of food because there were no choices in what one ate. You just took whatever was there.
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To try to address the question that forms the heading of this post: we should neither ‘celebrate’ sex workers nor condemn prostitution. There is ample evidence in most societies that prostitution has existed, irrespective of ‘patriarchy’; whether these societies are capitalist or communist; and whatever criminal justice regime existed in relation to prostitution (including none), whilst there is no conclusive evidence in any society that prostitution has not occurred.
Prostitution is a social phenomenon, and those condemning it have existed as long as prostitution has. Whilst undoubtedly for some, prostitution has been the only choice available for them, this observation begs the questions what would the outcome have been if not for the existence of prostitution, and how, by removing that choice, we would improve their quality of life?
My view of prostitution as a social phenomenon means I do not think that “analysing the causes of prostitution and address[ing] them” would be any more useful than analysing the causes of, say, ears, noses or throats and addressing them.
Of course, analysing the causes of, for example, poverty or drug addiction and addressing them would be a very valid and noble exercise, and I’m sure that some persons involved in sex work may be thus rendered free to make other choices SHOULD THEY SO WISH.
What I think we should do, above all, is support sex workers in their battle for human rights and against the injustices created by inappropriate criminal justice interventions.
I do not think that we should unconditionally support the author of the blog you quote. If we listen to the testimony of a variety of sex workers and former sex workers, it is very clear that it varies enormously, from those who hated every second of their experiences to many who, indeed, found and continue to find their experiences personally liberating.
It is in the interest of none of these persons, or anyone else, bar organised crime that relies on prostitution being a clandestine activity and politicians seeking a ‘moral high ground’, that sex workers should continue to have their safe spaces raided and closed by police, that they should be forced to work in isolation, that they should be subjected to a trade boycott by having their clients hauled before courts, or that persons employed to protect their security should be prosecuted, all at enormous public expense at a time of massive economic pressure.
Now I am aware of the Brazilian anti-HIV campaign you castigate. Apparently it had a very good website until its funding was pulled or threatened under the iniquitous US ‘prostitution pledge’. It had had enormous success in winning the hearts and minds of sex workers, fighting to restore their self-respect, breaking down barriers with them and effectively combating the transmission of HIV/Aids.
Regarding feminism – the fact of the matter is that feminists are divided on the issue, with no strand of feminism owning a monopoly on a ‘correct’ approach. Personally, I found Sarah Bromburg’s site here useful:
http://www.feministissues.com/index.html
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My opinion exactly, only much better expressed.
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