Why "fun feminism" should be consigned to the rubbish bin

I'm really hoping that was just a coincidental juxtaposition with my post! If not, tell me what you're annoyed by and I will try to respond.

I didn't mean to call anyone on here 'selfish', btw. I do think there is selfishness involved in saying the rights of one set of people to enjoy themselves are more important than the rights of another group to be harmed, and I'd stand by that.

I know quite a lot of people who would say they are feminists but they're 'sex positive'. I agree with kritique the terminology is very important here (as with that debate we hate about the word 'misandry' - these are not 'just' words).

What bothers me is, finding a small minority of women who 'enjoy sex work' seems always to be put forward as if this is a really convincing argument. I want to leave aside for a minute the question of whether there might be complicated reasons for women to say though even though I am convinced there can be as I have heard them from the horse's mouth.

But if we accept this premise that some women enjoy sex work - why on earth should that justify perpetuating something that harms a whole lot more women? Are we saying the women who 'enjoy sex work' somehow deserve a bigger say? Or they're more important?

Because, to me, the right of one person to enjoy themselves is always going to be less important than the right of another person not to be hurt. And how can you, in this situation, have them both?

It comes across as incredibly selfish. I would rather we used that term rather than 'fun feminism' because at least it's accurate.

NYAC the problem is women who are just trying to start out their journeys on feminism are learning, people recommended certain things to read and whilst I haven't read them all I find MacKinnon and Dworkin harder to relate to than say Martha Nussbaum. I don't know all the arguments yet, I am just coming to terms with negative and positive objectification and in some ways there is a resonance in Soble's work.

Maybe in a few years I would have become more radical but what I have read of the more modern UK radicals like Bindel and Banyard is there is no middle ground, no compromise or effort to understand other women who disagree. This is where I certainly find that the radical element hard to digest and therefore it has caused me to shy away. I may be the only one or they may be other women who feel the same. I find it strange that whilst feeling so driven away though I feel I have to explain and defend myself. I am a feminist but radical feminism is not my choice.

problems of people-trafficking that are not directly related to the sex industry

Sorry about all the typos, multi tasking here, phone to ear.

Of course there are other reasons for people trafficking other than the sex industry but again that rests on the fact that the trafficked people are both labour and commodity, to be sold. Are women and children more or less likely than men to be trafficked?

If someone has no qualifications or there are no suitable jobs

What predisposes women to not having qualifications and why are there are no suitable jobs? What are the forces at play that decide what wok is waged and what isn't. Who creates work and decides what a single unit of exchange or the price of the good is? Who decides that women can not find well paid work in other sectors. Who decides whether it is possible to study? because even studying required money.

When women and their bodies are diminished to a single product of demand and exchange it means that women are less than other humans. People are not for sale but their waged labour is, someone always makes a profit from it, but women in the sex industry are both the product and the waged labour, usually poorly paid, working 1 hr to pay for a loaf of bread and a gallon on petrol, so that means that the a women as a commodity is worth very little indeed. All the time someone stands to make far more money both from her as a product and as waged labour.

how does radical feminism suggest those women earn the same money if they stop working in the sex industry? If someone has no qualifications or there are no suitable jobs, or at least none that pay what she can earn in the sex industry

That is the most ridiculous pro sex industry argument possible. Women are economically disadvantaged and they shouldn't be. Women are not commodities and it shouldn't be possible in a egalitarian world for women to be sold the idea that sex is a commodity to bartered in exchange for food or other commodities. Unless of course men are similarly coerced and disadvantaged.

Who dictates that women can or should or could earn more money selling sex? Why is it possible that selling sex is more profitable than selling sweets or bread?

Nyac: I'm saying that feminism should not be about restricting other women's choices, and the radfem obsession with the sex industry (and sexual behaviour in general) is the same dead end for feminism that it has been for the last 20 years. The 'Domestic goddess' bullshit and the airspace given to women who advocate SAHM as though everyone has a rich hubby to support them is damaging to women's rights. The attack on reproductive rights and the destruction of the benefits system are far more immediately damaging to women's freedoms than the choices of some women to work in the sex industry.

And the biggest problem with the agenda-driven, anti-sex-industry campaigners is that they are dishonest scaremongers who talk a lot of bullshit and seem more concerned with squawking about what shoes another woman wears than the problems of people-trafficking that are not directly related to the sex industry.

Something radfems don't seem to address when telling other women that by working willingly in the sex industry they are betraying all other women and the feminist struggle: how does radical feminism suggest those women earn the same money if they stop working in the sex industry? If someone has no qualifications or there are no suitable jobs, or at least none that pay what she can earn in the sex industry and she decides that she is prepared to do that job for that money, that's a choice she has the right to make, and not one that she should be condemned for by someone who's coming at it from an ideological viewpoint and no practical experience. There are also women working within the sex industry trying to make it safer for each other without insisting on an abolitionist agenda - and some who are demanding the right to explore and perform sexuality on their own terms rather than falling back into the 'decent women don't like dirty stuff' trap.

"Women again are being made vulnerable for the purpose of exploitation by the patriarchy."

Some women have made gains through the massive steps that previous waves of feminism made. Not many women would now think it acceptable to take home less pay than a male colleague for the same job. If women are being educated and taking up posts in well paid jobs they are less vulnerable to many forms of exploitation.

However as more women become higher earners and more economically independent the patriarchy must find a way to perpetuate itself, both along sex and class lines. The porn industry, the media, advertising, fashion, sex education in schools is not designed to empower women to take control of the own sexuality but rather to see sex as like any other commodity to be bought and sold. Where once it was just women from socio/economically disadvantaged backgrounds that could be recruited into the sex industry, rich white men have now found other ways that ensure they have a never ending and very large pool of women complicit and amenable to the aims of the patriarchy/capitalist. (I believe the two are the same)

I think the political right especially in the states that also use the bible and the church as a blunt tool to subjugate women. It seems to me again not just about women and sex but about women and class. The church has investments which when traced are linked to the porn industry.

The right wing, seems to think that middle class women should stay home, raise children, get raped by her husband and have no reproductive rights, whilst hubby pays for sex with a prostitute as long as she is from the "lower class" It's rooted in the Madonna?whore complex which seems to me to spring from Christianity itself.

Anybody remember that thread a couple of months back where a man came on and started a thread something along the lines of:

'I love lapdancing, me, and all the feminists I know are sex positive and agree with me that lapdancing is brilliant! So ... what's wrong with you lot?'

I think funfem is to feminism as new labour is to socialism - a sellout, basically.

See, that is what I dont understand."Women again are being made vulnerable for the purpose of exploitation by the patriarchy."
Surely men are being made vulnerable too.
And by the patriarchy , if you insist.

There are some parallels with the slave trade where even now in Nigeria one tribe will not work or live with another because the other tribe sold their ancestors into slavery. It's also a class/racial thing.

One thing that I find interesting is that as the economic and social landscape changes, student grants replaced with loans and the massive hike in tuition fees, more women are becoming economically disadvantaged. It has been the case that women have worked in the sex industry to fund their studies, these women in the past have been from "working class" backgrounds or lower socio/economic status. However with the change to higher education fees/funding it would seem that the class lines are blurring. Women again are being made vulnerable for the purpose of exploitation by the patriarchy. Where some women would lap dance to pay the rent and tuition fees and once having gained their qualifications would escape the sex industry there is it seems to me a greater percentage of women from all classes being "earmarked" and primed through basic economics and media to perceive the sex industry as just another mode of production and consumption where women are products of consumption for profit.

Getting back to the (actually quite interesting) point of this thread:

I don't think the fact that religious rightists oppose lapdancing etc means that feminists can't oppose lapdancing. My views on the occupation of the Palestinian territories have similarities (but are certainly not identical!) with Islamist views on the subject; that doesn't mean that my views are wrong or I'm an Islamist.

I would argue that the centre right as a whole has no problem with the sex industry - this is the political segment that would argue most strongly that people should be able to do what they want for money, or with their own money, within certain legally defined boundaries. Some of them argue that people should legally be able to sell their kidneys... which raises very similar issues as pornography/prostitution do.

Sorry Porto, got you mixed up with flatulette.

The sex industry is about selling a commodity, it makes a commodity of women and some women whether they intend to or not or argue otherwise, are complicit in this process. This effects all women irrespective of whether they are "a fun feminist" they approve of freedom of choice or liberation. One persons liberation and freedom shouldn't be granted or sought at the expense of another's.

The proliferation of the sex industry and the normalisation of women as tools of the patriarchy, as commodities is about class as well as sex. It is often less educated, less economically equal and classes of disadvantaged women who actually have to/choose to do sex work. It isn't just about women, its about class as well. The patriarchy are clever in having targeted disadvantaged women to both do it's work and perpetuate the myth that buying/selling sex is just like any other industry. Unfortunately for many of us and these women, there are middle class women and educated women that see it as a small loss, insignificant, a trade off with the very thing they are meant to be opposing.

The name calling gets very tiresome.

The only name calling on this thread is, as usual, directed at those with a feminist agenda. Stating 'feminism is name calling' over and over again does a vast disservice to those of us who have eyes and can see in black and white that (basically Nyac, seeing as you've all popped out of the woodwork to have a go at her) hasn't called anyone names on this thread.

So boring to read, so tiring to deal with: but then I'm quite sure that's the intention.

Unless someone would like to offer an alternate explanation as to why say, Worried Betty would take Nyac's post and re-write it as 'strippers are dumb broads'?

As for my twopenneth, I agree with Julie Bindel (and I don't always). Prostitution, stripping, lapdancing etc are practices that harm women as a group. It is a mystery to me that they would be anything other than unifying targets for feminists.

Sausageeggbacon, anti/non radical feminism from what I have seen on these boards is name calling, baiting and annoying anyone who doesn't agree. In fact, this thread is a case in point. I don't like to post here much anymore because of it, but there aren't dozens of threads devoted to those of us who feel like that. I have never once had my feminist explorations dismissed with personal attacks by radical feminists and I am very new on this journey. I have had my views challenged and my arguments unpicked and I am very grateful for that, hard though it is at the time.

I actual think that most of these ideological differences that drive the feminist-bashing threads as well as the radical vs fun feminism is about libertarian vs collectivist (small l, small c). Never the twain shall meet on that one, I've afraid.

fridakahlo - what is this sexuality on your own terms, which is being alluded to again and again?