Choosey choice

[FloralBunting]

I keep noticing that the choosey choice crowd are very fond of this idea of individual freedom etc. I'm not 100% on my political terminology, but I think that comes under 'neo liberalism'.

I always thought, given that I lean very strongly towards liberty and free speech ideas, that I would find myself agreeing with choosey choicers, but it's becoming very clear to me that for liberty to function effectively, it needs to be accepted that not every possible choice will be available.

Essentially, one thing I've had hit me in the last year was that you cannot give away someone else's rights and protections. This is true of same sex spaces etc, and it's also true I realized tonight, of Prostitution and it's little brother Porn.

I keep reading the choosey choicers sounding oh so liberal-minded about the women who just love sex so much they want to be paid for it, and I now just see it as repeatedly saying "I don't care that my choice affects another woman negatively! My rights to do as I please trump her rights to autonomy and long term safety."

It's a challenging thought to me, and leads me to interrogate myself yet again, for the contradictions in my own thinking that hamper the rights of other women. This is a good thing.

I guess it’s the age old struggle of individual rights versus community rights. For example in most western countries healthcare in consider a right for everyone while in the USA it is not perceived that way and spoken of in the language of individual rights.

Do the rights of the individual trump those of the community?

Could you please give a concrete example of what you are calling “choosey choice”?

Sure Ida. My train of thought on this was crystallized by looking at Nordic model for Prostitution which I've been trying to read up on recently, and reading about 'pro sex work' objections which so often include phrases like 'I enjoy it, I chose it, I'm not a traffiked woman' etc, in response to details of the terrible things that occur in the sex industry.

No acceptance at all that pressing for the 'choice' to sell sex to punters has consequences for other women that have no choice whatsoever.

The thing about something like prostitution is that there are interesting economic influences.

If only women who were not addicted, had a decent income, weren't abused and/or started after age 18, weren't coerced or trafficked and had capacity were prostitutes, I have no doubt there would be a few left. Very few. Who could therefore charge a fortune and be extremely discerning. That doesn't fit the 'right' of every man to buy women for sex.

You need trafficking and drug addiction if it's a right to buy, rather than sell. The right to sell is spoken about but it's actually the right to buy that the powers that be wants. Because the right to sell is largely female and the right to buy is exercised almost exclusively by men. Which is why I favour the Nordic model.

Well yes, I think that's why I find it so disingenuous when it's presented as a counter to the Nordic model - they're not campaigning for women to be free to choose, they are campaigning for men to be free to fuck.

Anyway, I'm off to bed now, but I'll turn this over again tomorrow.

My feeling on it is that there is a contingent of choosey choicers who really only care about themselves and a large number of choosey choicers who feel confused about how to support other women's agency and so go along with the choosey choicers (the intention is perhaps irrelevant wrt the harm it does, but at least they would be open to persuasion).

I feel that choosey choice grew out of 'anti-slut-shaming' sentiments which I generally support - in principle I think a woman should have as much sex, and with who she is attracted to, as she wants. The context of this would be fighting against the idea of a virgin being a purer and better woman who hasn't been 'used up' (the horrors of abstinence only sex-ed spring to mind). I wholly support fighting against the pressure to view a woman's worth in their virginity.

However, I think there's a blindness to the pressure being put on women to have lots of sex and a lack of acknowledgement in choosey choice circles that the swing to the other extreme is also damaging to women - their mental health, their self-esteem, their view of what is valuable about them.

The strength of the choosey choice crew seems to have turned quite a few women around me off 'feminism'. I had a long chat with a friend who expressed her suspicion of western 'feminism's' inclination towards showing more skin, saying she felt empowered by covering up so that men would judge her mind and not her body. It showed to me that at she thought it was along this spectrum we had to move.

It all puts me in mind of the picture of the two female volleyball players - one fully covered, the other in a bikini - and the endless debate about 'which one is more empowered'. I don't think they're opposites, but expressions of the same problem. I don't want to ask 'which one is more empowered by the amount/lack of skin they're showing' but 'why the hell is that the question you're asking'!

I pointed out that I felt both ends were expressions of the same problem - over-value of a woman's body - rather than opposites, and then she got it.

I've not had a huge amount of exposure to prostitution, but I've tangentially had a lot of exposure through university to 'softer sex-work' (urghhhhh) positive 'feminism' (eg pole-dancing) and I could never quite square my feelings with wanting to support women and having that crawling feeling that something wasn't quite right about endorsing and celebrating taking off all your clothes in front of heterosexual men as a feminist act. Now I know what the problem I have with it is - I both think it's right to fight for a woman to celebrate her sexuality and to fight for a woman to not be pressured to using her body for men's sexuality, and these are not mutually exclusive.

The emphasis on agency has got to the point where I see 'feminists' now also dismissing the pressure placed on women from very conservative/religious backgrounds to value their virginity - that conversation seems to have dropped off the agenda. It's a natural stance to take if you believe in complete agency, I suppose.

Surely it's that age old thing where your choosey choicey to flail your arms around ends at the point where you are about to hit someone.
Yes you may have the right to have sex - but not if it causes someone hurt (any sort of hurt).
You may have the right to dress how you want up until it causes hurt ( fetish in public for eg)
How does that work?

If everything is based on individual choice you cannot address systemic inequality. Individuals with power - and, at the top of the pyramid, middle class, white, heterosexual men - will dominate because they already have the power.

ABitCrapper Surely it's that age old thing where your choosey choicey to flail your arms around ends at the point where you are about to hit someone.

Don't kinkshame! (UrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHH)

On a serious note. I think the 'hurt' question is being, to their minds, already addressed. It's a common refrain that what they do 'doesn't hurt anyone'. Usually if you say it does, they'll immediately draw a parallel to same-sex couples now 'being allowed' (which I actually find a deeply homophobic sentiment - how did we end up making a full circle back to 'being gay is only about subversive sex'?!)

LangCleg I honestly think the 'systemic' part of it is invisible to many people. I had a wonderful argument with a friend about countries where women need a chaperone; her argument was that it was individual men's choices to beat/hurt/restrict women, so it wasn't right to blame 'men' as a class for individuals being bad people.