Empowered by 'sex work'

[Springfern]

Long time lurked on this board. Thought I'd introduce myself!

Looking for some advice. I'm firmly rad fem when it comes to so called sex work. I used to work as a support worker for prostituted women and it was such a grim and depressing job. I've spent a number of years reading about prostitution and the nordic model. This is something I feel passionately about and it makes a lot of sense to me alongside my other feminist views.

The problem is... I'm hearing more and more women arguing that sex work is 'empowering' these days. Friends, colleagues, people who I other wise respect...and its everywhere in the culture (their must be about 10 netflix shows right now which glamorise prostitution!) I find it hard to argue with or get through to them without it sounding as if I am anti women's choice (ironically). I also get very have andninvested and then am probably written off as a crazy woman! Have any of you had an success in these types of conversations? If so how? What have you said? Have you managed to change anyone's mind?

My best response at the moment is rolling my eyes and saying 'the men who pay for it feel empowered' ...I need something a bit more substantial though!

I'm not sure that the OP has been making radical feminist arguments, given that she's worrying about sounding as if she is anti-women's choices. Radical feminists examine men's choices, and women's lack of them. Reality in other words

I've been trying to! I try to argue that it doesn't really matter whether a woman 'feels' empowered, what does matter is policing men's abhorrent behaviour...but it always falls on deaf ears

Good for you for trying OP. People don't like to examine men's horrendous behaviour, it's actually taboo in the patriarchy.

You might find that your arguments sink in later on. Something may click for them.

At certain times society has openly agreed prostitution is bad, for many of the same reasons rad fems today do. Lots of people sill went to prostitutes but the overall social belief was different. So why has that changed? I think it points to some underlying change in people's thinking, maybe about sex, or maybe about work, or both

this is a good point, thanks for raising it. In the past I don't think women believed prostitution was empowering, they knew it was grim (even if attitudes to men doing it were still as relaxed). I think the shift is part of the neoliberal ideology which seems to have engulfed us all.

DuMonde wow. Thank you for sharing that

Thanks to everyone for posting. This thread is great. It's renewing my faith. I had started to think that I was the only woman left that held a rad fem view on prostitution. I think a big part of the problem is that I'm 30 and most women my age seem to have drunk the kool aid.

Karabair

It's not the case that "society" was ok with men using prostitutes. Some people were clearly, and many also thought it was something that could not be prevented, but the ethical norms of society for significant periods saw that as morally wrong - it was illegal, you were considered to be in a state of sin, and many people simply considered it socially unacceptable. There was a fairly clear ideal of marriage held up as well, which included monogamy.

As far as people not being moved by rad fem arguments, I think that's clear, whether or not the OP was using them. People seem quite naturally now to accept these ideas of women being empowered by sex work, when that would not have been believed at other times - even people who paid for sex in the past tended to think it was degrading. There has been a real change in the attitude people have to sex, ad this includes many people who have nothing to do with sex work themselves and many women.

I think that it came out of various elements of the sexual revolution. The idea that sex is an insignificant act that requires no real thought or worries, that can be pursued casually with strangers as a pass time. Where it is perfectly ok to have sex parties with members of a rock band for the prestige, or in return for back stage access. Where people are told again and again that sex isn't about pregnancy in any important way so it doesn't matter if you know the potential father, and that you can easily prevent STIs. Where women are as empowered by these attitudes as men.

If you accept all these ideas, it's difficult to see any real difference from sex for money.
I don't think that total social agreement by every individual is a reasonable bar for talking about social attitudes.

Harm to society is not really the same argument as the activity being too dangerous for anyone to be allowed to choose to do it. "Who do you think "society" is if not people?

Harm to society means harm to the social fabric, the state, and things like that.

Harm to an individual means harm to a person.

These are important distinctions when we talk about regulating decisions of people. Generally our society believes individuals should have a fair bit of freedom to make decisions which may be bad for them as individuals. On the other hand, if the type of decision involved begins to really impact others, or the function of the community or state, at a certain point we may feel we can and should regulate the activity.

A heck of a lot of social arguments are about the line where these two considerations meet.

So, a marriage ending because the husband uses prostitutes, harm to the people in that family or harm to the institution of marriage?

A neighborhood where men constantly solicit women and kids for sex, harmful to people or harmful to the state?

AIDS being spread by a prostitute-using man, harmful to people or to what you call the social fabric?

Why so black and white, cut and dry? None of those things are one or the other, don't be so simplistic.

Precisely, Themyscira.

I agree with NatashasDance, "Prostitution has no benefits for anyone other than the literal and metaphorical wanker but does considerable harm to the women involved and to society as a whole."

Goosefoot took exception to this and sees a clean split, deeming social harm "the easiest argument to make around prostitution." and suggesting the harms men do to prostituted women are the results of individual bad decisions that people have the freedom rights to make.

@miri1985

M. Farley is a leading academic on the harms of prostitution.
I really like this 2019 recent paper of hers:
“Consent, Coercion, and Culpability: Is Prostitution Stigmatized Work or an Exploitive and Violent Practice Rooted in Sex, Race, and Class Inequality?” By Rachel Moran and Melissa Farley
www.spaceintl.org/assets/Uploads/MoranFarley2019.pdf

I recommend it to anyone spouting the happy hooker myth.

So many good quotes
“In thousands of interviews, we have heard prostituted women, men, and transwomen1 describe prostitu- tion as paid rape, voluntary slavery, signing a contract to be raped (in legal prostitution), the choice that is not a choice, and as domestic violence taken to the extreme. These are more accurate descriptions of prostitution than consenting sex or unpleasant work. Sex buyers’ descriptions of prostitution mir- ror the women’s: “renting an organ for ten minutes,” “like a cup of coffee—when you’re done with it you throw it out,” “I use them like I might use any other amenity, a restaurant, or a public convenience,” “You get what you pay for without the ‘no.’”

“Cho, Dreher, and Neumayer (2013) found that across 150 countries, when prostitution was legal, there was increased trafficking. Similar overlaps between legal prostitution and trafficking have been reported in the European Union (Jakobsson & Kotsadam, 2013; Leem & Persson, 2013; Osmanaj, 2014) and in the U.S.(Heiges, 2009). In a review of reports on adults in prostitution, 84% were trafficked or under pimp control (Farley et al., 2014).”

@Goosefoot your comments resonate with me.

Sex is different from other activities. We all know the huge damage for example child sexual abuse can do to both girls and boys.

However most people's view is now that any form of consensual sexual behaviour between adults is absolutely fine, so the issue of prostitution for them hangs on the definition of consent. As long as there is no coercion it's fine.

However I am not sure I agree with this.
My belief is that because throughout human history sex has usually resulted in pregnancy it is a psychologically significant act especially for women. That's because having a child with someone is one of the most fundamentally important decisions women can make. There is emotion connected to sex as well, as the couple bond (fall in love) to prepare for the task of raising a child together. Just because we can now use contraception doesn't mean we can just switch off the emotional and psychological implications of sex and attempting to do so takes its toll.

However for example this viewpoint also leads me to think that extreme promiscuity is not a good idea. It seems like we have chucked out all sexual morality as old fashioned religious, women hating rubbish without considering that moderation might be better for us both physically and mentally.

Another thread recently on MN had a link to the Saafe website - sex workers forum. It was an eye opener to me and they do discuss their perceived positives and negatives in their work. I feel more confused after reading it.

I think that it came out of various elements of the sexual revolution. The idea that sex is an insignificant act that requires no real thought or worries, that can be pursued casually with strangers as a pass time. Where it is perfectly ok to have sex parties with members of a rock band for the prestige, or in return for back stage access. Where people are told again and again that sex isn't about pregnancy in any important way so it doesn't matter if you know the potential father, and that you can easily prevent STIs. Where women are as empowered by these attitudes as men

If you accept all these ideas, it's difficult to see any real difference from sex for money

I profoundly disagree with that conclusion. In all of the situations you describe the parties involved are seeking a mutual and consensual relationship. It might be brief and lacking in any commitment and you might not approve of it but it is nothing like prostitution.

So, a marriage ending because the husband uses prostitutes, harm to the people in that family or harm to the institution of marriage? A neighborhood where men constantly solicit women and kids for sex, harmful to people or harmful to the state? AIDS being spread by a prostitute-using man, harmful to people or to what you call the social fabric?

I feel like you aren't really reading the thread, just looking at things to jump on. I said way back that I thought social harms were the easiest argument to make, and most likely to be accepted by those who have a different view about sexuality and individual sexual choices.

There are certain limitations to those kinds of arguments. One is that you have to convince people the social harm is greater than the harm of restricting individual freedoms, and in our kind of government that tends to be a high bar so it is not always easy to convince people of that. You also have to show that empirically restricting prostitution does work to reduce the social harm. If all of a sudden we found some other model that actually reduced harm more, you'd have a problem with your argument.

And then, the social harm argument does not say that it is not possible for a person to freely consent to sex for money, even if it shows that often that doesn't happen. So if you want to say that it is not possible, you have to find another argument.

The bits and pieces you and a few others have been quoting from my posts were about other arguments besides social harm, about the intrinsic status of trading sex for money and why that might be a problem, or why people might not think it is. I said this specifically. So why are you trying to tell me its a social harm?

I realise its sometimes difficult to follow multiple posts but its nearly impossible to discuss a complex subject this way.

Goosefoot took exception to this and sees a clean split, deeming social harm "the easiest argument to make around prostitution." and suggesting the harms men do to prostituted women are the results of individual bad decisions that people have the freedom rights to make.

Oh, FFS. If you are going to deliberately completely misrepresent what I've said, I'm not going to talk to you, you'r discussing in bad faith.

However most people's view is now that any form of consensual sexual behaviour between adults is absolutely fine, so the issue of prostitution for them hangs on the definition of consent. As long as there is no coercion it's fine.

Yes, exactly. If someone believes that, it's an uphill battle to see it as different. The best you can do IMO is likely to be to show that it is so often destructive and coerced due to the financial and social pressures that it shouldn't be allowed.

I profoundly disagree with that conclusion. In all of the situations you describe the parties involved are seeking a mutual and consensual relationship. It might be brief and lacking in any commitment and you might not approve of it but it is nothing like prostitution.

Why not? We don't usually say that people cannot have a mutually satisfying exchange because money is involved, or they can't consent. I can consent to all kinds of risky financial activities. And lots of sex is transactional, I get something out of it I want, and so does he, and nothing more, and I can consent to that. If sex is really just not that big a deal, why would it not be ok to exchange it for money?

In any case that is the rational a lot of people are following.

As long as there is no coercion it's fine

Yes, exactly. If someone believes that, it's an uphill battle to see it as different

No it isn't- it really isn't. The coercion is only having sex with someone because you are paid too.

I have Brooke Magnati's book and even with the glasses wanker left out, it still doesn't seem like fun. The typical pharmacy shopping list with cystitis powders and thrush cream tells you that Magnati was regularly getting cystitis and thrush from her "job"; tell me what other job causes repeat infections in that way with no recourse to Occy Health?

Would men take a job that meant they'd have to shag all comers, even the smelly mingers, and they'll end up pissing battery acid and have fungus growing on their cocks?

"the social harm argument does not say that it is not possible for a person to freely consent to sex for money"

Who cares about the philosophical possibility of the Happiest Hooker? Your philosophical pondering of the infinitesimal possibility some woman some where really wants to be sexually submissive to hundreds of strange men is porny unreality.

I'm going to paraphrase Catherine MacKinnon, "People often say something is good in theory but not in practice, and I suggest they revisit the question of the original theory's quality based on the emergent evidence."

A woman who wanted to have sex with hundreds of strange men, like you say, a porny unreality inside, wouldn’t need to be paid if she wanted it. The money is there because she doesn’t actually want it.

Women who have to endure men’s invasions of their bodies generally disassociate their mind from their body and feelings, something else not required in other jobs.

Honestly I think you have misinterpreted what @goosefoot has been saying. She is against prostitution.

Her point was I thought an interesting one. When people think that sex is basically a fun leisure activity and anything goes how can they be made to see the significance and harm of prostitution (or porn or or even sex assault)

Anyway I thought it was an interesting point and might explain why lots of people think feminists are prudes etc.

And for the avoidance of any doubt I dont think feminists are prudes and I am firmly against prostitution.