On “Sex Work” and the Proprostitution Lobby

“In the small but highly vocal proprostitution movement, some few women are treating their prostitution affirmatively, as “sex work,”, as experiences of unrepressed sex that they control. Theirs is not unlike some heterosexual women’s and lesbian’s defense of sadomasochism as an enactment of sexual desire for women; in the movement to promote pornography this group is led by F.A.C.T. and its views are promoted in works like Carol Vance’s. Many women actively promote pornographic sexuality as a chosen dimension of their lives while many other women actively claim and positively assert a “prostitution identity”. Are they dehumanized by these dissociations, or are they only claiming a self-chosen identity? If women actively choose pornographic, prostituted sex, can we consider that sex as harmless because it is chosen? These questions collapse the experience of harm into the act of consent, rendering invisible the harm of the prostitution exchange, dissociating it from the fullness of lived experience, and locating it only in human will. This is a variant of liberal ideology, which drives economic markets by elevating individual choice in order to maximize consumerism. In this way, the sex of prostitution is reduced from being a class condition of women to a personal choice of the individual. Under the decadence that elevates individual choice above the common good, chosen patriarchal violation serves capitalist market exchange.

A feminist analysis of sexual exploitation requires analyzing the class condition of women in relation to actual, lived experience. Developing a feminist human-rights perspective refocuses the question back to the act, to lived experience, to the conditions under which sex takes place, and asks whether or not that constitutes violation. In human rights, the determination of harm must rest on the act, the experience and its representations, not only individually but collectively in women’s class condition. If the act exploits, it is in itself destructive of human life, well-being, integrity, and dignity. That is violation. And when it is gendered, repeated over and over in and on woman after woman, that is oppression.“

-Kathleen Barry, The Prostitution of Sexuality, page 69-70.

Pornography and Freedom by John Stoltenberg from the book *Refusing to be a Man*

I thought this was a really excellent explanation of why “sexual freedom” (that is, the freedom to be sexual in whatever way one wants and call it “empowering”), is actually simply sexuality without an ethical mooring. It’s only 12 pages, and I encourage you to check it out. Sorry the pages aren’t properly aligned.

Is it Possible to Abolish the Patriarchy and Pornstitution?

What do we mean by using the word “possible”?

There are several things we could mean.

Is the scenario logically possible? That is, is there a logical contradiction in proposing the world without the patriarchy?

In other words, can we imagine a possible world where there is no patriarchy in a way that we fail to understand a possible world where there are square circles, or where two is equal to one, or that a particular flower is both green all over, and entirely not green?

I believe that a world without patriarchy is logically possible.

Is the scenario nomologically possible? That is, is the scenario possible given the current laws of nature?

Given that a world without patriarchy does not alter the speed of light, or violate the law of conservation of energy, or any other law of nature, I believe that a world without patriarchy is nomologically possible.

Now, is the scenario a real possibility? That is, is it possible to abolish patriarchy in the actual (that is- our) world?

If it is possible, does this imply that we should hope for this possibility, work towards this possibility, plan for this possibility, etc.?

Some people say that “abolishing prostitution/the patriarchy is impossible.”

What do they mean by this statement?

Surely they don’t mean it is logically impossible, and that there is a logical contradiction involved in imagining a world where women are not sold to men to be sexually used, and therefore cannot come to be.

Surely they don’t mean that it is nomologically impossible- that is, that ending pornstitution would contradict a law in nature and would change the gravitational constant, or super cool matter to absolute zero.

Do they mean, then, that ending prostitution is impossible in the real world, given the way it is right now?

If so, then they lack vision of what the future could become. They are presuming that because the patriarchy exists now, that it will always exist, and that because women are treated like chattel now, that they will always be so treated. In other words, these folks lack imagination.

Or, perhaps they mean to make a stronger claim- namely that there is no way the world as it is now could change in order to free women from sexual slavery.

It may be impossible to completely end prostitution right now given the existence of the patriarchy, and the concentration of power in male hands.

HOWEVER, we do not have enough information about how the world could change, just by observing the way our world happens to be now. If that is their argument, then it is weak indeed.

I believe that it is possible, sometime in the future, to abolish the patriarchy, and remove mandatory male access to women.

In stating that a world without prostitution/patriarchy is possible, I am not stating that I know how to bring this world about. I’m merely stating that I have a vision of the world without constant male access to women’s bodies. I don’t know what the long way forward looks like. But I believe it is possible. Dee Graham recommends that we use science fiction, and our imaginations to think of what such a world would be like. In reading The Holdfast Chronicles, Herland , and the Daughters of a Coral Dawn series, I’m expanding my vision to include a world outside of male dominance and power.

Men do not define what is possible, and by dreaming of the long way forward now, we find the power to fight against male power today.

on moral relativism

TW

This is Bibi Aisha, an Afgan woman.

Aisha was the Afghani teenager who was forced into an abusive marriage with a Taliban fighter, who abused her and kept her with his animals. When she attempted to flee, her family caught her, hacked off her nose and ears, and left her for dead in the mountains.

Radical feminists know that the way Aisha was treated is wrong.

We don’t need a floating deity in the sky to tell us that this is so. We don’t need to be philosophers to know that this is wrong.

We acknowledge that different cultures have different practices. Some cultures bury their dead, and some cremate them. Some cultures communicate through sign language, and others speak Farsi. Some cultural practices are different from others. However, that doesn’t mean that all cultural practices are equally acceptable. Some cultural practices are wrong.

Femicide and violence against women happens on a worldwide scale. In the United States, 17.6% of all women survive a rape or attempted rape (and that’s only counting the 26%-37% of rapes that are reported). Woman-hating pornography in which violence occurs in over 88% of scenes is so mainstream and accepted that “progressive” Dear Abby-types see nothing wrong with it. There are over 50,000 women and children trafficked in the United States, and worldwide, at least 4 million women and girls are trafficked annually. Despite how oppressed women are, men don’t try and change the oppressive system. In fact, they still think rape jokes are funny. Some of them are in such denial that they claim women are actually the perpetrators. The authorities are no better, since 15 of every 16 rapists will go free.

This system is not just broken; it’s actively evil. By reading the above statistics, you can see that not only is violence normalized in “other cultures”– it’s normalized in our own. If right and wrong were merely determined by cultural consensus, then violence against women would be morally correct in our own culture as well as others. Violence against women is *normal* in our culture. Clearly, then, moral relativism cannot be true.

I am not a relativist. I believe that our patriarchal system must be destroyed, because it is objectively harmful. I don’t need a moral theory to tell me that.

*This essay by James Rachels is a good 101-type document on cultural relativism, if you are interested.

an invitation to hate women

Trigger Warning

The following is quoted from Robert Jensen’s book Getting Off p 117-118.

“It’s hard not to go from these observations [about pornography] to a simple question: Do men hate women?

The question doesn’t suggest that every single man hates every single woman. Instead, we are asking whether there is something in the culture that makes woman-hating inviting. I don’t have an answer. But Bill Margold, a longtime pornography performer and producer with a reputation in the industry as a renegade willing to be blunt, does. Margold believes pornography is relatively harmless, but he also acknowledges an ugly side to the business. He doesn’t mince words in his analysis of what Stagliano called “a psychology which I don’t think is healthy.”

My whole reason for being in the Industry is to satisfy the desire of the men in the world who basically don’t much care for women and want to see the men in my Industry getting even with the women they couldn’t have when they were growing up. I strongly believe this and the Industry hates me for saying it… So we come on a woman’s face or somewhat brutalize her sexuality: we’re getting even for their lost dreams. I believe this. I’ve heard audiences cheer me when I do something foul on screen. When I’ve strangled a person or sodomized a person, or brutalized a person, the audience is cheering my action, and then when I’ve fulfilled my warped desire, the audience applauds.”

I’m getting burnt out reading about the pornography/prostitution industries lately. I think it’s time for a break from this topic soon, because it is one of the most difficult for me to face, as a woman.

The exceptionally hard fact is that the men in my life (and in yours) are using hard core, brutal, woman-hating pornography. Not every man uses it, and there are degrees of usage. But the majority of men use it, and don’t tell their partners. As one fellow put it to Hugo Schwyzer, “women go ballistic when you tell them the truth.”

In Jensen’s book, he relates a personal narrative. He states that after having done research on pornography (by watching it), he finds himself seeing women as objects for several days or weeks afterward. He tries to stay away from women during this time, because he needs to decompress (p 112-113). He recognizes this as a negative side effect of viewing the material.

If a researcher doing a project on porn has this reaction, how much more do the men using porn for their own satisfaction (and also orgasming to it) have this reaction?

That means that my boss, and the guy with the owl tattoo at the grocery store, and my brother, and the president, and the security guy in the hallway, and your instructor, your father-in-law, your kid’s coach, the Easter bunny at the mall, your partner, the bank teller, the plumber under your sink, your counselor… these men are using the type of degrading pornography that serves as anti-woman propaganda.

To borrow an idea, Shrodinger’s porn user is any man I meet during the course of the day. He’s turning in the form to me while thinking about the disgusting things he watched last night on his internet screen, or he’s the lost student who wonders while I give him directions whether I have the same haircut as the woman he fantasized about jizzing on this morning.

I don’t know which men are using it, and so all of them appear threatening to me.

This is the world we live in. These are the men who hate us.