I read with interest the article on the global sex industry in The Age today, mainly because of the title "The Vagina Dialogues" which I mistook for "The Vagina Monologues" and I was kind of hoping they'd come to Melbourne so that I could see them (finally). Anyway, not monologues, not even dialogues really, just a catchy headline - The Age has outdone itself today in that respect, but I might post about that later...
British feminist Sheila Jeffreys claims that us "neo-liberalists" view prostitution as simply a form of work (that'll be me), and that we should be more outraged at the buying and selling of women's bodies. I'm not sure that I'm happy with that as a blanket statement. Sure, when I hear about sex slavery I get as angry and unhappy as the next person. But I think it is a grave error to confuse sex slavery with prostitution. Also, to be blindly outraged at the buying and selling of women's bodies is dismissive of all the work done by sex workers campaigning to be recognised as a legitimate profession. Of course, in my ideal world, prostitutes are all doing the work by choice, they are well educated regarding their sexual health and how to maintain it and they work in nice places with lots of security guards and the means to summon them if they get a dud client. I know this is the reality for the minority of sex workers, but I also know that the other realities have other complications, drug addiction being a classic. If you're so drug fucked you can't hold down a job, you're desperate for more, and someone will pay you for the use of the one possession you can't lose... well....
I agree with Jeffreys that more of the money being made by the sex trade could go to the women themselves, but I feel that way about factory workers too. Big business is bad in itself, to label prostitution bad because of an association with big business is another error.
Perhaps I should reveal why I'm such a big fan of prostitution in my idealised form:
1 - Prostitution allows all kinds of people to have access to sex who otherwise couldn't or wouldn't get it.
It's obvious really, but some people need you to point out the obvious. I'm talking about people who are shunned by their partners, the disabled, the super busy or the just plain ugly. Who am I to say that these people should never have sexual intercourse simply because they cannot find a bedmate? If a person cannot walk, we find ways to help them get around, if they can't talk we find ways to get them communicating, we don't turn our backs on them reasoning that it's their tough luck and they'll just have to suffer without things the able bodied among us take for granted. Why should access to sex be any different? Are we so prudish that we cannot suffer the thought that the unfortunate might have sexual needs? In my opinion it is better that they safely pay to have those need fulfilled as the alternatives to not bear thinking about. Of course, this solution makes sex the privilege of the wealthier portion of the sexually frustrated population but that is a whole other can of worms I do not have time to address here!
2 - Prostitution keeps families intact.
Oh yes indeedy. Bear with me on this one. In this scenario, the frustrated marriage partner is not only paying a prostitute for sex, they are paying their sexual partner to go away afterward. I argue that prostitution, as long as it does not become an addiction, is a far more family friendly way of fulfilling frustrated sexual needs than cheating on your partner with someone else. This is because of the drain the cheatee can have on the family. There is the time drain where the cheater is off with the cheatee, there has to be courting and bonding before the actual sex and all of this takes time. Prostitutes take far less time by comparison. There is the emotional drain on the family where the cheater becomes emotionally distracted and distant, if one assumes there is no emotional attachment to the prostitute there is nothing to distract the cheater from the family. There is also the financial drain caused by maintaining a cheatee. Prostitutes cost money, for sure, but do they cost as much as the gifts and food, and places to sleep often entailed by an affair? Unless the cheater is a complete miser or having an affair with a rich single person the answer is probably not. And finally, lets not forget the emotional trauma often suffered by the cheatee at the hands of a cheater who refuses to leave the family. The pain of being the "secret other" is not to be underestimated. Going to a professional third party for sex may not solve the initial problem that lead the cheater to seek out extra sex in the first place, but at least it's less likely to cause any further problems.
I'm more than happy to hear from people who disagree with me. However, I will maintain that prostitution is actually a vital part of a healthy society. Particularly if that society is going to glorify unnatural modes of existence, I'm thinking here of the ideal that one partner can satisfy your every sexual need for your entire monogamous life. Sex is one of the few arenas where seeking out satisfaction outside the partnership is frowned upon in our culture. If you need other things such as books, company for exercise, conversations about antique cars or the occasional back massage it is considered ok to get them outside the relationship, but sex? Oh no, if you're not getting what you want in that area tough luck buddy, you chose your sex life when you chose your partner. This seems to me to be ridiculously exclusive and based on an ancient tradition whereby women were only allowed to have sex with their husbands so that the husbands could be sure of the paternity of their children.
Logically, if we can satisfy needs for anything other than sex outside of marriage, then we should all be signing up for life with the partner who was best in the sack. However, hardly anyone does. I didn't, and for a plethora of excellent reasons, one of which is that I'm just not that sexually driven. But if extra sex ever became a priority, you can guarantee I'll be seeking out that extra sex from a paid professional rather than going through the ugly emotional messiness of an affair. Radical feminists are wrong to tar all forms of prostitution with the same brush. Lets hope they see the light.
Saturday, 15 November 2008
Prostitution - some things to disagree with the radical feminists about.
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4 comments:
Prostitution should be legal; I agree. And the argument that criminalisation harms female, gay, transgender, and oppressed people should be enough, without any more.
Having said that, I do have problems with a number of points in your explanation, none of which I find compelling arguments for prostitution.
Firstly, you see to assume that "the disabled" (I assume you mean people with disabilities) are unable or unlikely to have sex lives outside of commodified sex, and that just plain incorrect. To assume that PWD are unfuckable is "prudish" in itself, an accusation you have levelled at others in this post.
(As is the assumption that busy and ugly people won't have sex unless they pay for it.)
Secondly, you seem to assume that sex with another person is a - human right, perhaps? ; and you don't seem to acknowledge the possibility of sex with oneself as an option for sexual satisfaction. Both aspects of your argument here are a little odd, to me; you seem, from this piece, to be stuck in the idea that sexual activity with another person should be the "norm" for everyone, everytime.
Thirdly, Your analogies with disability I again find a little tone-deaf. Yes, if people can't walk, they may find other ways to mobilise, often with help or assistive devices. To me, the more appropriate analogy here could be that when people aren't in a position to have mutually desirable sex with another person, and they wish to have an orgasm/be sexually satisfied, they find ways to do so, with or without assistive devices. To leap straight from there to prostitution as the obvious solution is, well, a giant leap.
But it's still an analogy I'm uncomfortable with. As a PWD, I'm deeply uncomfortable with disability being used as a catch-all analogy for people who don't happen to have a sexual partner right now.
Lastly, your argument about monogamy leads me to a need for more social acceptance of polyamory, not for prostitution.
I'm also going to disagree with prostitution being a vital part of a healthy society. Since I can imagine a healthy society without capitalism, I can imagine a healthy society without prostitution. This is all imaginary, of course, because I don't know if there has ever been what I would call a "healthy" society on Earth. Do you think there has been one? You do say that our society glorifies "unnatural" modes of existence, so I'm assuming you don't think our current society falls under your definition of "healthy". (I disagree that monogamy is "unnatural", by the way; it's one of the many possible modes of human existence, and is about as natural as any other.)
Well, there it is. You did say you were happy to hear from people who disagree with you!
I agree with your basic premise that prostitution ≠ sexual slavery. I've never really understood that line of argument, or the idea that the prostitute is selling their body (and the concomitant idea that that is bad). Prostitution is the provision of a service, that service being, primarily, sex. And even if it were the selling of one's body, how does it ethically differ from a labourer selling their body, such that one ought be considered illegitimate and the other legitimate?
As for your two arguments for prostitution, I think they are secondary arguments rather than primary arguments. Not that there is anything wrong with that, for secondary arguments inform and augment the primary. Primary arguments, I think, would include liberty and sex-positive ideology (though this one could also be secondary).
Nevertheless, I agree with no.1, but am skeptical of no.2. The problem with the second argument is that, as presented, it still involves deception. Though their is no affair, it is usually the deception surrounding the affair that results in a breakdown of the relationship. As lauredhel noted, far better to advocate open or polyamorous relationships to resolve such a problem.
Hey guys, I haven’t forgotten, just been distracted.
I have just done a crash course on my language use re PWDs - my apologies. I won't use terms like "the disabled" anymore. Thanks.
I should have been clearer about some of my premises. Often I don't even know I have hidden premises until someone drags them into the light of day. This is usually my husband's job :-)
Here are some of them:
The urge to have sexual intercourse (not just orgasm) was necessary for our survival as a species and remains a fundamental part of our biological make-up and therefore our psyche. In the language of Freud it lives in the Id and has the Ego and Super Ego telling it when it can and can't be satisfied. (I don't have much time for Freud in general but his terminology is useful.) The Id has different influences in different people. Some people think sex just isn't that interesting, for some it is an overriding interest, most people fall somewhere in between the two extremes. For people at the sexually driven end of the spectrum, masturbation may simply not be enough to fulfill their sexual needs. I did not mention masturbation because I assumed if people are paying a professional then masturbation isn’t working out for them. You’re right, I did leap, but I don’t think my leap was entirely unjustified.
My assumptions are that maturbation is not enough, that deceit in marriages is already occuring for good or ill, and that prostitution is a far better alternative than say, taking sex by force, or having an affair.
My view of human beings and their sexual behaviour is largely Darwinian. Though I don’t have time to lay out the details, this culminates in the view that a feminism that assumes that biological differences stop at the skull is misguided and doomed to failure. That view assumes that the inate sexual drives of men and women are similar, and though there are exceptions, the inate sexual drives of men and women are most certainly not homologous. I can easily imagine a society where people have their sexual needs fulfilled by other people who are paid to do it. I would welcome well-paid safe prostitution without stigma.
cheers
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