A big thank you to Francois Tremblay over at The Prime Directive for such a clear and concise break down of why its okay to hate prostitution and work to end it. He knocks this one out of the park in his post titled “The assumption sex is power“.
“In prostitution and pornography (which is, after all, organized prostitution), the imbalance is, at least on the surface, financial in nature; johns and porn directors trade money for sex, either with themselves or other people (and for those who object that pornography cannot be prostitution because porn directors don’t make actresses have sex with them, some johns have prostituted women have sex with each other too). Prostituted women and porn actresses are often coerced into unwanted sexual acts so they can get the money they need, and are exposed to high risks of sexually transmitted diseases, extremely high death rates, and extremely high percentages of PTSD (equal or higher to that of war veterans).
As has been pointed out by feminists, making women have sex with you by giving them money means they wouldn’t want to have sex with you in the first place. They’re doing it because they need the money, which makes it non-consensual. Furthermore, if consent is granted beforehand, and cannot be given or revoked for specific sexual acts as they happen, then it’s not consensual either, simply because it’s then very easy for a john or a porn director to decide to add new sexual acts and force the woman to do them under the threat of not getting paid.
And all of that is predicated on a capitalist society which makes work contracts and organized prostitution possible, as well as normalize the position that everything is potential property, including people’s sexuality.
But the more profound power imbalance, I think, is psychological: psychologically healthy men who have no qualms exploiting women who have been abused in childhood and devalue their own sexuality, or otherwise have bought into their “womanly” duty.
I can already hear the pro-prostitution advocates hissing like the snakes that they are, “see, you do hate sex workers!” I don’t hate prostituted women, I listen to the voices of ex-prostituted women who speak up about their experiences and who tell us that it was their devaluation of their own sexuality that led them to accept prostitution as a way of life. Pro-prostitution advocates tell us to listen to the voices of prostituted women, but they want you only to listen to the privileged white women who got what they wanted out of prostitution and then joined pimp-led advocacy groups. Of course such women have a vested interest in hiding the truth.
But to pro-prostitution advocates, anyone who disagrees must hate “sex workers.” To pro-pornography advocates, anyone who disagrees must hate porn actresses. As if hating an industry means hating the people who work at the lower echelons! Hating capitalism has never meant hating the workers, it means hating the institutions that exploit the workers. I hate prostitution and pornography and the people who defend those institutions, not the women whose sexuality is exploited by them. The power is generated by those institutions, not by a woman taking her clothes off.”
Go over to the Prime Directive and check out the rest of FT’s work, you won’t be sorry.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
5 comments
December 20, 2014 at 12:00 pm
syrbal-labrys
To say hating prostitution means hating sex workers is the same as saying hating war means hating soldiers. Of course, to me? As a veteran and wife and mother of vets? War as it exists in the corporate caused sort IS the prostitution of soldiers!
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December 20, 2014 at 12:10 pm
The Arbourist
@Syrbal
It really takes dedication not to see the difference between individual and structural critiques.
I found this article as my ire was recently raised by some of the comments on an earlier post of mine.
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December 20, 2014 at 8:53 pm
Brachina
Dear Goddess, by this definition of consent, it would make all employment a form of slavery!
This post is so crazy, I don’t know where to start. Just because someone does something for money does not make consent magically disappear just because you say so.
Then then to accuse sex worker right groups of being lead by pimps is outragous and a lie. And to suggest that all sex workers that want to the right to thier automony are white privdgled women is false and horrible thing to say. And I’ll point out that because some people have a horrible experience as sex workers, does not mean that the rights of sex workers disappear. Just because some people run savage sweat shops doesn’t mean that the textile industry should be shut down for example.
You don’t hate these woman, except the ones that stand up to your and your allies bullying, the they’re all white priveldge now, even if they’re not white.
And the idea that all sex workers have been sexually abused as childern is a myth, not that it would have any impact on thier rights to choose, suggesting that people that have experienced sexual abuse can’t consent is revictimizing them.
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December 20, 2014 at 9:03 pm
Brachina
That’s a false analogy, war invovles people killing each other, where each side doesn’t want to be killed, no buddy consents to being shot or bombed by the other side, its an inherantly unconsenting act, because no consent is ever given by someone to be killed or maimed.
Where as consent is given during prostitution and people usually don’t die during the sex act.
Also saying no to war is to say people don’t have the right to kill each other, being against prostitution is to be antichoice and to say you have more right to chose a personals sexual partners and why they have sex with them then they do which you
are doing, is to violate them. Sadly thier is no word that I know of for this kind of violation like thier is for rape and sexual assault, but there should be.
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December 21, 2014 at 9:40 am
The Arbourist
@Brachina
*sigh* – Here we go what is this, round 5?
There is this guy, his name is Karl Marx and what he has to say about the proletariat would be a good thing for you to know about.
If prostituted women do not have sex, they and their children will starve.
Of course hypothetically it could be said that one can freely choose *not* to eat and feed their family – but that is usually not how the real world works.
The pressure to survive necessarily makes prostitution for many women an non-consensual activity as the article says –
“making women have sex with you by giving them money means they wouldn’t want to have sex with you in the first place. They’re doing it because they need the money, which makes it non-consensual.”
To suggest that those who profit the most from the exploitation of women would not lead the charge to save their livelihood does not seem outrageous to me.
Really? How many aboriginal prostitutes do you see on the news faffing on about wanting to legalize prostitution? No, we don’t see or hear from the majority of women who are being exploited. The voices we hear are from the healthy, wealthy, usually white prostitutes that are the small minority exception to the rule.
Oh, so how many prostituted women is an acceptable number to throw under the bus? How does this relate to their rights? Are you actually arguing that being sexually exploited should be a codified right?
Cool story…
Oh, so there is an acceptable number of people we can exploit. Sweatshops are just one small part of the mill of human misery there is no acceptable number of people that should be condemned to work in such onerous conditions.
I most certainly do not hate exploited prostituted women.
For whom I do hold a particular disdain are the misguided, ignorant, neo-liberal fun-feminists, that purport to stand for women while advocating for activities that destroys women and their lives.
Please quote where the article said that all prostitutes have been sexually abused as children.
Wow what a glorious choice – rent your body out or starve. An individual’s right to choose is *NECESSARILY LIMITED* by their class, society, and norms around them.
Do you think that laws apply equally to everyone in society – that race, class and sex have nothing to do with how someone is treated in society?
You have given me no indication that you understand even the first thing about class analysis, power gradients and how they work in society.
What I do see is some sort of libertarian fantasy land where, if everyone is just allowed to make their choosy-choices things will be just fracking amazing – because society and class have no bearing on the quality of choices available to an individual. Libertarian/neo-liberal thought serves one purpose – to divest the underprivileged of their only true power in society – class consciousness and solidarity.
The critiques of prostitution offered in the article are on the class level and cannot be applied one to one onto specific cases and individuals.
Consider this quote from Anatole France –
“In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.”
To understand this quote is to understand much of what feminist critique of society is about.
What is being suggested is that being traumatized and victimized can lead to a greater chance in the future of more abuse.
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