Prostitution Debate Part 2: New Zealand
(See Prostitution Debate Part 1: Thailand for an introduction to this series. That first post also contains the moderation rules for the debate.)
This is going to be a very different post than I’d expected it to be.
New Zealand decriminalized prostitution in 2003, and I’ve seen it mentioned online as a model that ought to be followed. I’ve even seen it lauded as one of the “most successful” prostitution reform programs in the world. I knew very little about the NZ situation before I started researching it for this post, and I expected that I would find all kinds of glowing reports about how wonderful it’s going down there.
I found no such thing.
The stated goals of the reform law are unquestionably noble: to safeguard the human rights of sex workers, to protect them from exploitation, to promote the welfare and occupational safety and health of sex workers, to create an environment that is conducive to public health, and to protect children from the exploitation of prostitution.
So far the results seem to be a mixed bag, with the protection of children in particular looking questionable.
In truth, I think it’s too soon to really gauge the impact of the law. It’s only been three years. I guess I’d expected to find statistics showing that prostitution has dropped or trafficking has dropped or crime has dropped….but in fact they all seem to have increased since prostitution was decriminalized. If there are reports out there showing the opposite, I can’t find them.
Of course, the single biggest positive effect of the law is that prostitutes are no longer being rounded up, fined, or jailed. That is a good thing, indisputably. But have their lives improved, aside from no longer fearing arrest?
Tim Barnett, the MP who sponsored the reform bill, listed on his blog last year the following good results from decriminalization:
1. successful prosecutions of operators of under-18 year old brothel employees have taken place and of clients using unsafe sex;
2. Occupational Safety and Health have produced sex industry guidelines;
3. sex workers employed in brothels, their legal status as employees confirmed by the new law, have acted to challenge the most oppressive - and coercive - of employment practices, including fining and bonding;
4. there has been some move to home-based sex work, the least publicly intrusive and safest environment for prostitution;
5. records of former massage parlour employees and escorts have been removed or destroyed, lessening the possibility of future misuse;
6. (on the basis of average figures over the previous 5 years) 300 people have avoided conviction for soliciting; and
7. the review process - deliberately built in to the law to minimise attempts to make up stories about its impact - has started, has produced baseline data and is linked to major Christchurch-based research work.
I’ve been investigating these claims, and here’s what I’ve come up with:
1: As far as I can tell there have been 4 prosecutions for child pimping and 1 for unsafe sex.
According to the U.S. State Department, “New Zealand has a sizable number of children engaged in prostitution who may be victims of internal trafficking; it is a destination country for women from Thailand and other countries in Asia trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation.” Another report says that trafficking of women and children in New Zealand is a growing problem – from other countries, like Thailand, and from within New Zealand, with the Maoris especially at risk.
In April of this year, Scoop said: “As an interesting aside, everyone now agrees that the prostitution law reform has been a failure. There is more prostitution, more street walking and younger girls are involved.” The Decriminalize Prostitution Now Coalition also notes the increase in streetwalking, including by children, since decriminalization.
Given all that, only 4 convictions for child pimping doesn’t sound great. And in one of the cases, the woman convicted was sentenced to community service only. (As far as I can tell, there have been zero convictions for trafficking.)
As for the unsafe sex, there was that one guy who was given a tiny fine for removing a condom during sex with a prostitute. It’s terrific that the prostitute was able to take him to court, though honestly what jumped out at me when I read the article was how small the fine was — less than I’ve paid for a traffic ticket.
2: Yes, the government has produced guidelines. They seem to be the object of much amusement, at least online, with suggestions such as that each dildo should be thoroughly cleansed between uses and so forth. I don’t know what effect they will have, since they’re just guidelines and brothels aren’t regulated.
3: This sounds good, but I can’t find any more information about it.
4: Ditto.
5: Ditto.
6: This is the obvious benefit I mentioned earlier — that prostitutes are no longer being treated as criminals. And indeed, this is a huge benefit and not to be underplayed.
7: This isn’t a benefit of the law, just a means to gather data about the impact of the law.
What Barnett doesn’t mention is the explosion in prostitution since the reform law was passed: Scoop reported a 40% increase in prostitutes within one year of decriminalization. Considering that, as noted above, trafficking and underage prostitution have also increased, this sounds like a great many of the new prostitutes are severely disadvantaged people. (Update: the 40% figure from Scoop has been challenged as completely unreliable — see the comments below, particularly #3 from Cicely. — Violet)
There are also reports that organized crime has expanded since decriminalization.
Anti-prostitution activists are very doubtful about the prognosis. In “Bad for the Body, Bad for the Heart”: Prostitution Harms Women Even if Legalized or Decriminalized, Melissa Farley writes about the effects of decriminalization with particular reference to New Zealand. I strongly recommend this paper for a good understanding of the anti-prostitution argument. Another paper by Janice Raymond discusses the issue more generally, looking at the effects of decriminalization and legalization in several countries, including New Zealand: The Consequences of Legal Policy on Prostitution and Trafficking in Women.
I would like very much to find similar papers espousing a positive view of New Zealand’s decriminalization experiment, but I can’t find anything comparable. It’s relatively easy to find advocacy statements that were issued before the reform bill was passed in 2003, but what I’m looking for and have been unable to find is a post-reform analysis of the situation. (If anyone can find some good links, please send them to me and I’ll add them here.) I would imagine that proponents would argue that it’s early days yet and that decriminalization is the first step toward destigmatization and true social change.
General references:
The Nature and Extent of the Sex Industry in New Zealand: An Estimation by the Ministry of Justice, 2005.
New Zealand Prostitutes Collective, the chief advocacy group (tax-supported) for sex workers in New Zealand. Unfortunately the site is outdated.
61 Responses to “Prostitution Debate Part 2: New Zealand”
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gordo says:
It’s pretty discouraging to see this attempted solution fail. Locking up the clients results in a lot of entrapment, and locking up the prostitutes only brings them more misery. Neither option brings us anywhere near where we want to be in terms reducing the incidence of prostitution.
We can look for ways to increase wages and provide the necessities to those who need help, but that still leaves us with a lot of prostitution.
So we’re stuck, I suppose, until the last vestiges of patriarchal thought have been chased from society.
June 10th, 2006 at 9:41 am EST -
Violet says:
I think it’s far too soon to say the NZ experiment has failed. I was disappointed not to find the kind of positive reports I’d expected, but it is very early days.
The most troubling thing is that it seems very difficult to decriminalize one sort of prostitution — adult citizens — without opening the door to the bad stuff you don’t want: child prostitution and trafficking. This may require more hard thinking.
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cicely says:
Hello, hello! Surprised to see me, not? I think you were possibly expecting too much, Violet. Certainly more than I would have expected in this short amount of time.(good prediction) I am definitely not guilty of lauding the NZ reform as ‘one of the most successul’. What I have done, however, is wholeheartedly endorse its rationale and intent, and report one telling event. (the conviction of the client who removed a condom.) Possibly in the amendments, penalties will be made greater, if there is enough protest about that at the time. And the prostitutes collective has the right to nominate three of the eleven commissioners for 2007 or 2008.
I do have to post the following refutation of the 40% rise you quoted, which is still doing the rounds over a year later.(not unusual on the net, I know) This is from a Green Party blogger.
More whores on the street!
Tuesday April 19th, 2005. 9:09 am
So, the Press (A Christchurch newspaper) is trying hard to feed the moral panic surrounding the 2003 liberalisation of prostitution law by shouting in a headline this morning:Number of prostitutes rises 40pc
The story, written by Colin Espiner, leads with:
‘A 40 per cent leap in the number of sex workers, along with a sharp rise in those working the streets, is concerning critics of the law decriminalising prostitution.
As police in Christchurch investigate the suspected homicide of a street worker, opponents of the Prostitution Law Reform Act are pointing to evidence in a new report that the number of sex workers on the streets and in unlicensed brothels is growing.
The Prostitution Law Review Committee’s benchmark report on the state of the sex industry in New Zealand, tabled in Parliament yesterday, will be used by lawmakers to decide whether changes to the act are necessary in 2007 or 2008.
The review committee’s report estimated there were 5932 sex workers operating in New Zealand in April last year, 10 months after the act was passed – up nearly 40 per cent from the 4272 identified in a 2001 police survey. ‘
Well, the problem with the story is three-fold.
First, the research was specifically aimed at assessing the size of the sex industry in June 2003, *when the law was passed*, not after. While the telephone surveys of police districts were conducted in the months after the law came into effect, they were asked specifically to estimate the size of the sex industry at the time the law was passed.
Second, the report states specifically that any attempt to estimate the size of the sex industry shouldn’t be treated as having any precise statistical accuracy. The report’s executive summary states explicitly:
‘Any attempt to establish the size of the sex industry must be viewed with caution. It is an industry where much of its activity has been ‘hidden’ and the non-regulated and fluid nature of the industry means that any estimate will simply be an indication of actual numbers. In addition, limitations in the accuracy of data also mean that the findings in this report cannot be taken to be an accurate assessment of the size of the sex industry in New Zealand.’
Third, the comparison Espiner tries to draw between this benchmarking exercise and a 2001 police survey is flat-out meaningless because the methodologies used for the two studies were vastly different.
This, of course, won’t stop moral panic erupting as a result of Espiner’s report, and other similar stories. United Future’s Larry Baldock told Espiner:
‘Everyone is saying there is an increase in young people on the street, which is the most dangerous part of this whole industry and which should not have been decriminalised. It’s absolutely nuts.’
Well, no. But what is absolutely nuts is a debate about important social legislation taking place in an atmosphere of flat-out inaccurate and self-serving reporting.
Also, why this obsession with prostitute numbers? Why not do a survey of the number and type of people who use prostitutes? One suspects that whether it’s legal or not won’t change the urges of those people, mainly men, who decide to buy sex.
UPDATE: And, right on cue, United Future unleashes some of that predictable (and, indeed, predicted) moral outrage.
Posted in Justice & Democracy | Media | by frog | Tue, April 19th, 2005
I’ll add that in the first review non NZ citizens working in the sex industry were already considered to be a significant issue, particularly in the greater Auckland area. These workers were predominantly from Thailand and China, but other Asian countries were also represented.
You’ll note that a specific purpose of the reviews is to combat the circulation of spurious claims and statistics by proponents *or* opponents of the law reform - as these things are sorrily (?) predictable. When the final official review is done will be the time to properly assess the impact. At that time, appropriate amendments will be made, or, if the Labour Party/left party coalition has lost power, maybe the whole thing will be repealed by a National Party government or conservative coalition. We have our share of godbags too - and it’s growing - in the land of the long white cloud.
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Mandos says:
Yeahso, that was my question too: it seems to me that the legal situation being different for post-decriminalization (duh) would mean that it would also be easier to count prostitutes. How do they compare the accuracy of the predecriminalization count to the postdecriminalization count?
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Violet says:
Thanks for that information, cicely.
The other references I mentioned (greater trafficking, higher number of streetwalkers) suggest that there has indeed been an increase in prostitution, though the degree of the increase is probably impossible to pin down.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Societies evolve through experiment.
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Sam says:
It’s always good to critique statistics, and any challenge of the 40% increase in street prostitutes would be better if it offered alternative numbers, but thinking bigger picture I’d have to ask why legitimizing prostitution in New Zealand would produce results different from other countries where it has been legitimized?
If legitimizing prostitution as a job in the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Costa Rica, Guatemala, etc. has always been shown to lead to increased numbers of prostitutes, increased child prostitution, increased trafficking, and increased gang activity, what sense does it make to suggest on spurious theory alone the numerous findings of these same negative trends in New Zealand are inaccurate?
I say spurious because it’s a favorite tactic of pro-pornstitute folks to say, “It’s a shadow industry so who knows?” but when so many people from various walks of life all over the world have noted prostitution’s explosion the past 15 years as well as the immense rise in trafficking for sexual slavery and the ages of prostitutes getting younger, such criticisms come off like an unthoughtful shrugging of the shoulders.
The “who knows?” excuse can also be trotted out to downplay the apparent successes of the Swedish model despite recorded conversations of pimps and traffickers revealing their new fears of operating in Sweden and nonprofit agencies saying they’ve seen the Swedish law’s positive impacts on street prostitution at the very least if that’s as generous a reading pro-pornstitution advocates can allow. It would accept such criticisms, as I would accept Petra Ostegren’s criticisms, if they were backed with something more substantial than “nuh uh” and poorly reasoned excuses that border on lunacy (the evil Swedish women blackmailing would-be tricks paranoia is preposterous).
Plugged into the very long history of regulated, legalized, decriminalized prostitution and compared to modern trials with prostitution legitimizing of various sorts, New Zealand is experiencing exactly what has been predicted it would experience.
-increased men’s demands for prostitutes
-increased numbers of prostitutes to meet the demand
-increased child prostitution
-increased illegal prostitution
-increased trafficking for sexual slavery
-increased gang activity as criminals vie for control of the increased profits to be had -
cicely says:
I’d have to ask why legitimizing prostitution in New Zealand would produce results different from other countries where it has been legitimized?
If legitimizing prostitution as a job in the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Costa Rica, Guatemala, etc. has always been shown to lead to increased numbers of prostitutes, increased child prostitution, increased trafficking, and increased gang activity, what sense does it make to suggest on spurious theory alone the numerous findings of these same negative trends in New Zealand are inaccurate?
I would like to suggest that the NZ Government enquiry, a minimum of three years in duration, may have taken into account all the local and international information it was felt appropriate to include before the decision was made to, not just legitimise, (legalisation) but completely de-criminalise prostitution. As Sue Bradford of the Green Party stated in her address to parliament, ‘no stone, however murky, was left unturned.’ The bottom line is that the NZ government does not share the Swedish government’s position that all prostitution is intrinsically violence against women (or men, or transexual or transgender persons).It cannot therefore adopt any policy based on that idea. It has declared itself opposed to legislating against any sexual activity between consenting adults (over 18’s), whether or not this involves an exchange of money. Its concern therefore is to provide the healthiest, safest and fairest possible environment in which voluntary prostitution will take place, with the least possible negative impact on NZ society. To those ends it has won the support of The NZ AIDS foundation, Women’s Refuge, rape crisis organisations, the National Council on Women, Business and Professional Women’s Federation, Maori Womens Welare League, The Public Health Unit, Citizens Advice Bureaux and so on and so on - as well as the NZ Prostitutes Collective.
I would suggest that if there does indeed turn out to be an increase in the incidence of the negative activities you list, it will be the NZ government’s task to deal with those issues - as themselves - since they are crimes, while prostitution itself is not. They are far more
likely to be able to enlist the co-operation of voluntary prostitutes in this endeavour than they ever were in the past as well. It may well take some further hard thinking to deal with these issues. The NZ government though has shown its intention to do so without any longer maintaining the lie that prostitutes or their law-abiding customers are to blame for them rather than the real criminals.The “who knows?” excuse can also be trotted out to downplay the apparent successes of the Swedish model despite recorded conversations of pimps and traffickers revealing their new fears of operating in Sweden and nonprofit agencies saying they’ve seen the Swedish law’s positive impacts on street prostitution at the very least if that’s as generous a reading pro-pornstitution advocates can allow.
Apparent successes may be the key phrase here. If pimps and traffickers are becoming afraid to operate in Sweden, that’s one thing. Swedish street prostitutes may not however be electing to change their profession. Many who are able, I have recently read in a report written by a Swedish street prostitute who counts herself in this practice, are rather electing to travel to Denmark or Norway to work where they feel safer and not so harassed by social workers and other authorities. This creates a whole new set of problems, particularly around childcare, as many of the women are mothers.
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Sam says:
I’m not sure what your point is in reiterating that New Zealand didn’t follow Sweden’s lead, as that’s obvious and not contended. What you haven’t done is explain on what basis you think New Zealand’s experiment legitimizing prostitution as a job will work where all other attempts have failed and why the available evidence of the harms exacerbated by legitimization in NZ so far doesn’t figure into your optimistic theory.
“Its concern therefore is to provide the healthiest, safest and fairest possible environment in which voluntary prostitution will take place”
If that was their goal then they’re failing miserably at it. From the “Bad for the Body, Bad for the Heart” document above that I highly suggest reading if you haven’t, it’s clear some NZ politicians who supported decriminalization were aware of the real outcome:
another sponsor of the NZ decriminalization bill admitted, “it’s going to be the owners or the operators [of brothels and other sex businesses] who are going to be the long-term beneficiaries [of decriminalization]” (Else, 2003, n.p.).
While appearing to promote public health, the NZ law keeps the names of brothel owners secret, thus making public health inspections of brothels an impossibility. The outraged mayor of Auckland, New Zealand, wrote, “This so-called legitimate profession remains partly hidden behind a veil of secrecy [under the new law]” (Banks, 2003, n.p.). In fact, the law protects the privacy of pimps and generally represents the interests of johns.
People are confused by the illogic of vaguely written public policies that claim to reduce the harm of legalized prostitution. For example, the NZ Accident Compensation Commission (ACC) establishes risk assessments for various occupations, setting amounts for what employers must pay to cover medical and rehabilitation claims. Prostitution has been categorized by the ACC as a safer job than child care attendant or ambulance staff (Dearnaley, 2003).
All the hot air about how bringing prostitution out into the open would be good because visibility will take the abuse and exploitation out of prostitution is exposed for the lie it is with such “pimp privacy” decriminalization laws.
On a related note, the media has been banned in Cologne’s red light district because apparently bringing prostitution out into the open isn’t as good for prostituted people as pro-legalization people have said. “This zone is owned by the city of Cologne and is not considered a public street,” Mr Kilp said.”Anyone filming or taking pictures there will be liable to prosecution. Prostitutes are having sexual intercourse in cars there, it is not a good thing to be filming.”
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Violet says:
I would like to suggest that the NZ Government enquiry, a minimum of three years in duration, may have taken into account all the local and international information it was felt appropriate to include before the decision was made to, not just legitimise, (legalisation) but completely de-criminalise prostitution.
If laws were passed based on a perfect understanding of reality, then no well-intentioned government would ever pass a mistaken law. I’m not saying that the NZ reform bill is a mistake, but that we need to be realistic about how laws are passed.
I mean, Sam points out that this evidence was available and still it didn’t sway a majority in the NZ parliament, and cicely says the government had done an inquiry so apparently they had better information, etc., etc., but you know, it really doesn’t work like that.
Most legislators who cast votes know very little about any subject. They’re advised by aides, and they listen to a parade of witnesses or stakeholders or whatever who testify before committee/parliament about what should happen. Then they vote based on what they believe, and what they believe depends on a) who they find persuasive, b) what lobbying group has their ear, and c) what they personally prefer.
I recently read a transcript of a hearing in Canada that was considering decriminalizing prostitution, and it’s instructive to see how it works. There’s a parade of witnesses, including anti-prostitution researchers like Melissa Farley, pro-prostitution advocates who tell the committee that the anti-prostitution people are just moralists, pimps who plea for the right to run their businesses, and so on. The committee members listen and you can see them making up their minds. They may not believe the evidence that’s presented. If they already have predispositions to one opinion or another, not much will sway them.
You also have to look at the background lobbying; in New Zealand, the NZPC had the government’s ear and was the main player in shaping government attitudes towards prostitution. And they are clearly pro-prostitution — they are a prostitutes collective (though for all I know they’re also composed of pimps and brothel owners.)
I’m rambling, but my main point is that it’s a mistake to think either NZ must have had better information OR that NZ knew that bad things would happen and did it anyway. Laws aren’t made like that.
I think cicely is probably right that at bottom, the attitude in NZ was that sex of any kind should not be illegal, except for rape/trafficking/coercion/children, etc. And the expectation was that those latter things could be dealt with separately. But I suspect they are learning that it is extremely difficult to legalize one form of prostitution without opening up a floodgate of trafficking and child prostitution.
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Violet says:
For what it’s worth, I found New Zealand’s 2006 report to the UN on the status of women; article 6 specifically addresses the sex industry and trafficking:
CEDAW Report: (6th) The Status of Women in New Zealand (2006)-Article 6
That whole site is interesting: it’s New Zealand’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs.
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cicely says:
What you haven’t done is explain on what basis you think New Zealand’s experiment legitimizing prostitution as a job will work where all other attempts have failed and why the available evidence of the harms exacerbated by legitimization in NZ so far doesn’t figure into your optimistic theory.
I’m not sure where I’ve articulated any optimistic theory re the abuses. All I’ve said (I think) in that regard is that voluntary prostitute’s co-operation in comabatting problem areas will be easier to obtain in NZ than it used to be.
I see that the abuses have not been successfully combatted by *any* approach to prostitution to date, with the possible exception of Swedens. It’s my opinion that if the Swedish system works to that end, it still exists for the wrong reasons, and still leaves many women (and others) vulnerable. If Sweden was to state that its system knowingly treats some women unfairly for the greater good, that would be another thing. But a State shouldn’t treat persons doing nothing morally wrong unfairly because it has otherwise failed to stem the tide of actual and appropriately named criminal behaviours. At least, that should be the subject of debate at policy level, imo.
but my main point is that it’s a mistake to think either NZ must have had better information OR that NZ knew that bad things would happen and did it anyway. Laws aren’t made like that.
I’m under no illusions about the processes of law-making, or whether bad laws can be made - clearly they can and often are. I was just making the point that a wide range of perspectives were at least taken into account.
The NZ government neither condemns nor condones prostitution perse. It acknowledges its persistence as a fact of life. No type of legislation or lack there-of has ever looked like eradicating it, or, imo ever will in the foreseeable future. It can only be de-criminalised, patch-work regulated, or pushed further and further into a criminal and dangerous under or otherworld. Sweden is no doubt exporting it’s problems to surrounding countries at present, and unless there is wide international agreement that the Swedish approach is the right and proper one to take (which is unlikely), this is all that will continue to happen. My personal opinion is that the eradication of prostitution altogether is not a necessary goal. Which is where the debate shifts into our culture’s negative attitudes to sex and sexuality overall.
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Mandos says:
And with that, we can immediately lead back to the Thread That Never Ended. Is it possible for a healthy society to sell access to bodies and remain a healthy society?
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Violet says:
But a State shouldn’t treat persons doing nothing morally wrong unfairly because it has otherwise failed to stem the tide of actual and appropriately named criminal behaviours.
But States do this all the time, sacrificing the liberty of a few for the good of the many. That’s why you can’t legally sell your organs. You could make a strong libertarian case that a person has a right to sell off any parts of herself that she wishes. But an organs-for-sale free market leads to abuses and exploitation that society does not wish to tolerate.
Of course each situtation in which the State inserts itself like this is debatable, and should be. I’m just pointing out that there are situations where everyone agrees that it is proper for the State to exert control.
Obviously prostitution is not one of those cases where “everyone agrees.”
Sweden is no doubt exporting its problems to surrounding countries at present, and unless there is wide international agreement that the Swedish approach is the right and proper one to take (which is unlikely), this is all that will continue to happen.
A problem for both Sweden and NZ is that they are isolated social experiments in a patriarchy-drenched world full of illegal trafficking. Both experiments are designed to defeat the traditional prostitution paradigm, or at least that’s how I see it. But the existing paradigm is all around them — women as the sex class, stigmatization, men brutalizing women, and an enormous market in international trafficking. How well can these experiments succeed in this kind of world enviroment?
Is Sweden displacing prostitution to outside its borders? I wouldn’t be surprised. Is New Zealand becoming a magnet for illegal traffickers and child prostitution? I wouldn’t be surprised.
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Mandos says:
I suspect the only way to stop harmful prostitution (however you define it) or harmful porn (however you define it) is to make people stop wanting it, ultimately.
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Violet says:
I suspect the only way to stop harmful prostitution (however you define it) or harmful porn (however you define it) is to make people stop wanting it, ultimately.
And how do you do that?
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Mandos says:
[unhelpfully]Precisely the problem.[/unhelpfully]
But you get my point, right? If the MPAA can’t stop piracy without the Internet evolving to avoid their enforcement, how can you stop even illegal porn?
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cicely says:
Mandos says:
And with that, we can immediately lead back to the Thread That Never Ended.
Well yes, Mandos. I’ve just read the Melissa Farley article in its entirety, and it’s full of debatable interpretations and points even among all the indisputable ones. At one point she lists a veritable army of reputable organisations lobbying for legalisation or decriminalisation of prostitution only to dismiss them all in one way or another as either misguided or pimp mouthpieces. She’s entitled to her point of view, of course, but it always come back to one thing. The central question is certainly - ‘is prostitution always, inevitably and in fact by definition violence against women - full stop - or not?’ (This of course ignores male and transgender prostitution, but that’s just par for the course.) It’s impossible to avoid a discussion on attitudes towards sexuality itself. (Though not in this thread, I understand, Violet) The problem of stigmatisation is writ very large in the article, particularly where it talks about unionised German prostitutes still being reluctant to report abuses because of it. (Which Alon has mentioned here before.)
Violet - I have read Janice Raymond’s article before but, as the author of ‘The Transexual Empire’, which argued that transwomen were basically a Trojan Horse of men invading womens space to impose male definitions of femininity, without taking into account the medicalised conditions of ‘permission’ to transition at the time of writing, she lacks credibilty for me. She objectifies people to suit her politics. Sheila Jeffreys, (both women are quoted by Melissa Farley) does the same. Jeffreys identifies as a celibate lesbian (because it’s not about having sex with women, it’s about not having sex with men), and has been objectifying lesbians for years to suit her politics. Both women (and their followers) did immeasurable damage to whole communities of people and I trust them not, to listen to the subjective voices of the women they are here once more discussing from on high.
It seems that perhaps the closer people are to the actual (mainly) women currently involved in prostitution, the more likely they are to support de-criminalisation. I’ve been reading an article by Liv Jessen, the first recipient of the Human Rights Award from Amnesty International for Prostitute’s Rights work. She did what Sam did but in reverse. She started out in the 1980’s as a radical feminist social worker in Norway, working with prostitutes who she believed to a woman were victims of male violence. She believed absolutely that selling sexual services was synonymous with selling part of yourself and invariably therefore done at great emotional cost. Over the years (17 at the time of writing) working with prostitutes she came to realise that the sex industry includes many different degrees of volition and exploitation. She has learned that there is no ‘one fits all’ explanation for all that goes on within it. And now she lobby’s for decriminalisation.
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cicely says:
But States do this all the time, sacrificing the liberty of a few for the good of the many. That’s why you can’t legally sell your organs.
That’s a fair point. And, as you say, there’s just so much more disagreement about prostitution.
A problem for both Sweden and NZ is that they are isolated social experiments in a patriarchy-drenched world full of illegal trafficking. Both experiments are designed to defeat the traditional prostitution paradigm, or at least that’s how I see it. But the existing paradigm is all around them — women as the sex class, stigmatization, men brutalizing women, and an enormous market in international trafficking. How well can these experiments succeed in this kind of world enviroment?
Is Sweden displacing prostitution to outside its borders? I wouldn’t be surprised. Is New Zealand becoming a magnet for illegal traffickers and child prostitution? I wouldn’t be surprised.
At least neither country could be accused of utter paralysis. Although I actually didn’t know until this conversation that there was only a one vote majority to get the law reform passed in the NZ parliament. I wasn’t in the country for the public debate. Well, there’s no way around this thing but through it…and I agree with your outlining of the godawful world environment. How could I not?
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Violet says:
It’s impossible to avoid a discussion on attitudes towards sexuality itself. (Though not in this thread, I understand, Violet)
Actually I think that might be very appropriate here, since the New Zealand reform is predicated on the idea of de-stigmatizing sexuality and treating sex work as simply work.
The problem of stigmatisation is writ very large in the article, particularly where it talks about unionised German prostitutes still being reluctant to report abuses because of it.
Yes: Farley doesn’t address the fact that the ultimate goal of decriminalization reform, at least in New Zealand, is to de-stigmatize sex work. Which is hardly going to happen over night. It’s a long-range goal — extremely long-range, I would think. Whether it’s achievable at all is something to discuss. But that is the goal.
Violet - I have read Janice Raymond’s article before but, as the author of ‘The Transexual Empire’, which argued that transwomen were basically a Trojan Horse of men invading womens space to impose male definitions of femininity, without taking into account the medicalised conditions of ‘permission’ to transition at the time of writing, she lacks credibilty for me.
Stupid question: what does “the medicalised conditions of ‘permission’ to transition” mean?
I’ve been reading an article by Liv Jessen, the first recipient of the Human Rights Award from Amnesty International for Prostitute’s Rights work.
If that’s online I would love to read it.
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will says:
I remember the good old days when I didnt have to think to read this blog.
Can’t I just act the same way I’ve always acted so I can get the ladies and then come back later and do all of this high falutin’ thinking?
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Infidel says:
Go to Kos
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Violet says:
I’m sorry, Will; what would you like a thread on?
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will says:
“What a great Feminist Will is!”
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Sam says:
When a conversation on prostitution devolves into criticizing individual people on unrelated matters so the mud can shake off onto prostitution instead of focusing on social theories and collected information about prostitution itself, it has veered down a path I don’t care to follow.
“She did what Sam did but in reverse.”
To quote the talented Ms. Tanya Donelly, “I tell you stories. That doesn’t mean you know me.”
There’s an article in today’s Guardian that I think is relevant to the destigmatization debate about Heather Mills McCartney suing a paper for saying she used to be a prostitute.
The Sun called topless photos of Heather “obscene and pornographic”, which would seem odd considering page 3 girls (never women, always girls), but actually it’s very much in alignment with the pornographizing of women’s bodies and subsequent male devaluation. Readers wanking over page 3 are the same ones being written to in the McCartney article slamming a woman for having her breasts photographed because that’s what men think of page 3 girls, that they’re being obscene sluts just the way men like them, just the way pornography titles reveal how men prefer to think of naked women.
As many radical feminists have said before, removing men’s sense of obscenity at seeing a woman’s breasts would mean the end of pornography because without the ‘dirty’ appeal there would be as much obscenity in seeing breasts as in seeing elbows or ears.
Where prostitution goes, sexual crimes against non-prostitute women and girl children follow because the fostered belief that tells men they are entitled to sex on demand reinforces their “right” to make objects out of all female people. The Australian states where prostitution has been legalized have the county’s highest rates of domestic violence, rape, and child prostitution. Nevada has one of the highest rape rates in the USA and is one of the most anti-woman US states in general (it’s a conservative ‘red’ state overall.) Women’s Enews recently reported that spousal murders in New Zealand are way disproportionate when compared to spousal murders in other countries, 51% of all murders compared to the USA’s 11% of all murders. Murder is the leading cause of death of prostitutes, and the most common way prostitutes are killed is by strangulation, an intimately close act of violence.
I think I read in the book “On Killing” that even though going for the eyes is the easiest way to kill someone, unless men are trained by the military to dehumanize the people they’re going to attack they’re extraordinarily reluctant to look a fellow human in the eye and continue with deadly intent. Men who strangle prostituting women to death have had their belief in the fellow humanity of prostitutes washed away by misogynist enculturation that is increasingly including advertising and pornography that edits out women’s humanity-denoting eyes, leaving only tits, ass, and other sexified parts.
Where prostitution goes, the value of women’s lives goes down and violence against them goes up, because further entitling men to treat women as disposable fuck toys creates an even more toxic social atmosphere than women already have to deal with everywhere.
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Violet says:
Where prostitution goes, the value of women’s lives goes down and violence against them goes up, because further entitling men to treat women as disposable fuck toys creates an even more toxic social atmosphere than women already have to deal with everywhere.
Sam, I agree that this seems to hold true as long as prostitution is stigmatized and women’s sexuality is stigmatized. But I think the NZ approach is about pushing through this — through an intermediate stage where prostitution is decriminalized but still largely stigmatized, still part and parcel of men’s dominion over women as the degraded sex class — and on through to a future where sex is not degraded, women are not degraded, and women who choose to work in sex are simply skilled performers or service providers. Then it wouldn’t be men “using” women as disposable sex toys, but women choosing to offer a service. Do you think that evolution is possible?
That, for me, is the heart of the matter. It’s what I keep asking myself. Can we get there from here? Can we get there by this road?
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Sam says:
I believe women are a statistically insignificant number of prostitute-users for the same reasons 80-85% of men don’t use prostitutes, because the idea of having sex with someone who you know is faking sexual desire for you is repellent. Why would we as a people even aim for such a disconnected, commodified version of sexual relations when there’s no lack of people wanting to have sex with others for free because they truly desire it?
Sex feels really good, and it is easily available to anyone who treats others with respect and kindness. There’s no lack of consensual fucking in the world, and therefore no real reason to purchase sex unless you either don’t want to treat others with respect and kindness, y’know like humans, or you aren’t looking to have sex “with” someone as much as masturbating yourself with their body. I’m being generous here and leaving out the majority of tricks who use prostitutes because they don’t like women and/or see their dicks as a kind of weapon or sex as a mechanism for ‘taking power’ from someone.
Why seek to have sexual relations between humans governed by the mandates of capitalism in the first place? I think that’s only considered an option for the future of sex because our current culture values making money above everything else that humans do.
I’ve got to see about getting D.A. Clarke’s permission to post her brilliant essay from Not For Sale, “Prostitution for everyone: Feminism, globalisation and the ’sex’ industry”, online. She masterfully ties prostitution, sexism, racism, classism, capitalism and a bunch of other -isms together in a way that answers the question “Why not prostitution for everyone?”
Any asking of the question “Why not prostitution for everyone?” also needs to assume the biological factors about sexual relations spreading diseases and pests and inducing pregnancy have been dealt with satisfactorily, a hard thing to imagine without utopian presumptions in this Age of AIDS and pitifully inconsistent birth control even when it is available.
Bringing it back from a seemingly impossible utopia for a minute (you know how I feel about the usefulness of such fantastical speculations), there are friends of mine I adore and will make meals for and give backrubs to for free, but the only person I have sex with is my partner because having sex isn’t the same as making a meal for someone or giving them a backrub. No matter how sexually promiscuous or polyamorous a person is they don’t casually lick the genitals of their friends and acquaintances and expect to have their genitals licked in return just because all of them like oral sex and hang out together sometimes. Explore internally why you don’t casually lick your friends’ genitals and expect them to lick yours before wondering why or why not a world in which licking the genitals of strangers for needed money could ever work.
Here’s an argument I’ve haven’t pulled out in a while because it’s kind of coarse, but its day is here again. I doubt most people have irrational fear and shame about taking a big dump in a toilet, but still no one wants a picture of them taking a shit posted on the Internet. Is this evidence of a culturally-enforced prudish attitude about natural, normal bowel movements that we should seek to “correct” or something more intrinsic that needn’t be pathologized and overcome for any reason, much less to satisfy capitalist motives?
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Violet says:
This is fascinating, and now is the first chance I’ve had to come back to it.
The poop analogy is coarse but somewhat apt, since elimination and sex are the two activities most commonly shrouded in privacy in human societies.
I think I’ve commented before that all known human societies treat sex as a special behavior and usually a private one. I personally believe that the majority of humans will always see sexuality as more private and special than, say, sharing a meal or giving a back rub. (I can’t prove that, it’s just what I think based on history and psychology). I don’t think that’s patriarchy; I think it’s to do with how we’re made.
Having said that though, it’s worth noting that: 1) the degree to which sex is considered private and special varies among human societies, and some have been much more open and casual about it than we are, and 2) there are many individual people who will tell you right now that their own personal perspective is that sex is not much different than a back rub. And many of those same people will argue that they see no problem with commodifying sex. So that perspective does exist.
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Mandos says:
Sam, thank you for clarifying and expounding at appropriate length on this key point: that you do NOT believe that there exists a condition under which sex can be sold. That sex is substantially different from other human activities.
Therefore, can I presume that you believe that it cannot be compared to buying a T-shirt made in a sweatshop in Cambodia or something? Even though that is an exploitative act?
Why would we as a people even aim for such a disconnected, commodified version of sexual relations when there’s no lack of people wanting to have sex with others for free because they truly desire it?
Sex feels really good, and it is easily available to anyone who treats others with respect and kindness.
Hmm. Are you sure about this? What about disabled people, fat people (in our culture), people without personalities, etc, etc?
A long time ago on a board far, far away, we hashed out a similar discussion on porn and prostitution which was, if anything, far longer, more passionate and even trolly than the relatively academic discussion we’ve been having here. At least one thing stuck to me in that discussion.
One regular, a woman, told us she had been a stripper a few years ago, and related to us a striking account. So, her general impression of the experience wasn’t terrible, for sure, but it’s not something she aspired to do her whole life: nevertheless, it didn’t seem like she felt she suffered through it. However, it was her account of her clientele that was most interesting. They roughly divided in two groups, as I recall: regulars, and frat party-type groups.
The latter group was much more likely to be offensive and problematic. The former group, however, this woman seemed to feel a little sorry for: men with no personalities, looks, or prospects, who used the occasion to construct a quiet fantasy for themselves.
I hope I’m remembering it correctly. It’d be impossible to dredge it up now, I think. Whatever the case, I thought it interesting.
There’s no lack of consensual fucking in the world, and therefore no real reason to purchase sex unless you either don’t want to treat others with respect and kindness, y’know like humans, or you aren’t looking to have sex “with” someone as much as masturbating yourself with their body.
I think one of the arguments that the other side is making is that carnal pleasure shouldn’t be seen as subsidiary on the more “noble” emotional/relational pleasures. It sounds like you are defending the opposite proposition. Am I right?
Is this evidence of a culturally-enforced prudish attitude about natural, normal bowel movements that we should seek to “correct” or something more intrinsic that needn’t be pathologized and overcome for any reason, much less to satisfy capitalist motives?
I’d be, in this case, forced to agree with your inevitable critics that this analogy is bad. Sex is something most people do specifically *for* pleasure.
But all this aside, the fundamental question is whether or not, given Already Existing Capitalism, there is a difference between degrading work when one kind of work is sexual.
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Violet says:
I’d be, in this case, forced to agree with your inevitable critics that this analogy is bad. Sex is something most people do specifically for pleasure.
Perhaps I misunderstood the pooping analogy, but I thought the point was that sexual behavior is considered private not because of patriarchal prudishness, but because of something about the activity itself. Anthopologists have considered the same idea, so it’s not bizarre.
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Mandos says:
Well, for me the reason why pooping should be private is that pooping is gross and smelly and contains negative connotations due to its unhygienicity. Any pleasure in it is the pleasure of relief. So of course one would want to hide it.
Clearly, not everyone is willing to agree that the same holds for sex. And some people believe that “grossness” is why people hide things. Or spiritual profundity, I guess as well. If in our modern world sex is neither, well…
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Violet says:
And some people believe that “grossness” is why people hide things.
Except that people hide sex even in societies where it’s not considered gross at all. And not all societies have agreed that pooping is particularly gross, but they still seek privacy for it.
Some anthropologists and behaviorists have thought that there is an impulse to seek privacy for elimination because of vulnerability. Something like that could also hold true for sex, which involves vulnerability on a couple of different levels (physical as well as psychological.)
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Mandos says:
Well yes. But how much does the vulnerability issue stand now? There’s technically no vulnerability through a TV screen…
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Violet says:
Yes, and most of us are not at risk of being attacked by wild animals while taking a dump, but there you go.
The point is just that it’s entirely plausible that a general human tendency to surround sex with privacy is not a construction of the patriarchy and is not a function of people thinking sex is dirty. It might be deeper than that. Personally I think it is. But of course, as with all human behaviors, there are exceptions. There have been societies where pooping was an occasion for pleasant socializing, and there have been societies (including our own) where a certain amount of sex was conducted in public. But the majority of humans, I suspect, will continue to feel rather private about their sexual behavior. They may well enjoy the exhibitionism of the few — those humans who are happy to perform sex for the cameras — but their own sexual activities are likely to be conducted in private.
If that’s true, then what are the implications for thinking about (to wrench myself back on topic) the commodification of sex? If it’s possible that for most people sex will always be seen as a unique activity, then it’s possible that the commodification of it will always carry a different connotation than the commodification of other activities.
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cicely says:
Stupid question: what does “the medicalised conditions of ‘permission’ to transition” mean?
When the gatekeeper was the patriarchal medical establishment, pre and during 70’s feminism, those wanting to transition to live as the women they felt themselves to be already, had to jump through hoops to present as kind of ‘more woman than women’ to meet male standards of ‘femininity’. Many just lied because they had no choice while it’s always been the case in fact that transwomen wish to, and do present in as great a variety of ways as any other women, and always would have.
I’ve been reading an article by Liv Jessen, the first recipient of the Human Rights Award from Amnesty International for Prostitute’s Rights work.
http://www.bayswan.org/swed/livjessen.html
When a conversation on prostitution devolves into criticizing individual people on unrelated matters so the mud can shake off onto prostitution instead of focusing on social theories and collected information about prostitution itself, it has veered down a path I don’t care to follow.
I am meaning to focus on social theories and their origins here. Raymond and Jeffreys have been and still are very influential social theorists, and imo, most often not in a good way. Melissa Farley quoted them both, and Violet provided a link to Raymond by itself. I think my comment was appropriate.
cicely -“She did what Sam did but in reverse.”
Sam - To quote the talented Ms. Tanya Donelly, “I tell you stories. That doesn’t mean you know me.”
That’s true. I was making the point that it’s possible to change one’s mind in either direction and further that Liv’s change occurred in the context of working professionally as a social worker among prostitutes and over a long period of time. I don’t presume to know that you haven’t also been in direct, in person contact with women who work as prostitutes, or anything else about you or what informs your views.
Women’s Enews recently reported that spousal murders in New Zealand are way disproportionate when compared to spousal murders in other countries, 51% of all murders compared to the USA’s 11% of all murders.
Yes, but NZ’ers aren’t armed to the teeth and going about murdering people in all kinds of other contexts in addition to spousal murder. When I left NZ not even the police were armed with more than long batons, and they were snuck in very controversially at the time of the Springbok (South African Rugby team) tour and the attendant country-wide protests by many thousands of anti-apartheid activists (including myself). I was shocked to see the police wearing guns in visible holsters when I first came to Australia.
Sex feels really good, and it is easily available to anyone who treats others with respect and kindness.
This is a highly debatable point. In fact I just don’t think it’s true. I think there are many, many people in our societies who go through life having far less sex than they would like to have, even long to have, with some not having any at all. Not all people who are going without would consider paying for sexual services either. These people may even be the silent majority.
I think I’ve commented before that all known human societies treat sex as a special behavior and usually a private one.
Well, sex with prostitutes, for most customers, is still conducted in private, the scene of people apparently having sex in cars in the red light district of Cologne notwithstanding. Teenagers have sex in cars too.
There have been societies where pooping was an occasion for pleasant socializing,
There was an infamous commune called ‘centrepoint’, on the Coromandel Peninsuala in NZ, run by a guy called Bert Potter. I never went there myself but I heard from a number of people that the toilets were set up four to a room, two facing two. Whether or not this was just a rumour I couldn’t really say, but I know I thought that would probably be enough to discourage me from ever living there! Bert turned out to be a paedophile, unless that was just a rumour too.
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BTD says:
I’m pretty confused here.
It seems the current agenda is that the main goal is reducing the amount of prostitution, and everyone seem to take that for granted. Why is that? What’s so wrong with prostution? (Not child prostitution. Prostitution itself.) -
Infidel says:
I’ve laid it out there and been kindly treated. As a mastrubator and former user of porn- I can say probably my desires might be met by any hole I can stick it in and recieve enough stimulation to orgasm. It isn’t sex but it is as personal as a prostitute and it could be bought. Is that wrong? If I’m sticking it in the hole to dominate the hole and have power over the hole is that wrong? If the hole is a human is that wrong? If the hole is same sex- a mans mouth behind the hole, is that wrong? If there is a child behind the hole, is that wrong? If it is a machine is that wrong?
Anything but sex for procreation is wrong to the degree that it negatively impacts the participants, because sex for procreation is right.(forced anything((against the will of the participant))being wrong) -
Violet says:
It seems the current agenda is that the main goal is reducing the amount of prostitution, and everyone seem to take that for granted.
Well, no, actually that’s one of the things under debate.
Sam believes that prostitution should be reduced because prostitution is always deleterious. Cicely believes that there’s nothing wrong with prostitution per se, just the conditions in which most prostitutes find themselves.
I would say that since the conditions under which most prostitutes work world-wide are bad, then reducing the numbers of prostitutes overall reduces the level of human suffering in the world.
Obviously pro-prostitution feminists would counter that the thing to do is just improve conditions, not try to reduce prostitution.
Of course you can do both: I personally would like to see less prostitution and also an improvement in the conditions under which prostitution occurs.
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Sam says:
”there are many individual people who will tell you right now that their own personal perspective is that sex is not much different than a back rub.”
I’d say some, but not many, though I guess that depends on what’s meant by many. However, it is commonly said that the sex of prostitution is “emotionless” sex and I thoroughly disagree with that status quo quote. The emotions of men buying prostituted sex aren’t warm, fuzzy feelings of friendship but there are other emotions like resentment, anger, dominance, revenge, etc. as there is no such thing as an emotionless minute in a person’s mind unless they’re seriously mentally disturbed (possibly not even then but who knows?)
”it cannot be compared to buying a T-shirt made in a sweatshop in Cambodia or something?”
When US soldiers wanted to humiliate and break the spirits of Iraqis, it wasn’t sewing clothes for hours that they made them do, it was sexual torture that was photographed. A hard penis repeatedly breaking into a vagina or anus is a much different kind of assault than being slapped repeatedly in the face. Rape victims are treated much, much differently than victims of non-sexual crimes.
I’ve seen disabled feminists take great umbrage with the idea that they don’t have any kind of a sex lives, and I’ve seen fat feminists do the same because it’s a cruel prejudice that no one in their right mind would willingly choose to be sexual with them because of either physical condition.
”men with no personalities, looks, or prospects, who used the occasion to construct a quiet fantasy for themselves.”
If those men were just constructing quiet fantasies then it would be only the frat boys abusing sex workers, soliciting children in sex business neighborhoods, and treating females everywhere like lesser beings because of their denigrated female sexuality. I don’t believe men’s misogyny is as neatly compartmentalized as your source says, not like I can believe a sex worker emotionally fending off the hatred of men that so often accompanies prostitution finds it comforting to think not all men are woman-hating assholes, just some who are easily identified. Unfortunately, rapists are not easily identifiable by their looks, age, education, or demeanor in public.
”I think one of the arguments that the other side is making is that carnal pleasure shouldn’t be seen as subsidiary on the more “noble” emotional/relational pleasures.”
I’m not sure what this means, please explain it another way.
”there are many, many people in our societies who go through life having far less sex than they would like to have”
Like Hugo’s nice guy Pete, for instance? With around 40 million prostitutes in the world plus epidemic rape rates and incest, there are many people being made to have far more sex than they would like because it is demanded of them by more powerful others. A majority of women report being compelled into sex they didn’t want (some call it rape, most don’t), something I consider way more horrendous and problematic than anyone not having sex whenever they want it.
As our boy Pete demonstrates, masculinity is very tied up in being a “player” and that is seen by men as the opposite of feminism with its goal of treating women like respected equals. Men and their sexual instruction manuals, pornography, regularly calling women whores, hoes, sluts, and tramps goes against the idea that supposedly undersexed men really want women to make themselves more sexually available and less shamed for having sex.
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cicely says:
cicely:”there are many, many people in our societies who go through life having far less sex than they would like to have”
Sam: Like Hugo’s nice guy Pete, for instance?
Well, I’m in absolutely no doubt that there are a lot of women who’d like to be having more sex as well. I only made the comment to challenge your apparent assertion that - outside purchasing sexual services - anyone who’s prepared to be respectful and kind can have sex (and I’ll add physical intimacy) with someone any old time they choose. I think we all know that isn’t true. You must know that isn’t true…but I agree with you when you say…
With around 40 million prostitutes in the world plus epidemic rape rates and incest, there are many people being made to have far more sex than they would like because it is demanded of them by more powerful others. A majority of women report being compelled into sex they didn’t want (some call it rape, most don’t), something I consider way more horrendous and problematic than anyone not having sex whenever they want it.
No prizes for guessing which I would consider the lesser thing to suffer myself. It’s just that I don’t agree that the whole concept of buying and selling sexual services is negative. I believe it can be positive. It’s the social context in which it happens that needs to be changed, and in a big, big way. The abuses have to be stopped - absolutely - but we also have to get honest about all the things that influence our thinking about sex. The ones that would have us stigmatise sex work more than work of any other kind, even in the absence of exploitation and abuse. When (generic) you actually *define* it as exploitation and abuse - ‘violence against women’, you make this impossible.
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ehj2 says:
the relationship of a pimp to women as sexworkers is that of a capitalist to capital — one of defacto objectification.
one certain way to have less prostitution and improve the lives of prostitutues is to make the role of pimp illegal. put all of the power of owning the transaction in the hands of the woman. if we trust women, we must let them decide this issue. in my mind, all laws pertaining to women in the collective should only be decided by women.
language gives us a lot of clues here. if we sell ourselves in any form of labor to which we harbor some antipathy, we acknowledge we have in some sense prostituted ourselves. we sell ourselves, piece by piece, day by day. we call our western society a rat race and attempt to numb ourselves to the price we pay in selling ourselves to survive within it. we have built a machine society and to pay for our basic food and shelter we are slaves to clocks and the mechanisms of production and bureaucracy. i hope that in time we will see how unhealthy this is and remedy it.
to sell our intimacy, however, and sex is intimacy no matter how arduously we attempt to blunt ourselves to this deep reality, is to sell something that psychologically resides within us. it is not a coincidence that emotionally sex is related to the religious function and that in our not so ancient past, that relationship was expressed in temple prostitution.
i am thus strongly predisposed to believe that all sexual prostitution is psychologically bad for both seller and buyer. it is inappropriate (because it is psychologically unhealthy to my sense of agency) for me to sell a piece of my soul, or attempt to buy a piece of another’s soul.
language clearly fails me here. i do not imagine one must believe in God or an individual Soul to comprehend that one has something infinite within them that responds to music and poetry and the numinous and the imaginal as if something within one filled the very cosmos and all of time. even an atheist knows we are not simply (or only) machines (of atoms and molecules) and that we cannot sell what resides within The Temple of our Selves without diminishing our Selves. on the contrary, i believe that atheists, far more than those who are blindly religious, rebel against myths about an invisible God (of any persuasion), precisely because they refuse to sellout their own clear personal experience and the integrity of their own Psyches, their own pure (virgin, untainted, unadulterated) psychological Self(s).
i would support the free agency of women to choose and i would legalize their free choice. i would make the capitalist/corporatist organization of women as objects and commodity resources (pimping) illegal.
/ehj2
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cicely says:
i am thus strongly predisposed to believe that all sexual prostitution is psychologically bad for both seller and buyer. it is inappropriate (because it is psychologically unhealthy to my sense of agency) for me to sell a piece of my soul, or attempt to buy a piece of another’s soul.
language clearly fails me here. i do not imagine one must believe in God or an individual Soul to comprehend that one has something infinite within them that responds to music and poetry and the numinous and the imaginal as if something within one filled the very cosmos and all of time. even an atheist knows we are not simply (or only) machines (of atoms and molecules) and that we cannot sell what resides within The Temple of our Selves without diminishing our Selves.
ehj2 - The question might be, is it only appropriate to appreciate or share the music, the poetry, the imaginal of sexuality in the currently socially sanctioned ways? As we do have a capitalist economy in which we buy and sell art (and artists/actors etc *were* once widley considered to be prostituting themselves and very much looked down upon), why can’t we approve of persons selling sexual services when the person actually doing the selling maintains that they do not experience the work as personally damaging? Are we incapable of believing in the subjective experience of another when it conflicts with our own sense of ourselves? I know someone very well whose attitude to sexuality is very different from mine. She is able to have sex with multiple partners - mostly female, but also some male - because she has a very active libido and delights in her own sexuality as well as that of others who are willing to open themselves up to desire and enjoy uncomplicated by otherly relational stuff, guilt-free sex. I used to wonder what on earth she could see in some of the partners I saw her with, but that’s how she explained it to me, and that’s also what I saw. This woman is middle class, a scientist (lots of white-coated sex in control rooms ;), very confident and well-adjusted.(curious term). Actually, she was my partner for four years in my late twenties, early thirties. I learned a lot about sex from knowing her - including the discovery that I could enjoy a relationship with someone so unlike one woman at a time me, and not experience jealousy. We parted for totally un-related reasons, and are still friends. She carried on the same with the very next woman she partnered with and they have now been together for almost twenty years. Curiously enough, she was very much what I call ‘the marrying kind’, and I’m not.
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cicely says:
Reported in The New Zealander - a national paper sold abroad to ex-pats, Wed June 14, pge 9:
“Two years after claiming New Zealand has ‘a large problem’ with child-sex trafficking, the United States Government has changed its tune. The US State Department’s annual report on the subject, published last week, says New Zealand remains in the top category of countries that meet minimum standards for elimination of severe forms of trafficking…The tone of the report is in contrast to the 2004 version which claimed New Zealand had a ‘large problem’ with children being trafficked inside the country for sex.
And just to demonstrate that barrow pushing interpretations and statistic bending etc goes on at the highest level too…
But the governments of both countries continue to dispute what is meant by the term ‘trafficking’. The US regards any child prostitution as trafficking, but New Zealand officials, who have argued the issue with the US embassy in Wellington, say
trafficking must involve transporting children for the purpose of sex. Justice Minister Mark Burton said he was pleased that New Zealand’s efforts were being recognised, but was concerned about some of the reports comments about New Zealand. There were
differences about definitions, some characterisations and the use of some anecdotal information. The issue was being discussed with the US in an attempt to clarify it.US ambassador Bill McCormick applauded New Zealand’s efforts to fight the problem. ‘The New Zealand Government continues to show significant efforts to prevent trafficking in this country, and to address trafficking issues in the region.’
Does NZ have a large problem with child (under 18) sex workers perse though? In the assessment of the industry at the time of the law reform the estimate for the national number of underage street workers was 126; in massage parlours 5; in rap/escort parlours
5; in escort agencies 50; private workers 22; ship workers (catering to sailors - merchant and military navies) 2 - for a total of 210. You can see that many of these (71%) are street workers, private workers or ship workers. I have known underage streetworkers - all
were aged 16 or 17 and also had ‘adult’ personal sexual relationships - and none of them had pimps. They worked for and by themselves or with a friend. Bearing in mind the difficulties around obtaining accurate statistics, I would not call this a ‘large problem’ in a
population of approximately 4 million people. It may increase after law reform, (and may not) but if this increase is in self motivated street and private prostitution (which is still illegal as it always was, and with stricter penalties for any adult involved in it than
previously), as a work ‘choice’ over other available options, what is the source of the problem? Is it a similar source to the ‘problem’ of underage individuals engaging in sexual activity at all? Is it drug addiction? Emotional or physical alcohol addiction (can’t hold down a 9-5 job)? Rebelliousness (don’t want a 9-5 job)? Any combination of these? I’m not suggesting that childhood sexual abuse or other violent or psychological abuse hasn’t led some, even many of these young people onto the streets and into prostitution. I’m just suggesting that the problem be kept in perspective. -
ehj2 says:
Cicely,
I’m sorry I wasn’t clearer. The dimensions and scale of what are “healthy” for one person’s agency and those same dimensions for another can be incredibly different. A wise culture would protect a significant amount of cultural space for extraordinary amounts of diversity.
I abhor most forms of rigidity, generally suffer when I see the consequences of notions of “norms,” and have little regard for what currently passes for “socially sanctioned.”
I stand for a woman’s choice. Her agency. Her freedom. Her psychological and artistic and spiritual truth and health. She may offer herself, or share parts of her experience, with another, for a price, if she chooses. But she owns the psychological narrative and the mythology of her choice. The decision to be a Temple Prostitute in a world that has no real Temples any longer is hers alone.
Humans are obviously physical objects and their activities slide across the spectrum of property rights. SHE, as human agency, must be regarded as different from other forms of “objects” and should be protected as a special category of object. SHE should own all the dimensions of the transaction because the wealth that sustains the transaction is within her and cannot be anywhere else.
I believe very powerfully that a woman should own her body and have considerably more legal power in protecting both her body as well as images of her body.
If society sanctions pornography, then the profit should go to the women whose images comprise pornography. All the other participants in the commerce of such images should be simply commodity resources, paid at scale. SHE should be treated as the OWNER of her images for commercial purposes (just as the writer of a book owns her words). If I own a company, I can decide today to stop making a product. A woman should be able to say, “I no longer wish to sell that movie I made ten years ago.” At that point, no more legal copies should be made for sale. Obviously, images in magazines and other publications can not be withdrawn and can be scanned and distributed endlessly. But that image should never again appear in a commercially sold product.
The feminine — in men and women — is the soul of the universe. It is not property. Objects can be inbued with its mystery (the numinous), but it is not an object. It is closer to poetry, myth, art, magic, music. It’s what makes everything meaningful. It is at the core of Love.
The object of a photo of a woman is desired because it inspires (breathes into a viewer as God would breathe into you your life) the mystery of the woman herself (and the feminine within her) beyond the object. It’s not for sale. It’s hers. And in a rational world it would be inarguable that she should own her essence, her mystery, her beauty, as it is rendered into simple objects easily reproduced and sold.
Every man has masturbated to the image of a woman he has seen or experienced in some way. This is a place beyond all objects. It is a desire for more than any mere object can be. But it is projected and held in physical form in an object. What holds a man in this space is the mystery. It makes the moment meaningful. Of course there is a carnal act. And yet there is far far more. And it is “the more” what makes everything meaningful.
And it is “the more” that is hers.
She may sell herself, but she cannot be sold by others. I am opposed to pimping and the violence of the notion that one person owns and may legally sell any part of another.
It’s her decision, to be remade and reconsidered and rebirthed in each moment. She owns Her Self.
~~~
In clarifying my earlier comment, I’ve expanded a bit into areas of analytical psychology that require further edification. Both men and women have aspects of the feminine and masculine. Our societal norms are to see, and project, these elements more clearly and explicitly on women. I look forward to a world in which both men and women are sufficiently conscious that both honor and serve the same clear values of masculine and feminine in all of us.
Psychologically, we all place poetry of the sacred above everything else. We automatically put it on a pedestal because it is our highest value. When we project that onto human people, it is obvious that in our interactions we would try to tear that down and make the relationship more equal. What we see in the culture around us are both the symptoms of overcompensation (women are demeaned and belittled even as their images are central to everything), and worse, the tendency for pendulum swings in individual people and short-term cultural norms that allow for no equilibrium and no rest.
Our culture will remain a rat race until we accept and honor the feminine within all of us.
/ehj2
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soopermouse says:
There is something that really bothers me about all this discussion. Cicely seems to believe that all the people who have ” a lot less sex than they would like to”, are for some reason entitled to have sex. This would lead to the conclusion that someone has to provide the sex for them. Namely prostitutes.
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Infidel says:
By “have sex” we’re talking about all the various forms of sex yes? Deviant? Normal? Kinky? Same? Vigan? Beastie? Dominant? SadoMaso? Because if Cicely seems to believe that all the people who have “a lot less sex than they would like to” are only having a lot less any sex. Wouldn’t the entitlement be for any kind of sex?
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cicely says:
She may sell herself, but she cannot be sold by others. I am opposed to pimping and the violence of the notion that one person owns and may legally sell any part of another.
/ehj2 - I’ve long understood that in Britain and in NZ before law reform it was always actually illegal to ‘live off the immoral earnings of a prostitute’. Not the phrasing that echoes your sentiments for sure - but anyway, that would make pimping illegal wouldn’t it? It just hasn’t made much of an impact. As you can tell by what I write, I have no actual experience of any prostitution that involved pimping or brothels, escort agencies or anything of that nature. That doesn’t mean I’m unaware of these, obviously. You know my feeling about that side of it is that it’s not for me to say, at least where it’s consensual - it’s for the sex workers themselves and their advocates on health, safety, general working conditions, fair earnings, non-exploitation etc issues. In NZ with decriminalisation it’s up to the government to do all it can as well.
Can I ask does what you say here apply to professional sportspeople too? How do you feel about pre-season football/baseball/basketball drafts and the like?
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cicely says:
soopermouse says:
There is something that really bothers me about all this discussion. Cicely seems to believe that all the people who have ” a lot less sex than they would like to”, are for some reason entitled to have sex. This would lead to the conclusion that someone has to provide the sex for them. Namely prostitutes.
No, that’s not what I’m saying at all, rest assured. If there weren’t any adult women or men in the world choosing to do sex work there shouldn’t be any in my view. No-one is entitled to use another persons body, against that persons will, for their own sexual satisfaction. Even to have what are sometimes called sexual ‘needs’ met. I don’t actually believe in sexual needs that ‘require’ another person at all. One doesn’t die because one can’t have sex with someone. One might feel a bit sad about it, but one can always fantasise and wank. I should know. (And so should all you other wankers out there…;) I am absolutely certain, in fact there’s obviously no denying that many, many men do, however, have a powerful sense of entitlement. The men who travel to places like Thailand to buy sex with underage girls or boys. The men who never question how a woman who doesn’t even speak their language ‘happened’ to be doing sex work when they are not ignorant of the existence of trafficking and sex slavery. The men who rape. The men who pinch women’s bums in bars… and on and on and on and on. I’m as angry and hurt by this stuff as anyone. I just don’t happen to believe that the whole concept of sex work is solely responsible for that attitude or that sex work is a concept that it’s impossible to conceive of in any positive light. Or that sex work isn’t ever actively chosen by mainly women, but also men and transgender people over other available work options. If that was the case there would be absolutely no-one advocating for prostitutes rights, decriminalisation and de-stigmatisation of the sex industry, and we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
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ehj2 says:
Cicely asks me, “Can I ask does what you say here apply to professional sportspeople too? How do you feel about pre-season football/baseball/basketball drafts and the like?”
These are legalized monopolies, and as such they are very distorted markets that act to distort and impact negatively all the markets that touch them, such as television and advertising.
That Americans, who claim the utility and efficacy of free markets as a pseudo-religion “enable” their dominant sports to exist as monopolies tells you how committed actual America is to its values. America supports free markets and democracies and human rights only when it is convenient to the self-interests of America (more precisely, America’s ruling class, that 2% of the population that owns more than half the assets of the entire nation).
But you’ve touched upon a reasonable analogy; sports players “sell” themselves to the machine of football voluntarily and become “property” to the manager/owner processes whereby the sport distributes and maims human resources. Given the incredible physical damage the sport entails for most of its participants, it’s reasonable to consider this a form of prostitution for really big bucks.
/ehj2
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ehj2 says:
Cicely,
I was going to add that I think of football as a form of war porn, because it’s really a form of ritualized tribal war.
And then I realized that I was wrong to think of your question as relating to an analogy. It’s a metaphor.
Football sells violence (and panders to those who love violence) by pornographizing (ugly neologism there, sorry) violence, the same way crude sexual pornography panders and sells sex as an object that can be seized and taken and used and discarded. Both numb consciousness and lower the psychological barriers to violence and objectification.
Football is not like prostitution (analogy), football is prostitution (metaphor). Football is the prostitution of owned and managed tribal violence for money. And it is so lucrative that the owners/managers have successfully distorted our entire legal fabric and economic value system to sustain their incredible profits.
/ehj2
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Violet says:
Football is not like prostitution (analogy), football is prostitution (metaphor). Football is the prostitution of owned and managed tribal violence for money.
Yes, but football players are millionaires and public heroes.
As for real prostitutes — sex workers — I actually think that some of your ideas are the closest I’ve seen yet to my own vague musings. I like the idea of people having complete ownership of their sexuality. I don’t think that’s possible in a world full of pimps and prostituted women (I use the passive construction deliberately). I want to get rid of the pimps, the brothel owners, the traffickers.
I also rather like the idea of treating a person’s sexual image as her property in the same way that an author enjoys copyright.
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cicely says:
Football sells violence (and panders to those who love violence) by pornographizing (ugly neologism there, sorry) violence, the same way crude sexual pornography panders and sells sex as an object that can be seized and taken and used and discarded. Both numb consciousness and lower the psychological barriers to violence and objectification…Football is not like prostitution (analogy), football is prostitution (metaphor). Football is the prostitution of owned and managed tribal violence for money
Well, this here is another can of worms - or two (which I opened, I understand…) There was a longtime sense that amateur sport was more noble than professional sport, which kept professionals out of the Olympics until comparatively recently. But this issue of the wrapping up of all manner of activities in the web of capitalism is way too big for me to tackle. I’m resigned to the inevitability of capitalism because it’s a better economic system than anything else that’s been tried, but it does need to be tempered with humanitarian principles more than it is in most parts of the world. I love sport too. Playing it, watching it, thinking about it, talking about it. Not obsessively, but I’d definitely note it in any personal profile. Just fleetingly and quietly, I do wonder sometimes whether being as highly altruistic as we can possibly be as humans would make us just too good for this world, and also prevent us from ever having any fun!
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ehj2 says:
Just fleetingly and quietly, I do wonder sometimes whether being as highly altruistic as we can possibly be as humans would make us just too good for this world, and also prevent us from ever having any fun!
Cicely, this is really what Hugo wrote with respect to Feminism, that being good is difficult and somehow diminishing of life and pleasure and agency.
My experience is the opposite. And my understanding is that people may think this isn’t true, but only because they believe (incorrectly) that there can be shortcuts to life and pleasure and agency. The shortcut may seem to work for the moment, but it really simply delays true happiness. Unfortunately, most people simply attempt to repeat the shortcut (addictively) because the desire for immediate gratification and pleasure overwhelms any deep effort at authenticity.
America’s psychosis is based in the life destroying notion that one can have everything, that one can have it now, that the height of success is “I did it my way.”
Any form of shortcut is really a form of theft. It diminishes life and postpones it.
Note that one is owned and possessed by one’s addictions (because addictions reduce agency). A person so obsessed by wealth that he cheats and steals does not have the wealth so taken, his obsession has him. A person obsessed by having women be the way he wants them to be (so that he doesn’t treat them or even see them as equals) doesn’t have a woman or a relationship, his dehumanizing world view has him. He is dominated (ruled) by his own dominance because he has no choice in the matter of expressing his personality that way.
Freedom is in owning oneself.
/ehj2
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CR says:
Whoh! Doggonit ehj2! I surely did like what you just said.
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Maia says:
Violet I think you’ve used quite a few unreliable sources in compiling this view of New Zealand’s prostitution laws. It’s understandable that someone outside New Zealand wouldn’t know who some of these organisations are, but I think it does undermine your point.
The thing is there hasn’t been any good research yet into the effects of New Zealand’s law change, so that anyone who is making statements about the effect of the law probably doesn’t have a lot to go on.
For example, you referenced the 40% figure to Scoop, which is an open-wire news service and anyone can post press releases there - it not more has opinions than a graffitti wall. The Maxim institute, which released that figure, is an anti-woman right-wing think tank. I don’t think their argument
As someone else has pointed out the US state department has backed down from the 2004 report, and there’s never been any evidence in New Zealand that its statements were correct, or what evidence they based the report on.
The link you provide for organised crime increasing also doesn’t provide any figures or evidence.
“But have their lives improved, aside from no longer fearing arrest?”
I guess my response would be to ask why you’d want anything more from stopping working as a prostitute from being illegal?
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Violet says:
It’s understandable that someone outside New Zealand wouldn’t know who some of these organisations are, but I think it does undermine your point.
I’m quite open-minded about the NZ experiment. My only point was that it’s apparently too soon to know for sure what the effects are.
The thing is there hasn’t been any good research yet into the effects of New Zealand’s law change, so that anyone who is making statements about the effect of the law probably doesn’t have a lot to go on.
Well, that was pretty much the conclusion of my post…as when I said: “In truth, I think it’s too soon to really gauge the impact of the law. It’s only been three years.”
I was frustrated at not being able to find more information, and in the comments we’ve already discussed some of the problems with the info I did find (such as the Scoop report). I’d expected to find something from the prostitutes’ collective, but they don’t seem to have even updated their website since the reform bill was passed. If you have links to more information or research, please let me know.
“But have their lives improved, aside from no longer fearing arrest?”
I guess my response would be to ask why you’d want anything more from stopping working as a prostitute from being illegal?
Well, I’d also like to see a reduction in the huge rates of murder, rape, and abuse of prostitutes; reduction in STDs; elimination of exploitation-by-pimp, trafficking, slavery, and so forth. I don’t think that being arrested is the only problem prostitutes face.
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cicely says:
Hi Violet,
Just having a little side-discussion re this thread on an Alas thread (on a truce between sex-pos and anti-prostitution feminists) and I may have accidentally left a slightly skewed view of your view of the Scoop report…Going to correct it just in case.
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Violet says:
Hey, cicely. I just updated the post, too, with a little note about the Scoop figure. Thanks again for the information you provided about that in the comments!
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Maia says:
Violet it’s funny that you call it the New Zealand experiment - to most of us who live here (or at least those of us on the left) that refers to our awful economic policies of the 1980s and 1990s - I think there was a documentary, or book, of that name that was released.
Well, I’d also like to see a reduction in the huge rates of murder, rape, and abuse of prostitutes; reduction in STDs; elimination of exploitation-by-pimp, trafficking, slavery, and so forth. I don’t think that being arrested is the only problem prostitutes face.
Me too - I think part of the problem is that proponents of decriminialising prostitution oversell it, and pretend it will solve all these problems, and it won’t. But I think decriminilising prostitution doesn’t need any other justification than that selling your body should not be a crime.
This debate thread, and the debate on Alas, has actually clarified to me why I find debates on these issues quite frustrating. A huge part of my analysis, when it comes to state regulation of the sex industry, is the role of the state. Generally I agree with those who want more regulation of the sex industry’s analysis of the sex industry, but I disagree with their analysis of the ability or willingness for the state to solve these problems.
Cicely if you continue to call it the Scoop report then you’re misrepresenting the report - if nothing else.
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cicely says:
Cicely if you continue to call it the Scoop report then you’re misrepresenting the report - if nothing else.
Yes, thanks maia. If I’m ever discussing this again I understand I should refer to it as the Maxim Institute report, via Scoop, if Scoop is mentioned at all.
Good idea to update the post, Violet.
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cicely says:
Oh, this is niggling me - I need to be precise. It’s not the Maxim Institute’s report either. It’s the Maxim Institute’s misrepresentation of the Prostitute Law Reform Commitee’s report, publicised by the open-wire news service, ‘Scoop’ on which anyone, it seems, can report anything as if it’s real and reliable news. There, that’s better.
