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The idea that women’s public sexuality can so precisely mirror traditional male fantasy while simultaneously existing in a kind of pro-woman, I-do-it-for-myself alternate universe is the cornerstone of funfeminist “thought.”
Posted by Violet under Gender Issues, Prostitution, Pornography on July 22, 2008, 6:49 am EST
I slept! Nine hours, I think. The world is a beautiful place again. Or it was until I got to my computer and started on the news.
Two items this morning caught my eye with their promise to tell the truth, to actually say what the hell is going on in this godforsaken crack-brained world of ours. But on perusal both proved disappointingly flawed.
First up, from ABC: Madams Fall While Their Johns Prosper: D.C. Madam’s Suicide Shows Great Discrepancy Between Men and Women When It Comes to How Prostitution Is Punished. Yes! Great headline and some good points in the article. But Christomatic, couldn’t they have interviewed a feminist for the piece? Instead they went to Concerned Women of America, the ultra-rightwing anti-feminist industrial-strength Christian group. The lay-dees at CWA think the answer to everything is for women to get married and stay home, cooking and cleaning and slavishly obeying their husbands. Thank jeebus none of that fundie shit made it into the article, but why in bog’s name did the reporter even go to them? Might as well interview somebody from FLDS.
Next up, from U.S. News & World Report: Obama Wins The Media While Clinton Moves Up In The Polls. The first paragraph is promising (emphasis mine):
There is an odd dichotomy emerging in the media coverage of the Democratic presidential race emerging this morning. On one hand, the media is seeing former Democratic National Committee Chairman Joe Andrew’s defection to Barack Obama’s camp as a sign that superdelegates are beginning to move towards his candidacy, and give the move extensive coverage. On the other, there are a number of items of good news for Hillary Clinton polls showing her in a dead heat in Indiana and one showing her competitive in North Carolina, which was expected to be an Obama stronghold. In addition, she picked up the endorsement of the Indianapolis Star, and a group of swing state polls show her far stronger in the general election in key states than Obama.
This is a perfect setup to explore why the media is paying so much attention to the Andrew business, overinterpreting its import while downplaying Hillary’s rapidly rising poll numbers. (Gosh, could it be that they’re biased?) A really intrepid reporter — say, somebody with the intellectual curiosity and electronic resources of a blogger — might even go so far as to note that the Obama campaign has a pattern of revealing existing superdelegate endorsements when they’re needed, as a PR maneuver to shift the news cycle away from whatever bad thing is happening to Obama. And if the reporter were really up for some kind of media critique, he/she might note that the breathless stories about the Andrew business are largely regurgitated press kibble from the Obama campaign. Funny, that.
But the reporter doesn’t do any of those things. The ripe fruit is left hanging there, unplucked. As ever.
Posted by Violet under Politics, Prostitution, Election 2008 on May 2, 2008, 12:38 pm EST
I haven’t been watching the Ken Burns documentary “The War,” but this post over at Heart’s got my attention:
Where in the name of all that is holy are the comfort women?
And it’s not just the “comfort” women; it’s all the enslaved and prostituted and raped women in that global apocalypse, that furnace of souls.
Heart includes the open letter to Ken Burns from Dr. Suki Falconberg, and I’m reproducing it here because I’d like you to read it in its entirety. I’d like you to read it and think about these women, think about what happens to women in war, think about what war means. What it really means.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under War, Prostitution, Rape on October 3, 2007, 12:55 am EST
I keep as much distance between myself and popular culture as possible, so I’ve only just now discovered that for the past few years HBO has been running some utterly unrealistic “reality” show about a brothel in Nevada, a happy place where happy people do happy things, just because they’re so darn happy. According to HBO’s website for this exercise in noxious bullshit, “The series sheds light not only on the numerous joys and challenges of working at a legal brothel, but on the therapeutic benefits that customers take with them after a stint at the Ranch.”
My first thought was that the guys who run HBO must have a serious stake in the Vegas mob, but then I remembered: it’s HBO! This is what they do. HBO is the brand pioneer of Porn n’ Patriarchy TV, where every new series is basically a soft-core variation of a BangBros video but with more intricate plotting and higher production values. And as we all know, the only reality today is what’s on TV, so if the TV says that prostitutes are happy empowerfuled gals who love their jobs, then by gum, it’s true.
Fuck that noise. Time for some blows against the empire! Buy this book for the real story: Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections.
Here’s a picture of it, which I’m going to make huge — a giant jpeg of righteous truth to cancel out the evil lying HBOshit:
Giant jpeg of righteous truth.
The book is the result of a two-year investigation by Melissa Farley into the real conditions in Nevada’s legal brothels. Here’s what she found:
“The physical appearance of these buildings is shocking,” says Farley. “They look like wide trailers with barbed wire around them - little jails.” The rooms all have panic buttons, but many women told her that they had experienced violent and sexual abuse from the customers and pimps.
“I saw a grated iron door in one brothel,” says Farley. “The women’s food was shoved through the door’s steel bars between the kitchen and the brothel area. One pimp starved a woman he considered too fat. She made a friend outside the brothel who would throw food over the fence for her.” Another pimp told Farley matter-of-factly that many of the women working for him had histories of sexual abuse and mental ill-health. “Most,” he said, “have been sexually abused as kids. Some are bipolar, some are schizophrenic.”
*
The women are expected to live in the brothels and to work 12- to 14-hour shifts. Mary, a prostitute in a legal brothel for three years, outlines the restrictions. “You are not allowed to have your own car,” she notes. “It’s like [the pimp’s] own little police state.” When a customer arrives, a bell rings, and the women immediately have to present themselves in a line-up, so he can choose who to buy.
*
So how did Farley gain access to her interviewees? Those in control of the women were confident that they would not be honest about the conditions, she says. “Pimps love to brag, and I know how to listen,” she adds. Although left alone with the women during interviews, Farley noted that they were all very nervous, constantly looking out for the brothel owners.
Investigating the sex industry - even the legal part - can be dangerous. During one visit to a brothel, Farley asked the owner what the women thought of their work. “I was polite,” she writes in her book, “as he condescendingly explained what a satisfying and lucrative business prostitution was for his ‘ladies’. I tried to keep my facial muscles expressionless, but I didn’t succeed. He whipped a revolver out of his waistband, aimed it at my head and said: ‘You don’t know nothing about Nevada prostitution, lady. You don’t even know whether I will kill you in the next five minutes.’”
Farley found that the brothel owners typically pocket half of the women’s earnings. Additionally, the women must pay tips and other fees to the staff of the brothel, as well as finders’ fees to the cab drivers who bring the customers. They are also expected to pay for their own condoms, wet wipes, and use of sheets and towels. It is rare, the women told Farley, to refuse a customer. One former Nevada brothel worker wrote on a website: “After your airline tickets, clothing, full-price drinks and other miscellaneous fees you leave with little. To top it off, you are … fined for just about everything. Fall asleep on your 14-hour shift and get $100 [£50] fine, late for a line-up, $100-500 in fines.” (The women generally negotiate directly with the men over the money; what they get depends on the quality of the brothel. It can be anything from $50 for oral sex to $1,000 for the night, but that doesn’t take account of the brothel’s cut.)
Farley found a “shocking” lack of services for women in Nevada wishing to leave prostitution. “When prostitution is considered a legal job instead of a human rights violation,” says Farley, “why should the state offer services for escape?” More than 80% of those interviewed told Farley they wanted to leave prostitution.
The effect of all this on the women in the brothels is “negative and profound,” according to Farley. “Many were suffering what I’d describe as the traumatic effects of ongoing sexual assaults, and those that had been in the brothels for some time were institutionalised. That is, they were passive, timid, compliant, and deeply resigned.”
“No one really enjoys getting sold,” says Angie, who Farley interviewed. “It’s like you sign a contract to be raped.”
And as if that weren’t enough:
Meanwhile, illegal brothels are on the increase in Nevada, as they are in other parts of the world where brothels are legalised. Nevada’s illegal prostitution industry is already nine times greater than the state’s legal brothels. “Legalising this industry does not result in the closing down of illegal sex establishments,” says Farley, “it merely gives them further permission to exist.”
Farley found evidence, for example, that the existence of state-sanctioned brothels can have a direct effect on attitudes to women and sexual violence. Her survey of 131 young men at the University of Nevada found the majority viewed prostitution as normal, assumed that it was not possible to rape a prostitute, and were more likely than young men in other states to use women in both legal and illegal prostitution.
You can order a copy through Lulu’s. Blows against the empire.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Prostitution, Recommended on September 13, 2007, 1:47 am EST
As I understand it, the rationale behind legalizing all kinds of sex work is that the women (strippers, prostitutes, etc.) will then enjoy the rights and dignities of workers in other fields. They’ll be able to set boundaries, demand safe working conditions and reasonable job standards, earn respect for a job well done, all that stuff. Just like everybody else.
So, how’s that working out?
Twisty covers the story of how a Seattle referendum to establish a four-foot space restriction between strippers and patrons was defeated by the mafiosos and pimps who run the strip clubs, thus ensuring that Seattle men will continue to enjoy their god-given right to grope strippers and receive lap dances.
No doubt there were all kinds of issues and considerations at work in the Seattle case, but that’s beside the point for our study of the Empowered Sex Worker motif. What is revealing is the response that ensued on an anti-referendum, pro-lap dance Seattle blog when a stripper explained why the four-foot rule was a good idea:
Stripper:
“Strippers really hate the rise in lap dances and private room experiences that johns like you are increasingly demanding from us to have your ‘fun’. If imposing a four-foot rule keeps me from having one more asshole lick me, bite me, jam his fingers into me, rip my costume or otherwise act like an entitled fuckface, then four-foot rule it is. Asking you little boys nicely to stop hasn’t been working, and the last time I complained the manager laughed in my face and said, ‘You don’t have to work here, lots of girls will be happy to take a finger up the ass for what you’re getting paid.’”
Typical responses from male commenters:
“You make 100 to 300 bucks an hour? I think you should shut the fuck up and ride the dick like a good girl, or quit the business and go legit making far less. Either way, shut the fuck up.”
“That’s what you gotta deal with if you want the big bucks. So shut your mouth, shake your assets and grind on some old smelly cocks cuz if you want stripper money, that’s the deal.”
“What a wench. If you don’t want to be a stripper, then don’t. You feel you should get paid 100’s of dollars an hour just to be looked at? Are you that special? You sound like you think you’re entitled to the good life just because you were born somewhat attractive. Being a stripper is “prostitute-lite” honey, get used to it or quit. I don’t go to strip clubs because I don’t like being hustled/used by retardedly-manipulative, vacuous, coke-whore lesbos that reek of baby-powder and cheap perfume. “
See how these guys think? If you’re a woman in the sex industry, you have no boundaries. You have no rights, you have no bodily integrity, you have nothing. The very notion that strippers might want to stick to the job description of stripping, much less enact regulations to keep their revolting customers in line, is greeted with sneers. A woman drops her drawers for any reason, she’s no longer human. She’s meat.
Sex-positive feminists believe that the underlying problem here is the stigmatization of women’s sexuality. Personally I think they’re missing the root cause by one step: the deep-structure problem is patriarchy, which is why women’s sexuality is stigmatized in the first place.
But hang on — before you get all sex-positives are stoopid! anti-pornstitution rocks!, check out this review of Bernadette Barton’s book on the strip-club biz:
Many of the [stripper] activists were trying to speak out against unsafe and exploitative conditions in the sex industry, and trying to improve safety standards, but were sometimes reluctant to complain too loudly for fear of giving ammunition to conservatives and those feminists who want to abolish the sex industry altogether. That’s not to criticize the anti-sex-work feminists who, I think, raise important issues—and, judging from Barton’s book, tend to have a more accurate diagnosis of the sex industry—but it does illustrate the difficulty in seeking middle ground in the current sex-work debate. (It’s worth noting that the activists were also frustrated that “sex positive” feminists too often glossed over safety concerns.)
So: anti-pornstitution radicals may have the better handle on conditions in the industry, but they’re about as popular with sex workers as Carry Nation at a saloon-keepers’ convention. Meanwhile the sex-positives are friendly but not much help, seeing as how in their native country of la-la land it’s considered empowering to have drunks shove their fingers up your ass.* Yay feminism.
Wouldn’t it be great if all the feminist battle units could lay down arms, abandon their entrenched rhetorical positions, and start talking afresh on what we know, what we can agree on, and how we might work together to help the sex workers who are out there on the front lines getting battered daily by johns and pervs and pimps?
Yeah, well, nobody ever listens to me.
*Gross distortions of anti-pornstitution and sex-positive feminism for entertainment purposes only. Action figures sold separately.
Posted by Violet under Gender Issues, Prostitution, Recommended on November 15, 2006, 12:57 pm EST
(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?
Posted by Violet under Prostitution on June 10, 2006, 7:44 am EST
(See also: Prostitution Debate Part 2: New Zealand)
As promised, here’s the first part of a little series of posts on prostitution.
Back in The Thread That Won’t Die, I explained here and here what I have in mind:
First of all, I’m going to start a new post in a couple of days, or rather series of posts, to compare approaches to prostitution. I think a series because we need to distinguish between radically different situations — imprisoned sex slaves in Thailand versus Cicely’s lesbian friends, to take one extreme…The reason being that most debates revolve around the big Theory of Prostitution, with people arguing the same point using references to completely different situations. Hence anybody can prove anything. My idea is to take an atomic approach for a change. That might allow us to work back up to a Big Picture analysis, but one that hopefully is more informed by an appreciation of the diverse circumstances involved.
As a first case study, let’s talk about Thailand. I don’t suppose we’re going to come up with the magic bullet solution, but I’m interested in comparing how pro- and anti-prostitution feminists approach the problem.
Modern-day prostitution in Thailand seems to be essentially a continuation of that country’s age-old practice of female sex slavery. Before slavery was outlawed in the 19th century, low-class and “surplus” women were routinely sold as slave-wives. When slavery was abolished, the slave-wives transmuted into prostitutes.
Young girls are kidnapped in the rural villages or sold by their families as sex slaves; once they are imprisoned in brothels they are beaten, raped, physically prevented from leaving, and burdened with debt slavery so that the girls owe their owners for their food, medicine, and their own purchase price.
Foreign women are increasingly trafficked into Thai brothels as well, almost always under false pretenses (the women being told that they are going to jobs as waitresses, etc.).
Prostitution is almost universally engaged in by Thai men and has been for centuries, though the American military presence seems to have clearly contributed to Thailand’s modern emergence as a sex destination for foreigners.
Prostitution has been technically illegal in Thailand for the past few decades, though it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Child prostitution and slave trafficking are also illegal, and again, it makes no difference. The Thai government is interested now in re-legalizing the sex industry, undoubtedly tempted by the enormous potential tax revenues.
Legalization advocates argue that legalizing adult prostitution would give the prostitutes workers’ rights, labor protection, and so forth. I am frankly skeptical of this because what we’re looking at is a form of sex slavery that’s been going on for centuries and which has endured through various forms of legality and illegality. It is abundantly evident that Thai men — and the male-dominated Thai power structure — are not the slightest bit interested in the rights of female sex workers.
By the same token, this indifference also suggests the reason that anti-prostitution laws (both adult and child) and anti-trafficking laws have no effect.
But, I’m no expert on Thailand. And my little post here is not intended as an exhaustive description of the problem, since I’m sure we’ll flesh that out in the comments.
What I’ve read over the past few days has left me frankly depressed and feeling rather hopeless. The only thing I’m sure of is that Thai law needs to be adjusted so that the none of the women who are trafficked or enslaved are themselves liable to criminal prosecution. These people are victims, not criminals. It’s obscene and infuriating for these women — beaten, raped, and enslaved — to be treated like they’re the ones who have committed a crime.
Here are links to some of the material I’ve read on Thailand:
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Factbook: Thailand
Prostitution in Thailand: What’s the Solution?
Moderation Update — Please read:
I’ve decided that I need to establish some ground rules for this discussion, rules that will also apply to further installments of the prostitution debate.
What I would like to do in these threads is explore various approaches to prostitution, from both anti-prostitution feminists and pro-prostitution feminists. I want both sex-positive feminists and anti-pornstitution radical feminists to feel welcome here. But the only way that’s going to happen is if everyone feels that their views will be given a respectful hearing and that they themselves will not be subjected to ad hominem attacks.
That means I don’t want to see radfem anti-pornstitution feminists attacked as being self-righteous man-hating puritans who are just out to control other people’s sex lives. I don’t want to see sex-positive feminists attacked as being selfish hedonists who are just out for their own gratification at the expense of others’ suffering. Unfortunately, there’s such a history of antagonism that it’s amazingly difficult to have a discussion around the issues without this kind of mud getting thrown. People who might wish to comment in this thread are not doing so because they don’t want to be slimed.
So, though I’m not usually the Moderation Queen, I’ve decided to establish rules of engagement for these threads:
Good luck.
Posted by Violet under Prostitution on May 31, 2006, 9:31 pm EST
Stephanie Zacharek has an article in Salon today about Colin Farrell, in which she defends his enthusiasm for using prostitutes — which Farrell has compared to “phoning up for a pizza.”
More precisely, Zacharek sneers at those fuddy-duddies who think Farrell’s likening of a live human being to an Italian pastry is pretty fucking sick. She refers to it as “wattle-shaking disapproval” — since obviously only old biddies with neck wattles think prostitution degrades women. The young and the hip are all totally down with the women-as-meat thing.
The essence of the fucked-upedness of Zacharek’s piece is right here, where she defends Farrell’s remarks on the joys of ordering up a woman (with or without extra cheese):
The subtext of that comment, if there needs to be one, may be that sometimes it’s more honest to just pay for sex, as opposed to trying to fool a woman into thinking you really like her just so you can get laid — although even that may be a truth some people don’t want to hear.
Bzzz. Wrong. People like me are well aware that people like Colin Farrell think it makes sense to rent a woman the way you rent a stump grinder from Home Depot. That’s not a truth we’re “afraid to hear,” Stephanie; it’s a truth we know all too well.
Seriously, what is Zacharek’s argument here? It’s as if she sat down to write this piece thinking, “People who disapprove of the prostitute-as-pizza analogy just don’t grasp that sometimes men simply want to rent a woman’s body to fuck. They’ve led sheltered lives. If I explain to them that some men see women purely as fuckholes and aren’t interested in the whole relationship thing, then they’ll understand that buying a prostitute really is just like buying a pizza! And then everyone will agree with me that Colin Farrell is a great guy.”
Stupid crap like this is why you shouldn’t bother with a subscription to Salon.
Posted by Violet under Prostitution on March 10, 2006, 6:28 pm EST
Although I’m a denizen of Virginia, I hadn’t planned to post on the story about Spotsylvania County police officers having sex with prostitutes in order to get “evidence” for convictions. Twisty covered it perfectly well.
But in the course of my travels this morning I happened upon a big-name new blog — big because it’s from Gawker Media — and lo and behold if the guy hadn’t posted about the Spotsylvania County thing.
Now bear in mind, this isn’t some tiny little website from a teenager in his parents’ basement. Gawker Media is a big deal, and this blog is positioned to capture the guy market for gambling and “cool” news.
Here’s what the fucktard has to say:
Yup, it’s now SWEET to become an officer of the law in Spotsylvania, Virginia. (Is it too late to switch professions?)
Woo hoo! Nothing like the institutionalized rape of women for laughs! He goes on in this vein for awhile, with a number of yuckety-yuck comments too disgusting to quote. Then the asswipe grows philosophical, and opines:
When you look at it, there’s really nothing wrong with prostitution. You get to have your rocks off and the hoe gets her money. Everybody wins. It’s a win-win situation really. And it’s the hoe’s beaver anyway so what do these moralists care anyway?
Did you know that prostitution is a win-win situation? That’s right — the brutality, the degradation, the rapes, the murders, the fear, the godawfulness of it all — it’s a win-win situation.
Ah, the brilliance, the insight, the moral rectitude of the American male. Blogs like that restore my faith in humanity, you know?
Posted by Violet under Prostitution on February 16, 2006, 3:28 am EST
Yesterday the British government announced plans to legalize small home-based brothels. It’s already legal for a single prostitute to work from home as long as she doesn’t openly solicit. The new plan will allow up to three women to work together, including one receptionist. The goal here is to improve women’s safety, since one prostitute working alone is at great risk. There’s also a plan to enforce zero tolerance of streetwalkers.
Since I’m a dedicated commie pinko anarchist America-hater, of course I read the Guardian every day. It’s my favorite British newspaper. Today I was fascinated to read two opposing opinion pieces on the new plan, both from women who want to make the lives of prostitutes better. Both agree that prostitution is dangerous, and both agree that the women themselves should not be treated as criminals. But they seem to differ on everything else. One woman wants the government to go further in outlawing prostitution altogether. The other wants the government to go further in legalizing prostitution. Both back up their arguments with data.
I’ve made a handy dandy little table to compare their arguments side by side. Which makes more sense to you? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Violet under Prostitution on January 18, 2006, 2:19 am EST
