Economic stakes
Perhaps because a powerful economy has arisen
around the sale of sex,
totally integrated into local and national economies and hugely
profitable for
industrialists and for states, more voices are being raised to
suggest and in some cases,
to demand that prostitution be accepted as commerce and as legitimate
work for women and a
valid means for women's economic empowerment. The flesh trade in
Thailand has been
estimated by ECPAT to generate between US$18 - 21.6 billion a year or
over half of the
entire 1995 budget of that country, and in Japan equals the defense
budget; attesting to
the fact of the huge revenues generated.
Diverging feminist analyses
Some arguments claim to find in prostitution a
practice of women's
resistance to and sexual liberation from norms and traditional moral
precepts of sexuality
that have served to control and subordinate women.
Radical feminist thinking, on the other hand,
has analyzed
prostitution as a cornerstone of patriarchal control and sexual
subjugation of women that
impacts negatively not just on the women and girls in prostitution
but on all women as a
group because prostitution continually affirms and reinforces
patriarchal definitions of
women as having a primary function to serve men sexually.
Human Rights Arguments
Human rights arguments are being marshalled on
both sides of the
divide for and against prostitution, particularly in light of the
feminist movement to
apply a human rights framework to women's condition while at the same
time posing
challenges to and redefining mainstream human rights principles with
a women's
perspective.
Right to self-determination
For the pro-prostitution advocates, foremost
among the human rights
principles invoked to defend the right to prostitute is the right to
self-determination. This is understood as the individual's
right to make
autonomous choices and decisions which can include engaging in
consensual commercial sex
as well as of setting the terms of that sexual exchange.
There are many problems with this position
starting with its failure
to acknowledge the social, economic and political structural
imbalances and the sexual
relations of power between women and men which constitute the context
within which these
choices and decisions are being made. Further, it fails to ask the
crucial question of
whether prostitution can lead to social and sexual equality for women
or will in fact
continue to reinforce gender disparities of rights and status. As has
been pointed out by
human rights advocates, "By failing to take the phenomenon of
male domination of
women in both the public and private worlds into account, the right
to self-determination
(…) can in fact reinforce oppression against women through its
complicity in systemic
male oppression and violence." (Charlesworth 75)
Worse, it is predominantly a North and
class-blind perspective that
trivializes the massive phenomenon of the abduction, deception and
trafficking into
prostitution of women and girls, mostly from countries of the South
but today, also from
the dislocated economies of eastern Europe, and which constitute by
far the most prevalent
procurement methods worldwide. Still less does it take into account
the plain fact that
the male users of prostitution do not ask to know or care if the
human merchandise they
purchase consent to being put at their sexual disposal. The stated
consent of some,
therefore, can damn others, women and girls who by no means have
consented to
prostitution.
The issue of choice and consent as an analytical
tool is worthless to
understand prostitution as an institution. Prostitution pre-exists as
a system that
requires a supply of female bodies and therefore, women and girls
will be kidnapped,
deceived, enticed or persuaded to ensure that supply. How
women get into
prostitution is irrelevant to the functioning of the prostitution
system, rather,
prostitution maintains itself as a system by what is and can be
done to women in
prostitution, and what sexual privileges prostitution allows the male
clientele.
What is one to make, for example, of the case of
the hundreds of
Nepali girls trafficked into India who in the first two or three
years of their
confinement in Bombay brothels are kept closely guarded and not
allowed outside because at
any opportunity they will try to escape. In later years, they will
stand displayed in
their finery outside the brothel door with no risk of their running
away. They may even
leave for a time and then return. What has happened to them in the
interval? What is the
quality of that later "consent" that would define the
prostitution exchange as
consensual activity? In recommending the recognition of prostitution
as legitimate
commerce, the government of the Netherlands goes so far as to propose
the concept that a
person may "fully and freely consent to his/her own
exploitation." (cited
in le Monde Diplomatique March '97). For women (as for workers,
indigenous or colonized
peoples) whose historical condition has been one of subordination and
exploitation, this
is clearly a barbarous and unacceptable concept.
Some prostitutes and prostitutes' rights
advocates vigorously assert
the possibility of the integrity of women's agency in prostitution.
and accuse
anti-prostitution feminists of being patronizing and disrespectful of
their perspectives.
The issue of consent, of "personal choice
politics" rests
on an western liberal understanding of human rights that elevates
individual will and
choice above all other human values and above notions of common good.
(Barry 83) At the
same time, it must be noted that as a result of advances in
bio-technology, the concept of
personal choice has been questioned and ethical issues have been
raised regarding the
integrity of the human body and person, for example in connection
with the sale of human
organs, surrogate motherhood or human cloning. Individual choice is
also generally not
accepted as an argument for drug use. In defense of a conception of
the human and of
social good, human community has often seen the necessity to mark the
boundaries of
personal liberty. But perhaps because mainstream concepts of social
good have never
included the good of the class of women, the traditionally
"socially subjugated"
(Charlesworth 76), it is tolerated that prostitution, a
"practice…(that)
integrally contributes to the maintenance of an underclass"
(Mackinnon 73), be
accepted on the basis that some few women are freely choosing it. On
that same basis,
slavery might have been accepted following the few slave voices who
declared that they
were content with their lot.
Right to work
Pro-prostitution advocates invoke the right
to work. However,
the question begs why this work exists in the first place and why an
experience of human
intimacy has been transformed into the category of sexual
labor. Two views are
presented, either that prostitution is work like any other such as
typing or waitressing,
or that it fulfills a number of socially useful functions: sex
education, sex therapy, or
providing sex for persons who would otherwise be deprived of sex, for
example, male
migrant workers without their families and disabled or old men.
Following this view,
prostitution is said to be a rational choice of work. This view also
holds that men in
every circumstance and at all cost must be able to have sex.
In fact, it is the millions of buyers of sex,
far outnumbering the
women and girls that they use, who are not only choosing but ardently
defending their
practice of prostitution. But their choice is not only
unexamined and unquestioned,
it is brushed aside by such international agencies as the World
Health Organization that
in a Geneva report on AIDS in 1988 devoted pages to the
socio-economic and cultural
profiles of women in prostitution and in a terse paragraph stated
that "Clients are
more numerous than the providers of sex services…The factors
which lead persons to
become clients are largely unknown." The general refusal to
devote critical scrutiny
or to assign responsibility to the users of prostitution, who
constitute by far the more
important component of the prostitution system is nothing less than
tacit defense of male
sexual privilege and practice.
The view on the right to work further holds that
where there are
inadequate, poor or outright bad economic options for women,
prostitution may be the best
option and that in any case, it is work that does no one any harm
because the two parties
most directly involved agree to what will happen in the prostitution
exchange. This fails
to acknowledge that in fact, violence is often done to women in
prostitution not just
because laws do not protect women or that work conditions are not
what they should be, but
because men’s prostitution use of women and the acts carried out
are sexual
enactments of a culture and system of subordination of women.
Therefore, violence and
degradation, even when not acted out, are inherent conditions of
prostitution sex. For one
thing, the possibility of violence is always present, for another,
sex mediated by money
means power to dictate what sex will happen. A client encountering
refusal of a particular
sex act or even condomless sex by a prostitute (or a wife, for that
matter) will merely
hire another woman who may be needier and will accept his demands.
Harm will therefore be
inflicted to another, more vulnerable woman.
Prostitution has been called a victimless crime,
because women are
assumed to consent and that therefore no harm is done. The notion of
harmlessness does not
take into account the issue of human intimacy that is being
transgressed. Women in
prostitution have told of the elaborate means they employ: refusing
access to some part of
their bodies or the use of their own beds, creating fictional life
stories or other such
measures, as attempts to preserve some part of an emotional or sexual
life that is theirs
alone and not for public use. The view that repeated invasions of the
body, of unwanted
but tolerated sexual acts can be passed over harmlessly, is
questionable, to say the
least. Women survivors of prostitution in the Philippines like those
of WHISPER (Women
Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt) in the US have
known "the act of
prostitution as intrusive, unwanted, and often overtly violent sex
that women
endure.." (Giobbe 67) In fact, the "work" of
prostitution mostly consists
of submitting to acts carried out by clients or by
pornographers on women's (and
children's) bodies. Women repeatedly tell of strategies to finish
quickly with a client,
for if women need and want the money of prostitution, they do not
want the sex of
prostitution which as such, is a form of "paid
rape."
Merely accepting the fact that there are
sometimes no better work
options for women is to give up political battle for women’s
non-prostitution
economic empowerment and to tolerate the growing operations of
enormously lucrative sex
businesses that absorb women as the raw material for their industry.
Feminists in
solidarity with women in prostitution carry out much work with and
directly for them while
they are in prostitution, precisely recognizing that social and
economic life is designed
by patriarchal capitalism to allow women few good options, and that
getting out of
prostitution systems is a difficult process.
The second view of prostitution as socially
useful work assumes that
male need for sex is an unquestioned biological need likened to the
need for food. This
obviously contradicts evidence that people, women and men both, have
been known to go for
long periods without sex and without the fatal outcome that going
without food would have!
What is true is that a culture of sexual consumerism has been stoked
by patriarchal
capitalism and that not only is sex used to sell products of all
kinds, sex itself has
been reduced to an aggressively marketed product. This is a
relentlessly gendered
capitalist enterprise that offers the bodies of women, girls and also
boys, for
consumption. But it must be recognized that there are pre-existing
and socially
constructed sexist concepts of sexuality on which patriarchal
capitalism feeds and which
are not simply biologically determined.
A certain stream of pro-prostitution advocates
appear to look forward
to the day when all our irresistible sexual urges and needs,
women’s and men’s
alike, will be adequately "serviced" by commercial sex. The
only problem, as
Sheila Jeffreys, tongue-in-cheek has pointed out, is how to find the
millions of men and
boys, who will be willing to lie there and let women stick any kind
and number of objects
into their bodies or to let themselves be photographed in ridiculous
or degrading
positions!
Prostitution is possible because men’s
power as a dominating
class over women exists. The existence of some men in prostitution is
in fact most often
in service of other men and even when it is women who are the
clients, the commercial
exchange still mirrors class, race, age or other power differentials
between the buyer and
the bought. Most importantly, the prostitution of individual men
never diminishes the
power of men as a class while the prostitution of women is a direct
result of and serves
to maintain the subordinate status of women. It is true of course,
that class, race and
other factors also operate in many other labor or employment
situations. But prostitution
is more than "work", it is "the most systematic
institutionalized reduction
of women to sex." (Barry 65) In a 1992 UN document, the impact
of prostitution on
women as a class was recognized: "By reducing women to a
commodity to be bought,
sold, appropriated,
exchanged or acquired, prostitution affected
women as a group. It
reinforced the societal equation of women to sex which reduced women
to being less than
human and contributed to sustaining women's second class status
throughout the
world." (Tomasevski 13)
Right to freedom of expression
The system of prostitution that includes
pornography and sexual
entertainment in all its forms is defended as erotic art or as sexual
freedom and
expression. Invoked here is the exercise of the right to freedom
of expression. Strippers
and other performers have sometimes even claimed to derive a sense of
power in displaying
sex that the male viewers are aroused to want but cannot have from
the performer. In fact,
it is not true that men cannot have sex when they want it, millions
of women and children
all over the world are trafficked into prostitution houses precisely
so that men can have
sex whenever and however they want, and without bounds. Sex is bought
and it is inflicted:
sexual crimes of rape, incest, sexual harassment are prevalent
everywhere: rape occurs
every 6 minutes in the United States, every 1 1/2 minute in South
Africa.
If prostitution is a form of sexual freedom and
expression for women,
then women should be able to determine and demand the sex that
happens in prostitution.
Obviously, this is not the case. In fact, while prostitution is one
of the most debated
gender issues, discussions almost never address the sex of
prostitution. When a
German customer of an Filipina prostitute demands to take a
photograph to show his friends
back home of the "two best things about the Philippines": a
beer bottle in the
woman's vagina, whose sexuality is being expressed? When a
group of men pay a woman
so they can simultaneously ejaculate on her, what sexuality is that?
When Patpong offers
"blow job bars" and entertainment programs that tout
"Pussy pingpong ball,
pussy shoot banana, pussy smoke cigarette, big dildo show, fish push
inside her, egg push
into her cunt, long eggplant push into her cunt," (Odzer 7) or
shows of knives and
razor blades in women's vaginas" that are the live versions of
the huge pornography
industry's images of hand grenades in women's vaginas, live rats
coming out of them and
dogs penetrating women, is this "adult entertainment,"
sexual recreation, sexual
liberation? In fact, it is true that freedom of expression is amply
being exercised there,
but whose sexuality is being expressed and what ideological
statements are made
about women? What is being demonstrated is a male will to dehumanize
women.
It is clear that sexuality was and remains
political terrain where
war continues to be waged against women as such practices as rape,
female genital
mutilation, the denial of possibilities of contraception,
discrimination against lesbians,
pornography or "snuff" films where sex acts culminate in
the actual death of the
woman make quite plain. In this war, prostitution is a main
battleground where women as
a class are reduced to sex, denied equal humanity, and delivered
up to such practices.
To purport to promote women's sexual liberation
by abstracting
prostitution and pornography from male supremacist and woman-hating
sexual ideology and
practice is disingenuous and exposes women to harm. And while
pro-prostitution advocates
like to promote themselves as being "pro-sex" and to charge
prostitution
opponents as being "anti-sex" or "sex prudes," it
is quite remarkable
how they never question basic patriarchal assumptions and male sexual
norms and practices.
This amounts to complicity with those assumptions and practices or at
the very least, to
acceptance of the ideological proposition that men have a
"naturally" great need
for sex, including in the above forms, that must be catered to at all
cost. Once again,
this view willfully ignores the social and cultural construction of
sexual attitudes and
behavior.
To be pro-sex is to oppose prostitution by
reclaiming and
reconstructing a sexuality that is life-enhancing, mutually
respectful and beneficial and
if it is heterosexual, based on gender equality. This is by far the
more revolutionary
position; the pro-prostitution position is merely one of
accommodation with the
masculinist system already in place.
The human right not to be
prostituted
The true human rights that all women must enjoy
begin with the
right to non discrimination on the basis of sex that is enshrined
in all major human
rights instruments. Prostitution violates this right because it is a
system of extreme
discrimination of one group of human beings put in sexual servitude
by and for the benefit
of another group of human beings, and there is no denying that the
overwhelming historical
and majority phenomenon is of women and girls being prostituted.. It
violates the right
to physical and moral integrity by the alienation of women's
sexuality that is
appropriated, debased and turned into a thing to be bought and sold.
It violates the
prohibition of torture and of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
or punishment
because practices of sexual "entertainment" and pornography
as well as clients'
acts are acts of power and violence over the female body. It violates
the right to
liberty and security and the prohibition of slavery, of forced
labour and of
trafficking in persons because millions of women and girls all
over the world are held
in sexual slavery to meet the demand of even more millions of male
buyers of sex and to
generate profits for the capitalists of sex. . It violates the
right to enjoy the
highest standard of physical and mental health because violence,
disease, unwanted
pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and AIDS stalk, presenting grave risks
for women and girls
in prostitution and militating against a healthy sense of and
relationship with their own
bodies.
Accepting or promoting prostitution as an
inevitable social
arrangement of sexuality or as fitting work for women denies the
efforts to achieve higher
standards of human rights, including the human rights of women, for
example as articulated
in the Beijing Platform for Action. And although even here, the lobby
for the recognition
of acceptable categories of prostitution has made headway through the
use of the language
of "forced" and "free" prostitution, the document
is not consistent
throughout, evidence of a continuing discomfort with that
proposition. The incompatibility
of prostitution with a conception of true sexual self-determination
and freedom is
articulated in the Platform for Action: " The human rights of
women include their
right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on
matters related to their
sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of
coercion, discrimination and
violence. Equal relationships between women and men in matters of
sexual relations and
reproduction, including full respect for the integrity of the person,
require mutual
respect, consent and shared responsibility for sexual behaviour and its
consequences."
Prostitution must be recognized not only as part
but as a foundation
of the larger system of patriarchal subordination of women. Feminists
have a duty to
imagine a world without prostitution as we have learned to imagine a
world without
slavery, apartheid, infanticide or female genital mutilation.
Ultimately gender relations
must be restructured so that sexuality can once again be an
experience of human intimacy
and not a commodity to be bought or sold.
