Friends and Enemies

More from Figleaf:

I normally respect what Figleaf has to say quite a lot, but this time I think he's a little bit off-target with what he writes.

He's ing about the opposing forces in feminism over the matter of sex work and prostitution, inspired by the talk brought on by the death of Deborah Palfrey, the "D.C. Madam".

He makes some very good points, but I think he falls down a bit with his characterisations of the two sides in the debate when he talks of "anti-prostitution" and "pro-prostitution".

What we have are "anti-prostitution" and "sex workers and those who are pro-sex workers". It may be that there are "pro-prostitution" feminists somewhere on the blogosphere, but if there are I haven't found any that I would describe in that way.

Thus, Figleaf's "learning moment B" is way off-beam:

Moment B: Almost her entire adult life Palfrey was eyebrows-deep in the dominant one-way-or-another-pussy's-a-commodity ideology. Whereas some of the clients she scheduled escorts for may have been paragons of progressive pro-feminist enlightenment... the ones who've been outed, anyway, have been utter, thuggish, women-hating, woman-denigrating, woman-punishing, woman-curtailing, woman-as-commodity-purchasing, anti-feminist, skin to bone bastards who depended on the discretion of Palfrey and her employees to maintain their public positions as virtuous paragons advocating policies of chastity before marriage, fidelity within marriage, home-binding of wives, lower pay for women so they'd be obliged to *become* bound as wives, anti-choice, anti-contraception, anti-HIV-treatment, and abstinence-only-promotion as the cure for all social and medical ills. So *if* one was inclined to be sympathetic towards the anti-prostitution position Palfrey's agency would be a pretty good argument for that position.

The clue here is that, in this model, suddenly, it's all about teh menz again. And the pro sex-worker position is one of those things where, get this, it's NOT about the men!

It really isn't. Yes, Palfrey's clients were bad (or at least, very heavily Patriarchy-infused) men. But prostitution hasn't made them so. It seems more likely that they use prostitutes because they are that type of man, and it may be that doing so reinforces them in their Patriarchal views (I couldn't say on that score for sure, but it seems a safe bet). It may also be that Madam Palfrey was a part of that structure.

None of this seems to impact in any way on the arguments for sex work, and prostitution in particular, to be seen as just another job. We don't judge a hospital by whether it treats drug addicts or cancer victims, but we might judge it by the way in which it treats its employees. Same thing here!

It would be great if you could find a way of regulating prostitution so that only good, decent, progressive, pro-feminist men are allowed to use prostitutes, but first off, that would probably lead to many prostitutes having a very low income and not much option to choose another course (and therefore, the prostitutes wouldn't thank you for it!), and secondly - how on earth would you police such an arrangement!? Also, it wouldn't necessarily do anything to change the lives and working conditions of the women we're talking about. Bringing up the type of people who were clients of Madam Palfrey seems to me to be the biggest fallacy possible. It ISN'T ABOUT THE MEN (read: clients).

It's about the agency of the women to refuse to accept a client who is abusive or threatening, or who doesn't obey the rules. For an example of what I'm talking about, here's an episode from the experience of Renegade Evolution.

As I say, I don't think I know of a feminist who is "pro-prostitution". I know it's not me, and it's not Ren (admittedly, she identifies as ex-pat, and no longer feminist, but I still think she's feminist) and it's not any of the other "sex-positive" feminists I've read. All of us on the pro-sex workers side of the debate (I hope the other people don't mind me lumping myself in on their side) want to see prostitution changed. I'd say we want to see it decriminalised so that it is only subject to the same labour laws as any other job. I'd say we want to see the public attitude towards sex work changed so that the women who work in sex work are no longer victimised, no longer denied other career options, no longer made the victims of decisions like the "theft of services" ruling.

If people are characterising the sex-positive, sex-worker positive attitude as "at the end of the day all women only have sex for money, some just call what they do 'marriage.'" then I think they missed the "sex-positive" bit. You know - the bit that says a woman's body is hers to do with as she wants, including sex for her pleasure alone! Or, yes, sex for money alone, if that's what she wants to do with it.

And I think I object to the characterisation of the pro-sex worker position as regarding the anti-prostitution lobby saying, "whores, like all women, have no, zero, none capacity for, let alone right to, sexual self-determination." That they do sometimes gang up with the Christian far right to fight against porn and prostitution is beyond doubt - they've freely advertised the fact, as recorded several times by other sex worker blogs like Renegade Evolution and Bound not Gagged. But the anti-sex work feminist position frequently does argue that sex workers have no agency, however, they suggest that "real" women (i.e. those who aren't in sex work) do have agency. At some point, the rhetoric of the anti-prostitution feminists slips into a clear attitude of being anti- prostitutes. That's why the sex worker activists are so invested in fighting the anti-prostitution feminists just as much as they are the anti-feminist Patriarchy.

Figleaf writes of "an analysis that included *both* elements", but I think that this is the analysis that the pro-sex worker position already has. It works like this:

Give sex workers the protection in law that other workers (and other women) have; give them the ability to determine which clients they accept or don't accept, and give them the ability to find other ways of earning a living wage - and society and the johns' attitudes to them will have to change. Of course, in order to do those things you also need to change some of society's attitudes as well (so that a former sex-worker does not face discrimination when she applies for a job, for example). But when a prostitute can say "no" and not face any great penalty beyond a small loss of income, the john has to look at his attitude and understand he is employing a human being, and not buying a fucktoy. And so on and so forth.

So, like I say, it isn't about the clients. It isn't even about "prostitution". It's about the prostitutes themselves, and the attitudes that we take towards them. And if we get that right, then maybe we can see how prostitution looks now, and how we might make it better. And maybe we can see how society's attitudes, in the Patriarchal "dominant paradigm" web, need to be shifted and how we might go about it. Right now, I say being pro-sex workers is the right attitude.