An argument for not trying to decrease prostitution (trafficking in women) or help prostitutes — at least as presently done

Brief review and summary

Dear friends and readers,

I’ve been puzzled for quite a while over the terms of debates feminists have about prostitution. Well-meaning feminists stigmatize and inveigh against those working to rescue and help prostitutes (which includes Emma Thompson who travels about trying to help women by lending her acting talent and prestige). This morning for the first time I read an essay which outlined what can be behind arguments like those of Laura Augstin against much of the legislation that seems to be promulgated to protect prostitutes, help them escape what is in effect a new form of chattel slavery (done by trafficking — simply snatching women in the way slaves were once snatched), and decrease, yes perhaps even end prostitution in some places by at least punishing the men who pay for it. The line of argument is partly persuasive. It coheres with a description of how prostitutes were treated in 18thc Magdalen houses that I recently read

First, a brief resume of the arguments of those who say prostitution is a degraded and debasing way to make money; further that the woman who practice it are subject to extreme violence, victimization and often become (in effect) chattel slaves (through sheering snatching of them in what’s called trafficking). On prostitution: an article meant for popular consumption about what kind of men pay prostitutes for sex, and a study of what prostitutes say about their experiences. It’s claimed that the demand to purchase sex this way is increasing; the same people who pay prostitutes read porn. And here is Agustin’s series of objections to the report.

My first reaction is to say I find the objections to Farley come out of an agenda about prostitution which while seeking to empower these women (they are a very abused set of people) does so by trying to present their lives as less victimized than they are. A friend replied that my reaction reminded her of her reaction to a talk by Dr Laura Agustin that she attended at Zurich University’s Gender Studies Department late last year. Here is the title and introduction to the talk which surrounds words like helping and prostitution with critical marks:

Leaving Morality Debates Behind: The Cultural Study of Commercial Sex With the academic, media and “helping” gaze fixed on women who sell sex, the great majority of phenomena that make up the sex industry are ignored. People who sell sex tend to be examined in terms of “prostitution,” focussing on transactions between individuals and personal motivations. A cultural-studies approach looks at commercial sex in its widest sense, examining its intersections with art, migration, ethics, service work, consumption, family life, entertainment, sport, economics, urban space, sexuality, tourism, informal economies and criminality, not omitting issues of race, class, gender, identity and citizenship. The object is to study the everyday practices involved, to reveal how our societies distinguish between activities considered normatively “social” and activities denounced as criminally and morally wrong and to look for ways out of a seemingly intransigent social conflict.”

My friend wrote that she “was still somewhat surprised by the tenor of the talk itself which seemed to be arguing for social and legal acceptance of sex for money in general as simply a further form of economic service and economic choice by the people – not only women- involved, questioning the actual existence of large scale trafficking networks – ‘trafficking’ being another term she preferred not to use – and both highly critical of what she terms the ‘rescue industry’ in the book she was also pushing that evening, ‘Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry’, and extremely allergic to feminist criticism of her own approach.”

After reading Agustin’s blogs I wrote in reply:

On one level she is offering the pragmatic argument that fighting sex trafficking doesn’t “work” (bring an end to it) any more than wars “work” (though the aims of wars are often to make money for arms dealers and put people in power and the first is certainly achieved); thus it’s waste of money to try.
Nowhere does she acknowledge what trafficking in women is and how it works. It’s kidnapping, people snatching done just in the way people were once snatched to become chattel slaves.
Nowhere is there an acknowledgement of the violence inflicted on prostitutes. To say they freely chose this and should be respected for their choices would be hilarious if the lack of acknowledgement of how limited are our choices in life were not so painful.
That sex workers should be treated as equal citizens trying to survive and not punished is obvious and part of the motive for people like Agustin, but it’s also the motive of those who want to end the trade altogether or limit it insofar as they are able to. The problem is that our society refuses to take responsibility for helping people to jobs, to support, to decent schools (the US nowadays pays almost nothing for needed post-secondary education).

I was very puzzled by her motives. Here we are at the core of why women are repressed, controlled, despised and disgarded: men want to use them as sex objects, as baby making machines, as housekeepers, nurses, all of which involved the body so prostitutes are a lightning rod. From the beginning of recorded history women have had to sell their bodies directly — often as a side occupation — because they have so little access to money or property, and this selling has subjected them to severe loss of status, violence, death from disease and childbirth, maiming, self-hatred.

Grace Chang’s review of Sealing Cheng’s On the Move: Migrant entertainers and the US military in South, Korea which appeared in the latest issue of the Women’s Review of Books (September/October 2011) finally at least explained the line of thought to me in a way that makes sense, that shows the people making this argument are not simply dismissing women who are prostitutes.

Cheng outlined for the first time for me what can be behind arguments like those of Laura Augstin against much of the legislation that seems to be promulgated to protect prostitutes, help them escape what is in effect a new form of chattel slavery (done by trafficking — simply snatching women in the way slaves were once snatched), and yes end prostitution by at least punishing equally the men who pay for it.

The core that struck me is the argument that the behavior of agents who profess to be doing this is much more aimed at getting and keeping their jobs. I suppose I was struck by this since I’ve become convinced that the supposed agents (of institutions) who are being paid it’s said to help disabled people get jobs and services are doing no such thing; that their values and norms are that of the larger society which impose on disabled people impossible, conflicting demands and that their services are anything from feeble to non-existent. They are perpetuating their institutions, serving the values and norms of a society which will not help disabled adults and their own interests; so these agents for prostitutes are similarly serving their own interests, not those of women. They are making the women’s lives worse; they are doing nothing to raise their status or enable others to understand and to sympathize.

I have seen the larger argument that these agents are serving a puritanical anti-sex agenda which keeps up the attitude towards sex work as criminal, keeps up blaming them (in effect), sends them back home to places where they have no means of support and are anything from ostracized to murdered.

It is germane to consider how societies have regarded and treated prostitutes even supposedly enlightened cirlces, e.g., in an essay on the 18th century Magdalen house – by Peter Stearns, in Journal of Social History, 17:4 (1984): 617-628: we find the model Emma Donoghue based her depiction of the Magdalen house in Slammerkin on. Stearns demonstrates that basically the women who entered were treated as prisoners in a penitentiary, and many techniques begun which reached a fruition in the 19th century. You could leave, that’s the difference but if you did without references (as Mary Saunders did) you are bereft of a future — her finding her mother’s old friend is actually fairy tale. To anyone interested I can send it on by attachment. It connects directly to this modern debate on prostitution and does provide some ammunition for those who argue that prostitutes ought to be left alone, and not protected if the protection is as severely punitive as the supposed crime, if they are treated as low status people without any say in their future.

Back to Cheng and Change: This is the first time I’ve come across descriptions of what actually happens. Thus the attempt to de-stigmatize the women, to treat them as workers like any other, workers forced into this work for the same reasons others are forced into other work (most people’s jobs are not taken by any choice, we have very limited choices by the time we are ready to try to seek paid employment), is to free them of these useless agents and let those who are making money this way and controlling their lives more than is realized (or admitted) carry on surviving with what tools (so to speak) an deeply anti-woman society makes available to them.

It is a lesser of many great evils arguments from my point of view.

Grace Chang’s review does not quite put it this way — especially the idea that prostitution of any more degrading or based on violence than most work women are forced to perform. The argument on the other side (from Augstin’s) is that prostitution is degrading, debasing, violent; that women are forced into it and everything should be done basically to outlaw and punish severely trafficking in women and do all that one can to (ultimately this is the aim) end or decrease prostitution. Sealing Cheng’s book is one which (according to Chang) gives us the women’s view of themselves. The history is not retold of what the laws and customs in the Philiippines were which did push (force let’s say) women to migrate. Apparently she likens the conduct and movement of these women to women who emigrate as nurses, factory and agricultural workers, and domestic servants. To see them against this background is indeed to make them seem much less different and to remember how marriage and having children is treated in traditional cultures in these starving places extends the picture. According to Cheng, one way the women better themselves is to pretend to adhere to romantic love: they pretend to be in love with a customer in the hope he will marry them or enable them to migrate elsewhere or simply provide decent protections the pimp does not. We should not then make fun of them or deride them for this behavior as false consciousness for it is a performance just a much as romantic love is in the US and elsewhere among many middle class women. The woman want to marry and an American male especially; the men persist in believing these women long to have sex with them — men often do believe this.

Cheng then describes who the NGOS are, these agents and how they behave towards these women – it reminds me of what I’ve read and been told about agents in service agencies supposedly helping disabled people to get job or other services. No tangible support or use but a continued need for the organization itself. So the idea is these attempts to stamp out prostitution as debased, degraded, just further exploit the women – now they are abused by the states running them through their agents.

There is a problem with this as trafficking is snatching and the women are made into slaves. So while it may be that Agustin has a real argument on her side for prosititutes who have not been snatched, it does not follow she does in the area of trafficking. On the other hand, I now wonder how much these agents help the trafficked women. Do they give them places to live for real, help them to decent situations and jobs? I fear they do not; perhaps this may not be possible without spending a great deal of money and changing present misogynistic and puritanical norms and values. I don’t know enough about this.

I also wonder why Agustin and those who write like her have never brought this up or out, have never exposed the agents themselves. She would have no reason to keep quiet about it. So I’m sceptical. Shall one just give up in despair?

Still I wanted to share Chang’s review of this Cheng book in an effort to shed light on something that has puzzled me. Why someone calling herself a feminist like Agustin should take the side she does. Could it be that she doesn’t expose the agents out of some (perverse surely) ideas of political diplomacy or fear of what might be thought if she exposed these people? I know from my own experience I am sometimes astonished at the way the average person reacts to a variety of ordinary situations and cannot fathom the thinking that leads to the usual stupidities we hear all the time — say on behalf of the various Republicans who propose to do such evil. So maybe Agustin knows better than me — silence (as I’ve suggested) is a very feeble weapon, so feeble it boomerangs most of the time.

Unfortunately the review is not online and it may not be one of those few chosen to be online when the latest issue turns up on the website. This is why I have written this blog. I did write a first version to Women Writers though the Ages at Yahoo, and am sending the URL to this blog to the Women’s Studies list run by Joan Korenman (WMST-l). There is now a list of publications published by Moira Richards each week on Wompo (Women’s Poetry list first founded by Annie Finch, now run by Amy King) by members, and maybe I’ll send this along there even if the listserv is really about women’s poetry (prostitution is an important topic for women).

Ellen