It’s. Not. About. You.
Apr 18th, 2008 by Rebecca
It seems as if it’s the month for glaring displays of obnoxiousness about sex work: whether it be my deranged sociology lecturer, tigtog’s stunningly clueless effort at Ren’s, or Sam Berg’s attempts to silence Ren.
I keep noticing one thing again and again with these people. It’s obvious that these people care about those involved in sex work, or at least think they do. What they don’t have, though, is empathy. For all the words and time and energy spent on trying to save people from the sex industry, these folks generally seem to have very little ability to try and envision themselves being put in the shoes of those that they’re proposing to save. Women in the sex industry, to the likes of many of these folks, are a moral dilemma, a political problem: what they are not seen as, at least in more than a superficial sense, is people. That’s a horrifyingly privileged position to be coming from, and I think it’s why the ultimate product of that mindset is such ineffective and downright harmful social policy.
For so many of the Jensens and the MacKinnon’s of the world, it seems as if sex work can only ever be conceived of as a moral dilemma, a political problem, rather than one rooted firmly in the actual lives of those who, for whatever reason, are actually involved in that business. I see this in the tendency of many of these folk to repeatedly reframe sex workers’ rights arguments as being about it all supposedly being “empowering”, thus allowing it to fit into some sex work good/sex work bad narrative. Moreover, I think it’s a stance one needs to have to view a “war on prostitution” as being any sort of desirable political strategy beyond its sheer impracticability. Here’s why.
The likes of Jensen and Mackinnon profess to be all about those who are doing sex work for reasons other than personal choice, but from any sort of empathetic perspective, it’s a pretty unhelpful way to go about helping those women. See, say, against all the odds, you succeed. Say that anti-sex work laws, for the first time in history, completely eradicate prostitution in that jurisdiction. What in the fuck are the women who were doing sex work, say, because they can’t find another way to survive, or to pay for an addiction, supposed to do now? Do they get to starve while you folks cheer your (hypothetical) victory?
I’ve read associated theories about how the cash involved in paying for sex work will suddenly magically reappear in the non-sex work economy in such a way as to go back to those particular women. This is not a rational position. If you fight to make sex work disappear without actually providing to the support to those who don’t want to be there to allow them to get into something better, you’re effectively throwing them out on the street. The sex industry does not occur in a void. People either want to be there, or if they don’t, they’re there for a reason. As I mentioned above, perhaps they can’t find other work. Perhaps they have an addiction. If you’re going to actually help these people, perhaps it might be more useful to assist in fighting the causes rather than the symptoms. The practical result of the antis actually succeeding at eliminating sex work would be tipping some already marginalised people out of their means to make some ends meet, and forcing them into an even more precarious position. In the far more likely event that they don’t, it just means those involved in sex work wind up making less money and working in far more dangerous conditions. Either way, this is a bizarre means of planning to come to anyone’s rescue.
If one wants to actually help those who don’t want to be doing sex work out of sex work, perhaps it might, y’know, be helpful to actually listen to those voices, rather than rampaging in to the rescue. Perhaps it might be helpful to redirect the vast amounts of time, energy and money that goes into political crusades against sex work towards directly helping those women, actually giving them an out. Might it not be more effective to say, help people who need to get out of the business find jobs, or training, or stable accomodation? How about, in the meantime, helping those who are doing sex work to gain the safest possible conditions for doing so, so they’re not at quite the same risk of, y’know, getting killed and all that stuff. And perhaps, if one is concerned about sex trafficking, it might be helpful to fight for increased policing efforts on that front, rather than targeting sex work just because it’s easier. All of these things could make a difference, but you’ll never see Berg or Jensen or MacKinnon or Jefferies shifting their focus out that way: it’s far easier to feel better about oneself if one is getting to play the big feminist hero saving the poor wimmins, than it is if one sees ones role as a decent fucking human being to be a supportive ally rather than a saviour.
I’m fed up with this daft, distant, entitled bullshit from feminists who should know better. If you’re going to profess to be all about saving people, then maybe, just maybe, it might pay to actually listen to those women first, and act with empathy rather than ill-thought-through sympathy. If someone wants to be doing sex work, it’s their own damn business. It isn’t mine, and it shouldn’t be theirs. And if someone doesn’t, then efforts should be directed at providing the direct assistance they individually need and want, not dumping them in the shit because the theory says that it’s a bright idea.
Ultimately, it comes down to this. For gods sake, I’m about the most unlikely “sex-pozzie” around, seeing as I’m about the biggest prude around. The thing, it’s not about me. It’s not about what I might find empowering, or what I might want to do. I can’t conceive of sex workers as a distant other in need of saving; I’ve had friends over the years who’ve been in sex work, more often than not not because they wanted to be. So, when the Mackinnons and Jensens of the world start talking about saving the wimmins in some great abstract, I see faces, faces of people that criminalisation and anti-sex work policies have royally fucked over. I see trans girls I knew as a teenager who were trying to get out, and having a fucking hard time of it because the support services simply were not there. I realise that if I’d been less privileged in my own life, it could have been me in those shoes. And I wish that, for once, all of these defenders of the wimmins would realise that IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. It isn’t your challenging moral, philosophical or political dilemma: it’s about people’s lives, damnit, and just because you’re distant enough from those actually affected to see them as some sort of helpless other in need of saving does not give you a license to fuck with deeply marginalised people’s lives because it allows you to feel righteous.
Amen.
Totally. The money in sex work can be amazing, especially on a per-hour basis. If someone can only get entry-level work, and they have to study or look after their children or anything else that prevents them from working long hours, then they won’t get pay like that in any other field. Women (and trans dudes, and homos) will continue to enter into sex work for perfectly rational economic reasons as long as there are poor women (and trans dudes, and homos) and rich men.
What in the fuck are the women who were doing sex work, say, because they can’t find another way to survive, or to pay for an addiction, supposed to do now? Do they get to starve while you folks cheer your (hypothetical) victory?
Considering the demographics of most of those forced to be in sex work to survive, the position taken by anti-sex-work people is pretty blatantly racist and transphobic, imho. IIRC, all of the better-known anti-sex-work people are white.
it’s far easier to feel better about oneself if one is getting to play the big feminist hero saving the poor wimmins
This seems to be the same attitude that Westerners take when colonizing other countries. It’s like saving the “poor savages” from their “infidel religion”, by killing them if necessary.
For gods sake, I’m about the most unlikely “sex-pozzie” around, seeing as I’m about the biggest prude around. The thing, it’s not about me.
Word, from this asexual person.
Berg, et al: “Feminists”, all.
What they don’t have, though, is empathy.>>
Isn’t that always the bottom line? -sigh-
Considering the demographics of most of those forced to be in sex work to survive, the position taken by anti-sex-work people is pretty blatantly racist and transphobic, imho. IIRC, all of the better-known anti-sex-work people are white.
See - while you’re very much right - I get the impression that it hasn’t even been thought through on that level. None of these people seem to conceive of how they, themselves, given a less privileged background, might be faced with the reality of ending up in sex work. Thus, they are able to see it in the theoretical, the abstract - they can’t conceive of how making the working conditions worse (or eliminating business altogether) for someone who’s in it because they have to to survive is not making that person’s life any easier - and that a more humane means of actually helping people who want out of sex work to get out might be to actually focus on that at an individual level, rather than political “war on prostitution” efforts.
This seems to be the same attitude that Westerners take when colonizing other countries. It’s like saving the “poor savages” from their “infidel religion”, by killing them if necessary.
I was a bit wary of making that analogy, being a white lady and all, but I do feel that it’s pretty apt - it’s that absolute insistence on riding in to the rescue, “saving” people - whether or not they want to be saved, or whether or not that actually improves the “saved” people’s lives.
The fact that attacking the sex industry doesn’t help the women in the sex industry should be totally obvious. Promoting the idea that you have to be a lost cause or a basket case to get in (and/or that being in the sex industry always does irreparable, traumatic damage) obviously creates a stigma that makes it that much harder to switch from this line of work to something more socially acceptable. It blows my mind that promoting this stigma could be considered “feminist.”
I think you’ve hit it on the head regarding the lack of empathy. I would go one step farther and say that the feminists who want to protect women from the sex industry typically see women who are in the industry as being already lost, fallen, and broken (possibly beyond repair ) . So these feminists aren’t as concerned with helping women move into another line of work (or even less with helping those who want to stay in the sex industry to be healthy, safe, treated decently, etc. ) as much as they are concerned with protecting any more women from ever having this tragedy befall them. This is the only possible interpretation I can find for the “Prostitution Facts” graphic (which perhaps you’ve seen — made to look like “Nutrition Facts” and run as an ad in magazines where prostitutes run their ads ) .
In order to take a more reasonable look at the sex industry, one useful metaphor is to compare it to work performed by illegal immigrants. Here we have a lot of the same elements such as lack of police protection for workers creating a situation where employers can abuse them, and people ending up in certain types of jobs (which they may or may not want to be in) due to lack of other options. At the same time this example allows us to step back from the deep-rooted prejudice that becoming a “whore” turns a woman immediately from a person into worthless trash (a prejudice which has — mystifyingly — been absorbed wholesale into feminist theory… ) .
I’ve discussed this in the comments of this post. I think there are a lot of middle class women who have bought into the anti-sex-industry rhetoric just because that’s what’s been sold to them as the feminist party line and they haven’t really thought about it. So I think it’s useful to be discussing this on the internet in hopes of getting people to think a bit about what strategies actually benefit real women.
I don’t exactly have anything to add to that, but I just wanted to say that I agree wholeheartedly, C.L. Hanson. I think you’re spot on about how some of these women seem to see sex workers, and perhaps I didn’t go far enough in this post.
I think it’s one of the advantages of the feminist blogosphere that we actually can get these arguments out there, and challenge some of the bullshit that’s going around in feminist communities about sex work. Though I wish I could stand to actually read the average thread about it at a place like Feministe…those threads generally wind up with me wanting to throw things.