Read Loose Women, Lecherous Men Online

Authors: Linda Lemoncheck

Tags: #Social Science, #Feminism & Feminist Theory, #test

Loose Women, Lecherous Men (30 page)

BOOK: Loose Women, Lecherous Men
5.27Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
 
Page 119
others report abuses by photographers and producers that rival the exploitation and coercion of pimps, customers, and cops. Some feminists condemn pornography as more oppressive to women than prostitution, since porn models and actresses typically have no control over the distribution of their work.
35
The term "pornography" comes from the Greek
pornographos
, meaning the writing or depiction (
graphos
) of the life and manner of prostitutes (
porneia
) and their patrons.
36
Andrea Dworkin has contended that these sexually explicit depictions were part of an entrenched institution of female sexual slavery in ancient Greece. Gayle Rubin, on the other hand, finds no evidence for the claim that such depictions are in any way historically or teleologically linked to modern pornography.
37
The sexually explicit depictions likely served as aphrodisiacs for patrons in the houses of prostitution of ancient times and could be used by prostitutes to advertise their particular services. This sales technique is given an ironic twist when contemporary pornography, often depicting violence or abuse, is used to show prostitutes what customers want. Evelina Giobbe argues that since much of the contemporary pornography shown to prostitutes by customers is of various sexual perversions, many of them dangerous or painful when attempted, prostitutes who may be averse to such sex are simply raped.
38
Rubin would argue nevertheless that this is a far cry from suggesting that pornography is part of the history of ancient Greek sexual experience designed to exploit, debase, and violate women in forced sex.
Despite oppositional hierarchies within the sex industry, when California defines prostitution as "a lewd act in exchange for money or other consideration" and strippers who perform live sex shows are the equivalent of live pornography, the lines between pornography, prostitution, and stripping become extremely thin. Sarah Wynter flatly rejects all conceptual and moral distinctions between prostitution, pornography, and stripping, since she believes that all sex work reduces women to commodities for the pleasure and profit of men. The only descriptive difference she does acknowledge is that "in pornography there is a permanent record of the woman's abuse."
39
Diana Russell rejects the expressions "porn actress" or ''porn model" because in her opinion, pornography is just prostitution in front of a camera.
40
On the other hand, Robert Stoller reports that most performers he has interviewed disagree with Russell's assessment. They point out that their sex is with other performers, not customers, so that their partners are not hiring them to do their performing. All performers are hired by some third party, and all parties know that the performers are acting,
especially
when the sex is not simulated. They also appreciate the circumstances and special skills involved, such as men ejaculating in artificial settings, long hours of frontal or anal penetration, and complex dramas of bondage and discipline and/or oral sex under hot lights and in uncomfortable positions.
41
While there is considerable conceptual disagreement over the various categories of sex work, there are a number of striking similarities between sexual relations outside the industry and commercial sex work. As Alan Soble has pointed out, sex in exchange for money (or some other consideration) could describe dates, marriage, even sex therapy.
42
Indeed, radical feminists have regarded prostitution as the paradigm of the sexual subordination of women to men in any context: women "sell" their sexuality daily, in exchange for dinner and a movie, for a promotion, for financial se-
 
Page 120
curity and social status. From this perspective, if prostitutes accept paintings, flashy cars, and apartments for sex, how different are they from man-hunting social climbers? At least, so sex workers say, prostitutes are
honest
about the exchange and can say no or send men away in the absence of coercive pimps, who eerily imitate the role of demanding husbands. Thus, it is claimed that what makes prostitution especially threatening to "respectable" women is that it reveals the fundamentally commercial nature of sex.
43
For example, Frederich Engels was convinced that a bourgeois wife differs from a prostitute only "in that she does not let out her body on piecework as a wageworker, but sells it once and for all into slavery."
44
Sex workers, like wives or girlfriends, can be exploited, abused, and threatened by men, especially if women want to end their relationships with them. A sex worker, like a wife or a girlfriend, can appear to "choose" her life yet still be coerced into sex because she has no other alternative for men's acceptance or support. A prostitute may not be dependent on a single man for making a living, but she is dependent on men, whose fortunes turn with the vagaries of the economy. As one prostitute reports, "If the stock market falls, it's just like any other business."
45
Some prostitutes' rights organizations contend that sex workers are stigmatized, even criminalized, because their efforts at true financial independence from men, unlike the social climber's financial parasitism, are a threat to men's oppression of women.
46
Therefore, if feminists wish to condemn sex work as degrading to women, we must also look critically at our more traditional economic and social institutions whose sexual exchange for goods and services may be degrading to women as well.
Without a raised consciousness regarding the oppressive nature of heterosexuality under patriarchy, prostitutes remain the "bad girls" who perform the dirty, indecent, promiscuous sex that "good" girlfriends/wives cannot or will not do in order to retain their "good girl" status in the eyes of men. As Gail Pheterson points out, the "bad girl'' stigma is a stigma of
blame
for her abuse,
shame
for her sexuality, and
punishment
for her independence.
47
Thus, the good girl/bad girl standard for women's sexuality only exacerbates the alienation of prostitutes from wives or girlfriends by teaching good girls what will happen to them if they do not toe the line. Yet some prostitutes contend that what men really want is for their wives to be whores, the virgin nymphomaniacs of some pornography, who represent the impossibly simultaneous good girl/bad girl discussed in chapter 2. According to one sex worker, if a prostitute could perform the sex her male clients asked for, while successfully pretending to be in love with them, she would be rich.
48
Prostitutes often see themselves as therapists for their customers' problems with their wives, while wives condemn prostitutes for pursuing a line of work that they believe encourages errant husbands and panders to, even promotes, men's worst sexual fantasies. Such condemnation is only reinforced by men who bring their wives with them when they visit prostitutes, to coerce their wives into doing what they must pay prostitutes to do.
49
Given the diversity and overlap within the sex industry and the complex relationship between the sex industry and other social relations, I propose using the expression "sex worker" to refer to those persons whose sexuality is a commodity for the commercial exchange often referred to by workers themselves as the sex
trade
.
50
The
 
Page 121
extent to which women (and men) make a
business
out of trading sex for personal gain is the extent to which we can call their sexual relations "sex work." Sex workers are conceptually distinguishable from others who work in the sex industry, such as accountants, lawyers, producers, directors, writers, managers, or pimps, whose sexuality is not for sale but who engage in the production and distribution of sex. Sex workers can also be producers or pimps, but they are not to be conceptually confused with them. Thus, "sex work" can be understood as the commercial exchange within the sex trade of the sexuality of the worker for some other commodity of value. This expression alone does not decide whether the work is that of entrepreneur, employee, or unwilling victim nor whether the work is done for $100 an hour or simply to stave off starvation. Nor does the expression "sex work" presume the gender, race, sexual preference, or other social location of the sex worker. In other words, sex work does not presume freedom or force, pleasure or pain, respect or humiliation. Work, as Karl Marx has reminded us, can be impoverishing, alienating, or exploitative for some, humanizing or liberating for others.
Politicized sex workers have often advocated using the expression "sex work" to advance the view that prostitution, stripping, and pornographic posing are simply occupations deserving of employment protection under the law, equal to that of other occupations. Many sex workers report that while making an independent living as a woman is difficult enough, taking money
for sex
stigmatizes sex workers most. Emphasizing the
work
in sex work is thought to reduce this stigma, by eliminating the negative connotations many people associate with words like "whore" or "stripper." From this perspective, if sex workers have more trouble than other working women in determining the terms and conditions of their work, it is the
sex
in sex work that is the reason.
Yet sex work is attractive to many women who are sex workers precisely because sex is a powerful tool for women's economic independence. As one prostitute has said, "The erotic image is our bread and butter."
51
Some politicized sex workers refer to themselves proudly as "bad girls" and "whores" as a way of subverting the negative connotations typically attached to them and announcing their pride in exchanging sex for money. Indeed, as I mentioned earlier, the fact that a woman's sexuality can be a source of freedom from dependence on any one man may be one reason for the stigma of sex work.
Consequently, feminists who want to convince sex workers that feminists are not sexual puritans must convince sex workers that we are worried about women's potential
subordination
through sex, not the (purported) indecency of tainting sex with anonymity and money. Feminists who are skeptical of sex work fear that it makes the degradation of women
sexy
and hence natural, desirable, pleasurable, and defensible. Yet in claiming this, even feminists who presume that only some kinds of sex work are degrading appear to complain about
sex
and so alienate many sex workers from the start. Because I wish to explore the tensions between sex worker and feminist concerns, my conceptual emphasis will remain balanced between the two terms "work" and "sex." This approach is in keeping with my thesis that the work itself comprises a dialectic between sexual subject and object that both affords and explains the variety of interpretations of it.
 
Page 122
Normative Criticisms
The feminist complaint that sex work is degrading to women is typically both a complaint about work that degrades women who participate in the industry and a complaint about the degradation of all women. The degradation is typically described in terms of the commerce in sex in which the sex worker engages: sex work is degrading because the sex worker treats herself, and allows others to treat her, as a commodity to be bought and sold on the open market. Evelina Giobbe characterizes the sex industry as one in which "women's or children's bodies are bought, sold, or traded for sexual use and abuse." Diana Russell and Laura Lederer remark that "even the most banal pornography objectifies women's bodies."
52
According to this view, the sex worker does not treat herself, nor is she treated by others, as a person whose feelings, interests, and needs are worthy of respect, equal to that of any other person. She is treated as a mere body, toy, tool, prop, or pet to be used and abused by the men who purchase her. Not only does her work define her as the proper sexual subordinate of men, but her work, insofar as she appears to choose it, encourages and reinforces the view that her only pleasure is to service men and that what she wants and needs from men is their use and abuse. From this perspective, because sex work is situated within a patriarchal milieu whose sexual ideology is already one that defines women in terms of our sexual availability to men, sex work only reinforces the view that all women, even those who would not choose it, wish to devote our lives to the sexual service of men. Feminists argue that such false beliefs about women not only are degrading in themselves but also inevitably result in the sexual exploitation and violation of women, regarded as the unconditional sexual objects of men. Thus, the complaint that sex work degrades women is both a deontological and a teleological complaint: sex work is wrong per se, because it is degrading to (all) women; and sex work is wrong because it has harmful consequences that are the result of degradation, in that sex work encourages the exploitation of women and promotes the tolerance and exercise of violence against women.
However, one of the ways that feminists may forestall open debate on the morality of sex work is by
requiring
that sex work be degrading to women. Helen Longino defines pornography as "the degrading and demeaning portrayal of the role and status of the human female." According to this view, by portraying herself in demeaning ways, a pornographic model or actress performs work that is degrading to all women. Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon define pornography in their Minneapolis ordinance as "the graphic, sexually explicit subordination of women in pictures and/or words." Sarah Wynter defines prostitution as "a type of commercial sexual exploitation and abuse which reduces women to commodities for the pleasure and profit of men."
53
The negative normative content of sex work need not be a function of defining sex work as degrading; some feminists argue that the degradation is implicit in the patriarchal context in which the sex work is practiced. For example, Laurie Shrage posits that cultural settings specify the meaning and value of our activities. Thus, depending on the culture in which commercial sex work is practiced, such work may or may not be degrading to women. However, according to Shrage, in contemporary Western industrialized nations like the United States, prostitution is necessarily de-
BOOK: Loose Women, Lecherous Men
5.27Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Silent Mercy by Linda Fairstein
ThisTimeNextDoor by Gretchen Galway
Bellows Falls by Mayor, Archer
Charlie All Night by Jennifer Cruise
A Promise to Believe in by Tracie Peterson
City of the Dead by T. L. Higley