Bridget Crawfor of Feminist Law Professors, commenting on what she feels is thin-gruel anti-prostitution legislation in Rhode Island, says
Want to stop prostitution? Publish the names of the customers.
While I don’t agree that anybody should be prosecuted for uncoerced transactional sex I do agree that if you want to get serious about stopping prostitution, as constituted, then you have to start holding buyers responsible instead of sellers. You have to stop blaming the providers (enough of whom are not coerced to make “blaming the victim” an insufficient construction) and start blaming recipients.
And so, by all means, if they’re serious they should publish the names of the customers. (Not that they are.)
The point isn’t that men, the primary customers, are to “blame” for sex work. Nor, I think, should men be punished for seeking it. (Really, seriously, I believe that: sex work as constituted is a product of a social paradigm of sexual scarcity for men. Therefore whatever the solution is it’s not adding to the perception that men must be willing to put themselves at risk to find sex.)
It’s just that one of the big consequences of the heteronormative, androcentric view of the world is the assumption that men’s social/sexual activities are physical, inevitable property of the universe like gravity or the speed of light. With the result that we tend to lament men’s behavior, and fulminate about it, and devise and impose various behavior-modification schemes to try and subvert it, and oh boy do we create layers, and layers, and layers of customs, conventions, rules, regulations, and blame, blame, blaming of others to try and cope with it! But setting and upholding actual, useful, affirmative, non-punitive expectations? Not so much.
