sex work

How the Dominant "No-Sex Class" Paradigm Complicates Sex-Work Acceptance

Posted by figleaf on Wed, 2013-02-20 16:47

Via Miri at BruteReason there was a bit of a kerfuffle at Jadehawk's Blog over a post about sex work by Jill Filipovic at Feministe called Supporting Sex Workers’ Rights, Opposing the Buying of Sex.

You can follow the links to see who said what. Here's my take on the conflict.

The fact that full-service sex work has declined nearly 90% since the beginning of the post-modern, feminist, "sex-positive" era suggests that Jill has a point about the likely role of sex work in a feminist future: while it won't go away any more than ballroom dance instruction has gone away, it will no longer be considered the necessity (literally the "necessary evil") it once was. The reason being, according to economists, that as legal, social, and economic barriers to women's equality have fallen women have been more able to choose to have sex when they want to, without worrying about ruining their "chances."

That tends to reinforce Jill's point that after feminism sex work as we know it will all but disappear. It already has! It already is! I'll go a step further here and say that for all our tolerance and/or advocacy of sex work (and while I'm a curmudgeon about it I'm still an advocate) I'm... pretty sure nobody thinks we should go back to, say, the 1940s when between one in three and one in four men regularly went to brothels or otherwise hired sex workers.

So if those particular bad old days are gone and if perfectly credible free-agency sex workers are able to advocate for themselves and their professions what's the problem?

The sticking point, I think, with sex work as it continues to be constructed in popular culture (and consequently in much of feminist culture) is that it's seen as one end of a continuum of heterosexual sex as transactional sex where there are women (only women sex workers count in pop culture) who men can marry for sex, and other women men can pay cash for sex, and maybe somewhere in the middle there are women who will or at least are expected to trade sex for dinner and a movie.

Oh, and inside the paradigm of transactional sex there are the reviled-by-pop-culture "sluts" who screw everything up by "giving it away." Them and assault victims who are eternally scrutinized and blamed for somehow "asking for it." Them, and assault victims, and men who "resort to" all those demeaning, deprecating euphemisms for masturbation all screw thing up "for the rest of us." And finally inside that paradigm it's almost impossible to imagine women (it's always women in the popular imagination, remember) doing it of their own free will, without being enslaved, induced, degraded, addicted, abused, broken, or otherwise appearing to themselves and the public as "damaged goods."

Inside the dominant paradigm wherein men may desire sex and women may only be interested in what they can get for sex with men (cough), no matter how interesting, intentional, or freely chosen sex workers and their customers are still going to be part of the problem. In other words, like a lot of the rest of patriarchy the problem isn't individuals, it's the system.

It doesn't have to be that way. And obviously for a lot of individual participants it's nothing like that at all! But for too much of the rest of contemporary civilization (let's not even start talking about "traditional" civilization!) it's still not like that at all!

So here's the metric I've used to think about sex work for about the last five years: sex work will stop being problematic from a feminist/gender-consciousness perspective when as many women hire sex workers as men... and when men's motivation to hire sex workers are the same as women's. To the extent that metric seems impractical, idealistic, outrageous, or ridiculous sex work will continue to be problematic. And further, until we get there I don't necessarily agree that Jill's right... but those who disagree with her won't be right either.


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What Keeps Getting Missed When Activists Try to Distinguish Sex Trafficking From All the Rest of Human Trafficking?

Posted by figleaf on Sat, 2012-06-09 17:33

Laura Clawson says

A Human Rights Watch report based on interviews with dozens of farmworkers as well as many attorneys, service providers, law enforcement officials and others involved in the agriculture industry details the problems these women face. The problem is widespread:

A 2010 survey of 150 farmworker women in California’s Central Valley found that 80 percent had experienced some form of sexual harassment, while a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that a majority of their 150 interviewees had also experienced sexual harassment.

Because assailants are often supervisors, women who resist sexual harassment or assault are often fired in retaliation, sometimes along with their entire families or with coworkers who try to stand up for them

Source: Daily Kos

It's just so... conceited to claim that people trafficking into commercial sex is the only conceivable thing we should be worrying our pretty little heads about. My only quibble would be that the report makes it sound as though only women in precarious, smuggled, or trafficked agricultural work are subject to sexual harassment and sexual coercion, but that's just a quibble: it matters more that anyone at all is acknowledging that "non-sex" smuggled, trafficked, and otherwise poorly-documented workers are at risk. Especially since credible reports suggest that they (along with trafficked manufacturing, domestic, and hospitality workers) make up close to 90% of humans trafficked worldwide.


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Lessons From The Secret Service / Cargagena Sex-Worker Case: Who Benefits Most When Sex Work is Illegal?

Posted by figleaf on Sun, 2012-04-22 13:04

Something to keep in mind about the recent Secret Service / Sex-worker scandal in Cartagena, Columbia. When an American tried to pay a sex worker only $30 after previously agreeing to pay her $800 she complained to the police.

She complained to the police.

If you're an American take a minute to wrap your head around that.  Take more than a minute if you need to.  And you might.  But let's look at that again.

She. Complained. To the police.

The possibility that a sex worker would complain to the police almost certainly never occurred to the American.

The possibility that the police would listen to her probably never crossed his mind.

Because in America, where that kind of sex work is universally illegal it just doesn't work that way.

Because every American customer, let alone every American criminal/sexual predator, knows that no American sex worker dares go to the police no matter how badly they're treated.

And of course it's not just American customers and predators who can't wrap their head around the concept.  Nominal sex-worker defenders who can speak only in terms of "prostituted women" don't seem to get it either.  Nor is the general public, immersed as we are in cop shows, "gritty urban realism" metaphors, "heart of gold hooker" movies like Pretty Girl, and Krucher Ashton videos, likely to have much luck either.

So.

Small wonder then the American Secret Service agent thought he could get away with treating a Colombian sex worker the way he would treat (has treated?) sex workers at home or elsewhere abroad.

I mean, even if you "know" sex work is legal in the "3rd-world" town* you're visiting it's unlikely it would occur to you that if you bilk a sex worker she'll complain to the police.

The American made a bad decision to effectively rob a sex worker.  Unfortunately for him a decision under Colombian law makes it safe for sex workers to complain to the police.

Standard disclaimer: One can oppose sex work as an industry and still celebrate social, civil, and legal protection for those who practice it.  Further, the social transformations required to end the sex work industry does not require that sex work itself remain illegal.  And finally, one can oppose the sex work industry and still recognize who benefits most from laws prohibiting it.

* Note: Socioeconomically speaking Cargagena, Columbia is considered a thriving, multi-industry middle-to-upper-middle class city that regularly hosts international economic and trade summits.


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Whatever Else One Can Say of the Recent Ontario Brothel Court Ruling, One Can't Say it Protects the Most At-Risk Sex Workers.

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2012-03-26 22:16

Amber, at what appears to be a commercial erotica site in Canada called "GirlZPorn," points out a significant problem with the recent Ontario court ruling that's been characterized as "legalizing bawdy houses" a.k.a. brothels: it leaves street/subsistence sex workers figuratively and to a certain extent literally in the dark. (Emphasis mine.)

PRESS RELEASE: Ontario Court leaves most vulnerable sex workers unprotected

In a ruling which many sex workers are calling a disappointment, the Ontario Court of appeal today released a decision that upheld the law against communication for the purposes of prostitution, modified the law against living off the avails of prostitution and struck down the law against operating a common bawdy house.

“The vast majority of all prostitution arrests are under the communication law. The failure to strike down the communication law means that the most vulnerable sex workers will continue to face arrest, police harassment, prosecution and violence.” –Emily Van Der Muelen, Assistant Professor, in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Ryerson University.

“I reject the conclusion that street work is so bad for neighborhoods that stopping it is more important than protecting women’s lives.” -Lux, a current sex worker with street experience.

“This is a letdown for the most vulnerable sex workers who are largely street, Indigenous and transgendered sex workers” –Keisha Scott, Coordinator, Maggie’s: Toronto Sex Workers Action Project.

Source: GirlZPorn

Living as I do in what's approximately ground zero for murdered street/subsistence sex workers, including successful and unsuccessful pickups and body dumps within a mile of my home, the main issue I really care about when it comes to the whole issue of legalization is making it safe for people who are determined to continue working in conditions with mortality rates that would make the average coal miner, logger, or the nearby "Most Dangerous Catch" crew blanche. And so for that reason I share the activist's concerns that the ruling will do very little to bring safety or security to those who need it most.

Via Newfinland/Laborador's @Anjasa's Twitter feed.


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I'm Pretty Sure Legal Sex Work is Safer Than Illegal Sex Work -- There Should be Fairly Simple Ways to Find Out

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2012-02-02 18:13

An interesting exchange posted at Sex Worker Problems raises what seems like an imminently testable research question into whether or not sex-work legalization increases or decreases worker safety. First, here's the post

Anonymous asked

I am a dancer. Yes, though I may face social stigma as well, my cash flow is at least legal, so I couldn't even imagine the terror of possibly facing legal issues to earn my income. Out of curiosity... is the issue of illegality daunting/frustrating/scary? --- Much love and respect. This blog is amazing.

Thank you so much! The issue of illegality IS really daunting and scary. There are of course all kinds of resources for sex workers to do their best to screen clients, but yeah, the likelihood that a cop or a serial killer might be the next person you meet is… well it’s not high, really, but it’s much higher than it is in a lot of other occupations.

Source: Sex Worker Problems

And now here's the research question. Two questions, really.  Ok, actually maybe a whole series.

First, what are the assault, robbery, on the job harassment, and law-enforcement-action rates against dancers vs. otherwise comparable non-dance customer-contact employees (wait staff, bartenders, greeters, etc.) in "strip clubs?"

Next, what are the assault, robbery, harassment, and law-enforcement-action rates against dancers vs. otherwise comparable non-dance customer-contact employees in non-"stripper" bars and nightclubs?

In both these cases, above, both indicated professions are legal.  (The comparisons would be even more informative if data could also be gathered in areas where dancing is not legal.)

Next question, slightly further afield:

What are the assault, robbery, harassment, and law-enforcement-action rates against "escort" sex workers vs. otherwise comparable non-dance customer-contact workers who work in similar circumstances (e.g. massage therapists, housecleaners, or even legal "strip-o-gram" delivery persons.)

Offhand my guess would be that in all cases where both sets of professions are legal rates will be fairly similar.  My further guess would be that in all cases where one set of professions is legal but the other is not, workers in the non-legal arena are subject to considerably greater jeopardy.

I'm... pretty sure the results would not be prediction-defying.  It's also entirely possible that the research has already been done.

Still, considering the rather incessant drumbeat about the relative perils of legalized vs. non-legal sex work it would be nice to have some solid data to base actual policy on.


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More Evidence That Using Possession of Condoms as Probable Cause for of Sex Workers Is a Really Bad Idea

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2011-11-14 13:43

New York based sex-worker advocate Crystal DeBoise has a positively charming example of how anti-prostitution tactics produce results we'd... probably rather not have produced.

Last winter, “Sheila,” a sex worker in her early 20s, had just finished her counseling session with me at the Sex Workers Project, and was heading out the door. Sheila was seeking counseling from the Sex Workers Project to help her make a career change, but had no financial support and was still working in the sex industry. I gestured towards our colorful shoebox of condoms, lube and pamphlets about safe sex and reminded her to take whatever she needed. She looked at me as if I were suggesting she walk into the January snow barefoot and said, “Are you crazy? I’m not carrying those things around! You want me to get arrested or something?”

Sheila was referring to a situation in New York that permits the use of condoms as evidence of prostitution, resulting in their collection and confiscation from women who are detained by the police. This practice is an outright slap in the face to the decades of hard work that public health advocates have undertaken to increase safe sex, decrease HIV and create a positive shift in the cultural acceptance of condom use. This policy discourages a stigmatized and marginalized group of sexually active people from carrying the tools they need to be healthy and safe. And this occurs despite the fact that the New York City itself runs a free condom distribution program because “Using a condom every time you have anal, oral or vaginal sex protects you and your partners from getting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases … and prevents unplanned pregnancies.”

Source: Feministe

I'm pretty sure you could find the random conservative fundamentalist, or cartoonishly stereotypical pimp, or neo-conservative "feminist," or trans-phobist, or heck, even gay basher who really, truely doesn't care that sex workers are discouraged from protecting themselves or their customers from illness or death by anti-condom police policies.  But I don't think you'd find very many.   Therefore I'm not sure what, exactly, the appeal of the we'll bust you if we catch you with condoms policy really is.


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Yes, Roxanne, Put On The Red Light

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2011-10-31 10:40

Helpful, concise definition from SW2 at Yes, Roxanne, Put On The Red Light in response to a reader who asked "I was just wondering if you could explain what exactly a 'sex worker' is? (She ends by explaining why she and her fellow authors started their blog.)

Good question!!

A sex worker is paid to do sexy things, basically. If a person is paid to turn someone else on and/or get someone else off, they are a sex worker. This includes up-close and in-person sex workers like happy ending masseuses and masseurs, strippers, professional dominants, and prostitutes. It also includes sex workers who work at a bit of a remove or on the mental aspects of arousal such as peep show and web cam performers and phone sex operators. Because we all basically sell sex in one form or another, and we must all deal with our work being stigmatized and devalued, if not outright criminalized, we made this blog to share, commiserate, laugh, bitch, tell stories, and keep each other company.

Source: Yes, Roxanne, Put On The Red Light.

Their blog has an interesting format -- generally a series of red ("sex worker problems") or purple ("sex worker perks") decorated boxes with Twitter-length single words, phrases, or sentences. The authors are all current or former sex workers. According to their intro, one of them hates sex work, the other two love it. At least so far it's been quite active. They encourage contributions from other sex workers. I've added it to the blogroll.


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From Nova Scotia to Washington State, Sex Workers Have Human Faces, Human Lives

Posted by figleaf on Wed, 2011-10-12 20:07


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Margo DeMello, reflecting on why a Nova Scotia NGO's initiative to humanize sex workers in the minds of the public is important.

Stepping Stone’s executive director, Rene Ross, points out that every time a prostitute is killed—sex workers have a mortality rate 40 times higher than the Canadian national average—media accounts emphasize that the victim was a prostitute, but not that she (or he) was also a mother, daughter, friend or, for example, animal lover. By thinking of sex workers only in terms of their stigmatized occupation, we don’t have to care about them as people.

In New Mexico, where I live, the remains of eleven women (and the unborn fetus of one) were found buried on a mesa outside of Albuquerque in 2009. The women had disappeared between 2003 and 2005, and most, according to police, were involved with drugs and/or prostitution. Why did it take the police so long to find the bodies of these women, and why do their murders still remain unsolved? Some observers have suggested that because the women were—or were alleged to be—prostitutes, there was less pressure to find them after they went missing, or to solve their murders once their bodies were found. As long as the victims were sex workers, then the non-sex worker public can feel safe in the knowledge that they are not at risk. We know that prostitution is dangerous, so it’s expected that some of them will die grisly deaths, and be buried like trash on a mesa outside of town.

Source: Sociological Images

Yeah, it's really important to portray sex workers as people. Not just because they're actually people but because enough people seem to think they're not people that a) some people think it's really ok to rob, rape, assault, or murder them, and b) waaaaay too many other people who don't actually commit those crimes seem to agree that, yeah, it's ok to do that stuff to them. Because, as Green River serial killer Gary Ridgway put it, "I thought I was doing you guys a favor, killing, killing prostitutes ... Here you guys can't control them, but I can."

While researching this post I learned that Ridgway dumped the body of one of his victims near the parking lot of the hospital where my daughter was born -- just a nine minute drive from my neighborhood.

If that victim had been the only one, and if Ridgway was the only criminal who calculatedly chose sex workers, then maybe this wouldn't be a big deal. But as DeMello says in her article being a sex worker is 40 times more dangerous than the average job -- more dangerous than coal mining, more dangerous than crab fishing in the Bering Sea. They're people. They should be treated like people, not garbage.


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Dacia Ray: Sex Work Decriminalization is a State and Local Issue, Start There

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2011-09-29 13:30

Audacia Ray says

Embarrassing Sex Worker Activism:

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO: Decriminalize the practice/occupation of engaging in sexual activity between consenting adults in exchange for payment.

Dear sex worker activists: the Obama administration cannot make this happen. The criminal code is codified at a state level.

If you want to “decriminalize” aka chip away at the legal system that does harm in our lives, start researching the laws in place in your state and city that do this harm. There are lots of local laws that discriminate against sex workers and people profiled as sex workers. Like the fact that condoms can be used as evidence of prostitution, or that until it was defeated this summer, people profiled as sex workers (esp trans women of color) in Louisiana were being put on the sex offender registry.

Source: Waking Vixen

If you follow Dacia's link to the petition at WhiteHouse.gov you'll see the details of the petition are nice but vague, and that while the stated goal is "Signatures needed by Oct. 27, 2011 to reach goal of 5000," the "Total signatures on this petition," at least at the moment, are... 45.

Actually I expect the petitioners were hoping for the President to direct agencies under the control of the executive branch to back off, say, cooperation with multi-state law-enforcement "sweeps" or something.  Which wouldn't hurt.  But even then, since even then the initiatives arise from state and local levels and federal agencies such as the FBI really do mostly just cooperate, she's right that the place to go to work on this stuff is the state and local levels.

Which, since very often what's needed are human faces at human scale, local jurisdictions are probably the right place to make your cases.  And also very often it's the petty outrages like condom carrying as evidence, or sex work as sex offense* that cause the biggest law-related headaches.  And it's also often the merely venal outrages like cops shaking down sex workers for free "dates" as part of the "cost of doing business" that local activism is more likely to have some influence over.

I'd add that it probably really is state and local level activism that'll help incubate "best practices" decriminalization in the long run.  Because as we can tell from Sweden to Nevada to Holland to Australia to Vancouver(!) there are a lot of ways to do it wrong too.

Also, groundswell!  5,000,000 marchers on the D.C. Mall rarely have much impact, even with the backing of FOX news, so 5,000 petition signatures isn't going to cut it either.  If you're going to make a difference I'm... pretty sure it's going to have to be from the bottom up.

* Though, of course, never, oh never, is a customer put on the offender registry.  Even when the sex worker they select is working under duress.  Even when the sex worker they select is working under *age!*http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2011/09/big-dick-goes-to-canadian-pedophile.html


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On Peculiar but Not Unforseeable Outcomes of the Swedish Model of Sex-Work Prohibition

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2011-09-08 19:34

A month or so ago Hexy outlined one of the problems with the egregious Swedish Model of sex work "legalization."

It’s also worth noting that, under the Swedish model of policing sex work, if the police interrupt a sex work transaction, the sex worker is taken into custody.

Source: Feministe

She adds

Sex workers in Sweden have had their children removed from them when it was found that they engaged in sex work, even though doing sex work is not a criminal activity.

And then there's this

Most disturbingly, the strict pimping laws apply to people who live with sex workers (the good old ‘living off the earnings’ schtick) which may include partners and even sex workers’ children. There have been cases in Sweden already where sex workers have had their grownup children charged with pimping because they were living with them and not paying rent.

While this seems insane from an outside perspective it arises more from a serious disconnect between the feminist ideals of the law (whatever one thinks of the consequent essentialism, denial of agency, fairness, safety implications, or effectiveness) and the implementation by those who may pay only lip service to those ideals.

The strong impression I’ve gotten from people who do sex-work advocacy and research in Sweden say that whereas sex work is nominally legal, and sex workers nominally victims, in practice they’re often treated as material witnesses to illegally being a customer. With the result that being detained for income-robbing periods or having your minor or adult children threatened are just fairly typical procedures used by police almost everywhere to essentially extort cooperation.

This “material witness” ploy is evidently one of the reasons sex workers retreat back into areas that aren’t regularly patrolled by (non-corrupt) police — with the same increases of risk of rape, robbery, assault, police shakedowns, coercion into trafficking situations, or of course serial murder as we see in the standard U.S. model where sex workers are considered the criminals and customers are just naughty boys who sometimes have to go to John school.

I still don’t care much for the role sex work plays in the transactional model of sex, but I hate the kind of calculated immiseration and endangerment of sex workers that's nominally done in the name of "protecting" them.


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