Handbook on Sexual Violence (52 page)

As a means of organising the discussion, this
chapter asks whether Kelly’s (1988) concept of a continuum of sexual violence can be applied to understanding or theorising sexual violence in the context of prostitution. The

main argument of the chapter is that no matter how innovative the concept may have been in the 1980s, it obscures and conflates more than it illuminates in relation to prostitution. In order to make this argument, the first
section of this
chapter briefly reviews Kelly’s concept of a continuum of sexual violence. The second
section explores some of the difficulties in measuring and naming ‘sexual violence’ in the context of prostitution. The third part of the chapter works through the implications of applying the concept of a continuum of sexual violence to prostitution.

A continuum of sexual violence

One of the legacies of 1980s feminist scholarship on sexual violence was the calling into question of the idea that legal or ‘common-sense’ definitions of sexual violence were sufficient. Instead, early feminist scholars argued that sexual violence is a social phenomenon that takes its meaning from the social and historical context. Critical in establishing this shift in thinking was Liz Kelly’s (1988) pioneering analysis of sexual violence and her concept of a continuum of sexual violence.

At the time of its publication, Kelly’s (1988)
Surviving Sexual Violence
was groundbreaking. It provided a then much-needed bridge between feminist activism addressing the issue of men’s violence against women and academic feminism attempting to theorise the extent and range of women’s and children’s experiences of sexual violence. As Kelly herself remarked: ‘The concept was used in a number of talks given to a variety of women’s groups (some were feminist groups involved in work around male violence, some were local community groups). Many of the women present found it helpful in understanding their own experiences and sexual violence generally’ (Kelly 1987, 2002: 128–9). It also provided an academic challenge to constructions and definitions of sexual violence in women’s lives which treated sexual violence as merely and only about sex, as pathological, abnormal or aberrant forms of sexuality and as rare events. The challenge came from the broad definition that Kelly used. For her sexual violence is

any physical, visual, verbal or sexual act that is experienced by the woman or girl, at the time or later, as a threat, invasion or assault, that has the effect of hurting her or degrading her and/or takes away her ability to control intimate contact.

(Kelly 1988: 41)

This definition allowed Kelly to move beyond the idea that the sexual violence was an instrumental (if pathological) way of getting sex. Instead, Kelly constituted the ‘sex’ in sexual violence as a means by which men achieved social power. Her object of inquiry was the extent, range and impact of this newly defined sexual violence on women’s and girls’ lives and it was in this context that she developed the concept of a continuum of sexual violence. By ‘continuum’, Kelly meant two things. First she meant that the forms of behaviour identified (that is, obscene phone calls, sexual harassment, rape,

incest, coerced or pressurised sex and so on), no matter how seemingly disparate, were part of the same social phenomenon, i.e. that of men’s social control of women. Second, she meant that at the level of social experience, these disparate forms of behaviour were not easily distinguished, that they blurred into and out of each other. So, the argument to be distilled from
Surviving Sexual Violence
and the various articles that were published by Kelly shortly afterwards can be summarised as follows: women’s and girls’ lives are limited and their experiences of freedom and autonomy are constrained by a continuum of sexual violence which functions to ensure men’s social power and control.

Before moving on, it is helpful to highlight a few obvious exclusions in the following discussion. This chapter concerns itself with women’s involvement in prostitution. This is not for any reason other than a purely pragmatic one – Kelly’s concept was never developed to address sexual violence per se but rather sexual violence committed by men against women. This means that at a very basic level, there will be difficulties in using it to address (i) men and boys as sellers of sex and/or victims within prostitution and (ii) the distinctions between adults, young people and children in prostitution and their experience of violence in commercialised sexual exchanges. Second, an important development in Kelly’s work was eschewing the dominance of legal definitions of sexual violence and including in her definition some of the more ‘blurry’ activities, such as harassment, obscene phone calls and the like. This
chapter focuses on what is most commonly understood and known as prostitution – the direct exchange of sex for money. What is excluded from the discussion are the ‘blurry’ activities in which a sexual service is provided but where there is no physical contact (e.g. webcams, telephone sex lines and so on).

Victimisation in prostitution: the problems of naming and measuring

The past two decades has seen a reawakening of criminological, sociological and anthropological research (and feminist campaigning) interest in prostitution (Phoenix 2009; Campbell and O’Neill 2006; Kinnell 2010; Sanders 200; Munro and della Guista 2008). Most of that research can be described as critical scholarship that focuses on policy development, innovation, reform and implementation. Notwithstanding this, there has also been a steady flow of localised and small-scale ethnographic and survey research examining the conditions of existence for individuals in prostitution. Together, the findings of that research tell a fairly consistent, if contradictory, tale in which involvement in prostitution is seen as being both a strategy for achieving economic and financial stability and security (or merely economic survival) and a form of victimisation in that, for many, involvement in prostitution has exposed them to a range of violent and criminal forms of behaviour such as rape, assault, sexual assault, robbery, intimidation, violence and so on (Phoenix 2001, 2002 and 2009; O’Neill 2001).
1
The literature is littered with accounts of exploitation and intimidation, of violent physical assaults, of sexual assaults and rape, of harassment by community vigilantes or by policing ‘purges’, of street robbery (for those working from the streets), of clients refusing to pay, of the force of

necessity and poverty driving women’s choices, of the coercive and corrosive effect of drug and alcohol dependency, of housing problems and homelessness, of backgrounds marked by domestic abuse, child abuse (physical, sexual and emotional) and mental health problems and so on. Research also confirms that street work is more dangerous than indoor work – especially if indoor workers are able to work together (Sanders 2008; McKeganey and Barnard 1996; Church
et al
. 2001; Day and Ward 1999; Kinnell 2006, 2010; Campbell and O’Neill 2006). The risks and realities of violence are not evenly distributed across all types and forms of prostituting activities or for all constituencies of sex workers (Kinnell 2010). Women and girls working the street tend to be most at risk from a broad range of violences. Those individuals whose lives are marked by increased levels of social and economic stability and security (i.e. escort workers, indoor workers) tend to experience less violence generally and a narrower range of violences.

Recognition of the high levels of (sexual) victimisation
2
in prostitution raises a series of difficult methodological and epistemological questions. There is no question that victimisation – sexual or otherwise – punctuates the lives of women in prostitution. What remains, however, are two points of discussion:

(i) the extent of that victimisation and whether it is ever possible to measure and (ii) how to make sense of it. In examining some of these questions, this
section makes the case that the concept of a continuum of sexual violence does not
readily
lend itself to generating new insights into the lives of women involved in prostitution. The concept was developed in relation to Kelly’s stated aim of giving a ‘voice’ to women whose experiences had not figured in public, academic and policy debates (i.e. those who were outwith criminal justice or health and welfare agencies) and with the express purpose of addressing one of the key research questions, that is the ‘long-term impact of sexual violence’. In order to accomplish these twin aims, Kelly’s research population were ‘women’ and her object of inquiry was both the experience of sexual violence and the way those experiences came to be meaningful. Although seemingly obvious, it is worth noting that Kelly’s object of inquiry was constituted as being
in the context of everyday, ordinary life
and not in relation to a specific set of activities, events or social relationships, much less in relation to a diverse social institution. In this way, the concept of a continuum was developed
because
the data demonstrated links between the way women experience a broad range of behaviours in everyday life (from unwanted sex, to harassment, to rape) and the impact this had on their everyday life. Her interview sample was relatively small (n=60) and was what might be termed ‘opportunistic’ in that she visited a range of women’s groups with leaflets and tear-off strips. The interviewees, by and large white British women, were a more or less homogeneous sample in that they were women attending a women’s group of one variety or another.

In relation to prostitution, however, there are profound difficulties in even beginning to specify the prevalence or impact of sexual victimisation perpetrated against individuals in the prostitution. This is not ‘just’ a problem of (self)disclosure, as Kelly (1988) noted. Nor is it ‘merely’ a problem of quantification. The problem is basic and fundamental. As discussed in the introduction to this
chapter, prostitution is a social institution – and a highly

diverse one. Women working in prostitution can work in complete isolation from welfare, statutory or voluntary agencies, as in the case of women working from their own homes and using the Internet as a point of contact with clients. Alternatively, they may be working from the streets in which case they could be known to other working women and a range of agencies tasked with working with them. Some of these women are able to secure for themselves very stable lives and very high incomes. Others are involved as a form of economical survivalism. In this respect, often the only thing that women in prostitution have in common is that they are involved in the commercial exchange of sex for money. At the risk of oversimplification, it may be that the contexts and experiences of women working from different venues and in different ways are so diverse as to render any analytical grouping of them together meaningless – even, or especially, for the purpose of understanding sexual violence.

Research in prostitution has the added difficulties associated with identifying and gaining access to unknown, hidden or indeed ‘vulnerable’ and marginalised research participants (O’Connell Davidson and Layder 1994). Often UK data produced about prostitution (qualitative or quantitative) are, in reality, data produced about research participants (i) who, in stark contrast to Kelly’s research population, are accessed through outreach, criminal justice or other welfare agencies; (ii) for whom prostitution has become the type of problem that means that they are compelled, or inclined, to seek help; (iii) or who may be part of pro- or anti-campaigning groups and thereby frame their experiences by particular sets of a priori assumptions. Inferences or extrapolations from data collected about the experiences of these individuals in prostitution will not necessarily be meaningful across the full range of all individuals involved in prostitution(s), including those who have never accessed services or campaigning groups. By their very nature, outreach services or other voluntary or statutory welfare services often work with only a very small sector of prostitution such as street work, escort or parlours. It may well be that recent attempts to quantify sexual violence in prostitution have an inherent tendency to
overestimate
the extent and prevalence of sexual violence if only because there is an over-representation of individuals who are accessed through welfare or criminal justice agencies and who work in less stable and more risky environs. In order to make any methodologically robust, meaningful statements (or to produce ‘evidence’) about the extent, range and prevalence of violence, it is vital that the general population, from which the sample is derived, can be described. This is simply not possible with research in prostitution and has led to what Wagenaar (2010) refers to as the ‘fallacy of unwarranted generalisations’. Wagenaar (2010) argues that prostitution research is marked by a tendency to make large quantitative generalisations from small scale qualitative research. Take for instance a frequently quoted statistic: ‘more than half of UK prostitutes have been raped and/or seriously sexually assaulted’ (Eaves 2008). This statistic was drawn from an earlier Home Office publication.

Another area in which there is a growing body of literature concerns violence experienced by women involved in street prostitution (Barnard

and Hart, 2000; Lowman, 2000; Miller and Schwartz, 1995; Pyett and Warr, 1999; Williamson and Foleron, 2001; McKeganey and Barnard, 1996). Barnard and Hart, (2000) found that it was the location of prostitution, whether indoors or street, rather than any other factor that was significantly associated with incidence of violence. In their survey including 115 street prostitutes in Leeds and Glasgow, they found that 81 per cent had experienced client violence, with 47 per cent having been slapped, punched or kicked, 37 per cent having been robbed by clients, 28 per cent having suffered attempted rape, and 22 per cent having been raped. May
et al
. (1999) reported similarly that over three-quarters of the 67 women involved in prostitution in their study had been subjected by clients to physical, sexual or other forms of violence. In a survey of 193 women involved in prostitution conducted in London, Ward
et al
. (1999) found that 68 per cent of those involved in street prostitution had experienced physical assault and all had a mortality rate twelve times higher than expected for London. Moreover, the majority of street prostitutes have had multiple experiences of violence, not only from their clients but also from passers-by abusing them both verbally and physically (McKeganey and Barnard, 1996; Campbell
et al
., 1996).