Loose Women, Lecherous Men (34 page)

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Authors: Linda Lemoncheck

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Page 135
trol over her life, even though that very sexuality is a feminist symbol of her oppression. When feminists appear to take that power away from a sex worker by treating her as a victim, a sex worker's understandable response is to accuse feminists of self-righteous moralizing and middle-class interference. Many would argue that Catharine MacKinnon's sardonic comment quoted earlier about lawyers not choosing sex work betrays a social classism that blinds her to the struggle to make a living that sex work often mitigates. Yet when women already experienced in the job market or otherwise capable of other work choose stripping, pornography, or prostitution, they typically see themselves as taking advantage of the profits in a capitalist economy that otherwise discriminates against women. From such a perspective, if sexual self-determination and economic independence are feminist goals, sex workers are the quintessential feminists, taking advantage of the power of a woman-identified sexuality. In these women's eyes, they are combating the very dehumanization to which feminists seem determined to resign themfeminists who blame sex workers, not men, for promoting violence against women.
98
Combine this sense of her own personal agency with the subjectivity of the intentionally seductive stroke, glance, or gyration, and the self-appointed sex worker cannot comprehend where the submission is located about which feminists complain. For a sex worker, submission lies in giving anyone the power to keep her away from using recreational sex as a way to make money. Thus, the only sensible way such sex workers can translate accounts of their degradation is as complaints about the sexual indecency of their work, and this translation is reinforced by feminists' apparent confederacy with the political right.
Catharine MacKinnon's cynicism about the sexual agency in sex work is typical of feminists who see such unequivocal dehumanization in sex work that they cannot imagine or condone any woman's consent to it. By conceptualizing sex work solely in terms of women's object status, however, feminists forfeit the possibility for transcendence to greater subjectivity afforded women when sex work is regarded as work that contains the reality and possibility of both objectification and agency. My contention is that unless feminists are willing to acknowledge the dialectical subjectivity in sex work, we will continue to be regarded as sexual puritans and only contribute to the dehumanization of the sex worker. We can now turn to some of the more specific arguments offered in favor of sex work.
Sex Workers and Sex Radical Feminists Join Ranks
[F]or some women to get paid for what all women are expected to do for
free is a source of power for all women to refuse any free sex.
Nina Lopez-Jones,
"Workers: Introducing the English Collective of Prostitutes"
I didn't join the feminist movement to live inside a Hallmark greeting
card.
Pat Califia,
"Feminism and Sadomasochism"
 
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Sex workers skeptical of feminists' anti-industry stance have found a more permissive approach in sex radical feminism. This approach eschews analyses of women's oppression solely or even primarily in terms of patriarchal victimization, in favor of analyses in terms of the repression of sexual deviance and the promotion of alternative sexualities for women. Both sex workers and sex radical feminists point out that sex workers struggle against stereotypes perpetuated by both feminists and the mediathat they are either greedy glamour girls who cannot get enough sex or sexually abused and exploited women who turn to drugs to assuage the disgust of work foisted on them by a discriminatory patriarchy. From this perspective, all sex workers are either physically coerced into their work, compelled by their circumstances to live a life otherwise abhorrent to them, or victims of an internalized patriarchy that has convinced them that theirs is a freely chosen life, not without risks, but with the promise of greater financial reward and independence than other jobs demanding the same hours, level of training, or education. What politicized sex workers demand is that feminists stop making such blanket assumptions about an industry as diverse as women are themselves and recognize that for at least some sex workers, their livelihood can be pleasurable, profitable, and liberating.
Such sex workers desire to be recognized as plying a legitimate trade so that they can better determine for themselves the terms and conditions of their work. This means jettisoning the stigma attached to associating female sexuality with earning power. Many prostitutes argue for the abolition of laws against soliciting so that they can file legal grievances against abusive or exploitative conditions that cannot be addressed under current restrictions without landing them in jail. Politicized sex workers typically want to educate the public about the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases and to dispel the myth that just because someone works in the sex industry, she is incautious about infection. Heterosexual customers have been known to offer prostitutes as much as four times their going rate if they will dispense with using condoms. On the other hand, prostitutes would
prefer
that their customers use condoms, belying the claim that prostitutes' indiscriminate sex is largely responsible for the spread of AIDS in the heterosexual community. Sex workers complain that they are doubly stigmatized: as morally incorrect by conservatives for their sexual license and permissiveness, and as politically incorrect by feminists for making sexual transactions with sexists and for taking advantage of a capitalist enterprise that profits from exploiting women's sexuality. From a sex worker's point of view, her stigmatization gives feminists a way to remain good girls who join the moral and political right in righteously condemning sex workers for being bad. Moreover, while political liberals or civil libertarians may be more inclined than conservatives to accept the sex industry in the name of freedom of expression, according to some sex workers and sex radical feminists, liberals do not give the needs of women in the sex industry the priority that many feel they deserve.
99
Sex radical feminists claim that the sex industry affirms sexual pleasure, promotes diverse sexual styles, and gives a voice to oppressed sexualities. They claim that prostitution affirms the validity of sex divorced from intimacy or romance. Lesbian and gay pornographic literature, s/m videos, and magazines featuring cross-generational sex are regarded as important erotic outlets for those interested in exploring sexual alternatives. Many sex radicals point out that the vast majority of pornography depicts
 
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women liking sex in all its variety and initiating sexual encounters, confirming, not denying, women's sexual agency and subjectivity in a world that benefits from women's sexual submissiveness. From this perspective, the very public depiction of women's sexual agency combined with the revelation that sex for money is not fundamentally different from sex in exchange for social status, marriage, or children is what moral conservatives of both genders find truly "obscene." Sex radicals contend that the sex industry is poised to redefine women's sexuality in women's terms and to end the stigma associated with combining female sexual pleasure and recreational sex. Instead of feminists telling other women what kind of sex they can have, sex radicals and sex workers advocate organizing more groups like Pink Thread, a liaison group of women from both inside and outside the industry advocating financial independence, sexual self-determination, and protection against sexual abuse for all women.
100
Strengthened and emboldened by such reforms, women will then be in a position to decide for themselves what kind of sex or sex work is best for them.
Instead of asking "What kind of woman would choose sex work?," sex radicals suggest that feminists should ask, "What kind of woman
wouldn't
choose sex work?" Indeed, both sex workers and sex radicals censure the society that would stigmatize and marginalize an economically productive worker, demanding her existence and her invisibility all at once. Sex workers and sex radicals contend that since many feminists would ignore the social and economic needs of sex workers, feminists' complaints about sex work are really concerns about bonding versus recreational sex and about confronting the power of our own sexuality.
101
From this perspective, until feminists are willing to expand our notion of appropriate sexuality, the chasm between sex workers and feminists will remain.
My contention is that just as some feminists overemphasize the objectification of the sex worker, some sex workers and radicals see only the potential for subjectivity and female agency in the sex industry. In the discussion that follows, the claim that sex work can be pleasurable, profitable, and liberating will be expanded in some detail. My aim is to show that without taking a close enough look at the ideological milieu in which their sex work is performed, sex workers can too easily rationalize their occupations as nonoppressive, indeed, liberating for women. What I do believe is that sex work contains both liberating and oppressive elements, circumscribed by the dialectic between subject and object described in the previous section. This dialectic reflects the broader dialectic between gender and sexuality that acknowledges the victimization and the agency in women's sexuality under patriarchy. From such a perspective, we can then describe in the closing section of this chapter a care respect for sex workers from the "view from somewhere different" that can embrace some of the tensions and highlight some of the complexity in our attitudes toward sexuality and the sex industry.
It has been argued by sex workers that sex work can be pleasurable, just like any other occupation. The money, independence, and flexibility afforded many single women and working mothers means more time for leisure, more time with children and family. Many porn actresses and strippers report feeling sexy and glamorous on the screen or stage; some prostitutes enjoy the company of their customers.
102
Porn actresses get satisfaction out of the fact that their photographs, films, and videos will offer viewers new sex techniques or sex therapy, or simply provide their audience with
 
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sexual pleasure. Some prostitutes say they are only too happy to provide (for a fee) the sex that men are often too ashamed, unable, or unwilling to ask their wives or girlfriends to provide. According to this view, if women and men were willing to confront their sexual fears and frustrations and share them with their partners, they would contribute to the breakdown of the good girl/bad girl sexual standard that separates sex workers from feminists. Sex workers like to point out that as long as sex work can be stigmatized,
any
woman can be made into a bad girl. Thus, feminists aligned with sex workers argue that women's freedom from male sexual intimidation and control of sexual pleasure will always be limited as long as sex workers are stigmatized and criminalized. As Deirdre English has noted, the whole point of a feminist politics of sexuality is not to have to choose between being a good girl or a bad one.
103
Moreover, many sex workers and sex radical feminists argue that pornography is consumed for arousal and produced to make money. From their perspective, the claim that it represents or promotes violence against women is simply unwarranted, given the conflicting claims of researchers, and especially given the fact that such a small portion of the industry is devoted to depictions of violence. As Ellen Willis remarks, "It is men's hostility toward womencombined with their power to express that hostility and for the most part get away with itthat causes sexual violence. . . . [I]f
Hustler
were to vanish from the shelves tomorrow, I doubt if rape or wife-beating statistics would decline." Gayle Rubin adds, "It is important to recall that rape, violence against women, oppression and exploitation of women, and the attitudes that encouraged and justified these activities, have been present throughout most of human history and predate the emergence of commercial erotica by several millennia."
104
Accordingly, if feminists are concerned about media expressions of violence against women, we would do just as well to boycott selected mainstream television, movies, music videos, and "bodice-ripper'' romances (all the more insidious because they are mainstream), or to promote more woman-identified, heterosexual and lesbian pornography. Sex radical feminists contend that women can be aroused by visual depictions of sex; women just need to be looking at sex that appeals to us. This contention is in response to authors like Beatrice Faust, who suggests that women are not aroused by visual erotic stimuli in ways that would make pornography appealing to them the way it is to men.
105
Such feminists argue that they only wish to delegitimize the primary significance of the penis for women's eroticism, not reject heterosexual porn, especially since many women report liking and buying it. Furthermore, they would argue that prohibiting pornography is just another way to repress sexual minorities whose "deviant" sexualities are made explicit in porn. According to this line of reasoning, anti-industry feminists and former sex workers deceptively portray themselves as representative of the feminist movement and all sex workers, when there are plenty of women who would like to experiment safely with using pornography or engage in sex work. Furthermore, feminists have argued that saving the sex worker from her purported victimization has a history of being subverted to serve moral and legal conservatism.
106
Sex workers admit that abusive porn producers, club managers, pimps, and customers are hazards of the profession. They also admit that the personal pride as well as survival of many sex workers often precludes their dwelling on how and why women get hurt.
107
But many prostitutes claim that eliminating discriminatory laws

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