Red herrings
I have lots of things on my mind, personal stuff big and small that I’d like to blog about eventually but haven’t had the motivation just yet. In the meantime I decided to do a post directly confronting and refuting many of the things anti-porn/anti-sex workers rights bloggers have accused sex-positive feminist bloggers of saying. For the most part I don’t read the anti-porn blogs and haven’t for quite some time, because I realized it was a waste of my time and frankly I think most of those folks are off their gourds. When Ren posts the latest screed from Maggie Hays or Heart, I do read it at her blog. And I read a post at Heart’s where she linked to me. I don’t know that I had actually visited Maggie Hays’ blog before today, when I went to get some quotes from a post Ren had linked; all I can say is good god I’m glad I don’t read that shit all the time.
So you might ask, if I think these bloggers are so thick, why bother spending so much time now taking apart their accusations one by one? Well, it’s because even though they might just be random bloggers, there are plenty of people out there who wield considerable power who subscribe to the same ideas about sex workers. For example, look at what’s happening in the UK now with Jacqui Smith (Caroline has been all over this), and the new porn ban which was passed several months ago. Here in the US there’s a push for a “smut-free” internet (of which adults who don’t want a babysitter can opt out – at a premium, naturally), revisiting of the already heavy-handed 2257 regulations, a noted anti-”obscenity” crusader appointed as Attorney General. And, of course, Steve Gower and others like him continue to harass sex workers in cities near and far.
Below I’ve listed accusations that I’ve heard more times than I can possibly keep track of, in a wide variety of places. Further down the page I link to specific posts that anti-sex work bloggers have written and refute specific accusations in their posts. I can’t possibly tackle everything because it’s just too damn much. And of course while I can’t guarantee that no one, ever, in the history of the world has said one of these ludicrous statements, my point is that I have never heard or read anyone saying such a thing and it’s certainly not a “party line” of the sex workers rights movement, it’s a blatant misrepresentation of sex workers’ rights activism.
Each one of these accusations could be the topic of an entire post, so my responses will be short, meaning that I will not be able to cover every nuance.
The rest is below the cut because I’m sure it will get LONG.
Things that sex-positive feminists and/or sex workers’ rights activists have been accused of saying
“Prostitution is just a service” – Never said it
“We want to take away their precious, precious porn” – Never said it
“If you get off then it’s okay” – Never said it. In arguments, sex-positive feminists have never positioned orgasm as the determining factor in whether something is “okay.” It’s about people articulating their own sexual desires and boundaries – especially women, as we have been traditionally denied this right . The focus is always on informed consent and an end to stigmatization of consensual sex, including consensual sex for money. To quote Amanda Holloway’s Sex Positive Feminism: A Statement of Beliefs:
I reject the traditional representation of all things sexual as dirty or shameful. I do not believe that “anything consensually sexual goes, as long as orgasm is the aim.” I believe that anything consensually sexual goes; I don’t care if you’re doing it or not, how you do it, what genders you prefer to do it with, how many people you do (at once or separately), if you’re using porn or sex toys, or if you like it kinky, as long as you’ve got the information you need to make informed decisions. I stand just as strongly for a woman’s right not to have sex (of any kind) if she doesn’t want to, and I believe that women who make that decision deserve support and protection as well. I do not believe that I am an object belonging to the person I’m having sex with, unless I want to be. I do not believe I am a victim of masculine sexuality.
“Porn is empowering” – Universalizing statement. Never said it. What has been said is variations on, “Porn can be empowering for some women” and individual sex workers saying, “Porn has been empowering for me.”
“Stripping is empowering” – See above
“They think they can fuck their way to freedom” – Doesn’t make sense
“Placating men’s desires” – What?
“pro-prostitution lobby” / “pro-porn lobby” – Doesn’t make sense, inaccurate terminology
Specific examples
From post at Women’s Space, Rebecca Mott to the Pro-Prostitution Lobby: “Stop the Victimizing, Stop the Undermining, Stop the Lies”:
“those who choose think my experiences are just bad luck or my lack of judgment” – Don’t think that, never said it
“For these same people will say a whole mass of prostituted women and girls have bad luck or have made bad choices” – Nope
“I would say those who choose to view me as a sad case are doing so in order to maintain the status quo of the sex trade: that the right of men to a constant flow of women and girls to fuck or sell should not be questioned.” – Absolutely not. Doesn’t even make sense.
“So the [pro-porn] side patronizes any exited, prostituted woman who says that torture is the day-to-day experience for the majority of prostitutes.” – Nope
From post at Women’s Space, Rebecca Mott: Prostitution Is a Human Rights Issue! Stop the Torture of a Whole Class of Women and Girls:
“I am so pissed off with the ‘choice’ argument being used to dismiss so many women and girls.” – It is not used to dismiss. It is used to empower. It is also not so simple as “the choice argument.” That is a misrepresentation and over-simplification of the argument. Just as reproductive justice is specifically not only a “choice” argument, the issues here are so much more than that. It’s about bodily autonomy and agency, for a start.
“Why are women who have been on the receiving end of the harms of prostitution considered liars, misguided, mentally ill, too damaged to know their own experiences to be listened to?” – They’re not
“However much the words of exited prostituted women mount up as they describe how being prostituted has caused them massive damage, it is dismissed.” – Untrue
“He does not have the right to rape, batter, torture and mentally abuse with impunity.” – Agreed. This is exactly what sex workers rights activists have been saying.
“He has no right to take away the prostituted woman’s or girl’s human rights.” – See above
“It is a human right to live a life with safe[t]y, without the threat of sexual and physical violence, without the threat of verbal abuse., without the threat of being murdered.” – Absolutely agree. Sex-positive feminists and the sex workers rights movement advocate for this. It is one of our main underpinnings, in fact.
From comment by buggle at Rage Against the Manchine BDSM thread:
“I really get pissed off when I hear/read people trying to claim that BDSM is a ‘feminist choice’” – No one has made such a claim.
“Or that they have ‘thought about this stuff a ton’ and so that means they don’t need to continue thinking about it.” – No one has said this. They have said that they have thought a ton about this stuff but they have not said that means they don’t need to continue thinking about it.
“Or that I want to outlaw your whips and cuffs.” – No one has said it
“Or think that they can convince me of how GREAT S/M is, and how much I’d love it if I just learned more about it.” – No one has said it
From Maggie Hays’ post On Choices:
“‘Women freely choose to sell their bodies in pornography and in prostitution’ is one of the main disputes that pornstitution defenders put forward as an attempt to silence any feminist critique of misogynistic industries.” – Nope. Sex workers rights activists and sex-positive feminists hate the term “sell their bodies.” We challenge the generalization/stereotype that the sex industry is wholly misogynistic. We do not wish to silence any feminists and make this specifically clear all the time.
“The same applies to prostitution: one woman doesn’t suddenly wake up one morning and say ‘Oh, I’ve just decided today that I’m going to sell my body for sex among a wide range of opportunities to make money’, this is absurd! Prostituting women’s life stories are much more complex than this.” – Actually some women do wake up and decide to work in the sex industry, but again, the use of “selling their bodies” is a red flag. Just because you cannot imagine doing it does not mean it is not true for some women. And absolutely, sex workers stories are complex. Sex workers’ rights activists say this all the time. That is why it is important not to universalize.
“[P]ro-pornstitution folks claim that ‘the sex industry isn’t something merely uniform and massive; there are lots of opportunities, aspects and types.’” – Yep, we do say that. It’s true.
“The malestream media typically portrays and elevates misleading images such as of ‘the happy hooker’, ‘the glamorous life of the stripper’, or ‘the empowering job of the porn star’. HBO and other major TV/cable channels are filled with deluding glamorizations like these in order to gloss over the dark side of the porn industry and other forms of sexual exploitation of prostituting women. Corporate media only shows the few ‘Jenna Jamesons’ of the world, the few prostitutes/’porn actresses’ who ‘made it to the top’, while ignoring the overwhelming majority of women who appear in video and Internet pornography.” – These representations are provided for titillation and often as fiction or humor or a “gee whiz” one-off. The sex workers are not represented as whole people. Ask most people what they think of Jenna Jameson and while they might like to watch a special about her or pick up her book as a fun saucy thing to do, they still look down on her and see her as “other,” because she works in the sex industry. They will even deny her right to have children. Negative sex worker stereotypes are pervasive in our society. Sex workers rights activists agree that media representation of sex workers is a huge problem and nowhere near nuanced enough. Just look at the Diane Sawyer 20/20 special if you want one example of MANY.
“For instance, the problem with a typical HBO-type (or other TV channels) documentaries which glamorize the porn industry is this: the sample size (usually around 30) of porn performers interviewed is both too small and unrepresentative of the overwhelming majority of porn ‘actresses’ for these pro-porn TV programs to be accurate portrayals of what life is like for the women in the porn industry.” – True (barring the dehumanizing snark quotes). See above about representation of sex workers in media.
“Those on screen probably also have to protect themselves — if they say defamatory things about the pimps that prostitute them out for mass consumption, they’re likely to lose their position to someone who is a lot more compliant.” – True, and this is why we are for sex workers’ rights!!!
“In a recent article which was published in the in Hartford Courant, Gail Dines wrote that mainstream culture is accepting, even promoting, the media-generated sugar-coated image of the porn industry as glamorous, fun and cool. This image has been made popular by Howard Stern, documentaries on E! Entertainment and celebrity magazines such as People. The Vivid Girls are the elite of the porn industry, women who earn a decent, if short-lived livelihood, and are somewhat protected from the much larger world of more violent and body-punishing hard-core movies called ‘gonzo’ by the industry. The (mainly white) Vivid Girls are the respectable face of the porn industry; their job is to make porn look like a wholesome route to stardom; they act as a recruitment tool for a mass production sweatshop industry that needs to keep replenishing its supply of female bodies.” – Here’s your first hint, Howard Stern is not sex-positive. Sex worker activists hate all this same bullshit, too. Again, actual sex workers are not seen as full human beings in these representations nor are they granted full personhood in society as a whole.
“There is no doubt that pro-porners, cruelly reveling in their pornographic ‘fantasies’ and being deaf to the cries of millions of suffering women and girls, would rather not hear stories like:” – We want to hear voices of all sex workers, prostituted women, and trafficking survivors. We understand that there is a distinction among these. Decriminalization will help make women in the sex industry safer. Sex workers’ rights activists hate pimps and want them GONE. See also Jill:
When I did need help, when I was facing violence and coercion in the sex industry, none of the current anti trafficking measures would have applied or helped, I couldn’t go the cops or the justice system because in the US being a prostitute is illegal, the clients getting arrested,,, so what??? Great so the whole thing which was underground in the first place just moves farther underground. Not to mention I went into the sex industry for a reason. To make money to survive. I didn’t need the clients arrested because they were clients, I was there to make money to eat, to live, there was a need for the clients. I needed the ones arrested that beat the shit out of me, or raped me, or forced me to do things without my consent. I needed them arrested for rape, for assault, not on some minor misdemeanor that they could wash away with a visit to “John School” in some lame ass plea bargain. I needed labor and human rights so that an abusive, sadistic pimp, didn’t have criminalization to use against me to keep under control. As long as the whole thing is illegal the cops were more his allies than they ever could have been mine as I was more afraid of being arrested, or worse, being blown off because I was a prostitute and sent back to him to face a very angry pimp. I needed human rights. Not more than the rest of the world should get, but not less either. Perhaps what people don’t like about the sex worker rights movement is that we want to determine our own course. We don’t want to be rescued, or be research guinea pigs, or stereotyped. We are individuals and human beings. We are hugely diverse.
“In spite of all this, ’sex work’ advocates carry on their propaganda by upholding the anti-woman status quo. ‘Prostitution is the world’s oldest profession’ they frequently say” – We do not say that. And, we challenge the status quo.
“The ’sex work’ advocates inhumanly refuse to hear the stories of the vast majority of prostituting women or prostitution survivors and attempt to silence them.” – Not true (as already mentioned above)
“A few months ago, some ’sex work’ advocates violently attempted to disrupt a play entitled My Real Name, which used the real life stories of survivors of prostitution. My Real Name was about, by, and for survivors of prostitution and sex trafficking, and was a racially and ethnically diverse production. Maxine Doogan, a ’sex work’ advocate who wrote a propaganda piece called ‘Anti-prostitution group commits violence on sex worker’, is a convicted madam from Washington state. She encourages prostituting women to oppose anti-prostitution feminists and sex industry survivors. Maxine Doogan was one of the women who orchestrated the racist and classist ruckus that occurred when the play My Real Name was being performed in Berkeley.” – This is nothing but ignorant spin. Here’s what actually happened, written by Maxine herself:
“My Real Name” was a One New Earth Production performance by Students and Artist Fighting to End Human Slavery. Sponsored by the UC Berkeley Ethics Studies and promoted by the SAGE Project violent scene after violent scene was played out against streetbased prostitutes. This play actually turned out to be a propaganda piece conflating incest, rape, domestic violence, economic disparity, homelessness, drug addiction with the occupation of prostitution by depicting graphic sexually violent images and reenactments.
The producer had stated that this performance was meant to be interactive and invited audience members to interact with the people depicting the violence during the performance. It was unclear if the people relating the violence were actors or the actual people who had experienced the violence originally. The producer also said a discussion about trafficking in the sex industry would follow the performance.
Many people walked out before the end as did Doogan, who returned at the conclusion expecting to find a discussion under way but instead found her comrade, Lisa Roellig, a former streetbased worker surrounded by anti prostitution activist, like researcher Melissa Farley, who recently called for the closing of the legal brothels in Nevada.Roellig, an ex-streetbased worker and Doogan attempted to converse with the producer about her relationship to the issues raised in the performance. The producer responded by yelled and waved her arms saying she didn’t believe in the comodification of women and that no discussion was going to take place. However a loud discussion ensued between all parties with the producer stating that Doogan ‘sucked the dicks of corporate America’ and was ‘a white and privileged’. Another anti prostitutionist, also a former streetbased worker, stated that all prostitutes are dogs, and used physical intimidation to push Doogan out the door while evoking the name of blood of Jesus Christ. Doogan responded by leaving the building and calling the anti prostitution group “poverty pimps”. Annie Fukushima, U C Berkeley Doctorial Candidate, threatened to call the cops and Doogan encouraged her to do so.
Doogan, Roellig and the third person made statements to the police that Doogan had been physically assaulted. UC Berkeley Campus Officer Sanchez only wanted to know if the women who called the police were women of color. All three women were issued 7 day stay away orders.
Said Roellig, “While they were privileged enough to call in the cops because two women show up to question their view of our lives, I was not ever privileged enough to call the cops when I was raped, assaulted or robbed on the street because I was a criminalized worker. These women are outspoken on their abolitionists views and are advocates of the continuation of the States oppressive laws that control our bodies, our economies and most important make us easy targets for police abuse and corruption”
“Some ’sex work’ advocates, such as Yasmin Nair in Clamor Magazine, have even gone so far as saying that women who are from poor countries and who are trafficked into the U.S. for prostitution, are lying about being pimped, enslaved, raped, beaten and sold into the American sex industry. Those ’sex work’ advocates have claimed that trafficked women are ‘problably (sic) migrating for “sex work”‘ instead.” – We are not denying. We are calling for a more nuanced analysis and looking at the different circumstances women face rather than whitewashing all of them as trafficking victims and being done with it. We look at the way anti-trafficking legislation claiming to help women victimizes them, especially undocumented workers. See also Laura Agustin.
“When we expose the facts, ’sex work’ advocates argue that we are ‘portraying women in the sex industry as victims’ and that we are ‘denying their autonomy’.” – Yes, sex workers’ rights advocates do argue this, because it is true.
“‘Sex work’ advocates simply do not want to face the fact that denying major study results on prostitution along with real life stories of prostitution survivors is a deplorable repudiation of one’s empathy.” – Who were the studies funded by? Why would sex workers accept out of hand reports that attempt to speak for them? Sex workers’ voices are so misrepresented and silenced throughout society that yes of course they’ll be leary. The studies are done by people with an agenda (e.g. Farley) and focus only on street workers, conflating them with all sex industry workers.
“Some ’sex work’ advocates claim that the exploitation of prostituting women arises from the social stigma associated with prostitution.” – Exploitation does not necessarily arise from social stigma but is facilitated and perpetuated by it.
From Maggie Hays’ post On Choices (Part 2): Prostitution and the Agency of Johns:
“One of the most common misrepresentation and accusation that gets thrown at radical feminist who take a stand against pornography and prostitution is that we’re somehow ‘denying women’s choices’ or that we’re ‘ignoring women’s agency’ in all this.” – True and accurate
“But what was most unfair and disturbing was that the voices of the 89% of those prostitutes who said they wanted out of prostitution were denied and silenced by the pro-prostitution lobby. People who claimed they “defended sex workers’ rights” refused to hear those important voices.” – Untrue. Sex workers’ rights activists slammed Farley and her methodology (as did many of her peers in academia), questioned her motivations, and confronted her hypocrisy in using these women, without their consent, to further her own career.
“The voices of those so many prostitutes, who’d made it clear that prostitution is not a ‘career choice’ but abuse and violence on a daily basis, were silenced by the pro-prostitution lobby in order to try to promote their agenda (i.e. ‘prostitution as work’).” – Our agenda is safety and human rights for sex workers.
“‘Melissa Farley is lying’, ‘Biased research’ or some other foolishness, the pro-prostitution lobby and its followers said.” – We have said her research is biased – because it is. I don’t believe anyone has said she’s lying, because it doesn’t really parse as a lying/not lying situation.
“Thing is that when we criticize pornography and prostitution, we sometimes hear (but not always) someone say ‘But my friend does porn or strips or prostitutes and she likes it’.” – Yes, I’m sure you do hear that. And it is important to point to individuals who do choose a form of sex work or, hell, sexual expression outside what is the norm for women. Because sex workers are painted as bad, wrong, damaged, deviant, pointing to specific individuals can humanize sex work for some people, remind them that yes these are actual PEOPLE. But, this is not a useful argument against criticisms of porn or prostitution on the larger scale. As many sex workers’ rights activists (myself included) have said again and again, the focus should not be on attaining some Utopia where every sex worker absolutely loves their job 100% of the time, but on making sure sex workers are safe, have access to healthcare and law enforcement, have viable economic alternatives to sex work, and have exit strategies that actually work. Furthermore, the misogynistic clients Maggie writes so floridly about are the same people sex workers’ rights activists oppose and fight against. Without decriminalization sex workers have little leverage against these men who often hold significant power.
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OKAY. That’s it, I’m stopping. And I’m putting this up without proofreading… hopefully it was at least somewhat informative!
Amber,
You’ve really outdone yourself with this one. :) Awesome, awesome, awesome.
“No one has said this. They have said that they have thought a ton about this stuff but they have not said that means they don’t need to continue thinking about it.”
I do think there’s a kind of “thinking about this stuff” that’s ultimately unproductive, though. I no longer ask myself “Why am I kinky?” with the aim of figuring out just how I got so horribly fucked up and what did society have to do about it and how does patriarchy affect my choices because I’ve got to know to make properly feminist choices…
So yeah, in a sense I do think I don’t need to continue thinking about it, if the injunction to think about it contains a presumption that I’m broken.
Trinity,
Thanks!
And, I agree on your point about thinking about stuff. That was just one of those things that, as promised, I wasn’t able to include out of time/exhaustion! I’ve actually been wanting to write a whole post about that anyway,
Bravo! Bravo!
“So you might ask, if I think these bloggers are so thick, why bother spending so much time now taking apart their accusations one by one? Well, it’s because even though they might just be random bloggers, there are plenty of people out there who wield considerable power who subscribe to the same ideas about sex workers.”
Aye, there’s the rub. Gods, those were a lot of assy comments you had to sift through, Amber. I admire your endurance! There’s a couple that stand out so much that I just have to comment.
“The (mainly white) Vivid Girls are the respectable face of the porn industry; their job is to make porn look like a wholesome route to stardom; they act as a recruitment tool for a mass production sweatshop industry that needs to keep replenishing its supply of female bodies.””
In a way, yes, I’m a bit miffed that the face of Vivid is mostly white. Where is the diversity? I mean, beyond Nina Mercedez and Kira Kener? Nonetheless, if there were more women of color with Vivid, then the anti-pornography crowd will crow about them being racially exploited. The anti-”pornstitution” argument, on the whole, is a Catch-22.
“The anti-”pornstitution” argument, on the whole, is a Catch-22.”
Yeah, THIS.
Amber, I’ve been meaning for a few days now to thank you for this post. It takes a great deal of patience and dedication to sort through so many red herrings!
It is important that we all keep redirecting and redirecting when red herrings and straw men get tossed around. Otherwise we end up letting them talk past us and they somehow end up shaping the dominant discourse that way.
As always, I’m so glad you’re out here doing what you do!
Great post!!
I find it funny that when dealing with issues like this, and politics, that thick headed people have beliefs that they “choose to believe.” It puts issues and people into nice little boxes and does not allow for critical thinking or challenges.
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