Jezebel 
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New York, 8:56 AM
Thu Nov 26
64 posts in the last 24 hours
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To me, I don't think she's speaking for sex work. She's speaking to her personal experience with sex work. If she'd said this was my experience, therefore all sex work is like this, that'd obviously be wrong, wrong, wrong. But there is a side to by-choice sex work that does need discussion.
To me, it's as complicated as human sexuality. I've watched several docs on prostitution, sex slavery, call girls, etc. It's as varied as people are. And it's just not all good or bad. Which I think is the common mistake we make with a lot of things that involve human sexuality and the body.
I'm reminded of, of all things, an episode of The Bunny Ranch...and possibly an episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit that covered the same topic. Both have a more "positive" spin on prostitution for obvious reasons, and I'm well aware of how dangerous and awful it is for many others.
But one of the things that struck me in both was dealing with clients who couldn't really have sex otherwise. One was a man who, I think, was not conventionally attractive, not very socially adept, and so paid for sex. Another was a widower who didn't really want to date after the death of his wife, but still wanted the intimacy of sex.
Now, of course, that's not representative of all or even most of the clientele for prostitutes. But I think it's legitimate. And it's one of the reasons I do think prostitution should be legal, just highly regulated. Much like that fact that some women (and men) don't have a choice, it's this or starving to death.
In an ideal situation, a prostitute would be willing, would never be forced into it, and consent would be clear and obvious and not contingent on payment. Ie. None of that nonsense that prostitutes can't be raped. I think some people would still choose sex work, honestly. #belledejour
11/16/09
If 97% of prostitutes have no options, horrible experiences as a prostitute, and no way out, then bringing up the 3% as a counterpoint in every discussion is not helpful. It doesn't help to broaden our understanding of prostitution, it skews the sample. #belledejour
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[www.ojp.usdoj.gov]
[www.ijm.org] #belledejour
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You might get more of that "positive" thing online, but again, I think that's actually more even. I doubt you'd get nothing but positive hits on a search for "prostitution". You don't even get that if you search "porn". In the U.S. you can't use that word without a whole bunch of slurs generally following it.
I just don't see any sex work as being portrayed as overwhelmingly positive. Strippers are always getting murdered, hit, portrayed as drug addicts, or prostitutes in disguise. The "positive" examples are pretty rare. Even Pretty Woman, which I -loathe-, has some of that negativity in the Kat character. Hell, they have an entire Law & Order dedicated to sex crimes. I don't think I've seen that glamorized there.
This is not to say that it doesn't happen. I just haven't seen it in any way that suggests the new cultural norm is Yay Prostitution!, and I think I'm relatively culturally aware.
11/16/09
But I think we can agree on a few things:
1. Any child sex worker is not working freely and voluntarily.
2. Any sex workers exchanging sex for drugs are not working freely and voluntarily.
3. Any sex workers trapped in the profession by poverty are not working freely and voluntarily.
Okay, that's a pretty freaking big chunk of people right there. Now, my original comment about 97% was not that 97% are sex slaves, but that 97% are coerced and/or have horrible experiences (rape, abuse, etc) and/or cannot leave the profession. When you look at statistics regarding violence against sex workers (in this case, making no differentiation based on entry to the field), again the numbers are horrific:
As adults in prostitution, 82% had been physically assaulted; 83% had been threatened with a weapon; 68% had been raped while working as prostitutes; and 84% reported current or past homelessness. [www.prostitutionresearch.com]
Brooke's experience is her own, and she is free to tell it. What I disagree with is the idea that Jez always seems to put forth with these posts about sex work: that by ignoring the outliers that make wonderful money while eschewing other options and never get abused, we're being Debbie Downers. Prostitution harms women. Just because it can benefit a woman doesn't mean it doesn't harm women (and girls). #belledejour
11/16/09
I don't think it is Debbie Downer so much as, is the relentless emphasis on the harmful aspects of sex work actually accurate? Has it helped us bring about the end child abuse or rape? What is being obscured by this narrative? What does it tell us about sex work that if you ask sex worker activists, and sex- worker led organizations (all over the world, I might add. i can think of one famous indian sex work activist whose group carries signs with doilies with an x through them to protest campaigns to get sex workers to, say, make crafts instead of working their profession) they are generally offended and harmed by by the paternalism of those outsiders who assume every sex worker is a victim. When we listen to sex workers themselves, what do they tell us? So much of the dialogue about sex work is dominated by law enforcement or the religious right that I do believe there is a need for other perspectives, most crucially from participants themselves. Criticizing the reality of an actual sex worker telling her story because one (not sex worker) thinks that it takes away from the "truth" about sex work seems incredibly paternalistic to me. I'm afraid our views about sex work are skewed, as you are -- but in the other direction.
I think in general we lack discussions about sex work that are led by workers themselves. Ideally those workers would come from a variety of backgrounds, and I understand that the voices that get published, trumpeted, etc. are (as usual) ones of relative privilege. And that is genuinely problematic. But I definitely don't think the solution is to minimize the experiences of one class of workers because it doesn't fit with a preconceived notion that an observer has of the profession either. #belledejour
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Well, if you're going to define sex work as work done by adult women who are not forced into it by addiction, you've moved the target a pretty fair distance. That's like saying, "Oh, but I only consider it sex work if you want to do it and don't get harmed by it." The reality of sex work involves children. Writing it off as "that's just a crime, not the actual sex work itself" seems dodgy to me.
And then, you can't talk about the negatives of sex work because talking about it hasn't ended child abuse or rape? What on Earth? That doesn't make any sense. Should I take that to mean that you think not talking about it will end child abuse and rape?
I'm very interested in hearing sex workers' opinions and goals, but that's because I think sex work cannot be eradicated, at least not in my lifetime. And that's sad. So if it cannot, and these women have palliative measures they'd like to implement to lessen the instances of violence in their day-to-day lives and grant them relatively more safety and security, then I'm all for it. But this will always be a stop-gap for me, because the commodification of women and children is wrong, and it makes the world more dangerous for all women and children.
My wanting to end prostitution isn't paternalistic: it's not just because these women don't know what's good for them, but I do! It's self-interested. *I* am made less safe by prostitution, and I would like to be safer. As a woman, as a sister, as a daughter, as an aunt, as a godmother. #belledejour
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Treating hookers in decent situations as a miniscule minority that is barely worth mentioning is kind of ridiculous, considering how many of us exist. #belledejour
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This is a much closer analogy.
What you have a problem with is the sex. #belledejour
11/16/09
Your "job" analogy ignores millenia of power dynamics that come into play when women and children are viewed as outlets for male sexuality. Yes, you have put a price on your filing abilities, but before you did, men did, and the idea of putting a price on that was hashed out with the presumption that the two people setting the price were more or less equal. That's not the same thing at all as sex.
The history here is one of women as less than people, as chattel, as property, and as recently as 100 years ago in the United States, not legally recognized as people. That is the reality of the situation. Just like the reality of prostitution in the world today involves many many women and children whose entry into the field was coerced, and many who have no viable options other than prostitution or way to leave the field.
It's easier for you to write me off as a prude, because then you don't have to listen to what I'm saying. Hell, you don't have to listen anyway, this is the internet and who cares what a stranger thinks, right? But prostitution isn't as simple as I like sex, I like money, why not combine the two? In reality, prostitution hurts women and children. #belledejour
11/16/09
I don't buy the comparison to organ donation at all because you have a limited number of organs available -- sex is an activity, a service, not a commodity that can be taken away from women and never returned. To me, the insistence that selling sex is selling WOMEN, selling bodies, selling selves, rather than selling a service, actually entrenches the relationship of sex to oppression.
Also, what is your position on men acting as sex workers for women? Men for men? Women for women? Are these as problematic to you? I am genuinely wondering because it seems to me that a proliferation of genders and types of sex workers seems a more liberatory path to sex equality than prohibition does. I wonder if we don't have some hetero blinders on here.
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The insistence that selling sex is selling women is not just a reflection of the reality that most sex workers are women, but also a reflection of the reality that many prostitutes in the world are literal slaves.
Sex work isn't the only kind of work that hurts women and children, no. But it's the most blatant actualization of the patriarchy in existence (the purpose/role of women is to fulfill the sexual needs of men, full stop), and as such it does draw more fire. I am sure if you dug through the archives, you'd find evidence of me being outraged by the Global North using women in the South as surrogates, and other examples.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I do support measures that improve working conditions for women who are in this business. If that's labor reorganization and unionizing, huzzah. But it's not because sex work is just the same as other work, and it's not because sex work is some social good (there was this guy on a show who couldn't get sex any other way! Who cares?). It's because my actual goal -- ending sex work and tearing down the social constructs that encourage it -- doesn't seem attainable. But that doesn't mean that I won't articulate it, or be irritated when an outlier like Brooke Magnanti gets held up as a perfectly reasonable counterpoint to the lives of most sex workers (which don't lead to book contracts, tv deals, etc, and do in fact contain violence and degradation).
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On a more philosophical level, I think that the continued stigma on sex work actually cements us in a patriarchal slave relationship with men. I truly believe that being FORCED to give my sex away for free, only for free, is a form of slavery. I think it serves to make sex this precious thing that women need to be protected from or something. I KNOW that is not your intent and that you are not coming from a sex-shame position. But I believe that treating sex work as different from other forms of labor feeds this narrative nonetheless. I think sex needs to be taken down from the pedestal and normalized in order for women to be liberated. As long as everything else in this goddamn world can be traded, don't make THIS, the engine of our inequality, the only thing I can't monetize. When the revolution comes, maybe I will think otherwise. I think the fact that anti sex work feminists find common cause with right wing elements in anti-trafficking and anti-sex work campaigns is troubling, and I wonder what norms we are reifying. For all the psychic and political energy it takes to suppress the sale of sexual acts, I think if we say produced sexual services marketed to women, increased women's economic participation including in the formalization of sex work, the only area where we outearn men, and destigmatized the work we might make more progress in taking some of the patriarchy and inequality out of it.
I'm just thinking and typing. I'm not saying yes, for sure, this is what I think always and forever amen, just talking. #belledejour
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I'm not writing you off as a prude. It's just that your insistence that women are selling their bodies when they sell a service says a lot about how you think of women, and how you think we should behave. It has little to do with the ethics of the situation.
11/16/09
I'm not writing you off as a prude.
I do, in fact, act like men are the only people who visit prostitutes. Because by and large, men are the consumers of commodified sex. You can find a few examples to the contrary if you look hard enough, but my entire position on this thread has been that focusing on the outliers skews our understanding of prostitution and is unhelpful. That's why I'm not focusing on that one story about Australian women visiting prostitutes or whatever.
A woman visiting a male prostitute is an outlier. If the customer is a gay man or the prostitute is female, then there are shades of the same ol' same ol' patriarchy which I think are important to discuss, but still not my focus here. #belledejour
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basic capitalism, right? when supply does not meet demand, we get trafficking. neither legalization nor criminalizing fixes that -- trafficking goes up in countries where it's legal and and also during economic booms.
i don't judge sex workers (i'm related to one!) - and i want what's best and safest for all women -- but i don't think glamorizing the life or skewing the reality helps anyone. #belledejour
11/16/09
I was kind of stumped as to why she'd come forward now. Her hand was forced. OK. Totally get it now.
Is it really on her shoulders to "examine the complexities" of prostitution? She's may choose to, but I wouldn't fault her if she didn't. Just because she's one particular type of prostitute (white, very educated, lucky to be spared harm, had plenty of other options) doesn't mean she'd care to engage on the subject any further.
There is so much hostility-- and warring judgements and presumption and projection-- in any public discourse on any type of sex work, that her being willing to be out about it at all is pretty huge, and from what she's expressed, both the secrecy and her anxiety about being out have exacted enough of a toll on her. She may just want to get on with her life. #belledejour
11/16/09
As part of a sociology course I took about social problems in Atlanta, we talked to the social workers and police officers who fight the city to make resources (therapy, housing, GED classes, career counseling, etc.) available for child prostitutes. And they said the biggest problem they face in their work is the idea that, once a person, especially a young girl, has been in sex work, she's become tainted and irredeemable. So this little self-formed committee of government employees gets shot down constantly because the ones making the decisions are too wrapped up in their squeaky-clean morals to rescue suffering kids.
OK, rant over. Sorry to threadjack. #belledejour
11/16/09
The stigma and intrinsic fascination surrounding the subject have a dazzling effect on people--they're so stirred up by the issue that they lose sight of the basic humanity of the women and girls involved. No matter their age or circumstance.
It's being objectified all over again, but politically or morally, not sexually.
So in many, many cases, I think the least-damaging thing for women and girls who have been in this line of work is to just move on to a more peaceful life. If they can.
It so easily devolves into people just yelling and preaching at each other, and nothing changes. #belledejour
11/16/09
By which I mean, I think she's another liberal blogger on a sight-seeing tour to the wrong side of the tracks, who can bolt whenever she wants.
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Where was that video? Googling is NOT HELPING. #belledejour
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The blog, the first book, and the TV show were all successful without this information.
She has a career as an epidemiologist which she said she wanted to keep as a full time job, but it seemed like she might be looking for fame. I don't see this moving the sex work discuss further, but I do think she is about to get a lot more attention. #belledejour
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There just doesn't seem to be a reason for her to come out- no new book, no sex worker NGO she is working with- other than fame. #belledejour
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Honestly, it sounds like she was about to get outed anyway and wants to get outed on her own terms, and I don't blame her. #belledejour
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the only situations i can see where somebody would pay for it is in outright illegal fetishes like wanting to have sex with children.
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As for Belle: ugh, I do feel like this insistence that her experience needs to enter into a discussion of nonconsensual sex work is an insistence on shutting down claims that uh, yeah, the commodification of human bodies is pretty horrific.
Someone might say that it's "just capitalism." Indeed it is! Too bad for them I think capitalism is an awfully shitty way to run a society for reasons just like this.
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(disclaimer: I am from a country where prostitution is legal. Some of my best friends are sex workers (no, seriously), and while I support the right to choose, I do recognise this is not the case for all women, nor am I ignoring that. I'm just saying, for women that want to sell sex, why can't they do so, without the shit-tonne of judgment?) #belledejour
11/16/09
I can't remember the show I was watching, but it was some talk show that was interviewing prostitutes about their line of work. One woman made a comment that really made me think. What's the difference between prostitution and the sex that many women engage in everyday. Her point was that even if we aren't selling ourselves or exchanging services for cash, many women at the very least get a free meal out of having sex.
I think it was very interesting to point out that it is legal to have sex in exchange for gifts or food, but once someone is directly giving you cash then it is labeled prostitution. #belledejour
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On one hand, I'm not so sure that the act of selling sex or the profession itself is worthy of the ire it draws. To define selling sex as implicitly wrong and morally bankrupt is ridiculous in my opinion. Further, as it has been argued on this site many times, legalization and de-stigmatizing prostitution would enable greater legal protection and health regulations for sex workers.
The flipside of this, is that I am made deeply uncomfortable by the idea of assigning a monetary value to the human body. Part of the reason there is such a discrepency between high and low end prostitutes is that the higher end ones tend to embody a gender, racial, and age-specific notion of beauty/value. #belledejour
11/16/09
Honestly, while women like this are prostitutes, I am uncomfortable speaking to the industry at large while discussing their experiences because it's frankly not the same. The industry is, overall, dangerous and not profitable for the prostitutes themselves.
Stories like this are, for me, just an extension of women who date for money. #belledejour
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With respect to the industry at large, I agree that Belle/Brooke is not the best person to use when assessing the profession wholesale. However, she is a part of it, even if it's a very rarefied, small segment of the industry. Where I have difficulty is in assessing whether or not prostitution is an industry that should be legal or remain illegal when it manages to encompass both people like Belle/Brooke and pre-teens who are forced into it by circumstance, and everything in between.
I completely agree with your assessment of this particular case being just a jump skip and a leap from women who date men for money. #belledejour
11/16/09
For the record, I think it should be legalized. #belledejour
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Although some do look at industries in a more global and overarching way. Which I believe is valid. #belledejour
11/16/09
It really protects the johns more than the sex workers. The johns get the reassurance that the person they are sleeping with is STI free. The women don't get that benefit.
Both Germany and the Netherlands have seen an increase in trafficking, forced prostitution and child prostitution post-legalization. When it is legal, you can hide in plain sight. It ends up regulated like a restaurant, which isn't much supervision.
The big benefit for sex workers is the ability to go to the police, but it is possible to do that without legalization. #belledejour
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@Tchotchke: So much of the discourse about sex work takes for granted the conflation of women's bodies and the act of sex. It assumes that women's bodies (or the access to them) are what's being paid for. But isn't this in and of itself an acceptance of patriarchal constructs of sex?
When I get a massage, I don't feel like I've just bought the therapist's hands. I bought a service or an interaction. Of course it's a much less charged example, but I'm trying to make a point. When I think of sex work (which I have never done, BTW, if you should wonder how that's influencing my thinking), I think of a worker selling sex, the act, as opposed to "herself," "her body," "her womanhood" or any other similar euphemism that implies a woman her body parts.
Obviously with the constructs surrounding even consensual sex (whore, tramp, pure, etc.), a woman's worth is most cultures is tied to her sex history. But shouldn't we not participate in making a woman's vagina (or "self") and the act of sex the same thing? Or am I missing something with this line of thinking?? #belledejour
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I guarantee you that Woman A. is going to command a higher hourly rate because she fits a certain notion of beauty. If a woman is selling sex, her appearance will likely dictate (to some degree) her rate. Yes, the client is purchasing the sex act, but a large part of that purchase is the ability to decide with whom. Someone who is closer to a societal beauty ideal will be in more demand, and thus, can raise their rates.
To me, you cannot separate the sexual act from the body that is performing it. #belledejour
11/16/09
Racism and beauty ideals absolutely play a role in how much a woman earns, but I see it as how much a sex act with her is worth to a "customer." Not the value of her body. Even if the appearance of her body dictates the price, the woman is still selling sex. But I'm open to explanations of why I should not see it that way. I keep rereading this and I'm concerned I'm not making sense.
Also, I do think that for every man who decides he doesn't want to have sex with an XYZ woman, there's a man specifically looking for an XYZ woman (although the explanation for his desire may be problematic, but that's another issue too). I think the first three issues you mentioned must play a larger role than breast size or hair color or even skin color when it comes to determining the money a woman earns. But what I know about this industry I learned from watching "Cathouse," so that's a completely meaningless guess. #belledejour
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This (and rampant offshoring) definitely says something about the current state of cubicle-farm software development. #belledejour