So much for the class analysis
Is access to the bodies of women a right, or is it not? Can access to women’s bodies be treated as a right without making women into commodities?
Cherry Smiley at Feminist Current tells us about a change in views and policies at a Vancouver rape crisis center:
In 2008, Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW), a rape crisis centre in Vancouver BC, published a position paper documenting a two-year collaborative process between their staff, board, volunteers, and practicum students exploring the issue of prostitution. It states:
“The argument of supporting individual women’s choices pales when one considers the way in which prostitution plays out in the global arena. As a global phenomenon, it must be analyzed in its capacity to enhance women’s lives and in its capacity to end violence against women. Viewed in the broad social context, and not in the context of individual choice and unique experiences, prostitution operates as a function of capitalism, colonization, and slavery. It destroys cultures, communities and women through objectification, sexual violence and exploitation.”
Ten years later, on July 18, 2018, WAVAW published a new statement, explaining that their previous position — which criticized the actions of men as sex buyers, pimps, and profiteers of the sex industry — had harmed sex workers, that they take accountability for causing that harm, and that they now support “sex work.” The organization also apologized for articulating their (previously) critical position through written text, as they claimed publishing and sharing this position had caused harm to “the sex worker community and their allies.”
So has it now become the case that viewed in the broad social context, and not in the context of individual choice and unique experiences, prostitution does not operate as a function of capitalism, colonization, and slavery? Is it now a function of glorious freedom, opportunity, and profit?
As feminists, we should all be concerned with the depoliticization of what was once called the “women’s liberation movement.” Today, we are more likely to hear about “gender-based violence” than “male violence against women,” which wouldn’t be such an issue if “gender-based violence” weren’t replacing “male violence against women” as a central component of the feminist movement. As feminist women, our ability to unapologetically voice our realities, name the problem, and set boundaries is being undermined.
What happens when women and our interests are pushed out of the core of our own liberation movement? One consequence is the transformation of rape crisis centres from expressly politicized organizations — where women who have been assaulted by men can receive support from other women and where women come together to develop feminist theory and take action — into apolitical “service-providers” that are open to all.
The feminist movement — like other political movements — is expressly political, and has focused political goals. This means that the feminist movement, like other political movements, is inherently exclusive. For example, a group of hotel workers who are organizing for better working conditions would not include hotel management or the hotel owners in their political movement. Yet, women’s rape crisis centres are pressured to include services for everyone.
What does that sound like? It sounds like the way feminism is pressured – aka bullied, threatened, ostracized, ejected, disinvited – to include everyone. Isn’t it interesting that it’s women who are under constant relentless bullying pressure now to move over and “include” everyone else in their feminism? Isn’t it interesting the way that expectation and that bullying neatly aligns with the way women have always been expected to move over and shut up?
There is an unresolvable contradiction when a rape crisis centre supports “sex work.” One might assume that a rape crisis centre would challenge male entitlement to the bodies of women and girls — whether that entitlement takes the form of sexual harassment on the street; fathers who molest their daughters; or men who beat, rape, and kill the women they claim to love. Male entitlement to sexual access to women and girls is a pillar of misogyny and patriarchy — what has now been termed “rape culture.” Without male entitlement to the bodies of women and girls, prostitution would not exist.
While rape crisis centres that support the system of prostitution may believe the message they are sending is progressive and inclusive, the message actually being sent is: male entitlement to sexually access the bodies of women and girls is not ok unless you pay for it.
Supporting “sex work” as an occupation means supporting and affirming male entitlement. Supporting “sex work” means supporting the ideologies and corresponding behaviours of men who buy sex, pimp, and profit off of women.
In a different, perfect world that wouldn’t be the case, but then that world wouldn’t need feminism.
Libertarian arguments featuring hypothetical individual women who enjoy their work as (high end) prostitutes always miss this point.
From the same article:
I appreciate the snark, but I’d bet anything that the people behind the second statement weren’t the same people behind the first statement. I know of lots of people who went from libfem to radfem. I don’t know of anyone who went in the other direction. So I deduce that radfems left the board and were replaced with libfems. Which is really depressing.
Playing devil’s advocate for just a small portion of the whole point – to which I’d like to say right on –
There’s good reason to have both politicized organizations and apolitical service providers – they have different roles. But a rape crisis center as such really is appropriately on the apolitical service provider end of that – or at least, some rape crisis centers at least ought to be apolitical beyond organization against rape and in support of rape survivors. We can accept and expect that the majority of rapes are male on female, but the remaining three combinations do exist and places for those victims to get help are needed. They may not, strictly speaking, have to be the very same places, and there’s good reason for rape victims to be allowed spaces where they needn’t mingle with people of a sex who’ll trigger anxiety.
We’re not doing feminism right if male rape victims get erased or female perpetrators are left comfortably unthinkable, and we’re not doing it right if we’re viewing female rape victims as recruits for a cause. I don’t think anyone’s really wanting to do that, but there are ways of putting what we DO mean to do that don’t make that as clear as it ought to be.
I’m not arguing for legal prostitution here.
I don’t really see how prostitution being made legal is an issue of male entitlement. Pimping and raping and molestation are mentioned, but I don’t think anyone’s arguing for legalizing those things.
If someone is willing to have sex with someone else for a certain amount of money, I don’t see how that is giving the buyer an entitlement. The would-be purchaser doesn’t get it if they don’t pay the money, and they don’t get it if nobody wants to sell it.
Now if people were being forced to sell sex at a price that was unacceptable to them (or for free), then, sure, that would be an entitlement.
In practice legal prostitution may almost always break down to a horrible system where women get abused frequently, and so for that reason should be kept illegal. I’m not arguing against that.
Skeletor, the people arguing for legalization and against the Nordic model are arguing for pimping to be legal, so you are mistaken in thinking no one’s arguing for that.
One of the things I got out of Jensen’s book was how pervasive the view is (consciously or not) of sex as domination, control, power. Men often seek out prostitutes not simply for having sex, but for engaging in acts they see in porn films: acts that assert dominance, that use pretend or actual force or pain, that involve humiliation. It’s not simply a matter of paying for sex.
Skeletor
I see it as part of the–attitude? common, more-or-less unconscious assumption?–that sex is a thing men are entitled to, which women dispense. Males are sexual subjects; females are sexual objects. This attitude is changing, but it’s still more deeply ingrained than most people realize. If you read MRA, PUA, and incel writings, you’ll see it in its most explicit form.
Within this milieu, prostitutes exist as conveniences for men. Traditionally the prostitutes are stigmatized, while being a john is accepted, or excused as “boys will be boys.”
There isn’t an equivalent class of males whose job it is to sexually pleasure women.
(This is pretty basic 2nd Wave analysis, but libfems seem to have forgotten it.)
And if you read liberal male blogs, it isn’t uncommon to see it in a much more subtle, but still present, form, often disguised as “feminist ally”, but still asserting the idea that objectifying women is just “normal hormones” and “ordinary male-female interactions”. Or just doing stuff that is the entitled attitude, but not recognizing it.
Jeff Engel:
“We’re not doing feminism right if male rape victims get erased or female perpetrators are left comfortably unthinkable, ”
What?
Do you have any idea?
Sex-as-commodity is, perhaps, a step up from women-as-property. But not by much.
Sure, ‘traditional marriage’ might not ALWAYS be violent and oppressive, but it still reeks of Bronze Age slavery. Prostitution, with its quicker turnover, isn’t going to translate into Opportunity and Empowerment without the rest of society and the economy changing beyond recognition.
‘Entitlement’ doesn’t seem to be quite the right term. It still assumes that transactional sex is somehow ‘natural,’ and I’m sure all the Evo-psych apologists will rush in to say so.
So once again, we are expected to center someone else in the movement formerly known as feminism.
Yes, male rape victims need to be noticed, helped, and given what they need. This should be part of society, not part of feminism, which once upon a time was about women. White people are victims of violence, and are sometimes shot by police unfairly, but I would not argue that BLM isn’t doing racism properly because they do not take up this issue. I don’t think anyone would argue that.
And I will note here – male victims of Catholic priests are getting noticed and talked about/to in an attempt to force the Catholic Church to reform itself. The female victims (of which there are myriad) of the priests are hardly ever noticed. The movie Spotlight mentions in passing the name of a female victim, and Michael Keaton expresses shock that there were women victims. Then fails to follow up on that angle at all, instead talking to the males, writing about the males, and in general focusing on the males. Why? I can think of several possible reasons. (1) We value women less in society. (2) We tend to see sexual molestation of females as a normal part of the social order. (3) We see males raping females as a validation of their womanhood, while males raping males (or females raping males, for that matter) as an emasculation, a robbing of their manhood to thrust them unwillingly into the despised role of feminine. (4) We tend to believe men when they report the abuse more than we do women. (5) Male on male sex is simply more titillating to the prurient interests of the reading public. I suspect it is in reality a combination of all five in varying amounts.
So you might see, I don’t think the problem is male rape victims getting erased, and since most male rapes are committed by other males, diverting attention to female perpetrators is less helpful than it might seem (though female perpetrators of rape should be treated as rapists, yes).
I agree, although more to the point it should be exactly the sort of thing that so-called MRA’s actually champion and do something practical about. But they don’t. Mostly because they are just too busy generically hating on women and complaining that if a woman has the right to do something it’s one right too many. So, not really Men’s Rights Activists, but more Remove Female Rights Activists.