The sex industry is highjacking the left. Lobbyists for the sex industry have been given a platform at the anti-capitalist, pro-development events taking place around the G20 Summit in London, this is our response:
Fellow Workers: Do we accept the control of others’ sexuality as ‘work like any other’? Do we want to embrace escort agency owners, brothel managers and lap dancing entrepreneurs as comrades?
The IUSW (‘International Union of Sex Workers’) along with other sex industry advocate groups is working with the Lap Dancing Association, Escort Agency owners and punters to deregulate the sex industry. Claiming to speak for all sex workers, they are fighting for more Lap Dancing Venues, continued ‘café style’ licensing for sex establishments, and more widespread sex work ads in Jobcentres.
The IUSW does not distinguish between workers and managers. It identifies owners, controllers and punters equally as sex workers and encourages their membership. It does not promote collective or worker-owned brothels, simply denying any conflict of interest or inequality, between those who ‘sell sex’ and those who ultimately profit from its sale. They deny all research on the incidence of trafficking, maintaining it is rare and that forced prostitution is a myth.
Their recent campaign is focused on stopping the Policing and Crime Bill currently in session. In relation to the sex industry, it aims to: create a new offence of paying for sex with someone who is controlled for gain and introduce new powers to close brothels, modify the law on soliciting, and tighten up the regulation of lap-dancing clubs by reclassifying them as ‘sex encounter establishments’ rather than ‘entertainment’ venues. Although minimal, symbolic and largely unenforceable, it is at least a notional recognition of the harm of pimping and trafficking.
The claim that prostitution is ‘work like any other’ ignores the physical and psychological harm involved. Accepting it as ‘work like any other’ eradicates women’s sexual agency, and reduces sex, for women, to just another piece of drudgework women (or the underclass of prostituted women necessary to fulfil the imperatives of male demand) must undertake to survive, no different to scrubbing a toilet. If sex, for women, is no different to scrubbing a toilet, then rape can’t be that big a deal either. Our culture already sees rape as trivial, the normalisation of prostitution as ‘work like any other’ is gradually helping to cement that attitude.
There is nothing radical about the sex industry. There is nothing transgressive. It is fundamentally a part of the status quo. The sex industry is capitalism in its purest essence, reducing whole people to commodities. The sex industry is also patriarchy in its purest essence, the hierarchy between men and women reified. Patriarchy has always required a class of prostituted women, and has tacitly condoned the sexual abuse of girl children to create this class.
We are feminists and trade unionists. We call for our brothers in the union movement to fight for a fundamental gender equality, which includes fighting the presumption of unlimited access to female bodies through the sex industry. People are NOT FOR SALE.
Increasingly, the media promotes the myth that prostitution is a free, empowering choice. We don’t hear about the boredom, the pelvic inflammatory disease, the sexual dysfunction occasioned by numbing repetitive penetration, the STDs, the pressure to not wear a condom, the 12-hour shifts and the exhaustion, the reality of not being particularly liked or respected by punters. The voices of women harmed in the sex industry are ignored, dismissed as one-offs who made ‘bad choices.’
Prostitution itself is not illegal. But the argument to legalise brothels and further expand all areas of the industry lest it be ‘driven underground into the hands of criminals’ applies equally to child prostitution. Should we legalise child prostitution to keep it ‘out of the hands of criminals’ and to allow frequent health checks and free condoms for prostituted children?
Accepting prostitution as inevitable is to accept that women’s poverty is inevitable, that men’s sexual violence is inevitable. The sex industry is an institution, it creates a demand for women and children that can only be met through poverty and coercion, poor women deserve better choices than between prostitution and poverty.
If prostitution is the ‘only’ available way out of poverty for large numbers of women and children, as claimed by sex industry advocates, should western aid workers, businessmen and soldiers working in the developing world be encouraged to ‘help’ women and children survive by buying them? Should we turn the developing world into one giant brothel to service the west? Or should we fight for real change, and real routes out of poverty?
Should we change society to suit the globally tiny minority of people who claim to actively want to engage in prostitution? Should we accept any industry just because some people want to work in it? How about the arms industry, or the oil industry? What other industries have benefited from deregulation?
Far from promoting freedom and empowerment, the IUSW and other sex industry advocates are exploiting the economic crisis to try to push through their laissez-faire agenda. They are trying to apply the same kind of ‘shock tactics’ used in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Iraq after the US invasion, and Sri Lanka after the Tsunami, to push through what is ultimately a neo-liberal, ultra-capitalist agenda.
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April 11, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Autonomous Radical Feminists « Anti-Porn Feminists
[…] Autonomous Radical Feminists April 11, 2009 Posted by sarahcl in Radical Feminism, activism, events, flyers, sex industry advocates. trackback Have been taken out of storage, dusted down, and sent off to work. Read all about it here and here. […]
July 21, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Daisy
An excellent article. I have always wondered why the left was so complicit in accepting prostitution as “work” and I love your challenge to that idea that prostitution is work like any other. We have been working hard here in Vancouver to fight against the big push towards total decriminalization of prostitution pro sex work lobbyist have been pushing for. This is a great article and I would love to post it on our website in our “issues” section under “abolition of prostitution”.
Thanks
Daisy Kler
Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter
July 22, 2009 at 9:36 pm
sarah
Hello Daisy,
You’re welcome to reproduce this article on your website; but please link back to this blog.
Sarah
August 27, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Daisy
There is a typo on my comment. My organization’s name is:
Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter
August 27, 2009 at 8:40 pm
sarah
Oh yes, I hadn’t spotted that, I have corrected it for you in your original comment.
Also, thanks for linking to this post!
Sarah
September 16, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Ajay
“The sex industry is capitalism in its purest essence, reducing whole people to commodities.”
– brilliant line from a smashing article. I particularly enjoy how you crush the standard line that prostitution is ‘inevitable’ and illustrate the ridiculousness of that position by comparing it to child prostitution. I am part of a collective that supports Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter through fundraising, and had a recent encounter with a man who reacted to a sign we had that identified the average entrance age for a prostitute in Canada is 12-14. He said he would give us money because that is wrong, but argued that there was nothing wrong with prostitution if the woman is of age. We argued for a while, but I wish I had this article ready for him. We did refer him to Rape Relief though, and they have linked to your article so maybe he’ll see it anyway.
December 10, 2010 at 12:18 am
solsamba22
I am so glad to find this blog!
And, I’m always impressed that there are actual feminist groups in the UK, I’m writng from the US and radical feminism is so hard to find, especially in the Anarchist and Primitivist groups. This post is excellent and so is the one on ‘sex work’. All of you made the point much better than I ever could, that there is no such thing as ‘sex work’ under patriarchy.
December 16, 2013 at 12:57 pm
Vicki Wharton
Also, if it is work like any other, how come it has to rely on slavery, enforced drug addiction and blackmail as recruitment tools, how come the average age of a prostitute dying is 34, how come rape and assault is such an inherant part of working conditions and how come safety equipment such as condoms are discouraged by clients and pimps? If this is work like any other I’m a pink elephant – which I’m not! 😉 The men running the socialist side of the political sphere do not seem aware of their own prejudice and have done little meaningful to actually begin to examine and breakdown their own privilege as men.
February 26, 2015 at 10:26 pm
Autonomous Radical Feminists | Anti-Porn Feminists
[…] Have been taken out of storage, dusted down, and sent off to work. Read all about it here and here. […]