There Is Nothing About Sex That Is Uncomplicated
I’ve got a friend I don’t see often. To preserve anonymity, I’m going to use gender-neutral pronouns and call zhim Robin.
Robin is, I don’t know how else to say this, the awesomest person I know. Sorry everybody else I know who thinks they’re awesome – you’re not as cool as Robin. Not by ten thousand longshots. I think zhe would probably be embarrassed to know I think this about zhim, or maybe I’m projecting my embarrassment at talking very openly and personally about feelings with other people. But, back to the point, I admire Robin in a way that is usually reserved for, say, Bob Moses. Robin is feet-first, hands-on, neck-deep in real and meaningful activism, and always has been. Zhe’s got a first-rate mind, a heart with room for everybody, and a presence and a personality that is just steady and fulfilling to be around. If I ever have a kid that makes me want to vicariously live the dreams I never had the courage to live, I would probably be trying to make them like Robin. Zhe is just good and smart and important down to the bone.
Just recently, Robin disclosed to me that zhe is a sex worker. I assume that Robin only decided to tell me this because zhe had made a determination that I wouldn’t be a total shithead about it. I hope I’m not being a shithead. But, as I told Robin (albeit not very eloquently at the time), I have some conflicting feelings about this.
Theoretically, I don’t have a problem with sex work. I don’t think there’s anything inherently, fundamentally wrongdirtybad with sex as a job, or sex for pay. But that’s based on a concept of sex work in a vacuum, and we don’t live in a vacuum. We live in a patriarchy. And sex work situated within a patriarchal world is inevitably swimming in a pool of wrongdirtybad, and anything tagged with the wrongdirtybad brush becomes fair game for serious violations of humanity.
On the one hand, since my ideal vision of the world doesn’t differentiate sex work from any other kind of work, it seems like that should be the thing I’m working toward. I “should” be the kind of feminist that is all on board for decriminalization or legalization, or normalizing the sex trades so they’re not a dirty stigmatized mess — and often I feel bad that I’m not more so. On the other hand, I work in a profession where I frequently see young girls who have been trafficked and exploited, and/or mothers who have had to prostitute themselves in order to feed their children, and their desperation has usually caused them to be exploited as well. Some of the abuses I see surrounding exploited sex work are so heinous that it’s very difficult not to come away with a “SHUT IT ALL DOWN” view of sex work. And yet, I know it’s not something that can be shut down, not now, not ever. I often just don’t feel like my brain is large enough to find a way to integrate some of the worst horrors I’ve ever seen with a utopic vision of positive, healthy sexuality. I don’t know how to overcome my revulsion of abuse long enough to separate the tools (which are not inherently abusive) from the abusive people who are handling them. At some point, they just seem practically, realistically fused together, even if conceptually I know they aren’t.
Normally this would’ve just been something to chew over slowly and at my leisure. But Robin chose to tell me about zhis work the day before I was to attend a conference on young girls and human trafficking. So my conflicts were immediately brought to a huge, bubbling surface of confusion. Talking with Robin, I could so completely understand zhis point of view and I felt like climbing on the radical sex work advocacy boat. Knowing that I was later going to be hanging out with a bunch of people who consider Robin – awesome, incredible Robin – to be an exploited, miserable being who needs saving at the least and is ignorantly perpetuating a system of evil at the most made me feel very guilty. The next day, hanging out with bunches of social workers relating story after story of the beaten, raped, kidnapped, abused, purposefully addicted girls that they have worked with, I felt guilty for having ever entertained some ideas of “sex work – maybe it’s not pure evil?”
The social work side of me and the feminist side of me often come into this conflict, but it’s usually smaller and less personal. As a feminist, I believe very strongly in offering people options; people – and especially women – get picked up and moved around so much by their oppressors, the last thing you want to do is emulate them. And yet, as a social worker, I’m working with people who, if I do not pick them up and move them around, are going to rape or kill somebody.
I know our system is a broken one. It delivers law, and not justice. The long view is that government can change, slowly, or die, slowly, and new solutions can be brought to bear. The short view – which is the view that allows me to work for government – is that in the meantime, government is the largest resource out there. People can’t avoid interacting with it, and when they do, they deserve a friendly voice on the end of the phone, they deserve a worker who’s doing their best. When somebody comes into my office, they are likely having the worst day of their life. I don’t believe that I personally have the internal resources or intelligence or just plain strength to be the person who moves and shakes the big things, keeps that worst day from ever happening. But I do have the resilience to deal with people on the worst day of their life, and be polite, and help them with their paperwork, and be kind, and be efficient and hard-working for them. I can help them feel that, on this terrible day, they are not utterly alone or considered totally worthless or a lost cause. They have somebody who will hold their hand until this terrible day is over.
When there are no other options for a person – as is often the case with abused children – the biggest resource out there is likely the only one that can forcibly extract them from their abusers. In the long view, the government is fucked to hell and needs to change, and cannot manage this responsibility in a way that doesn’t perpetuate more horror. In the short view, there is a kid being horribly abused and they need to be taken to a safe place right now more than they need to hear about political change or theory. I don’t want a damaged child to grow into a damaged adult and say, “When I needed help, nobody was there.” I’m willing to accept the restrictions of giving imperfect help within an imperfect system, because a kid that doesn’t get helped as much as they should have still has more chance of growing up to change the system than a kid who gets no help and is abused until they’re just a shell. I consider my job to be life support. It’s worth more to stop the things that put people on life support, but until that happens, they need good, smart, genuine people manning the life support. That’s a position I’ve found I’m capable of emotionally dealing with, so that’s where I locate myself.
This doesn’t play out too well with sex work, I’m finding. There are people who come into our office who have been crippled by the sexual exploitation inflicted upon them. In the long view, we need to destroy the goddamned patriarchy so the word “sex” no longer gets paired with “abuse” as a viable weapon. In the short view, we need to get these people out. Like, now. And the solutions we have for getting people out are so imperfect that they actually inhibit us from ever achieving the long view. The legal system is a chainsaw where we need a screwdriver.
And yet.
There is a girl who has been in our office lately. She’s actually a woman now, I suppose, but she is so young I have trouble thinking of her that way. She used to be one of our kids, the kids we work with. She’s grown enough that she’s not our kid anymore, has graduated from “victim” to “criminal” due to her age – but she’s still so very young that I cannot help but call her a girl. She’s got her own kid. Her kid is now a kid we work with. That’s always painful to us. She’s a really fun, friendly, wonderful person. Her kid, though very young, has obviously inherited her traits and then some. Everybody loves this kid on sight. The kid is like a shining beacon of light, zhe’s just so damned adorable – strangers are drawn to zher. The girl, she’s had a bad time. I probably can’t count how many evils of the world she’s fallen or been forced into. It’s pretty apparent to us that she’s also being prostituted. We’re not sure if she knows this. She might, and might think she’s hiding it from us. She might not know. She talks about her boyfriend and how much he loves her. But we hear the ways he loves her and we are pretty sure he is her pimp, not her boyfriend.
The only legal option for her right now — the only help the government is able to offer at this point — is to put her in jail and take her kid away from her. It’s a very strong possibility. Her pimp will probably go free. Her johns will probably go free.
That’s not life support. That’s the cutting away of healthy flesh.
And yet, that healthy flesh may not have a chance if zhe keeps living with zher mother.
And yet, the only reason we can help the child and not the mother is because the child is a victim, and the mother is a criminal, and the only difference between them is age. We can help this child, and 20 years from now, we will perhaps be cutting healthy flesh from them as well.
The only other thing I can do to help her that I know of is continue to work toward a world where sex is not abuse. Where, should she choose to be a sex worker, that would not be a black mark against her legally, and it would not be one further inhuman torture she must endure as opposed to a profession she has chosen. I can work toward a world where the ability to repeatedly rape, abuse, beat, and terrorize multiple human beings at once wasn’t a valid job description called “pimp,” because all those things would be actually and always illegal, instead of lip-service illegal and actually tolerated and normalized behavior between most men and most women.
But when I see her in the office, I can’t think that’s worth a damn. Right now, she needs something more. But the only something more I have to offer her is, I believe, only going to hurt her.
I’ve seen the sex worker vs. exploited woman conflict pop up frequently on feminist blogs. In the past, I’ve tended to skip over those blog posts. It’s just too much for me to navigate, and I haven’t really had to, either. The official right and wrong answer is pretty clear in my job, provided the kid is a kid/victim and not an adult/criminal. Girl comes in, she’s getting pimped, we move the fucking earth and stars to get her out. The end. We don’t bother ourselves with any concerns about whether this is good for her in the long term – we see an evil thing menacing a child, and we remove the child from the menacing evil. On my feminist side, it’s been equally simple: sex worker rights are women’s rights. Sex workers have the right to not be raped, to negotiate freely, to live happily, to make their own choices. Anything deeper than that didn’t need to be addressed. Any conflicts between those two beliefs and actions – any conflict between my personal beliefs and my professional position – didn’t have to be investigated. Until I had a friend who was a sex worker.
I’m chagrined now that I’ve declined to care about this particular topic. I’m embarrassed at all the times it came up, and I pushed it aside, because why bother investigating this further? Everything I’ve got for me works right now, and it’s not like this affects me, so, whatever. It’s a privilege I’ve had that I don’t think I get to have any longer, because Robin is the best and I want to be the best I can in return. I don’t want to be a shithead. If I disagree with aspects of zhis life, I want to be able to express those disagreements clearly and respectfully, instead of giving off a bad vibe of ambivalence that makes zhis wonder if zhe should have told me. If zhe is willing to answer my questions (if I have them), I want those questions to be informed and inoffensive, and as non-101 as possible, because it’s my responsibility to educate myself first, before I start asking zhim to help me out.
At the conference I attended, one of the speakers was describing several women she had worked with. She described their fear, their humiliation, the sorrow that had been their lives. I’ve met those women, too. I know they exist. But the image of those women, at that conference (and usually in that entire field), are synonymous with sex worker. Whenever anybody in that conference said “prostitute” or “sex worker,” that’s who they meant. And that’s not Robin. There’s no room for Robin in the phrase “sex worker” or “prostitute,” and everything my coworkers mean by it. The solutions discussed and debated had no bearing on Robin, and some, I imagined, might cause zhim more problems than it solved, such as a discussion about shutting down certain websites where sex workers can find clients. I don’t know how Robin finds zhis clients. Since zhe seems happy in zhis work, I assume zhe has found a way that is safe for zhim. I know websites can provide a significant vetting opportunity for any business, including sex work. And while I understand my colleagues’ point of view (new ways to find clients = new ways to pimp girls, or, new ways for clients to remain undetected = new ways for girls to continue to get pimped) I’m also invested in anything that keeps Robin safe and happy, and honors the fact that zhe’s a human being who can make zhis own damn choices. So, suddenly I find myself surrounded by intelligent, good-hearted adults saying, “Obviously, we need to go after Craigslist,” and I’m not sure how to phrase everything that goes through my head. That won’t work. That will hurt others. The Internet is not the patriarchy. The Internet is not the abuser. The handful of girls that will save doesn’t add up to the handful of girls who go underground.
Social work and feminism are very similar in a lot of ways. People get into these fields because they want to save lives, make the world a better place, create good where good previously wasn’t allowed to live. And because you’re taking on the responsibility to make things better, you also have to share the responsibility of making things worse if you fuck up. If your action can make the world a better place, your inaction can make it far more horrible. So, those two fields get populated by people who believe (rightly or wrongly, but often through experience) that the wrong decision will truly and literally destroy another person’s life. Which can lead to a certain degree of well-intentioned fanaticism. I have seen both social workers and feminists cling to “best practices” or “current theory” as if their lives – as if ALL the lives – depended upon it, and all those who aren’t zealously convinced be damned. They are the BAD people, their skepticism and flexibility and unbelief is corrosive and sinful. I don’t mean to make fun of this view, as if the people who buy into it are stupid. I’ve done it. If you tell me you haven’t, I don’t think your perception is worth a damn.
I know all that fanaticism comes from a very personal place. At the conference the other day, I didn’t feel comfortable speaking up and saying that I didn’t think getting rid of a website was worth anything, because for chrissakes, there are always more websites. I knew that there would have been people in the audience who had seen their clients, friends, or daughters get sucked in by a website, seen what happened to them after. I know they end up inhabiting the ugly place that some of us go to sometimes, the abandoned hell of: “Why didn’t somebody do something? It was there and it was so obvious and everybody saw it and NOBODY DID ANYTHING.” Their daughters end up on a website that is easily accessed, the whole world can see what the website is being used for, and yet, nobody does anything. Why shouldn’t we shut the website down? Why shouldn’t we do something, ANYTHING?
I don’t mean to paint that as an irrational way to think. There are some situations that can only be solved by the tiniest of steps possible. There are times where you have to put out the fire but have no control over the asshole running around with a box of matches. And if that’s the only option you have to make things better, and you don’t take it, then you feel responsible in some way for the blaze, and all who get caught in it. It is of no use to tell a girl getting pimped that her pimp wouldn’t abuse her if we ended patriarchy. It looks suspiciously like you care about the big picture – and being somebody who paints that big picture – more than you care about the actual, living human being in front of you. At the same time, when what you have is a rampant, systemic problem, I don’t think you can really say, “As long as we save that one girl, it’s all worthwhile.” That’s all worthwhile only if your solution for saving the one girl doesn’t make it harder to save the other girls. If shutting down the website saves one girl but drives the rest underground, you’re really saying that that one girl was worth more than all the other girls who go on being exploited harder. But try explaining that to the one girl you’re not saving.
I’m definitely guilty of both. On my feminist side, I have engaged in the big picture with sex work. I’ve read the theories. I know the lingo. And I can sort of generally say that by attacking patriarchy from any angle, I am doing something about the badness involved in sex work. On my social worker side, I engage in the little picture, putting out the fire. A kid comes into the system, they’re being exploited, and I really don’t care about questions of agency and careers and self-determination and feminism. I care about getting that kid out, right this very second. And, of course, these two areas in my life could use a little more connection. For example, at this conference about the sexual exploitation of girls, the word “patriarchy” wasn’t mentioned once. A speaker noted that, of course, sexual exploitation happens to little boys, and, of course, women exploit girls, too, but considering the overwhelming statistics in this field, they were just going to go ahead and talk about little girls and grown men. And yet, patriarchy and feminism were verboten words. When I mentioned feminism or patriarchy — not even by name but just by idea — I got crinkled up faces of distaste. I don’t know how you can come up with a solution to a problem that primarily affects an underclass without addressing what makes them an underclass, and how to destroy that particular noose. Otherwise you’re just shuffling them from one noose to another. Maybe the next noose is looser. Maybe that really is an achievement, in the absence of any other possible achievement. I don’t know.
On my feminism side, I do too much theoretical engagement, and too little involvement with real people. Talking with Robin, hearing about zhis life, makes me see this much more clearly. I’m not a very social person. I’m very analytical. In some ways, it’s worth noting my strengths and working with them – I’m the person to organize the SHIT out of your movement, but I’m not the one who gets feet moving. But in other ways, I’m cutting myself off from the most direct, immediate, and powerful method of education there is. Just having Robin disclose zhis work to me has already forced me to confront more things in a few days than I’ve managed in the last several years. Knowing zhim, loving zhim, admiring zhim, is making these issues important to me in a way they weren’t before.
I’m trying to figure out what I can do – right now – that will have an effect. As always, I have to start in my own backyard. Before I can engage more in education or action, I need to understand where I live in relation to these systems. There is a deeply personal side to this that I need to investigate. There has to be, or there is no meaning, no context. Social workers who don’t care about people are little more than abusive prison wardens. And feminists who don’t care about people are little more than a new breed of supremacists. And I have to include myself, first and foremost, in the definition of “people,” or I’m already starting out with a worthless foundation: some people count, and others don’t.
Starting in my own backyard, I realize that I have to address something I usually prefer to avoid. I need to talk about sex. I have talked about a lot of personal things on this blog, some of them very difficult. I have talked about rape until I am blue in the face (or fingers). I have rarely, if ever, talked about sex. When Robin told me zhe was a sex worker, I expected to be filled with deeply curious questions. And I had none (okay, I am a little curious how zhe does zhis taxes). I realized I had none because I could not even begin to conceive of what zhe does. To have sex be that large a piece of your life, you’d have to know so much about your boundaries, your wants, your needs, your desires. You’d have to be able to connect with others, routinely, in a very intimate way. That’s alien to me.
Robin has known me for a long time, but we haven’t seen each other in quite a while. Lots has changed in my life since I last spoke to zhim. In many ways, I feel stronger. But talking with zhim, I realized how much of that strength is an illusion, a shield. I found myself feeling very vulnerable with zhim, because zhe knew me during a time when I hadn’t been so broken, or, more accurately, when I had been more honest and forthcoming and confident about my brokenness. When I hadn’t been so ashamed and afraid of the years I’ve lost and the strength I discovered was fake. I could see my shame and my fear so clearly in comparison to zhis strength and genuineness, zhis comfort with zhimself. I have built up a life full of things that make me proud and different from those around me, but much of that has served to distract me from what are still my most vulnerable places. I do not connect with others. Sometimes, I feel that I cannot. The part of me that needs still operates in full force, but the part of me that fulfills feels broken into and destroyed, so destroyed that I often wish I could take a pill or a therapy that would inhibit forever my desire for sex or desire for friends. I run away from challenges. I run toward my areas of competence, and I bury myself in them. I am competent when others are vulnerable. I am challenged and incompetent when I am. Spending time with a person so together as Robin made me realize how useless I feel interacting with somebody who doesn’t need me, doesn’t want my help, doesn’t look up to me. No wonder I have looked for the work that I have, where I can help those in need, but I am never in need myself. No wonder I have avoided the many, many opportunities there are to make friends, because I only feel worthwhile and useful if I am the strongest, strangest one in the room. And no wonder I have so many inhibiting problems with sex, because I do not even know how to fake sexual strength or competence. In my belief, successful sex requires vulnerability, and I am never willing to give that.
I realized that was the only question I had to ask Robin, and I had no way to vocalize it. And, I suspect, zhe would have no way to answer it. It’s a question to ask myself. How can you give of yourself to so many people? How does it feel to be a part of their lives? How does it feel to know you are making them happy? How does it feel to enjoy doing that, not for the self-sacrifice, but because you are vulnerable enough to take? To like? I mean, sex work requires such a blatant, grounded trade: you need sex, I need money. Even something so bare and basic as that, I can’t manage to imagine. Even if I translate it into something relevant in my life – you need sex, I need sex – I cannot do that. Instead, it’s you need sex, I will give you sex. I will take only from what I give, attempt to fulfill myself only with the satisfaction of giving; I will not take from the satisfaction somebody else offers me. My tongue goes dead if I have to ask, if I have to reveal that I want or need and only another person can fulfill that want or need. I also know that Robin enjoys zhis work, so I assume there’s something more than the cash that does that, because lord knows I’ve had well-paying jobs that I hate, and crap paying jobs that I love. Zhe is getting something out of this, and I cannot even fathom what, because I cannot fathom having an itch and asking somebody else to scratch it. I cannot fathom taking as well as giving.
Before I can address sex work as a larger concept, address its problems and work towards solutions, I have to investigate the fact that I cannot understand on a basic level how Robin can like sex SO MUCH that zhe makes a job of it. That has to do with me, and my serious fucking problems with sex. So, because I want to be as good a friend as I can to Robin, and because I want to help the people who need help in the best way I can, and because I want to live a happy and fulfilling life, I need to address this very private, very vulnerable part of my life.
Which I will do in another post because, as per usual, this one has gone on for a decade.
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Dear Harriet,
Reading this post immediately made me think of PEERS Victoria Resource Society, which is an advocacy, support and outreach group for sex workers and former sex workers, founded and staffed primarily by former sex workers. They offer resources to current sex workers, as well as programs for people who want to leave the industry. You might find their model interesting – it seems to me to bridge the gap (at least somewhat) between feminism and social work that you mentioned in your post. They have also done a lot of research about sex work and sex workers. Here is a link to their website, which has a lot more information on their philosophy, the specific services and programs they provide, as well as links to download their publications and research (for free): http://www.peers.bc.ca/index.html
I hope that perhaps some of aspect of PEERS’ operations or philosophy helps illuminate this very complex (conceptually and in practice) issue.
Regards,
April
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A thought provoking post. But I would also say that the Internet is a patriarchy, because in the end its an excellent reflection of the rigid patriarchy of real life. It’s used to extend and strengthen that rigid system, just like any other media like print or television.
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I’m lucky enough to be living in Australia, where (outside my own state) sex workers are seen as workers, and victims of sexual exploitation are seen as that. Here in my own state, sex work is still illegal, and sex workers’ position outside the law leads to them being abused by the public (being pelted with rocks and eggs, and shot with air-rifles), let alone what their pimps or clients might do. Even our Commissioner of Police says that we need to decriminalise sex work here, so despite being the home state of conservative christian party Family First this is a short- to medium-term problem, rather than a seemingly insurmountable one like it must be in the US (I presume).
It’s hard for me to say anything about this topic because the dilemma just doesn’t exist for me the way it does for you. I guess the closest thing in my experience would be the Intervention on Aboriginal lands, which given the historical use of child protection laws in the service of eugenic genocide (to “breed the black out” of Aboriginal children and “protect” half-white children from having to live in Aboriginal communites) is such a hard issue to wrap my head around. On the one hand the government is doing some really stupid and bad things (sending in the army as police, confiscating land, replacing welfare with Basics Cards [think food stamps, but you have to travel 100s of km to get to a shop that takes them]), but the situation there is so bad you know something has to be done (even though the doctors sent in found no evidence that Aboriginal children are sexually abused more than others, infrastructure, health care and poverty are so bad that serious preventable diseases are at third world levels). Even steps I thought were draconian when I heard them (banning alcohol and pornography) started to sound more reasonable when I heard about the problems in these communities (and that many within the communities approve of the bans, despite wanting them to be under local control).
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-er: I would say the Internet is a tool of the patriarchy, but it’s not the patriarchy itself. There is nothing fundamentally patriarchal about the Internet, or any other tool of the patriarchy. Shutting down the Internet, or any given website, doesn’t destroy the patriarchy — another tool will pop up to fulfill the same need. You have to attack the manufactured, socially enforced need for certain websites before those websites go down for good; otherwise you’re just playing Whack-a-Mole.
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The big topic.
I was trafficked as a minor, and my impression is that people who pay for sex don’t really care whether you like it or not. At the same time I used to believe the happy hooker myth and thought I was some sort of exception until I read the research. At the same time I realize that some people in prostitution seem to be doing ok.
I remember a conversation with a woman a long time ago. She had had sex with an adult when she was 12 and thought it was fine until she found out it was taboo. She thought the age of consent should be lowered so people that age wouldn’t feel shame at liking sex. I could see her point of view but couldn’t really see how to explain to her that increased freedom for people like her would mean increased exploitation for a lot of other young people, and I wasn’t going to go for that.
At the same time, my experience in acting classes/auditions is that people who perform sexualized content in acting roles don’t have any choice, if they’re women, at all attractive, and want to act, or if they’re men who get typed as male leads, regardless of whether they mind or not. (And I gather a lot really don’t want to do it, but bite the bullet anyway for whatever reasons.) So I really can’t see how putting sex in any job description can coincide with consent on a regular basis. I consider it sexual harassment, in effect if not in intent.
And then there’s the women on public display = public health issue.
If I were friends with Robin, I’d be very curious about what makes it work for Robin: personal strengths, more external resources? But I’d still think of Robin as a scab, a very lucky one, or a dupe. Not that I’d do anything about it, other than enjoy Robin’s company and hopefully agree to disagree, since Robin’s personal situation is hardly going to be a political priority. I just wish that the Robins of this world would go into politics, where we need them more.
PS indoor prostitutes are legal here, but it doesn’t seem to stop exploitation in prostitution in general.
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You’re not the only one, by a long shot. This is related to the gulf between people who have been through a particular hardness and people who haven’t — cf. Jon Carroll on broken-teapot people and new-teapot people — but different, too. I kind of don’t know how to act with someone who’s at ease with hirself. I can charm, perhaps, and geek out, but when it comes to the exchange of intimacies and vulnerabilities, I need to feel like the other person’s struggling with life, too. What’s the Plato line? — “be kind, for everyone you meet is in the midst of a hard struggle” — but some people really aren’t, and I’m envious and disoriented.
Sometimes I’m secure enough to let myself be weak, to let someone take care of my needs just because that’s what I want. It’s easier with a close friend or a stranger than with an acquaintance.
I once drunksat a puking marketing guy at a convention, because he needed it, and he couldn’t conceive of why I was doing it. He’s a libertarian. His model: people did nice things for him because they wanted something from him, or because they were martyring themselves “trying to be nice” — all transactional and tawdry. I felt superior, doing a nice thing because he needed it and I could do it, but when the rough edges of giving-without-reciprocity or taking-without-reciprocity show up in my friendships I get uneasy too.
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Your post hit a whole bunch of nails on the head with regard to how the “human trafficking has to stop” people and the “Sex work is empowering and good” people often end up at odds due to their not generally talking about the same workers.
Your post promted me to write one of my own (it’s ). I’ve got a few more floating around in The Non-Serious Blog (LJ) that I think I’ll probably end up transfering, as they deal with the Feminist Circular Firing Squad, specifically in the context of sex workers’ advocacy.
to sum up: Nice work. This is a(nother) good post. I’m glad you’re thinking and talking about this stuff, and I’m looking forward to your next post(s) on the subject.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
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: Just as a side note: Robin is in politics. Not, you know, as a politician, but as a very committed advocate and organizers in several different causes.
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“I cannot fathom taking as well as giving.”
How does this dynamic play out in your relationship with your SO? From the bits and pieces that show up in your writing here, it seems like you have a pretty solid relationship, and that’s hard to do if both partners aren’t giving and taking. (I don’t mean to imply that your relationship is without its issues. I just mean that it seems like you and your bear have a fairly healthy approach about working through issues, and that requires give and take from both partners). And, you’ve been vulnerable on this blog many, many times in ways that have truly touched people’s lives. That may be easy to write-off as not really counting in light of the whole anonymous blog thing, but I don’t think it should be written off. The anonymity keeps you safe (in more ways than one), but the vulnerability is still there, and there is an element of give-and-take between you and your commenters, particularly in the posts you did earlier about making friends.
I point these things out because it’s been my experience that those who have survived really painful and difficult circumstances can sometimes see themselves as more “broken” than they actually are. It’s easy to make internal comparisons to those we see as totally having their shit together only to find ourselves horribly lacking. But I’ve also learned over the years that those people with their shit totally together rarely have it as together as I imagined. Were all human and we all struggle with our own internal crap. Sure some have it more together than others, but no one is without demons, conflicts, and confusions. I used to idealize others a lot, and I found that, in the long-run, it was detrimental in two ways. First, it often made me feel really bad because I couldn’t stop finding fault with myself by comparison. And second, it was unfair to the other person. It limited our ability to connect because it was hard for me to conceive that the idealized person could need my input, or ear, or sympathy, or advice. It’s one thing to admire someone and have your relationship with hir prompt you to greater depths of self-reflection and healing; but it’s something else to idealize someone and see yourself as broken by comparison.
I’m totally open to the idea that I’m just projecting here, but I felt a little of that dynamic in this post. I have no trouble believing that Robin is a strong, confident, happy, kick-ass person. And I have no trouble believing that you’re truly grappling with how to connect with others, how to need, and how to take and still feel safe in light of the horrific abuse you’ve survived. I guess my point is just that I don’t think you’re starting off quite as deep in the hole as you might feel you are when you compare yourself to Robin. I think you’re already a bit father ahead than you feel on the path towards becoming the kind of friend and helper you want to be, and living the kind of fulfilled life you are seeking.
Once you’ve explored and have moved beyond your own backyard, and are ready to have a conversation with Robin, make it a conversation between two human beings who are both doing their best to live good lives and do the right thing in a world that often makes it hard to know what the “right:” thing is; not a conversation between a broken woman and a superhero. Robin not being a superhero takes nothing away from hir, and need not dim your admiration. And you not being the broken one does nothing to diminish what you’ve endured, or the difficult reality of the issues you are working through.
Anyways, I hope that made sense, and I hope it wasn’t too off topic. If so, feel free to delete this.
You are the best!
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: As for how it plays out with me and the bear, the answer would be “awkwardly.” He is a good bear and he does not push me, but I also don’t push myself, so things crawl slowly and then change quickly, and then crawl slowly and change quickly. When we got together, our sex life was scorching. But, as time as gone on, I’ve settled back into old habits where I never ask for sex and never tell him what I want — I just wait for him to want me and then go with that. We’ve had lots of talks about my old habits, so he knows what I’m doing and why and how and when, and that makes it less of a problem than it could be, because otherwise I’m sure he could feel very rejected. He’s told me he wishes I would ask more, but he is willing to wait until I can. One thing I know my bear values about himself is his ability to roll with things, from the very very weird to the mundanely weird, so my issues are cool with him.
I think the reason Robin struck me so much was because of how much I’ve limited myself in my social interactions. I’ve been taking baby steps here and there, and been feeling really good about that (still do). But then I hung out with Robin and saw how much farther I have to go, how babyish my baby steps are, and had to simultaneously congratulate myself for what I have accomplished while reminding myself not to get too big-headed about it — there’s a huge world of shit I still have left to do. That didn’t depress me, but it was a moment where I had to just take a deep breath and prepare myself for a long haul.
At one point, zhe asked me what life’s been like, after an abusive relationship. I muttered something or other I can’t remember now, but have been thinking about a better way to answer that question. What’s come to me is that I feel weaker and more vulnerable than I ever did in my life. I felt stronger when I was with Flint. I felt stronger because I cared so much less. I felt stronger because I let nothing touch me, and I didn’t let myself want anything. I felt stronger because my walls were immensely thick and high. Now I care a lot, things touch me, I want really hard, and I have dropped most of my walls.
That’s enabled me to see just how much work I have left to do, how much I’ve neglected, and how difficult some basic things are for me. So I feel very weak, and I feel very vulnerable. And because of that, I’ve put myself into social situations where I feel like I’m still going to be the strongest person in the room, because appearing strong has been such a huge part of my identity. And, as weak and vulnerable as I feel, the social situations where I feel the strongest are the ones that. well, are a pretty weak sauce version of reality. Even here, on the blog, you know, it’s my blog, it’s my voice, I run things, I can withdrawn when I want, I can delete when I want. This is a supportive and safe place to grow, but I’ve intentionally made it (for myself) not a challenging place, because, you know, I’m king fucking shit here, accountable to no one and nothing. There’s not much challenge there, because I don’t do challenge well. And while it’s crucial to have safe and supportive place, that’s a very limiting way to live all the time. It’s very easy for me to get arrogant if I’m only taking on the challenges I know I can win.
Hanging out with somebody who is much more solidly strong gave me a chance to see how much farther I have to go, and confirmed for me that I do want to go that much farther, that I am hitting on something here that it’s time to deal with. Robin also gave me a chance to be vulnerable. I was surprised, hanging out with zhim, just how awkward and fumbling I was, how quiet and stuttering. Even in social situations where I feel very uncomfortable, I still usually have a very big, booming, self-confident-seeming voice. But that’s my put-on voice, and it keeps me from connecting with others. For some reason, with Robin, I felt comfortable sounding the way I usually feel, which is confused and small and not-very-bright. I felt, talking with zhim, the way I had felt only days or weeks after leaving Flint, just completely at a floundering loss and terrified of the world and still not sure if I had done the right thing or was a good person who deserved to live well.
I was surprised to feel that way, because I haven’t felt like that in a long time. I thought those feelings were gone and done with, that the person I am now is “the person who got over abuse and is so super strong,” and not “the quiet timid person who has obviously been abused because she seems terrified of everything.” I think now I never really dealt with those feelings, never really let myself be that quiet timid person because I didn’t want to look like or be treated like a “victim”. I eventually came to fully recognize that what he had done to me was abuse, and therefore it wasn’t my fault, and that was a good and healthy thing. But I also used that as a new wall to cover up the fact that I really do feel like I’m at a floundering loss, and the world is terrifying, and I have no idea how to do right or live well, or if I deserve either of those things. I labeled all those feelings “Flint’s Abuse” and put them in a box, instead of labeling them, “Real Things That Are a Part Of You” and unpacking them and owning them. Now that I’m moving into these new areas of my life that are immensely difficult, where I have no special store of knowledge or natural ability or even a decent ability to fake, those feelings are popping up again and demanding to be dealt with before I can get any farther. Robin, who is immensely together, provided me with a good foil. It was like, oh, that’s what being together and happy and integrated looks like. Oh, wow, I am so not there. It made me realize that I am at the beginning of my work on myself, instead of tying up loose ends, as I usually like to think about it.
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Once again you’ve come up with a stunning post that articulates so many of my tangled, difficult thoughts.
I have a friend, alias Z, who sounds similar to Robin in many ways, and I just found out a couple of months ago that Z does BDSM and fetish-specific sex professionally. Z loves the work, finds joy and a fair amount of financial security in it, goes about it in a really smart and healthy way, has a whole together life that I really envy. I have very little doubt that clients come away from Z’s services with a better understanding of their own attitudes and better-equipped to act in sexually healthier ways. That’s just how Z works–educated, articulate, sensible positive, charismatic, possessed of incredible integrity and character–and even when some of the sex Z actualizes seem crazy and all messed up, Z can be objective and can help clients be objective in pursuit of healthy and satisfying sex.
I admire that a ton. I can unequivocally state that Z’s attitudes about sex (well before I knew about the sex work) inspired me personally to explore my own sexuality in safe and healthy and positive ways… my self-discovery in that area was subsequently a big part of refining a lot of my worldview as I crept into exploration of feminism and other social justice issues. So I’m convinced that encountering Z–getting their needs met justly *and* receiving a heaping dose of intelligent and healthy and positive thinking about sex–could be a good thing for a lot of people.
But, while I’m not a social worker, I’ve held on my lap an eleven-year-old girl who’d been a prostitute for six years before a judge was finally able to get her away from her parents. I’ve waited, panicked, for news of teenage girls who’d disappeared from an outing with their temporary house families, hearing nothing for weeks until rumors drifted back that the girls had been seen with their former pimps again–despairing, because it’s even more difficult to help a young woman when you can’t take her parents to court, when it’s a matter of an adult man abusing an “emancipated” adolescent whom no reasonable human being would treat as an adult but who must be seen as such in the eyes of the legal system.
These particular stories didn’t take place in the U.S. I experienced them elsewhere, in a developing country that’s much more violent and unstable and dangerous for much more of the population than is common here. But I know this shit still happens here. Of course I know that large numbers of women and girls are trafficked and abused and exploited here in this country. The stories I know firsthand, they could have happened here.
How do I acknowledge that and stop it? How do we get these girls, the suffering protagonists of these stories, to safety? How do we make them safe without letting those who threaten them slip through our fingers?
How do I *simultaneously* acknowledge Z’s freedom and the value of Z’s work? How can I reconcile a world where both of those experiences are a part of sex work, and maximize the autonomy and the positive impact of someone like Z while protecting the vulnerable?
You nailed it, this eternal problem of a broken system. I think this is the real reason I want to be a teacher. Of course our education system itself is deeply broken and fucked-up, but I still have this crazy hope that as a high school teacher I’ll be able to give kids *something* to hold onto. Enough strength, or hope, or sanity, or humor, or imagination to get them through adolescence without being ripped apart by this crazy hurricane of a culture. Even just someone that they can look at (maybe talk to?) and say hey, she gets it, she doesn’t hate me for doing the difficult shit I need to do to figure out how the hell I’m supposed to live my life in this mess.
I admire you for the resources you offer in your job and I look forward to hearing more about your personal journey. Thanks again for a great post. Sorry I write monster comments. You just make me think a ton.
You are the best!
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This is such an articulate post.
I so agree. I feel that conflict too; hating the bad, exploitative side of the sex work industry, but not wanting to be counterproductive in trying to make that better and end up actually harming those expolited girls and women even more.
Of course women who do sex work are people, too. Women. I used to be vehemently, vehemently anti-sex-work and sex workers are stupid dupes or evil tools of the patriarchy. I have mellowed that slightly.
I didn’t believe happy sex workers existed. Now I do. I still think they are in a minority, and I still think they’re very privileged compared to the sex workers who for whatever reason can’t or don’t find that kind of sex work. I am sure Robin is aware of that though.
I think there is so much to be done and if , it’s just really sad that the debate is so polarised with the rad fems on one side and the sex-is-like-fun! types on the other. As with anything so complex there is so much debate to be had. I don’t know how to make it safe so that everyone on both sides can actually listen to each other, and talk without all the yelling – and especially so actual sex workers can feel safe contributing honestly. Hmmm. I will look forward to reading the second part of this, anyway.
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: It was near the end of the night when Robin told me this, and we didn’t talk very thoroughly about it, but one thing zhe did talk about briefly was the understanding that zhe was in a privileged position, especially relative to the kids I work with who make me so overly uncomfortable with sex work (though they’re not the only reasons, just the most obvious, emotionally knee-jerk ones). From what I understand, zhe uses that privilege for good and does a lot of advocacy work, because that goes hand-in-hand with Robin being an awesome person overall. I’d like to hear more about it from zhim, so we’re getting together to chat again, which I’m sure will be a third blog post.
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One compromise I have made with myself with the “sex workers vs sex slaves” clusterfuck is this:
Portugal has this system for their drug laws where using is decriminalized, but dealing is punished (source). Not only do I want this for US drug laws, I want this for US prostitution laws. Decriminalize prostitutes, criminalize pimps. It puts the blame where it needs to be – on the exploiters – and, in theory at least, helps those that need to be helped – the exploited. And neither exploited sex slaves nor sex workers in the industry of their own free will end up in jail.
The only problem, of course, is getting everyone else, especially those in charge, to see my view as correct.
You are the best!
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This was a very thought-provoking entry, and I share, to a certain extent, the conflict between understanding sex work as just another form of work, and sex work as an industry that exploits the pressed and perpetuates systems of inequality.
I’m not entirely sure what my conclusion is, but I’ve been thinking in more broad terms, starting with economic transactions of goods and services. With economic transactions of goods, it is fairly straightforward that an object is being exchanged for another object. The area I find confusion in is over the exchange of a service for an object. By exchanging a service for a good/object, it by necessity places the service structurally equivalent in some ways to that of a good/object. To my mind, it is most clear in the provision of personal or intimate services, but to a certain extent, the provider of any service becomes the object that is being purchased, and as such, any buying and selling of services (as opposed to goods) perpetuates the person-as-object structure that maintains and reinforces inequality between the person buying the service and the person selling the service. In thinking about the relative power of industries, the ones who control the goods are the ones with the power. Even in service industries, the ones who control those who provide the services are the ones in power. The ones who directly provide services are the ones without the power.
All this, of course, is not at all useful in any practical sense, but is what keeps me from completely accepting the idea that any service work, including sex work, is completely benign when ones object is overturning existing power structures and rendering each person equal to each other.
That said, my last sentence is exactly why some of this doesn’t actually apply to what you are discussing here. For less radical goals, pushing for acceptance of all service work, including sex work, to be on par with any other type of work is a workable solution. A step toward an end, certainly, but not an end in and of itself.
Of course, I’ve never been without resources such that the only thing I had to make my way in the world was sex work, and as someone who finds such intimacy uncomfortable, I fail to appreciate how one could have a vocation or desire for such work. All of that, of course, is my own failure of imagination, but nonetheless where some of my lack of conviction comes from.
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I read this blog written by a sex worker: http://nightmarebrunette.blogspot.com/
I don’t have anything to add that hasn’t already been said on the sex worker issues. I link you to NB’s blog because she is very upfront about how her work effects her personally, both the good and the bad, and talks about how she feels about her clients. I think its a worthy read.
As for the whole baby step feeling inferior thing… I had this rant once and I said something along the lines of this:
“We are all, each and everyone of us, completely different. What is easy for you is hard for me, and vice versa and we should never be made to feel ashamed for that.”
I think that’s inclusive of making ourselves feel ashamed. I often feel lacking and weird because of my social anxiety, which I hide well enough that most people never even notice it by all reports, and it is me, and only me, that is the cause of those feelings. No one does anything to make me feel like that. I just make the mistake of comparing myself to the people I want to be like, often forgetting that at some point (if not at that time) they’ve had to face issues of their own.
The point of this being that baby steps can be huge steps if there’s no precedence, we take those little steps to build up confidence to make the big steps. Don’t be harsh on yourself. Take the baby steps, when you’re ready talk to friends who will be supportive (like your Bear and, it sounds like, Robin) and let them to support and encourage your bigger steps.
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Hi Harriet, that’s awesome to hear that Robin does advocacy work.
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
You are the worst.
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Pornography is legal. It is a legal industry with standards and laws applying to it. That doesn’t stop the exploitation and abuse of workers in the standardized and legalized portion of the industry, and it doesn’t stop the illegal porn from proliferating. It seems like you’re trading one exploitative, abusive industry for another, on the basis of the one you are more personally and morally comfortable with.
Also, I don’t see how your solution is different from the actual current status quo. Porn is legal, prostitution isn’t. Rather than creating a legislated, safe place for sex workers and funneling them out of prostitution somehow, as you’ve imagined, both industries are still flourishing unabated, and workers in both industries still suffer heinous abuses.
What I’m saying is: I don’t think your solution is actually a solution. I think your solution is the way shit currently runs, and that’s the whole problem — the way shit currently runs isn’t working even the tiniest bit.
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Schmerdro, it makes me really uncomfortable that you a) imply you’ve never met a sex worker (you quite possibly have, and have never been told because well… we’ll get to b in a second) and b) basically state up front that your only desire to interact with a sex worker is to basically judge if they are moral enough to be a sex worker according to your standards. Those questions you listed are clearly not ones you have thought of because you are interested in learning what sex workers’ lives are like, but instead because you have decided there are Right and Wrong answers, and you need to make sure that they have the Right ones. That’s creepy. And probably why (if you know anyone who is a sex worker) they haven’t bothered to tell you.
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Yeah, I don’t think I expressed myself very well. I was focusing too much on the difference between pornography and prostitution and I didn’t explain my view of how pornography should be.
If you look at some of the more successful porn websites you’ll see that, when they’re not role-playing, they give about 15-30 minutes of just interviewing the woman (yes, only the woman) about why she does what she does; and they generally say something like they like the pay or they like the sex. So they’re quite comfortable and aware of what they’re doing. Of course, I’ve seen other porn sites where, although the women look happy with what they are doing, I seriously doubt they really are and worry about the questionable place in which the sex scene takes place and I worry about the weird men that have sex with the women. I definitely do not like the latter type of porn sites and would like there to be stricter rules on them so that only the most successful ones are left operating. Some of those rules could be like a decent salary (I think 1,000-2,000 USD per scene is fair but I’m not sure), testing for STD’s, a written document in which all parties involved agree on what exactly is going to happen in the respective scene etc.
But I don’t think I prefer this because, like you said, I’m personally or morally comfortable with it. I prefer this system because it is something that I believe can be improved upon since everything is filmed and there’s nothing secretive about it. Some set of rules (which remains to be debated by people who are more knowledgeable than me) can be applied to the way the porn industry operates.
I agree that the way things currently run, at least in the USA, is not working and a new set of laws need to be applied. And I think the current porn websites need to be accountable for higher standards or get shut down.
I hope I clarified my opinion on this. Feel free to point out if I’m being an asshole in some way and I’ll try to be more sensible. I know this is a touchy subject for pretty much any feminist.
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@ TheDeviantE
[quote]imply you’ve never met a sex worker[/quote]
People, in general, are uncomfortable with me just by the way that I look (I think it’s because of my face and quiet personality). So yes, I doubt anybody would ever say something so personal to me.
[quote]basically state up front that your only desire to interact with a sex worker is to basically judge if they are moral enough to be a sex worker according to your standards[/quote]
For the questions about safety for sex workers, I guess I’ve already made up my mind that it’s a little unsafe and can easily transmit STD’s. For the second question, I do think that it would be wrong to have sex with a married individual. So you’re right, it’s pretty obvious I am slightly hostile to sex workers and probably wouldn’t be truly interested in learning about their experiences. But I do not agree that I feel the need to make sure that some other person has a set of morals that are the same as mine. Those 3 questions were inappropriate and I apologize for writing them.
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: I don’t think you’re being an asshole in your hopeful views of pornography, but I do think you’re being mighty privileged and ignorant, and it’s coming out in pretty much everything you say. I have trouble, after reading your comments, believing that you know anything at all about sex work — pornography or prostitution — and yet you feel qualified to state that you have the solution. If you want to go with asshole, that’s where you’ll find it.
I’m not sure if you’re saying, “Here, in my ideal world, is what I’d like to see,” or if you’re saying, “Here is what I think would actually work in the real world.” Because if you’re saying the former, sure, ideal world scenarios are nice, and I’ve got a laundry list of ideal world scenarios as well. If you’re saying the latter, then it’s pretty obvious that you know fuck-all about the real world of sex work. Because, here’s the thing: your list of rules are already in effect for the pornography industry. Actors do make a gratuitous salary (that’s why they do it), they are tested for STDs, and they do sign contracts. And yet, pornography is still an abusive, exploitative industry, and the allowance of legal pornography has done nothing to nullify the illegal pornography out there.
The only difference between pornography and prostitution is whether or not you get to watch the product later; it’s the same act, but one is committed on tape and the other isn’t. You say you prefer pornography because it can be better regulated somehow, but the facts are already against you there. You also say you prefer it because it’s not secretive. Well, legalizing prostitution would remove the secrecy. You say some set of rules can be applied to the porn industry. Is there any reason the same isn’t true for prostitution?
I also don’t know where you’re getting your idea that pornography “isn’t secretive,” or that this lack of secrecy is somehow a self-correcting measure. Take Girls Gone Wild, for example. There is nothing secretive about Girls Gone Wild. All their porn is readily available. All the members of the production team can be tracked down, by legal name. And yet, recently a woman brought a lawsuit because Girls Gone Wild had filmed her, without her permission, as a patron in the bar pulled down her top while she was clearly shouting “No.” She lost the suit, because, as the jury said, her presence in the bar implied consent — despite the fact that she was saying no. The fact that her sexual assault is visible — completely unsecret — does nothing to mitigate the fact that we have declared it legal to sexually assault a woman on tape. A lack of secrecy doesn’t solve anything magically — if we have a society that deems it appropriate to sexually abuse certain people in certain ways, we will continue to unsecretly do so, sometimes on tape. We could require that sex workers only get to have sex in front of legal officials, or jurors, or judges, and they will still be getting sexually assaulted, because we are a society that finds sexual assault permissive and appropriate.
There’s really nothing you’re saying about pornography that isn’t true about prostitution as well, but your insistence that pornography is somehow a better way to express sex work belies that yes, you have some kind of problem with prostitution that has nothing to do with the facts of it — facts that, by the way, you don’t seem to actually know.
Here’s a piece of advice (I’m not trying to be snarky): anytime you are crafting a solution for a group of people you have no contact with and know nothing about, and to do so, you have to make large assumptions about how their world works, you are being incredibly ignorant and privileged. You are crafting a solution that makes sense to you, and makes you comfortable; you are not crafting a solution that has anything to do with the actual people involved, because you do not know the actual people involved and you do not know anything about them. If you haven’t made it your business to get to know them or about them, then you’ve got no business telling them how to operate, because seriously, what the fuck do you know?
You are the best!
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I’m glad you’ve recognized this. Until this changes, you’re not welcome to comment on this thread anymore. Sex workers are real people who deserve respect and consideration, not hostility. This is a moral view of mine, but it’s also a feminist view — women do not deserve to be treated as “less than” due to who they choose to fuck, and how, and why. And they certainly do not deserve to be treated with hostility from somebody who flippantly admits they don’t give a fuck about learning anything about them.
Considering the shit you’ve been saying here, I’m going to put out there that maybe people don’t want to talk to you because you’re hostile, judgmental, and proudly ignorant.
You can continue to comment elsewhere, on other topics, if you like, but if you give off this same shit anywhere else, I’m banning you.
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I’d like to pop in and add that the first time I come across the use of gender-neutral pronouns, I recognized they were useful but found them clunky and annoying. After reading this post and it’s comments, I can honestly say I’m used to them enough to consider them in my own writing. Babysteps, people, they are working!
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Hey, I really appreciated this post and all the comments. I don’t really think I could add anything to the conversation. But I just wanted to make some notes about using gender-neutral pronouns. The choice of pronouns in the post were somewhat inconsistent (e.g. zhis and zher as well as “The kid is like a shining beacon of light, zhe’s just so damned adorable – strangers are drawn to zher. The girl, she’s had a bad time.”), which in someway goes against the reasoning for gender-neutral pronouns (zhis and zher seem pretty gendered to me). My humble suggestion would be the gender-neutral pronoun ze/hir (pronounced here) [of the form he/him and she/her]. So for example you would say “Ze caught the ball” or “The ball was thrown to hir.” And for some more examples and other pronouns (such as using they/them singularly) I would recommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Invented_pronouns.
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: Usually I use zie and hir. But when I wrote the post out and looked at it, I felt like the pronunciation of those two words sounded too gendered to me — like “she” and “her” — and I didn’t like that for some reason. I also realized that I’d never looked at what the other possible pronouns were. So I checked out that wikipedia article and chose the Zhe, Zher, Zhim variety. It was partially just to try some new ones out, but also because I liked that sometimes the word would “sound” like her, and sometimes it would “sound” like him, thus preserving some of the gender anonymity I was working for.
As for this quote:
I realized afterwards that it was probably unclear. I gendered the girl in question, but tried to keep her child ungendered to avoid identifying her any further. But putting all those pronouns in a sentence together made it sound like sometimes I was de-gendering the child, and sometimes I was slipping up and calling the child a “she.”
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I guess
My favourite set of gender-neutral pronouns is ey/em/eir, because they sound reasonably natural, they’re easy to remember, and they don’t seem to me like they sway towards either side of the binary at all.
And after reading Alex’s comment, I found myself going over the post again, studying the variant uses of zhim, zhis, and zher and chasing my brain in circles, not so much trying to determine the genders of Robin and the kid from your usage patterns as trying to decide if there was a usage pattern at all in the first place. I think that unfortunately the way that pronoun set is constructed lends itself to this kind of hopefully-fruitless analysis, which might be something you want to avoid. Or not. I don’t know.
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Greta Christina has written several frank blog articles about sex, sex work, and feminism. (She also edited an anthology titled “Paying for It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients”, which might be described as a how-to book for johns.)
As for gender-neutral pronouns, singular they is at least as old as Shakespeare and comes naturally to me. “Despite almost two centuries of vigorous attempts to analyze and regulate it out of existence, singular they is alive and well.” (Ann Bodine)
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I don’t mean to single out one thing in a totally awesome post, but I was completely flabbergasted by this:
And yet, patriarchy and feminism were verboten words. When I mentioned feminism or patriarchy — not even by name but just by idea — I got crinkled up faces of distaste. I don’t know how you can come up with a solution to a problem that primarily affects an underclass without addressing what makes them an underclass, and how to destroy that particular noose.
I mean. What. The. Fuck. Is wrong with these people? How can you talk about sex abuse and trafficking, in any honest sense, without discussing feminism and patriarchy (even if those specific words aren’t used)? It’s like having a discussion about child malnutrition but making kitty-butt-mouth at anyone who brings up the subject of poverty.
The only thing I can come up with is that these are people who are coming from a deeply antifeminist, traditional worldview, where women are cherished virginal creatures who need to be protected by the unavoidable excesses of Male Sexuality, hurrrr. I’m at a loss.
I have an old friend who is very active in victims’ rights and anti-trafficking (though I’m sure said friend is not Robin); think I will buttonhole them and ask WTF.
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: I think the more likely scenario is that these are mostly women coming from a field that is mostly dominated by women, and as such, has been degraded as not real work. You mix that with a general cultural antagonism to feminism, and you end up with a group of professional women who believe that feminism is not compatible with maintaining their professional status in a field that already labels them as conducting unvaluable, unprofessional women’s work. I think they view it as just sort of digging the hole deeper for the de-valuing of their work.
I see a lot of antifeminist crap coming from people that I know are smart enough to know better, and who I know will spout off something deeply feminist in the next breath, provided they can say it in a way that doesn’t seem feminist. I think so much of this is due to the fact that, although most social workers are in almost completely female spaces during most of their work day, when they need to pitch something that has to change or move or shake, they’re pitching it to a male-dominated space (lawyers, judges, cops). So scrubbing their language is probably a professional survival mechanism.
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, that reminds me of a friend (sort of) of mine who is a female nurse. She’s very outspoken and opinionated, which (to my mind) ties in strongly with feminism. But we’ve seriously gotten into fights about whether women should be “allowed” to serve in the military. There’s definitely a level of “I’ve got mine, so who cares about [x]?” but I also believe there is a level of fear of not being taken seriously by the “guys” if she doesn’t every once in a while “prove” that even though she’s loud and opinionated and smart, at least she isn’t a *feminist*.
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i was reading this yesterday, and at school today, a group of boys our age showed a presentation discussing women’s rights and highlighting issues of gender inequality. i was surprised and pleased.
they put up their video on youtube. i quite like it.
i’m sorry if this is off topic, but i just wanted to share it.
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A very complex topic, and an excellent un-weaving and examination of the various threads thereof. Like most things in life, there are no easy answers here.
Re: some the discussion about pornography, and taking a similar route with prostitution.
I think one thing that hinders the resolution of this issue is, we as a society currently don’t have much to separate the “good” (or at least “not-bad”), from the bad…in an overall way and for practical purposes. Right now we just have to sort of take it on a case by case basis, and for society at large…determining whether a given person is being exploited or empowered has no practical upshot; they’re all criminals under current law.
Legalizing and regulating it would at least give us some yardstick with which to measure, and not just a tautology of “bad-illegal” prostitution either….it could help mitigate some of the actual problems.
Johns who are looking to pick up prostitutes to murder are unlikely to head to a brothel where they are required to show ID. Johns who care somewhat about the safety, happiness, and health of the sex workers, are more likely to go to a regulated brothel with rules to promote these…..while Johns who don’t are more likely to pick up girls on the street. Conversely, girls who are being exploited by someone are less likely to end up in a system which discourages exploitation.
I don’t think we’ll ever be able to get rid of the age-old trade in sex and money…but I think for now it’s worth considering as at least one avenue of attack a strategy to mitigate some of the negative effects, and encourage healthy practices.
This won’t stop the illicit trade of course: it’s expensive to try and ensure the workers are healthy…so Johns will seek the cheaper “street walkers”. Some girls won’t be able to get into a brothel because they have an STD. Some have a taste for young children, which won’t be legalized.
That’s kind of the point though.
It isn’t so much that it will absolutely stop the bad stuff, but it will help shrink the ambiguity involved: we will have a line where we can say “anything on that side of the line needs to be intervened in for sure”. That won’t mean that anything on “this” side is all sunshine and roses…but it’s a start.
There will be problems even within the system: for example a woman may be coerced into going to work in a legal brothel by her lover, family, whoever….or any other number of things.
A lot of this of course depends on other changes happening, and just how the system is implemented. I think a system similar to how drug use is de-criminalized in some countries should be considered.
De-criminalize the “use” (in this case, I would consider the sex workers the “users”, more than the Johns)….recognize we won’t stop the “use”…but try to ensure it occurs in as healthy a manner as possible. When a someone is encountered outside the system, they should be referred either to a program to get them into a legal brothel…or out of sex work. In some cases criminal charges may have to be involved, but that should not be the standard response like it is now.
Bring the the legal hammer down on the “dealers”: the pimps and traffickers etc…or the Johns in certain cases.
It would of course bring some problems of it’s own….and completely fail to address others.
A highly imperfect solution…but I think it’s at least marginally better than what we have now.
The biggest change needed is still a social one: a mass realization of the reality and nature of the problems these people are facing, a desire to help them, improved attitudes towards sex, etc etc.
This is a system that would have to be implemented in a very thoughtful and careful manner to really work… We could end up with a token change which only justifies increased harassment of sex workers because they “have the chance to do it legally, but aren’t”….similar to the way growing marijuana was once technically legal…but only with impossible-to-obtain “tax stamps”.
The way politics are in this country, I’m not convinced it would work…..but I think it’s worth getting a dialog going. It’s at least something feasible with tangible practical benefits.
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Oh, I had some other stuff I wanted to add…but I forgot.
I got kind of caught up in the public-health aspect in it (which is sort of natural given my occupation)….but there are some other benefits.
Such a system would help spotlight the really overt and clear exploitation, as I mentioned…..but it would also help the less overt stuff, or rather if done correctly …it could help.
For one, it would gather sex workers together, and would make it hard for them to be pushed completely underground. They could talk to and support one another, maybe even unionize. Visits from social workers could be arranged.
It would also allow some more efficiency in the system, and could encourage more open discussion on the topic.
Overall I think a better way to address the type of exploitation that Harriet talks about in pornography is changes in society and social values…..but I just wanted to add that such a system of legalized prostitution could assist in that process.
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hey, just wanted to echo april and let you know about the young women’s empowerment project. http://www.youarepriceless.org/
these kind of harm reduction/sex worker staffed organizations bridge the gap between social work and sex work advocacy as well as sidestepping the thorny empowered happy hookers vs. exploited victims dichotomy which unfortunately still dominates the ‘debate’ about social policy by allowing people involved in the sex trade to own the multiplicity of experiences they have nad problems they face. this includes situating their experiences in the lived conditions of their lives-whether sex work is a choice or being involved in the sex trade isn’t, and pinpoints the issues people need to change-either decriminalization, immigration reform, legal resources, poverty reduction etc.
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