Newsweek has released a report on Melissa Farley’s nasty new study on men who buy sex of all kinds, which was financed by the Hunt Alternatives Fund as part of their 10-year plan to End Demand for buying sex. Now the latest Trafficking in Persons Report reveals that End Demand is also part of US government policy, which means that some of the big spending – $109 million last year – on anti-trafficking programmes is going to anti-client projects. US Trafficking magnate Luis CdeBaca attended the Hunt planning meetings, so this development is hardly a big surprise. I recently wroteabout a World Gender Warin the form of campaigns against male sexuality: desire, penetration and the penis itself: an international trend, but money from a rich philanthropist certainly puts the US in charge.
The theory that if men stopped buying sex no one would offer it anymore is a breath-taking over-simplification of the many different services and desires involving money and sex and the multitude of social and cultural conditions involved. How people now selling sex as a livelihood would earn their living if clients disappear is never mentioned – which is disturbing. I appreciate that campaigners are talking long-term and utopically, but to never address economic and employment issues seriously? I hope they do not feel that preventing women from selling sex means saving them from a fate worse than death.
This notion of demand fails to square with some well-known client types, such as the one Thomas Rowlandson portrayed here around 1800, described by the Wellcome Library as A prostitute leading an old man into the bedroom and taking money from him, implying that her services will act like a tonic and preserve his state of health. I guess Farley didn’t manage to find any men like this to talk to.
Here is the End Demand statement from this year’s TIP, ridiculously called a Fact Sheet, when it is only a moral aside revealing the government’s wish that culture would change. Yes, they wrote the phrase new innovations.
Prevention : Fighting Sex Trafficking by Curbing Demand for Prostitution
A growing understanding of the nature of trafficking in persons has led to new innovations in addressing demand. Corporate standards for monitoring supply chains and government policies for eliminating trafficking from procurement practices are making new inroads in the fight against modern slavery. But the fact remains: if there were no demand for commercial sex, trafficking in persons for commercial sexual exploitation would not exist in the form it does today. This reality underscores the need for continued strong efforts to reduce demand for sex trafficking by enacting policies and promoting cultural attitudes that reject the idea of paying for sex.
Policies to Address Demand for Commercial Sex
Governments can lead both in practice and by example by implementing zero-tolerance policies for employees, uniformed servicemembers, and contractors paying for sex. If paying for sex is prohibited for those who work for, or do business with, a government, the ripple effects could be farreaching. Through their massive procurement, governments have an impact on a wide range of private-sector actors, and policies banning the purchase of sex could in turn reach a significant part of the private sector as well. At the same time, governments have the capacity to raise awareness of the subtle and brutal nature of this crime by requiring training of employees, contractors, and subcontractors about how individuals subjected to sex trafficking are victimized through coercion. Too often, trafficking victims are wrongly discounted as “consenting” adults. The use of violence to enslave trafficking victims is pervasive, but there are other more subtle forms of fraud and coercion that also prevent a person from escaping compelled servitude. A prostituted person may have initially consented, may believe that she or he is in love with her or his trafficker, may not self-identify as a victim, may not be operating in the vicinity of the pimp, or may have been away from the pimp’s physical control with what seemed to be ample opportunity to ask for help or flee. None of these factors, taken alone or in sum, means that she or he is not a victim of a severe form of trafficking. Ensuring that these facts are part of the required training for every government employee and everyone who does business with or on behalf of a government is an important step in shifting attitudes about commercial sex.
Moral Leadership in the Future of this Struggle
Strong policies are critical for ridding countries of all forms of modern slavery, but ultimately for encouraging a broader cultural shift in order to make meaningful progress in reducing demand for sex trafficking. This can only be achieved by rejecting long-held notions that regard commercial sex as a “boys will be boys” phenomenon, and instead sending the clear message that buying sex is wrong. Lawmakers have the power to craft effective antitrafficking legislation, but they also have a responsibility to represent values that do not tolerate abuses of commercial sex. Business leaders need to cultivate a corporate culture that leaves behind outdated thinking that turns a blind eye to the sex trade, including the adoption of codes of conduct that prohibit purchasing sex. And leaders in civil society – from teachers to parents to ministers – must foster the belief that it is everyone’s responsibility to reduce the demand for sex trafficking. It is especially important to reach young men with a strong message of demand reduction to help them understand the exploitation involved with commercial sex and combat the glamorization of pimp culture. It is every person’s individual responsibility to think about their contributions to trafficking. Laws and policies, partnerships and activism will continue to be critical to the struggle against modern slavery, but it will also be the day-to-day decisions of individual men and women that will bring an end to sex trafficking and carry forth a message of freedom for all.
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
Washington DC June 2011
Fundamentalist feminists ordinarily avoid sharing a platform with people like me, but it does happen occasionally. These photos were taken in 2004 at UC Berkeley in a debate on Measure Q (Prostitution Enforcement in Alameda County). On the blackboard are two lists: on the left Robyn Few, Laura Agustín and Veronica Monet (on the right Norma Hotaling, Melissa Farley and Davida, whose surname I cannot make out.
Farley’s team were accompanied by people dressed in skeleton costumes. Skeletons adorned one of her polemical books – I guess to suggest that prostitution is death. The groupies sat quietly enough at first; the debate was timed with a stopwatch so each person had only a minute or two to speak. But when a well-known Bay Area activist in the audience started crying and went over her time, the whole Farley team were up in arms, claiming the debate was biased. It was quite embarrassing. She also flung out her arm at one point and called us pimps. Robyn, Veronica and I were polite about it; after all, who looks bad in that situation?
But there was a very funny incident involving me and Melissa. I was staying in San Francisco with an old friend who, by coincidence, was in a reading group with Farley. Nothing to do with prostitution or violence; my friend knew nothing about her. After the debate, my friend went to say hello to Farley, who assumed she was there to support her and was asking for confirmation about how terrible we were. At that moment, my pal caught my eye and waved me over, and smiling charmingly (and mischievously) said, Melissa, I want you to meet my friend Laura. I put out my hand, and Farley, looking appalled, shook it – a pimp’s hand! I got a huge kick out of it.
Farley did leave a restrained comment on this blog once, when I recounted how she called me the Postmodern Nadir. What larks, worthy of a (brief) Monty Python sketch.
Recently I wrote about a man-licking-women video that supposedly depicts a man who does sex for money and feels oppressed by the job. The only sex we are shown, though, is oral, with the man kneeling on a floor between the outspread knees of women on their backs on a bed. The video, part of a campaign by the non-democratic European Women’s Lobby, has provoked interesting comments on my blog, not least from men who say the video’s message is not easy to grasp.
It seems the actual subtext of the video is that older and fat woman are disgusting and undeserving of sexual pleasure. matt
What the creator of this video did not realize was that clients love to lick women including the mature providers. Pohaku
It is a big boost for a man’s ego if so many women want to have sex with him, even if they are older women. Kris
The depiction of women who are older or a little bit curvy as disgusting? Talk about misogynistic. Erik
Oh, please. A job described as Help Wanted: male to lick anonymous pussies for $xx per hour, supply your own toothpaste and kneepads would have applicants lined up out the door. There would be plenty of candidates if it was a volunteer gig. ewaffle
Okay, bizarre choice of ad. That turned me on. Randy
These are just extracts; go to the comments directly if you are interested. The point is, the video itself, as opposed to the propaganda surrounding it, is open to a myriad of interpretations – some of them quite the opposite of what the EWL intended. Which is good.
The European sex worker rights movement objects to the characterisation of their lives in this way, of course, calling it anti-sex, woman-hating, sexist, discriminatory. But even more importantly, everyone asks how a campaign can be called Together for a Europe Free From Prostitution when several EU member states permit some sorts of sex work and prostitution (see this example from Italy’s Comitato per il Diritti Civili delle Prostitute). The issue is that the EWL receives public money – your taxes – from an EU programme called Progress, established to support financially the implementation of the objectives of the European Union in employment, social affairs and equal opportunities. I first questioned this use of public funds in April, so I am glad to see that the following question was submitted to the European Parliament on 1 July (note the EU’s executive body is called the European Commission):
Can the Commission explain if EU funds have been used directly or indirectly to finance an abolitionist “Campaign to put an end to prostitution in Europe” and “Together for a Europe Free from Prostitution”, promoting a “Europe free from prostitution” and calling on “individuals, national governments and the European Union to take concrete actions”, substantially on the basis of the Swedish model of legislation on the issue and with the aim of abolishing prostitution, which is presented as a form of violence against women? Have notably Progress funds been used for this? If so, can it explain how EU funds can be used to promote a certain legislative model, notably on a matter where Member States have different policies and sensitivities on the matter? If EU funds have been directly or indirectly used, if a campaign is launched to legalize prostitution and sex work or to promote a different legislative model, would the same EU funds be eligible for it? If not, why? Will the Commission request that EU funds are given back, if the campaign is funded without the Commission knowledge?
I edited a couple of words to make the English more understandable to an international audience; see the original form submitted at the bottom of this entry.
The current commissioner for Home Affairs is Cecilia Malmström (Swedish), and although she has not said anything publicly so far about the EWL campaign, she is getting close with recent pronouncements on sexual exploitation of children and modern slavery (where she mentions someone who was forced to have sex with 65-70 men a day, every day during five years, just as though it was the most typical story). I will keep my eye on her, both as an anthropologist of Europe and an anthropologist of Bureaucracy. Speaking of which, here is the original form submitted to parliament.
I was going to write about Extremist Feminism again but this latest is over the line into wackiness. By what twisted logic did the European Women’s Lobby decide that a film of a man pretending to lick a series of pussies would work to discourage other men from paying to lick pussies or have their own parts licked, or both? The incoherency of this End Demand product is mind-boggling.
The EWL, as noted not long ago in a post about European anti-prostitution trends, has been running a Together for a Europe Free From Prostitution campaign, despite the fact that some members of the EU legally permit and regulate some branches of the sex industry. The EWL is not run democratically, however, instead picking names from member countries willing to go along with their insider fiats. Yet the European Commission funds them just as though they truly represented all women in Europe. It is an old scandal, and if I am not in possession of all the facts then that is because the EWL provides none on their website. I am also told they accept money from other parts of the world and would not be surprised to find that Hunt Alternatives is a source, since the international End Demand campaign begins there.
Europeans will like to know that their money has gone to make versions of this video in many languages besides EN (BG, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FN, FR, HU, IT, MT, NL, POR, RO, SE, TR) with voice-overs and/or subtitles in a bunch and subtitles only in others. And we are in a financial crisis? What a boondoggle.
In the one-minute video, the man (meant to be a sex worker though he looks anything but) doing the licking acts out feeling sickened by it. He brushes his teeth a lot. In contrast, the women throwing themselves back on his bed look quite pleased. Just how is this meant to discourage men from paying for sex? It seems possible that women seeing the film will think how great it would be if they could hire someone for oral sex, though they are always said to want a lot of cuddling and romancing first (which is a silly essentialising of ‘female’ desire). In any case, the psychology of this campaign certainly shows how anti-sex the campaigners are.
This time I think they’ve outwitted themselves, these anti-everything campaigners. For all their money, this approach can only backfire, as I imagine more women starting to search for . . .
Nella nostra società le sex workers diventano un pò meno “cattive ragazze” solo se associate ad un immaginario di vittimizzazione che le vede povere immigrate in balia del pappone di turno che le sfrutta. Non crediamo sia possibile ridurre tutte le donne che praticano lavoro sessuale a vittime, perché a svolgere questo tipo di lavoro non sono soltanto donne. La realtà è molto più complessa, fatta delle scelte individuali di ognuna, scelte legate alla voglia d’indipendenza, alla propria condizione materiale, ai percorsi migratori che si scontrano con le leggi della fortezza Europa di Schengen, alle politiche ed al discorso pubblico in materia di prostituzione, nonché alle disuguaglianze di genere e alla discriminazione sociale.
Le migrazioni delle donne Le migrazioni delle donne come ristrutturazione delle relazioni di genere per Laura Ma Agustín , dicembre 2003 Mentre si continuano...
I feel like the veteran of a long, drawn-out war. I first knew it as the War Between the Sexes (back when I thought there were only two). Now it feels like a World Gender War, in which a small number of women endeavour to bring all men and all disagreeing women to their knees (the existence of other sexes or gender identities is routinely dismissed). In this war, masculinity is equated with patriarchy (a strategy of domination), the penis becomes a weapon of mass destruction and the vagina is an open, constantly violated wound.
Sexual acts involving women and men are the major battlefield of this war, outperforming unequal job opportunities and wages, unpaid housekeeping and caring labour, inadequate health care, sexist stigmas and poverty itself as crimes against women. For crusaders, the male body is the problem of patriarchy and sexual relationships over-riding concerns. Particular sexual relationships are said to be correct and a wide range of others, where power is defined as ‘unbalanced’, are the target of eradication campaigns, in Europe as well as the US. Pornography, prostitution and rape at the top of the list, but surrogate motherhood and transsexuality are not exempt.
Nowadays, the 1950s are dismissed as a Dark Age for women ejected from wartime jobs into neurotic house-cleaning, child-rearing and the vaginal orgasm. I remember that period and wouldn’t want to bring it back, but a lot of what I hear now is not better. 1960s women’s liberation was about women acknowledging and standing up for their desires and ambitions. Legislative and wider political proposals emerged, but the foundation was about individual women understanding their oppression and learning how to express their own selves, whatever those were. The initial stage was not about political correctness or ideology, and it felt liberating, all right.
For some of the 1970s, I lived in San Francisco, and I recall the day I noticed a shop had opened near my house at 22nd Street and Guerrero. The window displayed dark metallic objects I couldn’t identify, so I went through the door to a space no bigger than some closets where a woman explained the mysteries of antique vibrating objects. Although some now laugh at or dismiss the phrase sexual liberation (pace Foucault), it did not sound funny then. Learning about sex – the acts of sex – was important at a time when almost no information was available at all. The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm was a breakthrough essay, and then others said it wasn’t entirely a myth, and so it went, constant discoveries that every sort of sexual configuration and activity was feasible and satisfying for someone. What a deliverance: Now there would be no need to live up to anyone else’s idea of Good Sex.
The names Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon crop up these days as people struggle to understand the reductionist, unforgiving ideas associated with a particular version of feminism that claims itself to be the One True Faith. The first US Take Back the Night march, where Dworkin spoke, was held in San Francisco in 1978, but even though I was living in the city I didn’t know anyone who went. I wouldn’t have felt opposed but rather that my concerns were different, and I wouldn’t have understood why the march was going through red-light areas: the link between rape and the sex industry was not apparent to my own young feminist self.
I often meet women annoyed that the term radical feminist should go to mean-spirited, authoritarian and apparently sex-hating folk. I don’t blame them for wanting to reclaim radical, since a stream of thought that once proposed revolution now wants to make us obey a narrow set of sexual rules – like in the 1950s and other repressive eras. This is fundamentalist ideology, a claim that there is only one truth about sex and women. The opposite of grassroots politics, this fundamentalism is transmitted by an elite cadre of leaders who forbid differences of opinion. No cultural relativism or local history is permitted to interfere with simplistic, reductionist principles that are applied to all people despite what they feel themselves.
Dworkin famously likens the penis to an invading weapon in her book Intercourse. In this war zone, male sexuality is inherently violent, exploitative and imperialistic, reduced to the penis which is said to have to push past the vulva’s muscles. Male sexuality is described as a weapon of predation and violence that only criminal law and punishment can solve.This is anatomical fundamentalism, in which an erect penis is said to be capable of doing more harm than other body parts might do – a stiff tongue, hard nose, knee or finger. Vaginas are imagined as not doing anything but defencelessly wait to be invaded (amusing when one remembers the old idea of women’s dangerous, toothed vagina, not to mention spider women and other scary types). But this sort of anatomical determinism comes up in contexts far from Dworkin’s thinking; for example a recent report claimed that the way female rats curve their backs and raise their hips for sex means they are submissive. But neither physical traits nor bodily positions have inherent meanings, as any sane commentator knows.
Movements resisting sexual repression have to contend with difficult contradictions: that men tend to be physically stronger than women, that male arousal and orgasm are more evident than female and that violence against women and sexism are still ubiquitous. Who could have predicted that my way of thinking about migration and selling sex could end up being seen as a sign of collusion with the enemy? Women like myself who were alive in the 60s are viewed as particularly sinister traitors to the fundamentalist cause, because we ought to know how things should have turned out. When I nearly ran into MacKinnon recently at a Swiss university I could imagine the potential confusion felt by people hearing us both, because, despite our similar age, our mental universes seem spectacularly opposed.
The World Gender War is most evident nowadays in campaigns to criminalise men accused of causing prostitution and human trafficking through their willingness to buy sex. Ideological crusades assuming all women want the same things include the European Women’s Lobby’s Prostitution-free Europe to Hunt Alternatives’ End Demand and Ashton Kutcher’s Real Men Don’t Buy Sex. I am accused of being a pimp or pornographer because I don’t think male sexuality per se is the problem. Instead I believe we are all engaged in a slow process of working out how to get along sexually with different sorts of equipment, different desires and different ways of going about satisfying them.
I wrote about hate and hating last year in a somewhat jocular tone, noting that I maintain a sort of parallel cv in which Important Enemies appear as a category (note that readers’ comments were highly entertaining). I also noted that some anti-prostitution activists question the right of people even to disagree with them. Then not long ago ex-movie star Sorvino attempted to stop me from talking on a BBC World Debate where I was a panelist – without succeeding, but her sense of entitlement is amazing (BBC editors softened the effect of her attack considerably in the published version).
Here is an example of another actress, Anne Grethe Bjarup Riis, making a nasty attack on a mainstream Danish television show (Go’ Morgen Danmark, TV2). Here no editing has softened the full effect; even without subtitles, even with the sound turned off completely, you get the gist. Bjarup Riis feels entitled to scream at and interrupt the other guest, hog screen time and use insulting language (fissehul = cunthole). The object of her attack is Susanne Møller, spokesperson for SIO, sex worker rights organisation in Denmark. Sus reacts to the attack by smiling and remaining calm.
Anne Grethe Bjarup Riis’ pinlige optræden på Go’ Morgen Danmark, TV2
The attack backfired, since SIO got lots of positive attention from viewers who did not appreciate Bjarup Riis’s behaviour and, especially, from those who repudiated her claim that she speaks for all women. This is a perverted version of feminism, to put it mildly. A parody was soon made of the encounter which is quite funny, and this time the presenter has a way to turn the screeching off.
Live fra Bremen 4 – Diskussion om sexarbejderne – Nyhederne sådan cirka!, DKWebTV
27 februar 1300 – 1800 Festival begins at Jemtelandsgade 3, Kvarterhuset, near Amagerbro Metro station (the metro to and from Vanløse to the airport). Map.
12:30 – 13:00 – Ankomst – Kom gerne i god tid
13:00 – 13:15 – Velkommen – Eini Carina Grønvold fra De røde paraplyer byder velkommen og fortæller om dagens forløb
13:15 -14:00 – Antropologen Laura Agustín taler om migrante sexarbejdere
14:00 -14:30 – spørgsmål og debat
14:30 – 15:15 Sexarbejderaktivisten Pye Jakobsson taler om forholdene for de Svenske sexarbejdere
15:15 – 15:45 spørgsmål og debat
15:45 – 16:00 Pause
16:00 – 16:30 Historikeren Nina Søndergaard vil kort skitsere op hvordan prostitution er blevet opfattet og reguleret i Vesteuropa gennem de sidste 150 år.
16:30 -16:45 spørgsmål
16:45 – 17:15 Talskvinde for SIO, Susanne Møller, vil fortælle om SIOs kamp for sexarbejderrettigheder
17:15 -17.45 spørgsmål og debat
17:45 – 18:00 – afrunding og og tak for i dag
1 marts kl 18:30 – 20:30
Filmaften i Virus Bio på Valhalsgade 4, 2200
Der vil blive vist film, der tematiserer sexarbejde fra forskellige vinkler. Efterfølgende debat. Entré 20 kr.
3 marts kl 17:00 – 19:00
Festivalen slutter d. 3 marts hvor vi vil markere Sexarbejdernes Internationale Rettighedsdag med en demonstration FOR sexarbejderrettigheder og IMOD sexkøbsforbud fra Rådhuspladsen til Halmtorvet. Alle er velkomne!
At an event at the British Academy in London the other day I used the term Extremist Feminism to describe the sort that convicted a man for buying sex in Sweden although evidence was lacking to show he had bought it, on the ground that he should have known that someone must have paid. The court assumed the female playmates in a hotel room to be prostitutes because of their appearance and their foreign-accented English. Dismal stereotyping of women going on there – not so different from the comment about disreputable women made with impunity by a hotel magnate in Luxor. Extremist also describes feminists who evaluated the sex-buying law without doing any actual investigation but declared it a success on purely ideological principles. And who then proceeded to propose increased penalties for clients convicted. Extremism means assuming men have bad intentions towards women and seeing their sexualities, and in fact their bodies themselves, as inherently exploitative. Others have used extremist to refer to man-haters like Valerie Solanas, author of SCUM Manifesto, and people throw around ruder terms like feminazi. But I prefer not to sound like someone trying to discredit all sorts of feminism.
I usually use the term fundamentalist feminism, referring to a stream of feminism that wants to go back ‘to the roots’, by which they mean early 1960s universalist feminism, the idea that Woman can be known through a biologically female body and Women are all ultimately alike. Authoritarian Feminism is another possible term, this time putting emphasis on the tendency of fundamentalists to decree that their view is the only correct one and must be followed by everyone. Theory calling itself radical feminism in the 1960s has moved in a direction Orwell might have called Big Sister Feminism, where no disagreement is brooked. This particular feminism happens to hold power in Swedish government bureaucracy. It is State Feminism (coming from government employees empowered to set policy on women and gender), but there is no reason why State Feminism should have to be extremist; this is just how history has played out in Sweden. This view of women and men exists in every country I have lived in, and that is quite a few. And my, how many extremist feminists wish it would play out the same way in their countries! Here is the review of the BA event from Something Dark, in which government attempts to censor and silence were discussed in detail.
A UK academic organisation, the Onscenity* research network, hosted a seminar at the British Academy, London, on 1 February to draw attention to increasing state regulation of sex in relation to media, labour and the internet.
Julian Petley, professor of screen media and journalism at London’s Brunel University, chaired the seminar, and introduced it with his own presentation, “Censoring the image”. Petley is a veteran advocate of free speech, and he once again demonstrated his detailed grasp of a broad range of censorship and free speech issues in the United Kingdom.
Petley began his delivery with the sobering declaration that there were many UK laws limiting freedom of speech; he then tabled an overview of these laws, their history and their socio–legal impact today. He drew particular attention to the evolution and problems of the Obscene Publications Act (OPA), various child protection laws, and the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act (CJIA) 2008.
He pointed to how the typology of child sexual abuse imagery adopted by the UK legal system regarding the mildest category, “level 1” – which refers to “images depicting erotic posing with no sexual activity” – had led to “controversy”, for example, by allowing for “police bullying” of galleries exhibiting the work of artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe [see the feature articles concerning Mapplethorpe from page 28 in SomethingDark webmagazine issue 1, beginning with “Twenty years later: Mapplethorpe, art and politics”; see also our Latest News entry of 9 July 2010, “Further viewing – the art of Robert Mapplethorpe”].
Regarding the CJIA 2008, specifically the sections criminalising simple possession of “extreme pornographic material”, Petley repeated the oft-quoted charge of critical specialists by stating the law was so vague and subjective that it is impossible for anyone to know whether a great body of material will be regarded as illegal or not. He summarised the approach of regulators as one that tends to “collapse” the offensive into the harmful, “as if being offended is the same as being harmed”.
The first speaker, Martin Barker, professor of film and television studies at Aberystwyth University, in his presentation “The problems of speaking about porn”, outlined the difficulties faced by individuals, including academic researchers, in dealing with themes of sex and pornography due to the stigma often attached to critics of heavy-handed regulation by the advocates of such regulation.
Barker referred to “the politics of disgust” and summarised the results of a survey he had conducted on print media coverage of issues concerning pornography. He said tabloid press coverage of “pornography” had increased since 2000 but had fluctuated within this trend, and consisted of two attitudes: (a) a “prurient fascination”; and, (b) an exaggerated morality that proclaimed certain categories of sexually oriented material as kinky and unacceptable.
Revealingly, Barker spent more time on broadsheet coverage, particularly on a steady increase in their use of the term “porn” as a metaphor with a range of negative connotations. He maintained the evidence suggested that the individual and subjective, emotional response of disgust automatically authorises commentators to adopt a simplified, morally superior position when dealing with complex issues such as pornography, and that “the politics of disgust” was driving public discourse and regulation.
Yaman Akdeniz, formerly at the University of Leeds but now an associate professor of law at Istanbul Bilgi University, outlined his work in legal campaigns to reduce the growing censorship of the internet by the Turkish state. He emphasised his concern at the potential for a “domino effect” that would see developing countries seize upon internet- and website-blocking policies, either already implemented or proposed, in developed Western countries such as the United Kingdom, the European Union and Australia as justification for furthering their own, already relatively severe, censorship of the internet.
Turning his attention to the case being made for restricting internet access in the Western world, Akdeniz stressed the increasing prominence of arguments claiming that child protection demanded more robust, state-enforced internet regulation and censorship that targets all forms of sexual content, not just child abuse material. He cited an article in the Guardian newspaper from December to illustrate the pro-censorship argument being furthered in the United Kingdom, in this case as advocated by the UK parliamentary under-secretary of state for culture, communications and creative industries, Ed Vaizey.
Laura Agustín, a consultant anthropologist and author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (2007), focussed on attempts to regulate sexuality and society based on exaggerated claims regarding the extent of human trafficking in the international sex industry. She had recently counselled lawyers for Julian Assange of Wikileaks notoriety, who sought her advice on Swedish rape law in preparing their client’s defence against extradition to Sweden. Agustín, who has lived and worked in Sweden, criticised “state feminism” in the Scandinavian country, describing it as “extremism” that “has gone too far”. She went on to discuss Sweden’s “sex purchase law”, which criminalises those who pay for sexual services – a law that, using unsound and concocted, ideologically driven research, was last July evaluated by the Swedish government as having significantly reduced prostitution and prevented trafficking. It is a law that has been marketed with some success to other countries, including the United Kingdom.
Agustín narrated her experience as a panelist at the BBC World Debate Can Human Trafficking Be Stopped?, held in Luxor, Egypt, on 12 December 2010, which she likened to a “religious revivalism” meeting for “the rescue industry”. This industry, she maintained, bases much of its fervour on enthusiastically publicised – but bogus – statistics on the numbers of trafficked women. She emphasised the fact that sound and genuine research on the subject does not exist, but this does not deter the rescue industry from what is, in effect, a misguided and unrealistic attempt to eradicate prostitution globally, with damaging social consequences at ground level in individual countries [see Laura Agustín’s blog entry, “BBC World Debate on Trafficking Online: Sex, lies and videotaping”].
Clarissa Smith, senior lecturer in media and cultural studies at the University of Sunderland, rounded off the seminar with a summary of the issues and the work that lies ahead in contributing towards the realisation of a more mature society.
Onscenity is a research network dedicated to developing new approaches to the relationships between sex, commerce, media and technology. It draws on the work of leading scholars from around the world and is working to map a transformed landscape of sexual practices and to coordinate a new wave of research in relevant fields. The body was founded in 2009 with funding from the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC). “Sex and Regulation” was Onscenity’s second seminar.
Louise Persson and I have twice complained loudly in the Swedish media about the complete absence of scientific principle and method in the government’s evaluation of its law criminalising clients of sex workers. Anna Skarhed never replied, nor did anyone else who might be expected to want to defend the report published in July. Now it turns out that in December Skarhed admitted quite openly to a reporter from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention that she never cared about science or methodology the slightest bit.
Some have objected to the scientific validity of our investigation. Which is fine, but in my view we have been able to show that the law has had a effect in accordance to the objective: to show that we don’t want prostitution in society.
[En del har haft invändningar mot vetenskapligheten i vår utredning. Det kan man ha, men enligt min syn har vi kunnat visa att lagen haft effekt utifrån syftet: att visa att vi inte vill ha prostitution i samhället.]
It is wrong to refer to effect when you have done no research to find out if one even exists, but Skarhed’s meaning is clear: The goal of the so-called evaluation was never to evaluate anything but instead to demonstrate ideology: a typical End Demand strategy. So it is Orwellian double-speak to claim anything was actually investigated or evaluated. All they did was pretend, and spend public money on it.
This should be front-page news! Although I know that many Swedish people object to this sort of philistine arrogance, it is not so easy to dismantle a policy once it has become embedded in bureaucracy and forms part of a national brand. However, there are indications that more people than usual are annoyed – about which, more later.
This is a long academic piece but useful to understanding the beginnings of what I came to call the Rescue Industry. The links between reference numbers and endnotes go via the original publication’s website (rhizomes). If you use them you just need to click the back button to return to this page.
Abstract: Social interventions aimed at helping the group positioned as most needy in Europe today, migrant women who sell sex, can be understood by examining that time, 200 years ago, when ‘the prostitute’ was identified as needing to be saved. Before, there was no class of people who viewed their mission to be ‘helping’ working-class women who sold sex, but, during the ‘rise of the social,’ the figure of the ‘prostitute’ as pathetic victim came to dominate all other images. At the same time, demographic changes meant that many women needed and wanted to earn money and independence, yet no professions thought respectable were open to them. Simultaneous with the creation of the prostitute-victim, middle class women were identified as peculiarly capable of raising them up and showing the way to domesticity. These ‘helpers’ constructed a new identity and occupational sphere for themselves, one considered worthy and even prestigious. Nowadays, to question ‘helping’ projects often causes anger or dismissal. A genealogical approach, which shows how governmentality functioned in the past, is easier to accept, and may facilitate the taking of a reflexive attitude in the present.
This article addresses the governmental impulse to name particular commercial-sex practices as ‘prostitution’ and its practitioners as ‘prostitutes.’ Although it is conventional to refer to ‘the world’s oldest profession,’ the term prostitution has never described a clearly defined activity and was constructed by particular social actors at a specific time for specific reasons. [i] Within feminism, the phenomenon called prostitution is the centre of an intransigent debate about its meanings, one aspect of the conflict revolving around what words should be used to describe women who offer sexual services for sale: prostitute, sex worker, prostituted woman, victim of sexual exploitation. The use of one label or another locates the speaker on one or the other side of the debate, which essentially asks whether a woman who sells sex must by definition be considered a victim of others’ actions or whether she can enjoy a degree of agency herself in her commercial practice. In the prostitution discourse, those who sell are women and those who buy are men; it is a gendered concept, despite the enormous numbers of transgenders and men who sell sex and the transgenders and women who buy it. The anxiety to define and classify concerns the position of women, and this anxious debate should be seen as a governmental exercise carried out by social actors whose own identities are at stake. Academics and other theorists and advocates for one or another vision define themselves as good feminists or caring persons through their writing and advocacy. Being ‘right’ about how to envision women who sell sex is necessary to these identities, which explains the heated, repetitive nature of the debate. At the same time, for most of those who actually carry out the activity that excites so much interest and conflict, the debate feels far away and irrelevant.
Nowadays, much of the discourse targets migrant women who sell sex, particularly in wealthier countries. I have written in other places about the construction by outsiders of these contemporary subjects as prostitutes, sex workers or victims of ‘trafficking’ when their self-definitions are different (2005a), the construction of victimhood in general (2003a, 2005a), the disqualification of other elements of their identity (2002, 2004b, 2006), the obsession with certain of their sexual practices to the exclusion of everything else about their lives (2003b), the difficulty on the part of many feminists to accept the agency of working-class women who sell sex (2004a) and the voluminous quantity of interventions designed to help, save and control them (2005b).
The social sector desiring to help and save women who sell sex is very large indeed. The proliferation of discourses implicated includes the feminisation of poverty, closing borders and immigration law, international organised crime (especially ‘trafficking’ and modern forms of slavery), sexual-health promotion, the control of contagious diseases, debt bondage, non-recognised economic sectors, violence against women, women’s and human rights, social exclusion, sex tourism, globalisation, paedophilia and child labour, as well as policies aimed at controlling the sale of sex. Attendant technologies have also proliferated, including safe houses, rehabilitation programmes, outreach projects, drop-in centres, academic research, harm-reduction theory and a whole domain of ‘psy’ theories and interventions concerning the causes and effects of selling sex on individuals. People positioned as experts on the subject constantly lobby governments, write and speak at conferences on the subject, with the result that women who sell sex are pathologised as victims daily.
All these preoccupations and apparatuses provide employment for large numbers of people, the majority women. These social-sector jobs are considered dignified, sometimes prestigious and may even be tinged with a sacrificial brush—the idea that those employed in ‘helping’ are unselfish, not themselves gaining anything through their work. The fact that their projects are governmental exercises of power is ignored. There is strong resistance to the idea that rescue or social-justice projects might be questionable or criticised in general, and the internecine feminist conflict focussing on whether the activity called prostitution is inherently a form of violence or can be a plausible livelihood strategy distracts from any real reflection on the usefulness of the projects. Yet, despite the abundant efforts carried out on their behalf, there has been little improvement in the lot of women who sell sex since the whole helping project began two hundred years ago. ‘Programmes presuppose that the real is programmable,’ said Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller (1992: 183). In this case, ‘the real’ is too often a woman designated victim who does not want to be saved, so it is little wonder that programming does not work. This article therefore explores the beginnings of the identification of a pathological activity (prostitution) and the labelling of its practitioners (prostitutes), the governmental projects that resulted and the social effects on both groups involved. Continue reading →
The other day I spoke to a large sexuality class in Basel, Switzerland. In an hour-long talk I can at least mention the many complications and ambiguities of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (the book’s the name of this particular talk). The material – and my take on it – was probably unfamiliar to most of the students. My ideas come from within the logic of people who leave home and sometimes wind up selling sex, folks without many options but who negotiate their way. Mine is a pragmatic view, not an ideological one. It can be called postcolonial, or an anthropological view of western folks’ conviction that their ways of looking at things are always, by definition, most progressive and best.
At dinner afterwards, I learned that Catharine MacKinnon had spoken at the same university just the other day, airing a view of gender and prostitution that is all about abuse and patriarchy. Hers is a bottom-line, zero-tolerance vision of women, sex and gender. MacKinnon began her activism against sexual harassment and pornography in the 1970s and has remained loyal to that vision, unswerved by the sort of perplexing experiences that influenced me.
If anyone happened to hear both presentations they can be pardoned for feeling confused. I just listened to part of a talk MacKinnon gave a year ago but turned it off after ten minutes or so. She is admirable in many ways, but how can she justify citing decades-old research to ‘prove’ that pornography causes violence and that all women who sell sex were abused as children? MacKinnon is a legal scholar who knows what evidence is, so how do her intellect and training allow her to misuse research like this?
In 1985 she wrote
Having power means, among other things, that when someone says, ‘this is how it is,’ it is taken as being that way. . . . Powerlessness means that when you say ‘this is how it is,’ it is not taken as being that way. This makes articulating silence, perceiving the presence of absence, believing those who have been socially stripped of credibility, critically contextualizing what passes for simple fact, necessary to the epistemology of a politics of the powerless.
I completely understand how this applied to women as a class and would agree that in many ways it’s still largely true everywhere. But the same idea applies to women who do not agree with her ideas on sex and gender and particularly about the meaning of selling and buying sex. Why doesn’t she see her own fundamental contradiction?
I presume it’s the sheltered life she has led. Anyone who has stayed in the academy continuously their whole adult life runs the strong risk of Not Getting Out Enough to know what’s happening in the world. Furthermore, universities are hierarchical and in many ways still feudal, and those who advance by producing the sort of outputs prescribed are led to believe that they are, in fact, superior intellectually to ordinary folk. MacKinnon reproduces in her ideology the same elitist, unbending belief in her own ability to Know Best that male patriarchs do. And she probably isn’t aware of it, because she is undoubtedly met by admiring, if not adoring, followers everywhere. She must also have a strain of the absolute certainty which leads me to talk about Fundamentalist Feminism. She is a quintessential example of a theorist in the Rescue Industry.
I, on the other hand, have been buffeted to and fro by confusing, contradictory, enriching and impoverishing experiences in a raft of different jobs, countries, cultures and social contexts. I couldn’t possibly have maintained my own beliefs from the 1970s – too many things have proved them wrong. So although Catharine and I are nearly the same age and almost bumped into each other in Basel, we seem to be creatures from different planets. Good luck to students trying to sort out the differences!
En vanlig teknik när man bedriver spionage eller illvilliga kampanjer är att sprida felaktig information. Desinformation. Om mig har det bland annat påståtts att: Hon är betald av sexindustrin. Och: Alla vet att hon är allierad med traffickerarna. Syftet har varit att manipulera känslorna hos en allmänhet som inte har kunskap nog att värdera sådana påståenden. Om Kajsa Ekis Ekman i Varat och varan inte avsiktligt ljugit om mig så är hennes forskningsförmåga sannerligen undermålig. Jag har bott i Malmö i två år och det är lätt att hitta min blogg med kontaktformuläret. Ekman kunde alltså ha kollat sina fakta med mig personligen, men har valt att inte göra det.
Jag är inte, som Ekman hävdar, ”anställd av lobbyorganisationen Network of Sex Work Projects” – vilket hon också kunde ha sett på deras webbsida. Jag är en oberoende forskare, skribent och talare. Jag arbetar som frilansare och är mest känd för boken Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (Zed, London). I Varat och varan undviker Ekman att nämna boken som av The New Statsman har kallats ”en av de viktigaste böckerna kring migration som publicerats de senaste åren”. Dessutom är varken denna bok, eller den spanska som jag skrev innan dess, korrekt beskrivna. Ekman kallar dem ”böcker om trafficking som mediemyt”.
Vem som helst som läser förlagets webbsida kan också se att jag i Sex at the Margins inte säger att vi ska ”sluta tala om trafficking”, vilket Ekman påstår, utan snarare att alla migrerande kvinnor som säljer sex inte upplever sig själva som bara offer, samt att när man drastiskt klassar varenda kvinna på det sättet avväpnar migranterna – medan det ökar makten hos människor som Ekman vilka tror att de vet bäst hur alla andra ska leva. Det är inte heller alls så att jag ”döper traffickingoffer till `migrerande sexarbetare´”. Det var Tampep, ett nätverk grundat 1993 av Europeiska kommissionen och som arbetar HIV/STI förebyggande och hälsofrämjande som gjorde det – och alltså långt innan jag dök upp på scenen.
Att plocka ut citat ur sin kontext är en standardtaktik hos skrupelfria korstågskämpar. Mot bakgrund av att jag har publicerat 50-talet artiklar och essäer, förutom en populär blogg, är det uppenbart att Ekman var ute efter att hitta ett ställe som – skiljt från sitt sammanhang – skulle få mig att låta som ett monster. När jag tillfrågades om att skriva för en bok kallad Women and the Politics of Place, där andra författare skrev om kvinnors placering i lokala områden, argumenterade jag för kosmopolitanism som en ”plats” som migranter bebor (därav titeln Challenging ‘Place’
Även om jag skattar mitt oberoende högt är lögner om mig till syvende och sist oviktiga: mitt rykte kommer inte raseras av en ideologs oreranden. Eftersom Leopard förlag säger att de publicerar ”historia, samhällsdebatt och populärvetenskap” måste Ekman tillhöra debattkategorin, för hon är inte någon historiker. Men oavsett kategori så har Leopard förlag utgivarplikt att undersöka påståenden om levande personer och förhindra författare att sprida desinformation eller utföra lågkvalitetsforskning. Skickade inte Leopard förlag ut Ekmans manuskript för översyn?
Däremot är förvrängningar och utelämnanden kring sociala rörelser viktigare att blottlägga. Ekman ger sken av att skriva en komplex rörelses historia, en rörelse som hon föraktar, nämligen den som arbetar för sexarbetares rättigheter. Men etiska, kompetenta historiker – oavsett om de är akademiker, journalister eller populärskribenter – manipulerar inte sitt material genom urval och utelämnanden i avsikt att göra en politisk markering. När jag blir tillsänd uppsatser för granskning eller redigering, och som vimlar av den sorts selektiva presentationer av fakta och polemisk ton som Ekmans bok består av, så returnerar jag dem. Författaren måste tänka om, omstrukturera och skriva om. I ett fall som Ekmans kan jag inte lista alla de felaktigheter, utelämnanden och citeringar som gjorts ur sitt sammanhang – det skulle ta för lång tid. Istället tillhandahåller jag några exempel och förväntar mig att författaren förstår lektionen och gör efterforskningen ordentligt.
För många seriösa aktivister, teoretiker, forskare, socialarbetare, epidemiologer, psykologer, policymakare och feminister världen över, är marginaliserade människors kamp att ha en röst i debatter som rör dem ingenting att håna över som Ekman gör. Sexarbetsrörelsen fokuserar på hälsorättigheter, sexuella rättigheter, arbetsrättigheter, individuella rättigheter eller mänskliga rättigheter, beroende av tid och plats. På ett eurocentriskt sätt fokuserar Ekman på några få länder nära Sverige, men sexarbetsrörelserna har rötter över hela världen: Empower grundades i Bangkok 1985, AMEPU 1986 i Uruguay, New Zealand Collective of Prostitutes 1987, Rede Brasileira de Prostitutas 1987, bland åtskilliga exempel. Många av dessa grupper startade innan Internet gjorde det enkelt att ”nätverka”, annonsera eller sprida information om problem och principer. DMSC, grundat i Kolkata 1995, har nu 65 000 sexarbetsmedlemmar från de mest missgynnade sociala klasserna. AMMAR har varit en del av den nationella arbetarfackföreningen CTA i Argentina sedan 1996.
Sexarbetsrörelsen har inte ett enskilt center eller styrelse. Utifrån lokala kulturer och behov stöps argument för sexarbetares rättigheter olika. Ibland kretsar argumentet kring sexuella rättigheter, som för det sydamerikanska projektet Ciudadanía Sexual. Ibland är mänskliga rättigheter grunden för kraven, som i fallet med aktivisters protester mot polis som tvingar människor in i rehabiliteringsprogram. Ingen av dessa organisationer påstår sig representera sexarbetare som en generell kategori; alla vet att det skulle vara omöjligt i det kriminaliserade, stigmatiserade sammanhang där de flesta människor säljer sex befinner sig. Vad de istället gör är att sammanföra människor med liknande värderingar, intressen och behov. Ibland fysiskt men ofta via nätet.
Notera att en del av dessa aktivister kallar sig själva prostituerade, vilket antyder att Ekman inte förstått att kärnan i denna rörelse inte handlar om att byta ut ord, något som är en av hennes grundteser i Varat och varan.Genom att reducera sexarbetsrörelsen till den enda aspekt som betyder något för henne – ideologi – förvränger Ekman – eller misslyckas med att förstå – kvinnovåldsdebattens historik på FN-nivån. Hon förefaller inte veta att ett officiellt uttalande gjordes om trafficking och prostitution i Wien-deklarationen kring våld mot kvinnor 1993 i avsikt att skilja mellan verkliga offer och människor som inte är fullständigt tvingade. Hon förefaller ovetande om den livliga och stridbara prostitutionsdebatten vid Beijing-konferensen 1995, vilkens slutliga plattform för handling efterlyste bekämpande av påtvingad prostitution och trafficking, inte prostitution i sig självt. Genom att utesluta dessa nyckelhändelser i samtida feministhistoria får Ekman specialrapportören kring våld mot kvinnor – Radhika Coomaraswamys – användande av båda termerna, sexarbetare och tvingad prostitution att låta som en del av en godtycklig och illvillig konspiration.
I Sverige är det kanske möjligt för Ekman att fnysa åt skadereduceringsrörelsen, men kan på intet vis ens förstå vidden av dess betydelse för resten av världen.Tror hon verkligen att skadereduktionsteori och -praktik inte borde användas för att minska förekomsten av HIV bland marginaliserade populationer i Asien? Gräsrotsnätverk för både drogbrukare och sexarbetare har blivit allt mer inflytelserika i forum som International Harm Reduction Association, där man använder sig av principer om sexuellt självbestämmande och kroppslig autonomi. Scarlet Alliance, grundat 1989, är ett nätverk av sexarbetarorganisationer som deltar i Australiens federation av AIDS-organisationer. De använder anslag, vilket inkluderar kamratutbildning, samhällsutveckling och advocacy. Sexarbetare i Ghanaerhåller HIV-förebyggande stöd på grund av att de är en högriskpopulation, liksom män som har sex med män och transsexuella människor.
De ghanesiska sexarbetarna kallar förresten sig själva för en fackförening. Ekman försöker avslöja själva idén om fackföreningar för sexarbetare genom selektiv forskning i Europa. Detta särskilt genom ett trångsynt hat mot Nederländerna som länge associerats med olika slags skadereduktionspolitik. Och trots att Ekman hävdar att hon forskat kring detta i två år så är den mesta av informationen hon presenterar tillgänglig på olika organisationers webbsidor. När hon insinuerar att hela sexarbetsrörelsen har byggts upp av några få holländska aktivister så är det ett tecken på en sann neokolonialistisk sinnesuppsättning: antydandet att människor utanför Europa är inkapabla att organisera sig själva eller att välja de principer de tror på.
Ekman plockar även russin ur kakan av den europeiska historien – om det inte är så att hon helt enkelt misslyckats med att upptäcka den. När hon hånfullt skriver att “agerar inte fackligt någonstans”, avslöjar hon en svensk oförmåga att förstå att i större delen av världen fungerar stödarbete och sociala rörelser som inte får betydande ekonomiskt understöd via nätet. Detta genom e-postdiskussionslistor, skypekonferenssamtal och social nätverksprogramvara. Dessutom ser Ekman bara delar av ICRSE:s webbsida, eftersom hon inte är medlem. Hon förlöjligar också en tidig sexarbetskonferens som hölls i Bryssel 1986, men lyckas ändå utesluta efterföljaren till evenemanget som hölls i. På denna konferens grundades ICRSE och 120 sexarbetare och 80 NGO-allierade från hela Europa deltog.
Jag behöver inte överdriva vad som har och inte har uppnåtts av en rörelse som har så många motståndare. Men det finns inte heller någon ursäkt för Ekman att, på ett ofeministiskt och osolidariskt sätt, håna de ansträngningar som gjorts av aktivister som inte delar hennes manikeistiska världsbild. Varför smutskastar Ekman denna rörelse? Varför hatar hon människor som främjar sin rätt till självbestämmande? Varför attackerar hon människor som försöker reducera spridningen av HIV? Varför verkar hon skadeglad när en sexarbetarförening (Comisiones Obreras i Barcelona) misslyckas med att locka medlemmar?
Genom att fokusera på Europa försöker Ekman få alla sexarbetarorganisationer låta löjliga, men hon förstår inte att traditionella fackföreningar endast är ett sätt att organisera och främja rättigheter. Det kan mycket väl vara så att klassiska fackföreningar inte är den föreningsmodell som passar sexarbetsrörelsen. I vart fall har fackföreningar i alla typer av branscher och länder mattats av och minskat. I fallet med sexbranschen är strävandena dessutom kraftigt försvagade av ett antal faktorer som Ekman inte förstår. Det är svårt för arbetare att förhandla med branscher som opererar i informella ekonomier. När människor som säljer sex är migranter utan arbetstillstånd och juridisk rät att bo någonstans, så förefaller fackföreningar irrelevanta. När stigmat att vara prostituerad är så starkt så vill de flesta inte etikettera sig själva, registrera sig hos staten eller på något annat sätt anta en professionell identitet.
Ekmans felaktiga påståenden om Londons IUSW (en del av det nationella GMB) kunde ha undvikits om hon hade gjort lite mer grundligt forskningsarbete istället för att förlita sig ensidigt på ett gammalt gräl i den brittiska bloggsfären. Hon kunde ha frågat mig, som var en aktiv medlem en gång. Mannen hon anklagar att sköta showen för IUSW gjorde det aldrig, och siffrorna hon tillhandahåller kring medlemskap är sju år gamla. Eftersom GMB tillåter direktörer att ansluta alla sina branscher, är det faktum att en eskortfirmas direktör anslöt sig mindre anmärkningsvärt och lömskt än Ekman vill få läsarna att tro. Hon försöker misskreditera STRASS i Frankrike genom att citera data från en abolitionistgrupp utan att ange datum för dess dokument, vilket ändå inte kan finnas på den webbadress hon tillhandahåller (not 167).
Ekmans skadeglädje är föga tilltalande. I ett nyligen taget domslut i Ontario som slog ner på flera diskriminerande aspekter i den kanadensiska prostitutionslagen, observerade domaren om ”expertvittnet” Melissa Farley (vars forskning Ekman använder i boken):
Dr Farleys val av språk är tidvis infekterat och förringar utifrån sina slutsatser… Dr Farley fastslog under korsförhör att en del av hennes åsikter kring prostitution hade formats före hennes forskning… Av dessa skäl fäster jag mindre vikt vid Dr Farleys bevis.
På samma sätt skulle domare utan tvekan avslå Ekmans bevis också, vilket också många läsare borde göra.
Om författaren: Laura Agustín är fil doktor, just nu gästprofessor i Gender and Migration vid schweiziska universitet, migrationsforskare, författare till Sex at the Margins, bloggare, föreläsare och bofast i Malmö. Hon heter också The Naked Anthropologist.
If you didn’t read the comments on my recent post about Important Enemies you really should. Nearly every one is interesting, thoughtful or nutty-entertaining, far from the tedious comments often heard at places like the Guardian. No, this was an authentic conversation with drama. My original idea was to have a section on my cv where important slag-offs would be listed, but the latest characterisation of my work is quite wonderful. In a round-up review of several recent books on the sex industry, Ken Plummer has called me an Intellectual Feminist Maverickafter finishing up his take on Jeffreys’s Industrial Vagina:
Of course, I think [Jeffreys] is over the top and lacks some subtlety – but that is often what is needed so that the big issues can be seen. . . she would make a great starting point in a classroom and elsewhere for a debate on these issues.
But then, immediately, one needs to read the work of Laura Agustín as a counterpoint. Laura María Agustín is an intellectual feminist maverick who seeks to deconstruct the entire field and challenge much thinking. In Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry, she draws from years of researching and thinking about the position of women travelling in the global economy, many of whom engage in various forms of ‘selling sex’. Much of what Jeffreys claims, I guess Agustín would dismiss as myth. At the core of her argument is the idea that migrants often make ‘personal choices’ to travel and work in the sex industry. Her specific interests though are not with groups like street workers but with migration and trafficking. She sees them as a part of a dynamic global economy; and one where often the sex control industry makes the situation worse, not better, for them. Indeed the core of this book is an attack upon the ‘rescue industry’, which ostensibly has a long history of ‘saving women’ while in fact it is driven by a ‘feminist fundamentalism’ which frequently and actually harms women. This book is reviewed elsewhere in Sexualities (Vol. 12, no. 6) and her ideas are developed in a special issue of Sexualities in 2007 (Vol 19, no. 4). But it has to be mentioned again here. She problematizes the whole area of those who work to help these women – and who place them ‘in need’. She advocates listening to the voices of the migrant women. Between the work of Agustín and Jeffreys there is a major and long-standing feminist tension at work on many levels.
The only thing I’d take exception to is Plummer’s guess that I’d call Jeffreys’s ideas ‘myth’. Numerous reviewers of my work use this word, but I personally don’t. To me, myth makes it sound as though I think fundamentalist feminist ideas about trafficking are fabrication, which isn’t right. Instead, I see those ideas as gender ideology and a campaign strategy: change the language, reduce complexity to a simple, quickly comprehensible type, hold fast to the line. I don’t think the world is a happy, unsexist place, that globalisation is fair, that no one is ever made miserable by migration or sex work or any other simplistic thing. The long-standing tension Plummer mentions is between a hard-line reductionist (or totalising) view of women as always exploited and a nuanced and doubting view that wants to recognise as much female agency as possible, on principle.
Sweden’s The Local invited me to write on the government’s evaluation of the sex-buying law (sexköpslagen). I’m reproducing the article here minus stereotyped photo of woman’s high-booted legs in street at night with red overtones. It is very hard to illustrate these stories, I know, but I do feel the media could resist the worst cliches. These jolly masked men might be sex workers’ clients, as might this ashamed man be.
A new review of Sweden’s ban on buying sex has provided little hard evidence that the policy of prohibition has worked, writes Laura Agustín, but few politicians have dared to point out its obvious failings.
Every Swede knows that the famed law against buying sex – sexköpslagen – is a hot potato. Few politicians have commented one way or another on the evaluation of the law announced on 2 July, and only one government official claimed it proves the law is a success. Given that the report has been strongly criticised as empty of evidence and methodology but full of ideology in its very remit, debate has been curiously muted, even for the time of year.
At another period in history the sex-purchase law might have been considered a minor piece of legislation on a lesser social problem. Few people die, are maimed for life or lose their homes and jobs because of prostitution here; other threats to national security and happiness might seem more pressing.
But one feminist faction promotes the ideology that prostitutes are always, by definition, victims of violence against women. As victims, they can’t be criminals, so their side of the money-sex exchange is not penalised, whereas those who buy are perpetrators of a serious crime. This ideology, a minority view in other countries, predominates among Swedish State Feminists who claim that the existence of commercial sex is a key impediment to achieving gender equality. Such a dogma is odd, given the very small number of people engaged in selling sex in a welfare state that does not exclude them from its services and benefits. It is not illegal to sell sex in Sweden, just to buy it.
The evaluation leaned heavily on small-scale data about street prostitution, because that was the easiest to find. No one doubts that most street sex workers went somewhere else after the law came into effect, and no one knows where they went. But evaluators bolstered their case by claiming that street prostitution had increased in Denmark, where there is no such law, using information from a Copenhagen NGO whose inflated data was exposed in parliament last year. Street prostitution is known, in any case, to constitute a tiny, diminishing part of the whole of commercial sex.
The report confesses that ‘prostitution on the Internet’ was difficult to research but exhibits a poor understanding of the multiplicity of businesses, jobs and networks that characterise the sex industry. Asking police officials and social workers what they think is going on is no substitute for true research, and no academic studies pretend to know the extent of prostitution here. A government report from 2007 admitted it was difficult to find out much of anything about prostitution in Sweden.
The evaluation gives no account of how the research was actually carried out – its methodology – but is full of background material on Swedish history and why prostitution is bad. Only 14 sex workers were actually canvassed for their opinion of the law, seven of whom had already stopped selling sex. It is a rather pathetic display.
Several media commentators took the occasion to attack the law itself, since, despite regular government affirmations that the majority of Swedes support the law, opposition is fierce. In the blogosphere and other online forums, liberals, libertarians and non-conforming members of the main parties relentlessly resist a reductionist view of sexuality in which vulnerable women are forever threatened by predatory men.
But most politicians undoubtedly feel little good will come from complaining about legislation now symbolic of Mother Sweden. The Swedish Institute has turned the abolition of prostitution into part of the nation’s brand, what they call a ‘multi-faceted package to make Sweden attractive to the outside world.’ The SI, claiming to represent the most ‘socially liberal’ country on the planet, celebrates gender equality and gay love along with Ingmar Bergman, high technology and pine forests.
Sweden indisputably ranks high on several measures of gender equality, such as numbers of women who work outside the home, their salaries and length of parental leave. But other policies considered as part of gender equality are much harder to measure: cultural change, how people feel about sexual difference and, not least, the effect of a ban on buying sex. So it is hardly surprising that the government’s evaluation presents no evidence that relations between men and women have improved in Sweden because of the law. The evaluation’s main recommendation is to stiffen the punishment meted out to men who buy sex.
There was something new in Justice Minister Ask’s positioning of the law to the international media, however – a claim that it has been proved to combat organized crime, particularly the kind called sex trafficking. Citing no evidence, the report maintains there is less trafficking in Sweden because it is now ‘less attractive’ to traffickers.
Such naïve statements argue that without a demand for commercial sex there will be no supply, ignoring the complicated ways sex-money markets work in cultures with different concepts of family and love, reducing a wide range of sexual activities to an abstract notion of violence and brushing aside the many people who confirm that they prefer selling sex to their other livelihood options.
As for combating trafficking, there is no proof. Statistics continue to be a source of conflict in international debates, because different countries, institutions and researchers do not agree on what actually constitutes trafficking. It does not help that fundamentalist feminism refuses to accept the distinction between human trafficking and human smuggling linked to informal labour migration, as enshrined in the UN Convention on Organised Crime.
The Swedish government has proved nothing with this evaluation, and most Swedish politicians are keeping quiet, because they obviously know it.
I once thought of adding a section to my cv called Important Enemies, in which two kinds of people could be included. The first make conventional academic critiques based on ideology; here, Sheila Jeffreys would be a good example, peppering as she did The Industrial Vagina with references to my work as a sterling example of what’s wrong with views that don’t jibe with her vision of prostitution. The second would be non-academic attacks that seem to question the right of other people to do research at all. One example here would be Melissa Farley’s characterisation of my work as the postmodern nadir in an essay called ‘Theory versus reality: Commentary on four articles about trafficking for prostitution’, in a journal called Women’s Studies International Forum. The occasion was an edition with several articles critical to violence-against-women rhetoric about trafficking. I hadn’t written any of them and couldn’t help feeling chuffed. The Postmodern Nadir has a certain ring.
Attacking what academics choose to research and how they do it seems slightly odd to me. I have no romantic ideas about freedom of academic thought but I do suppose people end up researching general areas in general ways because they are drawn to them. I think of research as an endless stream of fairly random coloured bits that sometimes come together to fill in part of a big picture we will never comprehend. Time passes and the shapes we thought we had figured out change, but new research brings new bits of understanding.
Julie Bindel feels different, though, recently complaining, according to a reporter, that there is a lot of terrible anthropological research concerning women in the sex industry, and that they should not be treated as an anthropological field research group; she went so far as to say that if she had one bullet in a gun, it would not go for the pimp, but for the academic who’s all into the sex industry. The occasion was a panel at a UK Feminista event.
Not so many who research the sex industry are technically anthropologists, so maybe the criticism is against people who do ethnography. Which usually means not using formal interviews or quantitative surveys but spending a lot of time with the people being researched: living with them, or visiting them frequently over a long time, watching and listening, recording what you see, hear, smell, taste, feel. These days, ethnographers don’t ordinarily claim their results to be final truths about large groups but rather suggestive small-scale pictures.
What does it mean to suggest any subject should not be researched? Is the implication that research harms some people, who are better served by those taking particular ideological stances towards them? That’s pretty extreme Rescue Industry ideology. Since I am probably one of the anthropologist types whose research makes Julie Bindel angry, I might now add her name to the list of Important Enemies on that cv I haven’t written yet.
Louise Persson and I have published a piece in Svenska Dagbladet, one of Sweden’s major national newspapers. The topic was the government’s report evaluating the law against buying sex, sexköpslagen, issued recently and unsettlingly uncommented and uncritiqued in the mainstream media. There were ‘news’ stories, of course, reproducing the government’s line – publicity claiming the law has been proved successful. Given the very lively culture of debate in these same media on every other topic, the silence is noticeable. And given the unquestionable existence of a liberal/libertarian movement that hates the law and its ideas about sexuality and gender equality, one wonders what’s at work here: A genuine taboo? Gender equality such a sacred cow that everyone chooses to keep quiet about the report’s mediocrity? Sweden isn’t a police state and surveillance is low compared with the UK, for example. Critical blogging has been brisk, so what makes mainstream media commentators avoid criticising this evaluation, not on ideological grounds but because it is so badly done that it proves nothing at all?
That’s what we wrote about, the embarrassing lack of evidence to prove the law has had any impact at all on the buying and selling of sex. This is not an ideological argument; it doesn’t prove that the law is no good; it proves that the evaluation is no good. Significant because the world’s peabrained media have picked up the claim – Swedish Law Giant Success – without reading even the English summary of points that make it crystal-clear that evaluators couldn’t find any evidence of anything. That’s the story, and it’s one any researcher will appreciate!
The original is Tvivelaktig rapport om sexköp,Laura Agustín och Louise Persson, Svenska Dagbladet, 15 July 2010. Our own title was better, but it’ll be a cold day in hell when editors don’t think they can improve titles. Here’s the English translation Given a very small word limit, we could only mention key issues in a barebones fashion.
Doubtful report on sex-purchase law
Laura Agustín and Louise Persson, 15 July 2010, Svenska Dagbladet
Sex crimes go down in Sweden: The new evaluation of the law against buying sex is spreading the message round the world, but the report suffers from too many scientific errors to justify any such claim.
The report was delayed. It is hard to find evidence to explain why one can’t see sex workers where one saw them before: Have they stopped selling sex, or are they doing it somewhere else? Stigmatised and criminalised people avoid contact with police, social workers and researchers.
Street prostitution receives exaggerated attention in the inquiry, despite the fact that it represents a small, diminishing type of commercial sex that cannot be extrapolated to all. The inquiry mentions the difficulty of researching ‘prostitution on the internet’ but appears not to know that the sex industry comes in many different shapes being researched in depth elsewhere (escorts without websites, sex parties, strip clubs, massage parlours, students who sell sex, among others).
The report’s conclusion that the law has decreased prostitution is based on police reports, government-funded groups working on prostitution in three cities, a few small academic studies and comparisons with other Nordic countries. But police only encounter sex workers in the context of criminal inquiries, the funded groups mostly meet sex workers seeking help, small studies can only indicate possible trends and the Danish statistics on the number of ‘active’ street workers – used to show that Sweden’s prostitution is less – were publicly shown to be very wrong eight months ago.
The law is claimed to have a dampening effect on sex trafficking, but no proof is offered. Trafficking statistics have long been disputed outside Sweden, because of definitional confusion and refusals to accept the UN Convention on Organised Crime’s distinction between human trafficking and human smuggling linked to informal labour migration. The report claims the law diminishes ‘organised crime’ without analysing how crimes were identified and resolved or how they are related to the sex-purchase law.
All social research must explain its methodology. An evaluation like this one needs to provide details on the sample of people consulted, since even in a field as small as Sweden’s no study can pretend to speak to everyone. Methodological research norms require explaining how informants were consulted, under what conditions, what questions they were asked and how, what ethical apparatus was in place to help guarantee they gave their true opinions, how a balance of different stakeholders was achieved, how many people refused to participate, and so on. In this report, however, the methodology section is practically non-existent. We know nothing about how it the evaluation was actually carried out.
On the other hand, the report brims with irrelevant material: background on how the law came about, Sweden’s history with gender equality, why prostitution is bad, why international audiences are interested in the evaluation and how many Swedes are said to currently support the law. One single sex worker’s sad personal story takes up three pages, while the account of sex workers’ opinions is limited to the results of a survey of only 14 people of which only seven were current sex workers.
Research must try for some kind of objectivity, but the government’s remit to the evaluation team said that ‘the buying of sexual services shall continue to be criminalised’ no matter what the evaluators found. The bias was inherent.
The Swedish government understands that the law is of interest internationally as a form of crime prevention. What they don’t realise is how, when the report is translated and reviewed, the methodological errors and crude bias will cause researchers in the field to dismiss this evaluation.
The international trafficking debate has moved beyond the simplistic position presented in this report. More humility is needed from a small country with little experience of, and research about, undocumented migration and the sex industry. If one wants to present oneself as occupying a higher moral ground than other countries, one needs to do better work to understand complex questions. This evalution tells us nothing about the effects of the sex-purchase law.
We offered sources on the topic of flawed research not supporting extravagant claims in this field, but editors omitted them.
Socialstyrelsen. 2007. Kännedom om Prostitution. Another Swedish government report from just a few years ago that concludes little can be known about prostitution in Sweden:
Folketingets Socialudvalg, 20 november 2009. Socialministerens endelige svar påspørgsmål nr. 37 (SOU Alm. del). Question in Danish parliament about incorrect figures claimed for street prostitution.
United States Government Accountability Office. July 2006. Human Trafficking: Better Data, Strategy, and Reporting Needed to Enhance U.S. Antitrafficking Efforts Abroad.
Laura Agustín och Louise Persson, Svenska Dagbladet, 15 July 2010
Den nysläppta utvärderingen av sexköpslagen sprider budskapet att sexbrotten minskar, men utredningen är behäftad med alltför allvarliga vetenskapliga fel för att man ska kunna hävda att lagen är framgångsrik.
Rapporten om sexköpslagen försenades. Det var svårt att hitta bevis som demonstrerar anledningarna bakom varför man inte ser sexarbetare där man sett dem förut: har de slutat sälja, eller har de flyttat någon annanstans? Stigmatiserade och kriminaliserade aktörer undviker kontakt med polis, socialarbetare och forskare.
. . . En grundprincip för forskning är att sträva efter objektivitet, men regeringens direktiv var: ”En utgångspunkt för vårt arbete har varit att köp av sexuell tjänst fortfarande ska vara kriminaliserat.” Det skapar läge för en partisk inlaga. . .
Vill man presentera sig med en högre moralisk nivå på den internationella arenan, krävs bättre underlag och förståelse för komplexa frågor. Den här utvärderingen säger oss ingenting om lagens effekter.
I wrote the following piece after some welcomed a parliamentarian’s suggestion that Sweden change to a regulatory regime that looks more like the 19th century than any progressive proposal for better Gender Equality. It was published at The Other Swedish Model. Note: sexköpslagen is the name for the Swedish law, meaning sex-purchase law or law on buying sex. Also note that the evaluation of the law, originally expected at the end of April, has been delayed.
Laura Agustín, 17 June 2010, The Other Swedish Model
Does sexköpslagen, the law against buying sex, work or not? Everyone wants to know. Camilla Lindberg is right that talking about the possibility that the law does not work is taboo in Sweden. The government’s official evaluation of the law has been delayed, probably because it has not been easy to find evidence to demonstrate the reasons behind an absence. That is, you may look around and not see sex workers and their customers where you did before. But you cannot know whether they have stopped buying and selling sex or, if they have not stopped, where they have gone.
Evaluators will question police and social workers, and maybe get to speak to a few sex workers, but none of these can give an overview of sex markets that operate via private telephones and the Internet, in the privacy of homes and hotel rooms. And evaluators certainly cannot say how many people are doing what. Street prostitutes are estimated in some countries to constitute less than ten per cent of all sex workers, so, even if there are few left to see, 90% are unaccounted for. When businesses that sell sex are outlawed, they hide, so government accountants are unlikely to find them – and, after all, many are just individuals working alone.
But if we want to discuss the whole sex industry more openly, we should not focus on the concept of brothels, as Lindberg suggests – particularly not on the idea of health checks for workers. This 19th-century French idea could not be more patriarchal and thus the very opposite of jämställdhet, sexköpslagens guiding principle. Basic common sense tells us that, if disease-transmission is a concern, all parties exchanging fluids have to practice safer sex – not ‘be checked’. And although laws in the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand, Nevada and parts of Australia allow and regulate brothels as one form of commercial sex, many people who sell sex in those countries prefer to work on their own, in small groups in flats or – yes – on the street. In France, organised sex workers vociferously oppose a proposed return to the old system of maisons closes with health controls that stigmatise prostitutes as (female) carriers of sexually-transmitted diseases.
Draconian legislation does not make sense because no single law can do justice to everyone who sells and buys sex, whether they are Swedish, other European citizens or migrants, and whether they are women, men or transgendered. The enormous variety of jobs and personal histories involved cannot ethically be reduced to ideological categories: neither free nor forced describes the complicated life histories of most people who sell sex. Neither exploiter nor violent describes those of all people who buy it.
After 15 years of studying the variety and multiplicity of the sex industry and the social conflicts surrounding it, I do understand the utopic vision behind sexköpslagen: a desire that commercial sex would simply go away, that men and women would have equal opportunities, power, money and everything else – and that everyone would have good sex. Whether such a utopia can be achieved through legislation I personally doubt; sexual markets have shown themselves to be extremely tenacious over history and efforts to prohibit particular sexual behaviours have not prospered.
Debates about legislative models focus on a simplified idea of prostitution and date from times when women were seen as subordinate, when men were allowed to control their destinies and when disease was conceived as someone’s fault. All such ideas are now passé. Women are understood to be autonomous actors, with responsibility for their actions. Sexköpslagen conceives of one group of women as inferior and needing protection. Lindbergs brothels conceive of them as needing to be specially controlled. But neither are adequate ways to think about the diversity of people involved – and when it comes to safety not everyone wants to be protected the same way.
Sexköpslagen was envisioned as a way to legislate jämställdhet – ’send a signal’ about what is right and wrong in sexual relationships. The problem is it requires all women to feel the same way about sex. Nowadays, arguments about sexual behaviour revolve around rights, the idea that people can choose for themselves what activities they want to engage in and with whom. As we come to understand the enormous diversity of sexual desire, so we need to accept that, for some, money has no special ability to ruin the experience. Everyone doesn’t feel the same way about sex: it’s an anthropologist’s truism but nonetheless true.
For those interested in women’s rights, the question is how to promote the autonomy of as many women as possible, not the achievement of laws that embody some correct ideological stance.
Masseuse is sometimes a euphemism for prostitute or sex worker: an annoyance for many massage therapists who offer no sexual contact. But given the common misuse, and given the social context of mostly male military personnel, it’s interestingly odd to see a Swedish official advocating that women must be allowed to perform massages on soldiers – as a logical necessary consequence of a policy of Gender Equality. Of course opportunities to work on government contracts should be gender-equal. And the ‘unequal’ policy is probably grounded in ‘protecting’ women as a general principle, which is no good. However, there could be some old-fashioned realism involved in the exclusion, given mostly male armies and the longstanding covert use of massage to signify prostitution. I wonder how many female massage therapists there are in Afghanistan who might like to take up this opportunity?
A Swedish army gender adviser in Afghanistan has taken the Armed Forces to task for only employing local men to perform massages on troops stationed in Mazar-E-Sharif. In a written internal document submitted from Swedish headquarters at Camp Northern Lights, Gender Field Adviser Captain Krister Fahlstedt of Afghanistan force FS17 took exception to an army contract specifying that on-base massage services should be provided exclusively by men.
“The agreement specifies, with no further explanation, that the physiotherapists (masseurs/masseuses) should be men,” wrote Fahlstedt in his November submission. The captain’s investigations showed that the recommendation was followed to the letter, as two men were brought in to perform massages.
“It is the opinion of FS17 that there are no reasonable grounds for gender to be one of the profile requirements,” he wrote. Fahlstedt further stressed that his force was committed to strengthening the position of women in society by helping create the conditions in which they could become self-sufficient.
“It’s not important as such whether women eventually get the job, what’s important is that there’s equality of opportunity and they are treated on the same terms as men,” Fahlstedt told The Local. “Contracts of this kind must always be gender neutral, and this is actually the only time I’ve seen an army contract worded in this way,” he added.
Fahlstedt, active in both the Centre Party and the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights (RFSL), returned earlier this month to Sweden from service with the FS17 force. He remains hopeful that the army will rectify the situation and begin considering the possibility of employing Afghan masseuses. “I haven’t received a formal response yet but I have been led to believe that the necessary changes will be made to the contract,” he told The Local.
Sex worker Susan Davis advocates the decriminalization of prostitution
Clients as monsters and misfits, exploiters and rapists, dysfunctional or weird: that’s how many who hate prostitution and the sex industry generalise all men who buy sex (they skim over women who buy sex because that’s not the gender-equality road they want to follow.) If you attend meetings where sex workers are present, you will hear another story, in which all sorts of guys buy sex for all sorts of reasons, most of them quite ordinary. In these excerpts a researcher amongst clients also speaks up.
Veteran sex worker Susan Davis wants people to know that her “clients aren’t the bogeymen they are made out to be. I love what I do,” Davis told the Georgia Straight in an interview at the Vancouver Public Library’s central branch. “I think the guys are the best; a lot of them are my friends. Some I’ve known for 18 years. How do you not become emotionally attached?”
Davis, who has been in the business for 23 years, insisted that stability and security for sex workers can only come with decriminalization of prostitution. FIRST, a national coalition of feminists who support sex workers’ rights, hosted a lively forum on the subject at the library on November 23. Davis, who was on the panel, suggested that men who buy sex can actually help enhance the safety of those in the trade. “I think that clients are our biggest resource in trying to combat exploitation, trafficking, and exploitation of youth within the sex industry,” declared Davis, a member of the West Coast Cooperative of Sex Industry Professionals, in the interview.
Another panellist, SFU sociology instructor and researcher Chris Atchison, echoed Davis’s sentiments. He revealed the results of an extensive three-year study—called “Johns’ Voice”—that documents the relationship between buyers and sellers of sex in Canada. “I wanted to understand how these men engage in purchasing behaviour and what their relationships with sex-trade workers are about,” Atchison told the audience. “I wanted to know whether social and legal intervention such as the Swedish model is warranted by any empirical evidence.”. .
. . . The men he spoke to were seeking companionship and a connection with the sex workers they patronized, he said, adding that they wanted to engage in a safe and respectful relationship. He also reported that many customers saw the same sex worker for months or years, and that 79 percent said they wished to see prostitution decriminalized and regulated.
“I’m not here to present a picture of the sex buyer as some wonderful guy or say that they are all great, salt-of-the-earth people,” he said. The “Johns’ Voice” project showed that between one and two percent of clients have been brutally violent toward a sex worker. Those are the people the law must address, according to Atchison. . .
Male sex worker in Kenya with ‘important’ clients Recently on a history-of-sexuality list, people complained about blanket statements regarding ‘Africans’, given the enormous diversity of people and cultures across...
Because the prostitution controversy is about women who sell sex to men, most of male sex work passes unnoticed. And people who do talk about it often slip into the assumption that it’s a phenomenon happening between men, whether you call them gay or MSM. Consider host bars, which welcome female clients to be treated as men are in Japan’s numerous hostess bars.
The basic work is providing company whilst customers sit in the venue: good conversation, graceful flirting, lighting cigarettes and making sure drinks are correctly poured and always full. The relationship takes place in public but has an intimate quality. Venues differ, and sometimes employees are obliged to meet customers outside the clubs. Wages are low, and employees depend on the commissions they earn on promoting the sale of drinks, whose prices can be very high indeed.
I have read good research about Japanese hostess clubs but not about host clubs. You can find a lot of media reports that all say the same thing about how they work. They say that even professional Japanese women are supposed to be passive and submissive. They correlate the rise of host clubs with such women’s desires to have a place where they can be assertive and uninhibited. It is often said that a lot of the customers at host bars are hostesses who arrive after their own wearing shifts.
I’ve been studying the sex industry for 15 years, and I understand that the conflict about prostitution – and therefore about trafficking – derives from the belief that biological women are innately vulnerable to sexual violence. Therefore, information about men who sell sex (or are exploited) is usually marginalised, unless the men are technically boys.
But what about women who buy sex from men? Evidence about that is usually dismissed, too, by those who want to abolish commercial sex. When it’s not dismissed, the women are denounced as ‘acting like men’ – exploitative, objectifying, dominating, selfish. This critique comes up most in treatments of middle-class women tourists in poorer countries, where it’s common for local men to act as guides, advisers, drivers, cultural mediators and lovers. More everyday situations of women paying men are said to be few and exceptional, except for cheerful accounts of places like Chippendales.
Photo by Yevgeny Kondakov
At the end of last year I said I want to begin to think more purposefully about where the idea of Gender Equity has taken us. This will not take the form of a statistic war, because, as I always have to explain, there can’t be meaningful statistics where activities are stigmatised, illegal or simply occur in the informal sector of the economy. We don’t know how many of any sort of person buys what kind of sex from whom. What we have is a patchwork of information, a lot of it unreliable. Some of it, like the piece about a Kenyan man I posted the other day, is what’s called anecdotal. So is this piece from Der Spiegel about Bobby, who entertains women in Moscow.
Why aren’t women like those above seen as realising their desires? Why aren’t they seen as victims? Why isn’t this equity? What’s going on?
This piece was originally published in Good Vibrations Magazine 19 July 2011.
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