The Naked Anthropologist

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Violence Against Women: Too much of a bad thing

This is one of the images some feminists objected to in an H&M advertising campaign a year ago. The object to be sold is underwear, so there’s no way to advertise it without showing flesh. I’m thinking about this in relation to the idea of Gender Equality, taking the case of Sweden, where H&M has its home. While I intuitively understand the concept of equality as a general principle, I don’t when it applies to sex. I have never understood how we think we can absolutely measure the sexual experience or know when people have enjoyed themselves ‘equally’. Lots of people know when they haven’t had a good time in bed, but in fact many people also don’t know because they haven’t had enough experience to be able to compare. And taste comes into it, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. As well as the fact that we indisputably are trapped within patriarchy. That’s the direction I’m taking in my exploration of the meaning of hegemonic Gender Equality policy at The Local, a Swedish news site in English. And here’s the underwear one commentator thinks might be ‘equal’ enough to please some feminists:

Violence Against Women: Too much of a bad thing?

Laura Agustín, The Local, 10 November 2009

It might sound odd to talk about silences on the topic of gender equality in Sweden, since discussions of it seem to run non-stop. But that is how hegemony works: a constant bombardment of words, most of which reiterate the opinions of a single powerful group. Differences of opinion are usually quibbles over details to a central idea that’s accepted as being indisputable because it’s supposed to be normal.

Gender equality in Sweden is a perfect example. Voices that want to question its foundations are not heard, which is what Maria Abrahamsson, a veteran editorial writer for Svenska Dagbladet, meant when she said that ‘open discussion’ is missing about certain aspects of gender law and policy.

Some of what you hear from state feminists refers to assuring that women are represented in government and paid as well and have the same opportunities to work as men, and that men have the same opportunities to be good parents that women do. These are the policies for which Sweden ranks highly compared with most other countries. When the word jämställdhet is heard here, chances are that the details of these issues are being discussed. I say details because the policies have been in place for some time, and no one questions the need to make citizens in general more ‘equal’ in a democratic-type society.

The problem is that much of what state feminists say centres around the concept of Violence Against Women (våld mot kvinnor, often referred to as kvinnofrid, the legal protection of women). The mantra is ‘We have a big problem with violence against women’. Repeated over and over, it becomes a truth difficult to break into questionable pieces, rather providing a reason for endless conversations about how to stop men from committing aggressions against women. A point of view that says ‘Wait a minute, all those things you’re talking about shouldn’t be called violence!’ is rarely heard in public discussions.

It’s not that people in Sweden, feminists and non-feminists alike, never discuss this exaggerated notion of violence in bars, cafes, emails, blogs and occasional seminars. The issue is that the basis of policy, the quite extreme definition of violence and the reductionist idea of what’s ‘good for women’ is so rarely questioned in any visible, public way, whether the mainstream media or parliament. And by questioning I don’t mean the occasional online article with its cloud of comments; I mean a sustained conversation.

Violence Against Women (often known in English-speaking countries as VAW) is problematic when it relies on the idea that women are always, innately weaker than men. More than physical strength is at stake, although the words heard most are abuse, assault, battering. VAW has come to signify different sorts of coercion, threats, and moral strangleholds men are conceived as naturally committing on women, just because men are born that way. Women’s bodies are conceived as inherently vulnerable to men’s invasion and use, which oddly doesn’t produce a demand that women be granted full autonomy over their own bodies.

Partial autonomy is granted: women shall be allowed to have abortions and be listened to when they say No to sex. These are great as far as they go. But on other issues, women’s bodies are conceived as objects for government policymakers to decide about: a contradiction that drives many women, the world over, round the bend. Gender policy is also problematic when it assumes that women are innately better than men – kinder, more peaceful, more capable of love, less capable of violence, preferring certain forms of balanced, meaningful sex.

Louise Persson’s blog frihetspropaganda is the best place I know to hear the other point of view in Sweden. Blogging since December 2003, Persson is the author of Klassisk Feminism. Discussing an H&M advert that showed a woman wearing underwear in her home, which one state feminist, Gudrun Schyman, not only denounced as soft porn but also equated with hard porn, prostitution, trafficking and slavery, Persson complains that Schyman presumes to speak for All Women. In the case of the underwear advert, we can ask: What about women who want to wear sexy lingerie at home, or be photographed wearing it, or make money being photographed wearing it or wear it as a prelude to selling sex?

It was a rare occasion the other night when Aschberg brought Abrahamsson together with Schyman to discuss how gender-equal Sweden is. Abrahamsson said yes, Sweden is gender-equal, especially relative to the rest of the world, and would like to stop talking about jämställdhet and switch to jämlikhet – another word for equality that hasn’t got the baggage of gender and sex. Schyman said no, Sweden isn’t gender-equal and, interestingly, complained that she has no one to discuss the problem with. (Would she like to talk with the model in the H&M ad?)

I’ve got questions about the idea of equality in the first place. Must it mean sameness, exact balance, symmetry? Especially in the area of sex and bodies, that will always be impossible. The core complaint against Sweden’s version of gender equality is that the diversity of women’s mental, spiritual and sexual desires is not recognised and that women who conceive of their bodies differently, who feel empowered in other ways than VAW hegemony recognises, are ignored.

This difference of vision is the subject of exhausting, resource-wasting battles all over the world – which I wrote about some years ago under the title Utopic Visions or Battle of the Sexes? The conflict, if possible, has only grown more venomous since then. How is it that Sweden, with its cultural value on avoiding conflict, can reconcile causing so much of it?

Taiwan: decriminalization of prostitution and the classic debate

Brothel Museum, Taiwan

The other day activists were happy because Taiwan’s government announced a plan to decriminalise prostitution. Here is the rather predictable follow-up, with both sides’ arguments represented. One point needs to be clarified, however. When anti-prostitutionists say that Amsterdam’s recent actions ‘prove’ that legalisation doesn’t work they are vastly oversimplifying and misleading. The law is a process, a series of initiatives that are considered, written up and tried out. It’s quite common for them to be modified, whether by liberalising or specifying or narrowing, without the fundamental sense of the law changing. No one law’s passing is going to change a culture overnight or, probably, get everything right the first time! Note the anti-migration component in New Zealand’s law, often cited as the best available. To understand the Dutch situation, read an in-depth analysis.

Taiwan’s women split over prostitution issue

Brothel, Taiwan

Amber Wang, 8 July 2009

Taipei (AFP) — Sex workers in Taiwan have cautiously welcomed a government plan to legalise prostitution, but the scheme is being opposed by an alliance of women’s groups who fear it will breed crime and violence. A red-light area similar to Amsterdam’s famed canalside sex-for-sale district has been proposed for the capital Taipei, with legal and zoning measures due in place within six months. Prostitutes and their supporters say they see a ray of hope after many years of campaigning for legalisation to protect them from both customers and police, but some are concerned about being moved into special zones.

“I hope the government will allow us to stay where we are and give us legal protection,” said one prostitute who wanted to be identified as Hsiao-feng. “I don’t want to move to a new place to start again.” Hsiao-feng earns a living in Taipei’s Wanhua district, which is believed to be home to thousands of sex workers plying their trade illegally even though prostitution was outlawed in the city in 1997. “Who wants to have red-light districts near homes?” she asks. “The government would have to put us in the mountains but then we can’t make a living because nobody wants to travel that far.”

Observers say paid-for sex remains big business and the ban has driven it underground, where brothels operate under euphemistic names such as tea houses, massage parlours, clubs and even skin-care salons. There are also women known as “liu ying” or “floating orioles” — a metaphor for flirtatious and seductive women — who find patrons on the streets.

There is no official record on the scale of Taiwan’s sex industry but the advocacy group Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters (COSWAS) estimates that it involves 400,000 people and is worth 60 billion Taiwan dollars (1.8 billion US) a year.

“Right now we are helpless when customers don’t pay, or even rob or hurt us,” Hsiao-feng told AFP. “We have to watch out for the police and their informants because we can end up in prison if caught.”

Prostitutes face three days in detention or a fine of up to 30,000 Taiwan dollars if arrested, while their clients go unpunished. “The government should protect sex workers’ human rights and stop treating them like criminals,” says COSWAS chief Chung Chun-chu. “It should allow a blanket decriminalisation to regulate the sex trade.”

The public is divided on the issue, with 42.3 percent supporting the plan to legalise prostitution while 38.8 percent oppose it and the rest are undecided, according to a poll by the local China Times.

Arielle Su, an elementary school teacher in Taipei, says legalising the sex trade cuts both ways. “I think it can help prevent sex crimes as some people have needs and they would prey on the general public if they are unsatisfied,” she said. “But as a mother and a teacher I am also concerned that it would corrupt morals.”

A dozen local women’s groups have formed an alliance against legalising prostitution, warning that it would encourage crime and injustice against women. “We oppose making prostitution a legal industry because it fosters sexual violence and exploitation of women,” said Chi Hui-jung, head of The Garden of Hope Foundation.

Chi pointed out that the Dutch authorities were reducing the size of Amsterdam’s red-light district due to concern over criminal activities such as human smuggling and money laundering. “The government should offer welfare programmes and job incentives to women so they won’t go into prostitution out of economic desperation,” Chi said.

Hsiao-feng, a 45-year-old divorcee, says it is difficult for street walkers like her, with little education or job skills, to find regular work. “I don’t like what I do for a living but I have to raise my children and pay the bills. I don’t regret becoming a sex worker. I just hope the government will protect my safety so I am not always at the mercy of others,” she said.

Copyright © 2009 AFP

No more sex-industry jobs via UK Jobcentres?

Not long ago I wrote about advertisements for sex-industry jobs in UK government-funded (un)employment offices called Jobcentre Plus. The other day, a government consultation on their presence came to an end.

Patrons were not forced to take the jobs or even look at the listings, and presumably some job-seekers were grateful to come upon them. One would think otherwise, however, by protestors’ language at a demonstration held against these adverts. Sometimes I think their vision of Woman’s Place looks more like this:

Jobcentre picketed by anti-sex industry protestors

Louisa Peacock, 27 March 2009. This article first appeared in Personnel Today magazine

Anti-sex industry campaigners have branded Jobcentre Plus ‘Pimpcentre Plus’ for continuing to advertise jobs in the adult entertainment industry.

As the government’s consultation ‘Accepting and advertising employer vacancies from within the adult entertainment industry by Jobcentre Plus’ draws to a close today, human rights organisations and women’s rights campaigners have urged the government to stamp out any escort or masseuse services as those jobs are “euphemisms for prostitution”.

Members ofthe campaign group Object and the Feminist Coalition Against Prostitution stood outside Brixton Jobcentre with ‘Pimpcentre Plus’ placards in protest.

Anna van Heeswijk, grassroots co-ordinator at Object, said: “It is not acceptable for a government agency to be promoting jobs to women which often involve violence and abuse and which send out the message that women are sexual objects to be bought and sold.”

The Department for Work and Pensions began to advertise jobs in the adult entertainment industry after a 2003 legal ruling that Ann Summers should be allowed to advertise through Jobcentre Plus.

But van Heeswijk said: “It is nonsensical for the government to extend a decision applicable to retail premises to virtually the entire sex industry. It is well known that ‘escort’ and ‘masseuse’ are euphemisms for prostitution. Working in Ann Summers is very different from providing direct sexual services in prostitution or lap dancing.”

The DWP consultation, which aims to investigate whether more can be done to strengthen the safeguards in place for the safety of jobseekers, ends today, 27 March.

Host bars and Gender Equality: Men who serve women

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?

Prostituting Women’s Solidarity: Another voice questions the extent of sex trafficking

It’s an uphill, possibly hopeless task to go against the massive tide of uninformed ideas about migration and the sex industry (called in blanket fashion sex trafficking and sex slavery), but a growing number of people are asking questions about images such as this one from the
Salvation Army’s anti-trafficking programme

All too often even a mild analysis or questioning of the current shrill public discourse on this subject is attacked as monstrous and cruel. To the contrary, measured skepticism about such brouhaha is healthy. Nathalie Rothschild is commissioning editor of Spiked. Her reporting on immigration and migration issues include the following analysis of the UK Home Secretary’s proposal to criminalise clients of sex workers ‘controlled for another’s gain’. My own analysis of this legislation appeared in the Guardian as The Shadowy World of Sex Across Borders.

Prostituting women’s solidarity

Spiked, 27 November 2008

The UK government’s call to British women to help combat ‘sex trafficking’ amounts to a crackdown on immigration.

Nathalie Rothschild

Women around Britain have been asked to unite to liberate their prostitute sisters from the shackles of modern-day slavery.

Last week, UK home secretary Jacqui Smith unveiled a proposal to protect women from exploitation by tackling the demand for prostitution – in other words, by punishing punters. Anyone who pays for sex with someone who is ‘controlled for another person’s gain’ could be fined and receive a criminal record. Under the proposal, ignorance of the circumstances would be no defence.

On Tuesday, Harriet Harman, the minister for women, followed up on Smith’s proposal by sending out a rallying call to members of the Women’s Institute (WI), the UK’s largest voluntary women’s organisation. She asked the ladies to help tackle the sex trade by complaining to editors of local papers that run ‘sleazy adverts’ for sexual services.

Harman believes this will help stamp out sex trafficking, which she has described as a ‘modern-day slave trade’. One WI member told the BBC that the ‘sleazy ads’ may be for services that the girls involved are not giving willingly. They may have been tricked and forced into prostitution, she said. Spokeswoman Ira Arundell said the WI’s aim is ‘to raise awareness and spread the message about what is happening with these girls’. Just how complaining to editors about newspaper ads will counteract exploitation of women or reveal what happens behind the doors of massage parlours, brothels and erotic DVD shops is not entirely clear.

The images broadcast this week of middle-aged and elderly British WI members, gathered around tables to scour local papers – scissors and marker pens at hand – and tut-tutting at ads for erotic services, were reminiscent of those old gatherings of women knitting sweaters and collecting toys for starving, black babies. In effect, Harman and the WI view the foreigners who they are so intent on rescuing as childlike, helpless victims; as easily cajoled and loose women in need of the watchful guard of respectable, morally superior British ladies.

This war against international prostitution may be well-intentioned, but it looks like a puritanical ‘white woman’s burden’ mission. Far from engaging in an act of solidarity, the WI members who heed Harman’s call will only help to reinforce the image of migrants as a danger to themselves and to British society.

The numerous charities, non-governmental organisations, official bodies and police that work to root out human trafficking form what some have termed a ‘rescue industry’, whose collective efforts reinforce a dehumanising view of migrants. As writer Laura María Agustín points out it in Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry, migrants become reduced to ‘passive receptacles and mute sufferers who must be saved and helpers become saviours’. This, Agustín says, is ‘a colonialist operation’.

Besides, who says migrant workers employed in the sex industry (which includes everything from charging for sex to pole-dancing, providing attentive dinner company and selling erotic lingerie, literature or DVDs) want to be ‘rescued’ in the first place? Continue reading →

Sometimes satire is the best revenge: Anti-trafficking news from Norway

Dag Stenvoll works on the PROGEMI project at the Stein Rokkan Senter for Flerfaglige Samfunnsstudierin in Oslo, Norway. For all you who thought things couldn’t get worse than the ‘Swedish Model’, welcome to the Norwegian. The British are currently debating the Finnish. For anyone who drops by this website and thought Scandinavian models were tall, leggy women in fancy clothes, around here they are types of prostitution law that criminalise the buying of sex – the punter, the client, the customer. Dag writes:

Since January 1st, paying for sex (or attempting to) has been illegal in this wonderful oasis of gender equality and social democratic sex. Exactly ten years after our blond neighbours, Norway has installed an abolitionist law that reaches further than the Swedish one: Also buying sex abroad is made criminal. In principle, then (disregarding the obvious difficulties of enforcement), a Norwegian citizen can be fined or sent to jail for having made the deal anywhere in the world. No need even to be caught with your trousers down. Selling sex is, as before, not illegal, but all forms of organising are.

On Jan 4th, the first “whore client” (the charming Norwegian expression most commonly used for men who buy sex) was caught in Oslo. According to newspapers, the 44-year old man made a deal with a Norwegian street worker, who, when the car they were driving was stopped by the police, confirmed that they had agreed on a price (no action had still taken place, thank God!!). The man’s photo is shown in the tabloids; his face blurred but he must be easily recognizable for those who know him. He will be fined about €1000 for his crime, in addition to a life in shame. Not more than he deserves, the pig.

As this case indicates, convictions under the new law will depend heavily on either confessions by clients, or on sex workers’ willingness to admit that they’ve sold sex to, or, as in this case, made the deal with someone. Since most won’t admit this, for obvious reasons, a spokeswoman for the Oslo police says that prostitutes (sex worker is not a PC word in Norway) will be informed about their “duty to act as witness”. Reassuring indeed, for those who feared that the new law could turn out to be ineffective.

Whereas the Swedish sex-purchase prohibition was largely defended in terms of women’s equality, the Norwegian one has been framed as a measure against sex trafficking: If there is no demand, then there is no money to make dealing in supply. In this way, Norway confirms its self-congratulatory image as a human rights superpower. Yesterday, the Oslo police anti-trafficking squad announced that eight female Nigerian sex workers had been taken in for lacking legal residency, during an anti-trafficking operation directed at the indoor market. As none of them qualified as victims of trafficking (fortunately, or unfortunately?), they will be expelled, probably to a nice place called “home”, where, according to Norwegian folklore, foreigners are much better off than here.

In short: No reason not to open the champagne bottles and celebrate! Our peaceful streets and glorious consciousnesses will become cleaner than ever, tourists and good citizens will no longer be offended by visible and offensive whoring, and Norway will undoubtedly get an excellent grading in the next TIP report. I have never been so proud as in this very moment of being Norwegian. Let’s only hope that this wonderful policy will continue to spread, so that more and more oppressed women will come to enjoy the unmatched benefits of the Scandinavian model for sex: Always free, always equal, and always mutually enjoying.

Dag Stenvoll

Late last year I put up some positive pictures of Women Doing Things and promised I would be following up on this idea called Gender Equality. Dag’s comment on the different motivation for the Norwegian versus the Swedish legislation is important, so listen up: Sweden’s law is not about prudishness on the subject of sex – this is a widespread misunderstanding. If you’re not that old, you remember when Sweden was considered a sexual-liberation paradise. No, the goal of many Swedish policies is Gender Equality, and the prostitution law is a centrepiece. Now it’s ten years later, and the Norwegian government uses another justification for its law: to stop sex trafficking. Is the idea of Gender Equality changing?

European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labour and Migration

The European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labour and Migration was held 15- 17 October 2005 in Brussels. I was a member of the Organising Committee, which began meeting in January 2004 in Amsterdam, usually at the headquarters of Mama Cash.

The website for the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe is full of resources and can tell you what happened at the conference and what’s happening around Europe now better than I can.

Of particular interest for rights activists is the Sex Workers in Europe Manifesto, the product of a consultation carried out with sex workers throughout Europe. You can see the Manifesto in English, РУССКИЙ, Deutsch, Français, Español, Italiano, Ελληνικά, Slovensky and Български.

Note the wording: This conference was not about ‘Europeans’ but people working in Europe. Many of the workers who came to the conference were migrants.

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