food for thought: feminist solidarity?

On Feminism and Sex Work, (excerpt from a personal academic paper):

While feminism ideally represents the rights of women, feminist reconciliation of sex work with women’s rights has been historically confused and divided over the issue of prostitution. Within feminist ideology, there is a strong movement for the abolition of all sex work. As Gail Pheterson notes, “strategies are typically geared to reform the whores, punish the pimps, and discourage the tricks.” (1) Furthermore, she argues, within this ideology, “[p]rostitution is perceived as the ultimate objectification of woman and the ultimate alienation of labor [. . .] Empowerment within prostitution is, according to such an analysis, an ideological contradiciton in terms.” (2)  Movements within feminism to abolish prostitution do not acknowledge the existence of voluntary prostitution. Instead, as Priscilla Alexander argues in “Feminism, Sex Workers, and Human Rights,” all prostitutes are defined as “passive, helpless, degraded victims.” (3) This ideology reinforces the whore stigma in its indication that all women are incapable of sexual and bodily agency and autonomy. Moreover, Pheterson suggests that a prostitute who asserts her agency in the presence of abolitionist feminists loses her ‘status.’ She notes, “[w]omen who claim self-determination as prostitutes lose victim status and ideological sympathy. In other words, a whore is viewed either as a casualty of the system or as a collaborator with the system.” (4) Thus the message maintained by abolitionist feminist ideology continues to subscribe to the notion of female dishonor: prostitutes are either victims or collaborators, reproducing the binary of honor/dishonor. Feminist ideology that is not explicitly abolitionist is often silent, participating in the perpetuation of the whore stigma and its implications, by not supporting sex worker rights through omission and inaction.

Where do we go from here?

When things have calmed down after I get back in July, I’m hoping to expand more upon this, and instead of just stating the problem, offer some thought.

And as a starting point, I’ll be using karly kirschner’s post on Bound, Not Gagged (which I was honored to be mentioned in), which should have been posted on every major feminist blog, but somehow, wasn’t.

 

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1. Pheterson, Gail, “Whore Stigma: Female Dishonor and Male Unworthiness,” Social Text 37 (Winter 1993(: 57.

2.  Ibid, 57.

3. Alexander, Priscilla, “Feminism, Sex Workers, and Human Rights,” in Whore and Other Feminists, ed. Jill Nagle (New York: Routledge, 1997), 83.

4.  Pheterson, “Whore Stigma,” 58.

deborah jeane palfrey, the whore stigma, and the systematic silencing of sex workers.

So upon hearing the news today of Deborah Palfrey’s death, I had two immediate reactions. One was a visceral shock and awe of how far the american  legal system takes the shaming of sex workers, the implications of this shaming, and the immense sadness I feel that Palfrey felt compelled to end her life in the face of condemnation, shaming, and wrongful impending imprisonment. My second reaction questioned the validity of the reported suicide, knowing that there were many powerful people on her client list that would rather have her silenced then face their own public shaming.

Upon some searching, I found that Palfrey had recently appeared on the Alex Jones show, and had explicitly said that she was not suicidal, nor would she attempt to take her own life. She also predicted that she would be “suicided” as a way to keep her quiet. Contradictory to this, Palfrey had also stated that she would end her own life if she were forced to serve time. She had been imprisoned previously and did not feel she could endure it again. Taking these two statements together makes it impossible to know (or even begin to guess) which now rings more true.

The United States government and the society which prescribes to the puritanical, sanitized ideologies of sex and sexual expression, have directly caused this to occur. Whether or not Palfrey was murdered or committed suicide, her death was the result of a society unwilling to accept sex work as a legitimate profession. The public shaming of Palfrey before, during, and after the trial is a testimony to the pervasiveness and persistence of the whore stigma which reaches every aspect of American society, from politics (Ashley Dupre in the Eliot Spitzer case) to religion (Mary Magdalene) to the media (see recently the slut-shaming of the artistic photography of Miley Cyrus, or anyfemale in th spotlight) to schools (abstinance only education) to any and every realm of America. Whether Palfrey committed suicide because of her own public shaming or whether she was killed by those who wanted to avoid their own shaming, this is not an isolated incident that can be forgotten. The United States is guilty of systematic structural violence which silences sex workers and disempowers women and female sexuality to the point of death.

 Much more thoughtful commentary at Bound, Not Gagged.

press release: SEX WORKERS BLOW SPITZER A FAREWELL KISS.

The following is a press release from SWANK/PONY/SWOPNYC/Desiree Alliance. 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  (source)

Contacts

Madeleine Dash, Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK), 877-776-2004 x 2 swank@riseup.net Audacia Ray, 718.554.1714
Sarah Bleviss, Sex Workers Outreach Project NYC (SWOP-NYC), swop.nyc@gmail.com http://www.swopeast.org/
Prostitutes of New York (PONY), pony@panix.com
Desiree Alliance, http://www.BoundNotGagged.com; http://www.desireealliance.org 

Sex Workers Blow Spitzer a Farewell KissNew York, NY - In the wake of former Governor Spitzer’s resignation, sex workers and human rights advocates remain concerned about the representation and future of “Kristen” and other sex workers, who do not have the legal and social privileges that will be afforded to Mr. Spitzer. The identity of the sex worker implicated in this case has already been made public, a situation mirroring many a sex worker’s worst nightmare. “Kristen’s” exposure may entail not only bring her legal repercussions, but invasion of privacy, financial hardship and social opprobrium.Rather than continuing to sensationalize Spitzer’s actions and those directly involved, we urge the press and the public to shift their focus to the legal climate under which sex workers operate, while respecting “Kristen’s” agency to have chosen sex work as a viable source of income. “Everyone wants to know how high her rates were, all the salacious details, but the real issue at stake here is that the hypocrisy of criminalizing sex work has been exposed! It’s a part of our society, of every society, and we need to take this opportunity to stop with the value judgments and start coming up with policies that respect the human dignity of all people, sex workers and all workers. ” says Dylan Wolfe of SWANK (Sex Workers Action New York). Former Governor Spitzer took a lead role in developing the NY State Anti-Trafficking Law as well as other initiatives that stigmatize sex workers and their clients. It is the stigma of sex work that leads many individuals like “Kristen” to keep their occupations a secret, creating further isolation and opportunities for exploitation. This same stigma compromises the safety and well-being of people like “Kristen” when their private lives become public knowledge. Sex workers are then forced to work further underground, rendering them more vulnerable to abuse, while denying them access to the basic civic participation, health and social services available to other people. “Hopefully Mr. Spitzer’s unfortunate public decline will send a message to all like him who pass laws that endanger the safety of sex workers while indulging in the service themselves,” Sarah Bleviss of SWOP said, “Sex workers clearly provide them a very valuable service; it’s time for lawmakers to return the favor.” Too little attention has been paid to what the repercussions of this case will be for those most directly concerned, sex workers, and more generally to the impact of laws and attitudes that marginalize them. It is time for a change.

Spitzer pushed through penalty enhancements against clients of all sex workers. Sex worker advocates fought against such provisions because these policies drive people who need help further underground. Often prostitution is wrongly conflated with trafficking and vice-versa. People are trafficked for many kinds of work, be it domestic labor, farm work or other jobs, and this kind of exploitation undoubtedly needs to be addressed. The majority of men, women and transgendered people working in sex work, however, are ‘normal’ members of society who have used their own intellectual agency to decide to make a living in a sexually-oriented way. Laws, like the Mann Act (against inter-state transportation for the purposes of commercial sex), are too often used for punishing sex workers and their clients rather than those who profit from their exploitation.

Sex workers make a living in an industry with the potential for high risks and little by way of protection from abuse. The stigma surrounding our work can be lethal at its most extreme: we are often the targets of notorious serial killers, like the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway who targeted prostitutes because he thought he “could kill as many of them as [he] wanted without getting caught.” If sex work were decriminalized and legitimized as a form of paid labor like any other, or seen simply as an intimate exchange between consenting adults, the associated harms would be greatly diminished. Furthermore, sex workers could access their basic human rights and social services without fear of legal reprisal or personal upheaval. “Eliot Spitzer has represented himself to the public as a law and order man, and ironically, has been in the vanguard of further criminalizing sex workers and clients. . . However, it’s a shame that so much time, energy, and tax payer resources are being spent to criminalize consensual sex between adults. It’s time to decriminalize prostitution.” says Sarah Blake of Prostitutes of New York (PONY).

Incoming Governor Paterson and other law-makers need to create policies that actually reflect the realities of their own lives and those of their constituents, including sex workers, rather than the harmful legislation of morality, whereby private matters become public scandals.

(source)