Prostitution


In the frame 1

Debbie Cameron takes a critical look at the linguistic framing of current debates on prostitution.

Let’s start with a question. Are you pro-sex or anti-sex?

Maybe you’re thinking: ‘of course I’m not anti-sex, who the hell would be against sex?’

Or maybe you’re thinking: ‘Hang on a minute, aren’t those terms a bit loaded?’

And of course, they are. But that comes with the territory. It’s in the nature of political arguments to be conducted in loaded language. The proverbial ‘battle for hearts and minds’ is always, among other things, a war of words.

‘Pro-sex’ (or ‘sex positive’) and ‘anti-sex’ are shorthand labels for political positions on a set of issues (including pornography and prostitution) which have divided feminists since the 19th century. ‘Anti-sex’ is what the ‘pro-sex’ camp call the people on the other side of the argument: it’s not what the other side call themselves. (Because who the hell would be against sex?)

But the competing terms in a political argument aren’t always straightforward opposites like ‘pro-/anti-sex’. In debates on abortion, the opposing camps are most commonly labelled ‘pro-choice’ (supporting women’s right to choose whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy) and ‘pro-life’ (defending the sanctity of human life and the rights of unborn children). Each side has chosen a label that suits its own argument, and both have been relatively successful in getting others, including the media, to respect their terminological preferences.

There’s more to these preferences than just the words themselves. As the linguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff explains, ‘every word is defined relative to a conceptual framework’. For instance,

If you have something like “revolt,” that implies a population that is being ruled unfairly, or assumes it is being ruled unfairly, and that they are throwing off their rulers, which would be considered a good thing.

So when the people in a suburban street complain about the council’s new parking restrictions and the local newspaper reports this under the headline ‘Residents in parking revolt’, that implicitly directs us to judge their action in positive terms, as if they were downtrodden peasants courageously resisting tyranny. If instead the paper had called it a ‘parking squabble’, that would frame the residents’ grievance as trivial and petty.

The power of framing to shape perceptions of an issue is what makes the choice of terms tactically important. Lakoff has written extensively about the way this works in arguments between conservatives and progressives in the USA. One of the cases he examines is the argument about cutting taxes for the wealthy—or as the conservatives who favour this measure put it, offering them ‘tax relief’. Progressives oppose tax cuts, but they also use the term ‘tax relief’, and in Lakoff’s view that’s a tactical mistake. The word ‘relief’ frames paying tax as a painful affliction—a frame that reflects the conservative view and so gives them an advantage in the argument. When the progressives declare themselves ‘against tax relief’, they are accepting rather than challenging the conservative view of tax as an intolerable burden. And when tax is framed as a burden, the politician who offers ‘relief’ will be more popular than the one who doesn’t.

What Lakoff thinks the progressives should do is frame the issue in a different way. Like, ‘paying taxes is paying your dues to your country’. If rich people take pride in their ability to pay the hefty subscriptions charged by exclusive country clubs, they should also be proud to pay for their membership of what so many of them like to call ‘the greatest country on earth’. More generally, he argues that whoever controls the framing of an issue stands a better chance of winning the argument. It’s a mistake to accept terms which have been chosen by your opponents to serve their own interests, and to let them define your position for you.

In the case of abortion feminists haven’t fallen into that trap. But on other issues, especially issues which feminists are divided on, the situation is rather different.

Prostitution/sex work: framing the debate

The current debate on what to do about prostitution (or ‘sex work’—different terms, different frames) is a case in point. On this issue there are two competing arguments which both claim to be progressive. The first is that commercial sex should be legally available in the same way as other personal services: the state should treat the (mainly female) purveyors and the (overwhelmingly male) consumers as equal, autonomous agents, and should not limit their freedom by making the buying or selling of sex a crime. Wanting less state interference and fewer restrictions on free trade is a position typically associated with the political right, but in the case of the sex trade it’s more common on the left. It’s also the position taken by some feminists.

Other feminists, however, view prostitution as a fundamentally exploitative institution which depends on and reproduces inequality between men and women. From that perspective there is nothing ‘progressive’ (or as Jeremy Corbyn recently put it, ‘civilized’), about making it more easily accessible and more socially acceptable. Supporters of this argument do agree with the opposing camp that the state should stop punishing prostitutes. What they favour is the ‘Nordic model’ (so called because it was pioneered in Scandinavia, though it has recently also been adopted in France), in which the law defines purchasing sex as a crime, and it’s the buyer rather than the seller who is penalized.

This second group of feminists has struggled to present itself as ‘progressive’ and to resist being labelled ‘conservative’ by the first group. In Britain last August, a YouGov poll found that the majority of respondents thought ‘consensual sex work’ should be legal—though the overall majority in favour wasn’t large (around 54%), and there was a significant difference between men and women. A clear majority (65%) of men were in favour, with only 15% opposed; most women, by contrast, were either opposed (27%) or undecided (30%), with 43% in favour.

The reasons why people hold the views they do are likely to be multiple and complex; but one relevant consideration may be the way language has been used in this debate. Feminist opponents of prostitution have arguably done the same thing Lakoff criticizes progressives in the US for doing in the argument about tax relief: they’ve accepted terms that favour the other side. In particular, they’ve accepted that what they’re arguing about is most aptly described as the ‘decriminalization’ of prostitution.

One immediate problem with this is that it’s confusing. In reality, both sides want to decriminalize the selling of sex: the point they disagree on is whether buying sex should be legal. Sometimes, campaigners for the Nordic model try to get around this confusion by explaining that what they oppose is ‘full’ decriminalization (meaning, of buyers and sellers alike). How well this works depends on how aware the audience is of the details of the competing legal proposals (for those who are not deeply engaged with the debate, the difference between ‘decriminalization’ and ‘full decriminalization’ is probably obscure). But in any case, there’s a more general issue about the way the term ‘decriminalization’ frames the question being debated.

Whenever there’s a proposal to ‘decriminalize’ something, the implication is that its current status as a crime is arbitrary and unjust. The fact that it has been ‘criminalized’–made into a crime–is either a reflection of conservative social attitudes from which most people have now moved on, or else an expression of the state’s need to control its citizens, especially those it perceives as a threat to the existing order (e.g. youth, the poor, and members of ethnic or sexual minorities). This was the argument that led to the decriminalizing (under certain conditions) of abortion and sex between men in the late 1960s. These were/are said to be ‘victimless crimes’, acts which do not harm others, and which therefore should not be forbidden or punished.

For people on the political left, who pride themselves on their tolerant social attitudes and their resistance to authoritarianism and injustice, the term ‘decriminalization’ works like ‘revolt’ in Lakoff’s example: it frames the proposal in positive terms, as the obviously ‘progressive’ thing to do. Conversely, the label ‘anti-decriminalization’ frames the people it is applied to as the opposite of progressive. The label says nothing about their political motives; it merely suggests that they are standing in the way of change, and so endorsing a right-wing ‘law and order’ agenda. In fact, feminist critics of prostitution reject the traditional conservative case against it (that it flouts the religious/moral norm prohibiting extra-marital sex, and that the women involved in it are ‘dirty’); but they do not believe it is ‘victimless’ or harmless. However, the ‘pro-versus-anti-decriminalization’ frame does nothing to help feminists get that argument across.

Could feminist opponents of prostitution take Lakoff’s advice, and use different terms to put the issue in a different frame? Some campaigners do call themselves ‘abolitionists’, thus placing themselves in the tradition of earlier struggles to abolish slavery. Another possible reframing is suggested by the writer Rae Story, a former prostitute who now describes herself as a ‘sex-industry critical feminist’. Discussing the support recently expressed for decriminalization by the left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Story comments on the paradox of a committed socialist taking this position. The sex industry is run on capitalist principles: the argument for ‘full decriminalization’  is, she says,

in effect an argument for the full industrialisation of prostitution. It opens the way for businesses to be able to leverage their wealth to build large brothels and chains, thus consolidating potential industry profits and hiving them off into smaller and smaller numbers of hands.

This isn’t just wild speculation: the proliferation of mega-brothels run on super-exploitative, neoliberal lines is what has happened in Germany since the sex industry there was decriminalized.  Would leftists find the cause so obviously progressive if it were described as ‘the industrialization of prostitution’, or in other terms which activate a ‘neoliberal capitalism’ frame, like ‘deregulation’ and ‘free market’? Would people who associate ‘decriminalization’ with campaigns for social justice feel the same about a campaign for ‘legalized brothels’?

But being labelled ‘anti-decriminalization’ isn’t the only problem for feminist opponents of prostitution. Another problem is the framing of their position as ‘anti-sex’.

From prudes to pearl-clutchers: the rhetoric of ‘anti-sex’

Attitudes to sex are a major dividing line between modern conservative and progressive ideologies. Whereas conservatives see sex as a socially disruptive force which must be regulated and contained, progressives regard it as positive and socially liberating. Because of this, anyone who expresses concern about any kind of sexual behaviour is liable to be described by progressives as ‘anti-sex’, meaning conservative, moralistic, intolerant and prudish.

Feminists of my generation have been hearing this accusation for nearly 50 years—originally it came from anti-feminist men, and now it often comes from younger feminists, who maintain that female sexual agency and pleasure were not part of the second-wave agenda. In reality, these were key questions for the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s. One of the most-read texts produced by the early WLM was Anne Koedt’s ‘The myth of the vaginal orgasm’ (1970):  after observing that women had been ‘defined sexually in terms of what pleases men’, Koedt asserted that it was time for them to insist on their own right to sexual pleasure:

We must begin to demand that if certain sexual positions now defined as “standard” are not mutually conducive to orgasm, they no longer be defined as standard.

What Koedt and her contemporaries were against wasn’t sex, it was men dictating the terms for sex. And men dictated the terms just as surely in the ‘progressive’ counter-culture of the 1960s as they did in the most conservative family homes. The terms themselves were different, but men’s entitlement to set them was the same. And feminists had had enough of that.

Unsurprisingly, some men were less than delighted by the prospect of sisters doing it for themselves—defining their own desires, making their own demands, saying no to sex they didn’t want (and in some cases, to heterosex in general). That kind of female agency wasn’t what men had in mind when they talked about sexual ‘liberation’. (An apter word than ‘agency’ might have been ‘availability’.) Calling feminists ‘uptight’, ‘frigid’ or ‘prudes’ was a way of dismissing the challenge feminism posed to traditional, male-centred ideas about sex. Terms like ‘anti-sex’ and ‘pearl-clutching’ do the same job today. The vocabulary has changed, but the framing is the same.

On some issues, feminists have succeeded in changing the frame. 50 years ago, for instance, you could be labelled ‘uptight’ for expressing concern about rape. Today you can disapprove of rape without being labelled ‘anti-sex’, because rape has been reframed as an act of violence rather than sex. But feminist criticisms of prostitution have not had the same impact. On this topic we still hear all the old arguments about men’s sexual needs, and even the claim that if prostituted women did not provide an ‘outlet’, the rest of the female population would be at greater risk of rape. We also hear a newer set of arguments about the ‘empowering’ nature of commercial sex work for women. Feminists who disagree are called ‘whorephobic’, and accused of denying other women agency and choice.

Of course, feminists have contested these arguments and accusations; they haven’t just retreated into silence. But Lakoff would say that engaging in debate with an opponent on their terms, using their preferred language, is a less effective strategy than redefining the issue in your own terms. If you want to change the picture, change the frame.


Whose human rights? 1

The issue of prostitution is under close scrutiny at the moment, so here’s a quick review (with many links!) of some recent events. If you know of other developments, especially in countries other than the UK, we would welcome your comment.

For radical feminists, the institution of prostitution is both cause and effect of women’s oppression and we have always found it problematic to frame prostitution as work like any other (see All in a day’s work? by Celia Jenkins and Ruth Swirsky in T&S Issue 36). The fact that poor women, victims of child sexual abuse and incest, women with drug addictions, and women from ethnic and racial minorities are over-represented in prostitution is a clear indication to us that prostitution exists within a patriarchal context of oppression.

The Swedish model

When Sweden adopted a radical new approach to prostitution in 1999  – decriminalising the people in prostitution and offering them significant help in exiting, and at the same time criminalising the people exploiting them, including the “buyers” (see Not for sale by Angela Beausang and Eva Hassel-Calais in T&S Issue 38) – many feminists adopted this as the best compromise solution within our current systems. The Swedish model was explicitly framed as an issue of gender equality, not an issue of violence against women.

Radical feminists do not want to see women in prostitution criminalised. Criminalisation makes women vulnerable to harassment by police and the public, fines for offenses just increase women’s poverty, and incarceration punishes women (and their children) for crimes committed against them.

Amnesty International and sex as a human ‘need’

On January 24th 2014, Julie Bindel publicised a document circulated to Amnesty International UK members as a discussion document for an upcoming vote on Amnesty’s position on prostitution (An abject inversion of its own principles, Daily Mail, January 24 2014) in which she noted:

Amnesty tries to pretend that women selling their bodies is similar to other forms of labour – with one passage in the document explicitly drawing a parallel between women who ‘choose to become sex workers’ and ‘miners and domestic foreign workers’.

It turns out that Amnesty International is “in the process of considering a global policy on sex work”, and part of the reason is that:

The draft policy proposes the decriminalisation of activities relating to the buying or selling of consensual sex between adults, on the basis that this is the best means to protect the rights of sex workers and ensure that these individuals receive adequate medical care, legal assistance and police protection.

Obviously, abolitionists have no problem with decriminalising the “selling of consensual sex between adults” (although that begs the question of what “consensual sex” actually is within the context of prostitution transactions), but we have huge problems with decriminalising the “buying”.

The Amnesty UK discussion document referred to by Julie Bindel goes even further than that, however. A footnote to a paragraph about the Swedish model says:

As noted within Amnesty International’s policy on sex work, the organization is opposed to criminalization of all activities related to the purchase and sale of sex. Sexual desire and activity are a fundamental human need. To criminalize those who are unable or unwilling to fulfill that need through more traditionally recognized means and thus purchase sex, may amount to a violation of the right to  privacy and undermine the rights to free expression and health.

The Twitter hashtag #QuestionsForAmnesty exploded. The idea that criminalising johns could be construed as a violation of their human rights is antithetical to radical – and other types of – feminism.

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Many noted that the language in the document sounded like it was written by a pimp. Indeed, Martin Dufresne posted Douglas Fox’s claim that he was responsible for Amnesty UK’s pro-prostitution position, a claim that Amnesty UK rejects completely.

Douglas Fox and the organisation IUSW (International Union of Sex Workers) which he fronts has been the subject of feminist scrutiny before. Julie Bindel’s article, “An Unlikely Union” explores her contention that the IUSW is neither a “union”, nor is it comprised solely of “sex workers”, since it welcomes the membership of anyone, including johns and pimps. Cath Elliott has also covered Douglas Fox  and the IUSW.

The Amnesty consultation document is fundamentally at odds with all human rights conventions where trafficking and ‘the exploitation of prostitution’ is considered. Very few countries decriminalise pimping, procuring and profiting from the prostitution of others. Few, if any, decriminalise all prostitution in all contexts. It seems, however, that Amnesty is seriously considering this position and putting it to a vote.

EU vs Amnesty?

On February 27th, the European Parliament voted on a motion to support the Nordic model when considering legislation around prostitution.

A letter of support of Mary Honeyball’s Report on sexual exploitation and prostitution and its impact on gender equality, and objecting to the Amnesty International position, started by London Metropolitan University’s Maddy Coy and University of New South Wales’s Helen Pringle, received 79 signatures.

In complete opposition to Amnesty’s apparent starting position on prostitution, the EU parliament passed the motion, a development which the End Violence Against Women coalition here in the UK welcomed.

In addition, an All-Party Parliamentary Group report recommending the Nordic model was launched in the UK on March 3rd.

What you can do

  • Sign the petition asking Amnesty to reject its support for pimps and johns. This petition was started by Canadian activist Jennifer Kim.
  • If you’re an Amnesty member, get involved! The Amnesty UK AGM is April 12-13. These are the resolutions being voted on – see A2. If you’re not in the UK, find out what is happening in your country and make Amnesty support the human rights of women, not johns and pimps.
  • If you’re not an Amnesty member, keep posting relevant questions to the #QuestionsForAmnesty hashtag.

Other links

Coalition Against Trafficking in Women:

More information about the Swedish model

Feminist Current:

The Nordic model is the only model that actually works. ‘Duh,’ says Sweden

New research shows violence decreases under Nordic model: Why the radio silence?

Ten myths about prostitution, trafficking and the Nordic model

Space International (a group of Irish prostitution survivors):

Public statement in support of the Honeyball Report

The Telegraph:

An article published in the Telegraph in 2013 describes the conditions for prostituted women in Germany where prostitution has been legalised. In it, a multi-millionaire brothel owner is asked if he would be happy for either of his two daughters to work at Paradise (the brothel):

Rudloff turns puce. “Unthinkable, unthinkable,” he says. “The question alone is brutal. I don’t mean to offend the prostitutes but I try to raise my children so that they have professional opportunities. Most prostitutes don’t have those options. That’s why they’re doing that job. He pauses and looks away.

“Unimaginable, he repeats. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

 


Feminism with fizz

When the sex industry came up with a new way to get around Iceland’s ban on strip clubs, feminists fought back with their own original contribution to Reykjavik’s nightlife. Guðrún Jónsdóttir explains.  

Buying women’s sexual services has been criminalized in Iceland, and we have also banned strip clubs, which were actually brothels and in some cases involved in trafficking. But of course we knew that they would find other ways to sell women.  We have suddenly got three so-called ‘Champagne Clubs’ in the heart of Reykjavik: one of them is located in the same house where the largest strip club used to be. The women are not naked, but wear ‘sexy underwear’; men can buy a bottle of champagne for 20.000 krona and then get ten minutes of privacy to ‘talk to’ the women who work there.

A journalist visited the clubs and one of the staff members of the feminist organization Stigamot was asked what she thought of the new trend.  She compared it to the strip clubs, and mentioned prostitution and trafficking. The club-owners immediately sued her, and also a member of the City Council who made similar comments. We are supposed to pay two clubs two million krona and withdraw the statement—though because the journalist didn’t quote it correctly, I think we are off the hook.

I wrote a statement about the clubs and it sent to the media, pointing out that in fact we are back to the same situation as before: the clubs have just changed their name from strip clubs to champagne clubs.  In reality it is prostitution and they are selling access to foreign women—many come from Slovenia and don’t speak either English or Icelandic. But as has often happened in the past, the statement didn’t change anything: it was met with total silence. We could have given up at that point; or we could have gone on repeating what we had already said; or we could have organized a demonstration, without any success. Instead, I decided to use a different strategy: ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’.

I sent out invitations to the Mayor of Reykjavik, to all members of Parliament, to all members of the City Council and to the Chief of Police in the Capital area, and of course I sent a copy to the media. Stigamot had found a modern way to raise money for our work and at the same time take part in the cultural life of Reykjavik.

We invited the authorities to a reception at Stigamot last Thursday, August 15th, to mark the opening of our own Glamorous Champagne Club.  Guests were invited to buy interesting women at a charge of 20.000 krona for ten minutes, and during those ten minutes they could drink all the champagne they wanted for free.

The women had all kinds of skills. Our guests could, for instance, buy Dr. Guðrún Jónsdóttir (82), the founder of Stigamot, and hear the story of our work; she was also willing to dance to please the customers if they preferred it.  Thorunn, who sings in a choir, was willing to sing the old rhymes. Anna Bentina would tell a personal and interesting story about rape. Anna Thora, our psychologist, would sing, ABBA-style, about our self-help groups for women exiting prostitution and trafficking. Teddy was ready to teach people to knit a wool shawl, if they weren’t too drunk.  Margret would rock and read the Declaration of Human Rights.  We offered many more interesting and pleasing women.

Last Thursday we ran advertisements: ‘Women for sale at Stigamot’. You can imagine the debate we got. It was all over the media: the national TV News Channel came with their car, and they broadcast directly from the opening of the club.  I never left the role of a serious Champagne Club owner, and my husband took the role of a doorman, dressed up like a gangster.  The Mayor of Reykjavik accepted our invitation and so did some members of both the Parliament and the City Council.  Now every Icelander knows what the Champagne Clubs are all about, and we will continue our work from there.

When you work every day with serious violations of human rights, it is so empowering to have some fun and make the criminals of Iceland look ridiculous. We have got enormous applause and support from everywhere.  The task now is to get the authorities to ban the selling of private time with women for enormous amounts of money. There are many ways this could be done, but it certainly needs to be done.

Just wanted to share this with you, and maybe encourage you to do something similar in your own countries.


In New Orleans, prostitute = sex offender 4

Colorlines reports on a law in New Orleans that was originally intended to target child sex abusers that is being used instead against prostitutes.

A conviction on this charge is a more serious felony offense rather than a misdemeanour, carries a longer sentence, and requires the prostitute to register as a sex offender.

Of the 861 sex offenders currently registered in New Orleans, 483 were convicted of a crime against nature, according to Doug Cain, a spokesperson with the Louisiana State Police. And of those convicted of a crime against nature, 78 percent are Black and almost all are women.

It is a complete outrage that the victims of prostitution are being prosecuted and forced to register as sex offenders for the crime of “unnatural copulation” (anal or oral sex). The article does not mention if johns are also being charged with this offense as co-participants in the acts, but I suspect not.

I’m rather rusty on my Mary Daly, but I think she would have called this a Patriarchal Reversal.


Good news for women who have been prostituted 7

Clause 14 of the Policing and Crime bill passed through Report Stage unamended in the House of Lords last Tuesday 3rd November.

Clause 14 aims to protect vulnerable and exploited people by shifting the focus of the law onto those who create the demand for prostitution. The clause makes it an offence to pay for sex with someone who is subjected to force, deception or threats.

During the debate Baroness Scotland, the Government Minister in the Lords said “We are faced with a choice tonight: do we speak for the victims, do we stand up for those who have no voice for themselves, do we stand in the breach for them—or do we provide a cloak of anonymity and protection for those who do not wish to face what they do when they purchase sex from a woman or a man, quite often of tender years, who has been coerced or forced into that position?

I need to be clear that the Government’s view is that those who purchase sex from people in that position commit a wrong. They enable a situation that is avoidable to continue. We have a choice tonight to decide on which stand we will set our mark. Who will we support, and who will we defend?”

The succesful passage of this clause is a huge victory for women who have been exploited by the sex industry,  especially given the amount of opposition to the clause and the totally unbalanced media coverage of the issues involved.    But there is still a long way to go.  Eaves Housing and OBJECT have orchestrated a campaign called Demand Change to challenge the legitimacy of the demand for prostitution.