Viagra, Valium, and Prostitution in Occupied Iraq
Viagra, Valium, and Prostitution in Occupied Iraq: http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/06/viagra-valium-and-prostitution-in.html. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: question about Iraq - the theoretical significance of prostitution economics
Basically the banks are arguing your love gimme such a thrill, but your love don't pay my bills, so gimme money, that's what I want. (actually John Lennon was sick in the plane prior to performing this song at the Live Peace in Toronto concert in 1969). Suppose that you are or feel dependent for your survival on monetary income from the market. Then you are bound to argue that there has to be a market and there has to be private property, because there is no other way to survive. What economics adds to this, as you imply, is an ideological justification: it's efficient, and results in a better form of civilisation. Or, if we become a little more dogmatic, we could say that it is inconceivable (untheorisable) to run an economy without markets and bourgeois private property, and the United Nations just haven't understood Milton Friedman. Neo-liberalism (sic.) takes this idea further, and says there exist only markets and only bourgeois private property, public ownership, commonly held goods, sharing and co-operation are a fiction, outside of private consumption in households and outside private enterprise. Neo-conservatism (sic.) is just a tack more cautious and defensive in this, because it admits there are some areas of public assets in the world which could be still be privatised, for example to pay off debts, but, all the same, christian fundamentalism basically admits only private property, only Jesus Christ is permitted to do things like sharing out loaves and fishes and stuff and he is in heaven now, and no longer available to do it except through the hidden hand of the market. The conceptual issue here is how we deal with the historical evidence, because for most of human history there was no monetary economy at all and for a very long time monetary economy played only a very small role in economic life. This issue can ultimately be resolved only by the theorem that God (sic.) created the market and God created money for us to use one day to allocate his bountiful resources (a creationist theory), or else simply by ignoring this sticky issue (history is bunk theory). Now suppose that in a market economy, you already have assets, resources, wherewithal of life etc. then you can still in principle exchange without using money, receive stuff, give away stuff, share stuff, own stuff in common, because of the freedom with the market provides, which is the basis for a lingering socialist evil (sic.). But this creates a problem at the very frontiers of bourgeois economic (sic.) thinking, namely: how do we prevent people from giving stuff away instead of selling, receiving without buying, sharing things, and owning things in common ? What do we need here ? Armies ? Police ? Security staff ? Brainwashing ? In other words, how do we move the privatisation process forward and thus expand the market ? At the most theoretically advanced level, neo-liberalism resolves this through prostitution economics, because if we model prostitution, we can obtain the data necessary to devise institutions in which all observable transfers of economic resources between people can take the form of a monetary transaction, and then we can phase this program in, and remove all outstanding impediments to the market. The theoretical objection to this is, that the model shows, that there is still a problem with pricing and costing, because observable interactions between economic agents (the negotiation process, the bargaining process) involve a significant number of unknowns, and the very act of observing a buyer or seller, may change prices. To overcome the volatility problem, christian fundamentalism provides an answer: prayers and faith in the hidden hand of God, because if we all have faith, then the market will work well, and economic behaviour of economic agents will become more consistent, regulated and predictable. Churches should therefore be theorised as essential market instruments. As I implied at the start, love cannot be the theoretical foundation of bourgeois economics, and it is not surprising therefore that Marx discovered that bourgeois economics is actually a highly contradictory enterprise. References: Karl Marx, Economics and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 Note also: http://www.yakupkucukkale.com/nobel/GunnarMyrdal.htm J.
The Natasha trade: a note on the political economy of prostitution
In Amsterdam, I met a Russian prostitute once whose name was really Natasha. When she told me, I said No kidding, and she showed me her identification to prove it. She wasn't trafficked though, it was more an individual entrepreneurial activity. In Amsterdam she could make a net income of maybe a hundred or several hundred euro's a day, if you were reasonably skilled at john-spotting, and because the rouble at that time was pretty low, this represented a fortune to her. It was pretty easy Keynesian economics, if you knew how to do it. I met a Polish guy who operated on the same principle. If the name of the bourgeois game was getting something for nothing, okay, then we are going to deal with this in another way, that was the thinking. It is a revolt at the level of exchange though, not the level of production. Generally, when neo-conservatives talk about prostitution, they have in mind women who need to be protected. But this involves a massive sexist, class-biased distortion of the real situation, and doesn't differentiate between many different sorts of activity, and the motivation for that activity, and who exactly engages in it. Prostitution ought to be analysed both from the supply side and the demand side, without gender bias, since both women and men, boys and girls, engage in it, and this includes transvestites and transsexuals. Sex becomes work, and people trade in it, that is the basis of it, on the basis that some people want to sell it, others want to buy it and have the money to do so, and yet others want to mediate in the process as a pimp or Madam or social policy maker. This occurs both formally as a professional activity and informally on a casual basis. For example, if the demand on your sexual organs is very great, then you start to charge money, and indeed that is exactly how a middle-class friend of mine from New Zealand explained it to me. Then you can ask, why do some people sell sex, and why do some people want to buy it, but there are millions of reasons, just like, for example, if I ask why do people want to buy a bottle of Coke ?. You may all laugh at me for talking about the concept of porosity of exploitation but if you examine how millions of people are forced, for one reason or another, into a position where they have nothing to sell anymore but sex, then you wouldn't be laughing anymore. Prostitution is, according to my analysis, the future for many people on the earth under capitalism, other things remaining equal, because the more sexuality becomes integrated into the accumulation process, and the more people must rely on individual resources which they do not really have (for example, through debt) the more those people who fall out of the boat in this sense are forced into prostitution. And in this way, capitalism begins to sort out what love really is, in a negative, reified way. Which is what capitalism does: it creates hell on earth for masses of people, but simultaneously develops the productive forces to such an extent, that we can at least see what heaven on earth would look like. Rather than engaging in moral ostentation, my point of view is that the topic provides a powerful critique of capitalism and an argument for socialism. And I don't think socialists should ignore it, for example by excluding many prostitutes from the proletariat, ignoring that they are capable of engaging in a contest of strength, and capable of exposing the hypocrisies of the moneyed classes. In fact, the Dutch Socialist Party has published articles on it in a dispassionate way. If you think it through, prostitution is a conduit for Capital to re-establish real slavery. Many authors have observed, that the effect of the operation of free markets is to increase social inequality, because the strong outcompete the weak. The more money you have, the more money you can make, simple as that. This means, that the expansion of the unregulated market will, other things being equal, ultimately sort out who is strong and who is weak in such a comprehensive way, that it condemns a significant fraction of humanity permanently to the social scrapheap, relying on stronger people who are momentarily weaker than they are for an income. Point is, this social inequality is directly reflected also within human beings as well, who may be superstrong on one side of themselves, and weak as babies in some other respect, and this has important implications for the character structure of the individual. But if psychologists simply focus on individual characters, they miss the problem by a mile, because they ignore the total social situation which generates those characters in the first place. My boss in the Statistics Department, an Australian woman of Jewish-Catholic background who said to me candidly she didn't like Dutch men, told me in a most patronising way, that I needed some more character. What a total bitch ! In reality, my character has never changed, and it did not need changing, it needed
Re: The Natasha trade: a note on the political economy of prostitution
Jurriaan writes: Prostitution is, according to my analysis, the future for many people on the earth under capitalism, other things remaining equal, because the more sexuality becomes integrated into the accumulation process, and the more people must rely on individual resources which they do not really have (for example, through debt) the more those people who fall out of the boat in this sense are forced into prostitution. And in this way, capitalism begins to sort out what love really is, in a negative, reified way. Which is what capitalism does: it creates hell on earth for masses of people, but simultaneously develops the productive forces to such an extent, that we can at least see what heaven on earth would look like. Not the future, the present. I think this is what Marx had in mind when he wrote Money is the pimp between man and the object of his desire. All human activity under capitalism is alienated: we prostitute our intelligence, our labor, our bodies, and some, our sexuality. Whether capitalism furnishes a negative definition of love is debatable. It may be that some will react to the present order by understanding that the only thing you can exchange love for...is love; some may even realize that love cannot be bartered for anything...even love; but the great majority seem to have reached a very different conclusion: everything is for sale; you are what you buy. I think it is this specter that haunts global consciousness -- that to be able to buy nothing is to be nothing. And thus, in our effort to exist on a social level (when that society is a capitalist one), in accepting the terms of a capitalist existence as essential to human identity, we come to fear the demise of capitalism as a loss of our most essential selves. Joanna
Re: The Natasha trade: a note on the political economy of prostitution
Well I have never prostituted myself sexually as a sex worker, but I have paid money for sex, for various survival reasons, but I regard it basically as lack of competency on my part. But I had a lot of people mucking round with me to change me, and I just thought of Jesus and did it. When people are blind in some respects they get robbed anyhow, and in that sense I have prostituted myself unwittingly and against my will. But the debate gets very complex because it involves notions of love and responsibility, and there is always another way they find to get at me, and you have to shake yourself out of a victim mentality instead of hanging on your own cross. The bitch is, that in the end I still have to survive and take responsibility for my own life. And I want to stop seeing it as a bitch and enjoy it. J. - Original Message - From: joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 7:33 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The Natasha trade: a note on the political economy of prostitution Jurriaan writes: Prostitution is, according to my analysis, the future for many people on the earth under capitalism, other things remaining equal, because the more sexuality becomes integrated into the accumulation process, and the more people must rely on individual resources which they do not really have (for example, through debt) the more those people who fall out of the boat in this sense are forced into prostitution. And in this way, capitalism begins to sort out what love really is, in a negative, reified way. Which is what capitalism does: it creates hell on earth for masses of people, but simultaneously develops the productive forces to such an extent, that we can at least see what heaven on earth would look like. Not the future, the present. I think this is what Marx had in mind when he wrote Money is the pimp between man and the object of his desire. All human activity under capitalism is alienated: we prostitute our intelligence, our labor, our bodies, and some, our sexuality. Whether capitalism furnishes a negative definition of love is debatable. It may be that some will react to the present order by understanding that the only thing you can exchange love for...is love; some may even realize that love cannot be bartered for anything...even love; but the great majority seem to have reached a very different conclusion: everything is for sale; you are what you buy. I think it is this specter that haunts global consciousness -- that to be able to buy nothing is to be nothing. And thus, in our effort to exist on a social level (when that society is a capitalist one), in accepting the terms of a capitalist existence as essential to human identity, we come to fear the demise of capitalism as a loss of our most essential selves. Joanna
New nuances in the bourgeois approach to women's liberation: prostitution is not nice
NZ brothel law condemned at UN 19.07.2003 By HELEN TUNNAH, deputy political editor Members of a key women's committee at the United Nations have asked the New Zealand Government to overturn the law to decriminalise prostitution. Hungarian Kristina Morval told the UN committee prostitution treated women like pornography. It was humiliating and oppressive, she said in New York this week. French delegate Francoise Gaspard asked if the laws would help women get out of the sex trade or do anything to stop people trafficking. The criticism came as the special 23-nation committee was hearing the Government's report about how New Zealand is meeting its obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Just three weeks ago politicians voted 60-59, with Muslim MP Dr Ashraf Choudhary abstaining, to decriminalise prostitution, and allow brothel-keeping and pimping. The measure divided women's rights advocates here, was opposed by religious bodies but was welcomed by groups such as the Prostitutes Collective. It was not a Government law, but was sponsored by Labour MP Tim Barnett through a member's bill. Women's Affairs Minister Ruth Dyson presented the report to the UN committee and was told New Zealand should avoid becoming complacent just because it has women as Prime Minister and Governor-General. The UN committee's formal report on the meeting said experts questioned the new prostitution laws, and listed their concerns. Ms Morval, one of 23 men and women on the committee, wanted the Government to reconsider the laws. She said New Zealand considered pornography harmful because it created inaccurate stereotypes and encouraged inappropriate behaviour towards women. With all due respect, was that not an outline of what the Government had done to women's equality by legalising prostitution, she said. Regardless of whether it was a matter of free choice, prostitution was oppressive and humiliating, for it was about men paying money to use women as less than human beings. Ms Gaspard asked if prostitution was now considered a profession just like any other in New Zealand. Ms Dyson told the committee the new law allowed for a review of the policy in five years. She said the Government would monitor closely how the new laws worked. She faced questioning over the impact of health reforms and about the ongoing problems with the gender pay gap between men and women. There was also concern about the wellbeing of migrant, Maori and Pacific women, and the high suicide rate of young women. New Zealand signed up to the UN convention in 1985, and is one of 174 signatories. It is touted as a bill of rights for women and requires nations to meet 16 articles outlawing discrimination. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3513506thesection=newst hesubsection=general
Re: Re: Prostitution, Disease, and Race (was Fall of Communism sparks job growth)
Just came across your answer of a few days ago, Tom. Jo wrote: Yeah? And who emerges from the spotless sheets? You positing a saviour of some sort, Sandwichman? Don't you mean: And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? I'll bet I do, too -- all slow thighs and pitiless gaze and darkness dropping again. Jo
Re: Re: Prostitution, Disease, and Race (was Fall of Communism sparks job growth)
Yeah? And who emerges from the spotless sheets? You positing a saviour of some sort, Sandwichman? Jo At 13:18 21-09-00 , you wrote: There is an immaculate conception between this topic and the "Market as God" thread. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant 215-2273
Re: Prostitution, Disease, and Race (was Fall of Communism sparksjob growth)
I wrote: There is an immaculate conception between this topic and the "Market as God" thread. Jo wrote: Yeah? And who emerges from the spotless sheets? You positing a saviour of some sort, Sandwichman? Don't you mean: And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant 215-2273
Re: Prostitution, Disease, and Race (was Fall of Communism sparksjob growth)
There is an immaculate conception between this topic and the "Market as God" thread. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant 215-2273
Prostitution, Disease, and Race (was Fall of Communism sparks jobgrowth)
NY Times, Sept. 19, 2000 The Oldest Profession Seeks New Market in West Europe By ROGER COHEN snip For Dr. Hana Duchkova, an expert on sexually transmitted diseases at Usti Hospital, the collapse of Communism and the order it imposed have been a "recipe for many problems." Foreigners have no medical records, and spread disease. Cases of syphilis at the hospital are up to 134 so far this year from 59 in 1999, she said, heaping blame on foreigners and a large Gypsy population she described in disparaging terms. Dr. Hana Duchkova's prejudice is rooted in the old ideological connection made between prostitution, disease, and foreigners, immigrants, oppressed races/ethnicities/nationalities. This line of thinking has a fertile ground in the political economy of global capitalism with its attendant immiseration on the periphery migrant labor. * Modern Fiction Studies 42.1 (1996) 31-60 Dangerous Liaisons: Prostitution, Disease, and Race in Frank Norris's Fiction Stephanie Bower Prostitution is pregnant with disease, a disease infecting not only the guilty but contaminating the innocent wife and child in the home with sickening certainty almost inconceivable; a disease to be feared as a leprous plague; a disease scattering misery broadcast, and leaving in its wake sterility, insanity, paralysis, and the blinded eyes of little babes, the twisted limbs of deformed children, degradation, physical rot and mental decay. --Vice Comission of Chicago, 1911 By 1911, scientific advances in the understanding of venereal diseases had significantly altered public perception of their seriousness. No longer considered just punishment of the guilty, these diseases were blamed for transmitting the wages of sin from errant husband to virtuous wife and child, the newly discovered venerealinsotium--infections of the innocent--deemed an insidious threat to the beleaguered middle-class family. 1 But as this quote from the Vice Commission makes clear, these philandering husbands manage to evade the full impact of such condemnation, their guilt eclipsed by the prostitute who, in the iconography of syphilis, gets cast as the center and source of such infection. 2 According to the imagery of this quote, prostitution breeds not healthy children but gruesome deformities, a horrific picture that implicitly associates venereal disease--the "family poison" that renders women barren, or even worse, turns normal fetuses into subhuman monstrosities--with "race suicide," that widely-circulated term used to describe the declining birth rates among middle- and upper-class white Americans. The causal connection between syphilis and race suicide made by some venerologists represents only one aspect of a subtle yet persistent tendency to identify disease with racial "others": namely, blacks, Asians, and the "new immigrants" who flocked to American shores in ever-increasing numbers. 3 Indeed, the undercurrent of disease that informs virtually all discussions of prostitution reveals a pervasive anxiety about the influence such others might exert on a narrowly-defined "American" identity, the apprehension shared by many native-born Americans that this influx of immigrants might weaken or even contaminate cherished American ideals. Generations after European "others" spread diseases that would decimate "natives" in the New World, their descendents constructed a trope of disease that reversed the flow of contagion, imagining themselves as the "natives" imperiled by hordes of diseased "others." Indeed, these latter-day "natives"/nativists inherited a racist ideology first articulated in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when American politicians, scientists, and cultural critics justified brutal policies toward American Indians, African Americans, and Mexicans by describing these groups as inherently inferior, obviously incapable of self-government or even assimilation (Horsman). Turn-of-the-century nativists fiddled with racial categories to apply this language to a new generation of immigrants, classifying these racial others as "degenerates" and worrying that an infusion of "inferior" races would fatally corrupt the purity of Anglo-Saxon stock; the language of disease literalizes these fears by constructing a rhetoric of contagion based upon the biological model of germ theory, imaging race as a deadly virus capable of passing from one host to another, infecting a previously "healthy" organism. Since prostitution was identified in the public imagination with immigrants--those foreign pimps and prostitutes who imported an old trade to a new country--and with venereal disease, it becomes a crucial target of nativist attacks. In this essay, I explore the complicated nexus of prostitution, immigration, and disease in Frank
[PEN-L:7901] US Militarism Prostitution
Does anyone know of a good or interesting study or article about the UN or NATO "peacekeepers'" conduct toward local women in the countries where they have been stationed? Will the Balkans be turned into a place resembling Okinawa, whose economy has been distorted by the presence of US military bases? Will Balkan women find themselves in a situation where the only gainful employment will be to serve various needs and desires (including sexual ones) of "peacekeeping" soldiers? Or have they already, in Bosnia, Macedonia, etc.? Yoshie while below doesn't get at specific questions asked, info is relevant... Women and Children, Militarism and Human Rights: International Women's Working Conference Naha City, Okinawa, May 1-4, 1997 Final Statement We are a group of women activists, policy-makers, and scholars from Okinawa, mainland Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and the United States who share a deep concern for the impact of the U.S. military presence on women and children in all our countries. For four days we have exchanged information and strategized together about the situation of victims of violence committed by U.S. military personnel against civilians, especially women and children. We have shared information about the plight of Amerasian children who are abandoned by their G.I. fathers, and the effects of U.S. military bases on the social environment, in particular on women who are absorbed into the dehumanizing and exploitative system of prostitution around U.S. bases. We have considered the current status of the various official agreements governing the U.S. bases and military personnel; also the effects of high rates of military spending on women and children in the U.S. We see militarism as a system of structural violence which turns its members into war machines and creates victims among women and children in our local communities. Underlying our discussions this week is the clear conviction that the U.S. military presence is a threat to our security, not a protection. We recognize that the governments of Japan, South Korea and the Philippines are also complicit in this. This is the first time that women have sat down together to discuss these issues which are usually marginalized in discussions concerning U.S. military operations. As a result of our work this week, we see the many striking similarities in our various situations more clearly than before. As women activists, policy-makers, advocates and scholars, we have strengthened our commitment to work together towards a world with true security based on justice, respect for each other across national boundaries, and economic planning based on local people's needs, especially the needs of women and children. We will continue to support women and children affected by U.S. militarism in all our countries, and to create alternative economic systems based on local people's needs. We will establish new guidelines to prevent military violence against women that are quite separate from existing official agreements. In addition we demand the following: * that the Status of Forces Agreements between the United States and the governments of Japan and South Korea be significantly revised to protect the human rights of women and children, and to include firm environmental guidelines for the clean-up of toxic contamination to restore our land and water and to protect the health of our communities; * that our governments pursue sincere efforts to support the democratization and reunification of Korea; * that our governments take full responsibility for violence against women perpetrated by U.S. military personnel; * that all military 'R' and 'R,' which has meant widespread sexual abuse and exploitation of local women and children, be banned; * that all military personnel receive training aimed at preventing the sexual exploitation, harassment, and abuse of women and children who live and work around bases; * that our governments provide substantial funding for the health care, education, training, and self-reliance of women who service G.I.s, and their children, including Amerasian children; * that the U.S. government and the governments of Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines take full financial responsibility for Amerasian children, and that the U.S. government introduce immigration law that provides for al Amerasians in these three countries; * that all U.S. bases, weapons, and military
Re: prostitution
At 05:03 PM 1/8/98 +, Jim Craven wrote: Response: No Bill, you just don't understand, the theoreticians, backed up with data/theory mining and anecdotes from some of the "high class" and "educated" sex workers (proletarians) have it all figured out. etc. There is no reason for getting cynical, Jim. There is plenty of room for disagreement without getting personal. Besides, why should I accept your definition of prostitution as universally valid and disregard all other views presented on this list, including those who engage in the trade themselves? wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
Prostitution, marriage rat-choice
At 04:05 PM 1/8/98 -0800, Bill Burgess wrote: This is not only too much faith in the equality of buyer and seller in the market, it is too bleak a view of most (physical and emotional) relations between men and women to be taken seriously. It is not the matter of faith in the market, but of the fundamental difference in cost/benefit calculation between transaction in the market vs. one in the so-called traditional social institutions. Assuming no relation between a sex worker and her client other than a "spot" transaction exchanging sex for money, there is little opportunity cost for a sex worker passing on a particular prospective client. However, the very nature of most social institutions is to increase the opportunity cost to motivate the actor to engage rather than not to engage in a particular sort of activity. In a marriage-type relationship that opportunity may vary form informal sanctions imposed by the husband who got a cold shoulder (ranging from displaying his dissatisfaction to getting physical) to ending the relationship. Thus, the opportunity cost of sex (emotional attachment, informal and formal sanctions) for a woman is considerably higher in marriage than in a "spot" sex-for-money transaction. Of course, that is not limited to marriage. By their very nature, social institutions impose opportunity cost on certain actions which does not exist from a rat-choice perspective (assuming no relationship among actors other than how they value the exchanged objects) - and that explains why people do what they should not be doing from a rat-choice point of view. Thus, most women have little to gain from marriage, both emotionally and financially -- and if they calculated the cost/benefit from a purely rat-choice perspective, few of them would marry. That, however, is not what happens, for there is a considerable opportunity cost attached to the institution of marriage in the form of a host of informal sanctions (ostracism, loss of status, ridicule, etc.) which alter the cost/benefit marriage for the woman and push her into a relationship in which she may have little to gain personally. There is a very good reason for the 'socialist moralism' regarding prostitution - it reflects the plebian horror of falling into poverty, privation, dependency, lumpenization, etc. Perhaps, but that may or may not be an important factor. I think that the fear of falling down the social ladder is much greater in the middle class than in the working class - for two reasons: working class has much less to loose than the "middle" class, and working class has social mechanism to cope with life contingencies that the "middle" class is lacking. That mechanism is social solidarity or the obligation to aid another member of the community in need. The "middle" class, by contrast, tends to rely on accumulated wealth and formal agreements (insurance, retirement accounts) rather than informal social solidarity ties. That explains, for example, why working class is less attached to their material possessions and is more willing to share them (cf. on average working class contributes a higher share of their disposable income to public causes than the middle class). IMO, the main reason behind 'working class moralism' is that not playing expected social roles jeopardizes social solidarity ties - the main mechanism of coping with contingencies. Thus, prostitution threatens the unity of the household, just as homosexulaity and any other non-conventional gender role does. In the same vein, flag burning threatens the unity of the nation. Hence the staunch oppostion of the working class to non-traditional gender roles, falg burining, and other forms of individualism that intellectuals falsely interpret as "conservatism." Regards, wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
The End of Prostitution?
--- Forwarded Message Follows --- Return-path: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 8 Jan 98 19:42:35 +800 Thu, 8 Jan 1998 19:41:55 -0800 (PST) for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Thu, 8 Jan 1998 19:40:37 -0800 (PST) Date: Thu, 08 Jan 1998 19:48:17 -0800 Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The End of Prostitution? I don't know about the rest of you, but the arguments seem to be recycling. Susan's belated mention of gender was the only new thread. Should we put this one to bed? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] OK, I'll write no more on the topic--for now. I just wish that the pain and fear and terror that I have seen in the eyes of all the "sex slaves", "sex peons/serfs" and "sex workers" I have met and been touched by could be as summarily wiped out as the discussion on the issues. Jim Craven *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,* * Clark College controls the past." (George Orwell)* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.* * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 (360) 992-2283 FAX: (360)992-2863* * [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
Re: The End of Prostitution?
At 05:39 AM 1/9/98 -0600, valis wrote: Coming back to a lot of wheel-spinning after ~10 hours offline, I ought to agree, but it seems that everyone has talked around the core issue of sex- as-commodity, holding to different points with varying degrees of fervor. Suppose we retire this volatile subject with a simple vote on the question "Should a formal commerce in sexual favors be permitted under socialism?"? No electioneering; there have been Ks and Ks of it already. My answer is: exchaning sexual favors, as any other form of exchange (sexual or otherwise), should be permitted under socialism. Socialism is not to limit exchange (which is the nature oif human relationship) but to prevent the concentration of wealth resulting from those exchanges in private hands, and allow equitable distribution of that wealth among those who produce it. wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
Re: prostitution
Received: from MAILQUEUE by OOI (Mercury 1.21); 9 Jan 98 08:48:25 +800 Return-path: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 9 Jan 98 08:48:19 +800 Received: from host (localhost [127.0.0.1]) Fri, 9 Jan 1998 08:47:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from jhuml1.hcf.jhu.edu (jhuml1.hcf.jhu.edu [128.220.2.86]) for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Fri, 9 Jan 1998 08:41:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from sokol.wpmc.jhu.edu (wsokolow.wpmc.jhu.edu) [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Fri, 9 Jan 1998 11:39:54 EDT Message-Id: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 09 Jan 1998 11:30:04 -0500 Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Wojtek Sokolowski [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: prostitution In-Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN X-PMFLAGS: 34078848 At 05:03 PM 1/8/98 +, Jim Craven wrote: Response: No Bill, you just don't understand, the theoreticians, backed up with data/theory mining and anecdotes from some of the "high class" and "educated" sex workers (proletarians) have it all figured out. etc. There is no reason for getting cynical, Jim. There is plenty of room for disagreement without getting personal. Besides, why should I accept your definition of prostitution as universally valid and disregard all other views presented on this list, including those who engage in the trade themselves? wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 Response: Generally a fair comment. I did not purport to give a universally valid definition because the "universe" of "sex workers" like the "universes" of all types of workers is stratified. I have to run to teach but I'll write one more piece on where my experiences and observations come from. Suffice to say, none of my contacts with "sex workers" have ever given me any masturbatory fantasies (many nightmares however). Since "sex work" supposedly involves production of a commodified service and a commodity not really different than any other commodity, applying that logic, I have indeed "turned many tricks" in my life and continue to do so to survive. But applying the logic that I have not "turned a trick" and therefore cannot comment on the conditions, attitudes, costs, benefits etc of "sex work", then has Tracy ever turned a trick in Patpong in Bangkok, has she ever been sold at 13 years old to a brothel? Has she ever turned a trick as a young Indian girl or boy in Great Falls Montana? Or, those who support "sex work"--the theoretical males__presumably Doug Henwoood has never "turned a trick", so appying the same logic, on what basis is his support for "sex work" ratified by some activist hookers more valid than my opinion ratified also by many "sex workers" with whom I have had extensive contacts and who I genuinely regard as friends and comrades and with whom I keep in regular contact. Neither Doug Henwood nor I presumably have turned a trick so it is a wash on the theoretical male side. Jim Craven *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,* * Clark College controls the past." (George Orwell)* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.* * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 (360) 992-2283 FAX: (360)992-2863* * [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
Re: The End of Prostitution?
Quoth Michael Perelman without the merest thought of punning: I don't know about the rest of you, but the arguments seem to be recycling. Susan's belated mention of gender was the only new thread. Should we put this one to bed? Coming back to a lot of wheel-spinning after ~10 hours offline, I ought to agree, but it seems that everyone has talked around the core issue of sex- as-commodity, holding to different points with varying degrees of fervor. Suppose we retire this volatile subject with a simple vote on the question "Should a formal commerce in sexual favors be permitted under socialism?"? No electioneering; there have been Ks and Ks of it already. valis
The End of Prostitution?
I don't know about the rest of you, but the arguments seem to be recycling. Susan's belated mention of gender was the only new thread. Should we put this one to bed? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: marriage and prostitution
On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Fleck_S wrote: prostitution and marriage are the two most common occupations of women - Even in the poorest countries in the world surely the first part of this claim is untrue (assuming something close to a conventional definition of prostitution). Bill Burgess
Re: prostitution
At 11:43 AM 1/8/98 +, Jim Craven wrote: I'm getting it now. Sorry I'm so slow. It is not the sexual acts that prostitutes typically engage in that are exploitative and degrading, only the fact that such acts take place under capitalist conditions of exploitation, degradation of labor and alienation of surplus value. If the sexual acts are seen as degrading by either prostitutes or non-prostitutes, it is only because they are hung-up with puritan, Judeo-Christian [or Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Sikh etc] morality and if only they would take themselves off this plane of lower-order bourgeois or puritanical morality and rise to the higher value system and absolute truths of the secular sexual libertine, they wouldn't experience any degradation or brutalization from the sexual acts per se. Brutalization from sexual acts can occur in non-commodified sex as well. I would go even further and say that there is a better chance a woman being brutalized by someone with whom she is in non-commodified relationship (a boyfriend or a husband) than by a 'john' in the commodified sexual act. That, again, calls for analytic separation between sexual practices in general and commodified sex as a form of work. wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
Re: prostitution
At 12:00 PM 1/8/98 -0500, Louis Proyect wrote: Jim Craven's frustration is with other people's inability to understand the reality he has seen with his own eyes. I can understand this myself. Much of the discussion that pervades PEN-L and the Spoons lists seems detached from the day-to-day brutality of the Third World, or of America's internal colonies. Everybody who makes a living as a professor and who continues to identify in some way with social and economic transformation owes it to themselves to travel to places like South Africa, Nicaragua, the Philippines, etc. It would seem to me that it is almost necessary to do one's "Progressive Economics" in a professional manner, since it rounds out one's perception of the world. An excellent point indeed, however, Jim is not entirely without the blame for that misunderstanding because of how he argues his point. In the same vein, "pro-lifers" claim they defend "life" yet their opposition, if any, to death penalty is not nearly as aggressive as their reaction to abortion. That makes one wonder what is the real target here: degradation or sex? I do NOT question Jim's integrity by comparing him to "pro-lifers" - all I am suggesting is that, whether he likes it or not, his argument can be read as the same genre as the attacks of sex launched by moral entrepreneurs of the Christian Right. As far as burtality of the Third world countries is concerned, we must be careful not to confuse their apparent lack of technology and consumer goods with degradation. I heard ad nauseam the "toilet-papaper-and-towel" stories from Americans traveling to Eastern Europe who erroneously assumed that the absence of certain consumer goods available in the US makes the living standards and human conditions in general in those societies worse than those in the US, and the people living of those conditions somewhat less human, that is, deprived of agency, than people in the US. To reiterate I am not saying that poverty is virtuous, all I am suggesting is to view it in the proper social context, and do not apply the American standard equating consumerism with human progress to societies different than ours. wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
Re: prostitution
Jim Craven: Just spend some time at the Health Clinic at the Blackfeet Reservation at Browning. There you will see 12 and 13 and 14 year old boys and girls with AIDS and other diseases just waiting to die. Now we are getting down to brass tacks. The world of Suzie Bright and Nina Hartley is about as far removed from the Blackfeet Reservation as a computer programmer's is from that of a Malaysian assembly line worker at a NEC plant making 31 cents an hour while breathing toxic fumes. The first group is in the "sex industry" while the second group is in the "information industry." Bright, Hartley et al are not the enemy. I don't think it is very useful to stigmatize them as Jews collaborating with the Nazis. They are a product of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and represent an extension of the sort of leftish entrepreneurism that you will find in the UTNE Reader and Mother Jones. Suzie Bright sells sex as a commodity in the same way that Working Assets or Peter Camejo sell stocks and bonds to leftists with trust funds. These are just sleazy ways to make a living that they rationalize with radical verbiage. Jim Craven's frustration is with other people's inability to understand the reality he has seen with his own eyes. I can understand this myself. Much of the discussion that pervades PEN-L and the Spoons lists seems detached from the day-to-day brutality of the Third World, or of America's internal colonies. Everybody who makes a living as a professor and who continues to identify in some way with social and economic transformation owes it to themselves to travel to places like South Africa, Nicaragua, the Philippines, etc. It would seem to me that it is almost necessary to do one's "Progressive Economics" in a professional manner, since it rounds out one's perception of the world. One organization that is devoted to this mission, and which I send money in to on a fairly regular basis, is Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org). They sponsor "Reality Tours" which are closely related to the sorts of tours that my own group Tecnica organized in Nicaragua during the 1980s. The goal was to open the eyes of middle-class professionals to the reality of third-world life and a revolution that was trying to change this reality. WHAT IS A REALITY TOUR? (from Global Exchange Web Page) Reality Tours are an increasingly popular way to learn about the history and current situation of a country from the people themselves. Reality Tours offer an alternative way to travel and go past what we read in the media and travel beyond hotels and beaches. Meet with community leaders in Haiti, Senegal, or Ireland. Learn Spanish in Cuba, or visit environmentally sustainable farming projects. Meet with artisans at crafts cooperatives in the fair trade movement. Or learn about the arts and religions of Haiti, Thailand, Palestine, and Israel. We also offer an exciting program called Exploring California which examines issues and communities close to home. WHY GO ON A REALITY TOUR WITH GLOBAL EXCHANGE? We set up meetings with people you'd never get to meet on your own, from government figures to grassroots organizers and families in isolated villages. It's an opportunity to learn not only from the country you are visiting but also the people you are with. Trip participants represent a diverse cross-section of the U.S. population in terms of geography, race, occupation and age. WHO CAN PARTICIPATE? Our tours are open to anyone with a genuine interest in learning about the regions visited. We also appreciate participants who are flexible and sensitive to Third World realities. Past tours have students, retirees, industrial workers, teachers, lawyers, social workers, doctors, nurses, church workers, journalists, community organizers, and city officials. HOW TO APPLY: Simply call us at 1.800.497.1994 with your $200 deposit to reserve a space on any delegation. Then complete the application and return it by fax or regular mail. CUSTOM REALITY TOURS If your organization is interested in a specific issue or would like to travel to a particular or different destination, we can tailor a trip for you. Please e-mail Susan Kench with your needs. Louis Proyect
Re: prostitution
James Michael Craven wrote: Just spend some time at the Health Clinic at the Blackfeet Reservation at Browning. There you will see 12 and 13 and 14 year old boys and girls with AIDS and other diseases just waiting to die. Under bourgoeis theory, the "exchanges" of these "sex workers" with their "clients" (who were not buying "sex", they were buying domination with sex as the instrument) were "free" and "mutually" beneficial--otherwise they presumably would not have taken place. These children were "free" not to sell themselves, yet they "chose" to. At the Clinic you will also find Indian women whose husbands used prostitutes and brought diseases home; their husbands were "free" not to make the exhanges, but unfortunately due to "asymmetric information" these women were unfortunately not "free" to choose not to be infected. The crime here isn't sex, but a couple of centuries of genocide and planned degradation. Neither Bright, Hartley, nor anyone on PEN-L (well there may be a few exceptions lurking here there) believes in bourgeois concepts of free exchange. Why, in the formulation "domination with sex as the instrument" do you turn most of your fire towards the sex and not the domination? Doug
Re: prostitution
On Thu, January 8, 1998 at 11:02:39 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes: William S. Lear wrote: Bright nor Hartley Remember that these two women are socialists whose critique of degradation and exploitation focuses on wage labor, not sex. Yes, quite right. It's easy to get sucked into a pointless debate about sex when the real issue is the larger critique they share in. Good point, Doug. Bill
Re: prostitution
On Wed, January 7, 1998 at 22:45:13 (-0800) [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Perhaps given the best opportunities people will choose to work in the sex industry. Perhaps given a better world, people will freely trade sex in whatever democratic utopia we create. "freely trading" does not sound like prostitution to me. Of course not, why should it? My question was (you didn't answer my other ones --- why not?), why is it so unreasonable to assume that sex work is just as good as any other in principle? Why should it be deprecated any more than any other work done under conditions of legal exploitation? If the working conditions are safe, if the work is as "freely" chosen as any other within our society, why should we care? Bill
Re: prostitution
G'day Penners, William Lear asks: Why should it be deprecated any more than any other work done under conditions of legal exploitation? If the working conditions are safe, if the work is as "freely" chosen as any other within our society, why should we care? It occurs to me that the 'self-employed' prostitute (and I recognise the range of possible experiences for such people is enormous) is essentially escaping the dominant mode of exploitation of our time. There is no surplus value produced is there? No capitalist and no proletarian! Sure, most alienations emanating from the commodity form (and, typically but not necessarily, most effects of differential wealth-determined power relations) prevail, but can we argue that we have in this prostitute a model for least-possible-alienated-worker under capitalism? An Adam-Smithian ideal type, perhaps? Theoretically at least, we have here the possibility of prostitution presenting some with a career choice that is tenable/optimal from both economically rationalist and politically socialist points of view. Cheers, Rob. Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia. Phone: 02-6201 2194 (BH) Fax:02-6201 5119 'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.'(John Stuart Mill) "The separation of public works from the state, and their migration into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in the form of capital."(Karl Marx)
Re: prostitution
William S. Lear wrote: Bright nor Hartley Remember that these two women are socialists whose critique of degradation and exploitation focuses on wage labor, not sex. Doug
Re: prostitution
At 08:23 AM 1/8/98 +, Jim Craven wrote: Just spend some time at the Health Clinic at the Blackfeet Reservation at Browning. There you will see 12 and 13 and 14 year old boys and girls with AIDS and other diseases just waiting to die. Under bourgoeis theory, the "exchanges" of these "sex workers" with their "clients" (who were not buying "sex", they were buying domination with sex as the instrument) My comment (WS): It is an interesting point, indeed: what is actually being bought and sold on the market? Tangible goods services or fetishized commodity? Jim seems to oppose sex industry because of fetishization of sex rerlationship (that embodies the relationship of domination) - but the same can hold, in principle and reality, for any other commodity. As one vacuuum cleaner peddler once told me: "I do not sell vacuum cleaners, I sell clean houses" (his pep talk indeed was designed to create an impresion that the house was "dirty" unless the owner bought his vacuum). Thus fetishization is not unique for commodified sex. were "free" and "mutually" beneficial--otherwise they presumably would not have taken place. These children were "free" not to sell themselves, yet they "chose" to. At the Clinic you will also find Indian women whose husbands used prostitutes and brought diseases home; their husbands were "free" not to make the exhanges, but unfortunately due to "asymmetric information" these women were unfortunately not "free" to choose not to be infected. Two pints are due here. First, is the element of risk that is present in any employment - a nuclear plant worker exposes his/her family to the risk of contamination by the virtue of living close to the plant. Moreover, the risk does not result from commodification but from "information asymmtery" -- not commodified sex (i.e. where no money changes hands) can be equally risky if partners do not have sufficient knowledge of each other's history. SEcond is the element of transmitting the risk to persons not directly involved in the transaction. That transmission is due to indentured servitude nature of "traditional" marriage rather than to commodified sex. A person can trnasmit that risk even in the absence of commodified sex, ie. when he/she contracts AIDS through blood transfusion or intravenuous drug use. I think that Jim's position falls dangerously close to that of Judeo-Christian morality holding that that there is an actual physical risk by not following its norms, so to make that morality appear as the "law of nature." Following the same "logic" AIDS is a consequence of violation nature-like norm of Judeo-Christian morality prohibiting intercourse between same-sex partners. I think that the problem of degradation of people forced to sell sex (and other services) by their dire living conditions can be addressed without linking it to behavior that has been the traditional scapegoat of Judeo-Christian warlock. Regards, wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
Re: prostitution
James Michael Craven wrote: I'm sure that the few rich Jews of Hungry had rationalized away or insulated themselves from knowing exactly what fate awaited the other Jews that they helped to identify, register, collect and have deported. Am I the only one who finds this analogy offensive? To compare sex workers - who are in the business for a very wide variety of reasons, ranging from dire necessity to conscious free choice - with the victims of genocide? It both insults the former (by denying them any agency) and trivializes the latter. Doug
Re: prostitution
On Thu, January 8, 1998 at 11:02:39 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes: William S. Lear wrote: Bright nor Hartley Remember that these two women are socialists whose critique of degradation and exploitation focuses on wage labor, not sex. Yes, quite right. It's easy to get sucked into a pointless debate about sex when the real issue is the larger critique they share in. Good point, Doug. Bill On what basis do you assert that these women are "socialists"? Because they know about the difference between labor-power, labor, wages and the value of the product of labor and surplus value? Because they are using some of the right rhetoric and terms? Are they involved in other struggles besides the so-called "sex worker" struggles? Perhaps they are I don't know them. So there is nothing inherently "degrading" about the "sex" that is sold in the typical exchange? So there is nothing inherently "degrading" about having some stranger huffing and puffing over you while his penis is in your mouth, up your anus or in your vagina? If one just gets over some puritanical hang-ups, there is nothing degrading that will remain? Really? Have either of you guys tried it or is this just theory disarticulated from practice? Well I haven't tried it, but in all of the prostitutes with whom I have ever spoken to about this subject, and my work in Puerto Rico led me to speak with literally hundreds, not one expressed the view that they were receiving any kind of personal sexual satisfaction from the acts. Literally every one said they try to get a high price and try to get over on the tricks because they found the work and the tricks degrading and wanted to get more than chump change for the conditions of work, risks and degradation they felt they suffered in their work. But I must admit, my sample is limited and not having participated in the activities personally I just may be a bit too theoretical and limited in my imagination. Jim Craven *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,* * Clark College controls the past." (George Orwell)* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.* * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 (360) 992-2283 FAX: (360)992-2863* * [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
Re: prostitution
James Michael Craven wrote: I'm sure that the few rich Jews of Hungry had rationalized away or insulated themselves from knowing exactly what fate awaited the other Jews that they helped to identify, register, collect and have deported. Am I the only one who finds this analogy offensive? To compare sex workers - who are in the business for a very wide variety of reasons, ranging from dire necessity to conscious free choice - with the victims of genocide? It both insults the former (by denying them any agency) and trivializes the latter. Doug Response: Well then we are even because I find the few with any kind of real "agency" or "free choice", glossing over some very ugly realities (after of course giving the usual caveats "yes there are abused prostitutes and I do feel their pain") also denies lack of real "agency" and "free choice" under the surface of nominally "free exchanges" (the essence of capitalism) and it also trivializes the victimization of the many from the contrived extrapolations from rare conditions of the few. Just spend some time at the Health Clinic at the Blackfeet Reservation at Browning. There you will see 12 and 13 and 14 year old boys and girls with AIDS and other diseases just waiting to die. Under bourgoeis theory, the "exchanges" of these "sex workers" with their "clients" (who were not buying "sex", they were buying domination with sex as the instrument) were "free" and "mutually" beneficial--otherwise they presumably would not have taken place. These children were "free" not to sell themselves, yet they "chose" to. At the Clinic you will also find Indian women whose husbands used prostitutes and brought diseases home; their husbands were "free" not to make the exhanges, but unfortunately due to "asymmetric information" these women were unfortunately not "free" to choose not to be infected. So obviously we all come from different experiences and perspectives such that one person's analogy is offensive and trivializing to another. So be it. I just find capitalism and the fetishizing of ugly realities and brutal relations under the veneer of "free choice" and "free, equal and mutually beneficial exchanges" to be far more offensive and trivializing. Jim Craven *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,* * Clark College controls the past." (George Orwell)* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.* * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 (360) 992-2283 FAX: (360)992-2863* * [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
marriage and prostitution
I have been skimming the amazingly prolific discussion of prostitution on pen-l and am interested to see how most contributors talk about class issues but don't mention gender. Gender inequality fuels prostitution and promotes another phenomenon (which i have not seen anyone discuss yet) of marriage 'markets' - third world women advertising themselves as wives for the first world males looking for 'docile' and 'traditional' wives to serve them (read sex for financial security). The power trip that northern men get from buying 'docile' southern brides is not something that can be explained merely in terms of class, although international inequality does make a 'northern man' a relatively better choice for a poor southern woman than a 'southern man' from her own country. Gender inequality is based on economic, social, and political conditions that allow men to control women's sexuality, body, and many other life choices. Women's oppression is not limited to market exchange. A woman's ability to have control over her life, her job, and her body depends on her finding a good job with good pay. That is why prostitution and marriage are the two most common occupations of women - they pay better than most jobs. The argument that divorce has risen in the U.S. because women have more access to better jobs (I believe McCrate puts this theory forward) is a convincing one for me. What's different between prostitution and many marriage contracts? 1.prostitution is sex for direct payment of money, marriage is sex for indirect payment of money/financial security. 2.prostitution is the 'constrained choice' of many women who face relatively lower earnings in other jobs, partially due to systemic job discrimination against women marriage is the 'constrained choice' of many women who face relativley lower earnings in other jobs, partially due to systemic job discrimination against women. 3.prostitutes are at risk of STDs because of multiple partners, wives are at risk of STDs because spouses have multiple partners. 4.prostitutes are often considered 'undesireable' once they get older, wives are often considered 'undesireable' once they get older. There's not much difference between the two professions, if you ask me. High risk, relatively higher pay than other jobs. We need more and better jobs for women (with affordable reliable childcare, of course). Susan Fleck [EMAIL PROTECTED] W (202)-606-5654, ext 415 H (301)-270-1486 My views are private and do not reflect those of my employer.
Re: marriage and prostitution
At 04:01 PM 1/8/98 -0500, Susan Fleck wrote: What's different between prostitution and many marriage contracts? 1.prostitution is sex for direct payment of money, marriage is sex for indirect payment of money/financial security. Response: Marriage is or equals sex for indirect payment of money/financial security or marriage may or even often involves indirect payment? If marriage is or equals sex for indirect payments/financial security, then are all the married women on pen-l whores (or what do you call someone who trades sex in kind--a sex serf or sex peon versus a sex worker who sells commodified sex?) and should all the men who are married go home and help to create alternatives to liberate their sex peon/serf wives? 2.prostitution is the 'constrained choice' of many women who face relatively lower earnings in other jobs, partially due to systemic job discrimination against women marriage is the 'constrained choice' of many women who face relativley lower earnings in other jobs, partially due to systemic job discrimination against women. Response: And many women (sex workers as well as sex serfs producing tribute in kind for their husbands) face the "constrained choices" of not less food but no food, not less money but no money, not less shelter but no shelter for themselves and their children as an alternative to sex for money or as tribute. 3.prostitutes are at risk of STDs because of multiple partners, wives are at risk of STDs because spouses have multiple partners. Response: I've been converted, the notion that multiple partners or visiting sex workers has something to do with risk of STDs focuses on the multiple partners rather than the true cause--asymmetric information. With proper information, then having multiple partners (the more the merrier) should be no problem as long as one gives up certain bougeois puritanical hang-ups about monogomy, commitment etc because in reality it is only an illusion as ALL marriages are just barter arrangements masquerading as something else. 4.prostitutes are often considered 'undesireable' once they get older, wives are often considered 'undesireable' once they get older. Response: And even males are also often considered undesirable once they get older unless they have a fat wallet to lure some sex peon/serf to produce tribute in return for the protection and security for the Lord and his manor or if the Lord can turn into a sex capitalist finding a sex worker whom he can use when and as he pleases without the burdensome obligations of taking care of an old sex slave or providing commons for the sex peon/serf--capturing a portion of the difference between wages of labor-power of the sex worker versus the value created by the sex worker. There's not much difference between the two professions, if you ask me. High risk, relatively higher pay than other jobs. We need more and better jobs for women (with affordable reliable childcare, of course). Response: Who is to say better or worse? This is just all puritanism and bourgeois morality. Some people sell sex, some people sell capacity to work as a teacher or a computer programmer, just different commodities being sold. Let the free market, dollar votes, and the "free and mutually beneficial exchanges" of the market decide. And childcare? Is it possible that concern for children also serves to turn people into sex workers or to keep them paying tribute as sex peon/serfs? Is it possible that these "constrained choices" are even more "constrained" than nominally apparent? ;-( (Absolutely Gender inequality has a whole lot to do with it) Jim Craven *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,* * Clark College controls the past." (George Orwell)* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.* * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 (360) 992-2283 FAX: (360)992-2863* * [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
Re: prostitution
On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: there is a better chance a woman being brutalized by someone with whom she is in non-commodified relationship (a boyfriend or a husband) than by a 'john' in the commodified sexual act. This is not only too much faith in the equality of buyer and seller in the market, it is too bleak a view of most (physical and emotional) relations between men and women to be taken seriously. There is a very good reason for the 'socialist moralism' regarding prostitution - it reflects the plebian horror of falling into poverty, privation, dependency, lumpenization, etc. The middle class can afford a more 'objective'view, and a more romantic one. Bill Burgess
Re: prostitution
On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: there is a better chance a woman being brutalized by someone with whom she is in non-commodified relationship (a boyfriend or a husband) than by a 'john' in the commodified sexual act. This is not only too much faith in the equality of buyer and seller in the market, it is too bleak a view of most (physical and emotional) relations between men and women to be taken seriously. There is a very good reason for the 'socialist moralism' regarding prostitution - it reflects the plebian horror of falling into poverty, privation, dependency, lumpenization, etc. The middle class can afford a more 'objective'view, and a more romantic one. Bill Burgess Response: No Bill, you just don't understand, the theoreticians, backed up with data/theory mining and anecdotes from some of the "high class" and "educated" sex workers (proletarians) have it all figured out. Young boys and girls in Thailand being used in brothels until their AIDs shows up are really "qualitatively" in no different a situation than workers in Nike plants; they are just producing different commodities in the course of selling their labor power. Further, if these young kids might be suffering some hang-ups over having sex with twenty to twenty-five creatures per day, they need to just get rid of their Buddhist hang-ups and realize that whether your producing shoes or providing an anus/vagina/mouth for use it is just different commodities being produced and what really matters is that there is a gap between the value of your labor-power and the value of the product of your labor. For those who are sex slaves, well Feudalism is objectively progressive relative to slavery and they have the hope of becoming sex serfs/peons; and since Capitalism is objectively progressive relative to Feudalism, they can hope to become sex workers; and since Socialism is objectively progressive relative to Capitalism, they can hope to become sex proletarians totally in control over their means of production and the full-value of the product of their labor (that is unless they live in some puritanical socialist society like China or Cuba used to be where commodification of sex was seen as an ugly remnant of the past and a weed in the garden (leading to ideas, practices and power relations that inhibited the development of socialism) of socialism in which case they will have to assert their revolutionary rights to screw as much as possible for money or in accordance with the national plan quotas because they individually can decide the types of services most necessary for socialist construction and servicing strangers is just as socially necessary and important for those who don't have bougeois and puritanical hang- ups. By the way, since most sex involves kissing as well as--as Alex in Clockwork Orange put it--the "old in and out", and since AIDS can be spread through kissing (sores and bleeding gums), and since the sex workers with perfect as opposed to asymmetric information practice safe sex and do not engage in kissing generally, shouldn't the "high- class" sex workers really be called "partial or quasi sex workers" or "specialized sex workers"? And what about Gay "marriages" are they also essentially tribute/krypto prostitution arrangements with one of the partners acting as a sex serf/peon and paying tribute to the Lord of the house in return for financial and other forms of security? And what is going on in those marriages in which the women are making more than the males and are the financial providers--the serf becoming the Lord and giving some payback? I'm just struggling through all this theory and new vocabulary for me. Jim Craven *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,* * Clark College controls the past." (George Orwell)* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.* * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 (360) 992-2283 FAX: (360)992-2863* * [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
Re: marriage and prostitution
Fleck_S wrote: What's different between prostitution and many marriage contracts? 1.prostitution is sex for direct payment of money, marriage is sex for indirect payment of money/financial security. I should say that Susie Bright made exactly this point in her radio interview with me. Doug
Re: marriage and prostitution
At 04:01 PM 1/8/98 -0500, Susan Fleck wrote: What's different between prostitution and many marriage contracts? 1.prostitution is sex for direct payment of money, marriage is sex for indirect payment of money/financial security. 2.prostitution is the 'constrained choice' of many women who face relatively lower earnings in other jobs, partially due to systemic job discrimination against women marriage is the 'constrained choice' of many women who face relativley lower earnings in other jobs, partially due to systemic job discrimination against women. 3.prostitutes are at risk of STDs because of multiple partners, wives are at risk of STDs because spouses have multiple partners. 4.prostitutes are often considered 'undesireable' once they get older, wives are often considered 'undesireable' once they get older. There's not much difference between the two professions, if you ask me. High risk, relatively higher pay than other jobs. We need more and better jobs for women (with affordable reliable childcare, of course). While I agree with most of what you write, there is one aspect you seem to miss: autonomy. First women in marriage have little autonomy re. their own sexual activities, they are essentially obiliged to perform sexual acts for their husbands or face a divorce. Sex workers, on the other hand, havo choice of whether or not go to work and whether or not have a sex with any particular client. That gives sex workers more autonomy than most women in a marriage (which I compared to indetured servitude in one of my previous postings) and most workers in more convential occupations have. A street walker can refuse taking a job without much explanation. Can you imagine a hairdresser, an automechanic or any other non-professional service employer saying "go elsewhere, I do not feel like taking this job?" BTW, I recognize the fact that in many Third World countries that choice is frequently not available and many poor women are sold into actual slavery; there was an article in The Nation some time ago describing how sex business in Thailand that prospers with generous support of Western countries and Japan uses debt to force poor families to sell their tenage daughters to brothels in Bangkok. But I don't see that as qualitatively different from other forms of Third World slavery practised in the name of free market. As far as international marriage business is concerned, that may look horrible form the US perspective, but from the point of view of foreign women it might look quite differently, slogans advertising docility notwithstanding. In fact, young females who want to marry a first world male might be the only person with "marketable" skills in many backward communities -- which might give them considerable power and prestige. What I am assuming here is that for many immigrants, immigration often does not mean assimilation to the new country, and their "reference group" remains their old community. Another point is that gender inequality is much worse in most Third World countries than in the US or Europe. From that perspective, a Third world woman marrying a first world man can see herself as better off both socially and financially because she compares herself with women and men in her old community rather than women in the US or Europe. Of course, the extent to which this is the case is an empirical question I am unbale to answer, I am merely pointing out at other possible interpretations. Regards, wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
Re: prostitution
On Wed, January 7, 1998 at 21:43:21 (PST) James Michael Craven writes: ... Then some self-professed "sex worker", who on the one hand professes "solidarity" with other sex workers, while on the other hand carefully differentiating herself as educated, articulate, free from puritanism and certainly not like one of those low class "lumpen" street hookers, purports to generalize from a rare and insulated experience, levels of "freedom of choice" and "mutually beneficial exchange" simply not found among the vast majority of women and young males involved in prostitution. Concern for very real, brutal and unconscionable forms and conditions of prostitution are summarily dismissed as "puritanism", "born again virginism", parochialism or whatever. This is hysterics, plain and simple. She does express obvious and sincere sympathy with degraded workers in her industry, just as I express such for exploited Indian programmers, or any other worker. That I express solidarity with them, while "carefully differentiating" myself by saying I live in better conditions and have better opportunities, in no way minimizes their sufferings. And just what sources are you using for your claims here? How did she "carefully differentiate herself as educated"? Please quote her. [disgusting and gratuitous Nazi references snipped] So of course a few hookers who attempt to sanitize it all with the title sex worker as part of the entertainment "industry" can work under conditions and with protections that few if any prostitutes and sexual slaves will ever know; it is they who are the truly insulated and even arrogant ones. I guess you missed the part where she wrote, "Of course there are people being grieveously exploited, used as virtual slaves, disposable humans." To the extent to which they attempt to generalize and rationalize from their very limited and privileged market niches, conditions and sentiments simply not found among the many involved in prostitution...[more peurile Nazi references snipped] Just how, precisely, in her words (please quote her), did she generalize her experience to others? She makes note of "disposable humans" and says that "no one defends it". I find these points totally irrelevant. Neither Bright nor Hartley distance themselves from those who are abused in the sex industry. To my eyes, they try to clarify what it is like to work in the sex industry (and, from what I can tell, these women are not in fact prostitutes as is so stupidly claimed) and to describe what it is like to have what seems to be a reasonable amount of control over their lives. What I find amazing on a supposedly leftist list is that women who have sexual power are such a threat and elicit such frantic squeals from men who can only distort the opinions of these women and dredge up utterly pointless Nazi horror stories to support their pathetic attacks. We should be learning from these women, not attacking them. Bill
Re: prostitution
James Michael Craven wrote: On what basis do you assert that these women are "socialists"? Because they call themselves that, for one. I've never talked to Hartley, but I did a long interview on my radio show the other week with Bright, and we talked, among other things (like left puritanism) about the relation between capitalism and sexual repression. Bright's political career started with a anarcho-red group in her Los Angeles high school, and continued with her membership in the IS (from which she was expelled in the late 1970s for insufficient puritanism). Doug
Re: prostitution
William S. Lear wrote: My question was (you didn't answer my why is it so unreasonable to assume that sex work is just as good as any other in principle? Why should it be deprecated any more than any other work done under conditions of legal exploitation? If the working conditions are safe, if the work is as "freely" chosen as any other within our society, why should we care? In general, I agree. I suspect that in many cases, the "freely chosen" descriptor is not appropriate. We are not far apart, are we? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: prostitution ( pornography)
At 06:43 PM 1/8/1998 +1100, Rob wrote: G'day Penners, [snip] It occurs to me that the 'self-employed' prostitute (and I recognise the range of possible experiences for such people is enormous) is essentially escaping the dominant mode of exploitation of our time. There is no surplus value produced is there? No capitalist and no proletarian! Sure, most alienations emanating from the commodity form (and, typically but not necessarily, most effects of differential wealth-determined power relations) prevail, but can we argue that we have in this prostitute a model for least-possible-alienated-worker under capitalism? An Adam-Smithian ideal type, perhaps? Theoretically at least, we have here the possibility of prostitution presenting some with a career choice that is tenable/optimal from both economically rationalist and politically socialist points of view. This begins to loop back to my original query. If the self-employed= prostitute (the "SEP") approaches the Adam-Smithian ideal, then it seems to= me that the self-employed pornographic Web site operator nails it on the= head. The self-employed prostitute, despite his or her autonomy, still= faces what should be unacceptable physical risks and (except for those= prostitutes specializing in Hollywood's A-list or New York's Social= Register) poor social standing. By contrast, a woman who runs her own Web= site featuring nude photos and videos of herself has the same or greater= autonomy as an SEP, faces little or no physical risk, and can if she= chooses be completely anonymous, which largely eliminates the social= standing problem. If she is successful at operating her Web site, she can= choose to no longer be anonymous (not that many site operators are anyway)= and be reasonably confident (at least in the U.S.) that admiration for= entrepreneurial skill will outweigh moral disapproval. The likelihood of a= positive reaction, incidentally, has been increased by the often dramatic= loosening of social mores that has taken over the last 20-30 years. I think that Rob's conclusion is accurate and increasingly less theoretical,= particularly from economically rationalist point of view. The politically= socialist/moralist point of view will take longer (typical for the U.S.),= but certainly is changing. Regards, Fred = Frederick S. Lane III, Publisher, italicThe Journal of Electronic Discovery Internet Litigation /italicA Publication of Pro Se Computing, Inc., 1 Main Street # 46, Winooski, VT 05404=20 Phone: 802/655-0605 Fax: 617/658-2014 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.pro-se-computing.com =
Re: prostitution
On Wed, January 7, 1998 at 20:50:43 (-0800) [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: ... I assume that if society presented better opportunities even our happy sex worker might have chosen another path. Mike, while I agree that "Prostitution is just a commercialization of another human relationship", hence a degradation of it, why do you assume that having sex for a living is not one of the "better opportunities"? Is my programming job superior to it? Your academic position? If so, how so? Perhaps given the best opportunities people will choose to work in the sex industry. Perhaps given a better world, people will freely trade sex in whatever democratic utopia we create. Bill
Re: prostitution
I don't like markets in general. Prostitution is just a commercialization of another human relationship. I think Fred Lane is onto something in looking at the class nature of th subject. Some sleeze cruises around and picks on a poor young girl who has few options in life. He has the upper hand in every sense. I think that Jim Craven is thinking of such people. When toe-sucking Dickie Morris pays a couple of grand to his sex worker, she is in a position to look down on him. So he calls up Clinton to impress her -- and apparently did not succeed. I see different power relations working here. The woman from Berkeley presumably was not cruising the street, but because of her gifts of education and probably physical attractiveness probably was mostly in command of her situation. Rather than criticizing the people we should take note of the circumstances that make them have to do what they do. I assume that if society presented better opportunities even our happy sex worker might have chosen another path. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Michael, I take it ever further. Some sleaze, who has been with many prostitutes, gives this young girl a deadly disease along with using her desperation to take another piece out of the heart and soul of an already very abused person; then that sleaze also goes home and gives the deadly disease to his wife and perhaps even creates a child born infected with this deadly disease. This is no game or parlor debate for the vast majority of women and young males who sell the only commodity they feel they have to sell. Then some self-professed "sex worker", who on the one hand professes "solidarity" with other sex workers, while on the other hand carefully differentiating herself as educated, articulate, free from puritanism and certainly not like one of those low class "lumpen" street hookers, purports to generalize from a rare and insulated experience, levels of "freedom of choice" and "mutually beneficial exchange" simply not found among the vast majority of women and young males involved in prostitution. Concern for very real, brutal and unconscionable forms and conditions of prostitution are summarily dismissed as "puritanism", "born again virginism", parochialism or whatever. I'm sure that the few rich Jews of Hungry had rationalized away or insulated themselves from knowing exactly what fate awaited the other Jews that they helped to identify, register, collect and have deported. What they did was generalize from their limited, insulated and pampered experience, what might await others. Since Eichmann was solicitous and careful in dealing with the Jewish leadership (he had been in Palestine studying Jewish culture and religious practices), this pampered and insulated leadership suggested that these "cultured" and "educated" Nazis had not shown the tendencies that would confirm the worst fears of the many Jews could be trusted to deal with the non-privileged Jews as they had superficially dealt with the priviliged ones. In other words, the insultated and privileged extrapolated from their positions of insulation and privilege to conditions in general that simply did not and could not prevail and rationalized their insulation and relative privilege. There were other rich Jews who knowingly and calculatingly set up other Jews knowing full-well the fate that awaited them (One of the main ones was assassinated in Tel Aviv after his role became public). So of course a few hookers who attempt to sanitize it all with the title sex worker as part of the entertainment "industry" can work under conditions and with protections that few if any prostitutes and sexual slaves will ever know; it is they who are the truly insulated and even arrogant ones. To the extent to which they attempt to generalize and rationalize from their very limited and privileged market niches, conditions and sentiments simply not found among the many involved in prostitution, they play the same role as the rich Jews who purported to extrapolate and rationalize from their insulated and privileged positions what the vast majority of Jews would likely face when dealing with Nazis as they purport to speak to the issue of what the vast majority of prostitutes will face and endure under the normal conditions and with the usual clientele and extreme risks with which they have to deal. Jim Craven *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,
prostitution
I don't like markets in general. Prostitution is just a commercialization of another human relationship. I think Fred Lane is onto something in looking at the class nature of th subject. Some sleeze cruises around and picks on a poor young girl who has few options in life. He has the upper hand in every sense. I think that Jim Craven is thinking of such people. When toe-sucking Dickie Morris pays a couple of grand to his sex worker, she is in a position to look down on him. So he calls up Clinton to impress her -- and apparently did not succeed. I see different power relations working here. The woman from Berkeley presumably was not cruising the street, but because of her gifts of education and probably physical attractiveness probably was mostly in command of her situation. Rather than criticizing the people we should take note of the circumstances that make them have to do what they do. I assume that if society presented better opportunities even our happy sex worker might have chosen another path. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: prostitution
Perhaps given the best opportunities people will choose to work in the sex industry. Perhaps given a better world, people will freely trade sex in whatever democratic utopia we create. "freely trading" does not sound like prostitution to me. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11921] Prostitution
I have repeatedly tried to return my comments directly to MS Quan and to Harry Cleaver directly but the messages keep getting bounced back. They can send stuff to me but I can't send back to them directly. This was sent to me privately by someone and I wanted to share the concepts without subjecting the person who kindly sent it to identification and possible harassment so it is edited to remove any basis for identifying the person or from where it was sent. It is legitmate. Jim Craven Please forward this to Ms Quan. Attempts to reach her directly have [EMAIL PROTECTED] The name of this response was edited so that this person will not attract the attention of this organization. Thank you Jim Craven I really must say that I find that you are being unfairly dumped upon by a number of prostitutes who seem to me entirely unrepresentative. As you note there are certainly great variations in the working conditions of prostitutes and no doubt there are "paternalistic" academics who ignore the fact that some prostitutes are such by choice, do well, and are hardly victims. I expect though that the vast majority of prostitutes are such out of economic necessity or parental pressure --as in Thailand, and are often abused both by pimps and by customers. The reality of a high class prostitute is no more representative of prostitutes in general than is a well-paid manager of a large company represenative of the condition or attitudes of the working class in general. In __, I can say that prostitutes in the inner city of _ come from poor backgrounds, broken homes, and quite a few are off reserve natives who have few skills and little resources and turn to prostitution as one of the few ways of making a living. Many are alcoholic and in poor health. These prostitutes cannot be compared with the young college women at universities who turn tricks as high class call girls to help pay for their sports cars and tuition. *---* * "Those who take the most from the table,* * James Craventeach contentment. * * Dept of Economics Those for whom the taxes are destined, * * Clark College demand sacrifice.* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd. Those who eat their fill, * * Vancouver, Wa. 98663speak to the hungry, * * (360) 992-2283 of wonderful times to come. * * Fax: (360) 992-2863Those who lead the country into the abyss,* * [EMAIL PROTECTED] call ruling difficult, * * for ordinary folk." (Bertolt Brecht) * * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION * --- =_aa-- *---* * "Those who take the most from the table,* * James Craventeach contentment. * * Dept of Economics Those for whom the taxes are destined, * * Clark College demand sacrifice.* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd. Those who eat their fill, * * Vancouver, Wa. 98663speak to the hungry, * * (360) 992-2283 of wonderful times to come. * * Fax: (360) 992-2863Those who lead the country into the abyss,* * [EMAIL PROTECTED] call ruling difficult, * * for ordinary folk." (Bertolt Brecht) * * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
[PEN-L:11862] Re: A Prostitute on Prostitution
Folks: The recent exchange on prostitution came to an end and I am not interested in reopening it where we left off, but I think most of you will find the following communication of considerable interest. It comes from Sera Pinwell, a woman working in the sex industry in Australia --one who is also active in the political struggles of that industry. I have been contacted by another prostitute, from New York, also an activist, whose comments were very similar. It is nice to have people come forward and verify that your ideas about them and their struggles are on target. Harry PS:I am reproducing this with Sera's permission. I have deleted the names of two others mentioned only tangentially. ... -- Forwarded message -- Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 13:03:37 +1000 From: WISE [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Prostitution Dear Harry, __ posted some of your correspondence with James Craven on Whorenet (for sex workers and interested others), and I have to say that I think Craven's arguments are so typically thoughtless and patronizing. A bit of background: My name is Sera Pinwill. I am the co-ordinator of Workers In Sex Employment (WISE) in the ACT Inc., which is a sex worker education/advocacy group in Canberra, Australia. I have worked as a whore on and off (no pun intended) for the past 15 years, both on the streets of Melbourne and Sydney, in brothels and massage parlours, and for myself as a high class call girl. It enrages me to hear other people - people who have absolutely NO IDEA of how I feel and what my life is like, making assumptions and judgments on my behalf, and that is exactly what Craven has done. You wrote: Why can you not imagine that sex workers hire other prostitutes for real pleasure? Why do you jump to the interpretation that they just want someone to abuse? Why do you keep repeating horror stories or dreaming up possible horror stories instead of accepting the possibility that there are attitudes and behaviors different from those you have encountered. If you refuse to accept any evidence that differs from your own, then there is no point to discussion --and your own understanding will stagnate. Of course - this is my truth and the truth of many, many women and men who I am involved with on a daily basis. Knowing how much pride I take in my professionalism, I am much more inclined to seek out the services of a professional during the times when I feel that I need someone to cater for my desires. I do not abuse them, nor they me. We fulfill each others needs. We are adults engaging in consensual and pleasurable activity - and to suggest that I am abusive or deluded in my thinking is patronizing and shows egomania in its extremes. Craven wrote: In the course of that work, I interviewed literally hundreds of prostitutes (always in confidence and not one was ever turned in and they knew it). I never met even one "sex worker" who looked forward to going to work or who did not have dreams of using the money "to get out of the business. And of course, these workers being interviewed are, by the nature of their work, experts at reading people. They know what the interviewer wants to hear, while the interviewer is in the position of power over them ( he could have turned them in to police) they will tell him what he wants to hear. With Craven's attitude - I sincerely doubt that even if someone did confess to enjoying their work or gaining job satisfaction from it - he would not hear them anyway.. Craven wrote: Further there are some unique dangers and forms of degradation involved when, as you put it, the commodity being exchanged is "use of genitals". Why? Where are these unique dangers and forms of degradation? They are in the mind of someone whose sexual repression is so complete that genitals = dirty. I am not arguing that all prostitution is equal and consensual. Of course there are some women and men who are forced to work in the industry and some who are forced by economic circumstances when they would rather not be there. But I can clearly and categorically state that the evidence from Canberra - which is much the same as any other city of its size - shows that by far the large majority of women and men who are sex workers, are doing it BECAUSE THEY WANT TO. Because they enjoy the financial freedom it brings them, because they enjoy the sex, because they enjoy the flexibility of the hours - and for lots of other reasons. To say that all these people are abusers/abused, deluded etc, etc, etc, is denying their reality. In a study that was done by myself and ___ from the National Sex Worker Rights Organisation in Australia (The Scarlet Alliance) of sex workers in the Canberra district, both brothel workers and
[PEN-L:11858] A Prostitute on Prostitution
Folks: The recent exchange on prostitution came to an end and I am not interested in reopening it where we left off, but I think most of you will find the following communication of considerable interest. It comes from Sera Pinwell, a woman working in the sex industry in Australia --one who is also active in the political struggles of that industry. I have been contacted by another prostitute, from New York, also an activist, whose comments were very similar. It is nice to have people come forward and verify that your ideas about them and their struggles are on target. Harry PS:I am reproducing this with Sera's permission. I have deleted the names of two others mentioned only tangentially. -- Forwarded message -- Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 13:03:37 +1000 From: WISE [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Prostitution Dear Harry, __ posted some of your correspondence with James Craven on Whorenet (for sex workers and interested others), and I have to say that I think Craven's arguments are so typically thoughtless and patronizing. A bit of background: My name is Sera Pinwill. I am the co-ordinator of Workers In Sex Employment (WISE) in the ACT Inc., which is a sex worker education/advocacy group in Canberra, Australia. I have worked as a whore on and off (no pun intended) for the past 15 years, both on the streets of Melbourne and Sydney, in brothels and massage parlours, and for myself as a high class call girl. It enrages me to hear other people - people who have absolutely NO IDEA of how I feel and what my life is like, making assumptions and judgments on my behalf, and that is exactly what Craven has done. You wrote: Why can you not imagine that sex workers hire other prostitutes for real pleasure? Why do you jump to the interpretation that they just want someone to abuse? Why do you keep repeating horror stories or dreaming up possible horror stories instead of accepting the possibility that there are attitudes and behaviors different from those you have encountered. If you refuse to accept any evidence that differs from your own, then there is no point to discussion --and your own understanding will stagnate. Of course - this is my truth and the truth of many, many women and men who I am involved with on a daily basis. Knowing how much pride I take in my professionalism, I am much more inclined to seek out the services of a professional during the times when I feel that I need someone to cater for my desires. I do not abuse them, nor they me. We fulfill each others needs. We are adults engaging in consensual and pleasurable activity - and to suggest that I am abusive or deluded in my thinking is patronizing and shows egomania in its extremes. Craven wrote: In the course of that work, I interviewed literally hundreds of prostitutes (always in confidence and not one was ever turned in and they knew it). I never met even one "sex worker" who looked forward to going to work or who did not have dreams of using the money "to get out of the business. And of course, these workers being interviewed are, by the nature of their work, experts at reading people. They know what the interviewer wants to hear, while the interviewer is in the position of power over them ( he could have turned them in to police) they will tell him what he wants to hear. With Craven's attitude - I sincerely doubt that even if someone did confess to enjoying their work or gaining job satisfaction from it - he would not hear them anyway.. Craven wrote: Further there are some unique dangers and forms of degradation involved when, as you put it, the commodity being exchanged is "use of genitals". Why? Where are these unique dangers and forms of degradation? They are in the mind of someone whose sexual repression is so complete that genitals = dirty. I am not arguing that all prostitution is equal and consensual. Of course there are some women and men who are forced to work in the industry and some who are forced by economic circumstances when they would rather not be there. But I can clearly and categorically state that the evidence from Canberra - which is much the same as any other city of its size - shows that by far the large majority of women and men who are sex workers, are doing it BECAUSE THEY WANT TO. Because they enjoy the financial freedom it brings them, because they enjoy the sex, because they enjoy the flexibility of the hours - and for lots of other reasons. To say that all these people are abusers/abused, deluded etc, etc, etc, is denying their reality. In a study that was done by myself and ___ from the National Sex Worker Rights Organisation in Australia (The Scarlet Alliance) of sex workers in the Canberra district, both brothel workers and those working privately from home, those who reported being sexually assaulted as children was arou
[PEN-L:11791] Re: Prostitution and Lumpenproletariat
At 02:03 PM 8/14/97 -0700, Jim C. wrote: Response (Jim C) I have a suggestion for all those males online--and any females--who think that prostitution is just like any other job: Try it for yourself. Try having a stranger's penis in you wherever he wants it. Try going out with some freak in a car not knowing whether or not you're coming back or what kind of freak scene awaits you. Try going for regular check-ups (if you can afford it) wondering if you have just contracted a fatal disease. Try having a pimp beat the shit out of you because you didn't turn enough tricks. Try having cops shake you down--for money or sex. etc. Jim: I read the response to your posting from Harry Cleaver, and I concur with most of what he said -- so I won't overburden this list with repeating it. I'd only like to add two points: 1. There is a certain tendency in the acdemia to consider the expert/researcher's point of view as the only valid/rational one. If an expert/researcher sees something as good, then everyone else is assumed to share that view and maximise that good. If, by contrast, an expert/researcher sees soemthing as bad (cf. your view of prostitution) then, it is assumed, everyone must share that view and minimise that bad. The possiblity that the people involved in the said behaviour may have a totally different view of that behaviour -- is not being considered at all. In that respect, neoclassical moralising and progressive moralising do not differ very much. What I was trying to allow the possibility that some people and I (as an academic) may look at the same reality and have totally different views. I would not consider nude dancing (who would want to hire me in that capacity anyway?) or doing cunnilingus to sleezy old women for money as a full time occupation (that does not mean that I would not do cunnilingus to such a woman -- but that's a different issue), but who am I to judge those who would? In the same vein, I would not consider many things -- being a police officer, debt collector, a WSJ journalist to name just a few -- but at the same time I would not project my feeling toward these occupations on those who decided to take jobs I consider reprehensible. 2. It is important to distinguish between a situation that people are forced to do things they would not do without coercion, and a situation when people choose to do things that others may find repulsive. I fully agree with you that a political-economic system that forces into prostitution women who otherwise would not consider that occupation is reprehensible and should be abolished by any means necessary. But abolishing such a system does NOT mean prohibiting people from selling sex for money, if they so choose without coercion. If I have a choice between farting in a chair in some office for 40 hours a week, or playing a gigolo for older women for half the time but twice the money, and I choose the latter because I don't mind playing a gigolo for older sleeze women but I like the free time and the money, or I like both, the gigolo and the money part -- then who is to judge me? Human sexuality is not limited to the missionary position and long term commitments. There are people who like long term relationships and those who like quickies; those who like S-M or BD, not to mention sex that does not involve penetration (nude dancing, phone sex, masturbation, cross-dressing, etc). Sexual role playing with or outside the sex industry does not essentially differ -- a person who, say, likes playing the "sub" part in his/her "normal" sexual realtions, may also want to play that part for strangers and for money. Where is the exploitation? Or suppose, by contrast, that a person likes to be a "dom" -- is he/she also "exploited" by his/her client whom he/she "disciplines" for a pay (BTW, who was the "exploited" part in the infamous Dick Morris's liaison -- the lady whose toes Mr. Morris sucked and who leaked the story to the media, or Mr. Morris himself who lost his White House job, or perhaps nobody?) Or take "random" sexual intercourses with strangers once popular in the gay culture -- which clearly indicates that some people like being fucked by strangers, whether they are paid for that or not. Is that exploitation? The bottom line is that it is one thing to eliminate social-economic conditions forcing people to engage in sexual (or ANY) activities they would not voluntarily consider, and quite a different thing to judge (that includes pity) people who voluntarily choose an occupation we consider reprehensible from other occupations available to them. Your postings suggest that you seem to conflate those two different things. cheers, wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 POLITICS IS THE SHADOW CAST ON SOCIETY BY BIG BUSINESS. AN
[PEN-L:11788] Re: Prostitution and Lumpenproletariat
At 02:44 PM 8/14/97 -0700, Louis Proyect wrote: This seems nuts to me. After Castro took over, the government was faced with the appalling legacy of Cuba as the fleshpot of the United States. It was used for sex tours the way that the Philippines is used today by American or Japanese tourists. In the current issue of the Village Voice there is an article on a Queens travel agency that takes men to a 10-night sex tour of the Philippines. The article states: "But if Big Apple is withering, the sex-tour industry is thriving.Fueled by giant disparities in the global economy and the ever increasing ease of travel, international gender exploitation has blossomed into what may be as much as a billion-dollar industry, etc. I think you are mixing Big Apples and oranges, Louis. What does the sex industry its horrors have to do with the patriarchal attituded of Cuban, Chinese, and other ML leaders, and for that matter -- the pre-1970 Left? Nobody is denying the exploitation of the "Third World" women by the "First World" entrepreneurs, albeit sex industry is but one form of such exploitation. Granted, the legacy of that sex industry in the developing countries is horrible -- not to mention the economic burden on the government (health care, crime control, etc.). But that does not havy anything to do with the patriarchal attitudes of the ML leaders -- which is the undeniable fact. My ex who took several trips to Cuba in a claer violation of the travel ban (complete with her request to stamp a Cuban entry visa in her passport -- which the Cuban generally did not do to the US travellers) was apalled by the persistence of patriarchal relations there, and the tolerance of those relations by the authorities. But she was even more apalled by the some of her fellow travellers who, in the name of poorly conceived "solidarity," tried to hush her when she voiced her criticism of those patriarchal relations. It is true that both Cuban and the Chinese revelutions eliminated the conditions that forced women into prostitution, selling their own children, etc. It is also true that virtually all ML government instituted some form of "women liberation" that eliminated the worst cases of patriarchal exploitation of women. But, at the same time, they instituted a milder form of patriarchy, one that allowed women to drive a tractor or truck, but effectivelly barred them from leadership. How many women could you count in any ML government? More to the point, the attitudes espoused by these governments toward sex were often puritannical and petty bourgeois -- and that is reflected in their treatement of anything that can be considered "kinky" -- not just prostitution, but homosexuality as well. Not to mention the fact that anything smacking of sex, nudity, and erotica was censored. Believe me, Louis, I am talking from personal experience -- during the Cultural Revolution in China, women who look too feminine were often accused of being "imperialist puppets," courtesans and what not. What does it have to do with economic conditions forcing women into prostitution that were eliminated for good some twenty or so years before the Cultural Revolution? cheers, wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 POLITICS IS THE SHADOW CAST ON SOCIETY BY BIG BUSINESS. AND AS LONG AS THIS IS SO, THE ATTENUATI0N OF THE SHADOW WILL NOT CHANGE THE SUBSTANCE. - John Dewey
[PEN-L:11753] Prostitution and Lumpenproletariat
To continue my discussion, I lived in Puerto Rico for three years and worked as an Analista de Planificacion for the Planning Board of the government of Puerto Rico. One of my assignments was to develop methodological approaches (adductive rather than a priori) for qualitatively and quantitatively assessing the linkages and leakages (from final demand, tax base etc) of aspects of the underground economy (drugs, prostitution and bolitos). In Puerto Rico, with about 4.2 million people on the island, about 2/3 of the population is receiving some form of "pagos transferencias" (transfer payments). The typical places where prostitution goes on are well known. About 80% of the prostitutes are non-Puerto Rican (Columbianas, Dominicanas, Haitians) and of course there are males also involved in prostitution with the percentage who are non-Puerto Rican being even higher. We were interested in such things as how many women or males typically live together (average six per dwelling), how long they typically stay on the island (average 8 months), how much they typically make during their stay (average $36,000), how much of their earnings are repatriated (average 80%), how much of their earnings are taken by pimps or other "overhead" (average 60%) and many other questions. I had funds available to go out and pay women for their time so they would not be losing money; they all knew I wasn't a cop and would never turn them in (some who had become friends would tell others that I would never turn them in or assist the police in any way). I did not find these women and men seeing themselves as "self- valorizing" themselves or practicing a form of "self-determination" or "empowered" in any meaningful way. Sure some would mock the tricks and take delite in getting over on them but there was always a look of sadness and expression of marginal pleasure out of a situation of desperation and hopelessness. In all cases, I would give my number and say, if you ever need any help with the bureaucracy (for access to services) or any help I am able to give please call--and many did. (Often academics do studies with no inclination or care as to what happens to the "subjects"). Prostitutes by virtue of their conditions of work, atomization (atomization is consciously designed to keep them powerless and unorganized) and isolation, attitudes (many were extremely anti- communist and anti-socialist eventhough they sometimes had a hard time articulating what it was about communism and socialism they opposed) typically belong more in the lumpenproletariat than in the classical proletariat. Of course there are many in the lumpenproletariat who have progressive sympathies and have played progressive roles while there are also some in the proletariat who are reactionary and have inhibited progressive struggles. I think that much of Franz Fanon's work helped to break down some of the anti- lumpenproletariat biases and stereotypes common in the left and that he was right on in suggesting that the potentially progressive sympathies and roles played among some in the lumpenproletariat have been grossly underestimated. On the other hand, it was not because of petit-bourgeois morality that the Chinese and Cuban revolutions de jure abolished prostitution as one of the first official acts and worked to abolish it de facto. They understood that prostitution is about much more than the "exchange of use of genitals"; it is about commodification, which under capitalism is more about degradation and depreciation than "self-valorization" and "empowerment"; it can cause all sorts of problems in families (imagine the husband goes home and after giving his wife STDs from a visit to a prostitute says "But honey, I was only aiding in the empowerment and self-valorization of a fellow worker who just happens to be selling a different kind of product but essentially doing what I do at work"), for the families of prostitutes as well as prostitutes themselves (drug addiction, pimps). Further, in the Chinese and Cuban revolutions, there was an understanding based on bloody experience that revolution requires dedication, focus, discipline, sacrifice, compromise, resoluteness etc and that these pathetic and marginal and individualistic (read "atomistic") attempts at "liberation and empowerment" generally lead nowhere except to even more marginalization and powerlessness and alienation. BTW what is this stuff about "atomistic Marxism"? On the inscription on Marx's grave at Highgate it says: "The Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." "Workers of all countries unite" It doesn't say "workers of all countries do your own individualistic and atomistic thing and cut the best deal for you
[PEN-L:11762] Re: Prostitution and Lumpenproletariat
Response (Jim C) I have a suggestion for all those males online--and any females--who think that prostitution is just like any other job: Try it for yourself. Try having a stranger's penis in you wherever he wants it. Try going out with some freak in a car not knowing whether or not you're coming back or what kind of freak scene awaits you. Try going for regular check-ups (if you can afford it) wondering if you have just contracted a fatal disease. Try having a pimp beat the shit out of you because you didn't turn enough tricks. Try having cops shake you down--for money or sex. Petit-bourgeois morality? No petit-bourgeois morality is a bunch of isolated, self-indulgent, know-it-all "House Marxists" and "House progressives" attempting to justify their own elitist petit- bourgeois notions by summarily dismissing away some real pain and suffering with bullshit theories in search of anecdotes and exceptions to some brutal rules. Patriarchy is the foundation of prostitution: take her when you need her, how you need her, for as long as you need her, no commitment, just like buying liver at the Safeway. This, in my opinion is absolutely sick and disgusting. "House Marxists of the World Unite; You Have Nothing to Lose Except Your Pet Theories Rationalizing Your Comfortable Isolated Existences." Jim Craven Jim C: On the pain of repeating of what has already been said in this discussion: Work conditions vary enormously in the sex industry. Without denying the validity of your Puerto Rico observations, the conditions you describe are general working conditons in underdeveloped countries, rather than specific to sex industry. I suspect that the way people are treated in sweatshops are no different from the treatment of sex workers in those countries. Do you think that sweatshop workers are not desperate, look forward to do their work, and do not want to use their money to get out of the sweatshop? But what is true of the developing countries, is not necessarily true of the developed ones. While I was a grad student at Rutgers, some of my colleagues did ethnographies of sex work (not all of it involved genital or oral sex, there was also "exotic" dancing, or phone sex) -- and what clearly transpired form those enthnographies (based on the reports I heard) was that women who did it, often reported choosing that occupation over other options mainly for two reasons: higher pay and greater occupational autonomy that included the ability to set their own work schedules and the ability to accept or refuse work. OTOH, most of these informants were white women working in suburban New Jersey. I suspect that a Black or Latina sex worker working, say, in the Bronx would report a somewhat different experience. The bottom line is that sex workers tend to be viewed (including by themselves) through the lenses of the social status of their occupation rather than through the objective conditions of their work. That social status, in turn, is rooted in the patriarchal petty bourgeois morality that, as some argue, resents the fact that women have a choice of their sex partners (a choice that women in bourgeois marriages typically do not have) -- and thus stigmatizes these women to ostracize them from the mainstream society. From that standpoint, the social status of sex work is an attempt to prevent a "dangerous example" (women choosing to have sex with men rather than the other way around) from influencing "respectable" women in patriarchal bourgeois society. We should put aside the petty bourgeois notion that "sex for money" is abhorrent, and focus on work conditions in the sex industry. Much if not most of the negative effects of sex work you mention -- disease, drug addiction, abuse, emotional strain -- result not from the "sexual" nature of the industry, but from unsafe or exploitative work conditions. As far as "degradation" or "depreciation" that you mention are concerned, some of it is surely related to work conditions, but I suspect that people tend to confuse it it with role playing that is the main commodity, if not the essence, of the sex industry. Playing a "submissive" role in the sex business is not much different from playing, say, the role of a servant in a theatrical play: both involve a symbolic enactment of unequal power relations for the enjoyment of the audience. Everything else (meaning occupational safety standards) being equal, a sex worker playing a submissive role is no more degraded than an actress playing a maid or a servant in a theatre -- provided that both are remunerated adequately for their performances. To summarize: I am not arguing that there is no exploitation of women doing sex work -- there is plenty, especially of the non-white workers. But
[PEN-L:11765] Re: Prostitution and Lumpenproletariat
On Thu, 14 Aug 1997, James Michael Craven wrote: I did not find these women and men seeing themselves as "self- valorizing" themselves or practicing a form of "self-determination" or "empowered" in any meaningful way. Sure some would mock the tricks and take delite in getting over on them but there was always a look of sadness and expression of marginal pleasure out of a situation of desperation and hopelessness. Jim:Once again since I have no idea what you mean by "self-valorization" and I'm convinced you have had no idea what I mean by it, I hardly know how to evaluate your "evidence". Since I rather doubt on the basis of your last post that we might agree about what "meaningful" empowerment or self-detrmination might be, I can wonder if I might come to the same conclusions from the same interviews. Given what I do mean by self-valorization (which I spelled out briefly in my last response) I would hope that things are not as bleak in Puerto Rico as you paint them, but they may well be. I'm willing to assume that there are any number of very desperate situations in the world of prostitution, as there are in so many other domains of work. Prostitutes by virtue of their conditions of work, atomization (atomization is consciously designed to keep them powerless and unorganized) and isolation, attitudes (many were extremely anti- communist and anti-socialist eventhough they sometimes had a hard time articulating what it was about communism and socialism they opposed) typically belong more in the lumpenproletariat than in the classical proletariat. Of course there are many in the lumpenproletariat who have progressive sympathies and have played progressive roles while there are also some in the proletariat who are reactionary and have inhibited progressive struggles. I think that much of Franz Fanon's work helped to break down some of the anti- lumpenproletariat biases and stereotypes common in the left and that he was right on in suggesting that the potentially progressive sympathies and roles played among some in the lumpenproletariat have been grossly underestimated. Jim: 1.Certainly those that seek to control prostitutes try (and often succeed) in keeping them seperated from each other, atomized as it were. On the other hand, clearly in some places at some times, prostitutes have been able to organize themselves and have fought for and won better working conditions, etc. What is needed is an analysis of the conditions under which and the means through which some have succeeded and others failed to do this, not just a focus on failure and a dismissal of success. 2.I don't think the "classical proletariat" - "lumpenproletariat" dichotomy is very useful, especially not now, perhaps not ever. I certainly don't see what we gain in understanding of the exploitation and struggles of prostitutes through the use of these terms. Recent Marxist studies of 18th C England have shown how the "criminal class" usually lumped in with the lumpen was actually made up of ordinary workers. (See Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged, and also Albion's Fatal Tree by Linebaugh and other Thompson ex-students.) At any rate all you have done is label them, not used the concept to reveal anything. On the other hand, it was not because of petit-bourgeois morality that the Chinese and Cuban revolutions de jure abolished prostitution as one of the first official acts and worked to abolish it de facto. They understood that prostitution is about much more than the "exchange of use of genitals"; it is about commodification, which under capitalism is more about degradation and depreciation than "self-valorization" and "empowerment"; it can cause all sorts of problems in families (imagine the husband goes home and after giving his wife STDs from a visit to a prostitute says "But honey, I was only aiding in the empowerment and self-valorization of a fellow worker who just happens to be selling a different kind of product but essentially doing what I do at work"), for the families of prostitutes as well as prostitutes themselves (drug addiction, pimps). Jim:Pretending that I think prostitution is just about fucking and then making fun of it is not a convincing way of arguing. Concocting a ridiculous scene and then making fun of it does not consistute a serious argument either, however entertaining. Obviously prostitution is about "commodification","degradation" and "depreciation", as is every other sale of labor power. Self-valorization and empowerment are things people sometimes manage to accomplish despite and against these things. What I don't understand about the whole trend of your comments is your continual tendency to ridicule or dismiss the possibility that such accomplishment CAN happen. Why are you so d
[PEN-L:11767] Re: Prostitution and Lumpenproletariat
On Thu, 14 Aug 1997, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: To summarize: I am not arguing that there is no exploitation of women doing sex work -- there is plenty, especially of the non-white workers. But that does not mean that sex work work should be abolished (as they did in Cuba or China which -- I strongly suspect-- was an expression of patriarchal petty bourgeois morality than anything else), just as the dismal conditions in the "Satanic Mills" did not justify abolishing textile industry altogether. It means that sex work should be treated and protected in the same way as any other kind of work. This seems nuts to me. After Castro took over, the government was faced with the appalling legacy of Cuba as the fleshpot of the United States. It was used for sex tours the way that the Philippines is used today by American or Japanese tourists. In the current issue of the Village Voice there is an article on a Queens travel agency that takes men to a 10-night sex tour of the Philippines. The article states: "But if Big Apple is withering, the sex-tour industry is thriving.Fueled by giant disparities in the global economy and the ever increasing ease of travel, international gender exploitation has blossomed into what may be as much as a billion-dollar industry, according to ECPAT, an international children's rights group that says its name stands for End Child Prostitution Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes. A growing number of companies organize trolling expeditions of the sex industry, which group up around Western military men in poor Asian countries. Advertising in magazines such as Asia File and Soldier of Fortune, most will also happily send you videos and related merchandise... But the draw is not just plentiful cheap sex, but also the chance to feel desirable. Filipina 'ladies are interested in all American men regardless of age, weight, or looks,' promises Bushwhackers, a Nevada-based tour company. 'It's like being an attractive woman in America,' one satisified customer has been quoted as saying. 'You look like Tom Cruise and you're that rich!' Sex-tour leaders also tap into plain old hostility toward 'American bitches who won't give you the time of day,' as one brochure puts it. Tales of toe kissing, hand laundering, and other forms of Asian-female subservience are juxtaposed with nasty swipes at feminist foes of sex tourism, whom Alan Gaynor of Philippine Adventure Tours has called 'a bunch of jealous, frustrated trouble-makers who don't know the truth.'" My guess is that the Philippine revolutionary movement calls for the end of such sex-tours and would probably ban prostitution on taking power. This sort of goal has nothing to do with the movement in the United States to legalize prostitution. Many women in the United States who are in the sex industry put forward arguments that we are hearing here and should be judged on their own merits. The question of prostitution in countries like pre-revolutionary China and Cuba and the Philippines of today involves all sorts of issues related to colonial oppression and require a different approach. It would be foolhardy for Western Marxists to rationalize what is going on in Thailand, India or the Philippines. Louis Proyect
[PEN-L:11770] recycling prostitution
Are we getting a bit repetitive here? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11763] Prostitution
At the time of liberation in China in 1949 there were over 100,000 child (under 14 years old) "prostitutes" in Shanghai alone. And those nasty "petit-bourgeois" and "patriarchical" fighters, who had seen and suffered so much, just couldn't get it. They just couldn't see how these children were merely engaging in "alternative forms of work", "free voluntary exchanges". They had some crazy "petit-bourgois" and "patriarchical" notions that these "prostitutes"--often kept through opium addiction-- were not providing some kind of real service. They had these "petit-bourgeois" notions that along with prostitution came other ills (drugs, criminal organizations like the Triads) that not only degraded women but also caused desperately-need resources to be diverted away from the business of building a new China. The same with the Cubans; they just didn't appreciate all of the positive multiplier effects that came with Cuba being turned into one big whorehouse prior to the Revolution. Again, for all of you guys who think that prostitution is simply some kind of alternative life and work arrangement, I suggest you try it-- just so you won't be accused of "a priori" reasoning of course. Jim Craven *---* * "Those who take the most from the table,* * James Craventeach contentment. * * Dept of Economics Those for whom the taxes are destined, * * Clark College demand sacrifice.* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd. Those who eat their fill, * * Vancouver, Wa. 98663speak to the hungry, * * (360) 992-2283 of wonderful times to come. * * Fax: (360) 992-2863Those who lead the country into the abyss,* * [EMAIL PROTECTED] call ruling difficult, * * for ordinary folk." (Bertolt Brecht) * * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
[PEN-L:11760] Re: Prostitution and Lumpenproletariat
Jim C: On the pain of repeating of what has already been said in this discussion: Work conditions vary enormously in the sex industry. Without denying the validity of your Puerto Rico observations, the conditions you describe are general working conditons in underdeveloped countries, rather than specific to sex industry. I suspect that the way people are treated in sweatshops are no different from the treatment of sex workers in those countries. Do you think that sweatshop workers are not desperate, look forward to do their work, and do not want to use their money to get out of the sweatshop? But what is true of the developing countries, is not necessarily true of the developed ones. While I was a grad student at Rutgers, some of my colleagues did ethnographies of sex work (not all of it involved genital or oral sex, there was also "exotic" dancing, or phone sex) -- and what clearly transpired form those enthnographies (based on the reports I heard) was that women who did it, often reported choosing that occupation over other options mainly for two reasons: higher pay and greater occupational autonomy that included the ability to set their own work schedules and the ability to accept or refuse work. OTOH, most of these informants were white women working in suburban New Jersey. I suspect that a Black or Latina sex worker working, say, in the Bronx would report a somewhat different experience. The bottom line is that sex workers tend to be viewed (including by themselves) through the lenses of the social status of their occupation rather than through the objective conditions of their work. That social status, in turn, is rooted in the patriarchal petty bourgeois morality that, as some argue, resents the fact that women have a choice of their sex partners (a choice that women in bourgeois marriages typically do not have) -- and thus stigmatizes these women to ostracize them from the mainstream society. From that standpoint, the social status of sex work is an attempt to prevent a "dangerous example" (women choosing to have sex with men rather than the other way around) from influencing "respectable" women in patriarchal bourgeois society. We should put aside the petty bourgeois notion that "sex for money" is abhorrent, and focus on work conditions in the sex industry. Much if not most of the negative effects of sex work you mention -- disease, drug addiction, abuse, emotional strain -- result not from the "sexual" nature of the industry, but from unsafe or exploitative work conditions. As far as "degradation" or "depreciation" that you mention are concerned, some of it is surely related to work conditions, but I suspect that people tend to confuse it it with role playing that is the main commodity, if not the essence, of the sex industry. Playing a "submissive" role in the sex business is not much different from playing, say, the role of a servant in a theatrical play: both involve a symbolic enactment of unequal power relations for the enjoyment of the audience. Everything else (meaning occupational safety standards) being equal, a sex worker playing a submissive role is no more degraded than an actress playing a maid or a servant in a theatre -- provided that both are remunerated adequately for their performances. To summarize: I am not arguing that there is no exploitation of women doing sex work -- there is plenty, especially of the non-white workers. But that does not mean that sex work work should be abolished (as they did in Cuba or China which -- I strongly suspect-- was an expression of patriarchal petty bourgeois morality than anything else), just as the dismal conditions in the "Satanic Mills" did not justify abolishing textile industry altogether. It means that sex work should be treated and protected in the same way as any other kind of work. cheers, wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 POLITICS IS THE SHADOW CAST ON SOCIETY BY BIG BUSINESS. AND AS LONG AS THIS IS SO, THE ATTENUATI0N OF THE SHADOW WILL NOT CHANGE THE SUBSTANCE. - John Dewey
[PEN-L:4303] child prostitution
I forwarded the press release about the child prostitution conference posted here to Tracy Quan, a prostitute and writer who is among the luminaries of Prostitutes of New York (PONY). Though she has a curiously Marxist-feminist past, Tracy is now a libertarian. Doug Henwood Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 00:22:45 -0400 From: Tracy Quan Subject: [PEN-L:4235] Forced Labor: The Prostitution of Children (fwd) When commenting on the following press release, please don't use the "Tracy Quan said" format! I am very disgusted with the following information but I think you should all know about it. The idea of a special event to address child labor in the sex industry is utterly stupid. Child labor in the sex industry should be discussed and seen in its proper context. These people are cynically exploiting curiosity about a sexual subject so they can go to a conference. It's pretty obvious. If they want to end child labor, they should be discussing contraception, education and family size. Education for girls in developing countries isn't as erotic to these ne-er do wells, but it would actually do a lot more for the cause of eliminating child labor than a child sex *boondoggle* in Sweden I say "education for girls" because the (male and female) children of these future women are going to be in much better shape than are those whose mothers can't read. It is less likely that they will be deprived of an education. This press release refers to a "profitable" sex industry which exploits children. Ironic, isn't it. I'm sure the non-sexual industries which employ children are actually making a lot more money! Mining, manufacturing and agriculture? I think there's more money in these industries than there is in sex -- partly because you can export the products pretty easily.
[PEN-L:4235] Forced Labor: The Prostitution of Children
The M.P. Catherwood Library of the School of Industrial Labor Relations, Cornell University in partnership with the Child Labor Study Office of the Bureau of International Labor Affairs is releasing the following report for Internet access-- Forced Labor: The Prostitution of Children Like the previous two reports, this third document is freely accessible using the following: World-Wide Web-- http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/library/e_archive/ChildLabor/ FTP Site-- ftp.ilr.cornell.edu GOPHER gopher.ilr.cornell.edu The Press Release appears below. BUREAU OF INTERNATIONAL LABOR AFFAIRS USDL: 96-155 For Release: IMMEDIATE Tuesday, April 23, 1996 LABOR DEPARTMENT RELEASES REPORT ON CHILD PROSTITUTION AS A FORM OF FORCED LABOR The U.S. Labor Department's Bureau of International Labor Affairs today released its first-ever publication about the use of children in the commercial sex industry around the world. "Forced child prostitution is forced labor and child labor in their most exploitative forms," said Joaquin F. Otero, deputy under secretary for international affairs. The publication, entitled Forced Labor: The Prostitution of Children contains the proceedings from a symposium held at the Department of Labor in September 1995. The symposium focused on the forced trafficking and prostitution of young children, mostly girls, in the profitable commercial sex industry. Forced Labor includes a keynote address by Representative Joseph P. Kennedy, sponsor of the 1994 Child Sex Abuse Prevention Act, and reports by internationally recognized experts on children's rights and child prostitution. The report and symposium are part of the department's international child labor project, in existence for over two years, to research and report on the exploitation of child labor in all its forms. Two major reports were issued in 1994 and 1995, entitled By the Sweat and Toil of Children: The Use of Child Labor in U.S. Manufacturing and Mining Imports and By the Sweat and Toil of Children: The Use of Child Labor in U.S. Agricultural Imports and Forced and Bonded Child Labor. "The goal of the symposium and this publication is to focus public attention on the issue of child prostitution as a problem of international dimensions. As we look forward to the Stockholm World Congress on the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children this August, we hope that the proceedings from this important symposium will make a contribution to the ongoing international discussions and action towards the elimination of child sexual exploitation," said Otero. The congress is the first international meeting held for the specific purpose of developing strategies to fight commercial sexual exploitation of children. It is being organized by the Government of Sweden in cooperation with UNICEF, End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT), and the NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In August 1995, the Department of Labor signed an agreement with the International Labor Organization (ILO) to contribute funds to the ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labor. One of the major programs supported by the department helps children at risk of exploitation in Thailand's sex industry. Copies of Forced Labor: the Prostitution of Children are available free of charge from: International Child Labor Study Office, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, U.S. Department of Labor, Room S-1308, 200 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20210 Tel: (202) 208-4843Fax: (202) 219-4923. # # # Stuart M. Basefsky * Information Specialist * CORNELL UNIVERSITY * New York State School of* Industrial Labor Relations* 232 Ives Hall * Ithaca, NY 14853-3901 * * Telephone: (607) 255-2184 * Facsimile: (607) 255-9641 * E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]*
