On Tue, 12 Aug 1997, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> A comment on the issue whether women forced into prostitution have some choice.
>
> 1. The fact of depriving a person some choices, even those deemed important
> in our society, does not meet depriving that person of all choices. A
> prostitute may have little choice as far as the selection of her occupation
> is concerned, but she may still have considerable (or some) choice of how
> she practices that occupation, howe she compensates for power inequalities
> etc.
>
Wojtek:I'd say except in the case of outright slavery (e.g., comfort
women) those who enter the sex work market generally do have choices about
both whether to get in and how to behave once in. The conditions on those
choices, of course, vary enormously.
> 2. In fact, if we take the petty bourgeois morality out of the picture,
> prostitution is work just as any other work, except that a prostitute owns
> the means of production, and under most circumstances she is paid for the
> "product" rather than for the time. These arrangements may vary, however.
> In case of "Comfort Women" or Asiatic forms of sex work in general, where
> women are held in some form of capitivity or debt slavery, their work is
> more like hiring a labourer who must toil for the capitalit for a fixed
> period of time during which the capitalist squeezes as much use value out of
> the worker as possible.
Wojtek: I think the "owning of the means of production" assumes a
dualistic and alienated relationship between prostitutes and their
bodies/minds/personalities. I can't see any more reason for looking at
these aspects of prostitutes as "means of production" than I can for any
worker. These are parts of themselves, the parts they must sell the use of
in order to earn income, just like other workers sell the use of their
arms, hands, minds, personalities. We may not like the way these parts of
us are used/abused but that doesn't make them "means of production". They
are elements of our laborpower, our ability and willingness to work as
well as parts of our being and potential for all kinds of activity, not
just work.
Similarly, I think the usefulness of thinking about prostitutes as if
they are independent entrepreneurs selling "products", e.g. pleasure,
understanding or catharsis, is limited. Even when they are independent
operators, e.g. working without bosses (pimps or brothels), their
situation resembles that of "independent" peasants, truckers, and many
small "businesspeople". That is to say, while they have the FORM of a
capitalist, the CONTENT of their work and lives is that of workers: they
work, they earn enough income to reproduce themselves, but the banks,
landlords, moneylenders and the state take any surplus they might generate
and they rarely accumulate in the social sense of gathering enough money
to put others to work. Like housewives, their "unwaged" status hides the
working class character of their lives. Also like housewives, their work
is primarily the work of reproducing labor power.
>
> 3. Since we should not view prostitution differently from any other kind of
> work (in fact, the term 'sex worker' is more appropriate than petty
> bourgeois 'prostitute')
Wojtek:Personally I like the term prostitute, precisely for its
connotations. Instead of casting it aside in the case of sex workers, I
prefer to apply it to all of us who sell some aspect of ourselves to
survive (as I suggested in a previous post).
- whatever can be said of how workers deal with the
> lack of choice should apply for sex workers as well. That problem was
> specifically addressed by Michael Borawoy in his book _Manufacturing
> Consent_ -- which is an ethnography of how manual workers in Chicago area
> deal with the very limited choices they have regarding their work. The
> bottom line is that they usually develop a quite elaborate informal system
> that allows them to adapt (at least emotionally) to a situation that
> significantly affects their lives (how much their earn what hours they have
> to work, what they have to do) -- but over which they have very little
> choice. That is, depriving them of some, even important, choices does not
> mean depriving them of all choices.
>
Wojtek: Yes, the parallel is a good one. But I think such informal (and
sometimes formal) networks often go far beyond just emotional adaptation
and come to provide all kinds of mutual aid and support, often laying the
groundwork for more formal and collective forms of struggle. In the case
of prostitutes such networks probably predated, to some degree, the
formation of formal groupings who fight for their rights.
> 4. Given the informal nature of sex work and the absence of any written
> rules, a sex worker has a greater latitude in negotiating with her employer
> how the work will be performed.
Wojtek: In the first place, you are talking here about a sub-set of
prostitutes. There are lots of prostitutes with quite formal work
relations, e.g., those who work in brothels sanctioned by and regulated by
the state. In the second place, how much "latitude" they have depends on
the conditions and the balance of power between the worker and employer.
As many horror stories suggest, the balance is often not favorable.
That latitude is missing from more formal
> arrangement of non-sexual work, where work is done "by the book" and any
> changes must be first reflected in changing the formal rules, procedures and
> policies. Sex work is one of the few areas that is resistant to
> taylorisation -- in that respect a sex worker is in a relatively more
> advantegous postion vis a vis other employees whose work has been deskilled.
> >From that standpoint -- a sex worker may have a greater choice over
> performing her work than most employees: a choice of the client/employer, a
> choice of what kind of work she will do for that client/employer, and a
> choice of how much she will be paid for that work.
>
Wojtek: The notion of prostitute as skilled worker is well taken and does
suggest that we can bring to bear on our understanding a lot of what we
know about the power of skilled workers in other areas of industry: their
power to withhold labor, to determine how labor will be exercized, etc.
But again, conditions certainly vary enormously. The only good source of
information on this is the testimony of prostitutes themselves, and their
clients, which lay out the intimate details of their interactions.
> Of course, that may not apply to the Asiatic forms of sex work, where women
> are held in captivity and forced to perform any kind of sex work requested
> by her employer or the client.
>
> The informality of sex work has its price -- a sex worker has virtually no
> protection against abusive employers.
>
Wojtek: Don't generalize from some cases. Not all "Asiatic forms of sex
work" involve "captivity" and slavery. You run the risk of being called
racist. Or at least of repeating Marx's ignorant claims about an
"Asiatic mode of production". There is sexual slavery in Asia; there is
sexual slavery in the US and elsewhere, just as there are lots of
prostitutes working under other conditions everywhere.
> >From that standpoint, de-legalization of sex work is probably more
> advantageous for the worker beacuse:
> - it gives her more control of her work than any formal arrangemnt, usually
> governed by the rules of capitalist exploitation;
> - it precludes the enforcement of formal arrangements (cf. the Asiatic forms
> of sex work) that favour the typically male employer by giving him legal
> means to control the means of production (i.e. the worker's body);
> - it it pushes the price of her work up.
>
Wojtek: See previous comments.
> 5. Another question, to which I have no answer, is how important the choice
> of sex partners is. As I understand it, in most Asian countries women have
> little choice in that respect in general, as marriages are typically
> pre-arranged by their families. In that respect, the distinction between
> sex work (or prostitution) and marriage is blurred if at all existent. In
> both cases, it is the family, or rather its male head, who materially
> benefits from sexual services his daughter(s) perform(s) to other men.
>
Wojtek: Although cultural patterns vary enormously (do we have any
informed anthropologists on the list?) I think it is very much an
overstatement to say that ehe distinction between prostitution and
marriage is "blurred if at all existent" --regardless of the parallels we
may find. These are quite different relationships and often coexistent. In
Thailand, for example, prostitutes are often married and supporting
families at the same time they are working in Patpong. The
interrelationship between their work in these two arenas is certainly
worth studying, but they should not be collapsed into each other.
> In Western culture, the woman supposedly has a choice of her sex partner
> until she marries. After that, she is expected to perform sexual services
> to her husband, only him, and whenever he wants. The concept of marital
> rape is a very new one indeed, and, to my knowledge, is still unknown in
> many European countries.
Wojtek:The concept of "marital rape" is not unknown, but women have not
everwhere the power to use the courts against it.
So what differentiates marital sex for sex work in
> Occidental culture is: (i) that the woman usually has a greater choice as a
> sex worker than a wife (ii) the forms of remuneration differ from a fixed
> sum to a loosely defined share of the man's income.
>
> Now, if retaining a choice of sex partners were very important, most women
> would not marry, would they?
Wojtek: How important it is clearly varies among people. You conclusion
follows only if its importance superseeds any and all other considerations
which might work in the opposite direction, e.g., need for a perceived
steady income and/or protection and/or social acceptance.
If that reasoning is correct, retaining the
> choice of sex partners does not seem too important.
Wojtek: Seem "too important" to whom? I don't understand the point you are
trying to make here. Look, sex is ONE aspect of life. People make choices
about work and lifestyles for all sorts of reasons, stirred by all sorts
of motivations. They elaborate networks of relationships with other people
of various kinds to meet a variety of needs. We are all, always, weighing
and balancing the conditions and costs of meeting some needs vs those of
others, ("calculating" opportunity costs economists like to say) whether
consciously or unconsciously. Novelists, psychologists and biographers try
to sort these things out for individuals (as do we all). They are NOT easy
to make generalizations about without taking into account all the
complexities.
But since the unknown
> variables here are the tradeoff between choice and access (easy access to
> one partner vs. not so easy access to many partners) and the tradeoff
> between legitimate sex with one partner vs. illegitimate sex with many
> partners -- I leave that problem open.
>
> regards,
>
>
>
> wojtek sokolowski
> institute for policy studies
> johns hopkins university
> baltimore, md 21218
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> voice: (410) 516-4056
> fax: (410) 516-8233
>
Enough.
Harry
............................................................................
Harry Cleaver
Department of Economics
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712-1173 USA
Phone Numbers: (hm) (512) 478-8427
(off) (512) 475-8535 Fax:(512) 471-3510
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cleaver homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/index.html
Chiapas95 homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html
Accion Zapatista homepage:
http://www.utexas.edu/students/nave/
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