Why I Love Bob Herbert, part 8472

155 thoughts on Why I Love Bob Herbert, part 8472

1. “Hey, who put this elephant in the living room?

   “And why is it wearing those impractical shoes?”

2. Um, That Sherri’s Ranch paragraph is beyond repulsive.

   And I had forgotten (though now remember) that the Amish killer targeted the girls. I worked at a newspaper at the time, and I don’t recall any of the national copy making a big mention of that. It should have.

3. I am guardedly optimistic that a few doors of opportunity have been opened in the discussions of gender and race that have emerged in this election cycle. No doubt the media will largely attempt to pit these identities against each other and present a seeming clash between the degree of severity or worthiness of various forms of oppression. No doubt some candidates will reveal much of themselves in whether they attempt to capitalize on these emergent issues as a wedge of great utility or instead push us toward real change through helping us to see that we can acknowledge injustice in all of its forms and keep more than one idea in our head at a time. So, guarded yes… But optimistic in that the way these race,gender, and class discussions play out in the coming couple of weeks in the democratic primaries will tell us a lot about whether Obama or Clinton are the real thing. And whether change will be more than a poster graphic.

4. No doubt some candidates will reveal much of themselves in whether they attempt to capitalize on these emergent issues as a wedge of great utility or instead push us toward real change through helping us to see that we can acknowledge injustice in all of its forms and keep more than one idea in our head at a time.

   The responses from the Obama and HRC camps concerning the latest round of flaps have been refreshing.

5. Hear hear — happy to see that they are at least trying to keep from being pitted against one another by a media controlled by the one group of people who have nothing whatsoever to lose and a lot of entertainment to gain by succeeding: white men.

   I’m really gravitating toward wanting to put Obama and Clinton in a sci-fi genetic combination machine, slapping them together down the middle, and voting for the result. A thumb in the eye of the extreme right-wing, AND a thumb in the eye of The Establishment. That’s win-win!

6. I really want to like Bob Herbert more than I do. I think it’s amazing to have a mainstream male commentator talking, not just about “a less level playing field” but about the violent and deadly misogyny that goes unchallenged.
   However, I think it is especially important for male allies to be responsive to women and to listen to the voices of the women that they are writing about. Considering that Nevada sex workers, the Sex Workers Outreach Project and the blog, Bound Not Gagged have put out several press releases over past year challenging Bob Herbert’s collumns on the subject as degrading, simplistic and xenophobic and he has, to my knowledge, never addressed their concerns but continued to talk about them as if they were little children and not adult women with opinions on their own lives, I’m not so into Bob Herbert.
   It’s a shame too, because we really need male allies who are able to not pull punches in calling out the ways in which sexism harms women.

7. It’s a good article and he brings up great points, but he lost me for a good while during the Nevada/prostitution/sex work paragraphs. He’s assuming that sex work is always degrading and “dehumanizing” to women, and implying that they did not choose to work there (the alternative being that they were forced, basically). He’s looking at the sex work institution from afar, and getting a typical removed view. That’s also a part of misogyny- not allowing women to choose their own paths in life, and immediately prejudging their condition based on what they do
   Same for porn, by the way.

8. WRT Nevada’s sex industry–it’s worth noting that when Heidi Fleiss wanted to create a brothel for female customers, brothel owners pitched a fit–George Flint, of the Nevada Brothel Owners Association, is not happy about this at all. It’s also worth noting that a prostitute, under Nevada law, is referred to as “she” and requires annual cervical exams. All well and good BUT if this nation wasn’t so misogynist and accepting of male entitlement, you’d see acceptance of women who are overtly sexual on their own terms. You wouldn’t run into this assumption that of course prostitutes are women, and customers are men because that’s just the way it is and a reversal would make the baby Jesus cry.

   /derail

9. I also have to say that I’m really skeptical about the invocation of the magic word “choice” to defend prostitution when I’ve seen pro-anorexia websites use it the same way. It’s my CHOICE!!!!!!!!! And Feminism Is About Choices!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

   Is that one on the bingo card anywhere?

10. Totally agree with Janis in #9. Just because someone says it’s his/her CHOICE to be a bank robber, a terrorist, a homicidal killer, a prostitute, a porn industry worker…. that makes the CHOICE and that “profession” acceptable and legitimate?? Some may have obvious and tangible negative consequences on others, but worse are those with subtle, insidious, and intangible negative consequences. Wake up!

11. I would hesitate to class prostitutes as mentally ill the way anorexics are. Or mentally ill in any way based soley upon their occupation.

    However, I’m skeptical of how freely we make such choices in a society that constrains women’s sexuality as much as this one does. This isn’t to say that some prostitutes don’t freely choose their profession, just that the views of womens’ sexuality (a service to be provided, and damn you’re an uptight jealous bitch if you don’t buy in!!1!) colors and informs how we view ourselves and sex.

12. He’s assuming that sex work is always degrading and “dehumanizing” to women, and implying that they did not choose to work there.

    Is renting out your vagina, etc. to eight or more strangers a shift empowering and inspiring? I’d like to hear from the sex workers themselves on this.

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14. I think Herbert’s firm and consistently progressive stance against pimps and pornography make him one of bravest men in the mainstream media today.

    Love him!

15. Sheelzebub,

    I haven’t noticed you around the ‘sphere much lately. Nice to see you, again!

16. I think a large number of sex workers are ones that don’t get to choose their clients. If you don’t want your sex-worker to be able to choose to refuse you, you are a misogynist. And I think maybe those are the sex workers Bob Herbert is worried about.
    To imagine that we would even allow women to be put into a job where they can’t choose who they have sex with… well.

    I am happy for the sex workers that are happy with their job, and if they feel empowered, that’s great. But I bet they choose their clientele.

17. Herbert:
    Bound, Not Gagged is a blog by women in the sex industry. You can search “bob herbert” on their site and find their responses to Bob Herbert’s previous articles. The women who work on Bound Not Gagged also work for the sex worker rights organizations, SWOP and The Erotic Service Provider’s Union. Sex workers have spoken about Herbert’s assertions. They have spoken on their blogs, in letters to the editor and editorial responses and by organizing rallies and protests. Spread Magazine, a magazine by and for people in the sex industry also has had articles about the topic. There are plenty of places where a person can hear sex workers’ voices on the subject but I suppose it much easier for outsiders to make broad generalizations about the lives of a diverse group of women when they pretend that these women don’t have voices.

18. Is renting out your vagina, etc. to eight or more strangers a shift empowering and inspiring?

    How many jobs are empowering and inspiring? Did you take your job because it uplifts your soul? If so, more power to you. Me, I took my job for a variety of intersecting reasons including but not limited to pay, opportunity, and personal preference. For the people who choose sex work, I’d imagine some similar personal calculus was involved. (One might say that no woman can freely, truly choose sex work – which, obviously, you didn’t, but it does happen – except there are plenty of people writing in plenty of venues who explicitly say they did choose it. Which, as far as I can see, means one has to claim that all those people are either deluded or liars. Which strikes me as impolite.)

19. Just because someone says it’s his/her CHOICE to be a bank robber, a terrorist, a homicidal killer, a prostitute, a porn industry worker….

    Good to see that you’re very concerned about the welfare of those sex workers, even though you think of them as lower and eviller than shit.

    It’s much more fun to talk about hookers but we’re sort of overlooking his bigger and much more accurate point: “Sexism in its myriad destructive forms permeates nearly every aspect of American life. For many men, it’s the true national pastime, much bigger than baseball or football.”

20. To focus merely on whether or not prostitution is a choice or an act engaged in by those with little choice I think clouds the issue.

    Frankly, sex work is difficult, strenuous and often dangerous. Unfortunately, because we live in a misogynist social system, prostitution as the embodiment of all that is feared about women (sexuality, lack of permanent dependency) if they are allowed their full humanity.

    Most all work that women perform is either sorely underpaid, underappreciated, discounted and discredited and even completely unpaid (i.e., housework, family care).

    I often wonder if prostitution would even exist in a truly just social system where honesty and fairness prevail and buying another individual would seem strange and unnatural.

    Until that time, I support the rights of sex workers, hope to hell they gain a voice and have read written work by many of them with keen interest.

    But, prostitution and sex work in general operate in an unjust system. Workers and those in control employ the ideal of the woman as sexual object for profit and many women are exploited by the same dehumanization.

21. I would hate to see “prostitution” be the one theme everyone takes away from this article.
    Because even if you have issues with that part (and I’m not even sure he was criticizing sex workers – I interpreted it as condemning johns and the women-as-commodities worldview), everything else is SPOT ON. He is an amazing man.

22. I think Bob Herberts repeated statements about sex work are indicative of an overall problem I have with, a problem that I see often in male feminists (for example, I see it in Derrick Jensen a lot), although I think he says some amazingly true things about the pervasiveness of sexism). In their eagerness to defend the feminist cause they assert that there is One Feminist Opinion on an issue that not only are feminists deeply divided about but many women feel personally conflicted about. It is easy for men, viewing a sexist society from the outside, to see things in black and white whereas for many women trying to survive inside this system it’sgot to be much more grey.

    I also find the whole tone of these conversations kind of patronizing.
    male feminist: This is an example of how women are horribly oppressed!
    women: well, yes, but it’s more complicated than that
    male feminist: no it isn’t. It’s really simple. you are oppressed by this.
    women: um…well..
    male feminist: *sticks his fingers in his ears and goes la la la*

23. I also found the comments about sex work to be disturbing. It’s not because I don’t think there are problems in the sex industry — I do. I also don’t like the sex industry or the fact that it exists.

    What I hate is when people confuse that with the issue of legalization, which I think Herbert did here, as are many on this thread. Decriminalization is not just about making money, though obviously that’s a part of it. It’s also, when done properly, about safety. And rather than just condemning the industry all together, that is the kind of reform we need to work for. I think that when you argue against decriminalization, you do enter the territory of arguing against sex workers. Their jobs being illegal does not make them safer. Are we more concerned about morals and feminist ideals or actual women? I’ll pick the actual women. These are the facts: the sex industry exists and will exist in our society for a long time to come whether or not we legalize and regulate it. And criminalization puts women in even greater danger than they would necessarily face in an already dangerous industry.

    AJ, your comment repulsed me. Comparing sex workers to killers? This is why sex workers are so distrusting of feminists (though some sex workers are of course feminists, most aren’t), and I certainly don’t think that we’re going to be able to work together by hurling atrocious insults.

    All that being said, I appreciate the rest of the column. And I do find the condescending section about sex work to be a shame.

24. Ah, of course. Not sure why I bother, but…

    Various actual sex workers, each with their own opinions and experiences, do not like this fellow, or the way he speaks to or about sex workers. See Bound, Not Gagged for more on that…

    It always warms my heart to see people coming to universal conclusions about the choices of people in sex work, and how real or valid those choices might be for the whole of every soul in the monolith.

    Also always nice to see those who did make such a choice likened to murderers and terrorists. We’ve killed oh so many people in cold blood after all.

    And why yes, decriminalization might normalize prostitution somewhat, though I doubt it would too much, after all, social stigmas die hard. But making it illegal has really put a stop to it, hasn’t it? And it’s done so much to actually help the prostitutes, willing or unwilling! I mean, it’s really cut down on their dehumanization, right? It’s really made sure they are accorded the same consideration as other human beings on so many levels…I mean, that’s why we see so many prostitutes not ever hesitating to go to the cops when they are beaten, raped, robbed or harassed, right? And when they do bother, they get justice, right? Theft of Services indeed!

    And lets not forget the lovely portrayal of the city of Las Vegas and the State of Nevada, where most people are not involved in prostitution, and have more anti-trafficking legislation that many other states do.

25. Ok, to clarify, I agree that Herbert is not great on the sex work issue. I think it’s interesting, though, that in a column where sex work got a paragraph or two, that’s all we’re talking about.

26. Jill, because it is how he frames so many things…sexism, yes, let us discuss. Can we do so without bringing Nevada into it and demeaning sex workers in the process? Sure. It can be done. He did not even need to mention any of that to get his point across, in fact, his point was lost by many when doing so.

27. I mean, why not this approach…why aren’t more wanna-be presidents discussing the roots of sexism found, say, oh, in organzied religion? Catholicism openly discriminates against women, has turned a blind eye to spousal and child abuse for years, as well as child molestation and rape, propogates the virgin/whore brand of sexism….yet, hum, they are much harder to take on, because they are powerful. And sure, the touched on sexism in mainstream media, but not with the chilling salaciousness of his brothel stories, because they are harder to take on and have power. After all, who signs his check?

28. Last night wolf blitzer called the democratic primary in Michigan “a beauty contest.” I wanted to throw something after I heard that. Just listen intently to the language and alot is revealed.

    In the case of sex workers, I think actively engaging in something that can give one a STD or AIDS is risky job. I remember hearing the owner of the Bunny Ranch say that he tells the women that they can refuse to have a female client if they are not comfortable, but I have never heard him say they can refuse a man. I find the lining up of the women and having a man pick one out is disgusting.

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30. Ok, it’s clear that a lot of people in this thread have a stake in the sex worker debate. And it may be possible to sell sex in a way that is not personally degrading, with full freedom of choice and no history of abuse or coercion. But from what I know (which is not much, primarily only from friends who have been johns, a little bit of reading, and a whole lot of exposure to the male “happy hooker” fantasy) this is rarely the case. I’m with the much-missed Twisty Faster here – In a world overrun with mysogeny, sex work is a survival tool, not a career choice. Women and men who enter into that bargain should not be punished or insulted for it, but saying that there is nothing wrong with the sex trade is ridiculous. I’m horrified by what a socially acceptable “magnificent brothel” would look like. The culture of objectification and dehumanization of women is inescapable, and that is the point of his article.

    It’s shitty that a man has to say it before people believe it’s real, but THANK YOU Bob Hebert for calling out the Ol’ Boys Club that is American culture. It takes guts to stand up to the kyriarchy, no matter who you are.

31. Commenters are focusing on sex work because that is the hook to the column: It just so happens that the Democratic presidential candidates are campaigning this week in the misogyny capital of America: Nevada. Why, does Herbert say, is Nevada the misogyny capital of America? Prostitution. Further, he does not tie any of the other cited examples of misogyny to Nevada. To me, his column clearly implied the Dems should speak out about the evils of prostitution in Nevada.

32. Ren, I hear ya — and that comment wasn’t directed at you, it was just a general observation. When I read the column, that’s what stood out to me too. I considered commenting on it, but decided to just let it be, since I didn’t want it to become the entire focus of the conversation. I should have figured that would happen anyway.

    And as we’ve discussed here and elsewhere before, yeah, Herbert sucks on sex work — his view is simplistic and often condescending to sex workers. But that said, there are a whole lot of sex workers world-wide who are exploited and trafficked and mistreated, and who don’t have much of a voice or an outlet. I think the way Herbert covered it was incredibly poor, but I’m not sure the point is out of place in the column.

33. The column was about rampant misogyny in society and he used several examples to prove his point. Two of his examples where the vast mainstream appeal of prostitution and pornography, two rampantly misogynistic institutions.

    It took seven comments for the expected “but what about the women who Ch-ch- choose it!!” thread hi-jack. Now the conversation is completely derailed– again.

    Where is the criticism of the scumbags who dehumanize and abuse women and girls in all this? Oh yes, as always, they’re disappeared and thereby protected. What happened to the discussion about misogyny in our society? Gone.

    This thread may well be another example of how misogynist this society is.

34. Shorter Gayle: if only we could talk about sex workers without having them keep showing up and wanting to talk to us!

    I mean, yes, let’s talk about the scumbags and the dehumanization. But you can’t complain if you’re talking about sex workers and sex workers want to join the conversation.

35. Jill, I get what you are saying about how Bob Herbert’s simplistic and often patronizing take on sex work should totally overshadow his pretty consistent tendency to actually write about sexism in a major mainstream column and how awesome that is. I think that when we are stuck with day after day of sexist, dismissive crap in the newspaper that it’s goddamn refreshing to see a male writer acknowledge that sexism does exist and it is ugly.
    However, I don’t think we should therefore give Herbert a free pass. I think we need to hold our male allies to a higher standard because they are worth our energy to engage with. I also think that Herbert’s statements on sex work are different from many, but not all, of the statements from feminist women about sex work. Most anti-sex work feminists acknowledge and then attempt to refute arguments from within feminism about sex work. Herbert tries to pretend that there is no such argument, that he is expressing The One Feminist Opinion on the subject and that, especially coming from a man, is really messed up.
    We need to make sure our well-meaning male allies are not just falling into another, more subtle sexist trap: that of the white knight coming to save oppressed women. I think this is something that Herbert is quite prone to.

    To Bluish: yes, many women on this thread have a vested interest in the sex industry, because either they themselves work in that industry or they have friends or relatives that are current/former sex workers. Shouldn’t the voices of women who have personal involvement in an issue be privileged over the voices of those looking at the issue from the outside?

36. And can somebody point to ONE SINGLE PLACE in this entire discussion where ONE SINGLE PERSON said that sex work is “about choice”? please and thank you.
    Alternately, can we, for the love of god, please stop flinging random strawwomen in order to avoid actually engaging with the actual women who might have slightly more complex ideas about the work they do than some random newspaper columnist? thanks.

37. But really, who the fuck cares what I say on the subject? Why not read the words of women in the sex industry.
    The Sex Workers Outreach Project would be a good place to start
    Emi Koyama is a sex worker’s right advocate who has some really good essays on her website.
    The Network of Sex Work Projects, mostly focused on sex workers in the global South
    I already linked toBound not Gagged
    Since we’re talking about Las Vegas, the Vegas chapter of SWOP
    UBUNTU’s statement on sex workers and sexual assault.
    The Erotic Service Providers Union
    The Empower Foundation a group of Thai Sex Workers

38. Yes, I do think that the voices of those who work in the industry should have a privileged place in the discussion. But I don’t think that any woman in this culture is “outside” the sex industry. I get frustrated because I think that the normalization of patriarchy-approved prostitution is a big part of the assumption that women are sexual objects to be consumed, not agents with free will. And by prostitution, I mean the dominant model wherein men buy sex from people who have almost no power to say no or control over the environment in which it happens.

    I see the problem in the men I know who think it is perfectly normal to visit “massage parlors” to get jacked off by asian women, or friends who find themselves at bachelor parties subjected to degradation that they are supposed to “enjoy” because thier all-powerful libido is supposed to trump everything. I think the normalization of prostitution in the military accounts for at least part of the increase in sexual violence against women service members.

    None of this is the fault of the sex workers: IBTP

    This is not a “what about teh menz” concept because this shit makes it harder for me every time I walk into an interview and have to compete with the “woman-as-object” mindset that mainstream prostitution and pornography perpetuates. And as someone looking for male allies, I recognize that the social punishement for men who step out of line can be harsh. For the record, I don’t think that all forms of sex-exchange or nekkid pictures are wrong, but the vast majority of what’s out there is mysogynistic, and I think Hebert is awkwardly trying to call attention to that.

39. Chloe at number 7 did talk about it as “choice.” Not being snarky here, just pointing it out.

    And of course not all women are forced into “sex work.” But most are, in some way or another. I’m sick of focusing on this tiny percentage of women who are feminists and who love being prostituted, or whatever. They aren’t really the issue. If they are happy, then great. I’m concerned about the other 99% of women who are forced, coerced, drugged, bought and sold, etc.

    Yes, we need to hear from actual “sex workers” (I use quotes because I hate this term). Of course we need to hear their voices. But to say that only women who sell their bodies can have a voice or an opinion on this? I don’t think so! You don’t think that all women have a personal stake in all of this? We don’t have the right to say that porn is bad, it hurts all of us? Just because I’m not in porn, I’m not allowed to have an opinion? Nope, don’t think so.

    I know I’ll get yelled at for this, and that’s just fine. But really, when I hear a woman telling me how much she loves letting 8 guys fuck her in a 3 hour time span, I say bullshit. BULLSHIT. Sorry, I don’t believe you. Maybe some people see that as unfeminist, but I don’t. An anorexic woman can tell me how much she loves weight 79 pounds, but it doesn’t mean that she’s not killing herself. And I’m concerned about all women who are being hurt, whether they want to admit it or not.

    Gayle, right on. We always talk about the women. The women this, the women chose that. What about the men? (HEe, I can’t believe I said what about teh menz! But I really mean it!)

    And ya know, for people who are getting upset because they feel “sex workers” are being maligned, take it easy. No one said a sex worker is evil, a murderer, or any such thing! I understand being defensive, but no one (as far as I know) said anything about sex workers being lowly or stupid or disgusting or evil or anything! So where is that coming from, cause it sure isn’t coming from this thread?

40. Also, while I appreciate the links, any “sex worker” who has a website and computer access- is a privileged person. Prostituted women all around the world who have been sold into “sexual” slavery (i.e. rape) do not have access to, or time for, blogging. So, yes, we need to hear these women’s voices, but they are NOT typical, at ALL. Their voices are drowning out other women’s voices.

41. Here is another link to a piece written by an ex-prostituted woman. It’s all so sexxee and empowering, dontcha know?

    http://feministfire.wordpress.com/

42. Prostituted women all around the world who have been sold into “sexual” slavery (i.e. rape) do not have access to, or time for, blogging.

    Now I’m not a sex worker at the moment, so please someone correct me if I’m putting words in someone’s mouth, but I think one of the complaints sex workers have, and why they always feel the need to speak up when the subject comes up, is that the situations for prostitutes are *not* always the same. there’s a difference between a woman working at a brothel in Nevada and a woman smuggled into a brothel in Thailand.

    I mean you can’t say what I quoted above and then at the same time say this:

    when I hear a woman telling me how much she loves letting 8 guys fuck her in a 3 hour time span, I say bullshit. BULLSHIT.

    It’s like saying the sex industry is a monolith, except when it isn’t.

    (Hope Ren doesn’t mind me linking to her here.)

43. Kate:

    I often wonder if prostitution would even exist in a truly just social system where honesty and fairness prevail and buying another individual would seem strange and unnatural.

    But you aren’t selling yourself. A prostitute sells a SERVICE. There’s no ownership of the prostitute involved.

44. I don’t think that any woman in this culture is “outside” the sex industry.

    Bingo. Prostitution and pornography affects all of us. It has been mainstreamed and normalized, and it profoundly affects the way all women are viewed and treated.

    IBTP too.

45. Also I don’t understand the “empowering” obsession. How many of us have jobs we find empowering? I don’t. Is that some sort of feminist litmus test now? You must have an empowering job or we take your card away?

    And if it’s not required, then why are sex workers being held to a higher standard than the rest of us?

46. buggle, you are right.

    Sorry, but if you have a blog, you do not represent most sex workers. You just don’t.

47. Most people don’t feel particularly empowered by their jobs, Whatsername. But most of us don’t make a point to let everyone know that “Data entry is sooooo empowering and hawt!”

    It’s only empowering if you actually gain some power from it. If you are in power in your sex work, you are the exception rather than the rule.

48. Sorry, but if you have a blog, you do not represent most sex workers. You just don’t.

    Oh for crying out loud. That’s gotta be the dumbest thing I’ve read on this thread so far.

    Who says they are representing most sex workers? Excuse me? Who said that? If that’s a dig at Ren, who is a sex worker who also happens to be, I guess, the Sex Worker Who Blogs Unapologetically and is therefore the lightening rod for everybody’s anxiety and anger, at least have the decency of saying her name. You know, she is basically right here, in the room, engaging in this conversation.

    Every time I hear somebody say “fine, let’s hear the voices of the sex workers themselves,” as soon as a real live sex worker shows up they get shouted down. It’s all a lie–nobody wants to hear a sex worker speak unless they tell a sob story. All anybody wants to hear is the horrible trauma/drama, because that’s what gets everybody salivating. Good to feel righteous about the horrible abused women that you’re so rigorously defending, while you’re shunning and abusing individual women right to their faces.

49. And could somebody please tell me where on this thread a Real Live Sex Worker came on to talk about how her job was “so hawt!”?

    I keep hearing this phrase coming up, but not from sex workers themselves. I don’t hear Ren saying it–I’ve never read a single entry on her blog that said, “oh my god, I’ve made the world’s hawtest job choice, and it’s so hawt, and all you women oughta join me cuz it totally rocks!”

    NEVER. Not once. She’s been more honest about the ups and downs of her profession than most of us are. Good days, bad days, she covers them all. And you know, she’s not recruiting, either, under the All Women Should Be Sex Workers Cuz It’s the Hawtness! banner.

    So can we drop that particular little meme?

50. Well, Kactus, whenever the subject of prostitution comes up on a feminist blog, or in Bob Herbert’s column, and people begin discussing what makes it problematic, sex workers and/or former sex workers practically issue cease and desist orders.
    THEY chose to be sex workers and THEY like it and other people shouldn’t discuss how it affects other women’s lives or the lives of prostituted women and girls who don’t have the privilege of a cable modem.

    If you can choose your own customers you are the exception! If you can go back to your nice, warm home and blog about sex work, you are the exception!

    Why can’t we talk about the rule?

51. kactus: THANK YOU

    Vanessa, No Probem.

    The privliged thing? Yes, now I have some. Why? Sex work! I’d been stripping for years before I could afford a computer, thanks. Though I did there for awhile have an email account thanks to the free, public Library.

    And this: ” But really, when I hear a woman telling me how much she loves letting 8 guys fuck her in a 3 hour time span, I say bullshit. BULLSHIT. ”

    Say bullshit all you want, not like I can make you change your mind. I do that fairly often. Sometimes its a strain, sometimes it is boring, and sometimes I love it, but then again, getting paid for it or not, maybe, just maybe, it isn’t always about “letting them fuck me”, maybe I am fucking back too. Novel concept, I know, but hey, it happens.

    Yes, the sex industry has issues. Yes, there are people trafficked into it and people who want out. These are not things any of us sex workers who blog have forgotten, in fact, a lot of us are working on helping them too. But this 99% line (or is it 90, or 80, or all hail the monolith!) is woefully overused and inaccurate. When one limits their reasearch to street workers and select brothels, their results are tainted. And when those tainted results are applied to ALL sex workers in the vast not-monolith (stripping, all forms of prostitution, porn, pro sub/dom, erotic massage) it’s simply, well, my turn to call bullshit.

52. I don’t understand the “empowering” obsession.

    First I don’t think it’s fair to call it an “obsession.”

    But that aside, my impression (as someone who is not in the sex industry) is that describing some of the potentially empowering experiences some women have as sex workers is a way to refuse the argument that ALL sex work is, de facto, DISempowering. I think that’s an absolutely important point to make: that it’s not what work we do, it’s the conditions we do the work in, that make a job empowering or disempowering.

53. oh, and true enough, work, including sex work, does not have to be about being “empowered”…”empaychecked” is more like it.

54. And I apologize, I know this is not the Defend Ren thread, and Jill I probably totally threadjacked, but you know I get sick of all this sly finger-pointing.

55. and getting somewhat back to the sexism issue…it’s easy to use the sex industry, especially the bleak stories about it as a hot point, because sex workers are a marginalized group of people, mostly (oddly enough) women, who folks do not expect to stand up and say “you’re wrong”, and then, when they do, they get ignored or written off. So yes, they are much easier to use than mass media, or the church, or huge marketing firms.

56. In welfare rights work you see this happen all the time. Every time a professional writer/academic/media person wants to talk about welfare/welfare deform they drag out the worst cases. The worst. They don’t want to hear about activism; they don’t want to hear about real women in poverty fighting for themselves and making a movement of their own, as the experts, no they only want to hear the horror stories. Because we as a society are addicted to the horror, the lifetime movie of the week version of reality.

    Why is it so hard to listen to the voices of the experts? Why is it that people only want to listen to the voices that tell them what they already believe?

57. If you can choose your own customers you are the exception! If you can go back to your nice, warm home and blog about sex work, you are the exception!

    Sarah, understood. But the fact is that none of the sex workers on this thread or previous threads has insisted that they represent all sex workers. There is a lot of activism being done by sex workers for other sex workers, especially the sex workers who yes, have horrible, horrible circumstances. But this isn’t recognized. It seems to be misread as “rah rah sex work” instead of “hey, we’re here, we’re organizing, recognize that.”

    And I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier upthread. Not sorry for what I said, but the way I said it was not called for.

    Still, listen to the voices of the experts. Everybody. The sex workers here on this thread have a perspective that the rest of us don’t. We need to honor and respect that.

58. But really, when I hear a woman telling me how much she loves letting 8 guys fuck her in a 3 hour time span, I say bullshit. BULLSHIT.

    Why? Because that’s not your preference and you can’t see extrapolating beyond what you enjoy?

    If the internet has taught us anything, it should be that there are people who love just about every thing you can imagine sexually, as well as things you’d prefer not to contemplate. When you consider that there are people who get off on being pelted with canned tomatoes, why is it so hard to believe that there are people who like the idea of group sex? Not to say that either of these groups is a majority, but they do exist.

59. I get frustrated because I think that the normalization of patriarchy-approved prostitution is a big part of the assumption that women are sexual objects to be consumed, not agents with free will. And by prostitution, I mean the dominant model wherein men buy sex from people who have almost no power to say no or control over the environment in which it happens.

    I do think that this is where the disconnect is. Whether you’ve chosen to make your body an object for consumption or not, every woman is treated as though she has made that choice because of the way that sex work is constructed in our society.

    Sex workers can argue that they’re working from inside the system to change things, and that’s a valid point, but it’s still a completely fucked-up system. Is an individual sex worker to blame if a guy decides that the fact I have D-cups means he can grope me in a bar? Of course not, but I would argue that the way the system is constructed is to blame, because the fact that some women’s bodies are for sale makes him think that all women’s bodies are for sale at some level, whether it’s $100 cash or the price of a drink.

    People working from inside the system are always going to get flak, because working from inside the system requires you to participate in that system. The question comes up, are you fighting that system from the inside, or are you perpetuating that system?

60. I don’t know who Ren is, so I was not attacking her. My point was only that strippers with blogs who have time/access to blog are not the majority, by far. Not picking on anyone personally, since I don’t know anyone here personally!

    I don’t know, I see sex workers on here getting really upset because they aren’t being listened to. But, I don’t see where they are not being listened to. I truly don’t. Just because I disagree, doesn’t mean I’m not listening! Big difference.

    I dunno Kactus, maybe I’m just misreading, but it does seem like sex workers come on here and say “Oh but I like it, so you can’t say that.” “Well I LOVE what I’M doing” and that reads to me like rah rah sex work. Also, most sex workers come in here and claim that most sex workers love what they are doing. They deny all those other women out there who don’t “love it.” And that is very problematic to me.

    There are many many voices out there, of sex workers, ex sex-workers, pimps, johns, etc. Why must we put the sex workers who like what they are doing, above everyone else? Why must the sex workers who like it, deny the experience of the VAST majority of women who do not like it. Who wish they had the opportunity to do something else, and can’t. It’s like, can’t you admit that there are tons of women out there that aren’t happy?

    As for statistics, I certainly don’t claim to have any kind of realistic figures. I doubt that anyone really could, because they are all biased, and so much of this happens way way underground. But why are you so upset to think that maybe you are in the minority? Sorry, this is for Ren specifically. Are you denying that most sex work is degrading and exploitative and coerced? Are you really making that statement?

    Yes evil fizz, that is exactly why I say bullshit. Because I just can’t imagine it. It’s all about my lack of perspective. It has nothing to do with ya know, sexism, oppression, rape culture, blah blah blah. It’s all about ME being a big MEANIE! Same thing when I am concerned about a friend who is starving herself and claims she is happy. It’s not that I should be concerned, it’s just that I can’t fathom how she could be happy without eating food. Just my lack of perspective, right? Nothing to do with her hurting herself!

    Did you go read that link I posted? I’ve read enough ex prostitute/stripper/whatever stories to know that denial is a huge part of it, for many/most. Maybe not you, but plenty of women lie to themselves, or are brainwashed enough to think they truly enjoy it. I know I used to think that way about various things.

    Gah. This is a tough topic, and it always gets people riled up.

61. Whoops, I am rereading and I see that someone DID in fact compare prostituted women to killers. Sorry, I missed that! Yikes.

62. The question comes up, are you fighting that system from the inside, or are you perpetuating that system?

    In truth, I suspect both. Working in it perpetuates it, end of story. However, also engaging in activism within can and does change it.

    Where I stand on it is right here: I don’t think the sex industry is going anywhere any time soon. Making aspects of it, such as prostitution illegal, and heavy content regulation in pornography, has not stoped anything. Hookers are still hooking, and extreme pornography is still being made, under far less regulated and illegal circumstances, which only hurts the people working in it, and makes them far less likely to actually seek out any assistance when they are abused/robbed/raped due to the criminal stigma, on top of the social stigma (I mean hey, upthread, women like myself got compaired to murderers and terrorists, after all). It’s not going anywhere. And yes, it does contribute, along with countless other sources of sexism, from video games to night time television, to the way women are viewed. However, making or keeping things illegal is not going to stop them, or sexism. Sexist attitudes were alive and well long before the mass production of porn, prostitution has always been around, and even if they were pushed further underground, sexism for the average mainstream woman would still be there, as would prositution, and porn. So yes, my concern rests with the people in the business…which a lot of folk seem willing to sacrifice on the sword of their anti “pornstitution” agenda. Keeping it criminialized and so very socially stigmatized only ends up hurting them: the people working in the business. Sexism is alive and well, but when a judge in a major city in the US rules the gangrape at gun point of a prostitute a “theft of services”, well, that should tell you something. Yes, it sucks that women unwillingly get groped in bars, but on a scale of things that suck I think getting raped at gun point then raped again by the justice system is worse…and since I really believe that the sex biz is not going anywhere…well, those are the people I’m interested in helping first.

63. Why must the sex workers who like it, deny the experience of the VAST majority of women who do not like it. Who wish they had the opportunity to do something else, and can’t. It’s like, can’t you admit that there are tons of women out there that aren’t happy?

    Have you ever read the blog of a sex worker? On Ren’s blog, I read a lot about activisim on behalf of sex workers. A. Lot. I read a lot about the attempt to form unions that would protect sex workers from abuse, for instance.

    And if you have no concrete figures, then why do you assume a vast majority?

    And how can you possibly compare sex workers who are not ashamed of their jobs to people with anorexia and not understand how people are insulted? A much better comparison would be to a weight lifter who’s on a special diet or something, not to a person with a mental illness.

64. And oh wow, I just checked out Ren’s blog, and ok. There is no point in a discussion here. Waste of time. Dang. That’s really cool that you get paid to do porn for men who hate women, and think women are bitches and whores and want to hurt them. That’s awesome! Super duper. Good for you! Don’t worry about the rest of us women who have to deal with the repercussions of a sick system that YOU support.

65. That is your opinion Vanessa, not some “truth.” Yes, I have read many blogs, articles, etc by sex workers and ex sex workers.

    If you have no concrete figures, why do you assume a tiny minority?

    I understand that people will be insulted. I said that I expected to get yelled at, and I was. I don’t see anorexia as a mental illness, anyways. I see it as a result of living in a fucked up patriarchy where women are constantly pressured to be thin and perfect and good.

66. Buggle:

    I have never once denied that the majority of sex workers on a world wide scale would prefer to be doing something else. I’ve said countless times, in countless places, that yes, I probably am in the minority. That, however, does not change or deny my experience, as someone who has be involved in one form of sex work or another for the majority of the last 17 years. And I stated world-wide for a reason, because I do think that in countries such as the US, Canada, many parts of Western Europe, well, there are a lot more people willingly invovled in the business that you hear about. I mean, your average escort who works of the net and makes decent money and enjoys her privacy is not likely to speak out, or participate in studies, interviews and discussions because she (or he) takes a huge risk of being outed, which can and does have very real and painful consequences. There are a ton of web-cam girls out there doing their thing quietly. And yes, I absolutely admit I’ve been lucky because I do generally enjoy my work and did choose it, but I will also continue to insist, and as can be evidenced by the other words of sex workers…some who do not have the privilege that I now have yet insist that they have chosen it as well, that I am no unicorn.

    And Evil Fizz does have a point, just because you cannot fathom enjoying something does not make it bullshit. Anorexia is a disease, liking group sex is not, and after all, there is no universal experience. The whole “No way I would do/like something, there for…” is a huge peeve, because it denies agency and infantalizes. I’m a grown woman, thanks, I think I can decide what I like and don’t, even if other people cannot imagine it. And like a whole lot of other people on the planet, I have good days at work and bad ones.

67. If you have no concrete figures, why do you assume a tiny minority?

    I didn’t assume a minority or a majority or anything, did I?

    Jesus. It’s this all over again, isn’t it?

68. Some people think of prostitution as a job that should be illegal because it is too dangerous and degrading, like working with asbestos or working in a sweatshop. I wouldn’t know. Any links to where prostitution is legal in other countries, how things are doing there? I think at the very least we should make prostitution legal for men in Nevada if it is legal for women. Otherwise it is contributing to the view that sex is something women give to men, and I think that view is misogynist.

69. Ack, I never said anything about group sex! My reference to 8 men in three hours was to a prostitute, not someone having group sex.

    I don’t know, I think you DID deny that it is a majority who don’t like what they are doing. That’s what is coming across, anyways.

    I’m going to bow out now, because this is actually enraging me and making me feel really awful. Clearly, you have your mind up. And so do I. I am a radical, anti-porn feminist. I don’t think prostitution should be illegal, but I think for the most part, it’s fucked up and hurts women and contributes to the larger culture of violence and sexism. I’m not going to be called stupid or close-minded because of my opinions. Especially not by other feminists.

70. I think at the very least we should make prostitution legal for men in Nevada if it is legal for women. Otherwise it is contributing to the view that sex is something women give to men, and I think that view is misogynist.

    Agreed 100 percent. I had no idea that was the reason Heidi Fleiss’ male brothel idea didn’t get done.

71. Vanessa, I’m really not sure what point you are trying to make.

72. Vanessa, I’m really not sure what point you are trying to make

    .Can you at least quote me when you say something like that, so I know what I said didn’t come across right?

73. What I said that didn’t come across right, rather.

74. Herbert does suck on sex work, and as we can see in this thread, that implicates what he has to say generally, or at least draws attention from it.

    But I think he gets a lot right. Crimes against women, misogynist portrayal of such crimes, an unbalanced price paid for sexuality by teenage girls vs boys, etc. etc. He’s right, we should be having a national conversation about these things.

    He loses many of us when he then argues that sex workers are per se victims of this type of misogyny. In my book just like in that of others here, it’s far more than a “tiny percentage” of sex workers who choose the gig. When I did my stint, it was very minimally empowering, but quite empaychecking, to borrow Ren’s phrase, which is the reason most of us choose jobs. Who here wouldn’t quit if we won the lottery? That doesn’t mean we ignore the large numbers of unhappy, mistreated, coerced sex workers. But who here is advocating doing that?

    All that said, I don’t think the flaws in Herbert’s analysis should cause us to walk away wholesale from his overall point.

75. Also, most sex workers come in here and claim that most sex workers love what they are doing. They deny all those other women out there who don’t “love it.” And that is very problematic to me.

    Where was this said? You got a link to these sex workers claiming most other sex workers love what they’re doing? Here on feministe? Where is it?

76. Yes evil fizz, that is exactly why I say bullshit. Because I just can’t imagine it. It’s all about my lack of perspective. It has nothing to do with ya know, sexism, oppression, rape culture, blah blah blah. It’s all about ME being a big MEANIE!

    I didn’t say you were being a big meanie. I asked why you wouldn’t believe a woman who told you that group sex something she enjoyed. Do you really think that any woman who expresses an interest in fucking 8 men in 3 hours is some deluded tool of the patriarchy?

77. Here is the thing. I can accept and fully belive that some sex workers are in it of their own accord, and that they enjoy it.
    But that does not change the fact that women are the sex class; prostitution and other kinds of sex work are part of this scheme. Sex work is connected to misogyny whether the sex workers are voluntary or not. The men do not care! Women-as-the-sex-class needs to be challenged. That does not have to mean dismissing sex workers’ experiences.

78. Where I stand on it is right here: I don’t think the sex industry is going anywhere any time soon. Making aspects of it, such as prostitution illegal, and heavy content regulation in pornography, has not stopped anything.

    I’m actually in favor of legalizing, to a point. A lot of the legalization in Nevada has done a lot to make the brothel owners rich, but not much for the workers. Prostitutes and other sex workers should have the same protections as any other freelance service job, like hairdressing. At a minimum, it needs to be decriminalized from the supply side so women don’t have to worry that their rapists will be charged with “theft of services.”

    But. You are participating in a very, very bad system. I think that’s what’s frustrating for everyone else whenever the subject comes up — a lot of the posters (not necessarily you) declare that sex work was fine for them, so everything’s fine. But it’s not, because like it or not, you are perpetuating the system.

    The entire system that’s set up now says that there’s only one difference between you and me: you have a cash price, but my price can be anything from dinner to marriage and how’s a guy supposed to guess which one I want? He’s going to bargain with me to get the lowest “price” he can, all while I’m thinking that we’re forming a relationship.

    There’s a reason a lot of feminists, starting with Wollestonecraft, linked “wife” and “prostitute,” and those links haven’t been broken. All women are potentially for sale, if the right buyer comes along.

79. I’m in moderation, but SarahMC managed to say what I did much more concisely.

80. SarahMC:

    Then my question is, how do you get rid of it? What is the plan? Who pays for it, all that will be needed; the education, medical care, living expenses, childcare, career training and perhaps therapy required by traumatized people who’ve been prostituted and/or trafficked? Are trafficking victims allowed to stay, or deported? Time frame? Plan of action? What about those who don’t want out?

81. Wow. So much to say.

    Yes, I do think that the voices of those who work in the industry should have a privileged place in the discussion. But I don’t think that any woman in this culture is “outside” the sex industry. I get frustrated because I think that the normalization of patriarchy-approved prostitution is a big part of the assumption that women are sexual objects to be consumed, not agents with free will.

    I call bullshit. I’m not “inside” the sex industry. I’ve never had sex for money. I don’t say that as an insult to sex workers but as a defense of them — there’s a huge fucking difference between being affected by the sex industry and actually doing it. Some people love sex work. Lots hate it, some just see it like any other job you do to get by. But there are indeed very real risks, depending on what sector you work in. I’m not in the sex industry, I don’t do any sex worker’s job, and from the sound of it, neither do you. It’s okay to say that the sex industry affects society. It does. But to say that we’re all “in” the sex industry is just insulting to those who actually are.

    Buggle, I’m glad that you clarified that you were not referring to group sex with your earlier comment. And the comment initially really fucking pissed me off, so I’m glad that I caught said clarification. But as for your remarks towards Ren, there’s absolutely no fucking excuse for talking to her that way and personally attacking her. NONE. It’s rude, it’s disrespectful, it’s unacceptable and since you’re claiming that it’s a feminist point of view, it really makes feminists look really damn bad. You may not want to be told by other feminists that your views on sex work are wrong, but I don’t want to read another feminist saying crap like this:

    And oh wow, I just checked out Ren’s blog, and ok. There is no point in a discussion here. Waste of time. Dang. That’s really cool that you get paid to do porn for men who hate women, and think women are bitches and whores and want to hurt them. That’s awesome! Super duper. Good for you! Don’t worry about the rest of us women who have to deal with the repercussions of a sick system that YOU support.

    For fuck’s sake. I’m no moral arbitrator, I certainly don’t speak for Ren and we’re not even friends (though I do enjoy her blog), but GODDAMN do you owe her an apology. You don’t have to like was she does, but she, like all of us, should at least be afforded some basic respect.

82. Wow, Ren, after your comment #80, which to me really sums up the “ok, what do we do in the here and now” issue that’s possibly THE most relevant approach to al this, I thought I’d do some other stuff and then check back at what would surely be a deluge of comments from the antisexwork crew. Comments suggesting doable mechanisms for dealing with the issues you’ve cited.

    And what’s this? Nothing? Nada? Can it be that those who decry sex work and want to talk about “the rule” as to the supposed majority of its victims, cannot actually contend with the realities of how to get rid of the industry and help transition its workers in a meaningful way?

83. The only solution to the problems that come with the sex trade is to reduce the demand. Curtailing the supply will not be effective so long as men demand sex in exchange for money.
    Granted, many sex workers do not *want* the demand reduced, as that would result in fewer employment opportunities. So I don’t know. To me, it’s problematic that sex work is often the most lucrative field for women.
    Ultimately, we must change attitudes. It’s difficult to establish a sex-as-mututally-pleasurable-activity model of sex when the sex-as-a-commodity model is so pervasive.

84. And what’s this? Nothing? Nada? Can it be that those who decry sex work and want to talk about “the rule” as to the supposed majority of its victims, cannot actually contend with the realities of how to get rid of the industry and help transition its workers in a meaningful way?

    Ahh, yes, the old “well, the problem is so big that there’s no possible way to fix it, so let’s leave it the way it is!”

    As I mentioned in my comment at #78, I do support decriminalizing being a sex worker, though I think the penalties should stay in place for using sex workers. As SarahMC said, the problem is the demand side.

    As far as placement programs and childcare, sex workers would probably get as much help as people who are thrown out of work when their factory shuts down. Are you arguing that sex work is a special category that demands more help than anyone else who’s thrown out of a job and has to regroup?

85. Commenters are focusing on sex work because that is the hook to the column

    No, they’re focusing on it because it’s much more fun (and more personally comfortable) than talking about, say, how dear misogyny is to many men and how pervasive it is in our culture. Really, this is not much different than listening to a bunch of fundies who can’t talk about alleviating poverty because they’re too busy blathering about Teh Gay.

    (Cue finger-wagging about how sex work is an Important Issue and How Dare You Silence Us in 3…2…1…)

86. No, they’re focusing on it because it’s much more fun (and more personally comfortable) than talking about, say, how dear misogyny is to many men and how pervasive it is in our culture.

    Uh, yeah . . . us feminists NEVER talk about that stuff.

    The reason I think we’re talking about sex work — and the reason I wanted to talk about it after reading the article and before reading the comments — is because Jill wrote a very short post saying that she loved the article, and we saw a big flaw with it. His views towards sex work are the flaw that we saw. If we saw a flaw in his argument regarding anything else, we’d be talking about that. But I think that pretty much all of us here are okay with the rest of the column. Among feminists, his comments about sex work are the only ones that are controversial.

    And yeah, sex work is an important issue, but I certainly have absolutely no desire or motivation to try to convince you. So whatever.

87. Shorter Gayle: if only we could talk about sex workers without having them keep showing up and wanting to talk to us!

    Except I wasn’t writing about sex workers. Nor was Herbert. That was my point.

    Learn how to read.

88. If there’s one thing feminists know for sure it’s that rape victims are loose-lipped masochists who simply love telling strangers all the excruciating details of their rapes, and this is why all research done on prostitution has come to the same “it is men paying to rape” conclusion. Raped prostitution survivors can’t stop flapping their big yaps about being raped to all listeners while unraped, content and privileged sex workers are simply too terrified to speak up about how content they are, as this thread demonstrates.

    Maybe if the women and girls raped in prostitution weren’t always skipping off to happily blabbermouth their research-skewing sob stories about being raped to police officers, social workers, prostitution researchers and feminists they might be better represented in this thread.

89. Wow, Cara, I was only half-serious that somebody would come along and miss the point entirely. My bad. (Although the little p/a thing of lecturing me on why it’s important, then saying you have ‘no desire to convince’ me, was a nice bonus.)

    Yes, sex work is an important issue and yes, it was a flaw in Herbert’s article no matter what your position(s) on the issue–but it’s ALL ANYBODY IS TALKING ABOUT. Nobody is discussing any of the other things he mentions: photographers busting their asses to get sexualized pictures of famous women without their consent, because there is a huge market for that; or sports fans gathering en masse to threaten women with police and stadium security doing *nothing* to stop it; or the lascivious focus that TV puts on images of women being raped, tortured and killed.

    I mean, who gives a shit about any of that stuff, right? It’s not important.

90. Where are the arguments on this thread that sex work is a fun and empowering way to spend ones time? Where are the people saying that well-paid women in the developed world are the only authority on sex work?

    People in this thread, including me have created link after link and quote after quote from women who have never had shiny happy experience with sex work but who still criticize the kind of raid-and-rescue model of “saving” trafficked women, still feel that the prohibitionist feminist model does more harm to street workers than good, still feel that Herbert and other descriptions of brothel work are degrading and offensive.
    Are people in this discussion physically incapable of clinking a damn hyperlink all of a sudden?

91. Oooohkay. I’ve been away from the computer all day, and I apologize that I haven’t been able to moderate this thread more effectively. But it’s getting insulting and out of control, so I’d just like to add a few things and lay down a few ground rules:

    1. Almost everyone on this thread is a feminist, or, if not identified as a feminist, at the very least quite concerned about women’s rights. Let’s keep that in mind.

    2. Let’s also keep in mind that none of the sex workers on this thread have ever claimed to speak for all sex workers. They have simply stood up for themselves. And their experiences and views are relevant.

    3. Personal insults are totally uncalled for and will be deleted.

    My personal thoughts are somewhere between Ren and Mnemosyne. Yes, we live in an incredibly problematic system, and sex workers themselves feed into it; I also feed into it every single day. I’m guessing everyone on this thread, to some degree or another, also feeds into a patriarchal system which seems women for sale. In the meantime, we all need to do what we need to do to survive. Which is why Ren’s question here interests me:

    Then my question is, how do you get rid of it? What is the plan? Who pays for it, all that will be needed; the education, medical care, living expenses, childcare, career training and perhaps therapy required by traumatized people who’ve been prostituted and/or trafficked? Are trafficking victims allowed to stay, or deported? Time frame? Plan of action? What about those who don’t want out?

    Can we maybe re-direct the sex work conversation this way?

92. annalouise, the problem is that you’ve identified the primary oppressors of prostituted women as anti-prostitution progressives like me and Bob Herbert and we identify the primary oppressors of prostitutes as johns and the pimps their money keeps in business.

    Please try to refrain from blaming feminists when men rape and murder prostituted women. For example, the “prohibitionist feminist model” never raped one single sex worker; that would be the johns whose rights to stick their penises inside some woman any time they desire you are inexplicably defending as some kind of beneficial poverty-assistance program. Battered women and domestic violence experts know very well how violent men get more violent when they feel they are losing control of their victims, and since prostitution is violence against women it is unsurprising that johns exhibit the same pattern of increased violence upon having their ownership of women challenged.

93. Then my question is, how do you get rid of it? What is the plan? Who pays for it, all that will be needed; the education, medical care, living expenses, childcare, career training and perhaps therapy required by traumatized people who’ve been prostituted and/or trafficked? Are trafficking victims allowed to stay, or deported? Time frame? Plan of action? What about those who don’t want out?

    And yet again, a good pragmatic question met with…

    *crickets crickets*

94. the problem is that you’ve identified the primary oppressors of prostituted women as anti-prostitution progressives like me and Bob Herbert and we identify the primary oppressors of prostitutes as johns and the pimps their money keeps in business.

    Damn straight. Let’s talk about the pimps and the johns for a change. Let’s go ahead and talk about the men– stop protecting them! They’re driving this.

95. Then my question is, how do you get rid of it? What is the plan? Who pays for it, all that will be needed; the education, medical care, living expenses, childcare, career training and perhaps therapy required by traumatized people who’ve been prostituted and/or trafficked? Are trafficking victims allowed to stay, or deported? Time frame? Plan of action? What about those who don’t want out?

    I’m glad you asked that as I think that frankly, feminists never discuss any of these topics but instead, brush the whole issue of in a more philosophical way and then go on to something else.

    I agree, I don’t think in this lifetime at least there is ‘getting it rid of it’. Although I am certainly curious if we did not have a social system in which men were economically and social dominant, would prostitution as we know it exist?
    I think the answer would be a resounding no, as for one, in my mind, men would not need to hire out for sexual ‘release’ or ‘fantasy’, which was my original point.

    The question of who pays for it is a good one? Where is public money allocated now? Is it a social priority to assist women in achieving their full potential? I think not. I don’t believe in the idea that we suffer under scarce resources, we suffer under a system in which resources are allocated by persons whose interests do not benefit women or children. That’s a major social problem.

    Until women have an equal voice and equal control over our social system, we will always be wondering what we will have to do to cajole or convince the ruling powers to give a hoot about us at all, any of us women.

    Which brings me round to the point I came today to share. I was thinking about this discussion and Herbert’s comments on the way back from my tiring, poorly paid job in which I have little control or voice.

    Why did Herbert feel that a discussion about women and the way they are treated should only be in the realm of the worst and most extreme examples? The extreme examples come from the sublime and actual sexism that we all suffer from daily; the promotions not given, the pay for the same work that is not equal–yes, there are exceptions, but let’s look at the rule, not the exceptional cases.

    Most women I think wake up everyday expecting that somewhere, somehow they will be judged as lesser, will be reminded of their lesser status and thus often will guard themselves or armour themselves against this affront in whatever ways they’ve worked out to do so.

    The fact remains though, that nothing will change substantially until women are freed from being second class citizens on the whole. I don’t care about exceptional examples, because again, they don’t make the rule and until the rule is changed and the power structure is changed, nothing will change.

    So yes Ren, money should allocated to assist women who don’t want to be in the industry. Women should be allowed to have children and not be forced into submission economically or even worry about that possibility because of it, or worry about a pregnancy or worry about whether this guy or that will treat them well, or if the boss will give a raise or simply ignore them for the young inexperienced “dude” or worse.

    That isn’t really the whole answer, but that is what I keep coming back to. Until we as women gain a substantial foothold in this society nothing will change. I salute the women who engage in sex work who organize as their efforts are just as legitimate or possibly even more urgent due to the dangers involved.

96. Then my question is, how do you get rid of it?

    I’m not necessarily the person to whom this question was directed, but in an effort to turn the conversation in a new direction . . .

    And these thoughts are from someone (as I said above) who has not worked in any sex-related industry, and who has not systematically followed sex worker activism.

    Still, it seems to me that there are a few ground-level principles that maybe both the pro- and anti- sides could agree on?

    1. Making something illegal (like drugs, immigration, or sex work) only drives it underground where the people on the bottom rung of whatever industry it is are going to be vulnerable to myriad abuses. People who are working in an illegal trade cannot go to law enforcement for help unless they are willing to give up their work, which they may not want to do. So LEGALIZING sex work and establishing a framework of health and safety regulations seem important.

    2. LISTEN TO THE WORKERS. All the workers. Women and men of all ages. The ones who like their work and the ones who don’t. The ones who want to change jobs and the ones who don’t. This seems like a basic feminist principle. Rather than going in with some pre-conceived notion of what people want for their lives, we need to learn how to listen before we speak. I’m not saying there isn’t any place for challenging questions or conversation, but I think that in any exchange a) the people who are inside the industry, and of those people b) the most vulnerable populations, should have priority when it comes to saying what they need to feel safe and supported regardless of what choice they make about continuing to do sex work.

    3. Further, I think that continuing to support authentic, feminist conversations and activism within a broad spectrum of sexuality issues will help to change–slowly but surely–the most misogynistic types of sexual expression in sex industries. Instead of saying that pornography and prostitution causes misogyny in the culture at large, I think it’s more accurate to say that the misogyny we tolerate in the culture at large is reflected back toward us in pornography and other forms of sex work. Or perhaps, most accurately, it’s a two-way street. So if we foster AUTHENTIC CONVERSATIONS ABOUT MEANINGFUL SEXUAL EXPRESSION in all its varied forms, perhaps the demand for the most anti-feminist types of sex work will diminish.

    This isn’t instead of concrete economic and legal reforms, obviously, but it seems like an important facet . . . we can’t blame our sexist culture on one particular subset. As Jill said above, we ALL make compromises, participate in, and are shaped by, the sexist norms of our culture.

97. Sam,
    If you’d actually followed the links that I posted you would have read that the ‘raid-and-rescue’ anti-trafficking model has raped many women. Young women in India who are “rescued” from brothels have been routinely raped by the very immigration officials who are supposed to be saving them. A organization of Indian brothel workers has put and open letter to the Gates Foundation enumerating these abuses. You would also have seen the story of Young Sook Kim who was swept up in an INS raid of a massage parlor in the US last year and then murdered through neglect at the immigration detention facility, in addition to numerous accounts of sex workers in Sweden, India and Thailand who say that anti-trafficking policies are being use simply as cover to attack undocumented immigrants. You would have read Emi Koyama’s essay on how domestic violence shelter organizations view of prostitution has pushed sex workers who are looking to escape domestic violence back into the arms of their abusers.

    I think if we are looking to stop the sex industry from the perspective that the industry could not exist in anything like its current form without widespread human rights abuses (which I think it s difficult thing to argue against), then we need to do whatever we can to support the many efforts of workers in the sex industry to secure basic labor rights. good, old school solidarity. You cannot be in solidarity with someone you pity or with someone you are willing to casually insult the way sex workers have been insulted in this discussion. You cannot be in solidarity with someone who you would prefer to remain a silent and helpless victim, an object of discussion, not a participant.
    If we are looking at stopping human trafficking then the very.first.thing. we need to do is not conflate trafficking with sex work. Less than 2% of trafficked persons in the US work in the sex industry. We also need to be in solidarity with anti-globalization activists around the world to stop the global injustice that is leaving communities vulnerable to trafficking. I work with an organization that is trying to stop trafficking of Nepalese girls at its source by providing schools and literacy programs for girls and women in the Nepalese countryside. One thing we know about these communities is that it’s disengenous in the extreme to talk about the enslavement of these Nepalese Kamaiya girls by the brothels when up until about two years ago they, and their entire families, already were slaves but because their enslavement was within Nepalese borders and not titilating enough for westerners, it was ignored.

98. RE: Then my question is, how do you get rid of it?

    —

    I would say to reject most organized religions. That would be a great start. It’s the genesis of much of the hatred towards and subjugation of women, the indoctrination of the culture that views women as property, sexual and otherwise. Now I’ll wait for the barrage of people defending their participation in the same system of oppression.

99. Mythago: apologies if I missed some sort of sarcasm or facetiousness in your comment. I tend to pick up on that sort of thing, but I certainly didn’t see it there and maybe that’s because this thread hasn’t really been the place for jokes. I guess that all of the insults being hurled around skewed my judgment on that one, so my bad.

    But for the record, what I was “lecturing” you about was a completely different topic than the one on which I said I had no interest in lecturing you.

    Yes, sex work is an important issue and yes, it was a flaw in Herbert’s article no matter what your position(s) on the issue–but it’s ALL ANYBODY IS TALKING ABOUT. Nobody is discussing any of the other things he mentions: photographers busting their asses to get sexualized pictures of famous women without their consent, because there is a huge market for that; or sports fans gathering en masse to threaten women with police and stadium security doing *nothing* to stop it; or the lascivious focus that TV puts on images of women being raped, tortured and killed.

    And as I said in my last comment, WE TALK ABOUT THOSE THINGS ALL THE TIME. There’s lots of feminist analysis out there about the treatment of Britney Spears, and the way that hatred towards Paris Hilton is expressed in misogyny and how even famous women have rights and deserve some personal privacy. There are plenty of threads about the issue of sexual harassment by sports fans. I’ve written two extensive posts about it in the last few months, myself. You can look them up, if you’re so inclined, by going through the “sexual harassment” tag. I haven’t personally written about the media attention towards victimized women and how that violence is sensationalized when the victim is young, white and pretty, but otherwise ignored. But there have been plenty of others doing it. I bet that if you search on this very blog, you’ll find some posts. So where exactly you’re getting the idea that we’re “ignoring” the other stuff, I do not know. Just because we’re not talking about it on THIS THREAD doesn’t mean we’re not talking about it.

    So. Like Jill, I think that this thread has gotten out of hand and that I’ve said all I have to say towards those who act like sex workers are some kind of traitors to all women and to those who seem to show little concern for sex worker safety. All I have left to say to you, Mythago, is that if you want to talk about those other topics, TALK ABOUT THEM. No one is stopping you. You keep saying that no one is talking about these very important issues, but I don’t see you talking about those very important issues either, other than to say that no one is talking about them. So start the conversation. Or go look up one of those other threads and continue the discussion there.

    For the record, I am indeed in a shitty mood and I’m also incredibly frustrated with this thread, in case you couldn’t tell. But though it may not come off that way, this is my best attempt at being cordial right now. If it’s rude, I sincerely apologize because the last thing this thread needs is more ill will. Of all the people I’m annoyed with on this thread, you’re pretty far down the list. But I also know that by the time I’m in a better mood and can think of more pleasant phrasing tomorrow morning, I will forget to come back.

    Goodnight.

100. Ok, let me try this again. What I wanted to say also was that when women are in the sex trade, they are doing the work that is expected of them by a male controlled society; that is engaging in activities for the pleasure of men.

     When women step outside the two realms still held as the ideal for women; sex partner and home care provider, they are rebuked and all attempts are made to send them back to where they “belong”.

     The fact that some women have managed to break through the barriers here and there only serves to make those women consider exceptions to the rule, they are exceptions, not the rule. The rule still is that women will carry the burden of caring for men and caring for children and other dependents, often without pay or with little power to negotiate for higher pay.

     Men organized unions for trades work and other work and received higher pay, their barrier was classism and exploitation by the money holders. Men against men. Women were not a part of that movement.

     Traditionally male dominated fields, such as some higher areas of medicine, the sciences, engineering and high level corporate positions are still dominated by men. The roles require that the women fit into a man’s paradigm (having someone at home to care for their progeny and their needs so they can work long hours without interruption, travel at leisure, entertain, etc.).

     Any work performed by women is demeaned and the higher the need of the men for it, the more it is devalued by those men. It works well for them in that they are guaranteed to get what they need to “succeed” with little cost or effort on their parts.

     Women can’t compete in these realms often on the same level as men without sacrificing a large part of the roles that they must also take on as men will not take them on (child rearing, home care).

     So, although sex workers may be empowered today or exploited tomorrow the fact is they all operate along the same paradigm of all other work that women perform; commanded by and bargained by those who hold the power, which are men.

     Frankly, I don’t see how it serves feminists to argue about whether or not sex work is good or bad as it stands now, because I think all women get the short end of the stick and when any of us work to bring more power and strength to any end, we all win.

     I hope I made some sense there.

101. Men organized unions for trades work and other work and received higher pay, their barrier was classism and exploitation by the money holders. Men against men. Women were not a part of that movement

     That is utterly and completely untrue and it saddnes me greatly that a feminist woman would have such misconceptions about the labor movement. Labor struggles in the industrialized west were overwhelmingly organized by women in woman dominated industries. The mill workers of New England were some of the first and to this day, most radical unionizers ever in the US and they overwhelmingly made up of young girls. The garment workers in New York City and other urban area were also a group of incredibly militant teenage girls. The radical labor movement is full of young women and girls who inspired workers all around the world with their strength, Lucy Parsons, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Voltairine De Cleyre, Fanny Sellens, Mother Jones.
     The late 20th century labor movement was run by women as well, including Dolores Huerta, who founded the UFW, the early welfare rights organizers who tried to address welfare from a labor rights perspective. Karen Nussbaum of the SEIU who eventually became secretary of labor.
     Women have been central to the labor movement and labor feminists have spent the past 200 years fighting at the places where sexism and class oppression intersect. Women as a whole continue to be segregated into low-pay, low-prestige jobs, including all forms of “caring work” which could easily include sex work. Women are segregated in the most exploitive industries: sex work, domestic work, home healthcare work, childcare, food servcie, textile and garment making. Women in these industries are fighting right now for their labor rights.
     I find the idea that labor issues somehow don’t apply in industries that are women dominated utterly and completely mind-boggling.

102. Cara,I actually *was* trying to steer the discussion back onto other topics Herbert talked about: particularly those that may be uncomfortable for us, because they hit closer to home. Most of us aren’t sex workers and don’t patronize sex workers, so it’s easy for the discussion to be somewhat academic. As Hugo puts it, it’s cheap grace.

     It’s a lot harder to look at our husbands, or partners, or male friends and think about how much misogyny is actually part of their way of life.

     And what annalouise said. Women’s work has *always* been devalued and women have *always* been a huge part of the labor movement. It’s no coincidence that the paleocrats who pack the NLRB with tools and who want to undercut labor are the same bigoted, anti-progressive scumbags who would like nothing more than for women go to back to being nothing more than their servants.

103. The way we get the change we want is, among other things, to get people watching porn that actually shows empowered female sexuality, legalize and regulate prostitution and continue working to change other media sources that give people unrealistic and harmful beliefs about men and women (I’m thinking here, movies, sex ed, tv…).

     Trying to get “men” (not to mention women) to stop watching porn is pretty much futile.

104. You know what? I will come back tommorow and read the rest…I WORKED tonight, then I went and passed out winter items to street girls….

     Hell, I feel entitled to say fuck you, what were YOU DOING?

     And this?

     “And oh wow, I just checked out Ren’s blog, and ok. There is no point in a discussion here. Waste of time. Dang. That’s really cool that you get paid to do porn for men who hate women, and think women are bitches and whores and want to hurt them. That’s awesome! Super duper. Good for you! Don’t worry about the rest of us women who have to deal with the repercussions of a sick system that YOU support.”

     See my latest post for wisdom.. ., OR here what i have to ask…. you ever fucked a dude to pay you electric? You ever stripped to get through college. You ever done porn to help out a family member? You ever felt nothing other that mercenary praticality and an odd thrill?

     You EVER done sex work?

     No?

     Then don’t you fucking dare tell me how to FEEL on this issue. Get it straight, I am, if anything, MYSANTROPIC… look it up.

     Ohhhh, do I stun and insult? Gee, I spent the last several hours stripping then HELPING street level sex workers….what id YOU do?

105. Then my question is, how do you get rid of it?

     Feminism, decriminalization, equal pay, countering stereotypes of women. Not an exciting answer but a general one.

106. wow, rage on my part and ad typing, but yeah, the message? still the same.

107. Jill…do what you need to do, but I have HAD IT.

     Sam: “If there’s one thing feminists know for sure it’s that rape victims are loose-lipped masochists who simply love telling strangers all the excruciating details of their rapes, and this is why all research done on prostitution has come to the same “it is men paying to rape” conclusion. Raped prostitution survivors can’t stop flapping their big yaps about being raped to all listeners while unraped, content and privileged sex workers are simply too terrified to speak up about how content they are, as this thread demonstrates.”

     Nice words from a woman who can’t even own up to using my words Out Of Context. Terrified? Hardley.

     I’m sorry Jill, but some of these people make me sick. They care nothing for the here and now, and care for women at their choosing, and THAT is NOT Femisim.

108. GAH..damn fake nails..FEMINISM.

109. I mean changing the perceptions of women is the big, macro answer. Equal access to jobs, equal pay, decriminalization, too. Sorry if I’m too general. It’s the best I can do at 3am!

110. legalize and regulate prostitution

     One thing (I’m staying out of the conversation at large because my blood pressure can’t take it anymore) – most sex worker activists support decriminalization, not legalization. There are plenty of resources online that explain why in great detail, but basically, with legalization (as a SWOP member put it), “Uncle Sam becomes a nice big pimp.”

111. Hi- long time lurker here. I’d like to touch on what Mythago was saying.

     I have a 15 year old nephew who is becoming an adult in this society, and it’s scary to me. He’s at a point now where he’s making really generalized statements, like “All men don’t listen,” and “All girls talk a lot.” Things that don’t seem really harmful, but I don’t think it’s a good base for his future relationships with the opposite sex.

     My brother-in-law even bought him a t-shirt that said “Boys and their toys,” which included a picture of a monster truck and a woman in a bikini. My sister promptly took it away, but my nephew picked that shirt out. Is that really what he thinks? I mean, he’s 15. He’s still so young.

     So, I guess my question is how to give him another message. I’ve tried countering his generalizations, but I feel like I’m coming across as crazy Aunt D, and he’s probably ignoring me. I consider myself a feminist, but I’ve never studied it, so I don’t really have the language down. What’s a good hip way (man, that makes me sound old, and I’m only 30) to engage him or counter some of the stuff he’s getting from society?

     I’m sorry I don’t have much to say about the sex-worker issue, but I’m woefully under-informed and don’t want to offend.

     I do, however, have nephews, and a brother, and I’m seeing the toll this (society) is having on them.

     Thanks!

112. most sex worker activists support decriminalization, not legalization.

     I guess I don’t get the distinction? If something is not criminal, it’s legal, right? Or did I use “legalization” in my earlier post the wrong way?

113. No, Anna…there is a difference between “legalization”/”decriminalization” and “regulation”.

     Legalization for most pro-sex worker advocates means that the state completely stays out of regulating consensual sex arrangements involving consenting adults and money…save for existing worker/client protections, health insurance. and the like. This is because most countries which attempt to regulate sex work do so from either the negative approach of regulating and criminalizing the actual work (and that would be true even of the heralded “Swedish Model” approach that Sam and so many anti-sex work advocates are so in love with; since they would simply punish the men for paying for even consensual sex) or making regulations designed to specifically drive sex workers underground and discourage them.

     “Decriminalization” simply means that laws against consensual sex work and against consenting sex acts amongst adults should be repealed.

     Anthony

114. That makes sense, Anthonythanks.

     When I was using the terms “legalization” and “regulation” earlier, I was thinking about it in the sense you used it:

     the state completely stays out of regulating consensual sex arrangements involving consenting adults and money . . .save for existing worker/client protections, health insurance. and the like.

     I guess I needed to clarify.

     I think it’s important for the government to protect people from the abuses of business and industry . . . in sex work as in all other kinds of work. So I think regulation should apply, but not in an anti-sex moral sense–in a health and safety sense.

115. So, I guess my question is how to give [my nephew] another message.

     And that’s an important question Aunt D! I’ll think about it and get back to you if I come up with any resources. (I’d love to hear other peoples ideas as well!)

     One thing I would say is that teenagers try on a lot of identities, or ways of being themselves in the world . . . so just because your nephew picked out an offensive shirt probably doesn’t mean he totally believes in the message. My brother experimented with some edgy clothing styles and music, etc., when he was younger (he’s now in his twenties) and he’s turned into a wonderful person who is totally non-defensive about his own gender identity and respects and cares about the women in his life in authentic ways.

     I’ve tried countering his generalizations, but I feel like I’m coming across as crazy Aunt D, and he’s probably ignoring me.

     In my own experience, children and teenagers–because they’re trying to figure out how the world works and their place in it–can get really rigid about gender issues. Like all the four-year-old girls I know who are frickin’ obsessed with Disney Princesses and won’t wear anything except pink. I think a little patience can go along way, particularly when it’s exercised alongside providing alternative ways of looking at things, examples of thinking critically about the messages the culture sends. I think the phrase “teachable moment” is kind of hokey and condescending, but I do think that when you’re around young people and you hear them repeat a misogynistic or homophobic idea, just asking them to stop and think about it can go along way. If they’re around their friends, they’ll probably blow you off–“yeah, whatever!”–but maybe in their heart of hearts they’ll think about it later. (Or at least I always hope they will!)

     I think the most important thing we can do is let kids know there are options–that there’s not one way of being a girl or being a boy–that these are not mutually exclusive, oppositional categories, and that they will be loved and supported in being who they are as human beings . . . and that you challenge them to love and support all the human beings in their life as well.

     The more comfortable they are in their own skin, the less likely they are to be cruel or defensive toward other people.

116. Anna,
     This is a good starting point on undersatnding the difference between legalization and decriminalization:

     http://www.freedomusa.org/coyotela/decrim.html

     SWOP-USA, Desiree Alliance, BAYSWAN, and $pread Magazine are also great resources.

117. I have read the links, annalouise. What the links prove is that johns can be counted on to sexually prey on vulnerable girls at every exploitable opportunity.

     The links show johns demonstrating that their desire to force girls into painful, degrading, permanently harmful sex acts means they actively seek to take advantage of the most vulnerable victims. Don’t point the finger of responsibility for men’s abuse of prostituted women and children at anyone but the johns whose sexual predations are the cause of the misery. Feminists don’t make men rape by refusing men their favorite toys to break.

     Less than 2% of trafficked persons in the US work in the sex industry.

     I’m quite sure you’re wrong.

     Put yourself in the shoes of a trafficker. You’ve moved from selling drugs to trafficking girls because the merchandise lasts longer than one snort, brings in more money, and can be resold until it expires. You latest haul is half a dozen 15-year-old girls and your options for where to put them to work are domestic slavery, agricultural slavery, military slavery, sweatshop slavery or prostituted slavery. Where do you put your girls?

     Remember, you’re a trafficker so the fact that the girls will likely be raped in all forms of slavery is of no consequence, you’re just looking for the biggest return on your investment. Compare what a farm laborer can earn an enslaving farmer in one day with what a prostitute can earn an enslaving pimp in one day and choose.

     it’s disengenous in the extreme to talk about the enslavement of these Nepalese Kamaiya girls by the brothels when up until about two years ago they, and their entire families, already were slaves but because their enslavement was within Nepalese borders and not titilating enough for westerners, it was ignored.

     Radical feminists have been opposed to men economically coercing sex from desperately impoverished people for a lot longer than two years, but you’re still avoiding the question of what to do with prostitute-using men.

     What do you want Bob Herbert to do if you think calling attention to prostitution as a harmful, anti-woman tradition deducts pro-woman brownie points from him? Should Bob Herbert make a weekly practice of using sex workers himself because if he really cared about them he’d give them what you claim they want – his money – and not some pity-laden charity handout but money for a blowjob well done, a handjob well done, a rim job well done? If the problem is too many violent johns for sex workers to handle, maybe the solution is to add a number of ‘nice’ johns like Bob Herbert to the pool so johns who mainly get off on hurting women will only turn up to rape a prostituted woman once every ten tricks instead of once every five tricks.

     I was once in a group brainstorming ideas about how to help prostituted women. My suggestion was, “Target johns for education about prostitution’s harms to themselves and women.” When it came time to read aloud the long list of brainstormed suggestions, the #$!%#I%! Woman collecting the ideas half sighed and read my suggestion as, “Do something about all violence.”

     I did not say, “Do something about all violence” and the wide-eyed faces of the women who turned to witness my reaction knew it was #$!%#I@%! woman’s intentional dismissal of considering the small subset of men who use prostitutes a possible area of preventive action.

     Radical feminists are not coy about what we’ve been asking so the questions “how do you get rid of it? What is the plan?” are insincere. We have been repeating our answers to those questions for years.

     Radical feminists are asking for thirdwave feminists to help undo the doubling of British men’s demands for prostituted sex that happened between 1990 and 2000. We know this is possible because what goes up can go down. The number of British men who paid for sex doubled in the past ten years to 10%. In Thailand 80% of men have used prostitutes and they use them more frequently. The only difference between Thai men and British men is the amount of entitlement to control women’s bodies each respective society allows its men.

     Ours could be a society that does not approve male entitlement to sex with a caste of impoverished girls deemed The Touchables, but only if we insist men stop their rampant, and in recent years increasing, sexual predation of females.

118. thanks for the link, Amber, and the other suggestions. I’m definitely adding stuff from this thread to my reading list :).

119. Aunt D-

     Don’t try to be young or hip. That way infinite dorkiness lies. When dealing with teenagers, never try to impress them, and continually thank god that you are no longer a teenager yourself.

     When he makes these obnoxious generalizations, instead of countering them, try questioning them. Ask “Why do you say that?” and “That’s interesting- where’d you hear that?” Don’t try to teach him something, actually try to figure out what he’s thinking. When there are inevitable holes in his argument, ask him to explain. “But what do you think of x counter-example?” At the very least, you’ll get him to examine where he gets his received wisdom.

     I think the socratic method is great for teens. Instead of trying to be cool, you treat them like an adult. And they teach their own idiot hormone crazed selves.

120. Decriminalization works the same way with drugs too.

121. “Target johns for education about prostitution’s harms to themselves and women.”

     Well, that’s a concrete suggestion. A few questions:

     1) how would you identify them?
     2) when you say “small subset,” are you referring to prostitution technically, or johns who frequent strip clubs etc.?
     3) would the goal in education about harms be focused on willing or unwilling sex workers?
     4) what form would the education take?

122. AnnaLouise,

     You are really misrepresenting and over-generalizing village life in Nepal. (I myself lived in Nepal, married a guy from a semi-egalitarian farming village in Baglung district.)

     I am curious, what is the organization you worked with in Nepal? I am very familiar with Nepali-run feminist groups that are working to end trafficking, provide skills training and shelters for trafficked and prostituted women, etc. And while your views (ie, your claim that MOST Nepali girls would rather be sold into prostitution and be dead by 30 than to live in a village) may reflect the views of Western development expats, so wedded to the idea of Western progress, they do not reflect the views of most Nepali feminists.

     So please, give me the name of your organization. I would love pass your comments on to Nepali feminists I know who are working to end trafficking and see what they think about your comments.

123. Oh yeah, and the idea that Nepali feminists only give a shit about girl trafficking and not the conditions of poor people in villages? Complete bullshit. Feminists in Nepal work on everything from media, educational, and political reform to caste, dowry and girl trafficking abolition. One of the things I love most about Nepal is the incredible solidarity among various women’s, human rights, and media organizations (I’m speaking of local organizations, not international Western-run NGOs, BTW.)

124. Hillary just won Michigan and she’ll probably win SC. Even if she wins the Democratic nomination, there’s no way she’ll win. There’s too much sexism and militarism in American society. That’s why there’s war in the first place to mask society’s problems of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. Huckabee will trounce her easily because of his progun views. After all, he wants to abolish the IRS (while I really want it abolished, it won’t happen).

125. where the hell did I say that Nepali feminists don’t care about trafficking issues or that Nepalese girls would rather be trafficked than not?

     My statement was that to portray the trafficking of Kamaiya girls as enslavement completely mischaracterizes their life before being trafficked when they already were slaves.

126. See that’s the thing, AnnaLouise, you used the passive “it [the poverty and enslavement of Nepapli people] was ignored,” by the same people who work against girl trafficking. So clarify, who was doing the ignoring? And what organization did you work for? Who are the Nepali women who share your views about girl trafficking, and the relative merits of being a prostitute in Nepal as opposite to living in a village?

127. Aren’t you the same AnnaLouise who said that, while Nepali prostitutes are “usually dead by the time they are thirty” that “many Nepali girls see prostitution as a genuinely better life than the one they have”? Or did you forget that you wrote that publicly on your blog?

128. Less than 2% of trafficked persons in the US work in the sex industry.

     I’m quite sure you’re wrong.

     Please do some research on the subject Sam. 98% of trafficking victims in the United States do not work in the sex industry. The most common industry that trafficking victims are found in is the domestic service industry. Many of them work for wealthy foreign nationals under a particular provision of US immigration law that provides them with very restrictive entry visas and little to no workplace protections. Others work in exploitive circumstances for American citizens who take their passports, underpay them and use the fear of deportation to keep them cowed. The largest growing group of trafficked persons in the US is men being trafficked from South and Central America to work on post-Katrina reconstruction of the Gulf Coast. This is the face of trafficking victims in the US.
     Why does it not get press coverage? Because the NYTime wouldn’t be able to publish a titilating cover of a girl in a schoolgirl uniform to accompany their stories on exploited nannies. Because looking at the men being trafficked in New Orleans would shine light onto exactly what a “guest worker” program means and big business doesn’t want that. Because mainstream feminism would have to do some genuine soul-searching about how some women’s liberation has come at the expense of other women. Because we might have to look at global capitalism and that make everybody uncomfortable.
     What countries are trafficked peolpe coming from? What countries are they coming to? When has the explosion of trafficed or exploited migrants happened in these various countries? But that list together and we’d see a list of countries that had market reforms forced on them by the IMF and we’d the see the explosion of trafficked or exploited migrants happening right after. We’d see women from Thailand, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Russia and former soviet states, Burma and Bangeledesh being exploited and abused economically, physically and sexually regardless of their formal job title by people in the West and in the Gulf States.
     There’s a very good reason why a lot of powerful interests want to do everything they can to stop feminists from looking at trafficking and its causes holisticaly because the conclusions we would inevitably draw would be that the entire global economic system is a form of instituionalized violence against women.
     Making us obsess over the “demand side” of trafficking would be one of those smokescreens. Maybe every man would rape or sexually exploit every woman if he could. I don’t know. I’m not cynical enough to believe that but I’m not ambitious enough to probe the inner depths of men’s minds. I want to know why some women are protected from instituionalized sexual violence and some women aren’t.

129. What do you want Bob Herbert to do if you think calling attention to prostitution as a harmful, anti-woman tradition deducts pro-woman brownie points from him? Should Bob Herbert make a weekly practice of using sex workers himself…

     Yeah, because it’s all just black or white. All the other illustrations Herbert used to assert his claim that misogyny is alive and well in America weren’t good enough. He HAD to shit on Nevada and sex workers in order to make his point. And he had to do it three times in three different articles (citing the same ONE trip he took to visit ONE brothel) because one article shitting on Nevada wasn’t enough.

130. Making us obsess over the “demand side” of trafficking would be one of those smokescreens.

     There is no supply without demand.

     He HAD to shit on Nevada and sex workers in order to make his point.

     He never “shit” on sex workers. He called out those who do.

131. and why does Herbert focus on Nevada as the “misogyny capital of America” and Nevada’s particular version of the sex industry as an example of that misogyny? I mean, I know he needs a hook and way to tie it too the debates but still. None of the democratic candidates are likely to visit a legal brothel or strip club nor take endorsements from brothel or strip club owners.
     Why are Nevada’s legal brothels held up as pinnacles of misogyny when the illegal brothels in towns on the US/Mexico border are the ones that are using underage, coerced or trafficked (or all of the above) women? That’s a much better hook, really. The growth of sex industry and just all around sexual violence and sexual exploitation along the border is absolutely tied to the increased militarization of the border and the increased reliance on coyotes and it’s gotten to a point where being raped by a coyote is considered the standard “payment” for a woman crossing the border.
     This would be just one example of how the politics of immigration is tied inexorably to human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of vulnerable women.

132. First I want to apologize to Jill and other folks for my meltdown there… I just get very frusterated.

     And I want to thank folks for talking about ways they think things can be changed…and I agree, changing mens attitudes towards women in general is a good and worthy to do thing.

     ANd yeah, this is a tough topic. Always is. But I really don’t see the sex industry as a whole going anywhere, most certainly not ‘away’. The systems in place now, including keeping it illegal, are not working, just as making booze illegal did not work, and keeping drugs illegal did not work. And the people who continually get shafted in all this are the sex workers. I mean, I drove two hours through a damn blizzard today, spent 50$ on gas for a strip show I was supposed to do this afternoon. No one was there, no one bothered to call and tell me it was cancelled, the woman (yes, thats right, woman) who hired me for it refused to answer her phone, so I got to drive back through the shit weather minus the money I would’ve made, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. I’ve had shit nights where I’ve been mistreated, but even doing legal work, I’m not of the mind to go to the cops, because I am posititve nothing would be done about it, and all I’d get for the effort is judged and disregarded by the justice system and society in general. And I’ve had both of those types of experieces more than once, but certainly not nearly as often as other sex workers, and yep, sure enough….it pisses me off. I also get livid when people assume that sexworkers with internet connections aren’t doing anything to help less fortunate people in the business, because it simply isn’t true.

133. Ren, no apologies necessary. I know you’ve had this conversation approximately 9,000 times, and I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be. I really appreciate your generosity in coming here and explaining your position yet again — I’m sure it’s tiresome. You’re a powerful voice and a wonderful writer, and I’m glad you take the time to say what you say, here, at your own space and elsewhere. You have certainly challenged and informed my own views on a lot of things.

     So, shorter Jill: I should be thanking you, not accepting your apology.

134. thanks Jill.

135. That is utterly and completely untrue and it saddnes me greatly that a feminist woman would have such misconceptions about the labor movement.

     annalouise, in all fairness I think your take-down was inappropriate. I live in a mill town, much like what you spoke of. Sure, there were organizers among women, although unions among the textile workers here were not very successful, certainly any efforts of women to unionize and their effects have been long forgotten by the hordes.

     My reference to trade unions was that male dominated trade unions successfully made inroads for male dominated work and still are in existence today. Although there exist some trade unions for traditionally women’s work, i.e., hotel workers or in some areas culinary workers, the fact remains that these work areas are still low paying, still considered shit work and still are largely not unionized across the board.

     The SEIU is an excellent example of a woman dominated industry that was organized and unionized mostly by women of course.

     But my original point remains that most trades, that is work not requiring a college degree, but still requiring some sort of skill set or craft ability, are considered to this day, the dominion of men.

     In fact, even nursing requires one to have the time and funds to enter into higher education for at least a couple of years if not more depending on the exact trade acquired. Compare that with the Laborer’s, plumbers and pipe fitters, teamsters, carpenters, electricians, (some college or trade school required), HVAC, public utility workers, cable and telephone workers (telephone workers do have a women organization – but I’m speaking of line workers), where little education is required.

     My point was that women still are forced into certain roles. If they don’t fit those roles, then they are damned in one way or another. In the roles given to them by society, whether being a house slave/whore or a sex worker, fit into the paradigm of what is considered acceptable ‘women’s work’, which is still underpaid, under appreciated and often a serious barrier to one’s safety and well being. If women find a way to overcome the possible barriers, (through for example, demanding worker’s rights and human rights to prostitutes) they are damned again by regulation that seeks to keep them invisible and thus deny basic human rights.

     H. Clinton receives flak because she has dared to step into an area where she is considered to not belong. All women who dare to break down the barriers receive pretty much the same treatment, every fucking day. I know I do as a self employed construction contractor.

     Also, although I’m sure you’ve had access to education, you make a mockery of the supposed inclusive nature of feminism by mocking me for not displaying sufficient knowledge of history. My reference or my attempt at reference was to trades that are unionized that do not fall into the paradigms of traditionally accepted women’s work. I still, to this day, do not see active women-only unions on a state by state basis, as a rule, that represent women interested in seeking gainful employment in an area outside the acceptable venues of women’s work.

     That was my point. Your history tirade was patronizing and unnecessary. I am aware of the efforts of women in the past, whose history is obscured by a male dominated culture and whose effects, if I may say bluntly, still have not changed the fundamental condition of women’s work today to the extent that all women feel free to pursue work outside of what is considering traditionally acceptable for them.

     You offered some links that I was going to bookmark to read further, but frankly, at this moment you’ve pissed me off so much I’m tempted, against my better judgment to ignore them.

     And people like you wonder why the working class and less educated get tune you out? I mean really, you couldn’t have been more condescending or classist could you have? Is feminism still the sole domain of white middle and upper middle class women? Are women like you the only ones who have a valid view? if it is, then I’ll go back to my day job and ignore this whole thing and to agreeing with so many working class women who say they can’t connect with feminists, instead of attempting to get them to see otherwise.

136. For people wondering what to do, here’s an excellent article: Eight ways to revolutionize the sex industry.

137. If it’s classist oppression to correct a factually false statement then….I don’t know…call me classist.

138. Because we might have to look at global capitalism and that make everybody uncomfortable.

     Yes! This!
     I’ve spent a not small amount of time studying Human Rights issues from an anthropological perspective. And it’s that, always, in the end.

     If Ren makes porn, and she does, and if I shop at Wal-Mart, and I do, which of us is directly responsible for more human suffering?

     Honestly, I don’t know. But it’s at least a tie.

139. ug, that previous statement was rude and uncalled for, I apologize.

     But really, saying something is wrong and ill-informed and then being pissed off because you are corrected is incredibly childish. You stated pretty clearly that labor organizing struggles were something women were not a part of and so are irrelevent to feminist discussion. My assumption was that you were ignorant of women’s involvement in the labor movement and the way women’s centrality to labor has been ignored and censured in the popular imagination. My intention was not to be patronizing but to correct that because damn if women’s role in workers’ rights struggles haven’t been downplayed enough that’s it’s depressing as hell to hear them downplayed in feminist space.
     Evidently that’s not what you were saying or where you were coming from so…I’m kind of drawing a blank here.
     Are you saying that women dominated labor groups somehow don’t count in your statements about the labor movement? Why? Just because they are made up of women? That there are no women anywhere fighting the ways that sexism and economic oppression interesect?
     Are you saying that labor organizing is irrelevent for women because of sexism? Are you saying that labor organizing is irrelevent for sex workers because sex work isn’t really work? (I’m not grasping at straws here, this is actually a really common feminist argument)
     I got nothing.

140. *Rings bell in my head* Yes these discussions are classist and Ren splained it 1000 times.

141. Pingback: “So, why do you pay for it, Vanya?” « Natalia Antonova

142. cough.

     In case someone here might find this useful. I think I might put up more conversations in the months to come. Maybe.

143. Oh, sorry, I forgot I trackbacked. Silly Natalia.

144. Sam, the 2% figure could be 2% of all trafficked people into the US, including for example, migrants who pay someone to help them across the Mexican border and who are then free of their traffickers when they get to the other side. I’d also be surprised if prostituted women only made up 2% of trafficked people who remain in the power of their traffickers.

     The real question though is what percentage of prostituted people have been trafficked as it’s likely that that figure would be much higher than 2%. In the UK it’s estimated that there are 80,000 people working as prostitutes with estimates that anything between 4,000 and 25,000 of those have been trafficked. A couple of years ago the Poppy Project in London did a survey of off-street prostitution (brothels and escorts) and they estimated that 80% of those women were from overseas.

     I see the usual arguments that unionisation would somehow be the panacea to the hideous abuses that prostituted women face have appeared. The problem with that argument firstly is how on earth would collective bargaining work in prostitution. Most prostituted people are either self-employed or reporting to a pimp, there isn’t a workplace to organise unless the feminists here are really arguing that we should rename pimps managers and let the union negotiate with them. Secondly the sort of abuses that prostituted people face – rape and violence from customers and their pimps, exposure to incredibly unsafe work environments, sexual abuse and sexual harassment on the job aren’t actually issues a union could deal with, it’s the police who need to deal with crimes.

145. Hey there. I just wanted to clarify a few things. I’m not trying to get a fight going or anything, I’m just much calmer than I was the other day, so I want to clarify a few things.

     Firstly, I want to apologize for being so unclear about what I meant about a woman having sex with 8 guys in 3 hours. Reading it again, that is so NOT what I meant! My point was more that, for many prostituted women, their daily life is a series of men fucking them. And that I doubt most of them enjoy this. I was absolutely NOT saying there is anything wrong with group sex, or having sex with more than one person in the same day, or anything like that. I really don’t care what people do sexually, as long as it’s consenting adults who are free to leave at any time.

     Secondly, I want to be very clear that I am really concerned about the women who do NOT want to be prostituted. For women who are happy or feel they are making a choice, ok (I don’t get it, but if it’s their free choice, and they have other options, then ok). But I insist that most women do NOT want to be doing that. Not if they had other opportunities. Same with most people working at McDonald’s, probably. Except I believe (and I know lots of people disagree) that being prostituted does take a toll on a woman’s body and soul.

     Thirdly, I am really confused by Ren. You assume I know nothing, haven’t done sex work. Well, not by choice, no. I have been in pornography though, against my will, and it haunts me to this day that there are pictures and movies out there of me as a child and a teen. I have had many times in my life where I felt that all I was good for was letting some guy fuck me. I have come very close to sex work and thankfully I’ve found other ways to make an income. At times this meant living off of credit cards and doing crap temp work or babysitting for cash under the table.

     What I’m confused about, Ren, is your last post. You say you like it, but then you say that you have to do it to pay the bills. So, which is it? It sounds from your post, that you DON’T like doing it, that you’ve felt forced into it, in some ways. So I’m confused. I’m not attacking you here, I just really don’t get it.

     I also don’t know what you are trying to prove by telling me you went to work and then helped people. I work too. That’s great that you helped people, awesome. But are you trying to imply that you are a better person than me? You don’t know me, you don’t know what kind of work I do, or what I do in my spare time. It seems that you are trying to feel superior to me in some way. I think it’s awesome that you help others, that’s great. But don’t yell at me just because you don’t know how I spend my time. Again, I’m confused. Maybe you were just feeling angry and wanted to attack (which I totally understand! That is why I left the conversation, because I knew I was so enraged that I’d say things that were just mean)

     I am NOT telling anyone how to feel, and I certainly apologize if this is how my posts come across. Feel however you want. I feel the way I do, and that’s not going to change. Please don’t tell me how to feel. Please don’t tell me that I can’t say anything unless I have been a prostitute. Please don’t tell me to shut up and stuff my anger down inside me, that’s what men/patriarchy have been telling me my entire life.

     Some of my rage comes from my past abuse. Some of it comes from seeing the damage that pornography has done to my relationships. Some of it comes from college experiences, watching porn, being disgusted and horrified by it, and being told I am crazy, a prude, or I must hate sex. Some of it comes from the way men/boys have treated me, because of pornography and stripping. Some of it comes from the constant pressure on women to be like strippers, porn actors. Some of it comes from feeling like the plight of the majority is being ignored, in order for the minority to feel good about what they are doing.

     It hurts a lot to hear someone talking so lightly about pornography and doing hard core stuff that involves women being called awful names, and being hurt. I really truly do not understand this, at all. Maybe what I said to Ren about her blog came across as mean, or judgmental. To me, I was just shocked to read her words. Shocked, horrified, sick to my stomach. I really am very confused about how so many people here are being so defensive about this. I certainly can’t be the only person here who is horrified by someone doing Bang Bros and getting spit on, etc? If I am, then I’m really on the wrong blog.

     I’m sorry to direct some of this to Ren, I really don’t mean to single you out, but I did go to your blog and I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. I think of feminism as a safe haven, away from degradation, abuse. It is a place where people don’t call me crazy for hating porn, strip clubs, and any kind of sex work. So yeah, I’m really really confused. I was really really angry. I understand that we all have different opinions. I just DON’T GET IT!!

     And please don’t tell me to go read what sex workers have to say, I really can’t read that stuff, it makes me physically ill. It gives me flashbacks and nightmares, and I’m not going to intentionally expose myself to that stuff. I have read plenty, but I have to maintain my sanity (or what little is left).

     Whew, long comment! That’s all for me. I’ll come back to read but probably won’t post. This is a very touchy subject for me, and I think for my mental health I need to not engage too much.

146. I posted this reply to Octogalore and it was in moderation for a while but now it’s not anywhere so I’m going to try posting it again.

     Wouldn’t it have been nice to see what the group might have come up with had the whole line of thought not been rudely derailed by one narrowminded asshole?

147. Buggle:

     By all means these discussions are tough, and they do get people riled. But to answer some stuff. Yes, I like my job. Like anyone, however, I have crap days. Like most people, I have had times when money has been damn tight and I’ve done things I’d rather not do because the money was good. I think that is true of a lot of people, in a lot of professions. I also know a lot of people, especially in prostitution, who have to do that, often, and do not like it at all. Those are the people I’m interested in helping. As for me bringing up working then helping other sex workers, I did so because so many people (not meaning you, but people in general) think that sex workers who have some privilege never talk about, have concern for, or try to help those who do not, and that simply isn’t true. I realize I am lucky wrt to my business, I most certainly realize that. I also have no idea what other people may or may not have been through, in regards to sex work or past abuse…but you know, the reverse is also true. I am not going to deny the truth of your experiences or the pain and thoughts they’ve cause in you, but I appreciate the same consideration. What I hate the most about my job? It’s all the other assumptions people have about me and anyone else who does it, especially those who claim not to hate it. It’s a dance I’ve done one too many times, and my feet are tired, you know?

     As for my blog…well…as childish as this might sound…it’s my blog? It’s not “Feministe”, or one of the other big feminist blogs? Hell, it’s not even a feminist blog. I write about feminism there sometimes, but I also write about other things of interest to me, from football to history to sex work…and yep, my job, my feelings, and what’s going on with any and all of that. And well, that’s what I do, and no, you are not the only person quite horrified by it, but I do have my reasons, and I do it by choice. And all too often, that overshadows anything else I might ever say about anything, including disucssions on how to help sex workers, and yeah, it makes me angry. And it makes other people who have seen this same dance play itself out over and over again angry too. No one has to like what I do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally have something of merit or note to say, you know?

     But yep, this is a hot button issue, and I can understand how it makes people emotional and angry, people on both sides. I’d be happy to discuss further with you if you want, or not if you don’t want, that’s up to you, but I certainly understand how it can make people angry and emotional.

148. Sam, I deleted your comment because calling other people on this thread “assholes” is a little unnecessary — and I said above that I’m going to delete comments that insult or attack other commenters. So unless I’m misunderstanding you, feel free to re-phrase and then re-post.

149. Yes, you’re mistaken. I was responding to Octogalore’s questions about the suggestion I made to the sex worker group I was in a few years ago, so the asshole refers to “#$!%#I@%! woman”.

150. But really, saying something is wrong and ill-informed and then being pissed off because you are corrected is incredibly childish. You stated pretty clearly that labor organizing struggles were something women were not a part of and so are irrelevant to feminist discussion.

     First off, your apology means nothing when you take it back a few sentences down, so I would have accepted, but oh, I guess its off the table.

     If you had read the point I was attempting to make, which you have NOT addressed yet in your two replies, was that certain work, mostly work that has traditionally afforded a decent living without requiring years of education is still considered in the realm of men’s work.

     Secondly, I was not ‘backed in a corner’, I was highly offended. Apparently your arrogance seems to give you the impression that you are still correct in how you read my comment. Instead of discussing the core issue I brought up and expanded on, you have chosen to nit pik me about whether or not I am familiar with women in unions. I never brought up traditionally woman’s unions, because as far as I know, women have not formed unions to protect themselves in any trades not traditionally associated with women’s work. And might I also add that my primary focus is the last fifty years.

     I imagine that the only reason you cannot directly discuss what I’ve brought up in my comments; the core theme of what I am trying to say, is that you have either decided on your own to troll me about something as silly as whether I know all woman labor leaders from a hundred years hence or not. So tell me, how does that tie in with the broader point I made?

     Can you please name me a woman organized and lead union that organizes women around work traditionally considered of the male domain? I named a few examples of trades that have always been easy ways for men, especially men in marginalized groups, to earn a decent income to support their families in middle class decency. Can you name electrical, carpenters, laborers and the other myriad examples I through out there that are still male dominated but have offshoots of organization for women?

     No you can’t, because there are not enough women entering those fields to form their own union.

     Which was a part of the point I made which I don’t think I need to restate here. I you didn’t get my point, or was hung up on something other than my failure to give a random Feminist History Knowledge Show here, then fire away.

     My assumption was that you were ignorant of women’s involvement in the labor movement and the way women’s centrality to labor has been ignored and censured in the popular imagination. My intention was not to be patronizing but to correct that because damn if women’s role in workers’ rights struggles haven’t been downplayed enough that’s it’s depressing as hell to hear them downplayed in feminist space.

     And you know what, that’s part of my point and a very large part of why I come onto blogs. I am really fed up with so many activists whining about how:

     1> They can’t understand why so many people don’t see their point of view.
     2> They are activists only out of an interest for self aggrandizement, often by performing, on a micro-scale, the same type of power play that poor and marginalized people must dodge from everywhere everyhow everyday.
     3> They blame their lack of action and their own unwillingness to step outside their own privilege to truly know and understand the ‘other’ — usually the ‘other’ they attempt to save by pulling them into a capitalist model.

     Evidently that’s not what you were saying or where you were coming from so…I’m kind of drawing a blank here.
     Are you saying that women dominated labor groups somehow don’t count in your statements about the labor movement? Why?

     Ok, even though I said I wouldn’t repeat myself, I will attempt to clarify.

     Women have not made substantial inroads into sectors of the working world where women have traditionally not been accepted. Possibly it is because today the union model does not work well anymore — although I’d certainly say that male dominated unions seem to be humming along quite well for the most part.

     Are women able to enter into non-female dominated work and still be safe from harrassment? No. Can a women enter into non-female dominated work and except to get a promotion like a man can? No, not expect it. Can a woman choose professions still dominated by men, such as fireman or CEO’s? No. Is the criticism and mistrust of H. Clinton reflective of how most women who enter non-traditional completely gone?

     What part of that point did you miss?

     Are you saying that labor organizing is irrelevent for women because of sexism? Are you saying that labor organizing is irrelevent for sex workers because sex work isn’t really work? (I’m not grasping at straws here, this is actually a really common feminist argument)
     I got nothing.

     You know, I don’t think my points were really that difficult to understand in anyway, in fact I really didn’t think what I said was any trouble for anyone to understand, but in consideration of your blank mind, I’ll have a go at assisting you in understanding mine.

     Labor organizing has been dominated by men. That doesn’t mean there were or are no women doing labor organizing. That doesn’t mean that women’s labor organizing doesn’t count, at least I’m not saying that. The fact that the rest of society says is my fault how? And by the way, how in fuck’s name did you divine that I said that sex workers organizing is a irrelevant? My god, the first time I mentioned sex workers organizing I said I was all for it. Last I knew that type of language means supportive.

     Why in the hell would I not be supportive of women sex workers organizing? The hell I wouldn’t! Or any women for that matter. My point is that until women are able to reach access in all areas controlled and dominated by men wherein women can choose whatever career they wish, then nothing will change. The rights of the laborer and the rights of the sex worker, when both are basically the same are they not? Both players in these roles are people are they not?

     My point was that traditional woman’s work falls into two categories; low paying or no paying and thus that work is less rewarding economically and affords little rights of redress in case of wrongdoing on another’s part toward these persons.

     Traditionally women are not accepted into the role of self supporting earner as their independence would/will upset the current power structure. Not much has changed in the last hundred years, not as much as I would have liked to thought would. Are you going to call bullshit on that as well?

     That there are no women anywhere fighting the ways that sexism and economic oppression interesect?

     I don’t know, I’m not attending a fucking quiz show here. If you know the answer tell me and others like me so then you make a whole lot of smarter people wouldn’t you and wouldn’t that be helping the movement people like always bleat about wishing it were more broad? I didn’t say I knew did I? If I don’t see any down here on the filthy fucking ground what should that tell you? Why do I have to make this point over and over and over again? What is the matter with you people? What have you got to lose?

     Are you saying that labor organizing is irrelevent for sex workers because sex work isn’t really work? (I’m not grasping at straws here, this is actually a really common feminist argument)
     I got nothing.

     Now you are really drawing, really digging deep, but more into your own mind and arguments possibly with others? I never made such comments, NEVER. Do not revise my comments. You got nothing because there is nothing there in my statements relative to ever saying sex work is not work. Believe me, that’s absolutely not a comment I’d ever state or write, ever as I do not ascribe to that. At. All.

     Geeze Marie, what next? Grasping at straws? No, you’re fricking chiseling them out of the stick you picked out of your ass.

     That’s why you got nothing.

     But really, saying something is wrong and ill-informed and then being pissed off because you are corrected is incredibly childish

     I never said anything wrong or uninformed. What I have said you have failed demonstrably to address or even recognize as a part of my comment. If you had trouble understanding me, then ask for clarification, but to bully all the rest of your issues with other people is uncalled for and again, you need to back off.

     I am not childish and I’d thank you also to withdraw your condescension, which I do not deserve. My views are valid as I can tell just by your comments, that you haven’t a fucking clue what life is like for a working class woman of any stripe. You have a serious issue with my point and instead of addressing that, you assailed me on a target point you figure will make me look small and insignificant, will point up your privilege against my presumed lack thereof.

     Uncalled for really by people (I say again) who profess with such vain sincerity to really have the interests of all women at heart.

     If it’s classist oppression to correct a factually false statement then….I don’t know…call me classist.

     No, its classist to use every opportunity you have to use the symbolism of institutional classism of which higher education is one marker. Another marker beyond that is being well schooled in such instruction that does not afford one an improved economic condition.

     People don’t learn to be welders because everyone among the elite is so awed at how they can run a good bead down a piece of flat stock. No. But that welder can get a good paying job with which he can buy a house, possibly the first in his family, or possibly just a little better than his parents’ (or so it once went).

     People who have the money and resources study feminist studies and art history, advanced drawing, nineteenth century literature, etc. ad infinetem, because it looks good socially; it conforms to a social ideal of higher learning, it puts one above the throng or gives at least the illusion that one is above them does it not?

     If you gave a damn about teaching people and improving the movement, you’d teach and guide and let me run at that, to add to it or whatnot. Instead you use what you perceive to be my ignorance and turn it against me. Then I am honest and out your bad tactics and you scorn and mock. What gives?

     Again, people like you use these behaviors as means to dismiss the working class and the many among them who to you simply exist as a convenient means to boost your own shaking standing with yourself and others.

     Young feminist women are having a very hard time identifying with second wave feminism and I’m not lost as to why. Poor and marginalized women are having a hard time as well, harder than I imagine you’ll ever know.

     In fact, my day starts early, so I’m done here.

151. Jill, this is late in the game, but for anyone still reading, I would like to make a point.

     Yeah, I am privileged compared to many sex workers. Yet in even blogging, I take a risk. I am not a “former sex worker”. I am in the here and now. Ranting up a storm, and well aware of the fact that anything and everything I’ve said could and would be used against me in a court of law.

     I make rough porn and like rough sex…if I got raped, even BEAT TO SHIT, what chance would I have? I sell it? What chance would I have?

     None. None at all. Hell, I’ve been outed to my family and blackmailed.

     MAYBE THAT is a big reason a lot of sex workers do not blog.

     just something to consider.

152. Boy that was poorly written, but then again, I work an average of ten hours a day at physically strenuous work for which I’m poorly paid, then I come home to a cold house to cook my own dinner. I get to look forward to cleaning my own house tomorrow, as I have no wife to do it for me while I work.

     Lemme see, I’ll call up that woman run union that I’ve been ignoring and have them give me a hand. Or possibly, I’ll just quit, live under the bridge and beg for food while attending university to attain my master’s in women’s studies.

     I can then offer to educate on feminism for quarters. In the meantime real woman who are holding up the capitalist system I am attempting to scum from, are dying, but hell, what matters? At least I know my feminist history. Give me a fucking break.

     Its almost funny if not just tragically stupid.

153. I clean my own house too…shit, there is something we can ALL agree on.

154. AnnaLouise said: “There’s a very good reason why a lot of powerful interests want to do everything they can to stop feminists from looking at trafficking and its causes holisticaly because the conclusions we would inevitably draw would be that the entire global economic system is a form of instituionalized violence against women.”

     Right, and that’s exactly why–contrary to your claims–radical feminists do give a shit about not only sex trafficking, but also capitalist exploitation, racism, and imperialism. It is you, not the radical feminists, who keep saying “at least x is not as bad as y.” How does that pass for progressive thought, anyway?

     Sam, with regard to what Bob Herbert, as a progressive, should have said about prostitution? I think that what some people here are saying is that he should have acknowledged that, while most women are exploited by prostitution, some women aren’t. Now, this would apply only in the case of prostitution, mind you. If he were writing about the US military, he wouldn’t be expected to throw in “some people like it.”

     So I think Bob Herbert, unlike other progressives is being consistent. What is the position of progressives, radicals, etc? You stand with those who are most marginalized. Say a corporation locates their headquarters in a rich, white community, and dumps toxic waste in a poor, Black community. Do we side with the people being poisoned and dumped on? Or do we need need to make sure to be “balanced,” to listen to those rich, white people, with greater access to the media, who say,”I work for that company and they treat me just fine”?

     With regard to prostitution:

     “Different actors in the sex industry do not have the same interests, and it would be irresponsible and inaccurate to group them together having one homogenous voice. Those with more power – the pimps and madams, the customers, and those in ‘upper-tier prostitution’ – have always advocated strongly, and for the most part effectively, for their own interests. Their interests, however, are diametrically opposed to the interests of those with the least power – the majority of prostituted and trafficked women and children. The former population uses their elite and empowered positions to collect the vast profits from within the sex industry or to maintain their access to buying women and children at will. The latter population comes almost invariably from marginalized populations . . . The position of the left must be standing unwaveringly with those who are most marginalized.” (From The Polaris Project Testimony on Germany’s World Cup Brothels)

155. annalouise:

     Please do some research on the subject Sam. 98% of trafficking victims in the United States do not work in the sex industry.

     I have done some research on the subject – a couple of hours Googling, which isn’t a vast amount, but still more than 98% of drive-by commenters. I haven’t been able to find any figures worth a damn. That said, the sex industry does seem to be the destination of a significant proportion of trafficking victims in the US. See this article for example:

     Government officials define trafficking as holding someone in a workplace through force, fraud or coercion. Trafficking generally takes two forms: sex or labor. The victims in most prosecutions in the Washington area have been people forced into prostitution….

     I would be the last person to discount the possibility that victims of non-sexual trafficking are under-acknowledged. But the claim that they amount to 98% of all trafficking victims would seem to be implausible.

     delphyne:

     Sam, the 2% figure could be 2% of all trafficked people into the US, including for example, migrants who pay someone to help them across the Mexican border and who are then free of their traffickers when they get to the other side

     People smuggling is not the same as trafficking..

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