Prostitution
I am writing this kind of in response to a few comments I’ve received recently. Usually I dislike doing this as it feels as though I’m trying to justify something I’ve said. This is not a justification but a clarification.

I am against prostitution. I have been against prostitution my entire life. I will continue to be against prostitution for the rest of my life. I consider almost all prostitution to be the sexual slavery of women. By the same token, I consider marriage to be an institution of female sexual slavery.

I am not against prostituted women or women in prostitution. I have never been against women in prostitution. I will never be against women in prostitution.

I hold this position not solely because of the reading I have done (this includes reading by feminists who have been in prostitution) but also because of personal experiences with men I knew who believed it to be within their right to purchase women for sex. I also watched an incredibly heartbreaking documentary last year called Born into Brothels. It made me cry for weeks.

My grandfather was an avid abuser of coerced and forced sex from women in prostitution. My grandmother was poor and black and had seven children. My grandfather used to steal what little money my grandmother had to keep herself and her family alive (money which she earned through sewing, knitting and crocheting) and he would spend it on alcohol and prostituted women. Once my mother was old enough to have a job my grandfather would go to her workplace and ask my mother’s boss for her pay. It being a men’s club back then, of course, my grandfather would get my mother’s pay and spend it on alcohol and prostituted women.

My purpose in telling this story is not to show the woman in prostitution as being an evil woman who steals from the mouths of hungry children. But more to show that all of the women in the picture are in the same boat in relation to men. As economically disadvantaged and oppressed beings they are often at the mercy of men. And, I believe that in this situation where women have to compete for the scarce resources that men have the privilege of bestowing upon them, no woman benefits. Not the wife, not the prostitute. And it is very reflective of the attitude that men have to women. That women exist only to service men’s needs.

Another story that my grandmother tells is that my grandfather came home drunk with two of his friends and ordered her to sleep with them. That was the last straw for my grandmother and she kicked him out. I think it is quite clear that to men who see women as whores they see all women as whores. And here is the thing, I don’t believe that any woman is a whore. They are all human beings. They all have the right to self-integrity and the only time a woman should have to engage in physical contact with another human being is when she desires to. If a woman’s ability to live hinges solely on her sexual availability to men that is what I call female sexual slavery. I consider both the prostituted women as well as my grandmother to be sexual slaves in this picture.

In a feminist society, men would not ever want to touch a woman who did not want to touch him back. In a feminist society, men could not even entertain the thought of doing something to a woman that might cause her pain or suffering in any way, shape or form. In a feminist society, men could not, and would not want to, and would be disgusted by the notion of purchasing the body of a woman. In a feminist society, my grandfather and his ability to see women as whores in order to consume them and their resources, could not exist.

When I say that I am against prostitution it means that I am against the right of men to use economic means to coerce or force a woman to do something that she would not ordinarily do without that coercion. If a woman in prostitution has no other options for the survival of herself and/or her children then the use of economic force is force and is therefore sexual slavery. Any man who believes that it is ok to take away a woman’s self-integrity by purchasing rights to her body is fundamentally fucked. I don’t think I can make it any clearer than that. I blame men for viewing women as whores and treating women as whores. I do not blame women for being trapped in sexual slavery. Or for choosing prostitution over shitty, ‘unskilled’, drudge labour doing ‘women’s work’ like childcare.

I was talking to this guy on the train once and he said something about women needing men and I replied back that I had never needed men in my entire life and that I never would need them. I had gotten rather angry at this guy by this point and this group of young guys behind me started hooting and yelling things like, “Woohoo for King’s Cross” (Sydney’s red light district). It was their way of telling me all women are whores, and that they like women to be whores, in fact women are nothing but whores. It was, in essence, woman-hatred. I wanted to tear those boys apart.

Anyone who wants to convince me that prostitution is ok then I suggest concentrating on this point: that all men who consider it to be their right to purchase women’s bodies for sex are fundamentally fucked up.

I do not disagree that many women have few options when it comes to earning enough money to live on. And as a feminist, I blame patriarchy for that and also for undermining and devaluing women’s work; for setting up a morally corrupt and nonsensical ‘economic’ system which dehumanises all people but especially women; and for limiting their ability to access education and training in order to escape conditions of sexual slavery.

As a feminist, I know that my work involves doing more than just abolishing men’s right to purchase women’s bodies. It also involves redefining the nature of work and, in essence, changing the entire patriarchal economic system. I don’t call my feminism revolutionary for nothing. And a feminist revolution is incredibly necessary now more than ever. Our planet is dying and patriarchal economics is what is responsible.

All women suffer from the commodification and sexual objectification of women’s bodies. This will not stop until all forms of sexual violence against women, of which prostitution is a part, ends. I think that it is woman-hating to believe that there is a nice, non-oppressive way for men to use and purchase women’s bodies for their sexual gratification. In short, prostitution shows very graphically, men’s ideas of what they want women to be, available on demand for purchase and consumption.

**Just a quick note on terminology: I don't use the term sex work or sex worker to describe prostitution or women in prostitution. I do this deliberately because I don't believe that sex should be, or is, work. I prefer women in prostitution or prostituted women as it says what I mean. From the research I have done it seems that most women in prostitution are in fact prostituted women. There is, in my opinion, very little to distinguish the two from each other although I've leant towards using women in prostitution in this entry as there may be women in prostitution reading this and I do not wish to diminish their agency.**