Search Eminism.org

  • Enter search term(s):

Debunking Anti-Prostitution Feminism

articulating a working-class sex worker feminism

Below is a series of postings to WMST-L, in which Emi debunks radical feminist analysis of prostitution with working-class sex worker feminism, otherwise known as the Whore Revolution.

Forum: WMST-L
Date: 04/10/2002

On 04/09/02 06:04 pm, "Ruthe M. Thompson" wrote:

Today she came to class and said she had begun an interview with one of the prostitutes, a cross-dressed man.

Does this person really identify as a "cross-dressed man"?

The question of economics got her thinking. I then asked her to query the neighbors on where the real problem may lie (or perhaps what bothers them most): the prostitutes or the johns they attract to the neighborhood?

Are those the only choices? And when you say "neighbors" - are you automatically excluding sex workers as neighbors?

I think the key must be to ask students to put aside their prejudices (growing from general fears of sexuality, perhaps)

Or working-class people. Or immigrants. Or single mothers. Or transsexuals.

and think about sex workers as people like them, perhaps without their economic or educational privilege (not that my students in downtown Chicago have a great deal of privilege in either realm!)..

This assumes (1) students are not sex workers and that sex workers never take a Women's Studies course, and (2) being a sex worker is universally horrible and extremely deplorable, rather than the conditions under which they work often are. Neither is true.

I know there are publications about this topic and would like to see a bibliography if anyone has one, as I suggested to my student that she read a few sources on the realities of sex work before writing her piece.

I created this pamphlet for an action (the hookers' demonstration at an anti-prostitution seminar in Portland) last year (note: open the pamphlet with Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 or higher; print page 1 and 2 back to back and fold in the middle): http://transfeminism.org/conspire/pdf/2001-04-01-flier.pdf

I also have a 'zine which includes this pamphlet, titled "Instigations from the Whore Revolution: A Third Wave Feminist Response to the Sex Work 'Controversy'": http://eminism.org/zines.html

Other online resources I recommend are
Meretrix Online (by Magdalen Meretrix, the author of "Turning Pro")
http://www.realm-of-shade.com/meretrix/
and
BAYSWAN (by Carol Leigh, who coined the term "sex work")
http://www.bayswan.org/

As for an academic analysis of prostitution, I like Julia O'Connell Davidson's "Prostitution, Power and Freedom" even though I disagree with some of her assumptions.

By the way, I was going to give a lecture about the whore revolution at a liberal arts college in New York, but they canceled at the last minute (they called me today, only three days before my planned flight) because the president of the college felt it was inappropriate and uneducational and pulled the funding - I thought about going there anyway to spite them, but I concluded that it was not worth my time.

Emi K. <emi@eminism.org>

--
http://eminism.org/ * Putting the Emi back in Feminism since 1975.


Forum: WMST-L
Date: 04/10/2002

On 04/09/02 11:50 pm, "Sheila Jeffreys" wrote:

Street prostitution is still illegal, and it is extremely hard for women to work for themselves without being forced into brothels to make profits for the industry.

Are you therefore calling for an immediate legalization of all forms of prostitution, including street walking (under which sex businesses are regulated by the same labor and commerce laws that regulate other industries)? If not, why?

My position, and I am involved with Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia, is that men's abuse of women in prostitution is a form of violence against women and a violation of women's human rights. [snip] I then put forward arguments against prostitution being seen as work, as sex, or as choice and argue that it should be seen as violence and a human rights violation

There is a huge *slip* here - in the first, you are arguing that the *abuse* of women in prostitution is a form of violence (indeed!). In the second, you suggest that prostitution itself - regardless of the presence or absence of abuse, exploitation, or unconsentual acts - as violence. This slipperly slide shows that anti-prostitution feminists share one thing in common with rapists: that they do not understand "yes means yes, no means no." While rapists argue in court that prostitutes can't get raped, anti-prostitution feminists argue that prostitutes can't avoid being raped - both arguments exonerate those directly responsible for the act of raping.

I use the work of organisations like SAGE in San Francisco which make arguments from women who have been prostituted that prostitution is commercial sexual violence.

SAGE cooperates with the law enforcement, which means that it gains its "clients" by threatening prostitutes (I've never met a prostitute who likes to be referred to as "prostituted women"; this phrase only makes sense when you are talking about the actual sex slavery) that unless they go through its program they will go to jail. Under this threat, it then demands women to accept and internalize its anti-prostitution message - that prostitution is inherently horrible thing, and that they were duped into prostitution in the first place. Talk about women being kidnapped, brainwashed, and trapped in an abusive system through enormous power differential! If anti-prostitution feminists were to seriously assist women wishing to leave the sex industry, they need to end their collusion with the law enforcement.

Here is a small portion of an interview I recently did with a prostitute who survived SAGE's program: "At one point a case manager referred me to a group called SAGE. I was told that SAGE offered a supportive place for sex workers and survivors. What I found however was a 'support group' that focused on shaming and blaming prostitutes out of the industry lead by a charismatic and manipulative ex-prostitute and recovering drug addict who worked with the law enforcement to further criminalize prostitution and who use the media to further scapegoat sex workers. I left the group early, thanks to my growing awareness of the patterns that tipify abusive group power dynamics." (to be presented as part of my paper at NWSA 2002)

In Victoria, in a recent case, 40 Thai women in debt slavery (they had to be penetrated by 500 men for free) were kept in a hotel behind bars. But apparently they 'consented' because they signed contracts in Thailand. These are the women who would be seen as 'migrating to labour' under the understanding that prostitution is just work.

In Victoria, is this kind of business arrangement (that workers are kept in a hotel behind bars until they perform certain amount of task - any kind of task, that is) legal? Under the understanding that prostitution is just work, I would think that what you describe is an oppressive and probably illegal treatment of workers by the management.

The 'choice' argument can be seen as victim blaming. Like battered women who 'stay' prostituted women 'choose' to stay in prostitution.

How is it "victim blaming" to acknowledge that battered women have the agency and that when they decide to stay within an abusive relationship rather than leave immediately there may be good reasons for them to do so? Are you suggesting that if someone actually "chose" to stay in an abusive relationship, blame should follow next time she is beaten? Do you think that if someone actually "chose" to turn some tricks, she should be blamed for being raped?

It can also be seen as classist since most students want good jobs in which sexual harassment policies protect them from men's unwanted hands and penises on and in their bodies. However in prostitution sexual harassment, precisely those unwanted, often hated, hands and penises in and on their bodies is what prostituted women are paid for. So prostituted women are abandoned, by the choice argument, to receive precisely what professional women are pretty desperate to remove from their workplaces.

Of course prostitutes deserve to be protected by sexual harassment policies - unconsentual touches are violation of their rights, and not part of their jobs. It is not "the choice argument" that abandons prostitutes without these rights enjoyed by other workers - it is the legal system that treats prostitutes as less than workers, refusing to enforce laws and regulations that other industries must comply.

I would also think that it is classist to suggest that work done by working-class women are really not work because their rights as workers are not protected as well as that of their middle-class counterparts.

I very deliberately do not use the language of 'sex work'. This language makes it impossible to see the violence of prostitution,

This language was coined by sex workers because they needed to view their work as work in order to (1) call for respectful treatment of sex workers in the society, (2) confront exploitative environments surrounding the sex industry as workers. You began discussing violence within prostitution economy (which does happen, as it does in any other industry), and jumped to equating prostitution to violence. Not mention that "sex work" involves much more than simply prostitution...

Such language does not allow us to see what is different about commercial sexual violence in which unwanted sex and sexual harassment are bought.

Again, your rhetoric shows me that you share the same mentality as men who think it's okay to sexually harass women because women's right to consent does not matter.

I do not buy "choice" argument either, because it is not particularly useful to reduce the issue to "choice." But "sex work is work" position is not the same as the "choice" position, as it has the potential to address abuse within the prostitution economy as the exploitation of workers' rights and challenge conditions that make workers vulnerable to such abuse, such as poverty, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-immigrant policies, neoliberalism, etc.

Emi Koyama <emi@eminism.org>

--
http://eminism.org/ * Putting the Emi back in Feminism since 1975.


Forum: WMST-L
Date: 04/11/2002

On 4/11/02 1:04 AM, "Heather Merle Benbow" wrote:

"I would also think that it is classist to suggest that work done by working-class women are really not work because their rights as workers are not protected as well as that of their middle-class counterparts." > Attempts in Melbourne, Australia, to unionise 'sex workers' failed because the women did not want to see themselves as in the industry long-term.

Of course, with the kind of prejudice that exists in the society, often intense working conditions, and lack of long-term security, it is not surprising that many women do not want to stay within the sex industry long-term.

And unionization may not be the best strategy - for example here in Portland, Oregon (city with more adult entertainment businesses per capita than anywhere else), most clubs are small family-owned ones, and hire very few workers - which would mean they are more readily replaceable. Even with the union bashing, women working at Lusty Lady were lucky because they had the status as employees to begin with - most clubs treat workers as independent contractors, which makes unionization impossible. And, yes, self-identified feminists pulling their legs does not help either.

There could be other ways to empower sex workers, simplest of which is enforcing the labor and civil rights laws on sex businesses just the same way other businesses are regulated. Californian legislature passed a law that require clubs to grant employee status to nude dancers, although it currently lacks enforcement (someone has to sue the club, and the government is not doing it). We need to also support decriminalization of prostitution so that workers can openly organize (currently, simply sharing safety and health information among prostitutes may be construed as abetting prostitution, which is a crime), and challenge societal attitudes toward sex workers in general.

Throwing up hands because unionization in sex industry (just like in many other industries where workers are treated as independent contractors) is difficult is not feminist. Women working in these industries (i.e. not just sex industry, but other places where unionizing is difficult) have organized and resisted exploitation, and they need the support of middle-class women, including academic feminists.

I find the above response to the exploitation of working class women pretty unfortunate. I don't think just telling women that prostitution is empowering does anything to help women harmed by it.

I never stated that prostitution is empowering; in fact, I had a big argument with Carol Queen (author of "Real Live Nude Girls") about this at the last Sex Workers' Conference in Olympia. My criticism was that by telling sex workers that sex work is inherently empowering, she was making invisible the exploitation and abuse of workers by the management, and making it easier for them to further the exploitation. By labeling someone "anti-sex" for having legitimate grievances against their working conditions, whether the work involves sexual act or not, Queen's pro-sex feminism renders sex work as primarily sex as opposed to work - and thus her argument is counteractive and anti-worker.

What I do not understand is why anti-prostitution feminists would conflate the working-class sex worker feminism I am advocating for with simplistic "pro-sex" statements like "prostitution is empowering." That is not something I said, nor even hinted in my last post; you invented it out of nowhere (see the abstract of my paper for NWSA at http://eminism.org/academic/2002-nwsa-prostitution.html ). What is truly unfortunate is that anti-prostitution feminists refuse to listen to the actual working-class sex worker feminists, and instead only argue with middle-class "pro-sex" feminists like Carol Queen and think they've done enough. I have even been told by a staffer at an anti- prostitution group (Council for Prostitution Alternative, now LOTUS) that all "prostitued women" (again, the term despised by most prostitutes that I know) are so severely beaten that their brains are damaged and therefore what they say is not important.

It is not 'classist' to identify harm and act to end the circumstances (gender and class oppression) which create it!

Yes! That is exactly what I was arguing for - rather than scapegoating prostitution, feminists need to confront poverty, violence, sexism, racism, neoliberalism, prison industrial complex, "war on drugs," etc. as they (and not the sexual acts themselves) are what make sex workers vulnerable to exploitation.

Since when was it progressive and feminist to argue for a status quo backed by big business (the 'sex' industry)?

Again, I was calling for the whole whore revolution (see my web site, http://eminism.org/readings/supporthookers.html ) rather than a status quo; anti-prostitution feminists who single out prostitution displace the problem onto sexual acts when in reality we need to be confronting economic and political systems that make workers vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. That is not to mention how anti-prostitution groups such as SAGE (in San Francisco) and Lola Greene Baldwin Foundation (in Portland) collude with the law enforcement to regulate and dictate women's lives (Lola Green Baldwin is a name of a police officer - how typical).

I don't understand where this glorifying of sex work comes from.

I don't understand where you got this either, because nobody on WMST-L has so far "glorified" sex work. You are making a classical "straw person" argument, and have not even began to dispute *anything* I said in my last post. And I doubt that you can dispute this one either.

Emi Koyama <emi@eminism.org>
Founder, Student Hookers Association, Portland State University
--
http://eminism.org/ * Putting the Emi back in Feminism since 1975.


Forum: WMST-L
Date: 04/11/2002

On 4/11/02 8:15 AM, "Rebecca Whisnant" wrote:

that is that if any perspective is being almost entirely silenced and drowned out in the contemporary WMST "debate" (such as it is) on this issue, it is the radical feminist critique of prostitution and pornography.

Silenced and drowned? Being defeated and obsoleted by others due to its faulty logic or unpersuasive rhetoric is not "silenced"; I've had to hear plenty of this position that you call "radical feminist" analysis of prostitution, and concluded that, like its anti-pornography, anti-S/M, anti-transsexual, anti-butch/femme, universalizing, oppression-ranking, and sexual hierarchy politics, it is a convenient tool for mostly white middle-class feminists to pretend that they are working for all women, including working-class women and women of color, while remaining oblivious to their own complicity in the oppression against these women, and without working toward the actual processes (e.g. decriminalization, immigration reform, drug policy reform, trans civil rights) necessary to bring about the changes working-class sex worker feminists demand.

Speaking of silencing, Sarah Lawrence College has just canceled my speaking engagement. I was going to speak there on April 13 about the sex worker feminism and the idea of the whore revolution from the third wave feminist perspective, but the president of the college singlehandedly withdrew funding, labeling it "inappropriate and uneducational." This happened on April 9, only three days before my planned travel. If I had more energy and I wasn't in the process of moving right now, I would have gone anyway to call attention to this specific act of "silencing." As a radical feminist concerned about the silencing of women's voices, what do you think about this?

The following cannot be said too many times: the radical feminist critique of prost/porn is not a moral criticism, or indeed any kind of criticism, of the women.

I've been told "false consciousness" many, many times. If that is not a criticism of where I am and my views, what is it?

Perhaps the most fundamental theme of this critique is that prostitution, including pornography, exists because men, as a class, demand that there be a sub-class of women (and children, and men, and transgender people--but mostly women) who are available for their unconditional sexual service.

Prostitutes do not provide unconditional sexual services any more than other workers provide eight hours of "unconditional" work. They only provide conditional sexual services.

This once again proves my argument that radical feminist critics of prostitution have rapist mentality: that prostitutes are and must be always available to any man unconditionally.

It exists because they desire and demand sex *of a certain kind*--the kind they don't have to ask for or negotiate about, the kind they can have with a class of person defined as degraded and inferior, the kind where "the customer is always right" and always get what he pays for.

Clients must ask for and negotiate about services they receive. Only people who think that they don't have to are anti-prostitution feminists and rapists. Anti-prostitution feminists participate in the definition of prostitutes as degraded and inferior. In addition, one of the barriers to having better negotiation about services is the illegality of prostitution (neither the worker nor the client can explicitly negotiate the exact acts traded without breaking the law, risking arrests). What are you doing to help change this situation?

"I've never been felt as dirty and used as when I was told how dirty and used I had been/ like I'm a pawn in someone else's theory about me" - from "difference," a piece performed at "Intercourse: A Sex and Gender Spoken Word Recipe for Revolution 2001."

Emi Koyama <emi@eminism.org>

--
http://eminism.org/ * Putting the Emi back in Feminism since 1975.


Forum: WMST-L
Date: 04/12/2002

Here is my last post on the topic (for now, at least) also...

On 4/11/02 10:26 AM, "Rebecca Whisnant" wrote:

Perhaps the most fundamental theme of this critique is that prostitution, including pornography, exists because men, as a class, demand that there be a sub-class of women (and children, and men, and transgender people--but mostly women) who are available for their unconditional sexual service.

Prostitutes do not provide unconditional sexual services any more than other workers provide eight hours of "unconditional" work. They only provide conditional sexual services.

Yeah, and they get more money (except they usually don't, most of it goes to the pimp) the more they "consent" to let men abuse them -- to not use a condom, to treat them violently, burn them with cigarettes, all that good stuff.

You made the statement that prostitutes exist due to men's need for women available to provide unconditional sexual service - which suggests that prostitutes provide unconditional sexual services. Are you now withdrawing that statement, which was supposedly the fundamental theme of your critique to begin with? And what constitutes abuse - is it the dynamic of power and control in the specific context (as I believe it is), or is any act that involves sex in exchange for money abusive? (This, again, connects to radical feminists' self-righteous criticism of S/M and other sexual practices and identities.)

This once again proves my argument that radical feminist critics of prostitution have rapist mentality: that prostitutes are and must be always available to any man unconditionally.

Emi, that's absurd. That's exactly the view that we're *criticizing.*

No. Anti-prostitution feminists argue that once a woman becomes a prostitute she is available for unconditional sexual services, that it is the norm within women in prostitution to be treated that way because of the nature of prostitution itself - rather than addressing specific social, political and economic factors, direct (physical confinement, slavery) as well as indirect (poverty, neoliberalism, sexism) that make women vulnerable to exploitatoin and abuse in prostituiton, as well as in other areas of underground economy.

In addition, one of the barriers to having better negotiation about services is the illegality of prostitution (neither the worker nor the client can explicitly negotiate the exact acts traded without breaking the law, risking arrests). What are you doing to help change this situation?

My view is that we should do as Sweden has done, and decriminalize the selling of sex while criminalizing pimps and johns.

In other words, you support leaving prostitution industry underground and unregulated, so that workers can continue to be abused or exploited with little recourse. Rebecca, it is not the exchange of sex for money that is the problem; it is the exploitation, coercion, lack of choice, lack of protective regulation, etc. - which arise from oppressive social structures (sexism, racism, transphobia, poverty, etc.), not from the fact one is trading sex for money. Not to mention the fact your response does not address the problem I pointed out above - as long as it is illegal to negotiate the exact acts being traded, that will close down communication channels and put workers at a greater risk.

Thanks for this quote. It summarizes what I think is one of the most fundamental issues in this dispute: whether the *primary* harms of prostitution are a result of having people think bad thoughts about you, or rather a matter of being violated and treated as a piece of meat day in and day out in ways that are NOT merely accidental and occasional "extra" abuses within this industry, but are rather PRECISELY what the industry exists in order to promote, protect, and give men as a class LICENSE to do to a certain class of women.

You are mischaracterizing my argment by suggesting that I argue that "primary harms of prostitution are a result of having people think bad thoughts about you." The actual fundamental issue in this dispute is: whether the pirmary harms of prostitution are an inherent result of trading sex for money, or a result of many social factors such as poverty, sexism, racism, neoliberalism, violence, etc. - which would make working-class people vulnerable whether or not they work within the sex industry. Your argument is circular in that you define prostitution as inherently violent and the only evidence for that position (i.e. *inherent* oppressiveness of sex-for-money transaction) is the notion that prostitution is violence itself.

I view anti-prostitution feminism as extremely harmful to women, not only because they collude with the law enforcement to dictate women's lives, as many of my friends had to endure, but also because it makes it difficult for workers to talk about their grievances around working conditions, violence, or exploitation - because if they said anything negative about their experiences, instead of actually addressing the specific injustice of violence or exploitation, anit-prostitution feminists would twist it and use it as a poster child to attack prostitution as a whole (and soon after, local police department will do a major sweep and everybody will be in jail). Thus rapists, abusive managers, and anti-prostitution feminists are jointly responsible for the silencing of sex workers.

One last anecdote: I was attending a conference about violence against women, and a speaker, who was from Council for Prostitution Alternative, a rad-fem anti-prostitution group, gave a story about the "successful" case in which a woman who had initially "refused" to admit that she was being victimized or forced into prostitution "finally, after three years in our program" came to see how abused and without a choice she had been. And this, for them, is a "success story"; it sounds to me that she was reluctantly attending the program only to escape imprisonment, and resisted for three years against the anti-prostitution feminists' demand to give up all of her power and agency - until it came to the point where she gave in and told them what they wanted to hear - either because she felt she had to lie in order to keep her sanity and "graduate" from the program, or actually came to accept the fabricated history and experiences that were fed to her in order to resolve the cognitive dissonance.

Those who successfully adopts to the ideology and history that match rad-fem analysis of prostitution are recruited as a poster child and used to "educate" the public. SAGE in San Francisco brings these women into the program for johns, where they are encouraged to yell and scream at the men. This shout therapy would have been rather innocent, if there was any way to guarantee that these women would never see the men in the program in the future; otherwise, it is one huge risk that SAGE is pushing women to take.

I will be presenting about the interviews I've been doing with working-class sex worker feminists at this year's NWSA conference, but for now here are some online stuff you can read for clarification of my positions:

My NWSA Abstract:
http://eminism.org/academic/2002-nwsa-prostitution.html

Support Prostitutes' Rights Now! (pamphlet)
http://eminism.org/readings/supporthookers.html

Instigations from the Whore Revolution: A Third Wave Feminist Response to the Sex Work 'Controversy' ('zine - download PDF or order)
http://eminism.org/zines/index.html

Emi Koyama <emi@eminism.org>

--
http://eminism.org/ * Putting the Emi back in Feminism since 1975.


Forum: WMST-L
Date: 04/13/2002

I know I said what I wrote before was the last post in this topic, but there are some distortion of my comments so I'll try to only correct them. It is interesting that the only negative responses to my posts so far have been: (1) distortion of my views (conflating my working- class sex worker feminism with middle-class "pro-sex" feminism or the "choice" argument, despite the fact I have criticized these positions as well), and (2) tokenism (i.e. "some women of color, working-class women, or former prostitutes agree with me!"). If these are the only possible "refutation" of my views, that once again proves that radical feminist analysis of prostitution is obsolete and intellectually bankrupt.

On 4/12/02 12:43 PM, "Kathleen (Kate) Waits" wrote:

2) Despite the strong differences of opinion expressed, it appears that everyone who's spoken agrees that "happy hooker" or "prostitution as choice" model is a far cry from reality.

I did not say that it is or is not "far cry from reality." Here's what I said:

I do not buy "choice" argument either, because it is not particularly useful to reduce the issue to "choice." But "sex work is work" position is not the same as the "choice" position, as it has the potential to address abuse within the prostitution economy as the exploitation of workers' rights and challenge conditions that make workers vulnerable to such abuse, such as poverty, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-immigrant policies, neoliberalism, etc.

As Karen Kapusta-Pofahl pointed out, statements such as yours erase "the complexity of the group of practices under the umbrella 'Sex Industry'" that I am trying to articulate here.

What I mean by this is that Rebecca and Emi, for all their disagreement, agree that IN THE WORLD AS IT EXISTS TODAY, prostitution is often evil, demeaning, dangerous, etc.

I've never stated that prostitution as a whole is or is not evil. I am saying that sexism, racism, poverty, transphobia, neoliberalism, anti-immigrant policies, "war on drugs," prison industrial complex, rapists, abusive management, etc. - those are what's evil. And anti-prostitution feminist groups such as SAGE and LGBF are also evil for using the threat of imprisonment as a weapon to abuse and control women, and getting paid by the law enforcement for helping them dictate women's lives.

The organization, headquartered in Minneapolis, describes itself as is "an educational organization against prostitution, pornography, and all other forms of sexual exploitation." I think it's fair to say that the organization's analysis is much closer to Rebecca's than Emi's.

Blatant tokenism.

On 4/13/02 9:58 AM, "Angie Manzano" wrote:

Which is why I think it's odd that you accuse *all* radical feminists who believe the system of buying & selling women is inherently misogynistic of being elitist, racist, white, middle class.

Again, I did not say that "all radical feminists [are] elitist, racist, white, middle class." I argued that radical feminist analysis of prostitution (that prostitution is inherently misogynistic) has implications that are racist and classist, among other things; I also argued that actions taken by anti-prostitution groups such as SAGE and LGBF are anti-women. See my previous posts for reasons.

If you disagree with my positions, you need to show why they are wrong - rather than distorting my positions or relying on tokenism.

Is it just me, or does it seem like it's mostly white, 100% college educated, 100% Western women (and men, of course)saying that prostitution can be a great career for women, and that women freely choose it as a profession?

As I have already stated, I am equally critical of "pro-sex" feminism which posits prostitution (or any other form of work under the capitalist system) as freely chosen and "anti-prostitution" feminism which displace the blame by arguing that prostitution is "inherently" oppressive, rather than focusing on social, political and economic issues that perpetuate abuse and exploitation within the sex industry (as well as in other industries).

(Yeah, and Mexicans "freely choose" and thoroughly enjoy cleaning up white people's houses, doing your laundry, and cutting your grass.

Excellent point. In other words, it is not the specific acts (e.g. sexual service) involved that make those work oppressive; rather, it is racism, classism, colonialism, neoliberalism, anti-immigrant policies, etc. that do. Forcing women to stop turning tricks is not productive if other options are not any more attractive. On the other hand, if we as the society could provide more attractive options for these women, there will be no need to force them out of prostitution - if they are truly better options, women will know and switch to that.

Programs currently run by anti-prostitution feminist groups are regressive because they take away relatively lucrative form of work from poor women, immigrant women, trans people, etc. and force them to work in other dead-end job for minimum wage or less (prostitutes from middle-class background seldom get sent to these programs, because they are less likely to be arrested and more likely to have good lawyers). These programs are abusive, degrading, patronizing, and out of touch with the actual needs of prostitutes.

These programs may claim to support decriminalization under the logic that women do not deserve to be punished, but they rarely take any concrete action to make such a legislation reality, despite their close ties with the authorities. I suspect that they are afraid that once it is decriminalized they won't be able to use the threat of imprisonment to force women to stick with their agenda, and thus lose their power and their government funding.

Please. Get out of school and into the real world.)

It's interesting that many anti-prostitution feminists continue to argue with the "choice" or "glorification" position that nobody here is making, and never respond to my criticism of anti-prostitution feminism and its anti-women actions.

Emi Koyama <emi@eminism.org>

--
http://eminism.org/ * Putting the Emi back in Feminism since 1975.