Prostitution

London Feminist Meetup Group

September 25th 2007

This meeting is not just about general prostitution  because  prostitution - the selling or offering of  talents or work for unworthy purposes, with or without causing offence to others, in public is widespread and largely accepted as 'normal' in our society. (Anyone who attempts to challenge other  commercial  forms of prostitution is derided as a 'commie' or an 'anarchist'.)

 

There are many people who prostitute themselves and their talents for money, status  and/or ideology.

 

Well paid people, doctors, lawyers, politicians & other professionals who use their talents ,training and status to advantage those able to pay over  the odds for essential services, and disadvantages the poor who cannot pay.

 

Many people  use their training and expertise (often attained at public expense) over and above their legitimate employment,  in devising cunning or  questionable strategies to enhance their own and their clients status or bank balance  - as  financial consultants, advisers & accountants e.g. minimising tax liability

 

(None of these fields in which women predominate. So that's all right then.)

 

But there are also teachers who subvert education by teaching opinion as fact to promote their own beliefs, media people and writers and entertainers who prostitute their skills to promote goods and services, ideas and attitudes that are harmful to individuals or society in some way .

 

Nor are we  talking about the prostitution that goes into marketing  goods and services, or attitudes and practices that are harmful but not illegal. There are many of these that are promoted and advertised - alcohol, cigarettes, spurious cures for which there is no evidence of efficacy - gender, race and class prejudices and stereotypes promoted in children's toys, games and children's fiction, and the promotion of violence in interactive games and videos. (And from my POV the promotion of  attitudes, practices and false claims of the religions of course - especially on sexuality)

 

Nor are we just talking about street nuisance, because there are many  intrusive public nuisances that are not illegal - some  street selling, rowdyism & intimidation, internet spam and junk mail, and the general saturation of society with intrusive advertising.

 

But street selling of sex is a problem for some people in some areas, not least for the sex workers themselves.

 

The particular stigma and harassment from public, politicians and police, is reserved for sex prostitution. And sex workers women and homosexuals are singled out for this punishment.

 

And the problems they face - coercion, its association with crime, drug crime, domestic crime, organised crime and  international crime -  the health hazards they face and their personal safety are the result of the traditional teaching and attitudes to women and sexuality. For which the religions have a lot to answer.

 

These attitudes were amply illustrated on a recent programme in which Ann Widdicombe took a superficial look at the subject from the POV of residents in a red light district and a young woman drug addict who she attempted to get to 'pull herself together' and get a better life. This from a  Catholic conservative politician - the last person to have any understanding of the origins of the problems or policies needed to give such women the choice of that 'better life'.

 

If I may, before I go back to the current problems faced by sex workers, I would like to just very briefly go back to what I see as the traditional attitudes towards sex and women, that underlie the attitudes to the selling of sex.

 

On Sex - For most of  the last 2000 years, the Christian church has taught that sex is  only legitimate within holy matrimony, sanctified by the church for the procreation of children. Outside of this narrow model - sex for the unmarried, sex for money, sex for pleasure, sex  between non-heterosexuals, even solo sex  was, and still is for many (even non religious people for whom it is a relic of the past) - sinful and to be punished.

 

It is a position that cannot be  justified either by 'nature', or the bible - but the patriarchal religious attitudes to women - as the property of a man, father, husband or son to whom she belongs, to serve, entertain and provide sex and progeny.

 

The worst of this still exists in the 'Better Dead than Defiled' attituds, the title of an essay in this publication 'Illicit Sex and the God Machine' on attitudes towards rape.

 

The two come together in the religious opposition to homosexuality.

Same sex relationships undermine this notion of women as the necessary  inferior and subservient partner for a man. Any  relationship between two men or two women based on love, respect and equality subverts this notion of marriage as an unequal relationship ship between a superior (male) and an inferior (female) partner. The Christian ideal. Why do so few people seem to realis

 

The current campaigns of sex workers are on the conditions in which they are forced to work, on the streets, the punitive attitudes of some sections of the public and  the exploitation and violence from criminals, psychopaths and 'law enforcement' .

 

It is also a problem that the response of  too many politicians to these issues, is just to placate punitive attitudes. It does not get to the root of the problem of criminality and exploitation but follows the same path that produced them. Policy is not directed towards the  causes of coercion into  sexual exploitation and  drug abuse, but treats the victims as the problem.

 

More of what has caused the problems is no solution. They need to look at what leads to people seek satisfaction in drugs, research into addictiction, remedial solutions, and for those still in need of drugs ensuring that they do not need to prostitute themselves or become criminals, and consort with criminals to get them. (Perhaps it would answer some of the problems of Afghan farmers if there was a ready and regulated market for their heroin!)

 

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Sex prostitution is part of a continuum.

poverty, crime, drug abuse, coercion, prostitution, power and conrol violence,