“Sex
worker activists are savvy feminist analysts of ... machinations,
their consciousness undoubtedly sharpened by daily trials of
(escaping) state entrapment, extortion, imprisonment, and slander. As
intimates of both back room and front stage men, prostitutes are
solicited by government officials to serve as undercover agents and
informants. ...Mainstream feminists would do well to listen to their
word in public as male authorities do in private.
Their
first demand is decriminalisation of sex work. This implies repealing
prohibitions against negotiations and services attached to the sex
industry, including the hiring of third parties to facilitate
management of businesses and travel to foreign markets. In other
words, sex workers demand the abolition of anti-prostitution,
anti-pimping and anti-trafficking laws. They
know that such laws invariably translate into discriminatory
surveillance, fines, arrest, detention, and expulsion of migrant
women. At
long last, listen to the women! Gail
Pheterson 2 Mar 2016 www.opendemocracy.net
I
would like to address this final sentence from an article I found
while researching 'Answers to a Red Life'*. I may return to other
points in the article as they are interesting to consider.
If I
am a mainstream feminist – I'm not sure I am. When I listen to most
prostitutes and sex workers I can't see where they are striving for
something that also supports my liberation
Where
on the planet are migrant women allowed to travel freely? When
prostitutes demand the right to travel freely are they arguing to
obtain it for all women in all industries? Are they arguing and
demanding it for all people, engaged in class struggles against the
hegemony?
Laws,
proposed, new and current in our judiciary are aimed at controlling,
dis-empowering and subduing the masses, propping the elite and
maintaining the systems of inequality. We are all ultimately battling
the same monster, the same system.
When
those fighting for their liberation invariably seem to set up little
camps and spend all their energy on all the places where their
definitions of liberty/liberation differ with each other, this only
ensures the continuation of the need for liberation by allowing the
current systems to continue.
Prostitutes
and other sex workers want the raised remunerative rewards of their
work; created by the fact that it operates outside of the law and
they are demanding all the protections created in law for general
workers rights.
Personally
I find this contrary because our system requires that works carried
out by (unskilled labourers) persons with little educational
paperwork to show their investment in the system are unentitled to
the same level of payment as those with qualifications. I know many
prostitutes and strippers would call their work skilled and be that
as it may, it's not really something one needs to study to do it
adequately enough for the clients.
Legalised
prostitution would surely therefore earn rates similar to those of
other domestic workers. For is that not the place state and church
say sex should occur? Child carers, service workers, cleaners home
makers their low (lack of) payment regard and status are the roots of
gendered womanhood that restrict the ability to create wealth.
Prostitutes profit literally by their rejection of gendered labour
being intrinsically badly paid because it is supposed to given
freely. They also pay no tax. Though the vast majority say they would
be happy to do so to gain employment protection.
I
can't imagine any of them being prepared to accept the standard
hourly rates of any other kind of gendered servicing work or fighting
to have other women in those industries paid the same hourly rates as
they are.
How
about if all the women's liberationist organisations worldwide came
together to focus on one goal; the complete eradication of patriarchy
– which would probably necessitate the eradication of 1MG religions
(Xtianity, Islam, Judaism, Zoroastrianism...?), capitalism, war?
It
seems as if currently most liberationist movements just focus on
worming their way into a better deal for themselves within the status
quo. Just trying to get a couple of steps up the ladder
With
no other choice (assuming they reject rape) many if not most men
will/would pay for sex and they are willing to pay a lot more for
that than they are for cleaning, cooking or child care. Can you
imagine how quickly things could potentially change if prostitutes
(and wives) went on an international strike for the pay rights of all
women?
That
would set them a place on the feminist agenda that would be
impossible to not support and give them a chunky voice in recreating
the world.
