Prostitution and Feminism

Towards a Politics of Feeling

Maggie O'Neill

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745668109
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Discrimination et relations raciales

Feminists have long differed in their view of prostitution. While some regard it as a classic form of exploitation and degradation, others offer a more sympathetic interpretation of women's involvement in the sex industry. In this important new book, Maggie O'Neill seeks to explore the theoretical debates on prostitution and the relevance of these to the everyday lived experiences of women working on the streets.

Based upon her own ethnographic research - defined as ethno-mimesis - the author seeks to undermine and demystify stereotypical images of prostitutes. She explores the narratives offered by prostitutes themselves, as well as other forms of their representation in film, art and photography, and shows how these various mediums may be used to shed light on the socio-economic processes and structures which lead women into prostitution. These personal accounts produce what O'Neill refers to as 'a politics of feeling', which, she argues, may be used to transform attitudes, policy and practice in relation to female prostitution. By relating these individual experiences to critical feminist theory, the book deepens our understanding of the phenomenon of prostitution in contemporary society.

The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in gender studies, feminist theory and sociology.

Part I

Feminist Knowledge and Social Research: Understanding Prostitution

One aim of this book is to show that academic involvement in the public sphere, in the articulation of the lived experience of women’s lives, can be ‘powerful’ and have potentially transformative consequences.¹ Furthermore, in the process of conducting participatory action research, I have found that the social construction of academic knowledge is enriched and a ‘democratization’ effect develops with the groups one is working with, given the reflexive relationship between critical feminist theory, women’s lived experience and policy-oriented practice. Women’s voices and participation through ethnographic work are central to this process. Feminism is a practice and a politics as well as ‘a strong intellectual movement’ (A. Gray 1997: 90).

This text is concerned with the development of ‘knowledge for’, as critical feminist praxis (Stanley 1990), embedded within a cultural politics of difference. The work documented and discussed here is located at the intersection of contemporary feminist theory and socio-cultural research. It is situated at the crossroads of feminist theory, interdisciplinarity, intertextuality and renewed methodologies for social research in late modern/postmodern times.

Renewed methodologies involve ways of researching and writing in societies that are post-traditional but also marked by the traditional. Societies that are ‘postemotional’ (Meštrović 1997) are marked by mechanical, mass-produced emotions and compassion fatigue; but they also contain possibilities of and for authenticity. Renewed methodologies are a response to the fragmentation, plurality and utter complexity of living in postmodern times.

The crisis in representing ethnographic data, which occurred during the 1980s, encouraged reflexivity around issues of class, race and gender and at the same time critiqued the moral and scientific authority of the ethnographer (Atkinson 1992). Texts produced and re-presented as the outcomes of ethnographic fieldwork are no longer accepted unproblematically (Atkinson and Coffey 1995; Denzin 1997). Ethnographers can no longer presume to produce uncontested ‘realist’ accounts of the experiences of individuals/groups/‘others’. Rather the self-reflexivity inherent in the ethnographic process, coupled with the deconstruction of conventional discourses, serve to question the status of ethnographic texts within sociology, cultural studies, women’s studies; and the ways in which ethnographers claim to re-present socio-cultural phenomena.

To illustrate: ethnography is a gendered project (Trinh 1989, 1991; Clough 1994; Denzin 1997). Feminist thought, queer theory and post-colonial thought have challenged and deconstructed the ‘oedipal logic of the heterosexual, narrative ethnographic text that reflexively positions the ethnographer’s gender neutral (or masculine) self within a realist story about the “other”’ (Denzin 1997: xiv). As a response, there have been demands for experimentation in the re-presentation of ethnographic data to enable specific gendered and racialized boundaries to be transgressed (Trinh 1991; Denzin 1997).

In this work, what I call renewed methodologies for social research that incorporate the voices of citizens through scholarly/civic research as participatory research can serve not only to enlighten and raise our awareness of certain issues; they can also produce critical reflexive texts which may help to motivate social change (O’Neill et al. 1999). The tension between a modernist ethos of resistance and transformation through participation as praxis (working with women through participatory action research) and a postmodern ethos of hybridity, complexity, interdisciplinarity and intertextuality (anti-identitarian thinking, re-presenting women’s lived experience through art forms; illuminating the interrelationship between the fictive and the real in our lived cultures) is uneasy but represents the dynamics of the work presented here. Renewed methodologies can uncover important messages about the complexity of everyday life.

In this work, renewed methodologies for social research seek to speak in empathic ways with women, in order to counter postemotionalism, valorizing discourses and the reduction of the Other to a cipher of the oppressed/marginalized/exploited. Renewed methodologies facilitate a politics of feeling. This is illustrated in chapter 2 through live art/performance as a response to the life-story narratives of women working as prostitutes.

The central thread that runs through this work is the relationship between theory, lived experience and practice, articulated in the relationship between psychic processes and social processes; between critical feminist theory and feminist praxis; between theory, lived experience and community activism. An important aspect is the attempt to collect and show in a purposeful way what usually remains hidden in the literature and research on women working as prostitutes and on prostitution. This will be revealed through the combination of women’s stories and cultural or fictive texts. The transformative possibilities of doing feminist participatory action research are identified, developed and analysed in the course of this section, which provides a review of the literature and an outline of ethno-mimesis – a theoretical concept that describes a research methodology indicative of a politics of feeling.

All purposeful manifestations of life, including their very purposiveness, in the final analysis have their end not in life, but in the expression of its nature, in the representation of its significance. (W. Benjamin 1972: 73)

1

Feminism(s) and Prostitution

Feminist approaches to prostitution

Feminist approaches to prostitution have shifted over the last ten or so years – linked to later modernity/reflexive modernity/postmodernity, however you decide to label the shifts and transformations that have been taking place since the 1960s but are, of course, rooted in much earlier social and cultural changes. In any consideration of feminist responses it is important to explore the intersection with discourses on health, the law and prostitutes’ rights. This chapter is therefore organized into four sections: feminist approaches to prostitution; health perspectives; prostitution and the law; and prostitutes’ rights and participatory research.

Although there is no specific work to date on the relationship between critical feminist theory, feminist praxis and prostitution, feminist theorists have addressed the issue of prostitution in their work on women and crime (Smart 1978, 1989, 1992; Edwards 1987, 1988a, 1988b, 1998; Phoenix 1999) or on women, sexuality, social organization and control (Smart 1978; Mcintosh 1978, 1992; McLeod 1982; Jarvinen 1993; Brewis and Linstead 1998; O’Connell-Davidson 1998; West 2000). Historical analyses focus upon the relationship amongst women working as prostitutes, the state, working-class communities and the regulation of the body (Walkowitz 1980; Roberts 1992; Finnegan 1979; Bullough and Bullough 1987; Meil Hobson 1990; Corbin 1987, 1990). More recently, texts examining sex tourism in Latin America and Southeast Asia have been published (Truong 1990; O’Connell-Davidson 1994, 1998; Brace and O’Connell-Davidson 1996; Bishop and Robinson 1997; Lim 1998).

In the initial stages of feminist analysis of prostitution in contemporary society, prostitution has been treated in a reductionist way as a deviant activity and as sexual slavery (see Barry 1988; Dworkin 1981; Hoigard and Finstad 1992; Jarvinen 1993). More recently, it has been treated as an understandable (and reasonable) response to socio-economic need within the context of a consumer culture, and within a social framework that privileges male sexuality (Pheterson 1986; O’Neill 1991, 1992, 1995; Green, Mulroy and O’Neill 1997; O’Connell-Davidson 1994, 1998; McLeod 1982; McLintock 1992; Hoigard and Finstad 1992; Mcintosh 1978, 1992; Campbell 1996; Phoenix 1999; J. West 2000). Feminist work in this latter area has mostly focused upon violence against women, sexuality and/or the pornography debate (see Hanmer and Maynard 1987; Hanmer and Saunders 1984; Hanmer, Radford and Stanko 1989; Segal and Mcintosh 1992). More recently, Jo Brewis and Stephen Linstead have produced an interesting exploration of the temporal organization of sex work in relation to the labour process (1998); and Jackie West has explored the politics of regulating sex work, focusing upon comparative analyses between Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and the UK (2000). West’s analysis explores the complex intersections between local politics, sex worker collectives and regulatory contexts that are marked by increasing differentiation within prostitution and a blurring of the boundaries between legalisation and decriminalization. There are complex implications for sex workers, including sex worker discourse having substantial impact (but not radical transformative change) under certain conditions – for example, in opening up debates on labour law reform; the significance of sex worker discourse upon local initiatives, such as zoning in Utrecht; and a combination of industry growth and legalization encouraging investment and the links between mainstream leisure industries and prostitution becoming more extensive. West’s analysis focuses upon the impact of sex worker discourse and the influence sex worker collectives have on the changing regulation of prostitution. The impact of sex worker discourse is an important and undertheorized aspect of the politics of prostitution.

In the last three years, feminists writing from the perspective of ‘pro-sex feminists’ have produced works that highlight prostitution as ‘performing erotic labour’ (Chapkis 1997; Nagle 1997). This work builds upon that produced by sex workers in the 1980s and compiled by the activist Priscilla Alexander (Alexander and Delacoste 1988). Both Nagle’s and Chapkis’s texts aim to ‘help heal the schism within feminism that had developed around commercial sex’ (Chapkis 1997: 1).

Two major feminist perspectives are documented in the available literature. First, women working as prostitutes are exploited by those who manage and organize the sex industry (mostly men). Moreover, prostitution and the wider sex industry serve to underpin and reinforce prostitution as a patriarchal institution that affects all women and gendered relations. Second, in contemporary society, prostitution for many women is freely chosen as a form of work, and women working in the sex industry deserve the same rights and liberties as other workers, including freedom from fear, exploitation and violence in the course of their work. Additionally, sex work or erotic labour can actually be a ‘liberatory terrain for women’ (Chapkis 1997: 1).

Jill Jesson carried out research into the incidence of adolescent female prostitution in the care of a local authority. Jesson published a literature review (1993), in which she explores the following major perspectives on prostitution: structuralist, feminist, and the prostitute’s perspective. The structuralist approach she documents has been labelled functionalist elsewhere (Jarvinen 1993). Here, Davis’s Durkheim-inspired functionalist perspective (1937) is outlined and criticized from a feminist perspective, and Jesson concludes that ‘feminism and prostitution are not easily reconcilable’ (1993: 521). Quoting from Fogarty (1982) Jesson states that, on the one hand, some feminists feel that prostitutes are wrong to work, and in the process are being exploited by men. On the other hand, feminists are acknowledging that prostitution may have been a freely chosen form of work in a society that has little to offer women. Highlighting the social stigma prostitute(d) women experience, Jesson goes on to describe how prostitutes have tried to shift the discourse around prostitution away from issues of morality and deviance towards that of prostitution as work.

Johannes Boutellier (1991) develops the legalization/decriminalization debate from the perspective of prostitution and criminal law and morality in the Netherlands, and hangs this upon the involvement of leading feminists. According to Boutellier, a coalition between feminists and bureaucratic powers has changed the public debate on prostitution. In 1985 the government changed the article on brothel keeping (250 bis) which had been instantiated in the 1911 public morality act. ‘Brothel keeping was no longer to be prohibited, except for cases of violence, force or overpowering’ (Boutellier 1991: 201). The revision of law facilitates prostitution to be perceived as work, but there is concern about the relationship between prostitution as work and prostitution as traffic in women. Currently, feminists in the Netherlands are clear about their stance. ‘Prostitute’ women should not be blamed; instead, the men who organize them and visit them should hold responsibility. Judicial policy should look towards brothel keepers, not the women who work in the brothels. Improving the socio-legal standing of women is central to the feminist cause.

Boutellier documents the shifts in feminist approaches to prostitution, from the coalition with the social purists in the early part of this century to the emphasis on prostitution as a psycho-social problem and the need for rehabilitation to reinforce family ties and male moral standards in the postwar years, and to the current situation, which Boutellier calls ‘moral indifference’. The late sixties and seventies are seen as times of the liberation of sexuality. The Melai committee in 1977 warned the government against intruding into the private sphere and pleaded for selective action against exploitation of individuals and nuisance to residents/neighbours. The debate was one that focused upon the management and control of prostitution. Prostitution is a ‘technical-juridical problem of public order’ (Boutellier 1991: 206). This debate is now being waged in Britain over the legalization (regulation) or decriminalization of prostitution (Matthews 1986).

For Boutellier there are also two major feminist approaches. The first views prostitutes as victims of male sexuality ‘and thus male sexuality should be the main subject of concern’ (1991: 207). The second, ‘subjectivist’, position places the experiences and needs of the women concerned in centre stage and views prostitution ‘as a legitimate form of labour freely chosen by thousands of women’ (1991: 207). Government policy is unnecessary once proper conditions for this work are established. From this approach, for Boutellier, the feminist approach is compatible with the ‘morally indifferent technocratic approach absorbed with management and control’. Boutellier explains this shift in part to social changes in what is termed ‘moral judgement’:

Until the 1960s moral judgements were part of the encompassing political ideologies of a religious, socialist or liberal kind. Lately, these ideologies – at least in the Netherlands – seem to have lost their importance in defining social problems. This change is often referred to as the ‘individualisation’ of society.… Morality today might more usefully be seen as the mediation between individual experience and state bureaucracy.… The prostitution issue is not nearly what it once so much was – an issue of ideologically defined morality – but an issue about the subjective experiences of the persons involved and the bureaucratic necessity of regulations. (Boutellier 1991: 209)

Laurie Shrage (1989, 1994) approaches the issue of feminism and prostitution from feminist philosophy and outlines a very clear picture of the very difficult issues that the debate raises for feminists. On the one hand, feminists want to support the abolition of discriminatory practices which serve to punish and harass prostitutes but which rarely punish the clients or pimps (mostly men) involved in buying sex or organizing the sex industry. On the other hand, feminists cannot support prostitution and the sex industry because ‘feminists find the prostitute’s work morally and politically objectionable’ (Shrage 1989: 347). Ultimately, the sex industry (like other institutions in society) is structured by deeply embedded attitudes and values which are oppressive to women, for prostitution depends upon the naturalization of certain principles that marginalize women socially and politically (Shrage 1989: 349). These principles are embedded within a cultural framework that involves assumptions, behaviours and beliefs which legitimate women’s subordination. For Shrage, prostitution and the sex industry simply perpetuate ‘patriarchy ideology’ and hegemonic heterosexuality. Furthermore, prostitution is a consequence of patriarchal hegemony which forms the foundation of all our social institutions and practices (1989: 360). The answer for Shrage is to challenge the cultural presuppositions that sustain prostitution: ‘Prostitution needs no unique remedy, legal or otherwise, it will be remedied as feminists make progress in altering patterns of belief and practice that oppress women in all aspects of their lives’ (1989: 360).

Shrage suggests a consumer boycott of the industry. Although she acknowledges that her arguments are consistent with the decriminalization of prostitution, she concludes that feminists have every reason to politically oppose prostitution because it is a practice that epitomizes and supports gender asymmetries which are oppressive to women (1989: 361).

There is a growing body of literature – mostly by feminists working in the sex industry and their supporters – that insists that for many women prostitution is freely chosen service work and that women and men working in the sex industry deserve the same human rights and civil liberties as other workers. This literature locates the debate firmly within ‘human rights and civil liberties’ and, one could argue, the sociology...