Sex Work

Question 1

Srinivasan quote

Answer 1

‘To say that sex work is “just work” is to forget that all work - men’s work, women’s work - is never just work: it is also sexed’

Question 2

Christine Overall definition

Answer 2

Sex work = sex acts and services of various kinds, and sex workers also include erotic dancers, strippers, models in the pornography sex partners

Question 3

Decriminalisation vs legalisation

Answer 3

Decriminalisation treats sex work like any other work, while legislation introduces prostitution-specific laws, with robust regulation

Question 4

Alison Jagher

Answer 4

If there is indeed a philosophically significant distinction between the woman who sells sexual services and the individual who sells services of any kind, then that distinction must be given a philosophical rationale

Question 5

MacKinnon quote

Answer 5

Prostitution is ‘the oldest oppression’

Question 6

Flanigan and Watson quote / context

Answer 6

Male prostitution is a significantly smaller portion of the market, with estimations between 10-20% of all individuals in prostitution; and there are no brothels where men are for sale

Question 7

Jill Nagle

Answer 7

For far too long, feminists have condemned sex workers and disavowed the possibility of feminist sex workers, with them having no seat at the table. Discusses the example of a pornography roundtable with no individuals participating in the pornography industry. Wiehs to hold accountable both traditional feminism for stigmatizing sex workers, and also the sex industry for its sexist practices

Question 8

Sonya Aragon

Answer 8

Recounts her experience as a sex worker -
1. Interesting mentality for why she chose sex work - 1) lower time commitment than a straight job, 2) insatiable curiosity about the sexual proclivities of others, 3) ‘inherited neuroses’, 4) a wish to ‘align with criminality’
2. Criticising those calling for criminalisation, arguing their ‘stigma masquerades as concern’
3. COVID-19 and the difficulty of making money and payments
4. One harrowing account of a sex worker considering the fact their video call with the client might end up on PornHub, and not being able to do anything about it

Question 9

Andrea Dworkin

Answer 9

Prostitution is not a simple matter of choice but is, along with rape, one of the ‘institutions that most impede any experience of intercourse as freedom’, and ‘negates self-determination and choice for women’

Question 10

Susan Cole quote

Answer 10

Prostitution is ‘an institution of male supremacy’

Question 11

Hirschmann

Answer 11

Women cannot really exercise free choice, because patriarchy and male domination have been instrumental in the social construction of women’s choices. Genuine real choice requires the absence of external coercion and the ability to evaluate critically and choose from significant and worthwhile options.
BUT still argues that feminist freedom requires that women’s decisions be respected, regardless of what they choose, including staying with abusers and not reporting rape or sexual harassment (too much?)

Question 12

Brison

Answer 12

Responds to Hirschmann, arguing that supporting and expanding the choice of some women (sex workers) can diminish the choice of other women

Question 13

MacKinnon: how does prostitution violate civil rights?

Answer 13

Prostitution violates many human and civil rights. Civil rights include:
1. Free from torture and cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment
2. Security of the person - in prostitution, the security of a woman’s person is stolen and sold
3. Liberty of the person - sexual slaves. Kathleen Barry argues that prostitution is female sexual slavery and something women cannot get out of. A study of street prostitutes in Toronto found that 90% wanted to leave but could not
4. Freedom from arbitrary arrest - criminalisation of prostitutes
5. Property ownership - prostitutes are kept systematically poor by pimps
6. Freedom of speech - silences women by punishing them for telling the truth about their condition, and by degrading what they do say because they are prostitutes
7. To be recognised as a person before the law - to be a prostitute is to be a legal nonperson in the ways that matter
8. Civil right to life - Green River murders, snuff films
9. Equality - prostitution is slavery or involuntary servitudeP

Question 14

MacKinnon: what is the solution to prostitution and why?

Answer 14

1. Decriminalising prostitution, because legal victimisation is currently piled on top of social victimisation. Women do not have a sex equality right to engage with prostitution, but a criminal saction makes it worse, and they don’t have police protection so pimps’ protection racket is necessary.
2. There should be strict enforcement of laws against pimps who exploit women’s inequality for gain.
3. Comparison to domestic violence - When a battered woman sustains the abuse of one man for economic survival for twenty years, not even this legal system believes she consents to the abuse anymore. Asking why she did not leave has begun to be replaced by noticing what keeps her there.
4. ‘The soft focus of gender neutrality blur sex distinctions by law and rigidly sex-divided social realities at the same time. By now, most legislatures have gender-neutralized their prostitution laws without having done anything to gender-neutralize prostitution’s realities’

Question 15

Overall - stance and brief observations

Answer 15

Supports decriminalisation and supports sex workers but not sex work, which is an unequal practice defined by the intersection of capitalism and patriarchy. Prostitution is sexist (overwhelmingly men customers), classist (those who have disposable income for sex), ageist (very young girls) and racist (sexually insatiable but subservient women).

Question 16

Overall - responses to other’s arguments

Answer 16

1. Danger and disease - a) not exclusive to sex work and b) not inherent within sex work (some with good conditions)
2. Sexual coercion - poverty and racism means women who had other choices would not have chosen this. So the question becomes whether in a situation of economic insecurity, inadequate education , sex role socialization, and inadequate choose prostitution any less than they choose other f women’s work. Surely women who
3. Cannot just assume that a person who engages in deviant sexual activity cannot consent to it - Rubin calls this the ‘brainwash theory’ - the idea that there are things so repulsive that no one can ever consent to doing it (which erases erotic diversity). Cannot rely on ‘false consciousness’ - hence coercion is not an essential element to prostitution
4. What about the treatment and money women get? Same working conditions as women in other service jobs - if prostitutes unionised, surely this wouldn’t be a problem
5. Sex without love, being uniquely objectified? (has good description) - what about licensed masseuse or psychotherapist, both of whom offer very intensely personal services? Also many other sex acts don’t include love. In our society, we often pay people to take care of bodies and listen to our feelings

Question 17

Eva Pendleton

Answer 17

Sex work ‘destabilises heteronormativity’ and is good:
1. Sex workers have historically operated as an ‘other’ against which varieties of white female sexual identity have constructed themselves. Heterosexuality as a social system depends upon the spectre of unchastity in order to constitute itself; the “good wife” as a social category cannot exist without the “whore,” whether she takes the form of a prostitute, an insatiable black jezebel, a teenage mother, or a lesbian
2. Lesbian sex workers perform heterosexuality regardless of their sexual self-identity, destabilising sexual identities; even for straight women, sex work is queer because it is performative heterosexuality and femininity
3. Can see heteronormativity much more clearly - the existence of the overt economy of sex brings to light the greater economy of heterosexuality, and ‘queers’ heteronormativity. The exchange is no longer couched in oblique, yet still patriarchal, language; the terms are clear and the exchange much more equal
4. Sex work is drag in that it is a mimetic performance of highly changed feminine gender codes
5. Sex workers provide a powerful indictment of gender roles by demanding payment for playing them; feminism would be transformed and strengthened by incorporating this analysis. Practitioners of queer sex and politics also have much to gain by forging alliances with sex workers

Question 18

Carol Queen

Answer 18

1. Argues against whore stigma, and that our culture and feminism culture carefully and narrowly circumscribes what is acceptable.
2. If activists truly wanted to improve the lot of sex workers, they would insist upon thorough and nonjudgmental sex information for clients as well as whores, such as teaching the skills of negotiation, creating respect.
3. If feminists were to care about the experience of all women and be open to learning from the experience of all women, they should take whores seriously
4. Any worker under capitalism is subject to mistreatment

Question 19

Different models of regulation for sex work

Answer 19

1. Criminalisation - criminalising the buying and selling of sex, as well as pimping, solicitation etc. Practiced mostly in the US, except rural counties in Nevada
2. Nordic model - decriminalises the selling ofs ex but criminalises the buying. Premised on the view that prostitution is a practice of sex inequality that differentially harms and disadvantages women. Views demand as the driving force of the prostitution market, hence targeting demand reduction. BUT does not draw a sharp distinction between sex trafficking and prostitution
3. Legalisation - removes criminal laws and penalties for both seller and buyers, with prostitution-specific laws, involving more regulations than decriminalisation. Legalised in Germany, the Netherlands. Brothels are permitted and state-regulated
4. Decriminalisation - removing criminal laws for both buyers and sellers of sex, preferred by sex workers and sex worker advocates, and endorsed by Amnesty International. Decriminalised in Australia and New Zealand, with specific regulations eg. mandatory health screening and zoning laws. Vs legalisation, decriminalisation generally treats sex workers like other kinds of work, acknowledging some industry-specific regulations may be needed but rejecting policies which aim to reduce the scope of the industry
5. Partial criminalisation in the UK

Question 20

Melissa Gira Grant - evidence for models

Answer 20

1. The Nordic model (Sweden in particular) was enacted without sufficient consultation of sex workers
2. In New York, condoms can be used as evidence of prostitution, so sex workers do not carry condoms to avoid arrest

Question 21

Sonya Aragon (policy)

Answer 21

Decriminalisation necessitates ‘positioning the work as a job like any other’, a struggle for workers’ rights as bequeather by a legislative body

Question 22

Mac and Smith

Answer 22

Revolting Prostitutes
1. Argue for full decriminalisation of sex work with additional labour rights for workers
2. Almost all sex work is done out of material necessity, and issues with sex work are issues of labour exploitation under capitalism
3. Criticise carceral feminism. Argue the Nordic model causes clients of sex workers to be more volatile and unsafe as reliable clients are discouraged by threat of arrest, and that criminalisation leads to more dangerous locations, or for sex workers to hire procurers who may put them at risk of where they have a higher chance of being extorted by the police

Question 23

Jessica Flanigan

Answer 23

1. Decriminalisation - restrictions on the sale and purchase of sex violate the rights of sex workers and their clients.
2. Public officials (eg. police) can also stand in relations of subordination to citizens eg. extorting sex workers

Question 24

General arguments for decriminalisation

Answer 24

Selling sex as the exercise of agency, a pathway to liberation from sex-based oppression, arguing sex work is work and against the unjust stigmatisation of sex workers

Question 25

Lori Watson (what model to use)

Answer 25

Supports Nordic model - a sex equality approach to prostitution in which buyers are criminalized and sellers are decriminalized:
1. Prostitution is an exploitative and unequal practice that entrenches existing patterns of gendered injustice
2. Full decriminalization of prostitution is incompatible with existing occupational health and safety standards and securing worker autonomy and equality
3. Sex trafficking and prostitution are functionally similar such that the distinction is irrelevant for public policy; attacking demand is necessary to address the inequalities that fuel both
4. Policies of toleration are proven to increase trafficking for sexual exploitation, demand reduction is most effective

Question 26

Arguments against Nordic model

Answer 26

1. Any position aiming to curtail prostitution rests on unjustifiable moralism or paternalism
2. Prostitution is a fully voluntary choice and should be protected.
   BUT Farley’s study into prostitution in nine countries, documents that 75% of women in prostitution were homeless at the time of entry, and there are limited exit options; sellers do not stand in reciprocal relations of equality with buyers
3. Even if prostitution is exploitative, allowing such exploitation makes sex workers better off
4. Persons have rights to markets in sex such that any prohibitive policies violate rights.
   BUT Watson argues you cannot buy and sell babies, and markets are not ‘morally neutral’ eg. brides being bought and sold entrench inequality

Question 27

Flanigan - responses to others’ arguments

Answer 27

Argues against criminalisation:
1. Police officers often enforce laws against buying and selling unequally, with women who are targeted and arrested. Consequences for women are also far more severe, eg. with prior criminal convictions, cannot afford legal fees
2. Police are known to coerce and exort sex acts
3. Sex workers cannot be protected by law when crimes have been committed within or outside prostitution
4. Makes sex workers more vulnerable relative to buyers (johns) as buyers know police intervention is unlikely
5. Moral condemnation without practical effects

Question 28

Lori Watson (is it work?)

Answer 28

1. Argues against the phrase ‘sex work’ itself, and that it attempts to legitimise prostitution as ‘just another form of work’.
2. Social conditions of inequality (sex, age, class, race) structure the conditions of entry into prostitution and prostitution internally, hence legal approaches which tolerate or normalise prostitution violate equality principles.
3. When sex is the ‘service’, occupational health and safety standards applicable to every other form of work cannot be met, eg. exposure to infectious diseases. Condom use dependent on cooperation of the john (true) and can be removed to negotiate for a higher price. Health threats cannot be eliminated or reduced to an acceptable level by reasonable modifications eg. STIs. Rape and assault risk is also very high
4. Sex workers do not want to sign contracts for fear of losing autonomy over where they can work
5. Requiring persons in prostitution to comply with civil rights laws (for example, holding them responsible for discrimination for refusing to have sex with someone on the grounds that they are a member of a protected group) is incompatible with respecting their sexual autonomy

Question 29

Lori Watson: why not full criminalisation?

Answer 29

1. Because of asymmetrical inequalities between buyers and sellers, supports decriminalisation which raises their social status, and should be provided state support for their basic needs and means for exit.
2. Important for policymakers to know who is there, why they are there, who benefits from prostitution, and who is harmed.
3. Watson self-describes as an ‘egalitarian-liberal’, someone who argues that some level of substantive equality is a necessary condition for meaningfully protecting individual freedom

Question 30

Jessica Flanigan

Answer 30

1. Poor conditions are not intrinsic to sex work - the fact that a person has poor economic prospects or exists in a state of social marginalisation due to sex, race etc does not entail she is incapable of consenting to work or it is wrong to pay for her labour
   (eg. raises example of selling your body for medical experiments - drug trials are work!)
2. Criminalisation perpetuates stigmatising judgements and reduce their bargaining power in the labour market
3. Paternalism cannot justify limiting the sex industry because even if sex work is difficult and distressing labour, sex workers are better judges of their own well-being than uninformed public officials who know nothing of their values and experiences which led them to choose sex work. Recognising the legitimacy of sex work need not conflict with embracing egalitarian values

Question 31

Heather Berg

Answer 31

1. Argues against sex-work exceptionalism, and that commercial sex exchange is not exploitative because of anything unique to sex; it is exploitative because it is labour under capitalism.
2. Categorises sex work as ‘intimate labour’
3. Notes that Carol Leigh coined the term ‘sex work’ to provide an alternative to stigmatised language, BUT it avoids a sustained critique of systems of capitalist exploitation and by reproducing key facets of the peculiar rhetoric of work under late capital

Question 32

Melissa Gira Grant

Answer 32

Sex work is labour:
1. Identifies systemic economic issues relating to sex work while dissenting with anti-sex work feminists and organisations aiming to ‘rescue’ sex workers
2. Traditional methods of sex work solicitation eg. red light districts have changed as such districts become gentrified and much of sex work moves online.
3. Analyses the concept of the ‘prostitute imaginary’, which are narratives of sex work in the public consciousness, involving 1) dehumanisation, and 2) allows for exertion of control over women sex workers.
4. Typecasting sex work as exploitation or empowerment creates a false dichotomy and dissuades analysis of systemic economic issues: 1) survival sex and 2) lack of worker agency in industries other than sex work.
5. Argues against a ‘rescue industry’ because they 1) use violence or force, 2) lead to surveillance of workers by police and evictions by landlords, and 3) is ineffective on the rate of full-service sex work.
6. Managers in the industry eg. strip-club owners are responsible for ‘pornification’ rather than workers, and that ‘sex workers should not be expected to defend the existence of sex work in order to have the right to do it free from harm

Question 33

Mac and Smith

Answer 33

Look at prostitution and the concept of a ‘deserving client’, usually a disabled man who is argued to need sex workers as the only way he can experience physical intimacy - argues this is an ableist idea, related to the desexualisation of disabled people

Question 34

Shrage

Answer 34

Responds to Overall, who argues that all sex work is characterised by conditions of capitalism and patriarchy, but Shrage argues this is contextually contingent. There are other contexts eg. Gambia has black male prostitutes, (older) white female customers.

HOWEVER sex work does not have to be characterised by inequality in every single social context; just as the existence of high-class escorts who get paid well and can have high expectations for treatment does not in any way undercut the suffering of poor sex workers

Question 35

Erotic Professionals

Answer 35

‘The Erotic Professional positions herself as answering a ‘calling’ that seems to have barely anything to do with being paid’. Downplays any coercion and positions her as ‘sex positive’. This creates the illusion that worker and client are united in their interests

Question 36

Sex worker example - pathologised as criminals

Answer 36

In 2013, a Swedish family court ruled that a young mother named Jasmine did not know what was best for herself; the court saw her sex work not as a flexible job that gave her a livable income while caring full-time for her children, but as a form of ‘self-harm’. The judge ruled that as she was engaged in self-harm, that she was unable to care for her children, and disregarded her warnings that her ex-partner was violent. Her ex was awarded child custody, even though he was violent. When she visited him in order to see the children, he stabbed her to death

Question 37

Example of sex work being preferable to other types of minimum wage work

Answer 37

1980s - sex worker Nickie Roberts writes that the word to describe working minimum wage, working-class jobs is ‘drudgery’. ‘Why should I have to put up with a middle class woman asking me why I didn’t “do anything - scrub toilets, even?” than become a stripper? What’s so liberating about cleaning up other people’s shit?’
Jobs can be good or bad, but they are still ‘jobs’

Question 38

Nussbaum

Answer 38

1. Stigmatisation of certain occupations may be well-founded, on reasoned arguments, but it may also be founded on prejudice or stereotypes of race and gender. Just like it would be fine to hope your child takes up a certain religion, it would be fine to want them not to take up sex work. But in both cases, it is wrong to stigmatise individuals in either category.
2. Argues sex work is ‘just work’, and is not morally significant enough to distinguish from other forms of work. Just like other kinds of work, there exist subjective moral grounds for objection, and normative grounds for significant regulation
3. Most cultures contain a continuum of commercially tinged relationships between men and women, from prostitution to the inclusion of money in marriage (dowry), expensive dates and sexual favours, eg. nightclub singer who takes song requests, or even a philosophy professor who provides intimate bodily services, in areas deemed central to selfhood

Question 39

Nevada case study

Answer 39

Stella Marr - It is a myth that legal brothels will protect women from pimps and violent johns; the legal brothels in Nevada exploit women too - the legality means that it become ideal business conditions for exploitation

Barbara Brents - Evidence indicates women at Nevada brothels feel safe and free. 84% say the job felt safe; because the police, employers, and other workers were their to protect them. Women came there to work due to poverty, to escape the danger of illegal SW, or to supplement their careers in related SW industries (porn, dancing). There was no evidence of trafficking

Question 40

Srinivasan

Answer 40

Argues that anti-prostitution feminism is fundamentally symbolic, as well as carceral, as it invites state hand and regulation. But this carceral approach is often counterproductive, addressing symptoms rather than causes, and failing to grapple with the realities that women do not gain (and may in fact lose) from a punishment-oriented approach. For example, after mandatory arrest laws for domestic violence, white domestic abuse fell, and black domestic abuse rose (due to retaliation by husbands after arrest). Carceralism also reduces willingness to seek help when women know that it will result in the loss of their economic support systems. Eg. in Brazil, harsher domestic violence laws resulted in a drop in reporting due to fears by women

Any form of criminalization ends with bad consequences:
1. In the UK, women working together for safety are charged with brothel keeping
2. In Germany, when there is heavy state-regulation, then money flows to managers (male)
3. Under the Nordic model, client demands for privacy and a lack of clients drive women to dangerous conditions

Question 41

Cahill

Answer 41

1. Renders questionable any sex work requiring workers to adopt a sexual subjectivity entirely limited by the desires and preferences of the client, and where their own subjectivity is not an engaged factor
2. It is not ethically problematic that a person doing certain labour is useful to the agent paying for this labour (teacher, waiter, sex worker), but it is if it requires the worker to adopt a subjectivity that is not recognised as ontologically distinct
3. BUT argues that queer sex work is acceptable, since 1) the derivatization that occurs in it is driven causally by wider comphet culture, and 2) objectification serves a key role in establishing identities, with sex work one of the few sites where queer desires are constructed as relevant and acceptable.
   Eg. Stychin - because gay porn enhances the subjectivity of gay men, it cannot be seen as objectifying them, and it not subject to the feminist critique of het porn
4. Hegemonic male heterosexuality is constructed to encourage men to derivatize women and to find derivatized representations of women sexually appealing, so wider context is also responsible. The difference is the privilege of male heterosexuality. Those with recognised and valued sexualities are under greater responsibility to refrain from and reject derivatization, because their privilege affords them greater scop of sexual expression and recognistion
5. Sex work is not inherently (need not be) derivatizing, since it can be constructed in ways that recognises the ontological specificity of the parties