Roy over at No Cookies for Me (discovered just now through his guest blogging at Feministe — yay!) posted a wonderful, thought provoking entry regarding discussions about the sex industry and how they neglect the actual reality and humanity of the sex workers involved:

I sat there at my desk, talking about sex workers and sex work and porn like they were abstractions… but they’re not, and mythago rightly called me on my shit. It took me a while to realize that, but it was a totally fair criticism. My sitting there saying that stats show this and stats show that and look how many sex workers were this or that… none of that helps them now, and talk like that does make me more likely to find myself allied with religious conservatives who have a “moral interest” in condemning sex work… and sex workers.

And when I allow myself to ally with questionable or even flat-out bad groups, I have to accept that the damage they do in the name of our cause is damage that I’m contributing to. I can’t wash my hands of the harm that my allies do if they’re doing the damage in the name of our mutual cause. If I’m rallying behind the cry of “PORN HARMS ALL WOMEN!” and I allow myself to get backing from a group that’s adding “BECAUSE DIRTY SLUTS ABUSE SEX!” then aren’t I at least somewhat culpable? Because, ultimately, don’t my actions help further that cause, as well? And doesn’t that mean that the damage they’re doing is to some extent, on my hands?

Because those people have made it absolutely clear that they don’t care about the women involved. They’re not working to help end the abuse of sex workers. They’re not condemning poor working conditions. They’re not working to help sex worker’s rights. They’re not even remotely interested in making sure that their voices get heard. They’re interested in keeping the whores out of their neighborhoods.

This is my big problem with a lot of (radical, particularly) feminists. I don’t disagree that most pornography is harmful to women* — and not just in a vague, nebulous sense. I believe a great deal of it has a real, tangible impact on the women involved. The industry can be unsafe and abusive, and sometimes it cheats the women out of the money they thought they were going to make by having sex on camera. Not to mention how it’s clear that depicting women actually experiencing pleasure is apparently pretty low on the priority list. (Because women exist for men to enjoy. Whether we enjoy ourselves isn’t important to a lot of people. It’s actually terrifying.) And it hurts women who buy into it, who think that they have to have labial surgery to be acceptable as a sex partner.

But trying to criminalize porn will not help anyone. The women who are harmed will be harmed more because they will have even less recourse. When people discuss sex work in impassioned, black-and-white moral terms, so often they forget that sex work isn’t just about feminist theory. It’s about the actual women who do it, for whatever reason. The lives of women are not abstractions. They are real people with real lives and their ability to make a living however they can manage is incredibly important.

Is it right that a woman’s only option to support herself might be sex work? Absolutely not. (Although if she really enjoys doing it, and, yes, I think that’s possible although perhaps rare in a world this fucked up, and she can make a living on it, more power to her.) But it doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong. What matters is that this is a human being who needs the money to live.

And one would think, one would hope something feminists could agree on is that women being able to live is important — but somehow, we manage to forget that for many women that’s exactly what’s on the line. The lives of sex workers get lost in the discussion and suddenly they don’t matter. I wouldn’t argue that most people are intentionally devaluing the lives of these women, but that’s the end result. Isn’t treating women’s lives as negligible exactly the attitude we need to get away from?

1. I also don’t think porn should be criminalized because I don’t think it’s inherently harmful or wrong, but that’s another discussion entirely.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 9:30 pm and is filed under Feminist Movement, Gender and Sex, Sexuality, Society, Theory.