The Sex Wars

Patriarchy perpetuates the sexual exploitation of women in all areas of society, specifically in the institutions of pornography, prostitution, and sex trafficking.  These patriarchal driven institutions coincide with one another and consequentially create the sex wars. Continuous debates of solutions to end the dehumanizing, devaluing, violence against women occur between feminist approaches, within nation-states, and in international relations.  Six major concepts surrounding the sex wars dispute are the issues of: prostitution as a legitimate job and women’s agency, morality’s involvement, pornography as an implicit sex industry, prohibition as a resolution, and the feminization of globalization and migration. The issue of either decriminalizing or regulating pornography, sex trafficking, and prostitution is the underlying basis of all sex wars arguments.  If decriminalized, it will allow women to have some form of agency.  If regulated, nation-states and its local governments will decide on sex wars affairs.  Even though these complex institutions of pornography, prostitution, and sex trafficking are strenuous to regulate and to oversee, simply legalizing and condoning such institutions will be an ill-fated solution.  This blog will focus on prostitution and morality’s involvement in the sex wars.

Prostitution, a legitimate job?:

A clash between morality and reason occurs when contemplating if prostitution is and/or should be a legal occupation.  One side of the argument stated in The Link Between Prostitution and Sex Trafficking over prostitution is that it is presumed “…prostitution is inherently harmful and dehumanizing, and fuels trafficking in persons, a form of modern-day slavery” (US Department of State, p. 99).  The other side of the argument envisions prostitution as a legitimate job.  Lin Chew in her article Reflections by an Anti-trafficking Activist states:

“…the only way to break the stigma and marginalization of prostitutes was to accept the work that they do as exactly that- a form of work, with its own specificities of risks and benefits, but no more or no less special than other forms of work” (Chew, p. 66-67).

Leah Platt concurs in her article Regulating the Global Brothel by arguing that the legalization of the sex industry would allow governments to “regulate” and “reduce abuses, such as unhealthy working conditions, assault, and sexual slavery” because prostitution will continue regardless if it is legal or not (Platt, p. 83).  Anti-prostitution feminists may ask: if women were given the choice between prostitution and an equivalent paying job, would the woman would choose the job? Conversely, the pro-prostitution feminists would protest prostitution as a women’s choice to do what she wants with her own body and women should be given the opportunity to choose.  However, prostitution cannot be treated as such since it is not like other work.

Furthermore, another reason why anti-prostitution feminists do not believe in legalizing prostitution is because of the psychological and physiological strains a woman may undergo during and after intercourse.  An analysis should be conducted of why women would voluntarily choose such a profession.  Possible reasons of her choosing prostitution may include having cruel, past sexual experiences that make her believe that her only worth is a sex object.  Or that she honestly believes this is the only occupation in which provides financial safety.  Pro-prostitution feminists may counter argue by stating prostitution attracts uneducated, unskilled women for occupations that will pay more than other professions since they are not as qualified.  It will allow previous victims of sexual abuse to gain some agency back by giving them the ability to control their work environment and who their clients are.

Some believe women should be given the legal opportunity to be a prostitute because they should have a choice over their own bodies, but this only provides women with a false dichotomy of opportunity.  The first choice may belong to a woman, but ultimately a prostitute becomes an object that a man penetrates, which perpetuates and implicitly legitimizes patriarchy. The option of being a prostitute or not is not agency, rather she will have agency when society no longer uses, abuses, or exploits her body.

There also must be clarification on legalizing prostitution the United States. Would there be brothels or would women be self-employed as prostitutes?  Advocates for legalization of prostitution in the United States say in Long Silent, Oldest Profession Gets Vocal and Organized, “…their ultimate goal is to remove prostitution altogether from criminal codes, rather than confining it to legal brothels, as in Nevada” (Navarro & Fisher, p. 96). If there are brothels, then there would be a way to receive health care from employers, but if not, how would self-employed women receive health care since the United States squirms whenever universal health care is brought up? Leah Platt reassures:

“Sex work is here to stay, and by recognizing it as paid labor governments can guarantee fair treatment as well as safe and healthy environments-including overtime and vacation pay, control over condom use, and the right to collective bargaining” (Platt, p. 91).

However, anti-prostitute supporters may ask how a government can mandate such things?  In first world countries these regulations could not be enforced, let alone in third world countries. After the Philippines’ government prohibited “mail order bride” businesses, due to the violence against and exploitation of women, the Philippine government condoned sex trafficking.  The Philippine nation-state that is a starting place, transfer state, and destination for sex trafficking, Samarasinghe notes:

“Trafficking of Filipino women overseas for sexual purposes has been greatly facilitated by the state policy encouraging women to seek employment overseas.  Export of labor has been an acknowledged policy strategy of successive Filipino governments.  Hailed by policy-makers as ‘new heroes,’ the overseas contract workers contribute billions of dollars to boost the economy of the Philippines” (Samarasinghe, p. 170).

Samarasinghe later states clients, industries, owners, and governments solely reap profit since women do not need to be trained or given health care (Samarasinghe, p. 168).  This is where anti-prostitution supporters would ask why would this government legalize prostitution to give benefits to women, if they are receiving all what they want now?  Since all governments are patriarchal, where men reap benefit by means of women, why would they change under international law and what universal police would enforce repercussions?  Why would a third world nation who has at last found a way to profit billions and possibly bring them to second world status, change prostitution regulations that would therefore detract from their profit?  Why would nations who do not have universal health care and jobs who do not provide health care, decide to give health care to prostitutes over other workers?

What would a sovereign nation, who condones sex trafficking and violent prostitution, say to an intruding international force or nation-state that says to stop selling and exploiting women?  That nation may say, why?  Your nation does the same thing because all nations demean, exploit women in one form or another.  It is wishful thinking that a patriarchal government will regulate such benefits for women, when still today the United States turns a blind eye to epidemics of domestic violence and pornography.

Morality’s Involvement:

How could morality, a positive human characteristic, hinder the productivity of ending sex wars?  In Tara McKelvey’s The American Prospect, she writes about organizations in various countries that assist trafficking survivors and victims.  These health-care educators and social workers encourage children by telling them that one day they will no longer be victims of the sex industry, however, in the mean time they will give sex workers condoms to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS and other STDs (McKelvey, p. 102).  Alas, University of Rhode Island Professor Donna Hughes began accusing these organizations of condoning prostitution, “ ‘It is unacceptable to provide medical services and condoms to enslaved people and ignore the slavery” (McKelvey, p.102).  Under former President George Bush’s order, organizations that did not sign a “loyalty oath” would not be granted funds.  This loyalty oath would mandate organizations to not promote, advocate, or support the legalization or practice of prostitution (McKelvey, p. 103).  Workers in these organizations became concerned with this new program after it formed a schism it formed between groups and its preventative effects on outreaching to victims of the sex industry.  McKelvey states:

“Others see the change as a sop to the religious right, which has taken an undoubtedly sincere interest in the problems of trafficking and slavery, but which, to critics, is creating a rift in a coalition that was working smoothly by imposing its value system in a manner that’s alienating groups that used to get along-and that isn’t necessarily helping the women it’s designed to help” (McKelvey, p. 103).

This so-called abolitionist movement is harmful and diverts meaningful, helpful plans for victims of sex trafficking.  The leaders of this movement are from the right wing and from religious institutions, which are “overzealous and moralistic” persons (McKelvey, p. 104).  An occurrence of moral stupidity was when a raid by Bush’s IJM in Thailand freed 29 women from a brothel, but were later imprisoned for illegal immigration.

If eradicating sex trafficking and prostitution is in the far future, steps must be taken to protect women today such as the use of condoms. Lisa Duggan’s, An Historical Overview: Feminist Historians and Anti-Pornography Campaigns, explains the hindering effect of alliances with right-wing parties.  Historically, in the United Sates and England, feminists worked with social-purity campaigns to strengthen anti-prostitution laws to promote economic opportunities for and cease sexual vulnerabilities of women.   However, these conservatives, who are misogynic in nature, did not wish to protect women rather they, “…displaced energy onto campaigns to suppress prostitution [and not] work to give women more economic and social recourses” (Duggan, p. 234).   This does not mean there can never again be an alliance with the right wing and feminists, in fact, there must be an alliance.  However, by allowing these unintelligible solutions of legalizing oppressing institutions such as banishing the use of condoms and by not giving economic opportunities to women, will further hinder all women. In the process of eradicating sex wars, parties need to envision the entire problem with a realistic eye before acting.  There needs to be one goal that every party should be in the process of achieving, which is protecting and saving women for the sake of today and tomorrow.

Prohibition:

Pro-prostitution supporters relentlessly argue that the prohibition of prostitution has not been and is not a triumphant progress.  Therefore, their reason brings them to push for legalizing prostitution, “Criminalization has been as unsuccessful in dismantling the sex industry as it has been in eliminating the drug trade and preventing back-alley abortions” (Platt, p. 91).   One may ask pro-prostitution supporters, since the disassembling of drug trafficking has not been a prosperous outcome, should we then legalize cocaine and heroine?  If the process of disestablishing child labor has not been exultant, should children be permitted to work at the age of 5, nine hours each day? Though the criminalization of such industries have been unsuccessful does not give the right to decriminalize them.

Yet, to pursue Lisa Duggan’s patterns of thought, in regulating and prohibiting prostitution, sex trafficking, and pornography industries, there has been a displacement of focus.  Duggan uses the Temperance Movement in the United States of adverting the root of what female Prohibitionists wanted resolved:

“But the temperance campaign focused its efforts on banning alcohol.  Although there were serious problems related to the consumption of alcohol, the notion that the banning of alcohol would address the problem of domestic violence or do anything about all-male social spaces was a very mistaken, displaced strategy” (Duggan, p. 233).

This displacement of focus by governments is also seen by the US Department by the United States initiating medical check-ups or licenses.  These do not address the root issue of psychological and physiological violence against women in the prostitution industry (US Department of State, p. 100).  There are vast faults on the behalf of international law and nation-states interventions regarding regulating and eradicating sex trafficking and prostitution, however, these are patriarchal societies and patriarchal laws.

Big heads will not focus as much of their attention on so-called “women’s issues.”  Instead, their focus is preoccupied with: wars, immigration laws rather than migration laws, unification of first world nations not of first, second, and third world nations, expanding their ideologies instead of listening to others, and extracting resources from other nations.  Samarasinghe illustrates such international, patriarchal transactions:

“While not as visible in policy documents, the suite of policies designed to foster foreign currency earnings and debt repayment undoubtedly encourages the growth of prostitution and the consequent trafficking of females because it generates foreign exchange and revenue from the remittances of exported female sex workers” (Samarasinghe, p. 167).

Despite the consequences of government’s agendas and though the implementations of their laws that prevent trafficking are complacent, these laws have flourished for some individuals in some regards.  Such is seen in Lin Chew’s article regarding her satisfaction of the political process of ending sex trafficking.  One of new millennia steps to end sex slavery is identify and clearly define what trafficking is the:

“ ‘…threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, the abuse of power or (the abuse of) a position of vulnerability, the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation’ ” (Chew, p. 74).

This definition was used in December of 2000 for the Trafficking Protocol, which was established after long triumphs of unified individuals and organizations combating against trafficking or persons.  More recently in the United States, advocates contacted their local constituents to pass the S.3184-Child Protection Act of 2010 to have Congress vote to eliminate child trafficking.  In substitution of decriminalizing tragic issues, nation-states must know these industries are affecting them in a negative way.  To see it is not just women’s issues, rather trafficking affects males and female of all ages, all classes, and all races.

Conclusion:

The downfall of trying to resolve sex wars is that parties cannot systematically study sex wars.  Parties cannot find exact statistics of the number of sex trafficking victims. Regardless of the quantity of victims and despite any sides’ or nation-state’s viewpoint, an agreement can be made that women need more job opportunities; jobs, which are in the formal, public work sphere rather than women in informal and sometimes illegal spheres.  Other solutions have been offered to stop sex wars, most of which have excluded the solution of elevating women’s position in the formal work force.  There must be a stronger force, an international force with the help of all nation-states that wants to protect all women.  A force which will put its patriarchal hat aside and implement laws and actions which will help women and will not legalize sex wars since it will consequentially further harm women.  An implementation of an international law which all governments sign that will eradicate sex trafficking and prostitution.  If not followed, fellow country signers will direct enforcement.  Militaries and police must be directed towards using coercive force on traffickers, violators of the law, rather than on trafficking victims.  This feminization of globalization has taken misogyny to a new level.  The US Department of State reassures:

“Where prostitution is legalized or tolerated, there is a greater demand for human trafficking victims and nearly always an increase in the number of women and children trafficked into commercial sex slavery…Legalization of prostitution expands the market for commercial sex, opening markets for criminal enterprises and creating a safe haven for criminals who traffic people into prostitution” (p. 99-100).

If we legalize or condone any form of oppression against women in the sex wars, feminism might as well say it has been defeated once and for all.

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