Update (1/0/09): Aspasia lays the ultimate smackdown on Cara…but Ren Ev, as usual, gets the win.

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OK….I still owe y’all a 2008 Blogging Year in Review post, and that will be forthcoming…but there’s something that I just have to get off my chest that is nagging my ass pretty good.

Caroline Shepherd over at Better Burn That Dress, Sister (and formerly of Uncool) has been fighting the good fight pretty hard lately on debunking all the crap that she has been taking on the British side of the Great Big Pond over the recent attempts to change for the worse laws concerning sex work in Great Britain. She is currently running a petition to get the British Parliament to delay discussion and enaction of various proposed anti-sex work legislation until a new government can be elected; if you are British, you are strongly encouraged by me to go there and sign it.

Caroline has also been all over the Internet lately — guest posting in places like Sex In The Public Square, Shiraz Socialist, Feministe, and The F-Word — on the negative effects of what is known as the “Swedish Model” form of legislation that seeks to eliminate prostitution and other forms of sex work through criminalizing and shaming exclusively the men who patronize such services while leaving the women basically untouched. Problem is, wiping out their professions by eliminating and criminalizing the “demand”, as Caroline so aptly notes and backs up by testimony from active sex workers themselves, not only does NOT significantly reduce the harm to those sex workers who remain in the business, but it actively supports the broader system of sexual shame and sexual reaction which fuels the most violent and abusive practices to begin with.

Needless to say, the radicalfeminist defenders of the Swedish Model were out in force to defend their favored legislation, and as usual, they brought out all the usual and all too typical memes about how they aren’t really against sex workers, but against the evil MEN who “sell women’s bodies” and otherwise abuse and degrade women merely for “male sexual entitlement”. A seminal example that touches all the bases of the usual boilerplate follows (this from the thread from The F-Word courtesy of “Cara”, who responds en blanc to Caroline, Renegade Evolution, and SnowdropExplodes, who all commented earlier in the thread defending Caroline’s work):

[posted by Cara to The F-Word on 1/6/06 @ 8:53 PM London time]

Renegade Evolution – I’ve never been a cleaner either, so I can’t possibly comment on whether a cleaner is exploited or not…? [responding to Ren Ev's comment here; See also Ren's post to her own blog here]

Caroline – oooh, yes, a union for the protection of pimps and other abusers, how convincing.
And – because it *is* unthinking. [responding to Caroline's remarks here]

What part of: prostitution. will. not. be. a crime. do you all not understand?

‘As for, “all she has to do is is show she is willingly doing sex work”, this is no protection at all for the client – after all, whatever proof is shown might be faked by an abusive pimp, and Jacqui Smith’s proposed new law means that however convincing the evidence shown to persuade the client that the sex worker is willing, he is still liable – there is NO room for “reasonable belief” or any other such caveat. He is taking the same risk whether she “shows willing” or not.’

This is rubbish. The burden of proof in law is on the prosecution. It would have to be proved beyond reasonable doubt that the sex worker *was* coerced.

I have not seen any convincing argument for, or evidence that this new law would in fact harm sex workers. As I said in my post, they have *more* redress to the law, and less fear of being prosecuted themselves.

And there *are* no ‘decent’ men who visit prostitutes, because decent men don’t. There are merely greater and lesser degrees of abusiveness and misogyny. Don’t try to tell me that there would suddenly be an explosion in abuse of prostitutes by nasty customers. There isn’t a binary division between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ johns.

As for demand falling, *I don’t care*. In fact if it leads to some sex workers exiting the trade, great, I’m ecstatic.
Those women who willingly work in the sex trade, by definition, have a choice and skills, and can find some other kind of work. I don’t have a problem if they eventually decide to do so. *I* don’t have a right to a job if demand for my skills falls, due to economic or other reasons, nor does anyone; you find something else, that’s life.

If you are going to argue that many sex workers love it and are making a free choice and all, and are not abused, these are the ‘high end’ girls who can pick and choose customers, work out of their own home or somewhere else safe anyway. I do not see that their clients would suddenly all run away in fear – by definition, most johns aren’t the type of people who care about what the law says overly anyway. They won’t be forced to go from servicing nice polite clean johns in a warm flat for large sums of money, to selling blow jobs for a tenner on the street!
As for the police investigating, don’t make me laugh – in the UK they often don’t come if your home has been burgled.

It’s the addicts, the desperate, those who have probably been abused in childhood or by partners, those with few qualifications and so on, as MB says. who I care about.

Legalisation would only condemn them to continue in the trade. However sanitised you make brothels, you’ve still got to admit it is mostly the desperate and vulnerable women who would be attracted to this line of work. Prostitution is inextricably linked to drug trade and other organised crime.

Making sex work acceptable would only reduce their chances of getting out, hey, nothing wrong with sex work, so it’s easy to say there’s nothing wrong with drug addicted, vulnerable women being trafficked, or exploited. Seeing sex work as acceptable makes it easier to be blind to women who are not willingly doing this work. Because sex workers don’t divide neatly into the ‘trafficked’ and the ‘totally love my career, yays’.

Exit programmes would be reduced or die out altogether; unemployed women could even be required to go into sex work or lose jobseekers’ allowance.

The ‘right’ of a tiny minority of sex workers who claim to enjoy the work is way down my list of priorities below women who do *not* want to be sex workers and are abused daily. This law would actually *help* them to get out of prostitution.

I am with MB and Jennifer.

‘It is all about male beliefs in sexual entitlement and sexual access to women and girls.’ Exactly.

Now, at least Cara doesn’t attempt like Mark P over at Shiraz Socialist to play the Marxist “I know more about who a worker is, and a prostitute isn’t a worker” card; she is actually honest enough to say outright that prostitution must be abolished through the Swedish Model-style legislation and men jailed and shamed into submission for their evil ways and their wayward erections.

When you get right down to it, ultimately, there really isn’t that much difference between the Swedish Model method of repression and the more traditional “smack and stone the whores” style of persecution (which, BTW, also tends to go after the clients pretty hard, too, but at least allows the workers some form of minimal agency). Especially since both models of oppression are heavily spiced with lots of slippery slope arguments, gross assumptions about the ultimate basar instincts of sex regarding its targeted scapegoat. and the refusal to even grant active sex workers even the smallest bit of self agency and self-representation.

But why take my word for it? Let’s do a full breakdown of Cara’s comments and dissect the gist of her methods, shall we?? (Italicized phrases are Cara’s, of course.)

Renegade Evolution – I’ve never been a cleaner either, so I can’t possibly comment on whether a cleaner is exploited or not…?

Now the argument of “if you’ve never been there, you have no right to comment” card is not my choice for a counterargument in this case, mostly because the other side will ultimately bring out someone like Rebecca Mott or Shelley Lubben or some other “ex-slut” or “ex-hooker” turned antiporn/antiprostitution activist to buttres her case. Nevertheless, people who pretend to speak for those they are “protecting” while dismissing the experiences of actual sex workers that don’t match their particular ideology don’t necessarily get to dictate the terms of the argument….and I’d say that Ren Ev’s been far more open to the opposition’s arguments than Cara ever will. Besides, I’d say that the cleaner herself (I’m assuming a female gender because I’d assume that Cara wouldn’t care one bit about a MALE cleaner being exploited because men don’t quite count in her universe) would be a far better judge of whether she’s being exploited than some outside party.

‘As for, “all she has to do is is show she is willingly doing sex work”, this is no protection at all for the client – after all, whatever proof is shown might be faked by an abusive pimp, and Jacqui Smith’s proposed new law means that however convincing the evidence shown to persuade the client that the sex worker is willing, he is still liable – there is NO room for “reasonable belief” or any other such caveat. He is taking the same risk whether she “shows willing” or not.’

This is rubbish. The burden of proof in law is on the prosecution. It would have to be proved beyond reasonable doubt that the sex worker *was* coerced.

Of course…just as here in the United States with rape law, the burden is always on the prosecution to prove that the woman was indeed raped; if the burden of proof wasn’t proved without reasonable doubt, then the accuser would have to be assumed to be not-guilty. Hey, wait-a-minute, hold up…I thought that radicalfeminists believed that the existing judicial system principle of presumed innocence was merely a taint of “the patriarchy” and allowed far too many rapes to occur without penalty of the accused?? Would Cata be willing to accept the same burden of proof be applied to cases regarding coercion in sex work??? HELL NO…why do you think that she and her allies are attempting to change the freakin’ laws to put the burden of proof onto the MAN to prove he is NOT GUILTY???

In fact, the fundamental assumption of the laws that Jacqui Smith is proposing (and the entire point of Cara’s rant) is that men who visit prostitutes should be assumed to BE nothing less than rapists and misogynists, and should NOT be given the assumption of innocence until proven guilty, but assumed to be guilty as the day is long and subjected to all kinds of humiliation, arrest, and even jail time…even if they never hurt one woman at all.

And what would happen if the Smith laws were enacted and am activist sex worker testified to being abused…..and the defense decided to simply whip out the old “the slut/bitch/trollop made me do it” defense??? Would Cara be so willing to defend the worker uncategroically?? OR…would she simply stand aside in silence until such worker admitted her hurt and harm in being an accomplice to a patriarchial society and accepted Jesus Christ Saint Andrea as her personal Savior??? Given what I’ve seen of the biases and prejudices of radicalfeminist antiprostitution abolitionists, I wouldn’t be so willing to vote for Option #1.

And there *are* no ‘decent’ men who visit prostitutes, because decent men don’t. There are merely greater and lesser degrees of abusiveness and misogyny. Don’t try to tell me that there would suddenly be an explosion in abuse of prostitutes by nasty customers. There isn’t a binary division between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ johns.

Note the bolded emphasis that I added to the obvious moral assumptions of Cara. Decent men don’t have to use sex workers, because either their wives/girlfriends/significant others are good enough for them, or…..men should just keep their pants zipped and think of other things rather than nasty, dirty, patriarchial sex. Just like “nice girls keep their legs closed until they find the right man (or woman) and get married.” Or…”nice girls don’t use birth control, or bare their midriffs, or wear those nasty low-rider jeans and braless halter tops or -gasp- thong panties; that’s only for evil sluts who bring women down and fuel men’s dirty lusts.” I suppose that “decent men” would also not use porn or even think about other women as “sex objects”, right??? Only the majority of “indecent” men do that, you see.

As for demand falling, *I don’t care*. In fact if it leads to some sex workers exiting the trade, great, I’m ecstatic.

Those women who willingly work in the sex trade, by definition, have a choice and skills, and can find some other kind of work. I don’t have a problem if they eventually decide to do so. *I* don’t have a right to a job if demand for my skills falls, due to economic or other reasons, nor does anyone; you find something else, that’s life.

Yup….far, far better for women to remain poor, economically exploited, and tied to abusive relationships or trapped in traditionally crappy, exploitive jobs that don’t even guarantee any means of protection from sexual harassment or even rape, than to ever allow them the right to change and reform sex work to make it safer and saner. And all this from a woman who has the gall to call herself a “feminist”. Sarah Palin would be so proud of this brand of “progressive feminism”, indeed.

If you are going to argue that many sex workers love it and are making a free choice and all, and are not abused, these are the ‘high end’ girls who can pick and choose customers, work out of their own home or somewhere else safe anyway. I do not see that their clients would suddenly all run away in fear – by definition, most johns aren’t the type of people who care about what the law says overly anyway. They won’t be forced to go from servicing nice polite clean johns in a warm flat for large sums of money, to selling blow jobs for a tenner on the street!
As for the police investigating, don’t make me laugh – in the UK they often don’t come if your home has been burgled.

It’s the addicts, the desperate, those who have probably been abused in childhood or by partners, those with few qualifications and so on, as MB says. who I care about.

The point, madame Cara, is that those “high end” girls should not be forced out of business and their clients who do treat them with actual respect for their humanity and do not abuse them should not be targeted for shaming and abuse by the state merely to resolve your personal fee-fees about men and their erections. Nobody is arguing that abuse is OK or that those who use the sex industry to abuse sex workers should go unpunished; but that those who are proven not to do any harm should not be done harm by the State. End. Of. Statement.

And yes, some sex workers have suffered prior abuse…so let’s do like we do other women and attack the source of the abuse….mainly, the family, the state, and how about going after the abusers themselves??? That would be a bit more effective than chasing after The Cock, ‘ya think???

Legalisation would only condemn them to continue in the trade. However sanitised you make brothels, you’ve still got to admit it is mostly the desperate and vulnerable women who would be attracted to this line of work. Prostitution is inextricably linked to drug trade and other organised crime.

Making sex work acceptable would only reduce their chances of getting out, hey, nothing wrong with sex work, so it’s easy to say there’s nothing wrong with drug addicted, vulnerable women being trafficked, or exploited. Seeing sex work as acceptable makes it easier to be blind to women who are not willingly doing this work. Because sex workers don’t divide neatly into the ‘trafficked’ and the ‘totally love my career, yays’.

Exit programmes would be reduced or die out altogether; unemployed women could even be required to go into sex work or lose jobseekers’ allowance.

This is what Caroline would call BULL-FUCKIN’-LOCKS. Here in the US, I’d prefer a equally colorful term: BULL. SHIT.

Yeah, right….decriminalization would reduce the chances of those abused within sex work getting out??? When there is NOT A SINGLE GODDESS DAMN SEX WORKER ORGANIZATION calling for anything less than full support for those wanting out?? Not SWOP, not COYOTE, not NSWP, not the folks at Bound, Not Gagged…..NOWHERE. Well…maybe except in the heated imagination of abolitionists like Cara, perhaps.

(And notice I use the term “decriminalizatoin” rather than Cara’s loaded term of “legalization”; since most sex worker activists are just as opposed to some legaliation schemes that would regulate the sex worker’s whereabouts as strongly as any abolitionist’s scheme. I do favor some form of regulation that goes to protect sex workers from abuse and allows for proper health and safety and adequate compensation for their profession.)

And I’ve seen NO evidence of any law forcing any worker to go into prostitution in order to retain their allowances…but then again, I’ve never heard Cara actually defend the right of poor people TO have such decent allowances to get them through the hard times. Again, better for poor and working-class women to suffer than to ever become a sex worker and willingly serve clients???

The ‘right’ of a tiny minority of sex workers who claim to enjoy the work is way down my list of priorities below women who do *not* want to be sex workers and are abused daily. This law would actually *help* them to get out of prostitution.

I am with MB and Jennifer.

‘It is all about male beliefs in sexual entitlement and sexual access to women and girls.’ Exactly.

Like I said..at least Cara is honest about supporting the efforts of Jacqui Smith (and in fact, Jennifer (the other commentor Cara referenced) actually thinks that Ms. Smith’s proposed legislation doesn’t go far enough; she wants the full Swedish Model treatment to be imposed on Irish and British citizens without delay).

But it is this “male belief(s) in sexual entitlement and sexual access to women and girls” meme that really got to me, and caused me to write this post.

Apparently, the motivation of every single man in the universe to engage in sex with women is not, at least in Cara’s mind, let alone the minds of radicalfeminist antiprostitution/antipornography activists, is not considered to be merely the innate drive to maintain and extend the species, or simply the natural desire to achieve pleasure with a willing and mutual and equal partner. It is considered, essentially, an act of rape….if not real, then at least virtual. Even merely thinking of a woman as a subject of sexual desire for a man (let alone acting on those desires through negotiation and persuasion) is seen in the eyes of such “feminists” as nothing less than a violation of a collective space, and reducible to the lowest common denominator and the worst, baser instincts. And of course, women who are tainted with such a desire to engage in sex with such low life forms that men apparently are should themselves be tainted with the same brush of “gender traitor” and reduced to the level of “cumdumpster” and “sparklepony” and any other insult that can be thrown at any woman who dares to go against The Sisterhood.

It’s not dissimilar to the profound hatred and disgust that White supremacists have toward those fellow White folk that they consider to be too close to the profane Blacks (or whomever group of color are the scapegoat of the moment). It’s almost as if sex itself is considered to be a vector of disease and oppression that can only be redemmed by the most reactionary, repressive rituals or by the most confining, restrictive boundaries (such as “radical intimacy” or monogamy enforced by marriage or simply reproduction within an approved “nuclear family”).

That there is certainly very real abuses and very real harm and real misogyny in sex work is not in conflict here; what is is that one particular group has decided to exploit such abuses as a means to impose an agenda and an ideology that is every bit as repressive and closed as the “patriarchy” they so duly oppose. The only difference between the “Swedish Model” form and the more traditional form of anti-sex work reform that merely cleans the streets of sex worker and client alike and arrests them in mass, is simply the gender of the scapegoat used to justify the policy. Of course, advocates of the Swedish Model insist that they would NEVER attack the sex worker herself, only the evil “john” and “pimp” who would “abuse” her….but their ideology of “all men are potential rapists because of their erect dicks” fails to seperate the truly abusive from the merely horny; the overly aggressive from the actual rapist from the mere risque comment.

But mostly, the “SW” abolitionist view fails because it refuses to deal with the reality that women are NOT merely tools or extensions of their vaginas or nipples; they do have brains and voices and hearts, and are more than able to speak to their experiences and fight for their own rights without the need for spokespeople running in as “crusaders” on their behalf. Merely because some men might not be so willing to take a woman’s “No” seriously is not cause to completely deny her that right or the right to say “Yes” and mean it; it simply means that a woman’s declaration of “Yes” or “No” should be upheld and counted. If a man ignores a woman’s stated ‘NO”, then he becomes an aggressor and should be treated in that manner; if he attacks and assaults a woman anyway, then he becomes a rapist and should be treated as such. It doesn’t matter whether money was exchanged or not.

But..if a man and a woman (or any other combination of consenting adults) decide to negotiate as equals a price for a consensual sexual encounter where both sides mutually satisfy each other, both sides respect each other, and both sides get mutual pleasure out of the encounter, and no injury or force results, then it is NOT the business of the State, the Church, the Law, the GenderBorg Collective, or anyone else to pass judgment on their tryst. You may not like what they personally offer, but as long as there are no children present and no other laws are violated, ultimately it is their business and none of ours….unless the participants want to share the details with us.

Yes, consent is constrained a great deal by our culture through economic privilege and gender privilege and racial privilege…..and those who don’t have the resources or the control of production may not have as great a leeway to avoid abuse and/or exploitation as those who are more privileged. Where sex radicals of the Left and sex worker activists differ from the Caras and Jacqui Smiths of the world, however, is that we have a much more positive and humane view of human sexuality, as well as a more open and positive view about transforming prevalent male attitudes and behaviors concerning sex.

Some men are certainly boorish and not too nice when it comes to soliciting women (or men) for sex, and they should be called out and chastized and corrected on the spot a lot more than they are now. That is not the same, though, as constantly shaming and guilt-tripping and collectively convicting and punishing every single man for having sexual thoughts about some women. A more profitable and more effective strategy would be to accept sexual desire for the universal that it is, and offer more positive, safer, saner, and egalitarian venues for the expression of such desires. It would also help a great deal if women were allowed the same rights and privileges and responsibilities for their own desires (yes, women do in fact think about sex nearly as much as the men do; they’ve not had nearly as much space or leeway to engage in their desires as much), and if women were given more power within the sex industry and in the broader culture to express themselves more fully.

Men should have as much access sexually to women (and boys to girls) as women should have to men and girls to boys. That is: as much as women and girls should allow….and vice versa. In short, to quote Marcia Pally: Ban Sexism, NOT Sex.

[Damn....that's a whopper to kick off '09, but I had to get it off my chest.]