Comment: The sex industry – what is to be done?

John Millington writes for Left Foot Forward on the arguments surrounding the sex industry, unionisation, women's rights and the impact on gender roles.

Though there has been a spike in media coverage and comment surrounding the sex industry in recent months, the debate has not changed much.

It masquerades as total de-criminalisation vs. criminalising the punter, with both sides claiming to be looking after the best interests of those women who “work” in the sex industry.

However, the real debate is around whether you see prostitution as a legitimate “industry” or whether you want it completely phased out of existence.

Personally, I don’t believe it is possible to get rid of prostitution in western capitalist societies because its very existence is engrained within our patriarchal class system.

Many who agree with this conclusion will then suggest: “Well it is like any other industry in capitalist society. Let’s unionise those who work in it – i.e. prostitutes/sex workers.”

There are several problems with this.

Firstly, sex worker unionisation advocates will talk about men who are prostitutes or sex workers within a stripping context, games etc., so as to say “it is not all about women and it’s not all about sexual intercourse”. When you get down to it, prostitution and strip clubs where women are the ones selling their bodies in the main are the areas people are referring to when talking about the sex industry.

Explicit sexual acts are sold in exchange for money in both arenas.

In a capitalist society workers sell their labour for a wage. The employer owns the fruits of that labour; he/she does not own the worker or their body, hence the term “free waged labourer”. However, this is exactly what the punter owns when commissioning for sex – the woman’s body.

It is a horrible notion to contemplate, but at that moment the man owns the woman. He calls the shots; he has absolute control over the financial transaction and, in some cases, the power to take her life or seriously injure her if he chooses.

Aside from traditional definitions of work, a woman in that situation does not need a union representative. She needs an exit and a viable alternative.

This is where the focus should be and where resources on helping the women involved should be spent; women’s refuges and support services which are being cut, and extra resources to track down and punish the punter.

Others argue women can earn more from being a prostitute than they can from working in a supermarket. However, that is not a reason to accept the sex industry as an equal. It is more of a reason to support unions in their fight for higher pay in the service sector and wider campaigns to end gender pay discrimination.

In many ways, with feminists arguing over some of the points above, it is up to the feminist movement as a whole to come to its own conclusion after a full debate.

But one thing seems obvious to me – the “sex industry” has in essence got nothing to do with sex.

Surely a healthy and legal definition of sex must relate to mutual pleasure enjoyed by at least two consenting and equal adults; that leaves a lot of scope for personal expression and adventure; however, when money exchange enters the sexual arena, it rips all that apart.

The participants cease to be equal – the woman is commodified and reduced to a mere object to be used at the will of the man; she is not a person to him.

Does anyone really think men who use prostitutes are doing it for “mutual pleasure”? The kicks and gratification they get come from a sense of power and entitlement; “hey, I have paid for you, you are mine for the duration of our contract”. That is assuming he doesn’t just unilaterally change the terms of the arrangement, regardless of what the woman may want or choose.

I have seen first-hand the effects of this with women selling sex on the side street, in my run down home town of Wolverhampton. Nobody can tell me that these women, with their teeth smashed in, looking drawn from years of abuse and enforced drug addiction, are “free”, or doing what they do by choice.

But let’s just say our straw man just enjoys a quickie at a strip club most lunchtimes during work hours. How do you imagine he will treat his fellow women workers when he is back in the office? Does that sense of power and entitlement simply stay within the strip joint, or is it transferred to his place of work and at home with his family?

There are plenty of sexually liberated men I know, including myself, who have never been to a strip joint or would never ever think of using a prostitute. And yes, we are what society would term ‘men’s men’, straight, sporty, leather jacket wearing, beer drinking lads who probably should have been in our prime during the 70s!

Prostitution, and for want of a better word, the sex industry, demeans and alienates us all.

But it is fundamentally about the oppression of all women by male dominated capitalist society and must be opposed.

29 Responses to “Comment: The sex industry – what is to be done?”

  1. Nick

    Why do you assume that money is so horrible? I don’t treat an optician, a dentist or a hairdresser as “less than equal” just because I am paying them for a service. It is, in fact, possible to become friends with one’s hairdresser or dentist. You can exchange a kind word at the check-out counter too. I think it is this article that displays a reactionary and impeccably bourgeois attitude towards sexuality by saying that money rips it apart.

  2. Ed

    What a bunch of paternalistic nonsense. I’m sorry, but I just don’t agree with the reading that prostitution only exists in the context of our patriarchal hierarcy. It exists (in part) because sex is a key component of human happiness and, for a variety of reasons, some people are unable to find it from a consenting partner. These conditions will not change even once we have achieved a more equal society, as the intricate relationships between individuals can not be seen solely in the light of our over-arching societal structure.

    Your notion that sex ‘must relate to mutual pleasure enjoyed by at least two consenting and equal adults’ is spurious, at best. Whilst that may be your personal definition of sex, it is hardly your right to impose that on others who may not agree. If a person, who is not coerced or otherwise forced into the position through financial circumstance, chooses to sell sexual services for money then it is fair and right that they are able to do so in the safe framework of the law, not shunned away from a prudish society who can’t bring itself to contemplate human sexuality. As amazing as it can seem to some of the more repressed amongst us, some people don’t chose to view sexual relations as some quiveringly precious flower whose honour must be protected. If they don’t have a problem with it, then neither should we.

    Also, it’s entirely misleading to portray sex work as the selling of one persons ‘body’ to another. It is the exchange of a money for services. Services that use the more intimate parts of ones anatomy, yes, but also services whose terms can be agreed beforehand. Limits can be set and boundaries can be agreed. In the context of a safe, legal and unionised setting this is no more a risk to the sex worker as giving a massage is to a masseuse, or a haircut from a hairdresser. It is only the shady, criminal veneer given to sex work by handwringing moralists that convinces people otherwise and gives them license to disrespect the boundaries of those in the industry. There is no more concept of ‘ownership’ than there is when you get a shave from your barber.

    I am also completely at a loss as to where the existence of male prostitution fits into the worldview set out above. You say that prostitution “is fundamentally about the oppression of all women by male dominated capitalist society and must be opposed”, but I entirely fail to see how a man selling his body to another man can fit into that viewpoint. Two gay men are on an equal social footing, so there can be no notion that it is only through leverage of ones privilege over another that the ‘prostitute’ is driven to sex work – This gives the lie to your contention that it is only through the patriarchy that people are driven into these professions.

    The existence of sex work comes about through that old canard of supply and demand – There is a demand for sex amongst those who cannot obtain it by other means and thus there is motivation to supply. Even in the most glorious socialist utopia I have a hard time imagining that these most fundamental market principles will cease to apply. But hopefully, with the sensitivity and knowledge that progressive thought allows us, we are able to bring these transactions out of the shadowy margins of our capitalist economy and into the antiseptic sunlight.

  3. Newsbot9

    “In a capitalist society workers sell their labour for a wage”

    No, companies offer a wage to workers. Capitalism is not the free market.

    You’re not going to eliminate prostitution. So – If you want to limit it, you need to treat the causes. For example, we need to move to harm minimisation on drugs, and we need to stop and reverse the falling percentage of GDP going to capital rather than wages, so people can find jobs which can support them in other fields. We need to encourage adult learning, rather than as the Tories are making massive loans their precondition…

    But criminalising voluntary behavior, in the end, damages everyone and helps nobody.

  4. Newsbot9

    “In a capitalist society workers sell their labour for a wage”

    No, companies offer a wage to workers. Capitalism is not the free market.

    You’re not going to eliminate prostitution. So – If you want to limit it, you need to treat the causes. For example, we need to move to harm minimisation on drugs, and we need to stop and reverse the falling percentage of GDP going to capital rather than wages, so people can find jobs which can support them in other fields. We need to encourage adult learning, rather than as the Tories are making massive loans their precondition…

    But criminalising voluntary behavior, in the end, damages everyone and helps nobody.

  5. Newsbot9

    “In a capitalist society workers sell their labour for a wage”

    No, companies offer a wage to workers. Capitalism is not the free market.

    You’re not going to eliminate prostitution. So – If you want to limit it, you need to treat the causes. For example, we need to move to harm minimisation on drugs, and we need to stop and reverse the falling percentage of GDP going to capital rather than wages, so people can find jobs which can support them in other fields. We need to encourage adult learning, rather than as the Tories are making massive loans their precondition…

    But criminalising voluntary behavior, in the end, damages everyone and helps nobody. Abuse and so on are illegal anyway – there is no call for new laws, and much of the hysteria around trafficking in recent years has approached a moral panic.

    (I *personally* find prostitution repulsive, but that’s a personal reaction and one which I set aside for looking at things from a philosophical, free market one – others can make choices I don’t, and as long as consent is involved…the principle of freedom is more important than my reaction)

Comments are closed.