Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1997 12:32:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: malgosia askanas <ma-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-FEM: Prostitution


Yoshie wrote:

> I am surprized to hear that the use of surrogate mothers is
> non-controversial. I think hiring surrogate mothers might be legal--I don't
> know how widespread this practice is--but I don't think that it is
> encouraged. At least, the publicized cases have raised a lot of ethical and
> legal concerns.

I didn't mean to imply that it was non-controversial.  What I meant to imply
is that it is not imbued with the kind of moral valuation, the same burden of
outrage and shame, that attaches to prostitution.  Even the fact that it is
openly controversial seems to me to attest to that.

> As for wet nurses, in the United States, from the African American point of
> view, "mammy" images come with memories of slavery and historical and
> current exploitation of black women. Anti-racist whites and other racial
> groups would also be aware of this history. There are probably lots of
> whites for whom hiring wet nurses present no problem, since there are lots
> of people who are willfully ignorant, but with the revaluation of breast
> feeding and availability of infant formula, I don't think that there are
> many who want to hire wet nurses.

Yes, but it seems to me that the problematic here operates in a very
different space than in the case of prostitution.  Again, there is no moral
condemnation attached to being a wet nurse.  As in the case of the surrogate
mother, the woman who thusly sells her body is not treated as shameless
or immoral.  The reason I am offering these examples is because I would like 
to better understand how much of Peter's "alienation" and "losing one's body"
argument is rooted in moral attitudes specifically having to do with the 
way women are viewed in the context of the sex act itself.  This is not 
to say that my procedure or examples can survive scrutiny. 


-m