Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 10:17:06 +0000
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: State-run brothels


In message <v03102802b13dfd84ccd1-AT-[128.146.5.18]>, Yoshie Furuhashi
<Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu> writes
>Sex workers' cooperatives might be a temporary solution for some
>better-situated prostitutes in core capitalist countries, but the problem
>of self-exploitation remains, in the same way that it does for any workers'
>coops under capitalism.
>
>One must, however, remember that many prostitutes are 'illegal aliens,' and
>for them the legitimation of prostitution without immigration law reforms
>and improvements in economic conditions of the emigrant-sending countries
>is not very meaningful.
>Unlike Nancy, I do *not* think that love and sex can or ought to be
>equated, but Bill's response (like most others in this thread), IMHO,
>misses the point. Most (if not all) sex workers fuck for *money*, NOT AT
>ALL for fun. Let's get real.

I half agree with Yoshie here, and half with her critics. The idea that
prostitution should be a positive goal just makes a virtue out of the
market, which carries all the problems of exploitation and alienation
that it does in other spheres of life.

But there is a point surely that it is a mistake to make sex-work
exceptional. In so far as people are free to sell their labour, then it
would be wrong to single out sex-work for special regulation. The only
conceivable basis for such exceptional regulation is that sex-work is
exceptional, which I don't think stands up - except on the basis of
conservative taboos about sex.

The practical problem with legal restrictions on prostitution is that
they all tend to make conditions of exploitation worse. The semi-legal
status of prostituion in Britain (where soliciting and living from
immoral earnings is illegal) does not have the effect of alleviating
exploitation, but the opposite effect of making it a much more
exploitative and vicious industry.

So when Yoshie says that women do not have sex for fun but for money,
that's right. But then bricklayers and typists do not lay bricks or type
for fun, but for money too. The only viable argument it seems to me is
for the abolition of wage-slavery across the board. To make an exception
of prostitution, would only tend to reinforce a moral agenda and taboos
about sex.

>'Petty bourgeois romanticism' is not in me; but uncritical libertarian
>responses to it are *inadequate* for marxists.

Libertarianism might be inadequate, but we should make sure that we are
in advance of libertarianism and not falling behind it.

>Yoshie
>
>P.S. Has anybody seen Lizzie Borden's _Working Girls_?

Yes - a grim night out, but a powerful film.

In message <v03102804b13e09c7ae4c-AT-[128.146.5.18]>, Yoshie Furuhashi
<Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu> writes
>One kind of 'fun' that marxists cannot endorse uncritically is the
>eroticization of exchange relations and gender and other hierarchies
>involved in them. (This occurs in prostitution, marriage, and other sexual
>relationships that involve unequal economic resources.) The thinking goes
>like this: "I [as a customer] am _paying_ for it, you [as a prostitute] are
>getting paid by _ME_. So I have no reason to respect you, care about your
>feelings, it is _my_ wish, desire, feelings that count. By having paid you,
>I have bought the right to have power over you, look down on you, hurt you,
>humiliate you." I am not saying that all johns feel like this, but many
>probably do, especially vis-a-vis *more economically vulnerable
>prostitutes*.

I think the difficulty with this argument is that it veers between a
society-wide critique of the dehumanising effect of exchange rlations,
and a moral (notwithstanding Yoshie's rejection of that tag) criticism
of personal behaviour.

In the first instance, the criticism stands, but is not restricted to
paid sex, but to all human relations under a capitalist society. the
cash nexus corrupts relations between workers and lovers of all kinds.
But as far as personal morality goes, it is none of our concern what
emotions are in play. I can disapprove of someone's actions where those
are hurtful or destructive, but it seems unreal to think that sexual
fantasies of all kinds do not involve power games or even humiliation.
It is utopian to imagine that the emotional resources that people have
to draw upon in their personal lives are not going to be distorted by
the power relations in wider society. What people get up to between
themselves is their business. The fact that this is paid work does not
alter that.

-- 
James Heartfield


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