Peter Grayson (see previous article) says as a socialist that he looks to feminism for political guidance. So I will attempt to offer him some, but it will not be the kind of comfort he seems to seek. In offering a critique of the institution of prostitution it does not follow that I reject or have contempt for the women who work as prostitutes, any more than a critique of capitalism shows contempt or rejection of workers. On the contrary, during my recent research I have made a number of friends amongst the women who work or have worked on the streets who have the same background as I do. Prostitution is a problem about men and until this is properly acknowledged, there can be little understanding of neither its durability nor why women do not express their sexuality by buying sexual contact with men.
While PG says life is not reducible to sociological analyses of power, prostitution is nevertheless part of what he describes as male power relations and supremacy over women. The point is that gendered power relations cannot be reduced to the power of an individual man over an individual woman. Male supremacy comes from the collective power and control of men over women exercised through the institutions of a society.
Prostitution is often referred to as the "oldest profession". However, in Britain it was only in the 19th century that the state became involved in organising public expressions of sexuality, particularly prostitution and homosexuality, into legal and illegal activities. For the first time legislation specifically about prostitution was enacted (1885) and by the end of the 19th century, prostitutes had become a separate "class" of women.
For the first time male views of women's sexuality were publicly aired during debates around the Contagious Diseases Acts. These Acts allowed the police to arrest and detain any woman on the streets, in some garrison towns, and treat her as a prostitute by subjecting her to a medical examination. If she was thought to have venereal disease (and diagnosis was extremely crude), she could be detained in a locked ward for nine months for 'treatment'. It was during the campaign to repeal these Acts that women exposed the 'double standard' of morality practised by many middle-class men, claiming that men publicly vilified poor women who sold sexual services for money while privately visiting them for sexual gratification. This 'double standard' of morality has been enshrined in laws around prostitution ever since. Although being a prostitute in Britain was and still is not in itself illegal, almost everything done in order to practice it is - i.e. soliciting, loitering, using a house for the purposes of prostitution etc. The ancient male right of access to women's bodies through prostitution was recognised in law.
The legislation has remained unchanged in its combination of high moral tone and wide discretionary powers given to those who impose it, a combination which acts as an important controlling mechanism on the social and sexual behaviour of all women. The following two quotes, though written 130 years apart, echo an unchanging male moral sentiment: Dr. William Acton wrote in 1857, as a heap of rubbish will ferment, so surely will a heap of women, thus collected deteriorate to the dead level of harlotry; in 1985 a Bradford City Magistrate said, prostitutes are similar to the litter on the streets and ought to be fined accordingly. Yet, despite this public denunciation, young Kings Cross prostitutes were recently solicited by the DPP. It seems to me that individual men cannot just disown the hypocrisy of these statements without challenge or attempts to change these attitudes. Another uncomfortable fact is that despite legislation in 1982 removing prison as a sentencing option for offences relating to prostitution more prostitutes than ever go to prison as a result of non-payment of fines for the same offences.
| no one has ever died from sexual hunger and everyone has the means to satisfy their own sexual appetite at hand |
Looking at prostitution from the point of view of an individual man, PG suggests that visiting a prostitute and exchanging money for sex ought not to be seen as different from casual sex: she doesn't become a prostitute until or unless she thinks she is one, and he goes on to say you become 'a prostitute only if you feel degraded by what you do. Casual sex between individual men and women and prostitution are poles apart. Prostitution is the use of a woman's body by a man for his own satisfaction for money; casual sex is the mutual exchange of the use of bodies for pleasure. As Carole Pateman says in her book The Sexual Contract (Polity, 1988) the confusion arises because we ignore the question, "why do men demand that satisfaction of a natural appetite must take the form of public access to women's bodies in the capitalist market in exchange for money?" It is not as simple as equating the satisfaction of sexual appetites with satisfying hunger because, as Pateman points out, no one has ever died from sexual hunger and everyone has the means to satisfy their own sexual appetite at hand.
Sexual satisfaction bought on the open market through soliciting in the street is criminal, and therefore dangerous to respectability, which heightens the excitement of the encounter. Equally, for some men, the crossing of the boundaries of social class and respectable society can also be an attraction. Most women working as prostitutes (particularly on the streets) are young and working class while a significant number of their clients are professional middle-class men (see the recent case of the DPP and a succession of senior probation officers/magistrates/judges/businessmen etc.). If sexual satisfaction is the sole object of these clients there are many legitimate ways of achieving it rather than exposing themselves in this way. So, it can only be assumed that this kind of encounter is part of the enjoyment.
| Prostitution is the use of a woman's body by a man for his own satisfaction |
It should be made clear here that a prostitute sells only her sexual services not her body, nor her emotions. If she did actually sell herself she would not be a prostitute but a sexual slave. Furthermore, as PG points out himself, it is sex and not affection that is on offer because he says prostitutes need to protect themselves from abuse. But perhaps it might be more accurate to say that it is a sexual service that the customer wishes to purchase. If a woman's emotions were really involved would that not deter the client? Surely, it is precisely because it is sex without strings that clients choose this form of sexual satisfaction and not one which would demand a reciprocal relationship.
When a man, as a client, enters into a "contract" with a prostitute, he does not want a sexually indifferent disembodied service. He contracts to buy the sexual services of a woman for a given period. A master (a man) wants a service but he wants it delivered by a person (a woman) not merely a piece of property. John Stuart Mill said men do not want solely the obedience of women they want their sentiments. All men accept the most brutish, desire to have, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely but a favourite. (The Subjection Of Women).
Isn't PG arguing for just this - guilt free sexual access to women's bodies? He conveniently forgets that if a woman wishes to exercise her right to earn money by allowing that access she runs a considerable risk of being charged in court with being a "common prostitute", fined, and if she can't pay, being sent to prison. Surely, it is not a simple issue of whether or not she feels degraded by selling her services but whether she is degraded by a wider society i.e. criminalised or labelled and stigmatised.
PG's argument that he has the power of purchase and choice but as a client is subject to the power of or limitations set by the prostitute with regard to important aspects of how we couple, the duration and possibility of repeated assignations if desired misses out a crucial dimension of buying and selling. Of course I am not arguing that the prostitute has no power at all in the transaction because as I stated earlier she is not a sexual slave. But she is in a competitive market and knows that the customer can go elsewhere if he does not like the service she gives or feels that he has not got "value for money" which somewhat limits her power. Is he not just fooling himself into believing that he is powerless and simply a victim of hers?
I do agree with the philosophical argument that there ought to be balance in the human personality - "a balance between intellect and feeling, intuition and reason, physical and mental and so on". However, they should all influence our different roles in life bringing together the public and private aspects of our lives without contradiction. Thus, we create not only deeper fulfilment for ourselves but have a greater capacity to influence the world around us for the better.
However PG seems to be suggesting that we interpret it as a reason to indulge our every whim without recourse to rationality and costs to others, We are, after all, rational actors in the world and can fulfil ourselves sexually and in other ways without necessarily reverting to biological arguments about "urges" that must be satisfied at all costs. This is essentially a masculine argument that has scant regard of the costs to women. Neither can it explain why, despite the increasing financial independence of some middle-class women, they have not become clients themselves. Nor can men argue, as they did in the last century, that women don't have sexual urges, only that they generally don't buy sexual services in the capitalist market. This perhaps is the most powerful indictment of male views of sex, women, prostitution and relationships than anything else I can add.
I stated earlier that men cannot disown privately or individually what they as a sex do and say about prostitutes and prostitution. My answer to "guilt-free" access to prostitutes is to begin by trying to change the social and legal inequality between them and their male clients. One way of ensuring freedom of and equality in sexual exchange in this form is to decriminalise prostitution. I have never yet seen a group of men - clients or not - with the courage to argue publicly for this or for the rights of prostitutes. Given the number of male clients involved in law either as makers (MPs) or enforcers (Police and Judiciary) perhaps here is the place to start. Surely, a more socialist position is one that argues that the freedom to express ourselves sexually as we please in equal exchanges without hurt to others is a goal to aim for and not a starting point. We ought to begin by acknowledging and challenging the reality, however uncomfortable, of existing inequalities.
Copyright © Achilles Heel Collective
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