5th Annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

I'm almost three days late with this post. I offer the policeman's excuse for arriving late at the scene of the crime; I had to stop for doughnuts on the way.

Rather than write about violence in an immediate way, I'm going to approach it indirectly. Belle de Jour (post labeled Mardi, Décembre 18), tells about informing a man she was in bed with (but not having sex with) that she is Jewish. His response was

Get out of my bed, filthy woman. You killed fucking Jesus.

To which she replied

This from the man who made a stripper cry? Whatever.

After some further conversation, they both fell asleep, still in the same bed.

Compare this with her post five days earlier (Jeudi, Décembre 13). She was responding to a British TV show on sex blogs. Among the many fuck yous in her rant was the following:

Fuck you, heteronormative journocunts judging who is a proper feminist and who is not while contentedly popping sprogs here, there and everywhere in north London.

(I'm not British, but "popping sprogs" appears to mean giving birth.)

Why did she respond to the Jews killed Jesus libel with humor, but get angry at lesser libels on the TV show? It's true the fact that the guy who accused her of killing Jesus was a self-admitted arrogant prick making an arrogant prick joke, and that Belle De Jour tends to find arrogant prick humor charming. (And truthfully, I've engaged in a fair amount of arrogant prick humor myself.) But why didn't she respond to the TV show with the same good humor?

As a Jew, Belle de Jour is well defended against Jews killed Jesus. Anti-Semitism is intellectually unfashionable. The various libels against Jews that have been created in the past two millennia have been thoroughly debunked. Anyone who tries to kill, harm, or commit a criminal act against Jews in the UK can reasonably expect to be punished. Critically, being Jewish does not place a person in a class of people that society is unwilling to protect.

Belle de Jour's anger is directed at feminists who want to deny her the right to call herself a feminist. Because, as she puts it, she does something for money that most people do for free, there is something wrong with her, and this disqualifies her from membership in feminism. What is wrong with her is that she willingly has sex for money, and thereby participates in an act her critics consider violence against women.

Feminism has been the force that brought society to deal with issues of violence against women. Feminists are felt to speak with some authority on the subject. When feminists accuse Belle de Jour of complicity in violence against women, they are taken far more seriously than someone who accuses her or her coreligionists of killing Jesus. And by stigmatizing her with violence against women, they effectively prevent her and other prostitutes from using feminist discourse to deal with their own concerns about violence. They block prostitutes from using what has become the primary means for advancing womens' rights. Not only that, but they make it difficult for prostitutes to advance their own rights outside of feminism by bringing the condemnation of feminism to bear on any such attempt. Any attempt to advance prostitutes' rights is viewed as an attack on women.

Anti-Semitism is not harmless, but it is effectively countered in Western societies. Anti-Sex Worker bias is alive and well in our society, and supported by feminism. That's not going to change as long as sex workers can be excluded from the ranks of feminists, because sex work is thought of in terms of female workers, and feminists who are not sex workers and are biased against sex workers strongly influence society's discussions of women.

Academic research on sex work has tended to focus on trying to find out what's wrong with sex workers. Usually this focuses on drug use and abusive relationships, primarily sexual abuse. Surveys of the literature show little support for drug use as a predictive factor; in plain English, overall the research doesn't show women going into sex work as a result of using drugs. The link with sexual abuse is weak. People who go into sex work as adults tend to have experienced the same level of sexual abuse as the general population. People who enter sex work as minors are more likely to have experienced sexual abuse, but they are also more likely to have run away from home, and the higher likelihood of becoming sex workers may have to do with job opportunities rather than a psychological predisposition caused by sexual abuse.

In spite of this, academics and writers continue to assume that people become sex workers because of mental pathologies. Researchers continue to look for links between mental pathology and sex work, and authors of technical papers sometimes claim that the literature supports a link when this is factually untrue. Many authors and researchers explicitly state that they assume that sex work is violence against women; they accept the feminist viewpoint uncritically. Most researchers continue to look for a link, in spite of the consistent failure to find it in the past.

Prostitutes themselves state that the determining factors in their decision to become prostitutes are money, excitement, independence, and flexibility, in that order. (My source is Priscilla Alexander's essay Prostitution: Still a Difficult Issue for Feminists, in the book Sex Work, edited by Delacoste and Alexander.) Since this is what sex workers say about themselves, it would seem reasonable to research these to determine how strong their influence is and how they interact with personality, economics, moral beliefs, social context, and any number of other factors. To my knowledge, no one has tried to do this. As long sex work is considered to be a result of mental pathology, it's probable that anyone trying another line of investigation would be accused of not taking the problem seriously.

As long as Belle de Jour and other sex workers can be excluded from the ranks of feminists, society can avoid taking them seriously. Their concerns can be ignored, their safety can be subjugated to the whims of abolitionists, and their sexuality can be relegated to the pathological. Academic researchers can continue to futilely search for links between entering sex work and drug use and sexual abuse. And all of this will continue to hinder attempts to change laws and reform law enforcement to deal with violence against sex workers.

As long as sex work is viewed primarily as a female occupation, and as long as feminism can block serious discussion of sex work by excluding sex workers from its own ranks, society will continue to class sex workers as a group of people that it is unwilling to protect.