The "Nordic" model for the repression of Sex Workers
 |
| Am I too Brown and Foreign for Consent ? |
I think it is time that we open up the discourse around what is motivating and driving these increasing attacks on sex workers.
Attacks on sex workers rights and safety are usually presented as ensuring the safety and dignity of women by protecting them from immoral practices and criminal exploitation. However I believe that there is another agenda that is often left undeclared that is really driving much of the hostility towards sex workers. I can only hope to scrape the surface of this hidden agenda but I will try my best.
The histrionics of the moralists seeking to control and subjugate the sexual behavior of women is directly linked to the needs of patrimony and the demand of men to be sure of the paternity of "their" children. This in turn is the foundation of nepotistic hierarchies that allow these elites to ignore merit and privilege their own progeny. This privilege and entitlement can only be sustained for men when they are able to be sure of which children belongs to them. Women who can live outside such patronymic norms and who can sustain a life without marriage are a direct threat to privilege that is consequential to proven a particular bloodline such a particular racial, religious or national identity. When Fathers are unknown, privilege based on notions of paternity will fail.
So it is easy to understand why many actors consider sex workers immoral and dangerous to their social order. However I have been increasingly intrigued by why many "feminist" women should be so aggressive towards sex working women.
The presented reason for why this aggression is necessary is that sex work is consider exploitative sexual slavery or prostitution and that women are compelled by criminal men or poverty to prostitute themselves. I have seen first hand women being exploited and abused in sex work by violent and cruel men. However this exploitation was the direct consequences of the sex workers being excluded from labour rights and protection and the policies that compelled them to work in social spaces given over to criminals. I have worked as an independent sex workers at various times in my life, but I am also a qualified nurse and mid-wife so I have considerable choices that allow me to access different skilled paid work. My status as a highly skilled person has also given me mobility rights that have allowed me to locate myself in places where I could work safely as a sex worker. Sex work/Prostitution like any other occupation where the labour is marginalised and is without forcible rights. Such a lacuna invites ruthless people to exploit the vulnerable, often in collaboration with law enforcement.
So why do so many "feminists" want to introduce policies that work against the safety and rights of sex working women ?
I believe that in many places sex working women are the most visible class of women who can easily be punished for having sex with men. We are being targeted by some "feminists" not because they want to protect us or rescue us or stop slavery but they want to introduce laws that criminalize sex between men and women. This is because they believe equitable sexual exchange between men and women is hardly possible in the current social order. With the blind outrage of moralists ensuring an ongoing panic these "feminists" offer "solutions" that punish sex worker with insecurity and increasingly marginalisation because of sex workers' claims that they can negotiate equitable exchanges with men for paid sex. This contradicts many feminist notions regarding the structural inequalities of our present social orders.
Many feminists identified marriage as the primary location of sexual slavery and prostitution as the most public form of sexual exploitation. Therefore the criminalisation of sex work in any aspect becomes the means to regulate sex exchanges between men and women. If a vulnerable women (especially WOC) cannot consent to sex work/exploitation because she lacks competency, her decisions can be set aside, and she is infantilised. That is why many "feminists" falsely claim that most sex workers entered sex work as children so we can be classed as damaged adults of previous child sexual abuse. However when consent becomes framed by notions of structural disadvantage that accrue to vulnerable women (especially WOC) then my decision to marry a white man from a foreign country can easily be constructed as sexual exploitation. I can legitimately be instructed only to have sexual relations with men who are not structurally powerful enough to exploit my supposed frailty. To be able to "consent" to sex I would have to demonstrate some set of competencies established to protect me from powerful men. "Powerful" men could then be forbidden to have paid or unpaid sex with me as the very act would be inherently exploitative regardless of my supposed "consent". I would become a perpetual rape victim.
These "Feminists" have little interest protecting sex working women or they would support our calls for labour rights, what they want are laws and conventions that regulate "sexual exploitation" not just prostitution and to then expand notions of "sexual exploitation" to enable the regulation of the sexual domain as much as possible. e.g. I would not be surprised if men from the developed world will eventually have to apply for an exit visa from their home country to visit any designated sex tourism area, so as to protect local women from their depredation. Remember single women from many countries are denied visas to visit various countries so as to protect them from being "trafficked" so it will not be long before these is a campaign to prevent men travelling alone from visiting Thailand/Cambodia etc.. without clearance from the anti-sex tourist office in their home country. I wonder if Sweden will be first to implement it.
Sex working women are on the front line of this assault on sexual rights that is hidden behind the moralising jingoism of the anti-traffickers and abolitionists.
You have read this article with the title The Repression of Sex Workers. You can bookmark this page URL https://duk78.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-repression-of-sex-workers.html. Thanks!
