Thanks for this.  The myth of the “power” of female sexuality makes me want to pull my hair out.  It’s the flip-side to the “men have needs, they can’t help it” ideology; the one notion cannot operate without the other.

As much as I’m pro-sex and erotica and a mega-backer of women exercising full sexual agency, I’ve always been perplexed by the “stripping is empowering” meme, for instance.  “False power” is right on, Amanda—it’s an illusion cast in a controlled environment.  How much power does that stripper have, ultimately?  So what if she held a roomful of men in so-called sexual thrall for 20 minutes?  The fact that many peeler pubs employ not just bouncers but strapping male drivers to ensure the women make it home safely each night illustrates just how little power these people really have.  “At the end of the day,” strippers are sometimes imperiled by their jobs (even if the jobs give them the “power” to pay rent and keep a roof over their kids’ heads…which is something else entirely, of course, and which has little to do with their actual sexuality).

Yes.  I love Lesley Gore, and your inclusion of her in this kick ass playlist is deliciously ironic.

Monkey, I think you stumbled on the perfect example of the exception proving the rule.  She’s famous precisely because she’s rare. I’m not sure how she got around the rule, but I think Italian culture has some specific, peculiar things about it that allowed that.  I don’t, however, think it was an example of the world moving in the right direction.  It was more just a freak exception unlikely to be replicated.

1. The Cure - Signal to Noise
2. The Soft Boys - Do the Chisel
3. Queen - We Will Rock You
4. Kinski - Boy, Was I Mad!
5. Tom Waits - Bottom of the World
6. Mazarin - I Should Be Sleeping
7. Stereolab - Tomorrow is Already Here
8. The Feelies - Doin’ It Again
9. Dr. Octagon - 3000
10. Camera Obscura - Lloyd, I’m Ready to be Heartbroken

On topic, I fail to see how working in an industry run by men, designed by men, made for men, and built around the illusion of female submissiveness to men can be “empowering” for women. It really doesn’t make any difference whether it’s porn or homemaking. I can easily see an argument for expressing power or challenging the status quo through individual displays of sexual agency or exploration (in art or music, for example), but porn is rarely about expressing or exploring what the woman “starring” in it is interested in.

The Feelies!

It’s my understanding that, due to the huge numbers of politcal parties in Italy, “who’s in charge” changes approximately every fifteen minutes. Didn’t the last guy get in trouble for having a teenaged mistress? I don’t think the Italians have the same “high expectations” for a squeaky clean public image that Americans do.

Holy cats, do I love the Feelies!. I just picked up the reissues of the first two albums, even though I already owned the originals. I’m generally try not to re-buy albums just because they’ve been remastered, but I have to admit I was floored by how good these sounded. I can actually hear instruments and parts of the songs that weren’t apparent before. It’s so pristine, it’s like they’re in the room with you. Besides, their stuff has been out of print for so long, I’m glad a new generation of people might have a chance to be exposed to them. I only wish they’d added a second disc of the b-sides and live bits instead of making them available as downloads, only. Still, highly recommended.

“Do I think this is fair?  No.  I think that it would be a better world if someone could both be in Playboy and be a congresswoman”

I think it would be a better world if one could be in Playboy or Playgirl (minus all the airbrushing) and be a congressperson.

Starting with the obvious of everything you say, I think that the “empowerment” of porn and sex work is often very limited. It’s not gaining access to real power in the wider world, it’s at best, allowing a certain subset of women to feel they have ownership over their sexuality and training themselves out of cultural narratives that they are horrible people that must be punished for admitting to their sexuality and exploring it.

Of course, it’s not one of the best ways to do it objectively speaking, given the systems as created are modeled after often hostile misogynistic views of the role of women, do not actually undermine the madonna/whore complex, and definitely don’t support the idea that a woman owns her own sexuality and a right to consent.

But for a small subset of people, it can be crucial in overcoming the massive guilts of religion that tell them they are filthy for being or wanting sexual things and overall can provide greater push to the idea that women are sexual and that isn’t something to be punished.

So, I don’t mind people that say it’s empowering for them or for a subset of women who need it to get past a step, but I do mind when people say it’s universally empowering and then start simultaneously pushing memes that women should be like porn stars for their partner no matter their comfort levels or consent. That’s more of the sexuality is a commodity by men for men using women crap.

I love sex, but I absolutely hate the way porn, stripping, and prostitution work in our society.  We have this idea that conservatives are prudes and want women to withhold sex, and that liberals are wild and women to put out sex.  The problem is that both sides still see sex as something that women do for men.  Their main argument is about how often and to whom women should give sex to.  So it isn’t empowering or “sex-positive” if it’s ok to have sex or be sexy when the assumption is that you’re doing it for a man and your own enjoyment is an afterthought. 

I also hate the idea that “empowerment” means getting men to do what you want, rather than getting men or society to take you seriously regardless of your genitals.  So we end up with the situation where women can get control men by withholding or offering sex, and not because the men actually respect them and value their opinions.  Reinforcing this assumption and using it to your own advantage is certainly understandable, but I wouldn’t call it “empowerment”.

Volcanically off-topic, but (via Feministing), reports emerge that Emma Thompson is taking name off Polanski petition after learning more about the case:

http://www.feministing.com/archives/018745.html

/need to share

“llona Staller became, for a time, the most powerful political woman in Italy.”

That’s damning with faint praise, given that female parliamentarians in Italy make up 15% of the total (2006 figures). Actually Italy provides the most outstanding example of the evils of blurring the boundaries between real, political power and Sexyfun Ladypower:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/17/berlusconisbeautypageant

The only good thing about Playboy is that certain factions of it seem to like and admire Amanda, even if their praise is laced with asshole anxiety. Otherwise, put the wheezing, useless old cart horse out of its misery.

I also hate “but sex work can be empowering for women” theme, along with its sibling, “pussy has all the power.” Oh, and its cousin, “but women can get laid anytime they want.” People who believe it seem to be arrested in some quivering adolescent moment where a sexy woman is an omnipotent goddess who holds all the cards, larger than life. Being hot, wanted, beautiful, whatever does not equal power for a woman. I know it feels like power, it did to me when I was young until I realized how interchangeable I was. But there never seems to be any actual payoff, other than a slight edge in attracting the partner you want. Most “pretty girl” jobs are decorative and low-paying.

The people I know who’ve worked in the sex industry never made any serious money. There seems to be this idea that stripping and porn and escort work equal mad cash, but IME that’s the exception. Maybe when you’re young and desperate, making a thousand dollars to shoot some risky and painful scenes sounds like decent money, but it wouldn’t to anyone who actually had power. But there seems to be a (very understandable) defensiveness from sex workers whose main argument is all that wonderful money they make and how great it all is. Or from people who bring up the Jenna Jameson dynasty as if that’s the typical success of the average porn worker. The world is full of former sex workers who found the experience less than fulfilling, but the social stigma keeps them quiet.

On topic, I fail to see how working in an industry run by men, designed by men, made for men, and built around the illusion of female submissiveness to men can be “empowering” for women. It really doesn’t make any difference whether it’s porn or homemaking. I can easily see an argument for expressing power or challenging the status quo through individual displays of sexual agency or exploration (in art or music, for example), but porn is rarely about expressing or exploring what the woman “starring” in it is interested in.

It’s a mistake to assume that what they’re doing is necessarily key there, versus how they’re treated, or how much money they make.

My job gives me a lot of power in the sense that I (mostly) get to do what I want, when I want, how I want.  I show up to work when I want, leave when I want, and nobody cares.  My job gives me very little power in the sense that I don’t earn enough to pay income tax.  It also gives me very little power in that nobody has to give the slightest shit about what I say if they don’t want to.  I would imagine posing in Playboy doesn’t give one a ton of flexibility to do what they want, how they want at work.  But I’ll also bet those girls pay income tax.

One tiny, tiny quibble.  Being in Playboy may mean the conventional roads to power are cut off from you, no argument there.  Do what men want and yes, they can then devalue you are a person just because you followed their wishes.  But there is power in money and there is money is “selling out” like this.  Much more money than might be easily attainable through other means.  I’m not arguing that playboy or porn is creating a class of wealthy, influential women.  Clearly that is not the case.  But for some few, they have, in some way, shape or form, gained some small modicum of power over their own lives.

Shitty trade off if you ask me but there it is anyway.

I would also add that, in porn, women are the ones who make the real money and, to some extent, call many of the shots.  Again, once a woman is in porn the traditional paths in society are blocked off to her but to a porn star making $100K a month, maybe being senator isn’t as important, even if that income only happens for a few years.

I’m not making a case that porn is empowering, it clearly isn’t but it is a path for some women to gain some more power through gathering more money.  How they use it and how the process affects them are other issues.

We live in a fucked up sexually negative society, men or women in any kind of sex industry are treated as badly as possible.  Thanks religion.  Thanks again for helping to fuck up something.

Excellent point, Veronica. The money seems like a lot to the 18-21 year olds that populate nudie mags, but for a 30-year old who thinks having a roommate is a no-go, it’s really not.

I would disagree with you *if* the porn industry actually had a significant number of female producers, directors, or distributors.
But since it’s still very close to the abuser/victim roles of pimps and prostitutes I’ll have to agree it’s only a façade of empowerment.

I would also add that, in porn, women are the ones who make the real money and, to some extent, call many of the shots.

It’s true that female porn actresses/models will make more than male porn actors/models.  However, you’re forgetting about all the men who who aren’t on screen but make enormous money: owners, producers, etc.  If you consider the industry as a whole, it’s not just the women making money.  On top of that, the men in the business who are behind-the-scenes don’t stop making money as soon as they turn 25, the way the actresses do.

Again, once a woman is in porn the traditional paths in society are blocked off to her but to a porn star making $100K a month, maybe being senator isn’t as important, even if that income only happens for a few years.

For all two of those women, your argument may have merit.  But most women in male-pleasing professions don’t make even close to enough to make the foreclosure of those other opportunities worth it.

Except that you’re way overinflating what sex workers make, ice. And even if it’s well above average for their age, when their career comes to it’s end, they’ll be below average for their age with few prospects. Or at least if they’re out, which is true if it’s on film. You can keep sex work a secret and do okay. It’s not fair, but it is true.

Most strippers I’ve known had to live in shifty neighborhoods and have roommates, though. I don’t know where people get the idea it pays well in average.

Actually, it strikes me it’s a lot like professional sports for poor young men, except the odds of striking it rich are even poorer, and the physical toll on the body even greater.  A shiny trinket of hope to dangle in front of the eyes of someone who otherwise wouldn’t have a lot of prospects of making anything beyond a tenuous middle class living.

I will never see how stripping is an empowering act, if the message is lost on the audience.  Well, I’m not discounting that for some women it feels empowering- I’m just disappointed that, from my view, it does not empower one, if the message is lost on the majority of the audience.  See:  “Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School” b.s.  Let’s just call it what it is:  NAKED WOMEN AND ALCOHOL!  HURRAY.  Yes, my perceptions have been tainted (okay reinforced?)by knowing people that host local DSAAS events.  The major player is a far-right leaning Republican/Libertarian.  Nice guy, just obviously, questionable politics/viewpoints.
Random “I just have my Iphone, and not my Ipod” mix:

1. “Breaker Breaker”- Boys Life- appropriate!  Live in KC, work in Lawrence, KS!
2. “Under The House” PIL
3. “Aeronautical”-Camera Obscura (the defunct, San Diego band)
4. “Get Me”- Dinosaur Jr.
5. “Our Coastal Hymn”- Les Savy Fav
6. “Cycle Time”- Liars
7. “Definitive Gaze”- Magazine
8.“Skintone”- Single Frame (Ashtray)
9. “Fountain and Fairfax”- Afghan Whigs
10. “Laughing Cavalier”- Ladytron
Bonuses:  “Walk it Off”- Tapes ‘n Tapes
“Turn it Off”- Drive Like Jehu

The money seems like a lot to the 18-21 year olds that populate nudie mags, but for a 30-year old who thinks having a roommate is a no-go, it’s really not.

I’ll drink to that, but the 19 year old stripper isn’t comparing herself to 30-somethings, she’s comparing herself to the 19 year old guy with no highschool who thinks his job is great because the Sobey’s pays him a $2/hour premium to work nights, so he’s making $8.85 an hour while all his friends are making $6.85 an hour.  (Okay, I finished highschool, but none of the other 19 year old guys who worked nights at the Sobey’s had.  $8.85 an hour was definitely a good income for them.)  Most people’ll never be as influential as Hillary Clinton, or Tina Fey, or Amanda.  There are plenty of 30 year olds out there (men and women) for whom not having a roommate is not a realistic option.  Since those are more likely to be her social peers, of course she may feel (relatively) powerful.

Mostly the “porn = power” argument shows the limits of the concept of “power” or “agency.”  And it sounds like the author is really just staging another round of Don’t Hate the Playa, Hate the Game.

owever, he also observed that the male “someone” they can always find is usually someone who’s clearly an inferior option to just going home and masturbating.  I suppose it’s possible that something like this is true for women as well—you can get laid anytime you want, okay, but by guys so skeevy or desperate or unattractive that you would have to be out of your mind to take advantage of this “power”.

THIS, a thousand times over. It gets on my last fucking nerve when my male friends are always like, “But you could get laid anytime you want!” I have to point out that if I’m going for another average/more attractive guy (I consider myself average) then I have competition from the other women who have or are trying to get his attention. Usually the guys who are ready and roaring to go aren’t very appealing or they’re creepy as fuck (I’ve had one guy just stand behind me and not move, even when I politely tried to get past him).

Also, on the porn subject, as far as payment goes, from what I’ve heard (can’t find the source) but men who do gay porn on average get *more* than actresses in straight porn, so maybe even there women don’t trump in the pay department. Also, with the increase of gonzo and ameatur porn, and the fact that most people aren’t buying tapes/DVDs anymore and just downloading it from the net, often without paying for it, I’d imagine that’s driving down costs for actresses, when they have to compete with a young woman who will do a lot more for cheaper.

<blockquote.he also observed that the male “someone” they can always find is usually someone who’s clearly an inferior option to just going home and masturbating</blockquote>

I love this line.  Sometimes “no sex” is better than “sex with a skeevy guy”.

I think the “forcloses other kinds of power” thing may be a little problematic—what highly visible careers for women don’t foreclose later power?

But otherwise yeah, it’s not even as benign (ha) a con as professional sports. Imagine if someone paying a woman to pose naked/semiclothed or perform sex acts on video had to pay her room and board and health care and give her time to take whatever educational courses she wanted. And if she made it to “the majors” she would be guaranteed a minimum salary, a pension and a cut of the gross. It even sounds bizarre to suggest such obvious things.

All of us would never have this if we posed for Playboy, because as much as the men who make the rules coo and flatter Playboy models, they actually think you’re dumb bimbos and they don’t give a shit what you have to say.

Well, unless the dumb bimbo is dissing feminists.  For that, she will be granted a brief reprieve where she will be revered as an expert and her words will be treated as pearls of erudition.  But I stress, it will be brief.  Soon as she starts saying anything that is not dissing feminists it’s back to, “Whatever, honey, show us your tits.”  At whatever age her hotness privilege is rescinded she will become invisible or a joke.

I’ve learned to just ignore anyone who uses the word “empowering.”  It’s gone from being the emptiest of Third Wave buzzwords to code for “totally humiliating and sexist, but suck it up and smile, woman.”

Which is the thrust of the Fox News article.  (Fox News ragging on women?  Fox News leaping on the flimsiest of opportunities to shill for Playboy and/or Hooters?  Quelle horreur!)  Krupa berates other women for not being the fun-loving good sport she is.  It’s not about empowerment in even the loosest sense; it’s about scolding women for not working hard enough to please men.

It’s also about lowering your expectations in life so low that anything feels empowering.  See, a model gets to be “creative” because sometimes the men in charge of her photo shoots let her provide limited input!  Oh boy!  That’s way more fulfilling than being any kind of actual artist!

And that would be a legitimate argument if the women involved had more power at the end of the day.

THIS.
This is really the point of it all. And yet it’s when you’re trying to make this point to the straight man arguing FOR women being “free” to be strippers, porn stars, and etc. etc.

First - they’re assuming that YOU don’t want women to be “free to make their own choices”
Second - they don’t deal with the misogyny DAILY. They don’t see it. It’s simply not a factor.

When that factor is brought up, it’s usually more convenient for them to outright disimss it since what doesn’t happen to them doesn’t actually happen and it’s all in chick’s heads anyhow.

And it goes on and on.

Volcanically off-topic, but (via Feministing), reports emerge that Emma Thompson is taking name off Polanski petition after learning more about the case.

Thank God for that.

I hope my last paragraph didn’t come off as critical of women who do nude modeling.  It’s just that, as an artist who works pretty hard at her craft, I really get ticked off at the “see, honey, you can be artistic by inspiring a man to make art!” thing.  Also, there are nude magazines and websites that do give models some creative freedom (Suicide Girls is a sleazy operation, but at least they let the models develop their own ideas for shoots), and Playboy ain’t one of them.  Even the article admits this: Krupa gushes about the Big Important Photographer who did her shoot and how lucky she was to be allowed to strip for him, and then there’s a bit about how the photographer and Hef argued over how to do the shoot.  The idea that Krupa might have an opinion never even comes up.

I’d imagine there MIGHT be a way for stripping or acting in porn to be empowering, I’m just not smart enough to figure out what it is.

Maybe sex work is not the best choice in the vast majority of cases, maybe it is small change compared to other types of power, but there is some power to be had in being paid to be attractive, sexy or decorative, marrying for money when you´re young and beautiful, or manipulating men who are interested in you. If there wasn´t, the patriarchies that are worst for women wouldn´t keep them veiled and shut in. I would like very much to think every 18 year old girl has many other better options open to her, but that may not always be the case.

As for women always being able to get laid, maybe I live in a more conservative culture than most of you (Though I don´t think so), but I tend to get offers of NSA sex from men who are extremely attractive and quite a few years younger than I am, and to get them rather often (through generic flirting in everyday life). And women around me who are in “friends with benefits situations always manage to be with someone far more attractive than themselves. That may be only because there is some stigma for women who have sex outside serious relationships, but it does happen.

Brian, that’s the point—-they’re lured in with promises of more money now, but in order to be ahead of their peers for 2-3 years, they will behind the rest of their lives. Financial power is only real if it lasts.

The real “power” she feels is the power to get people to look. But that’s illusory power. Real power is the ability to cause change.

And yeah, so most people don’t have power. Irrelevant, though, because they don’t claim to. Krupp made a claim to have power. I’m not saying I think she should have power. I’m just saying her claim is wrong.

Oh Amanda, a missed opportunity! Speaking of Power:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z33tH-JdPDg

The real “power” she feels is the power to get people to look. But that’s illusory power. Real power is the ability to cause change.

I think the power to get people to look feels like real power when the alternative is invisibility and neglect.  So I don’t want to dismiss immediately the feels-real aspect of “star power,” the power that comes from making people watch, the power that comes from being able to perform and adopt new guises.  It’s a thrill, it’s a talent, it’s an energy.  But, yes, all of _that_ “power” is kind of like a homonym for the other kind of power that you have defined as “the ability to cause change.”  Here’s how I might put it:  Star power might feel like causative power, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same thing.

And that would be a legitimate argument if the women involved had more power at the end of the day.

This indeed.  Power isn’t really power if it can be revoked in an instant by a displeased male audience.  And I’m betting strippers only really get ‘respect’ during the show, when the bouncers are lurking in the background and there will be immediate consequences for men who act up.  Once the show’s over, it’s dealing with club owners and obsessed client-cum-stalkers who mistake a lapdance for a marriage proposal.

And Playboy is the publication of choice for men without even the tiniest shred of self-awareness.  At least the Maxim/FHM/Stuff brigade acknowledges—however rarely or clumsily—that you actually need to be attractive and able to talk to a woman like a human being to have a chance romantically.

And I’m betting strippers only really get ‘respect’ during the show, when the bouncers are lurking in the background and there will be immediate consequences for men who act up.

That’s my wife’s argument:  power isn’t really power if it can be revoked by sheer physical intimidation.  The threat of violence is always there to reenact and reset the fundamental power imbalance between women and men in the context of sex work.

Or from people who bring up the Jenna Jameson dynasty as if that’s the typical success of the average porn worker.

I’m sure if you dig down long enough you’ll find some story about a guy who started as a cashier in some fast food joint and ended up going up the ladder until he became an important VP of that fast food consortium.

I bet there’s a ton of people itching to say that working as a fast food cashier is real empowering. And they’re all libertarians too.

He said that if he and his friends—even the older ones, or the fatter ones—are looking for sex with men, they can always find someone, while this is not true when looking for sex with women.  However, he also observed that the male “someone” they can always find is usually someone who’s clearly an inferior option to just going home and masturbating.

Tell me about it. My experiences with men are resumed thusly:

a) Cute dude, bit bulky like me, was pleasurable while he fucked me but that lasted a good 30 seconds, went in the bathroom threw away the condom cleaned up and left without a thank you.

b) Guy shows up after online hooking up piss drunk, during pre-game preparations rams my anal beads so hard up my ass that I cry out in pain and forbid any more play in the area for the rest of the encounter (yeah, you’re not touching this part of me again)

c) Guy is 20 years older than I thought he would be, is unkempt, and I learn he’s on the down-low and married after the fact.

d) Threesome with girlfriend results in him making huge drama because she didn’t want to fuck him, leading us to think he was just faking bi to get into her pants.

I’ve been questionning my bisexual identity ever since, though in reality the fact that I still wank off to pictures of dudes occasionally seems to indicate that I’m at least bi in theory, if not in practice. I’ll just assume my experiences are due to poor selection skills rather than a lack of attraction.

Anyway, I just want to tell the hetero female audience that I feel your pain.

Here is an interesting case involving the treatment of strippers as “indpendent contractors” rather than employees.

http://employment.law360.com/registrations/user_registration?article_id=132385&concurrency_check=false

It alleges that the largest strip club in Vegas is violating the law by not paying the minimum wage to the strippers working there and not otherwise treating them as employees.  (In most of these places a stripper actually pays a fee to management for the privilege of working and then must also share her tips with the bartenders, bouncers, bus boys, wait staff, etc.)

That being said, women who work in high end strip joints can make what seems like an awful lot of money to a young person.  And it’s “cash money” as they say—an awful lot of take home pay.  But it’s not exactly a career for the long haul and I think it often goes hand in hand with things like substance abuse issues and the like.  And of course no health care, no pension, no unemployment, social security, or workers comp.—you laugh, but some of these women do things that are physically very risky (or so I am told). 

As for it being empowering—just ask yourself it would encourage your daughter to opt for this as a way to make a living versus say going to medical or law school.

Go Shoshana Johnson!

As for it being empowering—just ask yourself it would encourage your daughter to opt for this as a way to make a living versus say going to medical or law school.

OK, but not everyone can go to medical or law school, and the “daughter” bit stacks the deck even further.  Would you sooner have a woman you cared about be a stripper or work at Wal-Mart part-time?

I mean, it would be in many women’s calculated self-interest to dance rather than do other kinds of work.  More lucrative, more expressive, more fulfilling, what have you.  So to me the question becomes, why is it that women have to be faced with this as a choice in the first place?  Why is it that we live in a world where women’s naked bodies are worth that much more than most anything else about them?

I think the power to get people to look feels like real power when the alternative is invisibility and neglect.

Agreed. And yet for a certain set of men, even that power is too much to bear if a woman has it, and they hate and despise and often try to destroy her for having it.

OK, but not everyone can go to medical or law school, and the “daughter” bit stacks the deck even further.  Would you sooner have a woman you cared about be a stripper or work at Wal-Mart part-time?

We need cashiers and janitors, and cashiers and janitors deserve respect, but people seldom talks about these professions as a source of strength or self-actualization.* They’re just considered jobs. I’d be fine with a woman I cared about stripping - in fact, women I care about have done it - but I’d hope they didn’t see it as the only venue for them to try to make something of themselves. That’s the real problem, no?

* Although, for a lot of the population these days, just having a job at all can probably feel like a source of power.

I’d hope they didn’t see it as the only venue for them to try to make something of themselves. That’s the real problem, no?

Agreed—that’s the gist of my comment at Number 50.

plus, there’s the fact that your career longevity in this field is so, so limited and a fresh supply of new 18-year-old girls is always waiting in the wings to replace you.

Not only that, but some of those girls are posting pictures and videos for free. From what I understand, porn is suffering from the same problem as the “legitimate” media: No one wants to pay for what they can get free online.

<blockquote>It’s not about empowerment in even the loosest sense; it’s about scolding women for not working hard enough to please men.</blockqoute>

Yes, this is exactly the point.  Being “empowered” to make men happier doesn’t seem like such a great reward.  This is what proves that being liberal doesn’t always mean being feminist.  This is where liberal and conservatives views match up too well.  Whether it’s saving your precious gift for one special man who signs a contract to pay for your room and board for life, or it’s giving out that precious gift to lots of men for small amounts of money, dinners, or even for free, it’s all about pleasing men.  The only difference is in how they expect you to please men.

Personally, I think strippers should get hazard pay, considering the stuff they’re often asked to do (dance on tables, in very high heels, flip around on poles) in skeevy environments with no healthcare. 

And if sex appeal is power, then why do professional cheerleaders, the object of every red-blooded man’s dreams, so badly paid? Cheerleading in general is quite dangerous and prone to many sports injuries, and has no analogue for the potential rewards for football players—there aren’t any million dollar cheerleading contracts.

If porn is so “empowering” for women, then why is it that the few times I’ve done an internet search for the stuff, the clips invariably inspire these thoughts, “There’s no way physically she can orgasm from THAT,” “Geez, THAT’s going to cause a vaginal infection!” or “Yuck!”

If typical male-oriented porn isn’t especially a turn on to a woman watching, how is it empowering for the women who have to perform sex acts that are at best uncomfortable, unorgasmic, unhealthy, and humiliating?

Especially since, from what I’ve read—The Other Hollywood by Legs McNeil is a fascinating history of the porn business in the U.S.—the glory days of video vixens making the big bucks are in the past with few exceptions.

As I written before, I have a friend who’s a makeup artist, although well-paid for porn, doesn’t work there anymore because it was too depressing to repeatedly reapply makeup that had been washed off with tears.

(And she’s a former stripper, sexually abused as a child of course, so she’s also familiar with the short term “empowerment” and how the money can melt away to drugs.)

If sex work is so empowering, then why are sex workers heavily weighted with those who were sexually abused as children? I doubt that the professions of medicine, law, and education also require pedophilia as background.

Wow, #45, that’s a whole lot of TMI.

And if sex appeal is power, then why do professional cheerleaders, the object of every red-blooded man’s dreams, so badly paid?

Ooh, ooh, call on me!  Star power doesn’t necessarily translate into financial power, and in fact I get the sense that in many cases conferring star power is a means of rationalizing the withholding of other more tangible forms of power.  That explains some portion of the amateur-porn phenomenon:  you get a modicum of “fame” _instead of_ actual compensation.

@judybrowni:  If sex work is so empowering

I thought the “empowering” argument was less that sex-work _was_ empowering by nature, and more that it _could be_ empowering when chosen freely and practiced responsibly.  It’s in tune with the “choice feminism” model that a lot of the feminist blogosphere has repudiated.

Maybe sex work could be empowering if freely chosen and practiced responsibly, however, how “freely chosen” if the women involved have a high correspondence with having been sexually abused as children?

A high correspondence in no other profession, “freely chosen.”

“Fifty-seven percent reported a history of childhood sexual abuse, by an average of 3 perpetrators. Forty-nine percent of those who responded reported that as children, they had been hit or beaten by a caregiver until they had bruises or were injured in some way…Many seemed profoundly uncertain as to just what “abuse” is. When asked why she answered “no” to the question regarding childhood sexual abuse, one woman whose history was known to one of the interviewers said: “Because there was no force, and, besides, I didn’t even know what it was then - I didn’t know it was sex.”

http://womensissues.about.com/od/rapesexualassault/a/Wuornos.htm

“Through childhood sexual abuse, many prostituted women have become conditioned into thinking that this is their choice,” she says. “That’s what happened to me and to many others. It normalises this kind of behaviour and causes many to enter into the trade,”

http://womensgrid.freecharity.org.uk/?p=3816

“73 percent of prostitutes were sexually abused before the age of 16”

http://www.stopcsa.org/RACE/cause.cfm

Not such a corresponence in tear-producing daily for other professions, either.

The majority of sex work for women is also that oriented to male, rather than female, desire—how empowering is that?  Sex not even geared to women’s sexuality.

Throw in the physical abuse doled out to sex workers, and you have a trifecta of unempowerment:

http://www.alternet.org/story/16406/

I’ve known more than one sex worker, and even anecdoatally from their perspective, not particularly empowering.

Could sex work be empowering? Sure, perhaps, for the few, maybe. Examples, please. Is it empowering, on the whole? Nope. So perpetrating the “feminist” myth that it is, I believe is damaging.

Oh, by the by, I know the back story on at least one of those articles pushing the “feminist empowerment” meme about strippers.

Written in the ‘90s, and published in the L.A. Weekly, off-the-record the writer admitted that in order to push that meme, she had to leave out the information that all the strippers she’d interviewed had confided they’d been sexually abused as children.

@ judybrowni:  In case I’m not being clear, I’m actually not disagreeing with you.  Your information is a large part of the reason why the “choice feminism” rhetoric on this subject feels inadequate.  And why “choice” is so thorny to begin with, because the things we may feel and experience as free choices aren’t necessarily so, especially for women under the patriarchal norms to which they’re constantly exposed via a kind of background radiation.

Sorry ,I hadn’t read all flip’s comments through the thread.

Porn has it’s place, and it’s obvious it ain’t going away anytime soon (read The Other Hollywood for a history of the failure of government to prohibit or second generation of feminists to curb it’s rise.)

Sex workers, like the poor, may always be with us: however, there’s no good reason to glorify sex work as tricked-up feminism and phony empowerment.

Better to recognize the reality, and help those who want out, support those already in: rescue and treat the underaged instead of incarcerating them, prosecute those who physically abuse the sex workers, and so on and so forth.

Pretty little blondes in control of their own photo shoots in Playboy are hardly the norm.

I’ve read elsewhere that Playboy in particular is sort of an ‘anti-stepping stone’ even compared to other porn. Basically, part of the playmate agreement (whether written or unwritten) is that Playmates don’t do other kinds of porn, or they’re blacklisted from the company’s own decently-paying and relatively tame in-house video productions.

I can’t think of any former playmates who were able to break into acting or other careers where one might think it would help. In fact, the sheer lack of such implies that it might seriously damage someone’s acting career. Sybil Danning and Barbi Benton are the two exceptions I could think of, and it’s not like their film careers were remotely stellar.

The article also mentioned some playmates being paid outrageous fortunes by some oil billionaire—possibly the Sultan of Brunei—to live in his palace for a while. That part sounded a bit too Victorian-harem-porn to be true, though.

The 10:

Lesley Gore It’s My Party Where the Action Is ‘66N

Talking Heads Wild Wild Life

Head Over Heels - Go-Go’s

Heart- Nothin’ At All (HQ)

The Roches Hallelujah Chorus 1982

Voyager P/T ~ I Melt With You

“Rift Valley Drifters” by Roy Zimmerman

The Police - Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic

1950s Juvenile Delinquent Movie Trailers (#2)

Ysgol Glanaethwy: O Fortuna - Last Choir Standing BBC One

Link

I was riding my bike one day and stopped to help a beautiful woman biker fix her chain, we chatted and had coffee. On the spur of the moment I asked her out to dinner, she accepted. We had dinner a couple of times and she was a little cagey about herself and what she did for a living. Finally she admitted she was a stripper, working the high end “Gentlemans Clubs” in the northeast. She’d go off for a week or two, work and come back to Boston for a week. She was gorgeous, classy and of course, sexy as hell. She said she really didn’t want a boy friend and I told her since I just gotten divorced I’d be a shitty one anyway! That said, we started sleeping together anyway. She had two rules; I could never see her work and no one could ever know what she did for a living. It was the strangest relationship I’ve ever had, I wasn’t upset by what she did for a living and rarely thought about what she might be doing on stage while she was on a “business trip” I trusted her, knew she took good care of herself and never got involved with her customers. On the other hand when she get done working at 2 am, she’d immediately call, wake me up and question me about what I’d done that night! Everytime she came home from a trip, she’d interrogate me, snoop around my things and was just insanely jealous. I finally said to her, look if I can handle my end of the relationship and the fact that someone I really care about takes her clothes off for a living and makes men think about fucking her night after night, why the hell can’t you calm down and trust a guy who works 60 hours a week and is happy as hell to have the most beautiful woman in Boston for a girlfriend! I don’t think she was ever abused, but her Dad had left her mother when she was 8 or 9 and they’d had a tough life…
She loved and hated her Dad and had all kinds of issues with his leaving.  We went to counseling together, she calmed down, began to understand her issues, quit stripping, went back to school and now manages a sales department of 6.  We got married 12 years ago, her past is still our secret…she is still great looking (esp, in a thong!)and I still can’t get enough of her and love her to death. And no, she’s never done a ‘show” for me!

flip,

I didn’t mean my comment to be so classist sounding, but it was.  I was focusing on the idea of things that are highly remunerative because of my discussion of stripping being a short term chance for some young women to make a fair chunk of cash.  I am a big believer in the notion that all work should be sufficently well paid that it would afford the worker a decent life.

I also hate the idea that “empowerment” means getting men to do what you want, rather than getting men or society to take you seriously regardless of your genitals. 
Comment #11: catgirl on 11/06 at 11:46 AM

And of course, what if what you want is for people (including men) to take you seriously? 

<blockquote>Maybe sex work is not the best choice in the vast majority of cases, maybe it is small change compared to other types of power, but there is some power to be had in being paid to be attractive, sexy or decorative, marrying for money when you´re young and beautiful, or manipulating men who are interested in you. If there wasn´t, the patriarchies that are worst for women wouldn´t keep them veiled and shut in. I would like very much to think every 18 year old girl has many other better options open to her, but that may not always be the case.
Comment #38: Maria on 11/06 at 03:24 PM

The situations are similar in that women are pitted against other women for the attention of men.  A few are raised very high in estimation above others because of arbitrary male-determined factors, whether that’s big tits or super chastity.

I was amongst those 19-year-olds! I started stripping when I was 19 and stopped when I was 21, and could no longer commute to a club that actually counted me as an employee and offered workman’s comp - after some haggling, I swear there are no other businesses that “forget” to bring the paperwork for taxes and all for a month. “whoops!”
Anyway, no, the money is not some monstrously fabulous thing. Yes, lots better than I would have made equivalently as a cashier, but uh, yeah, the experiences I had as a stripper were leagues ahead of the cashier job in terms of disgusting. For all the good, positive feelings that came from being admired up on a stage in naked glory was the ick factor of being badgered into power struggles between yourself, customers - oh sure, like I can just tell every single one who pisses me off to fuck off, when I haven’t began to look like I’ll leave work having made ANY money because of the stupid ‘independent contractor’ status, dancing your naked ass off for six hours and paying for the privilege is certainly disheartening - and the power structure. Because no, for all the bouncing staff/management is there for my protection, I am automatically “trying” to get the place shut down when I don’t, apparently, read their minds and know they’re going to do something they are not supposed to.

The power dynamic, especially outside of Burlesque and such, is way, way, not in the hand of the dancers.
And also, not against stripping or porn work. I’d love my child if they wanted to do that, but I would also want them to feel like they would be loved and supported so that it wouldn’t be a case of “you need to do this or things will be bad” (in my case, be in piles of debt - for others, not eating as much). I would hope that if they did they’d be able to walk out if they were in a bad situation, but recognize that it is an industry set up to try and convince them every situation is an AWESOME one, even if they feel like shit.

I forgot to add that my wife started stripping after she lost a job, she was down to her last 50 bucks and auditioned and went to work that night. She was 27 at the time and figured out early that if she fell into the normal stripper life style she’d be a hag at 28. She didn’t drink or party, she biked and ran and ate healthy food. She was 30 when I met her and looked 22. She said when she started,  she thought the girls were much older, when she found out they were all 6-7 years younger than she was it scared the hell out of her. Her career on “stage” lasted four years, she made about 36k a year working 3 weeks a month and that was in the early 90’s.

I’ve always been perplexed by the “stripping is empowering” meme

I have never *ever* heard this meme from a woman who was stripping for a living - because it put food on the table - but only from women who had other options, who did it as “art” or because it was some kind of slumming. It’s like listening to rhapsodies about the value of manual labor from trust-fund babies who go fix a car for a weekend and then go back to writing drivel for the New York Times.

For the women I knew, stripping wasn’t about “empowerment”. It was about being able to pay the bills, and work nights so they could watch their kids during the day, and to make more money than they would at a minimum-wage job. These were not women who were putting off that scholarship to Harvard Medical because they got some kind of “empowered” feeling from stripping.

Although, frankly, I really hate the “oh they were all abused” urban legend; it’s the flip side of the patriarchy’s hatred for whores. The poor things, they can’t help it, they’re damaged and they just need us to show them the light. (I’m not talking about women who are trafficked and abused. I’m talking about the assumption that no nice girl would show her body for something as crass as money.)

Paul wrote: “I think the “forecloses other kinds of power” thing may be a little problematic—what highly visible careers for women don’t foreclose later power?”

I can hardly think of any highly visible careers that foreclose on a woman’s later power. A young woman who distinguishes herself in journalism, law, science, medicine, business, or politics is building power now and laying the groundwork for future power.

It’s no “urban legend” that a large percentage of sex workers had been sexually or physically abused as children, but a phenomena that has been studied and reported for several decades:

http://www.darkness2light.org/KnowAbout/statistics_2.asp

http://www.stopcsa.org/RACE/cause.cfm

http://www.darkness2light.org/KnowAbout/statistics_2.asp

http://www.desireealliance.org/Exoticdancersfacerealdangers.htm

http://blogs.modestlyyours.net/modestly_yours/2007/03/prostitution_an.html

http://www.scribd.com/doc/6732117/Prostitution-the-Invisibility-of-Harm-HAWTH

The above come from the first several pages of a basic Google search, and are the tip of the ice berg for studies of childhood abuse of sex workers.

If there’s an “urban legend” here, it’s that sex work is “empowering.”

Amanda (and several others) I would suggest I have a very good idea what women make in porn.  I worked in the industry for two years (awhile back).  A *LOT* more than “two” women make that kind of money (I think gavel down said that above).  Again, I’m not saying women are in charge or that this is a great path to empowerment.  It isn’t.  But it is money and in much more than a handful of cases, a lot of money.

And while it is still a male dominated industry, there are many powerful women inside of porn.  Does, to name only one, the name Marci Hirsch mean anything (before you google it)?  That some of the folks here don’t know that doesn’t make it any less true.  The whole thing about women in porn only being victims just isn’t true as it once might have been.  It is, however, a very convenient way to think of it for some people.

And as I said above Amanda, your overall point is still correct I just wanted add in a detail that doesn’t fit most people’s preconceptions.  I think that too often we (most people) fall back on myth and prejudice because it helps us in other ways.

Then there’s the whole Chris Rock thing about “rich” and “wealthy”.

I have never *ever* heard this meme from a woman who was stripping for a living - because it put food on the table - but only from women who had other options, who did it as “art” or because it was some kind of slumming.

I have, though it was usually worded differently and said in defense-mechanism tones, and often retracted after the person stopped stripping or tricking (I used to do social work).  That said, I have to agree with mythago that we’re more likely to hear that expression in its purest “political” sense coming from more privileged types (or from pseudo-fems who’ve never done stripping/ sex work at all).  Good point.

On this side of feminism, people like Audicia Ray don’t exist.  Which is a bit of a shame really.

Reading of Stripping/Porn - re: “empowering” reminds me of a Very Different memory which to me illuminates some of the major differences - apart from “money” types of issues.  Perhaps 15 years ago in Berkeley, CA - there was a small group of both men and women - it may have been the X-plicit players or some others - who would walk in Berkeley totally nude (except for shoes).

I remember seeing a female of the group walking alone - “highly attractive” - also clearly - empowered and “not taking any s_it” from others (men).  Where men did respond to the women, it generally was throwing a cup of coke or similar from a car.

I think that the women were scary to men because suddenly their bodies and “sexiness” weren’t something that could be controlled or manipulated.  They weren’t ashamed of their bodies and didn’t titillate - with “sexy clothes”.

I’m not suggesting that what was done should be replicated, but rather hoping to point out - how “sex” and “female bodies” are such an issue for us men

McDuff, I think many feminists are well aware of people like Audicia Ray as well as movements to increase the safety and well-being of sex workers. The issue is that a lot of the discussions generated by the pro-sex work people tend to focus on what’s good and freely chosen and therapeutic about sex work, and tend to skip over the grim reality of much of it. Which is understandable, because they’re obviously sick of being portrayed as victims. But because the reality can be so grim, feminists are going to focus their dialogue on what needs fixing, which starts the whole cycle of defensiveness again. In the meantime, you’ve got people who are either completely naive, or invested in having a large pool of sexually available women without other choices, insisting that sex work is empowering and fun and harmless so shut the hell up about anything else.

Our culture is fascinated with escorts and strippers and porn and even sex addiction. A lot of TV, film and music people think it’s edgy to put sex work into their storylines but they often simplify and glamorize it or present it only from the customer perspective. This is another reason many feminists are frustrated and trying to get across a more realistic depiction. But it seems to be this endless cycle where talking about trafficked women or the horrors of street work induces a massive wave of “but I have a degree and I still became a hooker and I loved it!” righteousness. It’s almost impossible to have a nuanced dialogue about this.

In my circles, it’s a practically a hipster badge of honor to be affiliated somehow with sex work. I somewhat have this badge because I used to write porn for money and two of my exes were strippers. However, once people hear that I volunteer as a literacy tutor for ex-prostitutes, they practically jump down my throat with reminders that sex work can be feminist and empowering so I better not get all judgey! It’s telling that this is the knee jerk reaction to what is a very necessary service.

Porn “empowers” about as many people as the lottery…

Veronica, I’m pleased that you’re putting in work helping people out.  But this conversation is so tiring.  For a start, the pro sex work sex workers are, for the most part, feminists.  The ones who aren’t tend to be so because they don’t see “feminism” as doing anything for them, and in many cases because they see it as being a positive hinderance.  There are sex workers who come out of it hating men, and there are sex workers who come out of it hating feminists. 

We’re arguing over changes to law in this country this week, changes which will affect prostitutes and lap dancers, which are supposedly there to “protect” them, but which barely a single sex worker supports, and which precious few sex workers have been consulted over.  And the people pushing for it describe themselves as feminist.  Well, all well and good, but if you’re running over actual women in defeating the patriarchy, maybe the priorities are out of whack.

Here’s the thing that always frustrates me about these discussions.  What are the “rar rar it’s so terrible and sex work is inherently victimising” people doing?  What are you actually achieving by harping on about the bad things?  When the legislation comes round it makes the lives of sex workers worse.  People stop treating them like human beings with agency and start treating them like victims who need to be perpetually rescued, and when they get told to fuck off they make up all kinds of vile narratives about women who “just don’t want help” or the fucking “happy hooker” slur.  People drag out the “sexual assault” statistics and nod meaningfully, but what do they mean?  So Hooker X was abused as a child.  So what?  Does that mean that abuse explains all her decisions from there?  Is she merely the product of her history, her life just flotsam on the waves?  Or could her decision to engage in some kind of sex work actually be empowering simply because it’s the way she’s making the best of a bad situation?

What help - like literacy tuition - we can give to those who are only in sex work because they have no other option is all for the best.  But the world is fucked, and magical liberal complaining will not make it unfucked any time soon, so it’s only the small victories we can hope to win, not the world changing ones where everyone magically starts being nice to each other tomorrow.  Harping on about how sex workers are inherently victimised a) ignores and marginalises those who are not victims and b) doesn’t help those who are one single jot.  A double whammy of useless.

it’s akin to winning a few bucks in the lotto

Where do you live that buying a lotto ticket requires you to strip nude around people of the opposite sex who may or may not treat you respectfully?

Veronica in #84, thanks for the nuanced yet realistic take. That’s why I frequent this blog.

“Hell, I have more power than a Playboy model in the real world, since my opinions are taken seriously.  All of us would never have this if we posed for Playboy, because as much as the men who make the rules coo and flatter Playboy models, they actually think you’re dumb bimbos and they don’t give a shit what you have to say. “

Actually, there are a number of current and former porn stars who I take quite seriously, and when it comes to anything to do with sex work *a hell of a lot* more seriously than I do you. Renegade Evolution, Audacia Ray, Nina Hartley, Belladonna, and Madison Young all come to mind.

And I think the “dumb bimbos” comment is actually says more about your opinion of porn models then it necessarily does about men. Did an ex-boyfriend dump you for a stripper or something? I almost think that given the air of condescension and subtle contempt you bring to the conversation whenever you bring up the subject of porn or prostitution.

Oh, and what McDuff said at #86 (including the kudos to Veronica at #84 for her good work).

“...as much as the men who make the rules coo and flatter Playboy models, they actually think you’re dumb bimbos and they don’t give a shit what you have to say.?”

This quote has me thinking about what the stats would say about the differences in credence toward the “bad girls” vs. otherwise.  It seems that the Madonna/Whore complex runs too deep to be fixed by something as simple as a woman keeping her clothes on. Whether a person thinks that porn should be stopped for the sake of equality, or that porn is a great way to achieve equality by playing by the established rules - both initiatives would serve as no more that a weak band aid to a cancer.

“Well, all well and good, but if you’re running over actual women in defeating the patriarchy, maybe the priorities are out of whack.”  -McDuff

McDuff, you do realize that the industry itself is “running over actual women” don’t you? It appears clearly in 89’s comment, “Did an ex-boyfriend dump you for a stripper or something?”  Pitting the “girls that won’t” against the “girls that will” is an old and tired tactic of divide and conquer that apparently still works on some.

Calm Tongue

“The Industry” is running over women inasmuch as everything that exists is running over women.  There are more women who earn a meagre pittance cleaning shit from toilet bowls than there are men: is “the cleaning industry” running over women?  The answer is, yes, but so what?  Are we going to rail against how the concept of hygiene is essentially degrading?  And even if we are going to rail against it, do you think that will help?  Will it prevent one woman from working minimum wage cleaning toilets, or drag one out of a poverty-trap?

There are women in the industry who are troubled, abused, frightened, and in need of help.  Similarly, there are drug users who are broke, abused, scared, fucked over and unable to cope.  Unfortunately for them, the people who have the power to help them never listen to them, and ignore any research that doesn’t fit their personal narratives.  So we end up with shit drugs

Case in point: http://deepthroated.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/donna-hughes-and-the-anti-rights-activists-victory-in-rhode-island/

She and her allies championed this in the legislature as their great David Vs. Goliath battle and a resounding victory for women and trafficking victims.

However, this “victory” in actuality means that both consenting legal adult sex workers and trafficking victims are now subject to arrest where they weren’t before.

The world is fucked, and contra the dreams of liberals it is not going to get unfucked any time soon.  The least you can do, which is what sex work activists realise, is to not make people’s lives any harder, even if it means your moral crusade has to take a back seat.

There is such a vast swathe of experiences in the sex industry, it’s awful when people paint the entire thing with this “perpetual victim of abuse” brush. It’s more complicated than that.  Even those who are abused have more to their personalities than that!  Demonising the industry is significantly unhelpful.

“Pitting the “girls that won’t” against the ‘girls that will’”

Calmtongue –

This pitting is already strongly implicit in Amanda’s initial post, as well as in many of the responses by the “girls who won’t” feminists in this thread. This kind of high and mighty “you’re selling out your sisters” rhetoric is exactly what’s poisoned pretty much the entire conversation around feminism, sex work, and sexuality in general for over 35 years now.

Those up for some reading on feminist history might be interested in this:

http://books.google.com/books?id=6zaVkAjBuPEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA194

Its about a particularly disastrous feminist-led conference on prostitution. Some of the divisive rhetoric from feminists that killed that project sounds an awful lot like much of what I’m seeing here.

“The world is fucked, and contra the dreams of liberals it is not going to get unfucked any time soon.” 

I don’t disagree with this, McDuff, and especially agree that it is very complicated (as my above post would indicate), but is dismissing an issue any better than bellyaching about it?  Indeed, I believe the more complicated something is, the more important it is to think/talk about.  We learn from each other, and as empty as some of the words exchanged might end up being, there are some words, few and far between, that carry an impact.  Exploitation is a running theme in our fucked world, and some people are totally unaware of this.  While I know I’m not going to change the world, still I will not be okay with this. 

I hate the idea of having to make people’s lives harder, but sometimes things have to get harder before they get better.  This is not me being a moral crusader - this is philosophy, not politics, and in no way is it intended to diminish the complications.  What works for some won’t work for others.  What might help some people rise above might cause other’s to hit rock bottom. 

93: I don’t know why you feel the original post somehow exemplifies “girls who won’t” against “girls who will.”  You say it is “strongly implicit,” yet I don’t see it.

I hate the idea of having to make people’s lives harder, but sometimes things have to get harder before they get better.

Ah, spoken like a true middle class liberal.

You do know, don’t you, that it’s not the middle class hookers or the wealthy porn stars who suffer most?  It’s the already vulnerable people in the sex industry, the ones who you’re so concerned about, allegedly, who get hurt by bad laws written by people who are trying to legislate the industry out of existence because of their moralising, authoritarian, patronising need to try and save the poor, victimised fallen women.

But, OK, fine, you’re willing to make the noble sacrifice of making their lives worse before they get better.  You blessed, brave soul.  I’m glad you’re willing to accept the sacrifice of being called a lousy fucker by women whose lives you make harder while doing nothing whatsoever for them, under the guise of “making the world a better place”.  Except, y’know, not for them, obviously.  You made their world worse, but their working conditions and safety were a sacrifice you were willing to make.  You bravely contributed to the problem in the hopes that some day, the millennia-old strategy of criminalising sex work and treating sex workers are victims or sluts would finally work.  Go you, you inventive, noble soul!  Keep that up, and some day all sex workers will be miserable, and then they’ll stop doing it, and feminism will win!  Or something, I guess.

Is there a “step three: profit!” in your plan here, by any chance?

(also, it seems I lost half a paragraph from the above comment.  Go fig.  Don’t suppose it really matters.)

“while doing nothing whatsoever for them.”

That’s assumptive.  I never said we should do “nothing whatsoever”

And in pure defense, I said the statement was not political and is no way influenced by “middle class liberal” politics.  Indeed, I think the statement is more conservative in nature - something about bootstraps and idealism comes to mind - than it is liberal.  But that’s neither here nor there.

Take a look at the young woman that appears at around count 48 of this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fX6EaHuRCg

Would you say she’s trying to make life harder for these young girls by trying to get them off the streets?  She’s certainly not doing “nothing whatsoever” for them, is she?  Is she to be criticized for her perspective on prostitution?  (@89) Perhaps her boyfriend left her for a stripper?  This docu touches on legalities and how warped they are, as well. The problem runs deep.  Like I said already, a band aid is not going to fix it, but neither is handing someone a razor blade.  (and as you probably know, the suicide rate among prostitutes is high, not to mention deadly STD’s).  It’s really hard to take a moral stance on this issue.

By the way, I don’t have an opinion on whether or not the industry should be legislated out of existence.  My concern is with the exploitation that exists with the industry.

And that exploitation is not helped by people saying “all sex work is exploitative.”

The people who actually change the laws pick what they want to listen to.  They co-opt feminists who mean well and who intend to help, but the girls who are being abused are not helped by that kind of talk.  You might think they are, but the more sex workers are perceived as being nothing but victims in need of rescue, or sluts, or jezebels, or anything other than human beings doing work, the more people can pass regressive laws that say they’re helping them but which have the opposite effect.

Sex workers are more at risk when they are marginalised.  Just like immigrants are put at risk of exploitation when people can hold their status as illegals over their heads, so too sex workers are more endangered when their livelihood is illegal and socially maligned.

You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that I’m selling sex work to everyone, or that I think it’s no big deal if a 13 year old gets picked up by a pimp and turned onto the game.  Rather, I’m pointing out that the practical upshot of casting them as victims are bad laws that make it easier for pimps to pick up 13 year old girls, and easier for them to keep them there once they’ve got them.  Amazingly, you can’t prosecute a 13 year old for being a prostitute if prostitution isn’t illegal in the first place.  You can, in fact, rescue more underage girls when it’s not illegal, and once you’ve done so you don’t compound any abuse by giving her a criminal record! What gets stopped when we get rid of the well intentioned paternalistic laws and instead, just help the victims and leave those who aren’t victimised alone?  Police raping hookers, that’s what gets stopped.  Because they can’t hold the illegality of their situation above their heads and coerce a trick out of them. 

It’s incredibly bloody simple.  Yammering on about the abuses as if that’s the only thing about sex work is just like saying “drugs are baaad, mmkay?”  It’s the root of bad law, it’s obviously bollocks, it maligns people with positive experiences as liars or inconsequential, the amount of help it provides is significantly questionable and the amount of harm it causes is massively out of proportion to any theoretical help.

And fuck me sideways if someone justifying making street hookers lives harder for the greater good is the last person I’m going to expect to have a solid understanding of these issues.  The statement you made was political.  Everything is political.  Everything is real, not theoretical.  If you cannot see your way past your idealism on the matter, simply get out of the way and don’t make life harder for the girls in that video.

Re, the link in #96.

I have seen this documentary and I don’t think anybody here who is critical of anti-prostitution/anti-porn feminism is condemning the kind of social work carried out by people like Rachel Lloyd. (Nice strawman there.) However, her good work does not necessarily validate the entirety of Rachel Lloyd’s politics, nor does it somehow by extension act as a cover for the very destructive political actions carried out by people like Donna Hughes, nor does that kind of activism have much to do with the kind of “yer a disgrace to the sisterhood” cattiness toward sex workers all too often coming from middle-class feminists.

Other than that, what McDuff said.

“Hell, I have more power than a Playboy model in the real world, since my opinions are taken seriously.  All of us would never have this if we posed for Playboy, because as much as the men who make the rules coo and flatter Playboy models, they actually think you’re dumb bimbos and they don’t give a shit what you have to say.”

Even if we accept the dubious premise that you do, in fact, have more power than a Playboy model, for which we have only your word, it might behoove us to ask why this is true. Certainly patriarchal attitudes toward women who are openly sexual in any way contribute to the dismissal of their ideas, and indeed of their humanity.

But could it possibly be that the snide language and tragically hip posturing of you and your gang of dittoheads here contributes to the stigmatization of sex workers of all stripes and that by writing this kind of slut-shaming, woman-bashing, self-aggrandizing and entirely predictable slam at those who don’t “work” their assets in the same manner you do contributes to the sexist attitudes that silence the genuinely intelligent and insightful voices of sex workers in general?

It would appear that you and most of your pals have thrown in with the very men whose perspectives you reject when it comes to women whose choices - and they are choices though some on this thread have attempted to discredit those choices in a way they wouldn’t dare attempt when it comes to reproductive choices, though these are also most frequently dictated by economic necessity as well - just don’t square with our conception of cool feminism. How fortunate for you to be in the privileged position of joining the boys’ club in echoing the tired madonna/whore wheeze.

Women who do any kind of sex work may or may not find it personally empowering in their own lives, but this kind of condescending smack from you, Ms. Marcotte, certainly contributes to keeping them disempowered in whatever small way.

Perhaps the thinking that needs examining here is not Johanna Kruppa’s, but rather your own. Pitting “good and respectable” women like yourself against ” dumb bimbos” like her plays The Man’s game. For women it does nothing good.

And I say this as a man whose job as a board member of an NGO providing healthcare to sex workers puts him in the position of laison between sex workers and powerful political bosses: your views validate those of the latter at the expense of the former.

Nice job.

Well I’m not going to go that far.  I’m inclined to believe Veronica, above:

The issue is that a lot of the discussions generated by the pro-sex work people tend to focus on what’s good and freely chosen and therapeutic about sex work, and tend to skip over the grim reality of much of it. Which is understandable, because they’re obviously sick of being portrayed as victims. But because the reality can be so grim, feminists are going to focus their dialogue on what needs fixing, which starts the whole cycle of defensiveness again. In the meantime, you’ve got people who are either completely naive, or invested in having a large pool of sexually available women without other choices, insisting that sex work is empowering and fun and harmless so shut the hell up about anything else.

Parse it backwards.  There are people who are invested in ignoring the negative sides of sex work - there are.  “Feminists” - by which Veronica means people on the anti-sex-work side of feminism - focus on the negative stuff because they’re genuinely concerned that people aren’t paying attention to it, that nobody knows about trafficked women and the bad side of sex work.

But sex workers aren’t just sick of being portrayed as victims because they’re sick of being portrayed as victims - although you bet that’s part of it.  They’re sick of it because it hurts them.  I don’t doubt the motives of feminists who rail against all sex work as being bad - I think they want to help women.  I just think they aren’t, actually, in reality, helping women.

Frankly, I think it’s both rude, unhelpful and ironically misogynistic to assume that people like Amanda or Veronica are in it to prove they’re better women than the hookers and porn stars they criticise.  It’s an ad hominem, and one of those things that we can’t know one way or the other, and are irrelevant either way, so snipping and bitching just makes the pro-sex-worker side look bad.  Frankly, I don’t care why people are sold on the idea that sex workers are agency-free, perpetual victims.  I just want it to stop.

I’ll second ice weasel (and I think there were others too) in refuting Amanda’s comment at #18.  Many women at ages far north of 19, from all kinds of backgrounds, are making good money stripping.  And no, I don’t mean money that would “seem like a lot to 18-21 year olds” but, to get specific, north of $200K per year with a lot of time off.  And a lot of writeoffs.  That is by no means real power.  But it is not shabby, either.

I agree, though, with the main thesis.  In large part, sex work does not provide sustainable empowerment for women.  In isolated cases, at isolated times, there is power.  And yet, at the end of the road—and that end comes pretty quickly—there is much more emptiness than in many other fields.  (Of course, some may not have easy access to those other fields).  In the ideal world, it shouldn’t be this way, as you point out, Amanda.  But it is, and as a result, the profession often (like, very often) discards its used-up workers in a way that is not true of many other fields open to women.  So women entering stripping, despite their quick upside, will have a downturn that in many cases will put them behind similarly situated men in the long term.

Still, it’s unwise to make generalizations.  Many women do stripping as a temporary avocation, to cash in, and have a decent exit strategy.  That’s a valid and often successful endeavor.  I owe my current job (which required an investment of six months with zero income—something I could not have done while six figures in debt, as I was pre-stripping) to two years in Vegas.

“Frankly, I think it’s both rude, unhelpful and ironically misogynistic to assume that people like Amanda or Veronica are in it to prove they’re better women than the hookers and porn stars they criticise. “

Ah yes, the M-Bomb. Always so useful in conversations of this kind. I suggest you go back and re-read for tone the comment from the OP I quoted. The snipping and bitching isn’t coming from our side. We’re just sick of being used as pinatas by people whose motives do not, contrary to your assertion, seem particularly compassionate.

Those who actually work to improve the lives of sex workers, including sex workers themselves, are righteously tired of worked over by those who have a vested interest in portraying sex workers as agency free and perpetual victims, and use that portrayal as grounds to advance a political agenda entirely hostile to the best interests of sex workers and of society at large. I do care why, and how, people are sold on these ideas, who is doing the selling and to what end, because the result is greater prejudice against sex work and those who do it and neo-con social policies disguised as progressive and pushed by those who have personal issues with sex commerce.

You want an end to exploitation and abuse? So do we. And since I do that work every day, dealing with those very grim realities that you seem to think “our side” has the choice to ignore, and doing so uphill against the opposition of those who regard harm-reduction as enabling and any attempt by sex workers to assert their self-worth as inviting the kind of ad hominem attack that is the essence of this thread’s establishing contention, pardon my lack of manners and failure to know my place based on my gender, speaking of ad hominem arguments.

If you want what you say you want, and based on your upthread comments I believe you do, I am not the enemy, but the enemy is definitely nearby.

As to how that assertion makes “our side” look, it’s pretty clear that this is just a bit more than a P.R. problem. Our problem is not only with James Dobson, Donna Hughes and Melissa Farley at the extremes, it’s with privileged liberals in the middle whose condescending attempts at wit play right into the hands of those who may want to help “good” women but have only contempt for the “other” kind.

Five minutes after this comment goes up I’m going to get called an MRA. Setting my alarm clock now.

This is why you can’t get abortions covered by insurance. You know that right? If you vilify sexual freedoms, you send the message that women’s choices do not matter. You want one choice to be given serious consideration and the other to be shut down. It’s hypocrisy. The very same people in congress who passed the Stupak bullshit are the SAME ones who foster this “porno hurts women” argument. Abortions hurt women. Abortion exploits women. That’s what the pro-lifers say about abortion, that’s why you say about sex workers. There is no difference, no matter how desperately you wish there was.

Oh here we go again… No one is saying you can’t do whatever the hell you want, but let’s not pretend sex work is all fun and games. A critique of the porn industry isn’t the same thing as linking arms with conservatives and denying woman abortions because conservatives think women are too stupid to know better. Sex work follows along the same class lines as every other job, except there are more risks inherent in sex work due to the contradictory messages we receive about sex in this society.  Going around and sputtering about how everyone who criticizes the sex industry is really hurting sex workers more than other factors in society is a bunch of shit.  Many people on this blog support decriminalizing prostitution (not legalizing it, that pimp from the bunny ranch in Nevada is a piece of shit), abortion rights,enthusiastic consent for sex, and free and open attitudes about sex.  The people here are a far cry from some hypocritical conservative asshole that denies abortion rights and gay marriage with one hand and jerks off a $10 rent boy with the other.  In fact, one of the reasons sex work thrives in this society is because society has such weird attitudes toward sex.

Futhermore, the quipp up thread about how some of the posters must of been dumped for a hot stripper reaks of the maury povich retort that Amelie Gillette summed up so nicely in her blog: “Y’all just jealous! Y’all just jealous!”  I mean do you answer such an idiotic accusation?

“Futhermore, the quipp up thread about how some of the posters must of been dumped for a hot stripper reaks of the maury povich retort that Amelie Gillette summed up so nicely in her blog: “Y’all just jealous! Y’all just jealous!” I mean do you answer such an idiotic accusation? “

And I stand by it. Does any and all criticism of the sex industry mean someone is just jealous of hot strippers/porn stars/models? No, not by a long shot. However, the charge that female sex workers are “selling out women” or that erotic images being made of “conventionally attractive” women is in itself an act of oppression of other women – *that* critique reeks of personal jealousy. Dressing it under layers of half-baked sociology doesn’t change it one bit, and it should be called out for exactly what it is.

Add to that the fact that we’re talking about a blogger with a several-year pattern of talking snarky shit about sex workers, and, yeah, an appropriately snarky remark about her motivations is definitely not out of line.

As for the first paragraph of #104, I think the attitude that just because you’re not conservative doesn’t mean you can’t end up embracing political actions that in fact do a great deal of harm to sex workers. Why don’t you do some reading up on the “abolitionist” alliance against prostitution, which links “liberal pro-feminist” types like Nicholas Kristoff with some rather old-school radfems, and a boatload of evangelicals and neocons. Then give a read to authors like Laura Agustin and Melissa Gira Grant as to how this kind of paternalistic politics actually plays out in countries like Cambodia. Or how about the alliance of “liberal” AIDS activist (and confirmed grandstander) Michael Weinstein, and fundie ex-porn performer Shelley Lubben. Their “critique” of the porn industry has played out in the form of trying to destroy AIM Healthcare, one of the main institutions that has helped *prevent* a major HIV outbreak in that industry. Or, lets see, how about elitist liberal sniping from the sidelines that pretty much dovetails right into the kind of destructive politics that I just gave examples of.

Care to show me some examples of liberal activism against the sex industry that has actually resulted in some concrete good for sex workers? Because I’m sure not seeing it.

Yes, well, the fact that any number of anti-porn feminist blogs whose owners identify as somehow leftist or progressive link directly to Lubben’s Pink Cross Foundation, which is resolutely anti-abortion and supported California’s anti-same-sex-marriage Prop. 8 ought to raise a suspicion or two. Then there’s Melissa Farley’s alliance of convenience with Bay Area real estate developers in helping shoot down Prop. K, which would have decriminalized prostitution in San Francisco.

But as we know, these things are merely coincidental. There is no common overlap between feminist-identified sex-work bashers and right-wing sex-work bashers, other than the fact that particularly vulnerable groups of women suffer as a result of the efforts of both.

That’s all just sputtering, right?

California has been a relatively safe environment for sex workers in various branches of the trade for a long time, and that’s made this state the coming battleground for an attempt by two different factions of reactionary activists to wipe out sex commerce in the place where women engaged in it enjoy the safest environment and suffer the least repression.

But of course, wrap a feminist critique around this hypocritical nonsense and suddenly it becomes respectable in liberal circles.

That’s most convenient for some folks, no doubt, but it’s a menace to female sex workers, and I see the consequences of that growing menace every day.

AIM is the organization on whose board I sit. I was up at the clinic today discussing how we were going to keep the doors open under the unrelenting attacks of the PCF-AHF pact, Cal-OSHA’s blatant politicization of their regulatory authority and the irresponsible grand-standing of a couple of anti-porn fanatics in the machinery of LADOHS. Meanwhile, the waiting room was full of young women waiting to get the reliable, low-cost access to the state-of-the-art PCR-DNA testing for HIV that we’ve provided for the past 12 years. The cost of defending the organization from illegal attempts by these agencies, spurred on by “critics of the porn industry,”  to gain access to those women’s confidential medical records has been so ruinous that, even though we’ve won in court on every challenge so far, we’ve lost at the bank.

When that testing is no longer available, will these women just quit doing porn? Or will they not continue to do so under much more dangerous circumstances for producers who, unlike the law-abiding variety that dominates the mainstream porn industry, simply don’t care about exposing performers to increased risk and will make themselve scarce when the inevitable consequences arise.

Now, tell me another one about how feminist critics of the porn industry aren’t hurting women.

And one more time, absolutely no one from our side of the fence has ever claimed that sex work is all fun and games. I’ve heard that accusation a million times and yet I’ve never seen one example of an actual sex worker, or sex worker advocate, say such a thing anywhere. If any of us believed that were the case, we’d hardly feel a need to concern ourselves with things like STI testing and prostitution decriminalization. We’d all be too busy partying, wouldn’t we?

Until I see one non-sex-work-affiliated feminist lift a finger to help an actual sex worker who hasn’t repented and taken the pledge and offered herself up as a propaganda front for anti-sex-work hucksters, I’ll continue to believe that, in this case, the political is personal.

Do you see Lubben’s linked here? No? well then maybe you have the wrong blog….
Look, there is much criticism of the industry here. It is much more of a “Hate the game, not the player” type of mentality around here.  You are both building up a straw feminist here and mixing other up this blog with other blogs and thinking they are all one and the same.  I think we all support your work, but we have every right to call bs when a sex worker calls her work “empowering” - and we all know why.

If you hate the game and you call BS anytime any sex worker - and you make no distinction at all between those who work the streets and those who run their own corporations - says something positive about what she does, perhaps you’re the one on the wrong blog. Or perhaps this is really the right blog but you’d rather deny the resemblance, just as those who hold similar views like to deny their resemblance to Lubben.

And that’s all the more likely to be the case if you presume that “we” all know why your claim, which I’m quite certain derives from no direct experience with sex workers of any kind, is clearly factual.

I don’t know what “we” you’re talking about, but it doesn’t include me or any of the sex workers of all types I encounter every single day.

But gee, thanks a bunch for your support. How about sending some money to AIM instead of taking your forty whacks at me here?

It would better serve the image of liberal feminism to actually do something constructive for sex workers rather than trashing how they make their living and what they say about it and calling that “offering a critique.”

Whose interests are served by criticism I read on this thread? Certainly not those of sex workers, who benefit from neither the pity nor the contempt I see here. So far, it’s just the usual othering by the privileged, regardless of what flag they fly.

Oh, and if you really do support our work, here’s where you can make your contribution:

http://www.aim-med.org/

We really are a non-profit and we really do save sex workers’ lives.