Home

SWOP Press

Calendar

Safety Resources

Other Resources

End Demand for Sex Trafficking Act

CA Trafficking Victims Protection Act

Veronica Monet

Lady Aster

Averen Ipsen

SWOP Chapters - Start your own!

Myths and Stereotypes

About SWOP

Comments or information about
the Web site, e-mail the SWOP-USA Webmaster

August 31, 2006

Next Year in Venice!

A favourite web page of mine:

The Realm of Venus: Ladies Clothing and Accesories in 16th Century Venice

"Welcome to the Realm of Venus, a site about the clothing and accessories of the women of sixteenth century Venice - courtesans and courtly noble ladies. Whether you are a costumer in SCA, theatre, film, or Renaissance Fairs, or if you are simply a lover of art or historical fashion, I hope you'll find inspiration on these pages."

I've been immensely inspired myself by the figure of the Renaissance Venetian courtesan, and it's something of an ideal for my own practice to aspire to. Starchild and I visited the Venetian casino/hotel/mall in Vegas after the Desiree Alliance conference, and I fell into a very longing and humble sort of love with the sparkling versions of courtesan display that some of the female performers wore (why do nonsexual actresses get to dress up as courtesans but not actual sex workers?). I'm very jealous of anyone who's actually visited Venice. I see cities like Venice, Kyoto, Shanghai, as our holy sites, worthy of pilgrimages... and the most beautiful experience of my life was completed in Venice Beach, California. Some day I wish to visit the true Serene Republic.

If a few sex workers took to walking openly in the garb of traditional Venetian, or Greek, or Chinese, or Japanese courtesans, with the grace and dance and style and the mind to match, it could change the world.

And I'd simply kill to be able to walk in that sort of beauty and be recognised for it. And I want a society where the public image of sex worker is not the strung-out crack whore, with tattered fishnets covering a bruised ass-crack... nor a cold-smiled material girl of power and privilege, who stands proudly in her great achievement of possesing white skin and blonde hair... but a woman or man of intelligence, colour, passion, elan vital, open sexuality, and spiritual power. The question is whether we can rebuild the institutions to make that again possible.

June 07, 2006

As a longtime fantasy/cyberpunk role-player and gaming enthusiast, this disgusts me:

http://www.white-wolf.com/pimp/index.php

From their site:

"Now you can experience the dizzying highs and soul-bending lows of exploiting women, pushing drugs and dodging undercover cops. Will you become a Mack Daddy, leasing out high-priced call girls to discriminating clientele, or a lowly fishmonger making a sticky bankroll off the diseased crackwhores you’ve gotten hooked? Or will they find your unconscious body pistolwhipped into submission, lying in a storm drain?

There’s only one way to fulfill your destiny. Play Pimp: The Backhanding!

Pimp: The Backhanding is a set of 100 cards. Each player takes a role using their Pimp cards to mack on the Ho cards set out in the middle of the board."

The worst part is their disclaimer:

"Arthaus Games does not condone or support the illegal sex trade industry. Pimp is a fictional game about the humorous stereotypes created by television and film and is in no way representational of the true horrors of the sex trade. If you would like more information on organizations focused on Women’s Rights and support groups, please visit : http://www.amnestyusa.org/women/ or any of the many organizations providing help for women around the world."

Marketing a misogynistic a game based on crude stereotypes of the sex industry is bad enough; ‘defending’ such bigotry by bowing down to the altar of a patriarchal moralism which currently persecutes American sex workers is a second and worse slap in the face. This is to disclaim an insult by adding injury.

What a shame. White Wolf puts out the very well done Vampire: the Masquerade and other RPGs. But they just lost *my* business.

More commentary on the feminist blog Shrub.com by Andrea Rubenstein [they seem sex worker friendly]

The Complexities of Sex Trafficking

April 24, 2006

Mupetblast recently inquired on this site about my views on sex trafficking. So, here's my sharing of thoughts.

* * *

Human trafficking is real, but the situation is grossly distorted and consciously misrepresented by the establishment. The U.S. government, for instance, defines *any* movement of persons across borders in the sex industry as 'trafficking'. Congress recently passed, and the president signed, an End Demand For Sex Trafficking Act whose powers are sweeping enough to make virtually anything attached to sex work, including prostitution itself, a federal felony. So the first thing I would say is that 'human trafficking', in politics, is often a code word or an excuse covering up a desire to persecute sex work and sex workers.

I suspect the real situation is very complicated. I've never met anyone who described themselves as trafficked into sex work, tho' I have met many people who became sex workers because they felt they had little or no other choice in life–tho’ the same is true of many people who become wage-workers or housewives. I've read accounts of people who were trafficked and suffered all of the abuses described in the press, and certainly believe them. I have also read an accounts of women furiously angry at hearing their situation labeled as 'trafficked'. I've read accounts of women in Asian-American massage parlours who could probably be described as trafficked, but who usually prefer the situation they are in now to the one they would be if they hadn't emigrated. I would ask why, if the state is such a liberator, it has to quietly and coercively deport people whose situation in America it describes as kidnapped.

In Thailand, coercive sex work is certainly a problem, but the typical case involves parents selling their children into prostitution to support them, and nobody is interested in touching the real issues because it would involve challenging patriarchal and parental power. Instead, the U.S. government has used the issue to pressure the Thai government into becoming less and less friendly to all prostitutes, some of whom speak quite positively about the conditions of their work (sex work is often the best paying position around). I've been to Thailand, and sex tourism is certainly an immense industry there; prostitution involving both Thai women and economic migrants from around the world in an unbelievable part of the economy. But I saw no sign whatsoever that prostitution is on the whole any more oppressive than anything else in this state capitalist world. If I had to choose between working at WalMart in America or working as a bar girl in Thailand, I would choose the latter.

The same thing is true in other areas of the world–real trafficking is made possible by widespread patriarchy and poverty, and not at all limited to the sex industry (many women trafficked into the U.S. end up exploited as domestic and agricultural workers). But the state doesn't have any interest in fighting the real problems and arguably can't. Any cracking down on coercive trafficking done by the establishment has zero interest in actually liberating women and a great deal of interest in persecuting anything threatening patriarchy, Christianity, and monogamy. Think about it—how could coercive trafficking or pimping exist if women weren't cut off from the protection of political authorities and isolated from society? This is the same issue as domestic and child abuse—both very real and horrible problems—the hand-wringing is hypocritical, since it is the airtight dominance of social power that causes the problem in the first place.

The best way to liberate woman who don't want to be in sex work is, in my opinion, to let sex work out in the sunlight. All sorts of horrible abuses happen in the sex industry because sex workers seldom legally or socially are first class citizens of their countries (and no women are, really). 'Trafficking' only exists where persecution and marginalisation—via the sex laws or the threat of deportation or migrants—drives people underground. It's like the drug trade—there is nothing mysterious and special about drugs that created vicious drug lords or gang warfare—it's simply that violence, coercion, and corruption are inevitable whenever an activity is driven out of the safety of public society and its civil protections. The best protection for sex workers is *openness*. Ultimately, I don't know what can be done except to give the state's attitude towards sex work a firm tolchock to the head. But if you're interested, what you can do personally is: open political and social space for sex work. Make it clear sex workers are just people and that they can come to you with their problems. Be aware that there are sex workers in your community (and yes, there are) and ask how isolated and vulnerable they must be given that most people blithely live their lives not knowing they exist. *That* is what causes oppression. Wives can be beaten by husbands because both husband and wife know that no one will care or come to her aid if she cries, and because as a woman with little control over her resources she has nowhere else to go. Fight poverty, persecution, marginalisation, and patriarchy—that will end coercive sex trafficking.

* * *

I would add, as a necessary and final note, that exploitation and trafficking should not be the first image to come to us when we think of prostitution. The history of the sex industry is immensely complicated, and sex work as it actually exists contains elements of cruelty, necessity, and joy. It is entwined with a long history of patriarchy’s reduction of women to sex objects and an equally long history of women using the contradictions of the system as a means to their own liberty, leisure, and independence. But we think of other human activities first by the ideals they aspire to achieve, and sex work is simply the cultivation of the erotic aspect of our existence. It is something we should admire and respect—as sexuality is like poetry and philosophy one of the few things in life truly valuable for its own sake, and every sex worker cultivates and incarnates those values to allow us in desire this experience. That sex work deserves celebration and respect as a perennial calling should not be obscured by the industry’s corrupted and colonised state. Many excellent things in this world have seen millennia of batterings and burnings and yet survived.

In the last analysis, what matters to me is the intrinsic potential beauty of this life. I think if we are to restore sex work to its proper place in liberty we are going to have to face and critique the structures of patriarchy and exploitation that infest it. But I at least want to never lose sight of what the “world’s oldest profession” might be and ought to be.

April 14,2006

Well, that’s what our society is saying, isn’t it?

Some societies burn books for fear of the power of ideas. Other societies burn human beings in a terrified quest to maintain their psychic security. Yet others burn crosses and churches to steal from an oppressed people its voice. Our society fears desire embodied as woman.We bury the living bodies of women in prisons, as sacrifical offerings to appease our monomaniacal morality.

We are still burning.

March 6, 2006

Freeman, libertarian critter has recently said some very nice things about this woman of letters.

The following is a note I wrote to clarify language on 'legalisation' as used in connexion with sex worker rights issues.

* * *

Thank you kindly, freeman. The only correction I would make is that the term for the proper libertarian policy on sex work is *decriminalisation*. Legalisation, in the context of this discourse, specifically means a 'moderate' regulatory regime where sex work is not criminalised but is placed under the control and supervision of the state. In other words- a mixed economy combining elements of freedom and controls- which in practice means an ugly sexual corporatism or crony capitalism.

Legalisation, such as exists today in some counties in Nevada, tends to harshly continue persecution of independent sex workers while tilting the market in favour of connected businesses which can get a license, reproducing the pimping, organised-crime set-up that usually manifests under a pragmatic prohibition regime. The result is to tip power in the direction of owners, usually men- and to do terrible things for the independence, dignity, and living conditions of prositutues and other sex industry professionals. This is an immense problem in the sex industry- and absolute liberty is the only shield powerful enough to defend against a patriarchal society which constantly tries to take sexual power out of the hands of independent women. This is the same old story- from exploitive online review boards to San Francisco's strip clubs to the Nevada brothels. Women (and men) should control their own bodies, without exception- and this no less when the women in question are professionals.

Libertarians should favour the complete separation of sex work and state. This is what the Sex Workers Outreach Project and most sex workers rights organisations support, and it is especially the view which should be supported by the emerging socially conscious left-libertarianism. I'm well aware your spirit is entirely in the right place; I merely correct because your words, as these things are used, may be taken to support a policy unworthy of your ideals.

regards,

Lady Aster Francesca
{)(*)(}

In search of sex-worker idealism… and a critical pro-sex feminism

When I recently posted my last article to my online salon, a women in attendance replied:

“…[B]ut Prof. Hoppe does not understand traditional family values or normal sexuality. Prostitution is part of an understanding about human nature. Men will always have needs that wives can't (after childbirth or illness) or won't (certain fetishes should be left to pros.) or couldn't (even "straight" men might want a young man from time to time) tend to.

“Prostitution is normal. Trying to rid society of it is goofy idealism that should be left to communism.”

These words touched off some thoughts in me, which I’ll share here (in a slightly brushed form):

I see my work as an expression of my own spirit, or perhaps a celebration of a kind of life I adore. As Ayn Rand expressed things in The Fountainhead, "I do not build in order to have clients; I have clients in order to build". The notion that the final cause of sex work is the satisfaction of men makes me uncomfortable. I don't mind giving men (or women) pleasure in the course of my work, and to the degree I want to craft a beautiful experience, I very much desire to do so. But my sights aren't essentially on what others want, and I view the psychologies of most actually existing men- hardened in insecurity, mediocrity, and patriarchy, to be an obstacle to what I love about this Life. Certainly, the last thing I want is to be of service to the patriarchal order which subordinates individual dreams to assigned social heirarchies. I also think sex work is of value to men *and* women, and in a rational society the provision of sexual pleasure would not be wire-meshed into the binary gender system. To be quite honest, if I thought it were true- as many radical feminists also claim- that sex work is just a supporting prop of the current order- and could be nothing else- I do not think I could live this Life any more.

This is something I've been thinking about much recently- as much as I've vocally defended pro-sex feminism, I've started to feel like there are definite problems with the easy pro-sex stance. Most pro-sex feminists advocate and celebrate pluralist, liberated, antisexist, and/or woman-centered views of sexuality, which I very much applaud. But too many of them are also among the relatively privileged in this industry; having succeeded on the sexual auction block or otherwise 'made it' by shrewd mastery of the existing rules. As a result, they keep quiet when criticising the cruelties of the current order even while they exemplify themselves the kind of sexuality we should hope for in the future. I can very much understand this on a personal and professional level (every social advance is always begun by the privileged, who have the leisure and social armor to speak up safely), but as a result they make plausable the lies of the Dworkinites that we 'let the pimps speak for us', since most pro-sex feminists act as if the pimps are benign or don't exist. And there exists also a faction of sex workers who are profiteering off of an unjust system and are some of the fiercest guardians of that system as it is (you may recall my SWOP blog on sexual 'crony capitalism' a month or so ago, where I mentioned some sex workers who shortsightedly support persecutory prositution laws).

I didn't get into the Life to serve the patriarch. I don't want to be Malinche, leading the armies of the conqueror to the doorstep of her own people- even if the love she carries is real. And I can't admire the Empress Theodora, using her body to climb over piles of slaves to become the queen of a male supremacist empire- even if the Empress did turn around and use her position to improve conditions for Byzantine women. I think being true to thine own self is the most important thing in the world, and for that reason I cannot love any conception of the Life embedded in a system which throttles human potential and dictates a script to human individuals.

Personally, I think a radical pro-sex position needs to be coupled with a critique of the *precise forms* which sexuality and the sex industry takes under patriarchy. And this certainly includes prostitution's existence as a safety valve (or, as Aquinas put it, a 'sewer') for marriage. I want to see a society without the sexual retrictions of monogamy, and I'm not thrilled about patching a bad system by institutionalised cheating (and what about wives, whose sexuality is even less recognised within marriage? why should only husbands get to cheat?). I want to see a society in which everyone is free to pursue sexual happiness and where relationships aren't tainted by patterns of authority. I also want to see sex work as an honest, respectful exchange between equals, unindexed to those social roles. I'm not interested in working for the system. I'm not interesting in being a good social functionary- in a university, in a bureacracy, or in a bedroom.

I am too high born to be propertied,
To be a second at control,
Or useful serving-man and instrument
To any sovereign state throughout the world

- from "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience", Henry David Thoreau

I don't see prostitution as essentially a compromise- with human nature, with patriarchy, or with reality. I think it's something worthwhile in itself, which means an expression of the individuality and sexuality of the prostitute. Yes, I'm an idealist! And proud of it! I think life is too short (and death too long) to be anything else.

To conclude, she wrote back:

“Oh no, what you said makes a great deal of sense. I was just noting that Hoppe's so called traditional world has never existed and wouldn't be very desirable to anyone other than Castro. When I was a kid and someone would wax sentimental about Cuba, my father would roll his eyes whisper, "Yeah, great country, if your idea of freedom is locking up homos and hookers."

Hoppe is an amusing character but he is completely ahistorical if he imagines prostitution and homosexuality were invented during the Carter Administration.”

Only I get to call me a whore, round II

March 6, 2006

[Crossposted at Lady Aster’s letters.]

I continue with more commentary following my 'only I get to call me a whore' column. Partially, this is in response to a John Sabotta who commented on the previous blog, but most of the following is my response to a certain Stefan, who penned the following pearls of wisdom:

"It's interesting if that's the case, since in my view sex-work is far from the best kind of job to hold. If it was decriminalized it would pay even less than it does now. I realize that some values are subjective, but to me it's hard to believe that there are not better things one could do for oneself than essentially "renting" ones body for pleasure.

"I would also guess that some of the conservative opposition stems from the fact that the existence of sex-workers threatens the traditional family to some extent. Since I think families are a good thing, this makes me a little suspicious of encouraging women to go into sex-work. However, if Hoppe is right, then the question is moot since an ancap society will reinforce the traditional family and enforce social norms against "nature-worship and kin-centered lifestyles", which I think you could make the argument includes some kinds of sex-work."

Stefan is a servitor of one Hans Hermann Hoppe, a professor at the University of Nevada who believes that monarchy is superior to democracy on the grounds that a monarch will effectively manage a government, while a voting populace can be trusted only to loot their productive betters from the public treasury. He's also managed to have a few pretty little scandals, involving such things as mixing anti-homosexual smears in with his classroom lectures and giving an interview to a German magazine noted for its (ahem) right-wing nationalist proclivities. This would be nasty enough, but Hoppe (hereafter "H.H."), I am ashamed to say, presents his theories as a consequence of libertarian anarchism; a sort of getting punch-drunk on the right to property. As an anarcha-feminist answerable to the spirit of Liberty, I can only say: "Not In My Name!".

Much of what follows is an expression of my opinion of H.H.'s theories. I guess I could have saved myself some time and just said "Fuck You", but I usually use that word in more pleasant settings. And I wouldn't use it anywhere near H.H..

You can go read about him at his website, and read an excellent take-down of the creep by a saner libertarian, Tom Palmer of the Cato Institute here.

* * * * * *******************************************************************

John -

Replying to the comment you left on my blog, I do appreciate your clarifications, and a positive view of our business! Please understand I wasn't writing in personal anger so much as to point out the implications of harmlessly meant language for stigmatized groups. Please remember, we live in a culture in which the 'whore' is considered, not an archetype of sexual flowering, but a demonic projection of ultimate opportunistic evil. My intention wasn't to personally take you to task but to challenge our public discourse about sex work.

Now, on Stefan -

You're right, I shouldn't (and won't) confuse you with Stefan.

Oh dear, dear, dear. I must actually disagree that he is an idiot, believe it or not. But more on that later; I want to argue with him.

Stefan -

First of all,

I don't think of my work as 'renting my body for pleasure', any more than a shopkeeper thinks of her/himself as renting the hands that close the cash register drawer for customer satisfaction. Human cooperation inevitably involves one person using their body (we are embodied creatures, after all), to satisfy or please somebody else, and in market transactions this involves being paid for it. In one sense, all wage labor involves this sort of thing, and to no shame - whether that labor is babysitting or teaching or doctoring or bagging groceries. In another sense, sex work is precisely not 'renting', because sex work is (potentially) a *liberal* activity, meaning it is something enjoyed for one's own sake, developing an aspect of human flourishing (namely, the erotic) - it is not alienated labor done for another's benefit as is too much work under our current system. Sex work both appeals to and in practice is something which is valuable in itself. If one appreciates life on Earth, I can hardly think of something better to do with my time, and the few things that seem to me equally excellent as sex (such as friendship, spirituality, or the life of the mind) are quite compatible with the spirit of eroticism. Speaking somewhat above myself, quite.

Secondly,

Who the Abyss are you to tell me what a better job is? I gather you've never had any experience in the business (if so, *do* tell), and you don't act like you've made any attempt to understand us with empathy, so you really don't know what you're talking about, do you? As for 'better', my notion of the good is that which promotes my happiness, which is found in the good life and the flourishing of human possibilities. If you reject this standard, please lay your cards on the table as to what you think human beings ought to do. Please either tell me I shouldn't pursue my own happiness or tell me the erotic isn't a dimension of human flourishing. If it's the latter, then you're either ignorant or disingenuous, because the celebration of eroticism has been characteristic of humanistic cultures for millennia. If it's the former, then tell your deontologies for me, 'all debts are off this year'; I'm not interested in your commandments. Either way, unless you can give me an argument which shows I would enjoy life more if I followed some other path, I'm just going to continue doing my work and enjoying myself. Thank you.

Thirdly,

It is true that state prohibition of sex work inflates prices. Of course, it also makes our work more dangerous, prevents us from honestly advertising, makes it difficult for us to communicate the best we have to offer, and generally degrades the quality of our lives. How about you let us worry about it? I know in Thailand, where prostitution is only very technically illegal and a hugely visible industry, sex work is still a relatively well paying job. I could argue a lot of things here, but perhaps I might start by suggesting perhaps some of us value liberty more than scrambling to accumulate property? I want an independent life, not profiteering off some sexual crony capitalism.

Fourthly,

"I would also guess that some of the conservative opposition stems from the fact that the existence of sex-workers threatens the traditional family to some extent. Since I think families are a good thing, this makes me a little suspicious of encouraging women to go into sex-work."

Oh, you're quite right - this is the primary reason conservatives hate sex work, and the same reason your master Hoppe is against the *existence* of plenty of people, including sex workers (does having trouble with the *existence* of people sound familiar to any of our gentle readers?). Of course, Hoppe also favors an interpretation of anarcho-capitalism which grants 'extraterritoriality' to families in which a paterfamilias has absolute power over a household sacred against interference from outsiders (wouldn't one nifty consequence of this be that husbands could rape their wives without recourse), and hopes that market discipline will force everyone with a different social model to be ground out or perish. Hoppe is one of the most socially intolerant persons I have ever read and his presence among libertarians should be an embarrassment to the true heirs of John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty".

In my eyes H.H. is a travesty of libertarianism, his struggle a replacement of political coercion with social authoritarianism which opposes statism only because statism doesn't promote illiberalism enough. If his views were true, they would validate statist liberal claims that lassiez faire promotes injustice and evil - but I hesitate to say this as forcing a choice between his way and socialism is part of Hoppe's strategy.

That said, I don't think his views are true. In my mind Hoppe is nothing more than a European reactionary of the de Maistre variety with a flair for the terminology of Austrian economics. What he wants is clearly a restoration of the feudal order and the supremacy of the patriarch. Hoppe is a semi-monarchist who exalts throne and altar, hopes the market will eliminate social dissidents from society, and is known to associate pretty freely with types who'd also like to see people like me eliminated from society but who aren't so delicate about portraying the market as their means. I'm sorry, but some of us have standards on whom we get in bed with. You grok, mein herr?

I had a dream of an Enlightenment peace treaty, where public neutrality towards conceptions of the good could provide a space where different kinds of life could live in peace. Now I don't think that's quite adequate - as a left-libertarian I think dismantling structures of power in civil society (like racism and sexism) is just as necessary as dismantling state structures of coercion if we're all to have a real chance to follow our own muses. But I still haven't quite given up on that dream, and I still have some hope it might be applied, as it ought to be, to sex workers, to gays and lesbians, and to those God-damned nature-worshippers with nonlinear senses of kinship (dangerous blighters, I'm sure).

And that's not just a policy, that's a principle. I'm a market anarchist of the Tucker variety myself, but political technicalities are less important to me than the social reality of an open society. I've no love for those, like Hoppe, who want to eliminate the government in the hopes of an end-run around the separation of church and state. Maybe that's because in the social system Hoppe really wants, I and most of the people I love would die. You want to drive away support for liberty? Why not join Hoppe and tell social nonconformists that liberty will mean practical exclusion and ostracism? And if that doesn't make you pause, the only reason is because you want to see us driven out of town more than you really want to promote liberty. And that's, well, evil.

Why don't you at least try letting us live in peace? Of course, if you actively believe that your family values can't coexist with the existence of sex work, then what you are fearing is that the presence of out-of-the-closet, sex positive women will lure people away from family values. Although I haven't and wouldn't 'encourage[] women to get into sex work' (I think it is a decision that people must come to exclusively in one's own solitude), you sound like you fear someone doing so might be persuasive. Why? You don't think you can attract people to your society if they have several viable options? Are saying your social order depends on, if not force, *intolerance* and *ignorance*. Well, if that's what you want, then you are calling for a closed society- and I don't care if you hope to enforce it by guns, stakes, shunning, or starvation. You are also saying it's open social war between us and you. It which case, don't be surprised if we go around carrying swords on our backs. If your kind of family does have to destroy us to survive, then we don't have much choice than to be in a state of hot or cold war against the patriarchal family. This kind of thing's been going on for quite awhile, and I assure you we didn't start the fire.

Of course, that kind of morality has to make a constant war on human nature, evidenced by the fact that the moralistic kind of family values never really works (or there wouldn't be anyone to employ us, would there)? Of course, patriarchs take this to show we have to tighten even harder on the social screws, until people finally learn to sit down, shut up, and do everything 'right'. We take it to show there's something wrong with the whole authoritarian conception of the good, that beauty comes when we can enjoy ourselves, express ourselves, and relax, and that the good comes naturally to us and develops uniquely in each individual. To my mind, the essence of authoritarianism is the fear that all Hell will break loose the moment one fails to keep control. That surely defines Hoppe, even if he wants control to be accomplished by the invisible fist he makes out of the market. Some of us think this is both a vicious end and an insult to the market, whose hand we find a bit gentler.

No, I really don't like H.H. Hoppe. Oh yes, Herr Doktor Time Preference; the man who thinks a good society is one in which anyone who enjoys life in the present is put to the economic wall! Personally, I doubt that is even good economics- I think we're more able to deal with the vicissitudes of Fortune is we aren't made rigid by terrified fear of life's consequences, which is the real effect of these Protestant ethics. It's a horrible way of living, even without the sundry bigotry that Hoppe attaches to the concept. Personally, I'm not willing to sacrifice the beauty of life to gain control of myself and troublesome others. If you are, do it to yourself.

I think human history shows that it's periods of freedom, or openness, of 'decadence' that give rise to the sites of intellectual and artistic creativity (e.g., resonances of the names Babylon, Athens, Corinth, Alexandria, Venice, Paris, Kyoto, Shanghai, New York, San Francisco), whereas Spartan ages which know and do their duty are aesthetically and spiritually barren. That's really the basic issue here, with you and Hoppe - is civilization the cultivation of human talents in liberty, thus a fulfillment of human possibility, or it is the discipline which breaks recalcitrant human matter into doing the right? I say the former.

The question in this house is: what does Promethean individualism say? Allow me a moment of unguarded hope that libertarianism is a humanism!

Fifthly and lastly,

"However, if Hoppe is right, then the question is moot since an ancap society will reinforce the traditional family and enforce social norms against "nature-worship and kin-centered lifestyles", which I think you could make the argument includes some kinds of sex-work." What a *fascinating* choice of H.H. quotes, meus amicus! Y'know, for someone who claims to characterize sex-work as soulless body-renting, 'tis interesting that you also make the counterintuitive (to Americans, at least) association of sex-work with 'nature worship' and 'kin-oriented lifestyles'. Now, where'd you get the idea sex work had something to do with nature worship? You're talking about religion, while associating religion you don't like with a practice you believe embodies a lack of spirit. My father, an Episcopalian, would have just called this 'worshipping a false god'.

That's interesting - especially because you just coincidentally happen to be right, sex work does have a very long history of association with something very close to 'nature worship', this does have something to do with 'kin-centered lifestyles' (meaning, a nonpatriarchal family system, which is relevant because the patriarchal marginalisation of prostitution as a respected social practice has a lot to do with the enforcement of the social norms that prop up a patri-linearity which is at the heart of H.H.'s vision of social order). You are correct: many sex workers, myself included, practice what could be called either a special case of nature worship or a closely related religion of a similar pattern. The relationship's even closer, if you think of 'nature' in a pre-modern or Hellenic sense of 'cosmos', including humanity as part of a natural universe (the spiritualization of sex work is a triumph of humanism). Well, I'm flattered if you're paying attention! People do tend to forget these sorts of things nowadays.

I'll leave off the theology, but I think it's clear your problem with sex work has a lot to do with religion- not that it's exactly news that the stigmatization of sex and sex work in Western society is a matter of religious attitude problems at root. It's *religious intolerance* that's clearly here at least partially driving your problem with us persons of the professional persuasion. Congratulations, you're a bigot! Let's repeal the Enlightenment and restart the wars of religion! Or more precisely here, let's start up the Holy Inquisition- this time by the market, by making sure everyone is ostracized who doesn't belong to the traditional morality church. Let's make employment contracts and housing covenants come built-in with sumptuary laws.

Why don't you stand and say, clearly, like your master, that 'nature worshipping and kin centered lifestyles' are a danger to society and public order, who include some kinds of sex workers- and such people need to be excluded from society? Because there is rather a name and a history to all this. Don't you agree?

Methinks the gentleman philosophizes with a hammer.

Lady Aster Francesca

Only I get to call me a whore

Feb 26, 2006

I left a note on the libertarian site No Treason in response to the following:

"...Most prostitutes would consider the term "whore" to be rather insulting - that's why I applied it to Jill Edwards [a University of Washington student senator who voted against a proposal to build a statue to a decorated marine, previously described as a “worthless little whore”], who lacks even a tenth of the integrity possessed by any random sex worker patrolling Aurora. (A charming scenic street, conveniently provided with it's own suicide bridge.)"

'Tis unfortunate that it is necessary to even argue this sort of thing.
* * * * *

John-

I'm not certain about 'most prostitutes', but this sex worker personally feels uncomfortable with the term 'whore' when used to casually associate prostitution with ill-defined evil, or specifically with a lack of integrity. Using the term 'nigger' as a derogatory reference to a non-black person still draws power from racist views about the world and reinforces them. The use of the term 'whore' does the same, if and when the word is used as a disparaging reference. (I've no objection to the term being used in a reclaiming sense of cultural pride, but one should be as careful as when similarly using the term 'dyke' to refer to a lesbian. Generally, it's a bad idea unless you're another whore or best friends with one.)

I'm personally proud of my Life- and I believe sex work an honourable means of earning one's keep as well as a space for the cultivation of human eroticism. In the context of an anti-sexual culture which stigmatises sex work, the language of patriolatrous contempt only reinforces our marginalisation. Which is a shame- we're a pretty pro-liberty and individualistic bunch; you'd like us! (it helps sometimes that we're kind of cute) Libertarians and sex workers are natural allies and share many of the same traditional enemies, namely the religious right, the guillotinish wing of feminism, and the state-psychiatric establishment. But friendship requires a language which manifests a mutual recognition of spiritual equality.

ni victimes!
ni coupables!

Lady Aster
Sex Workers Outreach Project
www.swop-usa.org
San Francisco

P.S.

Incidentally, streetwalkers are a minority among sex workers, even in America where social and legal intolerance makes working in better venues far more difficult than it ought to be. People get into sex work for an incredibly complicated mix of good, bad, and neutral reasons (the most common case is a single mother who needs the time and money to care for a child), but the streetwalker is decidedly unrepresentative of sex workers as a whole (tho' of course deserving of the same human rights as anyone else). It's far more common for sex workers to work out of their home, go on calls, work at strip clubs, bars, or massage parlours, etc. But I feel I should point out that most people misjudge sex work based on the most visible, and usually most exploited and least attractive examples. The majority of sex workers in your town are simply women (and men) you may see every day, perhaps even know personally. And certainly, most of us have no need of a suicide bridge.

Reclaiming Porn from the Pimps

Feb 21, 2006

As a left-libertarian, I’ve been pleased to see a trend towards increasing recognition of patriarchal oppression emerge within the libertarian world. At the same time, I’ve been distressed to see an appreciation for the insights of feminism translate into an easy absorbtion of the Dworkinite views which I consider the dark side of the feminist movement. I very much hope antistatists and feminists can learn from each other; at the same time, I would hate to see libertarians start learning the worst habits of feminist culture at a time when the womens’ movement itself is thoroughly challenging them.

The following thoughts were touched off by a libertarian blog, in the context of a review of Pamela Paul’s Pornified - which I confess I haven’t read, nor do I claim to judge here.

* * * * *

If I may, I'd like to say a few words as someone who does work in the sex industry, specifically an escort living and working in San Francisco. Essentially, I think there is a great deal of ugliness and sexism in the culture of pornography and the larger sex industry. But I'd also like to be careful that what is being objected to doesn't end up becoming the erotic depiction of human sexuality per se, or any degree of explicitness in that regard. I applaud you for supporting free expression and opposing patriarchy, but I would like to voice a feminism which is strongly sexually liberatory, not in a shallow sense that ignores inequities in our sexual culture, but in a sense which draws on, reclaims, and celebrates a vocal sexuality whose origins and essence are not patriarchal.

I usually agree with radical feminist critiques of sexism within porn, which is extremely pervasive, but it does not logically follow that sexism is inherent to pornography. I personally find human sexuality beautiful, and would precisely like to see more unashamed portrayals of desire that partake of neither power relations nor the general cheap, sleazy, sniggering attitude of most pornography. But for this reason I'd precisely like to see better porn- better both politically and artistically. Some of this already exists to some degree, in the work of pro-sex feminist pornographers such as Candida Royalle and Annie Sprinkle. Here in the Bay Area there is a larger pro-sex feminist and sex worker activist subculture which produces a wide variety of erotic art which any logical definition must consider pornography.

Condemning porn as such annuls this reality and possibility, and only plays into the hands of mainstream pornographers who claim to represent the unchangeable reality of (men's) sexual feelings. This is something we should not be willing to surrender to them. It lets the pimps define the terms, and then goes after the pimps while accepting their status as the kings of sexuality. That is a war they will win. [The grey market status of pornography helps enforce this, as a pornographer who does not follow mindless (and sexist) set formulas is vulnerable to community standards lawsuits from any court in the country. Ugly conformity promises safety.]

Sexual desire is a power that is not going to go away, and I believe the nasty, dehumanising stuff that people call 'smut' is only the flipside of anti-sexual moralism. When sex is condemned as a vicious evil that men who fail to restrain their selfishness impose on asexual women, it is not surprising that the cultural representations of sexuality that do surface conform to the Satanic image mainstream moralism damns. The mainstream moralist and the bottom-feeding pornographer, seemingly enemies, concur precisely on the nature of sex- the only difference is that what one damns and drives to a grey market, the other profits by delivering. Both share a vested image in an ugly, demeaning view of sex, and each feeds off the power of the other. Dworkinite feminists who condemn porn as such only contribute to the problem, and effectively reproduce the patriarch's morality in order to save us from the pornographer. There is no way to break the cycle except to refuse the cultural conception of sex as something offensive, dirty and smutty.

I don't think sex is inherently like that, and I don't think an explicit theatre of sexual desire has to be like that. But condemning pornography as such attacks all sexual depiction alike, and so reinforces the very schema of values which sustains pornographic sexism. As I said, sexual desire or any of its byproducts is simply not going away- much like the demand for ecstatic experiences with drugs- and condemning all porn alike only gives a potentially benevolent market over to control of the worst elements. I fear greatly that Dworkin-style critiques of pornography as such only deepen sexual repression, which is particularly damaging to women insofar as patriarchy uniquely sexualises all women's bodies and our culture's judgement of sexuality and women are tightly linked. And such repression need not be enforced by law (tho' it often is)- anyone who sends a message that explicit sexuality is sexist immediately brands men who enjoy sexy pictures as pigs and predators (and the women involved as voiceless whores). This will not reduce interest in pornography, but it will encourage an ugly, sexist self-concept in men whom there might otherwise be nothing wrong with. It encourages the coding of sexual desire as repellent, exploitive, and male. It encourages men to think of themselves as the worst in the industry want them to. This is good for the sleazes, bad for women, and incidentally bad for men.

My experience is that most women are more sexual than people think and most men are less sexist in their desires than they know themselves- but that most people pick up their sexual ideas and images from an impoverished public sexual discourse. I think what we most need to do is open up this discourse by encouraging new forms of sexual expression, not condemning the entire concept of sexual representation. Yet this is what an politics that is against 'porn' as such effectively does. I say there is nothing wrong and much good with sexually exciting visual art. I say 'porn' is something valuable which patriarchy has done terribly wrong. To attack 'porn' is to dismiss everything, actual and possible, good and bad. Might there not be a better way?

Racism on SF Red Book

The Sex Industry’s Crony Capitalism