LAst go around on this, I won't say thsi again. Women have traded sex for things of material value probably since the first cave man brought the first gave girl a deer haunch, hoping they'd screw. Commercial prostitution, where professional or semi-pro, or even occasional amatewur sex workers perform sexual acts for money as a way of making their living or enhancing their income, is not a discrete special kind of activity that is distinct from this pattern. It is just a commercialized (not even a capitalist version of it.
In fact it very hard to describe what it is that makes this (in many states illegal) activity different from the legal -- nonprostition? -- cases of women who have sex with one or more men who pay for their apartments, buy them food, maybe support them while they pursue careers that they could not otherwise do. Is it that they is no other bond vbut the cold cash nexus? Well, these womem, whatever you call them, might not have sex with those men without the financial support. Does that make them whores? I knwo some would say so, but what about women who stay with men they wouldn't all thesings beings equal have sex with because they are "good providers," in marital relationships?
maybe your idea is that in the the feminist utopia none of these things would exist -- all women had enough security that they could have sex onlky with men who attracted them physically or em,otionally and independently of any consideration -- the legal term for something being oiffered as a thing of value.
Perhaps, and probably that would be a good things, though I will, in my contrarian way put in an objection in a minute. But in taht case the objection is not really to prostitution per se -- it is an objection to the idea that sex should ever be marketed ina ny sense, that it should ever be engaged in for reason other than lust or love.
That is not a crazy idea, but is is not a specific objection to prostitution, although it would have the effect of ruling out (I don't mean legally) prostitution narrowly understood.
Now the objection. (1) There are men who, for whatever reason, are so relatively unattractive to women that they not be the object of love or lust. They might not be ugly or vicious, they might just be terminally shy. Or (like a few people I know who have led sexless lives) terminally strange. Many of these men might not be able to ever have sex with they had to depend on their own charms. (2) Others, perhaps less, uh- challenged, might enjoy the charms of anonymous, no-strings sex without the costs of seduction. (3) A third class might have unusual tastes, perhaps they might light to be tied up and whipped, and their normal sex partner would be unwilling to do this for them, or they'd been so embarassed to ask. Or perhaps they'd like to try homosexual sex, so an opposite sex-partner couldn't help.
You might say, well, too bad for them, but this does suggest that if there are people who would sell sex for money, either to those men (or many a few stray women) unable to obtain it on their own, or unwilling for play the courting game, or who have deviant tastes, that there si a positive social role in having some sort of commercial sex arrangements.
It should be obvious, and to make it obvious I will say it, that I do want to get rid of weomen's subordination to men, their economic dependence to men, and their oppression by men. I am not 100% positive that this would eliminate the sort of commercial sexual arrangements I have been discussing, or that it would be a good thing if it did. I am still interestind in find out about the persistence, if it is there of prostitition in Sweden, the country taht most closely approximates a fewminist ideal as far as I know.
So in sum:
(1) What counts as prostitution is harder to say than you might think, because there are lots of sex-for-consideration agreeements thata lot of people do not think of as prostitution;
(2) An objection to sex-for-consideration is not in itself an objection to prostitution but rather a limitation on acceptable reasons for exganging in sexual activity (say restricting these to love or lust);
(3) Such a limitation could be harmful to several groups of men(mainly) for women for one reason or other sexfor considation is beneficial. That might be a reason to think that elimination of sex for consideartion might not be wholly positive, or even nety positive, as long as women were not coerced economically or psychologically into providing sex for consideration.
jks
--- joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > Your choice of words here suggests that you're
> viewing the prostitute
> > as the prototype for all workers, not seeing the
> prostitute as an
> > instance of the whole class of exploited workers.
>
> I guess because I don't see prostitution as work
> that must be done. In
> any society, you have to build a bridge, teach
> skills, cure disease, dig
> graves, etc. Right now, the people who are doing
> these activities may
> not want to do them or may not want to do them in
> order to make some
> capitalist richer, but would still acknowledge that
> the work needs to be
> done. But prostitution is by definition sex for
> money, and I don't see
> that it's necessary to sell sex no matter what.
>
> Joanna
>
>
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