"It's Wrong to Pay for Sex"

"It's Wrong to Pay for Sex", or is it? This is the title of a debate scheduled in NYC on April 21  by Intelligence Squared. It is actually the second debate on this topic that they have held, the first one being in London, UK on November 11 2008. The motion was soundly defeated, 449: 203. While we don't know how the speakers were chosen, the gendering is of interest. In the UK, each team consisted of one male and two females. The US debate will feature three women for the motion and one woman and two men against the motion. Is this significant? Maybe. While paying for or selling sex is not the sole property of any gender, it is the frame into which the dominant discourse has been forced that is highly gendered. 

Given the track record of two of the speakers for the motion, Farley and Mackinnon, formidable prohibitionists (only Janice Raymond is missing from the line up), the debate is likely to be highly gendered, and will exploit the gender balance of the teams. It has been asked - are there no strong women to argue against the motion? The answer is naturally, of course there are. Theoretically the gender of the speakers should be irelevant, but in a debate that will likely be framed in a way to avoid any consideration of sexual exchange other than men purchasing sex from women, it will be interpreted as highly relevant.

The dominant discourse has succesfully reframed sexual exchange as one of patriachal oppression, sexual violence against women and sexual slavery, and co-opted feminism to position the eradication of exchange as pivotal to the achievement of equality. So naturally no woman would speak against this - right? Wrong. The prohibitionists have cleverly portrayed this as a central feminist struggle, conceptually marginalising the large number of feminists who think otherwise. A feminist analysis of this, taking into account our understanding of relational autonomy and consent, might point out that it is the very marginalising of women who sell sex, and the denial of their agency, voice and rights, that actually betrays the very roots of feminisms and undermines equality. Furthermore, the protectionist vocabulary of prohibitionism is far more patriarchal than that of dominant feminist thinking, as is that of perpetuating a binary image of women (good girl/bad girl, or more dramatically Madonna/Whore). Finally, feminisms are betrayed by the essentialist arguments that deny women their sexuality and sexual pleasure in the most reductionist of prohibitionary language - sex work as 'paid rape'.

Politically, prohibitionism has been marketed to fundamentalist party ideology in the moral panic of the resurgent White Slave Trade, and under the 2000-8 Republican Administation in the US, the State department became a major agent of the policy goals of groups like the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. Therefore it is refreshing to see some rethinking of this in the reforming fervour of the new Democratic Adminstration. The Institute for Policy Studies  has attacked what it sees as the fallacy of the trafficking arguments and called for an end to this crusade. It is unclear to what extent these arguments will find voice in the upcoming debate.

Let us look more carefully at the question - It's wrong to pay for sex. While one might argue that everyone pays for sex, in one way or another, in this case the pivotal word is 'wrong'. This implies a moral universalism. While some moral values are relatively universally held, few around sexuality are. The question of what might be considered 'wrong' or 'right' has and does vary temporally and geographically, and often reflects membership of a particular cultural group. Many things that have been at various times considered 'wrong' about the expression of our sexuality, and even criminalised, such as homosexuality or oral sex are now relatively mainstream. While many people may conclude in the affirmative and vote in support of the motion, the question does not and most probably will not stop there. The real question is to what extent does the fact that some groups within a society disapprove of an action justify the intervention of the state? Many feminist legal theorists such as Mary Childs would say that there are strong arguments for not doing so, despite the strongly held views of some groups that see the state and its laws as the gatekeeper of  national morality, and hence social order.     

If you can't attend, you can still vote, there is a poll where you can Vote Online, which is still open. If you care about these issues, go there and vote now. Interestingly, although on-line polls clearly have limitations, the vote on the motion as of going to press was 25:71%, with the remainder undecided. It wil be of interest to follow this poll, which may largely reflect how the different schools of thought on this question mobilise their followers. 

Bibliography

Mary Childs "Commercial Sex and Criminal Law", in  L.Bibbings and D. Nicolson, eds, Feminist Perspectives on Criminal Law .  (London: Cavendish, 2000)

Suzanne Jenkins "Expoitation: The role of law in regulating prostitution",  in SD Sclater et al., eds, Regulating Autonomy: Sex, Reproduction and Family . (Oxford: Hart, 2009)