Feminism

Another Bloody Feminist Campaign

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There’s another bloody feminist campaign to get behind – it can seem like there’s always another feminist petition to sign. The latest one is about Feminism being removed from the A level politics syllabus. The petition was started by June Eric-Udorie and quickly reached over 40,000 signatures. It is an important campaign, but as usual it attracted a fair share of ‘whataboutery’ comments from people who think there are more important things out there on which to spend one’s time. This led me to think about two things:

  1. The reasons why this particular campaign is important, and how it ties in with other feminist campaigns.
  2. The reasons why we need so many bloody feminist campaigns in the first place.

If the lack of Feminism on the A-level Politics curriculum was a stand-alone instance of women being erased, marginalised, misrepresented, demeaned, underestimated or otherwise ignored, then it wouldn’t be so much of a big deal, obviously. We could look elsewhere for inspiration, self-respect, pride, role models and a sense of our place in the world. But a quick look at the feminist campaigns and petitions which have been necessary over the past couple of years tells a story which is fairly constant in its message about a woman’s place. From the absence of women on banknotes and passports, and mothers’ names on marriage certificates, to the objectifying images on Page 3, in lads’ mags and on ‘beach body’ advertising billboards, to the lack of women composers on the A-level Music syllabus and the lack of older women on BBC TV, to the opening of a Jack the Ripper Museum where a women’s history museum was meant to be, and to the highly stereotyped representation of girls in children’s toys, books and clothes: all of these separate elements combine to make a very consistent whole.

It is difficult to get away from the dominant narrative. For children growing up surrounded by this culture the same message is found again and again, whether it is in school or in music videos, magazines,books, television or the internet. Women are there for their sexiness or not at all. At school there is a chance to redress the balance by making sure that women and their achievements are represented as much as possible, but this is not happening. Women in history for example are largely there for the same reasons they exist in contemporary culture: they are either titillating, married to powerful men or being murdered (sometimes all three). There are some notable exceptions, but often they are used as the exceptions that prove the rule. Powerful women in history, like those now, tend to exist as stand-alone figures, with little trickle-down effect on other women. Exceptional women remain just that: exceptional.

Jung coined the term ‘collective unconscious’ to describe how ideas and beliefs are passed down through the generations and amongst contemporaries, almost like a kind of osmosis. The resulting belief systems are ones we are hardly aware of, let alone able to challenge, because they go in so early and so deep and are continually reinforced. It is a form of indoctrination which means that our beliefs become ingrained and take on the veneer of truth. In the case of beliefs about women, it means that restricting and damaging stereotypes are seen as normal and natural, to the point where it can seem more ‘unnatural’ to challenge them. As far as I know the ‘female of the species’ doesn’t have to mean ‘modest, passive and eager to please’ in any other animal on earth. There is no reason at all why it should do in the case of humans.

The representation of women, whether it’s the ubiquity of sexualised or pornographic imagery, the way women are referred to in stereotypical, old-fashioned and insulting ways in the media, or the way that women are left out when it comes to the ‘important’ stuff (particularly BME women, older women and women with disabilities) paints a broad picture which is more than the sum of its parts. It’s all linked: we can’t teach either boys or girls that women are human too if we consistently leave out all the evidence of women’s diversity, brilliance and achievement at all stages of the educational process.

All of this stuff matters because, as a complete picture, it is so bloody relentless. Each of the problems the above-mentioned campaigns were set up to address serve to reinforce all the others. And it all makes more work for women. It’s worth remembering that women work largely for free on these projects, campaigns and petitions (along with all the other unpaid work that still falls to women). Whilst the default sex (male) gets on with life, women have to challenge nearly every new idea that crops up, because the default decisions don’t usually don’t take them into consideration. It can feel like fighting to stand still. When there is criticism of a new feminist campaign, particularly if its subject is one I personally find slightly boring, I am always grateful to the woman/women who find it interesting enough to pursue. Somebody’s got to do it.

Men don’t generally have to spend their time campaigning just because they are men, so they have more time to spend campaigning on other issues that are important to them, or on getting most of the top jobs, or on doing most of the crime. The few men’s rights groups that do campaign on men’s issues tend to concentrate on feminist-bashing and complaining about the advances women have made, in terms of the impact they feel it has on their own sense of entitlement. They are not fighting to establish a level playing field, as women have to do, but rather to protect the beneficial injustices that have existed for so long in their favour.

It would be surprising if a man were to start a campaign such as June Eric-Udorie has done, even though men obviously sometimes have girl children and presumably wish them well. Even men who otherwise fight for equality issues tend to leave sexual equality well alone, even when it affects children in areas such as education. Without the work that women are doing the collective unconscious will keep absorbing the same old ideas and prejudices: boys will have less of a chance to learn to respect girls as equal human beings and girls will have less of a chance to see themselves as deserving of respect. Some of these boys will grow up to be men who perpetuate current sexist attitudes, and some of these girls will grow up to be women who start campaigns against their ill-informed decisions. They will probably be as dismayed as I am about the complete lack of understanding shown by many men regarding the common experiences of women, and wonder why something wasn’t done earlier about educating them.

This ignorance, coupled with a lack of empathy or respect, is part of what feeds into a culture of violence against women. Many more feminist campaigns deal with the serious issues around rape, abuse and men’s fatal violence against women, and again many of these are run voluntarily by women who are also trying to earn a living and/or bring up a family. June is running her campaign whilst also studying for her A-levels. You can understand why many women do not or cannot get involved – we’ve all got busy lives to lead. So thanks to June for taking this on, and thanks to all the other women who give their time for free or for little reward in order to make the world a better place for other women. The true purpose of feminism of course, is to smash the patriarchy, but in the meantime let’s all kick up a big stink every time we see women being erased or misrepresented in the public sphere, so that the generations of girls to come have a better chance than we did at knowing how brilliant, strong and inspirational women can be.

Poldark, Prostitution and Protein World

Not The News in Briefs6 Comments

In recent weeks several public conversations and debates have taken place on subjects that primarily affect women and girls: objectification, body-shaming, the sex trade…the usual suspects. A new way of minimising the harm of these practices for women seems to have emerged, in the form of claiming they are all gender-neutral, or at least ignoring the aspect of gender, and therefore erasing the equality issue. It’s been done before of course, notably in regard to domestic violence (brilliantly dismissed as an argument by Karen Ingala Smith here), but as a way of silencing feminist debate it seems to be growing in popularity: #NotallMen is being joined by #Don’tForgetTheMen! Men who want us to recognise that they are not *all* bad also want us to believe that they share *equally* in the oppression.

First there was the Student Sex Work Project by Swansea University. This study, based on a self-selecting online questionnaire, found that there was parity between male and female students doing ‘sex work’ and that this should have implications for the services provided to offer support to these students. There was a lot wrong with this survey, primarily to do with the methods used and the stated aims – unsurprisingly it concluded that ‘stigma’ was one of the most significant downsides of the work (as opposed to, say, threat of violence), and, more surprisingly, that ‘sexual enjoyment’ was one of the motivations to go into the trade. This is much less surprising when you note that significantly more male than female students had responded to the survey with a positive response to the question of whether or not they were involved in ‘sex work’ and that the definition of ‘sex work’ included porn acting. A lack of scepticism over this blatantly unrealistic result further discredited the project findings and, bar a couple of newspaper reports, it sank without trace.

Except that Ally Fogg picked up on it, and wrote an article highlighting the statistic of ‘male student sex workers’ and helpfully linking to another report that showed that 42% of ‘sex workers’ are male. This report relied on data from an internet site advertising adult services, and the 42% referred to the number of ads featuring men. Looking more closely though, the actual response to these ads was negligible compared to the responses to the female advertisers, and therefore the men could be seen to be ‘fishing’ rather than actually engaging in the sex industry. As with the students in the first study, it is tempting to point out that there is a certain branch of male thought which holds that to be a porn actor or ‘sex worker’ would be the perfect job – the envy of all your mates!- and possibly there are many men trying to get into the trade by advertising themselves. It doesn’t mean there is corresponding demand for their services. Ally Fogg was happy though to report on these statistics uncritically. He also does not engage with the question of who is buying the sex from the men who are involved in the sex trade, and in fact the title of his piece: ‘Britain’s Student Gigolos’ gives the impression that the customers are women when clearly they are predominantly men. (To be fair, when I pointed this out to him he agreed it was misleading but said that the title was not his. He couldn’t do anything about it. Bit lame though).

At the recent debate at Conway Hall in London: ‘Buying and Selling Sex’, almost every aspect of the argument for and against the sex trade was explored before the subject of gender came up, almost as though it was rude or inappropriate to mention it. When it was suggested by Niki Adams of the English Collective of Prostitutes that the current austerity measures have made it more necessary for women to enter the sex trade out of desperation, to feed their children, I wondered why this was not also true for men. All over the world in every different society and every social class there are women forced into prostitution. Correspondingly, all over the world in every different society and every social class there are men who can afford to buy sex. It’s not hard to detect a pattern. The small percentage of male prostitutes mostly serve other males, so although they may well experience a power imbalance due to age or race, there is not the power imbalance due to gender that women face, and therefore it is not always helpful to women to include male prostitutes in the analysis of their particular problems. If you persist in saying ‘but men too’ in trying to make the subject gender neutral, I would turn the question round and ask instead why women, as a rule, do not buy sex? That is something which would be hard to talk about without mentioning gender. The answers may seem obvious to some but that’s not usually a reason to refrain from asking the question.

And then there’s objectification. The Poldark phenomenon hit the headlines a couple of weeks ago, and was discussed on Woman’s Hour with guest Martin Daubney, presumably because the article he wrote on male objectification for the Telegraph makes him an expert. Women have apparently been ‘perving’ over Aidan Turner’s naked torso in the BBC series Poldark, and according to Daubney this is exactly the same as the objectification that women have always experienced, but, because objectification is everywhere now, we should all just learn to deal with it. Men can deal with it you see, but women can’t. Men are ‘bigger than that’, despite the fact that they are objectified EVEN MORE than women now.

As if to prove him right, up pops the Protein World ad and up jump the women to complain about it! If only we could learn to deal with objectification like men have done eh…? But no: there are protests and petitions and vandalism all over the place instead. And, helpfully, another piece by Ally Fogg (in which, even more helpfully, he links us to that previous piece by, you’ve guessed it, Martin Daubney!) These two are spoiling us at the moment!

This piece pays a brief bit of lip-service to the fact that there might be reasons for men and women to respond differently to objectification (in a nutshell: it’s been going on for a long time so women are sick of it!), but largely once again men apparently do it better. For Daubney it’s all about the ability to ‘grow up’ and take it on the chin, whereas for Fogg the emphasis is on the very real political and social changes men have suffered, which gives them more of an excuse than women if they respond negatively to objectification: either way they’re exonerated compared to women, who inexplicably tend to do things like ‘peevishly whinge to Everyday Sexism’.

What is missing from these smug accounts of male superiority is any sense of the context in which these objectifying images appear and impact on women’s lives. So here’s a handy guide:

  • Historical context. Under patriarchy women throughout history have had to bend towards what men want of them in order to survive. Many laws and social rules have existed to keep women dependant, so that pleasing a man was the only option available. What men have always needed from women is sex and babies, so women have always been defined by, and valued for, their biology. The march towards equality consists for a large part in challenging this narrow definition of women in order that we can be seen and respected as full human beings, equal to men. Objectified images of women reinforce the old order and remind women of their ‘place’. They remind men of women’s ‘place’ as well. Objectified images of men carry no such meaning.
  • Social context. Sexually objectified images of women exist in a culture where sex crimes are overwhelmingly enacted against women and almost exclusively perpetrated by men. Many men enjoy the idea of being objectified by women: it might mean they’ll get more sex! Many women are unsettled by being sexually objectified by men: it might mean we’ll get raped. Studies confirm what most women know instinctively: that viewing sexualised images has an impact on a man’s ability to see real women as full human beings, with, for example, the right to say no. So this background wallpaper of images in our lives can encourage attitudes and behaviours which come under the general heading of ‘thinking with your dick’ – the impact of which is not usually positive for women.
  • Media context. Media representation of men is varied, like men themselves. The oiled six-pack image is one choice amongst many for men to aspire to or identify with. If that’s not you then you could look to the nerd, the skinny rock star, the many types of sportsmen, politicians, TV stars, actors or business leaders who are successful role models whilst coming in a variety of different sizes, shapes, colours and ages. For women there is no such embarrassment of choice. We live with a media saturated with images of young, slim, white, large-breasted hotties, and the small percentage of media attention paid to other kinds of women (Older women! Black women! Successful women!) are often accompanied by criticism due to the lack of the preferred attributes mentioned. In advertising 95% of objectified images are of women. By contrast 95% of sports coverage in the media is of men’s sport: it’s not just a question of the images we see all around us, but of the images we don’t see. This is not true for male representation in the media.
  • Physical context. Women’s physical shape is much more diverse than men’s. Most of the arguments I have read assume that because the Protein World ad model is thin, the protesters must be fat, otherwise what’s their problem? But actually it’s the shape of the currently fashionable media woman of choice that is more important. It used to be that women had ‘vital statistics’ (ah, the good old days of objectification!). It was considered that a figure measuring 36-26-36 was the ideal: that meant you had a bust, some hips and a waist, and although not perfect in terms of being seen as a full human being, it did at least allow you to have a whole body. That changed over the years (and I blame the Sun’s Page 3 and the lads mags for this), until women were classified by individual body parts alone, particularly their breasts. Now we get ‘Debbie from Manchester, 32EE’- not just measurement but cup size too. And that’s important because the emphasis on the fullness of the breast has led to a corresponding reduction in the size of the back (I suppose because breasts look bigger on a smaller frame). The Protein World model, like most of the Page 3 models, has a tiny ribcage supporting relatively large breasts, and although this might be natural in the model’s case, it certainly isn’t in the main population. Analysis of the range of Page 3 model body statistics done for the NoMorePage3 campaign showed that the currently desirable shape is unachievable for 95% of the female population. It is clearly impossible to achieve for those of us who have a pear shape, an apple shape, a straight up and down shape or a wide ribcage, whatever weight we are. It is not an image which exists to inspire women to get fit and lose weight, it is designed to make as many women as possible feel bad about themselves so that they will buy your product. I would go further and say that it’s a type of image that might inspire girls to go on crash diets and then have breast enhancement surgery, neither of which are healthy choices. Sometimes I stop what I am doing in my day and wonder how many teenage girls at that particular moment in time have suddenly come to the gut-wrenching and devastating realisation that as they continue to lose weight their breasts get smaller too! (I feel for you girls…) It’s cruel to demand both skinniness AND large breasts for the ideal body shape, it’s a huge stroke of luck to have both and nothing to do with ‘working for it’. You can see why anorexia or obesity might be a solution for some young women, to escape the endless conflicting demands made on their bodies. Needless to say, this is a conflict that does not exist for men. It would be like having a continual barrage of images exhorting you to lose weight, but knowing that if you did your penis would shrink.
  • And finally, yes: it’s been going on forever and we’re sick of it.

But do you know what I’m also sick of? I’m sick of being misrepresented as a woman and as a feminist by men just trying to score cheap points for their own gender off the back of women’s protest. Writers who should be intelligent enough to analyse and understand the bigger picture, and even have some human empathy, or at least imagination, to inform their judgement, are instead characterising women as moaning whinging jealous losers who just need to grow up a bit. Martin Daubney, as a former editor of Loaded, used to get paid to misrepresent women in pictures: now he’s getting paid to misrepresent women in words. But it is this final paragraph from Ally Fogg that hit me the hardest:

Boys do not need to be shielded from aspirational or sexualised images, they need to be secure that they have a meaningful role in society beyond zero-hours contracts, the call-centre and brief respite in the gym. They need to feel like they have more to offer the world than a perfect set of abs. Achieving all that will take more than removing a poster from the Underground.

Because, you know, God forbid that anyone should show that amount of empathy for a woman. Try substituting girls for boys and breasts for abs in that paragraph, and you have the perfect illustration of how it is for girls. Only a hundred times more so.

Feminism is for Women

Not The News in Briefs12 Comments

The thing about feminism, which really shouldn’t need to be said (but here goes), is that it was invented by women for women. It is intended to identify things from a woman’s perspective and to look after a woman’s needs – so by definition, whatever the current subject of discussion, as a feminist you centre the woman’s point of view: you always ask ‘what does this mean for the women?’ This is important because historically it has not really been done: in a patriarchal system, rules, regulations and social structures have traditionally been invented by, and implemented for, the benefit of men. Sometimes this has benefited women too, but too often it has not. Feminists exist to look after the concerns of women: somebody’s got to do it. Feminists are interested in equality of course, but when all’s said and done, it centres women. Unapologetically.

We live in a culture shaped by thousands of years of patriarchy, where men are automatically centred, so it can be difficult sometimes to notice when women as a class are being shoved to one side, ignored, unrecognised, overlooked… it’s just normal. We have all to some extent been socialised to think of men as representative of all of us. Even as a feminist it can sometimes feel unnatural, or even selfish, to ‘think of the women’ when we have been socialised to think of others before ourselves. Add to that the fact that many feminists are also socialists and therefore committed to the idea of equality in their politics, and it becomes even more complicated. If we want our feminism to be intersectional we have to take into account race and class and all other inequalities as part of the picture, because they all impact on women’s lives. Feminists  abhor racism and homophobia as much as they do sexism, but crucially, as feminists we put the women first. Some recent examples of where this approach has been lacking in the public sphere include the practice of FGM and the sex grooming scandals in Rotherham and other places. Left to the authorities, cultural and racial sensitivities have taken precedence over the safety of women and girls. This is normal, this is patriarchy in action, and this is why we need feminism: we need to point these things out to stop them from happening again. It’s not easy, but as feminists it is our duty to see issues first and foremost from the perspective of what it means for women. It takes courage and belief and clear priorities, and it’s hard: practically everything we have become accustomed to needs correcting.

The subjugation of women has traditionally been based on biology. It is more complex than this, but just to sum it up in simple terms: women’s bodies have a nice place in which to put a penis, and they are capable of bearing and giving birth to children. As Janet Radcliffe Richards points out in her book ‘The Sceptical Feminist’: ‘…only the female has the ability to carry, give birth to, and nurse the child once it is conceived, and this is an ability corresponding to which men have nothing at all.’ In other words, women as a class have a biology that men as a class want and need. If you couple that with the fact of men’s largely greater physical strength, then the possibility of forcing women to comply with men’s needs through physical threats, strict laws and social constructs follows close behind. If women did not have this different biological reality to men then maybe the oppression would neither be necessary nor possible. Janet Radcliffe Richards again:

‘Presumably women must in some sense tend to be weaker than men, or men could never have reduced them to such a state of subjection in the first place, but the suggestion that a weak group can be protected by being abandoned to the total control of a stronger one involves as remarkable a piece of twisted reasoning as can ever have been devised. If women are weak and need protection, it should have been the men that were controlled. A similar argument shows that the pairing arrangement cannot be one into which both sexes enter automatically as a result of some deeply-rooted instinct. If women had acquiesced willingly, there would have been no need for a colossal superstructure of law and convention to keep them in their place. The existence of rules to keep women in the power of men shows that men must have wanted of women something which women could not be trusted to provide of their own accord.’

The general characteristics of what we refer to as ‘femininity’ were not innate in the female sex in the first place, but a response to the position in which women found themselves. To survive in a society in which most things were controlled by men and owned by men, women had to develop ways to please men in order to survive. Traits such as kindness and caring, modesty, submission and deference would have been popular, as well as good looks and a range of homemaking skills. That would have kept the men looked after. That became the blueprint for femininity.

It’s interesting to speculate on what the true nature of woman would look like, or would have looked like, without enforced femininity: just how strong, capable and clever could we all have been had we not had to be so nice…?

The inequalities based on biology are still very much in force, despite the fact that culturally, socially, politically and intellectually we have moved a long way from our biologically-determined origins. Women’s bodies are still the focus of much of the unequal treatment women suffer, whether it’s through the sex trade, rape culture, abortion rights, childcare or even the tax on tampons. Much of the structure put in place to keep women under the control of men, such as the system of law, marriage, unequal pay and unequal opportunities, are still here to a greater or lesser extent, and therefore disadvantage women, whose needs they were not designed to meet. Especially not their different biological needs, which are the needs that differ the most from male needs.

I have hugely skimmed over the details but you get the picture: it is important to have an idea of how big a part biological reality plays in feminism. Feminist theory cannot help but be concerned with women’s biological, lived reality.

And that, essentially, is why some feminists are currently on a collision course with trans activists.

I would like to be a trans ally. From the point of view of discrimination, equal opportunities, mental health problems, domestic and male violence, trans people suffer many of the same problems as women, as well as the other groups within the LGBT community. Trans people have the right to live their lives without fear of violence or discrimination. Feminists should be natural allies, and indeed many feminists are, and see no conflict between their support for trans people and their feminism. That would be fine except for the fact that feminists who are gender critical and therefore believe that a transwoman is different from a woman, are now in big trouble. No matter that this does not equate to a lack of support for transwomen, or a wish to hurt them; just to have a critical analysis of gender is enough for the more extreme and vocal trans activists to label you as a TERF (Trans-exclusive Radical Feminist), a transphobe, or cis scum.

The problems arise when the needs of trans people conflict with the needs of women, and the stumbling block is biology. To be a *true* trans ally it is necessary to pretend biology doesn’t exist: a penis can be female for example, and it’s not only *women* who bear children. Traditionally, the penis has been a symbol of male power (witness all those phallic buildings and sculptures raised as monuments to this power). It also of course has  power quite apart from the purely symbolic (witness the gendered crime of rape). The penis is biologically and symbolically male and it therefore  has a gendered meaning. For women who have been sexually abused the penis is a weapon. As a feminist, the biological reality of the penis, and its role in the oppression of women, both historically and in modern times, makes it impossible to see it as ‘female’, even if it is attached to a trans woman. It is hugely insulting as a woman to be told to give up what you know and experience to be the truth lest you get labelled a transphobe. It is a particularly intractable problem for lesbians, for obvious reasons, and so they bear the brunt of the name-calling.

As a feminist, however much I agree with trans rights, when those rights are in direct conflict with women’s rights, I will choose the women every time. That’s because I’m a feminist, not because I’m a transphobe.

I am embarrassed to watch so-called trans allies lying and lying and lying again to appease the most voiciferous and extreme trans activists. I think it’s patronising and stupid and dangerous to say ‘yes, a penis can be female’, or ‘transwomen are women’ just to save someone’s feelings: it reminds me of how people talk to children: ‘yes dear, you really are a flower fairy…’ It helps nobody. It makes trans people look stupid, it makes feminists look mean, and it erases women’s history. To be ‘trans-inclusive’ it is not possible to talk about biology anymore: to talk about periods, pregnancy, childbirth, rape – all ‘trans-exclusionary’ because it’s stuff that only affects women. Even talking about FGM is ‘cissexist’ because it contains the word ‘female’, which leaves out transwomen. Why do so many transwomen want to be part of feminist groups when almost everything feminists talk about contains some reference to biological reality and is therefore offensive? And why are all their attacks on feminists rather than, say, the homophobic heterosexual men who are their worst enemies?

There are many gender-critical trans people on social media who I consider to be friends and feminist allies: they are not afraid to tell the truth and they know that a transwoman is different from a woman. I have respect for them and they have respect for women, and feminist theory. We can be supportive of eachother and co-exist with understanding and to mutual benefit. I wouldn’t dream of insulting their intelligence by pretending they are what they are not. I accept them as they are. We have different, but parallel oppressions: we don’t need to invade eachother’s territory for validation. This is how it should be: we can come together but we can  separate when we need to. There is loads of stuff that trans women would want to discuss that is not relevant to other women, and they should be able to organise as they see fit. So should women. This is not transphobic, it is respecting boundaries.

I know that what I’ve written will be called hate speech by some people, and cleverly linked to the idea of a kind of homophobic right wing hysteria about gay men being paedophiles that is so abhorrent and now so discredited. Luckily though I’m not about to speak at a university femsoc and I don’t have a media career to lose or a book coming out, so I will take that risk… The tipping point for me has been seeing how the power of the trans lobby has effectively led, through mass blocking, to the policing of what feminists can and can’t say on Twitter (and yet it’s somehow feminist to support this). And also it has galvanised certain men who actually don’t like women very much (especially not feminists, and especially not lesbian feminists), into an enthusiastic support based on a sudden opportunity to take the moral high ground in the Oppression Olympics. Now, by vocally and loudly trumpeting their support for men who have transitioned, they can still effectively support men whilst looking as though they are more feminist than feminists. It’s a dirty trick, but it’s based on a lie. They know they are throwing lesbians to the wolves when they say a penis can be female, which is why, when you call them out on it, all they have to say back is ‘Bigot!’ They cannot defend their stance with argument because there is no rational argument that proves that a male sex organ is not a male sex organ.

Footballers, Prostitutes and Feminists

Not The News in Briefs14 Comments

This week the story of Ched Evans, the Sheffield United footballer convicted of rape, has been all over the news. Debate has been centred around whether on release from prison he should get his old job back, and the feminist position has been largely that no, he shouldn’t: as a highly-paid footballer he has a privileged position as a role model to young people, especially boys, and his reinstatement would be to minimise the damage he has done and to reinforce a structural misogyny within football. There is broad agreement amongst feminists that the message this would send out would be detrimental to women as a whole.

Judging from the accounts of the case I have read, the 19 year-old victim was picked up in a drunken state by a man who then texted his friend that he’d ‘got a bird’. She was then taken to a pre-booked hotel room, where the first man had sex with her, and then the friend turned up and also had sex with her whilst some more friends filmed it. This part was rape because she was too drunk to consent. When she woke up in the morning she was alone in a strange room, wet with urine, and unable to remember what had happened the night before. She went to the police, and examination confirmed the sexual activity that had taken place.

These are the bare facts of the case, without projecting any assumptions about the victim’s feelings, which we can’t know. I am sure though that a lot of women reading this will be able to fill in the ‘feelings’ bit themselves, drawing on bad sexual experiences, or worse, in their own lives. Leaving aside the rape part of the story, these two men picked up a woman, used her for sex, and then left her on her own when they had finished with her. They planned it beforehand.

What I would like to know, from feminists who are pro-‘sex work’, is whether it would have made a tangible difference to their view of the men’s behaviour in this case, if they had paid money for what they did? Would the presence of a few crisp twenties on the bedside table make a substantive difference to what happened in that hotel bedroom? Would it have made a difference to the way the woman felt the next morning? Because this is essentially what happens in prostitution – the using of a woman for sex, without having to worry about her pleasure, or even her consent (”the money takes care of consent” right…?). In other words, is this the kind of male behaviour that can be legitimised by money: does money make it ok?

If it doesn’t: if you still feel that the kind of male behaviour on display should be discouraged in a civilised society, if not actively criminalised, then the issue of ‘sex-worker’ rights becomes more complicated. Respect for, and advocacy of, ‘sex-work’ is an intrinsic endorsement of pimps and punters too. You also cannot help but accidentally endorse the pimps and punters of prostituted and trafficked women and girls, and give them more power, because the rebranding of prostitution as ‘sex work’ lends it a sanitised respectability it otherwise would not have. I think the behaviour of those men in that hotel bedroom replicates the behaviour of a lot of men with prostitutes (it is not unknown for a footballer to book a hotel room and order a prostitute to go with it). If we can see that prostitute in the same way as we see that drunken teenager: with *outrage* that she can be treated like a piece of meat and then discarded, then how as feminists can we accept prostitution as a ‘job’ like any other?

I fully believe in the freedom of individuals to do as they wish with their own bodies, but when that choice is monetised, then in a capitalist society with its entrenched inequalities, it becomes the business of us all. There are laws on what we can and cannot sell, determined by morals and ethics. We already have laws  on the limits of bodily choice – surrogacy, organ harvesting and assisted dying for example. A judgement is made concerning the basic rights of humanity, the right to bodily integrity, the right to be treated as a human being. Often the law is there because it recognises the potential for exploitation that occurs when you introduce a monetary reward: the law protects the most vulnerable, those least able to protect themselves: often the poorest, most marginalised in society, often women. The fact that ‘some people like it’ makes no difference to this argument. Why is it so difficult to take a consistent feminist stance where prostitution is concerned? I believe it is because it’s about sex. The insults people can hurl at you for taking a stance on anything to do with sex are often too painful to contemplate because they drive at your own private sexual insecurities. You will become all those things you really don’t want people to think you are: a prude, a sex-negative feminist, a whorephobe.

Some of the supporters of Ched Evans think they have irrefutable proof that he didn’t rape anyone: he could have ‘any woman he wanted’ so why would he need to rape? I disagree. I think the fact that he could have any woman he wanted makes it more likely that he would rape. When you have that high level of entitlement I think it is less likely that you will be able to recognise ‘lack of consent’ when it stares you in the face. Famously there have been professional footballers who cannot stop having sex with prostitutes, despite having a *gorgeous* wife or girlfriend back home. I think there is a power thing going on here, as much as a sex thing: the rise in the numbers of men visiting prostitutes has happened at the same time as an increase in women’s (comparative) sexual freedom. So there is more sex available for men in general: casual sex, hook-up sex, first date sex – but maybe what there is *less* of is non-consensual sex (rape exists even in marriage now! Imagine!). And maybe that is what prostitutes and drunken teenagers are for?

I would like pro-‘sex work’ feminists to look at this young woman’s experience and to make the connection between her and the prostituted women who experience this, and much worse, every day. If you have ever hashtagged ‘IBelieveHer’ about a rape victim, then please do the same with #ListenToSurvivors – they are not believed either, and they suffer too, and it hurts them every time a feminist uses the term ‘sex work’ to describe their torture. I will not use the term ‘sex work’ out of respect for survivors, and it’s time to stand up and be counted and to face the inevitable backlash from the very rich and powerful lobby that is the sex industry. I hope a few of my feminist friends will join me.