The legalization of prostitution and its impact on trafficking in women and children
The legalization of prostitution and its impact on trafficking in women and children
19 février 2005
par Richard Poulin, sociologue à l’Université d’Ottawa
Several countries have legalized prostitution since the start of the new millennium. Canada is currently reviewing its policy towards prostitution. There is accordingly an urgent need to discuss the impact of the legalization (regulation) of prostitution in light of examples of countries that have legalized this industry with a view to drawing conclusions from these experiences which can contribute to the process of collective reflection in Canada.
After reviewing some of the data on the scale of prostitution and the trafficking in human beings for the purpose of prostitution, I will study the links between prostitution and the trafficking in women and children for the purpose of prostitution, as well as the impact of the legalization of prostitution in a number of countries. I will conclude with a discussion of the agreements signed by Canada and the obligations arising out of them for the implementation of Canadian laws.
However, a preamble to this discussion is in order in the form of a number of significant data : in Canada, the average age of entry into prostitution in 1998 varied between 14.1 and 14.8 years, depending on the province. Between 70 and 80% of the prostituted people in Canada were children when they began to be prostituted. In 1987, the number of prostituted children in Canada was estimated at 10,000 (1). According to Phillis Chester (1994), 75% of escorts had made at least one suicide attempt. Prostituted women account for 15% of the suicides reported by US hospitals (2) (the data for France are similar). Women and girls working in prostitution in Canada have a mortality rate that is 40 times the national average (3). In my book, La mondialisation des industries du sexe [the globalization of the sex industries] I show that violence is intrinsically interwoven with prostitution, that it is an essential element of it. While the conditions under which prostitution is carried out can undoubtedly exacerbate its inherent violence, it is primarily the social relationships which underpin prostitution that are the fundamental cause of this violence. The pimps’ recruiting methods are not really the simple accumulation of private “abusive” behaviours, but occur within a structured system which requires violence. The violence committed by a substantial number of customers derives from the fact that the mercenary nature of the transaction confers upon them a position of domination.
Prostitution is ontologically a form of violence. It feeds on violence and in turn amplifies it. Abduction, rape, submission - there are submission camps in a number of European countries, not only in the Balkans and in Central Europe, but also in Italy, where submission is called “schooling” - terror and murder are still the midwives and outriders of this industry ; they are essentially not only for market development, but also for the “manufacture” of the “goods” as they contribute to making prostituted people “functional” - this industry demands total availability of the body. A study of street prostituted people in England established that 87% of them had been victims of violence during the past 12 months ; 43% were suffering the consequences of serious physical abuse. (4) A research study in Chicago showed that 21.4% of women working as escorts and exotic dancers had been raped more than 10 times. An American study in Minneapolis showed that 78% of prostituted people had been victims of rape by pimps and customers, on average, 49 times a year. 49% had been the victims of abduction and had been transported from one state to another and 27% had been mutilated. (5) I could multiply the data generated by field studies.
What I want to emphasize here is that the women and children who are the objects of trafficking for the purpose of prostitution as well as the vast majority of prostituted people, have very often been subjected to violence. A large number of them are supplied to the market on a “turnkey” basis : “Any woman can be broken in 10 days and turned into a prostitute”, in the words of the Bulgarian manager of a rehabilitation centre (6). Their abduction by traffickers of all kinds, who become their owners, their “commodification” - human beings metamorphosed into “goods” that are sold on the sex market -, their depersonalization, and then their consumption demand the rape of their humanity and require violence. The violence to which prostituted people are subjected is multiple and often unspeakable, indescribable. Violence is intrinsic to prostitution : the commodification and merchandising are aimed at forcing the sexes to submit to the satisfaction of the sexual pleasure of others. The second is also inherent : a person becomes prostituted as a result of sexual, physical, psychic (in 90% of cases, according to a range of studies), social and economic violence. The third is linked to the expansion of prostitution and to the ensuing deterioration of the conditions to which prostituted people are subjected : “The customer has no further hesitation about being increasingly violent towards the prostitute and today she must be extremely vigilant”, claims Chant, of the Bus des Femmes, an association established in Paris over a decade ago by former prostituted people. (7)
The conditions under which prostitution is exercised are thus not the cause of this violence, although this is the thrust of the organizations that argue in favour of the total decriminalization of prostitution or of its legalization. The cause is to be found not in the conditions under which prostitution is carried out, but in the carrying out of it.
The scale of the sex industries
Every year, approximately 500,000 women who are victims of trafficking are released onto the prostitution market in the countries of Eastern Europe (8)Â ; 75% of the women who are victims of this trafficking are 25 years of age or under, and an indeterminate, but very large, percentage of them are minors. Some 4 million women and children annually are the victims of the worldwide trafficking for the purpose of prostitution. In 2001, it was estimated that the number of prostituted people in the world (9) was 40 million, a figure that continues to rise. The phenomenon assumes unimaginable proportions in some countries, accounting for between 0.25% and 1.5% of the population in the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan (10), etc.
The prostitution industry accounts for 5% of the GDP of the Netherlands, between 1 and 3% of Japanese GDP and in 1998, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that prostitution accounted for between 2 and 14% of the total economic activity in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
During the 1980s, there were three times more victims of trafficking for the purpose of prostitution in South-East Asia alone than in the entire history of the African slave trade. The African slave trade, which continued over a period of 400 years, claimed 11.5 million victims, whereas the trafficking for the purpose of prostitution in South-East Asia alone claimed 33 million victims in a decade. (11)
Over the past three decades, the countries of the Southern hemisphere have experienced a phenomenal growth in prostitution and in the trafficking of women and children for the purpose of prostitution. For slightly more than the past decade, this has also been the case in the countries of the former Soviet Union and in Eastern and Central Europe and the Balkans. Sabine Dusch (2002Â : 109) estimates that worldwide prostitution generates a turnover of approximately 60 billion euros, i.e. over US $72 billion. In 2002, the profits from the trafficking in women and children were estimated by the United Nations (UN) at between US $7 and $12 billion per year. (12) The human victims of trafficking for the purpose of prostitution are significantly more numerous than those who are the victims of trafficking for the purpose of domestic exploitation of cheap labour. (13) It is estimated that 90% of the victims of trafficking are trafficked for the purpose of prostitution. (14)
The sex industries are now major industries - some of them multinational - that generate fabulous profits and substantial hard currency inflows, which has an impact on countries’ balance of payments and thus on their current account ; they are even regarded as vital in the economies of a number of countries.
However, the unbridled growth of the sex industries has had the effect of calling into question mark basic human rights, specifically those of the women and children who have become sexual commodities. The status of women and children has even seriously deteriorated. Henceforth, in many countries of the third world as well as in those of the former Soviet Bloc, under the impact of structural adjustment and market economy policies, women and children have become new raw resources in the context of the development of national and international trade. From the viewpoint of their possessors, these women and children have a dual advantage : this is reflected in the marketing not only of bodies and sexes, but also by that of women and children sold in succession to a variety of criminal pimping networks and then to clients, hence the frequently cited concept of the appearance of a new form of slavery to characterize the trafficking of which millions of women and children are the victims.
Prostituted people of foreign origin and human trafficking
The example of the Netherlands provides a good indicator of the expansion of the sex industry in recent decades and the growth of trafficking for the purpose of prostitution : 2,500 prostituted people in 1981, 10,000 in 1985, 20,000 in 1989 and 30,000 in 1997. The Netherlands has become a preferred destination in the world of sex tourism. In Amsterdam, where there are 250 brothels, 80% of the prostituted people are of foreign origin and “70% of them have no papers”, as they are victims of trafficking. (15) In 1960, 95% of prostitutes in the Netherlands were Dutch, whereas by 1999 the figure was a mere 20%. In Denmark, where prostitution is also legal, the number of prostituted people of foreign origin who are victims of trafficking has increased ten-fold over the past decade. (16) In Austria, 90% of prostituted people are originally from other countries. In 2003, the number of victims of trafficking for the purpose of prostitution was estimated at 20,000 annually, compared to 2,100 annually at the start of the previous decade. In the ten years from 1990 to 2000, 77,500 young foreign women have fallen prey to traffickers. These young women, who are frequently minors, and who can be purchased on the markets in the Balkans for US $600, are subjected to an average of between 30 and 100 sexual contacts a day. (17) Ten years ago, the number of prostituted people of Greek origin was estimated at 3,400 ; this figure remains more or less the same to day, but with the explosion of the prostitution industry, the number of prostituted people of foreign origin has multiplied by ten. The revenues derived from prostitution in Greece are estimated at US $7.5 billion a year.
Talking of foreign prostituted people means trafficking in human beings for the purpose of prostitution (and the production of pornography), which obviously implies that the trafficking is organized. Organized pimping, which is controlled by organized crime, is the major supplier of the night clubs and brothels, of which there are 700 in the Netherlands (18), where prostitution has been regulated since October 1, 2000. This legalization, which was intended to benefit prostituted people, according to its advocates, is probably a failure, since only 4% of them have registered. (19) This legalization was supposed to put an end to prostitution of minors. However, the Organization for the Rights of the Child, the headquarters of which is in Amsterdam, estimates that the number of minors who are prostituted in the Netherlands has increased from 4,000 in 1996 to 15,000 in 2001, including at least 5,000 who are of foreign origin. In Vienna, Austria, the number of prostituted people was estimated at the start of 2000 at between 6,000 and 8,000Â ; only 600 of them were registered. (20) Ten years later, there were 800 registered prostituted people and approximately 2,800 illegal prostituted people. In 1995, the number of registered prostituted people had dropped to 670, whereas the number of illegals had climbed to 4,300. (21)
As the experience in the Netherlands, Greece and Austria shows, the number of “legal” prostituted people, those who are natives of the country, is gradually dropping (in relative or absolute terms) and the number of prostituted people who are clandestine, illegal, who have a tourist visa or who are victims of trafficking is increasing. The regulation (legalization) of prostitution has thus not improved the fate of prostituted people, in contrast to the claims of activists who are in favour of such a policy. But legalization does represent a goldmine for the pimps, whose activity is now legal : over the past 10 years, the activities of the sex industry in the Netherlands have increased by 25% (22). Thanks to its liberal legislation, the Dutch government takes in US $1 billion $202 million annually in taxes, thereby becoming one of Europe’s largest pimps.
Trafficking and prostitution have increased considerably over the past decade. The hallmarks of this increase are the increasing control by networks originating in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, Africa, Asia and Latin America, and by the increase in flows of money and recycling the money derived from this criminal activity. Transnational crime has benefited from the discrepancy between the free circulation of goods and capital, the policies of restricting human migration and the fragmentation of the global penal space. It also benefits from its ability to corrupt customs officials, policemen, judges, politicians and public servants, if only from its ability to integrate them into the criminal activities themselves. It finances associations advocating the recognition and legalization of the sex industries. (23) It invades “legal” industries - nightclubs, hotels, restaurants, travel and placement agencies, transport, etc. - which are useful for all kinds of trafficking.
Legislation, expansion of prostitution and trafficking in women and children
The promoters of the legalization of prostitution in Australia (24) maintained that such a step would solve such problems as the control by organized crime of the sex industry, the deregulated expansion of that industry and the violence to which street prostituted people are subjected. In fact, the legislation has solved none of these problems : on the contrary, it has given rise to new ones, including child prostitution, which has increased significantly since legalization. Brothels are expanding (25) and the number of illegal brothels exceeds the number of legal ones. Although there was a belief that legalization would make possible control of the sex industry, the illegal industry is now “out of control”. Police in Victoria estimate that there are 400 illegal brothels as against 100 legal ones. (26) Trafficking in women and children from other countries has increased significantly. (27) The legalization of prostitution in some parts of Australia has thus resulted in a net growth of the industry. One of the results has been the trafficking in women and children to “supply” legal and illegal brothels. The “sex entrepreneurs” have difficulty recruiting women locally to supply an expanding industry, and women from trafficking are more vulnerable and more profitable. The traffickers sell such women to the owners of Victoria’s brothels for US $15,000 each. They are held in servitude by this debt. The weekly profits derived from the trafficking in women in Australia by the prostitution industry is estimated at $1 million. (28)
In Germany, the legislation that entered into force on January 1, 2002 abolished the concept of “immoral activity”. The hundreds of thousands of prostituted people who are German (or married to Germans) now have a status, that of “independent or salaried workers with a work contract” with the “bosses” of the eros centers. Prostitution is allowed and regulated ; it has to some extent become classified as a “profession like any other”. In addition, all businesses with 15 or more employees, including brothels, are obligated to hire apprentices on pain of financial penalties if they fail to do so. What thinking person would encourage any adolescent to become an apprentice in an eros center ? Women who perceive unemployment insurance benefits and who work in restoration or bars have to accept henceforth job propositions in brothels ; if they don’t accept they can lose their benefits. In 2001, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that almost half of the women who are victims of trafficking for the purpose of prostitution in Germany have entered the country legally. (29)
Some 50,000 women from the Dominican Republic are working in prostitution abroad, particularly in the Netherlands, where at one time they accounted for 70% of the occupants of Amsterdam’s 400 prostitutes’ “windows”. Between 75% to 85% of prostituted people in the red light districts of Germany are of foreign origin. Approximately 40% of Zurich’s prostituted people come from the third world. The number of brothels has doubled since the partial legalization of prostitution in Switzerland.
The legalization of prostitution thus generates a colossal expansion of this industry and of the trafficking which is its corollary.
An “abolitionist” country like France, with a population estimated at 61 million, has half as many prostituted people on its territory as does a small country like the Netherlands (16 million) and 20 times fewer than a country like Germany, with a population of around 82.4 million. In Sweden, where legislation has been passed to prosecute the customers and to decriminalize the activities of prostituted people, it is estimated that there are only about 100 prostituted people in the country for around 9 million inhabitants. In the capital, Stockholm, the number of street prostitutes has dropped by two-thirds and the number of customers has dropped by 80%. In addition, “Switzerland is the only country in Western Europe not to have been submerged by the tidal wave of girls from Eastern Europe following the fall of the Berlin wall”. (30) In neighbouring Finland, it is estimated that 15,000 to 17,000 people become victims of trafficking for the purpose of prostitution annually.
The most recent research, carried out by London Metropolitan University, at the request of the Scottish government and published in 2004 on its government website, “confirms what several prior studies have shown, namely that the “sex industries”, sexual tourism, child prostitution and violence against prostituted people have increased markedly in all the countries that have liberalized their prostitution laws and turned pimps into respectable businessmen.”
Government policies are accordingly a decisive factor in the proliferation of prostitution industries and its corollary, trafficking.
Policies favourable to the legalization of prostitution and trafficking for the purpose of prostitution form part of an international offensive, mounted by the countries that advocate regulation, against the abolitionist Convention adopted by the UN in 1949, the Convention for the Suppression of Human Trafficking and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. These countries have introduced in international or regional conferences (especially in Europe) the concepts of “forced prostitution” and “forced trafficking” in contrast to “voluntary prostitution” and “voluntary or consenting trafficking”.
International agreements
The 1949 abolitionist Convention was adopted following the Second World War, in that burst of activity which also saw the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was ratified by 72 countries, but not by Canada, United States and Thailand. It said in substance that “prostitution and the evil that accompanies it […] are incompatible with the dignity and value of a human being”. The signatories agreed :
to punish any person who […] procures, entices or leads away another person, even with the consent of that person for the purposes of prostitution, exploits the prostitution of another person, even with the consent of that person ; […] keeps or manages or knowingly finances or takes part in the financing of a brothel ; knowingly lets or rents a building or other place […] for the purpose of the prostitution of others. (31)
According to the advocates of the legitimization of “sex work”, the 1949 legislative instrument was “limited exclusively” to trafficking in women for the purpose of prostitution and “left aside the issue of the protection of children.” (32) As the negotiations in respect of the additional Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime with the aim of preventing, suppressing and punishing the trafficking in persons, in particular of women and children (the Palermo Convention), which faltered on the question of whether there could be trafficking without force of women and children, the issue was not to amend it or improve it. The real issues focused on the concepts of prostitution, pimping, sex industries, trafficking for the purpose of prostitution and human rights in society.
The growing concerns of the “international community” in view of the scale of international crime and the increase in the trafficking of women and children and the trafficking in migrants led to the adoption by the UN of a Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime. (33) This convention established broad definitions of victims and criminal offences. However, its objectives were to harmonize a number of criminal definitions in the signatory states which were to be included in their penal codes and to formulate common rules to assist mutual penal justice and extradition procedures. The primary aims of the additional protocols were to lead other states to harmonize their penal legislation and to strengthen their judicial cooperation.
Trafficking in human beings has given rise to a plethora of different definitions. In recent years, the proposed definitions have depended in large measure on the specific needs or political stances of the organizations or institutions from which they emanated. It has accordingly, among other things, been defined from the perspective of human rights, crime, clandestine migration, exploitation of work and modern slavery. The terms “trafficking” and “trade” in human beings are frequently treated as synonymous or confused. These terms nonetheless refer to different, albeit related circumstances. Since the adoption of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its two protocols, one on the smuggling in migrants and the other on trafficking in people, the term “smuggling” refers to illegal transportation of migrants and that of “trafficking” to the recruiting, transportation and exploitation of people. This “exploitation” may involve prostitution, slavery, forced labour and the removal of organs. International organizations and many NGOs distinguish between trafficking that is forced or voluntary and forced and voluntary prostitution, opening the door to trafficking of all kinds and to the legalization of prostitution and trafficking. This distinction between free and forced prostitution makes individual choices out of what is in fact a colossal worldwide system. The UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime maintains that trafficking may be a punishable offence even with the consent of the victim. But by emphasizing the abusive conditions of trafficking, perceived as a violation of human rights, instead of emphasizing its intention, prostitution, the convention downplays the fact that trafficking in women and children for the purpose of prostitution is far and away the dominant factor in the international trafficking in human beings. In this convention, in contrast to the Convention for the Suppression of Trafficking in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (1949), the fight against trafficking is not linked to a fight against the system of prostitution, which is the source of trafficking. On a positive note, however, this Convention formulated, during the Vienna negotiations, a definition of trafficking which “protects all the victims”, whether they be “consenting” or not and rejected the positions that defended “the right of women to migrate for sex work” and wanted a definition of the treaty that did not mention “sexual exploitation or prostitution”.
It should be emphasized that simply fighting against trafficking constitutes censuring the transfer of prostituted people between countries and not fighting against their prostitution. That is even more true when this “fight” concerns merely the most abusive forms of trafficking and not trafficking itself.
The 1980 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child condemns, among other things, the sexual exploitation of children. Two optional protocols to this convention were adopted by the UN General Assembly in May 2000. One of the protocols concerns the involvement of children in armed conflicts, the other the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. Canada actively supports the optional protocol to the Convention in respect of the sale of children and on child prostitution and child pornography. This protocol urges signatory states to criminalize these violations of the rights of children and to further punish those who exploit children, specifically in the area of sexual exploitation, both within the country and abroad, without criminalizing prostituted children, which a number of countries still do. In this regard, in Vancouver, during the 1990s, prostituted children were charged 59 times more often than their male customers. In a six-year period only six men were charged for accosting a child prostitute. Two of them were convicted. During the same period, 354 children were charged with soliciting or prostitution. (34)
In the countries which have legalized prostitution, a woman may prostitute herself if she obtains citizenship, marries a citizen of the country or acquires a temporary artists’ visa (as is the case in Switzerland and Luxembourg), and a pimp may receive the proceeds of the sale of her sex with complete impunity. The right of a person to engage in prostitution and to allow another person to benefit from the income she derives from it is regulated. People from outside these countries can obtain with ease a residence permit in a single industry, the sex industry.
Conclusion
Humankind is witnessing the industrialization of prostitution, trafficking in women and children, pornography and sex tourism. The various sectors of the sex industry are flourishing ; they are organized and managed by networks of pimps and organized crime. The liberalization of the laws governing prostitution in some countries has allowed the pimps involved in organized crime to acquire, emerging from the underground, the status of entrepreneurs and respected business partners. The criminal markets are naturally integrated into the legal markets where they are able to launder money with complete impunity. They now play a major role in the world economy. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) estimates that gross criminal product makes up 15% of world trade. (35) The sex markets account for a sizeable share of this. It is estimated that the profits from trafficking women for the purpose of prostitution alone now generate more money than trafficking in firearms or drugs. (36) The sex trade industryincreasingly regardedas an entertainment industry and prostitution as “legitimate work”.
There are two major consequences of the legalization of prostitution. First, the institutional officialization (legalization) of sex markets strengthens the activities of organized pimping and organized crime. Secondly, such strengthening, accompanied by a significant increase in prostitution-related activities and in trafficking, brings with it a deterioration not only in the general condition of women and children, but also, in particular, that of prostituted people and the victims of trafficking for the purpose of prostitution.
While the total decriminalization of prostitution - equivalent of the law of the jungle - is not regarded favourably by any country, the legalization of prostitution brings with it a number of problems that I have examined. The alternative is the policy adopted by Sweden, which criminalizes those who benefit from prostitution - the pimps and the customers - and decriminalizes the activities of the prostituted people, who are regarded as the prey and the victims of organized pimping.
Canada is a signatory to the Palermo Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. These conventions and the Convention of 1949 must provide a framework for strengthening Canadian legislation and adapting it to the new realities. I am not a jurist, and I accordingly have no specific proposals to formulate. But the globalization of the sex industry and its exponential growth can be slowed if not stopped by policies based on these conventions : a strengthened criminalization of pimping, sex tourism and trafficking (including the case of “artists’” visas for strip clubs). In accordance with the 1949 Convention and based on the definition of victims contained in the Palermo Convention, Canada could decriminalize the activities of prostituted people, who are considered the victims of a system that is controlled and developed by national and transnational organized crime (including in countries where prostitution is legal). With the aim of combating the human trafficking for the purpose of prostitution, Canada, which is both a destination and a transit country for this trafficking, must fight against prostitution, which is the source of the trafficking. To this end, it must attack the demand, in other words, customers (both at the national level and abroad in the case of sex tourism), another cause of prostitution, through a policy of penalization such as Sweden has adopted. In that country, prostitution is viewed as one of the aspects of male violence against women and children. It is officially recognized as a form of exploitation of women and children and as a major social problem, not only for the prostituted person, but for society as a whole. The battle against prostitution and trafficking for the purpose of prostitution occurs within the overarching objective of the fight for the equality of men and women. This equality “will remain out of reach as long as men buy, sell and exploit women and children by prostituting them.” (37)
References
1. Hodgson (1997Â : 5).
2. Farley (2003).
3. Baldwin (1992Â : 58).
4. Miller (1995).
5. Raymond (1999).
6. Chaleil (2002Â : 498).
7. In Menine (1999).
8. Commission des droits de la femme et de l’égalité des chances du Parlement européen (2003) and Europol (2001).
9. Healy (2003).
10. See my book, Poulin (2004Â : 66).
11. Demir (2003).
12. Konrad (2002).
13. Dusch (2002Â : 94).
14. Eriksson (2004).
15. Louis (1997Â : 8).
16. Kongstad (2000).
17. Mitralias (2003).
18. On the question of the organized crime in prostitution and in trafficking in the Netherlands, see Bruinsma & Meershoek (1999) and Martin (1999).
19. Chaleil (2002Â : 49).
20. ATTAC (2003Â : 139-140).
21. CATW (2003).
22. Daley (2001).
23. On that question, see the interview of Janice Raymond by Agela Miles (2003Â : 26-37).
24. In Australia, prostitution is legal in Queensland, in Victoria and in the Capital territory. The New South Wales have deregulated the brothels.
25. The most important brothel of Melbourne, the Daily Planet, founded in 1975, is now quoted in the stock exchange (Marks, 2003).
26. Jeffreys (2002Â : 22).
27. Raymond (2002).
28. Jeffreys (2003).
29. IOM (2003Â : 2).
30. Gyldén (2003).
31. The text of that convention is published in Poulin (2004Â : 371-386).
32. Boonpala et Kane (2001Â : 5).
33. ONU (2001).
34. Clayton (1997).
35. Passet & Liberman (2002Â : 60).
36. Geadah (2003Â : 31).
37. Ministry of Industry, Employment and Communications, Suède (2004).
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LOUIS, Marie-Victoire (1997), « Le corps humain mis sur le marché », Le Monde diplomatique, mars : 8.
MARKS, Kathy (2003), On s’arrache les actions du premier bordel inscrit en bourse en Australie [en ligne], Montréal, Sisyphe, 2 mai, [site visité le 6 mai 2003].
MARTIN, Gérard (1999), « Un État de droit face à la criminalité organisée », Critique internationale, printemps, n° 3 : 64-70.
MENINE, Karelle (1999), Les ravages aggravés de la prostitution organisée [en ligne], Paris, L’Humanité, 12 février, [site visité le 4 mars 2002].
MILES, Angela (2003), « Prostitution, trafficking and the global sex industry. A conversation with Janice Raymond », Canadian Woman Studies / Les Cahiers de la femme, Vol. 22, n° 3-4, Spring/Summer : 26-37.
MILLER, J. (1995), « Gender and power on the streets : Street prostitution in the era of crack cocaine », Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, vol. 23, n° 4 : 427-452.
MINISTRY OF INDUSTRY, EMPLOYMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS, Suède (2004), Prostitution and trafficking in women, Regerinkansliet, janvier, [site visité le 2 février 2004].
MITRALIAS, Sonia (2003), La traite des femmes en Grèce, un véritable enjeu de civilisation [en ligne], Paris, Les Pénélopes, 12 novembre, [site visité le 3 avril 2004].
MONRIQUE, Michelle (2003), Avis adopté par le Conseil économique et social au cours de sa séance du mercredi 26 février 2003 [en ligne], Le Conseil économique et social, République française, mai, [site visité le 23 septembre 2003].
ONU (2001), Convention des Nations Unies contre la criminalité transnationale organisée [en ligne], Assemblée générale de l’ONU, 55e session, [site visité le 24 mars 2003].
PASSET, René et Jean LIBERMAN (2002), Mondialisation financière et terrorisme, Montréal, Écosociété.
POULIN, Richard (2004), La mondialisation des industries du sexe. Prostitution, pornographie, traite des femmes et des enfants, Ottawa, L’Interligne.
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RAYMOND, Janice (2002), How Do We Support Women and Children to Escape Trafficking ? The Use of International Instruments [en ligne], Vilnius, Protection and Support of Victims of Trafficking in Women, 20-22 October, [site visité le 4 mars 2003].
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Richard Poulin, sociologue à l’Université d’Ottawa
Source - http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=1596 -
oz feminista:
This document provides much food for thought. I do think it provides alot of detail as to how damaging the industry as a whole is and that therefore actions that we take that reinforce or perpetuate that way of relating are not sustainable - or perhaps I could better express this as the costs must be tallied - and paid for. And if they are not paid by the ‘johns’ pimps (be it state or private) or even by the sex radicals or freely chosen sex workers - then guess what - the women and children who don’t chose freely will pay in this system. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts - perhaps we unwittingly contribute to suffering even while releiving someone elses needs and meeting our own professional personal or financial goals in what we think are harmless ways (consenting adults and all that - very important bur perhaps not good enough if the industry as a whiole is weighed up and found to be rotten to the core). Sort of like capitalism can’t be reformed - it too as a mode of production (analogy being to our current sexual ways of relating - commercial sex only being at one end of the spectrum) needs to be revolutionised.
As a transitionary response if you like to overthrowing our current patriarchal and commodified sexual relations perhaps some of the following measures are useful (ACT in this article refers to the Australian Capital Territory)
I’ll write more when i have had more time to think - just had to say something straight away as i do feel so strongly about this, really having come full circle from my old pre-socialist radical feminist days, to pro-sex work in recent times (sucked in I really feel by the industry profiteers and some quite sophisticated arguments from feminists i respect and so called sex “radicals”……anyway I feel i am developing different perspectives again based on the pain and suffering (and the attempts to alleviate it - drug use and self mutilation as the most concerning to me) i see associated with sex work(even if that is not my own experience)
From the Stop the Traffic ii conference oct 2003
17 April 2005, 10:03 amProject Respect 1
No bad women, just
bad laws.
Recognize the Elders of the Koolan Nations and their ancestral spirits.
“No bad women, just bad laws.†This English Collective of Prostitutes slogan is as
relevant today as when coined in 1975 - the same year of the French prostitute
strikes and an era said to mark the beginning of an awareness of sex workers
industrial rights.
Industrial rights are an integral component of human rights. I am arguing that
stronger legislation, and enforcement, combined with industrially educated
workers strengthens human rights as experienced by sex workers. Stronger labour
rights quite simply lead to enhanced human rights. By placing labour rights
alongside other strategies for fighting trafficking, the opportunities to trap people
into sexual servitude will be greatly reduced.
Left me quickly outline the key elements of the Economic, Political and Social
Covenant.
Article 6
1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right to work, which
includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain [their] living by work which
[they] freely chooses or accepts, and will take appropriate steps to safeguard this
right.
Article 7
The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to
the enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of work which ensure, in
particular:
(a) Remuneration which provides all workers, as a minimum, with:
(i) Fair wages and equal remuneration for work of equal value without
distinction of any kind, in particular women being guaranteed conditions
of work not inferior to those enjoyed by men, with equal pay for equal
work;
(ii) A decent living for themselves and their families in accordance with
the provisions of the present Covenant;
(b) Safe and healthy working conditions;
(d ) Rest, leisure and reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic
holidays with pay, as well as remuneration for public holidays
Yet as the language of sex work advocacy and lobbying increasingly emphasizes
industrial rights, inappropriate legislation, poor enforcement of useful legislation
and, on the odd occasion, a lack of legislation continue to seriously impede the
chances of good working conditions for all who chose to be sex workers.
Accordingly, their human rights are seriously compromised.
And the more uniformed and uneducated a worker, the greater the abuse of their
industrial rights, and therefore human rights. Their abuses are further
compounded by culture, dubious mode of entry in to the industry, lack of local
language skills and no knowledge of local legal systems. I am, of course,
describing many trafficked women, but this is not unique to them. It is pretty
common for illegal immigrant labour to be used in sweatshop conditions in
industries all over the world. Homebased TCF workers in Melbourne are a good
local example.
By working conditions being given the priority in legislation and enforcement
suggested by their role as a core component of human rights, states would be
more active, sex workers would be able to develop a greater degree of industrial
fluency and the opportunities for powerful people to enslave vulnerable people
would be greatly reduced.
So what is it that prevents the noble, all encompassing sentiments of the human
rights Covenant’s from ‘trickling down’ to the legislative and industrial response
that support individual’s in their work environment?
I believe it has a lot to do with the attachment of the ruling elite (elected or
otherwise) to the notion of sex workers as bad women needing saving, retraining
and a gentle push in the ‘right’ direction. For in their eyes sex work is not work, but
a moral challenge. And if sex work is placed in the moral realm, then the concept
of a sex workers “workplace†is irrelevant.
And their response to this moral dilemma, legislative and otherwise, cast the cloak
of invisibility over sex workers industrial conditions and rights; encouraging society
to treat sex workers industrial concerns as illegitimate.
To quote Alison Murray from her fine book “Pink Fitsâ€: “Much of the harm and
exploitation within the sex industry stems from moral attitudes, which workers may
themselves internalize to the point where they experience the work as indeed
degrading. Prostitution control is the consequence of this morality, combining laws
and their enforcement on one side with corruption, illegal practices and
exploitation on the other, which keeps sex industries running†(Murray 2001:143)
Before I go much further, I’d like to make it clear that when I talk about laws, I refer
to more than the piece of legislation but also to the education, enforcement and
resourcing of that legislation.
You may like to know that I am a postgraduate educated sex worker, who believes
sex work to be as valid occupational choice as any other. I chose sex work
because I wanted a work environment where I had control of my conditions. I also
see sex workers as sub-contractors – not employees. And that perspective informs
my approach to working and the conditions I work in. I am also a committed
feminist and trade unionist.
I have a number of ideas to offer for debate, as to how we can use legislation to
keep women good, rather than vilify them.
I’m pleased to say that I’ve been guzumped to some extent by the announcement
by Minister Ellision for the government has adopted some of the strategies I was
going to raise. For example, the increased resources and focus on enforcement,
and presumably, prosecution. That’s all good.
No longer detaining workers automatically, or in detention a centre, that’s a good
thing. As is the reversal of the automatic and instant deportation policy.
All these changes work to take the ‘bad’ tag off women. And to an extent they
recognize sex work as legitimate work, and the associated workplaces as
legitimate workplaces. I’m not sure if this recognition of the industrial/workplace
nature of sex work was an intended consequence of the recent package, but I
reckon it’s a good thing and over time will influence the debate and strategies
taken to combat sexual servitude.
I’m hoping over time that this will serve to normalize sex work.
For example, investigating cases will surely include looking at the working
conditions of the women. This will give plenty of scope for prosecuting using more
than sexual servitude legislation.
Other approaches I believe worth debate to address the working conditions of
trafficked workers in an effort to increase the opportunities to escape a trafficking
situation, or to avoid it all together, include:
1. If the federal government were to issue working visas for sex work, then women
who could afford it, could work in a very clear zone of legality.
It would help reduce the amount of visa manipulation currently estimated to be
done by traffickers.
And it would give women back their agency; their right to make their own
decisions and to control their destiny (well, inasmuch as one can control their
own destiny)
2. When issuing visa’s the Embassy could give a fact sheet, or similar, re working
conditions and systems and structures to enforce them. For example, a blurb
on the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, the role of unions and the
various State agencies responsible for enforcing workplace legislation.
3. The abolition of legislation dealing specifically with prostitution in all states.
This is an area where the States and Territories have a key role to play in the
prevention of trafficking for sexual servitude.
This will have the immediate effect of destigmatizing sex work. To me it is akin
to removing abortion from the criminal statues, and State judgement, and
recognizing it as a standard medical procedure.
By having specific areas of criminal justice concerns, such as corruption, drugs,
violence, rape, minors etc in other, already existing in State legislation, many of
the traditional arguments in favour of prostitution specific legislation are
resolved in a more dignified way. For example, sex without a condom could be
a simple matter of an amendment to the health act to the affect that sex
without a condom in a commercial sex transaction is regarded as a criminal act
and attracts a penalty as spelt out in the relevant legislation. Or something like
that.
Under state legislation, agencies responsible for industrial conditions and
standards, such as Workcover in the ACT, have the power to enter work
premises to enforce legislative conditions. It can by done by a phone call to the
relevant agency. A couple of years ago the ACT Workcover did a series of
brothel workplace inspections and found them all to breach working conditions
in some way.
It’s not so much the outcome that is important in this example but the fact that
there are avenues to regulate the industry to trafficked women’s advantage. It
just requires the political will to enforce them.
I’m basically suggesting the Al Capone theory – get them for every little breach
of every bit of legislation you possibly can. The state and territories have plenty
of scope to play an active role in combating trafficking and sexual servitude
and they need to be encouraged to get active. Crimes of assault and rape,
kidnap and depravation liberty seem pretty obvious. And what about workplace
health and safety? It seems to me there is a large range of legislation that can
be brought to intimidate would be traffickers from considering Australia is a
target market.
4. As a middle ground to the previous model, an alternative would be uniform
national prostitution laws, based on the ACT legislation. This would encourage working conditions that provide dignity and decency for all workers.
Particularly if that little clause in ACT anti-discrimination legislation referring to
respecting all occupations was added to other states anti-discrimination
legislation.
This model in no way limits the role of states and territories in applying all other
relevant legislation to prevent the creation of trafficking-friendly environments.
5. And where are the trade unions? The ACTU could undertake to lobby on behalf
of trafficked workers. They have the understanding of industrial matters and
the nature of work that could prove valuable, particularly in terms of education.
Also individual unions have the power to enter premises for inspections and
communication, if they have members there. There was an attempt to unionize
in Vic a few years ago, with some workers joining the Miscellaneous Workers
Union. But they left complaining of high union fees.
In spite of this, I believe there is much to be gained by workers becoming more
industrially active.
Education is vital to the success of legislation. It encourages compliance and can
help garner community support for controversial issues. And educating women
equips them to better achieve their goals.
Given that we know many women return to the conditions offered by traffickers
after their deportation, the value of educating overseas workers about workplace
legislative requirements in attempts to negate the power of traffickers is obvious.
These are intelligent resourceful women, who if properly informed, would most
likely find safer ways to offer commercial sexual services in Australia, or any other
part of the world they may choose to work.
While recognizing the good work already done by NGO’s in educating and
empowering women, greater gains could be achieved if they could also talk about
the industrial situation in Australia. For example, do trafficked women know they
can claim their unpaid wages – even from offshore?
Through their close and intimate contacts developed with trafficked workers,
NGO’s have a particularly powerful role in educating the survivors of trafficking.
These are just some ideas showing how current working conditions experienced by
trafficked people can be affected, for the better, through changes in attitudes
regarding legislation. Ideas that could go some way to combating trafficking for
sexual servitude and restoring the trafficked human rights.
I hope I’ve given you something to think about.
Stan:
Thanks for this post. I want to take one more stab at reminding (whomever… readers) that the critique of “the industry” from the radical feminists (who I consider the feminist-left) is NOT the same as that coming from the right. The refusal to recognize “sex work” as work by the right is based on the desire to retain power over women in a particular form… generally thorugh ‘domestication,’ or as Mies might say, housewifization. There is a paternalism there that does not translate into women’s liberation from oppressive systems, but a kind of protection racket underwritten by a whore-modonna complex. But the feminist-left critique is saying that desire itself is constructed in a system of power that is not reducible to class, and that the liberatory strategies of working class struggle (unions, etc.) (which are now being rendered obsolete for millions even in wc struggle by the flexibility and dominance of finance capital) are not centered against the system of power (male supremacy) that is most central to the question of prostitution… male prerogative and privilege.
The attempt to confront patriarchy (male supremacy) as ‘workers’ is, imo, an error (I did not say women have no right!!! but that this will not solve the root problem). The attempt, however, of so-called sex-radicals to mount an actual apology for the industry is not a defensive error, but an active position promoting desire as it is presently constructed (intentionally trying to bury any interrogation of desire as social construction by natrualizing it) using by feint-and-parry turns the idiom of biological determinism and liberalism. That is why I will continue to actively oppose them. They are supporting male social power over women.
And just as we take our struggle for the working class to the state to contest for power there, the state is a central battleground in the struggle against male supremacy. The failure to understand this is part of the more general tendency that a friend once described by saying “they have a black hole in their head where the state should be.)
The reluctance of many Marxists to acknowledge sex as a system of power is based on the belief that all systems of power, and all forms of struggle, must be subordinated to class struggle (which is often seen in economistic terms). Moreover, there is on the part of many Marxists a shocking level of overall unfamiliarity with the body of feminist work that has been developed. This accounts for the default to Engels and the tendency toward schematic reductions of sex as a system of power. This is pretty easy for me to see, because that was precisely what I was doing five years ago, until I started seriously engaging feminist work. This is an exercise I strongly recommend. It does not water down our ability to struggle, it strengthens and deepens our materialist conception of history by including the other 52%.
17 April 2005, 12:34 pmsw:
You don’t understand Marxism well enough to criticise it Stan. Rather, you are criticising it based on your own faults and interpretation.
17 April 2005, 6:59 pmsw:
There are a lot of distortions in the article.
For a start… THere are only about 300 “trafficked” women per year in Australia. They are not “sold”. Most of them are recruited from the sex-industry in Asia, voluntarily, by well-known agencies. They are brought to Australia on a contract (usually about $30,000). They keep about half their wages while paying off the debt, which usually takes about a year. During this time they are allowed out and allowed to contact their families etc. The reason they don’t leave is because they want to be in Australia because the working conditions, wages, opportunities etc are a lot better than where they came from.
Once they finish their contracts they are allowed to work where they like but the agency is supposed to take care of them and their papers. They can’t go back on the contract or they would lose their reputation in the areas they recruit from. To get around this raids are often organised with the Department of Immigration. Women still paying off contracts are removed from the premesis and only a few Australian women and whoever has payed off their contract are left. DIMA raids, takes the migrant workers and deports them or locks them up with lots of triumphant publicity about how they are “fighting trafficking”.
When sex-workers organisations here have tried to raise this issue they have been ignored. The rights of migrant workers are used as a political football by the government. If they were allowed normal working visas it would completely undercut this system of debt-bondage and also help to reduce racism and stigma.
17 April 2005, 7:32 pmoz feminista:
SW
17 April 2005, 8:42 pmit seems you are just throwing personal insults around now, and I was really valuing your input - sure angry reaction tells me something, but your insight tells me far more, so I’d appreciate you articulating what it is that you think Stan doesn’t understand about Marxism. As I see it, he has a pretty sound grasp on MArxist theory, and on theories of patriarchy. He is a self acknowledged late starter, but so what? That’s to me a great testimony to the power of people to change. So to get on with this………where does Stan not understand marxism here? how is it a problem?
Because I find what he is presenting, and the space to develop and discuss this, is not available anywhere else.
There is only one marxist organisation and associated group of thinkers in Australia that I have come accross who seriously consider these ideas and try to develop and take this analysis further - and outfit I would call a truely feminist socialist organisation - and even in my short lifetime I have seen the decline of organised feminism (admitedly it was in decline when i came around socialist politics) and that too has had an impact of the newwe layers as people work twice as hard to consciously raise and discuss issues of sexism and how it manifests, what pruposes it serves and how to fight it.
and how hard much harder does that discussion become when women are adopting language like chicks and babes in feminist women’s groups and adopting sex radicals lines on ‘anything goes?’ and it’s okay if you chose to be degraded……..
sw:
OF. I have been trying to engage in this discussion since the first post. Up until yesterday I was very patient with everyone. But so far Stan has not responded to ANY of the arguments I have raised. He even refuses even to clarify his own position when I have asked him to. He prefers to take up the sex-radical arguments because they are easier to tear up or moralise against. It’s passive-agressive and is designed to keep debate on his own terms.
What my belief is, is that the radical feminists and sex-radicals are BOTH arguing flip sides of the same coin and therefore both fall down in different places. This discussion has made that obvious to me (also that I was doing the same thing before).
18 April 2005, 12:54 amsw:
Also, I resent the implication that sex-workers like me are somehow responsible for the opression of women and children in the third world. This is pure capitalist moralism. It blames the opressed for their opression and falls into the whole good/bad women thing. The rights of women in the west is not contradictory with the rights of women in the third world. We are on the same side.
18 April 2005, 2:48 amoz feminista:
SW I hadn’t seen your post “Comment by sw — 4/17/2005 @ 7:32 pm” when I wrote. This is a helpful contribution - and a clear example of where sex worker campaigns and solidarity can show the humane and human response to traficking. But surely you too can see that it is hardly choice for women to “opt into” this sort of a contract….sure it is a choice for some, just as we all make choices in constraints. But when a woman knows she has no other future ahead of her, or perhaps her elderly mother, father, grandmother, young child, lover etc will suffer greatly or die unless somehow she gets the money rolling in…..I think these are the sorts of reasons we are talking about, often times similar reasons to why (often also poor, or somehow disadvantaged) women in rich countries take up this “option”…………to work,
18 April 2005, 7:48 amI’d like some different options ya know. that doesn’t mean it aint ok in a sense, we all have to survive, and hell, sometimes even we have to let loose and live it up - you know be happy and all that - whatever……but surely if we are thinking people and activists too, and we care about not just our own future, but our kids, our lovers, our planet’s very future & quality of life - then we have to follow some of this stuff through too - even if we don’t come out lookin too good.
Anyway the trafficking issue - especially the DIMIA treatment of women and girls - that’s a disgrace that surley an alliance can be built around - even with traditional enemies like the churches (who actually do a fair bit of good from my experience and feedback - as long as they don’t suck people in too far!!!
But then sex workers who are comfortable about being known for what they do as well as their politics would need to play a role in building these alliances too. hmmm…back to the shame stuff, the stigma…well, i think real barrier to some of this work happening….
michael:
There are a lot of problems with this ’study’, mostly in the implicit assumption that participation in the sex industry can be easily measured.
Like most offences designated as ‘vice’ (or sometimes mislabelled ‘victimless crimes’) the figures are intrinsically untrustworthy. If you get your car ripped off you will probably report it. But if you illegally buy drugs or sex neither you nor the supplier is likely to run to the cops to report the offence.
Obviously, in jurisdictions where prostitution is illegal, estimates of participant numbers will vary according to police activity. If they do a lot of stings and raids there will be an apparent increase in offending levels. If they prefer to pocket a bit of cash and look the other way, apparent offending levels go down.
Decriminalisation, by its very nature, creates a pool of registered sex workers who, unlike their illegal colleagues, appear consistently in the stats. The more sex workers ‘come in from the cold’, the more of the sex work iceberg appears above water and the more appear in surveys of sex industry participation.
That said, I tend to believe that there has been a big increase in people trafficking - including for the sex industry - in recent decades. But is this due to the legalisation of prostitution?
If Richard Poulin was capable of seeing through his own preconceptions he would realise that he has at least has part of the answer.
Poulin: “The example of the Netherlands provides a good indicator of the expansion of the sex industry in recent decades and the growth of trafficking for the purpose of prostitution : 2,500 prostituted people in 1981, 10,000 in 1985, 20,000 in 1989 and 30,000 in 1997.”
Of course prostitution has been legal in Holland since the early 1970s, so whatever is causing the growth in the sex industry it is not a change in its legal status.
Some alternative possibilities are the greater polarisation in wealth caused by ‘globalisation’ and the collapse of post-Soviet economies in Eastern Europe. In Australia there has been a huge boom in university student participation in the sex industry which is obviously being driven by increasing education fees and accommodation costs near universities.
Anyone fit to call themselves a scholar knows that correlation ain’t proof. The way Poulin has not queried the integrity of his data nor suggested alternate hypotheses for the trends he believes he has identified makes him an ideologue, not a scholar, in my book.
25 April 2005, 10:59 amDebbie:
Micheal,
You make some interesting points about the rise in trafficking etc. I suspect that it may be a combination of a few things. Way more reporting (I have seen a couple of documents from anti-prostitution conferences in the early part of the century which have discussions remarkably similar to the ones we are having today) and the fact that slaves, domestics, etc would not always have been counted as being trafficked for sex. Centralisation of the industry in the hands of companies etc instead of private workers and pimps. Finally, just people travelling more and further than they used to. Sort of like every other industry. What do you think?
26 April 2005, 12:33 ammichael:
Debbie: What do you think?
michael: Its really hard for me to know how much trafficking is rising or what the factors driving the rise are, so I’d be loathe to commit the same errors I see in Poulin’s analysis and try to finger specific causes.
If I was designing a study to try to identify what may be behind people trafficking I would be trying to control for changes in economic and legal circumstances in source and destination countries as well as changes in the structure and regulation of industries that employ trafficked people before I pointed at any specific change in the sex industry as the culprit. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there has also been an increase in abusive exploitation of illegal immigrant labour in other industries too but I don’t hear people blaming the legal status of cleaning services, food processing, restaurants, the building industry or fruit picking for the apparent boom in people trafficking.
My own preconception is that its the fault of ‘globalisation’ (i.e. rendering borders more porous to capital and less porous to labour). That works fine for capitalists in the more mobile industries like manufacturing, software development, call centres etc, but its a bit tough on the poor, greedy cappos who can’t relocate to where the labour is cheapest. You can’t send your office building to Bangladesh to be cleaned and even executives with lots of frequent flyer points would find it a bit inconvenient to pop over to Bangkok every time they feel a bit horny.
Not sure what the situation is in the US, but in recent years it has suddenly become acceptable for politicians in Australia, New Zealand and the UK to play the ‘illegal immigrant card’ at election time, followed by more draconian penalties for the illegal immigrants who are caught. I think that this has been at least partially at the instigation of their corporate masters who are unable to relocate their business to the third world, so instead relocate part of the third world to their business. Increasing legal immigration quotas would defeat their purpose as they would have to provide legal immigrants with the same wages and benefits as locally born workers.
‘Respectable’ companies have restructured and outsourced their personnel departments in a manner that facilitates labour hire agencies run by organised crime and linked to people trafficking
(see for example http://www.guardian.co.uk/immigration/story/0,15729,1422874,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1179164,00.html - the latter is a great piece of investigative journalism).
But as I said, I’m not even 100% sure that people trafficking has really increased at all (as opposed to the reporting of it) much less what factors might be driving it. But if I was determined to find out I sure wouldn’t be looking at any one industry in isolation - especially one as notoriously difficult to study as the sex industry.
26 April 2005, 12:50 pmsophie:
So is it different when radical feminists refer to women’s bodies as “garbage cans” too?
H¿igard and Finstad … “no-one wants to rent out her vagina as a garbage can for hordes of anonymous men’s ejaculations”.
I think that the radical-feminists, rather than transcending the good/bad, victim/agressor, whore/wife thing have just chosen to categorise *most* women as good or victims.
We need to start seeing women as *human* instead.
29 April 2005, 12:31 amGeorge:
From
Engels and the Origin of Women’s Oppression
by Sharon Smith
…
Was Engels right?
Engels has many critics. Some of this criticism has been invaluable. In particular, the anthropologists Eleanor Burke Leacock and Karen Sacks have applied more recent data to help further develop the Marxist approach to women’s oppression as laid out by Engels in The Origin, while casting aside his assertions which have been disproved. Stephanie Coontz and Peta Henderson have developed a useful analysis of the rise of patrilineal descent which builds upon Engels’ work. More recently, Chris Harman has developed a critique of Engels which helps to clarify his insights. All have been cited above.
One mistake which some of Engels’ critics make, however–and this is especially, though not exclusively, true of academics–is to dwell so much on the particulars as to obscure the theoretical framework developed by Engels. When one examines every detail of each and every tree, it is all too easy to miss the forest. For example, the sociologist Martha Gimenez, in an essay also cited above, offers some valid criticism of specific assertions made by Engels and, for all intents and purposes, convincingly defends the essence of Marxist theory. Yet she argues that “the presence of Marxist and non-Marxist elements in Engels’ text is an important determinant of the ambiguous nature of his views”–as if somehow Marx and Engels had parted ways.59 Engels may have made a number of errors, but this was not one of them.
The problem is made worse when those who are unsympathetic to Marxism are doing the dissecting. Many feminist writers accuse Marx and Engels of “economic reductionism”–of reducing all social questions, including women’s oppression, to class relations. The accusation usually rests on the false assumption that Marxism subordinates women’s oppression to the more important arena of the class struggle. The underlying assumption is, of course, that the root of women’s oppression is at least partly personal in nature, and unrelated to class society–a product purely of the unequal personal relationships between women and men. Eleanor Leacock makes the point, “In western academic circles second-hand knowledge of (or assumptions about) Marxist ideas are legion, but Marx’s and Engels’ works are all too seldom read. The usual practice is to set up as Marxist theory the straw man of economic determinism and then to knock it down.”60
One of those most hostile to Marxism, Catherine MacKinnon, writes in her anti-Marxist diatribe, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, that Marx was interested in women’s oppression “only in passing.” She accuses Engels of sexism explicitly, stating, “The key dynamic assumption in Engels’ analysis of women’s situation, that without which Engels’ history does not move is (in a word) sexism.” Thus, she concludes, “The classical socialists believed first socialism, then women’s liberation,” as if Marx and Engels swept women’s liberation under the rug.61 MacKinnon never bothers to present documentation of these charges. Her own analysis locates the source of women’s oppression in the existence of pornography. And she regards the criminalization of pornography as a step toward ending women’s oppression–a right-wing conclusion which a broad range of feminists have rejected.
Nevertheless, even many feminists who have attempted to incorporate questions of class share a similar assumption about Marxism. Thus, Gerda Lerner criticizes what she describes as “the insistence of Marxists that questions of sex relations must be subordinated to questions of class relations.”62
In particular, the feminist argument often goes, Marxism cannot (and does not seek to) explain the more personal aspects of women’s oppression because it locates the root of women’s oppression in class society. This is a caricature of Marxism, which assumes that Marxists only concern themselves with exploitation at the workplace. In reality, Marxists do not “rank” oppressions. But locating the economic roots of inequality is precisely the way to understand how seemingly quite different forms of oppression have come to play a crucial–and often interdependent–role in propping up the system of exploitation.
Far from ignoring the personal aspects of women’s oppression, Engels laid out for the first time the theoretical framework for understanding them. This should be obvious to anyone who has made the effort to read The Origin with an open mind. Engels incorporated into his analysis all aspects of women’s oppression–including domestic abuse, the alienation of sexuality, the commodification of sex, the drudgery of housework, and the hypocrisy of enforced monogamy. And most importantly, he emphasized the inequality between women and men within the family. Moreover, he did so in the Victorian era, when such ideas were far less commonplace than they are today in the aftermath of the women’s liberation movement. Locating the source of women’s oppression in class society in no way limits our understanding of the impact that it has had on the lives of individual women.
It should not be surprising that there are a fair number of errors in The Origin–if only because Engels was so far ahead of his time. The most important errors made by Engels, in fact, are those instances in which he accepts certain aspects of Victorian morality. Thus, after a scathing attack on enforced monogamy, he nevertheless guesses that socialism will bring with it a flowering of…monogamy, in the form of “individual sex love.” There is, of course, no way to predict what sort of relationships people will choose in a society in which sexuality is no longer alienated. Given the extent of sexual alienation present in today’s society, it is difficult even to imagine. Moreover, any analysis of gay oppression is entirely absent from Engels’ analysis, even though more recent Marxist theory has pinpointed the roots of gay oppression, like women’s, in the rise of the nuclear family.
Nevertheless, as the following passage makes clear, Engels’ method not only opened the door to understanding women’s oppression, but also put forward a vision of women’s liberation, which has continued both to inform and inspire successive generations of socialists since his time:
What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual–and that will be the end of it.63
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2 May 2005, 6:35 pmhttp://www.isreview.org/issues/02/engles_family.shtml
michael:
Seems to me that Sharon Smith’s piece (posted by George) simply tends to reinforce precisely the criticisms of Marxist (Engelian?) approaches to feminism which she attempts to debunk.
She imagines that she has dismissed the criticism that “Marxism cannot (and does not seek to) explain the more personal aspects of women’s oppression because it locates the root of women’s oppression in class society”, but then goes on to suggest that sexual relationships will be magically transformed into a utopian ideal with the arrival of the classless society. If that isn’t a failure to address the nature of female oppression in other than the one dimensional simplification of the dialectic then I don’t know what would be. It is essentially saying “forget your own struggles, sisters, and join ours - as that is the only one which will ultimately liberate you”. About as believable to someone actually living their oppression as the suggestion that joining the right church will fix everything.
And if economic determism is a ’straw man’ then how the heck did Marx pretend to be able to explain and predict all of history with it? It might be convenient for modern Marxists to pretend that the materialist dialectic is not at the very heart of Marxism - after all, it has been convincingly refuted not by anti-Marxists but by history itself - but to suggest that those who point to Marx’s adherence to economic determinism are erecting straw men would seem to be a renunciation of the fundamentals of Marxism itself.
To me, the most interesting line in the article was “[MacKinnon’s] own analysis locates the source of women’s oppression in the existence of pornography. And she regards the criminalization of pornography as a step toward ending women’s oppression–a right-wing conclusion which a broad range of feminists have rejected.”. From some of the articles posted on this blog it would seem that MacKinnon’s error is certainly not limited to right wingers.
3 May 2005, 10:45 pmComandante Gringo:
Knowing these gangsters and their vulgar practices too well myself, I’d like nothing better than to organize with komrads to smash them bigtime and free the people they prey upon; but on the one hand, the pigs always seem to have a blind eye when it comes to organized crime… and yet seem to always be on the lookout for “subversive” political activity. On the other hand, we’re also hampered by all the liberals and pacifists on the Left who simply will not even see these problems concretely — other than as abstractions out of the boox and articles they’ve read — let alone as activity they might even engage in directly and at possible risk to their ‘valuable’ hides…
And so gangsterism grows and grows again: to the point where it has even become Hollywood/Las Vegas sexy. With people even fawning over these greaseballs, or their Hollywood simulacra.
What a decadent system, huh? It’s got to go. And with a brutal shove at that. I’m more than ready myself.
4 May 2005, 1:49 amGeorge:
Actually Micheal, I think you missed the whole point of the piece (which was actually about Engels - not feminism generally).
“forget your own struggles, sisters, and join ours - as that is the only one which will ultimately liberate you” is the *exact opposite* of the point she was making… But maybe you’d have to read the rest of the article.
The point that last Engels quote (in sharon’s piece) is not that sex will be “magically transformed”, but rather that it is impossible to know what it will look like - ie that Engel’s own assumptions were made from someone who lived in Victorian times and therefore has some trouble imaging what it will look like.
4 May 2005, 6:40 pmGeorge:
Comandante Gringo… Your comments really reek of machismo. Have you ever thought of listening to actual sex-workers and their opinions about how to deal with this stuff? Do you think that violent attacks on their workplaces would really be “liberating” to them? I’m not a pacifist but what you are talking about is not revolutionary action but individual terrorism and machiso that is completely unrelated to the lives of the women involved.
4 May 2005, 6:45 pm