by Jackson Katz
“PIMPS AND HOES”
In Beyond Beats and Rhymes, Byron Hurt’s documentary film about hypermasculinity and misogyny in hip-hop culture, he interviews young men outside a rap music event who matter-of-factly identify many of the women across the street as “hoes.” He then walks over and asks the women what they think of being labeled this way. They reject the label and assert their right to wear short shorts and bikini tops in the hot Florida sun. The viewer is left with the sad impression that these women are either oblivious to how some men view them, or they are so beaten down that they expect it and are unfazed. The term “ho” has become such a routine part of everyday conversation that it has lost much of its initial sting. In this context, it is worth remembering that “ho” is shorthand for “whore,” which itself is a colloquial expression for a prostituted woman (or man). So when men (or women) call women “hoes,” they are comparing them to prostitutes. To what effect? As a growing body of research shows, some men treat prostitutes with shocking brutality. According to one study, about 80 percent of women in prostitution have been the victim of a rape. As Susan Kay Hunter and K. C. Reed said in a 1990 speech at a conference sponsored by the now-defunct National Coalition Against Sexual Assault, “It’s hard to talk about this because . . . the experience of prostitution is just like rape. Prostitutes are raped, on the average, eight to ten times per year. They are the most raped class of women in the history of our planet.” Contrary to the Pretty Woman stereotype, most prostituted women are young, poor, and desperate. A large majority are incest survivors. Many of them are women of color. The average age that “women” in the United States are drawn into prostitution is thirteen or fourteen. So the term “ho” is not just a thoughtless epithet. When men (or women) call a woman a “ho,” they not only demean and degrade her. In a sense they send the message to people who know her that she deserves to be treated like a prostitute. In this way it sets her up—like a prostitute—to become a rape victim.
If casual use of the word “ho” sets women up to be rape victims, then it follows that casual use of the word “pimp” sets men up to be rapists. In fact, in the moral universe created by the phrase “pimps and hoes,” the true “nature” of women is that they should be sexually subservient, and the true “nature” of men is that they should dominate and control women. In a world that operates according to the cold and unforgiving values of the marketplace, the only distinction between men is whether they own women or rent them. As the white rap/rocker Kid Rock raps in “Pimp of the Nation”: “There’s only two types of men/Pimps and Johns.” There is no doubt about which one is the true “man’s man.”
Over the past few years, the word “pimp” has become a non-controversial word in popular discourse. From Nelly’s Pimp Juice beverage to the MTV show Pimp My Ride, from guys displaying “Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy” bumper stickers on their cars and trucks to men high-fiving each other for that “pimpin’ stereo system you got there, man,” the word “pimp” has not only become a routine part of the language—it has actually become a complimentary term. To what effect? What are the possible consequences of this glamorization of pimps? First, a little reality check. The traditional image of a pimp in this country is an African American street hustler. So casual talk about pimps always has a racial subtext that perpetuates one of the most racist caricatures of black masculinity: They’re sex-crazed jive-talkers who treat their women like shit. But regardless of their race, pimps are criminals who make money off the crass exploitation of girls’ and women’s bodies. (And boys’ and men’s.) Many of them are rapists and batterers. Regardless of how “cool” the image of the pimp has become in mainstream media culture, in real life pimps are incredibly cruel and callous men. The Council for Prostitution Alternatives estimates that 85 percent of prostitutes are raped by pimps. Some pimps are sociopaths. As Kathleen Barry explains in The Prostitution of Sexuality (1995):
Pimps target girls or women who seem naive, lonely, homeless, and rebellious. At first, the attention and feigned affection from the pimp convinces her to “be his woman.” Pimps ultimately keep prostituted women in virtual captivity by verbal abuse—making a woman feel that she is utterly worthless: a toilet, a piece of trash; and by physical coercion—beatings and the threat of torture. Eighty to 95 percent of all prostitution is pimp-controlled.
Let’s be clear. A culture that celebrates pimps is a culture that teaches men that masculinity is about power and control. It teaches them that they are entitled to sell, abuse, and rape women. Of course many men reject that and refuse to accept the one-dimensional caricature of manhood it implies. Still, to the extent that “pimps and hoes” becomes increasingly synonymous in people’s psyches with “men and women,” the fight against sexual violence will be like shoveling sand against the tide.
THE DEMAND SIDE OF SEX TRAFFICKING
In 2003, a Los Angeles-based group called Captive Daughters partnered with the International Human Rights Law Institute of DePaul University College of Law to organize the first-ever conference on the demand side of prostitution and sex trafficking. The “demand side” is a euphemism for the men who pay for sex with women and children, either here in the U.S. or around the world. The rationale for shifting the paradigm this way is obvious. It is imperative that the victims of prostitution and sex trafficking—who are typically poor girls and women from Asia, eastern Europe, and Central and South America—get the services they need, including medical care, drug abuse counseling, job training, and a host of other assistance. But these services are often too little, too late. Many of the girls’ and women’s lives are already badly damaged, their family and community relationships severed. On the other hand, without the demand from johns, traffickers’ profits would shrink, and the international prostitution syndicates would either dissolve or move into other areas of criminal activity.
When the focus of attention shifts to the demand side of the equation, a number of relevant questions emerge: Who are the men who buy sex from trafficked women and children? What percentage of them are “normal” guys, and what percentage are sexual predators? In a 2004 New York Times Magazine cover story on sex trafficking, the author, Peter Landesman, said that many formerly trafficked women he talked to said that the sex in the U.S. is “even rougher” than what the girls face in Mexico. One woman he spoke with in Mexico City who had been held captive in New York City said that she believed younger foreign girls were in demand in the U.S. because of “an increased appetite for more aggressive, dangerous sex.” Who are the men with this increased appetite, and why do they seek out these types of experiences?
On a practical level, how do they find the prostitutes to service them? In ads for “escort services” and mail-order bride companies? In the classified advertising sections in the back of hip newsweeklies? On the Internet? Does the travel industry collude when agencies organize and promote trips for johns to go to favored destinations for sex tourism, where they have easy access to cheap sex with young girls and boys? To what degree is the U.S. military complicit when it averts its institutional eyes as brothels spring up near bases and U.S. service members continue the long tradition of taking quick trips on weekend leave to solicit prostitutes in Asia? There are a host of public health concerns that revolve around men. When American men travel to Southeast Asia or South America to have sex with children, do they wear condoms? Or do they force the girls and boys to have sex without them, which increases the chance that either party—but especially the prostituted person—might contract HIV or other sexually transmitted infections? Do the men’s wives, girlfriends, and boyfriends back in the States know about their unprotected episodes when they return from their travels and have sex with them?
Unless men’s demand for sexual services subsides, in a world where there are billions of poor and desperate people, there will always be a steady supply of women and children who are forced, tricked, or blackmailed into prostitution by criminal pimps and organized crime syndicates. The trouble is that until recently, few pe
ople even mentioned the demand side, much less sought to analyze it systematically. It was simply expected—and accepted—that millions of men would want to procure prostitutes or pay to have sex with young girls or boys. And to this day, few people seem willing to name and challenge the colonialist exploitation at the heart of the globalized prostitution business. Exhibit A: the increasing number of American and European men who travel to impoverished Third World countries to have sex with dark-skinned young women and girls, and boys. When you add that degree of overt racism to the already rampant sexism of prostitution, the problem can seem overwhelming. I know that for some women, this entire subject is simply too sensitive to raise, especially because some men can be defensive and hostile when women challenge them on the subject of their “private” sexual behaviors.
A woman I know who works as a rape advocate described to me a conversation she had with her neighbor, a man she considered very sensitive to women’s issues, about a new book she was reading by Melissa Farley.
She said, “I’m reading this book on prostitution and post-traumatic stress. It describes the experiences of prostitutes around the world and their experiences parallel those of rape and physical battery…”
The neighbor replied, “No, I don’t believe that. It’s the woman’s decision.”
“Is it?” she replied. “Do you really think they want to have sex with all those men? In the book it talks about how many are forced into it and then controlled by pimps or boyfriends, husbands.”
“They make a lot of money,” he said.
“…that the pimps keep.”
“I don’t know. It’s still their choice to do it.”
“What other choices do they have?”
“No one puts a gun to their head!”
At that point, according to the woman, her neighbor became defensive to the point of belligerence. He grew angrier as the conversation continued, while she felt a mixture of frustration and sadness. She also felt a chill coming on in their friendship. “He became a stranger to me in that moment,” she said.
This conversation is not unusual. The entire subject of men’s participation in the purchase, sale, and rental of women’s bodies has long been shrouded in denial, euphemisms, and evasions. The anonymity of pimps and johns in discussions about sex trafficking has been maintained in the same way that domestic violence and sexual assault have been defined as women’s issues. The language used to discuss it obscures men’s role. For example, the New York Times lead editorial on New Year’s Eve 2005 offered a series of resolutions for bipartisan national action, and it highlighted sex trafficking as one area where Republicans and Democrats could work together. But men were not mentioned in the editorial. There were references to “helping women in the third world” and earnest pronouncements that this kind of “exploitation of women” remain on the international agenda. But one would search in vain for any acknowledgment that the demand for the illegal business of sex trafficking is men’s desire to purchase sex with “exotic” women—and young girls—that they can use and abuse with virtual impunity. There was also no mention of pimps or johns. The editorial suggested the focus of the anti-sex trafficking agenda should expand beyond the poor countries where trafficking begins to include the wealthy nations where the sex slaves are imported, such as the Scandinavian countries, Japan, and the U.S. This is a step in the right direction. The next step is to say that the focus needs to be on the criminal men in the poor and wealthy countries who coerce and enslave women and children in order to exploit their bodies for financial gain, and the average guys whose money fuels the demand.
STRIP CULTURE GOES MAINSTREAM
In the early 1990s, I was a guest on a television talk show where the subject was “feminist strippers.” The question: does strip culture empower women or degrade them? Most discussions about strip culture on mainstream TV focus on the titillating and sexy aspects of strippers’ lives, or the conflicts that arise in women’s relationships when their husbands or boyfriends patronize the clubs. I was there to argue that it is impossible to discuss stripping without taking into account the prevalence of sexual violence in our society. We can speculate about whether or not strip clubs would be popular in a nonsexist, rape-free world, but that is not the world we live in. Predictably, one or two of my fellow guests, as well as several members of the studio audience, countered that the popularity of male strip shows like Chippendale’s proves that stripping culture is not sexist. Women love this stuff. They go crazy at male strip shows. But even the slightest peek beneath the surface of these comparisons reveals a huge difference between female and male strip culture. That difference provides interesting insight about some of the ways that the sex industry contributes to the sexual violence pandemic.
The male and female strip cultures are not even close in size and scope. Male strip shows make up a tiny fraction of the “exotic” dancing industry. It is a challenge to find any strip clubs that cater exclusively to heterosexual women who want to watch men take their clothes off, although there are “male stripper” nights at strip clubs that offer naked women dancers every other day and night of the week. And male strippers typically do not fully disrobe. As someone said of the bikini, what it reveals is exciting, but what it conceals is vital. Male strippers rarely appear totally naked with their genitals on full display, while in a great many of the twenty-five hundred strip clubs across the United States, women take everything off. Even more revealing is the difference between how female and male strippers pose. Like women in pornography, female strippers pose in vulnerable positions—writhing around poles, back arched, legs spread, bending down with their rear ends up in the air and facing toward the audience. The intent is to invite the male patron to fantasize about penetrating them. Male strippers, on the other hand, do not pose in vulnerable positions. They strut around stage and thrust their bodies forward, posing in ways that reinforce not their vulnerability but their sexual and physical power. Even their choice of costumes is revealing in their celebration of traditional masculine strength: male strippers frequently pose as police officers, cowboys, construction workers. Compare that with female strippers’ costumes of choice: garter belts and lace, cheerleader skirts and pom-poms, or the classic French maid’s outfit. (One exception: the dominatrix is another popular stripper persona.) In other words, in strip culture as in pornography, men’s power and women’s vulnerability is presented as sexy. Not coincidentally, that is the same dynamic that underlies and defines rape culture.
In patriarchal culture, women’s sexuality and physical appearance is one of their defining features, a sexist presumption that the institution of female stripping confirms and perpetuates. By contrast, heterosexual men’s sexual attractiveness is much less based on their looks. So, when women go to “ladies night” at the strip club, or hire a male stripper for a private bachelorette party, part of the pleasure is in the role reversal. They can act like men for a night. In fact, one reason there is so much laughter at such shows is that for men to put themselves on sexual display for women in this way is still relatively uncommon; the humor resides in the subversion of the norm. This has begun to change over the past twenty years, as male “beefcake” and “hunk” calendars have become more of a regular feature in the cultural landscape.
Spokespeople for the strip industry insist that many of today’s prominent strip clubs are not the sleazy strip joints of decades past: they are more likely to be housed in attractive steel and glass buildings with nice furniture and clean bathrooms, and the deeper pockets of their owners allows for higher quality advertising than the cheap XXX signs that you still see in windowless strip clubs near highway truck stops or in economically depressed urban or rural areas. But these upgrades do not hide the danger for women that lurks just beneath the surface of the stripping industry. In fact, perhaps the most important difference between the male and female strip cultures is the threat of violence that is absent from the former and ever-present in the latter. Female strippers rely on continuous pr
otection from male bouncers and security officers, who are present in every strip club to shield the dancers from aggressive, disrespectful men—many of them drunk—who do not recognize or accept the “official” boundaries between the dancers and the customers. Unlike male strippers, female strippers have to worry about their safety after they leave the club, and not only for the reasons that all women are vulnerable to men’s violence. Female strippers, like prostitutes, are more vulnerable to sexual violence outside the club.
Most men who go to strip clubs do not assault women, and they respect the boundaries put forth by the establishment. But some men clearly do not respect the women, and after a few drinks they have no shame or reluctance to express their contempt. One former stripper told me that it was common for men to yell insults to women on stage as they walked by, and many dancers she knew had experienced everything from slaps and pinches to digital penetration. One of the open secrets of the sex industry is that some male customers believe that once they have paid a woman for sex they have the right to treat her any way they want. This includes some men who go to strip clubs and watch women strip, and it certainly includes men who pay women for lap dances, where the line between stripping and outright prostitution is deliberately vague. They might not have touched the woman with their own hands or naked penises, but in their minds they have paid women for sex, and are thus entitled to them.
In some cases, this sense of ownership plays out in disturbing and violent ways. Prostitutes are regularly beaten and raped, both by pimps and by customers. According to the prostitution researcher Melissa Farley, women in prostitution report that half of their customers demand sex without a condom. Many women who strip are also prostitutes, but in the minds of many men, there is not a big difference between the two. The good girl/bad girl dichotomy is alive and well, and when a woman is a bad girl, some men who have been socialized in our deeply misogynistic culture believe she is no longer worthy of their respect. In fact, when a woman so much as takes her clothes off in public, some men think she has given up her right to control when and with whom she wants to have sex. I have talked with several former strippers who say they cannot tell men whom they are interested in romantically that they used to strip, because they fear the men will assume that means they are ready to have sex with them practically on the spot.