Sex Work

by Frédérique Delacoste

  Racial impurity is put forth as a justification for prohibition and segregation.7 Prohibition refers to restrictions in particular about what enters the body. Segregation is an attempt to separate the chaste from bodily temptation and contamination. The impurity assigned to race is glued to the shame assigned to sex. Divisions into the pure and the impure, the madonna and the whore, the wife and the prostitute, or the white and the black mirror divisions of conscience from pleasure, belief from act, or segregation from sisterhood. Laws are made, cities are planned, and children are raised to ensure those divisions either officially or unofficially.

  Although unchastity stigmatizes only women as whores, it does stigmatize certain groups of men in other ways. Like men who affiliate with prostitutes, homosexual men and men of color are deemed unworthy. Homosexual men are targeted with a gay or faggot stigma because they are regarded in dominant society as female men; men of color are targeted with a pimp stigma because they are regarded in dominant society as violent and irresponsible men. Stigmatization effectively denies heterosexual white male privilege to gays and men of color and, at the same time, absolves heterosexual white men of identification with sexual variations or of responsibility for sexual violations. One prostitute in Italy said, “Lots of married men prefer pre-operative transsexual prostitutes (men in the process of becoming women who have both breasts and a penis); they want gay sex without forfeiting heterosexual identity.”

  Anti-Semitism and the Whore Stigma

  Jews, too, have been identified as unchaste. However, whereas black unchastity is primarily attached to mythologies about black women’s sexual mysteries and black men’s physical violence, Jewish unchastity is primarily attached to mythologies about Jewish women’s sexual victimization and Jewish men’s financial conspiracies. “The ‘beautiful Jewess’ is she whom the Cossacks under the czars dragged by her hair through the street of her burning village.”8 Or, perhaps closer to modern associations, the Jewess is she who underwent sexual experiments in Nazi concentration camps. One Dutch woman whose parents both survived Nazi camps said, “I don’t know if it’s because of my thick black hair which stands out in Holland (racial difference) or my parent’s camp background (history of abuse), but my Gentile boyfriends always talk about their excitement in being with a Jewish lover and about feeling protective toward me and about my being different from other Dutch women. It sort of makes me feel like an orphan whore.” On the male side, the Jewish man is he who wants money and has intelligence, both of which incite him “to do evil, not good.”9 One Jewish man said, “They wanted my ideas but, as soon as I profited from them, they accused me of taking over.”

  Frequently in contemporary societies, stereotypes about Jews are not specified by gender and both Jewish women and Jewish men are seen as victims and connivers. Jewish victimization is stigmatized as unchaste because of supposed racial impurity (used to justify persecution) and defilement (the condition of having been spoiled by abuse). Jewish intelligence is stigmatized as unchaste because it is supposedly deviant, manipulative, and financially self-serving. A portrait of the Jewess as whore and the Jew man as pimp emerges with little reference to sexuality. That portrait is ambiguous. Victimization and intelligence are stereotypes which elicit contradictory feelings of compassion, blame, resentment, guilt, respect, and jealousy. Unchastity in the case of Jews is therefore both enviable and suspect: Jews are, at least, acknowledged as sufferers and validated as survivors. On the other side, they are suspected both for their history of persecution and for their history of survival. “Why were they persecuted?” “How did they survive?” Those questions glare suspiciously at Jews. The historical link of Jewish survival to oppressive interests, be they tax collection in the past or Western imperialism in the present, is used to stain Jewish credibility. Anti-Semitism is essentially the blaming of Jews for society’s ills and injustices. Jews are thereby accused of unchastity not only by the ruling class, but also and most painfully by other oppressed peoples.

  Jewish oppression and prostitution oppression have many parallels. Like Jews, prostitutes are unchaste both according to conservative ideologies (for their sexual license) and according to radical ideologies (for their transactions with sexist and capitalist men). Both Jews and prostitutes are denigrated and idealized and blamed for basic social problems. Furthermore, the reality of their persecution and daily abuse is frequently doubted or denied. Both Jews and whores are stigmatized for their past experiences, their non-conforming intelligence, their assumed quest for money, and their assumed sexuality. Historically, they have both been legally forced to identify (and isolate) themselves publicly by wearing certain clothes or symbols such as a strange hat or particular color.10 They both have had to hide or “pass” or migrate in order to survive. And, they both are perceived as simultaneously passive victims and guilty agents (Jews for communism-or-capitalism, whores for disease-or-disorder).

  Whether or not particular Jews are stigmatized as whores or as pimps, they are subject as Jews to the paradoxes of the whore stigma. One Jewish prostitute said, “Sex and money stigmas are nothing new for me and I learned about leading a double life from being a Jew in a community of Gentiles. I also learned as a Jew that it’s good and necessary to build your own life regardless of what other people think of you. Besides, I know that people will respect exactly the same things in me that they envy or reject, so it’s impossible to please. I’ve got no choice but to live my own life.”

  Classism and the Whore Stigma

  Whereas a person of color is portrayed as bad and a Jew is portrayed as different, a working-class person is portrayed as a nobody. It follows that dominant societies have set out to tame the colored, expel or exterminate the Jew, and ignore the worker. Chastity for the worker means invisible subserviance. Working-class people include, of course, people of color and Jews; however, in relation to white Gentile co-workers or certainly white Gentile bosses, people of color and Jews are urged to “know their place” and to “pass” as nobodies, or anybodies. Their position may be different from that of white Gentile workers, but in essence class oppression is a dynamic whereby all workers are pressured into conformity and obedience. Women fall under the same requirements as men within the public labor force; in addition, any woman without a maid to clean or a governess to care for children (the large majority, thus) becomes a worker in the private labor force. There, too, her chastity is measured by the invisibility of her labor.

  The labor process is associated with dirt, money, feces, noise, muscle, sweat, tears, pain, and repetition. Workers are expected to dirty themselves in the interest of human reproduction and production. They are considered the work horses of society; as such, their own humanity is denied. They are relegated to the back room or the basement or the “bad side of town”. They are excluded from opportunities, culture, public debate, and power. Classically, male workers are hired for their brawn not their brains and female workers are hired for their appearance not their performance. Essentially, the male worker’s muscle and the female worker’s smile are prostituted to middle- and upper-class demands.

  The impurity attributed to women workers leads to sexual assumptions and requirements. A man on a beach in Chicago yelled to a woman: “If you weren’t so rich, you’d be a whore!” He was crudely expressing the common assumption that poor women are whores and rich women would be whores if they needed money. In other words, women who work for money are called whores. It is true that the more access a woman has to money and privilege, the freer she is likely to be from selling her labor, especially labor sold at the cost of legitimacy. If a woman can separate herself from images of unchastity, then she can hope to gain immunity from the whore stigma. Even then, however, she remains a nobody. At best, the traditional woman can hope to take on the identity of her husband.

  In former times, every woman who worked in a public job was “working-class.” And, all working women were treated as prostitutes by higher-class men.11 Women workers in professions of different c
lasses are presently still in a battle against male sexual presumptions and harassments.12 However, the struggle amongst women workers for rights is usually articulated as a struggle against being treated like whores, rather than as a struggle against the treatment of whores. Prostitutes serve as models of the stigmatized working woman. Women who work, regardless of their class, are vulnerable to the whore stigma. Especially in countries where cultural values weigh against public labor for women, such as the Netherlands, the whore stigma is firmly attached to the work needs and wishes of women.

  Race oppression, Jewish oppression, and class oppression are distinct mechanisms of subordination and control. Impurities of blood, history, and status are attributed to the targeted group and used to justify social ostracism, physical mistreatment or persecution, denial of rights, and sexual abuse of women. Oppressed men are assumed to be mean or greedy or inhuman. Oppressed women are assumed to be whores or whorish unless they prove otherwise; there is, however, no proof of chastity for a self-identified or life-experienced woman. Even white skin, Gentile ancestry, and middle-class status are no guarantee of stigma immunity for women.

  Defilement

  Whereas unchastity as impurity refers to identity, unchastity as defilement refers to experience. Female virginity is commonly considered the opposite of defilement: the virgin is unspoiled and the defiled girl (or woman) is “spoiled.” Non-virginity refers specifically to sexual experience; defilement refers to physical as well as sexual pollution or violation. Boys and men are not stigmatized by (heterosexual) non-virginity or defilement. In fact, the lost innocence which devalues girls is apt to raise the status of boys. Sex and violence dishonor women and honor men. Women are stigmatized with The Scarlet Letter; men are rewarded with The Red Badge of Courage.13 Her shame is his honor.

  Most traditionally, a girl is suppposed to remain a virgin until she marries at which time her husband “takes her.” If she should engage in sexual relations before marriage, then she becomes unchaste and, in some cultures, uneligible for a marriage of standing. Whether the sex was voluntary or imposed is irrelevant to the social damage incurred through the loss of virginity. If the sex was imposed then, on the one hand, the girl can at least claim passivity; on the other hand, imposition implies the double damage of sex and abuse. In either case, girls are stigmatized as whores once they have been exposed to sex, by force or by choice. The anxiety with which parents protect their girls from sexual temptation or violation reflects their awareness of the whore stigma. Because the stigma is so devastating for the future of a girl, parents are socialized to protect their daughter’s reputation even at the expense of her safety, development, or physical integrity. Such a distortion of values has led some fathers to pathologically “protect” their daughters from other men by interrogating them, beating them, and/or by sexually claiming them for themselves. One woman told: “I was daddy’s little girl. When I hit high school, around age fifteen, I started screwing around a lot. . .As soon as my father found out, he would find an excuse to beat the crap out of me. It happened whenever I had a new boyfriend.” Another woman recounted: “My father didn’t physically violate me, although I remember I didn’t want to wash dishes because then he would slobber all over me with affection,’ but he held an inquisition every Sunday morning over exactly what I had done the night before. He also competed with my boyfriends, coming into the room where they were and showing off his muscles. He also told me: 1) he would find me a boyfriend when the time came; 2) I would end up walking the streets; 3) no man would marry a nonvirgin; and 4) if I got pregnant, I would not have to run away from home.”14 Another woman said, “My father used me sexually since I was five. And then, when I started going on dates with boys, he would accuse me of being a whore. I asked him why I sudddenly became a whore once I had a boyfriend of my age when he’d been fucking me for years! He said that with him it was different because he loved me and it was in the family.”

  Child sexual abuse is the most classic scenario for the shaming of girls. Accusations of girlhood unchastity are then used to justify and pardon male sexual violation. In one striking example, a judge pronounced in a child molestation case: “I am satisfied we have an unusually sexually promiscuous young lady (a 5-year-old child). And he (the defendent) did not know enough to refuse. No way do I believe (the defendent) initiated sexual contact.”15 And, less extreme but essentially identical, a woman recalls telling her boyfriend about having been molested by a man at age eight: “It was like a ghost returning as the familiar grin came to his face and he said, You must have been a sexy little girl.’”16 In the same vein, a lawyer said of a 14-year-old incest victim, “I can understand her father; she is a beautiful girl.” Female beauty, also of a young girl, was thereby offered as a justification for sexual intrusion.

  Unlike fathers, mothers rarely abuse their daughters sexually. However, they are socialized to guard their daughter’s chastity, be it with-warnings, accusations, or denials. Mothers are commonly known to worry if their daughter develops early physically or if she develops a conspicuously female body. One mother said to her daughter when she saw her modelling a new bathing suit: “You can’t go out in that! Some man will rape you!” Implicitly, the girl is held responsible for preventing male sexual assault. And, if she should nonetheless fall victim to abuse, she may be blamed for having been provocative or her mother may blame herself for having given her daughter too much freedom. In other cases, the girl is not blamed for the abuse, but she is expected to act “as if nothing happened.” One woman recalled complaining to her mother about “Uncle’s messy kisses”: “I thought she’d tell off my uncle but instead she slapped me across the face!” The tendency of mothers to suppress their daughter’s sexuality and of fathers to possess their daughter’s sexuality is a part of the gender socialization of women and men. Unintentionally, the “protections” of both parents can function more to stigmatize than to safeguard girl children.

  Also therapists classically collude in blaming girls for sexual abuse. A male therapist responded in the following way to an incest victim: “From some of the details which she related of her relationship with her father, it was obvious that she was not all that innocent. But she was unable emotionally to accept her own sexual involvement with him.”17 Other therapists, especially of the classical Freudian tradition, are apt to deny the reality of sexual contact between father and daughter altogether.18 In that case, sexual abuse is not attributed to the girl’s seductiveness but to her wishful fantasies. Indeed, the first response to a child’s disclosure of incest has often been to accuse the child of lying. Girls are thereby taught to hide their experiences of abuse and to silence their pain.

  Once stigmatized as unchaste, girls may become sexually more active and may begin to identify more with harlot than housewife models of femininity. One woman who became a prostitute said, “I was already labelled a whore as a teenager so why not get paid for it?” Another young woman who had been carefully “saving herself” for marriage said, “I was the perfect ‘good girl’ and then I got raped. It never had been so great saving myself and, once it had happened, I started doing it a lot.” And another woman declared, “I was born a whore. My father used to take me around and all his friends would say, ‘Hey, who’s your pretty date — give me a hug, honey’... Since I was young, I identified with harlot images in movies. I liked the glamor.” Another woman who was sexually abused by her father said, “My father would call me all sorts of names and would storm around saying, ‘You’re no goddam good. You’re a whore. You’re a nothing. You’re this and you’re that. You’re bad through and through.’ They (father and mother) would turn even the most innocent relationship (with a man) into a really dirty thing. . .they’re constantly calling me a whore — so therefore I am. So therefore I can go to bed with anybody. It’s a vicious circle.”19

  The sexualization and vilification and molestation of girls constitute obvious violations of girlhood integrity. It is a cultural shock to realize the pervasive, even
normative, occurrence of such adult invasion and abuse of children in society.20 One woman who never suffered such violations said, “I was aghast to hear my father list the fact that he had never molested me as one of his accomplishments as a father.” Apparently, respect for his daughter’s sexual integrity did not come naturally. Unlike her father, the girl was not congratulated for her virginity. Only unchastity is significant for women, and then as a stigma rather than as an accomplishment.

  The relation between sexual abuse and the whore stigma is especially important now that the incidence and effects of incest are being exposed (see footnote 20). Given the stigmatizing equation of whore with sexual unchastity with abuse with badness, the abused girl is forced to either bury her experience or relinquish legitimacy. Identifying abuse with female unchastity rather than with female oppression maintains the illusions which surround violence against women. One illusion is that female behavior causes male sexual violence. Another illusion is that male sexual violence causes irreparable damage to female personality. Women are thereby not only violated, but also blamed and stigmatized. They are expected to repent rather than to recover. One woman said, “People make all sorts of assumptions about me when they hear about my past. I had an awful childhood of beatings and rapes. Thank God it’s over. But the burden goes on in people’s judgment of me. It’s as if I became a bad person by being treated badly.”

  For adult women, the criteria of chastity is not virginity, but monogamous marriage (or religious life). And, the keeper of female sexuality is not the father, but the husband (or God). Like children, adult women are shamed and blamed for abuse. It is interesting to note that sexuality and abuse brand girls as (unchaste) women and brand women as (bad) girls.

  Within marriage, sexual and physical abuse of wives by husbands is even more acceptable than abuse of daughters by fathers within the nuclear family. One prosecutor in England referred to husband abuse of wives as “reasonable assault” in certain cases, in particular cases of sexual infidelity.21 Indeed, sexual infidelity is commonly used by husbands as a justification to exercise control, domination, and/or physical abuse. Even close friends and family members are apt to excuse male violence within marriage. One woman repeated a conversation with her mother: “Mom, Chuck (her husband) has beaten me bloody. He has held a gun to my head and. . he has forced me to have sex with women and other men. He is always threatening to kill me.” The mother replied, “But, Linda, he’s your husband.”22 Certainly not all officials or families are unsupportive, but the stigma attached to the battered or sexually abused woman is socially legitimized. A battered woman said, “I have learned that the doctors, the police, the clergy, and my friends will excuse my husband for distorting my face, but won’t forgive me for looking bruised and broken.”23 Conspicuous mistreatment is taken as a sign of the woman’s “misconduct,” as if battering is a righteous punishment of female unchastity.