However, there are big holes in this increasingly popular argument. First, it runs dangerously close to suggesting that gender inequality is a result of women themselves selling their bodies; that, in other words, it is women's own fault, an accusation which ‘sex negative’ feminists only get around by arguing that all sex workers are involuntary. Sex workers are either treated as the enemy ‒ or as victims. Second, it is of course realistic to suggest that if a society is unequal in gender terms, more women will feel forced into selling their bodies because they have few other options. At present, too many women who are struggling to feed their children find themselves with little option but to enter sex work. But preventing women from selling their bodies does not tackle those underlying gender inequalities. All it does is make the lives of sex workers more difficult. For example, policies that restrict sex workers’ ability to screen clients and advertise on line push women onto the street; policies that criminalize the buying of sex push sex work into dangerous avenues, where buyers are less likely to be caught; policies that restrict women's ability to work together mean that they have no one keeping check; and the whole set of policies aimed at ‘ending demand’ for sex work reduces the price of sex, leaving sex workers poorer than before. A much better approach would be to tackle the barriers affecting women's entry into education, training and the professions, along with addressing the unequal distribution of caring responsibilities in the economy and making sure that those that do unpaid care are not treated by the state as a welfare burden when they are in fact providing the public good on which we will all in the future depend: the next generation. In all of these respects, feminist thinkers have a great deal to offer policy makers, and without interfering with women's freedom to do what they want with their own bodies.16 Seeing women who sell their bodies as the underlying cause of women's objectification or of gender inequality is to confuse cause and consequence.
By placing the supposed ‘social good’ (the interests of womankind taken as a group) ahead of the freedom of the individual to do what she likes with her own body, ‘sex negative’ feminism also creates a slippery slope. If the way women use their bodies affects all other women, then we could easily end up in a society where women are not permitted to wear ‘revealing’ clothes; where they are expected to wear floor-length skirts and to cover their hair so as to discourage men from looking at them in a certain way. That may seem far-fetched, but it wasn't that long ago that a woman showing her knees, or even her ankles, was seen as objectifying herself, including by other women. If we see people who choose to deviate from the ‘norm’ as the cause of the problem, we end up, as Friedman and Hayek knew too well, in an authoritarian state, a state that demands that women cover up ‘for their own good’.
Once we start placing the supposed ‘social good’ ahead of the freedom of an individual woman, we end up in a world in which not only would we be insisting women cover up, but where we deny women proper access to birth control on the basis that it would resolve the current demographic crisis (one that economists Coen Teulings and Jason Lu have argued is costing the economy17) or of restricting people's ability to move abroad so as to avoid the adverse consequences of a brain-drain at home. Such policies would also be doing nothing more than placing the interests of wider society ahead of individual freedoms ‒ and yet, unlike with sex work, we would reject them. That presents a blatant inconsistency. Either you believe that individuals should be free to choose or that their right to choose comes second to the ‘social good’. You cannot have it both ways.
The Effect of Society on Sex Workers
It is common to think about the effect of sex work on society, but it is much less common to think about the reverse: how society affects the lives of sex workers. As Francesca Bettio, Marina della Giusta and Maria Laura di Tommaso point out, whilst economists have studied stigma in sex work, they have neglected the way in which such stigma is socially constructed.18
For centuries, sex work has been demonized and stigmatized. As Kate Lister writes, ‘[i]n the nineteenth century, sex work was known as “the great social evil” and was a source of acute concern to Victorian moralists.’19 Alexandre Parent du Châtelet (1836), author of Prostitution in Paris, wrote that ‘[t]he profession of prostitution is an evil of all times and all countries, and appears to be innate in the social structure of mankind.’20 F. Arnold Clarkson described sex workers as follows:
In the first place, a great many of them would be classified as pathological liars who garnish the sad tale of their downfall with a romance which would do credit to Munchausen. Poverty has comparatively little to do with their initiation, for prostitution increases regularly with wealth, and no raising of wages can abolish it. Domestic servants, who have a fairly sheltered life, furnish the most recruits. The mental characteristics which are most common are indolence and the love of luxury, including fine clothes. Passion does not seem to play as large a part as is usually supposed … Once firmly established in this life, few of them seem anxious to change their occupation, and there has always been difficulty, in America at least, in finding girls for the philanthropic ‘Rescue Homes’.21
Society has created a myth that they are bad people so as to create a ‘them’ and ‘us’ ‒ a world in which women are divided into ‘good girls’ and ‘whores’. Lena Edlund and Evelyn Korn explicitly model women choosing between the two.22 Evidence suggests that even when it comes to our choice of clothing, never mind the monetization of the body, we tend to be more empathetic towards modest women.23 It is this artificial division of womankind into two groups that allows individuals to get away with subjecting sex workers to the worst kind of horrors. By calling for the criminalization of the buying of sex, sex negative feminists are adding to the stigma, implicitly imposing a view that there is something wrong, shameful or sinful about monetizing the body.24 After all, if sex work was not thought to be ‘wrong’, why would they want to end the demand for sex workers? As any economist knows, suppressing demand pushes down the wage, hurting the livelihoods of sex workers. As Marina della Giusta, Maria Laura di Tommaso, and Sarah Jewell show, increased stigma actively achieves that result.25
Sex work is, of course, known for high levels of physical and mental abuse, something which campaigners often use to make the case for the buying of sex to be criminalized. In the words of Rahila Gupta, ‘[e]very prostitute who has left the industry describes the horrendous violence she has faced from pimps and punters, an occupational hazard that characterizes this kind of work.’26 However, such harm cannot and should not be separated from society's stance towards women who use their bodies in a particular way. In the words of sex worker and blogger Marleen Laverte, ‘[f]irst and foremost, it is social prejudices about prostitution that render it difficult for us to protect ourselves. That is because they lower the threshold to use violence against us – among clients, among the police, among everyone.’27
The disapproval of society can, understandably, result in common feelings of shame and, with it, mental harm and social isolation for women who monetize their bodies, unlike those who monetize their brains. It encourages clients to treat sex workers as subhuman and can lead them to take out their own feelings of shame for purchasing sex work on the sex worker. Society's disrespect also influences the law, which in turn affects violence towards sex workers. Criminalizing the buying (or selling) of sex places women in a more vulnerable position: unable to practise in safe conditions, unable to call on the support of the authorities and police and unable to benefit from the same rights as other occupations.28 It leaves women at the behest of those in a position of power. According to Laura Lee, ‘[t]he result is we're forced to work alone, sitting targets for would-be attackers who know that we are vulnerable, on our own, and carrying money.’29 And in the words of Margaret Corvid:
Criminalisation doesn't end demand – it just makes clients more afraid, and destroys any trust between worker and client. It makes it difficult to screen our clients or to practise safer sex. In street-base
d sex work, clients and workers now avoid well-lit areas, and meet in isolated places or in the client's home. In indoor sex work, it's harder to screen clients by phone, or with deposits, and our clients can't really trust us. How can this possibly help us?30
Society's Three Hang-Ups
Full equality for women means not only making sure that no woman feels backed into a corner but treating women who voluntarily monetize their bodies in the same way as we treat those who monetize their brains. Rather than criminalizing market exchange, it is instead society-wide disapproval and disrespect for sex work that needs to be tackled. This requires tackling three deeper hang-ups that we have as a society.
First, setting brain over body: to assume that it's perfectly all right for people to effectively pimp their brains but not their bodies. If you're born with or work hard to hone numerical or literary skills, it's entirely acceptable to make money from them, to sell your talents to others and for those other people to buy them. But if you're born with a great body, exercise hard and are able to hone your erotic skills, that's somehow considered different. Economic thinking, which grew out of the Enlightenment, hasn't helped here. Economics developed in a period in which science moved centre stage. Arts and emotion were out. Logic and reason were in. The brain came to be seen as superior to the body, capable of bringing about never-before-imagined riches. Anyone at the time identified primarily by their bodies ‒ women and people of colour ‒ was rendered second-class.31
Ever since the Enlightenment, there has been a tendency to view ‘clever’ people as somehow superior to everyone else. Consistent with this, and within sex work itself, stigma is lower for parts of the industry that involve more brain than brawn.32 Implicit in this way of thinking – that it's OK to sell access to your brain but not to your body ‒ is a gender element: the association of the brain with men and the body with women (as well as with people of colour).33 Since the brain has traditionally been considered masculine and therefore seen as man's great asset, our patriarchal society past and present has been perfectly happy with the idea of pimping the brain. But, since the body has been traditionally more associated with women and since women have traditionally been seen as inferior to men, then by default it has been assumed that making money from the body is somehow less respectable. And, of course, it has been in the distinct interest of men to leave sex workers in a vulnerable position, unprotected by the law, thereby reducing the sexual power that women can have over men. ‘Sex negative’ feminists fall into this same trap, one which devalues women who earn income from their bodies ‒ in fact, not only devaluing it but aiming to eradicate it. ‘Sex positive’ feminist Catherine Hakim, by contrast, suggests that we adopt a concept she calls ‘erotic capital’ alongside the more common concept of ‘human capital’, one that recognizes the value created by bodily assets.34
The second hang-up is that, historically speaking, we have tended to locate a woman's value in her sexual virtue and to see sex as ‘dirty’. Throughout the world, women are tortured and killed by their families if their sexual virtue is brought into question. Here in England, we revere Elizabeth I as ‘the Virgin Queen’. We slut-shame. Christianity has not helped, historically seeing the naked female body as evil, sinful and shameful. The problem is not sex work; it is the way we value women on the basis of their sexual virtue. In the words of Andrea Dworkin:
to the extent that people believe sex is dirty, people believe that prostituted women are dirt … The prostituted women is, however, not static in this dirtiness. She's contagious … In general, the prostituted woman is seen as the generative source of everything that is bad and wrong and rotten with sex, with the man, with women.35
Third, there is a tendency to see a woman's body as the property of men, that her (assumed to be) male partner should be the only one with access to it and that, until a woman meets her partner, she should remain ‘pure’. A woman using her own body is, as a result, seen as a threat to male sexual control. Throughout history, sex workers have been depicted as a threat to men and as a threat to the sexual virtue of women. It's for that reason that in medieval times they had to mark themselves out by the way they dressed (such as by wearing striped hoods), so that no other woman could be mistaken for one, and why female nudes in art were most commonly depicted as unaware of the male viewer and in an unthreatening pose, such as looking away from the onlooker.
As a society, we need to face up to and tackle these three problematic ways of thinking about women and sex, rather than regulating what women can and cannot do with their bodies. As suggested by the anthropologist Joke Schrijvers, a particularly good way to evaluate the place of women in a culture is to ask to what extent women have control over their own sexuality and fertility.36
Conclusion
Trading sex has a long history ‒ and is not unique to humans.37 It's also big business. However, women who monetize their bodies remain a taboo. Although the feminist mantra ‘my body, my choice’ seems to be perfectly acceptable in some situations ‒ such as in regard to birth control ‒ it doesn't seem to apply to sex workers. As a society, we surely have further to travel in gender equality terms but, once we achieve that utopia, the question is this: will sex workers, glamour models and revealing clothes be welcome? I personally think that a utopia that restricts the way that women use ‒ or reveal ‒ their bodies is no utopia at all. My utopia is, instead, one in which not only is no woman forced into a career that is not of her own choosing but that making money from the brain and body are placed on an equal footing. The inequality that exists between the two is not natural and is not the fault of the market; it results from deep-rooted social taboos about women, sex and their bodies. Confronting these taboos, as I myself aim to do by using my own body in art and protest, could have a transformative effect on the lives of some of society's most vulnerable women ‒ women who are vulnerable because they are unprotected by the law of the land and by the basic market supports available to those working in virtually any other profession.38
Notes
1 For more on the variation in policy, and for a similar conclusion, see Bettio, della Giusta and di Tommaso (2017).
2 Bateman (2014).
3 Walter (2011); Banyard (2016).
4 Phipps (2014).
5 Bindel (2017a,b).
6 Sprinkle (2009), p. 10.
7 Taylor (1992); Strossen (2000); McElroy (2002). Also, on pornography, Cornell (2007).
8 Lee (2014).
9 Birks (2018).
10 Bettio, Della Giusta and Di Tommaso (2017) point to a continuum of agency.
11 The Nordic model recommends the criminalization of the purchase of sex; on the End Banking for Human Traffickers Act, see Hatch (2018a, 2018b); FOSTA/SESTA legislation in the United States has severely affected sex workers ability to advertise online, and Sarah Champion, MP, has proposed that similar policies be adopted in the United Kingdom. See Hatch (2018b).
12 Quoted in Daggers and Neal (2006), p. 48.
13 MacKinnon (1987), p. 188.
14 Dworkin (1993): 9‒10.
15 Nordic Model Now (2016).
16 Lewis (2009); O’Connor, Orloff and Shaver (2009); Fraser (2013b); Balakrishnan, Heintz and Elson (2016).
17 Lu and Teulings (2016).
18 Bettio, Della Giusta and Di Tommaso (2017).
19 Lister (2018).
20 Quoted in Clarkson (1939): 296.
21 Ibid.: 300.
22 Edlund and Korn (2002).
23 Cogoni, Carnaghi, and Silani (2018).
24 Bettio, Della Giusta and Di Tommaso (2017).
25 Della Giusta, di Tommaso and Jewell (2017).
26 Gupta (2015).
27 Laverte (2017).
28 For a summary of research, see Bettio, Della Giusta and Di Tommaso (2017).
29 Lee (2015).
30 Corvid (2015).
31 McClintock (1995).
32 Bettio, Della Giusta and Di Tommaso (2017).
/>
33 McClintock (1995).
34 Hakim (2011).
35 Dworkin (1993): 5‒6.
36 Schrijvers (1991).
37 Gomes and Boesch (2009).
38 Bateman (2017).
Part III
State
Introduction
In this part of the book, I want to get to grips with the debate that has hung over economics since the time of Adam Smith: state versus market. It is a debate that raged throughout the last century, not only in lecture halls but in the form of the Cold War. As we will see, when it comes to capitalism, feminist thinkers are deeply divided.1 This does, however, have one big advantage: wherever one stands on the political spectrum, feminist thinking has a lot to offer.
Whilst we tend to assume that by the end of the twentieth century, with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the liberalization of China, capitalism had won, it's clear that the state has remained a powerful force in all western economies. The numbers speak for themselves. Little more than a century ago, governments administered no more than 10% of the typical economy's annual income. The typical government is now in charge of some 30‒55%2 of their economy's annual income (Figure III.1); it taxes the public to fund a whole host of activities, such as education, health, transport, utilities, energy, pensions, scientific research and welfare; and it employs around 15‒30% of the total workforce within Europe, or around one in seven workers in the United States.3
Figure III.1 Government spending as percentage of GDP in the UK, Germany, and the USA, 1880‒2011
The Sex Factor Page 14