According to Melissa Gira Grant, who published a piece in The Guardian today entitled Men buy girls, not sex’ and other myths of anti-prostitution moralists, your body is no longer connected to your existence as a human being. Even though women’s bodies have long been the only signifier of their existence as lesser beings, it is now clear, thanks to Grant’s willingness to set us all straight, that when men buy access to women’s bodies they are not, in fact buying a person, like a person attached to a body, but are merely buying sex…Which clearly has nothing to do with anyone’s body! Simple.
She claims that ‘anti-prostitution moralists’ (who these mystery moralists are, it isn’t clear. There is Ashton Kutcher, and then there’s the abolitionists. Who are all the exact same and they’re all confused. ) believe that “the way to end exploitation in the sex trade is to “end demand” for the sex trade – that is, end men’s desire for sex they can pay for.” Interesting. Because I never really thought we could end ‘men’s desire for sex they can pay for’. I thought, rather, that we simply wouldn’t let them do it. That we would educate the public about how, you know, women are human beings and that it was not acceptable to treat them like objects. That maybe, someday, it simply would no longer be acceptable for men to treat girls and women as things which exist to use and abuse. Whether or not men continue to ‘desire’ to buy sex is, sadly, not something I’m sure anyone is able to accomplish at this point. Because apparently there are millions of men in this world who like to hold power over women. And who get off on treating women like garbage. You could say they ‘desire’ it. But you could also say that’s what men are taught that this is acceptable (in a patriarchy) and that they are then taught that abuse is sexy (in a patriarchy) and also that power is not something many give up willingly (particularly if you are a man who loves living in a patriarchy).
Not only are we (we, Ashton Kutcher, we the ‘anti-prostitution moralists’, and we the abolitionists) confused about what it is men are actually buying (recap: buying sex with women’s bodies / buying access to women’s bodies is not the same as buying actual women human beings because our bodies are things which are completely separate from our selves), but Grant wants us to know that women are not objectified by the men who treat them as bodies which exist for their consumption, they are objected by people who point this fact out! So. New rules. From now on, pointing out oppression makes you the oppressor. Pretend that oppression is actually empowering, and you, friend, are now empowering the previously oppressed. Yay!
On one hand Grant seems frustrated by what she calls the “end men’s demand’ rhetoric” because, well, it’s not those poor men’s faults they ‘desire’ to buy sex, on the other she is right on. As she points out, men buy sex from women because women need to survive. And, often, women who need to survive have no other choice but to sell their bodies to men who want to buy them. This is indeed why women who are marginalized in our culture are overrepresented in survival sex work. And this is indeed what men take advantage of when they pay for access to these women’s bodies. A man knows you need the money and so he takes advantage of that need by paying you to use your body. And that’s how exploitation works.
You use your power to your advantage in order to exploit another’s need.
The reason, Melissa, that people fixate on ‘male demand’ is (based on my understanding of this, from having actually spoken to people who do desire to end prostitution and not just from having watched CNN and from following Ashton Kutcher on Twitter) because this is where the violence and the abuse and the exploitation comes from. Men.
Interestingly, Grant blames the media and politicians for making this mistake, though here in Vancouver, it is apparent that governments often leave the men out of the equation. When the City of Vancouver released a report on the survival sex trade in the city, a meeting was held and one of the biggest criticisms, according to some attendees, was the lack of focus on the root of the exploitation. i.e. the people who are doing the exploiting. i.e. men.
When it is men who are doing the buying, the exploiting, the abusing, the raping, the assaulting, it would make sense to focus on them when looking at a way to end said abuse, yes?
In an article published in the Vancouver Sun, written by Andrea Woo, Jenessa Greening was quoted as saying at the meeting yesterday:
“The most notable gap is the lack of reference to who is abusing the power imbalance — those who are violating these women, those whose actions are initiating and exacerbating the long-term, devastating impact these women will experience.”
So, Melissa Gira Grant, I do believe there is good reason to address demand. I also believe that when a man buys a girl or a woman to have sex with, that girl or woman is a human being. And whatever he does to her body, he does to her, as a human being. Sex is attached to the body and the body is attached to the human.
Tags: abolition, feminism, Misogyny, Sex Work, the survival sex trade, Vancouver, Violence Against Women
Tweet
Amazing how this does come up.I had a conversation with someone today who told me that “buying sex” was not “buying a woman’s body”. Ok, I said, maybe renting. Whatever. I suspect that this issue about what it is that’s being bought comes from the analysis of “sex work” as labour like any other labour. You go to work, someone uses your body’s work or your brain’s work, and you get paid. Simple. Same thing as being prostituted. But in what other “job” does the employer take your physical integrity and autonomy for his own pleasure, for pay. That’s also the point at which the “agency” argument breaks down. You don’t sell your agency when you work at any other job. You don’t say “Here, take my body and do more or less what you will with it for an hour”. Once our bodies have been so alienated from us that we don’t even see that we are selling or renting them for “intimate” use, it probably makes sense to say prostitution is about sex, not about bodies. Hell’s bells!
In addition to what Elizabeth has said already they also completely disregard how many of us have an analysis of wage labor as “wage slavery” that we understand to be oppressive. However as a wage slave I can tell you that if I were to be penetrated and asked to perform pornsick fantasies for the client my workplace theoretically serves it would be a lot different than an average day on the job.
There are degrees of intensity, particularly when we’re talking about penetrating a person’s body.
Thanks for bringing this article to my/our attention, Meghan, as well as for the wonderful take-down of it.
Ya know, these sites just love to have prostituted women speak on behalf of women. It would be a lot more telling if they had a dude who patronizes prostituted women defend the industry. Or a pimp. Instead, they rely on the strategy of pitting women against one another.
The comment section is horribly pro-sale of women. They don’t seem to get that while the women being raped for $$$ are the first ones hurt, legalization of prostitution affects *all* women (or that abolitionists are NOT for the arrest of prostituted persons!).
The comment by the man who patronizes strip clubs is hilarious! A good time for all?? Um, since every single women I’ve talked to who worked in a strip club hated it, I have to say–YEAH, RIGHT!
Wonderful article, Meghan, thank you.
One point which I rarely see addressed is that as soon as the system will be allowed to redefine overt sexual exploitation as legitimate “work”, those tasks – sexual penetration on demand – will surely be foisted on any women by administrations intent on cutting back social assistance, be it unemployment insurance or welfare payments. It will become what most women from impoverished countries will be allowed into our country for, just as it is already practically required from racialized and poor women in our inner cities.
And as giddy male demand grows from this windfall additional privilege, women who feel free to intone about *those* women’s alleged agency may soon find themselves in the receiving line for whatever pornography-driven men feel like dishing out, for whatever pittance. For why should men offer women real work when they can get off doing it?
@Martin – what a frightening thought, but I fear you may be right if we continuing on this ‘it is a job like any other’ path.
Well, I suppose the leftists at less are being honest in stating clearly that it is “reasonable” to view the prostituted as sub-humans – for unlike real women and girls when money is exchanged, it becomes impossible to sexually abuse/torture the prostituted – for we don’t exist as flesh or have minds of our own – we just holes to be filled, any flesh that does exist is just there for punters and profiteers to manipulate. The prostituted are not given the right to have minds of their own, for it considered ok to under the whims, demands and wills of the punters and profiteers – that is deemed ok when make the terrible claim is just buying/renting sex, not the person. Kind of sound like slavery to me, but that would a radical thought. This kind of poison is why so many powerful exited women go silent – it a constant re-triggering to know we must remained sub-humans to even be seen.
Agreed. And to further hammer the point home, do we ever, EVER think of male-male prostitution in any other way but some sicko with power and money degrading some vulnerable person in a weaker position? No, not really.
May I suggest what seems to me some very far-reaching analysis of the conflicting rhetoric used in this whole debate, from Catharine A. MacKinnon: “Trafficking, Prostitution and Inequality”, a speech given in India last year – http://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/MacKinnon.pdf
Melissa Gira Grant is parroting male excuses but as usual the men are using women as tools because men do not want women to know how they really view women. Far easier to focus on female prostitution apologists rather than going to root of issue which is male demand and men’s pseudo belief they will spontaneously implode if they do not have 24/7 sexual access to female bodies. But remember such male access is to inanimate objects never female human beings because the male buyers are purchasing objects (sic) to masturbate into/on and to inflict sadistic male sexual violence. Therefore since the purchased object is not human this means the male buyers cannot inflict violence on objects – that is the rational of men who believe it is their innate right. I’m still waiting to learn men are spontaneously imploding/combusting due to lack of 24/7 sexual access to women and girls.
Men do not purchase ‘sex’ they buy women and girls to use as disposable masturbatory aids and to demonstrate their male domination and control over all women and girls.
women and girls are in effect not purchasing ‘sex’ they are buying women and girls to masturbate into/on.
Focusing on male demand is having an effect on the pimps and Johns and their pro-prostitution apologists which is why ludicrous claims are being made anti-prostitution feminists are the supposedly ‘real oppressors.’ As always male supremacy has to try and ensure accountability is never ever levied at men because men must never be held to account for their sexual violence against women. This includes prostitution which is male sexual violence against women – not ‘sex’ as is often claimed.
Behold post-modernism, where up is down and down is up! Keep fighting the good fight!