Sexual stigma killed Debprah Jeane Palfrey. This seems like an issue that sex workers and feminists can agree on.
I think there’s this really complicated thing going on with feminist and sex worker perspectives on this. We all agree that we want to stop violence against women. But sex workers are still not treated as equals by many feminists. This is undermining both feminists and sex workers. The tragic death of Deborah Jeane Palfrey and the lack of response and demand for action from the feminist community is a reflection of this problem. Women really cannot be equal and free of oppression if some women tolerate the legal harassment of other women based on their perceived sexual behaviors.
The prohibition of prostitution is a method for social and economic manipulation of women. I don’t believe that it was necessarily the oldest profession, I think that women have always been capable of survival in many different capacities. I do believe that it is probably a profession with the longest history of stigmatization. It is the one form of legal and ritual persecution of women that some western feminists continue to tolerate. The systematic discrimination of prostitutes has a long, long life span. It is as old as sexism.
The visible sexual stigmatization associated with the deaths of Brandy Britton and Deborah Jeane Palfrey have a chilling resemblance to the attitudes that made the systematic murders of thousands of women during witch hunts tolerable to the public.
Feminists and sex workers have to be able to find common ground to fully address the issues of sexual stigmatization, violence and harassment of women based on their sexuality. I think we can identify many mutual goals in resiting such oppression. Our disagreements seem to be about where the harm is coming from and who harm is directed at. Really, I think it’s important for every single individual woman to be able to determine those things for herself and we need strong communities that support us in doing so. Sex workers and feminists are natural allies for creating that community. But if we can’t all learn to communicate better with each other and to treat each other as equals with valid life experiences, we will not be able to have a critique of very legitimate issues without also alienating the people who are affected by what we’re discussing.
In general I totally agree with this post written by Elizabeth A. Nowicki. The part that disturbs me is that there is an overemphasis on expanding criminal penalties to clients and not enough focus on how the legal prohibition of prostitution is damaging for women and is used to either justify their murders or bully them into suicide. Focusing on arresting the clients suggest a motive that isn’t as much about equality for women as it is about punishing the men at the expense of some women.
Women who are exposed as having been involved in prostitution scandals often kill themselves. Men tend to waltz away, unscathed in the long term. I realize these are gross generalizations for which I have no empirical substantiation, but I am thinking about Brandy Somethingorother, from about a year ago.
The author is pointing out that sex workers are treated differently by society than our wealthy and powerful clients. But then she refers to Brandy Britton as “Brandy Somethingorother.” She didn’t have the time to google “Maryland dead hooker Brandy” to check her facts? I mean seriously, if you were going to write about the death of one of our wealthy and powerful clients, would you refer to him as “Somethingorother” or would you use his full name, maybe even checking to ensure that it’s spelled correctly since he’s a public/wealthy/notable figure. But the dead hooker is just a “Somethingorother” whose death you can use to make your case about sexism in the enforcement of prostitution laws without questioning the sexism that defines prostitution as a crime in the first place.
Lots of feminist are writing really powerful critiques that are conscious of the perspectives and experiences of sex workers This post at Feminist Rising is one example:
The United States is guilty of systematic structural violence which silences sex workers and disempowers women and female sexuality to the point of death.
The messages from the above posts are very similar: “This is visible and structural sexism that costs women their lives.” The first post objectifies sex workers, the second was informed by sex workers. These are subtle but important distinctions. In developing solutions, feminists need to allow sex workers to identify the source of the oppression and stand in solidarity with our demands for policy change. If more feminists don’t choose to do so, they will be undermining what they claim to be their goals: independence, safety and equality for women.
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