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Recently at Amber Rhea’s blog, I felt compelled to comment on what seemed to me a bizarre mischaracterization of anti-prostitution feminists. Citing a heartbreaking and enraging news item, Pakistan ‘prostitutes’ beheaded, she had provided this notation:
Militants did this to (and I quote) “end obscenity.” Mmm-hmm. Now see the problem with that kind of shit? Oh but I thought Patriarchy totally loved sex workers. Riiiiiight.
My response, in part:
I’m confounded that you would take the interpretation that anti-prostitution feminists have some notion that “Patriarchy totally loves sex workers.” All the anti-prostitution feminists I know are pretty blisteringly aware that women in the sex trade are utterly despised by patriarchy - that indeed, much of the sex trade is centered around/caters to that specifically patriarchal hatred...
Yes, there are indeed some who call themselves feminists and/or radical feminists who harbor notions that what women who identify as sex workers are doing is some intentional act of collusion with patriarchy, with said collusion somehow being engineered to specifically harm other women (e.g., those not impacted by and/or participating in the sex trade). When I hear that, I call bullshit really loudly. That’s utterly antithetical to feminism, and it’s offensive. (More about the “whorebaiting” problem among some self-described radical feminists some other time.)
Well, I guess today is ‘that other time.’
Recently, at Jill Brenneman’s blog, I read an interesting comment by Gregor, who describes himself as a “male second wave pro -radical feminist.” Here, he is quoting Renegade Evolution (who in turn, had been, from what I gather, extolling the virtues of gonzo porn):
“The human animal is not all happiness and shine, there is dark and savage there…thats what I see in it.” Yeah and you see it again and again and again, and you make sure others see it again and again and again too..
I replied thusly:
This is an unfortunate example of what I call “whorebaiting.” It’s wrong, and it’s anti-feminist. I understand and am utterly sympathetic to your antipathy toward the sex industry on the whole, but this is not helpful. There are more effective (and ethical) ways to get your points across, comrade.
He commented back:
I think my statement is *not* antifeminist. I don’t know where you get that from. I will forward it to 2 senior feminist women for verification. I am certain, but as a male pro-feminist I will do this to make sure.
(AHEM.)
Insert pregnant pause here, as I consider which “senior feminist women” to whom my criticisms may have been forwarded. Maybe Melissa Farley, who’s been pretty cool toward me ever since I told her about the grossly unethical circumstances in which Evelina Giobbe’s “research” on pimps was actually conducted*, questioning the ethics of her relying on that data**?
(NOW BACK TO JILL BRENNEMAN’S BLOG)
Enter now into this discourse Gretchen:
Why is Gregor’s statement “whorebaiting”? Ren is making a decision to film, watch and be paid to do dark and savage sexual acts that an audience consumes and debately*** the films may reinforce misogyny. Gregor has a right to point that out to her and frankly should.
I’m unclear though from your post if you are sympathetic to the porn industry or not?
To which, with much exasperation, I replied back:
You obviously don’t know me, and neither does Gregor, whom I called ‘comrade’ without any sense of irony.
If I have to explain to you why his comment was ‘whorebaiting,’ then, damn. It’s quite possible there would be no getting through to you. The cognitive dissonance between recognizing the harm that the sex industry, largely controlled by men, perpetuates against women and then choosing, more often than not (it seems to me, from what I’ve read here thus far), women in the sex industry as targets for your ridicule is pretty confounding.
Of course, no woman’s experience in the sex trade is going to be ‘equivalent’ to anyone else’s. I’ve written a great deal about the various stratifications among women in the sex trade, which are inexorably intertwined with systems of oppression. In terms of the women I’ve known in the industry, Ren is hardly representative. A comment from ’sojourner’ on this old thread at Feministing speaks my mind here: “Yes, there are women out there who choose sex work… But I also think that trafficked women, women beaten by their pimps or raped by their customers, heroin addicts, and women lying dead in ditches don’t get to write about their experiences on blogs.”
Nonetheless, as a survivor (and I should not fucking have to declare that), I can’t abide by the phenomenon of people who haven’t been in the sex trade (can I safely assume that? if not, tell me) directing their patriarchy-hating vitriol (of which I also have a great deal, btw) at those of us who have been there.
And calling out Ren’s comment as anti-feminist would be sort of like calling out the sky as blue. I expect better from the anti-prostitution and anti-pornography activists with whom I am tactically, personally, and politically allied.
So, are we clear on the concept of “whorebaiting” now?
If my allies in the anti-prostitution and anti-pornography movement would like to stop being slandered by the ’sex pozzes’ (or whatever we’re calling them these days), it would be damn helpful if they’d stop giving them such good ammunition****.
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* At the time, Giobbe had a sixteen year old foster daughter, known to me a few years later as “Lee,” who had come into contact with her as a client of WHISPER (for Women Hurt In Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt, the erstwhile Minnesota nonprofit), when she was struggling to get away from her convicted murderer pimp. Giobbe essentially used Lee for PR purposes, showing off her charge at meetings of radical feminists who naturally cooed over what an awesome rescuer she was, while at home Giobbe was abusing her physically, sexually, and emotionally. (The fact that she sent Lee on her drug runs is barely the tip of that iceberg.) When she was doing her research for the “WHISPER Oral History Project,” she interviewed a number of pimps, and insisted on conducting at least some of those interviews in the home, while specifically introducing the pimps to Lee (against her stated wishes) and bragging about how she’d “gotten” her. This was part of a pattern Giobbe had of regularly threatening Lee that she could be turned back out on the streets at any time, which, of course, she ultimately did, on the night before Lee had final exams at the high school she’d finally been able to enroll in (about which Giobbe had said, “Education is a privilege - not a right“), which naturally resulted in her ending up back in prostitution. Giobbe, of course, would later lie to her colleagues about this, claiming that Lee had run away - “what else can you expect from these girls”?
** Note that I have no argument with the validity of Giobbe’s data. I just wish to God it could have been collected in a way that was not to the exhaustively demonstrated harm of one particularly endangered prostituted teenager. Every single member of WHISPER’s (long since defunct) board knows what Giobbe did, because I personally drafted the 33-page complaint on behalf of Lee and myself and distributed copies to each of them. Andrea Dworkin got a copy, too.
***This is obviously a misspelling (there were others in both her and Gregor’s comments, which I’ve corrected in this text), but I’m unclear on what she actually meant to convey, so I’m leaving it as is.
****I will not be particularly surprised if I am accused of being the one supplying such “ammunition.” It’s our movement’s dirty laundry, people: the kind that has caused many anti-prostitution survivors to essentially ‘defect’ from the cause, and you know you don’t want that - where else will you get your crunchy anecdotes for your grant applications and books? So, time to deal with it.
