Buying Bodies for Cash-What's The Real Scoop?

Left: child prostitution in India
I am always reluctant to enter into discussion and debate around the issue of prostitution or what is now referred to as the sex trade, and prostitutes ‘sex trade workers “ or “sex workers.”My reluctance is usually a result of the way the issue is always framed within certain parameters and because of this the arguments go in circles eternally.
Fundamentally there are 2 or three common ways to frame these discussions. Most who enter the fray often find that the discourses get mixed up, the boundaries of discourse and argumentation and merge into one another.

Discussions around prostitution are always rooted in larger debates around gender and sexuality, economic and social relations-places that most do not want to go in depth and are content with more surface arguments.

First of all to divorce this issue from the larger issue of the role sexuality plays in human relationships raises crucial issues. Do we as a species really want to divorce sex from all the other aspects of being human or do we not? Be honest and clear. I am not for a minute implying that we need to be emotionally involved with everyone we have sex with but do we not want to acknowledge real choice including economic choice , acknowledge the inequalities that determine and limit choice, including all forms of oppression and exploitation ?

Perhaps most johns do not but does that let them off the hook? Like it or not when cash is exchanged for sex then the only “relationship” between the parties is an economic one. Any notion that sexuality is in these cases bound up or intertwined with any deeper understanding of “relationship,” such as respect, intimacy, integrated connections between mind and body, emotions, dignity and equality and even “choice,”, all of those higher aspects of “human nature” that we aspire to, fight for, enshrine in custom, law and ritual –might as well go out the window. It is hypocrisy to even think otherwise.
Either we are no different from apes and men (in the main the majority of buyers of bodies for sexual activity) will always be driven by some animal instinct to have sex, no matter the context, in essence a socio-biological argument, or we are in some way different and will always be caught in the difficult process as human beings to live within the contradictions between our “natural” being and “social being?”

If we argue from the “natural “realm then it is a slippery slope from the idea that buying sex in a so-called “contractual” relationship is really any different in many if not all cases from “taking” sex forcefully in rape. Before anyone starts to roar with rage –let is look at the whole notion of choice. Choice is always constrained and sometimes there is no choice. When we buy sex from someone who has no other choice are we in fact entering into a contract? If the choice is between feeding oneself and one’s family I would say no we are not! Economic force upon victims is much more pervasive and damaging than one act of physical force and is in fact physical force that invades our body’s right to survive. We are exploiting at the most basic and I would say base level. Do young pubescent and prepubescent girls in Thailand and the Philippines for instance have a choice as to whether or not they want to be abused and used by masses of European and North American men doing their “thing” on the sex circuit? No they do not!

When we argue and discuss this issue are we or are we not basing our arguments in the underlying idea that men cannot live or thrive unless they have sex and it is thus their right to buy it and to take it. One of the most powerful and horrifying statements I have ever heard is from a Congolese soldier who based his right to rape women en masse in the belief that he had been in the jungle for months deprived of sex and it was his right and entitlement as a soldier to rape the first women he came upon to satisfy his entitlement to sex as a man.

Every war in every country throughout history has witnessed the use of rape of women and sometimes children, as an instrument of terror and ideology and is ultimately viewed as the normal course of events in war-too be expected and condoned.Women in other words are used as pure objects –nothing more than bodies to be forcibly taken and used to his satisfaction. Are we surprised when even many religions treat women as "vessels" rather than active particants with rights and minds and ideas .So when we enter into any kind of arguments and discussion around the sex as economic transaction, we have to admit that we are looking at the human body as pure object and accept all the implications that roll out from this premise or assumption. Most women simply do not understand this argument. For this reason we are often reluctant to enter into discussion. As well many men in so called “relationships “ whether marriage or less formal arrangements , solicit and use prostitutes on more or less regular basis. What the hell is this all about?

Yes there are a very few women who pay for sex from men, but the market has never really taken off in a serious way and I doubt very much if we will ever see this phenomenon emerge.
Throughout history prostitutes have been sought after and condemned. Even as a young girl I used to wonder why men solicit sex from women for cash and then condemn them as “whores.”

If I buy a car or a home I do not then go around condemning houses and cars and televisions as objects for actively soliciting my purchase(s) and then condemn these objects as vile and dirty and loose, provocative and luring me against my will to purchase them. I have always wondered as well why prostitutes are condemned, arrested, vilified and railed against from the pulpit, in the courts and around “proper” family dinners as “soliciting.” The very term implies that some degree of coaxing or coercion went into the effort of procuring a customer for the wares being sold. At least the term bares the reality that an object is being sold –and makes no bones about any notion of humanness being involved. However it would take a lot to convince me that men on the hunt for sex devoid of any “human” context need any convincing or coaxing. Who is soliciting what here?

I would add that while sex workers fight as a group for respect and safety on the job, they are much clearer on the nature of what they do than most who buy their bodies. There is generally an honesty and a clarity among them as well as many stories and black humour when they tell tales about their customers.

Sex workers as a group are not monolithic in terms of their life histories and circumstances. Many if not most have been sexually and physically abused as young women. Huge numbers use drugs to endure the work they do. I have no doubt that in a world where all workers including women are guaranteed employment at decent living wages as well as free education and health care for themselves and their families, huge numbers of women would leave the trade .

Some women however do this work to pay their kids tuition, do it because they have an element of freedom from the day to day oppressive experience of boring, low paid demoralizing jobs or at the very least an illusion of this .

So while I agree that as long as prostitution is with us we need to respect sex trade workers, and more importantly sex workers must respect themselves and organize collectively to ensure their rights to safety are entrenched as much as is possible. Their demands for dignity, safety and the right to determine their own working conditions as well as decent free health care and social infrastructure that enables them to choose their line of work are no different from the demands that all workers should be fighting for.

I am sure within the parameters of liberal discourse , many would pick a point I have made and argue it eternally-within the parameters of liberal discourse. But I am not even suggesting that we should do this. We need refuse to argue within these parameters and argue against the limits on argumentation that capitalist ideology to support its own rapacious, inhuman system of exploitation , oppression and brutality makes us believe is the only way to see, analyze and discuss is their way.

I for one do not believe that “prostitution “will always be with us. I do believe that society based on genuine human need, owned and run by the working class the real producers of wealth in society, according to our immense abilities and skills will result in a better society where sexuality is integrated in thought and action with other human needs such as respect equality and dignity. This is not a discussion about “morality” as some may argue but a discussion about material conditions that affect the way we think about ourselves as human beings. A society based on greed and profit, will inevitably turn everything into an object to be bought and sold in the market place-women’s bodies are no exception.

But lets be clear –are we apes or are we human ?