Re: Final Comment
At 03:21 PM 1/9/98 PST8PDT, Jim wrote: Surely nobody disagrees with the idea that sex-slavery or underage prostitution is wrong. The sex-workers comments were not aimed at coerced or non-consensual prostitution, but at prostitutes who bject to being criminalised in the name of saving their honour. James Heartfield [ Jim replies with examples of stupid statements by Milton Friedman ] ... Capitalism produces a whole host of slick facades to "show" that choices are indeed free choices or if they are even "constrained choices", we are all constrained and they are choices nontheless. But the reality is that what appears to be "consensual" is the "consent" given when the alternative is not simply less money but rather no money; the "consent" given when the alternative is not simply less comfortable shelter but rather no shelter; the "consent" given when the alternative is a slow and horrible death. Jim, in case you've forgotten what list you're on, this is the Progressive Economists list, not the NeoClassical Economists list. Nobody on this list--including the two prostitutes who chimed in--is saying or even implying that prostitution is "consensual" when the choice is turning tricks vs. starvation, or letting one's family starve. Nobody. Honest. Surely criminalization of prostitution will not solve anything and surely criminalization leads to more underground activity and makes it more difficult to control the disease trends. But the sanitized brothels of Nevada and Canberra are light years away from the brothels of Patpong, the conditions of young Indian prostitutes in Great Falls or the conditions of a highway prostitute servicing long- distance truck dirvers in India. And those, especially on the left and even call themselves leftists, and then talk about "free choice", or "free consent" or "consenual prostitution" under capitalism and based on the isolated and perhaps self-serving or perhaps even self-rationalizing rantings of a few white middle-class "high-class" hookers in Canberra, well there is a party available for your political action--the RIGHT-WING libertarian party. Again, who do you think you're arguing with? It's hard to imagine that in a country like, for ex, Thailand you could meaningfully talk about "consensual prostitution" when the alternatives to prostitution are awful, scarce, or nonexistant. But what does that have to do with prostitution in other regions of capitalism? I met a few Coyote activists when I was working at the Berkeley Free Clinic, and they really changed the way I think about prostitution. In my heart, I don't how someone can actually want to sell sex for a living if they've got any alternatives, but the women I met from Coyote said they genuinely preferred being a hooker to being a waitress, a secretary, or most of the other working class jobs that were available to them. At one point, I did ask, "would you want your daughter to become a hooker?" One said yes, the other said, "no, but I wouldn't want her to have to be a secretary or a waitress either, and I definitely wouldn't want her to be a housewife in a fucked-up marriage like I was; I want her to get an education and move up." Their goal wasn't just to legalize prostitution and improve working conditions for hookers but to improve the situation for all women, so that no women would end up becoming a prostitute because they felt they didn't have an alternative. If you want, you can treat the Coyote activists I met as suffering from false consciousness, or you can class-bait them as just speaking for 'a few white middle-class "high-class" hookers.' That seems to me like a pretty simple-minded way of dealing with a complicated issue. Like I said, I have trouble imagining turning tricks as feeling anything other than degrading, but what the hell do I know? There are lots of people who have sex lives that seem degrading to me, but they don't seem to be any less happy or more messed up than the rest of us. Would any of this still exist under Socialism? Who knows? Nobody on this side of the table is arguing in favor of putting people in situations where they choose to do things that feel completely and utterly degrading in the way that forcing someone to perform sex for money can--that amounts to contractual rape. Nobody here is saying that having the IMF include legalizing prostitution as part of their economic agenda for destabilized East Asian countries is something we should push for (although I'm sure someone will suggest it in the WSJ op-ed pages). All we're saying is, it doesn't make sense to argue that prostitution is inherently degrading when there are more than a few prostitutes who say that they don't experience it that way. Putting women in economic situations which they perceive as degrading, whether it's prostitution or marriage, is evil. But arguing that all true lefties have to see sex the same way is little more than political correctness dressed up in
Re: Final Comment
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], James Michael Craven [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Capitalism produces a whole host of slick facades to "show" that choices are indeed free choices or if they are even "constrained choices", we are all constrained and they are choices nontheless. But the reality is that what appears to be "consensual" is the "consent" given when the alternative is not simply less money but rather no money; the "consent" given when the alternative is not simply less comfortable shelter but rather no shelter; the "consent" given when the alternative is a slow and horrible death. This is all very well, but you seem to be arguing that there is no difference between wage slavery and slavery, or between adulthood and childhood. To argue that the power of capital is coercive surely does not mean that we might as wll be slaves, does it? -- James Heartfield
Re: Final Comment
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], James Michael Craven [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes But just as these privileged few don't speak for me (also one of the "privileged few" in relative terms) and certainly do not speak for the part-time teachers or the grounds keepers, so no hooker from Canberra can speak for all "sex workers"--like a teenage Blackfeet girl in Great Falls or a sex slave in Patpong--just because she is doing tricks and is a self-proclaimed "activist" for sex workers. Surely nobody disagrees with the idea that sex-slavery or underage prostitution is wrong. The sex-workers comments were not aimed at coerced or non-consensual prostitution, but at prostitutes who bject to being criminalised in the name of saving their honour. Fraternally -- James Heartfield
Final Comment
I lived in Puerto Rico 1983-86 and worked as a Senior Planner for the Planning Board of the Office of the Governor of P.R. My original assignment was to work as a project leader restructuring and examining the input-output system used for planning and forecasting estimates. After some time I was asked to design and carry out an "inductive" (adductive) study of the linkages, leakages and dimensions of aspects of the underground economy of P.R. (Drugs, Prostitution, Bolitos (numbers rackets) with reference to the probable effects on leakages from final demand (and the interactive effects through cells of the input-output matrices). Because P.R. is relatively small in area and because the induced investment/profit imperative mechanisms of capitalism lead to spatial agglomerations of investment, jobs, incomes and also those involved in underground activities, and because the hypothetico-deductivist scenarios for estimating dimensions, linkages, leakages of underground activities yielded nothing but indeterminate scenarios (scenarios built upon/derived from other scenarios...), it was thought that some filed study (bottom-up) was needed. At the time almost 2/3 of the population of P.R. was on pagos transferencias (some form of transfer payments), there were emerging incidences of AIDS in San Juan and other factors lead to this work being commissioned. I was tasked with working with D.E.A., PR Police (Control de Vicio), FBI, Treasury, IRS and anyone else from which I could obtain informant reports, locations/agglomerations of underground activities. Before I accepted the assignment, I demanded and got assurance that I could work in the field without any police or police informants working with me and that I would not under any circumstances identify or assist in the identification/apprehension of any sources. I worked almost exclusively in Spanish language and was turned loose. Through some political contacts (I was a supporter of the Independentistas and curiously the government knew it) I progressively made more and more contacts with prostitutes (in brothels like the Black Angus--not Stewart Anderson's--in San Juan, and others in Ponce, Mayaguez, Arecibo, Aguadilla etc as well as with street prostitutes etc.) I took special care to make sure I was not followed or observed by any police informants. I was interested in such factors as national origin, length of time in P.R., plans to leave P.R., average income, rental and other expenses, living arrangements, percentage of income sent to relatives outside P.R., arrangements with pimps, buying habits, drug habits, reasons for entering prostitution, any plans to leave it, other illegal activities involved with etc. I offered to pay for time spent and on off time so that the people would not suffer loss of income; interestingly very few wanted money for interview time and more and more would come after fellow sex workers would tell them that I could be trusted, wasn't interested in laying any kind of morality trip on anyone; for many they expressed that it was a kind of catharsis talking about their lives, dreams, conditions of work etc. Some with whom I talked were indeed schooled and some were students at U.P.R. or Interamerican. I also talked with male prostitutes some of whom were 14 and 15 years old. The vast majority of sex workers with whom I dealt were poor Dominicanas, Haitians, Columbianas, Cubans (only about 20% of the prostututes in P.R. were Puerto Rican). And yes I found many who wanted it legalized but when I asked if prostitution were legalized, and if social attitudes changed such that prostitution were seen as just another kind of work, would they have any objection to their sons or daughters going into the business, not one said they would have no objection--every single one with children or plans to have children said they were working so that their children would not have to do what they were doing. I did ask if the work was seen to be degrading because of social attitudes and if producing sex services could be seen as no different than producing any other kind of service if only society's--and the individual prostitute's--attitudes toward sex and morality would change and in virtually every case, or almost every case the response was "you just don't know what it is like to have some stranger huffing and puffing over you, playing domination games, asking if you have a young daugter under 14 and offering an extra bonus to fuck her, doing you with no regard or care as to how you feel about the act itself." (Some of the types of comments I used to get). I would hear stories about being set up for gang rape, about being beat out of the meagre money and about John's who would offer extra NOT to use a condom. And this debate is not new to me. I have known about COYOTE and other such groups for a long time; I read some of their stuff. So I would ask: If prostitution were
