Sex In The Public Square - Note to Bob Herbert: Misogyny is much more complicated! - Comments

That Doesn't Count as Spamming

Chris — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:58:08 -0800

Spamming is when you try to sell us cheap hard-on drugs or mediocre porn. Reporting on wankers who spend their time harassing and endangering sex workers doesn't count. As it happens, I have something in the tube about Gower. I'm just trying to focus my rage and hatred so that it comes out as something more intelligent than FUCKING!!! ASSHOLE!!!

The perplexing thing about Gower is that he's apparently a gay man himself. How often do you see gay men so obsessed about what women do with their naughty bits?

Kind of related...

Amber Rhea — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:28:08 -0800

On a somewhat-related note, if anyone at any of the "big" blogs like Feministe wants to shine the light on this fucking asshole Steve Gower (and the assholish reporting by Creative Loafing), please do... The CL reporter was at the Int'l Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers event, which is where he learned about Gower. He talked with several current and former sex workers and sex worker rights activists, yet did not include any of their voices. (Article)

Sorry for kind of spamming the thread here, Elizabeth. But I do think it's related and I'm STILL livid about it. I'm also not exactly happy w/ the fact that Gower's org is also responsible for Sex 2.0 losing our venue.

addendum re the Feministe! thread

Elizabeth — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 08:55:33 -0800

If you can get over there, and if you can afford the time, do read the thread. It demonstrates both everything that is wrong about the way we talk about sex work (moral panic, accusations, talking past each other) and also, with much credit due to Jill and Ren and a handful of others, everything that is right and optimistic about how we can talk about sex work when we really really try.

Jill, you do a good job with tough issues. Kudos.

Listening to sex workers

Elizabeth — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 08:18:11 -0800

I echo Chris's "thanks," Jill. And please stop by any time. You're always welcome here.

I think one thing that makes it so hard to discuss sex work from a feminist perspective is that it is not a monolithic industry with consistent conditions. Even within a single sector, like prostitution, there is a wide range of working conditions. And within a single sliver of that continuum, workers have different feelings about their work.

The other day Ren at Renegade Evolution was raging about the discussion of the Bob Herbert article in the comments on the "Why I love Bob Herbert" post on Feministe! after having come in from a night of outreach work among street workers. The fact that she was blogging and has a more privileged position among sex workers did not mean that she was deaf to the women and men who are less privileged. In fact, she uses her position as a platform from which to help improve conditions for those who are working the streets.

We need to do more listening across the spectrum of sex workers, and we need discussion and activism that targets the real problems: exploitation, harassment, violence. Further criminalization and prosecution will not make women safer, and it certainly won't make sex workers safer. Instead we need fundamental economic and social change so that poor and working class people have plenty of reasonable options for supporting themselves, we need social safety nets for people who can't support themselves, and we need to shift the way we think about sex so that it is not seen as "okay only so long as it is performed within the boundaries of a loving committed relationship."

If we are serious in searching for economic and social justice, and for sexual freedom and autonomy I think we need to frame sex work as something that, like most work, needs to be restructured rather than eliminated.

The Voices of Sex Workers

Chris — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 05:04:39 -0800

I'm sure that Elizabeth has some thoughts of her own, but I'd like to thank you for your comment, Jill, and I look forward to reading your follow-up on Feministe. One of the things that bothers me about the dialogue (and the lack thereof) on sex work is that it's probably the only topic where a progressive viewpoint is taken more seriously on the left when the speaker disregards the voices of the workers themselves. Publications like $pread and groups like SWOP have done remarkable work in organizing women (and men) whose have to stay closeted about how they make their money because it's at best a subject of moral opprobrium and at worst subject to criminal prosecution. At least steel workers or fruit pickers, no matter how badly abused by their employers, could openly say that they were steel workers or fruit pickers, and not suffer the consequences from that fact alone.

The fundamental problem with Herbert's writing about prostitution and pornography has been how blithely he's ignored the voices of the women themselves. Instead, he's depended on Melissa Farley as an authoritative figure, despite the fact that she's been routinely condemned for sloppy, sensationalist research by sex work activists. That Farley's voice can be elevated over those of people who have put everything on the line for their friends and co-workers bespeaks a paternalism that is to be expected from the moralists on the right, but which we as progressives should never tolerate from our own.

And yet, we routinely see it among our own. So much so, that to brush aside the thoughts and opinions of women and men who work as prostitutes, porn stars, pro-dommes, masseuses, and strip dancers imbues the speaker with a certain moral integrity and certifies them as a "fellow traveler" and insures that they'll be heard on Alternet, TruthOut, HuffPo, and the feminist blogs such as Feministe, Feministing, and Pandagon. (All of the above are on my daily read list.) Would Bob Herbert be getting such accolades if he'd spoken to people like Audacia Ray or Amber Rhea, who have more nuanced views of sexuality and sex work? Would he even have gotten it published in the New York Times? Likely not. Unfortunately, this country obsesses over sex like no other, and on both left and right, we seem incapable of discussing the "work" aspects instead of the "sex."

Thanks...

Jill — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:17:26 -0800

Thanks for this post, Elizabeth. My views on sex work and its relationship with feminism / misogyny / patriarchy are still very much developing, so I appreciate your insights here. I considered making a side note about Herbert's sex work comments, but decided instead to just post the column and see what developed. In hindsight, that was a mistake. I'll hopefully be publishing another post about sex work and feminism in the next few days, and this post will definitely be getting a link.

two other quick points

Elizabeth — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:38:38 -0800

about my previous comment:

1. The other thing that makes me mad about the adoration of Herbert based on his anti-prostitution pieces is that it is adulation for poor argumentation. The evidence and logic aren't there. Even if you agree with the position, if you are to be a credible source of online commentary shouldn't you refrain from applauding bad logic or poor evidence?

2. I didn't mean to suggest above that all sex work is only dangerous, exploitive and problematic. It can, under the right conditions, also be rewarding. That those most rewarding of conditions are experienced by the elite of the workforce again is not unique to sex work, but is parallel to many industries.

and not just Bob

Elizabeth — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:02:10 -0800

It kills me to see the very sharp women at Feministe!, Feministing, and Shakesville all professing their love for Herbert because he speaks out condemning sex work as misogyny.

Since my first gender studies course in college -- which was followed by a Philosophy of sexuality course, a Psychology of sexuality course, a bunch of graduate work in gender, a dissertation on strip clubs, this web site -- I've been fascinated and horrified by the sex wars within feminism. It amazes me that the thing that divides feminists more than anything else is sex, which we've turned into a dangerous thing with "consequences" instead of a pleasurable thing that can be abused.

My orientation to feminism is a sex-radical socialist sort of orientation, and it is one that does not romanticize sex work, but that recognizes it as work that is as dangerous, exploitive and problematic as lots of kinds of work. That it is performed in connection with intimate bodily functions or emotional entanglements does not make it uniquely oppressive. In fact other kinds of work -- nursing, for example -- also involves intimate bodily contact and emotional distance or entanglement.

The tragedy is that Bob

Chris — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:42:43 -0800

The tragedy is that Bob Herbert is one of the most genuinely progressive voices on the NYT editorial page. I think that, at least when he keeps away from the sex stuff, he's an intelligent and worthwhile read. Only Paul Krugman surpasses him. Admittedly, you really don't have to be that smart to be one of the best writers on the NYT Opinion page, nor do you have to be much of a lefty to be the most progressive. I mean, who is your competition? Thomas "The world is flat -- FLAT, I tell you!" Friedman? Nicholas "Boy Adventurer" Kristof? Maureen Dowd? Don't even get me started on that demented hack Kristol. I think that a lot of the problem comes from the roots of progressive activism. An awful lot of leftist philosophy in America originated and was supported by churches and religious movements, and you can still see that when it comes to sex.

Class

Elizabeth — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 08:20:43 -0800

Thanks Amber, thanks Anthony. You know, Anthony, your comment made me think about this book I read ages ago in college -- you know, like back in the late 80s or early 90s -- called "The Hidden Injuries of Class" by Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb. It did an excellent job of describing, through interviews mostly, the ways that the US class system harms people, especially working class people.

(Click here for the Google Books page for the book)

It's been a long time since I've read the book, but it strikes me that we're worse off now then we were when it was written.

Well said, Elizabeth, and said well.

Anthony Kennerson — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:08:45 -0800

Like Amber, I find it quite disappointing and frustrating, yet so typical, that the likes of Bob Herbert are allowed to represent what counts for "progressive" thought in the "mainstream media" on such issues of sexuality and sex work. And you are so right on about how Herbert misses the forest for the trees for not seeing how working class life in general is even more regulated and structured than even the worst form of sex work or porn. But then again, he probably gets paid far more for writing one column at the NYT than a sex worker or porn performer earns in even one week of work...so how can he claim any superiority to them in the first place?? Everybody complains about Bill Kristol becoming a Times columnist; I'd say that they might want to check their own selves first when it comes to propagandizing bigotry. Anthony

You nailed it as usual,

Amber Rhea — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:55:57 -0800

You nailed it as usual, Elizabeth. Stuff like this makes me feel a little hopeless, honestly. Will we ever make progress, when tripe like this is what passes for "liberal" analysis in the mainstream media? It just floors me. Guys like this congratulate themselves on being soooo progressive, yet they're just reinforcing the same old bullshit. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Note to Bob Herbert: Misogyny is much more complicated!

Elizabeth — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:44:45 -0800

Herbert's column in the NY Times this morning reprises his claims about the misogyny of prostitution and pornography but in a different context this time and with some unwittingly apt parallels.

Readers of this blog know that I have a very different analysis of sex work, one that doesn't assume that prostitution or pornography are inherently and essentially misogynistic, so I won't reprise that here. (You can get a glimpse of some of that here and here) Instead, I'd like to point out some of the things I think make Herbert's analysis here especially weak, including some false assumptions about causality, and unfortunate parallels to sports and the military.