Abstract
It was a privilege to be asked to write a response to Ron Weitzer’s commentary on resistance to sex worker stigma. I have followed his work for many years and, much like many of his other publications, I find myself unable to argue against or disagree with spirit of what he writes. It would be foolish to argue against a discussion about ways that might counteract some of the negative effects of involvement in sex work. In terms of my own politics, I fully support a policy position that does not criminalise those who sell or purchase sex. Yet, I find the commentary, as a whole, troubling if only because it reads as a (perhaps accidental?) defence of a neo-liberal economic policy on prostitution.
Weitzer makes four basic propositions. First, stigma is ‘one of the most important problems in sex work’ because stigmatization is harmful to the life chances of sex workers. Second, few academics have done anything more than accept at face value the idea that sex work is stigmatizing. Third, campaigning to destigmatize sexual commerce could have beneficial effects for sex workers and such a campaign could (ought to?) deploy similar tactics to those used by LGBTQi communities and those affected by mental health issues, and in other forms of identity politicking. Fourth, if sexual commerce is stigma free, then sex workers would be in control of their environment, safe and secure in their work. These four basic propositions make sense only because Weitzer also makes the following assumptions: that sex workers are united in their ‘spoiled’ identity as sex workers, and that it is prejudice and discrimination that gives rise to the stigma. Thus, he argues that the key political struggle for sex workers is the struggle against their ‘discredited’ minority identity.
Given the empirical evidence, stigma is clearly an issue and is something many involved in sex work do experience but this is not the same as qualifying it as an issue of a particular magnitude (‘one of the most important problems’), or a specific type (‘spoiled’ or ‘discredited’ identities á la Goffman) or a unique order (the cause of criminalization, violence, insecurity, lack of control, lack of safety, lack of capacity to protect one’s hygiene and presumably health). This strikes me as politically and sociologically naïve. Yes, Weitzer invokes a generalized notion of social identity, but what is absent is any notion of wider material inequalities or social power. Weitzer’s ‘spoiled’ identities (and the deleterious effects of involvement in sexual commerce) are not viewed as gendered, raced or classed, nor is his conceptualization of sex workers’ ‘stigma’ related to wider discourses and structures of social differentiation and division. There are robust arguments to support the case that the stigma of sexual commerce is constituted by and within patriarchal ideologies of gender and sexuality that distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women (i.e. between madonnas and whores). It is as though the shared occupational status of sex workers is enough to override the deep rooted ideologies of differentiation that sustain the operation of power in societies marked by profound class, gender and cultural inequalities and that they themselves shape, influence, create and sustain stigma, and many of the other harmful effects of being involved in prostitution and sex work as currently constituted.
The capacity of those working in sexual commerce to control their working environment and their experiences of safety, security, criminalization and the deleterious effects of being involved in sexual commerce, as empirical research from the 1980s and 1990s confirms (see McLeod, 1982 – who does also examine stigma; O’Connell Davidson, 1998) is more likely to be shaped by economic, cultural and gender-based inequalities than by the normative evaluations and social prejudice accompanying sex work. So, at the societal level, escort work is more likely to resist stigma and be ‘freed from emotional prejudice’ than street work, if only because the discourses constituting the stigma of street work are also discourses of reputability, class, cultural and race. More, the individuals involved are less likely to be poor and/or have had their lives shattered by the aggregate effects of poverty as they combine with gender-based disadvantages. It seems too simplistic to claim that shared occupational status of, on the one hand, a white university educated, female sex worker selling sex via the internet in a major city to some of that city’s business elite, and, on the other hand a 16-year-old, runaway, homeless, black drug addicted young woman selling sex from the streets in New York is politically and analytically more significant than their differences – both are fundamentally differently located in sexual commerce, and would be regardless of the stigma attached to sex work.
Weitzer implicitly proposes that sexual commerce, free from stigma for anyone involved (i.e. purchaser, seller, entrepreneur, ‘business’ elite), is desirable. This is a thorny issue to unpack. Weitzer does not seem to recognize that the political drive to destigmatize sexual commerce without also critiquing neo-liberal, consumer capitalism is, in effect, arguing for an approach in which ‘market forces’ become the ultimate regulator of sex work. In the case of sexual commerce, to theorize and politic as if pre-existing gendered, classed and raced inequalities would not be exploited and consolidated by ‘market forces’ seems as flawed as it is to not recognize the profoundly gendered and heteronormative nature of sexual commerce. Neo-liberal (and libertarian) economic policies operate in the favour of the few, rather than the many. Taking Weitzer’s logic to its extreme: it is not the women who sell sex, or even necessarily the men who purchase it that will benefit. It will be those individuals and corporations who own and control the industry – like any other capitalist industry. Thus, surely the fight is not for the right for non-stigmatized (neo-liberal and corporate) sexual commerce. Surely the real fight is against the profound material inequalities that mean that, when all else fails, money can be made from women’s bodies and against the gender-based ideologies that ensure that it is the women who are punished when they do sell sex for a living.