Prostitution and the Contours of Control

Abstract

Feminist thinkers have long been concerned to explore parallels between marriage, prostitution, slavery and wage labour, as well as the sexual, political and economic relations that underpin these institutions (see Jackson, 1994). For those radical feminists who foreground the sexual domination and political subordination of women by men in their analyses of gender inequality, prostitution is the unambiguous embodiment of male oppression. It reduces women to bought objects, it allows men temporary, but direct, control over the prostitute, and increases their existing social control over all women by affirming their masculinity and patriarchal rights of access to women’s bodies (Barry, 1979, 1984; Dworkin, 1987; Pateman, 1988). Prostitution is, for such commentators, a form of slavery: ‘Free prostitution does not exist … prostitution of women [is] always by force … it is a violation of human rights and an outrage to the dignity of women’ (Barry, 1991, quoted in Van der Gaag, 1994, p. 6). Since no person willingly volunteers to have their human rights and dignity violated, it follows from radical feminist analyses that the decision to exchange sex for money is always and necessarily forced and irrational. The logic of such arguments, combined with the liberal use of military metaphors, produces self-contradictory, but equally unpleasant and patronising, visions of the prostitute woman. One moment she is a tragic, front-line casualty, the next she is a self-serving collaborator betraying her sisters.