Prostitution and the left

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think this discussion/debate would be a lot clearer if two of the leading
principal's were here, which is about as likely as a snowfall in hell. One
is Harry Cleaver, a adherent of 'autonomist Marxism' and the other is Doug
Henwood, LM fellow-traveler and postmodernist. In a debate on PEN-L around
these same questions, both Harry and Doug were oblivious to the class
dimension and relied exclusively on the testimony of 'feminist' call girls,
in Doug's case Tracy Quan and in Harry's case, Sera Pinwill. In my opinion,
neither Doug nor Harry, seemed that engaged with the compulsory character
of class relations that forced poor women to sell their bodies. Both saw
the activities of call girls as having some kind of emancipatory feminist
character. Here is a letter that Pinwell wrote to Cleaver that he made
public on PEN-L in order to refute his and Doug's critics, which included
me and Jim Craven. It is not so much that Quan or Pinwill are wrong. It is
that to rely on their testimony exclusively leads in the wrong direction by
omitting class considerations. With Doug, we understand that it is part of
pattern. Whenever the discussion of maquilas came up, he was always anxious
to cite a boneheaded Nation Magazine article that spoke about the
'feminist' benefits of women working in maquila factories. This boiled down
to them being able to watch male strippers after work and not having to put
up with the 'rural idiocy' of farming villages.

----

Dear Harry,

__________ posted some of your correspondence with James Craven on Whorenet
(for sex workers and interested others), and I have to say that I think
Craven's arguments are so typically thoughtless and patronizing.

A bit of background:  My name is Sera Pinwill.  I am the co-ordinator of
Workers In Sex Employment (WISE) in the ACT Inc., which is a sex worker
education/advocacy group in Canberra, Australia.  I have worked as a whore
on and off (no pun intended) for the past 15 years, both on the streets of
Melbourne and Sydney, in brothels and massage parlours, and for myself as a
high class call girl.

It enrages me to hear other people - people who have absolutely NO IDEA of
how I feel and what my life is like, making assumptions and judgments on my
behalf, and that is exactly what Craven has done.

Of course - this is my truth and the truth of many, many women and men who
I am involved with on a daily basis.  Knowing how much pride I take in my
professionalism, I am much more inclined to seek out the services of a
professional during the times when I feel that I need someone to cater for
my desires.  I do not abuse them, nor they me.  We fulfill each others
needs.  We are adults engaging in consensual and pleasurable activity - and
to suggest that I am abusive or deluded in my thinking is patronizing and
shows egomania in its extremes


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/