[PEN-L:11764] Re: Prostitutes and "Choice"

["Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 14 Aug 1997, James Michael Craven wrote:

> Response (Jim C): I agree with your notion that there are many forms
> and levels of prostitution and indeed many forms and levels of
> brutality and degradation under capitalism. But another way of
> interpreting your comments above--about sex workers hiring others for
> their own "pleasure" is that it is analogous to abused becoming
> abusers; further, the glowing descriptions of the "power" their
> sexual competence gives them could also be interpreted as a typical
> reaction of the powerless seeking some marginal form of power in
> their own lives.

Jim:What's with you? Why is it that in each argument your mind leaps to
the worst possible interpretation and ignores any other? Why can you not
imagine that sex workers hire other prostitutes for real pleasure? Why do
you jump to the intepretation that they just want someone to abuse? Why
do you keep repeating horror stories or dreaming up possible horror
stories instead of accepting the possibility that there are  attitudes and
behaviors different from those you have encountered. If you refuse to
accept any evidence that differs from your own, then there is no point
to discussion --and your own understanding will stagnate.

> I see no a priori reason to dismiss all this as mere delusion
> > by perhaps once abused individuals. Just as other workers can subvert
> > their work for their own purposes and empowerment, so can some sex
> > workers. "Detournement" as the situationists called it, is a common
> > element of subversion in many jobs. Why not this one?
> >
>
> Response (Jim C): My reasons are not "a priori". I once worked as an
> Analista de Planificacion for the government of Puerto Rico. My work
> involved analysis and estimation of linkages/leakages of the
> underground economy in P.R (drugs, prostitution, bolitos etc) from
> the ground up. In the course of that work, I interviewed literally
> hundreds of prostitutes (always in confidence and not one was ever
> turned in and they knew it). I never met even one "sex worker" who
> looked forward to going to work or who did not have dreams of using
> the money "to get out of the business." Yes, workers have various
> ways of suberting the power relations and brutality in the work place
> but real empowerment comes through collective action which may or may
> not come about or be enhanced through individualistic reactions and
> forms of subversion in the workplace; sometimes these individualistic
> reactions and attempts at "empowerment" through individual acts of
> subversion--not coupled with collective action--may even set back the
> forms and levels of collective action necessary.
>
Jim: Straw man and belittlement. I never said that all, or even most,
prostitutes "like going to work", so why are you arguing against the idea
that they might. I have no doubt that many don't. I never said that all,
or even most, prostitutes wouldn't like to "get out of the business", so
why are you arguing that many do. I wouldn't be surprised; most of us
would like to change jobs to better working conditions, more control and
higher income.

"Real empowerment"? Why do you attack "individual acts of empowerment"
because they "may" not lead to collective empowerment. How about
analysing how they they sometimes do "lead to collective empowerment".
How are we to differentiate if we don't examine both situations. How do
you think people get to the point of acting collectively? They come to it
through their own self-activity, which is always social, always connected
to others. This individual/collective dichotomy is both old and misleading
because of this. Only individuals act. They may act collectively but
individuals are doing the acting. Ignore what motivates them to do so and
you fail to understand even collective action. And don't tell me about the
fallacy of composition. I'm NOT arguing that collective action is some
summation of indiviual action neoclassical style. How do you think
organized of groups of prostitutes, like PONY in New York, got organized?

> that they regard sex
> > > as a business and that housewives and girlfriends are essentially in
> > > the same business they are in,
> >
> > Jim: And they are all too often right, I would say. More frequently than
> > many would like to admit a marriage is just a long term contract to
> > provide sexual and other services in exchange for income and job tenure.
> > (Jane Austin wrote about his in her novels, without calling a
> > spade a spade but the lesson is spelled out clear as day.) Prostitutes
> > negotiate short-term contracts, spouses negotiate long term
> > ones (often with legal documents these days). In general I think one of
> > the best descriptions of capitalism is a society of generalized
> > prostitution. We are all prostitutes, the only choice we have is which
> > part of our selves are we going to make available for work. Some make
> > their genitals available, others their hands and arms, others their minds,
> > others their personalities and emotional expressiveness (McDonald's hires
> > only those who can smile on demand).
>
> Response (Jim C) Harry, I'm sure you don't mean it this way, but
> frankly the above sounds a lot like the typical libertarian argument
> that all exchanges are "voluntary" and "mutually negotiated" as other
> wise why would they have occurred? Further there are some unique
> dangers and forms of degradation involved when, as you put it, the
> commodity being exchanged is "use of genitals".

Jim: No I don't mean it that way, nor can I fathom how you could jump from
what I did say to your comments. To say, as I did, that "the only choice"
is what to sell makes it quite clear that the argument is NOT
liberatarian, but that the "choice" is constrained by the larger framework
of capitalist enclosure etc. Of course, there are "unique dangers" for
prostitutes, as there are unique dangers in every job. So what? Why do you
say this as if it were an argument against what I said?

Further, prostitution
> involves much more than just "use of genitals" and it is not petit-
> bourgeois morality or even abstract or a priori notions to suggest
> that very tangible and very dangerous and very injurious forms of
> degradation  occur within typical exchanges that go on in the sex
> industry. The same can be said about exchanges and products in the
> porn industry.
>
>
Jim:Clearly there is more to the work of prostitutes than fucking. See my
comments on Wojtek's remarks where I quite explicitly refered to
prostitutes selling their "bodies, brains and personalities". See previous
comment on dangers.

> > and that they have calculated costs and
> > > benefits and calculated that probable benefits outweigh probable
> > > costs and risks. But these women are very few and studies show that
> > > almost all of them suffered physical and sexual abuse at young ages
> > > suggesting they may be simply rationalizing their limited options and
> > > the real reasons for their "free choice".
> >
> > Jim: What studies are those? What does it mean to "rationalize their
> > limited options"? What are the "real reasons" and what do they matter?
> > What are the "real reasons" some of us are professors; what are the
> > "real reasons" others refuse to prostitute their minds and stick to manual
> > labor? The answers, I think, are as many as the people, at the level of
> > individual psychology. We are shaped by myriad forces, we make choices the
> > way we do under lots of different circumstances and for lots of reasons,
> > conscious and unconscious.
> >
>
> Response (Jim C) Generally I agree with what you are saying but for
> academics, and yes I have certainly seen a lot of whoring in
> academia, the conditions, options and dangers are simply nothing like
> what typical prostitutes (even in controlled borthels) face every day.
>
Jim: I was not refering to just the kind of ass-kissing and pandering to
authority that is usually called "whoring" in academia. I'm talking about
what we ALL so when we sell our labor power and let capital use our minds,
fingers, etc to impose work on students, subject them to exams, grade
them, and in general condition them to hierachical relations of
exploitation. We may resist, we may subvert,but to some degree we
prostitute ourselves this way or we lose our jobs. And what are the
dangers there, in terms of our sense of humanity, the quality of our
relationships with others etc.? Clearly the working conditions are
different from brothels, but the basic class relations are the same. We
have to see BOTH the similarities AND the differences.

>
> > > And yes, there are Filipinas, Koreans, Thais and women from other
> > > countries going to Japan who know they will be involved in
> > > prostitution (as opposed to being lured by promised jobs as "maids",
> > > dancers, nannies etc). But even those who know they will be involved
> > > in prostitution, scarcely have any real idea what is waiting for them
> > > (passports taken away, peonage practices promoting perpetual debt and
> > > servitude, extremely brutal sexual practices, Yakuza violence,
> > > isolation and alienation in Japanese society etc, police protection
> > > of pimps.)
> >
> > Jim: While there are certainly naive women who don't know what they are
> > getting into, I think you overstate the case. Not only do many Thais for
> > example, come to Japan from the sex industries of Thailand --everybit as
> > developed-- but the conditions of work are hardly a mystery to anyone in
> > the trade. As are the possiblities of income, repatriating wages and
> > supporting your family back home. Even in the case of those "lured" their
> > fate, while sometimes fatal, is not entirely out of their hands.
> > Originally Satoko, who is doing the research on prostitutes' struggles in
> > Japan, was going to do a comparative study with Filipino "mail-order
> > brides" who are brought to Japan to marry Japanese men. This interested
> > her because of evidence that they are NOT the docile alternative to ever
> > more assertive Japanese women that they are expected to be. On the
> > contrary Japanese men often find that women with enough gumption to
> > undertake such an engagement are tough and out to improve their lives, not
> > to be be slaves! They turn out to be not "desperate" as you describe
> > below but as recalitrant as the women the men were avoiding.
> >
>
> Response (Jim C) What can I say? I only suggest that manbe you might
> want to talk with some (for example) Filipina activists who work with
> women in the mail-order-bride business (women who have not found
> themselves empowered but ratrher brutally victimized) and of course
> eventhough the mail-order-bride business also involves the very ugly
> commodificiation of women, agan, the TYPICAL conditions, terms of
> "exchange", dangers, etc faced by women who go to places like Japan
> and become involved in prostitution are anything but liberating and
> "empowering".
>
>
Jim:If you have data that can tell us about "the TYPICAL conditions"
please be forthcoming. I haven't seen any that would provide an empirical
basis for your kind of generalization. Moreover, even it such data exists
and is believable, it is beside the point. It is not a valid argument to
counter specific cases with average data. Just suppose that there ARE
women such as the ones I described who are not just victims. Should we not
learn from them rather than dismiss them as exceptions? It may be the case
that the average American worker is a reactionary pig. But suppose that
most of them are passive and politics are made by minorities. Should we
not focus on those minorities and see how they interact with the rest?
What makes for success and what for failure? Isn't this why we pay
more attention to those on strike, e.g., UPS workers, than those NOT
obviously in movement? (I'm not saying we should ignore the latter, on the
contrary.)

>
>
> > > I know that there are some Japanese, I am certainly not suggesting
> > > that your graduate student is one of them, who, driven by their own
> > > "nihonjinron" and "Japanese nationalism" focus on the "free
> > > choice" aspects of prostitution by foreigners in Japan in order to
> > > cover-up the predatory, brutal, racist and sexist attitudes and
> > > practices prevalent in may corners of Japanese society that lead to
> > > larg-scale importations of these desperate women as well as
> > > oppression of some Japanese women as well.
> > >
> > > Thanks for your comments.
> > >
> > >                                    Jim
> >
> > Jim: Frankly, by raising this the way you do, I find that you ARE in fact
> > impuning the motives of Satoko. Not good. Insulting even. In fact,
> > while there are people like those you describe, there are other
> > Japanese who do worry about the conditions of prostitutes. What Satoko has
> > found, however, is that their general attitudes and assumptions are quite
> > similar to your own; they see only victims to be helped and freed of their
> > slavery. They are as loath as you seem to be to recognize and appreciate
> > the self-activity of these women, not only that they struggle, but that
> > in many cases they have won a great deal for themselves.
>
> (Response Jim C)Again, with no disrespect to your graduate student, it
> is an ugly fact that the Japanese Government and many Japanese still
> refuse, in the media, history books etc, to even acknowledge the
> history of "comfort women", the attitudes and practices behind the
> sex tours or the realities and attitudes driving the present
> realities faced by prostitutes in Japan. In Japan, even among some
> progressives, there are some very virulent racist attitudes that
> color research as well as postures on various domestic and
> international issues.
>
Jim: If it is not disrespect then what is it to jump from an individual to
a whole class of people. Why bring up Japanese racists in the context of
this discussion if not to raise the spector that maybe, just maybe, Satoko
is one of them and thus incapable of seeing things as they are. Yet the
whole argument here is screwy, because if she were a racist the last thing
she is likely to recognize is dignity in struggle among foreign
prostitutes!

>
> > This discussion is but an example of a kind of dialog in which I find
> > myself from time to time. Those of us on the Left, following to an
> > uncomfortable degree in old Charles Marks' footsteps, know a great deal
> > about exploitation and the brutalities of work. We are generally quite
> > capable of describing in gruesome detail the nefarious effects of
> > alienated and exploitative labor under capitalism. Where we are usually
> > much less knowledgeable and less eloquent is on the forms and degrees of
> > self-determination, of self-valorization and empowerment which workers
> > achieve --this despite the centrality of creative living labor power in
> > Marxist analysis. It is for this reason that my own work in recent years
> > has shifted somewhat, from terrain well known (exploitation and
> > domination) to terrain needing to be explored (self-valorization and the
> > creation of new ways of being, doing and interrelating). The women's
> > movement, like the ecology movement, has been particularly fruitful in
> > seeking out and exploring alternatives to the kinds of gender and
> > human-nature relationships characteristic of capitalism. Given the
> > centrality of sex work (paid and unpaid) in capitalism, I think we would
> > do well to investigate the self-activity of sex workers both on the job
> > and off to discover what they may have to tell the rest of us about what
> > can be realized in terms of human sexuality beyond the wage/profit,
> > worker/boss nexus.
>
> Response (Jim C) Under capitalism, often what is called "self-
> valorization" is rationalized commodification and what is called
> "empowerment" is essentially marginal crumbs in response to the cry of
> the powerless and self-determination may be nothing more than
> individualistic opportunism and self-destruction.
>
>
> > Harry

Jim: In the first place, nothing is ever "often called self-valorization"!
The term self-valorization, which derives from Marx's analysis of capital
but was given new meaning by Toni Negri in his essays on the Grundrisse,
is used by very few people. And I'm willing to bet that you have read
little or nothing of those of us who use it. If you had, and were honest
in argument, then you would not attack the term as such but the phenomena
it denotes. You say " what is called "self-valorization" is rationalized
commodification" without specifying the "what". Without specifying the
"what" the argument is empty and unanswerable.


The way I use the term it
denotes the postive content of our self-activity that goes beyond
resistance to the postive consitution of alternative ways of being.
Self-activity is inclusive: it includes resistance to exploitation and
domination as well as activities which create something new.
Self-valorization BY DEFINITION is juxtaposed to such efforst that have
been suborned. Dynamically we repeatedly find news ways of doing things,
new ways of interacting that initially are not integrated into capital.
The response is either repression to eliminate such deviance, or
cooptation/instrumentalization to harness/internalize newness and
difference. The latter efforts often succeed and what was
self-valorization is reduced to capital's own valorization. But the
concept denotes self-activity which still constitutes what Deleuze and
Guattari called "lines of flight" --the stuff which consitutes communism,
to use an old and not very useful concept.

Your statement " self-determination may be nothing more than
individualistic opportunism and self-destruction" is just like your
earlier statement that was also formulated in terms of "may". Sure, what
appears to be self-determination "may" not be; but then again, it "may"
actually involve autonomous activity that subverts the system and builds
alternatives. Why do you insist on the one possibility but ignore the
other? My guess is because your fundamental orientation tends to dismiss
"individual" in favor of "collective" action, but I have already critiqued
this dichotomy above.

Now on to your second post.

Harry
............................................................................
Harry Cleaver
Department of Economics
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712-1173  USA
Phone Numbers: (hm)  (512) 478-8427
               (off) (512) 475-8535   Fax:(512) 471-3510
E-mail: hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cleaver homepage:
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Chiapas95 homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html
Accion Zapatista homepage:
http://www.utexas.edu/students/nave/
............................................................................