–Does this work increase Jane’s ability to acquire food?
–Does this work increase Jane’s ability to acquire housing?
–Does this work increase Jane’s ability to acquire clothing?

Yes, yes, and yes.

–Does this work increase Jane’s dignity?

I’ll say in the case of stripping, I’ve heard more than one yes; in fact more than ten yesses. I’ve also heard some no’s. I was recently privy to a conversation among dancers about what they’d been doing before they got their first dancing gig (common answers: waiting tables, going to college, eating ramen) and almost universally in this conversation — to even my surprise — they said dancing had increased their confidence immensely, and reduced their willingness to put up with patriarchal crap. This conversation’s fresh in my mind; I don’t have the immediate awareness of other areas of sex work to answer for them.

–Does this work increase Jane’s social standing?

No. And that’s why we need advocates working day and night to take the stigma out of it. A lot of bad things happen in the closet that don’t happen in the light of day.

–Does this work improve Jane’s health?

Yes and no: off the top of my head, exercise, cigarette smoke, injury potential, disease potential, earnings permitting higher health care standards than a typical unskilled job in the US. I’d say it probably comes out in the negative, a little.

–Does this work improve Jane’s economic independence?

Yes.

–Does this work increase Jane’s literacy?

Not inherently. It’s a common college supporter, but that isn’t a special quality of the work. Slightly to the yes, on this one, simply from the number of women who strip through school.

–Does this work decrease Jane’s risk of being subjected to (non-consensual) violent acts?

It decreases AND increases the risk, again going on personal accounts: a lot of women in this country are raised to be too timid to say “no”, and that timidity flies away rather quickly in the environment, but sex workers of all kinds (except possibly PSOs) are liable to be targeted by predators. In the current US situation, I’d say escorting specifically is a net risk raise. I don’t think that’s an inherent property of the work, rather of the way it’s framed in our culture, and the way Jane the escort is dehumanized and forgotten by her detractors on all sides.

–Does this work decrease Jane’s exposure to (her clients’) communicable diseases?

This question comes off a little awkward, as *no* job decreases exposure to communicable diseases, and any job working with the public will involve higher exposure. Certainly escorts and porn actors are going to be more at risk for STIs, and that’s a serious risk indeed, one of the biggest concerns for this type of work. I’d say dancers get exposed to as many colds and flus as anyone else who works with the public, say in a retail job, and occasionally contract skin infections due to stage floor work, etc. Teachers (and anyone who works with children) and people in the medical industry get vastly more exposure to these minor ailments. PSOs and skin models probably don’t have much of a chance to catch anything in the course of work.

–Does this work increase Jane’s ability to sleep well at night?

That depends heavily on Jane’s character and the boundaries she sets. And also on when Jane is working. Sometimes, indeed often, Jane works all night and sleeps all day, and has to explain this to her neighbors who like to set their six-AM alarm to play Haydn’s Surprise Symphony…

–Does this work increase Jane’s opportunity for leisure time?

Almost one hundred percent, unless Jane is supporting a family with multiple children, in which case that opportunity is shot from the get-go.

And more importantly, the fact is, the prostitutes that choose this work are a very small minority and get out sooner than others. The vast majority of sex workers are coerced, kidnapped, trafficked, abused, left for dead, and most of them are children when they start. THAT is the point! That it doesn’t matter if you got lucky and found a service to work for that will protect you somehow, and your clients happen to be rich and don’t like hookers with bruises on their face. prostitution is a problem for the entire world that doesn’t necessarily have the luxury of ordering you like furniture from the internet, they just go get some little girl and pay their slave owner the money. She doesn’t get the money!!! Prostitution is a MAN’S business. Men make money off of women. No matter how much of a feminist one certain high-class hooker is, it doesn’t change the fact that the industry she works for is inherently wrong and unequal and her fellow workers are being used as slaves.

I can’t believe the amount of inconsideration for the rest of the world when I see all these American women whose mothers and grandmothers fought for us to be treated equal, take a big fat dump on all that work and take a big fat dump on all the women all over the world who don’t have the priveledge of living in a country that at least pretends to give a damn about them.
We will not be equal until prostitution is NOT accepted as a viable option for women and little girls. Yes little girls!! Cause that’s what happens when you have prostitution, you have men that will take your daughters cause they know someone wants them, and they’ll pay a higher price for them. Hey maybe we should do that here!!! Little girls can start their career early so that by the time she’s an adult, maybe she’ll be caught up to her male peers in how much money she’s made. That would really take the pressure off parents trying to save for college. Better yet, why don’t we all just start being hookers so our husbands can stay home with the kids and we can provide for our families. that would be a great “take your daughter to work day” Huh? Oh that’s right, we already do that here, the average age of a prostitute when she starts is 14! I’m sorry but I was still a child when I was 14 and should not have been having sex with old men, and I don’t think anyone else should do that either!

So yeah, keep being a feminist, please, but don’t think that your our work is done. One day you’ll come to embrace the parts of feminism that seem so inconvenient right now and realize that your present viewpoint was immature and un-evolved. Until then I suggest you all do your research and you’ll find that you’re patriarchy’s accomplice in this matter. Step outside of the “Green Zone” of America and think of the rest of the world for a change.

One of my points was that since feminism is defined and not represented (what’s socialism versus what’s the speed of light in a vacuum), the question seems more like whether somebody’s understanding of a particular form of work accords with a particular theoretical construct.

I’d go for the notion that activities which increase female classes’ autonomy and dignity are more likely to be feminist, while activities that perpetuate the notion of woman as the other class and thus inherently exploitable are less likely to be feminist. Then it’s a matter of playing word substitution games until you have your sets of feminist and anti-feminist.

Still, as I have sometimes said in other contexts, we have to live in the world. I’ll settle for something that will make things better than they are, as long as the process iterates.

http://www.counterpunch.org/blader03122008.html

Just as often, men pay to be spot on, pissed on, ejaculated on, beaten, verbally abused and sodomised.

hexy, not sure where you’re getting this from. But the number of men who hire pro dommes is far less than the number of men who hire ‘straight’ prostitutes. And remember that it isn’t the pro dommes who are paying to degrade men.

tinfoil hattie’s point, at any rate, was that if you look at the market rates, men value women most highly for their use as sexual objects.

Honestly, I do think sex-work as a whole is a strong tool of the patriarcal system, independantly of the individual motivations and choices of sex-workers. This is not to say it couldn’t be otherwise in a different context, but we are speaking of this reality. I mean, it must have some kind of social utility to keep existing, right? I tend to suspect it’s to keep a social order in place. I can’t imagine anything else.

The main problem I have when trying to think of sex-work is that I can’t help turning my mind to the patrons and their motivations. And the main point is, I don’t really get any of it. I simply can’t imagine what drives them.

What in the world makes them so different from me? I don’t understand, at all. This puzzles me to no end.