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Opinion | Banning prostitution a way to control women’s sexuality

James Giles

January 10, 2013 - 12:16

Any attempt to ban prostitution, the author argues, is an attempt to remove a woman's freedom of choice over her own body and own sexuality

The recent decision by the Danish government to not proceed with effectively banning prostitution should be welcomed by anyone who values women’s autonomy and equality.
From the beginnings of human history, people have tried to control women’s sexuality. Laws designed to restrict women’s sexuality can be found in many cultures: laws forcing women to wear veils, headscarves or burkas; laws disallowing women to wear make-up or to go out in public without a male family member; laws forcing women to undergo virginity tests or to hide away when they are menstruating; laws restricting women’s access to birth control or abortion; and laws restricting women from earning money from sex.
All of these laws and regulations have one thing in common: namely, the attempt to remove a woman’s freedom of choice over her own body and own sexuality.
Those who want to make women’s sex work illegal try to argue that they are doing it for women’s own good. But that is the same assertion made by those who require women to wear headscarves, undergo virginity tests or not go out in public without a male family member.
These laws too are purportedly designed for a woman’s “own good”. It does not, however, take great powers of perception to see that making it illegal for women to not wear headscarves or go out alone are little more than ways of controlling women and their sexuality. But if it is obvious that these laws are merely methods of controlling women’s sexuality, then it should equally be obvious that making it illegal for women to earn money from sex is also merely a method of controlling women’s sexuality.
One thing that has made it difficult for some people to see this is that many of the groups who are trying to make sex work illegal in Denmark are women’s advocacy groups. This gives the impression that outlawing sex work must be for women’s own good.
This is because it would seem that women’s advocacy groups would naturally want what is best for women. The problem, however, is that one does not need to be a man to oppress a woman. Women can also oppress women.
The well-known anthropologist Mary Douglas has shown how women in certain cultures use cultural rules surrounding menstruation – for example, being confined during menstruation – to oppress other women and to attempt to limit a rival female’s sexual behaviour.
Could it be that those women who are trying to stop other women from engaging in prostitution are doing the same thing? It seems clear that many women, even in Denmark, do not like the idea of their partners having sex with other women.
Prostitutes are clearly women who are sexually available for any man, including the partners of the women who want to make prostitution illegal. A woman attempting to make other women’s prostitution illegal can thus easily be seen as an attempt to limit a rival female’s sexual behaviour.
Of course in the Danish case, the groups who are advocating to make prostitution illegal are trying to make the buying of sex illegal, not the selling of sex. In this case it might give the appearance that it is the customer of the sex worker who is being controlled rather than the prostitute herself.
But this is neither here nor there; for in the wider picture, the result is the same: namely, the outlawing of prostitution. Indeed, outlawing the buying rather than the selling of sex looks very much like a cover-up. That is, it is an attempt to hide the fact that the ban is merely one more attempt to control a woman’s right to decide her own sexuality.
The expected reply to this is to point out how women prostitutes are often exploited and abused by both their employers and customers, how illegal immigrants are sometimes coerced into prostitution with threats of turning them over to the authorities, and so on. Consequently, the argument goes, outlawing prostitution would save those in prostitution from this sort of treatment.
The difficulty with this reply, however, is that none of these problems are problems with prostitution in itself. Rather, they are problems stemming from the government’s inconsistent treatment of prostitutes and the marginalisation of prostitution as a legitimate profession.
Thus, in Denmark it is legal to be a prostitute, and prostitutes, like anyone else, are expected to pay taxes. Yet prostitutes are not entitled to protection under employment legislation or to unemployment benefits. Not only is this inconsistent, but it sends the clear message to everyone (including those who would exploit prostitutes) that prostitutes are looked down upon by the authorities and not deemed to be worthy of society’s full protection. It is no wonder then that those involved in crime move in to take advantage of prostitutes.
What has created the criminal environment that often surrounds prostitution is therefore not the nature of the profession, but rather a lack of government protection for those in the profession. The same thing could happen with any profession.
Thus, were taxi drivers or hairstylists looked down upon by the authorities and denied legal protection or unemployment benefits, criminals would quickly move in to take advantage of the situation and exploit them. The answer, then, would not be to make the purchase of a taxi ride or a haircut illegal, but rather to give taxi drivers or hairstylists the same respect and legal protections as anybody else. In the same way, the answer is not to make the purchasing of prostitution illegal, but rather for the government to afford prostitutes the same respect and legal safeguards as any other workers.
In her recent New Year’s address PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt said that freedom, equality, and safety were the fundamental values upon which the Danish community is built. If this is true, then the government should uphold these values in their treatment of prostitutes.
Prostitutes should have the freedom to pursue their authorised profession, equality with other workers, and the safety provided by the full protection of the employment laws.

The author is a lecturer in philosophy and the author of ‘The Nature of Sexual Desire

Secularism Destroy Human Integrity

Monday, Jan. 7, 2013

Christianity vs. secularism

By KEVIN RAFFERTY

Special to The Japan Times

HONG KONG — Pope Benedict XVI had a busy holiday season, as you might expect, since it is a sacred time for Catholics and other Christians. He set himself the difficult-to- impossible task of trying to put Christ back into Christmas.

In his Christmas homily the pope pleaded with Christians to make space for God in their lives: If practicing Christians have no room for God, He does not have much future among humanity.

For the rest of the world, the question might be: Is it time to abolish Christmas? Christmas has come and Christmas has gone, but did anybody notice?

Of course, we noticed the endless Muzak playing in shopping malls worldwide, talk of angels singing on high, mummy kissing Santa Claus, flying reindeer and other unlikely UFOs. Even in hardly believing Japan it was difficult to escape the wretched tinkling noise.

Most places in the world celebrate Christmas for holidays and partying. But fewer and fewer people really believe in Christ in Christmas, the fairy story of the birth of a God-child in an outhouse.

So why not accept the reality and feasting and fun, as the ancient pagans did before Christians hijacked the festival?

Hong Kong, celebrating its self-proclaimed reputation as "Asia's world city," has shown the rest of the world the way in calling the period from Nov. 23 until New Year's Day "WinterFest." The city's tourist board makes a genuflection toward Christianity, claiming that its celebration offers "a unique spin on Christmas festivities."

With the promise of bringing a Tiffany's makeover for staid Statue Square in the city center, winter sales, festive foods and menus, entertainment and a pyrotechnic welcome for the new year, its bottom line message is plain — "in keeping with Hong Kong WinterFest tradition, shop, eat, drink and be merry."

No one should be surprised by Hong Kong's strident secular leadership. According to international surveys, only 22 percent of its people say that religion has any part in their daily lives, not far behind Estonia, where only 14 percent think religion is important.

In Japan, religious believers are 25 percent.

Increasingly and globally, except in stern Muslim countries, this is a secular age where people are shrugging off the superstitions of religion and believe that life is for the living without the nonsense of fairy stories, extraterrestrial powers or a new life beyond the grave.

Even in the Roman Catholic Church, the central bastion of Christianity, hundreds of thousands of men have left the priesthood. Others have been caught in the terrible scandal and sin of abusing children. Catholic worshippers, especially in the West, have been deserting in droves.

How many of the pope's army of 1.2 billion baptized Catholics are actually regular churchgoers?

No one has reliable figures, but at best 30 percent or 400 million people. That's a large number but a small 6 percent minority of the Earth's population of 7 billion. Why should such a small rump clinging to old myths make decisions for the whole world?

But hold on: Are Hong Kong and Japan and other secular places moving too fast and too far? A modern world that puts its selfish faith in the material here and now is exacerbating a terrible divide between those who have and those who are squeezed to the margins.

If you want to see the impact of money on a godless society, look to China. There, shopping malls are the swankiest, groaning with luxury brand goodies. Economic growth has created more than a million millionaires. But corruption is rife and hundreds of millions of Chinese have been lucky to pick up crumbs from the economic miracle. The Gini coefficient, which measures inequality, rose to an incredible 0.61 in 2010, according to a recent survey. Anything above 0.4 is considered dangerously unequal. The government last month refused to release its own figures for the coefficient, citing the ubiquitous need to preserve state secrets.

The savage irony is that China's miraculous economic growth has undermined what was undoubtedly a highly moral system — communism.

Lord (Jonathan) Sacks, the chief rabbi of the Commonwealth, bravely makes the argument for organized religion claiming that religion is a great survivor: "Superpowers tend to last a century; the great faiths last millenniums," says Sachs. He claims that the great religions offer the moral compass, including altruism that allows communities to be built and society to survive destructionist tendencies.

Pope Benedict in his Christmas homily said Christianity put great store on the dignity of each person because humans are created in the image of God: "If God's light is extinguished, man's divine dignity is also extinguished. Then the human creature would cease to be in God's image, to which we must pay honor in every person, in the weak, in the stranger, in the poor."

In the Financial Times last month, Benedict wrote that Christians are committed to fighting against poverty and they work for a more equitable sharing of the Earth's resources out of concern for the "supreme dignity of every human being, created in God's image. ... The belief in the transcendent destiny of every human being gives urgency to the task of promoting peace and justice for all."

Yet Benedict is an enigma. He is one of the world's sharpest thinkers, and he recently wrote the third volume of his book on Jesus, in which he got a lot of publicity for the wrong reasons. He claimed that there was no evidence that cattle were present at the birth of Christ. He is correct, since the birth was probably in a cave — not the stable of tradition — though the pope's own Christmas card shows animals in attendance.

He also claimed that the angels did not sing to the shepherds, but only spoke to them of about the birth of the Savior Christ. What a killjoy pope: With such Good News, surely the angels would not be whispering, but would be singing gloriously with the sweet melodies of a Mozart and the faith of a Beethoven.

Benedict has tried to be a modern pope, and last month opened a Twitter account, which has attracted a million followers. But he has not been able to discard his stern unforgiving bureaucratic past.

It is now 50 years since the Vatican Council began its work to open the church to the world. Blessed Pope John XXIII told the council fathers that they should engage with the world and "make use of the medicine of mercy rather than of severity" in dealing with everyone.

But the current pope, one of whose titles is "the Servant of the servants of God," has reacted as if he is still "God's Rottweiler" — the epithet he won when in charge of doctrine before becoming pope. Priests, and even bishops, who dare to suggest that for practical reasons the church should consider married priests or women priests or even — horror of horrors — take a new look at sexuality have been unceremoniously sidelined or dismissed.

In terms of liturgy and disciplines, Benedict is taking the church back into the holy smells and bells of its former European stronghold. This is a mistake, not least because Europeans have succumbed to the secular disease.

More important, it is a denial of the promise of the baby Christ who was born in poverty for all humans. The Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini in his final interview last year claimed that "the church is 200 years behind the times" and is weighed down by well-being, "like the rich young man who went away sad when Jesus called him to be his disciple."

Kevin Rafferty was editor of The Universe, the best-selling Catholic newspaper in English.