There's a great deal there to respond to and I don't think I can get around to it all today, so I'm just gonna skim the surface here: Responding to your first paragraph, yes, I plainly describe myself as a radical feminist. (More specifically a lesbian feminist.) It's worth pointing out though that a lot of the views that are today consigned to the radical feminist movement used to be embraced by virtually all feminists decades ago, including the liberals. If you go back to the late 1970s, for example, you'll find that it wasn't just radical women like Kate Millett, Germaine Greer, and Janice Raymond who opposed prostitution, pornography, what we today would call transgenderism, etc., it was also the leading ordinary liberal feminists of the day like Gloria Steinem, Eleanor Smeal, and Betty Friedan. The radicals were distinguished not by their opinion of things like the sex industry back then, but by their prioritization of cultural change over legal reforms. They worked to create an autonomous women's culture that could raise the class conscious of women toward the goal of radically transforming society and abolishing and replacing most of its existing institutions of male privilege, among which were commonly counted marriage, religion (especially faiths centering on the worship of male deities), heterosexuality, capitalism, and so on. That's what distinguished feminist radicals from the liberals back then; institutions that the liberal feminists have simply sought to reform, not abolish. Today, the differences have grown larger and more fundamental. Regarding your second and third paragraphs, personally I'm in favor of what has become known as "the Nordic model" of prostitution policy, which is to say that I strongly believe that purchasing sex, as well as brothel ownership, pimping, that sort of thing, should be treated as criminal offenses punishable by jail time, not as civil offenses punishable by mere fines like we typically do here in the U.S. The Nordic model, as it has come to be known, is the policy endorsed by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and has been adopted by many countries over the last 20 years, with the Nordic countries famously leading the way. (This policy recognizes prostituted women and other sex trade "employees" as victims of exploitative industry and accordingly doesn't penalize survivors of prostitution. This is also a better approach to prostitutes themselves than we typically use here in the U.S. (most of which are informed by the conservative idea that prostitution is a danger to family life, not to females as a class) in that punishing prostitutes discourages them from coming forward and reporting abusive treatment and in that way helps keep them trapped in the business.) I don't believe in identity politics and I'm not a "choice feminist". I fully believe that a given group can, even in its majority, be dead wrong about what is in their better interests. Prostitution is a major problem in my community (and I don't just mean among younger women) for two basic reasons: 1) because drugs are a major problem in my community, and 2) because, resulting in no small part from the former, sexual abuse is also not uncommon. Most of the prostituted women here had experienced both drug addiction and sexual abuse at the hands of a loved one before entering the field, and both of those things really seem to play a role. Pimps often pay women in drugs, for example, to keep them trapped in the business and rape is something that I can attest to from first-hand experience tends to tell you a lot about what you're worth to the world. Personal liberty is not an appreciable factor in the equation, in my observation. Most of them hate working as prostitutes, and indeed many investigations have born out that prostitutes tend to survive by dissociating themselves from their situation in the moment (as in pretending that they're somewhere else, doing something else), which I think tells you just how much "fun" they're actually having. I mean it ought to tell you something that a recent survey of American high school students found that most wouldn't have sex with someone they didn't want to for less than $2 million, while the average prostitute does so for less than $200. What does that tell you about the level of self-worth that's involved? Around the same time frame that Sweden adopted what has since become known as the Nordic model at the turn of the century, a rival approach revolving around properly legalizing the prostitution of women also gained some traction in Europe as well and was adopted in such places as Germany and the Netherlands in the early 2000s. The Nordic model continues to be adopted by more countries all the time. Full legalization, by contrast, hasn't had any new takers in over a decade now. That's because it's proven to be a disastrous, self-defeating experiment. In the Netherlands, for example, most of the legal brothels have now been closed because they've been caught trafficking sex slaves in (which isn't legal) and the same is true of those famous communities in Nevada where prostitution has been formally legalized here in the U.S. Likewise, Germany's "brothel king", Jurgon Rudloff, is currently serving a five year prison sentence for similarly trafficking sex slaves in from abroad to service the heightened demand for prostitute services that resulted from legalization. Indeed, Amsterdam's new mayor, Femke Halsema of GroenLinks (a left-leaning environmentalist party similar to the Green Party here in the U.S.), who is also the city's first female mayor, will be banning tours of the city's (in)famous red light district starting next year in a policy move supported by 80% of the city's prostitutes and is actively weighing other major changes such as banning prostitute windows. The city has been overrun by wealthy, foreign partiers, who now outnumber actual citizens on any given day of the year, as a result largely of legalizing brothels. That's how well it's going. One senses a definite policy direction here away from limitless permissiveness and toward cracking down. Perhaps this is why the project of full legalization hasn't had any new takers in quite some time now. Concerning the beauty industry, I would simply ask if you have ever read their publications like Vogue or Cosmopolitan before. It's very clear that their politics are Democratic Party-aligned today, as one can readily sense not only by their rhetoric, but also by their formal candidate endorsements. I mean even the former Miss Universe Pageant owner Donald Trump is himself, until recently, a formerly pro-choice, left wing Democrat who championed Medicare for all, beat most Democratic members of Congress to calls for exiting the Iraq War. |
In regard to your feminist identity, I'm aware of a good bit of the terminology around feminism but am not remotely as well read on the subject as yourself. I'm more familiar with the liberal feminists than the radical ones. I can appreciate the desire for cultural reform, however, because if liberal feminists limit themselves merely to political and legal reform, they will never achieve equality. Culture around women itself must change. I've a question for you though, you say you describe yourself as a "lesbian feminist" and say that the lesbian label adds specificity to your feminism. How so? Is it simply a matter of your being a lesbian informing your perspective? Or are you hinting that you're a lesbian separatist? Or does your lesbianism inform your ideology in some other way that differentiates you from a heterosexual feminist? Sorry if I'm reading too much into it.
You provide a lot of perspective here that I simply don't have comparable experience to respond to. You make a powerful and compelling argument. I confess I haven't given it as much thought as the politicians in those countries that have tried to put some form of legalized prostitution into practice. Based on what you present here, it sounds like the Nordic model is more or less what I described in my first step, that is, decriminalizing being a prostitute, so that we stop punishing survivors of human trafficking and discouraging them from reporting abuses against them. I had my skepticism that brothels and pimps could be legalized in a way that wouldn't be inevitably exploitative, so it sounds like there's a great deal of evidence that my instincts were right on that, and that brighter minds than I have tried and failed spectacularly to make it work without it leading to sex slavery and the like. That said, I maintain that if you had someone who was able to maintain full control over her own bodily autonomy, working autonomously and independently, able to refuse any service with any person for any reason without fear of legal retribution, it may be possible to have prostitution without it being exploitative. I'm sure you're right that most prostitutes today hate working as prostitutes and would rather do something else, and for the vast majority, personal liberty isn't a factor. But if there's even one woman out there would not just be willing, but actively desire to sell sex with her as a service, given that she could choose which services and with which people, and given that she didn't arrive at this decision as a result of or informed by experiences of drugs or sexual abuse, shouldn't that woman be free to do so? If it could be shown that such a woman cannot exist, that inherently, prostitution has to be exploitative, then I'd agree with you that the Nordic model is where things should stop. But look at your example of the teens that wouldn't sell sex for less than $2 million. Note that it says "sex with someone they didn't want to" as the condition. If prostitution were the selling of sexual services, but you could choose to sell them to only those you do want to, it completely reframes the question. We have sex with people we do want to have sex with for free, and don't consider that abuse. Imagine you could get money for it too? I'd bet that many people of both sexes would be willing to prostitute themselves in that case. I don't understand how that is exploitative.
I myself am quite skeptical of identity politics, as I see it as inherently exclusive, not inclusive. I also think that all that "progressive" identity politics tends to do is to replace a rightwing, straight white male identity politics with multiple leftwing, other identity politics. Good progressive politics should combat identity politics, undo the straight white male identity politics already in place (like the laws aimed at disenfrancising certain voters of certain races, or racial gerrymandering, or not allowing gays to adopt, or allowing businesses to not serve LGBTQ people, or the failure to stop the rape of women in the armed forces), and not replace them with identity politics of opposing identities but merely creating an inclusive politics that is fair to everyone. I too agree that it is quite possible for even a majority of a group to act against their better interests. Case in point, white women in the 2016 election. They did vote majority for Trump (if only barely), and I maintain that the Democrat's rhetoric was self-defeating and took those women for granted, but those women were definitely voting against their best interest. But I don't think that prostitution as a concept is inherently against the interests of women. I think in reality it is, but we could change that reality to empower women and fundamentally change the industry so that instead of creating sex trafficking victims, it instead gives them the power to make money off their sexual choices if that's what they want.
I haven't ever read Vogue or Cosmopolitan, but I'm aware of what they are. I detest them. Every time I would see the cover of one of their issues at a grocery store checkout line, all I could think was how vapid they looked, and how toxic the underlying message to women was. I guess I'm aware that they tend to lean left politically, but I never got the impression that their endorsements were all that valued or sought after by any politicians I gave a damn about, and I maintain that I've never seen a Democrat propose policies that seemed designed to appeal to the beauty industry. I wouldn't consider them major allies to Democrats or the left.
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