Prostitution, Power and Freedom E-Book

Julia O'Connell Davidson

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 472

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Prostitution is still the subject of intense controversy among feminists but theoretical and political analyses are often only loosely grounded in empirical research. This book offers new perspectives on prostitution based on wide-ranging research in nine countries and extensive work with prostitute users.

Leseprobe

For ‘Desiree’

Prostitution, Power and Freedom

Julia O’Connell Davidson

Polity Press

Copyright © Julia O’Connell Davidson 1998

The right of Julia O’Connell Davidson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published 1998 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Reprinted 2006

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ISBN 0–7456–1739–5

ISBN 0–7456–1740–9 (pbk)

ISBN 0–7456–6809–3 (ebook)

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

   Methodology

   Definitions and book structure

PART I DIMENSIONS OF DIVERSITY

1    Power, Consent and Freedom

The faces of power

Brothels as business enterprises

Power, oppression, the subject and the law

2    Patterns of Pimping

Towards a definition of ‘pimping’

Pimping and prostitution: some general remarks

3    Independent Street Prostitution

Contract and control

Children and independent street prostitution

4    Independent Prostitution and Tourism

Informal tourist-related prostitution

Parasites’ paradise

5    Power and Freedom at the Apex of the Prostitution Hierarchy

The entrepreneurial prostitute’s business

Power and control within transactions

The sources of control

Choice and power

PART II PROSTITUTION AND THE EROTICIZATION OF SOCIAL DEATH

Introduction

6    Narratives of Power and Exclusion

Patriarchy, rape and the prostitution contract

Imaginary communities

Otherness, objectification and desire

7    Eroticizing Prostitute Use

‘Fucking dirty whores’

Eroticizing the prostitute as ‘phallic woman’

‘Tarts with hearts’ and ‘sexual healers’

Secrets and lies

The contradictions of ‘clienting’

8    Through Western Eyes: Honour, Gender and Prostitute Use

Ritual reinscriptions

The pursuit of honour

The case of female sex tourism

Contradictions and constraints

9    Diversity, Dialectics and Politics

Collective political action

Policy debate and political strategies

Moral blame

Notes

References

Index

Acknowledgements

Licence my roving hands, and let them goe

Behind, before, above, between, below ...

How blest am I in this discovering thee

To enter in these bonds is to be free

John Donne, Elegie to his Mistris Going to Bed

The views expressed in this book are not necessarily shared by the many people to whom I have become indebted in the course of researching and writing it, and my purpose here is to thank those people, rather than to suggest that they endorse my analysis of prostitution. I want to start by acknowledging the support of the Research Board of the Faculty of Social Science at Leicester University, which funded fieldwork in Thailand and Cuba, and ECPAT (End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism), which funded field trips to Cuba, Costa Rica, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, South Africa and India. Particular thanks are due to Ron O’Grady, Amihan Abueve, Martin Staebler, Helen Vietche, Frankie Chissim, Jo Bindman and, above all, Anne Badger, for encouragement, advice and support. I am also grateful to the following people for providing information and/or assistance during field trips: Siriporn Skrobanek, Anjana Suvarnananda, Bruce Harris, Caroline Colaso, Roland Martins, Shifra Jacobsen, Marianne Thamm, Glen Smith, Terry Lacey and Edgardo Garcia. Special thanks go to Inez Grummitt for both distracting and helping us during fieldwork in Jamaica and to my long-time friend and hero Sun Wen Bin for coming to my rescue in Thailand.

A number of people have generously supplied me with insights, assistance, information, photocopied materials, references, contacts and/or general support over the past four years, and I am especially grateful to Matt Clark, June Gregory, Eve Rose, Ruth Knott, Bridget Anderson, Usman Sheikh, Simon Carter, Rohit Barot, Mark Maynard, Shelley Anderson, Kevin Yelvington, June Kane, David Prosser, Annie Phizacklea, Maz, Lisa and Christina, and, above all, Leigh Pinsent and Della Cavner.

In preparing this book I have been helped by Rebecca Harkin of Polity Press and by the detailed comments of an anonymous reader. I am also grateful to Theo Nichols, who gave me valuable feedback on a draft of Part I, and to Derek Layder, for his insights on issues of power, his comments on the manuscript and his more general camaraderie. Without Jacqueline Sánchez Taylor this book would not exist in its present form: she co-researched virtually all of the material it includes on sex tourism, many of the ideas developed from or were refined through discussion with her, and her work on the commodification of blackness has contributed greatly to my understanding of prostitution. Since it was Laura Brace who pointed out to me the significance of notions of political community for prostitution, drew my attention to the many and varied ways in which the moral philosophy of the sex tourist is informed by a liberal political tradition, supplied me with the references necessary to develop such insights and then critically commented on my attempts to do so, it can safely be said that she is the source of any theoretical merit found in Part II. Finally, John Hoffman has not only given me inspiration and encouragement over the past three years, but also read through an entire draft manuscript and gave me detailed and challenging, but always constructive, feedback.

I am an unrepentant romantic, and I choose to read John Donne’s elegie as meaning that the license to discover another person’s body confers both subjection and freedom: lovers take on bonds which oblige and commit them in certain ways, and yet simultaneously release them from the spectre of separation, loss, isolation and other existential anxieties. This potential is, I believe, also present in non-sexual friendships, for it lies not in the physical intimacy of sexual acts but in the possibility for mutual recognition implicit in all bonds of emotional intimacy. As a person who is much haunted by existential despair I value this kind of recognition above all else, and for this reason I want to thank Jacqueline Sánchez Taylor, Delia Cavner and Laura Brace, who have not only given me constant intellectual and emotional support but also, in so doing, the closest thing to freedom I can imagine.

PART I

DIMENSIONS OF DIVERSITY

1

Power, Consent and Freedom

What kind of power do clients and third parties exercise over prostitutes? Can human beings freely consent to their own prostitution? For some feminists these questions are relatively clear cut. Carole Pateman (1988), for example, holds that the prostitution contract establishes a relationship within which the prostitute is unambiguously subject to the client’s command. The client exercises powers of mastery over her. There is equally little room for ambiguity in Kathleen Barry’s treatment of prostitution. Sexual exploitation violates human rights to dignity, she argues, and there can therefore be no ‘right to prostitute’ and no distinction between ‘free’ and ‘forced’ prostitution. People cannot give meaningful consent to the violation of their human rights (Barry, 1995, pp. 304–6).