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human respect and motivations **trigger** » Dinah

Posted by Tamar on March 29, 2006, at 16:17:57

In reply to Re: Another Very long rant! Poss Trigger » Tamar, posted by Dinah on March 29, 2006, at 14:55:47

> Tamar, with all due respect, don't some of your objections to the sex industry really result from a lack of respect in society for our fellow human beings who happen to work in the sex industry? And that a lack of respect for our fellow human beings is the real source of those problems?

I’ve thought about what you said, and I’m sure you’re right to some extent, but I think there’s more to it. Yes, I object to the lack of respect for people who work in the sex industry. But I think my objections to the sex industry are chiefly objections to the ways in which the sex industry reinforces and sexualises the inequality of women in society. My objections to porn, for example, are about the semiotics of the imagery. I think many pornographic images convey sexualised ideas of women’s vulnerability. I think that's more complex than lack of respect.

For example, I watched a porn film recently in which the men and women were depicted as consenting adults who enjoyed what they were doing, but nevertheless I found the imagery uncomfortable. One scenario was about a woman whose house had been robbed and she called the police and then had sex with the officers who arrived. Nothing in the scenario was explicitly violent, but I was uncomfortable with the premise; anyone who has been robbed knows how violating the experience can feel. I felt the scenario was setting up the female character as a victim of a violation that she responded with sexual intensity as if the robbery had been inconsequential. To minimise the emotional impact of the robbery in that way depicts her (in my view) as dissolute; her only interest is in her next orgasm. Furthermore, her role as a victim is significant only insofar as it provides her with sexual partners. The film wasn’t subtle enough to depict that as one aspect of her character: hey, it was porn. And of course the police officers took advantage of her vulnerability when they should have been there to protect her and help her. So again, she’s a victim but she’s depicted as enjoying it. To me it’s the imagery of sexual assault but presented as a rescue fantasy.

Now of course I know it’s just a fantasy. And I can also imagine it’s potentially a real life fantasy. Maybe if a woman has been robbed and she calls the police and two cute officers arrive at her house, it’s entirely possible that in her heightened emotional state she might experience feelings of sexual desire for them. I don’t think that’s outside the realm of possibility. But if they took advantage of her feelings, they’d be exploiting her, in my opinion. In fact, if it happened in real life they’d be retraumatizing her, because she’d already experienced one violation with the robbery.

And that’s why I’m uncomfortable with most of the porn imagery I’ve seen. I don’t like the underlying implication that women enjoy being victimized, or that people of colour are inherently exotic/dangerous/wild, or that sex is at its best when there’s an undercurrent of danger. It’s not just about the consent of the participants or the way others view them. It’s largely about the themes used over and over again in porn. I just don’t think they’re helpful. It's more than just lack of respect; it's about political complexities. I don’t want to ban porn; I just want to make it better.

> And I'm not sure I feel any more comfortable about speculating on the problems and motivations of those who pose nude than I do about the problems and motivations of people who choose to find friendship on an internet bulletin board or those who are Fanilows, just as two rather commonly judged activities.

Ah well, part of my professional work has involved researching the problems and motivations of people who work in the sex industry, and additionally I’ve had friends who have worked in the sex industry. So while I can’t claim to know the motivations of everyone who works in the sex industry, I think it’s fair to say that I’m aware of research that has suggested some common patterns. And I think it’s worthwhile speculation because without a hypothesis it’s hard to know where to begin to explore the issue. If my speculations are found to be utterly wrong, they can be discounted and new hypotheses suggested. Either way, I think it’s as useful to explore the problems and motivations of people who pose nude as it is to explore the problems and motivations of people who work in hospitals or in the voluntary sector (which is sociological research that other people do…).

By the way, what are Fanilows? I’m intrigued…

> People have all sorts of reasons for doing the things they do.

Agreed. And that’s why I find it very significant that research has found such a high proportion of survivors of child sexual abuse among sex workers. It’s much higher than you’d expect to find in a random sample of the population; it’s usually around 75%-95%. And I wonder why that should be so. Do they all have very different reasons, and is it simply coincidence that they have traumatic histories? Or is there something about sex work that is particularly appealing to survivors of child abuse? Or is it something else? I genuinely want to know.

I work in education. It’s not terribly uncommon for students to supplement their income by working in the sex industry. If I’m teaching incest survivors, I consider that I have a responsibility to them, just like I have a responsibility to students with disabilities or students who come from non-traditional backgrounds. The difference is that surviving incest is usually less visible than disability or background. Of course, I have a responsibility to all my students. But some have more troubles to overcome than others, and I’d like to be able to help if I can. If there’s a chance that people choose to work in the sex industry as a result of educational underperformance which limits their choice of career, then I consider it my responsibility to be aware of the problem and to seek ways to solve it. And I feel similarly strongly about other issues that could affect my students’ performance, but right now we’re talking about the sex industry...

So that’s a long way of saying that I have a deeply material interest in the sex industry and in exploring what it means to choose to work in it or to choose to be one of its customers. I know I don't have all the answers, but I still want to ask the questions.

I’ve probably just made it more complicated. Sorry.


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