The elephant in the room, or, what’s missing from the feminist conversation about porn and sex work

[britgirlsf]

Class. Can we talk about that for a minute? I know that America likes to think of itself as a classless society but…um, no. Just because your aristocracy don’t have titles or distinctive accents (and even that last part is debatable) doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
In reality the USA has pretty much the same basic class breakdown as every

Comments

[miss_thrillz]

i don't know about in England, but here... I couldn't tell you anything about the other girls working in my area except the ads they post because we are all too afraid to talk to each other. Which is sad - given that prostitution has the highest death rate out of any job field. Its so important that people stop viewing those of us who work/have worked in the sex industry as people in need and not as "People in Sin". I don't know about the others, but I'd have been out of the streets a lot sooner...and would have to go back to that sort of work far less often if people where more pro active about getting more women's programs into place...

[britgirlsf]

In the UK it seems to be just about the only industry no one has ever succesfully unionised. Then there's the issue of whether people work alone or not - I think part of the reason I worried less about Noriko's situation was that she didn't work alone and the people she worked with seemed like a decent lot who looked out for each other (and the clients were, well, salarymen. Not very scary).
There's been a huge ammount of strife in the feminist community over the issue of sex work, which is why I'm posting really. It bothers me that people seem to be missing both the empathy/sisterhood angle and the class dynamic. I guess I just react badly when I see people putting priniciples above concern for the safety of others, and I also have an allergic reaction to women using terms that imply sluttiness on each other.
You really should check out Ren's blog, BTW. She has an interesting and not at all common perspective.

[belledame222]

second recommendation for Ren

[britgirlsf]

You may have a point there. Like I said, it's easy for me to take a "don't care, not important to me" viewpoint because it's easy to distance myself from the whole thing. For others with less options, probably not so easy. I'm actually kind of wondering if Ren's going to smack me when she sees this one what with my 18-year-old self being such a privileged little brat about the whole thing. One good thing about getting older, we sure as hell get smarter.
I do think that the idea that there's a class dynamic to all of this is starting to percolate more widely, but a lot of the people doing the sneer at the sluts thing seem to be completely unconcious that that's part of what's going on. And yep, I know the etiology of the word, being the linguistics geek that I am.
To your last point...yep. I read the Levy book and what I see is a person who feels that the peasants are knocking at her door with pitchforks.

[belledame222]

mhm.

also, it was a weird jump from the whole MTV, Girls Gone Wild, etc. etc. vibe to the inner workings of the East Village dyke/tranny scene.

more so because she wasn't exactly real honest about where she was coming from; in any case, i did not like the anthropological tone she took.

it is also sort of incredible that she never even mentioned (I don't think?) Susie Bright, let alone Carol Queen, Amber Hollibaugh, Dorothy Allison...

[britgirlsf]

My question would be, given that I don't know much about the East Village dyke/tranny scene being on the wrong coast and all...does she seem to have any actual knowledge thereof? Or was it just "well, I read this one article once and..."?
The funny thing is that I'm not much of a fan of any of the usual "sex positive" suspect, either, but I still don't see the need for the sneering. I think the issue I have is mostly with the earnest tone (pomo kid, don't do earnest, Annie Sprinkle makes me break out in hives), but...why the snottiness? Is it not possible for feminists to disagree like civilized adults?
Also the whole "orgasms are shallow and all you people making a big deal out of them are, too" schtick is getting old. Again...if she isn't interested that's fine, but why the jeering?