Prostituting for Charity
A pregnant woman in underpants on all fours in a cage on the sidewalk.
A woman wrapped in cling film to resemble cuts of meat in a supermarket.
Mel B gets her “tits out for trafficking.”
Most of us have come to expect the exploitation of women’s bodies to sell everything from cars to cleaning products – but for charity?
Julie Bindel takes PETA and other charities on in Prostituting for Charity, published on truthout.org.
As a young and idealistic vegan, I was shocked when Pamela Anderson posed naked for PETA. But I was too embarrassed to complain. I figured I would sound prudish, square, or worst – jealous of her “sexy” body and ashamed of my own.
I’ve been trying to figure out if pornography can be feminist. When Julie Bindel confronted many of these companies and charities, she heard over and over, “It was their choice to pose/run/be in a cage naked.”
Choice. Is that the key?
Many people believe that sex workers can be empowered by stripping, live or for a camera, or being paid to have sex. And I believe being naked in front of friends, strangers, a camera, etc. really can be an empowering step for the scores of people who are told that their bodies are shameful. Loren Cameron’s Body Alchemy: Transexual Portraits is a great example of this. The Womyn’s Center art show at Earlham College is another.
But in a consumer culture, how empowering can stripping and prostitution be? Where is the power? If customers don’t like the look, style or responses of the strippers at a club, they’ll go somewhere else. If the management understands why, the strippers will be fired.
If the customer doesn’t like the look, style or responses of a prostitute, the prostitute won’t be hired or paid, and a real need for money hasn’t been met.
Is it possible for commercialized sex to be empowering/feminist in a consumer culture?
Filed under: articles on April 15th, 2008 by Anna Lisa
This is a really good, thought-provoking post. I’ve never been convinced by the “sex work can be empowering” argument, partly because it just doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny and partly because the people I hear or read making it are often men or sex workers. One might think that if sex workers themselves are making the argument, then it must be true (because who would know better?) but the prevalence of childhood abuse (of various kinds), substance abuse (of various kinds) and plain old fashioned psychological defensiveness make me think that perhaps they’re not the best judges.
I, too, have been made uncomfortable by ads and campaigns by PETA and others that use the femaie body to make a political point. If it’s not exploitive, then where are the male bodies? And where is the line between that ad and every other ad that looks the same but is for commercial gain? Is that the difference, the “righteousness” of the cause? And, if so, is that justified?
Does one’s concern for animal welfare require that one put one’s feminism aside, and not judge PETA by the same standards we judge Chevy, or Absolut, or Ax? I don’t want to have to choose which one is more important to me, animal welfare or feminism. Ideally, they should be part of a bigger umbrella of compassion towards all our fellow creatures.
I think you’re really getting into something here, in that the defense of porn and prostitution is so often “it’s her choice.” Choice is a core feminist value, what we fight for, but I think the current waves of feminism are realizing that ‘choice’ is much more heavily rooted in contextualization than we’d like to think.
Does any one woman choose, all on her own, whether to have an abortion or bring a pregnancy to term? Does any one woman truly choose, all on her own , to prostitute herself? No and no, and the evidence is, as you point out, in the actual practice of these ‘choices:’ there is not a ‘fair’ distribution of persons in the sex industry, and that is largely because it is consumers who choose who works there (thanks, capitalism!) more than those whose sex is industrialized/consumed.
[...] such as animals? Have we not all read Carol Adam’s classic, The Sexual Politics of Meat? Elsewhere, Anna Lisa has commented on the disappointment many of us feel that some women have no problem [...]
[...] such as animals? Have we not all read Carol Adam’s classic, The Sexual Politics of Meat? Elsewhere, Anna Lisa has commented on the disappointment many of us feel that some women have no problem [...]
This is a tough question, and I can’t answer it from a woman’s — or even a feminist — perspective. But I wonder ( I haven’t worked this out at all yet) if it could be seen as parallel to self-immolation. The shock factor of witnessing a person burn oneself to death is hoped to bring an issue into the minds of the public. For being a society that commodifies bodies, particularly womens’ bodies, we’re still pretty prudish and scared of the human (again, particularly female) body. For those who see it as immoral, or at the very least, improper, to reveal your naked self, such a display will get the message (animal rights, anti-war; anti-Bush in the case of the Dixie Chick’s magazine cover) into the hearts and minds of the populace. Even bad press, such as bashing Pamela Anderson or the Dixie Chicks, can be good press for the movement the naked woman is highlighting. Of course it is not all good when women go nude for a cause. This conversation wouldn’t be happening if it was. Have there been any cases of naked men in similar situations? What about nudeness en masse And celebrity certainly impacts this conversation as well.
I tried to include links in my last comment, but it didn’t work. Let’s try again, this time without the ” brackets.
men & feminism:
http://www.nomas.org/node/122
activist nudeness en masse
http://www.worldnakedbikeride.org/
http://www.baringwitness.org/