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I still think being heard on an issue is NOT deciding it, and that this distinction is key.
As for morality, am I right in understanding that you are affirming an absolute disconect between it and law? I think that is inaccurate. Both in theory and in people's choices, morality is the basis of our relationship to others and to society. Women's rights such as that to abortion were won by people who put their morality above their self-interest, such as Dr. Tiller, Dr. Morgentaler and thousands of feminist and profeminist activists. When all that is at stake is applying the law, morality doesn't enter the picture. But when law is to be reformed or even interpreted, courts and lawmakers have always had to look at its underlying principles. Even equality between women and men is a moral issue and conviction, before it is implemented in policy. So this aspect of the debate and all positions in it cannot be silenced without losing sight of what is at stake.
I have been fighting the Right since longer than I care to remember but I have never believed that shutting them out of the picture was fair or even advisable. Better push them into the limelight and slice-and-dice their arguments.
Sorry Martin, there is not a chnce in hell that REAL Women of Canada are "nothing like the travesty you are painting". Ditto the Catholic Church.
... I would be a still poorer person than I am today.
Oh, I agree, but don't you have a serious problem with these misogynist nutbars being given some special status to speak to the Court, as if society has some legitimate need to hear from them on an issue involving the rights and freedoms of women? I do.
No, absolutely not. I never affirmed such a thing and I do not do so now. I just believe that society's morality is established through people's struggles for rights and equality and against oppression - and one a right has been won at least on paper (the right of women to equality and to control of their persons), our courts should not revisit some wingnut's "moral" arguments in order to call those rights into question. I find that exceedingly dangerous, because it calls into question whether that right has been seriously won even in theoretical terms.
Oh, I can't agree with that at all. Morality is the consequence of our relationship to others and to society. That's why a worker's sense of right and wrong, on particular issues, can vary very legitimately from an employer's (for example). That difference is not the starting point of their relationship, but rather the outcome.
I don't even agree one tiny bit with that statement. Women's rights to abortion were won by an entire social movement that gave rise to leaders, spokespersons, and self-sacrificial representatives. It is futile to try to find an individual common thread between all those persons. It is the evolution of society which itself drove the need for enhancing the freedom and equality of women, and gave birth to a movement to accomplish those aims. It has nothing to do with any abstract sense of morality. No one 500 years ago thought it was "morally right" to allow women to abort foetuses. And one day soon, no one will think it is wrong. It isn't people's "morality" which drove this change.
That's ahistorical and takes no account of difference in power relationships in a given society at a given phase. Morality is the result, not the cause, of these great upheavals in our society. It is the codification of social and political change into a "thou shalt and thou shalt not" code of behaviour. And when society changes, the code inevitably follows. Not the other way around.
I didn't say "shut them out". I said, once we've made an advance, don't look back. No more free votes on same sex marriage. No revisiting whether women should serve on juries in Québec. No debates on capital punishment. On to the next challenge.
Answering Stargazer about Real Women of Canada: Well, don't take my word for it, read their Statement on Prostitution and look for a reference to the Bible. I hate Real Women of Canada and disagree with their prohibitionist proposal, but I can acknowledge (without bursting into flames) that most of those arguments are evidence-based. Many others are platitudes that are to be resisted but not a single one is religious.
Beside the theoretical argument about morality in law (above), it just seems to me that we have a strong enough case without needing to shut out of the public sphere people and organizations we are uncomfortable with or opposed to.
It isn't just a matter of being uncomfortable. I absolutely DESPISE those organizations and I really do not care if they quote the bible or not, we know exactly what they are doing, and why, and it isn't to benefit women, it is to try to roll back what we have. I cannot stand in solidarity with them on that issue, even if I passionately disagreed with prostitution.
It makes me extremely angry that anti women's groups, like the catholic church and these so-called REAL women, get standing and are even being considered as having something to say that does not reference morality. You know as well as I do that there is no need to quote from the bible when you think you have the lord of your side.
BTW, I am currently on fire. I'll brb after I put it out.
I hear you. Call me a closet liberal, but I have as much problems with people who think thay have god on their side as I do with those who think they do so with Truth or History's Meaning (wink wink nudge nudge to fellow materialists). I am an agnostic on all counts and have seen too many advances rolled back to believe we can simply deem them scientifically unacceptable and shut out from discussion the moral dimension we need to keep the fires burning under the minions of oppression, even the "sexy" kind.
BTW, not to encourage thread drift, but strangely enough, the French Minister of Culture, Frederic Mitterand, is in trouble these days for a candid autobiography ("The Bad Life") where he wrote of his personal enthusiasm for sex with children in SouthEast Asia. And strangely enough, he is being taken on both by the RW Front National and the Socialist Party. The book was published 4 years ago, but these revelations were made an issue when Mitterand took a strong stand in support of colleague child rapist Polanski.
Another good news is that Berlusconi's immunity has been thrown out of court today, so he too is going to have to answer for his dalliances as a john.
I tell you, what is this world coming to if men of power are disallowed to use it!?
Martin, answer my last post while Stargazer extinguishes her fire, please.
Excellent news Martin.
Unionist, if there was a panel going on about taking charity status away from the churches and dinging them with taxes, I would want an athiest group, and unions to give evidence to the court holding it, that it is unfair, morally wrong for them to have it and discriminatory. :D
Questions from Unionist:
...don't you have a serious problem with these misogynist nutbars being given some special status to speak to the Court
It's not special status. One either has status to intervene or not.
Re: the disconnect. I never affirmed such a thing and I do not do so now.
Good.
I just believe that society's morality is established through people's struggles for rights and equality and against oppression
Society's yes. Individuals, it's more complicated... and differentiated according to a lot of factors.
- and one a right has been won at least on paper (the right of women to equality and to control of their persons), our courts should not revisit some wingnut's "moral" arguments in order to call those rights into question. I find that exceedingly dangerous, because it calls into question whether that right has been seriously won even in theoretical terms.
Well were it so simple, I would certainly be onside. But you know full well that Conservatives are constantly trying to devolve those rights and simply stating they are wingnuts and they shouldn't doesn't cut it.
Quote:
Both in theory and in people's choices, morality is the basis of our relationship to others and to society.
Oh, I can't agree with that at all. Morality is the consequence of our relationship to others and to society. That's why a worker's sense of right and wrong, on particular issues, can vary very legitimately from an employer's (for example). That difference is not the starting point of their relationship, but rather the outcome.
I wrote basis, not starting point. Maybe I should have used a textile metaphor, like warp. Even acknowledging morality as consequence - as we materialists do - can still leave place for acnowledging it as central to people's world-view.
Quote:
Women's rights such as that to abortion were won by people who put their morality above their self-interest, such as Dr. Tiller, Dr. Morgentaler and thousands of feminist and profeminist activists.
I don't even agree one tiny bit with that statement. Women's rights to abortion were won by an entire social movement that gave rise to leaders, spokespersons, and self-sacrificial representatives. It is futile to try to find an individual common thread between all those persons. It is the evolution of society which itself drove the need for enhancing the freedom and equality of women, and gave birth to a movement to accomplish those aims. It has nothing to do with any abstract sense of morality. No one 500 years ago thought it was "morally right" to allow women to abort foetuses. And one day soon, no one will think it is wrong. It isn't people's "morality" which drove this change.
I understand that macro perspective; I just don't think it excludes the micro perspective of individuals who do feel that they make moral choices and have to struggle against people with different moralities.
Quote:
Even equality between women and men is a moral issue and conviction, before it is implemented in policy.
That's ahistorical and takes no account of difference in power relationships in a given society at a given phase. Morality is the result, not the cause, of these great upheavals in our society.
Can't it be both?
It is the codification of social and political change into a "thou shalt and thou shalt not" code of behaviour. And when society changes, the code inevitably follows.
Were it so simple! But politics can be read as a conflict between groups each of whom has its code and tries to impose it. Pace Marx and Engels, there is no homogeneous scientific train of progress changing reality for everyone with no rollback.
Quote:
I have been fighting the Right since longer than I care to remember but I have never believed that shutting them out of the picture was fair or even advisable. Better push them into the limelight and slice-and-dice their arguments.
I didn't say "shut them out". I said, once we've made an advance, don't look back. No more free votes on same sex marriage. No revisiting whether women should serve on juries in Québec. No debates on capital punishment.
Nice work if you can get it...
Actually, martin (and remind), on reviewing this, I don't disagree with your views as much as I thought I did. So I'm going to stand back a bit now (remembering this is the FF after all) and hope to hear more from susan, Stargazer, remind, Ghislaine, just one of the concerned, Michelle, martin (whoops!), etc.
Some points of clarification:
Women were not given the right to be allowed to abort, women took the right to have control of our bodies, to do with what we choose, just as men have always had.
It is shameful that we had to get a court ruling to prove it, and that it only happened 21 years ago.
Many women have certainly practised, in secret, the right to conrol their own bodies, for more than 500 years, knowing that it was their moral right to do so. That others held a different morality, that was/is based upon inequality, was what had to be fought against to bring it to the equity point where it is today.
And there are still those who believe that women should still be owned subjects of the state, or religion, and forced to give their bodies into the service of it/them.
Ignoring them is not the correct thing to do, discharging their power, by having their viewpoints disregarded by the court is a powerful social statement, that will give them serious setbacks, leading to an complete understanding by a super majority of society, who will finally get that women are equal to men and what that actually means and presents.
Historically it benefitted men to set what "morality" they wanted to be in place, in order to keep women as chattel property, and that of their off spring too. Seeing as how they were only 50% of the population they had to co-opt a certain segment of the women's population numbers to their 'cause' in order to hold sway. Religion did this effectively in a number of ways.
Nowadays, patriarchy has lessened, so to have a majority who able to impose their "morality", they need more women to believe they are unequal, or to re-capture the loss of male solidarity. And never ever discount the fact that they are trying to that constantly, in a myriad of ways.
We ignore them at our own peril. Better to blunt them by exposing them to the light of the law.
here here remind!!
wow, martin. that is absolutely disgusting about the French culture minister. Why would he even write about it in a non-apolegetic way? /end drift
I lean fairly civil libertarian, so I approach this issue from that perspective. I find prostitution disgusting and morally wrong personally, but there are alot of things that I find disgusting and morally wrong personally but would strongly disagree with being criminalized. I think whether you personally find it morally wrong or not is completely irrelevant (and REAL and church groups etc. are even more irrelevant to the case). I am totally against victimless acts being criminal. Some may argue that prostituted women are being victimized. I would respond (as others have) that there needs to be strong regulation and enforcement of trafficking, underage prostitution, sexual slavery, rape, violence, etc., etc.
Consenting adults should have the right to do as they wish in a free society - if they aren't harming anyone else's freedom or security. This includes the right to harm themselves. It does not matter that I think on a theoretical and moral level that prostitution is harmful for someone emotionally, physcially, etc. and that if they were my friend or family I would encourage a difference choice of profession. It does matter that I am disgusted by men using their money to have this power. It is not for me or any of us to impose our beliefs on someone else. Our duty as society is to use the law to protect people from infringements on their rights. A consenting prostitute and a consenting client are not infringing on anyone's rights.
I do have a question for the more socialist or communist posters here. The right to prostitution seems like it would be mainly a phenomenon in a society tht allows personal wealth. Would it occur at all someplace like Cuba? Obviously it would not be a profession per se, unless done in addition to the profession given to someone. I am wondering if anyone knows anything about its existence there?
Black markets occur everywhere, and definitely in Cuba, so I would assume there are probably prostitutes in Cuba.
What do you mean, "would it occur"? Do you mean "would it exist" or "should it (according to socialist belief/theory) exist in a socialist society"? (If you mean the second, I suggest you google the topic. There are quite a few things that can't be discussed here - this is one of them.)
I guess I meant both, Rosa. I originally meant "does it exist" - given that there aren't men with the disposable income that they have here. But I guess, I am also curious about if it should.
Google "prostitution Cuba". There's prostitution in Cuba.
It does, and the tourist industry has a lot to do with that. The question of "should it" would be interesting to discuss but I don't think this is the place to do it
.
You are right Rosa...I guess I don't need to cause any more thread drift! It would be interesting to know how much it existed prior to Western tourism.
It certainly does exist in Cuba. Friends of mine had an amusing time trying to explain they didn't want the prostitutes on offer. It's a little bit of a different situation from street prostitution here, though. Unless they've a drug habit to supply too, they're not doing it out of the need to pay rent or buy food. It's to obtain the small luxuries you can only get in Cuba with access to dollars.
Ah yes, Cubans are so affluent that any money First World sex tourists give youths and women in exchange for sex is merely spent on small luxuries... What a patronizing, infantilizing, deresponsabilizing attitude! Maybe we ought to talk about "sex tourists" (capitalist rapists) themselves instead of keeping the conversation carefully focussed on women and why oh why do they do it and yes, of course, we must respect their choice to buy little gee-gaws if they want that, big children as they are...
This press release just out from Montreal's CLES about the current Charter challenge in Ontario:
Ontario Superior Court Challenge: Total decriminalization of prostitution is not the solution, says Montreal abolitionist group
Montreal, October 06, 2009 - The Coalition for Struggles Against Sexual Exploitation - CLES - is concerned by the increased violence against women involved in prostitution that could follow from invaliding all Canadian Criminal Code restrictions on prostitution.
CLES includes female survivors of prostitution, women who have been exposed to violence both on the street and behind the doors of brothels and bars. After a year of working together on these issues, CLES is convinced that it is false to affirm that TOTAL decriminalization - including immunity for johns and pimps - would improve women's quality of life. In fact, it has been demonstrated in other jurisdictions that across-the-board decriminalization is usually followed by the adoption of a gamut of regulations and laws that have a number of harmful consequences. Pimps are transformed into mere "business men", clients become legitimate "consumers", and women become more exposed to victimization through physical abuse, trafficking and other forms of abuse.
Where full decriminalization has been attempted, reputable studies have shown that the
sex industry and sexual tourism expand and that society evolves according to a market model, providing ever more women's bodies at ever lower cost for buyers. This specifically happened in The Netherlands, where the government totally lost control over the situation and is now attempting to close down most of Amsterdam's red-light district, taken over by organized crime.
CLES feels that prostitution is violence against all women and that total decriminalization will only legitimate the commoditization of women's bodies.
"Together - female survivors of multiple types of violence -, we say YES to decriminalizing the persons exploited in prostitution and NO to decriminalizing the people who profit from their prostitution: the clients and the pimps. No to the commoditization of women bodies!"
- 30 -
For more information, please contact: Axelle Beniey, Communications Officer, Coalition for Struggles Against Sexual Exploitation (CLES)
514-750-4535
info@lacles.org
http://www.lacles.org
Thanks for naming this martin!
I apologize if i hurt anyone's feelings but it is important that everyone know exactly who has filed the lawsuit (sex workers) and who is bankrolling the challenge. I am no longer in this industry but am still hot about it. I am sorry
In return, I would ask martin, politely, to stop appropriating sex workers' voices. Is it really too much to ask for him to stop calling sex workers "prostituted people," to stop appropriating testimony, and to stop insinuating that sex workers, that's right SEX WORKERS are victims, or trafficked? How do you think it feels to be made to feel like damaged goods by another name?
And stop calling yourself a sex worker because Stella is a group you despise, because they support legal sex work and you have said so on record here.
Seriously. Sex workers do not self-identify as "prostituted people" can we at least refrain from using that term in this forum???
Conversely, none of the prostituted women (present and former prostituées, passive tense of the verb prostituer) that work at CLES, or that the organization has met and interviewed for its upcoming documentary The Oldest Lie identifies with the term sex worker ("travailleuse du sexe"). They apparently shun like the plague this essentialist identity. So please avoid shoehorning them and me into using nothing but a label that includes - in Montreal, at least - part of their exploiters. Thank you.
Wow martin, that was not fair at all to just one.... She did not deserve that response. I'm being non snarky and serious here. This is the feminist forum. I realize that you are a feminist, but you are not a woman, and definitely not a sex worker. You talked right over just one..that isn't cool at all. It doesn't help anyone and it sure feels incredibly condescening.
I'm just saying please, could you perhaps respect some of the sex workers in here with the respect they have shown you and us for sharing their voices with us? I cannot possibly see that response to just one... as constructive. I don't think they should feel threatened (in any emotional way) and should feel free to post here, as it their bodies and their lives here being discussed, not just abstracts.
I am not meaning this as an attack, just some contructive advice.
Does "prostitute" and "sex worker" mean exactly the same thing? I thought it was more of an umbrella term.
If one of those former sex workers comes to babble and asks us to start calling them "prostituted people" then we will consider that. Until then, I'm not going to demand that people adopt one term over the other since I think this is one of those issues where feminists on both sides of the issue use terminology that they feel is most descriptive of their position.
But I also think that outright dismissal of the requests of people directly involved in sex work when it comes to terminology they prefer is not okay.
I think writer mentioned this a couple of weeks ago before she left (wish she'd come back!) - babble is an open forum, and anyone can (and does) join. All women, including women who have left the sex trade and share Martin's opinion, are welcome to come here and discuss this issue. Men are welcome to discuss it too. But male voices, even ones claiming to speak for women they know who aren't here to speak for themselves, will not be privileged above the voices of women who have direct experience and involvement in this industry.
I would like the women who are sharing their experiences with us to be respected.
Why? Shouldn't the arguments being presented be the deciding factor rather than who is making them?
For example, if Harper proposes expanding the size of an enviromentally protected area I am not going to fight him on it just because I can't stand Harper or the Conservatives.