<nettime> Sex Work and Consent at @transmediale

[Dmytri Kleiner <dk@telekommunisten.net>]

Sex Work and Consent at @transmediale

Transmediale 2012 is over. R15N is closed again, until the 
next occasion. As usual, lots of great people  at the 
festival, and lots to talk and think about.

On Saturday I attended the discussion "Commercialising Eros" with Jacob 
Appelbaum, Zach Blas, Liad Hussein Kantorowicz, Aliya Rakhmetova and 
moderated by Gaia Novati. Aliya Rakhmetova, supporter of sex workers' 
right working as a co-ordinator with SWAN, gave an overview of her 
organization and it's campaigns defending the rights of sex workers, 
including campaigns to fight violence against sex workers. Jacob 
Appelbaum went over his experience working in the IT department of 
smut.com, a leading internet pornography company, which he left as a 
result of his opposition to exploitive pay inequality at the company 
which paid the performers far less that the executives at the company. 
Liad Hussein Kantorowicz talked about her work as live erotic performer 
at a internet pornography site, and performed her job on the stage for 
her online clients while the other panelists gave their presentations. 
Zach Blas gave an overview of the work of the "Queer Technologies" art 
collective.

I enjoyed the presentations and discussions and applaud the panellists 
for their support of sex workers. One question stuck with me, I didn't 
expand upon it at the discussion, but I'd like to here.

Several of the panelists referred to the issue of consent as a 
justification for sex work and a way of arguing against legal 
repressions of sex work, and against the opposition against sex work 
that some feminists and other have, as well as a way to distinguish sex 
work from rape. Sex work is distinguished from rape because it is 
consensual, and neither legislator nor moral campaigner has any place 
interfering with what consenting adults do. Yet, this argument is 
unsatisfying.

Within the capitalist system, where workers and their families face 
destitution and homelessness unless they work, no work can be truly 
described as consensual. What's more the pretense of consent, is often 
used as justification for exploitation and to excuse the exploitive 
behaviour of employers. After all, the worker chose to accept the job. 
Yet, as the cliche goes, in context this choice is not much different 
than the one that a mugger gives you. "Your money or your life" is also 
a choice.

Like all professions, there can be no doubt that many sex workers feel 
empowered by their work, and take great pleasure in it. However, there 
can also be no doubt, that many sex workers are directly or indirectly 
coerced into doing this kind of work, and face emotional and social 
trauma as a result.

"Consent" seems to justify not only the sex-work itself, since the sex 
worker consents to perform sexual services for a client, but the 
conditions of the sex-workers labour as well, since the sex-workers, 
like other workers, has consented to the terms of employment. Thus while 
consent may help us differentiate sex work from rape, it justifies the 
economic exploitation of the sex worker at the same time, since both the 
workers relationship with the client and the employer are ultimately 
consensual.

I would prefer to see a stronger line of argument that says that sex 
work is a valid form of work not merely because it is consensual, but 
because it is valuable. Rather then a week liberal argument based on the 
sanctity of what consulting adults to, a strong social argument that 
argues that sex workers do necessary and beneficial work and should be 
protected and supported.

Like the consent argument, the value argument also differentiates 
between sex work and rape, as rape clearly is not socially valuable, but 
unlike the consent argument it doesn't excuse the economic exploitation 
of sex workers, since such exploitation is not socially valuable.

If we accept that sex work is valuable work that has a place in 
society, then we can focus on the health and well being of the sex 
workers directly, and acknowledge that many of them are not empowered 
consenting workers, but rather victims of coercion, trafficking and 
exploitation, often forced, unwillingly, into their work. Pretending 
that they have consented to their own exploitation is both delusional 
and disrespectful when it's quite likely that the empowered sex worker 
who takes pleasure in their work is the minority within an industry that 
recruits most of its workers by way of terror and desperation.

The value argument also confronts the moral issues more directly, since 
the consent argument doesn't necessarily dispute the immorality of the 
work, it only argues that nobody that is not directly involved has any 
business with it. The value argument makes a much stronger social 
statement: that sex work is not just a private business between 
consenting adults, but a form of work that benefits society and, far 
from being immoral, is a vital part of human civilization and always has 
been, despite persecutions and prohibitions. And that such persecution 
and prohibition should stop, not simply because it interferes with 
liberal rights, but because it is wrong and harmfull.

First we must reject capitalist ideological notions of consent, these 
do not help sex workers, only make them responsible for their own 
exploitation, and exploitation aint sexy. Once we see sex work as an 
essential form of work, we can fight for the conditions of these workers 
along with those of all other workers.

I'll be at Cafe Buchhandlung for Stammtisch tonight at 8pm or so, I 
hope some transmediale folk who are still in town will join for a drink 
in celebration of a great event.

Stammtisch is here: http://bit.ly/buchhandlung


--
Dmyri Kleiner
Venture Communist


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