Prostitution, trafficking and feminism: An update on the debate

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Prostitution, trafficking and feminism: an update on the debate

Within the academy the ‘sex work’ position, i.e. that prostitution should be understood as legitimate work, and an expression of women's choice and agency, has become the dominant perspective. Most feminist scholars now take this point of view or show sympathy towards it. The critical approach to prostitution that was almost universal amongst feminists from the nineteenth century up till the 1980s, that prostitution arises from and symbolizes the subordination of women, is much less often

Point of viewlessness?

Musto, Limoncelli, Segrave and Roces give the impression in the early stages of their articles in this issue that they represent the ‘view from nowhere’, and criticize the biases of those involved in the feminist debate on prostitution. They characterize the fierce feminist controversy over prostitution, between the ‘sex work’ approach, and the approaches of those usually referred to as abolitionists or neo-abolitionists, as constituting an annoying ‘binary’ that they have, themselves, risen

Trafficking should be seen as migration for labour

Segrave, Musto and Limoncelli all argue strongly that a huge mistake has been made in focusing concern about trafficking, amongst feminists and by governments, on the problem of trafficking for prostitution. They consider that prostitution is ordinary work and should not be separated out from other forms of work into which men and women are trafficked. Thus trafficking in women should be renamed ‘migration for labour’. Segrave argues that trafficking should be seen ‘as a crime that may occur

Prudishness: ignoring the body

One common element of the criticism of abolitionist/radical feminist approaches is to identify them as moralistic and somehow prudish or anti-sex. Segrave associates feminist scholarship on trafficking with prudishness, ‘Feminist scholarship on people trafficking …has primarily coalesced around the issue of trafficking of women into sexual servitude, a practice identified and debated as constituting a disruption to social and moral order’. None of the feminist scholarship on trafficking that I

Is trafficking in women slavery?

Musto's article examines the ‘efficacy of trafficking discourse’. She is scornful of the use of terms such as slavery, and sexual slavery. She asks, ‘What, one wonders, is accomplished by comparing human trafficking to modern day slavery?’ (p10) and argues that such terms, ‘prompt terminological conflations devoid of context and meaning?’ In fact the description of trafficking of women into prostitution as ‘slavery’ or ‘modern slavery’ is taken from the UN Supplementary Convention on the

Conclusion

Ending this form of violence against women does not have to wait until after the revolution. There are straightforward ways to act now to deter traffickers and reduce the harms of prostitution for women. The Swedish government introduced legislation in 1999 that penalized the male buyers in the prostitution marketplace, which has been very effective in reducing the numbers of women in prostitution in Sweden and persuading traffickers that Sweden is not a sympathetic environment for their

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