Page 97 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

84 ELAINE JEFFREYS
traditional feminist concerns with ‘the problem of prostitution’ on the grounds that they
display an anti-sex/sexual difference position; that is, they are ‘sexuality-blind’ (Hunter
1992:109–15).
The perception that orthodox feminist approaches are ‘sexuality-blind’, and thus ‘anti-
prostitute’, gained increased critical purchase with the establishment of the international
movement for prostitutes’ rights in 1985. Pro-sex-work activists often cite the
development of the International Committee for Prostitutes’ Rights (ICPR) as ground-
breaking in that it gave birth to a new politics of prostitution, one that claims to be based
on the perspectives of prostitutes themselves (Pheterson 1989:3). This position demands
public recognition of prostitutes’ rights as an emancipation and labour issue and opposes
any construction of prostitution in terms of criminality, immorality or disease. It also
challenges radical feminist constructions of prostitution as paradigmatic of women’s
oppression under capitalism/hetero-patriarchy by insisting that prostitution is
predominantly a voluntarily selected occupation which should be treated as equivalent in
social status to other forms of waged labour, and that legal restrictions on the practice of
prostitution constitute a violation of civil rights regarding the freedom to choose
employment and should therefore be repealed.
Complicating the routine equation of the pro-sex-work lobby with the ‘voice’ of the
prostitute subject, however, organisations such as WHISPER (Women Hurt in Systems of
Prostitution Engaged in Revolt), which was also founded in 1985, have rejected ICPR’s
construction of prostitutes as legitimate workers and an oppressed sexual identity
According to WHISPER, the prostitutes’ rights movement has constructed a mythology
of ‘liberal lies’ to the effect that prostitution is a ‘career choice’, that prostitution
‘epitomises women’s sexual liberation’, and that prostitutes ‘set the sexual and economic
conditions of their interactions with customers’ (Giobbe 1990:67). For members of
WHISPER, nothing could be further from the truth. So far as they are concerned,
prostitution is ‘nothing less than the commercialisation of the sexual abuse and inequality
that women suffer in the traditional family and can be nothing more’ (Giobbe 1990: 80).
And in refutation of ICPR’s depiction of prostitution as potentially empowering, or, at
the very least, no worse than any ordinary job, WHISPER’s Oral History Project, a first-
person documentation of the lives of women selfdescribed as having been ‘used’ in systems
of prostitution, is replete with accounts of women physically degraded and emotionally
traumatised by their experiences.
In keeping with these competing ‘voices’, feminist responses to prostitution are now
polarised around two opposing strategies. Supporters of the pro-sexwork lobby are
currently lobbying organisations within the UN to accept that prostitution is an issue that
relates to matters of work, privacy and choice, hence prohibitory prostitution laws
constitute a violation of the individual rights of women to realise economic and sexual self-
determination. In consequence, they are pushing to have the UN Convention on the
Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others
(1949), still in force, replaced by a new convention, one that recognises the right to self-
determination of prostitute women and therefore differentiates between ‘forced’
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prostitution and prostitution that is ‘voluntarily’ chosen as a form of work. Such
pressure has contributed to the introduction of governmental policies in places such as the