The prostitution of women: democracy's harem

Ana de Miguel Álvarez

Professor of moral and political philosophy at the University of Rey Juan Carlos

20/01/2015

The start of a new year is a time to take stock and make resolutions, so it is a good chance to reflect once again upon one of society’s most controversial issues: the prostitution of women.

Let us begin with two facts. First, all forecasts indicate that prostitution is on the increase in Spain, a society supposedly committed to equality. Second, this growth comes at the expense of thousands of increasingly younger girls, brought in from some of the world’s poorest, most sexist and least developed countries.

In the face of these facts, there is a tiresome tendency to spread the message that prostitution is just "a job like any other" and should therefore be regulated. But before we act, there is a lot to think about. And when it comes to thought, philosophy can help us to analyse and question reality through critical reflection.

Of course this demands dedicating time to the subject at hand. Philosophy does not accept thinking through slogans and stock phrases such as "prostitution has always existed, so the best thing is to regulate it", or "there’s nothing we can do about it, others have tried and failed". The last thing philosophy does is accept such a fatalist and traditional worldview. Nor does it accept the idea, as publicised in the media, that submission to the market is somehow rebellious or transgressive; leading people to declare that "everyone uses their body to work", or "I make a living on the streets too". Philosophy demands that we criticise these ideas and put them to debate. To sit down and think!

Let us begin by thinking about what questions we should be asking about prostitution, which is so often depicted positively in films and in the media. The first question is one of definition: What is prostitution?

Before we can discuss it, we need some concepts that allow us to see the reality of prostitution. The official definition is “the practice of engaging in sexual relations in exchange for payment”, and in a world where money is the supreme value, what could be wrong with that? This definition works to normalise prostitution and is convincing because it follows neoliberal logic: all of us buy and sell something. There are even people and organisations that claim to be staunchly anti-capitalist and anti-system yet, somewhat paradoxically, defend the trade of women's bodies as a progressive and transgressive cause. To them I put the question; if using prostitutes has always been the norm for men, just as it was for their fathers and grandfathers, what exactly is being transgressed?

Philosophy’s critical intent can lead us to question the official definition of prostitution, just as Socrates questioned the youth on how to define ‘justice’. A new definition is needed because the emphasis on "exchanging sex for money" actually disguises two of its fundamental real-life features. First, the key fact that prostitution is gendered: the vast majority of prostitutes are women, and almost all consumers are men. Second, the fact that what is sold is not 'sex', but a certain type of sex: a man using a woman's body for his own pleasure. The old definition must change because it falsifies and hides this reality. It is useless because it prevents us from seeing the truth.

Let us look at this alternative definition: prostitution is a regulated practice which grants men, as a group, access to women's bodies.

Access to the body for rent is granted to men ‘as a group’, because all men are entitled to stand in line for it. Prostitution is a public service, democracy's harem. It is true that money is required, but that condition does not invalidate the accessible, open-to-everyone character of the prostituted woman. Access is ‘regulated’ because the transaction is by no means natural or spontaneous, but one that follows a set of established and respected rules: the prostitutes are required to be in a particular place, and a price is established for a particular service.

Open access to women's bodies is guaranteed in almost every part of the world. Wherever a man may travel, from Valencia to Pernanbuco, Taiwan to Egypt, it is enough to stop a taxi driver and ask a simple question: "Where can I find a woman around here? Where are the girls? You know what I mean". The universal language of patriarchal society means he will be understood. The symbolic meaning of ‘woman’ could not be expressed with any more simplicity, achieving the kind of clarity and distinctiveness that René Descartes attributed to ‘self-evident’ truths.

Prostitution as an international, globalised institution is based in supporting every man’s right to satisfy his sexual desires in exchange for a variable quantity of money, no matter who it affects or what the consequences might be. If families from those countries most devastated by inequality and sexism sell their daughters into prostitution, that is not the clients' problem. Maybe they are in too much of a hurry to get home to their own families and daughters to care.

Philosophy also asks us to question the concept of humanity that underlies the institution of prostitution. The normalisation of buying sex teaches men, fathers and adolescents alike, that their own pleasure is the arbiter of what is good and bad; that ‘money buys you the right to rent another human being to manipulate for a while’. Now we can see prostitution emerge as a great school of human inequality, in which the boys and girls play very different roles to the ones they thought they played in class, when they all appeared equal behind their desks. In prostitution the girls become "fresh, beautiful, very young", sometimes offered up as insatiable sluts, other times as childish and submissive, but all of them bodies that men have the right to access. What the hell, why not? They're only women after all.

What kind of men are being made each day by this education in Spain’s brothels?

I want to end with a message to men. There is a very big difference between the trafficking of women and other problems that we find to be equally, or even more, morally repugnant. Try as we might, individuals cannot just choose to end hunger, gun trafficking, rape and war today. But it is in the hands of every individual man to put an end to prostitution. It would be enough if every man chose not to go out and buy a woman’s body today, just as women have chosen all of their lives; and here we are, we haven't died. It is men, our companions, who finance the pimps and mafia networks with an incessant demand for prostitutes. How many men got up this morning, looked in the mirror and said "I deserve to treat myself. What shall I have today? A black woman? A Chinese girl maybe...Wait, I’ve got it! A blonde, or how about a...”

The futures of so many girls being born today, all over the world, depend on every individual man and his one simple decision.

Translation by Ben Riddick

Original article in Spanish at http://www.huffingtonpost.es/ana-de-miguel-alvarez/la-prostitucion-de_b_6501688.html