This essay first appeared on Cliterati on April 21st; I have modified it slightly for time references and to fit the format of this blog.
Most people yearn for a simple world where the goodies wear white hats and the baddies black, where people and behaviors can be easily sorted into neat little boxes, where good intentions lead to good outcomes and bad intentions lead to harm, and where everyone agrees on hierarchies of morality and the relative importance of different principles such as profit, honesty, self-respect, adherence to external mores, etc. But the real world isn’t like that at all: morality and motivations are often ambiguous, different individuals assign different weights to various principles, noble intentions can lead to disaster and base to commonweal, and the few people who wear “hats” at all favor a multiplicity of shades.
An article by Hsiao-Hung Pai in the Guardian illustrates this complicated reality in several different ways, the first being the venue itself; though the Guardian is happy to provide a platform for prudes and prohibitionists, it is equally amenable to publishing pro-sex worker articles and carried one of the earliest debunkings of “sex trafficking” hysteria three and a half years ago. This has nothing to do with any lofty journalistic ethos; the primary motivation of a newspaper is to make a profit, and from the perspective of the editorial board any good or ill to sex workers which occurs as a by-product of that process is purely incidental. The motive of the reporter herself (to write and sell a book) was similar to that of the paper, but her behavior went beyond the merely amoral to the reprehensible; in furtherance of her goal she lied, misrepresented herself, spied on sex workers, recorded their conversations without their consent and used their stories to generate profit for herself, and it is entirely possible that her actions may result in brothel raids and other dire consequences for her unwilling sources.
Though the book was researched unethically, if this excerpt is a fair indication it depicts migrant women as free agents motivated by the desire to provide for their families:
Ah Fen…had been in Britain for four years. During the first two years, like many newly arrived Chinese, she worked in catering. In the third year she was laid off amid increasing raids on Chinese restaurants by the immigration authorities. A friend introduced her to the sex trade. With no skills to find other work, she accepted immediately. She told me it was the best decision she had made during her time in Britain: her income had gone through the roof and the money she had been able to send home was making a real difference to her family. “In a good week, I can earn £1,500 to £2,000,” she told me…Another [named]…Ah Ling…[said] “I wasted my first three years in England working in restaurants and takeaways doing tough work with little reward…A year ago, a friend of mine in the sex trade suggested I try doing this. She said: ‘Try it once and see if you are OK with it.’ Frankly, I had no real alternatives…Now I regret not having started it as soon as I got here.” Sex work had transformed Ah Ling’s life. She had paid off all her debts within a year and was earning £600 a week. Her current aim was to pay for a new house back home for her family, and return after two more years of sex work…
On the other hand, those heavily invested in “trafficking” myth see this through a distorted filter; one reviewer on Amazon called her reckless disregard for the welfare of migrant sex workers “compassionate” and claimed, “Hsiao-Hung Pai…videotaped the underworld of pimps and madams who make their living off slaving women in need…[and] deflates the myth of sex work as a free choice for migrant women.” This “true believer” denies the testimony of the workers, refers to a £2,000/week job as “slavery” and otherwise warps the narrative to her own ends; similarly, some of the post-article commenters insist on imposing Christian concepts of female sexual purity onto Asian women who do not share it, derailing nuanced discussions of pragmatism with lurid appeals to emotion. Yet at the same time, anyone who reads the text without the filter of “trafficking” dogma can see that it actually demonstrates the falsity of that paradigm, and adds more evidence to the growing heap which will eventually demolish it; many examples of such readers also appear in the comments. In the end, will the net effect of Hsiao-Hung’s self-serving, callous “investigation” be positive or negative? Will it ever be possible to tell?
For the final layer of complexity, we must look to the text itself. The brothel madam described therein (“Grace”) is a thoroughly nasty person, as self-centered, mercenary and unconcerned with others’ welfare as the newspaper and the journalist. But compare her actions with Hsiao-Hung’s; though the latter’s profession is “respectable” and the prohibitionists laud her work as “good” while painting the former’s as despicable, their own actions demonstrate otherwise. Though Grace was rude and abusive, her coercion was strictly verbal and situational; women were free to walk away and find other work (even sex work with a different madam) if they chose. The journalist, however, denied her subjects the information they needed to “opt out” of participating in her commercial enterprise; they were recorded without their knowledge or consent. Furthermore, the sex workers profited handsomely from putting up with Grace’s abuse, whereas their only reward from being “pimped” by Hsiao-Hung is having their lives offered up for scrutiny by judgmental prudes and their persons potentially targeted for harassment, detention and deportation. Who is the true “exploiter” here? Who are the “goodies” and who the “baddies”? In a world without scripts, stereotypes and endings neatly resolved just in time for the closing credits, these questions are a lot more complicated than in the two-dimensional, black-and-white world imagined by naïve moralists.
Likewise, no doubt there are sex workers who have been trafficked and enslaved…. As you rightly point out, there is no black and white, just many more than 50 shades of grey. It’s the same with everything, not just this one particular situation.
We’ve had a few slavery cases here in Florida. I mean actual, literal slavery. They don’t get much press though because they involved manual labor and not sex work.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/florida-farm-workers-tell-how-drugs-debt-bind-them-in-modern-slavery/1229662
Okay I just want to clarify here …
You’re opposing the secret videotaping of these girls based on the fact that the book writer was using those tapes for commercial gain?
I can buy that.
I also seriously doubt she’s has, or will release all of her video (unedited).
However, I don’t have a problem with other forms of clandestine videotaping. For instance – videotaping cops. I don’t have a problem with the Pro-Lifers going into abortion clinics as long as they release the entire unedited video. And James O’Keefe of Project Veritas is another guy who’s done some good work exposing corruption – though he often goes off the reservation into “la-la land” in some other areas.
It’s a sticky subject. We tend to like those who expose things that we want exposed. For instance, Bradley Manning. I don’t like him because he broke an oath – and that makes what he did unethical in my mind. But many folks look upon him as a hero.
I’m sure you can see the difference between secret videotaping of those in power, or perhaps even those who receive public funds, and the secret videotaping of people in a marginalized profession who could be subject to legal persecution and stigmatization as a result of the reporter’s selfish actions. In the former case the reporter has less social power than those she films; in the latter more. And that is the same difference as my recording a cop and the cops recording me.
Agreed.
Totally agree.
I had the chance to videotape some cops the other day … long story but they never noticed. I did it right from my front porch.
Seriously, Krulac? You’re defending James O’keefe’s fraud and scandalous behavior as just going into “la-la land”?
Do I have to like everything he does to approve of some of what he does? Only Siths deal in absolutes.
As far as I know – we aren’t giving any taxpayer money to ACORN anymore and he’s a big reason for that. I think every organization that takes taxpayer money should know that they’re subject to any citizen walking in off the street with a hidden camera. A little fear on the part of government – and those who take our money is a good thing.
You don’t agree?
The ACORN videos were some of O’keefe’s biggest falsehoods. They were selectively edited to heck and back.
Wait a minute, the videos showed ACORN workers helping someone they thought was a sex worker with advice.
Why should organizations be afraid of offering a prostitute on how to buy a house. What’s wrong with that?
One of the videos did have James O’keefe pretend to be trying to import children for prostitution, however it was proven that the ACORN worker only pretended to help James in order to arrest him. James has apologized to that worker
O’Keefe apologized to the man whose job he destroyed and whose entire organization he brought down through fraud?
Oh well, never mind then.
Just citing that as proof.
It’s OK. I have a serious dislike for people like O’Keefe. You didn’t post anything wrong, and I wasn’t really directing my snark at you. And since O’Keefe is unlikely to ever read here, I probably shouldn’t’ve directed any snark at all.
The key word is ‘secret’. Although many officers flip out when being recorded going about their duties in public, the legal reality is that they have no more right to privacy than anyone else; i.e. if they’re in public and anyone can see what they are doing, the police have no expectation of privacy.
However, recording someone when they WOULD have a reasonable expectation of privacy is an affront; even if you don’t like the person being recorded. There are legal procedures to permit such recordings in matters of public interest (and those procedures should be far more strict and monitored more closely, but I digress) but the point is in theory, the law recognises the difference between being filmed walking down the street and being recorded in a private conversation.
Wait. Does this mean The Economist was wrong about all the prostitutes in England running out of customers?
I think that depends on what day of the week it is.
The Amazon you point out is a great microcosm of the problem with organized religion in that: 1.) The morality I take should be projected on to other people even though the other person clearly wasn’t brought up in the tradition (it’s how we get the Muslim Taliban blowing up a Hindu statue), and 2,) belief is more important than fact. If I’m pushed out of my equilibrium/ comfort zone, I must rationalize until I feel comfortable again- this is an exception, a minority situation, “all the evidence” says something different, etc. For all the hysteria, I fail to see why it is always external threats that provoke moral outrage and there’s never a call for internal accountability for the people espousing the beliefs. E.G. So Gingrich ha an affair *three times*… No one’s perfect, he’s sought forgiveness in the Lord, bleh bleh bleh, But prostitutes are bad, and you can’t convince me otherwise.
“If you can feed your family with your earnings, you are average, she said. If you can build houses and really improve their lives, you are counted as successful. ‘And if you can make so much money that you can afford an affluent lifestyle, then you are everyone’s envy and your family’s pride,’ Grace said with conviction. She clearly wanted to achieve that affluence herself.”
I think it’s interesting that she talk about these three “levels” as it were. I think most people think of sex work as only, barely, achieving the first one. That’s because they figure pimps take all the money, and just leave the women with barely enough to get by. But that concept of sex work never explains why professional level women ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/29/AR2007012900654.html ) who should be able to just “get by” would take it up. I think people either just find that baffling, or figure that these women are all sex addicts or have out of control drug habits or something.
The truth is, if you leave out the social stigma, sex work itself can be a professional level career. For an immigrant who is probably overstaying her visa in Britain and even if she’s on a student visa may not be legally allowed to work (she wouldn’t be in the US), what other under the table, backroom job would pay as well? Not waiting tables certainly (though waiting tables can pay pretty well, it won’t put you in “affluent lifestyle territory” except at a very few, very exclusive, and very unlikely to hire immigrants without work visas restaurants). As to abuse, any “under the table” job is prone to that. The abuse is probably worse in the US, where sex work is more stigmatized than it is in Britain.
Is the stigma really that worse in the US then it is in the UK?
Speak to your average Brit and most people regard whores as smackhead victims with more kids than teeth and the punters as creepy trenchcoat-wearing losers. Maybe it’s me, but I’ve not seen any evidence that the stigma is any better in my own country than over in the states.
In fact this image seems to be the norm….
Perhaps not in the media, but they don’t seem to crack down quite as hard in a legal sense.
Funny, the pimp seems to be an American. Maybe he’s being trafficked!
Of course lumping professions/jobs into neat little boxes marked respectable or despicable does appear to be one of the 10 commandments followed by Lawheads. Oh and….
“In a world without scripts, stereotypes and endings neatly resolved just in time for the closing credits, these questions are a lot more complicated than in the two-dimensional, black-and-white world imagined by naïve moralists.”
THIS IS JUST PURE GOLD!
Thank you! It often seems like many of these people think life is like a TV show, doesn’t it?
Another well written post and done with a firm grip on reality, real issues, and real equality. People with a firm grip on these are in short supply where it matters most. Thanks for continuing to write. I always enjoy reading your work.
There was a story in the news just tonight about a large number of children rescued from traffickers. Lots and lots of children. A whole ONE of them in Dallas. More elsewhere. One of these children was thirteen; the rest were older than that. I’m interested in seeing what the truth turns out to be.
” This “true believer” denies the testimony of the workers, refers to a £2,000/week job as “slavery” and otherwise warps the narrative to her own ends; similarly, some of the post-article commenters insist on imposing Christian concepts of female sexual purity onto Asian women who do not share it, derailing nuanced discussions of pragmatism with lurid appeals to emotion.”
Well there are lot of Asians who are in fact Christians. I don’t understand the assumption that “Asian” and “Christian” must be diametrically opposed here. For that matter Christianity isn’t the only system with a concept of “sexual purity”. That concept is found though out various cultures of the world.