Now, over at Alternet, author Susie Bright interviews Laura Agustin, who has written a new book entitled Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labor Markets and the Rescue Industry. Augustin's argument is controversial, provocative, and subtle - the interview needs to be read in its entirety to appreciate her perspective.
There are a couple things I wish to highlight that I agree with. Please note that I am not advocating for the legalization of the sex trade or prostitution; nor am I defending the enslavement of human beings for sex (and please note that in the interview, both Bright and Augustin are pretty clear that even "non-sex trade" bondage, such as work in sweatshops or migrant harvesting very often includes sexual exploitation). I am merely pointing out that Augustin makes a point that is central to my own sense of the world.
There are risks in selling sex and there are risks in being a live-in maid, picking ground crops, selling pirated or stolen goods or drugs, working in sweatshops. It's not a good idea to generalize. They are all unregulated jobs with no insurance, no security, no workplace health and safety, and personal dependence on the boss.
People are concerned about the risk in selling sex when they believe that sex is different from every other human experience, or that it is sacred, that it belongs in the same room with love and should never be tainted by money. Some people think that women are sexually vulnerable by definition, always in danger of being violated.
But not everyone feels that way. Some migrants who sell sex do hate what they are doing, but stay on because the money is better and faster than in any other job they can get. Some don't mind selling sex because they learn how to "act" it, and keep it separate from the rest of their lives. Some like doing it. Everyone does not feel the same way about sex.
Men and women selling sex account for a large percentage of migrants, certainly. Notice I'm not talking just about women.
The societal fears about "damage" only get applied to women, so the attention goes to them, but men, transsexuals, and transgenders work in large numbers selling sex, possibly making up half of the total.
--snip--
SB: Why does the "empowerment" crowd rub you the wrong way?
The idea of empowerment is that someone gives power to another, or encourages them to take power or find it within themselves.
It's the "politically correct" way of thinking about those at the bottom of the social heap. However, it places emphasis on the helper and her vision of how to help, encourage and show the way -- on good intentions.
In the compromised worlds of "Aid" and "Development," first-world entities use their funds to help those less privileged. They spend money to set up offices and pay salaries, many to people who work in offices writing proposals that will allow them to stay in business. These organizations have hierarchies, and those engaged at the grassroots level often are the last to influence how funds will be used.
Those closer to the top, know how to write proposals to compete in the funding world. When empowerment comes from above in this way, it's not surprising that money is spent to little effect, such as rescue projects which can't find anyone who wants to be rescued.
SB: By its very nature, your book is going to attract the sort of person who DOES want to make the world better, help people, be a RESCUER! What does a caring person do?
LA: I certainly hope people working in social-justice projects will read the book. Many of them already have doubts and feel caught up in a bureaucratic web, dependent on pleasing funders, or itching to take more relevant action.
Those who want to support undocumented workers have few options for getting funds -- AIDS prevention and "rescuing victims of trafficking" are two.
But the undocumented want papers. They want the right to work and rent housing legally, to stop fearing the police or bosses, to be able to get on with their lives, and make money to pay back debts.
It is very frustrating for grassroots educators to know they can't help with any of that.
What should they do? It's a huge structural question, but if social-type workers don't believe they have any power to change things they are in the wrong business.
At the end of my book I suggest that people "leave home" -- meaning their mental home, the safe place where there cherished ideas about right and wrong go unchallenged. Leave behind nationalisms and religious moralisms -- and, above all, the assumption that certain people Know Best how everyone else should behave all over the world.
Imagine, the world is a complex place where people do all sorts of things for all sorts of motivations that don't fit in to our notions of noblesse oblige as we attempt to "help" those who are so unenlightened as to make choices we judge as erroneous.
Again, I am being contrarian here not to defend prostitution. I am being contrarian here to point out that the world is a big, messy, complex, contradictory place. Ideologues of any and all stripes, even those with the best intentions, very often work out of faulty assumption, bad ideology, and no sense of the realties faced by those whom they are trying to help.
