Don't be fooled (review of new Swedish book)
Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2010 1:51 pm
This is a review of a book I bought a few days ago in Sweden and which I think brilliantly pulls apart the lies being spread by those who support prostitution and trying to have it legalised there. Although most Swedes support the law against buying sex there have been a number of pseudo-feminists and post-modernist academics who in recent years have been doing their best to frame prostitution through terms such as "queer", "revolutionary" and "transgressive" and to claim that it's somehow anti-feminist to oppose a woman's "right to sell her body". Kajsa Ekis Ekman who works as a journalist and is a radical feminist, socialist and anarchist was alarmed at the way the debate was turning and has written the book and a number of articles in response.
The review doesn't go into it so much but in the book she exposes the absurdity of the arguments used by so-called academics like Laura Agustin who try to accuse radical feminists of being the oppressors while completely ignoring the true perpetrators of violence and abuse. Their hatred of the term of victim is obvious because if there are no victims then there are no oppressors and if there are no oppressors then what is there to fight against? They may claim to be radicals and revolutionaries but in actual fact all they do is defend the status-quo in an oppressive and unjust world.
The review doesn't go into it so much but in the book she exposes the absurdity of the arguments used by so-called academics like Laura Agustin who try to accuse radical feminists of being the oppressors while completely ignoring the true perpetrators of violence and abuse. Their hatred of the term of victim is obvious because if there are no victims then there are no oppressors and if there are no oppressors then what is there to fight against? They may claim to be radicals and revolutionaries but in actual fact all they do is defend the status-quo in an oppressive and unjust world.
Don't be fooled
Looking at the debate on prostitution in Sweden in recent years you get the impression that prostitution has been transformed into a pleasant and safe hobby for smart girls and boys. Kajsa Ekis Ekman crushes the contemporary prostitution myth in her book Varat och varan.
"I lived for a while in Barcelona and shared a flat with a woman from Russian. She was called Olga and prostituted herself on the approaches to Barcelona. She provided for her boyfriend and gathered money also for her brother who was in prison.
"Prostitution wasn't totally unusual in Barcelona. There was a view that it was part of the bohemian life, something charming.
"But that wasn't how it worked. She went to the motorway and stood there from 6 in the morning till late at night. When she came home she drank for several hours to subdue her anxiety. Later she slept. And then began again the next day."
When Kajsa Ekis Ekman went home from Barcelona to Sweden there was a debate going on in Sweden, but one which involved the view that prostitution had nothing at all the do with the oppression of women. it was not any pimps or porn magnates who drove the discussion. It was women like Petra Östergren who accused feminism of oppressing its prostituted sisters. There were syndicalists who demanded that Sweden have unions for the prostituted. And queer theorists such as Don Kulick who asserted that the prostituted broke society's gender norms and should be considered as some sort of revolutionaries. In heated debate programmes on TV there were people who prostituted themselves and assured us that they were happy and doing it out of choice.
With a review of Petra Östergren's prostitution positive book Kajsa Ekis Ekman began a 4 year long educational journey through the world of prostitution. She quickly discovered that nothing was it appeared in the debate programmes. After a number of journeys to countries such as Holland, Germany and France, where it was claimed prostitutes organised themselves Ekman came to an implacable conclusion: there are no unions for the prostituted i.e. being funded by their members and which act against the employers. Those which allegedly existed were always in league with the industry itself. They never managed to organise more than a tiny minority of prostitutes and they never managed to drive any union demands.
Neither can the idea of a regulated prostitution protect the prostituted. To be prostituted is today the most dangerous situation a woman can find herself in, more dangerous than to be homeless or on drugs. The death rate is 40 times higher than for other women - this is shown by studies both in countries where prostitution is illegal and where it has been legalised. Regardless of the laws that exist there is always violence, abuse, force and human trafficking.
"We are back in the situation we were in 100 years ago. You can see how legal prostitution leads to slavery. That was the reason why regulated prostitution was abolished and it is the same today", says Ekman.
In Sweden today, when politicians from the Centre Party and Liberal Party's youth associations want to legalise prostitution, one can get the impression that we are in the process of becoming more liberal on the question. Ekman believes it is the opposite. Norway has adopted the Swedish model and countries such as Holland are beginning to move away from their naive view on legal prostitution. And the Swedish law stands firm, believes Ekman.
"The lobby squabbles but they will never change the law. The Swedish sex purchase law will begin instead to be natural and self-evident. It is supported also by a clear majority, 80 percent".
But what then is the problem with the debate?
"The friends of prostitution have a contempt for weakness, a cold and cynical view of humanity, which has the consequence that you only have yourself to blame".
If you see nothing wrong with prostitution then the motivation to help people out of it is diminished.
"One can see that there is a difference between how people in prostitution are met by the advice services in Malmö, where this idea is stronger, as opposed to in Stockholm and Göteborg. The core of the debate today is that the prostituted should not be seen as victims but as strong entrepreneurs who choose what they do.
"They say that women are subjects, not victims. But these words are not eachother's opposite. People in vulnerable positions, refugees, prostituted or threatened people always create strategies for handling their situation. It doesn't mean that they are not victims of terrible things.
"The word victim has came to denote a person's character. A victim is a loser, someone with feeble intelligence or an unlucky wretch. With this the whole question of oppression is lifted away. The question concerns only that you have chosen it yourself."
If the left wants to refute the prostitution offensive one must understand how prostitution works and why young girls prostitute themselves.
"People in Sweden seldom prostitute themselves because they need to pay the rent. It is type of self-harming activity."
Ekman talks about how she has a friend who prostitutes herself now and then, only when she's feeling bad.
"I see it with her, always. She says first that she hasn't done it, then it becomes apparent that I was right".
The left has also, perhaps out of a fear of "oppressing" prostitutes, became uncertain in the new debate on prostitution. But there is no reason for this, believes Ekman.
"The most important thing I have to say is: don't be fooled! Prostitution's friends have nothing to support them! Prostitution, legal or illegal, is the most deadly position a woman can find herself in, more dangerous than being a drug addict or homeless. If you don't take a position against it then what is the left for?"
The debate's premises were a shock to discover for Ekman.
"This here is the first of society's debates I have actually took part in fully, yet I notice it is a debate which is completely empty. A debate which isn't needed because we already know how things are! But it is as if facts aren't important on TV debates and in culture pages.
You have a responsibility if you participate in debates about society, says Ekman. To find out the facts and say the truth: people are are hurt by prostitution in one way or the other. Then she tells the ends of Olga's story. That Olga was dead when Kajsa returned to Barcelona.
"I tried to find her, but there was noone in the neighbourhood who knew who she was. We didn't know what her surname was, only that she was in a churchyard in an anonymous grave. I rung round different churches to find out where she lay, and they said, 'what Olga? There are 30'.
"This is the reality. Who is there who cares about her?
"Don't be a coward. Then you can't be an intellectual."
by Aron Etzler
(from http://www.flamman.se/bli-inte-lurade)