Feminist Debates on Prostitution

Abstract

The first feminist conference on prostitution was called in December 1971…. The conference was both an enlightenment and a disaster. The first day began sedately enough…. The afternoon was devoted to workshops where all hell broke loose — between the prostitute and the movement… the confused animosity of the prostitutes’ attack, the uneasy guilt and muddled answers given back by the movement women — both were predictable. After hours of heated and fuzzy argument we had drawn lines, stated positions, denounced each other — or rather the prostitutes denounced the movement, some of whose members would occasionally stop defending themselves long enough to listen or vie with each other for approval from the prostitutes, who were enthralled to find themselves the center of attention in a group of women they were free — even encouraged — to insult. An S and M trip. The specter of sexual freedom, the real issue, was palpable in the room. Who knows most about sex? Who gets more? What is most? Who is cool? Money is fun. What’s pride? What’s prudery? Everyone was deeply ambivalent about everyone else: unconscious envy and resentment operated like steam engines — one felt them throb. We quarrelled and were reconciled, then quarrelled again — but at least we had come together.

However nicely our meetings begin, there always comes a crunch point where feminists cannot accept women providing sex for men.¹