The right to sell your body
Tags: Prostitution, Law, Sex Work, Sex, LGBT Rights

Copyright 2020 — Dainis Graveris

In the corner of the night he shovels snow, breaking his back to clear the worst of the blizzard so the suburbs can get to their offices come morning. Off in the shadows of late spring she sits, waiting for the first man to offer her $5.00 for a quickie. On a tenth-floor office space he paces, waiting for the code to compile and his 18-hour crunch to finally be over. Splayed on hospital bed she screams in pain, the surrogate parents caressing her hands as she births her child. Each selling their bodies, breaking them over paid labour.

Most countries have laws restricting or banning sex work, despite it being putatively the second oldest job in the world after soldiering. The assumption is that to sell one’s flesh to the highest bidder is dirty and denigrates the soul. Yet, in the light of day, the autonomy to sell one’s labour and skills is a fundamental right of all humans in the understanding that slavery is abhorrent. If you can break your body down a mine or blown to pieces on a battlefield, then why is it culturally we shame women and men who use their bodies for sexual labour?

Granted, this conversation is messy, complicated, with a lot of shades of grey. Abuse is rampant within the sex trade, with plenty of sex workers abused by Johns, pimps, and criminal gangs. In no reasonable or decent world should their plight go unheeded or unseen. The unvarnished truth is that prohibition of sex work drives criminal enterprise and abuse, and as the issues with the German and Dutch laws have shown, any deregulation and legalisation needs to be enforced. Women and men pushed into the margins are ripe for exploitation, and where prohibition exists their suffering flies under the radar.

Copyright 2020 — Dainis Graveris

Many queer and transgender folk, especially trans women, find themselves pushed into the margins through dire circumstances, ending up in the sex trade through desperation and poverty. Their twilight existence is further exacerbated if they are women of colour, and the murder rates amongst this group is unconscionably high. Sex workers are easy prey for predatory men (and it is almost always men) because they are forced into the shadows, and by keeping them in the shadows we fail to heed their plight. We tacitly accept their suffering as the cost of turning a blind eye to predominantly male needs, a black economy that services the desperate and vulnerable. There is an argument to be made that sex work is an act of the desperate, and that poverty is what drives them into this line of work. Yes, that is a reasonable line to take; however, there are plenty of people who sell their bodies who do it willingly and freely, understanding the risks and rewards. It is up to us as a society to help those forced into sex bondage, rescuing them from the depths of depravity, while at the same time allowing room for a sexual economy to exist that grants those who actively consent to selling their bodies be allowed to do so in the full light of the law.

Bodily autonomy is a fundamental part of being human, a right we all accept and take for granted. To inflict harm on others, to rape, to murder are seen as the worst crimes imaginable. Yet, conversely, the right to choose what we do with our bodies has also been long recognised. That we break our bodies in the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is almost a given; how many of us willingly push our bodies in the gym, eat food that long term could cause complication, work jobs that gradually wear us down (both officer and manual labour have health implications), and do other activities that cause physical and mental pain. We all do so willingly, on the understanding that the benefits will outweigh the costs, or at least the short-term benefits are worth the long-term sacrifice. In this light, is sex work any different?

This leads into a wider point about the commodification of the human body, and how sex is used to sex virtually everything. Young, slim, lithe, toned, hot. We are sold this message over and over again. Beautiful bodies used to promote the next best thing, each model paid their dues, without any real say over the text that goes next to their body. This is not to equate the physical actions sex workers undertake with the still image used to hawk products, but the fact that human societies have largely embraced this idea that young bodies can be exploited to better promote goods boarders on gratuitous. If the transaction between model and purchaser is above board everything is deemed kosher, theirs is the right to sell, and, as is deemed socially acceptable, ours is the right to objectify and treat their flesh as our stimulus. One of feminism’s most potent arguments is that the objectification of bodies harms all people, not just women, as it places unrealistic expectations on us all to look a certain way, in turn causing us to go buy the very products that cause our anxiety. Yet, we lionise the very models whose images are at the very root of our own exploitation. Their sex sells us moments of bliss and years of inner turmoil. We castigate the photographers, agencies, magazines, and social media for their exploitation when things go wrong, not the women and men who are at the centre of the image.

Copyright 2020 — Dainis Graveris

Yet, when it comes to sex workers, often we do the opposite. We place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the worker, not the parties purchasing the goods. That a woman, man, or gender queer person should wish to sell their body should be their own choice, as their bodily autonomy is their own. Just as it is the right of the purchaser to make the transaction complete. However, given the nature of human interactions, this transaction is not simply a mechanical swapping of goods, be it images, videos, or flesh. It involves emotions, feelings, fragile human forms, and if these transactions are in the light of day then respect and consent can be enforced by law and convention. In the shadows is where the abuse occurs, leaving broken bodies and souls behind. Those who sell their flesh and bones deserve dignity, and those who purchase their services need to respect bodily autonomy.

If we accept that soldiers can sell their flesh to the state as members of the world’s oldest profession, then why is being a member of the world’s second so different. We all have the right to sell our bodies as we wish in dignity and within the light of the law. For those cast onto the margins, especially trans women of colour and drug addicts who may feel they have no other choice, it is our societal duty to help them find their dignity in their choice and provide them with the legal boundaries within which to protect them. Predatory behaviour happens when the law and society turn a blind eye, be it in the red-light district or the executive suite. By confronting our own squeamishness over the moral and ethical implications, we can restore the world’s second oldest profession to a state of dignity and ethicacy. Sex workers are us; they are your neighbours, your sisters, your mothers, your co-workers. They could be out for a side hustle as cosplayers, they could be prostitutes desperate for rent or baby feed; they could, shock horror, actually enjoy and feel empowered by their chosen profession. Theirs is the power, and theirs is the right; ours is the obligation to ensure they can do so safely.