Handbook on Sexual Violence (53 page)

(Hester and Westmarland 2004: 81)

The estimated number of women involved in prostitution at any one time in the UK is between 40,000–80,000 (Phoenix and Sanders 2010). The combined sample referred to above is 375, i.e. between 1% and 0.5% of the estimated total population of sex workers. The point here is that there is very little that can be known with any degree of certainty or robustness where it comes to the question of the wide-ranging nature or prevalence of victimisation against women in prostitution. It is almost impossible to characterise, describe or measure in any meaningful way the totality of social
contexts
that women in prostitution inhabit. Studies that purport to measure victimisation in prostitution start with the taken-for-granted assumption that the experience of selling sex for money overrides other or wider social, political, economic and ideological conditions. They also tend to start with the bracketing-off of the way in which the systems of regulating prostitution may (or may not) shape women’s vulnerability to victimisation. For these studies also tend to start from the assumption that the common experience of selling sex for money is
analytically more relevant and important
than the diversity of contexts making up the institution of prostitution or the manner in which it is regulated and prostitute-women’s lives governed. Against this, Kelly’s concept of a continuum of sexual violence is limited in helping to understand the issue of sexual victimisation in prostitution, if only because it was never developed to understand experience and impact
in relation to a specific social institution, much less such a highly complex, highly regulated, quasi-legitimate and diverse one as prostitution
.

Applying the concept of a continuum of sexual violence to prostitution

This
section asks whether and in what ways the logic underpinning Kelly’s concept of a continuum of sexual violence maps onto women’s experiences of (sexual) victimisation in prostitution. I make the case that it does not. This is primarily because, first, Kelly’s concept of sex is ahistorical and asocial and, second, using the concept of a continuum of sexual violence produces profound theoretical closures that pertain to the way in which women in prostitution are regulated by government and by economic inequalities.

To remind the reader, Kelly’s definition of sexual violence is ‘physical, visual, verbal or sexual acts’ that are experienced as a ‘threat, invasion or assault’ and act to limit, constrain or otherwise harm women’s sexual autonomy. Framing this definition is a particular construction of sexuality. Kelly was keen to displace the then naturalistic constructions of sexuality as being biologically determined and being highly gendered (that is to say, men’s sexuality as being predominantly active, women’s as being passive). Drawing on feminist theories of patriarchy, Kelly substituted a construction of ‘sexuality’ and ‘sex’ as being the primary locus of men’s social control over women within patriarchal societies (i.e. societies structured by gendered relations of power). In this analysis, ‘sexuality’ and ‘sex’ are treated as the activities and behaviour that we most commonly associate with the terms, or to use Kelly’s words ‘intimate relations’. Kelly presents a vision of heterosexual sex and sexuality that in essence is shaped by social relations of gendered inequality. In so doing she implicitly draws a distinction between sexual behaviours that are
ipso facto
‘inappropriate’ (those in which sex is used as a mechanism of control and power) and those that are ‘appropriate’ (those where sex is not a mechanism of control, but is somehow ‘authentic’ in experience). The dividing line between the two is whether the woman consented. The difficulty in Kelly’s construction of sexual violence (as a sociological phenomenon) is that she uses a profoundly asocial notion of consent. For Kelly, consent is rooted in the concept of free will, that is to say it is based on the simplistic notion that the individual had no or limited choice. These assumptions then facilitated an analytical approach in which she could group inappropriate, violent sexual behaviours along with behaviours like unwanted sex, obscene telephone calls and unwelcome sexual visual imagery, for what they share is that they are unwarranted, unchosen sexual encounters. What is neglected in this analysis, however, are two things: (i) the way in which sociocultural and normative frameworks shape, blend, blur or otherwise impact upon which behaviours are seen as appropriate and which are not – within societies, across time and across societies – and (ii) the way in which wider social forces act upon and limit choices. The next part of this
chapter unpicks the implications of this.

Late modern sex: sex-as-leisure, sex-as-pleasure

How sex is experienced by individuals and how it is regulated has, in the past 50 years, dramatically changed across most Western industrial societies. With

the advent of moderately safe and reliable contraception, ‘sex’ in late modernity has become unhooked from the traditional constraints and controls of biology, family and to a lesser extent religion. As a set of embodied experiences, it has also been moved beyond traditional relationships and particularly from courtship rituals and marriage. Normative ideologies of gendered sex have also changed. Contemporary public discourses on sex focus on ‘good’ sex and how to have it, how much sex is too much and how many partners are too few or too many. Satellite television stations provide an endless series of programmes dedicated to helping the viewer enjoy their sex life just as confessional television programmes have become increasingly sexual in their tone. Sex has become so visible in late-modern cultures that it has prompted some to speculate about the democratisation of sex, or the pornographication of culture (Attwood 2006). The argument runs like this: contemporary, late modern cultures are increasingly preoccupied with sexual values, practices and identities, are marked by more permissive sexual attitudes, new forms of sexual experiences and expressions and have witnessed a shift or ‘breakdown’ of the rules, regulations and rituals that have operated to exclude that which once was considered ‘obscene’ from the everyday (Attwood 2006). There has been also an extension of sexual consumerism in which sexual products (and services) are increasingly available to a wider and wider range of consumers (McNair 2002). Combined with this process of sexual liberalisation there has also been a significant shift in the links between sex and consumption. So, for instance, Giddens (1992), Plummer (2003) and Bauman (1998, 2003) have all noted in varying ways the degree to which sex saturates consumer cultures and particularly the media. Researchers in the area of prostitution picked up on this expansion of ‘sex-as-leisure’ and ‘sex-as-pleasure’ and sought to understand what it signifies about the organisation of social life as well as the organisation of prostitution. So, for instance, Bernstein (2001: 84) noted that one of the features of late-modern societies is the reconfiguration of erotic life ‘from a relational model of sex to a recreational model of sex’ in which pursuit of sexual intimacy and ‘fun’ is not hindered by the expansion of a marketplace for sex but is facilitated by it – or rather by the ways that the erotic in the new sexual marketplace is not infused with ambiguity or hypocrisy of intimate emotional relationships (see also Prasad 1999).

What this means in practice is that sex and how it is experienced has changed significantly since Kelly’s earlier work. The wide availability and acceptability of pornography reshapes what is considered ‘beyond the pale’ or inappropriate, just as the extension of sexual consumerism also reshapes what is considered degrading, obscene or, indeed, unwarranted and unchosen. While I would not want to take this argument to a logical extreme, these significant sociocultural changes do call into the question the possibility of analysing ‘the sexual’ and ‘sex behaviours’ separately from the highly complex and layered normative field that make up ‘sex’. More than anything else, they call into question the utility of forms of analysis of complex, wide-ranging sexual behaviours that draw a single line between those which are ‘wanted’ and those which are not. This is especially the case in prostitution or other forms of what might now be called ‘sexual consumerism’.

Leaving aside these sociocultural issues, Kelly’s concept of a continuum was also based on the way in which she combined the issue of consent (or lack thereof) in sexual behaviours and the loss of individual control over sexual autonomy. Street prostitution highlights some of the profound difficulties of defining sexual violence in such a way. The backgrounds of the women who get involved in street prostitution are depressingly familiar. At least five decades of empirical research confirms that they come from backgrounds punctuated by sexual and physical abuse within families or by partners, have grown up in social care and have been raped or sexually assaulted prior to their involvement in prostitution (Phoenix 2001, O’Neill 2001). For many individuals across Europe, involvement in street prostitution is driven, for the most part, by financial necessity. One of the striking features of empirical research is the way in which women will recount tales in which they struggled to secure an economically stable future for themselves and their dependants. The literature is replete with quotations from women who talk about being ‘forced’, ‘compelled’ or ‘having no other choice’ but to go into prostitution (see especially Phoenix 2001: ch. 4). Such narratives fit nicely within Kelly’s formulation of a continuum of sexual violence. However, and this is the point, to map prostitution onto a continuum of sexual violence (or to explain street working women’s experiences as part of the continuum of sexual violence) requires (i) the transposition of women’s
economic conditions and their individual economic motivations
into a condition of sexual victimisation and (ii) a conception of consent which denies the way in which wider social circumstances act to limit individuals’ choices. What gets lost in that transposition is how a number of wider, non-sexual albeit gendered, processes shape and constrain women’s autonomy – sexual or otherwise.

The limits to sexual violence

Perhaps one of the more pronounced limitations of applying the concept of a continuum of sexual violence to prostitution is in specifying the boundaries of the concept, i.e. between sexual violence and other forms of violence and/or victimisation that women experience. Kelly’s concept was a conscious attempt to blur what were the then taken-for-granted boundaries between different types of acts that may have an impact on women’s sexual autonomy. For her, there was no limit to the concept of a continuum of sexual violence as long as the behaviour in question was sexual. In her discussion of the limits or boundaries of the concept, Kelly (1988: 40) includes sex (that is to say, behaviours which result in (intended or actual) ejaculation)
and
‘words describing women’s bodies and sexuality’, ‘images portraying women as inferior’ and pornography. In that these behaviours operate to reduce a woman’s autonomy, they are constituted by Kelly as being part of the continuum of sexual violence.

In the context of prostitution, however, the question arises as to whether all forms of victimisation that sex workers experience are, indeed, sexualised or constituted as sexual victimisation. One of the defining features of prostitution is that it is a job shaped by ‘the sexual’. Research has demonstrated time and

again how a woman’s status as ‘sex worker’, ‘prostitute’ or ‘prostituted- woman’ operates as a master status (Becker 1969). Her status as mother, wife, lover, sister, worker, resident and so on are eclipsed and overwritten by her prostituting activities and her prostitute identity (Phoenix 2001, 2009; Melrose 2009; Scoular 2009; O’Neill 2008; O’Connell Davidson 1998, 2006). At the level of lived realities, this means that for many women in prostitution, particularly those who work and live in the UK or other countries that regulate prostitution predominantly through criminal justice, there is little distinction between their lives
in
prostitution and their lives
outside
prostitution (see especially Phoenix 2001). This subjective experience is mirrored in the regulatory regime within the UK and other countries in that many women in prostitution now find that the totality of their lives and relationships are open to scrutiny by state and non-governmental organisations working with them to ‘exit’ them from prostitution (Phoenix 2009). This is seen most clearly in relation to young people who are in prostitution (or, to use the most contemporary discursive term, ‘the sexual exploitation of young people’). The guidance which shaped how sexually exploited young people are dealt with (
Safeguarding Children in Prostitution
, DoH/HO 2000) drew a formal line of distinction between those young people who are sexually exploited and those who voluntarily return to prostitution. For the latter category, appropriate intervention may well be criminalisation. For the former category, appropriate intervention will never be criminalisation and will always be provided within a child protection framework. At heart, the line of distinction inheres around whether the young person is classified as a victim or an offender. With that, the agencies have been forced to focus on establishing the degree to which a young person is voluntarily engaged in prostitution, i.e. whether (or not) s/he is being coerced into exchanging sex for money. In order to make this assessment, the totality of a young person’s life is examined, including family, school, work and social relationships. At the levels of subjective identity, policing and intervention, many young people’s and women’s social experiences implode on and are organised around their prostituting activities. Put simply: for many women in prostitution (and the agencies working with them), there is no life defined as being outside ‘the sexual’.

Within this context, it is difficult to use Kelly’s concept of a continuum of sexual violence to understand the different types of victimisation and violent experiences that women in prostitution have. At the risk of stating the obvious, if there is no life defined as being outside ‘the sexual’, then all forms of victimisation and violence are, within Kelly’s formulation, sexual.
All
unwanted invasions and threats that happen during the course of a woman’s involvement in prostitution will be part of the continuum of sexual violence. This would include behaviour that has no sexual content, such as being robbed or physically assaulted by a punter, being harassed by the community or the police, or being exploited by a partner in order to fund his drug habit. This is not an esoteric debate. If the violence and victimisation that any woman experiences while being involved in prostitution, in any of its manifestations, is analytically categorised as (i) sexual violence and (ii) thereby similar to rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment, then the specificity of that victimisation is lost. What is foreclosed within such a conceptual