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In the 2009 Global Gender Gap Report, Iceland was ranked #1. The report is issued by the World Economic Forum, and "assesses countries on how well they are dividing their resources and opportunities among their male and female populations, regardless of the overall levels of these resources and opportunities." (Let us just say that the US proudly ranked, uh, 31.) Go Iceland!
Then last week, The Guardian reported that Iceland banned strip clubs. The idea is that as the sex industry has expanded in the small country, fewer Icelandic women wanted to work in it. The industry thus brought in foreign women, who may or may not have been trafficked and that clubs may be a front for prostitution. In addition, many of the workers may be there due to drug addiction or poverty, not choice. The article hailed the united feminist movement in Iceland for this achievement, saying it is an inspiration to feminists around the world.
Except that I don't feel very inspired. I'm not gonna lie - strip clubs make me uncomfortable. I don't think they should be banned, though. And unlike the 82% of Icelandic women polled about prostitution, I think it should be legal. I know that there are serious abuse problems in the sex industry. I know that there are power dynamics and ingrained social biases and gender stereotypes and class and race issues that play out across these controversial types of work. I do not like anything that posits that women are mere objects to be ogled, bought, and sold. But I also know that I do not trust governments telling me how women can and can't use our bodies. This tends to not work out well.
I don't know if tighter regulation would eliminate the egregious abuses that engulf many (not all, but many) women who work in the sex industry, but banning this work will not make it go away. It will only make it go further underground in ways in which abuse will be worse. Sex workers, who are law breakers by definition when their work is illegal, are persecuted by law enforcement when crimes are perpetrated against them, not protected. Because they are less likely to report abuse, they are all the more vulnerable.
The idea that banning sex work will help women goes beyond stripping and prostitution. In print and film, feminists have tried to raise the status of women (which is good) by banning pornography (which is not so helpful). But there is also a positive correlation between a society's consumption of pornography and its level of equal opportunities for women in education, employment, and politics. Residents of Sweden and Denmark view a large amount of porn, but the countries have high rates of gender equality (numbers 4 and 7, respectively, on the Global Gender Gap Index in 2009) and low levels of violence against women, especially when compared to the United States. If mainstream porn objectifies women to any extent, its effects appear to be less harmful than anything Paris Hilton has done for the status of women in the last few years. It's complicated.
I used to be an anti-porn feminist. I think there's a lot of logic to the argument. But pro-sex advocate Ellen Willis intrigued me when I read that she wrote, "The claim that 'pornography' is violence against women was code for the Victorian idea that men want sex and women endure it." After reading more of Willis and others of her ilk, I began to think that in order to promote sexual equality free of gender stereotyping, we actually need more pornography and other sex work that addresses and affirms our sexuality as human beings. This does not include products like "Girls Gone Wild," in which inebriated young women on Spring Break are encouraged to doff their clothes and make out with their girlfriends, or Playboy, which annoys me with it's special issues that feature women of various professions posing naked, as that just seems to remind people not to take women seriously because underneath their professional demeanor, they just want to be ogled and thought of as sex objects. (Or maybe some women do. What do I know?) Something more equal and interesting, like what Lydia Lunch and
