The
Money
Shot
Sex Work and Making a Scene
February 10, 2016
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive
Health
“When two subjects argue according to a set
exchange of remarks and with a view to having the
‘last word,’ these two subjects are already
married: for them the scene is an exercise of a
right, the practice of a language of which they
are co-owners; each one in his turn, says the
scene, which means: never you without me… The
partners know that the confrontation in which
they are engaged, and which will not separate
them, is as inconsequential as a perverse form of
pleasure (the scene is a way of taking pleasure
without the risk of having children).”
- Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse, (emphasis in the
original) (1977)
“Pornography is the theory;
rape is the practice.”
-
Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography (1986), quoting
Robin Morgan
“Women don’t say that
to me because of the
questions I ask.”
Melissa Farley, clinical psychologist, in response to the
question “Do you encounter women who like this work?” (1998)
-
“We are... caught in this
uncomfortable contradiction:
the desire for what disgusts
us, the disgust for what we
desire.”
-
Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York
A blow job is better
than no job.
“
”
-
Margo St. James, sex worker activist (1982)
“Speak plainly and say ‘fuck,’
‘prick,’ ‘cunt,’ and ‘ass’ if
you want anyone except the
scholars at the University of
Rome to understand you.”
-
A prostitute in Dialoghi, by Pietro Aretino (16th century)
The only comment on the YouTube video from which a screenshot
was taken for the first slide of this talk.
“In the United States, talking
about money is harder than
talking about sex.”
- Marien Friestad, professor of marketing,
University of Oregon (2005)
“While every interviewer asks me whether I was
sexually abused as a child, none of them have
ever asked me a single question about the
financial mindset, or even the financial
motivation, involved in my decisions to work in
the sex industry. No one… has ever asked me if my
parents argued about money in front of me, if I
got an allowance, if I had a job in high school,
if I was raised to value money as a form of
status or simply as a means to an end...”
- Jo Weldon, burlesque performer
“[I have] never seen an issue
where there is less interest
in hearing from those who are
most affected by it.”
-
Phil Marshall, UN official involved in fighting
trafficking in the Mekong Delta region (2003)
“No single issue earned more Pinocchios than
dubious claims about sex trafficking. There are
NOT 300,000 children at risk of sexual
exploitation. There are NOT 100,000 children in
the sex trade. Human trafficking is NOT a $9.5
billion business in the United States. Girls do
NOT become victims of sex trafficking at an
average age of 13 years. The federal government
has NOT arrest hundreds of sex traffickers. These
were all false claims made in 2015 by
politicians, advocacy groups[,] and government
officials.”
- Glenn Kessler, “Special Award: Bushels of bogus sex
trafficking statistics,” (December 14, 2015)
“Overall, the amount of funding for this population is
minuscule. Organizations and groups that work with sex
workers are small and severely underfunded. The vast majority
of financial support for nongovernmental organizations that
primarily work with or are led by sex workers comes in the
form of funding for HIV prevention. The next largest source
of funding is from private and public entities working to end
human trafficking and forced labor. What is largely missing
from the landscape are consistent sources of rights-based
funding that seek not only to change the conditions that make
for the growing prevalence of sex work itself but also to end
the abhorrent human rights abuses faced by people who perform
sex work.”
- Sex Worker Health and Rights: Where is the Funding?
report by the Open Society Institute, June 2006.
“In no area of the social
sciences has ideology
contaminated knowledge more
pervasively than in writings
on the sex industry.”
-
Ronald Weitzer, criminologist at George Washington
University (2005)
“I challenge you to
distinguish a naked prostitute
from any other naked woman.”
-
Henri LeClerc, attorney representing Dominque StraussKahn (2011)