Zum int. Hurentag - Sexworkerpride am 2. Juni:
Anal-yse,
warum Sexarbeiter selbst bis heute immer noch nicht organisiert sind,
um fair dem gesellschaftlichen Leben teilhaftig zu werden.
The Obstacles of Sexworker Mobilization and Self-Organization
zitiert aus obiger Arbeit
Seiten 32-35 ...
- Gesetze - Law:
Laws regulating or prohibiting prostitution can have a direct effect on the prostitutes’ ability to organize.
- Herkunft - Poor social background:
The poor capacity to engage in social protest can be explained by the social origins of most prostitutes.
Prostitutes originate from the lowest classes of society.
Most [besser: many] prostitutes also live in extremely precarious conditions.
Low levels of education.
Precarious living conditions.
- Ausgrenzung - Stigma:
Es gibt keine vertikalen Bindungen (zu anderen Gesellschaftskreisen)
Prostitutes are ordinarily considered as one of the most marginalized and stigmatized social groups.
The stigmatization of prostitutes adds to the precariousness of their living conditions by forcing them to constantly disguise their activities (they must hide from their parents, their children, the police and, sometimes, social workers).
Illegal immigrant
Transsexuals
Homosexuals
The indignity and secrecy that affect prostitution are among the major factors that prevent prostitutes from protesting publicly against their unhappy endemic condition.
Feeling that they have no legitimate right to exert this competence and enter the public debate (Bourdieu, 1980).
What seems to be the main obstacle confronted by sex worker movements is the ambivalence that most prostitutes feel towards their activity, an ambivalence that is directly related to the stigma of prostitution.
Because they experience the stigma attached to ‘sex work’ on a daily basis and (more or less consciously) share the socially dominant negative opinion towards this occupation, they are not entirely convinced that prostitution is really a profession that deserves recognition.
The leaders of the movements who entered into protest and created a professional organization as a way to give up prostitution are examples of this ambivalence: Their defection [Abtrünnigkeit, Treuebruch] shows the weight of the dominant pejorative [abwertende] representations of prostitution that have the power to compel [nötigen] and to be shared by the very people they discredit.
For them, the exit always seems more valuable than the voice (s.u.).
- Sozialstruktur im informellen, nur teillegalisiertem Sexmarkt - Social Sex Market Structure:
Es gibt keine horizontalen Bindungen (wg. archaischer Wettbewerbsstruktur)
Lack of structure and organization of the world of prostitution itself.
A population that lacks the necessary resources to initiate a collective protest.
Characteristics of the prostitute population, one which is generally marked by a very low level of pragmatic competence for collective action.
The commercial logic of the world of prostitution contradicts collective action by making competition prevail upon solidarity.
World of prostitution appears to be a social world with extremely weak cohesion.
Prostitutes do not belong to a real ‘goup’ or ‘community’, but constitute an informal population united only by their common activities, common living conditions and common stigmatization.
This endemic deficit of internal cohesion that affects the world of prostitution is one of the strongest obstacles to protest, as it makes free-riding strategies more attractive than collective action.
Gefangen zwischen unmöglichen Alternativen:
voice vs. exit
Öffentlichkeitsarbeit incl. Zwangsouting vs. Zwang zum Ausstieg
Referring to Hirschman’s (1995) concepts
[Hirschman, Albert O. (1995) Défection et prise de parole. Paris: Fayard. (Orig. pub. Exit, Voice, Loyalty, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970.)],
it could be said that the characteristics of their group confront prostitutes with an
impossible choice:
it has been shown that the
voice solution is difficult, impossible or, more often, unimaginable for them.
What seems to be the easiest and most accessible alternative,
exit, also meets with many obstacles, such as drug dependency, submission to a procurer, or lack of professional qualifications preventing them from finding normal jobs.
Prostitutes seem, in most cases, to be restricted to a form of loyalty to the world of prostitution, a forced loyalty comprising resignation and fatalism.
As long as the prostitutes’ relation to their condition remains ambivalent,
social movements fighting for the recognition of prostitutes’ rights will face huge difficulties to mobilize them, and will remain marginal.
Das würde ich als "Falle Prostitution" oder "strukturelle Zwangsprostitution" bezeichnen:
www.sexworker.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=31106#31106 (Beim Thema: Ausstieg/Umstieg)
Es zeigt die volle Macht des unfassbaren Stigmas (Putophobie,
nichtsexuelle Prostitution gilt als gesellschaftliches Grundübel).
www.sexworker.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=919 (Wortgebrauch)
Es zeigt wie sehr Stigmamanagement und Stigmadekonstruktion zum Kern von Sexarbeiter-Aufklärung, -Ausbildung und -Fortbildung gehören müssen.
www.sexworker.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=817 (Sexworker Academy)
Es braucht Coming-out Gruppen für Sexworker [incl. geförderter Legalisierungsworkshops], so wie es Coming-out Gruppen der Schwulen-und-Lesben-Bewegung inzwischen in jeder größeren Stadt gibt. Möglicherweise ist das anonyme Internetforum SEXWORKER.AT ein erster wichtiger Schritt dazu. Denn auch bei Schwulen und Lesben hat es über 20 Jahre gedauert nach einer gesetzlichen Entkriminalisierung von Homosexualität bis Vorurteile und Stigma einigermaßen abgebaut werden konnten. Bei ihnen war nur das Tabu Sex nicht aber das Tabu Geld betroffen ...
Weiteres zur Stigma-Dekonstruktion:
www.sexworker.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=919 (Stigmaforschung und Leitbilder Sexwork)
www.sexworker.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=102619#102619 (Voice & Exit miteinander vereint von Simone S.)
www.sexworker.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=90061#90061 (Watzlawick'sche Scheinalternative)
www.sexworker.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=39370#39370 (Virginie Despentes: King Kong Theory)
www.sexworker.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=82847#82847 (migration and urban planing Wien2010)
www.sexworker.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=44807#44807 (Sadie Lune: "Stop punishing me because you can't imagine being me.")
www.sexworker.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=80943#80943 (Kerala Sexworkers about children in sex work)
Double Bind
Karpmansches Drama-Dreieck
Sündenbockfunktion, Projektion
Intersektionalitäten
...
Sex workers face several severe challenges!
Answer to Thierries impulse statement which I like to extend and bring to our common awareness:
- Competition: Which is very high in unregulated markets. Since our economy is partly criminalised and a grey market, solidarity is not easy. Solidarity needs structures and a foundation in order to flourish (unconditional love, basic income grant, job quota for sex workers and ex-sex workers within the helper industry and NGOs, affirmative action policy).
- Exclusion: By law we are not allowed to cooperate, work together, have management, profit from prostitution gain, move and settle free, get help from the police, be part of organized pension plans... On one hand side we have to work on these atrocities and on the other we have to develop new infrastructure and missing support institutions ourselves: sex worker academies, sex work research centres, sex work insurance, sex worker saving bank and micro credit institute, sex work cooperatives, sex work self regulatory boards, sex worker union, sex work intra-peer supervision, sex worker elderly homes...
- Moral hazard: Discretion, secrecy and double life, which we are forced to developed as countermeasure to taboo, stigma and alienation, makes it easy for a-social profiteers or drop-outs. Social control among us is low and can't hardly be improved. Whore culture and unionisation can be a solution or countermeasure.
- Self fulfilling prophecy: The stigma meme, mainstream culture and religious traditions have the capability to reiterate itself. We need to break that vicious circle. Besides, we must be alert how energy consuming and draining the fight and involvement in the public whorephobic discourse can be and that due to Self Value Management many sex workers decide to stay away in order to prevent SWBO (sex worker burn out).
- Scapegoating mechanism: The War on Whores has more to do with stabilizing society (due to misinformation, projection of suppressed emotions, class separation 'divide et impera'...), than with fighting sex for money between consenting adults. De-constructing societal psychological mechanisms is so important. Karpman Triangle, Intersectionality, Othering, Sexual Politics... give great explanations. We need to teach Stigma Management to our fellow sex workers.
- Youth bound business: Like children, pupils, compulsory military/civil service, students... all these are time limited life periods, which makes is hard to establish self organizing and representational structures within and establish an inheritance mechanism for these structures and culture. Up to now every generations needed to start from scrap. Now we have formed sex worker movement and history and use modern information and self management technologies (ICT, Liquid Democracy).
- Outplacment: And as answer for the individual sex worker on the youth bound business limitations we need to teach ourselves about financial planning, security, Whore Carer Management, Exit Strategies and Sex Worker Outplacement in whore college and SWOU. Otherwise sex workers can become trapped in poverty, addiction and a closet of shame.
- Heterogeneity: Sex workers come from all traits of life and often have very few in common. Some have very low level of education or knowledge of the local culture due to poor social background... Many fall to the mechanism to degrade others in order to not feel their own precariousness (escorts v whores, porn actors v whores, local whores v migrants...). Inclusion among ourselves becomes a hard task.
- Negative energies: These can come form shy, negative customers, from the media and public discourse, from drained out old sex worker fellows and social workers... To develop an invigorating community spirit is key. Inclusion of young successful new sex workers in functions of the movement is important (human resources).
- Trapped between voice and exit: Preventive Self-Outing and Legalisation becomes the root qualification of modern sex workers (registration, taxation). Hence peer education in Stigma-Management and business coaching is so vital to develop a sustainable sex biz model.
- Insecurity: Ever faster changing life and working conditions in a globalized over-poppulated resource restricted world governed by corporatocracy does not stay away from the oldest profession. We have to master many contradictions and transitions and then maybe become mature enlightened avant-garde role model of modern flexible worker, independent entrepreneur and sole proprietor of one-self.
A real avant-garde revolutionary worker and sex worker has to have no fear !!!
Thierry's statement to our fellow sex workers:
www.thierrySchaffauser.wordpress.com/20 ... x-workers/
.
