Andrea Dworkin - Right-wing Women

It is essential to recognize how genuinely accepted both the

brothel model and prostitution are in the social structure, and how

this disposition of women is simply accepted as inevitable because

they are women. However evil prostitution is held to be, however

righteous or religious men are said to be, the brothel model does

more than endure; it thrives. However marginal the women are

said to be, they form the sex nucleus of a sex industry that is in no

sense marginal. The brothel model thrives because men accept it

and all that is part of it as proper treatment for sexual women:

women who are sexual in male terms, women who get fucked by

many men, women who get fucked outside the protective custody

of a traditional father or husband. The staying power of both the

brothel as an institution and prostitution as a practice comes from

the efficacy of both for regulating the sexual use of women and the

disposition of sexually exploitable women. Think of what it means.

The brothel is most often something like a prison—women cannot

come and go freely. Women are displayed, used, and treated like

sexual things or sexual animals, all penned up. The brothel exists

usually with the tacit or overt protection of police and politicians;

the brothel is used by the rich and powerful as well as by all other

kinds of men; the brothel is the kind of place men like to have

women in, confined in, locked in, penned in, shut in; the brothel

suggests a wealth of women available to the man, it means he is

rich in having so many women in one place for him, it means he

chooses absolutely and his will is done by whomever he chooses.

Prostitution is the way women are used in the brothel model; it is

what women are shut in for, penned in for. The street comer

merely extends the brothel beyond the walls of a building into the

cold and rain. Pimps run several prostitutes; and usually some or

all live together, whether business is done in the domicile or not.

This is a version of the brothel: a kind of public harem. The

brothel model can sim ply be imposed on a neighborhood, which

then becomes a ghetto for prostitutes. In some cities with good

reputations for socially advanced ideas, women sit in windows,

posing for potential customers. This is w idely regarded as a humane and civilized w ay of conducting the business of prostitution.

The brothel, in such cities, is considered a nice place, good for the

girls. It is the acceptance of the brothel model as an appropriate

w ay of treating some women, these women, sexed women, prostituted women, used women, degraded women, public women, any women, that has unyielding and unchanging social significance

for all women. Once a prostituted woman exists, she can be shut

up in a house where men come to find and use women like her, to

use her because she is a woman. It is naughty to force her to prostitute herself, though women and girls are m ainly forced into prostitution; but once prostituted— by whatever means— she is for sex and the brothel is her proper abode and the use made of her there

is proper; it is a woman’s place, and this is accepted by the religious and irreligious, police and outlaws, users and abstainers. A pimp’s women are referred to as his “stable, ” but the analogy with

horses is misleading. Horses are treated better, being more valuable. Prostitutes get treated like women; no analogy fits. For men this w ay of life would be seen clearly as a deprivation of human

freedom; for women it is appropriate to what they are— women.

These women are not missed; in fulfilling this sexual function, it is

not thought that they are wasted. There is a difference between

female garbage and human waste. In the United States, there are

hundreds of thousands of these women; in the world, millions

upon millions. The brothel model keeps these women locked in for

sex, and both the devout and the sexually liberated think that is the

way it should be. Both think this is a sexy w ay for women to live.

The women are disposed of, used for what they are seen to be,

used as their sex, their class-defined essence and function, the sex

work to which some percentage of the sex class must be dedicated.

This use of women is thought to be not only an inevitable and

appropriate use of women but one that always was and always will

be.

The defenses of the brothel model applied to women are entrenched. In his study of prostitution, first published in 1857, William Acton articulated what has come to be accepted as a moderate, sensible point of view:

It seems to me vain to shut our eyes to the fact that prostitution must always exist. Regret it as we may, we cannot but admit that a woman if so disposed may make profit of her own

person, and that the State has no right to prevent her. It has a

right, however, in my opinion, to insist that she shall not, in

trafficking with her person, became a medium of communicating disease, and that, as she has given herself up to an occupation dangerous to herself and others, she must, in her own interest and that of the community, submit to supervision. 11

The state creates the conditions in which the woman is prostituted,

sanctions force against her to effect her prostitution by systematically ignoring it, creates the economic conditions that mandate her prostitution, fixes her social place so that her sex is a commodity; and then, prostitution is seen to exist because the woman wills it and the political question is whether or not the state should

interfere with this expression of her will. What is seen as the eternal dimension of prostitution—why it must always exist—is that the will of women to prostitute themselves will always exist. This

means, simply, that men accept that the conditions that create

prostitution are acceptable, fixed, and appropriate because prostitution is a proper use of women, one congruent with what women are. The harm done is when she carries disease. Wherever prostitution is legal and regulated, it is usually to control disease, to protect men from disease; the woman is the instrument by which harm

comes to the man.

It is the social and economic construction of the woman’s will

that is the issue: both in that feminists assert that this w ill is constructed outside the individual and in that apologists for the sexual exploitation of women— again both religious and irreligious— insist

that the w ill is interior, individual, an individual assertion of a

female sexual nature.

The notion of female w ill always articulated in discussions of

prostitution (and currently pornography) also is central in a new