There are two new films that are about sex work. Both are positive about it. The first is Good Luck to You, Leo Grande starring Emma Thompson. The second is How to Please a Woman starring Sally Phillips. Both are well-known comedians.
I found out about the second of these on Woman's Hour this morning. The presenter had no criticism of this film. Someone contacted the show and said how hypocritical they are in saying that men objectify women through prostitution and yet they accept the objectification of men. In both films the sex worker is male. I don't mean trans women, who the Radical Feminists regard as male.
I can see how the Radical Feminists are going to be critical of both of these films. Objectification means different things to different people. It meant one thing to Radical Feminist authors such as Catharine A MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. It means something different to the majority of Radical or Revolutionary Feminists. It means something different again to ordinary people.
To ordinary people it seems to mean having a sexual attraction to someone outside of the context of a relationship. The idea is that a man is incapable of appreciating a woman's personality if he is lusting after her. This is an idea that goes back thousands of years.
If I have casual sex with a woman, let's say on holiday, am I objectifying her more than if I play a game of tennis with her or a game of chess? Why would sex have that special attribute, different from other activities? If I pay for sex with a woman, am I objectifying her more than if I pay for a taxi driver or a waiter? You can say that sex is different from playing the usual sort of game or working the usual sort of job. That's not answering the question though.
We use people all the time. We meet people briefly, do something with them, and don't want to get to know them further. Casual sex or paid-for sex could be seen as harmful to women, but that is at the very least an overgeneralisation of women. Not all women are the same. Treating all people in a group as if they are all the same is one aspect of objectification, according to philosopher Martha Nussbaum.
The weird thing is that Emma Thompson has had a lot to say about prostitution over the years. She has signed up to Princess Eugenie's organisation to fight trafficking. We all want to fight trafficking, if by that we mean coercion. However, most prostitution does not involve coercion. Some other forms of work also sometimes involve coercion.
Other organisations that have associated with Princess Eugenie's crusade are the International Justice Mission, who say they want to release the captives. However, their hidden agenda is to try to stamp out prostitution anywhere in the world, no matter how many women they harm. They are an American Evangelical Christian organisation.
In the past they have called for and participated in brothel raids in countries such as Cambodia and Thailand. Women are arrested and kept against their will. Most of these women have not been coerced, and so their first experience of imprisonment is in a so-called rescue centre.
