1NC
OFF
The aff’s creation of a legalized prostitution market trades-off with police
monitoring efforts into unregulated prostitution markets---they’re key to prevent
sex trafficking
Wim Huisman & Edward R. Kleemans 14, PhD & Chair of Professor of Criminology at VU University Amsterdam AND
PhD, Full Professor at the VU School of Criminology, Faculty of Law, VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands, “The challenges
of fighting sex trafficking in the legalized prostitution market of the Netherlands,” Crime, Law and Social Change: An Interdisciplinary
Journal, Springer
*Note---text redacted by Joseph Lenart III. MN Debate does not endorse the gendered language of this article.
In three ways, the legalization and regulation of the prostitution sector can influence the capacity of the police (in terms of
manpower) to fight sex trafficking: first, when legalization leads to an increase in the numbers of trafficked women working in the
regulated sector; second, when monitoring the regulated sector drains capacity from investigating the unregulated sector; and, third,
when monitoring drains the capacity for investigating cases of human trafficking. Evaluation studies show that the police play a
pivotal role in monitoring the licensed sector and in carrying out inspections [1]. The downside of these efforts is that there is
insufficient police capacity left to play a
major monitoring and investigative role with regard to punishable forms of
operation outside the licensed sector . Thus, the assumption that the new policy would allow the police more capacity to
fight human trafficking has not come to fruition. What is more, the feeling in the prostitution sector is that licensed businesses are
inspected more often than non-licensed businesses, a situation which undermines the willingness of operators of licensed
businesses to adhere to the rules and complicates the efforts to combat human trafficking [1]. Internal evaluations made by
a lot of effort to monitor
the unregulated parts of the business [26, 27]. The monitoring of the unregulated sector was described as ‘inefficient’ and
‘ineffective’ [26: 101]. Many police forces limit themselves to incidental and reactive inspections. The internal evaluations also
the police also show that the licensed prostitution sector is not being fully monitored and that it takes
show that the money spent on police efforts to support local authorities is not always reimbursed. In some regional police forces,
local authorities financed extra police-officers. This can mean, however, that any increase in the police capacity to fight sex
trafficking becomes dependent on the priority that local municipalities put on it.
Turns the case---pimps will fight regulation to maintain high profit margins from
trafficking---that cements a permanent illicit market that o/w the aff’s benefits
Sheila Jeffreys 10, Professor in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, “’Brothels without
Walls’: the Escort Sector as a Problem for the Legalization of Prostitution,” Social Politics, 2010, Oxford Journals
Legalization does not discourage crime groups from involvement in prostitution because of the considerable profits they can
make from this industry. Crime groups are involved in the trafficking of women in particular and this aspect of the prostitution
industry is causing the governments of the Netherlands and Germany to rethink their prostitution polices as these problems become
more acute. The United Nations Organization on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) database in 2006 showed that the Netherlands and
Germany are in the top ten countries that score very highly as destination countries, which are, in alphabetical order: Belgium,
Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Thailand, Turkey, and the United States. The majority of women trafficked
to the Netherlands are from central and Eastern Europe, but also from Nigeria, China, and Sierra Leone (Department of State 2008).
The percentage of number of women from China is rising. This is the case in Australia too, where until recently the overwhelming
majority of trafficked women came from Thailand, but are now being replaced by Chinese and Korean women (Fergus 2005).
Since Germany embarked upon legalization, concern about trafficking in that country has become more acute. The large majority of
the estimated 300,000–400,000 prostituted women come from outside Germany (Day and Ward (eds) 2004). According to the
International Organization for Migration, Russian women are the third largest group of victims of trafficking into Germany, after
Lithuanian and Ukrainian women (Hughes 2002). One-third of the German police interviewed considered that the legalization of
pimping in the 2002 Prostitution Act had made it harder for the police to monitor brothels and inspect them to deter
trafficking, under age prostitution, and other forms of prostitution-related crime (Federal Ministry of Family Affairs 2007).
In respect of trafficking, prostitution can never resemble other legal industries. The profits to be gained from the industry and ease
with which vulnerable groups of women can be exploited, make trafficking an integral part of the supply chain in
a way which is not the case with other occupations. The ease of using trafficked women may act as a deterrent to pimps from
going legal. The fact that many of those involved in running the industry see no advantage, but rather a loss of revenue, is another
insurmountable problem for legalizing regimes. In the Netherlands, “compliance” is a problem precisely because of the costs
involved in joining the legal brothel sector (Daalder 2007). In Queensland, the PLA and the Crime Commission are faced with an
acute dilemma. Precisely, the provisions in the legislation designed to keep organized crime and corruption out of the industry
deter pimps and procurers from wishing to enter the legal industry . The reasons suggested are several.
One is that the probity checks are too intrusive, which is problematic since any alleviation of their thoroughness would negate the
aims of the legislation. Another is the expense. The license application process can cost up to 20,000$ and licensees are then likely
to have to pay fees to renew licenses each year, and to pay tax and for other compliance expenses which the illegal industry does
not face.
OFF
Focus on sex work and identity politics fails to effect change and fractures class
resistance – only Marxist focus solves
Smith 8 [Sharon, American socialist writer and activist, “The politics of identity”, International Socialist Review, Issue 57,
January-February, http://www.isreview.org/issues/57/feat-identity.shtml]
FIGHTING AGAINST oppression is an urgent issue in U.S. society today. Racism, sexism, and homophobia have all reached appalling levels—that seem only to rise with each
passing year. White students in Jena hang nooses, and Black students end up in prison.1 Squads of Minutemen vigilantes patrol the Mexican border with impunity, for the sole
purpose of terrorizing migrant communities.2 College campuses across the U.S. commemorate “Islamo-fascism awareness week” as if it were just another legitimate student
activity.3 Fred Phelps and his Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church congregation regularly picket outside funerals of gay soldiers killed in Iraq, proclaiming that they belong in
hell.4 To be sure, the problem extends way beyond the extremist fringe. Media pundits barely comment on the outrages described above, while mainstream discourse regularly
heaps contempt on those attempting to fight against oppression—including young women organizing against date rape (which is assumed to be a figment of their feminismcharged imaginations) and immigrants demanding basic legal rights (as if they are out to steal jobs from native-born workers). If the “playing field is level,” as so many in the
mainstream media assume, those who object must therefore be seeking an unfair advantage. It is no wonder, therefore, that so many people who experience oppression feel so
Only a movement aimed at fighting oppression in all its forms can
challenge the victim-blaming ideology that prevails today. The pressing need for such a movement is acknowledged here. Indeed, this article is
embattled in the current political climate.
intended to address the issue of how to most effectively fight back, since different political strategies lead to quite different conclusions about the kind of movement that is
needed to challenge oppression. The bulk of this article is a critique of the theory behind what is known in academic and left circles as “identity politics”—the idea that only those
that Marxism
provides the theoretical tools for ending oppression, while identity politics does not. It is
important to make a clear distinction between personal identity and identity politics , since the two are often
experiencing a particular form of oppression can either define it or fight against it—counterposing to it a Marxist analysis. My central premise is
used interchangeably. But there is a substantial difference between these two concepts. Possessing a personal “identity,” or awareness of oneself as a member of an
oppressed group—and the anger associated with that awareness—is a legitimate response to experiencing oppression. Racism is, of course, experienced on a very personal
level—whether it takes the form of institutional discrimination (racist hiring practices, police brutality) or social interaction (racist jokes, violence from an acknowledged racist).
Personal experience, furthermore, helps to shape one’s political awareness of oppression. It makes perfect sense
that experiencing sexism on a personal level precedes most women’s political consciousness of sexism as a form of oppression that degrades all women. Indeed, no white
person can ever understand what it is like to experience racism. No straight person can understand what it is like to experience homophobia. And even among people who are
oppressed by racism, every type of experience is different. A Black person and a Native American person, for example, experience racism differently—as does a person from
personal experience is quite
separate from the realm of politics, which involves strategies to affect society as a whole.
Personal identity only becomes political when it moves beyond the realm of life experience and becomes a strategy for
fighting against oppression. Every set of politics is based upon a theory—in this case, an analysis of the root causes of oppression. So the analysis of
oppression informs the politics of social movements against oppression. There are clear differences in strategy between Marxism
and the theory of identity politics, which will be examined below. It is first necessary, however, to make clear which facts are not in dispute. Both theories are in
Mexico versus a person from Puerto Rico. A gay man and a lesbian have quite different experiences. At the same time,
agreement that all oppression is based on genuine inequality. Men and women are not treated as equals in society. Whites and African Americans are not treated at all equally.
Oppression is not a matter of perception, but of concrete, material reality. Nor is there any doubt that struggles against
oppression should be led by the oppressed themselves—women themselves can and will lead the struggle for women’s liberation. This has always been the case historically,
from the struggle for women’s suffrage to the fight for abortion rights. The same dynamic is true of the struggle for Black liberation. Former slaves and other African Americans
led the battle for Reconstruction aimed at transforming Southern plantation society in the decades following the Civil War. African Americans led the mass civil rights movement
that finally struck down Southern segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. During the late 1960s, the powerful civil rights movement inspired the rise of movements for women’s and
gay liberation, while the struggle for Black Power emerged from the civil rights movement itself. All of these new movements were, in turn, inspired by the armed struggle of the
North Vietnamese resistance against the forces of U.S. imperialism. The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) chose its name as a formal identification with the National Liberation Front
(NLF)—the Vietnamese resistance. But it is also the case that women and African Americans were not alone in fighting against their oppression—thousands of men took part in
the women’s movement in the 1960s, and many thousands of whites actively supported the civil rights movement. The gay liberation movement was the first of its kind—
erupting in the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969, when New York City police raided a gay bar and touched off a riot among gays that lasted for three days. Although the gay
movement won little support in its early stages, movement leaders soon convinced the Black Panther Party to formally endorse gay rights. In 1970, Black Panther leader Huey
Newton announced his solidarity with the gay movement: “homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in this society. Maybe they might be the most oppressed
people in the society,”5 As the experience of the 1960s shows, it is not necessary to personally experience a form of oppression to become committed to opposing it. Yet the
central premise of the theory of identity politics is based on precisely the opposite conclusion: Only those who actually experience a particular form of oppression are capable of
fighting against it. Everyone else is considered to be part of the problem and cannot become part of the solution by joining the fight against oppression. The underlying
assumption is that all men benefit from women’s oppression, all straight people benefit from the oppression of the LGBT6 community, and all whites benefit from racism. The flip
side of this assumption, of course, is the idea that each group that faces a particular form of oppression—racism, sexism, or homophobia—is united in its interest in ending it.
The theory of identity politics locates the root of oppression not with a capitalist power structure but with a “white male power structure.” The existence of a white male power
structure seems like basic common sense since, with rare exceptions, white men hold the reigns of the biggest corporations and the highest government posts. That is true, but
it only tells half the story. It would be highly inaccurate to assume that all oppressed people are powerless in U.S. society today. Since the movements of the 1960s and 1970s,
a significant number of women, gays, Blacks, and other racially oppressed minorities have managed to climb up the corporate and political ladder and become absorbed into
various power structures. These individuals have achieved a fair amount of power in their own right. In the upcoming 2008 presidential election, the two Democratic Party
frontrunners are a woman (Hillary Rodham Clinton) and an African American (Barack Obama). The speaker of the House of Representatives is a woman, Nancy Pelosi. The
Whose
interests have these women, gays, and African Americans represented once they have achieved
some power within the system? The answer is fairly plain to see—not necessarily by believing their rhetoric, but by judging their actions. Rather than
fighting against the racist, sexist, and homophobic policies of the system, they become part of
enforcing them . For example, when the city of San Francisco began handing out same-sex marriage licenses in 2005, did openly gay Barney Frank embrace it as
U.S. secretary of state is a Black woman, Condoleezza Rice. One of the most powerful politicians in Washington is openly gay Congressman Barney Frank.
a step forward for civil rights? On the contrary, Frank called a press conference to attack gay marriage as “divisive.”7 Has Senator Barack Obama rushed forward to defend the
six Black youths victimized by racists in Jena, Louisiana? The candidate did not make an appearance at the historic civil rights protest in Jena on September 20, 2007.8 Yet
Obama has devoted ample time on his recent speaking circuit to exhort Black men to become better fathers, as he did in June 2005 addressing Black worshippers at Chicago’s
Christ Universal Temple: “There are a lot of folks, a lot of brothers, walking around, and they look like men...they might even have sired a child.... But it’s not clear to me that
they’re full-grown men.”9 If a white politician had delivered a similar lecture, it would have immediately—and accurately—been denounced as utterly racist. Nor does
Condoleezza Rice hesitate to perform her duty as she wanders the globe in her role as U.S. imperialism’s key international enforcer—traveling to the Middle East, for example,
to enforce Israel’s racist apartheid policies against its occupied Palestinian population. Iranian people will be no better off if and when the U.S. decides to bomb them if Clinton
or Obama occupy the White House than Iraqi people were when the Bush administration decided to invade their country. What all of these examples show is that there is no
such thing as a common, fundamental interest shared by all people who face the same form of oppression. Oppression isn’t caused
by the race, gender, or sexuality of particular individuals who run the system, but is generated by the very system itself—no matter who’s
running it. It goes without saying that we must confront incidents of sexism, racism, and homophobia whenever they occur. But that alone is not going to change the racist,
The entire element of social class is missing from the theory of
identity politics. The same analysis that assumes Barack Obama shares a fundamental interest with all African Americans in ending racism also places all straight
sexist, and homophobic character that dominates the entire system.
white men in the enemy camp, whatever their social class. Yet, the class divide has rarely been more obvious than in the United States today, where income and class
inequality is higher than at any time since 1929, immediately before the onset of the Great Depression.10 It is plain to see that the rich obtain their enormous wealth at the
expense of those who work for them to produce their profits, a process known as exploitation in Marxist parlance. Class inequality is not a side issue, but rather the main
byproduct of exploitation, the driving force of the capitalist system. Class inequality is currently worsening by the minute, as the economy edges its way toward a deep
recession. Yet the theory of identity politics barely acknowledges the importance of class inequality, which is usually reduced to a label known as “classism”—a problem of
snobbery, or personal attitude. This, again, should be confronted when it occurs, but such confrontations do not change the system that relies upon class exploitation. In
contrast to the inconsistencies and contradictions of identity politics, a class analysis bases itself on materialism—a concrete and objective measure of systemic benefits derived
from racism, sexism, and homophobia. In short, the ruling class has an objective interest in upholding the capitalist system, which is based upon both oppression and
the special oppression of women, Blacks, Latinos,
other racially oppressed populations, and the LGBT community actually serves to increase the level
of exploitation and oppression of the working class as a whole. The ruling class has always relied upon a “divide and
exploitation, while the working class has an objective interest in overthrowing it. For
conquer” strategy to maintain its rule, aimed at keeping all the exploited and oppressed fighting against each other instead of uniting and fighting against their real enemy. At the
most basic material level, no one group of workers ever benefits from particular forms of oppression. The historic role of racism in the U.S. provides perhaps the clearest
example. The prevailing view is that if Black workers get a smaller piece of the pie, then white workers get a bigger piece of it. In fact, the opposite is true. In the South, where
racism and segregation have traditionally been the strongest, white workers have historically earned lower wages than Black workers in the North.11 The same dynamic holds
true for men and women workers. When lower paid women workers enter an occupation, such as clerical work, in large numbers the wages in that occupation tend to fall. The
dynamic is straightforward: Whenever capitalists can force a higher paid group of workers to compete with a lower paid group, wages tend to drop. The same dynamic also
holds for the global capitalist system. When U.S. capitalists force their workers into competition with workers in the poorest countries, U.S. workers’ wages do not rise; they fall.
And that is precisely why U.S. workers’ wages have been falling in recent years. The only beneficiaries are capitalists, who earn bigger profits, while ensuring the survival of the
all working-class people suffer from some forms of oppression
rule of the profit system. It is also important to recognize that
.
Workers pay much higher proportions of their incomes in taxes than rich people and have far less leisure time; working-class schools are underfunded and overcrowded, poorer
neighborhoods are more run-down, and the streets have more potholes. Perhaps most significantly, prevailing ideology regards workers as generally too stupid to run society—
assuming this is better left to the “experts,” dooming the vast majority of workers to a lifetime of alienated labor. So oppression is something that even most white male workers
suffer to some degree. If one were to compare the self-confidence of the vast majority of white male workers to that of the arrogant Hillary Clinton or Condoleezza Rice, it would
be clear that something more than personal politics is a determining factor in oppression. The problem is systemic . The point here is not at all
to trivialize racism, sexism, or homophobia—but to understand that the entire working class faces oppression and has an objective interest in ending it. To be sure, workers
don’t always realize this. Male workers can behave in an utterly sexist manner; white workers—male and female—can embrace racism; and straight workers—Black, white, and
Latino—can be completely homophobic. But such behaviors are subjective—they vary from individual to individual and, unlike objective interests that remain the same,
subjective factors change according to changing circumstances. Most important among these is the Marxist concept of “false consciousness.” The definition of false
consciousness is straightforward: whenever workers accept ruling-class ideologies, including racism, sexism, and homophobia, they are acting against their own class
interests—precisely because these ideas keep workers fighting against each other. False consciousness is not unique to white, male workers . One of the
most obvious examples of false consciousness has occurred in recent years, as large numbers of African Americans oppose immigrant rights using many of the same
xenophobic arguments as anti-immigrant racists. Similarly, many Puerto Rican people exhibit prejudice against Mexican people (which is racist). Many women call each other
“sluts” (which is sexist). These are all examples of false consciousness. Whenever the levels of racism, sexism, and homophobia rise, the working class as a whole loses out.
Workers do not unite to fight back, and living standards drop. Conversely, when workers move into struggle against the system in large numbers, false consciousness is
challenged by the need for class unity, and class-consciousness rises—affecting mass consciousness as a whole. This process was demonstrated at the highest point of class
struggle in the 1930s and again at the height of the movements of the 1960s. And it will be demonstrated again with the next rise in mass struggle. As Marx argued in the
Communist Manifesto, “This organization of proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the
workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier.”12 Put differently, Marx distinguished between the working class “in itself,” which holds objective—but
unrealized—revolutionary potential, and a working class “for itself,” which acts in its own class interests. The difference lies between the objective potential and the subjective
identity politics does not acknowledge the potential for mass
consciousness to change. For this reason, the theory of identity politics can only be accepted at the highest level of abstraction. Ernesto Laclau and
organization needed to realize that potential.But
Chantal Mouffe, the originators of identity politics, do not seem the least bit concerned with any practical application of the theory laid out in their book, Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Laclau and Mouffe emerged from the postmodern wing of academia that flourished in the 1980s, proposing a set of theories
aiming to prove that society exists not as a unified and coherent social and economic system, but rather in a range of subjective relationships. Laclau and Mouffe posit their
theory as a step forward from Marxism. In reality, their theory is not post-Marxist at all. It is anti-Marxist. These two academics set out to prove that Marx was wrong about the
revolutionary potential of the working class—that is, its objective interest in and power to transform the system. This antagonism to Marx makes sense, because if Marx is
right—if the working class is capable of building a united movement against all forms of exploitation and oppression—then their theory goes out the window. There are two key
components to Laclau and Mouffe’s theory, both of which become problematic the moment the theory is put into practice. The first component is their definition of oppression. In
contrast to Marx—who defined oppression and exploitation as objective and therefore unchanging, but consciousness as subjective and therefore ever-changing—Laclau and
Mouffe regard oppression itself as entirely subjective. This is a fundamental, not semantic, difference. Since oppression is an entirely subjective matter, according to Laclau and
Mouffe, anyone who believes that they are oppressed is therefore oppressed. At its worst, that would include a white male who feels he has been discriminated against when
his application is turned down for a law school that practices affirmative action. Conversely, even the most clear-cut instances of systematic brutality are not necessarily
oppression. Laclau and Mouffe argue that even serfdom and slavery do not necessarily represent relationships of oppression, unless the serfs or the slaves themselves
“articulate” that oppression.13 Laclau and Mouffe describe society as made up of a whole range of autonomous, free-floating antagonisms and oppressions, none more
important than any other—each is a separate sphere of “struggle.”14 But this concept falls apart once it is removed from the world of abstraction and applied to the real world.
Separate struggles do not neatly correspond to separate forms of oppression. Forms of oppressions overlap, so that many people are both Black and female, or both lesbian
If every struggle must be fought separately, this can only lead to greater and greater
fragmentation and eventually to disintegration, even within groups organized around a single form of oppression. A Black lesbian, for example, faces
and Latino.
an obvious dilemma: If all men are enemies of women, all whites are enemies of Blacks, and all straights are enemies of gays, then allies must be precious few. In the real
world, choices have to be made. If Laclau and Mouffe are correct, and the main divisions in society exist between those who face a particular form of oppression and those who
politics of identity is extremely pessimistic,
implying not just a rejection of the potential to build a broad united movement against all forms of exploitation and oppression,
but also a very deep pessimism about the possibility for building solidarity even among people
who face different forms of oppression. The only organizational strategy identity politics offers is for different groups of oppressed people to each
don’t, then the likelihood of ever actually ending oppression is just about nil. At its heart, the
fight their own separate battles against their own separate enemies. The second key problem with Laclau and Mouffe flows from the concept of autonomy that is so central to
their theory. Most importantly from a theoretical standpoint, Laclau and Mouffe go to great lengths to refute the Marxist analysis of the state, or the government. Marxist theory is
based upon an understanding that the government is not a neutral body, but serves to represent the interests of the class in power—which in the case of capitalism is the
capitalist class. This should not be too hard to imagine in the era of George W. Bush, when the capitalist class has brazenly flaunted its wealth and power. But Laclau and
Mouffe insist that the state is neutral and autonomous. Even the different branches of government are autonomous from each other. Apparently, the Senate and the House of
Representatives have no real relationship, and the White House is similarly autonomous. If that is the case, then the stranglehold of neoconservatives and the Christian Right
over U.S. politics since 9/11 must have been a figment of liberals’ imaginations. Thus, there is a serious flaw in this logic. Oppression is built into the capitalist system itself, and
the state is one of the key ways in which oppression is enforced—through laws that discriminate and the police who serve and protect some people while harassing and
brutalizing other groups of people. But the theory of autonomy leads to another theoretical problem as well: every separate struggle warrants equal importance, no matter how
many people are involved on either side, and whether or not demands are being made against the state or other institutions. Indeed, Laclau and Mouffe carry this logic a critical
step further, noting that “struggle” need not involve more than one person. It can simply denote a matter of achieving “increasingly affirmed individualism.”15 The personal
struggle in this process substitutes for political struggle, leaving the system that maintains and enforces oppression intact. Like Laclau and Mouffe, theorists who advocate the
most extreme forms of identity politics do not actually aim to build a movement, large or small. They prefer small groups of the enlightened few, who remain content in their
Marxism offers a way forward for those interested in ending oppression in the
real world. As Marx remarked of his generation of smug academics, “The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to
superiority to the “ignorant masses.”
change it.”16 The caricature that often passes for a critique of Marxism today assumes that a united working-class movement of all the oppressed and exploited requires
subordinating the fight against oppression to the fight against exploitation. But this caricature has been proven wrong historically. Both exploitation and oppression are rooted in
capitalism. Exploitation is the method by which the ruling class robs workers of the wealth they produce; various forms of oppression play a primary role in maintaining the rule
of a tiny minority over the vast majority. In each case, the enemy is one and the same. As the Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin, put it, the Marxist vision of revolution is a “festival
of the oppressed and exploited.” But he also added: “Working class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all
cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected.”17 The argument here is straightforward: The lessons of building a united movement
against capitalism train workers to act in solidarity with all those who are oppressed and exploited by capitalism. The battle for class-consciousness is a battle over ideas, but it
is one that must be fought out in the context of struggle, not the musings of self-important academics.
Racism is a byproduct of the violent history of capital accumulationunderstanding the historical basis is essential to effective anti-racist politics
Tom Keefer, member of Facing Reality, in New Socialist Magazine, January 2003.
http://www.newsocialist.org/magazine/39/article03.html ableism-edited
The brutality and viciousness of capitalism is well known to the oppressed and exploited of this world. Billions of people throughout the world spend their lives incessantly toiling
to enrich the already wealthy, while throughout history any serious attempts to build alternatives to capitalism have been met with bombings, invasions, and blockades by
imperialist nation states. Although the modern day ideologues of the mass media and of institutions such as the World Bank and IMF never cease to inveigh against scattered
acts of violence perpetrated against their system, they always neglect to mention that the capitalist system they lord over was called into existence and has only been able to
this capitalist system, which we can only hope is now
was just as rapacious and vicious in its youth as it is now. The "rosy dawn" of
capitalist production was inaugurated by the process of slavery and genocide in the western
hemisphere, and this "primitive accumulation of capital" resulted in the largest systematic murder of human beings ever seen. However, the rulers of
society have found that naked force is often most economically used in conjunction with
ideologies of domination and control which provide a legitimizing explanation for the oppressive
nature of society. Racism is such a construct and it came into being as a social relation which condoned and secured the initial genocidal
maintain itself by the sustained application of systematic violence. It should come as no surprise that
reaching the era of its final demise,
processes of capitalist accumulation--the founding stones of contemporary bourgeois society. While it is widely accepted that the embryonic capitalist class came to power in
the great bourgeois revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, what is comparatively less well known is the crucial role that chattel slavery and the plunder of the "New World"
played in calling this class into being and providing the "primitive accumulation of capital" necessary to launch and sustain industrialization in Europe. The accidental "discovery"
of the Western Hemisphere by the mass murderer Christopher Columbus in 1492 changed everything for the rival economic and political interests of the European states. The
looting and pillaging of the "New World" destabilized the European social order, as Spain raised huge armies and built armadas with the unending streams of gold and silver
coming from the "New World", the spending of which devalued the currency reserves of its rivals. The only way Portugal, England, Holland, and France could stay ahead in the
In addition to the extraction of precious minerals and
the looting and pillaging of indigenous societies, European merchant-adventurers realized that
substantial profits could also be made through the production of cash crops on the fertile lands
surrounding the Caribbean sea. The only problem was that as the indigenous population either
fled from enslavement or perished from the diseases and deprivations of the Europeans, there was no one left to raise
the sugar, tobacco, cotton, indigo, and other tropical cash crops that were so profitable. A system of waged labour
would not work for the simple reason that with plentiful land and easy means of subsistence
surrounding them, colonists would naturally prefer small scale homesteading instead of labouring
for their masters. As the planter Emanuel Downing of Massachusetts put it in 1645: "I do not see how we can thrive until we get a stock of slaves sufficient to do all
regional power games of Europe was to embark on their own colonial ventures.
our business, for our children's children will hardly see this great continent filled with people so that our servants will still desire freedom to plant for themselves, and not stay but
Capitalistic social relations have always been based on compulsion, and they require
as a precondition that workers possess nothing but their capacity to labour . The would-be developers of the wealth
for very great wages."
of the "New World" thus turned to forced labour in complete contradiction to all the theories of bourgeois economists because unfree labour was the only kind of labour
Although slavery is now , and has almost always been equated with unfree Black
labour, it was not always, or even predominantly so. Capitalists looked first to their own societies in
order to find the population to labour in servitude on the large-scale plantations necessary for
tropical cash crop production. Eric Williams, in his groundbreaking work Capitalism and Slavery, noted that in the early stages of colonialism
" white slavery was the historic base upon which Negro [sic] slavery was constructed." Between
1607 and 1783 over a quarter million "white" indentured servants arrived in the British colonies
alone where they were set to work in the agricultural and industrial processes of the time. The
shipping companies, ports, and trading routes established for the transport of the poor,
"criminal", and lumpen elements of European society were to form the [core] backbone of the future
slave trade of Africans. Slavery became an exclusively Black institution due to the dynamics of
class struggle as repeated multi-ethnic rebellions of African slaves and indentured European
servants led the slaveholders to seek strategies to divide and conquer. The fact that an African
slave could be purchased for life with the same amount of money that it would cost to buy an
indentured servant for 10 years, and that the African's skin color would function as an instrument
of social control by making it easier to track down runaway slaves in a land where all whites were free wage labourers
applicable to the concrete situation in the Americas.
provided further incentives for this system of racial classification. In the colonies
where there was an insufficient free white population to provide a counterbalance to potential
slave insurgencies, such as on the Caribbean islands, an elaborate hierarchy of racial privilege
was built up, with the lighter skinned "mulattos" admitted to the ranks of free men where they
often owned slaves themselves. The concept of a "white race" never really existed before the
economic systems of early capitalism made it a necessary social construct to aid in the
repression of enslaved Africans . Xenophobia and hostility towards those who were different than
one's own immediate family, clan, or tribe were certainly evident, and discrimination based on
religious status was also widespread but the development of modern " scientific" racism with its
view that there are physically distinct " races " within humanity, with distinct attributes and
characteristics is peculiar to the conquest of the Americas , the rise of slavery, and the
imperialist domination of the entire world. Racism provided a convenient way to explain the
subordinate position of Africans and other victims of Euro-colonialism, while at the same time providing an
apparatus upon which to structure the granting of special privileges to sectors of the working
class admitted as members of the "white race". As David McNally has noted, one of the key component of modern racism was its utility in
resolving the contradiction as to how the modern European societies in which the bourgeoisie
had come to power through promising "freedom" and "equality" were so reliant on slave labour
and murderous, yet highly profitable colonial adventures. The development of a concept like racism
allowed whole sections of the world's population to be "excommunicated" from humankind, and
then be murdered or worked to death with a clear conscience for the profit of the capitalist class .
and all Black people slaves,
To get a sense of the scale of slavery and its economic importance, and thus an understanding of the material incentives for the creation of ideological constructs such as
"race", a few statistics regarding the English slave trade from Eric Williams' book Capitalism and Slavery help to put things in context. The Royal African Company, a
monopolistic crown corporation, transported an average of 5 000 slaves a year between 1680 and 1686. When the ability to engage in the free trade of slaves was recognized
as a "fundamental and natural right" of the Englishman, one port city alone, Bristol, shipped 160 950 slaves from 1698-1707. In 1760, 146 slave ships with a capacity for 36 000
slaves sailed from British ports, while in 1771 that number had increased to 190 ships with a capacity for 47 000 slaves. Between 1700 and 1786 over 610 000 slaves were
imported to Jamaica alone, and conservative estimates for the total import of slaves into all British colonies between 1680 and 1786 are put at over two million. All told, many
historians place the total number of Africans displaced by the Atlantic slave trade as being between twelve and thirty million people--a massive historical event and forced
migration of unprecedented proportions. These large numbers of slaves and the success of the slave trade as jump starter for capitalist industrialization came from what has
been called the "triangular trade"--an intensely profitable economic relationship which built up European industry while systematically deforming and underdeveloping the other
economic regions involved. The Europeans would produce manufactured goods that would then be traded to ruling elites in the various African kingdoms. They in turn would
use the firearms and trading goods of the Europeans to enrich themselves by capturing members of rival tribes, or the less fortunate of their own society, to sell them as slaves
to the European merchants who would fill their now empty ships with slaves destined to work in the colonial plantations. On the plantations, the slaves would toil to produce
expensive cash crops that could not be grown in Europe. These raw materials were then refined and sold at fantastic profit in Europe. In 1697, the tiny island of Barbados with
its 166 square miles, was worth more to British capitalism than New England, New York, and Pennsylvania combined, while by 1798, the income accruing to the British from the
West Indian plantations alone was four million pounds a year, as opposed to one million pounds from the whole rest of the world. Capitalist economists of the day recognized
the super profitability of slavery by noting the ease of making 100% profit on the trade, and by noting that one African slave was as profitable as seven workers in the mainland.
Even more importantly, the profits of the slave trade were plowed back into further economic growth. Capital from the slave trade financed James Watt and the invention and
What an
analysis of the origins of modern capitalism shows is just how far the capitalist class will go to make a
profit. The development of a pernicious racist ideology, spread to justify the uprooting and
enslavement of millions of people to transport them across the world to fill a land whose
indigenous population was massacred or worked to death, represents the beginnings of the
system that George W. Bush defends as "our way of life". For revolutionaries today who seek to understand and
transform capitalism and the racism encoded into its very being, it is essential to understand how
and why these systems of domination and exploitation came into being before we can hope to
successfully overthrow them.
production of the steam engine, while the shipping, insurance, banking, mining, and textile industries were all thoroughly integrated into the slave trade.
The oppression of women and relegation of reproduction to the private sphere
are not ahistorical products of sexism or patriarchy, but historical productions of the
emergence of a classed society founded on the logic of surplus accumulation.
This shift from necessity to surplus solidified the pre-existing division of labor based on
need and then sexed it to justify inequality
Cloud (Prof. Comm at UT) 03
[Dana, “Marxism and Oppression”, Talk for Regional Socialist Conference, April 19, 2003, p. online]
In order to challenge oppression, it is important to know where it comes from .
Historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists tell us that in pre-class societies such as
hunter-gatherer societies, racism and sexism were unheard of. Because homosexuality was not an
identifiable category of such societies, discrimination on that basis did not occur either. In fact, it is
clear that racism, sexism, and homophobia have arisen in particular kinds of societies, namely
class societies. Women’s oppression originated in the first class societies, while racism came into prominence in the early periods of capitalism
when colonialism and slavery drove the economic system. The prohibition against gays and lesbians is a relatively modern phenomenon. But what all forms of
They were created in the interest
of ruling classes in society and continue to benefit the people at the top of society, while
dividing and conquering the rest of us so as to weaken the common fight against the
oppressors. The work of Marx’s collaborator Friederich Engels onThe Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State in some respects reflects
oppression have in common is that they did not always exist and are not endemic to human nature.
the Victorian times in which in was written. Engels moralizes about women’s sexuality and doesn’t even include gay and lesbian liberation in his discussion of
it was in
the first settled agricultural societies that women became an oppressed class. In
societies where for the first time people could accumulate a surplus of food and other
resources, it was possible for some people to hoard wealth and control its distribution. The
the oppressive family. However, anthropologists like the feminist Rayna Reiter have confirmed his most important and central argument that
first governments or state structures formed to legitimate an emerging ruling class. As settled communities grew in size and became more complex social
as the surplus grew, the distribution of wealth became unequal—
and a small number of men rose above the rest of the population in wealth and power. In the
previous hunter-gatherer societies, there had been a sexual division of labor, but one
without a hierarchy of value. There was no strict demarcation between the reproductive
and productive spheres. All of that changed with the development of private property in more settled
communities. The earlier division of labor in which men did the heavier work, hunting, and animal agriculture, became a
system of differential control over resource distribution. The new system required more field
workers and sought to maximize women’s reproductive potential. Production shifted
away from the household over time and women became associated with the reproductive
role, losi
organizations, and, most importantly,
ng control over the production and distribution of the necessities of life. It was not a
matter of male sexism, but of economic priorities of a developing class system. This is
why Engels identifies women’s oppression as the first form of systematic class
oppression in the world. Marxists since Engels have not dismissed the oppression of women
as secondary to other kinds of oppression and exploitation. To the contrary, women’s oppression
has a primary place in Marxist analysis and is a key issue that socialists organize around
today. From this history we know that sexism did not always exist, and that men do not
have an inherent interest in oppressing women as domestic servants or sexual slaves. Instead,
women’s oppression always has served a class hierarchy in society. In our society divided
by sexism, ideas about women’s nature as domestic caretakers or irrational sexual beings justify paying women
lower wages compared to men, so that employers can pit workers against one another in
competition for the same work. Most women have always had to work outside the home to support their families. Today, women
around the world are exploited in sweatshops where their status as women allows bosses to pay them very little, driving down the wages of both men and
capitalist society relies on ideas about women to justify not providing
very much in the way of social services that would help provide health care, family leave, unemployment insurance, access to
primary and higher education, and so forth—all because these things are supposed to happen in the private
family, where women are responsible. This lack of social support results in a lower quality of life for many men as well as women. Finally,
contemporary ideologies that pit men against women encourage us to fight each other
rather than organizing together.
women. At the same time,
Vote Negative to validate and adopt the method of structural/historical criticism
that is the 1NC.
one must understand the existing social totality before one can act on it—
grounding the sites of political contestation or knowledge outside of labor and
surplus value merely serve to humynize capital and prevent a transition to a
society beyond oppression
Tumino (Prof. English @ Pitt) 01
[Stephen, “What is Orthodox Marxism and Why it Matters Now More than Ever”, Red Critiqu]
Any effective
political theory will have to do at least two things: it will have to offer an
integrated understanding of social practices and, based on such an interrelated
knowledge, offer a guideline for praxis. My main argument here is that among all
contesting social theories now, only Orthodox Marxism has been able to produce an
integrated knowledge of the existing social totality and provide lines of praxis that will
lead to building a society free from necessity. But first I must clarify what I mean by Orthodox Marxism. Like all other modes
and forms of political theory, the very theoretical identity of Orthodox Marxism is itself contested—not just from non-and anti-Marxists who question the very
"real" (by which they mean the "practical" as under free-market criteria) existence of any kind of Marxism now but, perhaps more tellingly, from within the
Marxist tradition itself. I will, therefore, first say what I regard to be the distinguishing marks of Orthodox Marxism and then outline a short polemical map of
contestation over Orthodox Marxism within the Marxist theories now. I will end by arguing for its effectivity in bringing about a new society based not on human
that to know contemporary society—and to be able to act on
such knowledge—one has to first of all know what makes the existing social totality. I will
argue that the dominant social totality is based on inequality—not just inequality of power
but inequality of economic access (which then determines access to health care, education, housing, diet,
transportation, . . . ). This systematic inequality cannot be explained by gender, race, sexuality,
disability, ethnicity, or nationality. These are all secondary contradictions and are all
determined by the fundamental contradiction of capitalism which is inscribed in the relation of
capital and labor. All modes of Marxism now explain social inequalities primarily on the basis
of these secondary contradictions and in doing so—and this is my main argument—
legitimate capitalism. Why? Because such arguments authorize capitalism without
gender, race, discrimination and thus accept economic inequality as an integral part of
human societies. They accept a sunny capitalism—a capitalism beyond capitalism. Such
a society, based on cultural equality but economic inequality, has always been the notso-hidden agenda of the bourgeois left—whether it has been called "new left," "postmarxism," or "radical
rights but on freedom from necessity. I will argue
democracy." This is, by the way, the main reason for its popularity in the culture industry—from the academy (Jameson, Harvey, Haraway, Butler,. . . ) to
For all, capitalism is here to stay and the best
that can be done is to make its cruelties more tolerable, more humane. This humanization (not
daily politics (Michael Harrington, Ralph Nader, Jesse Jackson,. . . ) to. . . .
eradication) of capitalism is the sole goal of ALL contemporary lefts (marxism, feminism, anti-racism, queeries, . . . ).
Such an understanding of social inequality is based on the fundamental understanding
that the source of wealth is human knowledge and not human labor. That is, wealth is
produced by the human mind and is thus free from the actual objective conditions that shape the
historical relations of labor and capital. Only Orthodox Marxism recognizes the
historicity of labor and its primacy as the source of all human wealth. In this paper I
argue that any emancipatory theory has to be founded on recognition of the priority of
Marx's labor theory of value and not repeat the technological determinism of corporate
theory ("knowledge work") that masquerades as social theory.
this isn’t a form of footnoting or marginalizing their aff, but a method of
explaining how oppressions intersect
McLaren & D'Anniable 4 - (Peter, Valerie Scatamburlo, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2004, ©
2004 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia April 2004, Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of
‘difference)
The real problem is the internal or dialectical relation that exists between capital and labor within the capitalist production process
itself—a social relation in which capitalism is intransigently rooted. This social relation—essential to the production of abstract
labor—deals with how already existing value is preserved and new value (surplus value) is created (Allman, 2001). If, for example,
the process of actual exploitation and the accumulation of surplus value is to be seen as a state of constant manipulation and as a
realization process of concrete labor in actual labor time—within a given cost-production system and a labor market—we cannot
underestimate the ways in which ‘difference’ (racial as well as gender difference) is encapsulated in the production/reproduction
dialectic of capital. It is this relationship that is mainly responsible for the inequitable and unjust distribution of resources. A
deepened understanding of this phenomenon is essential for understanding the emergence of an acutely polarized labor market and
the fact that disproportionately high percentages of ‘people of color’ are trapped in the lower rungs of domestic and global labor
markets (McLaren & Farahmandpur, 1999). ‘Difference’ in the era of global capitalism is crucial to the workings, movements and
profit levels of multinational corporations but those types of complex relations cannot be mapped out by using truncated postMarxist, culturalist conceptualizations of ‘difference.’ To sever issues of ‘difference’ from class conveniently draws attention away
from the crucially important ways in which ‘people of color’ (and, more specifically, ‘women of color’) provide capital with its
superexploited labor pools—a phenomenon that is on the rise all over the world. Most social relations constitutive of racialized
differences are considerably shaped by the relations of production and there is undoubtedly a racialized and gendered division of
labor whose severity and function vary depending on where one is situated in the capitalist global economy (Meyerson, 2000).6 In
stating this, we need to include an important caveat that differentiates our approach from those invoking the well-worn
race/class/gender triplet which can sound, to the uninitiated, both radical and vaguely Marxian. It is not. Race, class and gender,
while they invariably intersect and interact, are not co-primary. This ‘triplet’ approximates what the ‘philosophers might call a
category mistake.’ On the surface the triplet may be convincing—some people are oppressed because of their race, others as a
result of their gender, yet others because of their class—but this ‘is grossly misleading’ for it is not that ‘some individuals manifest
certain characteristics known as “class” which then results in their oppression; on the contrary, to be a member of a social class just
is to be oppressed’ and in this regard class is ‘a wholly social category’ (Eagleton, 1998, p. 289). Furthermore, even though ‘class’ is
usually invoked as part of the aforementioned and much vaunted triptych, it is usually gutted of its practical, social dimension or
treated solely as a cultural phenomenon—as just another form of ‘difference.’ In these instances, class is transformed from an
economic and, indeed, social category to an exclusively cultural or discursive one or one in which class merely signifies a ‘subject
position.’ Class is therefore cut off from the political economy of capitalism and class power severed from exploitation and a power
structure ‘in which those who control collectively produced resources only do so because of the value generated by those who do
not’ (Hennessy & Ingraham, 1997, p. 2). Such theorizing has had the effect of replacing an historical materialist class analysis with a
cultural analysis of class. As a result, many post-Marxists have also stripped the idea of class of precisely that element which, for
Marx, made it radical—namely its status as a universal form of exploitation whose abolition required (and was also central to) the
abolition of all manifestations of oppression (Marx, 1978, p. 60). With regard to this issue, Kovel (2002) is particularly insightful, for
he explicitly addresses an issue which continues to vex the Left—namely the priority given to different categories of what he calls
‘dominative splitting’—those categories of ‘gender, class, race, ethnic and national exclusion,’ etc. Kovel argues that we need to ask
the question of priority with respect to what? He notes that if we mean priority with respect to time, then the category of gender
would have priority since there are traces of gender oppression in all other forms of oppression. If we were to prioritize in terms of
existential significance, Kovel suggests that we would have to depend upon the immediate historical forces that bear down on
distinct groups of people—he offers examples of Jews in 1930s Germany who suffered from brutal forms of anti-Semitism and
Palestinians today who experience anti-Arab racism under Israeli domination. The question of what has political priority, however,
would depend upon which transformation of relations of oppression are practically more urgent and, while this would certainly
depend upon the preceding categories, it would also depend upon the fashion in which all the forces acting in a concrete situation
are deployed. As to the question of which split sets into motion all of the others, the priority would have to be given to class since
class relations entail the state as an instrument of enforcement and control, and it is the state that shapes and organizes the splits
that appear in human ecosystems. Thus class is both logically and historically distinct from other forms of
exclusion (hence we should not talk of ‘classism’ to go along with ‘sexism’ and ‘racism,’ and ‘species-ism’). This is, first of all,
because class is an essentially (hu)man-made category, without root in even a mystified biology. We cannot imagine a human world
without gender distinctions—although we can imagine a world without domination by gender. But a world without class is
eminently imaginable—indeed, such was the human world for the great majority of our species’ time on earth, during all of which
considerable fuss was made over gender. Historically, the difference arises because ‘ class’ signifies one side of a larger figure
that includes a state apparatus whose conquests and regulations create races and shape gender relations.
Thus there will be no true resolution of racism so long as class society stands, inasmuch as a racially oppressed society implies the
activities of a class-defending state. Nor can gender inequality be enacted away so long as class society, with its state, demands the
super-exploitation of women’s labor. (Kovel, 2002, pp. 123–124) Contrary to what many have claimed, Marxist theory does
not relegate categories of ‘difference’ to the conceptual mausoleum; rather, it has sought to
reanimate these categories by interrogating how they are refracted through material relations of
power and privilege and linked to relations of production . Moreover, it has emphasized and insisted that the
wider political and economic system in which they are embedded needs to be thoroughly understood in all its complexity. Indeed,
Marx made clear how constructions of race and ethnicity ‘are implicated in the circulation process of variable capital.’ To the extent
that ‘gender, race, and ethnicity are all understood as social constructions rather than as essentialist categories’ the effect of
exploring their insertion into the ‘circulation of variable capital (including positioning within the internal heterogeneity of collective
labor and hence, within the division of labor and the class system)’ must be interpreted as a ‘powerful force reconstructing them in
distinctly capitalist ways’ (Harvey, 2000, p. 106). Unlike contemporary narratives which tend to focus on one or another
form of oppression, the irrefragable power of historical materialism resides in its ability to reveal (1)
how forms of oppression based on categories of difference do not possess relative autonomy from
class relations but rather constitute the ways in which oppression is lived/experienced within a class based system ; and (2) how all forms of social oppression function within an overarching capitalist
system. This framework must be further distinguished from those that invoke the terms ‘classism’ and/or ‘class elitism’ to
(ostensibly) foreground the idea that ‘class matters’ (cf. hooks, 2000) since we agree with Gimenez (2001, p. 24) that ‘class is not
simply another ideology legitimating oppression.’ Rather, class denotes ‘exploitative relations between people mediated by their
relations to the means of production.’ To marginalize such a conceptualization of class is to conflate an individual’s objective
location in the intersection of structures of inequality with people’s subjective understandings of who they really are based on their
‘experiences.’ Another caveat. In making such a claim, we are not renouncing the concept of experience. On the contrary, we
believe it is imperative to retain the category of lived experience as a reference point in light of misguided post-Marxist critiques
which imply that all forms of Marxian class analysis are dismissive of subjectivity. We are not, however, advocating the uncritical
fetishization of ‘experience’ that tends to assume that experience somehow guarantees the authenticity of knowledge and which
often treats experience as self-explanatory, transparent, and solely individual. Rather, we advance a framework that
seeks to make connections between seemingly isolated situations and/or particular experiences
by exploring how they are constituted in , and circumscribed by, broader historical and social
circumstances . Experie
ntial understandings, in and of themselves, are suspect because, dialectically, they constitute a unity of opposites—they are at once
unique, specific, and personal, but also thoroughly partial, social, and the products of historical forces about which individuals may
know little or nothing (Gimenez, 2001). In this sense, a rich description of immediate experience in terms of consciousness of
a particular form of oppression (racial or otherwise) can be an appropriate and indispensable point of departure. Such an
understanding, however, can easily become
an isolated ‘ difference’ prison unless it transcends the
immediate perceived point of oppression, confronts the social system in which it is rooted, and expands into a
complex and multifaceted analysis (of forms of social mediation) that is capable of mapping out the
general organization of social relations . That, however, requires a broad class-based approach . Having
a concept of class helps us to see the network of social relations constituting an overall social organization which both implicates
and cuts through racialization/ethnicization and gender … [a] radical political economy [class] perspective emphasizing exploitation,
dispossession and survival takes the issues of … diversity [and difference] beyond questions of conscious identity such as culture
and ideology, or of a paradigm of homogeneity and heterogeneity … or of ethical imperatives with respect to the ‘other’. (Bannerji,
2000, pp. 7, 19) A radical political economy framework is crucial since various ‘culturalist’ perspectives seem to diminish the role of
political economy and class forces in shaping the edifice of ‘the social’—including the shifting constellations and meanings of
‘difference.’ Furthermore, none of the ‘differences’ valorized in culturalist narratives alone, and certainly not ‘race’ by itself can
explain the massive transformation of the structure of capitalism in recent years. We agree with Meyerson (2000) that ‘race’ is not
an adequate explanatory category on its own and that the use of ‘race’ as a descriptive or analytical category has serious
consequences for the way in which social life is presumed to be constituted and organized. The category of ‘race’—the conceptual
framework that the oppressed often employ to interpret their experiences of inequality ‘often clouds the concrete reality of class, and
blurs the actual structure of power and privilege.’ In this regard, ‘race’ is all too often a ‘barrier to understanding the central role of
class in shaping personal and collective outcomes within a capitalist society’ (Marable, 1995, pp. 8, 226). In many ways, the use of
‘race’ has become an analytical trap precisely when it has been employed in antiseptic isolation from the messy terrain of historical
and material relations. This, of course, does not imply that we ignore racism and racial oppression; rather, an analytical shift from
‘race’ to a plural conceptualization of ‘racisms’ and their historical articulations is necessary (cf. McLaren & Torres, 1999). However,
it is important to note that ‘race’ doesn’t explain racism and forms of racial oppression. Those relations are best understood within
the context of class rule, as Bannerji, Kovel, Marable and Meyerson imply—but that compels us to forge a conceptual shift in
theorizing, which entails (among other things) moving beyond the ideology of ‘difference’ and ‘race’ as the dominant prisms for
understanding exploitation and oppression. We are aware of some potential implications for white Marxist criticalists to unwittingly
support racist practices in their criticisms of ‘race-first’ positions articulated in the social sciences. In those instances, white
criticalists wrongly go on ‘high alert’ in placing theorists of color under special surveillance for downplaying an analysis of capitalism
and class. These activities on the part of white criticalists must be condemned, as must be efforts to stress class analysis primarily
as a means of creating a white vanguard position in the struggle against capitalism. Our position is one that attempts to link
practices of racial oppression to the central, totalizing dynamics of capitalist society in order to resist white supremacist capitalist
patriarchy more fully.7
OFF
Our interpretation is that the aff must defend the enactment of a topical plan
This does not mandate any style, type of evidence, or assumption about the role
of the judge—only that the resolution determines what arguments justify an
affirmative ballot.
They violate:
United States requires either state or federal government action
Stone, 45 – SCOTUS Chief Justice
[Harlan, HOOVEN & ALLISON CO. v. EVATT, 324 U.S. 652 (1945) 324 U.S. 652, decided April 9, 1945,
caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=324&page=652, accessed 7-24-14]
The term 'United States' may be used in any one of several senses. It may be merely the name of a sovereign occupying the
position analogous to that of other sovereigns in the family of nations. It may designate the territory over which the sovereignty of
the United States ex- [324 U.S. 652, 672] tends, or it may be the collective name of the states which are united by and under the
Constitution.
Legalize requires legislative or judicial action
BUSINESS DICTIONARY 14 [http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/legalize.html]
legalize - To make enforceable, justifiable, or lawful by judicial or legislative sanction .
Legalization of prostitution is regulation by the government
Micah Schwartzbach No Date (Either 2013 or 2014), Micah Schwartzbach joined Nolo’s editorial staff in 2013. Before that
he was a criminal defense lawyer specializing in research and writing, first in Berkeley, then in Marin County. In 2008 he served as
co-counsel in the landmark acquittal of an organ transplant surgeon accused of attempting to accelerate a potential organ donor’s
death. (People v. Roozrokh, San Luis Obispo Superior Court Case No. F405885.) He writes and edits content across a range of
practice areas. He also authors Uncuffed: A Candid Take on Crime and Society, a blog that dissects the world of criminal law. Micah
earned his B.A. from the University of California, Davis, where he graduated with highest honors, and his J.D. from the University of
California, Hastings College of the Law, where he graduated cum laude. “Decriminalizing Prostitution“
http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/decriminalizing-prostitution.htm ac 8-18
Legalization vs. Decriminalization¶ Those who oppose the criminalization of prostitution typically
advocate one of two approaches : legalization (which involves regulation ) or decriminalization
( no regulation). Legalization is what Nevada practices: the direct regulation of prostitution by the
government . This regulation may include an array of methods, from zoning requirements and
advertising restrictions to mandatory tests for sexually transmitted diseases. (For more information on
Nevada's prostitution laws, see Prostitution, Pimping, and Pandering Laws in Nevada.)¶ Decriminalization is the removal of laws
and regulation; under this model, prostitution is treated just like any other occupation. Sweden takes a partial decriminalization
approach, under which the sale of sex is not illegal, but its purchase is. New Zealand, on the other hand, has decriminalized both
the purchase and sale of sexual activity. Critics of decriminalization point to studies regarding New Zealand’s sex trade that show
that violence against sex workers has persisted in that country.
Prefer our interpretation:
First, framing: this debate is about which version of debate best prepares
students for life outside debate—not about trying to make the debate community
perfect. The subject matter of debate isn’t important—years from now we will all
have forgotten what we’re talking about in this round. This isn’t to say that
debate doesn’t produce effective activists or decisionmakers—but the process
and form of debate has a larger influence on students than the “education” we
get in round. Your ballot endorses competing visions of debate and a model
which focuses on skills over education-- not whether the 1AC is good or bad.
Second, critical thinking—predictable limits best generates argument testing and
decisionmaking
Steinberg and Freeley 13, * David, Lecturer in Communication studies and rhetoric. Advisor to Miami Urban Debate
League. Director of Debate at U Miami, Former President of CEDA. And ** Austin, attorney who focuses on criminal, personal injury
and civil rights law, JD, Suffolk University, Argumentation and Debate, Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making, 121-4
Debate is a means of settling differences , so there must be a controversy , a difference of opinion or a
conflict of interest before there can be a debate . If everyone is in agreement on a feet or value or policy,
there is no need or opportunity for debate; the matter can be settled by unanimous consent. Thus, for example, it
would be pointless to attempt to debate "Resolved: That two plus two equals four,” because there is simply no controversy about
Controversy is an essential prerequisite of debate . Where there is no clash of ideas,
proposals, interests, or expressed positions of issues, there is no debate. Controversy invites decisive
choice between competing positions. Debate cannot produce effective decisions without clear
identification of a question or questions to be answered. For example, general argument may occur
about the broad topic of illegal immigration. How many illegal immigrants live in the United States? What is the
this statement.
impact of illegal immigration and immigrants on our economy? What is their impact on our communities? Do they commit crimes?
Do they take jobs from American workers? Do they pay taxes? Do they require social services? Is it a problem that some do not
speak English? Is it the responsibility of employers to discourage illegal immigration by not hiring undocumented workers? Should
they have the opportunity to gain citizenship? Does illegal immigration pose a security threat to our country? Do illegal immigrants
do work that American workers are unwilling to do? Are their rights as workers and as human beings at risk due to their status? Are
they abused by employers, law enforcement, housing, and businesses? How are their families impacted by their status? What is the
moral and philosophical obligation of a nation state to maintain its borders? Should we build a wall on the Mexican border, establish
a national identification card, or enforce existing laws against employers? Should we invite immigrants to become U.S. citizens?
Surely you
can think of many more concerns to be addressed by a conversation about the topic area
of illegal immigration. Participation in this “debate” is likely to be emotional and intense. However,
it is not likely to be productive or useful without focus on a particular question and identification
of a line demarcating sides in the controversy. To be discussed and resolved effectively ,
controversies are best understood when seated clearly such that all parties to the debate share
an understanding about the objective of the debate . This enables focus on substantive and
objectively identifiable issues facilitating comparison of competing argumentation leading to
effective decisions. Vague understanding results in unfocused deliberation and poor decisions ,
general feelings of tension without opportunity for resolution, frustration, and emotional distress, as
evidenced by the failure of the U.S. Congress to make substantial progress on the immigration
debate. Of course, arguments may be presented without disagreement. For example, claims are presented
and supported within speeches, editorials, and advertisements even without opposing or refutational response. Argumentation
occurs in a range of settings from informal to formal, and may not call upon an audience or judge
to make a forced choice among competing claims. Informal discourse occurs as conversation or panel
discussion without demanding a decision about a dichotomous or yes/no question. However, by
definition , debate requires "reasoned judgment on a proposition . The proposition is a statement
about which competing advocates will offer alternative (pro or con) argumentation calling upon
their audience or adjudicator to decide. The proposition provides focus for the discourse and
guides the decision process. Even when a decision will be made through a process of compromise, it is important
to identify the beginning positions of competing advocates to begin negotiation and movement
toward a center, or consensus position. It is frustrating and usually unproductive to attempt to make a
decision when deciders are unclear as to what the decision is about. The proposition may be implicit in
some applied debates (“Vote for me!”); however, when a vote or consequential decision is called for (as in the courtroom or in
is essential that the proposition be explicitly expressed (“the defendant is
guilty!”). In academic debate, the proposition provides essential guidance for the preparation of the
debaters prior to the debate, the case building and discourse presented during the debate, and the
decision to be made by the debate judge after the debate. Someone disturbed by the problem of a growing
underclass of poorly educated, socially disenfranchised youths might observe, “Public schools are doing
a terrible job! They' are overcrowded, and many teachers are poorly qualified in their subject areas. Even the best teachers can
do little more than struggle to maintain order in their classrooms." That same concerned citizen , facing a complex
range of issues, might arrive at an unhelpful decision, such as " We ought to do something about
this” or, worse, “It’s too complicated a problem to deal with." Groups of concerned citizens worried about
the state of public education could join together to express their frustrations , anger, disillusionment, and emotions
regarding the schools, but without a focus for their discussions , they could easily agree about the
sorry state of education without finding points of clarity or potential solutions . A gripe session
would follow. But if a precise question is posed—such as “What can be done to improve public
education?”—then a more profitable area of discussion is opened up simply by placing a focus on
the search for a concrete solution step. One or more judgments can be phrased in the form of debate
propositions, motions for parliamentary debate, or bills for legislative assemblies, The statements "Resolved: That the federal
applied parliamentary debate) it
government should implement a program of charter schools in at-risk communities” and “Resolved; That the state of Florida should
adopt a school voucher program" more clearly identify specific ways of dealing with educational problems in a
manageable form , suitable for debate. They provide specific policies to be investigated and aid
discussants in identifying points of difference . This focus contributes to better and more
informed decision making with the potential for better results . In academic debate, it provides better
depth of argumentation and enhanced opportunity for reaping the educational benefits of participation. In the next
section, we will consider the challenge of framing the proposition for debate, and its role in the debate. To have a productive
debate, which facilitates effective decision making by directing and placing limits on the decision
to be made, the basis for argument should be clearly defined . If we merely talk about a topic ,
such as ‘"homelessness,” or “abortion,” Or “crime,” or “global warming,” we are likely to have an
interesting discussion but not to establish a profitable basis for argument . For example, the
statement “Resolved: That the pen is mightier than the sword” is debatable , yet by itself fails to provide much
basis for dear argumentation . If we take this statement to mean Iliad the written word is more effective than physical force
for some purposes, we can identify a problem area: the comparative effectiveness of writing or physical force for a specific purpose,
perhaps promoting positive social change. (Note that “loose” propositions, such as the example above, may be defined by their
advocates in such a way as to facilitate a clear contrast of competing sides; through definitions and debate they “become” clearly
understood statements even though they may not begin as such. There are formats for debate that often begin with this sort of
proposition. However, in any debate, at some point, effective and meaningful discussion relies on
identification of a clearly stated or understood proposition.) Back to the example of the written word versus
physical force. Although we now have a general subject , we have not yet stated a problem. It is still too broad ,
too loosely worded to promote well-organized argument. What sort of writing are we concerned with—poems, novels, government
documents, website development, advertising, cyber-warfare, disinformation, or what? What does it mean to be “mightier" in this
context? What kind of physical force is being compared—fists, dueling swords, bazookas, nuclear weapons, or what? A more
specific question might be, “Would a mutual defense treaty or a visit by our fleet be more effective in assuring Laurania of our
support in a certain crisis?” The basis for argument could be phrased in a debate proposition such as “Resolved: That the United
States should enter into a mutual defense treaty with Laurania.” Negative advocates might oppose this proposition by arguing that
fleet maneuvers would be a better solution. This
is not to say that debates should completely avoid creative
interpretation of the controversy by advocates, or that good debates cannot occur over competing
interpretations of the controversy; in fact, these sorts of debates may be very engaging. The point
is that debate is best facilitated by the guidance provided by focus on a particular point of
difference , which will be outlined in the following discussion.
Debate’s benefits come from arguing against a well prepared opponent – that
preparation is the only way to test the epistemology of the aff, their impact claims
are false until tested
Talisse 5 – Professor of Philosophy @ Vandy
(Robert, Philosophy & Social Criticism, “Deliberativist responses to activist challenges,” 31(4) p. 429-431)
The argument thus far might appear to turn exclusively upon different conceptions of what
reasonableness entails. The deliberativist view I have sketched holds that reasonableness involves some
degree of what we may call epistemic modesty. On this view, the reasonable citizen seeks to have her
beliefs reflect the best available reasons, and so she enters into public discourse as a way of testing her
views against the objections and questions of those who disagree; hence she implicitly holds that her
present view is open to reasonable critique and that others who hold opposing views may be able to offer
justifications for their views that are at least as strong as her reasons for her own. Thus any mode of
politics that presumes that discourse is extraneous to questions of justice and justification is
unreasonable. The activist sees no reason to accept this. Reasonableness for the activist consists in the
ability to act on reasons that upon due reflection seem adequate to underwrite action; discussion with
those who disagree need not be involved. According to the activist, there are certain cases in which he
does in fact know the truth about what justice requires and in which there is no room for reasoned
objection. Under such conditions, the deliberativist’s demand for discussion can only obstruct justice; it is
therefore irrational. It may seem that we have reached an impasse. However, there is a further line of
criticism that the activist must face. To the activist’s view that at least in certain situations he may
reasonably decline to engage with persons he disagrees with (107), the deliberative democrat can raise
the phenomenon that Cass Sunstein has called ‘group polarization’ (Sunstein, 2003; 2001a: ch. 3; 2001b:
ch. 1). To explain: consider that political activists cannot eschew deliberation altogether; they often
engage in rallies, demonstrations, teach-ins, workshops, and other activities in which they are called to
make public the case for their views. Activists also must engage in deliberation among themselves when
deciding strategy. Political movements must be organized, hence those involved must decide upon
targets, methods, and tactics; they must also decide upon the content of their pamphlets and the precise
messages they most wish to convey to the press. Often the audience in both of these deliberative
contexts will be a self-selected and sympathetic group of like-minded activists. Group polarization is a
well-documented phenomenon that has ‘been found all over the world and in many diverse tasks’; it
means that ‘members of a deliberating group predictably move towards a more extreme point in the
direction indicated by the members’ predeliberation tendencies’ (Sunstein, 2003: 81–2). Importantly, in
groups that ‘engage in repeated discussions’ over time, the polarization is even more pronounced (2003:
86 Hence discussion in a small but devoted activist enclave that meets regularly to strategize and protest
‘should produce a situation in which individuals hold positions more extreme than those of any individual
member before the series of deliberations began’ (ibid.) 17 The fact of group polarization is relevant to
our discussion because the activist has proposed that he may reasonably decline to engage in discussion
with those with whom he disagrees in cases in which the requirements of justice are so clear that he can
be confident that he has the truth. Group polarization suggests that deliberatively confronting those with
whom we disagree is essential even when we have the truth. For even if we have the truth, if we do not
engage opposing views, but instead deliberate only with those with whom we agree, our view will shift
progressively to a more extreme point , and thus we lose the truth . In order to avoid polarization,
deliberation must take place within heterogeneous ‘argument pools’ (Sunstein, 2003: 93). This of course
does not mean that there should be no groups devoted to the achievement of some common political
goal; it rather suggests that engagement with those with whom one disagrees is essential to the proper
pursuit of justice. Insofar as the activist denies this, he is unreasonable.
CASE
The 1ac has failed to engage the institutions that exist and control society -We must move beyond their abstraction in favor of discussing the tough choices
and trade-offs that a non-institutional analysis wishes away – institutions are
inevitable and learning to pragmatically engage them best facilitates change
Themba-Nixon 2K – Makani Themba-Nixon, “Changing the Rules: What Public Policy Means for Organizing,” Colorlines.
Oakland: Jul 31, 2000. Vol. 3, Iss. 2; pg. 12
In essence, policies are the codification of power relationships and resource allocation.
Policies are the rules of the
world we live in. Changing the world means changing the rules. So, if organizing is about changing the rules and
can organizing be separated from policies? Can we really speak truth to power,
fight the right, stop corporate abuses , or win racial justice without contesting the rules and the
rulers, the policies and the policymakers? The answer is no-and double no for people of color. Today, racism subtly
dominates nearly every aspect of policymaking. From ballot propositions to city funding priorities, policy is
building power, how
increasingly about the control, de-funding, and disfranchisement of communities of color. What Do We Stand For? Take the public
conversation about welfare reform, for example. Most of us know it isn't really about putting people to work. The right's message
was framed around racial stereotypes of lazy, cheating "welfare queens" whose poverty was "cultural." But the new welfare policy
was about moving billions of dollars in individual cash payments and direct services from welfare recipients to other, more powerful,
social actors. Many of us were too busy to tune into the welfare policy drama in Washington, only to find
it washed up right on our doorsteps. Our members are suffering from workfare policies, new
regulations, and cutoffs. Families who were barely getting by under the old rules are being pushed over the edge by the
new policies. Policy
doesn't get more relevant than this . And so we got involved in policy-as defense.
Yet we have to do more than block their punches . We have to start the fight with initiatives of our
own . Those who do are finding offense a bit more fun than defense alone. Living wage ordinances, youth
development initiatives, even gun control and alcohol and tobacco policies are finding their way
onto the public agenda, thanks to focused community organizing that leverages power for
community-driven initiatives. - Over 600 local policies have been passed to regulate the tobacco
industry. Local coalitions have taken the lead by writing ordinances that address local problems
and organizing broad support for them. - Nearly 100 gun control and violence prevention policies
have been enacted since 1991. - Milwaukee, Boston, and Oakland are among the cities that have passed living wage
ordinances: local laws that guarantee higher than minimum wages for workers, usually set as the minimum needed to keep a family
of four above poverty. These are just a few of the examples that demonstrate how organizing for local
policy advocacy has made inroads in areas where positive national policy had been stalled by conservatives.
Increasingly, the local policy arena is where the action is and where activists are finding success. Of course, corporate interestswhich are usually the target of these policies-are gearing up in defense. Tactics include front groups, economic pressure, and the
tried and true: cold, hard cash. Despite these barriers, grassroots organizing can be very effective at the
smaller scale of local politics. At the local level, we have greater access to elected officials and officials have a greater reliance on
their constituents for reelection. For example, getting 400 people to show up at city hall in just about any city
in the U.S. is quite impressive. On the other hand, 400 people at the state house or the Congress would have a less
significant impact. Add to that the fact that all 400 people at city hall are usually constituents, and the impact is even greater. Recent
trends in government underscore the importance of local policy. Congress has enacted a series of measures devolving significant
power to state and local government. Welfare, health care, and the regulation of food and drinking water
safety are among the areas where states and localities now have greater rule. Devolution has some
negative consequences to be sure. History has taught us that, for social services and civil rights in particular, the lack of
clear federal standards and mechanisms for accountability lead to uneven enforcement and even
discriminatory implementation of policies. Still, there are real opportunities for advancing
progressive initiatives in this more localized environment . Greater local control can mean greater community
power to shape and implement important social policies that were heretofore out of reach. To do so will require careful
attention to the mechanics of local policymaking and a clear blueprint of what we stand for. Getting It in
Writing Much of the work of framing what we stand for takes place in the shaping of demands. By getting into the policy
arena in a proactive manner, we can take our demands to the next level. Our demands can become
law, with real consequences if the agreement is broken . After all the organizing, press work, and effort, a group
should leave a decisionmaker with more than a handshake and his or her word. Of course, this work requires a certain amount
of interaction with "the suits," as well as struggles with the bureaucracy, the technical language, and the all-toocommon resistance by decisionmakers. Still, if it's worth demanding, it's worth having in writing-whether as law, regulation, or
internal policy. From ballot initiatives on rent control to laws requiring worker protections, organizers are leveraging their power into
written policies that are making a real difference in their communities. Of course, policy work is just one tool in our
organizing arsenal, but it is a tool we simply can't afford to ignore . Making policy work an integral part of organizing
will require a certain amount of retrofitting. We will need to develop the capacity to translate our information, data, and experience
into stories that are designed to affect the public conversation. Perhaps most important, we will need to move beyond
fighting problems and on to framing solutions that bring us closer to our vision of how things
should be. And then we must be committed to making it so.
Framing around institutional action creates the space for effective localism—but
not the other way around – the K is a better starting point that solves the aff
George Monbiot, journalist, academic, and political activist, 04, Manifesto for a New World Order, p. 11-13
The quest for global solutions is difficult and divisive. Some members of this movement are deeply suspicious of
all institutional power at the global level, fearing that it could never be held to account by the world’s people. Others are
concerned that a single set of universal prescriptions would threaten the diversity of dissent. A smaller faction has argued that all
political programmes are oppressive: our task should not be to replace one form of power with another, but to replace all power with
a magical essence called ‘anti-power’. But most of the members of this movement are coming to recognize that if we propose
solutions which can be effected only at the local or the national level, we remove ourselves from
any meaningful role in solving precisely those problems which most concern us. Issues such as
climate change, international debt, nuclear proliferation, war, peace and the balance of trade
between nations can be addressed only globally or internationally. Without global measures and
global institutions, it is impossible to see how we might distribute wealth from rich nations to poor ones, tax the mobile
rich and their even more mobile money, control the shipment of toxic waste, sustain the ban on landmines, prevent the use of
nuclear weapons, broker peace between nations or prevent powerful states from forcing weaker ones
to trade on their terms. If we were to work only at the local level, we would leave these, the most
critical of issues, for other people to tackle. Global governance will take place whether we
participate in it or not. Indeed, it must take place if the issues which concern us are not to be
resolved by the brute force of the powerful. That the international institutions have been designed or captured by the
dictatorship of vested interests is not an argument against the existence of international institutions, but a reason for overthrowing
them and replacing them with our own. It is an argument for a global political system which holds power to account. In the
absence of an effective global politics, moreover, local solutions will always be undermined by
communities of interest which do not share our vision. We might, for example, manage to
persuade the people of the street in which we live to give up their cars in the hope of preventing
climate change, but unless everyone, in all communities, either shares our politics or is bound by
the same rules, we simply open new road space into which the neighbouring communities can
expand. We might declare our neighbourhood nuclear-free, but unless we are simultaneously working, at the international level,
for the abandonment of nuclear weapons, we can do nothing to prevent ourselves and everyone else from being threatened by
people who are not as nice as we are. We would deprive ourselves, in other words, of the power of restraint. By first
rebuilding the global politics, we establish the political space in which our local alternatives can
flourish. If, by contrast, we were to leave the governance of the necessary global institutions to
others, then those institutions will pick off our local, even our national, solutions one by one. There
is little point in devising an alternative economic policy for your nation, as Luis Inacio ‘Lula’ da Silva, now president of Brazil, once
advocated, if the International Monetary Fund and the financial speculators have not first been overthrown. There is little point in
fighting to protect a coral reef from local pollution, if nothing has been done to prevent climate change from destroying the conditions
it requires for its survival.
2NC
T
Legalize requires rigidly structured and regulated framework- prefer ev specific to
prostitution
Tuccille 8 (Jerome, Civil Liberties Examiner for The Examiner, 11/06/08, "To legalize or decriminalize prostitution (and
everything else)?", http://www.examiner.com/article/to-legalize-or-decriminalize-prostitution-and-everything-else//candle)
My experience with the difference between "legalize" and "decriminalize" comes from
discussions of drug policy, in which legalization refers to removing all laws against a substance or activity and allowing it
¶
to be engaged in openly, while decriminalization has a somewhat vaguer definition, but basically refers to ending criminal penalties
while maintaining civil sanctions -- fines -- against people who engage in still-discouraged conduct.¶ ¶ Why, I asked, would
somebody prefer being fined over being free of legal penalties?¶ ¶ Well, it turns out that language is a bit tricky. Apparently,
discussions of policy toward commercial sex have gone in a different direction than discussions
of policy regarding drugs. In sex worker circles, I'm told, "legalization" refers to permitting
prostitution within a rigidly structured and regulated framework that dictates how the trade will be
conducted (usually in licensed brothels). "Decriminalization" refers to repealing laws against prostitution
and allowing people to work out their own arrangements in a deregulated marketplace .¶ ¶ In the case
of prostitution, Nevada is often held out as an example of legalization, while New Zealand is considered a
model of decriminalization.
The law constructs social norms and enforces them violently on the bodies of
prostitutes. Legalization is an essential tool for changing the framework and
social meaning of prostitution
Showden, 9 - Assistant Professor Political Science University of North Carolina Greensboro (Carisa, “Prostitution and Women’s
Agency: A Feminist Argument for Decriminalization”
http://policeprostitutionandpolitics.com/pdfs_all/Academics%20Research%20Articles%20Support%20Prostitution%20%20Decrimina
lization/2009%20Prostitution%20and%20Womens%20Agency%20A%20Feminist%20Argument%20for%20Decriminalization%20.p
df
Critics of legalization schemes often rightly point out that legalization can be and often is at least as harmful to prostitutes‘ interests
as criminalization. Certainly the one case of legalization in the United States—in rural counties in Nevada—
has been quite poorly implemented and needs not to be a model of feminist policy making.45 That
current legalization schemes are deeply flawed does not mean all efforts at legalization have to
be abandoned; it means that it needs to be done better . I want to look at the problems with the Nevada
legalization approach and compare it to the hybrid decriminalization/legalization model that the Netherlands has begun
implementing. The point of this brief comparison is to think about how to change the working environment for sex workers to enable
them the greatest degree of control over their sexuality and income.
In Nevada prostitution is only legal in state-licensed brothels. “Because the state has given brothel owners an outright monopoly on
legalized sexual commerce, all independent prostitution is a criminal offense. The effect is that no woman can work legally without
agreeing to share her income with a state-licensed ‘pimp’” (Chapkis 1997, 162). Further, while they have to work in
brothels to avoid being criminals, prostitutes don‘t count as “employees” but rather are categorized as
“independent contractors” so that they get no state-provided workers‘ benefits (e.g., workers‘ compensation,
retirement, and unemployment), are not covered by minimum wage or fair labor standards laws or
occupational health and safety regulations, nor can they unionize .46 They have to live in the same place
where they work, and they have to register with the police. In most brothels, if a prostitute needs to go into town during her weeks on
shift, she has to be accompanied by a non-prostitute, and most are required to live outside of the town limits during their week off
each month. They work a standard shift: 12-14 hours per day, seven days a week, for 21 days straight. Fifty percent of the money
earned per transaction goes back to the brothel management. In addition, prostitutes have to pay fees for room and board, supplies
(including condoms), and are required to tip house employees. To be allowed to refuse a customer, the prostitute has to provide
management with what it considers an “acceptable reason.” In most brothels, women are required to participate in a lineup.47
It seems the only benefit to the prostitutes in this system is that they are not in danger of being arrested, as autonomy has been
legalized out of the Nevada brothel system. Note that none of these requirements is necessary to brothel prostitution as Kathryn
Hausbeck and Barbara G. Brents explain in their social and political history of the Nevada system. Additionally, Lenore Kuo
describes cooperative brothels in The Netherlands that provide a high level of physical protection for prostitutes while also giving
individuals control over their working conditions, offering a very
which is practiced in Nevada.
different model of brothel prostitution than that
The Netherlands offers a legal model premised on protecting the labor interests of prostitutes
rather than focusing on the interests of third party moralists or neighbors, as we see in the Nevada scheme. In the Dutch model,
“acts of prostitution between consenting adults are decriminalized” (Kuo 2002, 88), but the conditions of work are matters of
regulation since a change in the law in 2000. (Before the change, brothels and pimping were banned, but being a prostitute was
legal.) Here, zoning of streetwalking consists primarily of “safe parks” and “red light districts.” In the former, police-patrolled parks
are established where women are permitted to congregate for purposes of soliciting, and service centers are provided for women
who need counseling. In the latter, brothels and window prostitution are located in specified zones in twelve cities.48 Brothels have
to be licensed and are subject to health and safety regulations, and coercion, deceit, and abuse are prohibited.49 This does not
mean that they‘ve been eradicated, only that ferreting out coercion and abuse—not prostitution per se—has become the focus on
law enforcement. Registered, tax-paying prostitutes can get state-sponsored workers benefits, but many prostitutes avoid
registration because of the bureaucratic stigma attached and the risk of losing their anonymity. (For example, being a known
prostitute will get one barred from entering many countries, like Switzerland and Austria, thus limiting prostitutes‘ freedom of
movement and future job prospects.50)
The sex worker response to the changes in the law have been mixed, but generally positive, noting particularly “independence
(setting prices, organizing working hours and choosing what services to provide), an improvement in the image of the profession
and the enforcement of rules on health and safety” as the main benefits to legalization of organized prostitution (Wijers 2008). There
are still a number of problems with this system, including the variability by local jurisdiction in the licensing of establishments and
enforcement of health codes. The Red Thread (the Dutch prostitutes‘ organization) is arguing for more uniform laws, the
establishment of a hotline to which prostitutes can report abuses, greater labor law enforcement, greater state support of
independent operators, more licenses for small, cooperative brothels, and more support for prostitutes who want to leave the
profession.51 One of the main problems seems to be with the licensing system, which works well for brothel owners, but fails to
protect prostitutes‘ privacy interests. But importantly and positively, “individual sex workers do not have to register [with police] and
are not submitted to mandatory health checks” (Wijers 2008). What is clear in reviewing the Dutch model is both that labor interests
can be protected in a law that emphasizes cracking down on coercion (trafficking) while legalizing consensual sex work and that
state regimes are better at regulating sexuality than they are at promoting freedom. This is why I argue that decriminalization should
be the default position, and women working independently should be free from state intervention in their labor.
The problem with simple decriminalization is that third parties (e.g., escort services or brothel owners) can still take advantage of
women‘s labor, so while the state is no longer disciplining her sexually, her labor interests would not be improved tremendously.
This is why some sex-as-work advocates argue that legalization is preferable to decriminalization because, as the current status of
pornography demonstrates, if we leave it up to the goodness in the hearts of porn producers or pimps to obtain consent and insist
on safer sex practices, we haven‘t done all we can to help women.52 Decriminalization can aid the sex radicalism agenda, but it
alone does not meet the needs pointed out by the sexed labor analysis. To shape sexual and labor relations more positively—to
create different social relationships within sexual commerce—prostitutes need to be decriminalized, but any business that hires sex
workers needs to be regulated in line with meeting women‘s interests. This will not necessarily change the violence that is faced by
street walkers, especially in the short term. But the most significant policy change that could improve the lot of streetwalkers is a
change in broader economic and social service policies, specifically drug rehabilitation and child protective services, rather than any
prostitution-specific policy.
Consider the results of Ine Vanwesenbeeck‘s study of the experiences and psychological states of prostitutes in indoor and outdoor
venues in the Dutch system, where criminalization is not a factor effecting the experience of sex workers. She found that about onequarter of prostitute women suffer severely. About half of the women are doing far better than the stereotyped view, at or slightly
less well than the average non-prostitute woman in the Netherlands. And a little more than one-quarter are faring “quite well”—even
better than the average non-prostitute woman.53 “The differences in how women fare appear to depend on five factors: childhood
experiences, economic situation, working conditions, survival strategies, and interaction with clients” (Kuo 2002, 95). The first two of
the five factors are non-specific to prostitution; the final three are related to changing the structure of the job of street prostitutes, and
the first two need to be addressed by changing women‘s overall cultural and economic well-being so that they don‘t face the worst
forms of prostitution as their “best” employment options to start with. Those who suffer under exploitative labor conditions in sex
work do so for two main reasons: one, criminalization and two, poverty and abuse outside of prostitution. Prostitution policy can only
address the former. Hence, economic policy is prostitution policy. Additionally, domestic violence policy is prostitution policy: “At
highest risk were those women who would never prostitute but for great economic necessity. ‘Abuse by a private partner‘ was often
the source of this extreme economic need” (Kuo 2002, 96).
Legalization schemes have tended to protect community interests and brothel owners‘ interests, but as currently constructed they
operate almost as oppressively as criminalization for the women involved. Individual interactions may be therapeutic or resistant, but
the material structure of the work environment requires serious sex-as-labor challenges in order to meet the possibilities sex
workers can provide for a more open sexuality discourse while avoiding the perpetration of the harms abolitionists have
documented. Thus, state policies must be a target of feminist activism. But if the only goal is abolition, not only is the policy doomed
to fail, it is doomed to punish poor women while failing to attend to the primary reason most women go into sex work: economic
need. Because
the state sets so much of the discursive and material framework within which
women‘s sexuality and work are determined, the law and its enforcement are central tools for
changing the framework and social meaning of prostitution and women‘s sex.
Ideally, feminists would move to supporting a hybrid legalization/decriminalization model that opens up space for women to operate
singly or in small groups without state intervention while labor law and safety provisions were applied to any third-party business
interests working with prostitutes (e.g., escort service providers, corporate brothel owners). Certain features of current practices
would not be part of an ideal state policy. For example, prostitutes must not be required to register with police, and self-employed
independent operators should not be required to get a state license. Registration is a further effort to monitor and control
prostitutes—to mark “whores” off from “respectable” women—and is not necessary to allowing women to engage in sex work or to
receive services that might put them on the path of improving their working conditions or leaving prostitution. Registration schemes
are also unlikely to work. Prostitutes across the globe generally try to avoid complying with registration imperatives, even when it
would garner them public benefits. Partly this is because of the temporary nature of most prostitutes‘ work in the field, and partly
because they wish to avoid the bureaucratic stigmatization of registering.54
Decriminalization could begin to change the structures within which sex work—and sexuality more generally—develops and is
regulated and produced. It is not meant to be a panacea for all of the harms of prostitution; nor can prostitution alone transform
sexual relations between men and women (or between gays or lesbians or transgender people). But because the law helps
to regulate—does not “determine” but shapes—not only the way we interact sexually but the desires we have and can
changing the law is one important element in creating
a more just sexual order . Because the state can be just as coercive as individual pimps and traffickers, it is important not
simply to displace one source of coercion for another. The power of the state to do good—promote more
equitable economic policies, for example—must be harnessed while not handing the state more
paternalistic powers over women‘s sexual self-development.
imagine and the relationships we build from those desires,
1NR
Marx
2) Challenging material structures is key—this card is super specific to their aff
strategy and takes out solvency
Common Cause 14 (Anarchist-communist organization, founded in 2007, with active branches in Hamilton, KitchenerWaterloo and Toronto, Ontario, 6-6-14, "With Allies Like These: Reflections on Privilege Reductionism")
linchpin.ca/?q=content/allies-these-reflections-privilege-reductionism
Championing Individual Over Collective Action While
anti-oppression theory acknowledges that power
relations operate at both the micro and macro level, it places a disproportionate focus on the level
of individual interactions. Emphasis is placed on individual conduct and personal improvement,
with little attention given to challenging oppression at a structural level. Widely used by activist groups and
NGOs, the document Principles and Practices of Anti-Oppression is a telling example of this trend. The statement describes the
operation of oppression and outlines steps for challenging the unequal distribution of power solely in terms of individual behaviour. It
puts forth the following suggestions for confronting oppression: “Keep space open for anti-oppression discussion… Be conscious of
how your language may perpetuate oppression…promote anti-oppression in everything you do…don’t feel guilty, feel motivated." In
a similar vein, the popular blog Black Girl Dangerous in a recent post 4 Ways to Push Back Against Your Privilege
offers a simple four-step model. The first step is to make the choice to relinquish power—if you
are in a position of power, relinquish this position. Step two is "just don’t go"—“If you have
access to something and you recognize that you have it partly because of privilege, opt out of it”.
The third step is to shut up—if you are an individual of privilege who is committed to antioppression you will “…sit the hell down and shut up.” And finally, step four is to be careful with
the identities that you claim. The strategy for ending oppression is articulated as a matter of
addressing power dynamics between individuals in a group context, but within the confines of the
State and Capitalism. For the privileged subject, struggle is presented as a matter of personal
growth and development—the act of striving to be the best non-oppressive person that you can
be. An entire industry is built on providing resources, guides, and trainings to help people learn to
challenge oppression by means of "checking their privilege." The underlining premise of this
approach is the idea that privilege can be willed away. At best this orientation is ineffective, and
at worst it can actually work to recenter those who occupy positions of privilege at the expense
of wider political struggle . Andrea Smith reflecting on her experiences with anti-oppression workshops, describes this
issue: These workshops had a bit of a self-help orientation to them: “I am so and so, and I have x privilege.” It was never quite clear
what the point of these confessions were…It did not appear that these individual confessions actually led to any political projects to
dismantle the structures of domination that enabled their privilege. Rather, the confession became the political project themselves.
Resulting in what Smith terms the "ally industrial complex," the approach of challenging
oppression via the confession of one’s privilege leads to a valorization of the individual actions of
a "confessing subject". Acknowledging the ways in which structures of oppression constitute who we are and how we
experience the world through the allocation of privilege is a potentially worthwhile endeavour. However, it is not in and of itself
politically productive or transformative. Privilege is a matter of power. It equates benefits, including access to resources
and positions of influence, and can be considered in terms of both psychological or emotional benefits, as well as economic or
material benefits. It is much more than personal behaviours, interactions, and language, and can
neither be wished, nor confessed away. The social division of wealth and the conditions under
which we live and work shape our existence, and cannot be transformed through individual
actions. We must organize together to challenge the material infrastructure that accumulates
power (one result of which is privilege). Anything less leads to privilege reductionism—the reduction of
complex systems of oppression whose structural basis is material and institutional to a mere
matter of individual interactions and personal behaviours.
Through discussing paths of government action, debate teaches us to be better
organizational decision makers. Learning about the uniquely different
considerations of organizations is necessary to affecting change in a world
overwhelmingly dominated by institutions
Algoso 2011 – Masters in Public Administration (May 31, Dave, “Why I got an MPA: Because organizations matter”
http://findwhatworks.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/why-i-got-an-mpa-because-organizations-matter/)
Because organizations
matter. Forget the stories of heroic individuals written in your middle school civics textbook.
Nothing of great importance is ever accomplished by a single person . Thomas Edison had lab assistants,
George Washington’s army had thousands of troops, and Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity had over a million staff and
volunteers when she passed away. Even Jesus had a 12-man posse. In different ways and in vastly different contexts, these were
all organizations. Pick your favorite historical figure or contemporary hero, and I can almost guarantee
that their greatest successes occurred as part of an organization. Even the most charismatic, visionary and
inspiring leaders have to be able to manage people, or find someone who can do it for them. International development
work is no different. Regardless of your issue of interest — whether private sector investment, rural development, basic
health care, government capacity, girls’ education, or democracy promotion — your work will almost always involve operating within
A wellrun organization makes better decisions about staffing and operations; learns more from its
mistakes; generates resources and commitment from external stakeholders; and structures itself
to better promote its goals. None of this is easy or straightforward. We screw it up fairly often. Complaints about
NGO management and government bureaucracy are not new . We all recognize the need for improvement. In
my mind, the greatest challenges and constraints facing international development are managerial
and organizational, rather than technical . Put another way: the greatest opportunities and leverage
points lie in how we run our organizations. Yet our discourse about the international development industry focuses
an organization. How well or poorly that organization functions will have dramatic implications for the results of your work.
largely on how much money donors should commit to development and what technical solutions (e.g. deworming, elections, roads,
whatever) deserve the funds. We give short shrift to the questions around how organizations can actually
turn those funds into the technical solutions. The closest we come is to discuss the incentives facing organizations
due to donor or political requirements. I think we can go deeper in addressing the management and organizational issues mentioned
above. This thinking led me to an MPA degree because it straddles that space between organizations and issues. A degree in
economics or international affairs could teach you all about the problems in the world, and you may
But if you don’t learn how to operate in an organization, you may not be
able to channel the resources needed to implement solutions . On the flip side, a typical degree in
even learn how to address them.
management offers relevant skills, but without the content knowledge necessary to understand the context and the issues. I think
the MPA, if you choose the right program for you and use your time well, can do both.
‘Abandoning’ the law is impossible, but the attempt to do so produces ineffective
social change
Orly Lobel, University of San Diego Assistant Professor of Law, 2007, The Paradox of Extralegal Activism: Critical Legal
Consciousness and Transformative Politics,” 120 HARV. L. REV. 937, http://www.harvardlawreview.org/media/pdf/lobel.pdf
At first glance, the idea of opting out of the legal sphere and moving to an extralegal space using
alternative modes of social activism may seem attractive to new social movements. We are used to thinking in
binary categories, constantly carving out different aspects of life as belonging to different spatial and temporal spheres. Moreover,
we are attracted to declarations about newness — new paradigms, new spheres of action, and new
strategies that are seemingly untainted by prior failures.186 However, the critical insights about law’s
reach must not be abandoned in the process of critical analysis. Just as advocates of a laissez-faire market are incorrect
in imagining a purely private space free of regulation, and just as the “state” is not a single organism but a
multiplicity of legislative, administrative, and judicial organs, “nonstate arenas” are dispersed, multiple, and constructed.
The focus on action in a separate sphere broadly defined as civil society can be self-defeating
precisely because it conceals the many ways in which law continues to play a crucial role in all spheres of
life. Today, the lines between private and public functions are increasingly blurred, forming what Professor Gunther Teubner terms
“polycorporatist regimes,” a symbiosis between private and public sectors.187 Similarly, new economic partnerships and structures
blur the lines between for-profit and nonprofit entities.188 Yet much of the current literature on the limits of legal
reform and the crisis of government action is built upon a privatization/regulation binary, particularly with regard to
social commitments, paying little attention to how the background conditions of a privatized market can
sustain or curtail new conceptions of the public good.189 In the same way, legal scholars often
emphasize sharp shifts between regulation and deregulation, overlooking the continuing presence
of legal norms that shape and inform these shifts.190 These false dichotomies should resonate well
with classic cooptation analysis, which shows how social reformers overestimate the possibilities of one channel for reform while
crowding out other paths and more complex alternatives. Indeed, in the contemporary extralegal climate, and contrary to the
conservative portrayal of federal social policies as harmful to the nonprofit sector, voluntary associations have flourished in mutually
beneficial relationships with federal regulations.191 A dichotomized notion of a shift between spheres — between law and
informalization, and between regulatory and nonregulatory schemes — therefore neglects the ongoing possibilities within the legal
system to develop and sustain desired outcomes and to eliminate others. The challenge for social reform groups and
for policymakers today is to identify the diverse ways in which some legal regulations and formal
structures contribute to socially responsible practices while others produce new forms of
exclusion and inequality. Community empowerment requires ongoing government
commitment.192 In fact, the most successful communitybased projects have been those which were not only supported by
public funds, but in which public administration also continued to play some coordination role.193 At both the global and local levels,
with the growing enthusiasm around the proliferation of new norm-generating actors, many envision a nonprofit, nongovernmental
organization–led democratization of new informal processes.194 Yet this Article has begun to explore the problems with some of the
assumptions underlying the potential of these new actors. Recalling the unbundled taxonomy of the cooptation critique, it becomes
easier to identify the ways extralegal activism is prone to problems of fragmentation, institutional limitation, and professionalization.
Private associations, even when structured as nonprofit entities, are frequently undemocratic institutions whose legitimacy is often
questionable.195 There are problematic structural differences among NGOs, for example between Northern and Southern NGOs in
international fora, stemming from asymmetrical resources and funding,1 9 6 and between large foundations and struggling
organizations at the national level. Moreover, direct regulation of private associations is becoming particularly important as the roles
of nonprofits increase in the new political economy. Scholars have pointed to the fact that nonprofit organizations operate in many of
the same areas as for-profit corporations and government bureaucracies.197 This phenomenon raises a wide variety of difficulties,
which range from ordinary financial corruption to the misrepresentation of certain partnerships as “nonprofit” or “private.”198
Incidents of corruption within nongovernmental organizations, as well as reports that these organizations serve merely as covers for
either for-profit or governmental institutions, have increasingly come to the attention of the government and the public.199 Recently,
for example, the IRS revoked the tax-exempt nonprofit status of countless “credit counseling services” because these firms were in
fact motivated primarily by profit and not by the notfor-profit cause of helping consumers get out of debt.200 Courts have long
recognized that the mere fact that an entity is a nonprofit does not preclude it from being concerned about raising cash revenues
and maximizing profits or affecting competition in the market.201 In the application of antitrust laws, for example, almost every court
has rejected the “pure motives” argument when it has been put forth in defense of nonprofits.202 Moreover, akin to other sectors
and arenas, nongovernmental organizations — even when they do not operate within the formal legal system — frequently report
both the need to fit their arguments into the contemporary dominant rhetoric and strong pressures to subjugate themselves in the
service of other negotiating interests. This is often the case when they appear before international fora, such as the World Bank and
the World Trade Organization, and each of the parties in a given debate attempts to look as though it has formed a well-rounded
team by enlisting the support of local voluntary associations.203 One NGO member observes that “when so many different actors
are drawn into the process, there is a danger that our demands may be blunted . . . . Consequently, we may end up with a ‘lowest
common denominator’ which is no better than the kind of compromises the officials and diplomats engage in.”204 Finally, local
NGOs that begin to receive funding for their projects from private investors report the limitations of binding themselves to other
interests. Funding is rarely unaccompanied by requirements as to the nature and types of uses to which it is put.205 These
concessions to those who have the authority and resources to recognize some social demands but not others are indicative of the
sorts of institutional and structural limitations that have been part of the traditional critique of cooptation. In this situation, local NGOs
become dependent on players with greater repeat access and are induced to compromise their initial vision in return for limited
victories. The concerns about the nature of both civil society and nongovernmental actors illuminate
the need to reject the notion of avoiding the legal system and opting into a nonregulated sphere of
alternative social activism. When we understand these different realities and processes as also being
formed and sustained by law, we can explore new ways in which legality relates to social reform .
Some of these ways include efforts to design mechanisms of accountability that address the concerns of the new political economy.
Such efforts include treating private entities as state actors by revising the tests of joint participation and public function that are
employed in the state action doctrine; extending public requirements such as nondiscrimination, due process, and transparency to
private actors; and developing procedural rules for such activities as standard-setting and certification by private groups.206 They
may also include using the nondelegation doctrine to prevent certain processes of privatization and rethinking the tax exemption
criteria for nonprofits.207 All of these avenues understand the law as performing significant roles in the quest for reform and
accountability while recognizing that new realities require creative rethinking of existing courses of action. Rather than opting
out of the legal arena, it is possible to accept the need to diversify modes of activism and legal categories while
using legal reform in ways that are responsive to new realities. Focusing on function and architecture, rather
than on labels or distinct sectors, requires legal scholars to consider the desirability of new legal models of governmental and
nongovernmental partnerships and of the direct regulation of nonstate actors. In recent years, scholars and policymakers
have produced a body of literature, rooted primarily in administrative law, describing ways in which the
government can harness the potential of private individuals to contribute to the project of
governance.208 These new insights develop the idea that administrative agencies must be cognizant of, and actively involve,
the private actors that they are charged with regulating. These studies, in fields ranging from occupational risk prevention to
environmental policy to financial regulation, draw on the idea that groups and individuals will better comply with state norms once
they internalize them.209 For example, in the context of occupational safety, there is a growing body of evidence that focusing on
the implementation of a culture of safety, rather than on the promulgation of rules, can enhance compliance and induce effective
self-monitoring by private firms.210 Consequently, social activists interested in improving the conditions of safety and health for
workers should advocate for the involvement of employees in cooperative compliance regimes that involve both top-down agency
regulation and firmand industry-wide risk-management techniques. Importantly, in all of these new models of governance, the
government agency and the courts must preserve their authority to discipline those who lack the willingness or the capacity to
participate actively and dynamically in collaborative governance. Thus, unlike the contemporary message regarding
extralegal activism that privileges private actors and nonlegal techniques to promote social goals, the
new governance scholarship is engaged in developing a broad menu of legal reform strategies
that involve private industry and nongovernmental actors in a variety of ways while maintaining the
necessary role of the state to aid weaker groups in order to promote overall welfare and equity. A
responsive legal architecture has the potential to generate new forms of accountability and social
responsibility and to link hard law with “softer” practices and normativities. Reformers can
potentially use law to increase the power and access of vulnerable individuals and groups and to
develop tools to increase fair practices and knowledge building within the new market.
Card
debates over the material effects of legalization are vital to challenging the social
construction of gender
Showden, 12 - Assistant Professor Political Science University of North Carolina Greensboro (Carisa, “Theorising maybe: A
feminist/queer theory Convergence” Feminist Theory 2012 13: 3, DOI: 10.1177/1464700111429898)
Theory, politics, and prostitution One way to think about sex-positive queer feminist norms is that they are multiple and therefore
must be balanced. To balance them one must consider the various constraints on subjects in practice. If what is required to realise
particular norms (anti-subordination or sexual autonomy or economic stability) is different practices in similar institutions, and if the
norms most needed for resistance are also variable, then one resulting argument is that some situations of prostitution are more
ethically defensible than others. A sex-positive queer feminism then leads us to think about sex generally and prostitution
specifically as multiple; rather than ‘prostitution’ we are led to think about ‘prostitutions’. This is problematic, perhaps, from a legal
perspective, which, as I noted above, might be one reason why Halley and others argue that MacKinnon’s work ‘won’ the legal
feminist sex wars. But politics and policy can be (slightly) more nuanced and context-sensitive. Here sex-positive queer
feminism needs to be (warily) more governance-oriented. It needs to infuse prostitution policy
with a different ethics – to take the norms it brings to queer theory and make them work for
women, to fight the subordination produced by stigmatising ‘deviant’ sex as well as the
subordination produced by poverty and coercion into sex. The epistemological shift I am endorsing
matters ethically for public policy debates , even recognising the inconsistent relationship
between a policy’s goals and its actual material effects, as these debates create frameworks of
understanding and subjectification . This convergentist epistemology is neither precisely (dominance) feminist nor
queer. While feminism and queer theory ‘know’ sexuality differently – it either is or it is not heterosexual, subordinating, and the
source of women’s social ills – they also know sexuality the same: it is through either the rejection of sex or the embracing of sexual
acts in all their manifestations that we will be led to the new frontier of gender relations. In Elisa Glick’s formulation, queer theory
says we can ‘fuck our way to freedom’ (2000: 22) and, it seems, dominance feminism says we can not-fuck our way there. So there
is an epistemological break between them, but a break premised on an ontological agreement: sex, sexuality, sex acts are the be-all
and end-all of liberation or resistance. Or at least ‘good’ sex (however defined) is the personal practice leading to political change.
But what if it is not? What if sexuality and sexual modalities can intervene in the consciousness of the people fucking, but this
consciousness raising has really quite mediated and distorted effects on the larger institutional contexts within which these sexual
actors live, work, and play? A more nuanced reading of sexuality, and one that accepts neither
epistemological framework of sex precisely as dominance and queer theorists have served it up
so far, might make more modest claims for its theory. Yes, rights to sexual pleasure and sexual
knowledge are essential to one’s health and well-being and (following Cornwall, Correˆa, and Jolly, 2008) are
fundamental to a human rights framework, but the specific sex acts that people engage in are not,
in and of themselves, essentially revelatory or politically engaged. Too much focus on specific acts puts all the effort
into self-styling and personal empowerment, and not enough into securing more general collective rights to sexuality without
stigma.29 Decentring sex as the central activity of identity formation and political status does not
make it unimportant; it simply means that sex does not occupy the vanguard position in identity
construction, political subordination, or political resistance. This version of ‘sex-positive’ feminism is in some
ways more ‘sex negative’ than dominance feminism: it is less positive that sex is capable of producing subjectivity, at least in whole.
If sex is not all that and then some, there are still arguments to be had about how and why to regulate sex acts; but taking the
onus off the sex part of prostitution, for example, as either dooming women to oppression or freeing
them to reinvent themselves and the sexual order, might just open up spaces to see other aspects of
prostitution: the material effects of legalisation or criminalisation on the prostitutes themselves.
If, ironically, ‘sex-positive’ queer feminism can take some of the ‘special’ out of sex and make it one
significant form of human interaction among others, then perhaps policy makers can be guided by
a sense that is both more and less ‘free market’. More in that not all commodified sex is
necessarily bad ; less in arguing that regulating conditions of commodification is the role of good
government . This is the point at which my interlocutors have asked for a more forceful normative defence: why should feminists
shift to a sex-positive queer approach such as the one I have outlined here, particularly in thinking about prostitution? I would say
first, as Kimberly D. Krawiec convincingly argues, both commodification and coercion objections to prostitution – based on the
‘special status’ of sex – help feed its continued marginal legal status, and it is this marginal status that benefits everyone except the
women supposedly protected by the ‘tolerated, but not embraced’ sex market (2010: 1743).30 Further, surveys of sex workers
across types of prostitution venues reveal that some prostitutes experience sex work much as abolitionists have described it, but
many do not.31 Given that many people, including some sex workers, do not in fact experience sex
acts as significantly tied to their identity, it seems somehow wrong – anti-feminist, in fact – to
insist on public policies premised on precisely this assumption. Given also the normative power
of the law , sex work’s illegality contributes to a view of women as either ‘good girls’ or ‘bad girls’
based on promiscuity. Finally, a discursive shift that describes sex as sometimes good and sometimes bad, but
insists on attention to women’s knowledge of sex from their own experiences of it, might
eventually promote a legal regime that takes women’s knowledge with similar seriousness ,
perhaps even eventually leading to changes in how rape claims are taken up by judges and law
enforcement officers. Listening to how the woman claiming rape frames the encounter could become more central while
beginning to marginalise currently hegemonic narratives about what indicates that a woman ‘wanted it’. Discourse matters in the
Even if the effects of theory on law
and policy are highly mediated , a more nuanced theory of sex is needed for its own sake in
addition to policy purposes. With its more modest ‘epistemology of sex’, sex-positive queer feminism provides a way of
construction of subjectivity and consciousness, of jurists no less than the rest of us.
contesting that it is the sex itself that is the problem with prostitution, arguing instead that it is when sex is combined with economic
coercion, or violent pimps, or desire only to feed a drug addiction, for example, that prostitution is a problem. This shift in
conceptions of power – where dominance is one, but not the primary, modality, and the production of subjectivities and normative
assessment and material weight of any acts one engages in is multivalent – reflects a complex reality more accurately. One can
begin to articulate the domination that exists in, for example, human trafficking without conflating human trafficking with prostitution
(thereby ignoring forms of human trafficking that aren’t for purposes of sex trafficking) or prostitution with trafficking (thereby ignoring
forms of prostitution that are more like sex work and less like forced labour or rape). Here, though, is the epistemological break –
within feminism – that simply cannot be bridged. Radical feminists say that sex ought not be commodified, because their
epistemology of sex is an epistemology of the self. The commission of sex acts cannot be separated from self-hood; therefore,
commodified sex is slavery. In this view, a ‘better’ marketplace of sexual transaction is, literally, inconceivable. But what sex-positive
queer feminism knows about sex it gets by looking at the world through lenses of both feminism’s definitional minima and queer
theory’s power plays: that sex can be a site of domination, but that it can also be a site of productive, opaque, and diffuse power
relations. Given this, then, a sexpositive queer feminism would know that sex ought not be commodified under particular
circumstances. On this view, sex does not say anything essential about women, but practices of commodified sex under certain
conditions are indictments of unequal structural opportunities. The point of sex-positive queer feminist norms is to help activists
challenge the conditions producing political subordination, not to challenge women for having sex. And the only way to get to that
challenge is to stop putting so much identity-bearing weight on sex acts. Further, a queer feminism, as opposed to ‘queer theory’,
can also employ its Foucauldian power frame to approach prostitution in the way that many radical feminists claim we ought to pay
more attention to and that is not directly addressed by queer theory. Prostitution is often framed as a question of why women
choose to go into this line of work. But the answers are not terribly complicated in most cases, and only for a minority of prostitutes
is it specifically for reasons that follow directly from a queer theory position of destabilising the meaning of sex acts. The more
interesting radical feminist question is why so many men use the services of prostitutes.32 The Foucauldian power framework offers
a more satisfying toehold on an answer because it asks how men’s subjectivities are formed and points to ways of resisting the
reading of political power out of sex acts into gendered social relations. It also points to a more nuanced answer to the motives and
political understandings of the far-from-monolithic group of men who purchase sex from women.33 In the same way that moving
away from a domination model of power makes it possible to conceptualise women’s actions and motives in terms of constrained
agency rather than forcing women into being either agents or victims, productive, subjectifying versions of power relations make
men’s subjectivity both more complicated and more open to potential reform. On the dominance view, there is no reason for men to
change given the benefits they currently receive. Further, a dominance frame where most sex is nearly indistinguishable from rape
makes dominance feminism all but useless in theorising a complex male sexuality. But such work is an important aspect of a critical
theory of sex given the number of women who seem to want to continue to have sex with men, and the number of men and women
who find various uses of power, but not over-arching structures of dominance, erotic. Finally, much feminist theory and sex worker
activism that is focused on legalisation or decriminalisation maintains this focus in part because of the critique of the stigma that
surrounds sex and sex work. The argument is that the more stigmatised that social norms make sex workers, the more sex workers
become legitimate targets of abuse, and the harder it is for them both to seek redress for harm and to leave sex work. This stigma is
also problematic because of its function in reminding all of us that ‘good girls don’t’ and that women’s sexuality needs to be
monitored so that it continues to serve as the moral compass for the national body. Even if most forms of prostitution cannot be
ethically defended as ‘good sex’ or even ‘good employment’, criminalisation of prostitution is problematic as it serves as an effective
strategy in the war for control over women’s sexuality, sexual rights, and sexual pleasures. Structures of subordination are
reinforced not only by what is permitted, but by what is forbidden. Easing the legal restrictions on prostitution may be, in fact, more
in line with dominance feminism and its ultimate abolitionist project than many would like to admit.34 Conclusion The deep
incommensurability between radical feminism and queer theories of sex cannot be overcome or merged into a happy (or even
unhappy) middle ground. What the balance of freedom and equality require in one theory is often antithetical to what is required in
the other. But this deep incommensurability is not between feminism and queer theory, it is between one version of feminism and
queer theory. There are ways to reconcile feminist critiques of subordination and feminist desires to generate a more open habitus
of sexuality for women with queer theory’s reliance on subversion, play, and resistance. This matters theoretically, as the way we
see the world shapes how we understand what is possible and desirable in it. So a sex-positive queer feminist theory claims, on the
one hand, a more modest view of the future – one where ‘freedom’ isn’t attainable, but degrees of openness
and agency are – and, on the other hand, a more expansive one, where ‘freedom’ is defined in
myriad ways within a complex notion of equality in difference. Whether this equality is based on multiple
intersecting identities or not through identities at all, but through practices and positionalities that shift and can be shifted is a
question I have been able only to raise in this article but not discuss in any detail. The question of identity politics and its necessity
for a robust feminist theory is obviously fraught, but is again being fought within feminism and not only between feminism and its
‘others’.35 This recognition of the incommensurability of feminist and queer epistemologies of sex
also matters politically, especially given the rise of ‘governance feminism’ over the last thirty years. It’s not enough
for voices of dissent within feminism to work culturally ; sex-positive feminist theorists must also
engage in the specific political institutions that help to produce the discursive and material
vectors through which power flows. Such political engagement is more difficult for non-dominance feminists. This is
partly because dominance feminism (along with liberal feminism) is already more solidly fixed as ‘the’ voice of feminism in US
jurisprudence especially, but also because governance violates both the anti-regulatory queer influence on sex-positive feminism,
and the poststructuralist feminist cautions against working in the state because it requires calcifying power relations and identities,
operates through false universals, and forces women to claim to be victims in order to be heard.36 Clearly, then strategising about
how to influence policy will be an on-going debate, but one that feminism beyond dominance needs to be party to. Otherwise, the
brief carried for F may too often be a brief against her.