1NC
OFF
Interpretation and violation---legalization requires removal of all penalties and
creation of a commodity/activity-specific regulation---the aff is only the former
which means they’re not topical
CLB ‘14 – The Canna Law Group™ is a five-attorney dedicated practice group of Harris Moure,
focusing on cannabis corporate, compliance, intellectual property, litigation, and consumer product issues
“Marijuana Decriminalization Versus Legalization: A Difference That Matters”
[http://www.cannalawblog.com/marijuana-decriminalization-versus-legalization-cause-it-matters/] July 1 //
Many people use decriminalization and legalization synonymously and interchangeably, and that’s
not correct.¶ Decriminalization essentially means that a given activity no longer qualifies as criminal
conduct and can only be treated as a civil infraction, but that activity is unregulated. Legalization
ultimately means the ability to lawfully regulate a given activity, as well as the fact that that activity
is no longer considered criminal conduct. A great article highlighting the staggering differences
between decriminalization and legalization is by The Economist, entitled “A half-smoked joint:
Decriminalizing drugs leaves the crooks with the cash. Legalize drugs instead.”
“USFG should” means the debate is solely about a policy established by
governmental means – the politics of maybe is extra topical and a voting issue
Ericson ‘03
(Jon M., Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts – California Polytechnic U., et al., The Debater’s
Guide, Third Edition, p. 4)
The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions, each topic contains certain key
elements, although they have slightly different functions from comparable elements of value-oriented
propositions. 1. An agent doing the acting ---“The United States” in “The United States should adopt a
policy of free trade.” Like the object of evaluation in a proposition of value, the agent is the subject of the
sentence. 2. The verb should—the first part of a verb phrase that urges action. 3. An action verb to follow
should in the should-verb combination. For example, should adopt here means to put a program or
policy into action though governmental means. 4. A specification of directions or a limitation of the
action desired. The phrase free trade, for example, gives direction and limits to the topic, which would, for
example, eliminate consideration of increasing tariffs, discussing diplomatic recognition, or discussing
interstate commerce. Propositions of policy deal with future action. Nothing has yet occurred. The entire
debate is about whether something ought to occur. What you agree to do, then, when you accept the
affirmative side in such a debate is to offer sufficient and compelling reasons for an audience to perform
the future action that you propose.
That’s true for prostitution – requires creating a specific state sponsored
regulatory system
-just removing criminal punishment = decrim
Mossman 7 – researcher @ Crime and Justice Research Centre Victoria University of Wellington
Elaine, “International Approaches to Decriminalising or Legalising Prostitution”
[http://www.justice.govt.nz/policy/commercial-property-and-regulatory/prostitution/prostitution-law-reviewcommittee/publications/international-approaches/documents/report.pdf]
Legalisation¶ This is where prostitution is controlled by government and is legal only under certain
state-specified conditions. The underlying premise is that prostitution is necessary for stable social
order, but should nonetheless be subject to controls to protect public order and health. Some
jurisdictions opt for legalisation as a means to reduce crimes associated with prostitution. ¶ Key
indicators of legalised regimes are prostitution-specific controls and conditions specified by the
state. These can include licensing, registration, and mandatory health checks. Prostitution has
been legalised in countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, Iceland, Switzerland, Austria,
Denmark, Greece, Turkey, Senegal, the USA state of Nevada, and many Australian states
(Victoria, Queensland, ACT and Northern Territory).¶ Decriminalisation
Decriminalisation involved repeal of all laws against prostitution, or the removal of provisions that
criminalised all aspects of prostitution. In decriminalised regimes, however, a distinction is made
between (i) voluntary prostitution and (ii) that involving either force and coercion or child prostitution
– the latter remaining criminal.¶ The difference between legalised and criminalised regimes has
been described as often largely a matter of degree – a function of the number of legal prostitutionrelated activities, and the extent of controls and restrictions that are imposed. The key difference
between legalisation and decriminalisation is that with the latter there are no prostitution-specific
regulations imposed by the state. Rather, regulation of the industry is predominantly through
existing 'ordinary' statutes and regulations covering employment and health for instance.
It’s a voting issue for neg ground----legalize v. decrim is a core negative strategy
across all topic areas---their interpretation devolves into stale, processed-based
debate
OFF
Text: The United States should eliminate all penalties for prostitution.
The status quo is always an option – proving the CP worse does not justify the
plan. Logical decision-making is the most portable skill.
And, presumption remains negative—the counterplan is less change and a tie
goes to the runner.
Legalization ensures workers have no autonomy and solidifies the stigma against
them—regs make it more exploitative than criminalization. Decriminalization is
key to empower sex workers and improve working conditions.
Thompson 2k (Susan, J.D., Capital University Law School May 2000; B.A. and Honors B.A., York
University, 1996) “Prostitution-A Choice Ignored” WOMEN'S RIGHTS LAW REPORTER [Vol. 21:217
2000]
legalization is very problematic on
it represents the ultimate form of control over women's bodies
and sexuality .4 7 7 While the typical "pimp- prostitute" relationship is seemingly non-exis- tent, the government's tight
control over prosti- tution, creates a situation where the govern- ment may be considered the pimp.478
Although a system of legalization appears to be a viable alternative to criminalization,
its own. Opponents to legalization argue that
Similar to the traditional pimp, the government controls with whom, when, and where the prostitute en- gages in prostitution through
a rigid series of time, place, and manner restrictions.479 Instead of providing women with a degree of control and
personal autonomy over their lives, the system of legalization ensures that prostitutes have no input over
their lives and livelihood. This lack of choice and control, leaves women fully dependent on the government for every aspect of their work .48 ° Once a prostitute is licensed to work in the legal brothel, she automatically gives
up her freedom to choose who her customers are, when to work, and how much she will receive for her
services.4 8 ' A brothel prostitute typically works fourteen hour shifts, everyday, for a three-week period.482 During that time, a
brothel prostitute may see at least ten to fifteen men a day.483 Prostitutes have no control over the clients they see so they have no
right to refuse or deny a customer service, unless the customer is aggressive and abusive.484 Legal brothel prostitutes may
generate a decent income from their work, however, they must split their earnings with management and are expected to pay for
expenses, such as room and board, condoms, maid services, and a portion of weekly venereal dis- ease checkups.485 Additionally,
prostitutes' movements outside of the brothel are strictly controlled.486 Once licensed, the female prosti- tute
may not live in the same area that she works, socialize outside the brothel, or vacation in the same
area.487 On the whole, prostitutes are forbidden to leave the brothels except to go to a doctor's
appointment or the beauty salon. The mandatory health checks have been influential in reducing the rate of STDs and AIDS
in prostitution. 489 mandatory health controls do little to protect the prostitute from infected clients who
are either unaware they are infected or aware and continue to visit legal brothels.49° Once the prostitute tests positive for a disease
such as AIDS, she is forced to give up her only means of income, with no chance of receiving disability or unemployment insurance
to compensate her for her lOSS. 4 91 Additionally, mandatory health care may present some problems regarding the right to refuse
medical treatment when prostitutes are forced to undergo medical examinations. 492 Lastly, the legalization of prostitution
through a system of licensing and registration stigmatizes prostitutes as a group of women in need
of regulation and control . 493 prostitutes are no longer criminals, under a system of criminalization, they are stigmatized
as "bad girls., 49 4 The sys- tem of legalization perpetuates the ideology of the whore/ madonna dichotomy by
emphasizing that whores are the source of diseases and licensing is the only way to control their
behavior.495 Alternatively, the madonna is the pure, good girl, who unlike the "other" woman, does not have to be controlled by
strict regulations. Arguably, there is a fine line between the whore/madonna which can easily be crossed by not only selling sex, but
by giving it away im- properly through adultery or promiscuity.496 This forced stigmatization may cause some
prostitutes to work illegally, for fear that registration and licensing may make their identity known.4 97 Under
this scheme of control, the prostitute is not granted the same rights of privacy afforded to the clients who enter
the brothels.498 Clients who seek the service of a, brothel prostitute do not face registration or risk friends and family finding out
about their activities without their knowledge. 499 Had clients been forced to register. before visiting a brothel, one is left to wonder,
how many, if any, would continue to frequent brothels under such strict conditions? At first glance, the system of legalization
appears to be the best model of control, for al- lowing women the freedom to practice prostitu- tion if they choose. However, a closer
examina- tion shows that legalization does not promote freedom or choice in prostitution, but rather
eliminates all freedom associated with the choice of prostitution. In some ways, the legal- ized system of
control is more exploitative and criminal than the criminalized model of prosti- tution control .
Under legalization, women are not given any options. Either they work within the strict regulations that dictate their
behavior and activities, or work outside of the law and risk potential violence and arrest. Although brothel prostitutes
may make a decent living, they enjoy less freedom than the average worker at a fast-food restaurant.5°° In some ways, the worker
at a fast-food establishment may actually fare better than the brothel prosti- tute because that worker is not subjected to mandatory
weekly and monthly health exami- nations, and is free to walk and travel where she pleases.5 'O More importantly, if she loses her
job or is unable to work, unemployment, disa- bility insurance, and other social benefits are available for her protection. The system
of le- galization is a form of modern day slavery-cre- ated, operated, and condoned by the govern- ment, in order to control women's
sexuality.502 In essence, the legalized prostitute is the most exploited worker under a system of capitalism. She
is forced to work for the "master," with no questions asked. This legalized system of imprisonment is carefully structured so the
prosti- tute does all the work and receives none of the benefits. The system of legalization forces us to question who truly benefits
from the laws of le- galization? C. Decriminalization The decriminalization of prostitution involves the removal of all existing criminal
laws and regulations regarding voluntary prostitution between consenting adults.5°3 Voluntary relationships between prostitutes and
their managers (pimps) will also be free from criminal regulations and sanctions." 4 Under decriminalization, no new legislation will
be implemented specifically directed at prostitution, instead, prostitution will be subject to the same civil, business, and professional
codes of conduct that cover all legal businesses."5 Presently, no system of decriminalization exists anywhere in the United States.
Unlike the United States, most European nations do not prohibit the entire practice of prostitution."' Countries such as Sweden,
France, and Belgium recognize prostitution as a legal activity.5 ' Similarly, the Netherlands has accepted prostitution as a legitimate
profession under a system of decriminalization.50 8 Known for having the least repressive laws on prostitution, the authorities in the
Netherlands tolerate 59 the brothels and escort services. Although the government does not actively interfere with the practice of
prostitution, per se, it does control illegal activities associated with it.510 Sec- tion 250b of the Dutch Penal Code, currently prohibits
"certain prostitution-related activities such as pimping, facilitating prostitutes, and running prostitution enterprises."51' Under a
system of decriminalization, prostitutes are given their independence to work freely in their 512 chosen
profession. "Any laws concerning prostitution focus on monitoring safe working conditions and
protecting the women from 51 3 The majority of prostitution activities takes place in Amsterdam and Utrecht.1 4 Amsterdam's policy tolerates existing prostitution houses, but prevents new ones from opening. 51 5 In Utrecht, a "zone of tolerance" exists
where within a specified, separated area, prostitutes solicit men under the watchful protection of plainclothes police officers and
other prostitutes.516 Under this policy, "[w]hen a prostitute leaves with a customer, another will take note of the license plate
number; if she is gone longer than usual, an authority will be notified. 5' 17 Decriminalizing the act of prostitution and all
associated activities is
directly aimed at empowering prostitutes to take control over their lives and their
work conditions .518 Prostitute's lives are dependent upon healthy, safe, and eco- nomically viable work conditions.
Protection alone is meaningless if prostitutes are continu- ally denied the right to work, organize, and par- ticipate in social security
programs.519 Decriminalization will permit prostitutes to organize and form unions in order to voice their
needs and concerns. As a professional union, prostitutes would be better able to fight for improved working
conditions and even develop standard professional codes of ethics and be- havior that regulate their
occupation.52 ° Recog- nition as a legal activity would permit prosti- tutes to demand implementation of satisfactory health and
safety standards, which would legally have to be followed by those who employ pros- titutes.52' Prostitutes would be able to request
a leave of absence for illness and vacations when the stress of the job become too much to han- dle. Additionally,
decriminalization would give prostitutes the opportunity to create and oper- ate job-related training programs
publicly for new prostitutes and refresher courses for the more experienced prostitute. Training in "self- defense, sexual
techniques, money management ... and the creation of mutual aid and support networks " would empower
prostitutes with for- mal control over themselves and their environ- ment.5 2 Presently, under a system of criminaliza- tion,
prostitutes are unable to gain access to ad- equate health care or become eligible for work- men's compensation or disability. If
prostitutes are injured or become sick on the job, they have no insurance to compensate them while they are unable to work.52 3
However, under a model of decriminalization, recognizing prostitution as a legal profession would alter this grim reality. From a
health perspective, many benefits would develop from decriminalizing prostitution. Firstly, decriminalization would make private
health insurance available to all prostitutes.524 Since prostitution would no longer be illegal, private insurers would be able
to provide legal coverage to prostitutes who could afford it.5 25 Secondly, decriminalization would make
employer-based health coverage available to prostitutes who were employed in brothels . 2 6 Economic
incentives or legal sanctions could mandate that employers provide health insurance to their employees at affordable rates.5 27
Lastly, eliminating the illegality of prostitution may allow prostitutes to have access to state sponsored
health care coverage, such as Social Security Disability Insurance or worker's compensation.128 If excess costs were a great
concern, "[t]axing prostitutes' income would generate additional revenue for the state, which may help to offset the ever-increasing
cost of national health care.,529 As noted earlier, enforcing the laws against prostitution is costly and a waste of valuable resources and manpower.53 ° Increasing technol- ogy and advanced methods of communication have made the easy arrest of the
streetwalker virtually obsolete.5"3' In order to keep up, gov- ernments have to invest more time and money to enforce prostitution
laws. According to the New York Times, "[t]he internet, pagers, cellu- lar phones and subterfuges like escort services have enabled
more discreet forms of prostitutio n to thrive beyond the reach of the street- level crackdown .... A 1985 study of sixteen of the
nation's larg- est cities, indicated that each city had spent ap- proximately $7.5 million to enforce prostitution laws.533 This came out
to an estimated $120 million spent for all sixteen cities combined.534 The study further detailed that police officers working in pairs,
spent an average of twenty- one hours per prostitution arrest.535 This in- cluded the time necessary to, (1) obtain a solicitation from,
and make an arrest of, a suspected prosti- tute or customer; (2) transport the ar- restee to the police station or deten- tion center; (3)
complete finger- printing and identification processes; (4) write and file a report; and (5) tes- tify in court. This fifth duty absorbs the
majority of each arresting officer's twenty-one hours.536 After spending all those hours on one ar- rest, it is not surprising that police
costs account for 40% of all public funds. 5 37 All sixteen of the cities studied, had spent a total of $35,627,496 to prosecute women
for prostitution and an esti- mated $31,770,211 was spent on incarcerating prostitutes.538 In New York, prostitutes ac- counted for
over 50% of the population in wo- men's jails and in California they accounted for at least 30%. 5 3 ' The reasoning behind these
figures, is simply that prostitutes usually serve longer sentences than women convicted of other misdemeanors.540 It is clear that
the costs and resources wasted on enforcing prostitution laws are ridic- ulous. The process of policing prostitution is an inherently
lengthy and tedious one.541 Decriminalization would allow costs and re- sources used for prostitution
enforcement to be transferred to enforce more pressing legal con- cerns.542 Not only would this be a more efficient use of presently scarce resources and pre- cious police manpower, the costs to local taxpayers would decrease tremendously,
saving Americans millions.543 A final argument in favor of decriminalization involves the equal protection violations against women
prosecuted for solicitation.5 44 Prostitutes and support organizations citing an equal protection violation, address the statutory
discriminatory treatment as applied to clients, married couples, and prostitutes.545 Although many states have statutes that make
illegal both the solicitation and the procurement of commercial sex, prostitutes often face unfair treatment under the law.54 6 This
selective enforcement places a disproportionate blame on women for the problems of prostitution.547 Decriminalization would
grant prostitutes a privacy right to engage in consensual commercial sex, thereby affording them legal
protection and rights. 54 8 However, the state courts have failed to recognize a privacy interest to engage in commercial sex.
54 9 Roe II v. Butterworth, ruled that although the Florida statute did not deny adults the right to engage in consensual sex, there
was no fundamentally protected right of privacy to engage in sex for money.550 Additionally, the state courts have refused to
recognize any discriminatory treatment, re- garding the ways the laws treat prostitutes as compared to married couples.55 2 When a
hus- band offers to pay his wife for sexual services, that transaction will be afforded constitutional protection. However, the
exchange of mone- tary compensation for sex between unmarried, consenting adults, is prosecuted under the laws of prostitution." 2
The court in People v. Mason ruled that states have a rational basis for dis- criminatory treatment between unmarried and married
adults since there exists a heightened privacy interest for all marital relationships.5 3 Theorists in favor of prostitution argue that
there is essentially no difference between the exchange of money for sex in a marriage or within a prostitute-client relationship.554
Ac- cording to Simone de Beauvoir, "[f]or both [marriage and prostitution] the sexual act is a service; the one is hired for life by one
decriminalization of voluntary prosti- tution is not
only the best alternative, it is the only alternative . Only within a system of decriminalization would
prostitutes be free to demand the equal justice and representation under the law they so rightly
deserve. Decriminalization would empower prostitutes with the ability to demand recognition of their work as
man; the other has several clients who pay her by the '555 piece. The
labor worthy of receiving all the bene- fits and protections afforded to any other pro- fession. When society allows prostitutes to organize and form support networks, it gives them a voice to shout out against any abuse and injustice .
Decriminalization acknowledges that prostitutes are not the enemies, but rather a sys- tem that marginalizes their existence and defines them as criminals is the enemy. To deny any individual access to satisfac- tory health care, fair wages, and a safe work environment is inhumane. Continued criminaliza- tion of prostitution justifies such inhumane treatment of prostitutes, under the pretext
that "they" are different from "us." The demand for decriminalization sends out a message that soci- ety will no longer support. a
system that arbi- trarily selects who will be protected from abuse under the law and who will not. Decriminaliza- tion may not be the
perfect solution to all the problems associated with prostitution, but it is the answer that makes the most sense.
OFF
Legal prostitution will be compelled as a condition for welfare—there’s legal
precedent for pushing poor women into demeaning jobs despite their wishes
Law 2k (Sylvia A. Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law, Medicine, and Psychiatry, New York University
School of Law. B.A., 1964, Antioch College; J.D., 1968, New York University School of Law.)
“COMMERCIAL SEX: BEYOND DECRIMINALIZATION” SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW [Vol.
73:523]
SUBSISTENCE AND EXPLICIT CONDITIONS REQUIRING COMMERCIAL SEX WORK Can commercial sex or other sex work be
required as a condition of public assistance? I first thought hard about the legalization of commercial sex in 1971 when I spent a few
months in Las Vegas, Nevada, working as a lawyer with the local welfare rights organization in a successful effort to reverse a state
action summarily terminating aid to half of the state’s recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children.442 Nevada was then
debating whether to make commercial sex legal in Las Vegas. The sophisticated poor women I worked with in Las Vegas were
unanimously opposed to legalization. They said, “ If it is legal, the welfare department will require us to
work as prostitutes .” I argued with them, asserting in my lawyerly way that commercial sex could be legal, but not required. I
still believe that legalization without compulsion is possible and wise. But, as this Section demonstrates, our legal and social
treatment of poor women lends much support to the fears of the Las Vegas welfare mothers that
compulsion will follow legalization. Under current law, even though commercial sex is illegal, disabled women
who earn money providing commercial sexual services are denied subsistence benefits for which they are
otherwise qualified.444 For ex- ample, in Bell v. Commissioner of Social Security,445 there was no dispute about the fact that
Ms. Bell was disabled.446 Rather, benefits were denied because she was currently engaged in “substantial gainful
activity,” that is, selling sex for money. As the Seventh Circuit explained, “If you are sub- stantially gainfully employed, that
is the end of your claim, even if you have compelling medical evidence that you really are disabled.”447 Be- cause Ms. Bell was
substantially gainfully employed as a commercial sex worker, the Social Security officials were not required to consider her claim
that her “prostitution was symptomatic of a serious mental disorder and whether it was driven by her drug addiction.”448 The cases
denying SSI benefits to disabled women who were engaged in “substantial gainful activity” in the form of commercial sex were preceded by two sets of earlier cases. First, earnings from illegal transactions have long been subject to federal income taxation.449
This makes sense. But, taxing illegally earned income is different from denying subsistence benefits to disabled people or mothers
of young children because they sup- port themselves through illegal activities or have a history or a prospect of doing so. In the tax
context, the activity is all in the past and the tax re- duces the profit of the illegal activity and provides an additional incentive to avoid
it. But the subsistence benefits context is quite different. A rule that says to disabled people, “earnings from illegal activities
categorically disqualify you from disability benefits,” implicitly suggests that the indi- vidual should continue to support herself in
whatever way she can. A second related set of cases holds that disabled people who earn money through theft or drug sales are
engaged in substantial gainful activity, and hence not qualified for SSI.450 The courts in these cases reason that unless earnings
from illegal activities are considered, then “[t]he thief would be qualified, the honest man disqualified.”451 The argument has force
and has been adopted by Congress.452 But present and future eligibility for subsistence benefits raises more complex issues in
relation to earnings from illegal activities than does taxation. Certainly it does not make sense to give benefits to people who earn
good money from illegal activity. All of the reported cases involving SSI claims by disabled women who earn money from
commercial sex involve disqualification at the first step of the SSI eligibility process. Generally, determining SSI eligibility involves a
five step process.453 Step 1 asks whether the individual is engaged in substantial gainful activity. If she is, she is disqualified and
de- nied benefits. If the applicant is not engaged in substantial gainful activity, Steps 2-4 address the question whether she is
disabled. Finally, if she is disabled and not engaged in substantial gainful activity, Step 5 asks whether the individual’s impairment,
age, education, and work experience precludes him or her from doing any other type of work currently available in the national
economy.454 Ms. Bell was thirty-four years old, had finished eight years of school, had been addicted to drugs since she was
fourteen, and had never held a regular job.455 But neither her conceded disability nor her bleak job pros- pects were relevant
because she was already engaged in substantial gainful activity as a prostitute.456 Most observers read these cases as holding that
women who are able to support themselves through commercial sex may not obtain SSI, even if they are disabled and have no
other job prospects.457 Others point out that the cases do not tell us what would have happened if Ms. Bell had stopped earning
money from commercial sex and then applied for SSI.458 Even if it is justifiable to deny benefits to a disabled woman who is
currently earning substantial income from illegal commercial sex, it seems wrong to deny benefits to otherwise
qualified women because they once earned money from commercial sex, or might be able to do so. None
of the courts that considered these cases addressed the issue. Social Security guidelines do not do so. In
the context of the decided cases, it would be quite simple for Social Security officials to say, “Benefits are
denied be- cause you are now earning substantial income from prostitution. But if you stop earning income, we
will consider whether you are disabled and whether there is other work that you might be able to do.” Because neither the cases nor
the regulations say anything like that, a Social Security administrator or benefit advocate could not confidently advise a disabled
woman that if she stopped selling sex her claim would be considered on the merits and the government would not require her to
continue to sell sex as a condition of aid. In the United States at the close of the twentieth century, large num- bers of women sell
sex and sexual titillation for money.459 A large propor- tion of these women, particularly those who work on the street, lack other
marketable skills.460 Disproportionate numbers of these women suffer from physical and mental disabilities.461 If asked whether
disabled women should be denied subsistence because they could support themselves through prostitution, it is likely that most
Americans, from across the po- litical spectrum, would say no.462 Indeed most would find the policy shocking and absurd.
if
commercial sex is legal, it will be compelled as a condition of subsistence because the U.S. has a
long history of denying aid to women who are judged to be “unworthy, ”463 particularly those who have
had a sexual relationship outside mar- riage.464 Poor women have little reason to expect that the state will respect
their choices in relation to the nature of work they can be required to do. Women can be required to pick up
Nonetheless, it is the policy that we have adopted implicitly and sub silentio. More generally, poor women might fear that
garbage, including dead rodents and urine soaked mattresses.465 Often these women are not provided gloves or other protective
clothing, or bathroom facilities.466 This work is not compensated, but is rather required as a condition of
receiving subsistence aid.467 Such work is required of women with very young children who are forced to leave them with
inadequate childcare.468 Frequently the work women are required to do as a condition of subsistence aid
denies them control over family life, and exposes them to the risk of sexual and other forms of
harassment.469 In relation to the poor, the assumption is that no work is demeaning to the worker,
if someone is willing to pay for it. As suggested above, one way around the conflict between legal and cultural
expectations that people seeking subsistence aid from the state can be required to do whatever work is available, and the equally
strong cultural norm that sex is legitimate only if it is consensual , is to allow women to decline work that violates
strongly held conscientious beliefs and personal values . For a time, the Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution to
hold that the state could not deny benefits to people who were willing to work at a large range of jobs, but had strong religious and
conscientious objections to particular jobs and working conditions.470 The principle that the constitution prevents the
state from telling individuals that they may only receive benefits if they give up fundamental liberties
and convictions has not been limited to religiously based beliefs and liberties.471 The norm that consent defines
the bounds of legitimate sexual relations is an histori- cally grounded, traditional fundamental liberty and it is possible to
argue that the state may not constitutionally condition subsistence benefits on submission to coerced sex. Unfortunately, the
have been largely abandoned by the Supreme Court, especially in
relation to poor women challenging restrictions on benefits that burden the exercise of fundamental liberties. In
principles described in the prior paragraph
Dandridge v. Williams,472 the Court rejected the claim of a poor grandmother who sought additional aid to enable her grandchild to
join the family.473 In Wyman v. James,474 the Court held that public assistance may be terminated if a woman
receiving aid refuses to “consent” to an investigative “home visit ,” even though the Fourth Amendment otherwise
prohibits government officials from non-consensual visits without a warrant based on reasonable cause to suspect wrongdoing.475
Similarly, even though the right to choose abortion is a fundamental constitutionally protected liberty,476 and the federal Medicaid
statute re- quires states to pay for all medically necessary physician services,477 the Supreme Court approved a federal law
excluding coverage for medically necessary abortions from the otherwise comprehensive Medicaid pro- gram.478 Following these
cases, lower courts have approved rules that deny aid to children born to women receiving public aid, even
though such rules provide strong incentives for abortion.479 These cases suggest that the state enjoys a
large freedom to condition receipt of public assistance upon the sacrifice of otherwise
constitutionally protected rights . Perhaps courts would see a policy that conditioned aid on a requirement that a woman
engage in commercial sex as so egregious that the policy would be found to violate constitutional liberty. But this conclusion is far
from clear.
Uniquely hurts marginalized populations
Cherry 2001 (April L., Associate Professor of Law, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland
State University; B.A., Vassar University, J.D., Yale Law School) “Welfare Reform and the Use of State
Power in the Prostitution of Poor Women” CLEVELAND STATE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 48:67]
Another important piece of welfare reform concerns the way in which women who receive public assistance are
stereotyped, both with regard to their sexuality and their work ethic. Although on its face, "welfare reform" is racially
neutral, African American women and other women of color are primarily targeted by the new welfare
regime. Underlying the welfare reform regime, its rhetoric, and its requirements is the image of the typical
welfare recipient as a promiscuous African American teenage girl or woman, with little or no sexual selfcontrol.' 4 For example, Charles Murray, a supporter of the new welfare reform regime, has consistently argued that Black
sexuality, which is understood as improper in that it includes sexual intercourse outside of marriage, is at the center of the debate
regarding the illegitimacy of poor children and the welfare entitlement of these children and their mothers. 5 This discourse
continues despite the fact that women who receive public assistance have on average the same number of children as women who
do not receive public assistance. 16 The African American community has long understood the ways in which negative sexual
stereotypes about Black women are used in the 7 welfare discourse.' In the welfare reform discourse, poor African
American women are also stereotyped as slothful and lazy. 8 This image of the welfare recipient has been attached
to the face and bodies of Black women even through "facts" would "explode" these myths.' 9 For example, in 1991, prior to the
advent of welfare reform, African American families made up less than thirty-nine percent of the welfare recipient population in this
country.20 In fact, although women who receive public assistance are stereotyped as lazy and unwilling to "work," that is in the paid
labor market, women on welfare often work in the market in order to make ends meet. You see, the funny thing here is that many
women (43 percent) either cycled between welfare and work, that is they worked when work was available (and as we know work
has disappeared from the urban areas were many poor people live),21 or they have had to combine welfare and work in order to
survive, in order to provide themselves and their children with shelter and food because welfare payments have never been enough
to meet the basic subsistence needs of poor families. 22 For example, in 1995, under the prior welfare regime, Aid to Families with
Dependent Children, the average monthly cash assistance offered to a family of four (usually a woman and three children) was a
meager $377. That was the average. In some cases, benefits were much lower, For example in Mississippi, a family of 3 (woman
with 2 children) received only $120 a month.23 Thus, even under the previous welfare system many poor women with children have
had to some how supplement their incomes with work - if they were lucky they could find a job "working off the books", or they
"doubled up" in homes with other families to reduce their housing costs.24 If they were less lucky they were forced to engage in
more clearly illegal activity to make ends meet, and in poor communities those activities are often drug or prostitution related. 5 So
in the end, welfare reform is premised on negative sexual and personal characteristic stereotypes about poor women, and reformers
have consistently resisted facts that would explode their stereotypes about women who receive public assistance. I am concerned
about what will happen to more and more poor women in the welfare reform regime, which requires self-sufficiency while at the
same time lacks the desire to provide adequate education, job training, and work which pays livable wages. What will happen
in the new welfare regime to those women who are already stereotyped as sexually deviant and lacking
positive moral virtues vis a vis work, when the public assistance time limits expire? Will we require that they perform
any "service" for which renumeration is given? What will happen to more poor women when prostitution and
other sex-work is understood or normalized as "work" in our post-welfare culture? THE CONDITION
OF WOMEN IN PROSTITUTION Many of the negative stereotypes regarding poor women who receive public
assistance are used to describe prostituted women. Simply, like poor women on welfare, prostituted women are
stereotyped as sexually deviant or sexually inappropriate.26 This of course makes sense given our cultural taboos regarding
non-marital sex, and that prostituted women have sex outside of marriage and with men they don't necessarily know. The negative
stereotypes of prostituted women also make sense given
the public mind, are women of color .27
that both the woman on welfare and the prostitute, in
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. Georgetown 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 the police also
show that the licensed prostitution sector is not being fully monitored and that it takes 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 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 policeofficers. 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.
The emotional impact alone flips the case---even if legalization has some positive
aspects, abuse of women will remain rampant, damaging those the aff seeks to
serve
Janice G. Raymond & Donna M. Hughes 1, PhD & professor at the University of Massachusetts
AND PhD & professor at the University of Rhode Island, “Sex Trafficking of Women in the United States:
Domestic and International Trends,” Coalition against Trafficking of Women, March 2001,
http://bibliobase.sermais.pt:8008/BiblioNET/upload/PDF3/01913_sex_traff_us.pdf
The emotional consequences of trafficking and prostitution can be just as, and sometimes more, severe than
the physical health effects. Thirty-one percent (N=4) of the international women and 64 percent of the U.S.
women (N=14) said they had suicidal thoughts (See Table 11). One international woman and 12 (63%) of the U.S.
women had tried to hurt or kill themselves at some point. Fifty-four percent (N=7) of the international women and
41 percent of the U.S. women felt hopeless. One U.S. woman said, “I didn’t care if I died.” One
international woman said, “I don’t care about myself.” Eighty-five percent (N=11) of the international women and 86
percent (N=19) of U.S. women experienced depression/sadness. Women who were sexually exploited
continued to experience depression and sadness, even after being out of the sex industry. Thirty-eight percent
(N=5) of the international women, and 27 percent (N=6) of the U.S. women reported that they were unable to feel.
54 percent (N=7) of the international and 36 percent (N=8) of the U.S. women reported feeling like they had no energy or felt
sluggish. One international woman said she had “no concentration.” And approximately a third of international and U.S. women
(31%, N=4 and 32%, N=7, respectively) said they had difficulty sleeping. Thirty-one percent (N=4) of the international women and
32 percent (N=7) of the U.S. women suffered from a loss of appetite. Women who are victimized in the sex industry often
blame themselves for what happened to them. This internalization of responsibility is not surprising given
that there is little understanding and little sympathy about about the situation of women in the sex industry.
Consequently, 46 percent (N=6) of the international women and 36 percent (N=8) of the U.S. women said they felt self-blame and
guilt about being sexually exploited and abused. Two international women said they felt anxiety and guilt about their children. Two
U.S. women said they felt “shame.” Although international women blamed themselves more than U.S. women, the U.S. women
reported more anger and rage. Sixty-four percent (N=14) of the U.S. women compared to 31 percent (N=4) of the
international women experienced anger and rage. One U.S. woman said she “felt like killing someone.” Although women
were not asked about feelings of fear, two U.S. women said that they felt “paranoid,” and one international
woman said she was “scared all the time.” Two U.S. women said they suffered panic attacks. One international
woman summed up her mental state prior to and after entrance into the sex industry. “Before I entered this business I
was quite a normal person: laughed, fell in love. And then everything was gone. I was like in lethargy , I
thought I didn’t have the way out.” Another international woman simply said, “ I was diminished .”
OFF
Their affirmation of sex workers mystifies violent relations of production that
coerce involvement in the industry---turns case and naturalizes unending
structural violence directed against women globally
Jennifer M. Cotter, MA, PhD, “Eclipsing Exploitation: Transnational Feminism, Sex Work, and the
State,” THE RED CRITIQUE (Spring ‘1),
http://redcritique.org/spring2001/printversions/eclipsingexploitationprint.htm
The ineffectivity of transnational feminism as a transformative practice—that is, as one capable of
fundamentally transforming the conditions of women's lives in the international division of labor—
can be seen clearly by examining recent discourses on "global sex work." Like much of transnational
feminism, the discourses on "sex work" claim to move away from disconnecting the conditions of
women's lives from capitalist production but, at the same time, they abstract "work" under capitalism
from exploitation as the production of surplus-labor. In her introduction to Global Sex Workers,
Kamala Kempadoo theorizes "sex work" as a term produced in order to explain prostitution and other
facets of the sex industry "not as an identity . . . but as an income generating activity or form of labor" (3).
"Sex work," it is claimed, is a term that advances the interests of all workers, especially female workers in
the "Third World," because it emphasizes not the "victim" status of prostitution, but women's "agency" to
" choose" a line of work that allows them to "make do" and "survive" in existing conditions. Some
theorists, such as Alison Murray, argue that the "agency" of sex workers has "nothing to do with"
economic conditions, and that to argue that poverty forces women into sex work is to advance the
moralist assumption that no "normal" woman would "freely choose" to engage in sex work (Global 43).
According to Kempadoo and other transnational feminists, "sex work" is a form of "necessary sexual
labor" or "emotional labor" that is not inherently exploitative owing to the capacity of sex workers to
assert their "agency" by developing strategies of resistance to "get by in their everyday lives"
("Slavery or Work?" 226). What makes "sex work" exploitative, according to transnational feminists, are
moral and legal restrictions and regulations imposed by the State to criminalize sex work and
prevent women from "freely choosing" it. In Allison Murray's contribution to the volume Global Sex
Workers, she states: "it is precisely the moral hypocrisy of global capitalism and sexual repression,
including the criminalization of prostitutes, which creates the space for exploitation, discrimination, and
negative attitudes toward female sexuality" (54). Here "capitalism" is theorized as primarily a moral
economy in which moral contradictions in sexual relations are understood to be what causes the
exploitation of sex workers and the oppression of women in capitalism. These contradictions, Kempadoo
argues, are based on a "masculine hegemony" in which "female sexual acts that serve women's sexual or
economic interests are . . . dangerous, immoral, perverted, irresponsible, and indecent" ("Slavery or
Work?" 230). Presumably, in the absence of moral codes and legal barriers that criminalize "consensual"
sex work, it would harbor no exploitation or oppression. Thus, the main task that transnational feminism
advocates in relation to "sex work" is to decriminalize it and to advance the rights of women to freely
choose sex work through the "deregulation" of the State. Once sex work is legalized, it is assumed, sex
workers will then be entitled to the same rights as all other workers. But this theorization of legal rights
as the basis of emancipation mystifies the basic processes of capitalist exploitation, including the
exploitation of sex workers. Even when the worker is legally free, to sell her labor in the capacity that she
legally "chooses" under capitalism, she is not free from exploitation: from the forced extraction of
her surplus-labor. Contrary to understanding "sex work" as non-exploitative where it is legal and without
moral stigma, it is imperative to insist on sex work as exploited WAGE-LABOR because, for one thing,
without doing so we cannot account for the fact that sex work continues to be based on exploitation even
when it is "legalized" and even when, on legal terms, it involves "free labor." It is, of course, important
to note here that transnational feminism puts the "state" (i.e., power) at the center of its analysis of sex
work, which eclipses the role of wage-labor (i.e., economics). As Teresa Ebert has explained, it "wages
war on totality"—specifically the totality of the "State"—without opposing the exploitation of wage labor
in capitalism (Ebert 31). Once again, while transnational feminism distances itself from ludic practices, it
continues to displace exploitation (labor) with oppression (power). Contrary to its claims, sex work is
not a point of departure from the subordination of sexuality to the capitalist state rather it is
actually the increased subordination of sexuality to production for profit . It is indicative of shifts
within the capitalist mode of production in which the forces of production in capitalism have developed
to the point that tasks once performed primarily within the privatized family of capitalism are now
increasingly becoming sites of commodity production and exchange. What is read as increased
freedom from the state and bourgeois morality, in actuality, is the subordination of sexuality to the
logic of transnational capital. The celebration of "sex work" as a mark of freedom and "agency" is a
ruling class response in the relations of reproduction to the historical limits of the "nuclear family" that
aims to get workers to re-adjust to exploitative conditions in the social relations of production. Sex work is
not merely a power relation. It is, first and foremost, an economic relation and is best understood not
as oppression but as exploitation . What transnational feminism occludes is that it is not the moral
contradictions of the capitalist state that makes sex work exploitative but, as Alexandra Kollontai has
argued, sex work is itself enabled by the "exploitative structure of [capitalism's] economy" (Selected
Writings 263). The bottom line of commodified sexuality is not freedom of sexuality, freedom for women,
or freedom for workers , it is freedom for transnational capital to turn all aspects of life into sites for
the production of profit. Thus, "freedom" to "choose" sex work (which itself presupposes class society)
is only the highly restricted and formal "freedom" that capitalism has always allowed its workers:
freedom from property and the freedom to sell one's own labor-power. In short, it is the "freedom" to be
exploited in the way one "chooses" but not the freedom from exploitation. In actuality, discourses of
"sex work" are not a point of departure from bourgeois morality as such because they do not serve as a
point of departure from private ownership of the means of production—the material basis of bourgeois
morality. The class politics of transnational feminism's notion of "agency" and "power" for women
becomes strikingly clear when we examine Kempadoo's reading of "gender subversion" in the Caribbean
sex industry. According to Kempadoo, the "romance tourism" of the Caribbean, which is "based on the
sale by men of 'love' to North American and European women" and in which "'rent-a-dread' and beach
boys dominate the tourist … sex trade," is an indication that "gender relations are clearly being contested"
("Slavery or Work?" 230-231). Such a reading of the consumerist practices of wealthy North American
and European women as a mark of feminist "agency" and "power" erases the crucial difference between
those women who have access to the material resources to participate as consuming tourists in the
global sex trade, and those men and women who are denied access to material resources and therefore
must subordinate their "needs" to the "desires" of the wealthy. It is a convenient ruling class narrative for
wealthy North Atlantic women to maintain the position that there is no principled position against
oppression and exploitation—that power is so diffuse and amorphous that there is no "outside." Such a
notion makes it possible to "advance feminism" without questioning the ruling class desire to exploit those
who have been positioned as "racial" and "sexual" others. For orthodox Marxist feminism—that is for Red
Feminism—concerns about the character of individuals (their desires, needs, their gender, their sexuality,
their "identity" and "difference," and their agency) cannot not be abstracted from the conditions that
produce them—not just the legal and moral conditions, but the "material conditions determining their
production" (German Ideology 42). Red feminism does not, for instance, treat "desire" or "agency" as a
"free floating" choice that is severed from economic structures but as a practice enabled by the
material conditions within which that society produces its needs. "Desire" and "freedom of sexuality," for
Red feminism, is in dialectical relation to need and how these needs are produced. Thus the ways in
which women's sexual desires are constructed and the ways in which a woman is able to fulfill desire is
enabled by her position in the material relations of production and the division of labor. For
instance, the material conditions of possibility for "freedom of sexuality" are quite different for a woman
who occupies a strictly gendered position in the social division of labor such as much of the sex industry
and is compelled to take up a strictly heterosexual position in marriage or in sexual and economic service
to a pimp in order to survive, and a woman who is a well paid professional in an occupation in advanced
capitalism that is relatively flexible regarding gender. Freedom of sexuality for women, then, is not
something that can be symbolically, morally, or legally asserted, but must be materially enabled by
putting the material conditions in place for it. The significance of production for feminism—that is, the
production of surplus-value and its private appropriation—as well as its normalization in transnational
feminism, matters because it determines what material resources and conditions are at the disposal of all
members of society (and how they are organized) and therefore determines whether the social
arrangements will be able to eradicate oppression for all or whether they will need to be transformed to do
so. Transnational feminism, with its focus on transforming the state without abolishing wage labor, is
actually producing a position that works in the interests of subordinating the state to the interests
of transnational capital . What is necessary in feminism is not the individualized "agency" of
"transnational" feminism but the collective solidarity of revolutionary internationalism for a
feminism that will participate in the class struggle to abolish capitalism's regime of profit and
wage-labor and therefore put the material conditions in place to emancipate all people from
exploitation.
Class society is the root cause
Sheila McGregor, socialist feminist academic, “Sexuality, alienation and capitalism,” International
Socialism, Issue 130 Posted: 5 April ’11, http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=728&;issue=130
Engels argued that prehistoric human beings lived in societies without class division, state oppression or
inequality between men and women.19 There was a sexual division of labour between men and women,
but no oppression of women by men. This view has subsequently been backed up by a number of
Marxist and feminist anthropologists. They concur that human beings evolved as small bands of
hunter-gatherers in which men and women cooperated to secure the existence of the band.20 Such
bands were observed right up to the mid-20th century and exhibit traits such as cooperation, lack of
hierarchy, and egalitarian relations between men and women. This sexual egalitarianism was rooted in
the fact that both gathering (usually done by women) and hunting (usually done by men) contributed to
the successful existence of the band.21 Certain North American hunter gatherer tribes accept a fluidity
about gender roles, in that a child could adopt a gender role different from their biological sex.22 So
human sexual behaviour developed in an egalitarian and cooperative environment. It would have most
likely been consensual in nature. Since human beings are not restricted to “mating” at only certain times
of year, human sexuality appears to have evolved with a pleasurable aspect to it, unconnected to the
direct needs of reproduction of the band. Early human societies were not subordinated to the discipline of
the clock. Men and women would have had a degree of leisure time that would permit more relaxed
relationships to develop between all members of the group.23 If labour was the motor for our emergence
as a distinctive species, we also evolved with a capacity for sexual pleasure. This is not an “idealised
view of human sexuality as inextricable from our essential, inner selves” as Dale and Rose suggest.24
On the contrary, it is a materialist view that starts from the fact of evolution and embeds our
development within the production and reproduction of human life through interaction with nature. We are
born with the ability to see, hear, smell, touch and taste. But how we do these things depends upon the
society we grow up in. We are born with the ability to speak, but which languages we learn depends on
which ones are used where we grow up. And so it is with human sexuality. Women’s oppression and
class society The egalitarian relations between the sexes that characterised human prehistory came to an
end with the development of agriculture. Engels argues that the oppression of women was linked to the
rise of class society and the family.25 Women were subordinated to men, just as the majority of men
and women were subordinated to a ruling class. This historic shift destroyed bonds based on equality
and solidarity. It reshaped our personal relations according to the needs of successive class societies.
Hannah Dee provides an overview of the varieties of personal relations prior to the rise of capitalism in
order to show that homosexual relationships had an important status in earlier times.26 Kollontai has
some interesting reflections on the different kinds of love in feudal society.27 But there is a common
thread running through successive class societies: the family, the oppression of women and the
subordination of women’s sexuality to the reproductive needs of society. The rise of capitalist society set
in train a further series of dramatic if contradictory changes to human sexual relations. In its early stages,
capitalism destroyed the feudal family as a productive unit as thousands, then millions, were drawn into
the new mines and factories. Such was the impact on the old society that Marx and Engels foretold the
end of the family for the new working class. They were proved wrong initially as the new bourgeois class
campaigned for the reconstruction of the family. This new working class family was required to ensure the
reproduction of the working class. It would be the place where the next generation of workers would be
born and reared until they in turn entered the production process. This reconstituted family was partly
welcomed by working class people as a defence against the ravages of industrialisation.28 But the
family’s re-establishment came with a raft of legislation to lay down the parameters of sexual relations:
The Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834, by outlawing outdoor relief for unmarried women, helped break
earlier patterns of premarital sex. Other laws in the 1880s raised the age of consent for girls, regulated
obscenity, prostitution and homosexuality and were a part of a drive to establish the marriage bed as the
sole legitimate place for sexual relations at least for women.29 The working class family once more
subordinated women to men, ensuring that women’s oppression continued. It enshrined segregated
gender roles with the burden of reproduction in the home falling on women’s shoulders. This in
turn led to discrimination both inside and outside the home: in terms of legal rights, unequal pay and
sex discrimination. Women were also expected to serve men’s sexual needs. Nevertheless, the basis of
the family had changed decisively, from a unit of production under feudalism to a unit of consumption
under capitalism. This also changed the basis of the partnership between men and women into what
Engels called “individual sex love”. “In modern capitalist society, marriage and its equivalent common law
relationships are entered into freely by men and women on the basis of mutual attraction,” he wrote.30
Mass production of household goods accompanied by mass advertising soon focused on women as
consumers of household goods. Women were also encouraged to see sex and their physical appearance
as a means of maintaining their husbands’ interest: “Women were increasingly pushed into becoming
self-conscious about their bodies and appearance. Beauty and sensuality became subordinated to
consumption and the cash nexus”.31 We should not underestimate the huge change this meant
for the majority of women . Their decisions over what to buy suddenly became important. And they
were encouraged to look and to be sexually attractive. Women as consumers were being written into
society’s script—and their bodies were too. But there were other long-term trends in capitalist society
that undermined the continued existence of the working class family as a unit with a father, mother and
children. These changes have fuelled a mass of contradictions in women’s position in society. They have
had profound repercussions for the sexuality of both men and women. The most important change has
been the way in which working class women—never entirely absent from the production process—have
been systematically drawn into paid work outside the home. As Orr points out: “Today, the majority of
adult women in Britain (71 percent) work outside the home… Women are almost 50 percent of the
workforce in Britain”.32 This economic independence of women from men underpins the rise in divorce,
the decline of marriage and the increasing number of single parent households. Another key change has
been the advent of safe contraception and legal abortion. This has given women the ability to plan the
timing and the number of children they choose to have, leading to smaller families started later in life.
Contraception and abortion further separated sex from reproduction and opened up the possibility of
sexual relationships based on pleasure without fear of pregnancy. One other change is the advent of
mass education, which partially shifts tasks of socialising and training young people from the family onto
the state. Meanwhile the market has almost entirely taken over the task of producing goods to be used by
the family.
Capitalism causes inevitable crises, inequality, and dehumanization—the
alternative is a class-based critique of the system—pedagogical spaces are the
crucial staging ground for keeping socialism on the horizon
McLaren, Distinguished Fellow – Critical Studies @ Chapman U and UCLA urban schooling prof, and
Scatamburlo-D’Annibale, associate professor of Communication – U Windsor, ‘4
(Peter and Valerie, “Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of ‘difference’,” Educational
Philosophy and Theory Vol. 36, Issue 2, p. 183-199)
For well over two decades we have witnessed the jubilant liberal and conservative pronouncements of the demise of socialism.
Concomitantly, history's presumed failure to defang existing capitalist relations has been read by many selfidentified ‘radicals’ as an advertisement for capitalism's inevitability. As a result, the chorus refrain ‘There Is No
Alternative’, sung by liberals and conservatives, has been buttressed by the symphony of post-Marxist voices
recommending that we give socialism a decent burial and move on. Within this context, to speak of the promise of
Marx and socialism may appear anachronistic, even naïve, especially since the post-al intellectual vanguard has presumably
demonstrated the folly of doing so. Yet we stubbornly believe that the chants of T.I.N.A. must be combated for they offer as a fait
should refuse to accept —namely the triumph of capitalism and
its political bedfellow neo-liberalism, which have worked together to naturalize suffering, undermine collective
struggle, and obliterate hope. We concur with Amin (1998), who claims that such chants must be defied and
accompli, something which progressive Leftists
revealed as absurd and criminal, and who puts the challenge we face in no uncertain terms: humanity may let itself be
led by capitalism's logic to a fate of collective suicide or it may pave the way for an alternative humanist
project of global socialism. The grosteque conditions that inspired Marx to pen his original critique of capitalism are
present and flourishing. The inequalities of wealth and the gross imbalances of power that exist today are leading to
abuses that exceed those encountered in Marx's day (Greider, 1998, p. 39). Global capitalism has paved the way for
the obscene concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands and created a world increasingly divided between
those who enjoy opulent affluence and those who languish in dehumanizing conditions and economic misery. In every
corner of the globe, we are witnessing social disintegration as revealed by a rise in abject poverty and inequality. At
the current historical juncture, the combined assets of the 225 richest people is roughly equal to the annual income of the poorest 47
percent of the world's population, while the combined assets of the three richest people exceed the combined GDP of the 48
poorest nations (CCPA, 2002, p. 3). Approximately 2.8 billion people—almost half of the world's population—struggle in
desperation to live on less than two dollars a day (McQuaig, 2001, p. 27). As many as 250 million children are
wage slaves and there are over a billion workers who are either un- or under-employed. These are the concrete
realities of our time—realities that require a vigorous class analysis , an unrelenting critique of capitalism
and an oppositional politics capable of confronting what Ahmad (1998, p. 2) refers to as ‘capitalist universality.’
They are realities that require something more than that which is offered by the prophets of ‘difference’ and post-Marxists who would
have us relegate socialism to the scrapheap of history and mummify Marxism along with Lenin's corpse. Never before has a
Marxian analysis of capitalism and class rule been so desperately needed. That is not to say that everything Marx
said or anticipated has come true, for that is clearly not the case. Many critiques of Marx focus on his strategy for
moving toward socialism, and with ample justification; nonetheless Marx did provide us with
fundamental insights into class society that have held true to this day. Marx's enduring relevance lies in his
indictment of capitalism which continues to wreak havoc in the lives of most. While capitalism's cheerleaders have attempted to hide
its sordid underbelly, Marx's description of capitalism as the sorcerer's dark power is even more apt in light of contemporary
historical and economic conditions. Rather than jettisoning Marx, decentering the role of capitalism, and
discrediting class analysis, radical educators must continue to engage Marx's oeuvre and extrapolate from
it that
which is useful pedagogically, theoretically, and , most importantly, politically in light of the challenges
that confront us. The urgency which animates Amin's call for a collective socialist vision necessitates , as we have
argued, moving beyond the particularism and liberal pluralism that informs the ‘politics of difference.’ It also
requires challenging the questionable assumptions that have come to constitute the core of
contemporary ‘radical’ theory, pedagogy and politics. In terms of effecting change, what is needed is a
cogent understanding of the systemic nature of exploitation and oppression based on the precepts of a
radical political economy approach (outlined above) and one that incorporates Marx's notion of ‘unity in difference’ in which
people share widely common material interests. Such an understanding extends far beyond the realm of theory, for
the manner in which we choose to interpret and explore the social world, the concepts and frameworks we use to
express our sociopolitical understandings, are more than just abstract categories. They imply intentions,
organizational practices, and political agendas. Identifying class analysis as the basis for our understandings
and class struggle as the basis for political transformation implies something quite different than constructing a
sense of political agency around issues of race, ethnicity, gender, etc. Contrary to ‘Shakespeare's assertion that a
rose by any other name would smell as sweet,’ it should be clear that this is not the case in political matters. Rather, in politics
‘the essence of the flower lies in the name by which it is called’ (Bannerji, 2000, p. 41). The task for progressives
today is to seize the moment and plant the seeds for a political agenda that is grounded in historical
possibilities and informed by a vision committed to overcoming exploitative conditions. These seeds, we would argue, must
be derived from the tree of radical political economy. For the vast majority of people today—people of all ‘racial
classifications or identities, all genders and sexual orientations’—the common frame of reference arcing
across ‘difference’, the ‘concerns and aspirations that are most widely shared are those that are rooted in the common
experience of everyday life shaped and constrained by political economy’ (Reed, 2000, p. xxvii). While postMarxist advocates of the politics of ‘difference’ suggest that such a stance is outdated, we would argue that
the categories which they have employed to analyze ‘the social’ are now losing their usefulness, particularly in light
of actual contemporary ‘social movements.’ All over the globe, there are large anti-capitalist movements afoot. In
February 2002, chants of ‘Another World Is Possible’ became the theme of protests in Porto Allegre. It seems that those people
struggling in the streets haven’t read about T.I.N.A., the end of grand narratives of emancipation, or the
decentering of capitalism. It seems as though the struggle for basic survival and some semblance of human dignity in the
mean streets of the dystopian metropoles doesn’t permit much time or opportunity to read the heady proclamations emanating from
seminar rooms. As E. P. Thompson (1978, p. 11) once remarked, sometimes ‘experience walks in without knocking at the door, and
announces deaths, crises of subsistence, trench warfare, unemployment, inflation, genocide.’ This, of course, does not mean
that socialism
will inevitably come about, yet a sense of its nascent promise animates current social
movements. Indeed, noted historian Howard Zinn (2000, p. 20) recently pointed out that after years of single-issue
organizing (i.e. the politics of difference), the WTO and other anti-corporate capitalist protests signaled a turning
point in the ‘history of movements of recent decades,’ for it was the issue of ‘class’ that more than anything ‘bound
everyone together.’ History, to paraphrase Thompson (1978, p. 25) doesn’t seem to be following Theory's script. Our vision is
informed by Marx's historical materialism and his revolutionary socialist humanism, which must not be conflated with liberal
humanism. For left politics and pedagogy, a socialist humanist vision remains crucial, whose fundamental features
include the creative potential of people to challenge collectively the circumstances that they inherit. This
variant of humanism seeks to give expression to the pain, sorrow and degradation of the oppressed, those who labor under the
ominous and ghastly cloak of ‘globalized’ capital. It calls for the transformation of those conditions that have prevented the bulk of
humankind from fulfilling its potential. It vests its hope for change in the development of critical consciousness and
social agents who make history, although not always in conditions of their choosing. The political goal of socialist humanism
is, however, ‘not a resting in difference’ but rather ‘the emancipation of difference at the level of human mutuality and reciprocity.’
This would be a step forward for the ‘discovery or creation of our real differences which can only in the end be explored in reciprocal
ways’ (Eagleton, 1996, p. 120). Above all else, the enduring relevance of a radical socialist pedagogy and politics
is the centrality it accords to the interrogation of capitalism. We can no longer afford to remain indifferent to the
horror and savagery committed by capitalist's barbaric machinations. We need to recognize that capitalist democracy is
unrescuably contradictory in its own self-constitution. Capitalism and democracy cannot be translated into one another
without profound efforts at manufacturing empty idealism. Committed Leftists must unrelentingly cultivate a
democratic socialist vision that refuses to forget the ‘wretched of the earth,’ the children of the damned and the victims of the
culture of silence—a task which requires more than abstruse convolutions and striking ironic poses in the agnostic arena of
signifying practices. Leftists must illuminate the little shops of horror that lurk beneath ‘globalization’s’ shiny façade; they must
challenge the true ‘evils’ that are manifest in the tentacles of global capitalism's reach. And, more than this, Leftists
must search for the cracks in the edifice of globalized capitalism and shine light on those fissures that
give birth to alternatives. Socialism today, undoubtedly, runs against the grain of received wisdom, but its
vision of a vastly improved and freer arrangement of social relations beckons on the horizon. Its unwritten
text is nascent in the present even as it exists among the fragments of history and the shards of distant memories. Its
potential remains untapped and its promise needs to be redeemed.
CASE
Legalization doesn’t remove the stigma or prevent violence against sex workers
Day 12 — Kristina Day, Creighton University (“ADDRESSING THE SEX TRAFFICKING CRISIS: HOW
PROSTITUTION LAWS CAN HELP”, Spring 2012, Creighton International and Comparative Law Journal,
2 Creighton Int’l & Comp. L.J. 149, Lexis-Nexis)
Despite such criticisms, a number of jurisdictions have legalized acts of prostitution, including the
Netherlands, Victoria (in Australia), Nevada (in the United States), and Germany. n70 Most Australian
states repealed the law that made commercial sex illegal and have since adopted a number of measures
to try to control the sex industry. n71 For example, the prostitution law in Queensland, Australia has two
legal forms of sex work: (1) a sole operator, where the sex worker works alone but is prohibited from
making public solicitations for prostitution, and (2) sex work performed in a licensed brothel. n72 All other
forms of sex work remain illegal in Queensland, which include "unlicensed brothels or parlours, street
workers, two sex workers sharing one premises (even if the workers both work alone in split shifts), and
out-calls provided by a licensed brothel." n73
While prostitution is typically legalized with the assumption that it will bring positive outcomes, this result
has continually failed to materialize . n74 Legalization has been proven to be ineffective in removing
the stigma of prostitution; it has also failed to protect women from violence. n75 The German
government, which legalized prostitution, concluded that legalizing the sex industry failed to make [*158]
it safer for prostitutes, improve their working conditions, or create a means for prostitutes to leave the sex
industry. n76 Additionally, illegal forms of prostitution and trafficking explode under a system of
legalization. n77 This should come as no surprise because, from a business perspective, it makes sense
for pimps to traffic the victims where prostitution is legal. n78 When prostitution is legal, there is little-to-no
risk for pimps, even if trafficking is illegal. n79
Status quo regulation is goldilocks---further legalization prevents a flexible
approach that solves the underlying causes of human trafficking
Brynn N.H. Jacobson 14, J.D. Candidate. Seattle University School of Law, 2014; B.A., Political
Science, University of Washington, “COMMENT: Addressing the Tension Between the Dual Identities of
the American Prostitute: Criminal and Victim; How Problem-Solving Courts Can Help,” Seattle University
Law Review, 37 Seattle Univ. L. R. 1023, Spring 2014, Lexis
[*1037] 4. Individualized Approach to Each Victim
Ultimately, it is important to recognize that there is
no "one size fits all" solution to this problem, and it is important
to keep all tools available. One of these tools is discovery and detention by law enforcement. Allowing for
discretion in choice of tools allows victims to be treated on a case-by-case basis best fitting their unique
situation. n122 Children's advocates arguing for continued criminalization believe that a comprehensive approach is
necessary and best accomplished by leaving every option available, including arrest and detention, to
ensure the evaluation and handling of victims' situations on a case-by-case basis. n123 For many, that path
will lead to services and rehabilitation, while for others, that path will lead to detention because they do
not see themselves as victims and may need time in detention, separate from their pimp, to see things differently
and prevent them from returning to their pimp. n124 For those who prostitute to afford luxuries, society must send a
message that prostitution for any reason is a wrong and harmful decision, and that there are consequences for engaging in this
behavior. n125 Others need separation from other victims because they are using their time in contact with them to recruit for their
pimp. n126 Some may be violent towards other women and girls thus making detention the best fit. n127 Keeping the laws in
place that criminalize prostitution gives law enforcement and the judiciary the tools necessary to
combat prostitution and sex-trafficking, and find help for victims. n128 It gives the police access to
victims through the right to investigate suspected prostitution offenses. n129 Prosecutors can utilize prosecutorial
discretion in handling cases brought to them by law enforcement and can choose not to prosecute every case. n130 Some
advocates believe the women need to be challenged, not coddled, and while they do not ever like to see
someone in jail, "[s]ometimes that is what you need, to be locked up repeatedly before you decide that you don't want
Continued criminalization , as opposed to any form of decriminalization or legalization, allows
for a flexible approach .
to do this anymore." n131
Queering fails as a methodology for political change
Halperin 3 (David M, Professor of the History and Theory of Sexuality at the University of Michigan,
“The Normalization of Queer Theory”, Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 45, No. 2/3/4, 2003, pp. 339-343)
The moment that the scandalous formula “queer theory” was uttered, however, it became the
name of an already established school of theory, as if it constituted a set of specific doctrines, a
singular, substantive perspective on the world, a particular theorization of human experience,
equivalent in that respect to psychoanalytic or Marxist theory. The only problem was that no one knew
what the theory was. And for the very good reason that no such theory existed. Those working in
the field did their best, politely and tactfully, to point this out: Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, for
example, published a cautionary editorial in PMLA entitled “What Does Queer Theory Teach Us About
X?” But it was too late. Queer theory appeared on the shelves of bookstores and in
advertisements for academic jobs, where it provided a merciful exemption from the irreducibly sexual
descriptors “lesbian” and “gay.” It also harmonized very nicely with the contemporary critique of feminist
and gay/lesbian identity politics, promoting the assumption that “queer” was some sort of advanced,
postmodern identity, and that queer theory had superseded both feminism and lesbian/gay studies.
Queer theory thereby achieved what lesbian and gay studies, despite its many scholarly and critical
accomplishments, had been unable to bring about: namely, the entry of queer scholarship into the
academy, the creation of jobs in queer studies, and the acquisition of academic respectability for queer
work. Indeed, queer theory has been so successful in its dash to academic institutionalization that
it has left tread marks all over earlier avatars of postmodern theory (who now even remembers The
New Historicism?). As such, queer theory was simply too lucrative to give up. Queer theory,
therefore, had to be invented after the fact, to supply the demand it had evoked. (The two texts that,
in retrospect, were taken to have founded queer theory, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the
Closet and Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, were written well before anyone had ever heard of it.) All this
would be merely amusing, if the hegemony of queer theory hadn’t had the undesirable and
misleading effect of portraying all previous work in lesbian and gay studies as under-theorized, as
laboring under the delusion of identity politics, and if it hadn’t radically narrowed the scope of
queer studies by privileging its theoretical register, restricting its range, and scaling down its
interdisciplinary ambition.
If identity is socially constructed according to dominant understandings of
gender relations – queer theory regresses into abstraction
Oakes 95 (Guy, professor of philosophy at Monmouth, Straight Thinking about Queer Theory,
International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Spring, 1995),pp. 379-388)
Queer theory maintains that all social categories and conceptual schemes are social constructs, arbitrary
fabrications that have no binding validity. Radical constructionism is, of course, a conceptual scheme as
well, fabricated by social theorists who reject an empiricist and realist epistemology. But if radical
constructionism is merely a social construct, it can make no claim to general validity. This means
that there are no reasons for preferring radical constructionism to any other analysis of social
reality, including all analyses with which it is inconsistent. Radical constructionism, the philosophical
hammer of queer theory, is shattered in the very act of wielding it. The development of radical
constructionism by queer theorists is intended to subvert the legitimacy of certain "hegemonic" categories
and dichotomies—such as heterosexuality and the heterosexual/homosexual binary—by establishing that
they are social constructs. However, queer theorists fail to appreciate the self-destructive power of their
own argument. Radical constructionism, along with all other social constructs, is invalidated by this same
logic. On this point, queer theory has no escape. The premises of radical constructionism entail that
this doctrine is itself nothing but a social construct, from which it follows that its validity and the
basis of queer theory collapse. Radical constructionism also generates an infinite regress. It
entails that a given social category, such as heterosexuality, is socially constructed from certain
practices and discourses. These practices and discourses are, in turn, socially constructed from
other practices and discourses, which are themselves socially constructed. Heterosexuality, the
practices and discourses on which it is based, and the further practices and discourses in which they are
grounded are all revealed as arbitrary inventions by demonstrating that they are socially constructed. In
principle, this chain of demonstrations is interminable. Either it produces an infinite regress that
invalidates every category in the regression, or it terminates only by assigning a non-socially
determined validity to some specially favored category—which becomes an epistemological
unmoved mover. However, such an arbitrary decision would be inconsistent with radical
constructionism, which cannot except itself from the fate of every other conceptual scheme. It is socially
constructed from practices and discourses, which are also socially constructed from other practices and
discourses that have the same status. The regression back to a generally valid practice or discourse that
would provide a foundation for radical constructionism cannot succeed since, according to this doctrine,
no such practice or discourse exists. Thus radical constructionism can escape this regress and claim
its own validity—thereby differentiating itself from all other conceptual schemes and exempting itself
from its own consequences—only by contradicting itself. The result is not a happy one. Radical
social constructionism either generates an infinite regress that negates its claim to validity, or, in
order to forestall this regress, commits a self-contradiction. Finally, radical constructionism reflexively
controverts not only its own claim to validity, but its intelligibility as well. If all social categories are
invalidated by demonstrating that they are socially constructed, then this also holds true for the categories
essential to the constitution of society, such as the concepts of social action, social meaning, and social
relations. If these concepts are invalidated, the concept of a society cannot even be articulated. In that
case, radical constructionism, which is possible only on the basis of some concept of society, is
unintelligible. As a result, the doctrine undermines its own coherence.
2NC
2NC IMPACT OV
Turns the aff---rolls back progress and recreates inter- and intra-group cleavages
that make remedying oppression impossible.
Martha Gimenez, Department of Sociology, UC-Boulder, “Capitalism and the Oppression of Women:
Marx Revisited,” Science & Society, Vol. 69, No. 1, Marxist-Feminist Thought Today (Jan., ‘5), pp. 11-32
In this essay, I have explored the relevance of Marx's methodol- ogy for deepening our understanding of
the structural basis for the inequality between women and men under capitalism. This is a pre- liminary
analysis, limited to mapping out those structural conditions at the level of the mode of production,
establishing the grounds for empirical analyses of their effects in historically specific contexts. I have
argued that Marx's methodology leads to a conceptualization of the oppression of women as the visible or
observable effect (e.g., in the labor market, socio-economic stratification, domestic division of labor, etc.)
of underlying structured relations between men and women which are, in turn, an effect of the ways in
which capitalist accumulation deter- mines the organization of reproduction among the propertyless,
mak- ing it contingent on the ability of people to sell their labor. Does this conceptualization matter? Isn't it
a form of "economism" or "class reductionism"? I do not think so. To argue that women and men are not
equal because the subordination of reproduction to capital accumulation makes that inequality
unavoidable is to ground the oppression of women in capitalist societies in the core processes and
features of the capitalist mode of production itself. The implica- tions for feminist theory and politics are
important. Theoretically, a focus on underlying relations between men and women leads to the
replacement of a men-vs.-women mode of think- ing with a more complex and dialectical framework
according to which sexist ideologies, "discourses," the beliefs, attitudes and prac- tices of
individuals, male and female, have structural conditions of emergence and effectivity that are not
reducible to individuals' in- tentions and characteristics. Relations, as objects of inquiry, can be grasped
only through their effects. We do not see class relations but we see and experience their effects when, for
example, downsizing leaves thousands unemployed or when, despite growth in labor pro- ductivity and
profits, workers' real wages decline. Likewise, we do not see the relations between propertyless men and
women based on their unequal access to the conditions of reproduction and the means of exchange, but
we do see their effects in women's relative lack of power at work and in the home. It may be argued that it
is superfluous to conceptualize these underlying relations, and that it is enough to document wage/salary
differentials, differences in socialization, ide- ologies, social constructions of gender that belittle women,
male prejudices, discriminatory practices, etc. These are important phe- nomena which, however, must
themselves be explained if we are to avoid falling into tautology {i.e., explaining male domination on
the basis of the phenomena used to infer its existence) while struggling for changes likely to be
ineffective in the long run , no matter how significant they might be in the short run. The alternative
to expla- nations of the oppression of women grounded in their historically specific material conditions of
existence (the capitalist processes that place propertyless men and women in unequal relations to the
con- ditions necessary for production and reproduction) are ahistorical theories based on societal
requirements or on individuals' attributes (biology, psychology, psycho-sexual development, etc.)
which, in terms of Marx's logic of inquiry, are at best descriptive, partial and therefore misleading
accounts of the observable phenomena we call the oppression of women. In light of the preceding
remarks, the Marxist-feminist analysis I offer in this paper is not "reductionist" but historical in the Marxist
sense; it postulates that just as the production of things is organized in qualitatively different ways or
modes of production, the reproduction of life and concomitant social relations are also structured in
qualita- tively different ways. Although at the level of observable phenomena there appears to be such a
degree of continuity to warrant the conclusion that gender differences and gender inequality are a
transhistorical phenomenon rooted in transhistorical societal or individual causes, Marx's methodology
leads to the identification of underlying histori- cally different structural conditions of possibility under
capitalism, conditions that remain unchanged despite changes at the level of ob- servable phenomena
such as, for example, greater male involvement in housework and childcare, increases in women's
income, women's access to male-dominated jobs, professions, careers, political office, etc. This approach
transcends the issue of whether class or gender is "pri- mary," or whether they "interact," by postulating
that at any given time people, as ensembles of social relations, act in ways that reflect the
interconnections of the historically specific structures that shape their lives, among which production and
reproduction are paramount. Capitalist production entails class divisions and contradictions between the
interests of capitalist women and propertyless women; among the latter, socioeconomic status
differences create antagonisms between, for example, "middle-class" and working-class women.
Reproduction, on the other hand, entails important commonalities of experience, most of which cut across
classes, establishing a material base for women's solidarity and shared interests (sexuality, childcare,
reproduc- tive rights, domestic responsibilities, problems and joys, etc.). There are, however, important
class and socioeconomic status differences in women's experiences of biological reproduction, reflected
in their attitudes towards abortion, desired family size, etc, as well as differences in the organization of
social reproduction: the use of paid domestic workers not only by capitalist women but by women affluent
enough to afford them highlights how oppression is not something that only men can inflict upon women.
The real advances upper-middle-class professional and business women (those earning six-figure
salaries) have made in the last 30 years presupposes the existence of a servant stratum, drawn from
the less skilled layers of the working class, including a large proportion of women from racial and ethnic
minori- ties, often undocumented immigrants. While the nature and number of divisions among women
varies at the level of social formations, class divisions are common to all capitalist social formations
and all social groups (e.g., immigrant populations, races, ethnicities, etc.) are themselves divided by
class. In light of recent feminist theory's "retreat from class" and from Marx, it must be kept in mind that
regardless of what theorists may think of class as a category of analysis, class as a mechanism of surplus
extrac- tion and as a social relation that constrains people's opportunities for survival and self-realization
continues to affect women's (and men's) lives: "Without understanding the significance of class positioning . . . women's movements through social space, through edu- cation, families, labor markets and in
particular, in the production of their subjectivity, could not be understood" (Skeggs, 1997, 6). Politically,
the existence of class divisions establishes limits to qualitative changes in the situation of women under
capitalism. Femi- nist struggles for women's rights, though important for the attain- ment of substantial
improvements in the opportunities and quality of life of many individual women, do not and cannot
substantially alter the status of all women. Women's success in their struggle for economic, political and
civil rights does not alter the material condi- tions that created the problems that motivated those
struggles; it only implies full membership in capitalist society.
This is indeed im- portant, for most women, like most men, must work to support themselves and their
families. The abolition of gender barriers to education, employment, career advancement, political
participation, etc. is a necessary and key aspect of the struggle against the oppres- sion of women. But,
as Marx argued, political emancipation and the attainment of political and civil rights are inherently
limited achieve- ments because, though the state may abolish distinctions that act as barriers to full
political participation by all citizens, it does not abol- ish the social relations that are the basis for
those distinctions and are presupposed by the very existence and characteristics of the state: The
political annulment of private property has not only not abolished pri- vate property, it actually
presupposes it. The state does away with difference in birth, class, education, and profession in its own
manner when it declares birth, class, education, and profession to be unpolitical differences, when it
summons every member of the people to an equal participation in popular sovereignty. . . . Nevertheless
the state still allows private property, educa- tion ... to have an effect in their own manner . . . and makes
their particu- lar nature felt. Far from abolishing these factual differences, its existence rests on them as a
presupposition. (Marx, 1994, 7.) Today we can add gender, race, ethnicity, immigrant status and other
distinctions to those aspects of people's lives used to exclude them from full economic and political
participation. Contemporary legis- lation designed to abolish male (and other forms of) privilege will not
put an end to these forms of inequality. The most propertyless women can expect, under capitalist
conditions, is a stratification pro- file that mirrors that of men. Women would then cease to be
disproportionately poor. While this would be an enormous improvement in the status of women, it is
unlikely to happen. Given the flexibili- zation of labor contracts, the unhampered mobility of capital, and
changes in the forces of production which increase productivity with decreasing labor inputs, women's
and other oppressed groups' struggle for equality within the structural limits of capitalist society are likely
to be protracted , with no happy ending in sight , as long as the capitalist mode of production prevails.
2NC ROB
This means alt solvency is irrelevant---neither team’s method “fixes” the
structural harm, but an accurate account of history creates the possibility of
resistance
McLaren, Critical Studies @ Chapman U, urban schooling prof @ UCLA, ‘1
(Peter, “Rage and Hope: The Revolutionary Pedagogy of Peter McLaren – an Interview with Peter
McLaren,” Currículo sem Fronteiras, v.1, n. 2, p. xlix-lix)
McLaren: Mitja, I like the way that you framed that question. The obviousness of conservative culture is precisely why
it is so hidden from view. Much like those who controlled the paradis articificels of everyday life in the film, The Truman Show. I
am struck each day by the manner in which predatory capitalism anticipates forgetfulness, nourishes social amnesia,
smoothes the pillows of finality, and paves the world with a sense of inevitability and sameness. I am
depressingly impressed by what a formidable opponent it has proven to be, how it fatally denies the full development of
our human capacities, and inures us to the immutability of social life. In other words, it naturalizes us to the
idea that capital is the best of all possible worlds, that it may not be perfect, but it certainly is preferable to socialism and
communism. Many leftists have unwittingly become apologists for capitalist relations of domination because they
are overburdened by the seeming inability of North Americans to imagine a world in which capital did not
reign supreme. To address this situation, I have turned to critical pedagogy. Mitja: You are very much identified with the
field of critical pedagogy. How would you define critical pedagogy? What is your position within this field today? McLaren: As you
know, Mitja, critical pedagogy has been a central
liberatory current in education of the last two decades. Critical pedagogy
has served as a form of struggle within and against the social norms and forces that structure the schooling process. Most
approaches to critical pedagogy are limited to disturbing the foundations upon which bourgeois knowledge is built, placing the term
‘schooling’ itself under scrutiny. Questions that arise in critical pedagogy often have to do with the relationship
among schooling and the broader array of publics constructed by the marketplace and brought about by the
secularization and the internationalization of the politics of consumption. In other words, critical pedagogy most often deals
with cultural manifestations of capital, and the norms and formations that are engendered by means of relations of exchange. This is
a good strategy as far as it goes. However, the revolutionary pedagogy that I advocate, that I have built from the roots of
Freire’s and Marx’s work and the work of many others, such as the great revolutionary Che Guevara,
involves the uprooting
of these seeds of naturalization – planted through the reification of social relations and the subsumption of
difference to identity by means of the law of value – and this means undressing the exploitative, sexist, racist, and
homophobic dimensions of contemporary capitalist society. But it also means more than simply ‘uncovering’ these
relations, or laying them bare in all of their ideological nakedness. It stipulates – and here it is important not to mince
words – the total uprooting of class society in all of its disabling manifestations. Revolutionary pedagogy refers to
taking an active part in a total social revolution, one in which acting and knowing are indelibly fused such that the object
of knowledge is irrevocably shaped by the very act of its being contemplated. That is, the very act of contemplation (I need to
emphasize that this act of contemplation is collective and dialogical) shapes – and is shaped by – the object under
investigation. The knowers are shaped – through dialogue – by the known. Revolutionary pedagogy attempts to
produce an excess of consciousness over and above our conditional or naturalized consciousness, to create, as it
were, an overflow that outruns the historical conditions that enframe it and that seek to anchor it, so that we
might free our thought and, by extension, our everyday social practices from its rootedness in the very material
conditions that enable thinking and social activity to occur in the first place. In other words, revolutionary pedagogy
teaches us that we need not accommodate ourselves to the permanence of the capitalist law of value. In fact, it reveals to us how
we can begin to think of continuing Marx’s struggle for a revolution in permanence. A number of thinkers have helped to unchain the
revolutionary implications of Freire’s thought in this regard – Donaldo Macedo, Henry Giroux, Ira Shor, Peter Mayo, among others. I
have attempted to do this by iterating the protean potential of his work for social revolution and not just the democratizing of
capitalist social relations. So much contemporary work on Freire has inflated its coinage for transforming classroom practices but
devalued its potential for revolutionary social change outside of the classroom in the wider society. Revolutionary pedagogy
requires a dialectical understanding of global capitalist exploitation. Freire is often brought in to illuminate debates
over school reform that are generally structured around the conceit of a dialogue over equality of opportunity, which rarely
go beyond momentous renunciations of corporatism or teeth-rattling denunciations of privatization. But such
debates studiously ignore the key contradictions to which history has given rise – those between labor and capital.
Such debates are engineered in the United States to avoid addressing these contradictions. Mitja: What do you
see as the most important challenge in the future for educational researchers? McLaren: The key to see beyond the choir of
invisibilities that envelope us, and to identify how current calls for establishing democracy are little more than
half-way house policies, a smokescreen for neo-liberalism and for making capitalism governable and
regulated – a “stakeholder” capitalism if you will. I do not believe such a capitalism will work, nor am I in favor of market socialism.
We need to chart out a type of positive humanism that can ground a genuine socialist democracy without
market relations, a Marxist humanism that can lead to a transcendence of alienated labor. Following Marx,
Eagleton claims that we are free when, like artists, we produce without the goad of physical necessity; and it is
this nature which for Marx is the essence of all individuals. Transforming the rituals of schooling can only go so far, since
these rituals are embedded in capitalist social relations and the law of value. There are signs that research in the social sciences
might be going through a sea-shift of transformation. I think we
need to take the focus away from how individual
identities are commodified in postmodern consumer spaces, and put more emphasis on creating
possibilities for a radical reconstitution of society. I like the new public role of Pierre Bourdieu – a role that sees him
taking his politics into the streets and factories of France, fighting the structural injustices and economic instabilities
brought about by capitalism and neo-liberalism – fighting what, in effect, are nothing short of totalitarian practices that are
facilitating the exploitation of the world’s workers. Bourdieu realizes that we haven’t exhausted all the
alternatives to capitalism. If that is the case, we need, as researchers, to bring our work to bear on the seeking
out of new social relations around which everyday life can be productively and creatively organized. In my view,
this is social science – and politics – the way it should be practiced.
ROOT CAUSE
Primitive collectivism is accurate---sexism and patriarchal domination are
outgrowths of capitalism and development---the alternative’s form of advanced
communism would destroy gender inequities
Terry Sullivan, International Socialist Activist, “Pre-Class Sexuality: Free, Warm and Wild,” Posted: 10
December ’13, http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=936&issue=140
Recently in this journal Sheila McGregor1 has written about sexuality in pre-class societies and its
evolution. Colin Wilson replied arguing that McGregor’s analysis is incorrect.2 In turn, John Molyneux has
countered Wilson.3 Most recently, Wilson has responded, and Molyneux countered again.4 In this article I
wish to show that, while there are shortcomings with McGregor’s account, it is Wilson who is
fundamentally mistaken. In so doing I elaborate on two points that Molyneux makes and defend him
from two erroneous criticisms made by Wilson. Wilson argues that there is no evidence to support the
claim that sex in primitive communist societies was typically consensual. He also makes the extraordinary
claim that human sexuality did not evolve with a pleasurable aspect to it. However, in his response to
Molyneux, Wilson argues the very opposite. Further, Wilson goes on to wrongly assert that Molyneux
equates sex with reproduction and, as a result, that Molyneux is being “heteronormative, if not actually
homophobic”.5 Most importantly, I argue that Wilson rejects a Marxist account of the nature of pre-class
societies and as a result denies that socialism alone is the means to human liberation. He does correctly
point out that certain ways in which sexual behaviour is described, such as “homosexual”, “heterosexual”,
“bisexual”, etc, are relatively recent. Wilson claims that such categories or concepts are “socially
constructed”. However, he mistakenly goes on to argue that sexuality itself is “socially constructed”. In the
process he draws the fallacious conclusion that evolution and biology more generally are unimportant in
helping to shape human sexuality but also in understanding it. Finally I argue that there is little support for
one of McGregor’s claims, namely that humans have evolved a tendency to form couples. Sex in preclass societies was typically consensual Modern humans, anatomically virtually indistinguishable from the
humans of today, appeared in Africa about 170,000 years ago. Further, they lived in a state of “primitive
communism” until the cultivation of crops and the domestication of animals for food and clothing in the
Nile Delta around 10,000 years ago led to the rise of class societies. Eleanor Burke Leacock captures
primitive communism well when she writes that it: “refers to the collective right to basic resources, the
absence of hereditary status or authoritarian rule, and the egalitarian relationships that preceded
exploitation and economic stratification in human history”.6 Such societies that persist or did so until
relatively recently are generally referred to as “hunter-gatherer” societies. McGregor argues that we can
make certain assumptions about sexuality in such pre-class societies based on their generally egalitarian
nature. Her key claim, Wilson asserts, is that given “human sexual behaviour developed in an egalitarian
and cooperative environment. It would have most likely been consensual in nature”.7 However, he argues
that “no evidence exists for these assumptions, either in prehistoric times or among hunter-gatherers
today”.8 Curiously, however, Wilson does go on to present evidence from contemporary hunter-gatherer
societies, but it concerns two examples of the threat or actual incidence of gang-rape. It is not at all clear
if he does so to show that sex in primitive communist societies would most likely not have been
consensual—this would be an extraordinary claim—or if he does so in order simply to emphasise what he
takes to be the problematic nature of generalising about sex in hunter-gatherer societies. But what of
Wilson’s examples themselves? One concerns the Mehinaku people of Amazonian central Brazil. Wilson
states that the Mehinaku men: “use the threat of gang-rape to deter women seeing rituals”.9 He goes on
to say that the oldest Mehinaku men, though perhaps tellingly not the women, recall an incident when a
woman was raped by several men at the same time after seeing some of the flutes that are used in the
rituals. Wilson also quotes—but does not name—an author who claims that, like the Mehinaku, some
Australian Aboriginal men use the threat of rape to keep women away from certain ceremonies. However,
Wilson does not tell us how prevalent such practices are. This is important given that there are something
like 200 different Australian Aboriginal communities exhibiting a great deal of diversity with regard to
customs and languages. The fact that such acts occurred in one Australian Aboriginal community is
hardly grounds for arguing that all men in Australian Aboriginal communities, let alone all men
throughout primitive communism, acted in this manner. Wilson himself quotes another unattributed
author who says that rape only became an aspect of Aboriginal life since colonisation. This suggests
that rape was not a typical part of such communities and may have been introduced in some way through
contact with colonisers. It is important to note that some argue explicitly that sex during primitive
communism was much along the lines that McGregor suggests. For example, Timothy Taylor in The
Prehistory of Sex writes that “hunter-gatherer sex had been modelled on an idea of sharing and
complementarity”.10 Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale recently make a similar point in this
journal.11 Further, Taylor makes no mention of rape in pre-class society at all in the entirety of his book.
Given the above I think we should conclude that it is Wilson and not McGregor who is mistaken and that
sex in primitive communist societies would indeed most likely have been consensual. Primitive
communism—still a model for revolutionary socialists Let us return to the key claim that Wilson contests
in McGregor’s account—given that: “Human sexual behaviour developed in an egalitarian and
cooperative environment. It would most likely have been consensual in nature.” Wilson, as we have seen,
mistakenly claims that there is no evidence to support the conclusion of this argument: namely, that sex in
primitive communist societies was consensual. Further, he also rejects the premise of McGregor’s
argument, that primitive communist societies were egalitarian and co-operative. Moreover in doing so he
fundamentally rejects a Marxist understanding of the world and the idea that socialism alone is the
means to human liberation. While Wilson holds that primitive communist societies are characterised by
the absence of classes and some degree of equality between men and women, from the examples he
uses he also thinks that there are other less desirable aspects of hunter-gatherer societies. “For
example”, he writes, “the !Kung practise infanticide of newborn babies with visible impairments, and
hunter-gatherer societies have until recently gone to war”.12 Further he quotes Leacock who writes of the
Naskapi people of northern Canada that: “Naskapi women joined in the protracted torture of Iroquois
prisoners with even more fury than the men”.13 Such examples lead Wilson to write of hunter-gatherer
societies that: “Despite their equality in terms of class and gender, we are not looking at societies
populated by noble savages, which provide a model for us today”.14 This is a remarkable claim, as I will
argue it is a rejection of how Marxists should understand the importance of primitive communism. To see
why Wilson’s claim is remarkable consider that at the end of The Origin of the Family, Private Property
and the State Frederick Engels quotes from Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society: The time which has
passed away since civilisation began is but a fragment of the past duration of man’s existence; and but a
fragment of the ages yet to come. The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a
career of which property is the end and aim, because such a career contains the elements of selfdestruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and
universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and
knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of
the ancient gentes.15 Chris Harman makes a similar point: The dominating question for everybody ought
to be whether it is possible to use the wealth [undreamt of even by our grandparents] to satisfy basic
human needs by getting rid of oppressive structures, to subordinate it to a society based upon the values
that characterised the lives of our ancient ancestors for the hundreds of generations of primitive
communism.16 So for Marxists, as Engels and Harman argue, the future socialist society will be a revival,
albeit with a massively increased quantity and quality of productive forces, of the communistic aspects of
primitive _communism—collective ownership of resources, equality and freedom from all forms of
oppression. To be clear here I do not invoke Engels and Harman in some appeal to dogmatic authority.
Rather I refer to them because Wilson holds that McGregor’s claims are not “compatible with a Marxist
account of the world”.17 However, it is Wilson’s rejection of primitive communism as a model for a future
society that is at odds with a Marxist view of the world. As revolutionary socialists and classical Marxists
we hold that the rise of class society brought about alienation and the oppression of women, as well as
societies that were increasingly unequal. Further, as Marxists we believe that the overthrow of capitalism
by the working class led by an organised and disciplined revolutionary vanguard party will end all
oppression, rid us of alienation and bring about a fundamentally equal society. This revolutionary
overthrow will eventually revive the communism of primitive communism but with productive forces having
been so developed by class societies that we will be able to bring about “advanced communism”.
However, if you hold, as Wilson does, that primitive communist societies saw frequent child abuse, in the
form of infanticide as well as war and torture, not to mention the fact that sex may typically not have been
consensual, then the source of these ills cannot be class divisions. Further, if class divisions did not
create these ills, then eradicating class divisions, that is, the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, will not
eradicate them either—something else other than socialism will be needed. Consequently, the conclusion
is that the grand historical project of human liberation is not one that socialism alone can achieve. In
short, the rejection of primitive communism as a model for a higher stage of communism is a rejection of
revolutionary socialism and classical Marxism. However, as we shall see, a fuller consideration of
Wilson’s examples does not support this rejection. Wilson refers to infanticide among the !Kung to
supposedly show us the violent nature of primitive communism. This is a curious example, not because
the killing of newborn infants is not a violent act but because of the circumstances which lead to it and
what they actually tell us about !Kung society and primitive communism more generally. Richard Lee in
The !Kung San, perhaps the most extensive study of the !Kung, describes the circumstances surrounding
infanticide as follows: The !Kung women consider childbirth and child care as their sphere of
responsibility, and they guard their prerogatives in this area. For example, the fact that women go to the
bush to give birth and insist on excluding men from the childbirth site is justified by them in terms of
pollution and taboos; but the underlying explanation may be that it simplifies matters if a decision in
favour of infanticide is made. Because the woman will commit a considerable amount of her energy to
raising each child, she examines the newborn carefully for evidence of defects; if she finds any, the child
is not allowed to live and is buried with the afterbirth. By excluding men from the childbed women can
report back to the camp that the child was born dead without fear of contradiction. But if the child is
healthy and wanted by the woman, she accepts the major responsibility for raising it. In this way the
women exercise control over their own reproduction.18 So for Lee infanticide is seen as a way for !Kung
women to exercise control over their own reproduction and is part of the equality that women experience
in !Kung society. However, Wilson instead only sees violence and tries to use this as an argument to
overturn a Marxist understanding of the importance of primitive communism. Wilson’s second example is
that hunter-gatherers, at least until recently, went to “war”. We must be careful here by what we mean by
war, especially of comparisons to modern day warfare where tens of thousands if not hundreds of
thousands can be involved in a conflict using weaponry that can often kill large numbers of people in a
short period of time. This is definitely not the war that took place in hunter-gatherer societies. Rather this
could involve scores of people perhaps armed with spears and bows and arrows as well as knives. Such
wars did no doubt take place. However, we must be careful how we understand them. As Ernestine Friedl
writes: Contests for territory between the men of the neighbouring groups are not unknown… But on the
whole, the amount of energy men devote to training for fighting or time spent on war expeditions among
hunter-gatherers is not very great… Conflicts within bands are normally settled simply by the departure
of one of the parties to the dispute.19 Nevertheless, it might be argued that the occurrence of infanticide
and “war” in primitive communist societies would be consistent with historical materialism. It could be
argued that they occur as a consequence of a low level of development of productive forces. With regard
to infanticide among the !Kung this does seem to be what Lee is arguing. That is, the low level of
productive forces means that some women carefully select which of their offspring they would raise. A
similar argument might be put to explain those instances of warfare that did occur. However, I do not see
how this argument could be generalised to non-consensual sex, even if it were much more prevalent in
primitive communist societies than I have argued.
ALT
Capitalism determines the choice to become a sex worker—it may be “freely
chosen” by those options are constrained by the means of production. The alt
agrees sex workers should not be criminalized, but their focus on that particular
site of oppression makes broader class struggle impossible---it’s a sequencing
question
Sheila McGregor, socialist feminist academic, “Sexuality, alienation and capitalism,” International
Socialism, Issue 130 Posted: 5 April ’11, http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=728&;issue=130
What are the implications of all of this for Marxists and our attitudes to the family and sex work? First, we
need to restate that one aspect of liberation for both men and women is about developing our full
potential as individuals, regardless of gender. Second, we have a vision of human sexual
relationships that are freely entered into and based on mutual attraction, consent and satisfaction.
Whether such relationships are short or long lived, with the same or the opposite sex, between couples of
the same age or with big age differences, will be a matter for the couples themselves to decide. And in a
world which encourages the development of every aspect of the human personality, the utter dependence
on one “love” relationship will give way to more varied relationships based on solidarity.49 Such a vision
will only be realised through a complete transformation of society. It will only be achieved when we
organise production to answer human needs rather than to maximise profits. The role of advertising to
get us to buy things will disappear when we can discuss and decide what our needs are. In particular,
however, it means the socialisation of all aspects of the family, in order to open the door to different kinds
of loving and supportive relationships, both between adults and between adults and children. In addition,
it will also require the disappearance of the sex industry so that women no longer sell their bodies for sex
and men no longer look to pornography, lap dancing or buying sexual services. But where does that leave
the question of organising sex workers today? We have to start from opposition to any kind of
condemnation of the women and men who get caught up in the sex industry. We need to
unequivocally oppose all forms of criminalisation of sex workers, and of their clients. This includes
campaigning for the free movement of people around the world and their legal rights to become part of
the society of their choice.50 We also need to be unequivocal in our support for the right of sex workers to
unionise and to campaign for demands that improve their conditions. In particular we should recognise
how revolutionary upheavals can enable some of the most vulnerable workers in society to transform their
lives. The role played by some prostitutes in the defence of the 1871 Paris Commune is one such
example.51 But does that mean Marxists should see the organisation of sex workers as a priority? A
degree of caution is in order here. Sanders, O’Neill and Pitcher estimate that “of the seven countries
where unionisation [of sex workers] exists, membership can be estimated at approximately 5,000
people”.52 These numbers are small. Dale and Rose themselves point to some of the difficulties involved
in this field: It is self-evidently the case that sex workers’ collective organisation, in the West as
elsewhere, faces structural and social barriers. Much sex work is individualised or takes place in small
workplaces… Many are independent contractors and/or have small business aspirations and, as such,
are pitted in direct economic rivalry.53 They go on to rightly note that the same arguments can be made
about “plumbers or freelance journalists or domestic workers”.54 But it is worth considering the last
example more closely. There were a million, mainly female, domestic servants in Britain at the end of the
19th century. But it was the strikes by match girls alongside dockers and others in east London that built
the first major general unions in Britain and thus transformed the prospects for working class women and
men. We have always argued that the revolutionary party has to fight for the working class to be the
tribune of the oppressed. But that does not mean starting from the most oppressed. Our approach to the
organisation of sex workers should run along these lines. As a rough guide, this means that individual
revolutionaries organise where they find themselves. But in party branches and caucuses, the focus
should be on large concentrations of workers, students and others engaged in struggle. We need to
avoid the two moralisms: that of rejecting sex workers as enemies, and that of elevating them to be the
focus for combating oppression.55 But if we positively support the right of sex workers to organise,
does that mean we simply equate sex work with other work? Here it is worth looking at how Kollontai
describes prostitution: Prostitution is above all a social phenomenon; it is closely connected to the
needy position of woman and her economic dependence on man in marriage and the family. The roots of
prostitution are in economics . Woman is on the one hand placed in an economically vulnerable position,
and on the other hand has been conditioned by centuries of education to expect material favours from a
man in return for sexual favours whether these are given within or outside the marriage tie.56 Kollontai is
fundamentally right to pinpoint economic vulnerability as the primary reason why some women see the
selling of sex or sexual services as an option: “For men as well as for women, the motivating factor
for entry into the sex industry is economic need and for many this is a conscious choice, as it offers
them more money than they could earn in mainstream employment”.57 What has changed, however, is
the way in which the commodification of sex has created a market for the sex industry. What effect does
this have on sex workers? Dale and Rose claim that the stigma attached to sex work creates “greater
psychological difficulties for sex workers than the work itself”.58 But there is evidence that this stigma is
decreasing. A whole range of practices associated with the sex industry are becoming more acceptable:
the sexualisation of girls’ bodies, girls providing fellatio for boys at a young age, the use of porn videos
and so on.59 To cite Sanders, O’Neil and Pitcher: Bernstein (2001) has argued that the prolific and
unabridged use of sex, in particular the female body form, in advertising and other mechanisms of cultural
production has produced a greater acceptability of the erotic, a normalisation of the desire for the erotic
and an increasing acceptance for men (and increasingly women) to pursue these desires.60 So more and
more people are being drawn into the sex industry, while the reactions to this range from positively
welcoming the development through ambivalence to downright hostility. Orr has documented the recent
growth of both raunch culture and opposition to its intrusion into society, particularly on university
campuses.61 A Marxist understanding of sexuality Marxists need to maintain a clear view about a
number of things. First and foremost, there is a difference between the consensual sexual relationships
people aspire to (whether short or long term) and anything which involves the buying and selling of
sexual acts. The difference between these two is real, which is why those involved in selling sex talk
about “splitting” themselves in order to do their work. In the case of a personal relationship, individuals
hope to “be themselves” without having to put up a mask or play a role. Sex work necessitates the
opposite: playing a role in order to separate their sex work from their personal relationships. That is why a
future society in which all human beings can experience fulfilling relationships would be one in which sex
work would disappear. Second, there is a difference between the erotic and the pornographic reduction
of women’s bodies to sex objects.62 In fact I would argue that the latter leads to a de-eroticisation,
which perhaps partly explains why so many young women can strive to present themselves as sexually
attractive while having no real concept of, never mind experience of, stimulating and satisfying sexual
relationships.63 The surgical restructuring of women’s sexual organs illustrates this triumph of
“presentation” over sexual desire and satisfaction. Third, there is the question of working class solidarity.
Workers, through their unique position in the production process, have the power to overthrow capitalism
and create a different society. But there are crucial concrete aspects to actualising this potential economic
power. Unity has to be forged in the face of a common enemy. Divisions inside the working class must be
overcome through a democratic process of debate and discussion. Solidarity is essential for a working
class intent on transforming society. Male workers have to accept women as their equals. And all workers
should accept that a person’s sexuality can be varied but is always human, and that religious beliefs are
strictly a private matter. As Kollontai argues, solidarity is about listening and responding to the needs of
the other.64 How can this process occur if men think that women’s bodies are sexual objects to be ogled
at and occasionally bought for a quick fellatio or other sexual act? How can women feel confident about
solidarity if they feel obliged to present themselves as sexual objects to men? Or that their purpose is to
sexually stimulate men without experiencing the satisfaction of their own needs? The sex industry cuts
across and undermines this need for working class solidarity . Hence Marxists need to challenge its
claims to be erotic, to provide a useful service or to be in any way empowering for women. Without being
moralistic, we need to explain that the sex industry is part of the deformation and destruction of human
sexual desire, both male and female. It objectifies those who work in it and those who use it.
2NC AT: PERM
This is especially true given their politics of maybe arguments---representing
prostitution as neutral decontextualizes it from the always-already determined
nature of sex work---their “new form” of sexual relations is a marketing ploy to
champion bourgeoise individualism---this makes collectivity impossible
Cotter, assistant professor of English – William Jewell College, former research fellow – Center for the
Study of Women @ UCLA, ‘12
(Jennifer, “Bio-politics, Transspecies Love and/as Class Commons-Sense,” The Red Critique Vol. 14)
In fact, Hardt and Negri’s theory conceals that transnational
capitalism necessitates new and different forms of
love, sexuality and reproduction relations. It is not workers who—by economic necessity—adjust out of "free
consent;" capital economically compels workers to do this in order to have a more easily exploitable
workforce. The ruling class, Kollontai argues "seizes upon the new" family forms developed by workers (247).
Hardt and Negri’s celebration of "wasp-orchid" love and their rejection of collectivity and solidarity of workers (under the
rubric of "love of worker bees") is just as much a private property concept of love as "marriage-family couple love." Its
reliance, for instance, on "cruising" and "serial sex" as "antidotes" to the bourgeois family form of "marriage-couple
and family love" is not a break from private property relations or love and sexuality under the capitalist mode
of production, but a marker both of the extension of the market further and further into human sexual and
love relations—that is, the commodification of love and sexuality—and, moreover, of historical shifts in production
practices, but not production relations, which put pressure on old family forms as an institution useful for reproducing
capitalism. "Serial sex" and "cruising" are contemporary examples of what Kollontai calls the "passive adjustment of the working
class to the unfavorable conditions of their existence" (247). Like "prostitution," serial sex and cruising with their market logics
of "free and equal exchange" undergirded by structural relations of exploitation, are ruling class
ideological resolutions to the material contradictions and social alienation faced by the working class under
private property relations. Kollontai’s materialist analytics of the class contradictions of love under capitalism teaches
workers not to be fooled by the ruse that the ruling class puts forward in equating changes in cultural
mores and family values—which capital necessitates of workers—with changes in material relations. She points out that
"The champions of bourgeois individualism" routinely "say we ought to destroy all the hypocritical restrictions
of the obsolete code of sexual behavior" (237). They do so when they find that older codes of sexual behavior begin to
become fetters for profit. And this is the case today with the "marriage-couple" arrangement which, in many instances has
come to serve as a hindrance to profit for capital. The key, for capital now, underlying the "new" post-nuclear forms
of sex and love is that they are flexible families and kinship relations. That is, they are families that are flexible in their
practices and schedules, in their gender and sexual relations, in their understanding of what "companionship" and
"love" are—in short, they are flexible in the methods they use to reproduce labor-power to allow for greater
pliability of the workforce to the dictates of production for profit in global capitalism. "Post-nuclear" forms of love,
kinship, and family are commodified forms of love not in the sense of being morally "corrupt" as conservatives argue. The "new"
forms of family are as commodified as the old forms because these family and love relations are shaped by
the needs of capital today for a "flexible" labor force that has no permanent ties or commitments that will
get in the way of higher and higher levels of exploitation. Capital needs living labor, for example, to be able to pick up and move
for a new job or position in another city, state, or nation.
Footnoting---locating class alongside identity strips class of its concrete,
socioeconomic nature---any risk of a link destroys proletariat solidarity necessary
to transform the relations of production
McLaren, Distinguished Fellow – Critical Studies @ Chapman U and UCLA urban schooling prof, and
Scatamburlo-D’Annibale, associate professor of Communication – U Windsor, ‘4
(Peter and Valerie, “Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of ‘difference’,” Educational
Philosophy and Theory Vol. 36, Issue 2, p. 183-199)
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).
In stating this, we need to include an important caveat that differentiates our approach from those invoking
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
, 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 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
question of which split sets into motion all of the others
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.’
1NR
AT: POLITICS OF MAYBE
Solves the frame of their gender relations impact – forces men to internalize
better sexual norms
Jacqueline Comte, École de Service Social, Université Laval, “Decriminalization of Sex Work: Feminist
Discourses in Light of Research,” Sexuality & Culture An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, ‘13
Contrary to abolitionist allegations, the elimination of the sexual oppression of women cannot be done
by forcing men to the same repressive sexual norms that presently control the sexuality of women. This
would only maintain the sexual repression of women and the stigmatization of those who dare to show
a sexuality different from the one they are allowed. It is only by questioning those norms and by
recognizing, for women, an inalienable right to self-determination regarding one’s own sexuality
that we will be able to get rid of this sexual oppression. Therefore, to fight abuses of power and to
prevent the physical violence and psychological wounds of which sex workers unfortunately still too often
become victims, it is absolutely necessary to decriminalize sex work and to give it a status similar
to that given to any other kind of work , whether sexual services are provided as an establishment
employee or as a independent worker. It is equally essential to fight against prejudices existing towards sex workers and to
recognize that they have the same rights to police protection and to social respect as other people. Once these changes are
accomplished, sex workers will be in a position to obtain better working conditions and a better quality of
life. Even more, however, all women will benefit, as getting rid of the stigma attached to present moral
standards regarding sexuality will make it possible for all women (sex workers and non–sex workers) to be on
better terms with their sexuality, and to more freely use it or explore it if they choose to , even within its aspects
presently defined as being ‘degrading’, without the risk of being socially ‘de-graded’!
AT: NO ASSESS POLITICS OF MAYBE
They say we don’t solve stigmatization – wrong – decrim does that’s the 1NC –
the locus of legalization and its connection with the industry turns the aff
McNeill 13 — Maggie McNeill, received her BA (English) from the University of New Orleans in 1987
and her MLIS from Louisiana State University in 1993, former sex worker, writes a daily blog called “The
Honest Courtesan,” which examines the realities, myths, history, lore, science, philosophy, art, and every
other aspect of prostitution; she also reports sex work news, critiques the way her profession is treated in
the media and by governments, and is frequently consulted by academics and journalists as an expert on
the subject (“Treating Sex Work as Work”, 12-02-2013, Cato Unbound, Available Online at:
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/12/02/maggie-mcneill/treating-sex-work-work)
Harm Magnification
The common belief in criminalization and legalization regimes is that sex work is unique among all
forms of work; this view is solidly rooted in an archaic and sexist view of women as particularly
fragile and vulnerable , and the “Swedish model” posits that paying for sex is a form of male violence
against women. This is why only the act of payment is de jure prohibited: the woman is legally defined as
being unable to give valid consent, just as an adolescent girl is in the crime of statutory rape. The man is
thus defined as morally superior to the woman; he is criminally culpable for his decisions, but she is not.
In one case, a 17-year-old boy (a legal minor in Sweden) was convicted under the law, thus establishing
that in the area of sex, adult women are less competent than male children.
One would expect that feminists would be vehemently opposed to a law that so thoroughly infantilizes
women, but it was first enacted in 1999 under pressure from state feminists; its radical feminist supporters
in Sweden and other countries seem wholly oblivious to its insulting and demeaning assumptions about
women’s agency. Nor is the damage caused by this remarkably bad legislation limited to dangerous
precedent; despite unsupported claims by the Swedish government to the contrary, the law has been
demonstrated to increase both violence and stigma against sex workers, to make it more difficult for
public health workers to contact them, to subject them to increased police harassment and
surveillance, to shut them out of the country’s much-vaunted social welfare system, and to dramatically
decrease the number of clients willing to report suspected exploitation to the police (due to informants’
justified fear of prosecution). Furthermore, these laws don’t even do what they were supposed to do;
neither the incidence of sex work (voluntary or coerced) nor the attitude of the public toward it has
changed measurably in any country (Sweden, Norway and Iceland) where they have been enacted.
Yet despite this complete failure, Swedish-style rhetoric has been heavily marketed to other countries. In
legalization regimes, the sales pitch is based in the same sort of carceral paternalism which is used to
justify the drug war and supported by the same bogus “sex trafficking” claims which are being used to
justify so much draconian legislation in the United States (despite the fact that Sweden found no effect on
coerced prostitution, and a Norwegian study found that banning the purchase of sex had actually resulted
in an increase in coercion). In criminalization regimes, “end demand” approaches (client-focused
criminalization backed by Swedish-style rhetoric) are used to win the support of radical feminists, to blunt
criticisms that criminalizing sex work disproportionately impacts women, and to win federal and private
grants by disguising business-as-usual prostitution stings as “anti-sex trafficking operations.” But despite
the hype, the truth is that even operations framed as “john stings” or “child sex slave rescues” end up with
the arrest and conviction of huge numbers of women; for example, 97% of prostitution-related felony
convictions in Chicago are of women, and 93% of women arrested in the FBI’s “Innocence Lost” initiatives
are consensual adult sex workers rather than the coerced underage ones the program pretends to target.
And it hardly seems necessary to call attention to the grotesque violations of civil liberties which are the
inevitable result of any “war” on consensual behavior, whether it be paying for sex or using illegal
substances.
In any discussion of sex work, there will always be voices calling for it to be “legalized and heavily
regulated”; unfortunately, the experiences of legalization regimes demonstrates that “heavy regulation”
isn’t any more desirable or effective in the sex industry than it is in most others. For one thing, harsh
legalization requirements simply discourage sex workers from compliance . It is estimated that over
80% of sex workers in Nevada, 90% of those in Queensland, 95% of those in Greece and 97% of those in
Turkey prefer to work illegally rather than submit to the restrictive conditions their systems require, and
those figures are typical for “heavy” legalization regimes. One example of an onerous restriction most
workers prefer to avoid is licensing; the experience of New York gun owners last Christmas provides a
graphic illustration of why people might not want to be on a list for an activity which is legal, but still
stigmatized in some quarters. In the Netherlands, ever-tightening requirements (such as closing window
brothels, raising the legal work age to 21 and demanding that the 70% of Amsterdam sex workers who
are not Dutch nationals be fluent in the language anyway) have made it increasingly difficult to work
legally even if one wants to. And even in looser legalization regimes, laws create perverse incentives and
provide weapons the police inevitably use to harass sex workers; in the United Kingdom women who
share a working flat for safety are often prosecuted for “brothel-keeping” and, in a bizarrely cruel touch,
for “pimping” each other (because they each contribute a substantial portion of the other’s rent). In India,
the adult children of sex workers are sometimes charged with “living on the avails,” thus making it
dangerous for them to be supported by their mothers while attending university. And in Queensland,
police actually run sting operations to arrest sex workers travelling together for safety or company, or
even visiting a client together, under the excuse of “protecting” them from each other.
Such shenanigans were the primary reason New South Wales decriminalized sex work in 1995; police
corruption had become so terrible (as it so often does when the police are allowed to “supervise” an
industry) that the government could no longer ignore it. A 2012 study by the Kirby Institute declared the
resulting system “the healthiest sex industry ever documented” and advised the government to scrap the
few remaining laws:
PERM
The CP is a distinct policy option from the plan—legalization requires state
regulation.
Meng 13—Jinmei, “On the Decriminalization of Sex Work in China: HIV and Patients’ Rights”
[http://books.google.com/books?id=H4YBAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false]
Google Books pgs 14-15 //
There are misunderstandings of the definition of legalization and decriminalization regarding sex work. Decriminalization of sex work
is often assumed to be the same as the legalization of sex work. However, legalization and decriminalization are
distinctly different legal approaches to sex work with different degrees of state control and sex worker
control (Wottons 2006; World AIDS Campaign 2010). In a legalization model, the state is the main regulator of the
industry and has the power to decide on the conditions of sex work . Unlicensed sexual services
are illegal. Sex workers are less empowered because they are subject to various restrictions imposed by the
state. However, where sex work is decriminalized, sex workers are more empowered and all activities of or related to consensual
sexual services between adults are not criminal offenses. The decriminalization of sex work allows sex workers to
have a range of work options. They can work as self-employed workers, independent contractors, or employees. They can
choose to work in managed brothels, to be street based, to work at home, or to work in any combination of these. Sex works are
thus enabled to mostly self-regulated the industry (Wottons 2006; World AIDS Campaign 2010).
Regulation is necessarily part of legalization—they have to defend it – they said
they would do this on T
Weitzer 12 – sociology professor @ George Washington University
Ronald, “Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business”
[http://books.google.com/books?id=cjJKlRQsEv0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false] Google
Books pgs 76-7 //
Legalization is defined here as legislation that provides mechanisms for government regulation of paid
sex transactions after prostitution has been decriminalized. Regulation is what distinguishes
legalization from simple decriminalization . Examples include the following: licensing of businesses,
registration of workers, geographic restrictions (such as zoning is designated red-light districts or
prohibitions near schools, churches, etc.), health requirements (e.g., mandatory condom use, periodic
HIV and STD tests), age restrictions, and other rules for workers, managers, and clients. Prostitution is
removed from the criminal law and regulated by civil law, yet the criminal law continues to apply to cases
involving extortion, kidnapping, assault, rape, and other crimes.
2NC SOLVENCY
The structure that necessarily accompany legalization turn autonomy,
employment benefits, stigma, health care advantages—decrim solves all of this.
Bingham 1998 (Nicole, J.D., City University of New York School of Law, 1998) “NEVADA SEX
TRADE: A GAMBLE FOR THE WORKERS” 10 Yale J.L. & Feminism 69 1998
Both those advocating the prostitution-as-work position and those advocating the prostitution-asexploitation position agree that decriminalization, rather than legalization, is for the most part the
correct approach . Legalization usually means some form of state-regulated prostitution, whereas
decriminalization means the removal of laws prohibiting prostitution. 44 Some opponents of prostitution
advocate decriminalization for prostitutes but continued criminalization for pimps and johns.145 Even
those who advocate this position agree that arresting prostitutes is an ineffective way to curb prostitution
and secondarily victimizes women. Prostitution, with the 146 exception of Nevada and a brief period of
regulation in St. Louis, has not been regulated by legislation in the United States. 47 State and local
governments have spent thousands of tax-payer dollars in law enforcement efforts to eradicate it with little
success. Theorists and supporters on both sides of the debate advocate decriminalization to prevent the
frequent harassment, stigmatization, and violence perpetrated against prostitutes.
Prostitutes' rights organizations advocate decriminalization because of their basic belief that there is
nothing wrong with prostitution, and that women who choose to engage in this type of work should have
the same rights and protection as other workers. In the opinion of Priscilla Alexander, a co-founder of
COYOTE:
Decriminalization of prostitution and the regulation of pimping and pandering, it seems to me, offers the
best chance for women who are involved in prostitution to gain some measure of control over their
work. It would make it easier to prosecute those who abuse prostitutes, either physically or economically,
because the voluntary, non-abusive situation would be left alone. Decriminalization allows for the
possibility that the lives of prostitutes can become less dangerous.
Decriminalization would reduce the stigma attached to prostitution and prostitutes and allow them to
better bargain for the rights and protection they deserve. Supporters of the prostitution-as-work
perspective oppose legalization in the form of state enforced regulations unless they regulate third parties
and improve the working conditions of prostitutes.
Kathleen Barry, a proponent of the prostitution-as-exploitation theory, also advocates the
decriminalization of prostitution. In 1995, Barry revised her previous position on decriminalization from
decriminalization for prostitutes and customers to decriminalization for only prostitutes and continued
criminalization for customers.
In the late 1970's, writing Female Sexual Slavery before a feminist movement developed to confront
prostitution, I proposed decriminalization as the appropriate legal strategy to confront the sexual
enslavement of women. Concerned with women's victimization by police under conditions where
prostitution is criminalized, and with pimping that produces slavery of women in prostitution, I saw the
urgent need to take the laws off prostitute women, as the abolitionists have argued, without promoting
prostitution as the regulationists do. But at that time my proposal to decriminalize prostitution implicitly
meant decriminalizing men who buy women's bodies. The error in proposing blanket decriminalization
was that it decriminalizes the customers as well as the prostitute, leaving the customer, the direct
perpetrator of sexual exploitation, virtually sanctioned.5
Barry believes that this approach would render the customer, not the prostitute, the criminal. At the same
time, she proposes that prostitutes be recognized as victims of sexual exploitation by the customer.' Opponents of
prostitution, such as Barry, reject the idea that decriminalization is necessary so that prostitution can be recognized
as a valid form of work. In fact, Barry believes that using the term "sex work" is a sign of hopelessness when used by
women in prostitution who would leave it if they were able. 5 2 She states that "sex work language has been adopted
out of despair, not because these women promote prostitution but because it seems impossible to conceive of any
other way to treat prostitute women with dignity and respect than through normalizing their exploitation. '15
Opponents of prostitution argue that prostitution is not inevitable and that the way to stop it is to provide prostitutes
with resources to enable them to escape prostitution and sustain themselves economically.154
Nevada uses a regulatory approach to prostitution rather than a decriminalization approach. Prostitution remains
criminalized in Nevada, but local communities may permit a highly controlled and limited type of prostitution to exist in
a limited geographical area. Under this model, the state enters into an area of regulating adult sexual relationships,
an area that some question whether the state should regulate.' 5 State and local statutory systems are not a
recognition of prostitution as a viable employment option for anyone who chooses it. Instead, these systems are an
attempt to control an illegal activity that will not be eradicated despite the efforts of officials.
Under Nevada's regulatory system, the "pimp/prostitute" relationship is redefined. It is clear that the only
kind of prostitute who is legal and protected is the licensed brothel prostitute. Equally clear is that
individual pimps controlling a number of prostitutes are replaced by a small number of legal brothel
owners who are closely monitored by the government. The only legal pimps then become these limited
numbers of brothel owners who have direct links with the local government. Some might consider this
arrangement to mean that the state becomes the pimp by exploiting and abusing prostitutes through the
system of licensed brothels. In any case, prostitutes are divided into two categories, licensed prostitutes
who are legal, and all other prostitutes who are illegal. Therefore, non-licensed prostitutes do not gain
anything from the regulatory system, since most prostitution remains illegal . Street prostitutes in the
large cities are still more numerous than legal prostitutes in brothels,1 57 indicating that the regulatory
scheme neither reduced prostitution nor brought the industry under state control.
B. Regulation or "Freedom" for Prostitutes
A regulatory system such as Nevada's provides the state with a controlled means to sell women's sexual
services and eradicates choice for prostitutes themselves, rather than providing a way for prostitutes to
gain a degree of control over their lives. The few references in articles about prostitution written either by
prostitutes themselves or leading theorists, seem to confirm that being a licensed prostitute in one of the
brothels in Nevada is not a liberating experience. Laura Anderson, a former brothel worker, states that
the system results in mandatory exploitation . "Prostitutes are giving up too much autonomy, control,
and choice over their work and lives. Because prostitutes are not allowed to work independently, or
outside the brothel system, Nevada has essentially institutionalized third-party management with no other
options."' 8 According to another prostitute who worked at the Mustang Ranch outside of Reno, it was
"justlikeaprison."' 9
Prostitutes under the brothel system are considered "independent contractors" and not full-time
employees.16 Therefore, prostitutes do not gain the benefits of health care, vacation pay, retirement
benefits, or any of the other benefits and rights many workers have .' 6 1 When a prostitute receives
a license, she gives up some of her rights, including the right to freely travel when and wherever she
wants, her right to refuse testing for sexually transmitted diseases, and her right to live and work where
she wants.162 Prostitutes have little or no say in choosing their customers or the numbers of hours they
work. 63 A typical shift in a brothel is twelve to fourteen hours a day, every day for three weeks.' 64
A legal prostitute must share her earnings with the brothel, unlike the unlicensed prostitute who can try to
work on her own and keep her earnings. 6 By the time a prostitute is finished paying for all her expenses,
her share of her earnings is about fifty percent.166 Each prostitute has to pay for room and board, maid
services, supplies (including condoms), mandatory tipping for house employees, one dollar for each pair
of panties washed, twenty dollars for the weekly venereal disease checkup, two dollars for each
prescription, and any additional cost to have it filled.167 While a prostitute may be able to make a decent
income if there is a steady stream of customers, it is clear that the brothel 16 8 and the county benefit far
more than the individual prostitute.
While legal prostitutes in Nevada may no longer suffer the stigma of being criminals, they are
stigmatized by the licensing scheme and the widespread belief that prostitutes are the source of
disease . Many prostitutes do not want to risk further stigmatization by going public as a prostitute and
obtaining a license, or give up their freedom by working in a brothel, so the vast majority of prostitutes
remain illegal . While legal prostitutes may not be stigmatized by arrests, they may suffer a similar
stigma by being licensed.169 Just because something is not criminal does not necessarily remove the
stigma of being considered an "other" woman or a source of "filth" and contagion. In fact, a significant part
of the regulations passed surrounding prostitution concern the spread of disease.
C.Scapegoating Prostitutes for the Spread of HIV
The regulations requiring mandatory HIV tests for all licensed prostitutes serve to perpetuate the image of
the prostitute as a transmitter of HIV and are an ineffective method of reducing the spread of the
disease . Historically, prostitutes have been scapegoated for the spread of venereal disease.170
According to Kathleen Barry, "creating the illusion of controlling venereal disease in order to promote the
prostitution market was the original basis of regulated prostitution."' 7' Prostitutes were first blamed for the
spread of syphilis and now for the spread of HIV and AIDS. By labeling prostitutes as the source of
disease, policies and regulations focus on prostitutes as the infectors, instead of prostitutes as victims of
infection.1
Women have a higher likelihood of contracting AIDS from men than men from women. Furthermore, men
who buy sex in prostitution are members of the very population that engages in the promiscuous sexual behavior that
is likely to transmit it widely throughout the female population. Whenever men get HIV infected, they carry the virus to
prostitutes and to wives and other women. In other words, it is men's promiscuity that is responsible for the spread of
AIDS to the population 73 of women made available for male promiscuity.1
While legal prostitutes and those arrested for illegal prostitution or solicitation are subjected to mandatory HIV tests,
those who seek the services of licensed prostitutes are not subjected to any test. 74 This scheme perpetuates the
notion that prostitutes are to blame and underscores the fact that prostitution is still illegal except when it occurs
within a regulated brothel.
VI. CONCLUSION
Whether one agrees with the prostitution-as-work or prostitution-as- exploitation perspective, the current condition of
prostitution in the United States does not significantly benefit prostitutes. For the majority of major cities, prostitution
is a problem that seems to endure despite numerous attempts to eradicate it. Law enforcement officials continue to
chase prostitutes from neighborhood to neighborhood or attempt to contain them in a particular area of town.
Licensed brothels and prostitutes may have allowed government to control the number of prostitutes in some rural
areas of Nevada, but not in the major cities where prostitutes continue to work the streets. In Nevada and other parts
of the United States two tiers of prostitutes remain: in Nevada, those who work in brothels and those who work the
streets; and in the rest of the country, those who work for escort services or similar businesses and those who work
the streets. Prostitutes continue to face harassment and violence on a daily basis. In sum, the current situation
concerning prostitution needs to change. The question remains as to what model, if any, should be adopted.
Nevada's system of legalized prostitution may, at first glance, seem to legalize prostitution in the state of Nevada and
be a model for prostitutes' rights groups and possibly for those who believe that prostitution is exploitation. However,
the Nevada model fails to satisfy the concerns of either group. The system in Nevada only allows for a highly
regulated and limited form of prostitution. Legalized prostitution may conjure up the image of women freely
offering and rendering sexual acts wherever and whenever they please. But that image is far from the
reality in Nevada. The individual counties dictate where, when, and to a certain extent how prostitutes
are to perform their services. Since prostitutes are considered independent contractors and not
employees they do not enjoy the benefits that other workers who are employees enjoy.
In addition to far less freedom than the image of legal prostitution suggests, prostitutes in Nevada earn a meager
living by the time they pay for all the expenses they are required to pay. These prostitutes do not earn an adequate
income even though prostitution, in a limited sense, is condoned by the government. A prostitute, unlike a
McDonald's cashier or a waitress, is essentially a prisoner in a brothel for a three-week shift and cannot collect
unemployment insurance if she is fired. While all three workers have to follow health regulations, only a prostitute
must submit to regular physical examinations and blood tests. Legal prostitutes may have more medical check- ups
than most illegal prostitutes and non-prostitutes, but these mandated check- ups are meant to protect the customer
from infection by a prostitute, not a prostitute from a customer. Licensed prostitutes in Nevada appear to gain little by
the limited governmental permission to engage in prostitution and suffer almost all of the disadvantages of being an
exploited worker in a capitalist society.
Both prostitution-as-work and prostitution-as-exploitation perspectives fail to discuss the work-as-exploitation
perspective. Prostitution does not occur in a vacuum but instead takes place, at least in the United States, within a
capitalist society where exploitation is often an essential component. The majority of workers, whether they work in
the sex industry or not, are exploited. The prostitution-as-work perspective argues that prostitution should be
considered as work like any other job but does not discuss the fact that work, particularly for women, is always
problematic. The percentage of women in the waged labor force continues to increase in most of world but women
still earn less than their male counterparts and are increasingly a larger portion of the world's poor. The prostitutionas-exploitation perspective, on the other hand, also fails to realize that individuals who leave prostitution to search for
other work will still be exploited. As one sex worker comments:
I believe that no one should be forced to do any type of work they detest or find degrading in order to keep food in
their stomachs or a roof over their heads. Yet most of the arguments against sex work are not criticisms of 'wage
slavery' or of economic systems that exploit the labor of some for the benefit of others. A thoroughgoing critique of the
global economic system would have to encompass not only men who exploit poor women for sex but also residents
of wealthy nations who benefit from the cheap factory and agricultural labor of poor residents of developing countriesexactly the types of labor that are often proposed as worthy alternatives to 176 sex work.
Thus, any analysis of prostitution that fails to include the larger context of capitalism and exploitation falls short of a
realistic and comprehensive analysis. Neither perspective, for the most part, discusses or mentions male, lesbian, 17
bisexual, transvestite, or transgender prostitution.
In addition, any analysis that assumes that no woman can ever choose to engage in prostitution is too simplistic.
Proponents of prostitution-as- exploitation do not discuss the possibility of some prostitutes, or others working in the
sex industry, enjoying and choosing to perform that kind of work. Prostitutes' rights theorists do not deny that forced
prostitution exists or that some prostitutes dislike working as prostitutes. They do argue that for those who do not fall
into those categories sex work is often better paying, more •178 flexible, and puts women more in control than other
forms of work. This argument is not confirmed under the Nevada model. Many prostitution-as-work adherents also
emphasize the need to accept expressions of sexuality that are considered beyond the mainstream or "sex positive"
thinking.179 Carol Queen, a self-identified sex positive sex industry worker, argues that if anti-sex-work activists
wanted to improve the lives of sex workers, they would encourage sex positive discussions. While attitudes
towards sexual expression may be slow to change, there is one legal shift that would significantly alter the
lives of prostitutes on a daily basis.
Decriminalization of prostitution would help provide prostitutes the same legal protection as other
workers. It should be seen as a first step in any program directed at helping prostitutes radically
change their lives whether someone agrees with the prostitution-as-work or -as-exploitation theory.
Decriminalization would allow a prostitute to seek protection under the laws that already exist since it
would no longer be a criminal act. It would also allow prostitutes to legally enter into the discussion of
employee versus independent contractor statu s. In Nevada the status of independent contractor
prevents legal prostitutes from asserting rights as employees. Decriminalization may also serve to
decrease the stigmatization of being a prostitute. Looking at prostitution from a societal context, the
necessities of housing, education, job training, and health care must be available and accessible in order
for a prostitute to leave prostitution or remain in prostitution and live a safer and more stable life.
If exploitation is no longer regarded as unique to prostitution, but recognized as inherent to U.S. society
and its institutions, then perhaps the prostitution debate could offer viable solutions to the current
situation. Adopting the regulatory system in Nevada as a model for the rest of the United States would not
be the answer. Like many movements that propose "band-aid" solutions, those who advocate for
legalization of prostitution are simply seeking another public and legal sanction of exploitation .
Organizations such as WHISPER advocate for public awareness of the violence perpetrated against
prostitutes, as within the larger context of violence against, and inequality of, women. Programs and
policies that aid prostitutes individually, through crisis centers and shelters, should also be seen as
working towards effecting social change in general. The debate over prostitution and the question of
legalization or decriminalization should be considered as part of the larger debate over capitalism.
Prostitution may be a clearer example of sexual exploitation to advocates of prostitution-as-exploitation,
but it is certainly not the only one. Under the work-as-exploitation perspective prostitution would be
characterized as exploitative along with most other forms of work in a capitalist society. The discourse of
sexuality which prostitutes' rights advocates point out is lacking in the prostitution-as-exploitation
perspective should not overshadow the discourse of economic exploitation. Instead these discussions
should be considered as both separate and intertwined. In the words of one sex worker: "the peepshow
does not subvert the culture, it mirrors it."18 1
TRAFFICKING DA
Decriminalization empirically reduces trafficking---allying with sex workers allows
for on-the-ground scouting for abuse and allows the state to focus resources on
helping trafficking victims
Mgbako et al 2013
(Chi Adanna Mgbako, Clinical Associate Professor of Law, Fordham Law School; Founding Director,
Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic. J.D. Harvard Law School; B.A. Columbia University;
Katherine Glenn Bass, linical Human Rights Teaching Fellow 2010-2012, Walter Leitner International
Human Rights Clinic, Fordham Law School. J.D. Harvard Law School; B.A. Princeton University.; Erin
Bundra, J.D. Fordham Law School; Mehak Jamil, J.D. Fordham Law School; Jere Keys, J.D. Fordham
Law School; and Lauren Melkus, J.D. Fordham Law School) THE CASE FOR DECRIMINALIZATION OF
SEX WORK IN SOUTH AFRICA - GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
Decriminalization of sex work in South Africa will not affect South Africa’s laws against forced labor and
the commercial sexual exploita- tion of children.108 Evidence from New Zealand suggests that there is no
reason to fear that decriminalization will lead to an increase in trafficking or youth in the sex trade.
Instead, decriminalization can ensure that sex workers are allies in the fight against exploitation .
Finally, any discussion of decriminalization’s potential effects on traffick- ing into prostitution should
address the problem of reliably measuring such effects in South Africa. Studies and statistics often
conflate traffick- ing with sex work, thus making it difficult to rely on figures that purport to show the extent
of trafficking into prostitution in a given country.
Evidence from New Zealand indicates that decriminalizing sex work has no impact on the number of
youth in the sex trade or on the prevalence of trafficking into forced prostitution.109 In fact, five years
after decriminalization, the Committee could find no credible claims of trafficking into forced prostitution in
New Zealand.110 After decrimi- nalization in New Zealand, several brothel owners and clients have been
prosecuted for hiring underage sex workers.111 And sex workers can now challenge in court debt
bondage contracts in which a brothel owner or pimp economically exploits a sex worker.112
Due to the hours and locations in which they work, sex workers would be in a unique position to identify
suspected cases of trafficking and underage sex workers and to gather information about exploitative or
abusive labor conditions.113 Therefore, decriminalization, by remov- ing the fear of arrest, would allow
sex workers to take advantage of their position and help identify situations of abuse without having to fear
being arrested as a result.114 South African sex workers are opposed to both trafficking into prostitution
and the involvement of minors in sex work. They already investigate suspicious situations on their own
and approach individuals they suspect may have been trafficked in order to find out whether they need
help.115 But they are reluctant to identify situations of abuse out of fear of harassment .116 In
addition, under current prostitution laws in South Africa, victims of trafficking and youth in the sex trade
can be arrested and prosecuted for prostitu- tion.117 Decriminalization allows the state to focus
resources on social services to help survivors of trafficking and youth in the sex trade.118
Although advocates of decriminalization are opposed to trafficking into prostitution,119 there is a growing
body of research that suggests claims about the extent of trafficking into prostitution have been overstated.120 Further, data on trafficking may conflate instances of trafficking into prostitution with sex
work.121 Failing to distinguish between the separate concepts of sex work and trafficking when compiling
data leads to generalizations about the extent of trafficking that may not be supported by facts.
WELFARE DA
You can’t effect welfare institutions – your movement doesn’t spill up to coercive
incentives to not give prostitues money – even if you change their epistemology
they have the economic incentive to do that
Making prostitution legitimate work allows the state to force poor women into it.
Cherry 2001 (April L., Associate Professor of Law, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland
State University; B.A., Vassar University, J.D., Yale Law School) “Welfare Reform and the Use of State
Power in the Prostitution of Poor Women” CLEVELAND STATE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 48:67]
CONCLUSION: WELFARE REFORM AND THE COERCIVE USE OF STATE POWER TO INDUCE THE
PROSTITUTION OF POOR WOMEN
The work requirements of the new welfare regime are premised on the belief that those women with
children who are not working at paid employment should be made to do so. And that they should be
made to work at whatever jobs are available, regardless of whether the job will actually lift the woman and
her children out of poverty, and really without regard to whether jobs are really available. So with
respect to the conceptualization of prostitution as work , or the cultural normalization of prostitution
as work, I worry about what will stop the state from requiring women to take jobs in the legal sex
industry.
What mechanisms will prevent caseworkers from suggesting to women, poor women of color, that they
should or must take jobs in the stripping and pornography industries. We know that there are always
stripping jobs, porno movies to be made, phone sex jobs, and jobs at Hooters. And then there is the
implicit requirement. What happens when the states and the federal government write the last check for
the woman who has been unable to find other "work"? Won't there be a cultural expectation that the
woman will, in order to feed and shelter her children be willing to take on the "job" of a prostitute, since, its
only a "job," and "'women are gonna do what they gotta do."'45 And given our stereotypes about poor
women's sexuality, isn't prostitution a perfect job?
I know that I don't want to go there. I don't want to be part of a system, or member of a culture that sends
more women down the river, into "work" where their lives are literally meaningless. And finally I want to
reiterate a question asked by my friend and colleague in struggle, Meg Baldwin: should prostitution "be
the price that women are expected to pay for being homeless, unloved, jobless, and afraid?"4'6 I sure
hope not.