Debbie Cameron takes a vital take a look at the linguistic framing of existing arguments on prostitution.

Let’s begin with a concern. Are you pro-sex or anti-sex?

Possibly you’re believing: ‘obviously I’m not anti-sex, who the hell would protest sex?’

Or possibly you’re believing: ‘Hold on a minute, aren’t those terms a bit filled?’

And obviously, they are. However that features the area. It remains in the nature of political arguments to be performed in crammed language. The proverbial ‘fight for hearts and minds’ is constantly, to name a few things, a war of words.

‘ Pro-sex’ (or ‘sex favorable’) and ‘anti-sex’ are shorthand labels for political positions on a set of problems (consisting of porn and prostitution) which have actually divided feminists because the 19th century. ‘Anti-sex’ is what the ‘pro-sex’ camp call individuals on the other side of the argument: it’s not what the opposite call themselves. (Since who the hell would protest sex?)

However the completing terms in a political argument aren’t constantly simple revers like ‘pro-/ anti-sex’. In arguments on abortion, the opposing camps are most frequently identified ‘pro-choice’ (supporting females’s right to select whether to continue or end a pregnancy) and ‘pro-life’ (safeguarding the sanctity of human life and the rights of coming kids). Each side has actually picked a label that fits its own argument, and both have actually been reasonably effective in getting others, consisting of the media, to appreciate their terminological choices.

There’s more to these choices than simply the words themselves. As the linguist and cognitive researcher George Lakoff discusses, ‘every word is specified relative to a conceptual structure’. For example,

If you have something like “revolt,” that indicates a population that is being ruled unjustly, or presumes it is being ruled unjustly, which they are shaking off their rulers, which would be thought about an advantage.

So when individuals in a rural street grumble about the council’s brand-new parking limitations and the regional paper reports this under the heading ‘Locals in parking revolt’, that implicitly directs us to evaluate their action in favorable terms, as if they were downtrodden peasants courageously withstanding tyranny. If rather the paper had actually called it a ‘parking squabble’, that would frame the locals’ complaint as insignificant and petty.

The power of framing to form understandings of a concern is what makes the option of terms tactically essential. Lakoff has actually composed thoroughly about the method this operates in arguments in between conservatives and progressives in the U.S.A.. Among the cases he takes a look at is the argument about cutting taxes for the rich– or as the conservatives who favour this procedure put it, providing them ‘tax relief’. Progressives oppose tax cuts, however they likewise utilize the term ‘tax relief’, and in Lakoff’s view that’s a tactical error. The word ‘relief’ frames paying tax as an agonizing condition– a frame that shows the conservative view therefore provides a benefit in the argument. When the progressives state themselves ‘versus tax relief’, they are accepting instead of challenging the conservative view of tax as an unbearable problem. And when tax is framed as a concern, the political leader who provides ‘relief’ will be more popular than the one who does not.

What Lakoff believes the progressives need to do is frame the problem in a various method. Like, ‘paying taxes is paying your charges to your nation’. If abundant individuals take pride in their capability to pay the substantial memberships charged by unique nation clubs, they need to likewise be happy to spend for their subscription of what many of them like to call ‘the best nation in the world’. More normally, he argues that whoever manages the framing of a concern stands a much better possibility of winning the argument. It’s an error to accept terms which have actually been picked by your challengers to serve their own interests, and to let them specify your position for you.

When it comes to abortion feminists have not fallen under that trap. However on other problems, particularly problems which feminists are divided on, the scenario is rather various.

Prostitution/sex work: framing the dispute

The existing dispute on what to do about prostitution (or ‘sex work’– various terms, various frames) is a case in point. On this problem there are 2 completing arguments which both declare to be progressive. The very first is that business sex must be lawfully readily available in the very same method as other individual services: the state must deal with the (primarily female) purveyors and the (extremely male) customers as equivalent, self-governing representatives, and need to not restrict their liberty by making the purchasing or selling of sex a criminal offense. Desiring less state disturbance and less limitations on open market is a position usually related to the political right, however when it comes to the sex trade it’s more typical left wing. It’s likewise the position taken by some feminists.

Other feminists, nevertheless, view prostitution as a basically exploitative organization which depends upon and recreates inequality in between males and females. From that viewpoint there is absolutely nothing ‘progressive’ (or as Jeremy Corbyn just recently put it, ‘civilized’), about making it more quickly available and more socially appropriate. Fans of this argument do concur with the opposing camp that the state need to stop penalizing woman of the streets. What they favour is the ‘Nordic design’ (so called due to the fact that it was originated in Scandinavia, though it has actually just recently likewise been embraced in France), in which the law specifies buying sex as a criminal offense, and it’s the purchaser instead of the seller who is punished.

This 2nd group of feminists has actually had a hard time to emerge as ‘progressive’ and to withstand being identified ‘conservative’ by the very first group. In Britain last August, a YouGov survey discovered that most of participants believed ‘consensual sex work’ need to be legal– though the total bulk in favour wasn’t big (around 54%), and there was a substantial distinction in between males and females. A clear bulk (65%) of guys remained in favour, with just 15% opposed; most females, by contrast, were either opposed (27%) or unsure (30%), with 43% in favour.

The reasons individuals hold the views they do are most likely to be several and complex; however one pertinent factor to consider might be the method language has actually been utilized in this dispute. Feminist challengers of prostitution have actually perhaps done the very same thing Lakoff slams progressives in the United States for performing in the argument about tax relief: they have actually accepted terms that favour the opposite. In specific, they have actually accepted that what they’re arguing about is most appropriately referred to as the ‘decriminalization’ of prostitution.

One instant issue with this is that it’s complicated. In truth, both sides wish to legalize the selling of sex: the point they disagree on is whether purchasing sex must be legal. Often, advocates for the Nordic design attempt to navigate this confusion by describing that what they oppose is ‘complete’ decriminalization (significance, of purchasers and sellers alike). How well this works depends upon how conscious the audience is of the information of the completing legal propositions (for those who are not deeply engaged with the dispute, the distinction in between ‘decriminalization’ and ‘complete decriminalization’ is most likely unknown). However in any case, there’s a more basic problem about the method the term ‘decriminalization’ frames the concern being discussed.

Whenever there’s a proposition to ‘legalize’ something, the ramification is that its existing status as a criminal offense is approximate and unfair. The reality that it has actually been ‘criminalized’– made into a criminal offense– is either a reflection of conservative social mindsets from which many people have actually now proceeded, otherwise an expression of the state’s requirement to manage its people, particularly those it views as a risk to the existing order (e.g. youth, the bad, and members of ethnic or sexual minorities). This was the argument that resulted in the legalizing (under specific conditions) of abortion and sex in between guys in the late 1960s. These were/are stated to be ‘victimless criminal activities’, acts which do not damage others, and which for that reason need to not be prohibited or penalized.

For individuals on the political left, who pride themselves on their tolerant social mindsets and their resistance to authoritarianism and oppression, the term ‘decriminalization’ works like ‘revolt’ in Lakoff’s example: it frames the proposition in favorable terms, as the certainly ‘progressive’ thing to do. Alternatively, the label ‘anti-decriminalization’ frames individuals it is used to as the reverse of progressive. The label states absolutely nothing about their political intentions; it simply recommends that they are standing in the method of modification, therefore backing a conservative ‘order’ program. In reality, feminist critics of prostitution decline the standard conservative case versus it (that it flouts the religious/moral standard restricting extra-marital sex, which the females associated with it are ‘filthy’); however they do not think it is ‘victimless’ or safe. Nevertheless, the ‘pro-versus-anti-decriminalization’ frame not does anything to assist feminists get that argument throughout.

Could feminist challengers of prostitution take Lakoff’s guidance, and utilize various terms to put the problem in a various frame? Some advocates do call themselves ‘abolitionists’, therefore positioning themselves in the custom of earlier battles to eliminate slavery. Another possible reframing is recommended by the author Rae Story, a previous woman of the street who now explains herself as a ‘sex-industry important feminist’. Going over the assistance just recently revealed for decriminalization by the left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Story discuss the paradox of a dedicated socialist taking this position. The sex market is worked on capitalist concepts: the argument for ‘complete decriminalization’ is, she states,

in result an argument for the complete industrialisation of prostitution. It breaks the ice for services to be able to utilize their wealth to construct big whorehouses and chains, therefore combining prospective market earnings and hiving them off into smaller sized and smaller sized varieties of hands.

This isn’t simply wild speculation: the expansion of mega-brothels work on super-exploitative, neoliberal lines is what has actually taken place in Germany because the sex market there was legalized. Would leftists discover the cause so certainly progressive if it were referred to as ‘the industrialization of prostitution’, or in other terms which trigger a ‘neoliberal industrialism’ frame, like ‘deregulation’ and ‘free enterprise’? Would individuals who associate ‘decriminalization’ with projects for social justice feel the very same about a project for ‘legalized whorehouses’?

However being identified ‘anti-decriminalization’ isn’t the only issue for feminist challengers of prostitution. Another issue is the framing of their position as ‘anti-sex’.

From prudes to pearl-clutchers: the rhetoric of ‘anti-sex’

Mindsets to sex are a significant dividing line in between contemporary conservative and progressive ideologies. Whereas conservatives see sex as a socially disruptive force which should be managed and included, progressives concern it as favorable and socially liberating. Since of this, anybody who reveals issue about any type of sexual behaviour is accountable to be explained by progressives as ‘anti-sex’, indicating conservative, moralistic, intolerant and prudish.

Feminists of my generation have actually been hearing this allegation for almost 50 years– initially it originated from anti-feminist guys, and now it typically originates from more youthful feminists, who keep that female sexual company and enjoyment were not part of the second-wave program. In truth, these were crucial concerns for the Women’s Freedom Motion of the 1970s. Among the most-read texts produced by the early WLM was Anne Koedt’s ‘The misconception of the vaginal orgasm’ (1970 ): after observing that females had actually been ‘specified sexually in regards to what pleases guys’, Koedt asserted that it was time for them to demand their own right to sexual enjoyment:

We should start to require that if specific sexual positions now specified as “basic” are not equally favorable to orgasm, they no longer be specified as requirement.

What Koedt and her contemporaries protested wasn’t sex, it was guys determining the terms for sex. And guys determined the terms simply as definitely in the ‘progressive’ counter-culture of the 1960s as they carried out in the most conservative household houses. The terms themselves were various, however guys’s privilege to set them was the very same. And feminists had actually had enough of that.

Unsurprisingly, some guys were less than happy by the possibility of sis doing it on their own– specifying their own desires, making their own needs, stating no to sex they didn’t desire (and in many cases, to heterosex in basic). That type of female company wasn’t what guys wanted when they discussed sexual ‘freedom’. (An apter word than ‘company’ may have been ‘schedule’.) Calling feminists ‘uptight’, ‘freezing’ or ‘prudes’ was a method of dismissing the difficulty feminism presented to standard, male-centred concepts about sex. Terms like ‘anti-sex’ and ‘pearl-clutching’ do the very same task today. The vocabulary has actually altered, however the framing is the very same.

On some problems, feminists have actually been successful in altering the frame. 50 years back, for example, you might be identified ‘uptight’ for revealing issue about rape. Today you can rape without being identified ‘anti-sex’, due to the fact that rape has actually been reframed as an act of violence instead of sex. However feminist criticisms of prostitution have actually not had the very same effect. On this subject we still hear all the old arguments about guys’s sexual requirements, and even the claim that if prostituted females did not supply an ‘outlet’, the remainder of the female population would be at higher danger of rape. We likewise hear a more recent set of arguments about the ’em powering’ nature of business sex work for females. Feminists who disagree are called ‘whorephobic’, and implicated of rejecting other females company and option.

Naturally, feminists have actually objected to these arguments and allegations; they have not simply pulled back into silence. However Lakoff would state that participating in dispute with a challenger on their terms, utilizing their favored language, is a less efficient technique than redefining the problem in your own terms. If you wish to alter the photo, alter the frame.