Alice Blogs Gender & Sexuality

An SMH article titled The other kind of country women’s club caught my attention today. It tells the story of a 36 year old sex-worker from rural NSW. She is a wife and mother, and her husband is supportive of her occupation - particularly because she makes good money (usually about $100 for half an hour’s work). She enjoys her job, not only because of the money, but because of the flexible work hours, because she likes meeting people, and she enjoys being able to provide a service that gives pleasure to other people.

This woman took place in a study of rural sex workers, conducted by Dr John Scott, from the University of New England’s School of Social Science.

An interest finding of the study was that most of the women identified with a religion and several practised, and that some had university degrees.

This article presented the issue of prositution in quite a positive way, in comparison to the negative way it’s usually conveyed in newspaper reports.

I found another article regarding prostitution in the UK publication, The Guardian, titled It’s all about what you want and when you want it. It’s sell line reads:

“A new [British] study shows the number of men visiting prostitutes has doubled [over a 10-year period]. But should we be surprised when attitudes to sex have shifted so dramatically?”

The study found that more men now feel comfortable with the idea of paying for sex and that there has been a change in the nature of the sex industry overall - it’s bigger and better organised than ever.

Dr Helen Ward who co-authored the study believes that sex has become a commodity, with products such as men’s mags, internet porn, raunchy films, television and song lyrics (which relates back to my blog on 1st blog on pornography). She states that most products, sex has become more about what you want, when you want it.

She states: “Strip clubs have became a common sight on our high streets; women learn to pole-dance…Celebrities are also far more candid about their sex lives”.

Susie Swallows, a prostitute who joined the profession 7 years ago, is keen to stress the normality and respectability of paying for sex: “We’re not streetwalkers…we’re not those alcoholic druggies, we don’t have pimps, we do it ourselves and the guys we see wine and dine us, and take us to the theatre and that sort of thing. It’s not seedy. The guys are gentlemen. And we pay our taxes like everybody else.”

The article also argued that men are now keener to pay for sex because in a society that edges closer to gender equality, paying a woman for sex affords men a degree of the power they feel is diminishing.

Although the article applauds an increasingly open attitude towards sex, it also states that the sex-industry is still largely dictated by men for men.

Both these articles have supported the idea that perceptions of prostitution aren’t necessarily as taboo as they’ve been in the past, but also that issues related to prostitution, and sex in general, are more open for public debate. I think it’s positive that prostitutes have been given a voice in both these articles, to comment on their profession from their insider’s perspective.

I read an interesting little column sourced from AAP and published in the SMH recently, about a study that assessed video pornography and found that the majority of it represents women in active sexual roles. I’ve typed out the whole column here, as I couldn’t find it on the SMH site:

Women’s porn roles examined
A study has challenged the commonly held view that pornography shows women as nothing more than sex objects. The study analysed 50 of the best-selling pornographic videos in Australia, and suggested “that mainstream pornography in Australia doesn’t represent women as sex objects, it shows them as active sexual agents”, said Professer Alan McKee, of Queensland University. “We were surprised at just how active and in control the women were in these videos.”
(Sydney Morning Herald 25/11/05)

I was interested that the study had been conducted and I was satisfied with the fairly unexpected findings of the study…. It’s not that I have a great interest in porn myself, but I don’t have anything against it and I’m very interested in people’s views about porn, particularly the general disparities between men’s and women’s perceptions of, and attitudes towards porn.

It’s assumed that men generally have a greater passion for porn than women do, but I don’t think the reasons for this are obvious or natural.

I’m not saying that all women hate porn, but a lot of women I know denounce porn, for some of these reasons:
- because they believe porn portrays women in derogatory ways, usually as sex objects
- because they believe porn represents only a specific type of woman as sexy (eg. young, busty, blonde bimbos) and that it perpetuates an attitude of this type of woman as the unrivalled sex symbol
- because porn just doesn’t turn them on
- because they’re pissed off and jealous because they’ve found the porn their boyfriend hides under his bed

But I think most of these views arise from misconceptions, basically because women don’t expose themselves to porn. I know from discussions with many males, that they’re all interested in different types of porn, just as they’re all interested in different types of women. I know that some porn presents big-busted women (which not every guy likes) and others with flat-chested women (that really turns some men on). Some displays stick-thin models and others present very large women. Some men like pornographic stories without pictures, others are only interested in the photos.

My view is that porn has actually benefited women over the centuries, as it has presented female genitalia to men in a fashion deemed as attractive. Due to an apparent disinterest in porn by females, male genitalia has never really had so much exposure as being beautiful and desirable.

I was interested in the way the article stated “mainstream pornography in Australia”. We all know sex sells, and much of our society’s popular culture has become so sexual that many mainstream advertisements, video clips, films etc, that appeal to both men and women, have become as explicitly salacious as a lot of the pornography on offer in magazines, videos and on the internet. For instance, see an SMH article about sexpot popstar Shakira and her products.

Look in any women’s fashion or lifestyle magazine and you’re bound to find more scantily-clad girls, staring at the lens seductively, than you would in many men’s magazines.

I was disappointed that the article was so short and wasn’t looked into any further by an SMH journalist but I guess that just goes to show that porn isn’t generally an issue considered appropriate for mainstream discussion.

Anyway, I guess this has become a bit of a rant….but I’d be interested to hear all your views on this matter, and I’ll try to monitor other stories about gender, sexuality and pornography in the media.