Canadian prostitution has hit the front page of the newspapers as the case currently presented in front of the Supreme Court has raised a number of legal and social issues. What would have a feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir said in relation to this issue?
Why and how is it relevant to consider not just philosophy, but a feminist philosophy for the analysis of prostitution? Let’s dare to philosophize with our dear friend Simone de Beauvoir and let’s try to imagine what she would have said about Canadian laws on prostitution.
Canadian prostitution has hit the front page of the newspapers as the case currently presented in front of the Supreme Court has raised a number of legal and social issues. What would have a feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir said in relation to this issue?
Why and how is it relevant to consider not just philosophy, but a feminist philosophy for the analysis of prostitution? Let’s dare to philosophize with our dear friend Simone de Beauvoir and let’s try to imagine what she would have said about Canadian laws on prostitution.
Feminist have an ongoing debate on prostitution. Some of them occupy a so-called “abolitionist” position, which treats prostitution as exploitation of women and as a primordial symbol of their oppression; they would support a total prohibition.
Other feminists (yes, there are different kinds of feminists) oppose the abolitionists and having reclaimed the concepts of bodily autonomy and a right of free choice they present a position that defends women’s right to practice sex work. Currently the Supreme Court of Canada is deliberating over the legal framework for prostitution.
Let us recall that exchange of sexual services for money is completely legal in Canada. On the other hand, almost all the activities around sex work are criminalized, including managing a brothel, living out of income from the prostitution of others, or communication with the purpose of engaging into prostitution.
Three activists — Terry Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott – are contesting these laws and advancing the argument that the laws violate their fundamental rights, namely the right to security of the person listed in the Canadian Charter. The Supreme Court intends to evaluate the constitutionality of the laws.
Which form of feminism would have Simone de Beauvoir sided with? What analysis of the subject could one have based on her ideas?
Engaged knowledge
First of all, would have Simone de Beauvoir participated in these debates? Her works as well as her political views give an obvious answer. In many cases Simone de Beauvoir has taken a public stand with the aim of interfering into the legal and political affairs.
In one famous case she wrote and introduction to a lawyers Gisèle Halimi’s book about Djamila Boupacha, a young Algerian girl who was tortured during the war in Algeria. On a different note in 1971 she has drafted the famous Manifesto of 343 bitches, which listed the names of 343 women having had undergone an abortion. At the time abortion was illegal in France and the document was advocating free access to abortion similarly to contraception.
It is thus obvious that Simone de Beauvoir did take political stances. In fact her written works were criticizing the laws which were jeopardizing women’s security. She mobilized both writing and thought to confront the violence of the State.
The most well-known book of Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex is an impressive survey of philosophy, literature, history and mythology.
This analysis allowed her to develop an argument that a woman is “the Other” of a man, someone who is never fully recognized as equal to man. Beauvoir has demonstrated that irrespective of what we are talking about – history, philosophy or even biology – science does not take into account anything but material circumstances of male lives.
Being a good philosopher she exposed the fact that the production of knowledge itself is “constrained.” The first part of her work presents biological, anthropological, historical theories and theories of culture.
In the second volume she analyzes the actual conditions of female existence (their education, their situation and justification of their inferior position) before proposing her own theory of the liberation of women.
This work includes a chapter that is of relevance to our discussion, that on prostitution. Let us recall that existentialist philosophy is not analyzing the nature of men, but is rather preoccupied with the actual conditions in which they live.
As Beauvoir has pointed out in the Ethics of ambiguity, “it is in the understanding of the authentic conditions of our lives that we should draw the force to live and the reason to act”.
While examining the conditions in which prostitutes work Simone de Beauvoir has stressed the profound stigma to which they are subject and deprivation of the human rights and respect enjoyed by other women. Nevertheless she is far from condemning those who work as prostitutes. Describing the material conditions of their existence she writes: “It is not the moral and psychological situation that makes their existence unbearable. It is their material condition that is deplorable in the majority of cases.”
Solidarity
Refusing the discourse that “psychologizes” the victims of prostitution, Simone de Beauvoir stresses the solidarity that exists between them. She claims that these women create a “counter-universe” in which they regain human dignity. Beauvoir states that the majority of prostitutes are “integrated into the society that needs their services”.
The choice of language here is far from innocent: Beauvoir defines the work of prostitutes as “services” and this is decades ahead of feminist discourse which coined the term “sex workers”, the expression that started to be used in the 1980s. The recourse to the concept of the “sexual services” indicates that for Beauvoir prostitutes are working the same way the other women do.
Thus one can imagine that Simone de Beauvoir would have refused feminist abolitionist position on prostitution. On the contrary she would have upheld the rights of women to work freely.
What is more her valorization of their solidarity would have led her to criticizing the laws which, like the laws on brothels, prohibit women to work together in the same house with the goal of maximizing their security.
Beauvoir would have definitely condemned all the legal frameworks that insist on sex workers practicing their occupation in isolation.
Her acceptation of prostitution as a “service” does not mean that she would have tolerated the injustices that these women face. It did not prevent her in her own time from denouncing the fact that “low prostitution” is “subject to police abuse”. In solidarity with the most poor and the most visible women – those working on the streets—Simone de Beauvoir has recognized that laws criminalize them and expose them to police violence and neglect.
Impressive data
Taking into account this fine understanding of the link between the prostitutes and the police and the current situation of the prostitutes in the streets of Canada, Simone de Beauvoir would have supported the introduction of the new legal framework, under which women would not hesitate to confide in the police, an impossible thing if the activities that are connected to prostitution (such as communication) would continue to be treated as a crime.
What is more, being a scientist, a researcher and an existentialist philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir would have immersed herself into examining the data presented to the court in the case of R.vBedford. The sheer scope of the data is impressive: 25 000 pages which include expert reviews, testimonies of the groups, community and street prostitutes.
When the case was examined by the Supreme Court of Ontario, the judge Himel has analyzed all this documents and came to a conclusion that the current laws create conditions of risk for women who find themselves vulnerable in front of the violence.
Our laws on brothels prohibit several women working together forcing them into isolation; laws on communication create obstacles for finding clients since the majority of sex workers are limited in theirs communications.
Finally, legislation over third parties prevent sex-workers from hiring a driver (because he will be regarded a pimp). This as well fosters the isolation of sex workers. Beauvoir would have appreciate the scope of collected information as well as its quality, because this way one can better understand the “conditions of existence” of these women.
The intellectual undertaking here is to analyze “the authentic conditions of our life”. These data allows us to understand how Canadian laws create the conditions under which women are exposed to risk and how their rights for the security of person are compromised.
The same logic was used by Simone de Beauvoir in her argumentation on abortions, where after having researched the empirical data documenting the conditions of everyday life, she denounced the legal framework which stigmatized the women and deprived them of their fundamental rights.
Who is “the Other”?
Apart from her pronouncement to uphold the freedom of women, including women doing sex work, theoretical framework developed by Simone de Beauvoir raises a fundamental question on the nature of human subjectivity. Having analyzed existential conditions of women, the philosopher states that to a great extent they are positioned as the “other” of men. This theoretical problems are currently also at the center of feminist discussions of prostitution.
In fact Beauvoir made us understand that a feminist position that treats prostitution only from the point of view of exploitation sustains and reproduces, perhaps involuntarily the division between the feminists and the sex workers.
Isn’t the desire of certain feminists to abolish the prostitution positioning sex workers as the “Other”? In other words, are sex workers a party incapable to express consent, simple victims of patriarchal ideology?
Beauvoir forces us to interrogate ourselves on the subject in order to better understand the implicit and theoretical foundations of “the other” and to discern the epistemological constructions of the “Self”.
The Supreme Court is currently pondering the constitutionality of the Canadian laws on prostitution. Owing to the theory of Simone de Beauvoir we are better positioned to understand the extent of discrimination to which sex workers are subject.
Her ideas also encourage us to consider constructions of the “Other” in our laws, political systems, myths and histories.
To sum up, for this great philosopher abolition of the laws that expose women to violence represents an important step towards their liberation, this essential passage from the ”Other” towards the Self recognized by the law and society.
Viviane Namaste
Titular professor, Institut Simone de Beauvoir, Université Concordia