02

Conectas • There is another debate among feminists in Brazil about prostitution. You have a very interesting reflection on this issue.

S. F. • It was the feminist movement that began the analysis of sexuality that has given the power to prostitutes to say, “I am a sex worker” and to come out of the shadows and to struggle and say, “my struggle is also a feminist struggle.” It was the women’s movement that started analysing sexuality as part of housework, as part of the services that women are expected to give to men, as part of the marriage contract that women are obliged to give. Until the 1970s or 1980s, the crime of rape in the family did not exist in the United States, because it was understood that when you get married, the man acquires the right over your body and has the right to get sexual services from you at any time. It was understood – and the feminist movement has analysed it – that men always sell themselves, or try to sell themselves, in the wage labour market. We also sell ourselves in the marriage market. For many women, getting married is an economic solution, because the division of labour has been organised in such a way that it is much more difficult for women to get access to wage jobs. So, many women marry not because they want to, but as an economic solution for their lives. And you have sex because that is part of your job. We performed this deconstruction of sexuality, of the family, of the relationship between men and women, and we said that marriage is prostitution. In many cases, you can have a good relationship with your husband, but it doesn’t matter. The reality is that the way the state has constructed marriage has forced women to rely on marriage for survival and therefore, to offer sex in exchange for subsistence. The state has put us into the situation of prostitution. This is an old theme – even in the 1900s we had anarchist feminists like Emma Goldman talking about it. So we have insisted that there is a continuity between the housewife who at night, after washing dishes and the floor, has to open her legs and have sex, whether she wants it or not, whether she’s tired or not – and many women have been beaten up because they refuse sex – and the woman who sells sex on the street. One sells it to one man and another sells it to many men, but there is a continuity between the two. I think that this kind of analysis has given power to prostitutes.

There was a famous event in July 1975, when in Lyon, France, prostitutes occupied the Church of Saint Nizier because the city had passed legislation that forbid them to be in the streets. They had to go out of the city to places that had no light and many of them were murdered. Then, one day, after another prostitute was murdered, all the prostitutes occupied the church. That was a major spark. A lot of feminist women went there and that occupation lasted one month or more. It became a place of debate, a place of discussion about feminism, about prostitution. It was a very liberating moment. That occupation started the sex workers movement in Europe. Within a month, you had a big meeting of sex workers in Paris, prostitutes occupied the highways, there was a meeting in Holland. It gave them power. It was then that they started calling themselves sex workers. They called press conferences. They openly denounced the hypocrisy and the way women are divided between good women who are married – that many times don’t like being married – and the bad women. And feminists too – we too had denounced this division. So this, for me, this is the position around sex work.

I am aware that there are some sex workers and some feminists who celebrate sex work as liberation. “We are the ones who don’t give it away for free.” I think that every woman, in a way, has felt a bit of pride in that. But it is exploitation – which does not mean that it is much more degrading than many other jobs. I have little patience, to tell you the truth, with feminists who are very scandalised by the existence of prostitution because they see prostitution as a particularly violent job and, above all, a job that is particularly degrading for women. To women who say that prostitution is so degrading, I say that if we have to decide that there are certain jobs that are so degrading that women should not do them, then let’s start with women who work in jails, let’s start with women who work in the police, let’s start women who are in the army. Let’s start from there and then we can discuss prostitution. It’s very hypocritical to think there is something worse about selling your vagina in the street than working in the police and beating people up or working in the jail and being part of the system of oppression.

If we really want to say “no, these jobs, we, as women, refuse to take them”, if we want to be coherent, let’s start from them. Let’s not be moralistic and select prostitutes in particular and make prostitutes feel like their existence is a shame for other women. I think that that’s very unjust.

Conectas • How is your relationship with the younger feminist movements and what do you think are the main challenges for them today?

S. F. • I have a very good relationship with younger women. I have been teaching women’s studies for many years and I went through a period in which I was shaking my head because so many women – at least in the United States, or in my classes – were saying “I don’t need feminism any longer. I am liberated. I can do this, I can do that.” Looking at these women, particularly women coming from the middle class, I could see that they had much more social power [than older generations]. The women’s movement has opened up new spaces and many women have gained some autonomy from men – but not from capital. I think there is an important distinction: one thing is gaining autonomy from men and another is gaining autonomy. You can work three jobs, and, that way, you do not have to depend on a man, but that doesn’t mean you are free or autonomous.

I think it is a very, very difficult moment now for younger women. Fundamentally, I think it is difficult because there is not a new strong women’s movement yet. It is also more difficult for younger women now because neoliberal globalisation means for many women – and also for men – that work and the possibility of supporting yourself is more precarious. And, at the same time, you are given the idea that you have infinite possibilities, mobility – today, you are in New York and then, you go to…wherever. There is a lot of confusion about what is possible and what is not possible. Increased mobility has made it more difficult for younger people, younger women to commit themselves to something, to see clearly what is possible, what they want. So there is the illusion of many choices and the reality of an actual precarisation of existence.

And because of all the ideology that women should be emancipated and not depend on men, you are much more confused about what are the values that you should put at the centre of your life. Should you still give a lot of space to passion, love? What is love? Sexuality? Should you still think about having children? Right now, there are many younger women who can no longer follow their mother’s model, but, at the same time, they are not clear about the alternative. Because the alternative through wage work, or any kind of work that gives you an income, is very precarious. It’s a moment of confusion. What matters in this life?

I think [my generation] had less social power, but we were luckier because for us the choices were clearer. We had our mother’s model of what women should be. We knew we didn’t like it and we had the model of what we wanted: to be able to decide on our own. We had some very clear demands: if I do not want to have children, I have the right to not have children; if I don’t want to do housework, I should have the right to be able to support myself; I do not want to depend on a man. These were all very clear objectives. Because we were coming from a society that had such a defined, rigid model about women, in a way, it was easier for us to defend where we wanted to go.

On the other hand, the relationship of women to the state and capital is now much clearer. I think this is positive. There’s less of a chance of one thinking “I’m battling against my husband, my children or just men.” Now we can see more clearly that behind man, there is also the state; there is capitalism. Now we are in a situation where, for a lot of younger women, the idea of liberation through a job, through work, is totally in crisis. This is because of the continuing intensification of neoliberal policies – the cuts in jobs, precarisation of work, rising tuition fees. In fact, I’ve been surprised by how much interest there is now in Wages for Housework, in the discussion about care and care work.

This is one part of the story. At the same time, I see younger women are now beginning to reappropriate some of the themes, to realise that some of the issues that the old women’s movement was fighting for are still open, that in fact we are not beyond the mountain. They are going back to them, but in a new way: with more consciousness of intersectionality, diversity, different types of women, the whole issue of trans* etc. I am looking forward to the growth of this new women’s movement. Whenever I’ve been in Europe, and especially in Latin America, I’ve been amazed by the enthusiasm of younger women. I’ve been in Argentina, in Ecuador, in Mexico and I see that there is a whole new generation of younger women who are really very, very eager to read, comment and understand. Now, they’re also eager to understand what we have done, where we came from, what kind of solutions we thought of and how us, the older women, conceive their situation.

Conectas • Do you think that the struggle of women is the same in the North and in the South?

S. F. • North and South are very limited concepts at this moment because there is a South in the North and a North in the South. When you look at a city like New York, it is full of immigrants, of black communities that are as poor as the ones here in São Paulo. In the United States there are 53 million people who don’t have enough to eat. There is huge, intense poverty, and there is an incredible amount of police and military repression against these communities that is not much different to what you have in Rio or São Paulo. Perhaps in the United States, you don’t have 60,000 people killed every year, but you have thousands and thousands and thousands. Recently, we see almost every day a black youth killed in the United States and in many cases, execution style. There is a huge amount of poverty in Europe too, and it is growing. In addition, the expansion of capitalist relations has created, in Europe and the U.S., new populations without rights: refugees, immigrants, the undocumented. At the same time, you come to São Paulo and you go into neighbourhoods where you see a very clear middle class style. It is very important to not flatten whole countries, to think that one is poor and the other is wealthy.

The South does have a specific condition because it is in many countries of the South that you have the greatest depository of mineral wealth and of natural wealth – and, unfortunately, this is a curse. The areas we call the South in general have been the richest. It is no coincidence that they are also the object of war and the object of desire because that’s where you find most of the timber, the oil, the diamonds, the carbon, the copper, the lithium etc. The South is the source of our computers. The destruction of the South happens so that we can have computers and labour.

And there is still a difference [between North and South] because, starting in the early 1980s, the IMF and the World Bank systematically implemented a process of recolonisation. This process has come into being through the structural adjustment programmes that have been applied globally and also with the change in private property laws, convincing governments to change the law to privatise land, destroy community relations, which means attacking indigenous peoples’ land, allowing the companies to exploit them. Neoliberalism basically allows taking down all limits to the unlimited exploitation of the soil, the seas and the forest. All these treaties for free trade mean free exploitation of the world, free exploitation of labour without recognising any rights, any limits, opening up the earth, squeezing it, like they’re doing with fracking, so you can take everything out of it without any concern for human life or the environment. Then, of course, there is the war on drugs. You cannot squeeze a population without using immense violence and some sort of justification, and the war on drugs and the war on terrorism have been the kind of material support to the violence needed to impose these very brutal austerity economic programmes and these dispossession programmes that are really at the service of the big corporations.