Dear Professor,
It was very inspiring to talk to you last Thursday. I read the two articles: Lena Edlund’s “A Theory of Prostitution” and Catherine Hakim’s “Erotic Capital,” which Caldwell wrote about in the Financial Times article. I have a lot of notes and questions for each, and would really enjoy discussing them with you if you ever have an open slot during office hours. I also started reading Sex is Not a Natural Act by Tiefer, and have some questions for you.
I will come by later today or tomorrow to drop off my Political Economy forms in your mailbox.
I. Thoughts about Caldwell Article in Financial Times:
1. “Men desire sex more intensely more intensely than women” – is this of biological or social construction? Edlund mentions in the conclusion of her article that the social construction of female sexual desire has varied greatly throughout history from Victorian female distaste for sex to the Middle Eastern idea that women have far greater libido than men. Do hormonal differences between men and women (ie testosterone / estrogen, progesterone) really create a big difference in sex drive? It has been proven that testosterone definitely makes men more aggressive, but to what extent does it make men desire sex more intensely as compared to similar effects in female hormones? To what extent is it justified to use the argument of disparate male/female sexual desire in a social construction of prostitution when the biological/social natures of that construction is yet unclear?
2. “It is wrong to make patriarchy the scapegoat. Women disdain prostitutes and trophy wives as much as men.” – These women are WITHIN the patriarchy, and have assimilated its ideas. Women can just as easily be “anti-feminist,” depending on the specific content of the feminism in question.
3. “Technology has provided what Ms. Hakim calls ‘technical aids to enhancing erotic capital.’ It has improved the sexual product.” – Interesting! Marxist analysis possible here: technology (contraception, personal enhancements for increased youth/sexual ability) has already changed the material political economy of sex (sexual revolution), but the superstructure/ideology is still shifting very hesitantly in conflict with other ideologies of Protestant religion, monogamous marriage laws, and conservative sexual norms.
II. Thoughts about Dr. Hakim’s paper “Erotic Capital,” published in 2010.
1. “Oblivion of the social sciences” to the notion of erotic capital “suggests patriarchal bias.” Men deny women have “erotic capital” because “they have less of it.” Furthermore, they make it socially taboo to exploit it. – Interesting theory! Although it does sound a little simplistic to me…it would be good to reason through this and see if there are any leaps in logic.
2. Bourdieu’s four types of capital, and Hakim’s inclusion of fourth form of capital, erotic capital. Why is erotic capital not something that can be included under human capital? Is human capital limited to education and skills?
3. Hakim’s Six/Seven Elements of Erotic Capital: sounds like qualifications for a beauty contest! But I wonder about some of the qualifications she includes as “erotic” or “beautiful” – for example, she puts down liveliness and social presentation/wealthy dress (she made a comment about not dressing like a “homeless tramp.”) What about fetishists and people of deviant tastes who like a sort of punk/dead look and go for a homeless chic? More importantly, it is a common saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Does that make beauty/erotic capital more precarious, as it is placed between the person who has it and the person who perceives that; as it is something that needs a secondary source of recognition in order to have value, and this value is fluid depending on the perceiver? Do any of the other sources of capital (social, human) have the same requirement of an outside validator?
4. Hakim says that women “have more erotic capital than men” and “deploy it more actively.” Is this argument valid? That which is commonly found attractive in women (physical attractiveness, social grace, etc.) is different from what is commonly found attractive in men (success), so would it be more accurate to say that the “erotic capital” of women and men differ in the composition of the six/seven elements that Hakim listed? In what ways do the other forms of capital (economic, social, human) overlap into erotic capital, as someone who is more cultured and well-connected may seem more attractive than someone who is not, to some people.
5. I wonder about a model that can illustrate the impact of AIDS/STD’s in the late 1970’s/80’s on erotic capital markets.
6. “Erotic capital may be the most widespread and democratic form of capital, so it becomes invisible.” – Interesting! Is this a common form of elite oppression that is true for other qualities? Or does the fact that the intellect is often placed in opposition to the body (mind/body dualism) make academics less willing to analyze human beauty for fear of appearing shallow/unintellectual? Plato and Aristotle sure analyze it a lot…
7. Another interesting Marxian analysis she makes: men of high economic capital tend to marry women of high erotic capital, and these women tend to pass their genes onwards, resulting in “class differentials…beauty filters up the class system.” It would be interesting to look more closely at the various biological vs. social ways in which all four kinds of capital are passed down.
8. Her mentioning of Arlie Hochschild’s “Emotional Labor” theory and Simone de Beauvoir’s “Gender as Performance” theory (as applied to sexuality) are both relevant to the theoretical framework for sex work that I am slowly constructing. I also agree with her statement at the end of the article that “the most powerful and effective weapon deployed by men to curtail women’s use of erotic power is the disdain and contempt heaped on female sex workers.”
9. She writes that contemporary men are now “beginning” to work harder on their own looks, with higher incidence of botox among older men, and viagra for enhanced performance. She writes interestingly that the newly “destabilized monogamy” of contemporary society forces people to maintain the erotic capital for a longer period of time, after marriage. She writes about male care of physical appearance as though it were a completely new thing, and I wonder what she would say about the colonial powdered wigs or the way men in Papua New Guinea pay more attention to their physical appearance than women do. It seems to me that men’s performance of attractiveness is not only for women, but also a display of power and prosperity for other men. Masculinity is a very difficult and stringent performance, perhaps even more challenging than femininity in many ways, and I don’t think that men are more interested in erotic capital now, merely due to the fact that women are gaining in economic capital, but that standards for masculinity are fluid and change throughout culture. There may be many more factors to men desiring to look “younger” than to compete in capital with women; I think youth is an obsession for the culture at large that symbolizes work vitality, which is not only deployed for sexual purposes.
10. Hakim does a poor job of proving that “Men’s demand for sexual activity and erotic entertainment of all kinds greatly exceeds women’s interest in sex….this has been known for centuries.” She doesn’t acknowledge the social construction of gendered sex drive, and she uses a questionable argument of a “pay gap” between women and men as proof of difference in interest (in the footnotes) without discussing the differential norms/stigmas/availabilities of purchasing commercial sex for men and women. She also uses the “feminist” perspective in a sort of derogatory way, assuming that feminists are one cohesive group, which they definitely are not. Finally, Hakim tries to prove that women lose interest in sex after childbirth more readily than men do, but her sample base for the time frame in which men and women in modern industrialized society tend to have equal sex drive, (men and women under 30-34 years of age) corresponds to the generation born after the ’60s sexual revolution generation, which is a group with very different gender and sexuality expectations than their parents, so logically, they should have less female inhibition. Therefore, this data is inconclusive of whether or not women lose interest in sex drive after childbirth, and we can’t really tell for a fact if this is true until the younger generation (currently 30-34) reaches menopause and shows sexual interest over the course of their lifespan.
11. “Women prefer sex with emotional attachment.” – Again, this is a biological/social issue. I think women are more wary of losing their erotic capital due to greater social stigma of promiscuity, therefore they have a greater incentive to hold on longer to their sexual partners, thus necessitating securitization via emotions. Women recognize the scarcity and fragility of their erotic capital, which comprises of a larger percentage of their overall capital than that of men, so men can take more erotic risks and thus need/desire less attachment. This is a social phenomenon, and I don’t think we have proven conclusively about biological differences in emotional attachment through sex.
12. “Women are more interested in the emotional games surrounding sex, while men can seek and enjoy sex as a goal in itself.” Again, this is due to the same cost differentials in female and male sexual behavior. I don’t like the word “games” because it implies that the female behavior is frivolous, trivial, and irrational, for entertainment purposes only; in reality, I think that women are very rational and complex in their emotional tests of men, to meter their power and security, an act that is necessary in a social structure that inhibits women’s overt expression of power and historically has forced women to exert indirect power through male partners to control basic economic and material aspects of their lives.
13. Hakim is kind of conservative at times; no wonder some feminists are angry with her. She encourages stay-at-home wives because there are “efficiency benefits of a division of labor that allows a man to focus exclusively on his work and career, without having to share the childcare, cooking, and cleaning,” and she proves that this is better because men who have stay-at-home wives tend to be more successful, since they can focus better. However, I think she has framed the causation in reverse: these men were probably more successful or had more potential for success to begin with in order to be able to attract and keep a stay-at-home trophy wife.
14. Also, Hakim doesn’t acknowledge the fragility of erotic capital, since 1) it depends on the eye of the beholder, 2) it depreciates with age!, 3) much of it is genetically acquired or expensively enhanced, and very unfair/undemocratic! She writes, in a relationship, there is a non-economic power balance between men and women even though women earn less in wages than men do, because “sexual access is typically wives’ principle bargaining asset, not money.” However, she doesn’t acknowledge the precarious nature of this bargaining chip, that it is dependent on the husband’s desire, and its excessive use carries the risk of encouraging infidelity and worse consequences; it is not nearly as reliable a source of power as economic equality.
15. Hakim criticizes Anglo-Saxxon feminists and the notion of “lookism,” which “encapsulates the puritan Anglo-Saxon antipathy to beauty and sexuality, arguing that taking any account of someone’s appearance should be outlawed, effectively making the valoraization of erotic capital unlawful.” While I sympathize with her argument that beauty queens are simultaneously prized and scapegoated in our hypocritical society, I wonder if she has thought about the extent which erotic capital is itself a form of oppression sometimes (ie body image, unhealthy media encouraging anorexia)? How are the pressures applied towards women in “improving their body” (through dieting, vs. men’s improvement through fitness) different from the pressures applied towards men in “improving their success” – mind, work ethic? (Of course, these are generalized gendered norms, which are not true for all women and men, especially in the contemporary context, but they are general frameworks to consider.) Are the components of female “erotic capital” somewhat less healthy or beneficial for the female, or more difficult to attain, than that of male “erotic capital”?
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III. Lena Edlund “A Theory of Prostitution” (Professor, I need your help in understanding the more mathematical aspects of her model. Lena Edlund is far more conservative in her attitude towards prostitutes vs. wives than Catherine Hakim. Although Hakim seems to encourage sex work destigmatization at the end of her paper, Edlund definitely does not, and has an overall rather negative and condescending outlook towards sex workers. I’m a little nervous I’m signing up for her class in the fall.)
1. Though I am fascinated by her model, and want very much to understand how to construct economic arguments like hers, I take issue with many of her assumptions. According to Edlund, the difference between marriage and prostitution is that within marriage, men are guaranteed paternal claim to the children, which is of positive utility, so men are willing to “pay more” for marriage in order to have this right, since biologically and legally (in the U.S.? – this doesn’t apply globally, and she does not specify location), only a woman’s right to “ownership” of the child is recognized. On the contrary, I think that men are not paying for the right of paternity to their children, but rather, they are paying prostitutes to be ALLEVIATED from the obligation of paternity if a child is born by accident. Which women would not want a man to help take care of her child, unless the man is abusive or absolutely intolerable in some way? Instead of thinking about marriage as a “paternity premium,” I think a better model would picture prostitution as a “non-reproduction premium.” I think that Edlund’s model is not in accordance with the reality of male motivations for commercial sex.
2. I like Edlund’s statement that because “female parental investment exceeds that of males by far (Trivers 1972), therefore females should be able to extract compensation (Wright 1994), and marriage is a sort of “mating premium.” “Marriage may be viewed as a contract on children in which custodial rights are transferred from the mother to the father.” This argument makes a lot of sense; however, I think that the reason prostitution costs rather more than an “unskilled” job “should” is because of the nonreproductive/non-attachment/non-responsbility, which asserts its own kind of value that seems contradictory to the value in marriage.
3. Edlund asserts that prostitutes are compensated for the loss of their “marriage capital” because they become less desirable spouses. However, I don’t think this is true across the board. Personally, I know many prostitutes who are married, sometimes to a former client, sometimes to someone else, and I think that the extra economic capital that sex workers gain can also be an attraction asset (erotic capital via economic capital). It’s impossible (and purely hypothetical) to measure that their marriage choices “have decreased” because of their work. Rather, in cases of global sex work migration, many prostitutes in Thailand and the Dominican Republic end up marrying a foreigner and going to a wealthier country, and gaining much more economic capital than they otherwise would have in the marriage market of their domestic countries. Rather than asserting that prostitutes are being compensated for their loss of “marriage value,” I think a more fair argument would be that prostitutes are compensating for social stigma and risk that may or may not lead to loss in marriage value. The fact that prostitutes between the ages of 25-30 are priced most highly is not necessarily because they are within the ages of the marriage market; it may also be simply because women are most attractive between those ages.
4. Edlund seems to be puzzled that: “married men also consult prostitutes” even though it would be cheaper to consult their wives, and writes about the difference between sex with a prostitute and sex with a wife, as if they are monolithic categories, in which all members within each category offer the exact same good. Why doesn’t she consider that prostitutes may be selling unique goods that are not simply “sex” (eg emotional connection, special personal qualities, deviant sexual services) that are unique to that prostitute and that the wife can not offer? She treats all prostitutes as objects, goods that are interchangeable one for another, and empirically, this may be true for a great percentage of business. However, for many “regular” clients, (which comprise of most of the business in New York City – most clients are not new clients, in any business you ask), what the prostitute offers is something unique, something human and personal. Why does Lena Edlund not consider the Hochschild idea of “emotional labor” that is serviced by the prostitute, which is separate from the body as object? Why is it inconceivable that the prostitute is being compensated for this emotional labor, which is more intimate, more highly valued, and more costly/difficult to acquire in a normal relationship for some clients, than most other services provided by unskilled workers (nanny, housekeeping, construction), thus justifying the wage differentials? On a personal note, I want to comment about mirror neurons: clients usually come to sex workers with many personal issues, and compassion is very very painful, but that is how long-term relationships with “regulars” are built. Prostitutes are the world’s first psychotherapists. Though for many clients, sex with any prostitute is exchangeable, I would argue that the norm among regular johns, which are the majority of users of commercial sex purchases in the world, there is an attachment built between a client and a specific sex worker, in which something greater than the physical body object is purchased and consumed, and it is objectifying to disregard this emotional qualia/emotional labor.
5. Interesting point by Edlund: fecundity is attractiveness. Sex with an old woman is inferior to sex with a young woman because older women are not fecund, and do not appear as attractive. She argues that the same is not true for men because they remain fecund for a longer time, and will continue desiring to have sex mostly with fecund partners. Therefore there is a scarcity of young woman which creates value. She also states strangely that if old men could remarry young women after the wife’s fecundity runs out, they would naturally choose to do so. I guess historically this is true, as can be seen in many polygamous societies. Is this an implicit argument against monogamy (as social construction not biological inclination)? Edlund is essentially justifying men’s greater/longer libido (although this is not a proven fact; actually, some studies say women’s libido increase after their 30’s), and using this supposed fecundity/libido argument to explain the disparity between socially-constructed sexual/chastity norms between men and women. Historically, men have been allowed to sleep around more readily than women have been, and I think this is due to the issue of questionable childbirth, and the fact that it is in men’s best interest to impregnate as many women as possible, not due to the fact that they are more libidinous than women and “attractive” for a greater portion of their lives.
6. Edlund writes about low-skilled women from poor backgrounds who go into prostitution: “a low-skilled woman who plans to remain so does not give up much in terms of training possibilities and hence future career options by a stint in prostitution.” The assumption is that when she is tired of sex work, she can go into another low-skill job such as nannying, which she would have done anyway had she not gone into prostitution, therefore there has been little lost in opportunity cost. However, this is not really true, since prostitutes could be working towards training in other professions with their time; easy money is a disincentive to acquiring more permanent skills. On the other hand, the money gained from prostitution can be reinvested into education or a business, thereby transforming erotic capital into human capital and/or economic capital.
7. For the model Edlund assumes: “The child is a public good to both parents if only they are married; otherwise, only the mother derives utility form the child. Moreover, we assume that children are costless, everybody supplies one unit of labor [men and women].” All these assumptions are questionable or false. Children are not merely “utilities,” they are also very costly liabilities, and I do believe men consult prostitutes to AVOID the “utility” of children; also, men and women do not often supply one equal unit of labor in child-rearing.
8. Is commercial sex a normal or luxury good? Edlund assumes it is normal, and so uses an elastic demand curve, however, prostitutes come of many different classes, with prices ranging from $20 to $20,000 a “session,” some remaining un-impacted by recession (because their clients are have high net worth) – I don’t think these types of prostitutes who work in such different conditions as to be significantly different business altogether can be classified monolithically in one curve. The economics of prostitution on the high end and the low end are very different. On the high end, the worker sets her own prices, and the less she works, the more she gets paid per transaction. On the low end, prices are set by the market or an overseer, and much more work needs to be done in order to make far less profit (or no profit, in the case of debt slavery and other forms of sex slavery.)
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I apologize for the lengthiness of this email and hope that you might find a moment to read it some time. I am very interested in writing letters to Dr. Hakim and Dr. Edlund about their papers, and implore your help. Would you be free at any point to meet up?
Warmest Regards,
Kate
Kate