Feminist?

Want an article that fails to complicate feminism's relation to the sex trade?

Here it is:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/25/iceland-most-feminist-country

Apparently Iceland is completely closing down all strip clubs in the country, leading the article-writer to herald the country as "the most feminist in the world." Wha? From where I'm standing "feminists" have been asking to decriminalize the sex trade, not ban it.

According to the ban, this decision might be attributed to the lesbian prime minister or the many vocal feminist groups in the country. This article writer fails to even reference the common anti-porn/pro-sex debates common to feminisms before, fails to make any reference to the possibility that this might not be a win for feminism but the opposite.

This might lead us to the question: Have these stripping women been in the way of feminist change the entire time? How dare they! Don't they understand the ways that their choice to take off clothes for money keeps women from rising above oppression? No? Okay, let's put them out of a job; I've heard the economy's really good lately.

Andrea Dworkin writes of the ways that strip clubs, the porn industry, and the sex trade tells men that they should always have access to sex. These avenues teach men incorrectly that women's bodies should always be available to us. This logic follows objectification in any form to violence, from an American Apparel add to rape. I do not necessarily disagree with this logical tract, in fact I wish that this article on Iceland could have at least made some mention as to possible decrease in violence against strippers outside of their clubs that this might lead to. But it doesn't.

I do think that feminist responses to sex work, especially when the argument is to legalize sex work, needs to be very articulate about relationships between sex and violence. And I think we commonly are: when you criminalize these people who use their body for money you contribute to a prison industrial complex, one of the most violent institutions in existence.

Granted, I know nothing about Iceland's prison system. It will be interesting to see how this stripping ban shapes the political and feminist landscape to come. But articles like the one above makes me HATE calling myself a feminist, which I've come to understand as largely a too-broad-to-mean-anything-and-sometimes-dangerous-term. Just go ahead and google: "feminism" and "middle-east" if you want a world of complicated and fucked-up "feminist" reading.