Karen Moe

I don’t think anyone

can read this book and still support the sex trade in any way—well-meaning as some of that support may be.[1] I don’t think anyone will be able to view prostitution as not only a job like any other, but necessary and beneficial to, paradoxically, the world’s most vulnerable people who would have no other way to survive if their bodies were not commodified. Rigorously researched, Last Girl First: Prostitution at the intersection of sex, race & class-based oppressions[2]is a testament that proves the abolition of the sex trade is absolutely necessary. This book is irrefutable logic. If you support the sex trade in any way, I dare you to read it.

From the first page, the study opens the reader to the big picture. It is crucial to look at a system of exploitation as a whole rather than cling to the delusion of individual choice being somehow separate from the system that we are all an intrinsic part of. Right away, the book demonstrates the necessity of revolutionizing the ideology of individualism that is responsible for upholding the exploitation of the other in order to serve the self. In this book, the sex trade as a system is thoroughly exposed in order to comprehend completely and be motivated to act accordingly:

“Prostitution does not only involve the person in prostitution but also other actors such as the sex buyer who imposes a sexual act for money and the pimp, who profits from the prostitution of the prostituted person. It is therefore important to decentralise the view: prostitution is not an individual choice but a social and commercial system that is exploitative.” [3] (Italics mine)

The view of the sex trade and all exploitation in neo-liberal[4] patriarchy must include all that produces it, maintains it and, most importantly, all who are devastated by it.

The indisputable fact that prostitution is a gendered atrocity is an intrinsic part of the contextualization of the study. Even though it should go without saying: the main gender sold are women and the main buyers men. It’s impossible to claim otherwise. Yes, there are a tiny percentage of women who purchase sex and, thereby, participate in the capitalist disparity of power abuse between the bought and the sold; however, this is such a small percentage and, as such, it is ridiculous to attempt to use a smattering of first world women to undermine the reality of the male buyer and female bought in a male-supremacist hierarchy.[5] In order for a hierarchy to uphold what is at the top, those below must be exploited. As a revolutionary tract that looks at the system as a whole, Last Girl First lists each of the micro-hierarchies that reinforce one another and produce the buying and selling of “the most socially, economically, psychologically and ethnically disadvantaged groups…: patriarchy, racism, colonialism, class, war and militarisation.”[6] It is through the interaction of these oppressions that men exploit (predominantly) women’s or girls’ bodies for their sexual ‘pleasure’—or pathology.

Don’t agree yet? Okay, here’s a bit of so much more:

After the wholistic definition of prostitution as a system

of sexual exploitation is laid out, a glossary of terms is provided where each component of the sex trade is defined so that there will be absolute clarity in not only the terms that will be used in the book, but also, the scope of normalized exploitation. The purpose of this book is two-fold: to prove the sex trade’s inherent violence as undeniable and a system that must be abolished, and to change mentalities and perceptions of women in society and, ultimately, eradicate demand. The Glossary lists: a person in prostitution/prostituted person (as opposed to the politically correct, misleading and damaging term ‘sex-worker’); survivor of prostitution; sex buyer; child sex tourism, sex tourism; pimping, the pimp; trafficking in human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation; the “red light districts/areas”; brothels; indigenous people; minority; migrant person; refugee; asylum seeker; internally displaced person. Next, the different legislative approaches to prostitution are explained: The Abolitionist Model also known as the Nordic Model or the Equality Model; The Partial Decriminalisation Model”; The Regulatory Model also known as the Legalisation Model or the Total Decriminalisation Model; and The Prohibitionist Model. Once all of the parts of the system have been explained, the foundation within which all of these parts interact is given.

“Throughout time and history, women and girls from systemically discriminated and marginalised communities have always been disproportionately targeted by the prostitution system. Socio-economic factors and historical and political trends contribute to their over-representation in the prostitution system.”[7]

Weaving together statistics, personal stories from prostitution survivors, and reports from organizations like Kafa (Enough) Violence and Exploitation in Lebanon, Breaking Free USA, Indigenous Women Against the Sex Industry (Canada), The National Center for Youth Law, the Columbian NGO Initiativa Pro Equidad, and Apne Aap India (to name a few sources of front lines testimonies provided in the first 51 pages), Last Girl First builds its analysis of prostitution as an intersection of sex, race and class-based oppression and proves how no oppression exists in isolation. Everything is connected; systemic analysis is essential for understanding.

When one thinks and feels in the big picture context of

exploitation of which sexual violence is a part, it should be glaringly obvious that the women and girls at the bottom of the patriarchal—most often white supremacist, but always male supremacist[8]—hierarchy suffer most. And, in a far from post-colonial world where the racializing, capitalist infrastructure is perhaps more voracious than ever, prostitution is a continued mechanism of colonization and profit. The beginning of Last Girl First moves from the over-representation of indigenous women in prostitution in Canada and the US, to the legacy of the British colonization of India, to the contemporary colonization of Tibet by China, resource extraction like mining and oil and gas by international corporations and sex tourism. We are given the infrastructure of the sex trade as a part of the history of imperialist patriarchy and capitalism whereby the women of the conquered people are converted to commodities to be exploited along with the land that was—and continues to be—taken from them.

In the next section, women and girls from oppressed castes in Asia are discussed along with asylum seekers and migrants. From the cut-throat perspective of patriarchal capitalism, the displacements of war are a great source of sexually commodifiable women and girls. As one of many statistics in this chapter informs: “In Europe, migrant women and girls are estimated to represent 84% of women in prostitution in thirteen European countries.”[9] Anyone who says that the legalization of prostitution in Germany is a “but a job opportunity like all others” needs to know that 90% of the (always very young) women being bought in Germany’s mega-brothels are migrant women predominantly from Eastern Europe and Africa and, now, with the war in the Ukraine, the displaced women of the Ukraine have become a large source of women trafficked to the legal brothels of Western Europe. As a manifestation of one of the many horrors of legalized prostitution in countries like Australia and Germany, the women are dehumanized in order to fulfill the sex-buyer’s demand to “own the woman [and] … do whatever you want with her.”[10] In one of the 3,500 registered brothels in Germany, “nearly 1,700 sex buyers flocked … during the opening weekend, complaining afterwards on forums about … women no longer being ‘consumable’ and ‘worn out’ after a few hours.”[11] Bound by the reductionist ideology of free choice for all, the women working legally in these mega-brothels need to service six men per day before they make any money themselves. So, basically, not only are the always younger and younger women brutalized and traumatized by six different men, they are not even being paid for their suffering. Like in the Netherlands and Austria where prostitution is also legalized, German nationals with the security and opportunities provided to women who are not displaced by war have better things to do with their lives—like take advantage of state-funded university, as one of many non-exploitative opportunities available to the privileged—than voluntarily signing up for a career of dehumanization.

One of my next books is going to be on child sex slavery. Not only do such horrors need to be exposed (what I call and will entitle my book, “inconceivable reality”), the fact that child sex slavery exists at all is absolute evidence that the system of exploitation we live in needs to be revolutionized. Last Girl First defines minors in the sex trade as “an alarming phenomenon which is constantly on the rise worldwide.”[12] As the basis for despicability in patriarchy as a system of male impunity, one surely cannot be affected by the fact that “[t]he demand for ‘virgin’ girls illustrates the relationships of control and domination at work in the prostitution system.”[13] An example in Mexico is provided where virgin girls are offered to sex-buyers at a high price. One could say, “Oh well, that’s Mexico. It doesn’t happen in civilized countries like Canada, for example.” But wait, we then find out that “[i]n Canada, the average age of entry into prostitution is reported to be 13.”[14] Yes, atrocity is in the back yard of the so-called first world if we take the time to look and/or read books like Last Girl First. If sex buyers are looking for younger and younger girls to exploit (and we must not forget that the majority of sex buyers seeking young girls in countries like Mexico are sex tourists from countries like Canada and the US), there is no things-are-getting-better-for-women when we include all women as the male fetish for the conquest of vulnerability is stronger than ever—not to mention the lack of empathy necessary to be able to pay to rape a child.

I ask:

do you want to be involved in this in any way except to fight for its abolition? Any justification of prostitution as sex “work” and work like all others along with the ideology of freedom of choice—including, paradoxically, circumstantial and coerced ‘choice’—maintains such horrors. Period.

It needs to be read;

I’m not going to explicate the whole book for you. This is one of those books where you can flip to any page and find more truth backed up by both primary and secondary research. When I read—especially such an important book of revolution as Last Girl First—I have a pencil handy. I underline, parenthesis, asterisk, exclamation mark, write “Wow!” “WTF?” or “Arggghhh!” on the margins. This is one of the books where I have been compelled to underline and asterisk almost the whole thing. What follows is a collage of some of the parts that leapt off of the page for me:

Women and girls from systemically discriminated communities … disproportionate impact … the sources of prostitution … the structural and systemic discrimination inherited from colonialism … in Canada … children from First Nations communities … represent 90% of the victims of sexual exploitation where Indigenous represents less than 10% of the population … victims are sold in Moldova, Romania or Bulgaria for a few hundred Euros and then taken to Turkey, the Balkans or Cyprus where exploiters enslave them and break down any will to resist by using gang rape, food deprivation, confinement and physical violence … before sending them to Western Europe to satisfy male demand … Roma women … Dom ethnic women … prostitution as a weapon of war … Iraq … Myanmar … “spoils of war” … a culture of impunity for perpetrators … sex buyers who take advantage of extreme poverty … prostitution in exchange for food … is actually part of a wider oppression inflicted by dominant groups on dominating groups … in 2018, between fifteen and twenty thousand minors were identified as victims of sexual exploitation in Cambodia, a country described as a “key destination” for paedocriminals travelling in South East Asia … in Brazil, a leading sex tourism destination, many sexual predators—mainly from Western Europe and the United States—travel to the coastal and north-eastern tourist regions seeking to force sex on children … the glamourization and trivialisation of prostitution, as well as the perception of women’s and girls’ bodies as objects of remuneration, “a means of making a career” and even tools for emancipation, contribute to the increase in prostitution of minors and students … “Student Sex Work Toolkit” … when asked why they “entered” prostitution, 88% said “needed money” and “hungry” … sex buyers would not have access to women’s bodies in the first place if the women were not in situations of immense financial insecurity and fighting for survival … sex buyers, in a position of power because they have the financial advantage, reportedly pay women in prostitution 66-79% less if the latter insist on using a condom … for 90% of the women surveyed, their first sexual encounter was in fact a sexual assault or rape … in the United States, overall, 20% of homeless youth are LGBTQ, while the latter represents 58.7% of victims of sexual exploitation on the streets … discourses normalising and promoting prostitution as a desirable and emancipatory economic option for LGBTQ people contribute to encouraging their entry and confinement in the system … in the UK … 95% of women in street prostitution use crack or heroin … in Canada and the US, all members of the Indigenous communities, with the aim of breaking all links with their original culture—considered as inferior—and to replace it with patriarchal and individualistic colonial codes … PATRIARCHY AT  THE ROOT OF THE PROSTITUTION SYSTEM … male domination at work in patriarchy involves the establishment of a continuum of sexist and sexual violence aimed at maintaining the established order … while prostitution is portrayed as free choice for some, … it first and foremost affects those who have the least choice.

These are some of the parts I underlined and asterisked to page 111 in a 193 page book. Can anyone not acknowledge these undisputable and impeccable sourced statistics and testimonies? (If so, please comment at the end of this post and share why and how this is possible! If you’ve come to my blog, you obviously care about justice. Dialogue is essential for understanding and transformation that serves justice for all).

As I wrote in my first post on prostitution,

I have often been accused and chastised especially by politically correct, pro-prostitution academics: “How would you know and what right do you have to speak about this, to have an opinion, if you have never literally been in the sex industry?” And, yes, they are right: I have never literally been one of the majority of circumstantially coerced women and girls or one of the 1% of women who gloat that they freely choose what everyone else has been scathed by[15]; however, not only have I been a victim and survivor of sexual violence on three occasions, I am also a woman in patriarchy. And, like all women in patriarchy, (and men conditioned to abuse emotionally and/or physically and who have, in Robert Jensen’s words, a crippled capacity to be fully human[16]) I am personally affected by the normalisation of that which rapes us. As Last Girl First states, all of the factors in the system of sexual violence “are cross-cutting: they do not only apply to women from systemically discriminated communities but go beyond this categorisation and affect women in general.”[17]  

If you were already an abolitionist before reading this or if I have convinced you, it should go without saying that I cannot recommend the importance of this book enough; if you still think that there is something good about the buying and selling of bodies and that sex-work is a necessary and benign employment opportunity, I cannot recommend the importance of reading this book even more. I have striven to give a representation of the researched reality that composes Last Girl First: the intersection of sex, race & class-based oppressions. Read it. Please. Then get back to me. It is one of my greatest wishes that everyone not only comprehends, but feels and acts on the logic of abolishing the sex trade.

Your friend in justice for everyone and everything always,

The Logical Feminist.

Order a copy of Last Girl Firsl: Prostitution at the intersection of sex, race & class here.

PS: If you have found this post provocative and important,  share the logic!       

#iloveendnotes

[1] The reasoning for the Sex Work is Work platform is that de-stigmatizing prostitution and making it a job like any other will increase the safety of prostituted people. The very need to increase the safety of people in the sex industry is proof in itself that prostitution is not just another job. Moreover, countries like Germany, Australia and New Zealand that have legalized and decriminalized prostitution have not resulted in an increase of safety and security for the world’s most vulnerable people. Instead, sexual violence and the use of a woman or girl’s body for the sexual relief of a man has been normalized. Read this book: Last Girl First: Prostitution at the intersection of race & class-based oppressions, Kat Banyard’s Pimp State: Sex, Money and the Future of Equality and Julie Bindel’s The Pimping of Prostitution: Abolishing the Sex Work Myth for three researched books that explain what has really happened and happens when prostitution is accepted (and even embraced) as a legitimate part of society.

[2] Last Girl First: Prostitution and the intersection of sex, race & class-based oppression. CAP International (Coalition Abolition Prostitution) with research conducted by Héma Sibi. Translated from the French by Karl Walsh, 2022.

[3] Last Girl First: 6.

[4] Neo-liberalism, served by individualism, greed, the unregulated free market and globalisation, is capitalism on steroids.

[5] At a recent presentation of my book Victim that is about sexual violence and a conversation that inevitably led to prostitution, a woman brought up the fact that so-called first world, middle-aged women travel to destinations like the Dominican republic in order to take advantage of the global economic disparity and enjoy the sexual services of young men. This is true. First World women go to such locales as the Dominican Republic and Jamaica with the intentions of having sex with young, exoticized, locals; however, the percentage is very small in comparison to the millions of men who travel abroad for sex with young women and any abuse involved— like between the women (or girls) and the men— is non-existent. The title of Tanika Gupta’s 2006 play ‘Sugar Mummies’ is telling in that the women have taken on the behaviour of ‘sugar daddies,’ not rapists; nevertheless, using one’s economic privilege to access another human’s body upholds a culture of domination and violence that is inherent to masculine supremacy. I think it is safe to say that women do not go to so-called third world sex tourist destinations to pay thousands of dollars to rape a child. Although I do not condone power abuse on any level, comparing male sex tourism to first world women’s dalliances in the Caribbean are only superficially comparable. As I responded to the woman who brought up women sex tourists (of course, a valid question and comment): they never result in organ damage.

Julie Bindel points out in her 2013 article, the women who travel south “are looking for attention and excitement but end up, often without realising it, being one half of a prostitution deal.” Of course, as with the male sex tourist trade, poverty is the key component due to the economic disparity between the First and Third Worlds and the young men would most likely not have sex with the middle-aged women from the north if they did not have, and give them, money. The trend of women buying sex in tourist destinations like Jamaica can also be connected to female ‘raunch culture’ where fun feminists of the US, Canada and Northern Europe are all about sexual prowess and have, out of proclamations of sexual liberation, adapted patriarchal behavior. See Julie Bindel: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2401788/Sex-tourism-Meetmiddle-aged-middle-class-women-Britains-female-sex-tourists.html https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/aug/09/comment. gender

[6] Last Girl First: 7.

[7] Ibid:18.

[8] It is important to note that not all prostitution occurs in white-supremacist patriarchies that were lborn of European colonialism. In Israel and Lebanon, for example, women from the Slavic countries of eastern Europe are trafficked as ‘Natasha’s’ and their white skin and often red hair are fetishized by Israeli and Lebanese men (See Lydia Cacho Slavery Inc.: The Untold Story of the International Sex Trade and Victor Malarek The Natashas: The New Global Sex Trade and The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who But It). In Iraq the Yazidi minority [is] targeted  by the armed group Islamic state where the women are subjected to acts of sexual enslavement (LGF 141-142). Tibet, as an imperial victim of China, is also a prostitution destination where the male predators are predominantly non-European. Moreover, in especially Cambodia and Myanmar, Chinese and Japanese sex-buyers are rampant along with their Caucasian counterparts. The Yakuza (Japanese mafia) are also key players in not only the prostitution in Japan, but also in South East Asia along. And, we cannot leave out the Korean comfort women of Japanese Imperialism. Even though white men brought prostitution to colonial contexts like North America by exploiting Indigenous women (and this is certainly not to trivialize the impact of European colonialism and the sexual violence that continues to be inflicted upon Indigenous women today), they did not invent it: men did in the masculine supremacist hierarchy that is Patriarchy which spans cultures and races.

[9] Last Girl First: 36.

[10] Ibid: 91-92.

[11] Ibid: 167.

[12] Ibid: 48.

[13] Ibid: 49.

[14] When I was on my Trauma & Triumph Tour for Victim in 2022, I connected with sexual assault non-profits around the US and Canada. When in Kenora, Ontario Canada, I found out that young indigenous women from the reservations are abducted and taken to resorts on the Lake of the Woods to sexually service (read: be raped by) men. Canadian men don’t have to go to sex tourist destinations like Brazil or Cambodia: they can be sex tourists in their own country.

[15] Like feminist Meghan Murphy says, the privileged 1% of prostituted women who claim to be, or are, unscathed and preach the glamour and legitimacy of sex work as a good job opportunity, “drag everyone else under the bus.” https://www.feministcurrent.com/2013/08/02/interview-meghan-murphy-on-the-sex-industry-individualism-online-feminism-and-the-third-wave/

[16] Robert Jensen The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men. Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 2017: 71.

[17] Last Girl First: 47.

About the Blogger:

Karen Moe is an art critic, visual and performance artist, author and feminist activist. Her work focuses on systemic violence in patriarchy: be it gender, race, the environment or speciesism. Her art criticism has been published internationally in magazines, anthologies and artist catalogues in English and Spanish and she has exhibited and performed across Canada, in the US and in Mexico. She is the author of Victim: A Feminist Manifesto from a Fierce Survivor: Vigilance Press, 2022. Karen lives in Mexico City.