January 29, 2008

Yes, Virginia, There Will Be a Sex Workers' Art Show

President Gene R. Nichol is back in the hot seat after reluctantly agreeing to allow the Sex Workers’ Art Show to appear at the College of William and Mary next week, the Newport News, Va., Daily Press reported.

The show, which is billed as “an eye-popping evening of visual and performance art” by strippers, prostitutes, and other sex-industry workers, is scheduled to visit more than a dozen college campuses this winter. Mr. Nichol had asked the students who are sponsoring Monday’s event at the Williamsburg, Va., institution to find an off-campus venue for it, but he eventually agreed that the show must go on, citing the First Amendment and the spirit of academic freedom.

“My views and the views of others in the community about the worth or offensiveness of the program can provide no basis for censoring it,” Mr. Nichol said in a written statement. “Censorship has no place at a great university.”

Mr. Nichol ignited a controversy in 2006 when he ordered a brass cross removed from the college chapel in an effort to make students of other faiths feel more welcome there. The cross was subsequently returned to the chapel. —Don Troop

Comments

1. In olden days a glimpse of stocking
   Was looked on as something shocking.
   Now Heaven knows
   Anything goes.

   — J. Ward    Jan 29, 07:28 PM    #

2. Ok…fasten your garter, it’s going to be a bumpy ride….

   — Constance Lavender    Jan 30, 05:09 AM    #

3. Bravo President Nicol for having the courage to stand by the right of freedom of expression and not censor this presentaiton or force it off campus in an attempt to dissassociate the school from anything that might smack of education about sex or sexuality, or simple expression about sex. Anyone who might fear they would be offended by such a show can chose to NOT go.

   — Dr. Bambi Lobdell    Jan 30, 06:24 AM    #

4. Right on Bambi!

   I hope this same institution will have the “courage to stand by the right of freedom of expression” and have the pro-life art show next month. Anyone who might fear they would be offended by such a show can also choose NOT to go.

   — Equal time    Jan 30, 07:54 AM    #

5. Right on Equal time. Let’s see how that plays out.

   — Nor    Jan 30, 08:31 AM    #

6. Although I have not viewed the exhibit, I doubt very seriously that much, if any, of the material displayed will be art, in the true sense of the word. Call it freedom of expression or whatever you wish, but to those who actually cherish the richness of art, displays of this nature will most likely cheapen it and in some cases has probably resulted in a backlash against the arts.

   — AJA    Jan 30, 08:55 AM    #

7. If Gene Nichol really wants to show some guts he should invite a politically incorrect ultra conservative to his “great university.”

   — Joseph Spretnjak    Jan 30, 09:39 AM    #

8. I have two concerns about this decision:

   1) The over-use of “freedom of expression” and “censorship” in cases like this… is this really required to uphold the first amendment? Would making a decision against this show really be “censorship”? Groups make decisions about this all the time… the first amendment speaks to Congress, but to a state university? I think often the first amendment is used as an excuse for free license, when this isn’t what it’s meant for.

   2) The idea of a “sex workers’ art show” seems very dangerous, considering how much the sex industry is demeaning to women (and men), how prevelant sexual abuse and slavery is throughout the world, etc. Let’s even forget the morality issue that is present in prostitution as a sexual thing… the really deeply cutting immorality is what this does to the women who are trapped in this profession. A few prostitutes may want to express themselves on a rich university campus- but doing so is hurtful to the many other (many more) prostitutes and sex workers who do what they do because they are forced to do so, either by circumstances or by another person.

   — J.D.    Jan 30, 10:07 AM    #

9. I hope that the folks weighing in here at least check out the website for this show and read the reviews: “In her introduction to the show, (show creator) Annie Oakley noted that we are a porn consuming – porn glutted – culture, but we prefer that the objects/subjects of our consumption remain silent.” This seems to be thought-out stuff, not just a glorified peep show swathed in artsy trappings. If right-wing fanatics can display a similar depth of meaning in presenting some artistic endeavor, then they ought to be able to perform as well. Only ranters usually just want equal time without qualifying their message…

   — Lee    Jan 30, 10:49 AM    #

10. I hope that certain classes don’t require students to attend this show like they did last year. People may have differing opinions about this show, but students should not be required to attend.

    — A.W.    Jan 30, 12:01 PM    #

11. And what, specifically AJA, distinguishes you as the authority on what art is in “the true sense of the word” to make such an assertion (ignorant of the show’s content, no less) that trivializes the expression of artists who value the word differently than yourself?

    — can of worms    Jan 30, 12:05 PM    #

12. Great thoughts JD. My response is why would we (or the College of William and Mary) want to allow public viewing and free speech to something that is illegal in almost every state in the United States? Unless of course, we are speaking out against the illegal nature and profound negative consequences of the sex worker industry.

    — Sad    Jan 30, 12:36 PM    #

13. I attended a 2007 performance of The Sex Workers’ Art Show and am acquainted with several of the performers in the current and prior tours who come from the neo-Burlesque scene. It is a cabaret style mix of readings, comedy, song, dance and other “perfomance art” by individuals involved in various aspects of “sex work” – which is rather broadly defined in the context of the show. Their voices are worth hearing.

    — Ed B    Jan 30, 01:08 PM    #

14. Ed B, does the performance go beyond sex work as “rather broadly defined” to address any real issues of oppression and violence that accompany the sex trade? I don’t doubt that there are sex workers out there who really see their work as performative and artistic, or who have an edifying purpose in shows like this. But these purposes are nothing compared to the widespread abuse and violence that mark the sex trade. Sex work is an objectifying and dehumanizing practice in so many ways- it seems that the few performative virtues of the trade must somehow address this fact.

    — J.D.    Jan 30, 01:17 PM    #

15. Sex workers art show. How 70’s. And these hicks at W&M think they’re being sooooooo avant garde.

    — marci    Jan 30, 01:44 PM    #

16. Lee’s got it right—please do take a look at the Sex Workers’ Art Show website, particularly some of the press information. Annie Oakley has been active for quite some time in speaking about sex workers and how they interact with and in society. She has said that her aim is to use the show “as a form of cultural activism, to entertain the audience while at the same time getting them to confront stereotypes they hold about people who work in the industry…The idea is to demystify the industry, to humanize the people who work in it. The goal is not to glorify the work, but to help present the whole complicated, messy picture.” (from the interview on SuicideGirls)

    I think there’s more to it than a sensationalized peep show. I’d also like to point out that not all the performers are current sex workers—some of them (at least in previous tours) joined the show to talk about their past experiences in the sex industry, and I’m sure they deal with some weighty subject matter. I’m just disappointed I won’t have the opportunity to see the show.

    — Andrea    Jan 30, 02:20 PM    #

17. “I think there’s more to it than a sensationalized peep show.”

    The fear isn’t that it would be a peep show, or that it would be some horrible carnal display. The fear is that it would humanize something that is deeply dehumanizing. The sex trade is an awful thing, not primarily because of its sexual nature, but because of its UNliberated, ANTIwoman nature. Don’t make the objectors here out to be simply prudes. That’s not why we’re objecting.

    — J.D.    Jan 30, 04:38 PM    #

18. First of all, the purpose of the show is not to let people witness the act of prostitution or other sexual acts. Secondly, the students/faculty/staff of William and Mary aren’t a bunch of “hicks”. It’s not about being avant garde it’s about be progessive. How many shows of this nature or sparked this level of discussion have been held at your institution Marci?

    — SDG    Jan 30, 04:44 PM    #

19. J.D. and other prohibitionists: As demeaning as sex work may be for some, pushing it underground makes the situation even worse. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

    — David Zetland    Jan 30, 05:05 PM    #

20. David,

    I see a vast difference between being opposed to a particular art show and advocating “pushing it underground”. Again, please stop assuming what the argument of the naysayers is. Where did ANYONE ever suggest hushing up about the sex trade?

    The issue of the sex trade should certainly be discussed and presented openly. But “spotlight” is different than “sunlight”.

    — J.D.    Jan 30, 06:02 PM    #

21. SDG—
    Maybe the world of sex workers is progressive to the good folks of Virginia (and I humbly apologize for my impertinent characterization), but the sad fact is that sex workers being some precious subset of either humanity or art is rather “over” in the world of art. This is stuff Andy Warhol and Xaviera Hollender explored over 30 years ago. Much to the dismay of activist sex- worker-artists, they were discovered to be a rather mundane group of people whose lives neither produced novel art or a profound world view. If anything, they tended to be a rather sappy group artwise, preferring Keene to Kandinsky. But I can understand if Virginia kind of missed the 70’s. That’all happened up amongst them hippies and gol’damn Yankees.

    — marci    Jan 30, 07:15 PM    #

22. I was in the show last year, and being in the show was precisely the opposite of being dehumanized. It was a revelation. When I was a young worker, I knew that the full-on victim stance misrepresented my experience, as did the Happy Hooker stance. In the show I was able to talk about parts of the job that stunk with humor instead of with anticipation of pity and contempt toward my family and my lifestyle. It felt like a miracle, compared to the way people often respond outside of the industry just to the fact that I’ve been in it.

    Everybody in the sex industry doesn’t have the same experience, and I think that fact has incredible value in the academic, human rights, and legislative spheres. Sex workers can’t be accurately studied if we are all assumed to be suffering or profiting in exactly the same ways. Nor does it benefit society if the workers under better conditions are assumed by researchers to have it so good there’s no value in understanding their experiences of the industry, any more than it makes sense to view trafficked sex workers through the lens of sexual liberation. All information about a subject is valuable to a true researcher.

    — Jo Weldon    Jan 30, 08:33 PM    #

23. Jo Weldon, what do you think about John Foubert’s comments in the article? Even if someone like you feels like this is a good way to discuss sex workers, you might be harming others in how you approach it.

    “William and Mary professor John Foubert disagreed. Foubert is an education professor and researcher of sexual violence toward women. He cited several studies finding that exposure to pornography made men more likely to commit sexual assault.

    “I’m opposed to — and working strongly against — pornography and the industry,” Foubert said. “What I believe the Sex Workers’ Art Show does is promote the porn industry, and it goes beyond a speech issue. ... The issue here is an issue of public nudity.”

    If a former sex worker wanted to come to the university to talk about her experiences, the discussion could be “a valuable learning experience for students and faculty,” he said.

    “You don’t have to be naked to describe a past experience.”“

    — R. Janson    Jan 30, 10:01 PM    #

24. I’m familiar with Foubert, and was before this article. Are you familiar with Jill Brenneman? I don’t mean to be disrespectful, since I’m the one who brought myself into this conversation, but I may not be able to continue for long so if you google her you might find more detailed points of view than what I’m touching upon here.

    Art is not all descriptive or discursive. The nudity (although not all the performers get nude, or at least didn’t on the tour I was with) can be part of what I’ll call the message. But that’s a sort of artsy fartsy discussion—“What is art? Why is there different information in a performance than in a lecture, and is that difference valuable?” That may not even be an answerable question, especially when definitions of what constitutues art can be very elitist.

    I’ve had these discussions literally hundreds of times, and many times in public fora.

    Originally the discussion was that all we sex workers (and as a sex worker I fall under the narrow, not the broad, definition) were brutalized by the very activities that define the job. Then it was that we activists who described it as work legitimized this violence. Then it was that we who were not in favor of an abolitionist approach to the industry (particularly in a legislative conetext) were in denial and didn’t realize the harm we were experiencing and creating. Now I often run into the accusation that we’re pimps, because we’re not acknowledging that the sex industry is the way abolitionists say it is, and to say that it’s any other way is pimplike.

    I also often run into anti-prostitution people who, if you disagree with one single element of their opinions, decide that you’re satan herself and must be discredited immediately. But I’m not assuming you’re one of those extremists.

    I stand by my assertion that to present sex workers as artists, and not as artists fleeing their work but engaging it, is to show dimension in sex workers, ie, to humanize them. Some people still feel very entitled to have contempt for us, laugh at us, and to call us, as they always have, antisocial. By performing we not only being social, but showing how we socialize and perceive human interaction—that is, as humans.

    I tell you as a sex worker for decades, I’m treated better by the average person who knows I’ve been a sex worker than ever before, and I believe it’s due to people having to see sex workers as something other than madonnas or whores.

    The madonnas in sex work, the way it is sometimes cast, are the trafficking victims; and we who are not trafficked are the whores. That is the reductionist view. There is no inbetween. My point of view is that without examining the inbetween, you can’t see how various environments and opportunities affect what motivates clients and what sex workers want and need—including how to those who want out to get out. And, since most sex work if in the form of jobs rather than of careers, most tend to be looking for something with more upward mobility.

    One thing I resisted in the anti-prostitution feminist descriptions of prostitution as a form of violence was their use of the word rape. I feel that rape has an important definition that needs to be preserved; it is hard enough to prove rape without mixing its definition with “sex for money.”

    This is what someone like me thinks: I think that defining all prostitution as a form of violence against women is harmful. I think that not differentiating between different kinds of sexually explicit or evocative media is harmful. I think it’s harmful, not to the artists who don’t get to express themselves (they always will find a way), but to the very people who need it most, the trafficked, raped, and murdered. I think it’s harmful because I think it prevents accurate research into why some people in the sex industry suffer to death, and others are fine. It prevents accurate study into the motives and mentalities of the clients, thereby eliminating any hope of discovering informed and effective ways to address the problems that you describe. That’s what someone like me thinks.

    — Jo Weldon    Jan 31, 02:08 AM    #

25. Jo, your comments are honestly received. But you’re looking at the issue entirely in terms of yourself (the sex worker). What Foubert and others have pointed out, in addition to the harm done to sex workers (and I would be of the opinion that you’re being harmed by this trade whether you think you are or not- sorry if that sounds patronizing), there is the harm done to patrons of sex work to consider. You can’t simply label something as “art” and proceed inconsiderate of what you are doing to others by practicing this art. The effects are very real, and while you might make a distinction between different types of sex work (and while there may be a real distinction to be made), the sex trade is uniform on many levels in its affects on the viewing public, and I would personally argue, uniform in its harmful effects on sex workers themselves, even if they see themselves to be “fine”, as you describe. People can be hurt even without realizing it, after all. Undue sexual repression is also harmful for someone, I imagine you might argue, even if the repressed person doesn’t realize it themselves. Sex work is repression in the same way. It represses the appropriate purpose of sexuality in human life and replaces it with an exploited form of sexuality.

    But anything I might say about sexuality is my own opinion. The important consideration for a public university (although morals should be considered on some level) is that there is verifiable harm done in these sorts of displays to the viewing public, even if the sex workers themselves say they feel “fine”. That is certainly a good reason to scale back the explicit nature of this art show.

    — R. Janson    Jan 31, 09:41 AM    #

26. Why is it that everything that has “shock” value is called art? Let’s be a little more discerning about how we use that word. 50 years from now, let alone 5 minutes from now, no one will remember any of the “artists” that “performed”. Let’s challenge popular culture to actually develop works that can be critically reviewed and have a positive impact on society. This is nothing but sensationalism at its worst. Shame on the President for bowing to liberal pop-culture and not challenging the academic merit of this event.

    — conservative in education    Jan 31, 10:02 AM    #

27. When I was on tour with the show, three of the performers read fully clothed and one of them performed music fully clothed and the host stayed fully clothed. Degrees of nudity were performed by a few others but it was not the predominant feature of the show.

    I do not believe there is verifiable harm in a show that, rather than being about how hot the performers are and how exciting sex is, which is one of the main themes of most porn, is about how sex workers feel about work and clients, and what kind of art they produce. Porn serves a different purpose. Nudity is not porn. By responding so strongly to the nudity, you prove that it has impact and meaning, making its presence worth allowing and examining.

    I believe that if sex workers are presented as people who are worth listening to, respecting, and viewing as potential artists, it raises the bar not only on how sex workers should be perceived, but on how everyone should be perceived. I do no tthink this harmful or encourages rape. I think making them hide out encourages the view of them as disposable, rapable, murdurable people, not to mention as people who deserve all the prejudice and discrimination anyone feels justified to put upon them.

    I am not so particularly concerned about myself as far as being discriminated against these days, as I am generally treated well and have a different life than many of the workers I’m concerned about. I have, however, had plenty of experience with it before my current situation. There are hundreds of thousands of them—an entire population of people. To dismiss the lives and issues of hundreds of thousands of people seems very strange to me. And they are not, generally speaking, an advantaged or privileged group, or willing to speak publicly about what they are generally despised for. So yes, this show is an opportunity to learn something about some of the people in our society who are often perceived as not even being IN society—another assumption that I believe leads to emotional, poorly-thought-out legislation and policies that do not work, either to protect sex workers from society or to protect society from sex workers.

    I am not going to get into what I think about porn and what I think about the available body of research about porn at this time.

    — Jo Weldon    Feb 1, 05:09 PM    #

28. Again, your framing the opposition as if we’re saying you should “hide out”. I’m not saying this. Nor have I ever said that you aren’t worth listening to. This is blatant mischaracterization of what I’m saying. And the fact that you don’t want to talk about demonstrations of harmful effects merely shows that you’re avoiding the issue.

    — R. Janson    Feb 1, 07:27 PM    #

29. Marci,
    “Deliverance” was not a documentary. The south is not comprised entirely of toothless, moonshine-stilling hillbillies. You seem to think you’re somehow “above it all” because you’ve flipped through a couple of art books. The appearance of this show at William and Mary doesn’t suggest that the college’s students or faculty confuse it with “fine art”. Keep in mind that William and Mary and ol’ Virginny didn’t put on the show. They just allowed the performers to appear. W&M didn’t do this to “blow people’s minds”; they did it to entertain the students for a few hours. Get a clue.

    — Joe    Feb 26, 05:33 PM    #

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