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Sex-Work: Competing Feminist Discourses On The International Sex Trade

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This response paper is based on “Work, and Sex-Work: Competing Feminist Discourses on the International Sex Trade” by Kate Sutherland. I will use this reading to aid in analyzing the differing discourse amoung feminists in regards to the International Sex Trade. Sutherland keeps her focus on two “Anglo-American feminist discourses:” radical feminism and sex radicalism (Sutherland 1). The discourses of these two very similar sounding feminisms are extremely different. I will focus on the views about relation to law and the discourses of ‘work, sex, and sex-work”.
Radical feminists believe that sexuality is the root cause for gender disparity. Sexuality is patriarchal construct that is meant to create submissive women (Sutherland 3). It allows women to be “steadily parred down from ‘a whole person to a vagina and a womb’” (Sutherland 4). Radical feminists think the law itself is created in male power. The law allows for men to have power and to maintain power (Sutherland 4).
Sex radicals believe “changing ideas about sex can change sex itself and with it the balance of power in society” (Sutherland 5). Sex radicals also believe that the law is privileged. The law favours those of “higher status, that is, [people in] heterosexual, married, monogamous, procreative, non-commercial sex” (Sutherland …show more content…

Sex is natural. It is a part of every human being, which includes women. Sex should be owned by individuals, and not to be taken by others. Being that sex is “natural and integral to the self… [it is] more damaging when alienated than other human activities” (Sutherland 12). In radical feminist discourse sex-work is just sex. The –work is dropped (Sutherland 12). Under patriarchy, the conditions in which sex-workers work is demeaning and links prostitution to many other “abuses of women” (Sutherland

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