作者 ｜
陳美華(中山大學社會學研究所)
摘要 ｜
即便女性主義者並不想污名化從事性交易的女性，但「女人為何賣淫？」這個深具誤導性的提問，卻始終在女性主義社群間佔據核心的論述位置。過去歐美和台灣女性主義者在這個議題上的激烈辯論，某種程度將投入性工作的女性簡化為「自由選擇」與「被迫從娼」兩種極端二分的形象。前者強調性工作是從業者個人的自主選擇，甚至認為從事性交易係個人性自由的表現；後者則認為賣淫是女性壓迫的表徵，「選擇從娼」是「錯誤意識」底下的矛盾產物。然而，這兩種論點都有普遍化、同質化性工作者的現象。為適當的呈現性工者所面對的複雜社會情境，以及她們進入性交易網絡的多元生命圖像，本文將援引18 位台灣性工作者的深度訪談，藉由回溯她們的工作史以及生命故事來闡明性交易如何成為底層成年女性在有限的物質條件下，合理的謀生方式。同時，本文將進一步指出性別化的勞動市場、男權統治的家庭結構和性產業之間的複雜關係。其次，面對年輕女孩都是因為「拜金」、「貪玩」而從事性交易的常識性偏見，本文也將引用涉足性交易青少女的訪談資料來呈現從事性交易對社會、經濟資源極其有限的青少女而言，具有追求獨立、掌握權力的豐富生命意涵。
關鍵字 ｜
賣淫、性交易、性別、性、底層女性
Title ｜
Making Sense of Prostitution: Gendered Labour Market, Family and Power Games
Author ｜
Mei-Hua Chen(The Graduate Institute of Sociology, National Sun Yat-sen University)
Abstract ｜
Although feminists do not intend to problematize and/or pathologize
(female) prostitutes, the question of ‘why women and girls prostitute’
is always at the centre of prostitution debates. Theorizing prostitution
as a patriarchal system, some radical feminists have struggled to seek
a theoretical solution to deal with the disturbing voices that claim that
women and girls involve themselves in commercial sex through choice.
At the other extreme, some pro-sexwork analyses of ‘consent’ only look
at the surface, and fail to examine the social and economic contexts that
make involvement in prostitution a possible ‘choice’. Both sides tend
to use homogenous narratives to represent all prostitutes, and produce a
general account of commercial sex. Recently, there has been a growing
voice claiming the necessity to contextualize women’s and girls’ choices
in prostitution. Following these writers, this paper will contextualize
workers’ ‘consent’ or ‘choice’ in order to reveal the social contexts that
make prostitution possible, and examine the ways in which interviewees
make sense of their involvement in prostitution. Drawing on interview
data with Taiwanese women and girls who are involved in commercial
sex, I argue that there is no single reason leading women and girls into
prostitution. In many cases, the gendered practices in the family (of origin)
and gendered labour market push working-class women into prostitution for survival. Instead of seeing young girls who are involved in commercial
sex as ‘having fun’ and/or ‘making easy money’, I argue that there are
more complicated social meanings behind this social practice. In many
cases, involvement in commercial sex turns out to be one of the available
strategies for disempowered young girls to re-gain power, independence
and control of their own bodies and sexualities.
Keywords ｜
prostitution, commercial sex, gender, sexuality, underclass women