[This is Chapter 1.3 of Sex, Cash & Privacy: A Case for Allowing People to Profit From Their Own Sexuality in Peace. For previous and subsequent segments, click on that link.]
With all that, let’s get back to Ashley Judd’s genuinely impressive sexual performance in Normal Life. In this film, she deftly plays an emotionally-unhinged lab technician, with a passion for astronomy, and a serious problem with pills, alcohol, and overspending. She gets involved with a cop played by Luke Perry. Her sexuality (starting from an inability to orgasm) begins to open up to him, the more she spends his money, and the more he lavishes her with gifts he can’t afford on his cop’s salary. Liking the sexual effect his gift-giving has on her, Perry eventually turns to bank robberies to fund their lifestyle. Their newly-rich lifestyle leads to increasingly explosive sex between them, including the fuck-a-thon described at the opening of this chapter.
Here, a production company “bought sexual access” to Luke Perry and Ashley Judd for their explicit and impassioned performance. This purchase including access to their “orifices” as they made out with each other passionately, and as Luke Perry licked Judd’s cleavage.
(Note: the phrases in quotation marks in the paragraph above, and in the paragraph below, are from Ashley Judd’s tweet about sex work here.)
Was this “body invasion”—as Judd calls sex work—of Perry’s mouth into Judd’s mouth and vice-versa “inherently harmful” to either? Was “cash the proof of coercion” for Judd’s sexual performance? And if “buying sexual access commodifies something that is beyond the realm of capitalism and entrepreneurship,” as Judd puts it, then why did she accept payment for this sexual performance? Is the Hollywood film industry not a part of capitalism?
Elsewhere, Judd has said:
- “I support the Nordic Model, which de-criminalizes prostituted women and penalizes the sexual objectification and commodification of the human body by the buyer, which is beyond the scope and is a distortion of the argument that it’s just capitalism and entrepreneurship. Some things are simply beyond the realm of remuneration and the female body is one of them. The inside of a woman’s body is not a workplace.” [from Twitter here]
- “I have friends who sell themselves. . . [and] one cannot consent to one’s own exploitation.” [from Twitter here]
- “I do define prostitution as paid sexual violence. It is the commodification of a woman’s orifices. Our orifices are not a workplace. They are a place of intimacy, and they are sacred, and they are for mutuality and informed consent, not for exchange of money between someone who is empowered with money and the person who is disempowered without it. . . . Where there is asymmetry of power, there is no valid consent.” [From a 2018 talk in France, at 5:28 and 7:14]
The sheer hypocrisy here is flabbergasting–particularly given just how sheer so many of Judd’s own performances have been. Let’s break these quotes down.
As should be obvious, I have absolutely nothing against any adults profiting from their own nude bodies or sexuality, if everyone involved consents. What I do have a problem with is people who consent to profit from their own nude bodies and sexuality, and then claim hypocritically that (1) that’s not what they’re doing, they’re doing some magical exalted “sacred” thing called Art instead, unsullied by the exigencies of commerce, and (2) it’s those other people—the sex workers—who are not capable of consent and who, according to these “sacred” Artists, should not be able to profit from their own sexuality.
Take Judd’s first quote above. Who exactly was sexually objectifying and commodifying Ashley Judd’s body here in this sexual performance: the producer of the film, the viewers, or Judd herself? I think it’s fair to say, to some degree, all three. When you act in, produce, or watch a movie based in part on the conventional attractiveness of the actors, I don’t care how “artsy” or “sacred” the film is, part of that film involves some degree of sexually objectifying and commodifying the acting talent; this includes the actors objectifying their bodies as part of it, for money.
Of course, Judd is a supremely talented actor, and she was not hired solely for her looks or sexuality. But ask any sex worker, and they will tell you, only one portion of the job is sex; the rest is acting. Do you think porn performers, strippers, cam models, escorts, and Dominatrixes act like their on-camera, on-stage, on-bed, or in-dungeon personas as soon as the clock is off? (I, for one, would love to see a Professional Dominatrix act like her in-dungeon persona when dealing with, say, an asshole corporate boss at her day job!) Sex workers and Hollywood actors bring much more to their work than just their bodies—even though the sexual objectification and commercialization of their bodies is one part of what they’re selling.
If “some things are simply beyond the realm of remuneration and the female body is one of them,” as Judd claims, then why has she repeatedly self-objectified and self-commodified her own nude body and her sexuality to make money throughout her acting career—not just in Normal Life, but in many other films?
Ironically, in Norma Jean and Marilyn (1996), Judd plays a young Marilyn Monroe before Monroe was famous. (Monroe was born Norma Jean Mortenson.) Judd appears topless in the first scene after the credit sequence. And in the second scene. And in two more scenes in the movie. (A running “joke” of the film, which Judd promulgates, is how Norma Jean used her breasts to get ahead.) Plus, there’s another scene in which she’s depicted having sex, but with no nudity shown. One of Judd’s topless scenes (with a flash of pubes as well) depicts the future Marilyn, posing for arguably the most famous nude photograph in history, the pinup that would later be featured in issue #1 of Playboy, launching the era of mainstream pornography in America. Apparently, according to Judd, it’s OK to play a sex symbol in a movie, but not to be one in real life.
Given Judd’s support for “the Nordic Model, which. . . penalizes the sexual objectification and commodification of the human body by the buyer,” why is Judd not calling for the arrest of the producers who paid her to objectify and commodify her nude body and her sexuality in her films?
If “the inside of a woman’s body is not a workplace,” then should Judd not have received workplace protections and labor rights on the set of Normal Life as she used the inside of her mouth to make money in a sex scene while making out?
When Judd says, “I have friends who sell themselves. . . [and] one cannot consent to one’s own exploitation. . .”: First, if I was a sex worker and a “friend” described me that way, I’d tell them to get lost. Second, does Judd believe she was “selling herself” in this performance? No? Then why is she saying that her supposed “friends” in the sex industry are “selling themselves”?
In fact, sex workers are so sick of constantly hearing the insult that they are “selling themselves” or “sell their bodies” by engaging in sex work, one sex worker named Danny Gold in Los Angeles tweeted: “Sex workers… help me out here. What do you say when someone says ‘you sell yourself’? I’m tired of finding the words again and again.”
She received dozens of on-point replies from sex workers and others, including:
- “I sell a service, just like a massage therapist, acupuncturist, if you think a sex worker sells themselves but a construction worker or service industry professional does not, your problem is a moral one.” (here)
- “Only a part of myself. I had three arms until my outcall yesterday.” (here)
- “I look down at my body and say ‘nah, still here'” (here)
- “You’re absolutely right. I sell myself through my time & energy, & anyone with enough self actualization & self awareness knows how utterly invaluable time & energy are.” (here)
- And I suggested: “So sexual organs are the seat of the ‘self’? Are you sure about that?”
Let’s now turn to Ashley Judd’s claim that “one cannot consent to one’s own exploitation.” This claim hinges on whether one thinks that it’s possible to consent to work at all under any form of capitalism that doesn’t offer a strong socialized safety net. If the economic system dictates that you and your family will be out on the street and starving if you don’t work, then it seems fair to characterize that work as coerced by the economic system. And it seems fair to say that those who hire your labor under such circumstances are in many cases exploiting your vulnerability to starvation if you don’t get the work–and probably using this vulnerability as leverage to pay you the lowest wages possible.
But this characterization applies to nearly all workers under capitalism, not just sex workers. Are agricultural laborers, Amazon warehouse employees, domestic cleaners, nannies, dishwashers, waiters, janitors, and Walmart greeters not being exploited under capitalism? How about young cubicle-drones paying down 5-figures of student debt? Do they or do they not consent to their work?
Probably all workers would begin to question the degree to which they had “consented” to their work, and begin to see this work as seriously coerced, after a year or two of living in some kind of socialist utopia—or even after a few years of substantive Universal Basic Income as a social safety net.
But before that time comes, if it ever does, at present I know of no polls showing that majorities of workers in America believe they have not consented to their jobs. That’s just not how most people think about their jobs. People do the best they can, with whatever options are available to them, and they usually consider their work consensual, in a commonsense, everyday way.
Interestingly, most ASW feminists never once question whether agricultural laborers, Amazon warehouse employees, domestic cleaners, nannies, dishwashers, waiters, janitors, Walmart greeters, or cubicle drones can consent to their work. But as soon as a woman says, “I’d rather make more money, with less hours, by selling sex instead of my ability to mop floors,” all of the sudden, a woman’s ability to make choices about her own time, finances, and body goes out the window.
Why is sex for money the one form of labor a woman could never, ever consent to?((Judd’s comment about how women’s “orifices… are a place of intimacy, and they are sacred” points to an answer, and it has to do with ASW feminists’ agreement, in some respects, with the “sexual purity” morality of the right-wing Christians they ally with in their anti-sex-worker activism. To be fair, ASW feminists don’t tend to support the idea–promulgated by their right-wing Christian allies in the anti-sex-worker movement–that sex should only occur in the context of heterosexual monogamous marriage. However, they do nonetheless tend to reproduce Victorian “purity”-based notions of women’s sexuality which mirror aspects of these more intensely patriarchal notions of their Christian allies. Judd’s comment suggests that sex exists purely in some ethereal, sanctified realm, and women could never nor should ever consent to it for practical reasons, what escort and sex-worker-rights activist Maggie McNeill calls “pragmatic sex.” She writes that anti-sex-worker feminists and their Christian allies believe “women to be so asexual that the only possible reason they might engage in pragmatic sex is because some evil man forced them to.” (The Essential Maggie McNeill, Vol. 1, Kindle location 2111)
Judd says that “women’s orifices. . . . are for mutuality,” and I totally agree with that statement, on its own. Of course sex should be for mutual benefit, as should most all domains of human relations and interchange. But Judd fails to consider that, in pragmatic sex, the mutuality could come in the form of cash, at a price a woman quotes ahead of time, instead of reciprocal sexual pleasure. Of course, this seems like a complete debasement and unacceptable commodification of sex, for quasi-religionists like Judd who believe sex should only occur in a “sacred” context. But if we remove this mystical obfuscation, we can see plainly that we could not even walk one day through our modern lives were it not for the practice of providing mutuality via cash, rather than via identical services in kind.
When you call a plumber, she does not come to your house so that she may receive the benefit of your mutual plumbing at her home when she needs it. (It’s quite likely she does not want or need that, nor would she trust you to do it.) She wants the mutual benefit to come in the form of cash.
When you call a hairstylist, he does not want you to provide him a haircut in return. When you call a lawyer, he does not want your lawyering in return. When you call a doctor, she does not want your medical diagnoses in mutual return. And when you go to a restaurant, the chefs and waiters don’t want you to cook for them and wait on them in return. They want your money.
This is a self-evident concept in every other domain of economic transaction. But when a woman chooses to have sex should wouldn’t have purely for pleasure in return, in order to receive the mutual benefit of cash rather than pleasure, all of the sudden these “pro-choice” feminists decide that a woman could never make such a choice about her to use her own body. It’s a “choiceless choice,” as anti-sex-worker feminist Janice Raymond says in Not a Choice, Not a Job (p. 19).
It never ceases to amaze me how concepts that are utterly quotidian and unremarkable in every other realm of human life–such as mutual benefit being provided by cash rather than by identical services in kind–get transformed into terrifying bogeymen as soon as sex enters the picture. I call this dynamic “sexual exceptionalism,” and argue that it would have no purchase in our culture if not for Christian anti-Erotic ideology, in later chapters.)
Nonetheless, despite the ASW feminists and Christians dictating of what women can and cannot agree to in relation to their bodies, as per their sexual exceptionalism, many women still decide they’d rather have the cash, than the feminists’ and Christians’ approval of the virtue, purity, morality, and religiously-approved sanctity of their decisions about their own bodies.))
Furthermore, when Judd says “one cannot consent to one’s own exploitation,” does Judd believe that she was being exploited in all the nude and sexualized scenes she has repeatedly signed up to perform in her long career? If so—and thus by her standard she could not consent to such activity—then will she going on the record saying that all these Hollywood sex scenes were not actually acting work, but rather, video evidence of non-consensual sexual activity—aka, sexual assaults in progress?
On the other hand, if Judd does not believe she was being exploited in this scene and she does believe she consented to the sexual activity—which are more likely the case—then why is she saying that others who profit from their own sexuality in similar ways are being exploited and therefore cannot consent? What exactly is the difference?
Moving on: in the third quote, when Judd says that “Our orifices are not a workplace. They are a place of intimacy, and they are sacred, and they are for mutuality and informed consent, not for exchange of money”:
Did she make Normal Life only to have intimacy and mutuality with Luke Perry? If so, then why did she accept money to bare her breasts, to have her breast area licked, and her undies ripped off, and her groin grinded-on and her butt grabbed, and to use her “orifices” to make out with Perry in this sex scene? Was this just for the fun of it? Was the film set not a workplace? Was this purely a “sacred” offering of her body for Art?
And finally, on her statement that “exchange of money between someone who is empowered with money and the person who is disempowered without it” creates an “asymmetry of power” in which “there is no valid consent”:
Normal Life was produced by New Line Cinema, then a division of Turner Broadcasting Systems, a conglomerate which at that time was valued at about $7.5 billion.((Normal Life was shot in 1995, with New Line Cinema as a production company. In 1996, Turner Broadcasting System, which owned New Line Cinema, was acquired by Time Warner at a valuation of $7.5 billion.))
I know Ashley Judd is rich, but not $7.5 billion rich. Would she say that “there was no valid consent” because of this gigantic asymmetry of money and power between herself and the production company that paid for access to her sexuality—an asymmetry billions of dollars greater than that between a typical sex worker and their clients?
What this all boils down to is agency. Ashley Judd believes she has agency, in relation to her own body and sexuality, but believes that sex workers do not.
That is the asymmetry I’m most worried about—the double standard of the anti-sex-worker coalition: viewing themselves as adults, capable of making their own decisions, while at the same time viewing adult sex workers as children, or damsels in distress, incapable of making their own decisions, who need to be protected and saved from themselves. It is an insulting, infantilizing, patronizing, and stigmatizing asymmetry, common to the entire ASW coalition, that I cannot countenance. And that asymmetry is part of why I am writing this book.
Next: Chapter 1.4: More Famous Hollywood Actresses Sell Access to Their Sexuality–Then Try to Stop Sex Workers From Doing the Same [Coming soon – sign up below to receive it first!] >>
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