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Published by Sciedu Press 8 ISSN 1925-0703 E-ISSN 1925-0711
Prostitution: The Enconomics Of Sex And Power Dynamics In El
Saadawi’SWoman At Point Zero, Adimora-Ezeigbo’STrafficked And Unigwe’S On
Black Sisters Street
Oyeh O. Otu
1,*
1
Department of English Studies, University of Port Harcourt, East-West Road, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
*Correspondence: Department of English Studies, University of Port Harcourt, East-West Road, Choba, P.M.B.
5323, Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Tel: 234-703-419-4922. E-mail: ichieoyeh@yahoo.com
Received: December 14, 2016 Accepted: December 19, 2016 Online Published: December 27, 2016
doi:10.5430/wjel.v6n4p8 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/wjel.v6n4p8
Abstract
Many feminist writers and critics have projected female prostitution as a radical and aggressive strategy aimed at
undermining patriarchal values and wresting power and subjectivity from men. Many have argued that through
prostitution women revolt against the traditional double standards which on one hand grant men license to be
sexually adventurous, promiscuous and unfaithful to their partners, and on the other hand legislate and enforce grave
moral and social sanctions against women who engage in the same acts. Such critics aver that women move from the
position of passive sex objects designed for men’s sexual pleasures to the position of agency and subjectivity that
enable them express their sexuality, and more importantly use their bodies to turn men to objects of sexual and
economic exploitation. But this paper argues that sex is a huge industry ultimately controlled by men. The three
African novels studied here reveal that from sex tourism, ownership and management of hotels and brothels, to the
mafia-like transnational business of trafficking in women, men control the sex industry, and that prostitution, by
objectifying and commodifying the woman’s body, makes women (female prostitutes to be specific) objects of
sexual and economic exploitation and victims of modern day slavery.
Keywords: prostitution; the economics of sex; female sexuality; the sex industry; female powerlessness; sexual
slavery; trafficking
1. Introduction
In her report to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Huda (2006, n.p.) avers that:
The act of prostitution by definition joins together two forms of social power (sex and money) in one
interaction. In both realms (sexuality and economics) men hold substantial and systematic power
over women. In prostitution, those power(s) disparities merge in an act which both assigns and
reaffirms the dominant social status of men over the subordinated social status of women.
One of the reasons for female prostitution is female powerlessness: socio-politically and economically. Men control
sex (including the woman’s body and sexuality) and the economy. More often than not women take to prostitution
due to lack of access to opportunities, and opportunities are gateways of self-actualization and economic
empowerment without which they are vulnerable to men who demand sex in exchange for money or any other
assistance they may need. Besides, in Africa women have always been seen as their parents’ or family’s or
community’s wealth which in plain language translates to the woman being an object of beauty or sex, a commodity,
a chattel. Some African scholars have made presentations about the enormous power and prestigious status of
women in Africa. The views of Chinweizu -(1990) in Anatomy of Female Power are representative. According to
him, women rule men, and with their sovereign power over men they rule the world. Accordingly, he argues that
patriarchy is a façade. This female power, in his view, derives mainly from the woman’s body which in Nigerian
parlance is called “bottom power”. But such arguments present a partial truth, somewhat romantic and Utopian. Such
studies usually focus on few women whose positions and experiences do not affect the condition of ninety-nine
percent of women in their societies.
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Some views about African women are not based on historical facts. For instance, Diop (1987) declaims, “Thanks to
the matriarchal system, our ancestors prior to any foreign influence had given women a choice-place. They saw her
not as a sex object but a mother” (p. 33). Whatever the merit of this argument may be, the fact remains that
motherhood on its own does not translate to economic empowerment, dignity and high social status. Right from
precolonial times, women have been treated as objects of pleasure, and female sexuality has been commodified and
sold by various means, including the sale of a woman to the highest bidder in the name of bride price. As Dworkin
(1995) aptly puts it, “Most social arrangements for the exchange of women operate on one ancient model or the other:
stealing, which is rape; or buying and selling, which is prostitution” (p. 239).
2. Sex, Economics, and Power in the Selected Texts
Saadawi- (2007) portrays domestic prostitution in Woman at Point Zero, but Adimora-Ezeigbo and Unigwe depict
international/transcontinental prostitution inTrafficked and On Black Sisters Street respectively.
Woman at Point Zero is set in Egypt, an Islamic society. In this novel, Saadawi narrates, analysizes and questions the
complicity of not just individuals and families but also religious and political institutions in the subjugation,
objectification and commodification of women in the Arab world. Firdaus, the heroine of the novel, is a brilliant
young woman destroyed by obnoxious sexist socio-cultural practices, backed or permitted by both Islamic religion
and the state (the law) in Egypt. After losing both parents, she is taken to Cairo by her uncle who used to abuse her
sexually while she was still a child. She is curious, intelligent and discerning, as a child. “Sometimes I imagined that
I would become a doctor or an engineer, or a lawyer, or a judge” (p. 24), she says. Unfortunately, she does not
become any of these because after her secondary school education, her uncle, a Sheikh and man of religion, and his
bitter wife ruin her life by selling her to Sheikh Mohmound in the name of marriage.
Whereas she is yet to turn nineteen, Sheikh Mahmoud is over sixty, and is sick and disgusting. “On his chin, below
the lip, was a large swelling, with a hole in the middle. Some days the hole would be dry, but on others it would turn
into a rusty old tap exuding drops red in colour like blood, or whitish yellow, like pus” (p. 45). Partly because she
wants Firdaus out of her house and partly because of money, Firdaus’s uncle’s wife who happens to be a relative of
Sheikh Mahmoud (a sick widower and pensioner) talks her husband into giving Firdaus to Sheikh Mahmoud in
marriage in exchange for money:
‘If I speak to him I am sure he will agree. I intend to ask him for a big dowry’
‘How much?’
‘A hundred pounds, or perhaps even two hundred if he has the money’ ….
‘If he accepts to pay one hundred pounds that will be sufficient blessing from Allah. I will be able to pay
debts and buy some underwear….’ (pp. 38-39).
Like a commodity, Firdaus is sold into bondage in the name of marriage. She is mistreated, her body violated
physically and sexually, and her honour and dignity trampled upon. This type of dehumanizing abuse in marriage is
traceable to the commodification of women. To some people, especially those who think that patriarchal practices
are natural and immutable, the payment of bride price or dowry makes for law and order and confers honour on
marriage. But this practice has been abused by parents or guardians who see their daughters or wards as chattel and
husbands who treat their wives as mere property, to be used and abused. A classic example of how marriage reduces
women to sex objects and prostitutes is the practice of Nikah al-Nut’ahor mut’ain Islamic law. This is the concept of
temporary marriage for enjoyment and women who participate in this are called musta’jara or “rented women".
“Mut’a is considered a kind of ‘rented’ because in general a man’s basic aim in this kind of marriage is the sexual
enjoyment of a woman, and in return for his enjoyment the woman receives a certain amount of money or property”
(“The Four Pillars”, n.p.).According to Saadawi (1980) in The Hidden Face of Eve:
In its essence real honour is in contradiction with all forms of slavery, subjugation and imposition,
and with all forms of trade and commercialization of human beings, whether they be slaves, women,
or children. True honour is fundamentally against transforming a human being into an instrument or
an object, or a commodity for sale. The marriage customs and laws followed in our patriarchal and
class society are the negation of true honour, for they have transformed women into merchandise,
which can be bought in exchange for a dowry and sold at the price of an alimony (p. 51).
It is in the course of running away from this terrible marriage that Firdaus is taken in by Bayoumi who later turns her
into a sex slave and later brings his friend to join him in violating her. She escapes from Bayoumi’s house and
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Sharifa Salah el Dine finds her by the Nile, homeless and confused. Sherifa is a courtesan who doubles as a pimp. In
the guise of protecting her from men and providing shelter, food and clothing for her, Sharifa introduces her to
prostitution. She keeps Firdaus in her house and brings men who sleep with her in exchange for money; the money is
paid to Sherifa, not Firdaus. She prostitutes and exploits young women like Firdaus, but she is also exploited by
some men and pimps who rape her, beat her up and take away her money. For example, Fawzy beats, rapes and
controls her; she depends on Shawki for protection. Indeed, men control the sex industry.
Once again, Firdaus escapes and becomes a “free”and “successful” prostitute. Her sense of freedom and success
seems to be affected by Saadawi’s(1980) definition of prostitution. According to her, “Prostitution means sexual
intercourse between a man and a woman aimed at satisfying the man’s sexual and the woman’s economic needs” (p.
56). This definition appears adequate, but it does not recognize the fact that men also control the money women
make from prostitution, that men force women into prostitution and control their earnings.
Firdaus’s belief that a prostitute has more value, is more respected, and is wiser than other women; that a prostitute is
completely independent, free from subjection to a man, marriage or love is an illusion, a negative argument born of
anger against men and patriarchal society. She tries to console herself with the following ideas: “A successful
prostitute was better than a misled saint,” “the least deluded of all women was the prostitute. That marriage was the
system built on the most cruel suffering for women” (p. 94), “a woman’s life is always miserable. A prostitute,
however, is a little better off” (p. 97).
Deluded by frustration and anger, Firdaus luxuriates in perverse logic and fatalism. She sees prostitution as a revolt
against patriarchal subjugation and double standards. She sees herself as enjoying some freedom not accessible to
other women. She sees herself as “a very successful prostitute” (p. 97). But her success attracts a different kind of
client that really questions her claim to complete freedom and gives her a rude awakening. When a foreign politician
declares interest in her and sends for her and she turns him down, policemen are sent after her to either persuade her
or force her into sleeping with the politician. One of the policemen tell her that “refusing a Head of State could be
looked upon as an insult to a great man and lead to strained relations between the two countries” (p. 98). Men
control politics and use prostitutes as part of political, diplomatic tools or hospitality package. “On one occasion they
put me in prison because I turned down one of these important men” (p. 99). She takes the case to court and wins
after spending “a very big sum of money” (p. 99). But then she is disillusioned: she realizes that men control the sex
industry and that whatever freedom she enjoys is what she is allowed to enjoy.
I knew that my profession had been invented by men, and that men had been in control of both our
worlds, the one on earth, and the one in heaven. That men force women to sell their bodies at a
price, and the lowest is that of a wife. All women are prostitutes of one kind or another. Because I
was intelligent I preferred to be a free prostitute, rather than an enslaved wife (p. 99).
To operate as a prostitute in a society where prostitution is illegal, she bribes the police, and in times of trouble she
also pays them for protection. But when she meets the pimp named Marzouk, she realizes that prostitution is an
industry controlled by fundamental power structures, and operated by cartels and syndicates. She wants to buy him
off as she buys the police but he refuses, he insists on sharing in her earnings, he wants to own her body and control
her money. The following dialogue is quite revealing:
‘Every prostitute has a pimp to protect her from other pimps and the police. That’s what I’m going to do.”
‘But I can protect myself,’ I said.
“There isn’t a woman on earth who can protect herself” (p. 100)
Prostitution involves power contestation. Pimps derive not just sexual pleasure and economic success from
controlling prostitutes and exercising authority over them, it is also a source of power. As Haralambos and Holborn
(2008) put it, “On the streets, pimping is one way to express masculinity. Pimps usually exercise strong control over
the prostitutes they ‘run’”(p. 382).So once again she seeks protection: first she goes to the police and then takes
recourse to legal proceedings only to discover that Marzouk has more connections and influence in the society than
she does, and also knows how to manipulate institutions to his advantage. Not even her money can protect her from
him. He tells her, “I’m in business. My capital is women’s bodies” (p. 101). She surrenders and he shares in every
money she earns. In fact, he confiscates the larger part of the money she makes for himself. He beats her up and
often tries to rape her. She later discovers she is not the only prostitute controlled, exploited financially and harassed
sexually, beaten physically and tortured psychologically by Marzouk. It is at this point that it dawns on Fridaus that
her idea of being a free prostitute better than other women was nothing short of self delusion. Thus, she says:
I realized I was not nearly as free as I had hitherto imagined myself to be. I was nothing but a body
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machine working day and night so that a number of men belonging to different professions could
become immensely rich at my expense. I was no longer even mistress of the house for which I had
paid with my efforts and sweat (103).
With this new awareness, Firdaus decides to quit prostitution, take her academic credentials and look for a job, but
her pimp says she has no right to choose the type of work to do, saying as a prostitute she is a slave who has forfeited
her freedom, integrity and honour to him. He tries to subdue her by beating her but she fights back. And when he
goes for a knife in his pocket, she first grabs it and stabs him several times until he dies. Then she is condemned to
death, a sentence she does not appeal, believing she has triumphed over men, her oppressors.
In Adimora-Ezeigbo’s (2008) Trafficked and Unigwe’s (2009) On Black Sisters Street, we see another dimension of
prostitution: female trafficking and prostitution at international and transcontinental levels. The novelists expose
various means through which sex syndicates deceive innocent young women, traffick them to European cities where
they sell them or coerce them into prostitution for many years under very risky and dehumanizing circumstances.
Like Saadawi, Adimora-Ezeigbo and Unigwe demonstrate that the quest for economic freedom and the attainment of
the power that goes with it lure women into prostitution, willingly or unwillingly; and that in prostitution money and
power are constantly at the centre of contestation and conflict, especially between men (as customers, pimps,
traffickers, or brothel operators) and women (either as prostitutes or sex industry operators).
In Adimora-Ezeigbo’s (2008) Trafficked, the heroine Nneoma and her friend Efe are lured into prostitution when
they are about nineteen.The novelist exposes how deceptive, well organized the traffickers are. Efe is ensnared
through a newspaper advertisement which invites young job seekers interested in working abroad to apply. This is an
irresistible bait for youths desperate to escape the grinding poverty occasioned by mass unemployment and lack of
basic amenities which make life meaningful. This is particularly during the military junta when corruption,
administrative ineptitude, insensitivity, impurity and all forms of political and human rights abuses are the order of
the day. Although young men and women are invited to this interview only ten applicants are selected, and all of
them are girls. These girls are made to take an oath to work for the “agency” until they pay off all the money it spent
to get them their international passports and tickets. These girls are trafficked to Italy where they are sold to waiting
buyers in the sex slave market. There is a well organized underground sex slave market where young women are
bought and sold as chattel.
Nneoma attended a teachers’ training college. But she is jobless, and when her relationship with her fiancé is in crisis
she becomes desperate to leave the village. Consequently, when her classmate and friend tells her that an agency had
helped her secure a teaching appointment in the United Kingdom, she flees the village without telling her family her
whereabouts. Her friend takes her to her sponsors in Lagos, and within a short time, she and five other young women
between the ages of seventeen and twenty have their international passports, tickets and appointment letters ready,
even though they turn out to be fake. It is imperative to note that traffickers have agents in embassies, airports,
immigrations, the police and other institutions of governance through whom they facilitate and execute their
nefarious activities all over the world. With their money and power, they render the law impotent.
These girls are made to take an oath that binds them to the agency until they pay their debt to the agency. They are
later trafficked to Italy and turned into sex slaves instead of the UK where they are promised teaching jobs. Ezeigbo
shows the links in the international sex trade. The trafficking agency has partners who operate in different countries.
Nneoma narrates her ordeal thus:
In Italy I discover I am trafficked. I have no say in the matter. There’s a woman called Madam
Dollar nothing comes between her and money. She owns us and the man, whom we learn to call
captain, is her body guard. She keeps us prisoner in her flat. Life is hell in Rome - we are always
walking the night, selling sex to Italian men and foreigners. I hate Madam Dollar. As soon as we
arrive, she sells my friend. I have not set eyes on her since (p. 129).
These young women are forced to hit the streets at night even in the coldest winter nights. Whenever Nneoma does
not bring back a lot of money, she is assaulted by captain. And whenever she fails to satisfy the demands of difficult
customers like insisting that they use condom or avoid making love in certain positions, she gets beaten up and
battered and thrown out of a car. The novelist portrays the terrible experiences of sex slaves, their dehumanization
and shame, the emotional, mental crises and psychological trauma. Like Nneoma, they dream of escape and freedom,
but they are alone, lost, vulnerable and helpless – mainly because they are illegal immigrants without valid
documents or any documents at all.
Nneoma slaves for Madam Dollar for three years before she is sold to Baron who smuggles her and two other girls
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into London. Her experiences in London further capture the horrors of prostitution, particularly for trafficked women
who practice prostitution without license. According to her:
Baron sends the other girls to brothels and keeps me in his flat. Instead of putting me on the street,
he brings men to the flat. Baron is a sadist. He rapes and beats me. I refuse when customers
demand oral or anal sex and insist that they use condoms and I’m sometimes assaulted for this.
Baron locks me up in the flat, and does not allow me to go out except when he takes me with him
(p. 132).
This is not surprising. Illegal prostitution, like drug trafficking, is a major component of the underground economy
and so it inevitably involves violence in forms of rape and exploitation. The underground economy, also known as
informal economy, “consists of economic activities – whether legal or illegal – that people don’t report to the
government” (Henslin 2010, p. 420). Even among licensed prostitutes in countries where prostitution is legalized and
government protects them, violence and exploitation are constant threats. Dworkin (1995) asserts that:
The relationship of prostitution to rape is simple and direct: whatever can be stolen can be sold.
This means that women were both stolen and sold; and when practices were codified into laws,
women were defined as sexual chattel. Women are still basically viewed as sexual chattel –
socially, legally, culturally, and inpractice (p. 239).
In the three novels under study, so many women are raped, even outside prostitution. In On Black Sisters Street, at
fifteen, Joyce is viciously gang-raped by the soldiers who kill her parents and her brother. Soldiers, in fact, abduct
girls and use them as sex slaves (p. 168).
Nneoma is not given any money by either Madam Dollar or Baron, they take even the extra money some generous
customers give her. Nneoma later escapes from Baron and is afterwards assisted by some sympathetic Nigerians in
London until she is arrested and deported back to Nigeria.
Similarly, Efe is trafficked from Nigeria to Italy where she is sold to Madam Gold, a Nigerian sex industry proprietor.
Like a cruel slave driver, she viciously compels the girls to walk the streets every night hawking their bodies. After
four years of grueling sex slavery, Madam Gold sells Efe to a white pimp who exploits her for two more years before
she escapes to Verona where she works as a free prostitute for one year before she is arrested and later deported.
Alice, one of the girls trafficked to Italy who was deported to Nigeria and kept at Oasis, a non-governmental
organization that provides support for rescued or deported prostitutes, for rehabilitation is a graduate. She says if she
had a job she would not have been trafficked and unashamedly states that if she does not find a job in Nigeria she
would return to Italy. She prefers sex slavery in Italy to unemployment and poverty in Nigeria.
Ezeigbo (2008) also captures the stigmatization of former prostitutes (including rescued and rehabilitated sex slaves)
and calls for public sympathy that could facilitate their integration into society. She demonstrates that prostitution is
a huge industry with well organized underground global networks. For instance, Baron who buys Nneoma in Italy,
smuggles her and some other girls to London where he has links with some brothels and clientele. After the girls are
deported back to Nigeria, Nneoma and Efe discover that Baron is in Nigeria recruiting and trafficking young girls.
But for Nneoma, Efe would have fallen prey again to Baron who now parades himself as Fyneface. Ezeigbo (2008)
therefore draws attention to “the trafficking industry in Nigeria”(p. 135) which seems to run unchecked.
Chika Unigwe is a Nigerian writer based in Belgium. Her novel, On Black Sisters Street (2009), won the most
prestigious literature prize in Africa, the NLNG Prize, in 2012. In an interview with Edozie Udeme, Unigwe (2013)
identifies human trafficking as a major thematic preoccupation of the novel. According to her, “There are indeed
Nigerian women in Antwerp, Belgium, working as prostitutes. There are lots and lots of them. For me, that is a story
waiting to be written, waiting to be attended to. It was a story I knew I’d explore and the only way to explore it was
for one to write about it. The core issues raised in that novel are all part of what we live with every day” (The Nation,
p. 51). She describes the characters in the novel as authentic, pointing out that the novel is a product of her research
on the involvement of Africans in prostitution in Belgium. She tells Adeola Ogunrinde, “I had to create characters
which are real so I had to go to the Red Light District to speak to the prostitutes” (Sunday Sun, p. 26).
Like Adimora-Ezeigbo’s Trafficked, Unigwe’s (2009) On Black Sisters Street has trafficking and the international
sex trade as its thematic thrust. Incidentally, Ifeanyi Ajaebo’s Sarah House which was shortlisted for the NLNG
Prize in 2012 also has trafficking and international sex trade as its controlling theme. Apart from prostitution, what
Trafficked, On Black Sisters Street and Sarah House have in common is the diasporic experiences of Africans. In
other words, these novels explore one aspect of the relationship between Africa and the outside world in the
twenty-first century. This is reminiscent of Nnolim’s (2006) charge to African writers: