Sexuality and resistance: Rethinking prostitution and agency through Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero

Abstract

Prostitution has long been a controversial topic within feminist discourse, with ongoing debates about whether it represents a form of freedom or remains fundamentally exploitative and oppressive. Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero offers a powerful and complex portrayal of prostitution as both a site of resistance and a form of constrained agency within patriarchal structures. This article examines El Saadawi's depiction of prostitution and its implications for contemporary feminist debates on agency, autonomy, and exploitation. Through close reading and critical analysis of the novel, supported by feminist theoretical frameworks including abolitionist feminism, sex-positive feminism, and intersectional feminism, this study demonstrates that prostitution in Woman at Point Zero functions neither as pure liberation nor as absolute victimization. Instead, Firdaus’s engagement with prostitution emerges as a tactical form of resistance that simultaneously exposes and remains structured by patriarchal, socio-economic, and biopolitical systems. By analyzing Firdaus’s experiences and situating them within the broader socio-cultural and postcolonial context of Egypt, this article argues that El Saadawi presents prostitution as a form of constrained agency. While prostitution allows Firdaus to assert a degree of autonomy and resist certain forms of male domination, it ultimately remains embedded within structures that commodify and regulate women’s bodies. El Saadawi’s narrative, therefore, challenges binary feminist interpretations of prostitution and reveals the complex and contradictory nature of agency within systems of domination. This analysis contributes to feminist and postcolonial scholarship by demonstrating how Woman at Point Zero reconfigures prostitution not simply as exploitation or empowerment, but as a situated form of resistance that exposes the structural conditions limiting women’s autonomy.