Scott Swenson draws the link that needs to be drawn in all this sturm und drang about Spitzer and the prostitutes: Funny how this is going on while reproductive justice and health activists are fighting a pointless item in PEPFAR—put in by Democrats, mind you—that requires health organizations who do outreach to sex workers sign pledges condemning sex work. Why don’t some of the people defending Spitzer turn some of that energy to defending prostitutes? I can’t help but conclude, with sadness, that we’re looking at further evidence that both pro- and anti-legalization people tend to treat the actual prostitutes as an afterthought. I’m with Scott. Instead of asking health organizations to sign pledges that might alienate the very clients they’re trying to reach, how about we start by making politicians sign pledges swearing not to visit prostitutes?
I’ll show my hand up front—while I’m happy to play partisan Democrat a lot of the time, my sympathy for Spitzer is short to non-existent. I’m with Jeff. Sure, Spitzer is the victim of a double standard here, one that doesn’t apply to Republicans, but that mainly shows that the problem is that Republicans are being held to a too-low standard. First of all, prostitution is illegal, and public officials who help enforce the law against the rest of us need to be held accountable to that law. Second of all, doubly so when it comes to prostitution, because prostitutes are citizens, too, and deserve our protection. But it seems that Spitzer needed so much damn money for his hobby because he enjoyed doing things that were quite likely dangerous to prostitutes, probably asking to go condomless. Do you think, if one of the prostitutes he visited were arrested, he would have come clamoring to her defense? Yeah, neither do I. After all, he helped make his career by busting prostitution rings.
Invariably during these discussions, you get a push and pull between the “sex slaves” people and the “happy hooker” people, with some admitting that both kinds of women exist and most prostitutes are somewhere in between. The only thing I’ve concluded about that is that no one should be arrested for selling sex. Either they’re happy hookers hurting no one or victims of the system who don’t need the state to add to their misery, or some combination of the two, but either way, they shouldn’t go to jail.
For me, the jury’s still out on whether or not it should be illegal to buy sex. On one hand, I am convinced by arguments pointing out that vice laws don’t usually work well enough to justify the loss of freedom, and that there’s a weird nonsensical nature to the argument that it’s okay to sell but not to buy, and inverse of the already-ridiculous drug laws that make selling a worse crime than buying. On the other hand, I’m disgusted by some of the intellectual dishonesty employed by people defending prostitution. By that, I mean the invocation of the Sad Unfuckable John. You know the image—in any debate about prostitution, the pro-legalization ones will overplay their hand and argue that prostitution is this positive thing, because it makes sex available to men, who by virtue of being ugly or deeply nerdy or whatever, are basically unable to get sex from volunteers.
I’m often lured by this image, because it makes a rough sort of sense. Isn’t it rude of those who get sex pretty easily to begrudge those who need to resort to professionals their chance at sexual congress? My sense of equality and fairness and general sex-positivity is lured by these arguments, and then I remember two things:
1) No one is defending the idea that undersexed women should have a troop of hard-bodied men in their 20s ready to satisfy.
2) Most men who go to prostitutes don’t fit the stereotype of lonely men just looking for some attention.
There is absolutely no reason that the brothels in Nevada need to keep their workers virtual prisoners on premises, if it’s just about sex. But if it’s about creating this fantasyland for misogynists where they can feel like kings by virtue of their gender, then it’s essential. If it’s about sex and loneliness, why are whores displayed in Amsterdam like they’re in cages?
Every time something like this happens, the poor wife is dragged out on stage to do the stand by your man routine, and invariably, people twitter about how odd it is that he visited prostitutes when his wife is loyal and lovely and etc. The idea that men resort to prostitutes as a last ditch, desperate measure apparently has its teeth in the public. But it’s bullshit. Most men who go to prostitutes can get sex, even strings-free, no-commitment sex, from other women. They want something else. For some, like David Vitter, I think it might just be a need to have some weird kink fulfilled. But I suspect for many, if not most, it’s the idea of buying a woman that’s the allure. Which is why the “consenting adults” argument rings a bit hollow. If full, complete, 100% consent were there—if it really were a transaction between equals instead of the purchase of the right to feel like a woman’s master for a time—the prostitution would lose a lot of its allure for many, probably most, customers. Not that I dismiss legalization arguments outright, but there’s that snagging intellectual honesty issue that gets to me every time.
402 Responses to “It’s okay to cut the strings on Spitzer”
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I think plenty of people would defend that idea, in principle, if the hard-bodied men in question were willing. It’s just that there doesn’t appear to be the same demand for that.
Yeah, funny how that works. You’d think if it was just a business transaction between equals, instead of a thrilling exploitation of male dominance, then there would be an equal number of male prostitutes to service women.
It’s just that there doesn’t appear to be the same demand for that.
There are sex tourism vacations for wealthy middle aged women to go and have no strings attached sex with young hot foreign men. There was a spate of article about it a while back. Make no mistake, the demand is there.
I don’t think the brothels are trying to create a fantasy of dominance - they’re trying to make damn sure they squeeze every penny out of the prostitutes. If you’re a prisoner you can’t go decide to be an independent contractor.
And I think the reaction to Spitzer would be quite different if he’d taken the approach that prostitution is a victimless crime but pimping isn’t.
Ballast, you’re mixing up supply and demand, by the way. The argument for prostitution is that there’s a great demand of lonely guys. Well, there’s a great demand of lonely women. But there’s not a supply of straight men available for that work, because, let’s face it, our society thinks it’s too debasing of work for men. Unless they’re gay, but that doesn’t speak much for the esteem we hold prostitutes in.
“If full, complete, 100% consent were there—if it really were a transaction between equals instead of the purchase of the right to feel like a woman’s master for a time—the prostitution would lose a lot of its allure for many, probably most, customers….. You’d think if it was just a business transaction between equals, instead of a thrilling exploitation of male dominance, then there would be an equal number of male prostitutes to service women.”
Yes, yes, and yes. Thanks for this Amanda.
Mythago, it just goes to show, either way, that when people say “legalize it so you can regulate it,” they mean regulate the women for diseases they could pass onto their johns. They don’t mean, so much, regulate for the health and safety of the workers.
It may indeed often be the latter, but I don’t buy that it could never be the former, in any context. And criminalizing it across the board would amount to a flat refusal that it could ever conceivably be anything other than exploitation, which is what seems problematic.
not until the advent of viagra that male can get it up whenever the external needs come.
Isn’t that obvious?
What, exactly, is the real difference between pornography and prostitution? Its very strange to me that its illegal to pay for sex unless its being videotaped, then its ok.
Ugly in Pink is right, and the justifications are just as delusional: that the hot poor guy is your “boyfriend”, you are “helping” him with your money, all of it. I work in the third world and it’s the same exact kink among women as men: the opposite gender back home doesn’t appreciate men/women the way the hey! surprise! really poor! men/women here do, etc. etc.
If you’re paying for it, it’s coercion, and that’s only okay if you think that sex is a bad to be coerced out of others or a bad they prefer to other options available (the argument for prostitution made via comparing it to working with toxins, or selling a kidney).
If you think sex is a GOOD to be enjoyed by all, then paying for it –ever — doesn’t make any sense. Therefore, conceding that paying for it might have a case to be made on good-producing-in-a-perfect-world rather than harm-reducing-in-the-world-we-know grounds is incredibly pernicious. I support decriminalization, but legalization? Absolute noes.
“They don’t mean, so much, regulate for the health and safety of the workers. ”
Ouch. Another illusion shot. I’ve always taken it for granted (as in, utterly unexamined) that the primary reason to legalize was precisely for the protection of the worker. Honestly never occurred to me that there was another view.
Hearing you say it, however, I sadly have to acknowledge that you are far more likely to be right. Even if the activists working for it were 100% worker-protection motivated, in practice, it would still turn around, privilege being what it is.
Still, messed up as that is, as long as it resulted in more protections for the workers, I think I would still support it - but I suspect the abuse of it would be far, far too common. Sigh.
“…if it really were a transaction between equals instead of the purchase of the right to feel like a woman’s master for a time—the prostitution would lose a lot of its allure for many, probably most, customers”
Yes! The impulse to make a woman do something she normally wouldn’t do is what the John desires. Its that nasty notion that they are getting over on a woman. Not only that, they are denigrating women who are not prostitutes in the process as well. It extends to dating behavior in which some men feel that when they buy dinner etc. it gives them rights. They want to own.
Ben, porn customers are not paying to actually have sex with the worker. Seems like a difference to me.
Fair enough, but there is actual sex-for-money going on among the porno actors.
So basically, you can pay to have sex with a woman (or man) as long as your videotape it and distribute it to complete strangers.
So you’re arguing that there is, in fact, a high demand for male prostitutes amongst lonely women, but it’s going unfilled simply because men find having sex with random women for money too demeaning? Really? Yes, there may be lonely women, but they don’t seem to be seeking out paid sex partners. Which might point to some issue of relative notion of entitlement, or whatnot, but I find the argument that the demand is the same hard to buy.
I think you could just as easily compare it to buying a massage, which I don’t regard as a Bad Thing. And that can arguably involve economic coercion as well.
Kathleen,
You have a very definite point. Probably an overwhelming one.
Without being argumentative, can you help me understand why other things being equal (and I know they aren’t, in practice), the difference between this and, say, housework?
Having a clean house is a good thing, and if someone is willing to provide it as a service, they should get paid.
Doesn’t your construction pretty much demand that sex (if seen as good) always has to fall inside a romantic relationship?
(Personally, I DO see it that way and cannot imagine hiring a prostitute, but I don’t see why it should be criminal. Mistreating a worker, as an employer or client, yes, but not the service as such.)
Help me understand why, in fact, your logic shouldn’t extend to it being morally wrong to pay anyone for doing anything that isn’t “bad.”
I do, absolutlely hop to the other side as soon as issues about pay, working conditions, and all those other real-world considerations (like some other situations, I may have to concede that something okay in principle can never be sufficiently okay in practice to allow it or support it.) But setting those aside for the moment, help me out with your broader premise.
Ben, I don’t know. I think, since men are being paid for sex, too, that it’s just a different model. That said, the porn industry borrows a lot of attitudes from the prostitution industry. But I do think there’s a stronger possibility of people making porn in non-exploitative ways.
Doesn’t your construction pretty much demand that sex (if seen as good) always has to fall inside a romantic relationship?
It’s utterly possible to have casual sex with a woman that’s equal and 100% consensual and eager. That’s the problem so many women are pointing out—our culture where men pay for “sex” (more the right to feel like kings of women, with sex as the action that affirms it) results in men thinking sex is something women have that you get. But that’s not true. Sex can be something done together for mutual satisfaction. I don’t think the law should ban everything else, but that strikes me as the feminist ideal, and it doesn’t necessarily indicate that casual sex is wrong.
Clarification: I withdraw the “romantic relationship” in my above post and change it to “personal relationship.”
Nothing wrong with unpaid casual sex among the mutually consenting.
My bigger point and question still apply.
I agree with all of the comments about the root desires of Johns. I don’t think that these desires are morally acceptable in any way, nor should they be encouraged or defended.
I think decriminalizing prostitution, while making pimping a somewhat serious crime, would be a good idea.
I’m living in Austria, where they have legalized prostitution, but brothels are illegal. In this system, brothels actually exist all over the place, but from what my girlfriend tells me, you pay for the room to the brothel owner, and “contract” separately with sex workers. This is a big loophole.
I think what would really be cool would be for sex workers to unionize and create institutions that to help keep them safe, while outlawing brothels (unless cooperatively run by sex workers themselves).
I am more than a little troubled by the many irrelevant arguments in favor of Spitzer. I’m glad you posted this, A.
Amanda, I was agreeing with you all the way until the last paragraph:
I read the escort rating boards from time to time for kicks. From that I find your assertion above completely contradicted. Do you have any support for that view of such men other than your own imagination?
Charlie Sheen was famously supposed to have said about call girls: “I don’t pay them for sex. I pay them to leave.” The point being that there rarely is truly “stringless” sex, even for (or maybe especially for) the physically attractive and wealthy male (of which I am neither, btw).
I don’t really give much of a crap about the arguments for and against prostitution. Pretty much all of you have reasonably valid points. I bet that as the imbalance of power between the genders gradually moves toward equilibrium, you’ll see more and more examples of older, wealthy or powerful women paying hot young men for sex. And as long as everyone knows what they’re getting into, that’s just fine with me. Whatever. Human trafficking, abusive and exploitive pimps, etc., are all serious issues and should be dealt with, but fundamentally, I don’t really see any difference between selling oneself to work at Wal-Mart and selling one’s body for sex. Again, whatever.
But what burns me is that people as involved in politics as y’all, and lots of others, are falling into precisely the Republican trap. This whole story and how Spitzer’s name got leaked smells to high heaven of the Republicans’ pollution of the DOJ. They’re doing to him what they did to the fellow in Alabama, only Spitzer at least did something arguably wrong. And the Republicans relied on our habit of wanting to put morality above the larger political struggle, and we and you are, and instead of rallying behind one of our team, even if we have to hold our noses while doing it, we’re fighting among ourselves.
Look at what happened to Vitter and even Craig. Um, nothing significant. The R’s made pro forma noises of disgust at most, but none of them said Vitter should resign and they shut up real quick about Craig. And you don’t hear a peep from them about it now, and both of those dudes are still in office wreaking havoc on the Constitution. And they’re doing that because they know that they owe loyalty to the party.
This isn’t to say that you should ignore what Spitzer did. But use the leverage you now have over him for a good cause. Make him do a few public mea culpas, use the opportunity as a way to talk about some of what are surely horrors in the trafficking business, leverage public declarations of support for reproductive rights or the rights of sex workers. Say “Look, we’ll stand behind you but you owe us now, dude,” instead of shooting the larger cause of progressivism in the foot in order to maintain a sense of moral purity.
I think some men aren’t really doing it for the sex. They’re doing it because its illegal. They’re doing it for the thrill. Its like billionaires making crooked stock deals even though they don’t really need the money. They just like some sick rush of getting away with something thats illegal.
After all, he helped make his career by busting prostitution rings.
It seems to me this should eliminate the “should prostitution be illegal?” question from the Spitzer discussion altogether. The Vitter/Craig exception applies here. Spitzer thought it should be illegal for everyone else; he advanced his career on that assumption. Thus, it should at the least absolutely be illegal for him.
By the way, I found the close juxtaposition between these two things in your post amusing for some reason:
2) Most men who go to prostitutes don’t fit the stereotype of lonely men just looking for some attention… Every time something like this happens, the poor wife is dragged out on stage
“But I do think there’s a stronger possibility of people making porn in non-exploitative ways.”
Might that be because of the possibility of higher earnings?
The crappiest and sleaziest porn still looks pretty exploitive, but (maybe?) there is a correlation to higher distribution of the better quality, bigger studio stuff and better treatment of the actors?
I know I always have trouble believing that the $5,000 hookers are being too terribly mistreated, but none whatsoever that the ones walking the streets, the helpless runaways, and the ones controlled by drugs are.
Huh? Sixties, I disagree that finding casual, free, no-strings sex is that impossible. Especially for a movie star like Charlie Sheen. In fact, that defies all common sense.
No, a guy can get laid. And since we have even a movie star claiming he can’t, we have good evidence that the “wah, wah I can’t get laid” argument is a cover story for a darker need to have the sensation that you own someone for a time.
It’s that intellectual dishonesty that galls the ever-living shit out of me. If prostitution is going to be legal, legalize it honestly.
SixtiesLiberal, I know more than one woman who has NSA sex; if you read an escort board surely you know what AFF is, let alone CL. Audacia Ray used to blog about trysts at hourly motels with strangers, and who are all these women that Jefferson chats up online and then fucks in bourbon-fueled romps? Lots of people are having lots of NSA sex. It really happens.
If Charlie Sheen really wanted them to leave, why did he induce Ginger Lynn Allen to violation the terms of her probation to visit him overseas, toy with her and toss her, contributing if memory serves to her substance relapse and custody problems? Why not just find some other woman and “pay her to leave?” Or did he get high on the power of being Charlie Sheen and having a famous porn actress take personal risks to cater to him? Giant asshole.
If you want to know about celebrities and porn stars, remember this: Shannon Wilsey was pregnant by Greg Allman at 16, and living with him; virtually moved in with Vince Neal and snorted everything that could be chopped, knew every rock star of the Sunset Strip scene when she was Savannah. The night she shot herself she had no money, nobody to call but her manager and no way to earn a living except to go back to porn. When they laid her to rest, the only celebrity who had the decency to stand in public, admit he was her friend or her sometime lay, and pay his respects was Paulie Shore. (And for that, I’ll forgive Paulie a lot of bad movies. At least he had the humanity to tell the world he mourned his friend.)
To clarify my post above, the reason men give on the escort boards for participating in the “hobby” include:
variety (such men are unwilling or incapable of fidelity, imo), the ability to have sex with women much more attractive physically than the men would attract on their own, and having an unsatisfactory sex life with their spouses. The desire to exercise control over a woman by buying her is never even hinted at.
That’s the reason they give in public, yes.
It comes out a lot more in their “reviews” of their experiences. Read those instead.
When looking at the question of male prostitution, I think one is failing to consider the dynamics of the marketplace. In our society, opportunities for men are greater than for women, and men have more money, on the average than women. That leads to a larger supply of women willing to prostitute themselves, and more money chasing those prostitutes. Lonely women do not have the same financial resources, and because the supply of willing men is smaller, that alone explains why there are fewer male prostitutes than female prostitutes.
There’s that, and then there’s the idea (which, incidentally, happens to be a favorite notion of people who are devoted to evo-psych) that sex is by definition a commodity bartered by the woman in turn for some other consideration (like companionship, jewelry or cash) which is extended to her by the man. There’s a certain frame or type of mind that really goes for the men-always-pay-for-sex-women-never-give-it-up-without-a-bauble meme, and to a man whose head is in that space, the act of paying off a prostitute must just seem like heteronormativity reduced to its pure grist.
This would explain why it is that women who buy sex from men can travel under the radar. When a woman purchases sex, that’s merely an incident; it’s just something she does. It’s not thought to figure forth any all-encompassing pattern or to tap into an eternal verity. But when a man buys sex, at the very least, he’s reinforcing his role as the one who has money and pays. I’ve never bought into the claim that says that without some form of prostitution men would just never get laid. The fact that there are now more than six billion of us sharing the planet seems to testify to the contrary. Which is why I agree that men who make a habit out of paying for sex aren’t interested only in the sex—there’s something else they want which the act of the purchase enables them to get.
That having been said, I don’t equate paying for stuff with coercion. Coercion is what happens when people who don’t feel like paying for stuff go ahead and rip off what they please. All of us pay for services all the time, and when I ask myself why payment for sexual services alone should be taboo, I can’t come up with a good answer.
There’s that, and then there’s the idea (which, incidentally, happens to be a favorite notion of people who are devoted to evo-psych) that sex is by definition a commodity bartered by the woman in turn for some other consideration (like companionship, jewelry or cash) which is extended to her by the man. There’s a certain frame or type of mind that really goes for the men-always-pay-for-sex-women-never-give-it-up-without-a-bauble meme, and to a man whose head is in that space, the act of paying off a prostitute must just seem like heteronormativity reduced to its pure grist.
This would explain why it is that women who buy sex from men can travel under the radar. When a woman purchases sex, that’s merely an incident; it’s just something she does. It’s not thought to figure forth any all-encompassing pattern or to tap into an eternal verity. But when a man buys sex, at the very least, he’s reinforcing his role as the one who has money and pays. I’ve never bought into the claim that says that without some form of prostitution men would just never get laid. The fact that there are now more than six billion of us sharing the planet seems to testify to the contrary. Which is why I agree that men who make a habit out of paying for sex aren’t interested only in the sex—there’s something else they want which the act of the purchase enables them to get.
That having been said, I don’t equate paying for stuff with coercion. Coercion is what happens when people who don’t feel like paying for stuff go ahead and rip off what they please. All of us pay for services all the time, and when I ask myself why payment for sexual services alone should be taboo, I can’t come up with a good answer.
There’s that, and then there’s the idea (which, incidentally, happens to be a favorite notion of people who are devoted to evo-psych) that sex is by definition a commodity bartered by the woman in turn for some other consideration (like companionship, jewelry or cash) which is extended to her by the man. There’s a certain frame or type of mind that really goes for the men-always-pay-for-sex-women-never-give-it-up-without-a-bauble meme, and to a man whose head is in that space, the act of paying off a prostitute must just seem like heteronormativity reduced to its pure grist.
This would explain why it is that women who buy sex from men can travel under the radar. When a woman purchases sex, that’s merely an incident; it’s just something she does. It’s not thought to figure forth any all-encompassing pattern or to tap into an eternal verity. But when a man buys sex, at the very least, he’s reinforcing his role as the one who has money and pays. I’ve never bought into the claim that says that without some form of prostitution men would just never get laid. The fact that there are now more than six billion of us sharing the planet seems to testify to the contrary. Which is why I agree that men who make a habit out of paying for sex aren’t interested only in the sex—there’s something else they want which the act of the purchase enables them to get.
That having been said, I don’t equate paying for stuff with coercion. Coercion is what happens when people who don’t feel like paying for stuff go ahead and rip off what they please. All of us pay for services all the time, and when I ask myself why payment for sexual services alone should be taboo, I can’t come up with a good answer.
Thomas and Amanda, OK I’ll yield on the NSA sex availability, though I still suspect that unexpected strings appear there often, emotional or economic. The boards do discuss AFF and CL. The former is said to have a high percentage of professional (i.e. hooker) among the women. The latter is only discussed as the low rent market for call girls, and the law enforcement or rip-off risk is said to be high. I browsed the personals section of CL once and was so grossed out by the explicit pictures I never went back. In some ways I am an old fuddy-duddy I suppose.
There’s that, and then there’s the idea (which, incidentally, happens to be a favorite notion of people who are devoted to evo-psych) that sex is by definition a commodity bartered by the woman in turn for some other consideration (like companionship, jewelry or cash) which is extended to her by the man. There’s a certain frame or type of mind that really goes for the men-always-pay-for-sex-women-never-give-it-up-without-a-bauble meme, and to a man whose head is in that space, the act of paying off a prostitute must just seem like heteronormativity reduced to its pure grist.
This would explain why it is that women who buy sex from men can travel under the radar. When a woman purchases sex, that’s merely an incident; it’s just something she does. It’s not thought to figure forth any all-encompassing pattern or to tap into an eternal verity. But when a man buys sex, at the very least, he’s reinforcing his role as the one who has money and pays. I’ve never bought into the claim that says that without some form of prostitution men would just never get laid. The fact that there are now more than six billion of us sharing the planet seems to testify to the contrary. Which is why I agree that men who make a habit out of paying for sex aren’t interested only in the sex—there’s something else they want which the act of the purchase enables them to get.
That having been said, I don’t equate paying for stuff with coercion. Coercion is what happens when people who don’t feel like paying for stuff go ahead and rip off what they please. All of us pay for services all the time, and when I ask myself why payment for sexual services alone should be taboo, I can’t come up with a good answer.
There’s that, and then there’s the idea (which, incidentally, happens to be a favorite notion of people who are devoted to evo-psych) that sex is by definition a commodity bartered by the woman in turn for some other consideration (like companionship, jewelry or cash) which is extended to her by the man. There’s a certain frame or type of mind that really goes for the men-always-pay-for-sex-women-never-give-it-up-without-a-bauble meme, and to a man whose head is in that space, the act of paying off a prostitute must just seem like heteronormativity reduced to its pure grist.
This would explain why it is that women who buy sex from men can travel under the radar. When a woman purchases sex, that’s merely an incident; it’s just something she does. It’s not thought to figure forth any all-encompassing pattern or to tap into an eternal verity. But when a man buys sex, at the very least, he’s reinforcing his role as the one who has money and pays. I’ve never bought into the claim that says that without some form of prostitution men would just never get laid. The fact that there are now more than six billion of us sharing the planet seems to testify to the contrary. Which is why I agree that men who make a habit out of paying for sex aren’t interested only in the sex—there’s something else they want which the act of the purchase enables them to get.
That having been said, I don’t equate paying for stuff with coercion. Coercion is what happens when people who don’t feel like paying for stuff go ahead and rip off what they please. All of us pay for services all the time, and when I ask myself why payment for sexual services alone should be taboo, I can’t come up with a good answer.
Interesting debate, you might want to check out Sex Workers Outreach Project. I’ve always been of the opinion that one should always talk to the people actualy involved in an issue.
Dude, you’re browsing a hooker board but you’re grossed out by genital shots on AFF and CL …?
To clarify my post above, the reason men give on the escort boards for participating in the “hobby” include:
variety (such men are unwilling or incapable of fidelity, imo), the ability to have sex with women much more attractive physically than the men would attract on their own, and having an unsatisfactory sex life with their spouses. The desire to exercise control over a woman by buying her is never even hinted at.
If one wants variety or is tired of unsatisfactory sex with one’s spouse, there are many many options outside of prostitution that one could engage in. It’s not that hard to meet people who are pretty much just looking for sex. As far as the desire to have sex with someone “much more attractive physically” than could be attracted on their own… I think that starts to fall into the desire to have control over women. Because that’s not just about wanting to have sex anymore, imo.
If this were the only factor, then we’d expect women and men of ample means to use prostitutes in equal numbers. Do they? I do not believe so.
From my perspective, it is a tempting idea, because I’m not all that far removed from some of the unattractive, shy guys that get hypothesized. But for something like that to be a good thing, we would need to completely change how we as a society think about prostitution, and about sex. And it still wouldn’t work as long as there’s a gender disparity in economic power.
I think the ideal they hold up for these cases is something like Inara on Firefly the “happy hooker” who chooses her clients (of course, this may mean that the Sad Unfuckable John is still unfuckable), has substantial bargaining power, and is in a professional/client relationship rather than a server/customer one. But that’s not going to happen in a society where prostitutes (and women generally) are regarded as inferior, and anyone who suggests that’s anything like the current state of affairs is just being disingenuous.
I’m not so sure this is a compelling argument. I believe that music is a good to be enjoyed by all, but there’s nothing wrong with charging admission to concerts.
There’s that, and then there’s the idea (which, incidentally, happens to be a favorite notion of people who are devoted to evo-psych) that sex is by definition a commodity bartered by the woman in turn for some other consideration (like companionship, jewelry or cash) which is extended to her by the man. There’s a certain frame or type of mind that really goes for the men-always-pay-for-sex-women-never-give-it-up-without-a-bauble meme, and to a man whose head is in that space, the act of paying off a prostitute must just seem like heteronormativity reduced to its pure grist.
This would explain why it is that women who buy sex from men can travel under the radar. When a woman purchases sex, that’s merely an incident; it’s just something she does. It’s not thought to figure forth any all-encompassing pattern or to tap into an eternal verity. But when a man buys sex, at the very least, he’s reinforcing his role as the one who has money and pays. I’ve never bought into the claim that says that without some form of prostitution men would just never get laid. The fact that there are now more than six billion of us sharing the planet seems to testify to the contrary. Which is why I agree that men who make a habit out of paying for sex aren’t interested only in the sex—there’s something else they want which the act of the purchase enables them to get.
That having been said, I don’t equate paying for stuff with coercion. Coercion is what happens when people who don’t feel like paying for stuff go ahead and rip off what they please. All of us pay for services all the time, and when I ask myself why payment for sexual services alone should be taboo, I can’t come up with a good answer.
Amanda Marcotte:
You’d think if it was just a business transaction between equals, instead of a thrilling exploitation of male dominance, then there would be an equal number of male prostitutes to service women.
Or, perhaps, that there are differences between men and women. Like certain anatomical asymmetries…
I disagree that finding casual, free, no-strings sex is that impossible. Especially for a movie star like Charlie Sheen. In fact, that defies all common sense.
No, a guy can get laid.
Suppose I were to say: What’s the problem with Texas’s ban on sex toys? It’s still possible for women to get off on their own. What would your response be?
The only way Charlie Sheen could have easy access to reliably no-strings sex is if the only willing women he encounters are ones who are fine with no strings sex. Even if every day he meets 25 beautiful women seeking casual no-strings sex, if he meets 75 other women who want a relationship, that means that 3 of 4 times he gets laid there are complications. (Maybe fewer if he’s able to distinguish well, but that takes work.) It sounds like prostitution is a screening mechanism, to get rid of the hassle of hurt feelings. What’s the problem with that?
It’s that intellectual dishonesty that galls the ever-living shit out of me.
Bullshit. “Intellectual dishonesty” is apparently your word for arguments you don’t understand.
Thomas, TSID:
I don’t pay attention to celebrity news, so I’ll take your word for it that Mr. Sheen himself is a jerk. My point still stands.
There’s that, and then there’s the idea (which, incidentally, happens to be a favorite notion of people who are devoted to evo-psych) that sex is by definition a commodity bartered by the woman in turn for some other consideration (like companionship, jewelry or cash) which is extended to her by the man. There’s a certain frame or type of mind that really goes for the men-always-pay-for-sex-women-never-give-it-up-without-a-bauble meme, and to a man whose head is in that space, the act of paying off a prostitute must just seem like heteronormativity reduced to its pure grist.
This would explain why it is that women who buy sex from men can travel under the radar. When a woman purchases sex, that’s merely an incident; it’s just something she does. It’s not thought to figure forth any all-encompassing pattern or to tap into an eternal verity. But when a man buys sex, at the very least, he’s reinforcing his role as the one who has money and pays. I’ve never bought into the claim that says that without some form of prostitution men would just never get laid. The fact that there are now more than six billion of us sharing the planet seems to testify to the contrary. Which is why I agree that men who make a habit out of paying for sex aren’t interested only in the sex—there’s something else they want which the act of the purchase enables them to get.
That having been said, I don’t equate paying for stuff with coercion. Coercion is what happens when people who don’t feel like paying for stuff go ahead and rip off what they please. All of us pay for services all the time, and when I ask myself why payment for sexual services alone should be taboo, I can’t come up with a good answer.
Peter — ask yourself this. Why is there no service whereby you can buy friends? A critique of frats, sororities, etc. is that you are buying friends but members would insist that’s not true, would in fact recoil at the suggestion, feel wounded by it, etc.
The reason: paying for friends would extinguish the point of friendship. Friendship is an expression of mutuality. It can take many forms. I’ve got nothing against casual sex — it can be an expression of mutuality and solidarity.
anyway, that’s what I mean about paying for sex — it’s paid for as a “bad”, and that’s not cool in so so so so so so many ways, about which feminism has quite a lot to say.
Sure, there are “goods” one can buy: candy, hip shoes, trips to the beach. But there is no expectation of mutuality there that is thwarted by purchase. Prostitution exists to thwart mutuality. Mutuality doesn’t have to mean heteronormative monogamous marriage. It can mean all kinds of things, but prostitution exists to sock mutuality in the face. That’s why it is not cool.
@jfpbookworm:
But for something like that to be a good thing, we would need to completely change how we as a society think about prostitution, and about sex. And it still wouldn’t work as long as there’s a gender disparity in economic power.
I’m not sure how that means that prostitution should still be legal. It sounds like you’re saying that prostitution isn’t the source of problem at all, but rather the gender disparity in economic power. Accepting that hypothesis, shouldn’t we evaluate whether to continue to imprison prostitutes and their customers on the basis of what good or bad it does now, rather than whether it lives up to some otherworldly ideal?
I mean, you could just as well say that sex is bad in a society with gender disparities.
There’s that, and then there’s the idea (which, incidentally, happens to be a favorite notion of people who are devoted to evo-psych) that sex is by definition a commodity bartered by the woman in turn for some other consideration (like companionship, jewelry or cash) which is extended to her by the man. There’s a certain frame or type of mind that really goes for the men-always-pay-for-sex-women-never-give-it-up-without-a-bauble meme, and to a man whose head is in that space, the act of paying off a prostitute must just seem like heteronormativity reduced to its pure grist.
This would explain why it is that women who buy sex from men can travel under the radar. When a woman purchases sex, that’s merely an incident; it’s just something she does. It’s not thought to figure forth any all-encompassing pattern or to tap into an eternal verity. But when a man buys sex, at the very least, he’s reinforcing his role as the one who has money and pays. I’ve never bought into the claim that says that without some form of prostitution men would just never get laid. The fact that there are now more than six billion of us sharing the planet seems to testify to the contrary. Which is why I agree that men who make a habit out of paying for sex aren’t interested only in the sex—there’s something else they want which the act of the purchase enables them to get.
That having been said, I don’t equate paying for stuff with coercion. Coercion is what happens when people who don’t feel like paying for stuff go ahead and rip off what they please. All of us pay for services all the time, and when I ask myself why payment for sexual services alone should be taboo, I can’t come up with a good answer.
There’s that, and then there’s the idea (which, incidentally, happens to be a favorite notion of people who are devoted to evo-psych) that sex is by definition a commodity bartered by the woman in turn for some other consideration (like companionship, jewelry or cash) which is extended to her by the man. There’s a certain frame or type of mind that really goes for the men-always-pay-for-sex-women-never-give-it-up-without-a-bauble meme, and to a man whose head is in that space, the act of paying off a prostitute must just seem like heteronormativity reduced to its pure grist.
This would explain why it is that women who buy sex from men can travel under the radar. When a woman purchases sex, that’s merely an incident; it’s just something she does. It’s not thought to figure forth any all-encompassing pattern or to tap into an eternal verity. But when a man buys sex, at the very least, he’s reinforcing his role as the one who has money and pays. I’ve never bought into the claim that says that without some form of prostitution men would just never get laid. The fact that there are now more than six billion of us sharing the planet seems to testify to the contrary. Which is why I agree that men who make a habit out of paying for sex aren’t interested only in the sex—there’s something else they want which the act of the purchase enables them to get.
That having been said, I don’t equate paying for stuff with coercion. Coercion is what happens when people who don’t feel like paying for stuff go ahead and rip off what they please. All of us pay for services all the time, and when I ask myself why payment for sexual services alone should be taboo, I can’t come up with a good answer.
Is this a warning shot across the bow of the Democratic Party by the republicans?
Showing how low and deep they are willing to further pervert the laws of this country to get their puppet installed as president. (As if Hillary’s recent performance has made things harder for them)
This whole thing stinks to high heaven but you just have to wonder, and just like 9/11/2001, there are so many coincidences and ’strange actions’ for it just to be a spur of the moment incident.
They have been planning to take Spitzer down for years.
To watch MSNBC’s Wall Street siren talking to some ‘Wall Street people’ you could see their glee and gloating in this nasty prosecution. Many people, many cruel, nasty, evil, rich and politically connected people are very ecstatically happy over this ‘convenient’ prosecution… And the message seems clear. Since Cheney now has full access to the ‘Justice’ Dept inner workings, I wonder if his fingerprints aren’t all over this thing.
Once again, Lady Liberty is prostituted for the pleasure of the GOP.
Benquo this may surprise you to learn, but sex not something that only men enjoy and therefor must wrest from women by hook or by crook. Lots of women like sex, seek sex, and want sex for sex’s sake and not with “complications.” Simply being in possession of a penis does not mean that a man is going to automatically be some sort of sex-hunting lothario, and lacking a penis does not mean that a woman does not want sex.
And you’re in no position to lecture on the definition of intellectual honestly when you go on to conflate a woman with an inanimate sex toy.
There’s that, and then there’s the idea (which, incidentally, happens to be a favorite notion of people who are devoted to evo-psych) that sex is by definition a commodity bartered by the woman in turn for some other consideration (like companionship, jewelry or cash) which is extended to her by the man. There’s a certain frame or type of mind that really goes for the men-always-pay-for-sex-women-never-give-it-up-without-a-bauble meme, and to a man whose head is in that space, the act of paying off a prostitute must just seem like heteronormativity reduced to its pure grist.
This would explain why it is that women who buy sex from men can travel under the radar. When a woman purchases sex, that’s merely an incident; it’s just something she does. It’s not thought to figure forth any all-encompassing pattern or to tap into an eternal verity. But when a man buys sex, at the very least, he’s reinforcing his role as the one who has money and pays. I’ve never bought into the claim that says that without some form of prostitution men would just never get laid. The fact that there are now more than six billion of us sharing the planet seems to testify to the contrary. Which is why I agree that men who make a habit out of paying for sex aren’t interested only in the sex—there’s something else they want which the act of the purchase enables them to get.
That having been said, I don’t equate paying for stuff with coercion. Coercion is what happens when people who don’t feel like paying for stuff go ahead and rip off what they please. All of us pay for services all the time, and when I ask myself why payment for sexual services alone should be taboo, I can’t come up with a good answer.
Benquo: absolutely we should be basing our policy decisions on the world we live in, and not some hypothetical utopia. My point was exactly that: that the utopian arguments where hypothetically prostitution isn’t problematic in the slightest, while interesting when discussing the topic as moral principle, are not relevant to a discussion of what the law should be here and now.
Guys get their self esteem from fucking attractive women or having power over women. Fucking women they think are unattractive? Fucking women who have economic power over them? They’d be regarded as totally emasculated.
Uh, how would the former not benefit the later? (Regulation is usually more about money/taxes too)
What you said made little sense to me.
If the workers are monitored for diseases, won’t that mean healthier workers?
As sick as it seems, probably legalizing it is the only way to deal with it. Not that I’d ever visit such a place but there should be for those people that need it. Maybe they can classify people that visit those places as ’sexual addicts’ and provide places for ‘treatment’.
Still, this is likely a product of 1) puritanical values, 2) ego, 3) anger, 4) control, 5) addiction and/or 6) convenience.
I had a catholic friend describe getting married as beating masturbation. Interesting viewpoint and I’m glad that I’m 1) not his wife and 2) no longer in contact with him but if it works for him then who am I to judge. BTW: He moved to another state…
@jfpbookworm:
Maybe I live a sheltered life, but the only pragmatic pro-legalization arguments I’ve heard have been on the grounds that legal prostitution, while still problematic, is less so that illegal prostitution, since at least prostitutes would have some kind of legal recourse when shit happens.
Maybe you’ve mainly heard arguments from people who imagine that if we just legalized it it wouldn’t be bad in any way ever, but I think we agree that those people are engaged in magical thinking.
Oh, and read this info here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/10/spitzer/index.html
before getting all righteous…
There is way to much political undertow in this to be believed at face value.
“Or, perhaps, that there are differences between men and women. Like certain anatomical asymmetries…”
What on earth does that have to do with anything?
Amanda, your overall points about prostitution are well-considered, but I find your assertion that there’s a strong demand for male hetero prostitutes, yet no men willing to deliver the goods, hard to swallow. Trust me, if the demand were there, somebody would come along to fill it. (And certainly, there is some demand — and precisely as much supply, I’d wager.)
The “patriarchal privilege” part is, in this case, not codified but strictly psychological, evidenced by the fact that some men apparently want prostitutes and even mail-order brides. Any women out there want’em a man fifty bucks for a throw, give me two hours to find one (no, not me; that would be cheating, wouldn’t it?)
Before you jump all over me, keep in mind that my observations hardly cast a flattering light on men, greasy purchasers of sex. Not most men, of course, not literally anyway.
Banquo: I’m not really arguing for or against legalization/decriminalization. I’ve heard folks defending the practice based on the Sad Unfuckable John argument Amanda cited above, and as much as I can identify with such a person I don’t find that a compelling argument with respect to the policy issue.
The “legalization protects prostitutes” argument is a much more convincing one.
Most men who go to prostitutes can get sex, even strings-free, no-commitment sex, from other women.
Oh for Christ’s sake. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve read all year. That’s like saying “any teenager can go to college.” Of course Charlie Sheen can get laid.Charlie Sheen is a Hollywood movie star! Charlie Sheen is charismatic, rich and famous. Don’t you know any losers?
However, regarding the “sex for the socially infirm” argument, hiring prostitutes is far worse for losers than for Charlie Sheen. Charlie Sheen gets done with his nasty business transaction and walks away whistling a happy tune, his self-respect largely intact. Charlie Sheen doesn’t get finished with his prostitute and look in the mirror and say to himself, “Jesus, look at me, I’m such a complete loser that the only way in the world I’m ever going to get next to a woman is to pay for it.”
(Yes, prostitution is also no good for prostitutes, but that does not contradict what I said above any more than “the sky is blue” disproves “the sun is bright.”)
Oh, by the way, to Hell with Eliot Spitzer. $5000 for a hooker! Die in a fire, you rich fuck.
jfpbookworm — to clarify why prostitution is not like music, ask yourself why no-one pays for friendship (or, if they do, they are in total denial about it — unlike a john hiring a prostitute or calling an escort service). Friendship is nice and enjoyable, yes? Like music? Like sex, too.
What is the difference? The point of friendship is mutuality. To buy a friend would be to vitiate the point of it. Prostitution exists to destroy mutuality. You can be into music, but music can’t be into you.
Mutuality and solidarity can exist in casual sex — mutuality and solidarity doesn’t mean fidelity, life-long commitment, any of that. What it does mean is for whatever moment you are interacting, you are both there uncoerced and the pleasure comes from the very mutuality of it: even if that mutuality consists of woo! let’s get it on in the bathroom of the pub and then never see one another again! If you’re both into it, right on.
The ways that prostitution destroys mutuality AND WHY THAT IS KEY TO ITS EXISTENCE IN SITUATIONS OF INEQUALITY (sexual or economic) — that’s, like, the point. That’s why it’s so incredibly popular, that’s what turns people on about it. That’s why while decriminalization is cool, legalization is not.
Anony,
Think of the bare minimum effort required of a female prostitute. On the other hand, it’s a little more difficult if a male prostitute just lies there.
I think it’s naive not to expect that the different physiological nature of sexual arousal in men and women affects the market for sex.
When we look up the economic ladder to more genteel and sophisticated arrangements, gender becomes more identifiably important.
Felgund and PinkyLeftBrain:
Who said that the Left needs to tie ourselves to a single person, or a few people? It doesn’t matter how we found out about Spitzer’s flaws; we know about them. If he won’t uphold our values, I see no reason not to allow his lieutenant governor, a man who has overcome a significant disability, an opportunity to show what he can do.
Kathleen,
The equivalent of paying for friendship would be paying for romance. The equivalent of paying for sex is paying for one of the incidents of friendship, like emotional support, or companionship.
Plenty of people go to psychologists and pay for conversation or emotional support.
The definition of AFF and CL being?
Just lay back and enjoy it, eh, Banquo? Yeah, somehow I doubt that’s what these skeezes are buying women to abuse want. If that was it, they could easily get it.
It’s not like women want to get laid or anythi—-Oh, yeah, wait. How inconvenient for that argument. If all a hooker has to do is lie there, then it makes even less sense that there’s prostitution. Bad sex that you pay for! Woo hoo!
Benquo — your attempted smackdown has no room for happy, satisfying casual sex which is not “romantic” at all. You lose.
What you seem to be arguing here is that the value and purpose of sex can only come from a satisfying emotional bond of some kind. But that’s only one possible source of pleasure in sex. There is the physical sensation, the experience of novelty, and other sources of pleasure as well.
To bring up massages again, a massage received freely from a lover, or a good friend, may be satisfying in particular ways that a massage received from a paid professional may not be. But that doesn’t make a paid-for massage devoid of pleasure. Nor does the lack of that mutuality make it inherently wrong. Nor does it necessarily mean that you, the recipient of the massage, are guilty of regarding the masseuse as something less-than-human - just a pair of hands to be used and tossed away.
“It doesn’t matter how we found out about Spitzer’s flaws; we know about them.”
If Spitzer is guilty, screw him. That’s a very simple decision.
However, it is absolutely critical to determine how Spitzer was found out.
If he was nailed as the result of Bush DOJ selective prosecution, this must be exposed. It’s logical to assume that if Democrats are being targeted, than Republicans are being ignored.
For the health of our nation, “Rovian Ratfucking” cannot be allowed as a “normal” practice. If that type of thing is allowed to continue, “crime” will be slowly defined down until consensual sex in the White House is considered a crime against the whole country - OPPS! Too late…
Amanda,
I can’t speak to whatever the heck the asymetrical physical things might be, but I think there is another asymmetry in play, at least to a degree.
Yes, there are women who are perfectly happy to have no-strings sex, but I suspect that there are far more men willing to. So it may be easier for women to find men who aren’t looking to get paid.
Add in women who have the wealth and power to both afford and ignore social consequences of keeping a boy-toy, whether in her home or effectively on call (still not prostitution, but definitely in the neighborhood).
You’d end up with whatever the female equivalent of “too unattractive to interest people who might want to have sex” is, and given the American male population, that sets the bar pretty low.
It may be that women who would otherwise be the equivalent of the men looking for prostitutes have an easier availability of free supply.
Not necessarily a utopia of consequence-free encounters, but the availability. That would skew the demand for paid workers, at least a bit.
Jeez, Kathleen, I went back to the lower string and saw you are in favor of decriminalization but not legalization. (The difference is well explained on this Coyote LA site here: http://www.freedomusa.org/coyotela/decrim.html)
The whole discussion was in the context of what Spitzer did and whether that should be illegal. You slammed us as disgusting for arguing that it should be legal, in that contex but you say you were in favor of decriminalization all the time? Are you insane or perverse?
OK. As explained by the Coyote site, I agree decriminalization seems to make more sense than legalization. I gather that’s what’s been done in Canada. So, as a value statement, what Spitzer did in calling an agency to arrange for an assignation where the payment was exchanged and the sex occurred in the privacy of a hotel room, should be legal (even if he induced her to cross state lines).
The fact that he engaged in illegal conduct where he built his career in large part on prosecuting such conduct is a hypocritical act serious enough to call for his resignation, imo.
Whew.
Spitzer betrayed every body who voted for him, and, in my opinion, should resign and just go away. But, if they are actually going to arrest the prostitutes in this case, and I feel strongly that Spitzer should be arrested! As in almost all high profile prostitution cases, I’m … stunned, although I shouldn’t be, by the double standard.
As making prostitution illegal has been stunningly unsuccessful in making the life of prostitutes better in any way, I don’t see any reason to support laws against prostitution. Of course, from the conservative point of view, making prostitutes miserable is the point. I guess it is supposed to be a disincentive to prostitutes, plus of course it allows us to put some woman on the bottom of the social chain where the police will laugh - representing all of us - if she is raped or murdered. And it is very important to have those negative figures on the bottom. But somehow, I’m against all that shit.
Not in the Caribbeans.
“What it does mean is for whatever moment you are interacting, you are both there uncoerced and the pleasure comes from the very mutuality of it: even if that mutuality consists of woo! let’s get it on in the bathroom of the pub and then never see one another again! ”
But again, can’t the mutuality (speaking in theory) be “Woo! One of us gets sex we’re willing to pay for and the other gets money we’re willing to have sex for!”
Sorry for the alphabet soup — CL is Craigslist, and AFF is Adult Friend Finder.
Ballast — a massage from a friend, a lover, whoever, is primarily intended to give pleasure to the recepient, though perhaps the massager gets some kind of satisfaction by proxy from providing that pleasure. The paid variety of massage replicates this form. It is, in its “free” and “paid” varieties, inherently unequal as regards pleasure.
That’s not how unpaid sex works, if done properly — it gives pleasure to both parties.
Paid sex changes this equation: one party gets pleasure, as in a massage, while the other gives it, as in a massage.
It’s interesting, actually, that you use massage as your example. It’s a perfect model of how sexist assholes understand all sex, paid or unpaid, which is why they don’t get what the big whoop is about prostitution — a pleasure for the man, from which a woman receives (perhaps) some satisfaction in giving, so that money is fair “compensation” in a situation in which she is not expected to get any pleasure even by proxy.
Care to try again?
Northern Virginia, if no one beats me to it
AFF = Adult Friend Finder
CL = Craigslist
These are web sites, remove the spaces and add .com and you will get there. The first is a dating/sex encounter site and the latter you undoubtedly know about but perhaps weren’t aware that it has a casual encounter section.
Thomas, “grossed out” perhaps was an overstatement, perhaps “seriously icked” is closer.
That would be fine, if the party behind the ‘discovery’ practiced by the same morals that they foist on others. THEY DO NOT! Vitter, Craig, McCain, Gingrich, Limbaugh, etc, etc, etc…
I remember a Star Trek episode that fits this well. To ‘eliminate’ war, two planets would draw random areas of the planet as ‘attacked’ and they the people in those areas would file into dematerialization machines to die.
I imagined the other planet not living up to their end of the bargain. Who would have known?
Elliott didn’t use public money to hire them, he didn’t use public areas to be with them. And the story is what? I’m sure that he threw out glass bottles and used plastic grocery bags too. The point is, if you read the Glenn Greenwald article that I linked to above, this has the incredible stench of a political prosecution. A stinking turd thrown into the middle of the dinner table. We are meant to be shocked. It’s part of the game.
Karl Rove called it ‘rat fucking’. He mailed letters slamming his own candidate on the opponents stationary just to manufacture and mold the publics opinion of his candidate and turn popular opinion against his heavily favorited opponent.
And come on, the Mann Act? Read up on it. Hell, Charlie Chaplin was prosecuted under it in an attempt to run him out of the country!
Beware in this overly politically perverted time, a sudden ‘gift’ to the hyperventilating base… Democrats find themselves fighting a firehose of vitriol and bile and the GOP (Vitter, et all) sit and laugh…
Peter — are you really willing to go to bat for that definition of mutuality? Cause it’s utterly crap, as a moment’s thought will tell you.
Roger, you’re kind of missing something. Prostitution is stunningly unsuccessful in making the lives of women happy.
Why don’t we ask Heidi Fleiss how well the free market argument worked for her when she proposed to open a stud farm (her name for it) in Nevada? People went apeshit, even though there are brothels in the state. Hell, Nevadans mourned when the Mustang Ranch closed a couple of years ago.
I would disagree that there is equal demand by women for hot, young men to have sex with, but I see this as the result of sexism and the denial of women’s sexuality. Our common cultural trope is that women do not have their own sexual desires, independent of men, but that they are vessels to fulfill men’s sexual desires.
Maybe that’s the main reason I see sex work as problematic in a way that other forms of labor are not. I can use my labor for myself or others, for pay or free but it is still mine. A prostitute is seen as selling something that she doesn’t inherently own– her sexuality– which justifies the ill treatment most prostitutes are afforded. Just look at the definition of “common woman” in medieval England– a prostitute was literally not allowed to refuse any man willing to pay them for sex. If your sexuality was not bought by a husband, and you ever had sex for money, you had to provide sex to any man willing to pay for it– you weren’t allowed to reserve your services for particular men. I honestly don’t think that, as far as mentality goes, we’ve progressed all that far from the common woman.
Pinky, there’s the unfortunate fact that Charlie Chaplin had a thing for underage girls. So, yeah….
“I think the ideal they hold up for these cases is something like Inara on Firefly the “happy hooker” who chooses her clients (of course, this may mean that the Sad Unfuckable John is still unfuckable)”
Beat me to it. The Companion model is the only one I find acceptable because Companions do not have to have sex with people with whom they don’t want to. I used to think that feminists saying prostitution is rape were spewing pure hyperbole, but it has since occurred to me that not being able to choose one’s sex partners severely diminishes the degree to which consent can be considered meaningful.
By the way, I don’t think anyone is unfuckable, it is just more difficult for some people to find sex partners that meet certain ideals of attractiveness.
And ‘Kathleen’. People don’t ‘buy’ friendship?
Since when?
Nobody gets sex for free…
Is there such a thing as ‘happy casual sex’? True some people treat sex like scratching their back or getting a haircut but usually there is somebody hurt in the process…
But that’s not why he was prosecuted, AFAIK. It was ’something’ that they could ‘get’ him with. Weak but it was ’something’…
Sad that laws like that exist and that government lawyers spend our tax money figuring out which ones they can stretch to fit their agenda.
Covering several bases:
Amanda: There is absolutely no reason that the brothels in Nevada need to keep their workers virtual prisoners on premises, if it’s just about sex.
Hadn’t heard about this - got a reference for edification? Legalized prostitution in NZ seems to have gone down a different path, possibly because we’re too small to isolate the brothels from the communities.
Most men who go to prostitutes can get sex, even strings-free, no-commitment sex, from other women. They want something else. For some, like David Vitter, I think it might just be a need to have some weird kink fulfilled. But I suspect for many, if not most, it’s the idea of buying a woman that’s the allure. Which is why the “consenting adults” argument rings a bit hollow.
An alternative perspective
Kathleen: If you’re paying for it, it’s coercion,
Do you ever pay for someone to cook for you, drive for you, clean for you, repair for you, or care for you?
Peter: I’ve always taken it for granted (as in, utterly unexamined) that the primary reason to legalize was precisely for the protection of the worker.
I got the impression during the debates here that that was the motivation, certainly as expressed by Beyer. I have no idea what the situation is now, but the Prostitutes’ Collective appears to be happy with the law change.
Jimbo: I think what would really be cool would be for sex workers to unionize and create institutions that to help keep them safe, while outlawing brothels (unless cooperatively run by sex workers themselves).
Or, alternatively, allow the prostitutes to act as free agents in dealing with brothels, letting them go where-ever they prefer to work or set up for themselves. Either they provide value to the worker or they go under. A bit like taxi companies, I guess.
That’s quite a leap you make there. I would never say that this is what “all sex” is, or even most sex. I do think some sex can be that - i.e. pleasure which one person gives to another, who perhaps receives some satisfaction in giving, as you put it. Indeed, I think it’d be very simplistic to say that no “properly done” sexual act could ever conceivably take that form.
Okay, it may be that some men have more trouble than others getting casual sex. That’s true across the board.
But the point is that Charlie Sheen, who has no problem getting casual sex, was hiding behind the “Woe is me, I’m so undersexed” argument.
Good evidence as any that the argument is bullshit used to distract from reality.
Wait, what? Anything more than speculation behind that lurid suggestion?
Yes, there are women who are perfectly happy to have no-strings sex, but I suspect that there are far more men willing to.
If you want to change that fact, then you need to join with those of us who promote sex as a mutual thing instead of something a woman owns and trades to a man as something else. Women are reluctant to have casual sex precisely because women are told that sex is their commodity that they exchange for other things, and so they’re hanging onto the milk to get the cow.
Until we get rid of that idea, then the sad sacks of men who occasionally—but not always—strike out in their absolute need to get casual sex will probably have some nights of going without. It’s really partially their fault, if they buy into the idea that women are items up for purchase instead of fellow human beings that may or may not want to have fun with them.
Sixties Liberal, if you follow the Spitzer thread, you will see that the shit storm started when Kathleen asked a simple question: Why are people so resistant to the idea that prostitution is exploitative? And really, even those who think selling sex is a woman’s right usually acknowledge that in most of the circumstances under which this occurs in our current society, it is exploitative. For her efforts, Kathleen was accused of hating women, wanting to control all women, hating sex, wanting women to be raped and brutalized, needing medication, being sick and twisted and being worried that her husband or boyfriend was getting some on the side. And about 90 percent of this bullying was coming from men. So, Sixties Liberal, that is the “context” in which she called some of you “disgusting.”
Personally, I’m probably on the decriminalization side, but not completely decided. But the level of abuse that commenters, some of them regulars on a feminist blog, were willing to heap on someone who finds paying for sex problematic really disturbed me.
From the Greenwald article:
PLB, fuck you. I was poly for a good part of my adult life; you can take your issues somewhere else. Some people can and do respect casual partners who are really just casual partners.
Quicksand, the warrant affidavit quotes a woman saying that Spitzer asked prostitutes to do things that were unsafe, “basic things.” Most of us are interpreting that as no-condom.
James said:
You seem to think you are making an argument for why its okay that many, many, many more women work as prostitutes than men. But you actually are making an argument for why IT’S NOT OKAY.
If men aren’t selling sex because they have other opportunities, that means that people with other opportunities don’t sell sex. That is not an argument for why prostitution is not morally problematic.
What do you think you have to pay extra for, Quicksand? Do you honestly, in your heart, believe that someone has to pay a shitload extra and have the prostitutes warned first because they want something that’s considered safe? In fact, the language in the warrant specifically states that he was asking prostitutes to do things they considered unsafe.
As Stephen Levitt demonstrated, the cultural traditions around prostitution in the U.S. include the extra-expensive sadistic pleasures of putting the prostitute at risk by going without a condom. It must be exciting indeed to do that, because whoever does is also risking an STI that he gets to bring home to his wifey.
I looked into my heart and realized I’d be screaming bloody murder if a Republican did it. If we don’t want them to have double standards, we can’t have double standards.
Hetero male prostitution exists, but the dynamic is different. I’ve seen it in the third world, where western female sex tourists visit and hook-up with local for the duration of her visit. It is not the cash on the table for services rendered type of prostitution but more like a temporary relationship wherein gifts and cash flow from the woman to the man. A good movie that depicts this is Vers Sud, with the incomparable Charlotte Rampling. Terry McMillian had just such a relationship. You can try to explain why it’s different through social and economic means, but i think you would be remiss to not consider that there may be real psychological or biological differences in the way men and women approach sex.
Thanks, Chingona. What’s come through for me is how unbelievably sex-negative the defenders of prostitution are — every parallel they can think of is to something just awful, like, what if I wanted to pay you 50 dollars to poke you in the head with a sharp stick and you agreed? Wouldn’t that be 100% fair, your choice to do what you want with your body, and ERGO the epitome (say in Vern voice) of feminism?
I mean, you’d reckon their sexual experience was rather a drearyish wasteland or something.
Sixties Liberal, if you follow the Spitzer thread, you will see that the shit storm started when Kathleen asked a simple question: Why are people so resistant to the idea that prostitution is exploitative?
I don’t have a problem with that question. Prostitution is exploitative (although, at $5,500 an hour, clearly not all prostitution is the same).
But any capitalist relationship is exploitative. Kathleen then went on to shudder oh so delicately at the special ickiness of sex.
Let me make this very clear to people who run to the defense of johns, any johns:
Spitzer, by virtue of his life history, enjoyed both visiting prostitutes (and doing things with them that had the thrill of putting them in danger) and throwing prostitutes in jail.
These two facts are not separate issues. I firmly believe they are intertwined, part of a larger psychological issue with getting off on getting off with people that you feel are subhuman and should be treated like dirt.
Running to his defense shows how so very many pro-prostitution people really have very little energy or enthusiasm for defending the values of prostitutes as human beings who deserve equality, yes, with even governors.
It’s in that detail that I find my patience with the intellectual honesty of prostitution proponents to run very, very short. If you think prostitution is no big deal, then by all means, you should be at the front of the line condemning Spitzer and declaring that the women he fucked deserve better than this.
From Greenwald’s article: “It’s only a matter of time before all the fun, salacious details start leaking — what exactly Spitzer did with the prostitutes he hired, what the prostitutes thought of him…” How dare the media publish this kind of sensationalistic trash, like details about how these women were treated or what they thought about it? Yeah, not convinced.
Absolutely. If you find prostitution immoral on those grounds, you may as well go all the way and be a Marxist.
Um, PHiatoR — can you find my shudders? Cause I remember describing sex as a lovely fun party, to which everyone is born holding an invitation, enjoyable both in committed relationships and in chance encounters, and which has not yet developed its full, manifold, florescence in society as we know it.
If you are taking my insistence on mutuality as “icky”, darling, you should try it sometime. It’s much nicer than you suppose.
If you want to use “but what about the capitalism!” as a way of derailing a feminist discussion, dude, fine. If you’ve got the revolution started and I’m holding it back by talking about sex, I’ll stop.
And while this navel gazing is going on, the last general that blocked ‘president for life’ Cheney’s goal of nuking Iran was just shown the door…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/03/11/cent-com-chief-admiral-fallon-resigns-robert-gates-presser/
Anyone taking bets on a war on Iran before the selections?
Hey Rape Apologist PitR (yeah, you thought I forgot), there are pretty good arguments that sex work is a special case. Like, it underscores the patriarchal tropes that women are a commodity, that sex is a commodity, and that women are sex. Like any capitalist relationship is exploitive but some things are more invasive than others; we don’t allow the selling of organs, either, no matter how much better off the seller would be with the money. Kathleen’s “shudder” that sex work is different from other work is not some silly emotional reaction; it’s a perfectly defensible (in my view compelling) position.
Let me also say that black market capitalism is often the MOST exploitive form of capitalism by far, because its unrestrained and unregulated. Want to make it less exploitive for the women? Put them under the protection of the law by legalizing it.
Regarding prostitution in Nevada, Bob Herbert had a piece in the NYT back in September that I suspect is at least one basis of Amanda’s reference to being virtual prisoners. I know the piece had an impact on me. Here’s a sample:
Read the whole thing, even if you think you disagree:
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/opinion/11herbert.html?scp=2&sq=Bob+Herbert+Sheri%27s+Ranch&st=nyt
@ginmar:
Where’d you get “enjoy” from? I never said it was a good situation. I just said that that’s how it is. Your response makes no sense to me; try again, maybe you’ll manage to communicate something.
@Kathleen:
Why do you assume that I intended a smackdown? Why do you feel the need to posit a loser or winner in this conversation?
I took another look at your 3:22 PM comment, and I might have initially misconstrued your point. If you’re just saying that the absence of “mutuality” (as you define it, where both people are interested in the act itself) in arrangements like prostitution is important because it allows power imbalances, then I agree.
But when you say that the point of friendship is “mutuality”… One aspect of friendship is “mutuality,” but there are plenty of things about friendship that are nice to have whether or not the other person is enthused about the friendship. That’s what the psychotherapist illustrates. Similarly, some aspects of sex are good because of “mutuality,” others are good independently of that. Now, if you think that psychotherapy “destroys” friendship by supplying some of the good of friendship without “mutuality,” I can see why you’d think the same thing about sex, and I’d like to know your reasons for thinking that about both. The implications are important. If non-”mutual” sex destroys “mutuality” by providing some of sex’s benefits in a non-”mutual” way, then casual sex “destroys” sexual love, and premarital sex “destroys” marriage.
I think it’s important to remember that non-”mutuality” does not necessitate abuse, but is compatible with other mutually beneficial arrangements, such as commercial transactions. And I don’t think that the “mutuality” of strictly casual sex is in any way intrinsically valuable, apart from the mutual benefit it implies.
I can see, however, why the desire for non-”mutual” sex might reflect a bad character. And that people ought not to desire non-mutual sex or think of it in a non-mutual way.
What’s come through for me is how unbelievably sex-negative the defenders of prostitution are — every parallel they can think of is to something just awful
Oh, like my example of what if I wanted to pay you to talk with me about my problems?
You’d think if it was just a business transaction between equals, instead of a thrilling exploitation of male dominance, then there would be an equal number of male prostitutes to service women.
I don’t see how that follows. Particularly in a society that puts far stricter constraints on the sexual freedom of women than on men.
I think the whole discussion of whether prostitution should be allowed because it provides lonely johns with a way to get sex is a non sequitur.
Who cares if lonely men can get sex? Not me.
Prostitution should be legal because women unquestionably own their bodies. Anything you own, you can sell. Period.
Not “You can sell it if other women agree with your choice”. Not “You can sell it if no other woman anywhere in the world is under any kind of compulsion whatsoever”. Not “You can sell it, or at least you could if you weren’t a victim of false consciousness, but now that we’ve defined you that way you don’t get to sell it until we change society completely”.
But before Amanda accuses me of running to Spitzer’s defense, I’m not. Fry him. I consider him to be hoisted by his own petard. He prosecuted others for this crime, and he should be judged by his own standard.
well, then Chet, how is it a transaction between equals?
Kathleen didn’t shudder at the special ickiness of sex. She shuddered at commodifying something as special as sex, even random hook-ups in bar bathrooms. The basic difference is that she thinks sex is something two people do together while others seem to think sex is something men do to women. Kathleen has explained her position over and over again, and any attempt to paint her as sex-negative at this point can only be interpreted as a deliberate misreading.
I used to have a very libertarian view on this issue, but the willingness of the pro-legalization people to belittle any women who disagrees with them makes it really hard to take their position at face-value and not as just another expression of male privilege conveniently wrapped up in sex-positivity.
Comment #107: There were a couple of things in that article that made me grind my teeth because they were simplistic, chin, but the details about the brothels are undeniably disturbing. Also fucking disturbing is that the brothels in Nevada are largely treated with this cutesy-poo affection. I saw a documentary on them a few years ago, where it was obvious that the filmmakers had some kind of intention to be titillating, but unfortunately, many of the women they met were just sad. One talked about how she never sees her kids, because, of course, she’s only allowed to leave one day a week.
The part about this that bothers me the most is that he was paying these women for something he could then personally throw them in jail for doing.
That is:
1) massively hypocritical
2) really adding a whole level to the idea of coercion, isn’t it? If I were a woman in that situation, I’d be terrified to refuse (for fear of finding myself under investigation), but also terrified of not “performing” whatever he asked to his satisfaction, for the same reason.
People do this all the time. Its called a Psychologist or counselor.
Thomas, TSID:
There’s a difference between equality of rights and equality of practical power. If Prostitution is only as bad as ordinary wage labor, then it wouldn’t be worth banning. I think a lot of people here are arguing that prostitution is worse than paying people to do other things they might not do without getting paid. That would require the inequality to either be different in degree or different in kind. Kathleen has been arguing for a difference in kind, for instance, which I think is the more plausible distinction.
Sorry about the multiple posts…I’ll do my best to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
[hangs head]
I agree. I reject and denounce Spitzer. And his phoniness, and his apparent disregard for the well-being and dignity of the people whom he paid to fuck him.
But I still can only scoff at the notion that maintaining a ban on the purchase of sex will do anything at all to address that particular issue.
Why is there no service whereby you can buy friends?
Professional therapy.
I rest my case.
It’s worth noting that the idea that you’re paying them to leave is largely a myth, too. A lot of of johns prefer an ongoing relationship with one or several prostitutes, to reinforce the idea that this is a personal relationship, except, you know, he owns them. What do you think sugar daddies want, except that I-have-a-harem feeling?
But I still can only scoff at the notion that maintaining a ban on the purchase of sex will do anything at all to address that particular issue.
Scoffing is of limited use. Considering that the subject is so controversial, it’s important to start bringing up empirical evidence.
It’s worth noting that I did not call for a ban on buying sex. I just think that it’s still on the table for me, while I do dismiss the idea that anyone should go to jail for selling. More evidence, I feel, is needed.
Interestingly, therapists have rules and boundaries about sexualizing their relationships with clients, Chet. If it’s no big deal, I wonder why that might be.
These two facts are not separate issues. I firmly believe they are intertwined, part of a larger psychological issue with getting off on getting off with people that you feel are subhuman and should be treated like dirt.
Bingo.
I think in society as presently constructed that prostitution only works by viewing women as interchangeable objects, that men should be able to purchase. If you accept that women are equals, how can you go out and purchase her? Literally, her?
And don’t tell me that it’s because men need sex twenty-four hours a day or we implode. It’s simply not true. Having lived with a penis for almost 34 years now, I can tell you that I’m utterly capable of not having sex on any given day, or indeed, in any given year. I can understand looking to find someone for a casual hook-up, or a relationship that’s not particularly intense. Nothing wrong with that, as far as I’m concerned. But purchasing another person’s body for my use? Unfathomable.
In a different society, there might be different implications to prostitution. In a world where men and women were truly equal, we might find some people got into the business of selling sex as a service — sex for mutual pleasure, sex for fun. But in this world, where sex and power are too inextricably linked, and in such imperfect balance — in this world, prostitution is not just a reasonable transaction between consenting adults.
Granted that massage therapy and psychotherapy are not as inherently unpleasant as toilet-scrubbing, a favorite parallel of the prostitution defense brigade.
so, to review — your point is that paid sex is like unpaid sex, minus the mutuality, plus money to make up for it.
mutatis mutandis — massage is like a friendship, except you pay the massage therapist cause it’s never his/her turn to get a massage. Psychotherapy is like friendship, except you pay the psychotherapist because it is never their turn to talk.
Friendship, therefore, is best defined as assemblage of services that people perform for one another on a tit-for-tat basis, a kind of barter that is unmediated by money.
okey dokey. Got it, got your vision of sexual relationships and friendship, concede your points on that basis.
Now would call you “sex negative” AND “friendship negative”.
And would suggest to you that maybe most people think of themselves as paying the massage therapist and the psychotherapist for services that people in the default scenario NEVER do willingly — give out massages, listen to others yammer forever — and most people understand that as *different from* sex and friendship, which are in the default scenario predicated on willingness.
Thinking the default scenario for “sex with a woman” is “unwillingess” is profoundly tragic and, like, sexist and stuff. Not to beat anybody over the head about it or anything.
I posted this on the other thread, but I think it’s still relevant. The first minimum wage laws were struck down because they violated workers’ rights to work for any wage they wanted. Just because all labor is exploitative doesn’t mean there is no legal or ethical interest by society (which inevitably means the state) in the parameters under which that exploitation takes place. In fact, it is precisely because all labor is exploitative that we have that interest, obligation even. There are all kinds of things my boss cannot ask me to do - even for money - and many of them don’t involve sex.
About the wives:
while terminal level wheedling is no doubt deployed, surely the wives have ‘agency’ (to use a fav Pandagonian word) and could refuse if they wanted to.
Obviously, they don’t want to be somewhere else ENOUGH to say, “Fuck yourself and your career, you’re going out there alone. Bastard.” I’m shocked, SHOCKED, that a feminist writer here would suggest otherwise.
What’s come through for me is how unbelievably sex-negative the defenders of prostitution are
Well, then let’s try a different tack.
Sex is a skill, and it’s one you can get better at through hard work, practice, and study. If I’ve put all that work in, and I’ve gained the skills to be a fantastic lay, why do I have to give the results of that labor away for free? Why can’t I charge a fee, to those who wish to pay, to recoup the costs and time I expended for those skills?
@Kathleen:
I agree with you that friendship isn’t just barter of services. These lesser goods are exchanged as tokens of mutual respect and affection. But they’d be no good as tokens if they weren’t good already.
What I’m saying is that I don’t think it devalues friendship too much if I purchase the tokens of friendship separately.
Similarly, sexual acts are often tokens of mutual affection. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t also in other contexts be goods to one party independently of what they represent. Sometimes I’ll do things for my girlfriend even when I’m not initially in the mood, because she is. That’s not the same as prostitution, but it doesn’t qualify as “mutual” by your standard either, since the my and her desires are different in kind.
while terminal level wheedling is no doubt deployed, surely the wives have ‘agency’ (to use a fav Pandagonian word) and could refuse if they wanted to.
That’s pure victim-bashing. Yes, the women have agency, but they’ve also just been blindsided by a horrific betrayal. You think that you’d think clearly in that situation?
No, my problem remains with the politician who wheedles — because he doesn’t deserve the support. He’s dragging his hapless spouse along as a human shield. And she goes because…well, because she’s probably a decent human being who is still struggling to determine whether she loves her husband or not, and who numbly goes along. The fault is not with the victim. It’s with the victimizer.
well, then Chet, how is it a transaction between equals?
How is anything? Since when did “it’s a transaction between precise equals” become the prerequisite for allowing people to do something?
I’m all for economic transactions being between equals, but that’s almost never the case - it’s certainly never the case between employer and employee - and I don’t see why prostitution should be the one single case where, if it’s not between equals, we can’t allow it to proceed.
If the problem is economic inequality that leads to coercive situations, let’s address the inequality. Playing whack-a-mole with its various symptoms seems about as effective as treating colds by banning sneezing.
chinonga, you are completely incorrect. I was in the thick of the discussion on that thread. Kathleen was the first to use namecalling. When she asked the question you cite, Kevin responded to it as follows at #79 (I include just the first paragraph of his response to that question):
Kathleen’s very next response at #82 was this:
She omitted calling me disgusting there but corrected that omission later.
I said above that Spitzer ought to resign and I also believe that he ought not to be criminally prosecuted for what he did. I’m not sure whether or not that puts me in the john apologist category. What he did was hypocritical and sleazy to the extreme. I agree that there is a consistency between his using the escorts for his political advancement and his uncaring desire for bareback fucking them. I’m not sure it much matters whether his motivation was to dominate them or if it was simply for his own gratification. If he hadn’t been such a dick as a law enforcement officer and used that record to gain higher office, I really wouldn’t care much. It would be a private matter between him and his family.
“No, a guy can get laid. And since we have even a movie star claiming he can’t, we have good evidence that the “wah, wah I can’t get laid” argument is a cover story for a darker need to have the sensation that you own someone for a time.”
Amanda makes this claim without the advantage of having BEEN a guy. So, two assumptions:
1) Charlie Sheen is lying
2) Guys can ALWAYS get laid.
FWIW, I thought Sheen was being very forthright: “I want PIV sex, and then I want you to leave and never darken my doorstep again.” What’s so hard to believe about that?
Go down to the local coffeeshop, Amanda, and you will find several guys who can’t get laid. ::eyeroll::
I give out massages willingly to my fiancee. I also listen to her yammer forever, occasionally, and I suppose she does the same for me sometimes. Where are you getting these distinctions from?
Your model of what sex is “supposed to be” is just too simplistic. I mean, if I perform cunnilingus and receive no immediate reciprocal pleasure other than having done so, by the measure you gave earlier I’ve been party to an “improper” sex act, because it was not sufficiently mutual by the measure you’ve given. And in scenarios like that, I think the massage comparison, which you regard as inappropriate due to the “mutuality” distinction, is generally apt.
Interestingly, therapists have rules and boundaries about sexualizing their relationships with clients, Chet.
I know, and I’m glad that they do, but I don’t understand the relevance. It’s well-understood in psychiatry that the people with the problems are the people who lack certain coping mechanisms, and one of the coping mechanisms that psychiatric treatment aims to replace is the support and interaction of friends and family. On a crude level, psychiatric therapy is just renting a supportive friend by the hour.
I mean, I don’t see how your remark undercuts my point. Psychiatrists have those rules because they’re therapists, not prostitutes. And because psychiatrists are hired to take the role of a supporting friend, it’s no surprise that some patients find that they want to do something a lot of people wind up wanting to do to some of their friends - have sex with them.
Chet, you miss the point. I was referring to this:
“far stricter constraints on the sexual freedom of women than on men.”
You were trying to refute the argument that if prostitution was just an economic trade that there a market of women for male sexual services. You pointed to the social norms disabling women from doing so. But in a society that has norms strong enough to prevent women from engaging in transactions they otherwise would want, how can you say that men buying sex is just economic and not driven by the same set of gender norms?
Eric, I laid out above why Sheen is lying: he has a track record of toying with women to amuse himself, not getting laid and then never wanting to see them again.
Kathleen–I just wanted to say thanks for laying out in such a clear and concise way the reason why paying for sex is different from paying for other goods. Your point that what’s being paid for in the case of sex is the removal of mutuality is compelling.
Now, I do think it’s possible to conceive of situations where that wouldn’t the case–where a sex worker could be more like a mental-health counselor, for example. It can be fun to posit that for sci-fi scenarios, for example. And my understanding is that, in the real world, there actually are some sex therapists, male and female, who work for a limited time with male/female/transgender clients whose severe physical disabilities had kept them, as the grew up from being able to explore their own bodies sexually or to have many relationships with people who weren’t caretakers. The therapists help them explore their sexuality, which can include having sex with them. I don’t know much about it, but my understanding is that, in that case, there’s mutual respect between the therapists and the unusually vulnerable clients.
However, to assume that, in general, in the world we live in, sexual transactions can work like the transactions between a therapist and client, with both parties respecting each other mutually, is simply disingenuous. It requires a huge amount of willful inattention to institutional misogyny and to how sex is viewed and played out in this society.
This is completely not true. See #123. There are all sorts of economic transactions that we ban or restrict or regulate based on the idea that the economic inequality between employer and employee is such that the idea that an employee can offer true, free consent is not realistic. My boss cannot ask me to work with hazardous materials with no protective gear and no knowledge of the effects of the materials, even for $5,500 an hour. My boss cannot ask me to work for $1 an hour. Even if I say no and walk away, he still broke the law by even asking me to do it.
Just because all labor is exploitative doesn’t mean there is no legal or ethical interest by society (which inevitably means the state) in the parameters under which that exploitation takes place. In fact, it is precisely because all labor is exploitative that we have that interest, obligation even. There are all kinds of things my boss cannot ask me to do - even for money - and many of them don’t involve sex.
You betcha.
Here comes the kicker -
“# You have the right to refuse to have sex with a client for any reason, or for no reason. No one- including managers, receptionists, minders, clients, other workers, etc., can force you to have sex with a client, even if he has paid. Managers cannot fine you for refusing a client- it is against the law for them to do so.
# You cannot be coerced (“induced or compelled”) into having sex by having money taken off you, etc., (i.e., fined, etc.), or threatened in any way. Section 16 of the Prostitution Reform Act states any person who does so “commits an offence and is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years”.”
This is the law that applies to prostitution in NZ, the debate on which form the basis on which my comments are made (since it was the last time I paid any real attention to the subject)
I think there is an undiscussed aspect to why some people see sex as different from a massage or any other service one can provide.
There is a large section of the population (at least a significant minority) that believes that sex divorced from emotion and especially sex with someone you don’t desire is damaging to the person having the sex. (There is also a minority that think all sex is damaging but that’s not relevant to this). This damage is emotional/psychological in nature and is somewhat akin to the kind of damage inflicted by abuse. So there is a subset of people that are uncomfortable with prostitution and incredibly uncomfortable with the type of prostitution (not $5,000/hr obviously) where a woman has little choice in her clients and has a lot of sex she doesn’t want. The idea is that someone voluntarily taking on emotional damage must either be deluded about the consequences of their actions, desperate, or already damaged and in any case entitled to sympathy and possibly protection.
I don’t necessarily subscribe to that view. I know there are people who enjoy casual sex and I take them at their word that it’s not in any way bad for them. But I know that even casual sex and certainly prostitution would be damaging to me so it’s hard work not to universalize from my own experience. Since how one experiences sex isn’t discussed all that often I think that’s a topic it’s especially hard not to universalize from yourself. And it’s always hard for human beings to really believe that other human beings are so different from themselves.
chingona March 11, 2008 at 5:15 pm
effects of the materials, even for $5,500 an hour. My boss cannot ask me to work for $1 an hour. Even if I say no and walk away, he still broke the law by even asking me to do it. ”
Not if same aspect of the job itself is illegal. How do you think underground illegal migrant work operate?
Once the labor protection law is off, exploitation exist.
Obviously, they don’t want to be somewhere else ENOUGH to say, “Fuck yourself and your career, you’re going out there alone. Bastard.” I’m shocked, SHOCKED, that a feminist writer here would suggest otherwise.
I’m always and forever disgusted by the number of men who will use any trick in the book to attack someone who genuinely fights the idea that women are subhuman cum dumpsters. Did I piss in your Cheerios, Eric? The low regard that Spitzer shows for his daughters, his wife, and the prostitutes he both jailed and fucked speaks for itself, I’d think. But noooooooo, we have to play dumb tricks and suddenly act like it’s not confusing for women to deal with blow-outs like this when it’s someone they trusted and thought loved them.
Amanda makes this claim without the advantage of having BEEN a guy. So, two assumptions:
1) Charlie Sheen is lying
2) Guys can ALWAYS get laid.
Simplifying my argument will not win you points. Why don’t you lay your cards on the table? Are you unfuckable somehow and resort to prostitutes because no one else with have you? If so, speak up. Because right now, I’m thinking those guys are largely a myth. Which is why politicians and movie stars and ordinary but sexy guys all go to prostitutes, as if they couldn’t get laid elsewhere.
I admit there are the unfuckable. I think you forget women count among them. But I don’t believe, not for a minute, that the unfuckable are the main income source for prostitutes. It defies mathematics.
Who the hell is friends with their therapist? What kind of unprofessional weirdos are people seeing?
Nobody gets sex for free…
Is there such a thing as ‘happy casual sex’? True some people treat sex like scratching their back or getting a haircut but usually there is somebody hurt in the process…
Once you actually have sex, you’ll find it’s not necessarily either the most magical thing that ever happened to you or “getting a haircut.” There are lots of ways to enjoy sex, and not all of them involve melodramatic soppiness.
I’ve never thought of myself as worldly, but the subterranean levels of socialization you find on the internets make me feel downright smug.
I think this sums up nicely for me why the “prostitution is just like any other labor” argument is problematic.
Chet, if you are getting paid for your mad sex skillz, well bless your heart. That’s the funniest thing I’ve read in the past two days.
I posit, to simplify things, that the myth of the Unfuckable John is a established so we can just believe that hookers are just really nice women with hearts of gold who see this as social work. Phooey. There are desperate women and then non-desperate women. I’ve heard speak, read, and talked to many of the latter and very few see this as a favor. Like, you know, none.
Interestingly, the counter-myth is that men aren’t as picky as women about who’ll they’ll fuck. If this was true, and prostitution was a strict transaction between equals based on the fucking-the-ugly-as-social-work, we should see more straight male prostitutes that female prostitutes. The supply should be mad rich, really, like guys who will act in porn. But somehow it’s not. Why not? Because despite strenuous social lies, we think being a prostitute is debasing and men won’t do it.
I think it is time to compile various laws around the world and see the result to public health and status of sex workers and their well being.
DE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Germany#_note-11
SE
http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/swedish.html
squashed, hiring people who do not have legal permission to work in this country is illegal. We have not enforced this law, but it is illegal, even if the work itself is legal and paid a legal wage. A roofing contractor who hire an undocumented worker for $10 an hour has broken the law.
Now, as with prostitution, enforcement has fallen disproportionately on the more vulnerable side of this economic equation. And that’s a big problem, if you care about social justice. And the arguments for legalizing or at least decriminalizing prostitution are similar to the arguments for legalizing illegal immigrants. And there are persuasive arguments to be made there. Like I said before, I haven’t made up my mind on prostitution, and the status quo certainly isn’t very good for women.
My point is the notion that we live in some no-holds-barred capitalist system in which any and all economic transactions proceed unimpeded, except for this one example, is completely false.
Prostitution should be legal because women unquestionably own their bodies. Anything you own, you can sell. Period.
Intellectually dishonest argument. Men who believe this usually don’t believe—unless they’re crazy right wing Republicans—that you have the “right” to work for less than minimum wage or the “right” to work with no benefits. If we locked men up in factories and refused to let them go home the way prostitutes are locked up in brothels, we wouldn’t say, “Their bodies, their right to have their rights taken away due to economic desperation.” But there’s that strange exception for prostitutes, where even those who understand the need for basic labor laws suddenly get stupid.
I’d like to think it’s because they’re just incapable of seeing women as being equal to men. I sure hope it’s not because most of them believe that AND they go to prostitutes.
Victoria, that may be in play, but one’s view of sex is not determinative of one’s view of sex work. I’m pro-NSA sex, naturally poly and a kinkster; and I’m anti-sex work and pro-Swedish model.
the myth of the Unfuckable John is a established so we can just believe that hookers are just really nice women with hearts of gold who see this as social work.
As false as that picture is, a lot of men who posit such arguments seem to genuinely see themselves as unfuckable. The average guy who goes to prostitutes seems more likely to think of himself as a loser who can’t get laid without paying for it than an awesome stud who gets to fuck hot women. Just look at all the backlash you get when you suggest that it’s not that hard for guys to get laid.
I’m pro-kink, and share the view, after being educated on this by many kinksters, that the sex-is-play model is a good one for understanding how some people can have strange relationships in the bedroom but be perfectly egalitarian outside of it. Like Dan Savage says, BDSM is cops and robbers for grown-ups. Dan take a lighter view on sex work than I do, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that the West coast is rife with happy hookers, which is honestly understandable. I have lived in a lot of neighborhoods where desperate streetwalkers roam the streets, and have spent time reading some of the postings by men on the internet to whom seeing hookers is a hobby, and it’s very clear that it’s borne not because they’re sad sacks who can’t get laid, but misogynists who enjoy paying for the opportunity to treat women like shit. My view is much darker.
The point is that lots of people are very pro-kink and still have a dim view of prostitution. The idea of porn, and a lot of the more fun-loving stuff out there, doesn’t bother me a bit, though seeing the seeping of prostitution-think into porn does bother me.
So equating a dim view of johns with a hatred of sex is simply silly. I’m in a relationship now, but I’ve always been a fan of the strings-free sex. I laugh at conservatives who say it ruins women to have casual sex. I think social stigmas against women having casual sex contributes to the abuse of prostitutes, because, surprise surprise, it creates the stupid virgin-whore dichotomy, with the latter being women you can spit on and abuse. Despicable to the core.
chingona March 11, 2008 at 5:38 pm
squashed, hiring people who do not have legal permission to work in this country is illegal. ”
Prostitution IS ILLEGAL. There is no complain department for hooker who get beat up, underpaid or forced to do what a person doesn’t want. There is no labor protection.
A pimp only need to say: well what you do is illegal and you need me to protect your income. … etc. Otherwise, meet mister police.
Do you think people like doing crappy job if there is option? Why do you think underground economy can exist? Because it is illegal, all the players has no other options but keep doing it.
Junk, the “I’m just a loser who can’t get laid” thing strikes me as rationalization. Hook-ups with non-professionals, especially in the social networking software area, aren’t that hard to come by. But you probably have to be nice to the non-professional you hook up with. You can’t ask her to sit under the table and pretend to be a dog who gives blow jobs. So there’s that issue. But even then, there’s BDSM sites and clubs all over the place. The problem there is that the women volunteer because they get off on it. It’s a lot more humiliating for her/exciting for him if he knows she’s hating it and would rather be somewhere else.
Men who believe this usually don’t believe—unless they’re crazy right wing Republicans—that you have the “right” to work for less than minimum wage or the “right” to work with no benefits.
Actually, I am a crazy right wing libertarian so I do in fact think that.
Actually, it’s useful you brought that up, because the argument against all of these things is generally made either on the basis of social utility or false consciousness. I happen to believe that false consciousness doesn’t exist. I also happen to believe that when analyzing whether a particular act should be criminal, only that discrete act should be up for consideration, and not any “social impact” of the act, and not the actions others might potentially take if you are allowed to engage in your act.
And if we’re going to talk about the arguments crazy right wing Republicans use, you’re duplicating most of the arguments fundies employ against abortion. “No woman really chooses to get an abortion”; “The women who think they want abortions are being misled”; “Women own their bodies, but we restrict the things you can do with your body all the time”; “What about women who are pressured into abortion by men in their lives?”; “Abortion may be the right choice for some women, but allowing it creates all these other harmful social effects”; etcetera etcetera etcetera.
This line of logic could be used to support the War on Drugs.
I.E., you could say “you don’t have the “right” to smoke a joint or do a line of cocaine anymore than you have the “right” to work in dangerous conditions. We’re doing this for your own good.”
Just sayin’.
Thomas and Amanda,
There are absolutely reasons to be against prostitution other then feeling that sex has an inescapable emotional component. Both of you are examples of that. Though Amanda, (I’m not sure if you were addressing me in any way with this but) that view isn’t at all the same as hatred of sex.
But I do think that one of the big reasons a lot of people aren’t comfortable equating sex with other services is that sex seems connected to our emotional well being in a way nothing else is. Comparing sex to other goods without examining this component is missing an important piece. I know that that is one of the reasons I’m not sure about legalization. (I’m definitely for decriminalization and a move to prosecute any abuse).
Kathleen (and others),
I’m trying to figure out what the doctrinal differences are in our positions. (I favor legalization and full regulation.) My current working theory is that the difference is that both sides are fighting against what they see to be the greater evil. I’m not trying to be contrary. I’m trying to understand the underlying rationales of what seems to be a bitter dispute among feminists.
For some the greater evil is the perception of women in society, whether that be the commodification of sex or the sense of male entitlement towards sex with women.
For some the greater evil is the lack personal autonomy women have and the stigma attached to any choice a woman makes.
Do you think that’s a fair assessment?
squashed, you are not understanding me. i’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume it was because I wasn’t clear enough. Amanda in #149 is about what I was trying to say.
Now, I used the illegal immigrant example because you used it. I actually wasn’t sure what the hell you were getting at, and obviously guessed wrong. I think I get it now.
Yes, both prostitutes and illegal immigrants are in very vulnerable legal positions that make it difficult for them to report abuse against them. That is one of the most legitimate arguments in favor of decriminalization or even legalization. (I said all of this before)
However, it is not legal to abuse them just because the work they do is illegal. It is just as illegal to rape or beat or steal from a prostitute or an illegal immigrant as it is to abuse anybody else. Prostitutes can and do press rape charges. Companies are fined for labor law violation even when they employ illegal workers. Illegal immigrants testify in court against their attackers and are not deported. All these things happen, though not nearly as often as they should.
That prostitutes and illegal workers have a hard time being taken seriously by our legal system and law enforcement is an indictment of the lack of humanity of those systems, not some mandatory feature of the work’s illegality.
ok. It seems the biggest missing ingredient in all arguments:
Men can’t actually be turned on at any time randomly at any given moment of notice. He may talk big, but nature dictate that minutes of up time. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen.
That’s why the economic relationship in prostitution as such. The female participant may to be turned on, but the transaction can still happens. The opposite is not true.
of course there is viagra now..
so please, can we start from this fact instead of high falootin’ social theory about this and that is what makes prostitution roles exist like that?
chingona March 11, 2008 at 6:24 pm
However, it is not legal to abuse them just because the work they do is illegal.”
Jeebus. It seems you think a hooker is some temp job or something.
1. being a hooker isn’t freelance job. You need the whole network. One cannot get in and out like it’s McD job. The entire network will be exposed. Hello?
2. One can’t just “complain” each time something unpleasant happens. Either.
The person is only a cog inside a web of illegal crime network. A working girl complain about something that endanger the entire network, she is liable to get snuffed. How long do you think a person can last on the street without help of the network? Few weeks before getting shot?
Remember DC Madam? Ever wonder How she protects herself? It’s not a typical working girl operation is it?
That’s where the similarity to underground human trafficking begin. There is internal reinforcement mechanism. This mechanism is what dictate the price of the labor and availability.
I am friends with an actual “call girl” who lives in NYC. The vast majority of her clients are by no means “unfuckable.” Many of the men she sees are very handsome and charming. Many of them have girlfriends or wives. Very few are grotesque looking.
The notion that men who see prostitutes are all sad and unfuckable is ludicrous. My friend doesn’t just have to lie there while her poor, pathetic clients have a go at her. She’s asked to do degrading, filthy stuff. She happens to like some of it, and sometimes even gets off on it. But her clients could definitely get NSA sex if they’d just go to a bar or nightclub and treat a woman half-decently for a few hours.
squashed, are you arguing for it to be legalized or not? I thought you were pro-legalization. ‘Cause I’m not sure I see that whole network going away overnight if it’s legalized.
Amanda @ 96:
No, and that’s an unjustified inference from my simple comment. I HAVE TO agree that the behavior you cite is “considered unsafe.” Duh. What I object to is the further tabloid-ization of this story by unfounded speculation as to the nature of the unsafe behavior.
There are other things that are “considered unsafe” (plenty of them, I’m sure) to do with prostitutes, so to speculate as to what specifically he might have wanted is unwarranted. If I wanted this I’d watch MSNBC.
I’m not trying to defend Spitzer. I can’t. But it is simply unfair to jump to these conclusions.
Decriminalize it first. It’s that much more useful because it eradicates the need for underground network (the pimp &co.) With it, financial control, health care, more open communication are possible.
after that maybe there will be more data to protect/improve working condition/reduce prostitution in earnest. (of course this is legalization by definition.)
The point is to minimize the criminal/unhealthy/exploitation while at the same time not let it out of control becoming some sort of lucrative big business.
Prostitution in itself is bad, but anybody who thinks making it illegal is improving the situation is lying.
And her clients probably ARE getting sex, perhaps even ‘unusual’ sex. What they want is more than just sex; depending on the man, it can be anything from novelty to the power fantasy to the feeling of being a bad, bad boy because he’s hiring a hooker.
Can somebody explain to me why men are entitled to “stringless sex” at all? I mean, seriously. Who the hell do they think they are to believe that they can use a person’s body as merely an object to get off in?
WHY is this supposed to be okay? Never mind being paid for it. WHY would any human being want to do that to another? THAT is the entitlement aspect, the entitlement to treat people as things. It’s sickening on those grounds, not because teh sex is bad, not because consenting casual sex is bad.
It seems true that being ABLE to use her like a Real Doll, to be able to have a person stop being a full person, is the draw. Nothing else makes sense. THAT is degrading, because the intent is to degrade her.
Charlie Sheen could TALK to a woman, treating her like the person she is, and tell her that all he wanted was a casual encounter and let her agree to that or say no. But, no. Put a nickel in the slot, the machine will stop on its own when the time’s up, and then you can walk away.
Buying a housekeeper’s services is nothing like a stranger buying the use of a woman’s pussy, and those who say “why not” are being disingenuous.
Precisely, Mythago. They could, and do, get sex elsewhere. But that is not enough. They need to own a woman for a few hours. And they don’t all “pay her to leave.” She’s dealt with a good number of men who’ve tried convincing her to be with them exclusively, to be their girlfriend (and stop hooking), and/or to hang out with them in a non-paying situation.
But there’s that strange exception for prostitutes, where even those who understand the need for basic labor laws suddenly get stupid.
Over here on the other side, we see a strange exception too, Amanda. Feminists who assert that a woman’s uterus is her own business to use as she will, but that her vagina is a resource that she needs to be kept from using “the wrong way.”
If we locked men up in factories and refused to let them go home the way prostitutes are locked up in brothels
The blanket prohibition on the business altogether doesn’t seem to prevent that situation. If human trafficking and slavery are the problem, address the problem.
But in a society that has norms strong enough to prevent women from engaging in transactions they otherwise would want, how can you say that men buying sex is just economic and not driven by the same set of gender norms?
I’m not saying that it’s not. But, again, since when do economic transactions have to be free of gender norms in order to be allowed?
I mean, people are prevented, socially, from making all kinds of purchases that they would like to, for fear of what their neighbors would think. How does that impugn the market? It sounds like a social problem.
I’m not saying that legalized prostitution ushers in an age of gender harmony. All I’m saying is, the objections to it so far have all been special pleading; a bunch of impossible strictures we don’t subject any other kind of transaction to.
Motivations are non-germane when evaluating a public policy argument on whether or not paying for sex should be legal or illegal.
It’s clear that many men get off on paying for sex so they can abuse the females that do the work by having them do degrading things, and those men are clearly scum of the earth. But over time continued emphasis on gender equality and gender respect should help change attitudes and eventually eliminate this deviant male attitude.
Some men like going to escorts because the females have nicer bodies or what not then what they would be able to get in polite society.
Why should a singer be able to profit over her or his natural voice, a runner over his natural athletic ability, but someone with a great body should be barred from profiting over his or her natural inheritance?
If this was true, and prostitution was a strict transaction between equals based on the fucking-the-ugly-as-social-work, we should see more straight male prostitutes that female prostitutes.
Semi-facetiously, perhaps there’s so many that the market drives the prices down to zero.
I have (as a woman) found delightful no-strings-attached sex on craigslist, etc. However –>
I have to agree with other posters that it’s a LOT easier for a woman to fulfill her fantasy of, for example, a threesome with 2 young bi males (highly recommended, btw). A man wanting something similar (i.e. two girls) cannot just go on CL and arrange it for free in a few days. It’s not impossible for them to find cute willing participants, it just takes time, a bit of charm and a LOT of luck. (Also, being good-looking isn’t as crucial as being friends with queer women who trust you.)
Does the fact that “it’s possible” mean there’s no room for a short-cut via prostitutes? Maybe, maybe not… it would seem to be great if more men were trustworthy friends of queer women (though not in that Nice Guy way) and more young women felt comfortable exploring their sexuality (though not in that pressured-to-have-sex-with-older-men way). But let’s face it: there will always be a supply/demand problem.
To Amanda’s point about prostitution being a power issue more often than a lonely-John issue: among my friends, both are true.
On one extreme, a friend of mine was so hung up about being a virgin at 26 years old that I actually encouraged him to proposition a stripper to take his virginity. She accepted, he was respectful to her and they had a small thing going for a little while, for which he paid very well. He then felt far more confident about sex and is currently in a long-term, healthy (from everything I’ve seen) relationship. Nice story, huh?
At the other extreme is a friend (sort of) who visited a prostitute in Amsterdam “just for the experience”. I suspect he meant because it’s a taboo here, but who knows; it certainly isn’t because he can’t get laid or lacks confidence. It’s relevant to mention that based on (enjoyable) participation I can say that this guy definitely has unusual stamina, so among other reasons it’s highly likely this is a true story. Anyway, apparently when this guy visited the prostitute in Amsterdam, she became bored/sore/whatever and wanted him to hurry up.
He said since he paid for the full hour, he was going to take the full hour — for bragging rights and the power trip of it, if I’m interpreting his story correctly. He didn’t say anything about her actually telling him to stop. Continuing when he knew she wasn’t into it, just because it was technically consensual, is still pretty gross though. He said he didn’t like the experience (why didn’t he just stop in the middle and leave… because he’d paid for it? and he liked it enough for one reason or another to keep going) and wouldn’t visit a prostitute again.
So: the guy with a legal prostitute was clearly interested in asserting power. In the potentially sketchy, definitely illegal example, the experience was about exploring sex and overcoming a confidence issue.
Amanda
Are you kidding? It’s not that at all - it’s that the market is swamped with men who’ll do it for free. Believe me, I looked into it. There isn’t as much demand in general, and what demand there is is mostly dealt with by the guys who give it away.
Well… I don’t mean that. And I think it’s kinda weird that you think that’s the only thing people are thinking of, even working prostitutes in favour of legalisation.
I’m not getting that from the Sheen quote, and think you’re misrepresenting the situation. Of course Sheen can have any woman he wants. What he obviously believes he’s paying for is the ability to say “hey, you’re not my girlfriend, don’t call me in the morning,” It might well make him a bit of an asshold but I don’t think it’s crazy to think that millionaire film stars might have problems with obtaining casual sex, as opposed to girls who get obsessive about them or try and sell their “I sucked Charlie Sheen’s cock” story to the newspapers. Which is of course not to say that that’s every woman’s motivation but we’re not talking real people, we’re talking crazy people in Hollywood and a guy who probably isn’t a normal woman’s idea of a dream date, aside from the looks and the money. Point being, if he wants to be an asshole about it but someone’s willing to take $8,000 dollars off him to put up with that, I don’t see a serious problem with that transaction. I’ve put up with assholish behaviour from rich people for a lot less.
Anyway, I don’t think the demand for prostitution is that there’s a huge swathe of lonely guys. It’s one argument for why people avail themselves of it. I think the biggest argument for it is that, basically, if I want to accept money for boning someone then that’s entirely my business. The other argument is that a lot of the problems relating to prostitution are comparable to the problems relating to drugs or immigration, and aren’t helped - are probably exacerbated - by its illegality. If people live in fear of the law they can’t be helped by the law. Keeping prostitution illegal puts a massive power imbalance in place that directly favours those who’d take advantage of women who work in the sex industry.
Really, my big problem with your argument here is that it doesn’t really work as an argument against legalisation. You come out and admit that there are plenty of reasons why legalisation is a possible positive and why criminalisation doesn’t work anyway, but then you say you’re on the fence because some people push for legalisation in an “intellectually dishonest” way. And that’s just a weird reason to be opposed to anything you’d otherwise be in favour of. Some people who support good things are cretins - this is news how?
As far as Spitzer goes, I don’t think he did anything wrong, but he did do something splashily and media-worthily illegal while going out of his way to make some rich and powerful enemies and while under a federal government not known for its respect for the rule of law in going after politicians in the opposing party. The term is “dumbass”, I think.
From Huffington Post: Dr. Laura Blames Spitzer’s Wife:
I think the issue of whether prostitution is exploitation and how bad the exploitation is is a different than the issue of legalizing prostitution. Prostitutes have to cope with the constant threat of being charged in court, a social blackmail, which makes them justly hesitate to report assaults, rapes, etc. to the police. The argument for criminalizing prostitution has to be, in some way, that it is efficient - that it actually liquidates the pool of prostitutes. Otherwise, those arguing that because prostitution is exploitative we should ban prostitution are being ‘concern trolls’ - under the guise of concern for prostitutes, they render them completely vulnerable to an array of injuries. A legal structure for prostitutes would include regulations that would eliminate these unnecessary evils. It would give prostitutes protection against johns. Decriminalization, on the other hand, would simply keep up the same game of burdening prostitutes with contradictory rules.
On the other hand, prostitution is, from all accounts, pretty miserable in most cases. It is easy to understand why selling yourself for sex is a bad job, because it is psychologically wounding, it means coming into intimate contact with assholes who are (literally) just there for sex, etc. It is a job that friends would try to talk friends out of taking. In a way, prostitution is like soldiering. A soldier’s job - especially at the moment - is murdering people. If you murder a person, it leaves a pretty deep mark on your psyche. While it would be utopian to hope that soldiers will be outlawed, at the present time, a friend of anyone being recruited to be a soldier should try to talk that person out of it.
Feminists who assert that a woman’s uterus is her own business to use as she will, but that her vagina is a resource that she needs to be kept from using “the wrong way.”
I don’t know that many feminists who say that a woman’s uterus should be her own “business.” I say a woman’s uterus and vagina are *hers*, and she shouldn’t have to have anything in them she doesn’t want there.
Accordingly, advocating for reproductive rights doesn’t necessarily contradict the notion that the commodification of a vagina could be problematic. Believe it or not, there are also feminists who find problematic the implications of rich people who wish to become parents renting out a poor woman’s womb. That doesn’t stop them from being pro-reproductive-rights, either. These are points feminists can disagree on, but coming down on being troubled by how the commodification of women’s bodies plays out in institutionally misogynistic societies doesn’t keep one from being a feminist or pro-repoductive-rights.
The idea that older women with sags and scars are beating off 21-year-old men with 6 packs is what’s laughable, McDuff. Sorry, not going to work for me. We’re assuming that the clientele of straight women for the largely imaginary straight male prostitutes would be similar to the men that go. So, older on average than the hookers, wealthier, with tastes tending towards wanting to see their partners degraded. Yeah, there’s not a huge volunteer army of men like that.
But whatever. The-poor-guys-who-can’t-get-laid is a major fucking red herring. Most men who go to prostitutes could easily get laid. This isn’t a substitute for something else.
So what are they getting from prostitutes that they can’t get anywhere else? Not sex. Not companionship. Not the willingness to leave after. It’s the thrill of buying a woman and feeling that all is right with the world for a few hours, because you’re the boss and she’s the commodity.
Also, see SarahMC’s comments.
Two things: first, do you have any stats on that? I know it’s a common fictional situation, but I have no idea how common it actually is in real life, especially among the low-level street corner prostitution which I would assume makes up the majority of the industry.
Second, in my time I’ve had preferences to which nurse I wanted to do work on me if I needed stitches, based on the number of people I saw her patch up and her work. I’ve had preferred auto mechanics and building contractors I’ve gone back to again and again. In my professional life I’ve had preferred lawyers, preferred consultants. I have preferred restaurants, all manner of things I pay for where I will go out of my way to give my business to someone for all sorts of reasons.
Not one of them is because I think I own them.
Yes, none of them involve sex, but I suppose it gets back to whether you view sex as something that is always meaningful emotionally or whether it’s something that’s done from time to time just because it makes you feel good.
That some men view it as a form of ownership? No doubt, but you can find people who do things for practically every reason.
Almost every man on earth could have free, NSA sex with a willing woman. What I’m finding is that a lot of men are putting a certain condition on it - that the willing women be young and attractive.
And you claim that women have SUCH a breeze of a time finding hoardes of men who are willing to have NSA sex with them. Well, not young, attractive men.
If you want me to pity men who can’t get “hawt” women to fuck them, sorry. Not all women are “tens.” Those of us who are average, plain, or simply unattractive can’t find men who are willing to sleep with us. And certainly not super cute men with great bodies.
An overweight, awkward woman is still a woman. Plenty of unattractive women would surely be more than happy to indulge the “unfuckable” guys. But apparently they don’t count.
These are points feminists can disagree on, but coming down on being troubled by how the commodification of women’s bodies plays out in institutionally misogynistic societies doesn’t keep one from being a feminist or pro-repoductive-rights.
I mostly agree, but I’d add that it’s one thing to be “troubled” - and I think Amanda has staked out a very reasonable position so far - and quite another thing to inflict grievous vulnerability and harm on an entire class of women by illegitimizing their sexuality, in the guise of saving them from themselves.
Most men who go to prostitutes could easily get laid.
How easy? As easy as picking up a phone and laying out some bills? As far as red herrings go, the idea that it’s as easy to go out and get a sex partner for free (or for a couple of drinks or whatever) as it is to contract a prostitute is certainly one of them. God knows I have no idea how that’s supposed to work. (I blame Dungeons and Dragons.)
Two things: first, do you have any stats on that? I know it’s a common fictional situation, but I have no idea how common it actually is in real life, especially among the low-level street corner prostitution which I would assume makes up the majority of the industry.
You won’t get stats, because lord how would you record them? And true, the lowest of the low are not treated this way—but then again, they aren’t the ones being romanticized as happy hookers. At best, they’re being ignored by men romanticizing prostitution. But you know, you could ask prostitutes. I’ve never read, talked to, or listened to a prostitute speak who hasn’t had this issue come up. It’s apparently a big joke—I saw the women from Bound Not Gagged speak at a conference, and jokes about clingy johns caused huge laughs in the audience that was well-peppered with sex workers.
By the way, that room was stocked mainly by women, very few men. Turns out that actually listening to prostitutes isn’t all that beloved by straight men, I’d imagine especially those who defend it so vigorously. A couple of earnest audience members asked the speakers—who are sex workers, mind you—what kind of outreach could be done to get johns to support the social and political work of getting health care and rights to sex workers.
Oh, how they laughed at that. And were like, “Yeah, no, that will never happen.”
And one said it was mainly okay with her, because that would mean having to interact with them on non-paid time, an idea that visibly repulsed her.
Turns out that actually listening to prostitutes isn’t all that beloved by straight men, I’d imagine especially those who defend it so vigorously.
I don’t understand why the constant presumption of bad faith has to be a part of the discussion.
Chet, do you sincerely think the man in question—Elliot Spitzer—really has that much trouble getting laid?
You’re not even going to bother listening to SarahMC talk about her friend’s johns, are you? Blows the fantasy of the social work corps of prostitutes.
I don’t understand why the constant presumption of bad faith has to be a part of the discussion.
That’s not a presumption. The deep disinterest in the subject coming from straight men was an observable fact. The percentage of women to men in the room listening to this presentation was such you’d think it was a knitting club or a lesbian separatist commune, but with more glitter. Now, if the women had been there taking their clothes off instead of talking about the importance of the rights and health of sex workers, maybe that would be different. To their credit, they did try. Both of them were dressed quite sexily for a conference, I must say. But it didn’t seem to make a difference.
I don’t understand why the constant presumption of bad faith has to be a part of the discussion.
And that’s what we call privilege. Amanda’s relating the view of actual sex workers and you’re complaining that it’s unfair to you.
On the issue of straight men who are vocal proponents of sex work suddenly not showing up when a show of support is needed, I have to toss this post in:
Chet, do you sincerely think the man in question—Elliot Spitzer—really has that much trouble getting laid?
I have no idea how easy it is for Elliot Spitzer. It might, actually, be fairly difficult for him to meet women that don’t already know (or care) that he’s married.
I know that if I wanted to get some expedient, casual sex, it’d be a hell of a lot easier to call a number in the back of the Smart Shopper than to learn to navigate the social minefield of the singles bar, or the frat party, or wherever the fuck you’re supposed to “hook up” these days. I have absolutely no idea. I can stat out a level 10 elf wizard from memory (3.0 and 3.5) but I managed to graduate college with almost no idea of how to get “hooked up” with people.
Sorry if I sound like a goddamned grandpa - I’m only 28 - but the fact that I don’t even know how to talk about casual sex culture should be an indication of how foreign and confusing what you’re describing as “easy” is to people like me.
You’re not even going to bother listening to SarahMC talk about her friend’s johns, are you?
I did listen. I am listening. It’s interesting. Why the constant assumption of bad faith on my part?
Re: The Savannah paragraph.
That’s a terrible story, but really, what the fuck does it have to do whether or not prostitution should be legal/illegal? Or for that matter, whether or not men have the hearts of saints or lucifer when they are laying down cash? Seriously, stop making this fucking non-germane emotional arguments that have nothing to do with public policy.
Amanda’s relating the view of actual sex workers and you’re complaining that it’s unfair to you.
Amanda’s not a sex worker, and the part I’m objecting to are her own views, and the views of everyone else who’s simply, and lazily, implying that to point out the total failure of the prostitution prohibition to solve the problems of abuse, human trafficking, and worker safety is to out oneself as some kind of diseased, misogynist whore-fucker.
Let’s be clear - there’s only one side here that’s defending the status quo, where the state uses police power to dictate to women who they can and can’t have sex with for whatever reason, and it’s not my side. It’s left as an exercise to the reader to discern which is the more misogynist.
The deep disinterest in the subject coming from straight men was an observable fact.
I just watched a TV show on this precise subject last night - by choice, I sought it out - so I don’t know what to tell you. I am, actually, interested in what actual sex workers have to say on the subject.
Now, if the women had been there taking their clothes off instead of talking about the importance of the rights and health of sex workers
Oh, is that what they were talking about? Because the way you describe it, it sounds kinda like it was just a bunch of prostitutes sitting around and complaining about how stupid and loathsome and disgusting their tricks always are. Yeah, can’t imagine why anybody would want to miss that, especially if they were as deeply motivated by such great hatred for people who hire prostitutes as people like Kathleen seem to be.
As it stands, I already believe in the importance of rights, health, and safety for sex workers. Not sure why going or not going to a conference across the country has anything to do with that.
What kind of event are we talking about here, exactly? Maybe it’s just me, but I’d assume that, as a random straight guy, I’d be viewed as an intrusion at a conference of sex workers, or just some random gawker.
For me the issue of going to prostitutes is very simple: not enough regular girls around. I live in Dubai most of the year and the ratio of guys to girls in that country is ridiculous. Add to that, dating native girls is out of the question. The bars and nightclubs are stocked full of prostitutes from around the region, mostly russian and eastern european. The biggest nightclub here is known as the united nations of prostitutes because you can find almost every nationality in there.
Yeah this has nothing to do with prostitution in the U.S but just wanted to say this.
I may have missed this, but…NSA?
For me the issue of going to prostitutes is very simple: not enough regular girls around. I live in Dubai most of the year and the ratio of guys to girls in that country is ridiculous. Add to that, dating native girls is out of the question. The bars and nightclubs are stocked full of prostitutes from around the region, mostly russian and eastern european. The biggest nightclub here is known as the united nations of prostitutes because you can find almost every nationality in there.
Yeah this has nothing to do with prostitution in the U.S but just wanted to say this.
Chet - your other side is a myth. No one on this thread has advocated that prostitutes should go to jail for what they do. No one. Almost everyone you are fighting so hard with favors some form of decriminalization. What we’re really fighting about is whether its okay (like morally and ethically, if you’re familiar with those concepts) to buy sex. Casting those who think it’s not okay in the camp that want women to be brutalized and imprisoned is disingenuous, to say the least.
And I’ll tell you exactly when I decided you were arguing in bad faith. It was this exchange with Kathleen on the Spitzer thread.
Cara, cara cara. Because we are supposed to be a relatively free country and individual liberties should not be restricted unless harm is caused to another by conduct not consented to. The discussion is not whether prostitution is a good thing, for the client or the provider, but rather whether it should be a crime for either.
Not that I care that much why Spitzer did what he did but PiatoR’s post way back at #87 had a link to “another perspective”, which was a report of an interview with a Palm Springs escort:
Just checking back… What did I miss?
Have they started building the cross yet? Are they building the base for the pyre?
I read that the self righteous GOP state head is calling for Spitzer’s head (which one? A female friend told me that republicans have small dicks)…
Have the old women that fainted and the impotent men that gnashed their teeth stepped back from the edge?
There was a local GOP politician that had an affair with a much younger women while his wife was sick. Well, it was a ‘non-issue’ from the local ‘hard core’ press… Good thing it’s a liberal press, hey…
It’s a private matter. His money, his motel room, his time… On the GOP’s perverted rules…
Amanda’s not a sex worker
No, but strawman. The point stands. I read their blogs, their books, go to their presentations, really listen. And when I learned some things that punctured your fantasy and repeated them here, you threw a fit. You openly ignored another commenter who has a good friend who is a call girl and knows a thing or two about what her customer base looks like, too.
That’s a terrible story, but really, what the fuck does it have to do whether or not prostitution should be legal/illegal?
Interestingly, my fucking post isn’t really about that either. It’s about how actual prostitutes are shoved aside and ignored and misused, even by those who pat themselves on the back because they like to believe in the happy hooker servicing the oh-so-lonely social work cases. And now Spitzer’s behavior—fucking prostitutes and throwing them in jail—reveals the reality behind the fantasy, that what drives prostitution is, by and large, not charity from whores but sadism and male privilege issues from johns. In what case, the story of the girl that everyone wanted to fuck and wear on their arm to show off, but couldn’t bother to be her friend enough to go to her funeral is relevant here.
What we’re really fighting about is whether its okay (like morally and ethically, if you’re familiar with those concepts) to buy sex.
“Okay” is a problematical term. Is it okay to shoot drugs? Is it okay to have an abortion? Is it okay to vote Republican?
The Magic 8 Ball oscillates between “yes”, “no” and “ask again later”.
My position - and, yes, Amanda, it considers the welfare of the hookers, and it is based on how it actually worked out here when prostitution was legalized.
I think it’s safe to say that it’s not okay to base a political career on busting prostitution rings and then be found with your hand in the cookie jar - in the “what were you thinking, you dumbass” sense.
I know that if I wanted to get some expedient, casual sex, it’d be a hell of a lot easier to call a number in the back of the Smart Shopper than to learn to navigate the social minefield of the singles bar, or the frat party, or wherever the fuck you’re supposed to “hook up” these days.
Oh, bullshit. A singles bar isn’t a “social minefield” if all you’re out for is one night. It’s fairly easy for anyone, man or woman, to find someone for a night. Maybe you, Chet, have trouble finding someone in a singles bar–I don’t doubt that some men do–but what I doubt is that MOST of the men who go to prostitutes are doing so out of need.
Also? Eliot Spitzer is MARRIED. Now unless he has an unusually sexless marriage, a plain old desire for sex can be satisfied with his wife.
Based on the sheer number of johns–not all of whom can be shy/awkward types who don’t know their way around a singles bar, and many of whom have regular sexual relations with their wives or girlfriend–I think the evidence suggests that most johns don’t just want sex. They want some type of sex that women don’t generally like to give unless they need to do it for their supper. They want a partner whose own needs, desires and values don’t really factor into the equation, because they have the money and the partner does not, and so they are not required to treat the partner like a person.
Again, do ALL johns think like this? Probably not, but the evidence about prostitutes and how they’re treated suggests most do.
And I also call bullshit on the idea that there are loads of men just waiting to have sex for free with women who are as old as their mothers.
What kind of event are we talking about here, exactly? Maybe it’s just me, but I’d assume that, as a random straight guy, I’d be viewed as an intrusion at a conference of sex workers, or just some random gawker.
Sex educator conference. There were plenty of men there in general. Just not in that room.
And of course, setting aside my experiences, let’s talk about the prostitutes themselves who were organizing for better health and safety for prostitutes. When asked about getting help from johns—who are both a potential audience and obviously have money to give to the cause—they laughed. The idea of men who visit prostitutes giving a shit was so funny that it wasn’t even worth giving time to.
Post a “Woman seeking Men” ad in Craigslist’s casual encounters section, with pretty much anything in the ad text and a picture of pretty much any middle-aged woman (preferably one who doesn’t mind her picture being there), and see what you get in response.
This is tangential to the issue of whether johns are hard-up nerds, of course, but I call bullshit on this particular bullshit-calling.
Oh, is that what they were talking about? Because the way you describe it, it sounds kinda like it was just a bunch of prostitutes sitting around and complaining about how stupid and loathsome and disgusting their tricks always are.
Damn, you are a baby. They not only have to fuck you for money, they have to pretend they like it.
Bite me. They were giving a presentation on more effective health outreach to prostitutes. Johns came up because someone asked if johns could be compelled to care about the issue. The answer was no, with some jokes about not having to put up with these guys in your free time.
I think you have that backward. He threw them in jail and then later fucked them.
Isn’t prostitution just a business transaction? Sex, for money.
We aren’t talking about women in Africa that are forced into sex and have to ’service’ 20 men in a day. We are talking about women that choose to provide sex to men for money.
Like a pro-football player that gets dressed up and sacrifices his body for people to watch. Like boxers that step into the ring and take a beating for entertainment.
I choose to not watch football and don’t watch boxing either but it doesn’t make me want to stop all football players or boxers from entertaining their fans…
And this all sort of by passes the political damage that this was designed to produce. So far it’s working very well and, well, with this sick ‘liberal media’, I’m sure this won’t get out of hand. Well, it is interesting that the GOP keeps blowing the embers smoldering in what is a private situation.
Hi Amanda. You said: “It’s that intellectual dishonesty that galls the ever-living shit out of me. If prostitution is going to be legal, legalize it honestly.”
Bloody right.
For the record a week or so I posted about my issues with customers of grindhouse brothels and street/subsistence prostitutes and just got my hat handed to me from all directions… but mostly from the kind of middle-class prostitutes responsible for most of the “happy hooker” stories and who, like middle-class people in general, don’t necessarily identify with visible and more highly vulnerable street people.
But yeah, I got all the same excuses you’ve covered in your post, and that other commenters have nevertheless raised over and over. (Oh, except for the “disabled people can’t get laid otherwise” argument — haven’t seen that one here yet.) And for the record, given that the kind of people who learn Klingon evidently have very high hook-up rates with each other, the doofuses-can’t-get-laid-otherwise argument is a real non-starter.
I’m still skeptical that the motivation is as 100%-misogyny-indulgence as you insist it must be, but yeah, like you I’d be a lot more comfortable with prostitution if I could be more comfortable with the customers. (Which do, by the way, include women sex tourists who, from what I can gather, tend to absolutely-with-clear-eyes know exactly what they’re doing and who holds all the cards.)
That said I *still* think criminalization creates more exploitation than either decriminalization (which merely institutionalizes neglect without providing much recourse) or legalization.
That one small quibble aside I think you’ve beautifully covered all the bases in the debate, Amanda.
figleaf
The GOP is playing to their base and I’m getting tired of them being dragged around by the ring that the GOP has in their nose.
It’s got to be like playing ‘whack a mole’ because you never know where the next mole is going to pop up or what it’s been accused of doing…
I can’t tell whether you’re purposefully disingenuous, or it’s just too late for you to read correctly.
They not only have to fuck you for money, they have to pretend they like it.
No, they don’t have to pretend they like it (at least, not afterwards.)
Just, don’t be surprised that nobody else cares to hear them complain. I can’t imagine anything less interesting.
Chingona, you wrote:
And I’ll tell you exactly when I decided you were arguing in bad faith. It was this exchange with Kathleen on the Spitzer thread.
Kathleen: Back to the “categorically different” idea of sex work: how many guys here would rather take a job where someone twice their strength took them alone in a room and shoved a dildo up their ass or down their throat, several times a day, instead of even the shittiest factory job?
Chet: …does the dildo job provide health insurance?
Where’s the bad faith there? I imagine I’d be a little averse to telling other people that that’s what I did, but I don’t really see anything intrinsically more horrible about the dildo job.
What we’re really fighting about is whether its okay (like morally and ethically, if you’re familiar with those concepts) to buy sex.
No. What we’re talking about is whether or not it’s okay to sell sex, since that’s what’s currently illegal, and a number of people are defending that status quo. So, contrary to your assertion, it’s abundantly obvious that some here do support sending prostitutes to jail, in order to discourage them for their own good, or something. Honestly they’re not making much sense.
And I’ll tell you exactly when I decided you were arguing in bad faith.
Did the fact that I didn’t use a smiley confuse you? It was a joke. Jesus Christ.
I read their blogs, their books, go to their presentations, really listen.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, Amanda. I’d be roundly excoriated if I attempted to speak on behalf of sex workers from the same basis of knowledge. And for good reason - you’re being ridiculous, here, Amanda. And I normally have great respect for your perspective on things, which is why I read your blog. But you’ve drastically overextended yourself, here. Surely you can see that?
You openly ignored another commenter who has a good friend who is a call girl
“Openly ignored”? Precisely how did I accomplish that oxymoronic feat? Was it when I stated, explicitly, that I had read and was interested in Sarah’s comments?
They were giving a presentation on more effective health outreach to prostitutes.
Sounds a little innish, I guess. You know? Could the more prosaic explanation for the lack of men being there be, oh, I don’t know, that it was a women’s health presentation? You’re drawing great significance from something that isn’t at all significant, and using it to cast imprecations against your opponents. It looks ridiculous.
Now unless he has an unusually sexless marriage
Because, God knows, no public figure has ever remained in a loveless, estranged marriage to keep public appearances. No sir!
I can’t believe the level of disingenuity, here.
Where’s the bad faith? Chet thinks taking it up the ass a few times a day every day for years on end are funny. Even with a smiley face, I still don’t think I would have laughed.
But we don’t need to go all the way back to the Spitzer thread. He just did it again.
figleaf: *I* am disabled, and cant get laid. sadly. because i have to have surgery on my hip, and having sex is currently torture. but, that is literally no contribution to the general discussion, as i have a boyfriend with whom i do many many many other things. just not currently teh PIV sex. which pisses me off. other than that, i’ve been disabled for years, and never had problems getting laid. so, i hope i stopped that line cold
as for the rest… question, in general for Amanda and her partisans; if the misogyny were taken out of prostitution, if it WERE in fact reduced to that basic transaction, would you feel better about legalization?
i’m not trying to throw out red herrings. i grew up reading Robert Heinlein. in “Time Enough for Love”, one of the principle characters is a heterae (prostitute, or Companion. i believe Joss Whedon based the Companions on Heinleins model of heterae). it was, quite literally, one of the most respected professions (up there with starship navigator, and waaaaaaay above politician!). the character i am refering to, Tamara, was one of the most famous Heterae ever… not because she was the most beautiful, or skilled, or whatever, but because she was most able to make her clients feel loved.
i myself strongly feel prostitution should be legalized, regulated and taxed. for a lot of reasons - some economical, some based on *my* standards of “personal liberty”. but then again, i’m with whomever it was on the other Spitzer thread who wanted to sell his kidney. i don’t want to be told i HAVE to wear a seatbelt - i mean, for gods sake, i can jump out of an airplane but not drive without a belt? i’m 31 years old…
they all jumble together.
and i have been on the medical system for YEARS. since i was 9. i have been given more treatments and meds “for my own good”… and they often fail. but *I* cannot judge whats good for me, someone ELSE tells me what i can do. so, instead of a patch that lets me function and not be “high” on meds all the time, i had doctors telling me to take PERCOSET 4 times a day. even though its more addictive than the duragesic patches, does less well at staving off chronic pain, and makes me higher than a kite. i have fought for 5 years, and finally, FINALLY this year got switched to the patches. i have (had?) a doctor refuse to treat me anymore, once i got on the patches. he actually told me that i had no *RIGHT* to choose what meds i take, and that i SHOULD SUFFER - God gave me this disease, and i needed either pain or being high.
so, getting that attitude so often, i hate hearing being told anyone is stopped from anything “for their own good”. thats an argument that i feel is only ethical when applied to children. which, yes, there is child prostitution, and THAT should be illegal! but, if the misogyny of the whole network were removed… and, i think that legalizing it would HELP remove that misogyny.
BAnquo, seeing as how you seem rather dense, I’ll spell it out for you. You said that all prostitutes have to do is lay down and by implication nothing else. This refers to the old saying about rape, “If rape is inevitable lay back and enjoy it.” You can’t even go that far, though—-a hooker should resign herself to a shitty existance, too bad so sad, that’s just the way it is.
but, if the misogyny of the whole network were removed…
That is such an enormous ‘if,’ though, that I don’t really see the point in continuing to argue after it. Not unless, say, we’re spinning out ideas for writing alternate worlds in a sci-fi story. The misogyny–along with the classist and racist elements that also so often go along with prostitution–is the crux of the whole issue for sex-positive people.
and, i think that legalizing it would HELP remove that misogyny.
And that’s where a lot of people disagree with you. In our world, not an imaginary sci-fi world, the huge majority of people paying for prostitution are paying to be allowed to treat another human as an object, as something that’s there to satisfy their whims without their being required to care how the prostitute feels about doing so. Legal or not, there’s no way the practice of treating female prostitutes as objects is going to help combat misogyny, and I don’t see how legalization in itself would stop johns from wanting to treat female prostitutes as objects.
It’s all deeply problematic. People can certainly disagree on what should be done about it, about what might be the lesser of evils in terms of possible ways to deal with it, but I think all intellectually honest people should acknowledge that legalization will still be problematic.
Amanda wrote, in the original article:
Yet, oddly enough, whenever the prosecution of Bill Clinton, at the time the chief federal law enforcement officer in the country, for attempting to suborn perjury and asking one of the subjects of an investigation to file a false affidavit is mentioned, we are told that it was “all about teh sex.”
Dana - and I mean this in only the nicest possible way - shut up!
There was no perjury, because the question was immaterial to the trial - a trial that should have been delayed until Clinton left office in the first place.
So, in the end, the Clinton Affair, which started as a “questionable” real estate deal, ended with a dubious charge of having sex.
If Bush or Chaney were to ever find themselves in a courtroom (or taped testimony for a trial), there would only be about 1,000 things that could be asked of them which would result in perjury.
Bush lies daily, Cheney lies only less often because he’s usually in his secret bunker most of the time.
(Politician = Forked-Tongue = Feet-of-Clay = Dirty-Job) /= Role-Model…
Dana, do you have evidence that Clenis paid to get lipstick on his dipstick?
Or are we just rehashing the stupid about an adulterous affair between consenting adults? If anything, why has there been no public hand wringing about the security implications of not practicing safe sex?
Put it this way: you are allowed to bring up the Lewinski affair ONLY if you are willing to use it as a pathetic foil to the truly GIGANTIC laundry list of high crimes against the constitution and the laws of the United States perpetrated by Bush and Cheney and their minions.
And to think that Bush swore upon the bible to uphold and defend his toilet paper. But Clenis got a blow job blow job blow job blow job …
Amanda Marcotte March 11, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Chet, do you sincerely think the man in question—Elliot Spitzer—really has that much trouble getting laid? ”
ya haa,….
1. I bet. He needs something to match his ego. (not that I know what his type is. But knowing he is not a country bumpkin, I think he knows what “pretty” girls mean.)
2. He needs something untraceable. (I guess he is not guiliani type. Talk of the town.)
This is a $5500/hr with offshore shell account. Even supermodel doesn’t charge that much money.
Mr Ess wrote:
The question of whether the civil trial should have been delayed until after Mr Clinton left office was adjudicated, going all the way to the Supreme Court, and the courts held that the trial should proceed.
Nor was the question immaterial; according to the Federal Rules of Evidence which President Clinton had signed himself, questions concerning past sexual behavior were held germane in sexual harassment suits.
Dana March 12, 2008 at 8:37 am
Nor was the question immaterial; according to the Federal Rules of Evidence which President Clinton had signed himself, questions concerning past sexual behavior were held germane in sexual harassment suits. ”
Let’s put it this way, Do you think if somebody pulls a trick like that to a high ranking republican you will say the same thing? (Obviously at least GOP senators doesn’t think so in similar situations)
I can’t wait until the day some seriously nasty democrats start coming after GOP. Not pretty. It will decimate GOP base for decades to come with that much corruption going on. You guys practically lost the entire house leadership within weeks after losing congress. (oh yeah, the hooker, the expensive trips, etc. will come out.)
I have never heard of anything besides legalization that actually succeeds at improving the health & safety of sex workers. Legalization doesn’t always work, but AFAIK nothing else does.
It’s perfectly understandable that the people on the sex worker panel Amanda saw don’t want to do any kind of outreach to johns, but it’s still necessary from a public health POV.
Chet, obviously you did not get the memo that said joking by men here is frowned upon (even this one).
Seriously, using jokes to make points is a style for me but when I brought it here that style was met with marked hostility. Since I hope to be persuasive I dropped the jokes (mostly). Jokes also run the risk of being completely misunderstood As much as I have disagreed with kathleen on the issues on these two strings I have seen her joking (some bitter ironies) taken literally by some here. If there’s a double standard about tolerance for jokes, here, it’s OK by me.
Squashed: Right now, several Philadelphia area Democrats have been complaining that they are the victims of Republican bias in law enforcement, with Republican US Attorneys looking at them too closely and ignoring Republican officeholders. It might be that the US Attorneys are focusing on Democrats, but when I hear such complaints from Democratic office hol;ders under federal indictment I have to laugh; they’re like the guy caught speeding whining to the state trooper about everyone else whizzing past.
Odds are that we’ll see Democratic US Attorneys in a year, or in five years; eventually that’ll be the case. And if they catch corrupt Republicans, oh well, that’s the risk they take doing illegal stuff.
Yup, that’s exactly what I’ll say. I was one of those who said that Senator Craig ought to resign when his scandal broke. Senator Vitter really ought to go, too, even though he hasn’t been convicted of anything. And I had no problems when Republican congressmen Randy Cunningham and Bob Ney were convicted.
“I can’t wait until the day some seriously nasty democrats start coming after GOP. Not pretty. It will decimate GOP base for decades to come with that much corruption going on.”
The tasty Reichwing-flavored Koolaid makes it impossible to take misdoings by the “Right” seriously.
“Well, he WAS found wearing a wetsuit with a dildo shoved up his ass, but he was SUCH a nice Christian man, and I’m SURE he had a good reason for it…”
Post a “Woman seeking Men” ad in Craigslist’s casual encounters section, with pretty much anything in the ad text and a picture of pretty much any middle-aged woman (preferably one who doesn’t mind her picture being there), and see what you get in response.
I don’t have to, because life as a middle-aged woman supplies that answer for me: she’d get misogynistic comments about her weight, her sagging breasts, her visible wrinkles, and her “perverse” sexuality for daring to want sex.
i suspect it may be different in other parts of the world, like Europe, where standards of beauty are less plastic. But in America? There’s definitely the idea that all men are entitled to conventionally attractive women. And women outside that mold do often have trouble getting laid, especially by men they’re attracted to.
That’s why it’s utter bullshit to talk about how men are just going around offering up sex for free to any woman who wants it. It’s a total denial of the experiences of all women who have trouble attracting men.
“Seriously, using jokes to make points is a style for me but when I brought it here that style was met with marked hostility. Since I hope to be persuasive I dropped the jokes (mostly). Jokes also run the risk of being completely misunderstood As much as I have disagreed with kathleen on the issues on these two strings I have seen her joking (some bitter ironies) taken literally by some here. If there’s a double standard about tolerance for jokes, here, it’s OK by me.”
Sixties, I and many other Pandagon regulars joke all the time. I enjoy it immensely. But there are things that are okay to joke about and things that are off limits - kinda like ANY social occasion you have found yourself in.
This is a gathering of a certain set of people, many of whom have certain perspectives. By knowing those perspectives, and knowing the audience for the blog, it is possible to make fun of and enjoy the absurdity of a huge range of topics.
The only time anybody gets pissy is when you purposely shit in the punchbowl. And the punchbowl has tons of easily recognizable police tape all around it to prevent that very thing…
The discussion is fascinating. I think we may have a consensus on which of three flawed options to choose!
(a) The status quo of criminalizing everything–buying, selling, transferring money, crossing state lines–is really bad (but Spitzer should still face the music, because of his hypocrisy).
(b) Legalization might improve the lives of workers, but prostitution is too troubling to approve 100%.
(c) Decriminalization would give us a compromise between (a) and (b).
Make selling sex legal. Make buying sex an offense comparable to driving above the speed limit: you pay a fine and get a record but not a criminal record. For the workers, it becomes easier to work independently rather than turn over three-quarters of your revenue to thugs and mobsters. But society is still expressing disapproval of the transaction. Nobody thinks driving 75 mph in a 40 zone, with no reason or excuse, is a good thing.
Chet thinks taking it up the ass a few times a day every day for years on end are funny.
No, what I found funny was your arrogant and self-righteous assumption that we all shared your ridiculous prejudice; that there was no financial or compensatory arrangement possible that would convince a MANLY MAN!!! to willingly submit to anal penetration, despite the fact, of course, that straight guys are being paid to do just that all over the place.
A couple of hours of that a day, compared to 10-hour mind-numbing shifts at a dead-end manufacturing job? My joke was to imply that, yes, I’d actually consider it, especially if they offered health insurance.
But I guess I’m not surprised you didn’t find it funny, since it basically destroys your argument.
Semi-facetiously, perhaps there’s so many that the market drives the prices down to zero.
You win the thread. I don’t think it’s facetious at all.
Chet, great friend of the working woman, just don’t make him listen to their boring complaints, but he did, just the other night, watch a documentary about them. He cares.
Fucking Christ. I don’t know what to tell you, chingona, when every attempt I make to rebut certain unfounded, personal assumptions - I haven’t done any research on what I’m talking about, I don’t pay attention to what sex workers have to say - is purposefully twisted as self-aggrandizement.
You’ve made up your mind about me; nothing I say can change it. Any attempt I make to defend myself, or to correct how I’ve been misinterpreted, is simply further confirmation of your own biases. Well, at least now that’s out in the open.
If you had any honesty at all you’d turn those accusations of bad faith around on yourself.
Honestly I think the troll hunters are skilled, and after we read about some crazy shit we’re left with rather similar viewpoints going at each other–I’m not exempt. Not that I would want bunnies back.
In our world, not an imaginary sci-fi world, the huge majority of people paying for prostitution are paying to be allowed to treat another human as an object, as something that’s there to satisfy their whims without their being required to care how the prostitute feels about doing so.
Aside from the sex, how is that different than ordering a burger? Since when was concern for the feelings of the person serving a mandated feature of any other economic transaction?
Which is not to say that I’m rude to servers; I try to tip well and say “thank you” when they refill the water. But other than that, I’m forced to assume that if they hate serving food, they wouldn’t be working there. And under a system of legalization, where it’s a lot easier to get out of the prostitution business because you’re not saddled with a stigmatizing criminal record, women who don’t like hooking have the freedom to stop doing it.
We don’t outlaw restaurants because people might not like being waiters, and people are more concerned about getting their food than having a meaningful relationship with their server. Banning prostitution for the same reason is simply another disingenuous double standard.
Dana doesn’t count because he never admits when he’s wrong.
Point taken, Mike. Many of the errors I made in that regard came from not recognizing what things were off limits to joke about in this social situation.
Shit let me take my first comment back from this thread. I couldn’t read or something for a minute.
Are you kidding? It’s not that at all - it’s that the market is swamped with men who’ll do it for free. Believe me, I looked into it. There isn’t as much demand in general, and what demand there is is mostly dealt with by the guys who give it away.
There are plenty of women who’ll give it away as well. SFW?
Besides the sexual double-standard that fuels the puritantical sex “industry,” women also have safety concerns. A might pick some random guy up for casual sex, but he could be Ted freaking Bundy. Going to a male escort could increase her chances for safety–she gets what she wants, no pressure to do things she doesn’t want to do, no worries that he’ll slip her a roofie and invite his friends to take turns, and no worries that he’ll otherwise assault or abuse her.
Really. Drop the evo-psych bullshit that we wimminfolk just don’t like teh sex, okay? Given the fact that Heidi Fleiss DID want to start a brothel and ran into resistance (as history mom pointed out, and as I’ve pointed out several times), there’s more at play than mere market forces among equals here.
I hope you’re not trying to be patronizing, Sixties Liberal.
My question was perfectly relevant. Doesn’t that determination (legal or illegal) take into account whether an act is good or bad, right or wrong, harmful or not?
Also, the issues of “consent” and “individual liberties” are pretty fucking thorny when it comes to prostitution (see Anonama’s post above where a prostitute said ’stop’ and the guy wouldn’t because he’d paid her for the full hour, by God).
So, horseshit. Again. It might be illegal for stupid sexist reasons as a result of slut-shaming and blah blah blah, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to legitimize treating people like objects. Legality is a red herring. It’s like the ‘is it rape if’ discussions.
Somebody really have to ask all this “emotion” assumption stuff. I seriously doubt it mean anything more than blurbs.
—
PS. spitzer’s resigning.
Lindsay Campbell has her own rant on the “plight” of Silda Wall Spitzer up at MobLogic (http://www.moblogic.tv/video/2008/03/12/btch-please/)
I’ve already left my comments up disagreeing with her. Check it out, make sure you let us know what you think.
Oh right, I should tell you I work at MobLogic. Still, it’s definitely an interesting video, and I’d love to get more feminist perspectives.
Thanks,
Amanda Elend
Somebody really have to ask all this “emotion” assumption stuff. I seriously doubt it mean anything more than blurbs.
Extraordinary claims…
Well then, Chet, how about the next time you want sex you have a burger instead? How is it different?
So go for it, Chet, and report back to us. Have you ever had anal sex (not that it’s my business)? Now think. If you did, was it consensual?
Now how would it be if you were, indeed, being paid for it? Fabulous, right?
Now, how about if you, for whatever reason, were put off by a client? Oh, you’d just suck it up and do it, right? Still better than a mind-numbing factory job?
How about if you’re shutting your head off for ten hours a day while you got fucked in the ass by strangers so you can get through it? Or would you be ‘up’ for the performance every time? Still better than a factory job? Or just better pay for worse work?
I don’t know how sex workers do it. I know even less how people can think it must be a dream job. Or better than keeping one’s clothes on and daydreaming at a machine.
Grammar RWA March 12, 2008 at 10:33 am
Extraordinary claims…
It’s basic. The entire point of modern entertainment is based on emotion and how it changes.
Cara:
that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to legitimize treating people like objects
Does that mean you’d be opposed to legalization even if it improved sex workers’ health & safety? Do you know of any other large-scale way to increase the chances of condom use, decrease the chance they’ll get beaten up, and so forth?
Cara March 12, 2008 at 10:33 am
Well then, Chet, how about the next time you want sex you have a burger instead? How is it different?”
Is it good sex or bad sex? How tasty is the burger?
Let’s leave aside prostitution and its important questions (genuinely no sarcasm) for a moment to remember one thing. Spitzer deserves to lose his office and reputation and perhaps deserves jail time under the current laws, but there is still a lot that smells about this.
Even if we accept that there was nothing fishy about the flagging of the accounts, we are left with the rather startling result that as soon as the FBI team assigned to what they thought was a corruption case discovered that it was just a Governor spending too much money to get his knob polished they INCREASED their efforts on this. (See TPM for details.)
When Republican Senator Vitter was caught, the Feds did not make the information public. Quite the opposite: the kept it secret. It was revealed by the pornographic magazine “Hustler” who used information obtained from the Madam. The question of how long the feds had the information and whether they let the clock run out on the statute of limitations is something which is not public knowledge. Even assuming they didn’t we are left with the fact that the FBI had the name of a GOP Senator caught using prostitutes, and kept mum on the information; they had the name of a Democratic governor and started issuing press releases, and may have even extended their investigation just to get more humiliating details.
A commenter on TMP wrote:
No, nothing to do with politics at all, no siree. So it rather does beg one to question what other GOP sex and money scandals the feds know about but have graciously declined to publicize or prosecute.
I repeat: Since the tenure of Louis Freeh the FBI has been near-as-dammit a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party. It has rolled over, begged and fetched, first for the Congressional majority then for this Presidency. That’s why CIA was gutted from the top down: it wouldn’t play ball. The FBI didn’t have to be gutted: it was already neutered.
Just, don’t be surprised that nobody else cares to hear them complain. I can’t imagine anything less interesting.
I’m glad you’ve found your excuse to dismiss the voices of sex workers in this discussion. Because it’s the last nail in the coffin of your right to have others assume good faith on your part.
You’ve definitely demonstrated you think like a tyrant on this issue. How dare the labor compare notes on how the bosses treat them?
Cara,
You wrote:
How about if you’re shutting your head off for ten hours a day while you got fucked in the ass by strangers so you can get through it? Or would you be ‘up’ for the performance every time? Still better than a factory job? Or just better pay for worse work?
The prostitute in the Spitzer case regularly got $1000/hr, accorging to the nytimes. That’s $10,000 a day, if you’re serious about 10 straight hours (which, of course, you’re not — you’d rather come up with bullshit examples than admit you’re wrong). Assuming a five-day workweek, that’s $2,600,000 a year.
Ginmar,
I’d never heard that “old saying” before, so I can’t have been referring to it. If you want to make things up about what I believe, I can’t stop you. But my impression, and if you have any actual evidence that I’m wrong I’d love to see it, is that there is a substantial demand among men for that sort of bare-minimum PIV in which women’s performance is less involved than men’s. Just because I think it is true doesn’t mean I think it is good or even okay. I don’t.
Just, don’t be surprised that nobody else cares to hear them complain. I can’t imagine anything less interesting.
Shorter Chet: I’m all for the right of women to sell their bodies for sex, as long as they don’t want other rights along with it.
Well then, Chet, how about the next time you want sex you have a burger instead?
What does that even mean?
Now, how about if you, for whatever reason, were put off by a client?
I’d refuse business from the client, a luxury that people in legitimate businesses always have, and one that could be extended to sex workers by virtue of legalization. Or I’d decide that the money was worth getting over my discomfort, and I’d do it anyway.
Either way, I’d be my choice; rape is rape, but the illegalization of prostitution puts sex workers in an untenable position of risking jail time trying to report crimes against their person.
I don’t know how sex workers do it.
I don’t, for a minute, think it’s for us to judge. The simple fact is that they want to do it, this is the work that many of them prefer, and rather than claiming to know better than they what’s best for them, we should give them the tools they need and that they’re asking for, to make their work as safe as possible.
but, if the misogyny of the whole network were removed…
The practice would mostly disappear, so yeah, I don’t see why ban something that people wouldn’t do. Like I’ve said, men who go to prostitutes are buying something that they can’t get for free. Sex is widely available, as is adultery or various kinks. Even more so with internet social networking. But what’s hard to get is the misogynist pleasure of feeling like you own a woman, like she’s your literal sex servant. Now, if the desire to own and control women disappeared, there would be no void for prostitution to fill.
and, i think that legalizing it would HELP remove that misogyny.
Maybe. There’s certainly an argument to be made for the idea that its illegality adds to prostitutes’ vulnerability, making them more compliant and therefore raising the thrill factor for the johns. But legalization schemes tend to function to make it easier for the johns, not less of a trap for the prostitutes. Look at the Nevada brothels, where most of the prostitutes have to sleep and work and live in the brothel, and aren’t permitted to leave most of the time. Clearly, the law was written with the understanding that if prostitution legalization made the work freer for prostitutes and less misogynist, then the customer base would lose interest.
Cara, your questions were these: Can somebody explain to me why men are entitled to “stringless sex” at all? I mean, seriously. Who the hell do they think they are to believe that they can use a person’s body as merely an object to get off in?
I took them as rhetorical, to suggest that men in particular (and I hope you meant women, too) should not be “entitled” to stringless sex. Any behavior that is not legally prohibited is behavior that free men and women are “entitled” to engage in, assuming they can persuade a partner to join them. It may be unwise or even reprehensible behavior but if it is not illegal one is entitled to engage in it.
The legality is not a red herring at all, particularly when the discussion is whether criminal sanctions should be placed or continue to be placed on people engaged in the behavior. It certainly is not a red herring to Spitzer, or the people who owned and worked in that escort agency.
If your point was that buying or selling sex should remain illegal because the transaction necessarily involves sexual objectification, and that should be illegal, then OK. I happen to disagree with you, and pretty storngly so because that view suggests you would if you could enact many more coercive laws to outlaw assholery. I believe people, men and women, should be legally free to be assholes (or to engage in “stringless” sex) and the rest of us free to criticize them for it.
It’s my body and my life and I will do as I please. If doing as I please includes screwing for money, I’m not sure how that’s the business of any of the moral busybodies on this thread. You think you know what’s best for every single person on this planet? You don’t. I don’t. On the other hand, I trust other women to live their own lives as they see fit.
You’ve definitely demonstrated you think like a tyrant on this issue.
Why, you’re absolutely right, because I’m the one who claims to know better than the nation’s one million prostitutes what’s best for them, and claim to dictate to them precisely what acts they may perform with their bodies and their sexuality, in what contexts and locations.
Oh, wait. That’s not me at all. That’s you guys.
Shorter Chet: I’m all for the right of women to sell their bodies for sex, as long as they don’t want other rights along with it.
Oh, for God’s sake. What rights are we talking about, precisely? Which rights do you think I don’t want them to have? You’re a fucking idiot.
I’m still waiting for the honest defense of the prohibition.
Look at the Nevada brothels, where most of the prostitutes have to sleep and work and live in the brothel, and aren’t permitted to leave most of the time.
Did we get a cite for this? The documentary of Nevada brothels I saw showed a sex worker arriving, checking in, and signing a time card, and it’s not clear why she would have had to do all that if she was, you know, already there. And made no mention of anyone being unable to leave.
Ent, point to the person who suggested that you go to jail for sex work, please. I think the consensus that “johns are creepy” doesn’t have to mean “prostitutes should go to jail”. Far from it, I’d say. Why punish them?
I’m sorry, Chet. I’m done discussing this with you. You demonstrated what your reaction will be when faced with unpleasant facts—hide behind your privilege and refuse to listen. What, then, is the point of talking to you?
Need data. too much handwaving, people …
I am too lazy googling it myself. post the stat.
Let me make something perfectly clear: it’s not your goddamn business who I fuck or why. If it’s not religious people’s business, then it’s not yours either. You can’t have it both ways.
And there it is: the inevitable comparison of paying a prostitute to buying a hamburger. There must be some rule that in any discussion of prostitution, someone must mention the purchase and consumption of hamburgers as an equivalent to paying a prostitute for sex. Apparently, we’re only supposed to notice that a physical need/urge has been satisfied as result of a financial transaction, and ignore that a human being has been compared to a mound of cooked, ground-up beef served on a bread bun.
I will give Chet credit for bringing a novel twist on this by trying to focus on the people who serve the burgers, but he still manages to bring dehumanization into the discussion. We don’t care about thee emotional lives of the people behind the counters of the burger joints, so why should we care about the emotional lives of prostitutes? Well, just because you don’t have a personal relationship with any of these people doesn’t mean you should ignore the reality of their working conditions. Do you really think it is acceptable for people to risk their health and safety in order to provide you with goods/services?
I guess you’ve never known anyone who held onto a job they hated in order to pay the bills. Sometimes any job is better than no job, and finding a replacement job can take a long time; not everyone can afford to go without income while looking for more enjoyable employment.
Why punish them?
Amanda, what precisely would you call it when the state targets a business by prosecuting its customers?
I mean you’re proposing a fantasy world, where sex workers make a lively income providing to nonexistent customers. How is that supposed to work?
Chet, if you don’t want people to think you’re an asshole, stop acting like an asshole. There are a lot of people on this thread who also back legalization who have not drawn the ire you have. Instead of whining about how humorless we are, maybe you should take a look at the tone of your comments. You keep implying that the work prostitutes do is really no big deal. And it makes me wonder - do you have sex where you are the one who is penetrated? That is an honest question. If you do (I’m assuming you don’t, but please correct me if I’m wrong), you know that doing it more than, say, two times in one day, results in a fair amount of soreness - like walking funny the next day. When I’ve done it a lot in one day, even though I’m sore the next day, I feel good - I have this fun secret about how hot we were last night - but if I had to fuck five different guys and at least some of them really weren’t attractive to me or smelled bad or just were rude assholes, and I knew I was going to have to do it again that same night, instead of getting to rest up, and then the night after that, and the night after that, and if I didn’t, I would get beat up, or my kids wouldn’t eat, or - even - I would lose my health insurance (just to keep your funny joke alive), that would really, really suck. And I’ve had some really shitty jobs, jobs that were physically exhausting and left me bone tired at the end of the day, jobs where my boss treated me like shit, and if I had to, I would still go back to those jobs over being penetrated four to five times a day by a random sample of the best humanity has to offer.
If you come back and tell me you ask your wife to fuck you in the ass two times a night, then I will say you had some basis to make that joke. I will then admit I went one rhetorical flourish too far (something you seem incapable of doing). If not, then all it was was the worst kind of male privilege.
But even then, we are left with the fact that even though you think selling sex is a great way to earn a living, you have no actual interests in hearing anything from the people that actually do just that. In fact, you cannot think of anything less interesting. Maybe that’s because if you had to listen to them, it would destroy your argument that it’s the same as busing tables or serving burgers or working in a factory.
Ugirl March 12, 2008 at 11:24 am
There must be some rule that in any discussion of prostitution, someone must mention the purchase and consumption of hamburgers as an equivalent to paying a prostitute for sex. Apparently, we’re only supposed to notice that a physical need/urge has been satisfied as result of a financial transaction”
unfortunately, it’s a realistic depiction of decision making. I can think of many realistic situation where such comparison can enter: if One hasn’t eaten for whole day, even when meeting the lover, wouldn’t that person say… “I am hungry and haven’t eaten the whole day, …we’ll make out after I eat… etc”
In fact, dinner is the most common dating ritual. Why do you think that is?
Food is much more fundamental need than sex.
Apparently, we’re only supposed to notice that a physical need/urge has been satisfied as result of a financial transaction, and ignore that a human being has been compared to a mound of cooked, ground-up beef served on a bread bun.
Again, you’re simply seeking out the most misogynistic interpretation. For a lot of you, of course, that’s how it works - find the least charitable interpretation, no matter how counterindicated; once you find the hook on which to hang the charge of misogyny, it’s no longer incumbent on you to respond to the argument.
The comparison is that it takes a human being to make a hamburger, and if it’s not objectifying to hire a human being to provide the service of making a hamburger - and let’s be honest, working at Burger King is pretty shitty and soul-crushing - then it’s not any more objectifying to hire a human being to provide an orgasm.
Do you really think it is acceptable for people to risk their health and safety in order to provide you with goods/services?
I think it’s absolutely unacceptable. Which is why I remain as puzzled as always, Ugirl, that you and others are so openly antagonistic to providing sex workers with the tools they need to operate safely.
Well said, and I wonder whether such a realization lies at the root of the debate about the “what’s so different about prostitution as a job?” debate.Some people like me (and most people, I wager) agree with your statement. Others don’t:
http://renegadeevolution.blogspot.com/
chingona March 12, 2008 at 11:28 am
You keep implying that the work prostitutes do is really no big deal. And it makes me wonder - do you have sex where you are the one who is penetrated? That is an honest question. ”
I think you have to admit that a) sex is common action that does not require much skill to perform. The performance of act itself I would argue is trivial. A lot of job come with bigger hazard, higher risk and lower return.
b) however a person has emotion and social context. It is this where the problem of prostitution exist. This of course include the meaning of women’s role in society.
PS. what’s up with sex-penetration bit? plenty of people do it. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. But you seems to imply it has negative argument value… (that include anal sex)
Ent, to make it very clear:
I have no moral issue with people who sell sex.
The most sticking issue for me is that they’re accessories to the cruelty that is cheating. I don’t truck with cheaters, and I couldn’t bring myself to sleep with a man who’s cheating on a wife or a girlfriend. I can’t stop him from being mean to her, but I don’t have to be a part of it. But I don’t think it’s worth getting on a high horse against The Other Woman (or Man, as the case may be)—already, they carry too much of the blame, and the blame should fall on the shoulders of the cheater. So I don’t really see it’s my place to moralize about sleeping with cheaters.
But selling your body? I don’t see the moral argument against it. Not hurting anyone.
Buying someone else’s body is what we’re debating here. No one here is busting on you for selling. Your body, your business. But buying, I think, is a legitimate area to look at. Society does have an interest in labor standards and what the bosses are paying labor to do and to what purpose. This gets me called a “Marxist”, but all but the most right wing Republicans buy into moral value of some amount of interest and regulation of how the bosses treat the labor.
In sum, I do not judge the factory worker for getting up every day and working hard to feed his family. But I do retain my right to judge the factory owner for labor abuses and general disregard for the humanity of his employees.
Chet, if you don’t want people to think you’re an asshole, stop acting like an asshole.
I don’t give a shit if you think I’m an asshole. What I want you to do is spend a lot less time trying to prove your own preconceptions of my misogyny, and spend a lot more time supporting your own arguments with evidence and reasoning, and addressing the arguments I’ve put forth. The fact continues to remain that not a single person has put forth an intellectually honest defense of the prohibition on prostitution, a status quo that has had a catastrophic human cost directed almost entirely towards women; you’re all too busy trying to find my true misogynistic motives so that my arguments and evidence can be safely ignored.
Personally I think the debate deserves a little better than that, since lives are at stake, and all. But then I guess we wouldn’t have the rape, murder, and slavery that you and Kathleen find so endlessly risible.
If you do (I’m assuming you don’t, but please correct me if I’m wrong), you know that doing it more than, say, two times in one day, results in a fair amount of soreness - like walking funny the next day.
Then lets give sex workers the freedom and protection they need to choose how often in a day they do it. The status quo doesn’t do that. Sweden’s solution prevents them from doing it at all.
Ent:
If it’s not religious people’s business, then it’s not yours either
Are you saying that the public health aspects of prostitution are not other people’s business? That your occupational safety should not be anyone else’s concern?
If I could wave my wand of supernatural power, sex work wouldn’t just be legalized, it would be *unionized* — not because I approve (or don’t approve) of the work itself, but because that’s the only way I know for workers to get a shot at decent treatment.
Do you really think it is acceptable for people to risk their health and safety in order to provide you with goods/services?
In an nutshell, yes. Millions of people do exactly this, every day. ANY job entails SOME amount of risk. And certainly some jobs are more dangerous than others. You’ll find that, ceteris paribus, people with risky jobs get compensated better than those who take on less risk. It’s why coal miners are paid more than say, mattress salesmen. It’s also why prostitutes charge more to go forgo condoms.
Buying someone else’s body is what we’re debating here. No one here is busting on you for selling.
Can you possibly be serious? If there’s nobody to buy how can you sell?
But I do retain my right to judge the factory owner for labor abuses and general disregard for the humanity of his employees.
And so, in response, you want to make it illegal to own or run a factory.
Oh, wait, no. That’s only your response to prostitution. Well, that makes perfect sense, I guess.
squashed
March 12, 2008 at 11:33 am
Yeah, I get the decision making process. The problem is the notion that buying/eating a hamburger = paying fucking a prostitute. Yes, physical needs/desires are being satisfied in both cases, but what is ignored is that while the hamburger is basically inanimate, the prostitute is not. She (sometimes he) is a human being, and it is the living body of a human being that is being used/rented.
Chet, it appears you’re responding to me. Why? I told you that I’m done talking to you. You can’t argue in good faith. Like even that comment was bad faith, because you had to pretend I was supporting criminalization, when I’m not. Really, it’s sad. Any tactic to maintain your illusions and fantasies, huh?
I don’t see why the customer base would really care that the prostitute is forbidden to leave the premises. I’d figure that regulation was there for the benefit of the brothel owner, who wouldn’t want his employees out freelancing.
Anyways, Nevada is not the only model for what legal prostitution could plausibly be.
Sure. But, unless you actually are a Marxist, you presumably wouldn’t judge the factory owner simply for trying to hire any employees under any circumstances. Which is closer to what you’re discussing here.
I told you that I’m done talking to you. You can’t argue in good faith.
I can, actually, and have been. And I know you can, too; I’m just puzzled why you haven’t been.
The United Fucking Socialists of America. Hell, I’m not a prostitute but I’d join, just for the card.
Yes, physical needs/desires are being satisfied in both cases, but what is ignored is that while the hamburger is basically inanimate, the prostitute is not. She (sometimes he) is a human being, and it is the living body of a human being that is being used/rented.
So how about a comparison to surrogate motherhood, then. Women are freely compensated to gestate the fetuses of other people. I support this, despite the risks, when it’s done in a monitored context and the woman receives compensation commensurate to the risks. And it’s certainly her body that’s being rented, if that’s how you want to construe it. I see it more as the providing of a service, because I don’t think I’m renting a surgeon’s hands when I hire him for medical reasons.
Either way. Is there some reason that the same objections you’ve leveled against prostitution don’t also apply to surrogate motherhood?
Like even that comment was bad faith, because you had to pretend I was supporting criminalization, when I’m not.
I can only plead misunderstanding, if in fact you’re not advocating the criminalization of hiring prostitutes.
But I was pretty sure that was what you were saying. Can you clarify?
Ugirl March 12, 2008 at 11:47 am,
Yeah, I get the decision making process. The problem is the notion that buying/eating a hamburger = paying fucking a prostitute.”
Just because you think it is buying “human being” doesn’t mean the prostitute or the john are thinking at the same notion. I suspect both are merely thinking in term of service and monetary exchange.
I get what you are trying to say, it is degrading. But you can’t insist an act to mean as you want it to be if nobody else interpret it that way. What you gonna do? Make all hookers and johns read Derrida and Lacan?
Ideological context is not the answer for every human problem. Giving new notion of old human habit is nearly impossible. Sometimes a pragmatic approach is far better temporary solution.
squashed, again, you deliberately misread me. I have penetrative sex. I like penetrative sex. I like vigorous penetrative sex. I like sex. I like sex. I like sex. Having it four times a day every day is a different story. My point is that unless Chet knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a vigorous fuck, he has no business making jokes about how he’d do it four times a day if the job had health insurance. Making such jokes reveal him to be … an asshole.
And now we’re on to Chet, who once again has brought up his favorite tactic - that people who think selling sex is morally problematic, enjoy the rape of women, while Chet, who has no interest in hearing from sex workers, has their best interests at heart.
I have said, repeatedly, that I would support decriminalization, and while skeptical that outright legalization would not benefit johns more than prostitutes, I’m open to arguments in favor of it, just not yet persuaded. Now, please tell me again how much I enjoy it when women are raped?
chingona March 12, 2008 at 11:59 am
squashed, again, you deliberately misread me.”
No. I read you correctly.
Chet, you bleat about the right of women to sell our bodies for sex, but don’t want to hear those who do complain when they’re treated like shit. And where did I say it should be prohibited. If you bothered to read my posts, you’d see that I never said it should be illegal–hell, I’d like to see this type of service expanded to women, and pointed out that the sexual double standard plays a lot into the (wrong) idea that there is no market for this or that women just don’t like teh sex, but Hades fucking forbid anyone do that! OH NOES!
Gawd, what a spittle-aspirating dipshit you are. Try to read the posts I write before attributing certain views to me.
My point is that unless Chet knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a vigorous fuck, he has no business making jokes about how he’d do it four times a day if the job had health insurance.
If you found the joke offensive, chingona, I apologize. All I meant to say was that I don’t find the idea of being pegged for money a few hours out of the day as completely objectionable as you expected me to, on its face, particularly if it meant making as much or more at a boring factory job. It’s a function of how much I detest boring jobs.
Now, please tell me again how much I enjoy it when women are raped?
Well, it was my joke you objected to, and not Kathleen’s. And since we were playing “spot the secret misogynist”, and all.
I’d figure that regulation was there for the benefit of the brothel owner, who wouldn’t want his employees out freelancing.
I worked in a field where I could freelance if I wanted to, even though the places where I worked forbade it. No one tried to limit my freedom of movement. Sorry, that’s a bullshit excuse.
Chet, you bleat about the right of women to sell our bodies for sex, but don’t want to hear those who do complain when they’re treated like shit.
I presume that you don’t want to hear me complain about my job. I don’t understand why that’s not a problem for you, but it is for me.
Like I said, I actually am interested in what sex workers have to say about their jobs. I’m just more interested in some parts of that than others. Specifically, I’m interested in the parts that are relevant to crafting a public policy on the issue. Complaining about gross johns isn’t relevant to that. By all means let sex workers have a forum where they can complain about their johns. I don’t understand why its a huge fucking deal if I choose to spend my time in another way, looking for the information that best informs public policy.
Amanda Marcotte March 12, 2008 at 11:42 am
The most sticking issue for me is that they’re accessories to the cruelty that is cheating. I don’t truck with cheaters, and I couldn’t bring myself to sleep with a man who’s cheating on a wife or a girlfriend.”
… therefore we should ban women from public space, so nobody cheat
Come on now. You know that line of argument is lame.
Chet
March 12, 2008 at 11:37 am
In many a discussion of prostitution that I’ve participated in, someone has shown up and literally said that buying a prostitute is just like buying a hamburger. For some reason, it’s always HAMBURGERS; we’re talking about human beings, and someone has to bring up cooked, ground beef. So, Chet, why don’t you provide us with the most charitable, non-misogyinistic reason for why that is, hmmm?
Chet, have you ever thought about how those orgasms are “provided”? The only way that comparison works is if prostitutes only provide hand-jobs, and are only expected to provide hand-jobs. There is a whole lot more of a prostitute’s body involved in the sex act than there is of the burger-cook’s body in the making of burgers. (I’m unaware of any franchises that involve the use of employees’ bodily orifices in the preparation of their products. If you know of any, please, let us know.)
If all someone wanted was an orgasm, they could achieve that for free with their own hand. When hiring a prostitute, they purchase the opportunity to use the body of another human being in a specific way in order to achieve that orgasm, without regard to the desires, preferences, or needs, of that other human being. That is what is objectifying about the entire process.
WTF? When did I say anything even remotely like that?
UGirl:
I’ve seen that too, and the analogy doesn’t work that well since the hamburger is a good that you purchase, rather than a service like prostitution. Or rather, I think that’s the overall sticking point — are johns buying sex, or are they buying people? I think it’s both right now, and that’s the problem.
squashed
March 12, 2008 at 11:58 am
The problem I’m addressing is the repeated use of the prostitute=hamburger construct that keeps popping up in discussions like this. Focusing on the economics aspects of the transaction would be fine if it didn’t always seem to involve a rather dehumanizing comparison to ground meat.
Is there a law or razor like Godwin’s Law that applies to hamburger analogies?
I’m not saying it’s a justified regulation. The original point was that the customer base would somehow be put off by a place that gave the workers more freedom of movement. That part was what I didn’t buy.
By his failure to answer the question, we can assume Chet does not like to be pegged voluntarily, yet he continues to insist that he would not object to doing it for money. Chet, nothing’s stopping you. Put your ad on Craigs List and get to work.
And please, don’t apologize for offending me. That’s even more offensive.
So, Chet, why don’t you provide us with the most charitable, non-misogyinistic reason for why that is, hmmm?
Hamburgers are popular, most people have had the experience of buying one at one time or another.
It is possible to overthink these things, Ugirl.
Chet, have you ever thought about how those orgasms are “provided”?
By sexual intercourse. I’m familiar with the concept in practice, I assure you, despite being a nerd.
There is a whole lot more of a prostitute’s body involved in the sex act than there is of the burger-cook’s body in the making of burgers.
Pianists and organists have to use their feet. Surrogate mothers have to use their uteruses. Models have to use their whole bodies. Porn actors have to use all of the above plus their genitals, mouths, and anuses. There’s a whole range of various body parts required for various legitimate forms of employment, and the range is inclusive of prostitution on both sides.
So the “argument from number of body parts used” doesn’t seem to hold up, either.
without regard to the desires, preferences, or needs, of that other human being.
Not entirely without regard to need, because the prostitute is being paid. Her need to get paid is being well regarded. And, again, regard for need is not a required feature of other legitimate economic transactions, yet we don’t consider them objectifying. So I see this as an argument that doesn’t hold up, as well. Whether or not the john objectifies the sex worker is up to him or her. I don’t see that any kind of legislation or prohibition has an effect on that either way. That’s a social problem, of which that kind of prostitution is a symptom. Treat the problem, not the symptom.
When did I say anything even remotely like that?
When you launched these attacks on the idea of economic legitimacy for sex work.
By his failure to answer the question, we can assume Chet does not like to be pegged voluntarily
Or, alternatively, we could assume that Chet doesn’t want to divulge specifics of his sexual proclivities on a blog he knows his close friends read.
The problem I’m addressing is the repeated use of the prostitute=hamburger construct that keeps popping up in discussions like this.
Ugirl, I’ve supplied an alternate analogy, surrogate motherhood. Is there some reason you don’t find it adequate? Otherwise it seems like you’re trying to draw attention to a red herring rather than address the argument.
Ugirl March 12, 2008 at 12:29 pm
The problem I’m addressing is the repeated use of the prostitute=hamburger construct that keeps popping up in discussions like this. Focusing on the economics aspects of the transaction would be fine if it didn’t always seem to involve a rather dehumanizing comparison to ground meat.”
It is an economic transaction. Hooker gotta eat, pay rent and buy nice stuff.
Between the transaction participant, I would bet it is more likely to follow “goods/service transaction” model than “purchasing slave” model.
More importantly, without addressing the economic aspect of prostitution, your effort to eradicate prostitution will likely doom to failure. Cash talks.
Chet
March 12, 2008 at 12:36 pm .
What attacks on the “idea of economic legitimacy for sex work”? I haven’t said anything about the economic legitimacy of sex work. I was addressing the dehumanizing language that inevitably turns up when discussing prostitutes and prostitution.
squashed
March 12, 2008 at 12:40 pm
My what? Where have I talked about eradicating prostitution? I’ve been objecting to dehumanizing language being used with regards to prostitutes. As far as I am concerned, prostitutes are human beings, and any discussion of their livelihood must acknowledge their humanity and avoid dehumanizing them. The repeated comparison of prostitutions to hamburgers in discussions such as this fails on that account.
I was addressing the dehumanizing language that inevitably turns up when discussing prostitutes and prostitution.
And your point has been taken. An alternate analogy was supplied. Is there some reason you’re ignoring it completely?
“there’s only one side here that’s defending the status quo, where the state uses police power to dictate to women who they can and can’t have sex with for whatever reason, and it’s not my side.”
A liar
” Just, don’t be surprised that nobody else cares to hear them complain. I can’t imagine anything less interesting.”
And a misogynsitic asshole.
Sixties Liberal, it wasn’t rhetorical, and I don’t really disagree with you on the legality aspect.
I want to know who the fuck these people think they are. Legality doesn’t make them “entitled” to do it, either. They might FEEL entitled to do it, but they’re not. It’s not illegal to cheat on your spouse, but if you don’t have an agreement it’s still wrong.
When I said “stringless” I didn’t mean non-committed sex (perhaps I misspoke), but more like the sex these guys seem to want–where they don’t even have to give their partner any thought, any regard, at all. Where they don’t have to realize she’s human.
Once money enters the equation, rendering one party (male or female) a temporary employee (at best), that’s a different thing from truly voluntary casual sex.
If legality would be better for the sex workers, fine with me. Still, fuck what’s legal. Is it WRONG? Yes. That’s why the discussion sounds like the “is it rape IF” ones to me. Especially when some yahoo like Chet talks about how much fun it must be to fuck for a living.
It MEANS, Chet, you dumbass, that if selling sex is the same as selling a burger then you should be happy with the burger instead. No? Why not? Oh, because sex is different? Huh. So it’s different from your standpoint as the (puke) consumer. Do ya think it might be kind of different for the service provider, too?
Honestly. Selling a burger is worker exploitation and so is selling access to one’s private parts, therefore they’re equivalent. Unbelievable.
Chet
March 12, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Frankly, Chet, in reviewing your various comments on this thread, it’s pretty clear you really don’t give a shit about the human beings who make their living through prostitution. You don’t give a shit what they have to say about the work, and you certainly don’t care enough to avoid using dehumanizing language to describe it without having it pointed out to you. Why the fuck should I, or anyone else, care about your bullshit “alternate analogy”?
“Selling a burger is worker exploitation and so is selling access to one’s private parts, therefore they’re equivalent. Unbelievable. ”
Unbelivable to feminists, yes. Par for the course for misogynistic boys-with-privilege who are either a) arguing this academically because they can or b) eager to justify their use and/or abuse of women.
It MEANS, Chet, you dumbass, that if selling sex is the same as selling a burger then you should be happy with the burger instead.
That’s incomprehensibly stupid. A shoe store is fundamentally similar to a book store (two retail establishments essentially equivalent before the law), but I hardly walk around with Proust strapped to my feet.
Do you think about these things before you type them, Cara? There are serious arguments in play, here. This kind of idiocy is a disservice to the discussion.
it’s pretty clear you really don’t give a shit about the human beings who make their living through prostitution.
If you’re content to simply out yourself as one more poor sap who finds it easier to demonize the other side into ignorability rather than address serious arguments, I’m happy to ignore you. Once again, the fact is that there’s one side here who wants prostitution to remain relegated to a black market, outside of the protection and safety of the law, and it’s not my side.
“there’s only one side here that’s defending the status quo, where the state uses police power to dictate to women who they can and can’t have sex with for whatever reason, and it’s not my side.”
A liar
No, you’re the liar, Anony, because that is obviously not my side, and my statement is thus true.
I said legitimize, not legalize. I was talking more about who the fuck people think they are to create a market for it in the first place. Their “needs” (to have sex with human beings while treating them like objects) are not legitimate. As I said, their feeling entitled to do that, and being allowed to do that, doesn’t make it okay.
“Legalize” is fine with me if it will offer more protections for sex workers, absolutely. It’s still a fucked-up way for the “consumer” to treat someone. If women were people there would either be no market for it or an equal one, where those who are truly unfuckable (hah) could have some kind of professional relationship with a sex worker without harm to anyone.
If women were people it would be a different matter, but we’re not there yet. As it stands now, it’s exploitative, and not in the way that going to a shitty factory job is.
And a misogynsitic asshole.
I’m sorry, but I don’t believe for a fucking second that this is anything but manufactured outrage among the lot of you.
Still waiting for that honest defense of prohibiting prostitution, either by criminalizing hooking or patronage. Anybody got one? No?
Do you think about these things before you type them, Cara? There are serious arguments in play, here. This kind of idiocy is a disservice to the discussion.
Do you know how to read, dumbass? Apparently not.
How is buying a hamburger different from buying sex? They’re DIFFERENT THINGS. Very good. Now:
If it’s different for you, as the fucking buyer, how much different do you think it is for the seller?
If you say “not at all”, then you’ve lost the so-called “argument” on sheer idiocy.
“No, you’re the liar, Anony, because that is obviously not my side, and my statement is thus true. ”
Except that not a single one of us has said the thing you’re accusing us of. So now you’ve lied again.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe for a fucking second that this is anything but manufactured outrage among the lot of you.”
because you’re a misogynistic boy-with-privilege who doesn’t care fuck all about women. Esp women who don’t agree with you and have the nerve to have their own opinions. That’s perfectly clear.
“Still waiting for that honest defense of prohibiting prostitution, either by criminalizing hooking or patronage. Anybody got one? No?”
Ignoring what was provided to you already is also dishonest.
Chet, your commercial surrogacy analogy is actually quite an apt one. Selling a kidney would be another parallel. These are illegal in many places, for some of the same reasons that prostitution is. As I do not advocate the arrest and imprisonment of prostitutes, I do not advocate the arrest and imprisonment of paid surrogates or people who have sold an organ. I do think people paying for these things are committing moral crimes — for reasons that may indeed be deeply compelling. Being lonely and unable to connect sexually with others, being unable to have a child, suffering kidney disease are all genuine tragedies. Nevertheless, solving these problems via the instrumental use of other human beings is wrong. As with some kinds of sex between willing parties, a sister carrying a fetus to term for a sibling or a family member donating a kidney are things that I personally might view as ethically dubious, but into which I do not feel I have a right to intervene. However, as a member of society, I do think paid sex, paid surrogacy, and organ sales between strangers should not be socially condoned and certainly not legalized for robust ethical reasons.
What you want is for people to BOTH (1) see your worldview and (2) agree with you that your worldview is ethically sound. Everyone here has shown enormous, superhuman patience about (1). About (2) — well, look. We think your worldview is NOT ethically sound. If you have the courage of your convictions, that shouldn’t bother you as much as it seems to do.
Who sells their organs, their wombs, and their sex? Mostly, poor people. But even if they were all rich sybarites who just thought “ka-ching!” (the happy hooker argument), all of these transactions are wrong because they treat people as things. You may think an ethical worldview includes treating people as things. I disagree — not respectfully, but with a strong desire to vomit.
Finally, the selling of sex, primarily female sex, is additionally morally hazardous because it posits something that is in the default situation RECIPROCAL as something that is one-sided. It builds out of and contributes to sexism, and as such is wrong.
Your worldview accepts none of these premises, and your rhetoric about “choice” is unbelievably vacuous and ill-informed. You have to live with people judging you on those bases if you insist on airing your stances at length.
And, btw, I’m still waiting to hear what background you have that qualifies you to decide for women what’s best for them.
I’ve worked with sex workers for over 15 years. I’ve worked with orgs that seek to end human trafficking (and don’t think I didn’t notice that you still are too much of a cward to deal with that).
So, what’s your cred? Got any leg to stand on or are you just a whiny brat who knows fuck all about any of this, but who thinks his opinion is interseting because he’s got a teeny weeny?
Make selling sex legal. Make buying sex an offense comparable to driving above the speed limit: you pay a fine and get a record but not a criminal record.
Nope - if anything is legal to sell, then it should be legal to buy, otherwise the law is an ass. Regulation is possible.
Again, I point at a situation where the law was changed to better suit sex workers.
I do think people paying for these things are committing moral crimes — for reasons that may indeed be deeply compelling.
Well, I can appreciate your consistency, Kathleen, even if I disagree that these are moral crimes.
What you want is for people to BOTH (1) see your worldview and (2) agree with you that your worldview is ethically sound.
I really don’t, Kathleen. What I want is to see the argument for prohibiting prostitution that’s not inconsistent or based on calling me an asshole for disagreeing.
Everyone here has shown enormous, superhuman patience about (1).
I guess we can disagree that being accused of bad faith by message 135 or so constitutes “patience”. If anything has characterized this debate it’s been the immediate intemperance leveled against the side of legalized, regulated prostitution.
You may think an ethical worldview includes treating people as things.
I do not. I do think an ethical worldview includes people volunteering to provide paid services to others that I cannot myself envision providing or purchasing. I contend that my worldview is more mature than yours, and doesn’t require me operating as moral gatekeeper for the actions of all other human beings at all times, in situations I may not be able to fully understand.
What I want is to see the argument for prohibiting prostitution that’s not inconsistent or based on calling me an asshole for disagreeing.
I should add that, at last, I think Kathleen has met the challenge, and even if I disagree with it, it’s neither inconsistent nor based on personal attacks.
If you read Chet at 313 in the voice of the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons, it’s fucking comedy GOLD. Especially the “met the challenge” part.
Chet
March 12, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Um, Chet? I never said anything about legalization or criminalization or prohibition or black markets or anything like that. I have expressed concern for the humanity of prostitutes and the language used to describe them. You, however, have said quite plainly that you are really not all that interested in what prostitutes have to say about their work or their experiences. If you were anything close to the Great Defender of Prostitutes that you envision yourself to be, you would be significantly more interested in listening to them. You see, if you actually listen to them, you would be better able to address their concerns. But, listening to them requires that you acknowledge that they are humans, not hamburgers, and that you treat them like people, not things. And, aw jeez, all that messy compassion crap really gets in the way of teh buyin’ of teh poosay.
So, yeah. Kindly take you Noble Knight routine and move along.
“And, aw jeez, all that messy compassion crap really gets in the way of teh buyin’ of teh poosay. ”
This is particularly funny when compared to his confusion as to why no one thinks he’s arguing in good faith.
Uh, Chet, I gotta admit that some of your statements carry a certain apparent flippancy, and that produces a reflexive hostility even amongst those who could be persuaded to the legalization point of view. A little less on how there’s nothing wrong in any sense with prostitution, and we might not be having a classic Usenet flamewar. A few of your targets hate the notion of legalization because they consider it to put the stamp of approval on a practice they’d like to see eradicated. Ms. Marcotte doesn’t seem to be firmly in that group.
(The following is an analogy. Like all such analogies, it is an approximation, unable to capture all of the nuances of that which it is meant to analogize.)
Look, early factory work was low-paying, dangerous, and degrading. People were desperate for work, though, so they took those jobs anyway. I think it was a good thing when unionization finally led to actual legal protections for workers. That ameliorated the low-paying and dangerous part. Degrading is more subjective: workers didn’t immediately become the backbone of middle-class respectability. And many people moved away from such work when new opportunities opened up. But the addition of legal protections for the workers played a large part in changing the society that provided those new opportunities.
So, can’t we work to enact legal protections for sex workers and work on attacking the underlying social attitudes and economic circumstances that force many sex workers to end up in the trade? Eventually, only those who genuinely don’t have a problem with the work would be left, and perhaps some much-lacking gender balance could creep in. Yeah, if wishes were fishes… But we have criminalization now, and it’s not helping. How draconian are people prepared to get to root out the scourge? Some apparently want the state to “eliminate” prostitution because it’s wrong. That worries me, because it sounds so familiar.
(And using my analogy, Chet, the existence of bespoke engineering firms didn’t mean that it was therefore great to work in an early twentieth-century meatpacking plant. “It’s no big deal” rubs a lot of people the wrong way.)
“So, can’t we work to enact legal protections for sex workers and work on attacking the underlying social attitudes and economic circumstances that force many sex workers to end up in the trade? Eventually, only those who genuinely don’t have a problem with the work would be left, and perhaps some much-lacking gender balance could creep in.”
Hooray! Someone with sense!
One thing I hear frequently from the women who do chose it freely is that they too wish those that don’t and those that want out were out. If the people doing it actually all wanted to do it, then perhaps we could work on eradicating the stigmas and stereotypes surrounding this.
However, I also understand the position that sex work is, entirely, partiarchy supporting. However, once again, if we can combat human trafficking and improve the conditions for willing sex workers, doesn’t that also stab patriarchy’s virgin/whore dictomy in the eye?
Of course that leaves the question of cheaters open, but cheaters aren’t the fault of sex workers.
Cara,
It looks like you and I were missing each other over how we used the word “entitlement”. As I tried to explain, my view is the legality of the behavior itself entitled a person to engage in it. It sounds like you mean it more in the sense of “deserving” because of exalted status.
At the higher end, pricewise, of the sex trade it seems less like that. I admitted before that I occasionally browse escort rating board for kicks. Average hourly rates quoted there are $300-350 per hour, probably $100 higher in high roller cities like Las Vegas, LA and NYC. IN that milieu, while there is certainly rampant sexism, there is a recognition of the human in the escort. Often discussions break out about whether the escorts orgasm with the clients. Most of the posted reviews claim it happened. But in discussion boards, the men recognize orgasms are at least often part of the act, part of the fantasy, and while the escorts who post admit that orgasms don’t always occur, they claim orgasms do sometimes, even often, occur during appointments. Perhaps it’s all a marketing ploy, but it does show that the clients prefer their escorts come. Otherwise why would faking even be necessary?
That doesn’t prove that the practice is wholesome or as fulfilling for either party as non-commercial sex. But if it’s non-coercive I would permit it. Exploitative? Blech. I am an ex-Marxist so when relatively free actors engage in a commercial transaction it doesn’t much bother me. Johns have the cash and the desire. Escorts want the cash and are willing to do what the Johns want. Who is exploiting whom?
Cara March 12, 2008 at 2:06 pm
I said legitimize, not legalize.”
What does that mean?
It better not be some sort of tautological gag.
“Who is exploiting whom? ”
Oh gawd. Somehow I just KNEW he’d make the men the victims.
Anyone have bingo yet?
Anony March 12, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Unbelivable to feminists, yes. Par for the course for misogynistic boys-with-privilege who are either a) arguing this academically because they can or b) eager to justify their use and/or abuse of women.”
Well let’s get back to basic than, has feminism succeeded in eradicating prostitution in the past 4 decades?
(I am not sure this form of inquiry is even productive, but what the hey. I am hungry and all I got is this lousy pre packaged miso soup and 20 minutes.)
Kathleen March 12, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Nevertheless, solving these problems via the instrumental use of other human beings is wrong. ”
That just opens so many cans of worm because one has to define what exactly is proper instrumental human action that confirms with ethic/moral/society. Inevitably it returns to things like religion, mores, etc. Hence current legal status of prostitution that is unhelpful.
The central idea of dispute is this: Is it human being or is it human body? One cannot have it both way. If A person has free will + human body and what he wants to do with his body has minimal effect to society, everybody should shut the fuck up and butt out.
If it is “human being” that is some core identity of a person, namely free will/personal freedom itself is being eradicated because of the transaction, then it should be banned.
Aside from the sex, how is that different than ordering a burger? Since when was concern for the feelings of the person serving a mandated feature of any other economic transaction?
No one is saying that people in an economic transaction need to be deeply invested in the other party’s emotional life. However, at a restaurant, it is rare that a customer is able to think that the server is not a fellow human being at all, that he could treat the server however he wished. That’s not what most customers are paying for at a restaurant.
And, in a restaurant, when a customer *is* dismissive of the server’s humanity, because there are some assholes who want to get off on having power over someone else in any situation, what generally happens is that he customer is verbally abusive for a short period, the server has to put up with it for that period and can then retreat and complain about the asshole customer.
That’s not a nice situation for the server to be in, and it wouldn’t be happening if the server didn’t need the paycheck that came along with putting up with it–but it’s very different from the customer explicitly paying to dismiss the server’s humanity and doing so while holding her down, breathing in her face, dripping sweat on her body, and putting his penis or fingers or tongue inside her.
Sex workers do lots of different kinds of work and have lots of different perspectives on what they do. Testimonies I’ve read from some sex workers focus on the fact that they like their jobs because they think the amounts of money they make are worth putting up with asshole customers who use their bodies. At the same time, though, they really want to emphasize that these customers are assholes, and that they don’t, in fact, have a right to own them, no matter what they’ve paid. They talk about taking long, scalding showers and scrubbing with rough materials to get the feel of the johns’ skin off their skin. That is a choice they get to make when they feel the money is worth it. But you’d be hard-pressed to find hamburger-servers who feel the need to take the same steps after interacting with their customers.
I’m not saying anything about what this should mean in terms of legalization or decriminalization. I am saying, though, that if you actually want to discuss prostitution in the real world, you need to acknowledge that IT IS DIFFERENT from buying a hamburger.
Kathleen’s theory seems to be that sex is sacred and vaginas are golden temples that are sullied if you rent it out for a party. How many degrees of separation are between that view and the views of fundies?
I would never compare prostitution to toilet scrubbing. The problem is not that prostitution is in and of itself bad, but that it can be dangerous and is held in low regard by society. Those problems can be corrected, and some sex workers have been trying to do that for decades.
No, oh malicious distorter, the point was where there are “relatively free actors” in a “non-coercive” situation there are no victims. “Exploitation” is a meaningless term in that situation, except in a Marxist sense. Thankfully Marxism is even more exhausted a philosophy than my handle’s.
Firstly
Saw them, not especially relevant. Firstly she’s hardly the only person in the thread who knows a working girl or several. Secondly there’s a huge mass of conflation involved there. Lots of people who visit prostitutes do have kinky shit they want to work out. Some girls say they’ll do it but they’ll charge you through the nose for it. Some girls say no. It’s not like you can’t make a good living as a whore saying no to things you don’t want to do. As with everything, power imbalances in transactions can be problematic, but again I’d love to see how that gets fixed by keeping it illegal and stigmatized.
I had to reread that because the first time I took the other meaning of beating off…
And no, you’re right, they’re not. But then older men with sags and scars aren’t beating off 21-year-old women with perky D cups either. Let’s compare apples to apples, shall we? If we take men and women of equal attractiveness and low to medium levels of disposable income, by and large the woman will find it easier to get a partner for a casual sexual relationship, leaving aside for a second whether they’re likely to get a boyfriend or anyone worth sleeping with out of the transaction. You’re more likely to find a young lad drunkenly stumbling home with a middle aged woman than you are to find a young girl doing the same thing with a balding accountant called Derek, at least if her friends have any sense. As you move into the upper echelons of wealth and kink it gets into a whole other ball park, for both genders (as much for class and age reasons as anything else), but if you’re coasting on or near the median a whole bunch of different factors - that don’t have much to do with whether men or women inherently like sex more but do have lots to do with how they go about getting sex - means that the ratio of women to men looking for casual sexual relationships in a way that would support an industry of hookers is tilted towards men.
I’m not saying that prostitution is the last bastion of female quality or anything like that, but there are reasons for the lack of male hookers beyond “it’s no job for a man, grr.” There’s less demand for particular kinds of stringless sex. If you want to call that “evo psych bullshit” then be my guest, but it doesn’t make it less true. There’s always some male out there looking for it, whether or not he’s someone you want to have sex with is another matter. Also, women are naturally more cautious because of the higher perceived and real risks of being alone with a strange man. Add to this structural differences, by which I mean that the demand there is isn’t as organised. Female clients and male hookers haven’t got the same kind of networks to find each other as the five thousand year old network for the other kind. All these things combine to mean that there is a massive overabundance of supply compared to a much decreased demand. Every adult board in the world has a bunch of guys hanging around going “I’ll sleep with you if you pay me! $100 a night! Too much? $50 a night!” Like I said, I’d do it and I looked into it, but the going rates ended up looking well below what I’d be willing to do it for, lower than half what I’d get if I were a woman. There’s always someone undercutting you, it just ends up being too much work and, after you’ve tried doing men and realised you’re not gay enough (and even then you’d be earning half what a woman earns), you give up.
*shrug*, maybe, I’d say probably more like half. And even then if we take away the men who can get laid only because they’re rich, which is basically prostitution without the tax returns, and the numbers drop even more. Sure, there are guys who want to buy women to demonstrate how rich and powerful they are. Men in certain circles show their peacock tails by being sleazy assholes. That’s not a problem inherently to do with prostitution, you might as well make it illegal to be a trophy wife or a mistress. There are also guys who go to prostitutes because their wives don’t want sex any more and they consider it a safer way of cheating than going to a bar. There are also guys with disabilities who truly can’t get it anywhere else. There are guys who can’t talk to women normally and so spend all the money they save from their day job being a network administrator to fly to England to be with one particular girl they met on the internet and pay her $4,000 for two days of fairly conventional sex - or, at least, one guy like that that I know of. You’ve got guys who visit dominatrixes who don’t even take their clothes off because they want someone to step on their scrotums in high heeled shoes. You’ve got guys who pay women to indulge their fetishes because they can’t work out how to raise the issue of wanting to dress up in their girlfriend’s underwear or masturbate on her toes. None of these have to do with feeling like you own someone.
(Incidentally, you can also get “feeling like you own someone” for free, if you find the right BDSM relationship)
There’s a huge and wide and varied world out there, and while it may be nice and neat and prejudice confirming to believe that all men who visit prostitutes are cut from exactly the same cloth that just ain’t true. Of course not all of them are charity cases. That doesn’t mean those don’t exist.
Either way, it’s not an argument for or against illegality, and I don’t hold for a second that these men’s existence is the reason I think prostitution should be legal. It’s a discussion about the climate in which actual prostitution takes place. Given that strict vice laws don’t apparently stop these nasty awful men from having their wicked way, it does seem like a red herring, but one that applies to both sides.
Dude. Take me and mine out of the box. I’m don’t defend every kind of prostitution, and you can believe me or not when I say that I know hookers personally but, well, I do. But the excesses I’m against are at the bottom end, and they are not helped by criminalisation or, frankly, much by “outreach” programs by well meaning people. They are caused, or at least exacerbated, by illegality and the ostracisation from society that that brings, and so everything short of that doesn’t help anywhere near as much as you’d think. If you have a woman in the country illegally with a drug habit who does a little bit of hooking to get some cash and gets beat up, you’ve got a triple crown of “the police won’t listen to you.”
I also know that escorts don’t like being conflated with streetwalkers, sometimes because of their own prejudices towards them, but mostly just because, y’know, it’s innaccurate. It genuinely is an entirely different economy with a different set of rules. The fact that they’re both “selling sex” is almost immaterial: people digging holes in Iraqi roads to put IEDs in and the US soldiers over there are both ostensibly “killing people” but there’s no way you could compare the circumstances that brought either of them to that point in their lives, nor the structures in which they work while they are there. Similarly, really, with the mad world of $10,000 a night “society” girls of the like Spitzer was using. Most hookers either work in parlours, where it’s pretty much just a moderately paid day job, or as freelancers, where they have an income scale probably comparable with being a freelance writer. Some of them like it, some of them don’t. Frankly, it would be better for everyone if the ones who didn’t like it just stopped doing it, but it’s hard to get out of any freelance gig, let alone one with such an inherent stigma attached to it.
Which is what it comes down to, really. When there’s no longer a stigma attached to the word “whore,” well, then we’ll be about halfway to having made a society that can sit down and talk about this rationally. As it is, as long as people get their panties all in a wad about how dirty and nasty and icky it must be then it ain’t going to go anywhere, because the inherent confirmation bias is going to stop you listening to people saying “actually, it’s not all nasty and dirty, some of the punters can be quite sweet in a dorky way” and make you listen only to the ones who say “I loves me some $3000 whoring because it’s so nasty!”
And she’s not the only one, so please, don’t ignore that. I have other people’s privacy to consider so I’m trying to be a bit reticent about my connection with the sex industry, but I also feel like I shouldn’t have to come out and keep saying it, that I’m being assumed to be arguing for something I’m not based on some very, very flawed assumptions. I do know what the fuck I am talking about, and not from TV or some article that I’ve read in a magazine. Most magazine articles you read on the subject are bullshit anyway. Hell, I’ve been paid for sex, which puts me in, I am damn certain, a hefty minority in this thread. I’m not claiming to have intimate knowledge of what it’s like to be a full time female whore, but I bet you a $200 blow job I’ve got a damn sight more insight than some people here.
I appreciate that this is an issue on which reasonable people can disagree. I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume that everyone on the other side is just doing so because they’re a misogynistic dumbass who doesn’t know any better.
Cara:
I said legitimize, not legalize.
Fair enough. However, *both* things act to make prostitution more dangerous than it needs to be. I don’t know if it’s realistically possible for sex workers to be treated with basic human respect as long as sex work isn’t respectable.
I hadn’t realized that unionization of sex workers has actually occurred, in New Zealand. Perhaps I don’t need superpowers to see my dream come true.
Kathleen, do you consider the New Zealand model one worth copying?
Regarding this commentt, I found this article today:
Hm. That’s a much more even split than I’d have expected.
Just to add to what TR says, it’s also noteworthy that people do not go to restaurants for the experience of treating the waitstaff like shit as a rule. Most people go for the food. With prostitution, you have the opposite issue—most men go for the ability to treat a woman like shit and not have to answer for himself, few just for the orgasm.
But all that said, I fully expect this thread to be one of those “but JOHNS ARE GREAT” people just take over. The willingness to hang in and yell and refuse to listen until all people have quit you—and then to declare victory—is the sort of bullying mentality you’d expect from people entranced by an industry that caters to bullies.
You, however, have said quite plainly that you are really not all that interested in what prostitutes have to say about their work or their experiences.
I have actually not said anything of the kind, if you’ll read closely, though that certainly hasn’t stopped the false accusations.
What I have said, and I’ll repeat, is that I’m very interested in what sex workers have to say, particularly in regards to information that is informative towards crafting policy. Some of the other things that they have to say, which are not relevant to that, I’m less interested in; sufficiently less interested not to fly to New York City on my own time and dime to hear about it.
The outrage towards that position is incomprehensible except as being manufactured.
And, aw jeez, all that messy compassion crap really gets in the way of teh buyin’ of teh poosay.
I don’t now, have not in the past, and will not, in all likelihood, in the future, purchase sex from prostitutes. And I would go so far as to say that this is by far the majority situation among people who promote the legalization and regulation of prostitution.
A little less on how there’s nothing wrong in any sense with prostitution
I don’t know how there could be any less than none; I’ve certainly never promoted the view that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with prostitution at all. We can comb through my posts today if you want. As I’m being relentlessly misrepresented you might like to do that.
Most people go for the food.
To apply your own reasoning, Amanda, we would be forced to conclude that people don’t go to restaurants for the food - they do, after all, have food in their own homes, generally much cheaper than they could get at any restaurant - and therefore that they do go to restaurants to treat the servers like shit.
Since I know that it’s possible to both have food in your home and want to go have someone else’s food in a restaurant, I’m forced to conclude that your reasoning is specious in regards to prostitution, as well.
Amanda Marcotte March 12, 2008 at 4:33 pm
But all that said, I fully expect this thread to be one of those “but JOHNS ARE GREAT” people just take over. ”
regardless if johns are great or not great, it still doesn’t change the fact the legal status of prostitution don’t help them at all. Most argument on decriminalization hinges on creating better working environment for the prostitute.
Obviously making it illegal hasn’t changed anything so far, arguably harmful.
If the idea is to regulate the johns, then it still requires legalization of prostitution. (otherwise, how can somebody regulate something that doesn’t exist?) So yeah, even Swedish model will require legalization of some sort. (definitely decriminalization.)
Can’t speak for actually turning tricks, but in stripping, I found that about half of the customers were okay (they weren’t good or bad, just wanting to see naked women and willing to pay without fussing about it), maybe a quarter were actually very pleasant and good customers, and another quarter were total fucking asshats. And by that I don’t mean ‘bad tippers’. I would expect that you get something similar in selling actual sex for money; some people are just there to get the sex and leave, some actually think of you as a person and try to be nice about it, and some are people you wouldn’t say “good morning” to if you didn’t have to.
Of course, I also had extremely protective burly bouncers within arm’s length at all times, which your average prostitute does not. That tended to limit exactly how badly the asshats could behave.
McDuff, one can acknowledge the difference in demand for paid sex without descending into “primitive man’s penis is ever-hungry” evopsych bullshit.
Chet, you have got a lot of nerve whining about being misrepresented when you have repeatedly claimed that those of us who disagreed with you fully support the criminalization of prostitution to the point of endangering the lives of the women involved. No one on this thread has said anything close; no one has expressed support for the persecution of prostitutes in any way. You might want to get clear on who is misrepresenting whom.
By the way, what is your answer to Anony’s question at #311? You would have us all believe that only your position truly represents the interests of prostitutes. You’ve dismissed the statements of people who have listened to/worked with prostitutes — what makes you such an authority on the subject that you can be so dismissive of various participants on this thread?
I would never presume to know or understand how a woman, or women as a whole think, yet somehow you know exactly what’s going through the mind’s of men who pay for sex.
Decriminalization is a start in keeping prostitutes from racking up criminal records and being further marginalized. It isn’t a magic ticket to being treated like people. And there’s a huge difference between “it’s legal” and “the workers are treated decently”. Every strip-bar owner wants their place to be legal. None of them want their workers to be protected by the same laws that apply to a Starbucks barrista. I doubt pimps feel much different.
Chet, you have got a lot of nerve whining about being misrepresented when you have repeatedly claimed that those of us who disagreed with you fully support the criminalization of prostitution to the point of endangering the lives of the women involved.
I’m sorry but if you defend the status quo that’s precisely what you fully support. If you oppose legalization and regulation, that’s precisely what you support.
I’m hardly responsible if people haven’t thought through the consequences of their positions.
By the way, what is your answer to Anony’s question at #311?
That it’s complete bullshit. I’m not the one claiming to decide what’s best for all women. Those are the opponents of legalized prostitution. My position is that individual women can be trusted to determine whether or not they should provide sexual services for money.
You’ve dismissed the statements of people who have listened to/worked with prostitutes
..in favor of the actual statements of prostitutes. Degrees of separation, and all that.
Chet: It is simply preposterous that you’re scrambling for arguments to “prove” that buying the opportunity to use a woman’s body for sex is the same as buying a hamburger that someone else has prepared and served to a customer. If you would simply listen to and think about what sex workers say about their work, even in places where sex work is legal, and compare it to what restaurant-workers say about their work, if you would simply reflect on how messed up views of sex and women’s roles are in the world and how that affects the practice of prostitution, it would be clear that there are significant differences between sex work and serving a hamburger.
You’ve said that you think what sex workers say about their experiences, if it falls into the category of “complaining” about johns, is irrelevant and uninteresting. However, it is partly those experiences that makes sex work different from working in a restaurant. You’re choosing to ignore those differences and then saying, “So, see? These things are the same! Why won’t you engage with all my arguments?”
Your arguments start from a flawed premise, and it’s offensive that you willfully persist with them.
Chet - “legalization” and “regulation” are two entirely different things.
Dude, what the FUCK?
Amanda, I think you rock, I read your blog for a reason and I think you’re very good at what you do, I’m not just coming at this to pick a fight. OK, are we clear on that? Can I still say that you can’t just characterise the people who disagree with you in this thread like that. It’s a blatant misrepresentation.
Disagree with us, but don’t strawman the argument.
It is simply preposterous that you’re scrambling for arguments to “prove” that buying the opportunity to use a woman’s body for sex is the same as buying a hamburger that someone else has prepared and served to a customer.
I don’t know in what sense I’m “scrambling for arguments” when that’s an analogy that I abandoned almost immediately. Paid surrogate motherhood is a much better example; so much better it proved to be so unassailable nobody even tried.
But prostitution is a transaction for services rendered. I don’t know how that can be seriously disputed. The only argument against it has been special pleading.
You’ve said that you think what sex workers say about their experiences, if it falls into the category of “complaining” about johns, is irrelevant and uninteresting.
No, I’ve said that I can tell the difference between genuine experiences of probative value for developing public policy, and the kind of grousing that people who work any job do, habitually. The first is useful information, worth considering, not ignoring the way Anony and others have been doing.
However, it is partly those experiences that makes sex work different from working in a restaurant.
Those experiences are what make it exactly like working in a restaurant. Maybe you never have, but I assure you, the complaints of wait staff about their customers are exactly the same.
Your arguments start from a flawed premise
That women, by and large, are to be trusted to know what’s best for their bodies and their well-being? I don’t think that’s a flawed premise.
Chet - “legalization” and “regulation” are two entirely different things.
I realize that. Wherever possible I’ve been trying to use both terms to describe my position. Legalization without regulation hardly solves anything; without legalization, there’s nothing to regulate. They go hand in hand, the way I see it. Or should.
I’m sorry, but I haven’t defended the status quo, nor have I expressed opposition to the legalization and regulation of prostitution. You have no fucking idea what I support, because I have not actually said anything on the issue of decriminalization anywhere on this thread. If you had actually been reading what people were posting here, you would realize that no one here supports the continued persecution and endangerment of prostitutes.
Several of us see an amount of objectification and dehumanization involved, and think that is a problem that needs to be addressed honestly in order to improve the situation. That is not support for the status quo, you mendacious twit. Stop pretending that it is.
“Actual statements of prostitutes”? Where have you quoted prostitutes? What is your source?
Amanda, you have been reasonable in this thread, but you have also been intransigent in your imagined belief in the motivations of most men who see prostitutes. I don’t think “johns are great” and I don’t expect I’ll ever be one myself. But I don’t see any evidence from you or anyone else that most men who do it at the higher price level are on a power trip and I do see some evidence that many or most do not. You haven’t bullied but it does seem that you have “refused to listen.” Perhaps you did listen and are not convinced.
the complaints of wait staff about their customers are exactly the same.
You prove with this statement that you have no idea what you’re talking about. Some of the complaints that prostitutes and wait staff have about customers may be similar, but sex workers have hugely, substantively different complaints as well. What customers do to sex workers is different. The attitude of the average person buying the opportunity to use a woman’s body for sex is different from the attitude of the average person buying the opportunity to have someone else prepare food and serve it. Sex workers’ complaints reflect these differences.
But prostitution is a transaction for services rendered. I don’t know how that can be seriously disputed. The only argument against it has been special pleading.
There are, in fact, special circumstances and power dynamics surrounding transactions like sex work, surrogate motherhood, and organ-selling. Pretending that these transactions take place in a society where those power dynamics aren’t deeply problematic is disingenuous, and such pretense will do nothing to help sex workers even if their work is legalized.
If it supports my position, it’s a genuine expression of probative value; if it weakens my position, it’s habitual grousing. Well played, sir!
Legalisation without regulation means that sex workers aren’t punished with criminal records and jail. Legalisation with regulation means that sex workers who don’t meet the regulations are right back to being illegal.
I would never presume to know or understand how a woman, or women as a whole think, yet somehow you know exactly what’s going through the mind’s of men who pay for sex.
You don’t have to be a mindreader. You just have to look at statistics and other evidence about their behavior, and at the lives of the prostitutes they use, to get a good sense of their motives and intentions. Homicide and drug use are the biggest causes of mortality among prostitutes, and most of those homicides are killed while soliciting by their clients. (http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/159/8/778#BDY, for just one example) . Yes, that says something about johns and their motives. Would legalization combined with regulation help this? Maybe–I’d have to see some compelling evidence–but that doesn’t address the ethical questions of what the hell the johns are doing in the first place.
I’m sorry but if you defend the status quo that’s precisely what you fully support. If you oppose legalization and regulation, that’s precisely what you support.
Nobody here defends the status quo, which arrests prostitutes and occasionally johns and pimps. Everybody here wants to stop arresting prostitutes and to step up arrests of pimps; some want to keep on arresting johns as well. But neither group is defending the status quo.
Also, women are naturally more cautious because of the higher perceived and real risks of being alone with a strange man.
Which is the reason why professional escort services for women should be a booming business: it’s a way to find a hot guy who’s been thoroughly vetted and has a very strong incentive to please you rather than kill you, rape you, etc.
As it is, as long as people get their panties all in a wad about how dirty and nasty and icky it must be then it ain’t going to go anywhere, because the inherent confirmation bias is going to stop you listening to people saying “actually, it’s not all nasty and dirty, some of the punters can be quite sweet in a dorky way” and make you listen only to the ones who say “I loves me some $3000 whoring because it’s so nasty!”
No, the reason it’s not going anywhere is because of people who are so in love with their “Happy Hooker” nonsense that they won’t listen to the vast majority of prostitutes who are not in that racket by anything resembling choice and who desperately want to get out. Nobody here is getting their “panties in a wad” about anything. We’re pointing out facts about reality, and we’re not talking about how nasty and dirty things “must be,” we’re talking about how nasty and dirty they usually are. I’ve no doubt that some prostitutes think some of their johns are “quite sweet in a dorky way.” This in no way diminishes the effects of those that aren’t, or the job as a whole, and in no way means that they want to keep doing it.
And, again, talking about ostracism and illegality of prostitutes misses the point, because NO ONE HERE is advocating arresting prostitutes or shaming them. We all want the stigma to go away. The main subject of this thread is the ethics of buying sex.
There’s a huge and wide and varied world out there, and while it may be nice and neat and prejudice confirming to believe that all men who visit prostitutes are cut from exactly the same cloth that just ain’t true.
Who said they’re all cut from exactly the same cloth? Making a generalization about a group isn’t the same as claiming that every single member of the group fits the generalization. And pointing out commonalities doesn’t take away from differences in degree.
Besides, I think there’s a fair amount of overlap between the “charity cases” and the johns who want to own someone. Either way, you are having sex with someone who does not want to have sex with you; you are making their sexuality irrelevant, because their basic survival needs trump their need to assert their own sexuality. For some johns this is the main appeal. For others it’s not, but it’s still something they’re willing to live with.
if it weakens my position, it’s habitual grousing. Well played, sir!
Does it weaken my position? Nobody’s made that connection. I don’t see how complaining about johns weakens my position because I don’t see how its probative to the issue.
Several of us see an amount of objectification and dehumanization involved, and think that is a problem that needs to be addressed honestly in order to improve the situation.
And harping on red herrings is how you’re going to do that? Were you going to address my analogy and the argument it was making, or not?
Or are you just here to call names?
There are, in fact, special circumstances and power dynamics surrounding transactions like sex work, surrogate motherhood, and organ-selling.
Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly the special pleading I was talking about. “it’s just different!”
I’ll try to salvage my contribution to this thread, now that I’m not high and comically naive. Let’s bring in another perspective:
Here I think is the basic problem. In our economic paradigm, the selling of sex transforms the human into a vending machine, as well as the commodity dispensed. This is where prostitution turns out as ethically dubious. That’s a separate question from how the law should approach the issue, of course. Sometimes it is not practically possible to use law to reach an ethical outcome, and sometimes it is.
But I don’t know if the above critique can be separated from capitalism. That is, I don’t think it’s available to those of you who want to defend capitalism in general, because to do so is to allow the practice of transforming humans into machines, and that undercuts the whole critique.
Chet
March 12, 2008 at 7:54 pm
The only one dealing in red herrings is you, Chet. As Serafina points out, the main subject of this thread has been the ethics of buying sex, which has been addressed from several different angles, but you have been steadfast in avoiding. The flaws in your analogies and arguments have already been pointed out to you by others, to which your responses have been variations of “Nuh uh! I am too right! So there!”. Why should I waste my time explaining these to you yet again? You argue in bad faith, and have proven nothing but your own ignorance on issues connected to prostitution. You dismiss the statements of the prostitutes themselves as irrelevant complaining, while claiming that you trust them to know what is best for themselves; do you only trust prostitutes as long as they talk about experiences you define as relevant? What makes you more qualified to define what is relevant than the prostitutes themselves?
Well, yes. Or at least unlicensed. And this might be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how the regulations were written, but would in all but the silliest of cases (which, admittedly, are likely to get written into any conceivable law) be a step up from every prostitute being de facto illegal.
But given that you can, on the internet, pretty much order in for free, it reduces the incentives for such a service to form itself. Your clientele consists of older women who can’t get it for free at a bar and who don’t trust the people on Craigslist or AFF or OKCupid giving it away for free, but who would trust a “male escort service” enough to part with money. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but they’re not numerous enough to make a “booming” industry. It’s not as if female “escort” services do a whole lot of vetting. And anyway, since it’s illegal, how much vetting can you do?
I’m inclined to think that it’s a market niche that has room to grow as attitudes towards sex and prostitution get more liberalised and as female sexual and financial independence gets more normalised, but it’s not something I’d give up my day job for at the moment.
Then you’re fundamentally missing the entire point of what I’m writing. Nothing would make me happier than for every hooker who wasn’t happy, or at least content, to go do something else.
But you’re not going to achieve that by talking about it as if the “happy hookers” are some perverse exception we should belittle and shun rather than the fucking target.
Oh, OK. And you want a straight up or down, yes or no answer? Well that’s not going to happen. Sometimes it’s ethical to buy sex, sometimes it isn’t. So what we need to ask is how to arrange society in such a manner that as and when sexual transactions occur that the ethical ones are favoured over the unethical ones.
If you’re coming from the point of view that there is no ethical way to purchase sex, then we disagree at the root of the discussion and can’t really go any further.
I think there’s a big difference between acknowledging that prostitutes can be victims and asserting that prostitutes are victims simply by the nature of what you do. And I think the biggest difference is that while you’ll get most sex workers to agree with you on the first case, pretty much everyone I know in the industry would not agree with you on the second. So you can either dismiss that point of view and belittle it with the “happy hooker” put down, or you can assume there’s merit to it, even though it might be out of your experience. agree with you on the second
Grammar RWA:
Given that it is a direct criticism of capitalism, I would imagine that it cannot.
If your criticism applies to prostitutes, it also applies to musicians, bakers, ironmongers, software engineers and photographers. I would argue that it doesn’t apply to any of those classes of people, and that it therefore does not apply to prostitutes either.
The intrigue continues. This could be an international spy ring instead.
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/007142.html
Apparently, Spitz is not the only one caught up in “Operation Honeypot.” There’s also the Duke of Westminister who reportedly used the services of the Emporers Club VIP. But he was smart enough to pay cash! If you think about it, such an outfit might be useful for some other purpose or another, given its seemingly exclusive target clientele of the high powered in western financial and political capitals able to pay as much as $5,000 an hour. I’m still curious about its founder, Mark Brener, found with an Israeli passport, $600,000 and 19,000 Euros in cash in his New Jersey apartment when the ring was taken down last Friday. Update: Apparently Brener found with three passports, two Israeli.
More from the Post on how the FBI had been trying to sting Spitzer in the act for a while. A bit disturbing, no, when they realized the politically exposed person was not paying blackmail?
It’s a direct criticism of coercive employment.
Given that there are many women and men working as prostitutes who do not wish to be in that line of work, but who do it anyway because they need the wages, it’s clear that there’s coercion at play.
She left a broken home on the Jersey Shore at 17 and came to New York City to work the nightclubs as a rhythm and blues singer. Now, at 22, she is the unwitting, and as yet unseen, star of the seamy drama that is the downfall of Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York.
Kristen, the prostitute described in a federal affidavit as having had a rendezvous with Mr. Spitzer on Feb. 13 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, has spent the last few days in her ninth-floor apartment in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. On Monday, she made a brief appearance in federal court, where a lawyer was appointed to represent her. She is expected to be a witness in the case against four people charged with operating a prostitution ring called the Emperor’s Club V.I.P.
In a series of telephone interviews on Tuesday night, she said she had slept very little over the past week, with all the stress of the case.
“I just don’t want to be thought of as a monster,” the woman said as she told the tiniest tidbits of her story.
Born Ashley Youmans but now known as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, she spoke softly and with good humor as she added with significant understatement: “This has been a very difficult time. It is complicated.”
She has not been charged. The lawyer appointed to represent her, Don D. Buchwald, told a magistrate judge in court on Monday that she had been subpoenaed to testify in a grand jury investigation. Asked to swear that she had accurately filled out and signed a financial affidavit, she responded affirmatively.
A person with knowledge of the Emperor’s Club operation confirmed that the woman interviewed by The New York Times was the woman identified as Kristen in the affidavit. Mr. Buchwald confirmed various details of Ms. Dupré’s background but would not discuss the contents of the affidavit.
Ms. Dupré said by telephone Tuesday night that she was worried about how she would pay her rent since the man she was living with “walked out on me” after she discovered he had fathered two children. She said she was considering working at a friend’s restaurant or, once her apartment lease expires, moving back with her family in New Jersey “to relax.”
She did not say when she had started working for the Emperor’s Club, or how often she had liaisons arranged through the ring. Asked when she met Governor Spitzer and how many times they had seen each other, Ms. Dupré said she had no comment.
As of Wednesday morning, Ms. Dupré’s MySpace page recounted her “odyssey to New York from New Jersey through North Carolina, Miami, D.C., Virginia and Austin, Texas;” public records show that she lived in Monmouth County, N.J., in 2001, and in North Carolina in 2003. She owns a company, created in 2005, called Pasche New York, which her lawyer said was an entertainment business designed to further her singing career.
Music is her first love, and on the MySpace page, Ms. Dupré mentions Patsy Cline, Frank Sinatra, Christina Aguilera and Lauryn Hill among a long list of influences, including her brother, Kyle. (She also lists Whitney Houston, Madonna, Mary J. Blige and Amy Winehouse as her top MySpace friends.) In the interview, she said she saw the Rolling Stones perform at Radio City Music Hall on their last tour after a friend gave her two tickets. “They were amazing,” she said.
On MySpace, her page says: “I am all about my music and my music is all about me. It flows from what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen and how I feel.”
She left “a broken family” at age 17, having been abused, according to the MySpace page, and has used drugs and “been broke and homeless.”
“Learned what it was like to have everything and lose it, again and again,” she writes. “Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone.
“But I made it,” she continues. “I’m still here and I love who I am. If I never went through the hard times, I would not be able to appreciate the good ones. Cliché, yes, but I know it’s true.”
Ms. Dupré’s mother, Carolyn Capalbo, 46, said that after her daughter finished sophomore year in high school, Ms. Dupré moved to North Carolina. “She was a young kid with typical teenage rebellion issues, but we are extremely close now,” Ms. Capalbo said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
In 2006, Ms. Dupré changed her legal name, according to records in Monmouth County Superior Court, from Ashley R. Youmans to Ashley Rae Maika DiPietro, taking her stepfather’s surname since she regarded him as “the only father I have known.” But in the interview, she referred to herself as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, which is how she is known on MySpace.
On the Web page is a recording of what she describes as her latest track, “What We Want,” a hip-hop-inflected rhythm-and-blues tune that asks, “Can you handle me, boy?” and uses some dated slang, calling someone her “boo.”
“I know what you want, you got what I want,” she sings in the chorus. “I know what you need. Can you handle me?”
Her MySpace biography says she started singing professionally after a musician she was living with heard her singing the Aretha Franklin hit “Respect” in the shower and burst into the bathroom with his lead guitarist. She says she toured and recorded with them, then moved to Manhattan in 2004 and “spent the first two years getting to know the music scene, networking in clubs and connecting with the industry.
“Now it’s all about my music, it’s all about expressing me.”
In the affidavit, the woman the Emperor’s Club called Kristen is described as “an American, petite, very pretty brunette, 5 feet 5 inches, and 105 pounds.” She apparently was booked at about $1,000 an hour, placing her in the middle of the seven-diamond scale by which the prostitutes were paid up to $4,300 an hour.
Ms. Capalbo said that she was “shell-shocked” when her daughter called in the middle of last week and told her she had been working as an escort and was now in trouble with the law. She said she was not sure that Ms. Dupré realized who Mr. Spitzer was when he was her client.
“She is a very bright girl who can handle someone like the governor,” Ms. Capalbo said. “But she also is a 22-year-old, not a 32-year-old or a 42-year-old, and she obviously got involved in something much larger than her.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/nyregion/12cnd-kristen.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
her myspace
http://www.myspace.com/ninavenetta
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/12/nyregion/girl_190.3.jpg
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/12/nyregion/girl_190_2.jpg
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/12/nyregion/girl_190_1.jpg
I suppose that dismissing any negative comments prostitutes have about their customers as ‘complaining’ or the sort of routine grousing any service worker does is a good way to shut down any argument that selling sex is different than selling lattes.
I myself have been under the “legal and regulated” regime you favor, Chet. Legal is certainly an improvement over illegal, but again, regulation simply introduces a division: some is legal, some isn’t.
Oh, and regulation also has the nice effect of making sex workers’ status public.
Folks, we’ve made it this far. I say we go for 400 comments.
So, I swore I wasn’t going to come back, but the last stretch of the marathon is the most difficult, and I thought I’d led my assistance (though of course, Chet still will get MVP, to mix my metaphor), but I think mythago’s last point there is important. There is a long history of legalized, regulated prostitution being a mixed bag for sex workers, and at the center of that mixed bag is requirements that prostitutes register or obtain licenses. A lot of women don’t want to register because they don’t want it to be public knowledge (at their kids’ school, their church, whatever) what they do for a living. Registration also creates an inconvenient record if a woman wants to move on with her life. But if you want to skip registration or licenses, it gets hard to enforce any of the health stuff that people usually want to include in regulated, legal prostitution. Maybe you could license the brothels but not the workers, but then any woman who doesn’t want to work in a brothel is back to being illegal.
So there are some practical issues that cause a lot of folks to be very uncertain about legalized, regulated prostitution, even if they are okay with decriminalization.
Separate comment, just to boost our numbers.
If selling sex is legal, but buying it remains illegal, think about how that changes the power dynamic. It’s not like johns go away. Buying sex is illegal now, and there is no shortage of johns now. But johns are prosecuted a lot less frequently than women, and they no that, so they don’t fear consequences of mistreating a woman. But if the johns are the ones with everything to lose, maybe they’ll have an extra incentive to be polite and respectful.
I understand it doesn’t make a lot of sense for it to be illegal to buy something that’s not illegal to sell, but given that any legal prostitution will coexist with profoundly unequal power dynamics, misogyny and male privilege of our messed up society, maybe that’s one way to level the playing field a little.
okie, well here is a useful filler.
In case you plan to do public confession, jsut remember pandagon is hosted at blogsome.com. It’s in Ireland. So that damned chimpie and his crew is spying/scanning the entire thing (including your home address, if you use home connection)
so, before you confess anything/do anything stupid online:
operator (this should be the easiest way)
http://archetwist.com/opera/operator
must read:
http://www.torproject.org/
further reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)
http://informationprivacy.org/en/anonymous_web_surfing/tor/weaknesses_of_tor
k. be good. you are now can do a lot of damage, combined with few other simple software. Use it for good.
Maybe you could license the brothels but not the workers, but then any woman who doesn’t want to work in a brothel is back to being illegal.
It’s already the case for any number of professions that some sort of licensing, from medical professionals to lawyers to geologists to engineers to actors and musicians.
Hell, we even have a name for those people when they don’t want to belong to the local organization: “scabs”.
I don’t see an issue with prostitutes facign the same kind of thing.
Registration is not going to work, with the country leaning rightwing, it’s only a matter of time before some wingnut legislator coming after those data and start doing funny things. It’s soft criminalization.
Actually, that’s the way it is now. In Canada (and other jurisdictions) sex for cash (or other form of compensation) isn’t illegal. What’s illegal is soliciting sex for cash. If I pick a girl up in a bar and we both have a good time, and as a result I give her a gift, well, that’s fine. If she asks for the gift in exchange for sex, or I make the offer of gift for sex, now that is illegal.
Note that it works both ways: it doesn’t matter if it’s the john or the hooker, whoever makes the sex-for-cash offer is the one breaking the law which is why prostitution stings using undercover cops work; the cop can be a hooker waiting for a john to make an offer (and then busting him), or can play the john waiting for the hooker to make the offer, and busting her (or him, in some locations).
Scabs are folks who don’t join the union. People who work without licenses may face civil or criminal penalties, depending on what they do. And professional licenses are matters of public record just about everywhere.
Let’s say I wait tables at a diner, and sometimes, at the end of the month, I turn a few tricks if I just don’t have enough to cover the bills (let’s say one of the kids got sick and needed medicine, leaving me short for the car payment). This is not an uncommon situation - the occasional prostitute. But now I have to register. Now anyone who goes to whatever local or state office that keeps these records can find out that I’m a prostitute. I don’t want my kids’ teacher to know I turn tricks. I don’t want my boss to know I turn tricks. What if someone who knows places an anonymous call to Child Protective Services. Will they take my kids? So I continue to work without a license. And if I get caught, I’m just as busted as if prostitution was never legalized.
The social stigma doesn’t go away the instant it becomes legal. And decriminalization may provide better discretion for the sex worker while reducing some of the negative effects of it being illegal.
Keith, I think that’s basically how it works in the U.S. also. The charge is almost always solicitation for prostitution (or occasionally lewd behavior). That’s not really what I’m talking about, however. I’m positing an imaginary situation in which it didn’t work both ways and asking people whether they think it would change the power dynamic in the prostitute’s favor in any way.
There are many women and men working as cleaners who do not wish to be in that line of work, so there’s probably coercion at play there too. Are we going to make cleaning illegal?
The criticism in your post isn’t of prostitution, or even of “coerced employment,” it’s of taking money for goods and services. As an argument that people shouldn’t do crappy jobs they hate to pay the bills it may be screwy but at least it’s internally consistent. As an argument that people can work in an office photocopying their lives away for 50 hours a week but can’t be a hooker, it lacks a certain something, don’t you think?
This is a good point, and one of the things that needs to be addressed when examining the legalisation. But there are enough benefits that most think some form of licensing scheme would be tolerable, as long as it didn’t extend into some kind of authoritarian registration and monitoring scheme (a fine, fine line).
But then, those of us who favour legalisation also favour helping women trapped in it get out of it. If you’re hooking because you’re out of cash and you’re desperate then, meh, I really don’t want to be judgemental but it may not be the job for you. I understand that a lot of people do it on a casual basis to get some extra cash, and they don’t want their boss in their day job knowing because the stigma attached to it isn’t going to go away just because it’s legal (because it’s sex, and sex is dirty, especially if women do it), but I’m sure that there are ways to manage the privacy concerns for women who choose to work that way.
Nothing is going to be fixed by just magically waving a wand over one bit of society. If you make prostitution legal without addressing the problems of drugs, immigration and poverty then you’re only putting a band aid on a more endemic social ill, of which your friendly neighbourhood streetwalker is just a symptom. Part of cleaning up prostitution has to be washing the stink of desperation away from it and changing it from an occupation of last resort by ensuring that there are always viable alternatives to it. Legalisation is what you do to recognise that it’s a valid choice, but ensuring it’s not the only choice can only be fixed in the bits of the law that have precious little to do with it, except for their tendency to drive people into poverty.
That’s how they do it in Sweden. Lots of people rave about the numbers, arrests and whatnot, but most actual sex workers are sceptical that it’s had the effect that is claimed, since it doesn’t lead to a customer base that likes daylight being shone on the proceedings. It is though, as they say, better than many of the alternatives.
I’m with chingona–both the drive to 400 comments and the content. Upthread I endorsed the Swedish solution: buying should be a violation like driving too fast on a public road; selling should be legal.
I didn’t mention regulation + licensing, a bad idea. The purposes of licensing is to protect a vulnerable clientele. Patients need doctors; people with hair need barbers and hairdressers; homeowners need a plumber. Johns need no protection. They should worry about STDs, but we have a cheap solution they can carry in their wallet.
Actually, Keith, for most of the professions you list, we have a name for people who aren’t licensed: “criminals.” Try practicing law without a license and you get a little more than being called nasty names. Licensing means that unlicensed people who engage in that profession are breaking the law, and face punishment from fines to imprisonment.
In other words, regulation doesn’t really decriminalize prostitution at all. It just creates a class of “legal” prostitutes and subjects all the others to the same, old, bad problems.
(Scabs, by the way, are not just people who don’t belong to a union; they’re employees brought into to fill the jobs of striking workers.)
I’m kind of alarmed how many people are still on this thread this late at night. Chet seems to have gone to bed. It would be sad for him if we reached 400 without him, not here to finish what he started. But really, we couldn’t have done it without him.
I don’t disagree.
I suppose I’m really skipping a step. I see licensed (and probably unionized, thus scabs) prostitution as viable where there minimal to no social stigma to being a prostitute. Decriminalizing is obviously a preceding stage. Whether the stigma ever goes, enh, who knows. But it should be pointed out that, historically, a great many professions have at one time or another been considered distasteful and that polite society looked down on while taking advantage of what they did. Actors, as one example. Hell, “moneylenders” (back in European history when that was basically a synonym for “Jew”) is a perfect example. Everyone railed about how evil that sort of thing was…and countries couldn’t function without it.
These days, working at a bank or other financial institution is just another job.
Mythago @ 336: Maybe. But I think strip clubs occupy this place in society where non-asshat men go a lot to just get a toe in the feeling of being the big man who lords over the naked ladies, without having to go full immersion. But they wouldn’t go to prostitutes. If you went through a strip club audience and asked them if they visited prostitutes, I’d imagine that the majority of the yeses would come from the asshat sector.
“As an argument that people can work in an office photocopying their lives away for 50 hours a week but can’t be a hooker, it lacks a certain something, don’t you think?”
The required misogyny to equate having a crappy job with being forced into prostitution?
“I’m sorry but if you defend the status quo that’s precisely what you fully support. If you oppose legalization and regulation, that’s precisely what you support”
Still lying, I see. I suppose that’s what misogynists do when they don’t actually care about the women involved, have already stated they don’t care to hear what they have to say about and can argue this from a comfy position of privilege.
“I’m hardly responsible if people haven’t thought through the consequences of their positions.”
But you are responsible for continually misrepresenting them.
“By the way, what is your answer to Anony’s question at #311?
That it’s complete bullshit. I’m not the one claiming to decide what’s best for all women. Those are the opponents of legalized prostitution. My position is that individual women can be trusted to determine whether or not they should provide sexual services for money.”
I have stated that I support what the sex workers themselves have said they believe will be best for them. You’re a pathetic liar to pretend I’m claiming to know what’s best for them. Your “position” is complete bullshit, since you stated you don’t care what they have to say about their jobs and have continually lied about the positions of everyone else.
You have no experience in this area. You have no idea what you’re talking about. But you still think you know best. You’re a liar and a fraud.
@362
What about requiring the johns to provide current and accurate health information? Say, say that johns must have had STD testing X many weeks ago or X many partners ago and are required to share this information with any prostitutes they see. Increase the penalty for faking this information, and provide free sexual health care for any woman willing to register as a prostitute. Or just start providing free sexual health care period.
There would still be problems with STDs spreading, people who lie, and prostitutes who choose to risk picking up an STD, but I think that making johns aware of the STDs they carry will have a greater-reaching effect, since there are probably more johns than prostitutes. Plus this places the onus for taking care of their sexual health on the person whose health it is while emphasizing the need to be honest about one’s sexual history with one’s partners.
napthia9 March 13, 2008 at 12:41 pm
What about requiring the johns to provide current and accurate health information? Say, say that johns must have had STD testing X many weeks ago or X many partners ago and are required to share this information with any prostitutes they see. Increase the penalty for faking this information, and provide free sexual health care for any woman willing to register as a prostitute. Or just start providing free sexual health care period. ”
That’s just criminalization by other method. (ie. people will just go do it without the report and risk breaking law.) Who is going to “register” seriously. Only insane person will think that sort of scheme will ever work.
The required misogyny to equate having a crappy job with being forced into prostitution?
Nobody is talking about being forced into prostitution. The word for that is “slavery”.
You make McDuff’s argument look more and more reasonable each and every time you show yourself unable to represent it fairly.
I didn’t mean forced as in human trafficking forced. I meant forced due to economic issues - no job, needing money, etc.
But, I suppose for a well known rape-apologist, it’s easier to slam the woman while making excuses to side with the man. Instead of, you know, asking for clarification.
But given that you can, on the internet, pretty much order in for free, it reduces the incentives for such a service to form itself.
No, you can’t get it on the internet, because there are no safety checks. An escort service for women, with background-checked and vetted male escorts, ought to exist if sheer demand carried the day without the factors of shame and fear.
And of course female escorts aren’t vetted, because men don’t generally fear that women will rape them or kill them.
Then you’re fundamentally missing the entire point of what I’m writing. Nothing would make me happier than for every hooker who wasn’t happy, or at least content, to go do something else.
But you’re not going to achieve that by talking about it as if the “happy hookers” are some perverse exception we should belittle and shun rather than the fucking target.
Oh, please. Don’t put words in my mouth as an attempt to bolster your argument. “Happy Hooker” isn’t an insult, it’s the description of a lot of people’s default assumptions about prostitution. And yes, they are an exception. Not “perverse,” but exceptional.
And you want a straight up or down, yes or no answer? Well that’s not going to happen.
Sure it is. Because yes, I do think it’s seriously unethical to purchase sex in 99.999% of cases. Once you get rid of all factors that present major ethical problems, you’re left with a tiny handful of cases that should not dictate policy. There are very few actions that are unethical in every conceivable case. But that shouldn’t stop us from describing them as “unethical” in the general sense, because they most often are. Lying, to take a mild example.
I don’t think our policy should be to “favor” sexual transactions at all. I think our policy should be whatever minimizes violence against sex workers most effectively. I’m interested in Sweden and New Zealand as models for that.
Speaking of the Sweden policy:
most actual sex workers are sceptical that it’s had the effect that is claimed, since it doesn’t lead to a customer base that likes daylight being shone on the proceedings.
Cite? It seems to me that all actual research that’s been done supports the Swedish solution.
Doctor Science, I think they’re not treated with basic human respect because it’s women doing it, for the most part. Women are the sex class, after all. Making it legal won’t make it respectable, at least not in the minds of those who get off on buying the use of a person’s body. I don’t mean they enjoy having sex, I mean they get off on the power-over thing.
The degradation’s in the mind of the johns buying sex, not in my mind.
Sure. And a notable element of the asshat sector has a serious problem with distinguishing one type of sex work from another–if you’re One Of Those Women you’ll clearly do anything for money, and they get very, very offended to find out that the pretty young lady who will take off her clothes for $20 won’t do anything more than that. (Which is not to dis on prostitutes by any means; I’m criticizing the sense of entitled misogyny, not selling sex.)
I don’t think it’s so much “dipping a toe in the water” (that sounds like it’s a gateway drug) as a way for certain asshats to reassure themselves that they’re still good guys. Hey, it’s not cheating because all they’re doing is looking, right? And it’s not like they’re one of those guys who’s so desperate that they have to buy sex.
I didn’t mean forced as in human trafficking forced. I meant forced due to economic issues - no job, needing money, etc.
Which, of course, describes anyone taking any crappy job. That’s why they’re crappy jobs - people only do them out of sheer economic need and lack of alternatives.
Your argument dissolves the moment you’re pressed to define your terms. Which is no doubt why ad hominem is your tactic of choice.
Which, of course, describes anyone taking any crappy job. That’s why they’re crappy jobs - people only do them out of sheer economic need and lack of alternatives.
Mea culpa - or a rational cost/benefit decision. I suspect the call-girl in question in the original story had plenty of other options, but at $1,000 an hour the money was just too good.
Don’t put words in my mouth, McDuff. I said prostitution is unethical under the current economic paradigm. I did not say that necessarily means it should be illegal. I really didn’t make my position on the law clear yet, so I will now: prostitution should be default legal unless keeping it illegal would somehow be more conducive to the safety and autonomy of prostitutes. (And I don’t have the data to answer that question.)
Bullshit, specifically bullshit that is starting to look like deliberate misrepresentation.
Some transactions are not coercive. Von Humboldt’s (and my) criticism is of systems that drive people to act against their own wills. When a person sells art because they just want to, that person is in a situation where they are allowed to fully express their humanity, their agency. When a person sells art because they will starve without the money, they are acting as an art-machine, a robot acting under coercion, without agency and thus without full humanity.
My argument is put forward to those here who want to defend capitalism while targeting prostitution as a special case. That’s not you, so I’m not sure why you’re replying, though you’re welcome to if you quit the misrepresentation. I don’t have time to deal with dishonesty, so either reply to what I actually said, or don’t reply.
Located and extracted an article about the reality of brothel prostitution in NZ.
The reason I take issue with what you say is not because I think your end point is necessarily in contradiction to my attitude to prostitution, but because how you get there seems to me to be based on monumentally flawed reasoning which does nobody any favours. You are seemingly under the belief that it’s possible to separate honest, pure transactions from the ones where people do something to eat. I think that’s a flawed and false dichotomy. I do my job because I love it, and because I need to eat. I could do a job I hate and eat better, and probably have two houses by now, and I’m lucky that I get to earn my subsistence plus some extras doing a job that gives me an immense sense of satisfaction - artistry, even - and also happens to keep me from starving to death.
I also believe that most people have a similar relationship with their work. Some do jobs they despise simply to exist, and there are certainly prostitutes in that cohort - I’d suggest that most of the streetwalkers turning $40 tricks on street corners are in that bracket. A majority of people, including some prostitutes, but also including “a majority of people”, do a job that they would either stop doing or modify significantly should they win the lottery, but which they nonetheless feel they are somewhat good at, and which they have picked from a field of other jobs which they would also leave in the event of a lottery win because they display some aptitude for it or enjoy it a bit better than the alternatives. Some, and these are a vanishing minority marked out in a majority of cases by being very, very rich, do what they do just because they get shits and giggles from it. Your argument states, quite clearly, that those who don’t fall exclusively into the latter category are somehow lacking in some aspect of their humanity.
I’m not opposed to your argument because it’s in opposition to me at the end, but because it’s so damn depressing. “It makes prostitutes into sex vending machines,” you say “but then, aren’t we all vending machines, living as we all are as slaves to the capitalist society?” Well, yeah, if you put it like that, who wouldn’t want to be a part of that glorious vision?
I just think you’re creating a huge false dichotomy, where one can either do something for the cash or for the fun and never the twain shall meet, and that’s at odds with people’s experience in their daily lives. I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, but I do think that you are mistaken on some basic premises.
Please, keep selectively quoting me, it’s just like crack for me. That’s why I’m still here.
I could set up a website right now that would say “male escorts: vetted to weed out the fucking psychos”. You’d have no more reason to believe the website than you would to believe a Craigslist post saying “I will sleep with you for free, PS I am not a fucking psycho.” To actually vet people and gain a reputation would take a not inconsiderable investment, and even if I put that investment in, I’m still facing the fact that my primary competition is giving it away for free, so it’s really hard to compete on price, and I’m advertising people who are “vetted” to be safe but, coincidentally, willing to circumvent the law and violate social norms. And you wonder why nobody can get venture capital for such an obviously profitable venture?
As I said, I happen to think that male prostitution is a long-term growth industry, but then I am an idealist who thinks that eventually women will end up achieving wage parity in jobs that aren’t sex related too, so what the fuck do I know about economics, eh?
Cool. Then we’re going to diverge on this issue. Let’s agree to disagree and go from there.
But, because there’s nothing I love better than flogging dead horses, here’s where I think you’re falling down.
“Happy hookers” are your natural allies on what is, frankly, the only issue worth talking about: how can we get hookers who aren’t happy off the streets, or for preference out of the industry altogether? Honestly, although I’m in favour of legalisation most of the hookers I know aren’t in much danger of arrest anyway. It’s stricter in the USA, of course, but over here most of the hookers I know don’t break the law in any meaningful sense, and all of them file tax returns that have bigger numbers on than mine. So legalisation is, honestly, not the biggest issue as regards solving the issue. I think it’s a component of the policy mix that would tackle the problem, but just saying “yup, prostitution is legal now” isn’t going to clear up the issue of trafficking, or drug abuse, or pimping. These are immigration policy, drug policy, economic policy issues.
Regardless of that, though, the hugest problem with prostitution qua prostitution isn’t anything policy-based at all, it’s the stigma. And the people you need on your side to counteract that stigma are your easily-dismissed minority of “happy hookers”. Nobody likes being told they’re a victim, even if they are. I’m sure a lot of streetwalkers would dismiss me for my attitudes, and for that reason I don’t honestly expect you to not keep dismissing me for my attitudes towards women who work freelance or in parlours. But even if women in prostitution are victimised, you’re not going to get them on your side if you approach them as victims of circumstance and isn’t it terrible and oh my god what a shame. Like it or not, even for the streetwalkers hooking can be, for them, the avenue that they have managed to eke some manner of control out of a shitty destiny. I think it’s terrible that women should end up in such dire straits, but I also know that painting them as victims is not the way to get them on your side. Given that “happy hookers” are (at least in the cases where they think about prostitution policy) just as keen as you are to see the end of streetwalking and abuse, I’m amazed that you’re so dismissive of them.
SANS - “Sexworkers and Allies Network in Sweden”
The ICRSE.
However, I am going to back off slightly from my previous hyperbolic statement about “most actual sex workers”. These organisations do not have “most” sex workers as members. However, “studies” also do not represent “most” sex workers. The unfortunate fact is that most sex workers are effectively invisible, not represented either by my favoured organisations or by your favoured government-cited studies. I make two arguments in my favour. One, “studies” are dependent on people willing to take part in them, and so studies on prostitution, like drug use, immigration, adultery, voting republican - anything that people feel embarrassed about - are notoriously unreliable. And, while SANS and ICRSE by no means represent the totality of sex workers, they are organisations that do have, as majorities of their membership, actual women selling actual sex for actual money. The overarching consensus among that type of organisation, which you may feel free to dismiss as “happy hookers” if that is your wont, is that the Swedish style law is not the amazing solution that the government claims it is.
Now, my opinion is that it is at least a step in the right direction, attitude-wise, but with the caveat that I’m a very results-based person. If the problem with prostitution is that women are abused, then whatever we pick should have this goal in mind: No abuse. Not less abuse, not less recorded abuse, not less streetwalking, not less prostitution. All of these are indications that we’re getting towards the goal - which is why I cannot be too critical of the Swedish strategy - but not proof. When the statistics drop, the first question we should ask is “where did those numbers go?” To assume that it supports our preferred explanation is to show a lack of rigour in pursuing the goal. The government in Sweden has an incentive to claim that it just went away. The only organisations representing sexworkers claim that it just went further underground. If we’re aiming for “no abuse” then I don’t want to take on a strategy that results in a false positive of lowered results but that has merely displaced the numbers outside the range of the studies.
On second thought I think I’ll just cop out. I’m not in the mood to be spreading depression.
To actually vet people and gain a reputation would take a not inconsiderable investment, and even if I put that investment in, I’m still facing the fact that my primary competition is giving it away for free, so it’s really hard to compete on price, and I’m advertising people who are “vetted” to be safe but, coincidentally, willing to circumvent the law and violate social norms. And you wonder why nobody can get venture capital for such an obviously profitable venture?
How is it any less profitable than, well, any other venture that requires some sort of reputation? And getting things for cheap or for free isn’t that tough, no matter what those things are–people are willing to pay extra for safety.
I think it’s terrible that women should end up in such dire straits, but I also know that painting them as victims is not the way to get them on your side.
No, you don’t know this. You think this. People don’t like the idea that they’re 100% out of control, no, but “victim” does not mean “100% out of control.” “Victim” means you’ve been wronged, plain and simple. Political movements through the ages have relied on pointing out that people have been wronged.
And, for the love of all that is sane, please stop implying that I’m using “happy hooker” as a pejorative or that I’m dismissive of them. I know they’re my allies–in so far as they want to help get the “unhappy hookers” off the streets. They are not my allies in so far as they minimize the suffering of the unhappy hookers in order to foster their own political agenda, however.
However, “studies” also do not represent “most” sex workers. The unfortunate fact is that most sex workers are effectively invisible, not represented either by my favoured organisations or by your favoured government-cited studies. I make two arguments in my favour. One, “studies” are dependent on people willing to take part in them, and so studies on prostitution, like drug use, immigration, adultery, voting republican - anything that people feel embarrassed about - are notoriously unreliable.
I really don’t buy this. There are ways in social science research of minimizing lying and maximizing accuracy. And to take your argument to its logical conclusion would mean that we can’t actually know anything about anything people are embarrassed about. This is demonstrably false: people have gathered reliable information on rape, domestic violence, child sexual abuse, and other topics that are notoriously under-reported and stigmatized.
And, frankly, sex work is far easier to find out about than immigration or adultery because sex workers, by the nature of their job, have to advertise and make themselves public at some point.
As for the pages you link to, they don’t have numbers, they don’t have research, and they don’t have facts. They do have links to some studies, none of which necessarily support their point. Basically they have are assertions, and if their assertions reflect their experience then that’s fine. But the only way of getting a handle on other people’s experiences are through those same studies that you’re so dismissive of.
If there really is a black box of sex workers who are completely invisible and unknowable, then that actually provides a strong argument for societal oversight and investigations: we have a group of people who are doing something we know can be dangerous and violent, and that is often outright slavery. We don’t know anything about whether they’ve consented or not. That means we owe it to them, and to ourselves as a society, to find out. Finding out means investigations. But I find the existence of this black box to be extremely implausible. It also would not account for why studies consistently show such high rates of violence, drug addiction controlled by pimps and other such abuses among prostitutes: why on earth would drug addicted prostitutes be more likely to talk to a researcher than non-drug addicted ones? Why on earth would prostitutes who get regularly beaten by pimps be more likely to talk to a researcher, given that it’s probably dangerous for her to do so?
Ack, long comment stuck in spam queue. But one more thing:
I just think you’re creating a huge false dichotomy, where one can either do something for the cash or for the fun and never the twain shall meet, and that’s at odds with people’s experience in their daily lives.
1) It’s not “for cash or for fun,” it’s for survival or for fun, and
2) It’s really not a false dichotomy when it comes to sex. Because, yes, sex is different from stacking books or frying burgers for most people. This is partly because of millenia of cultural construction and probably also part biological. And by “different” I don’t mean “shameful.” I mean “personal” in the sense that it would be emotionally scarring to have to cater to someone else’s sexual pleasure and desires, while placing a far lesser value on your own (which prostitutes have to do), for a living. We don’t feel this way about other jobs, for the most part: burger-fryers don’t feel scarred because they have to fry the burgers their employer’s way and not their own way or else get fired.
Some rare individuals who are deeply passionate about their professions maybe feel this way. Some artists and some lawyers would consider it a real violation to paint something that compromises their artistic principles or take a case that seems sordid for the case. And when they feel this way, the term they often use to describe that violation is “whoring” (a usage I don’t appreciate, but I think it’s worth thinking about why it’s common). I’ve heard some public interest lawyers, for instance, say they won’t “whore themselves out” to BigLaw for survival because they don’t want to subordinate their own personal sense of justice for cash. They use the term “whore” (and not some other stigmatized occupation) because they’re describing something they think is analogous to prostitution: the compromise of something important to their identity and integrity. A prostitute performs sexual acts to please the person who’s paying her, not for her own sake; a BigLaw lawyer takes cases in accordance with his employer’s judgments and not his own conscience. Sex is the standard, in most people’s minds, for an area of life where your actions should be dictated by your own desires and values and not by those of the person who’s paying you. I don’t think this is “stigma,” although I don’t deny that stigma exists (how could I?). I think it’s part of how we as a society draw the boundaries between the personal and the public. Money is in the public, commercial realm; sex is in the personal.
Does every single individual on the planet feel this way about sex? Probably not. Probably there are some people who can look at sex as being just like burger-frying. but the vast majority of people do, and the exceptions should not be the default subject of discussion. I am not, just in case someone decides to wildly misinterpret me, saying we should arrest prostitutes because we think they probably don’t want to be prostitutes. I’m saying that because of the way sex has been conceptualized culturally and affects us biologically (and affects women in terms of personal safety, but that’s another issue), we can’t think of prostitution as Just Another Job.
Oh, and just to clarify: I’m not arguing that stigma against prostitution is justified because we think of sex as so personal. I am arguing that most people would find it deeply violating and scarring to be prostitutes because of how we think of sex. That means our default assumption about the huge numbers of prostitutes in the world should not be that they look at the job as if it’s just another job and that they’re just fine with it. Rather, our default assumption should be that there are probably extreme circumstances that led them becoming prostitutes (an assumption supported strongly by all available data).
In a minority of cases that assumption will be wrong. Great! Good for those people. But again, minorities shouldn’t dictate how we look at things in general.
I can’t answer everything now, but just one point: assume that you’re talking to normal people. What’s the practical difference between “for cash” or “for survival.” Most people I know need money to survive. That’s how we get our food and shelter. Is there some economic principle I don’t know about that enables people to be fundamentally in control of their own destinies and completely avoid engaging in transactions for goods and services? And if not, what the fuck does the distinction have to do with anything? The comment was a generalised critique of the capitalist society that we all live in. IF IT WAS TRUE then it would be an indictment not just of prostitution but of everyone who earns a living doing a job. But it’s not, so it’s an indictment of neither.
My last comment seems to be permanently stuck in spam queue. So, in response to McDuff’s question about the difference between “for cash” and “for survival”: it’s the ability to say no to a particular client, and also the ability to walk away from the job in general.
A Greek hetaira–in high demand not just for sex but also for companionship, artistic abilities, conversational talents, social skills, etc.–would easily be able to decline a client who wanted her to do something she found deeply repugnant. If she said no to him, she wouldn’t be risking her future meals, clothes, shelter, etc. Not only does she have economic power, but she also is unlikely to be in a situation where it’s easy for him to use violence to force her to do what he wants. And if she wanted to leave off having sex for money entirely, she could do that as well. Her well-being would not be threatened.
A teenaged mother walking the streets or even in a brothel has no such options. Besides the issue of violence and pimp-controlled drug addiction, if she says no to a client–even if what he wants terrifies her–she might not physically survive. She could starve. Her baby could starve. She could be without shelter. Etc. And if she wanted to leave prostitution completely, she doesn’t really have that option either–she probably doesn’t have other skills or access to other livelihoods, especially not those that pay enough to pay the rent. Saying no to a client becomes a matter of survival for her in that situation.
If you think girls working in brothels can’t say no, then you’re talking about a minority of brothels, and you’re talking about sex slavery rather than prostitution. That you think the two are the same speaks volumes about why you can’t understand how people could choose to do something like this.
The capacity to say no is important as a prostitute, of course it is, and most can and do have that option, especially in brothels and massage parlours. You honestly think that a punter walking into a brothel gets to pick any girl of his choice and that she doesn’t get to say “nope, don’t like the look of you?”
Incidentally, if you have a glut of teenage, skilless mothers who will genuinely starve unless they sell their body, I would suggest that this is not, actually, a prostitution problem. In fact, even though prostitution in this case is a bad thing it would seem to me that it’s still better than starving to death, so taking away that option would kinda reduce the options from “prostitution or starving to death” to “starving to death.” So wouldn’t the solution to the problem seem to be, rather than fiddling around with peculiarities of whether or not to arrest the punters or the hookers or both, be to arrest her pimp for drug dealing and give her the financial wherewithal to choose to not stand on that street corner in the first place? I mean, I know it’s fucking radical and everything, but perhaps it really is the economy, stupid.
No, I know this. Because I talk to prostitutes who have reactions from “they’re wrong but their hearts are in the right place” to “what the fuck are these interfering busybodies talking about?” I mean, frankly, I don’t talk to all prostitutes all the time, and most of the ones I do talk to I’m often not discussing their work, just like we’re not always discussing my work. Amazingly, I went to an Alice Cooper concert with a couple of hookers last year and we didn’t talk about sex work at all. Imagine that! Imagine people doing that sort of thing and it not defining them utterly. And now imagine that this might have something to do with why they might not perceive themselves as victims.
And I’m sure everyone sees it that way and nobody would take umbrage with it based on that semantic disagreement and therefore start thinking you’re full of it. Sure, in some cases there are victims who accept that they’re victims right off the bat. But in a lot of cases the prostitutes who are victimised were victims before they were prostitutes, and for some the prostitution is how they salvaged control of already fucked up life. Don’t paint me as being in favour of these events, I’d far rather that they’d had alternatives available to them, but since they’re there now I’m really not seeing the advantage of wading in with your moralising “you’re a victim” wagon rather than with something that helps them make an alternative choice without adding a shitload of moral garbage. Because, frankly, “you’re a victim boo hoo” isn’t worth a hill of beans if they’re going to reply “yes, I know, but you should have seen how much worse it was before I did this, so unless you can give me an actual way to stop that doesn’t involve, y’know, just stopping, fuck off.”
1) You’ve been talking to happy hookers who’ve minimised the suffering? And 2) what agenda is that?
Amazingly, no, groups of hookers can often find it very hard to arrange scientific studies. They just have their own experiences. As hookers. It’s that last little bit that makes the difference.
You don’t think that targeting something in one part of society without addressing underlying root causes can just move the problem out of sight of those looking and measuring?
Studies about rates of violence within prostitution in general != studies done to see whether the Swedish model reduces the number of prostitutes in Sweden. I don’t think it’s possible to stress enough that you’re responding to a point that’s not even on the same planet as the one I made.
And most of those people don’t pick prostitution as a career choice, just as vegetarians rarely work at McDonalds flipping beefburgers. Let’s assume that there is a continuum. There are people who think like you do that sex is all super magical and totally tied up with your idea of self worth and that doing something sexual that you don’t want to do is pretty much the worst thing you can think of. If someone like that ends up working as a prostitute, then sure, we can be pretty certain that there’s a lot of coercion and desperation involved. And I don’t think that’s rare enough to not be a huge concern, although it’s rarer in the west (I’d argue) than it is in, say, South Africa or India, because poverty is a huge factor in making someone that desperate and, absent external factors like drugs, most western women who find the notion abhorrent can find something else. The minority who can’t are a problem, but the reason they’re not more is to do with the options they have available in the economy. As I said in the last comment, if the choices are “starving to death or hooking” then it’s not helpful to take away that last option. Nor is it especially helpful to point out that the second option is probably especially unpleasant for the girl involved. No fucking shit, Sherlock, ya think? Now we’ve established over the course of 400 fucking comments, repeatedly and incessantly, that girls who end up doing it for this kind of reason are probably having a real shitty time of it, maybe practical ideas about how to enable them to not do it are in order. Otherwise it’s just so much fucking think of the children blather.
But as with most things, there is a continuum. Not everyone has the same conception of sex that you do. Some people can very easily compartmentalise sex, and for others the money is perfectly adequate compensation for their psyches. And I think it’s fairly safe to assume that the venn diagram of women who could choose something else but who instead put up a website and register with a bunch of escort agencies are trending towards the latter end of the spectrum. If they weren’t, they’d think “eww, prostitution, no thanks.” Again if there’s coercion there that goes out of the window, but I’m pretty sure escort agencies don’t coerce people to join them.
Treating all prostitutes like they’re drug addicted street whores is insulting, if nothing else. If “in general” includes very distinct categories of people with dissimilar stories and “a minority” is between 30% and 80%, depending on how you draw your lines and whether you count parlours (which is tricky, as there is both some movement between parlours and the street, and a deep resentment among some girls who work in parlours towards the “dirty” whores who let the side down), then I think you maybe have to reassess quite how much you are able to dismiss their input. Even assuming all girls in parlours are coerced, even though 100% of all girls I know who work or worked in parlours (which is a statistically insignificant sample of all girls who work in parlours but, y’know, you can do a T test and work out a confidence interval) weren’t, the “minority” you talk about are still around 30% of the total. That’s, y’know, the percentage of Americans who voted for Gore in 2000. I think we should listen to them if they say they’re not victimised, drug addicted street whores, and that they just want to be let alone to do a job they chose to do, and no thank you I wouldn’t like any sanctimonious counselling about how terrible it is.
Serafina:
I think this is an overly rosy picture of courtesanship in Ancient Greece. Coincidentally, my nonfiction reading this week is Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens; very few hetairae per generation would had that kind of freedom. Many were slaves; even those who were free had to tread carefully between the desires of powerful men.McDuff,
You said this:
If you think girls working in brothels can’t say no, then you’re talking about a minority of brothels, and you’re talking about sex slavery rather than prostitution. That you think the two are the same speaks volumes about why you can’t understand how people could choose to do something like this.
Sex slavery is, legally, someone being compelled by violence to perform sexual acts for the profit of someone else. A sex slave is someone who can’t say no for fear of violence. What I was talking about is not violence (although that is a factor for a lot of so-called prostitutes, who have pimps and therefore are actually sex slaves), but desperate economic need, that prevents a prostitute from saying no. Call me crazy, but “have sex or you won’t eat” doesn’t seem all that different in practice from “have sex or you’ll get a broken nose.” There are some prostitutes who can turn down clients without drastic economic consequences, but there are far too many who can’t.
And yeah, that’s a problem that we should fix by economic aid to the prostitutes. Where did I say anything otherwise? Oh, that’s right–nowhere.
On the subject of victimhood: I actually agree that most people would find the word “victim” condescending. Which is why I didn’t use it originally. You imputed that word to me. I defended it as technically accurate, but it’s not a word I’d generally use. I would instead say that the average prostitute has been wronged, or has to make choices no one should have to make. It’s great that your prostitute friends don’t feel they’ve had to make those kinds of choices! Good for them, and I wish them joy! But they’re the exception–90% of women in the sex trade want out, and try to get out, and fail, and have been wronged by any reasonable definition of the term. This should be acknowledged and not shoved aside because people are paranoid about implying that the other 10% are “victims” (which they’re not, and I never said they were).
Also, intellectually dishonest statements like this just make you look completely ridiculous:
I went to an Alice Cooper concert with a couple of hookers last year and we didn’t talk about sex work at all. Imagine that! Imagine people doing that sort of thing and it not defining them utterly.
Oh, please. I never said or implied that sex work has to define you utterly, or that sex workers talk about sex work all the time. At most, I implied that figure of the sex worker in our cultural imagination is someone who is defined by her sex work (which it is)–but even that would be reading a lot in to what I was saying. If you want to argue, then make an argument. Don’t put words in my mouth.
You also asked this:
1) You’ve been talking to happy hookers who’ve minimised the suffering? And 2) what agenda is that?
1) Yes. Not in real life, thank goodness, but online–I’ve heard people who claim to be prostitutes who say violence is no big deal, just part of the job, that a prostitute who doesn’t do everything her john asks is a no-fun prude, and even that prostitutes who claim to have suffered violence are lying. Of course, these people might not have even been prostitutes, but I had no real reason to disbelieve them.
2) An agenda that wants, for whatever reason, to popularize a rosy picture of prostitution.
You don’t think that targeting something in one part of society without addressing underlying root causes can just move the problem out of sight of those looking and measuring?
Of course I do, but I really don’t think Sweden is failing to address “underlying root causes” of prostitution. I could buy that argument for America or even Canada or Britain, but not Sweden. Is it possible that there’s some hidden mass of prostitutes not visible to the researchers’ eye? Sure, but it’s also possible that there are aliens in Sweden. There’s just no reason to think it. Besides, the issue for me (and for the policy makers) is violence–and violence is harder to hide from people who are looking than sex.
As for your argument that people who think of sex as different from other activities (no, not “super magical”–please get over yourself and stop turning everything I say into a straw man) won’t choose prostitution as a career–I agree. But I don’t think most prostitutes have “chosen prostitution as a career.” As I’ve been saying, I think they’re forced into it by circumstance and do not have other realistic options. This does not mean I want to lock a prostitute up for her own good. It means I want to lock her pimp up, and maybe have some sort of legal sanction for her johns, and give her more choices.
Doctor Science,
Thanks for the correction. You can just substitute Inara from Firefly for the hetaira in my example, then.
Well maybe that’s because there’s more “underlying root causes” than you’re willing to accept.
See, I can’t help but think that if I said something like “there’s no reason that someone can’t be a prostitute and also be stupid”, maybe in relation to $1000 a night call girls who take the money to go bareback, that someone might call me out for “blaming the woman.” But I dunno, surely a generous interpretation of this would be that they weren’t “happy hookers” but people trying to desperately justify their own life choices. And an ungenerous one would be that this particular hooker was dumb. But then, I guess since I define “happy hookers” as “hookers who are happy” rather than “a political subset of hookers and johns who are in favour of legalising prostitution because all hookers are secretly happy”, that might be why we disagree.
Goodness. So an agenda that just wants you to stop conflating streetwalkers on drugs with their own experiences as a freelance escort wouldn’t qualify then? Nice to know.
Is telling someone about their own experiences as a hooker who manages to be happy count as “popularising” it? Should these girls just stfu because they’re confusing poor simple minded folks who might not be able to tell the difference? Or, perhaps, might there be some common ground to reach by, maybe, incorporating their experiences into a broader understanding of what hooking means up and down the spectrum.
You mean “not on the streets”? Yes, because that’sthe consensus. The authorities don’t really know how many prostitutes there are because, get this, they’re not in the traditional places and they’re harder to count. Let’s face it, it’s not the first time that crime statistics have failed to accurately represent crime.
Moreover, those likely to be affected negatively and invisibly by this are, as usual, those in the most vulnerable positions. If a hooker’s doing $40 tricks to feed a drug habit, she’s not going to stop because of the law. And if the punters now feel they want to avoid the old haunting grounds and stay away from CCTV cameras and the watchful eye of authorities, well, that’s where they’ll go too.
In the UK the anecdotal and limited studies suggest this: the best way for Prostitutes to keep themselves safe is to work inside. Parlours not only have lower rates of violence but suffer different types (no more excusable, but easier to deal with). But the Swedish law specifically prohibits women working inside and organising themselves into groups, because this is considered to be running a brothel or pimping. This stroke of genius is one of the big reason sex workers unions and organisations oppose it. It helps trafficking prosecutions but hurts the native hookers, so what you gain on the swings you lose on the roundabouts.
Where I think the Swedish law does go right is in mandating assistance to those who want to get out, which is why I don’t think the figures are entirely incorrect, although I’d be astounded if they weren’t out by 50% or more. However, my big problem with it is that it treats hooking in the exact same way that you do (no doubt why you approve of it and most hookers disapprove), which is to see it as a moral ill in and of itself, and to give an absurd weight to street hooking at the expense of the more regular kind, the truly invisible hookers who never get asked to take part in surveys because people who do surveys have to ask freelancers individually and that’s all kinds of hard work. People know about streetwalkers, and they know about high class call girls, and they can more or less work out the deal with parlours, but they have only a vague idea about the reticent middle class of freelancers who are a bit more difficult to get hold of because they’re not clumped together. If you check the research they all go to drop in centres, parlours, agencies, but never seem to have the money to scour the internet searching for every freelancer’s website and send them an individual email.
There are good things about Sweden’s approach. There are also massive flaws. If it were implemented as is over here it would massively inconvenience a significant minority (at least) of working girls who work in parlours, potentially converting huge numbers of “happy hookers” into “unhappy hookers” without necessarily converting them into “not hookers”. That’s something I’d rather avoid.