It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. – Mark Twain
Though I suppose I should be used to it after all these years, I am still astonished by the incredibly stupid statements which are habitually made by opponents of prostitution. Everyone makes stupid statements from time to time (and this writer is by no means an exception), but prohibitionists repeatedly and vociferously repeat the same asinine arguments over and over again, as though they were completely unaware of how ridiculous they sound. Anyone’s brain can slip out of gear for long enough to make an embarrassing declaration, but the whore-burning crowd’s constant repetition of these same idiotic assertions indicates that they honestly feel them to be both valid and persuasive. Today I’d like to look at a few of them, in no particular order.
The act of exchanging money for sex is inherently degrading.
Why? What portion of the act generates the degradation? Is it the act of having sex with men at all? Because if that’s the case you had best just shut up now before somebody points out that you’re naked. Or is it the act of having sex with people to whom one is not married, in which case why aren’t you out promoting laws against infidelity, singles bars, gay bars and swinger clubs, or advocating for “abstinence-only” sex education and campaigning against “no-fault” divorce? Or perhaps you believe that any personal service for pay should be illegal, in which case where’s all your anger and bile against masseuses, hairdressers, manicurists, physical therapists and cosmetologists? Perhaps you believe that wives need to be protected by prohibiting anyone from providing traditional wifely services for pay; good plan! So when do you start your campaign to criminalize chefs, tailors, nannies, maids and day care centers? No? It must just be that you’re against capitalism, then; good luck selling that one, considering that even the Russians and Chinese have embraced it.
Because you are too romantic, shy, introverted, conventional, prissy, prudish, narcissistic, lazy, fearful or misandrous to sell sexual services, why does that mean I can’t? I have too much sense to believe I can get all of my moral answers from a 2000+ year old book and too much decency to promote warfare between large groups of society so as to give me a chance to grab power, but you don’t see me trying to prohibit you from doing those things.
Prostitution is unacceptably dangerous to women.
Who determines what level of danger is unacceptable, you? Who decided that an adult woman who can drive, vote, drink alcohol, own a firearm, see X-rated movies, enter into binding legal contracts and even run for political office is somehow incompetent to determine whom she wants to have sex with and on what terms? And having decided that I was incompetent, who the hell declared you my legal guardian? What other activities carry an “unacceptable” level of risk? How about joining the military? Construction work? Driving? Walking on public streets without a male escort? Going outside without niqab and chador, thus risking rape due to male lust? What country are you from again? And since you’re so concerned about prostitutes’ safety, can you please explain why you think the best way to help us is to make our jobs more dangerous?
No little girl plans to grow up to be a prostitute.
Yes, I’ve actually had morons fling this one at me. Assuming for a moment that by “little girl” you actually mean one old enough to comprehend what a prostitute does for a living, you’re still wrong; as I discussed in my column of July 30th I had a secret admiration for prostitutes from my early teens and the only reason I didn’t embrace the idea wholeheartedly was due to brainwashing that an intellectual career was somehow “better” than one as an entertainer. Lots of teenage girls dream of being actresses or singers, who are nothing but glorified whores who make a living with the same body parts as we do; if our trade was not illegal and suppressed who knows how many girls might indeed want to be hookers?
But even that isn’t the point. No little girl plans to grow up to be a sales clerk, cashier, middle manager, real estate agent or maid either, so should we ban those professions? And do you honestly imagine little boys dream of growing up to be accountants, insurance salesmen, bus drivers, coal miners and pipefitters? If everyone grew up to be what he or she wanted to be in childhood we would have a workforce made up almost entirely of firemen, ballerinas, astronauts, teachers, cowboys and nurses.
Nine out of ten prostitutes would leave the trade if they could.
I totally believe this, but so would nine out of ten accountants, lawyers, doctors, secretaries, shopkeepers, clerks, waitresses, construction workers, teachers, farmers, plumbers, cubicle workers, factory workers, etc, etc, etc, etc ad nauseum; in fact, for some of those professions I’m sure it’s more like ninety-nine out of a hundred. There’s a reason people get paid to do work, you know; it’s an incentive to get them to do something they wouldn’t freaking do if they were independently freaking wealthy! Those of us who didn’t have the good fortune to inherit large portions of major corporations do indeed have to spend large portions of our time doing things we would rather not do with people we might not otherwise care to be around. But as I said two sections up, if you’re so concerned about the difficulty of our jobs, why are you so dedicated to making them even more difficult?
X% (insert random large number here) of prostitutes are coerced (or abused, or addicted, or “trafficked”, or underage, or whatever).
I’m not even going to comment on the arbitrary nature of these numbers because it should be pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that it’s impossible to make any reasonable estimate of what percentage of practitioners of a repressed and largely-invisible group are blonde, poor, left-handed, green-eyed, uneducated, diabetic or anything else. The important thing is that even if some percentage of any given profession is affected by a condition which removes free choice or invalidates judgment, what the hell does that have to do with those who are not so affected? 85% of cops have anger management problems, sadistic impulses or self-esteem issues; 72% of lawyers are addicted to cocaine; 99.7% of politicians are moral retards; 54% of doctors are only in it for the money; 95% of agricultural workers live below the poverty line; 113% of neofeminists are certifiably bat-shit crazy and 62.85% of statistics are made up on the spot, so why don’t you go pick on them for a change and just leave us to the Bible Beaters?
Prostitution is a manifestation of patriarchal dominance over women.
Wow, really? Then how come we were respected priestesses in the old goddess-centered cultures, and our status slowly declined in the patriarchal ones? And why is it that (at least until the invention of feminism) the most patriarchal cultures are those in which prostitutes are most brutally repressed? If the “patriarchy” likes prostitution so damned much, why the hell wasn’t it universally legalized centuries ago? This argument is as ludicrous as the neofeminist claim that sexy clothes are symptomatic of “sexist oppression” despite the fact that oppressive, rigidly patriarchal cultures invariably force women to cover up more in public.
Prostitutes are anti-feminist because they earn a living by being subservient to men.
Anyone who has ever actually prostituted herself, hired a prostitute or observed the transaction will recognize this as easily the most idiotic statement in this column. The male client is required to essentially beg and bribe a prostitute for sex by jumping through whatever hoops she declares he must and paying her whatever fee she demands, however absurd and unfair; if he displeases her beyond the point she is willing to tolerate she may simply cut him off and leave, and he has little recourse other than physical violence (to which normal men are not willing to resort). Prostitution is evidence of one gender’s dominance over the other, all right, but it’s the opposite way around from the sick fantasies of neofeminists; why do you think maladjusted men hate us so consistently? It’s because our very existence is a constant reminder of the male sexual dependence on women (and our ability to manipulate men to get what we want by means of that dependence) that bitter men are so obsessed with controlling or eradicating us and sociopathic men so often murder us.
Perhaps academic feminists, few of whom have ever had to achieve anything resembling real-world results in order to earn their pay, intentionally confuse “subservience” with the normal necessity of any service provider to please her customer? If a female barber was rude to her male customers and did a bad job cutting their hair, she wouldn’t last too long in her profession. Not even neofeminists are not so addle-brained as to pretend that other female service professionals are “anti-feminist” merely because of the way in which they earn their living; that distinction is reserved for whores. Like every other example on this page, this last stupid statement can more truthfully summed up in one phrase: “It’s different because it involves sex.”
I feel compelled to ask possibly a few more…
Generic statements, so I don’t have to write a whole book, in order to frame the questions below. Truthfully, I’m having a hard framing the question succinctly so I’m trying to carefully blurt out what’s in my head as clearly as possible….hope it makes sense…
In the U.S. (and other places), the major religions are monotheistic. Of these, when they speak of ‘God’, it is basically identified/understood as being male (as a protector/father figure). There is no balancing feminine “force” in these religions that gives the feminine side equal consideration/status/dominance. Male “ideals” are predominant, female ones are … not as dominant . Even though the core teaching of the morals/ethics of these religions are frequently non gender specific, there is a sense that there is a male deity watching over and guiding things/events.
Question(s):
Do you think that religious views are *the* major factor in people believing what they do about prostitution (girls needing to be protected, male dominance, immoral, etc)?
Regardless of the answer above, do you have any info/data/good links/thoughts on how prostitution is viewed differently by countries (in current times, nothing ancient) where there is balanced or less pronounced “male dominant” deity (are prostitutes socially better off, worse off, or basically the same)?
This is such a complex question, I’m going to devote an upcoming column to it. Look for it this coming Saturday (the 16th). 🙂
Looking forward to it.
I try to think of any country today where the dominant religion contains any Goddess at all, and all I’m coming up with is India and Japan.
Honestly, the public isn’t pro-whore in India either. I’m not Japanese so no matter how much anime I watch, I’m not authorized to speak about Japan.
Majority of the prostitutes in India have always been concentrated around pilgrimage routes, no matter what the average Indian believes, and essentially work in a tourist economy as traditionally, more men went on pilgrimages than women and the women that did go on pilgrimages were mostly old widows hoping to die on holy ground. The whores on seasonal pilgrimage routes engage in other occupations the rest of the time. But they’re still viewed negatively even though it’s more logical to view their customers in a bad light, as most of them are followers of philosphies which say ‘Pur-daaraa jananisamaan’ (literally ‘any woman who is not your wife should be treated as you would treat your own mother’). The epics say that gazing upon someone else’s wife was a sin and so you should only look at her feet. Most prostitutes do not marry, allowing them around this little technicality and peek at parts of her anatomy even she cannot completely see without at least 2 full length mirrors.
But the belief that non-marital sex is bad is still deeply ingrained in the Indian psyche, possibly because children were married off/betrothed as early as 3 y/o for girls and 9 for boys; but even though the couple was in the same house, sex was off the table until the girl came of age (got her first period) and the Garbha daan ritual (literally Uterus Donation) was carried out, completing the marriage formalities. Since child marriage was abolished, all the rituals are completed in one go. Essentially, the rituals and the specific terminology used in them signify that we give away our daughter to you coz you need a wife more than she needs a husband but children out of wedlock are frowned upon since Shwetaketu’s Law was established so we’ll make a deal. All of our most powerful goddesses are maidens as it is believed marriage saps one’s energy and causes one to be inextricably entangled in worldly life (coz kids and looking after each other); the woman unrestrained is the naked Goddess Kali but the mother enraged is the very dangerous and revered goddess Amba. A marriage is basically a sanctified contract stating that the wife accepts subservience to the husband and bears him children in exchange for his putting her needs before everything else, consulting her before any decisions and loyalty & fidelity along with other things and it is explicitly stated so in the wedding hymns. So patronising a prostitute essentially nullifies any marriage in spirit even though not so legally. Traditionally, divorce was not an option for Hindus though serial polygamy was allowed.
There is a specific Nat community in the Rajasthan region of India where almost all the women are either engaged in prostitution or married off; the 2 are mutually exclusive (coz marriage requires a vow of fidelity & ‘we can’t lie to god!’) but there are no restrictions on live-in relationships and children out of wedlock. Earlier, they were performers of dance and drama entertaining the rich landlords & kings of the region but have been unable to do so since Independence when kings were dethroned & landlords were given the boot. So they turned to prostitution and state that their families clear the room for business if some client arrives late at night. Homes without professional whores put up boards outside the house explicitly stating so. One can see that the ‘sex is bad’ idea doesn’t exist here. But even these women clearly state that they preferred the time when dance bars were still legal & they could get rich merely by jiggling their boobies while wearing shiny revealing clothes instead of having to sleep with a man and becoming unwed mothers (we Indians are very fixated on marriage, thus almost universal marriage in the country) on account of a technicality of fidelity in a marriage (and the wedding hymns themselves cannot be changed unlike the vows in a Christian wedding coz it’s all in Sanskrit, and everything is interconnected so one change here results in the requirement of 1760 other changes almost everywhere else). And I think it’s pretty obvious because a bar dancer usually entertained multiple customers at a time and took money from all of them as opposed to the lone man a whore deals with. There is an attempt to revive dance bars on those grounds but the government is trying to legalize them and we all know what a mess that becomes.
Ofc, I read the Nat community thing in a newspaper so there may be the problem of unrepresentative samples and what not 😛 But it looks pretty accurate.
So basically religious views have nothing to do with how people view prostitution. It’s the same story everywhere. Marriage is the culprit here. One might argue that abolishing the institution of marriage will positively impact all harlots but I doubt that’s the case.
9 out of 10 readers will also read the comments…
🙂
“Scotland Yard’s famous Vice Squad, which deals with prostitution and other aspects of London’s underworld, has changed its title to the rather less dynamic “Serious Crime Directorate 9: Human Exploitation and Organised Crime Command”, or SCD9 for short.
Metropolitan Police sources said the switch had been ordered in part because the word “vice” was thought to have negative “connotations”.
It reflects a growing trend by law enforcement agencies to treat prostitutes as victims rather than as offenders.”
(extract from an item in “The Daily Telegraph”)
Ah, euphemisms; when something has a bad reputation why bother changing the behavior or other characteristics which gave it that reputation when you can simply change the name instead?
Of course, treating us as victims is just as wrongheaded, patronizing, counterproductive, controlling and incorrect as treating us as “offenders”. Why can’t people (especially officials) just get it into their thick heads that we’re businesswomen who provide a service and that the only “crime” exists because they define it that way? If paying for food were suddenly defined as a “crime” all of us but farmers would instantly become “criminals”, but that wouldn’t make it true. 🙁
“If paying for food were suddenly defined as a “crime” all of us but farmers would instantly become “criminals”, but that wouldn’t make it true.”
WHAT!?! Maggie, I can’t believe you’re letting those dirty manufacturers and pushers off the hook!
I apologize; the rapid and retroactive transformation from evil criminal to helpless victim must’ve disordered my thinking. 🙁
If ‘vice’ has negative connotations, what about ‘crime’?
No little girl wants to grow up to be a prostitute…they want to be pimps.
One day when I was in about seventh grade, we were going around introducing ourselves and saying what we wanted to be when we grew up. Till we got to Nicki, who said that she wanted to be a pimp. Cue awkward silence.
Teacher: You want to be a what now?
Nicki: A pimp.
Teacher: Do you know what that word even means?
Nicki: (smiles sweetly and innocently) That means a lot of girls will have sex for money and give their money to me…
At least she was honest about it.
Anyways…about sex for money being degrading…
I’m not a prostitute but I have worked in food service, as a volunteer in an old folks home, as a grocery cashier, and as a hair dresser. I’ve listed them from most to least degrading, because a lot of service jobs do feel degrading. You have to kiss up to customers who feel that the customer is always right and that the customer can walk all over you with no recourse. I’ve seen customers yell at sixteen year old cashiers until they cried, I’ve been groped by smelly old folks (oddly enough, most were old women), and I’ve had people try to bargain, plead, and ignore you when you tell them that a certain item or service is a certain price and you cannot or will not change it.
From what you’ve said of being a call girl, at least you can demand a certain price that you set and most likely wouldn’t argue with you, you can leave if they are too disrespectful, at least you expect the gropes, and you certainly seem to have better self esteem than I did in most of these jobs.
[…] that personal aversions should be forced upon others at gunpoint. Some of these arguments are wholly ridiculous, while others have the appearance of sensibility to those who are ignorant of either the realities […]
Really late on the response here, I know, but I’ve just discovered this blog and am reading through the archives. I’ll try not to comment too much, but I just wanted to give my two-pence on the first point – about degredation.
I think the issue in most people’s minds when they say this is that sex is somehow sanctified. It’s supposed to be the ultimate expression of love, a sharing of all that is soulful, secret, vulnerable, and delicate. To give that up for anything less than love in return is seen as degrading, but while I’d agree that sex *can* be about exchanging love and so forth, it doesn’t have to be.
Still, I think that’s what most people are getting at when they say prostitution is degrading. I think it’s romantically naive, but I thought I’d point it out anyway.
…and that “sanctification” is, perhaps, some reaction, even subconscious, to a discomfort with the conflicting bio-wirings within us as humans.
The human species is part same-as-any-other-mammal instincts and part self-awareness/higher reasoning/conscious psyche. Between those parts lies a range of tensions and even contradictions, including a tug-of-war between our biological wiring for social dependence and our equally-strong-if-not-stronger wiring for individuality.
Humanity seems to have employed self-limitations of various means to try to at least minimize some of those tensions and the societal problems they can create, but, like the illustrative balloon, squeezing at one place merely swells the tension at another.
“Romantic sexuality” and the accompanying support for it such as “sanctification of sexuality” seems to me a recent means by which societies (Western) have sought to minimize perceived problems for certain groups. However, as per usual, while it might have had benefited some people in some places at some times, it inevitably has created problems for others at other places and times.
[…] that oppressive, rigidly patriarchal cultures invariably force women to cover up more in public. Amazingly Stupid Statements | The Honest Courtesan […]
Reblogged this on What Can I Say? and commented:
I wish to dedicated this re-blogging to my Mom. Awesome.
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As someone who went to a strip club with a stag party one weekend, I can confirm Maggie’s response to the last question. Neofeminists may clsim that such places “exploit” women, but truthfully, the women are kept safe from any patron who might cross the line by security staff, they make mountains of cash, and the guys who frequented these places usually end up with empty pockets and in love with their lapdancers so whoever’s being exploited, it’s definitely NOT the women.