Scratch the surface of a cynic and you’ll find a disappointed idealist. – Saying of uncertain origin
As so often happens in this blog, I started to type out an answer to a reply and found that it quickly grew long enough to be a column of its own. The reply in question was from Stephen Patterson and it appeared in yesterday’s column; I’ll break it up into pieces interspersed with my replies for ease of reading.
One of the problems with the media in this area as in many others is that the vast mass of media have little time to be anything other than superficial. Investigative journalism is also very expensive journalism.
I fully admit that the aphorism which appears as today’s epigram totally applies to me. Though I could generally give George Carlin or Ambrose Bierce a run for the money in the cynicism department (especially where government and other monolithic institutions are concerned), I am occasionally overcome by an attack of pure optimism. When this happens I usually manage to fight the feeling down, hissing and screaming like a wet cat, and force it back into the little lightless box under my mental staircase where it is kept most of the time; if I’m lucky I don’t even get too badly scratched. But every once in a while (when I think the possible consequences if I’m wrong will be minimal or nonexistent) I’ll indulge one of these optimistic feelings for a few minutes, so that when I am inevitably disappointed it acts as a sort of “booster shot” of cynicism without plunging me into deep despair.
Well, in one of the earlier replies to yesterday’s column Sailor Barsoom said: “Reporters, please. You are supposed to be what protects us from disinformation. You are supposed to be noble enough a profession that it makes sense that Superman would choose to be one of you when he isn’t in uniform”. At the mention of the Caped Kryptonian’s name I was momentarily overcome with a sort of nostalgic naïveté and thought to myself, “What if the reporter who wrote that story isn’t willfully ignorant? After all, he has to please his masters for a living just as other wage-slaves do; what if maybe he really wanted to do a real story but was too afraid, or even specifically ordered not to?” So, I went back to the original article and clicked on the link to send an email to the reporter who wrote it, Torsten Ove. Here’s what I sent him:
Dear Mr. Ove,
I realize that your editor may not be interested in balanced stories about unpopular subjects; however, if you are here are a few resources you might consult about the reality of prostitution, rather than merely accepting the lies and distortions promulgated by the police at face value.
The Sex Workers Outreach Project: http://www.swopusa.org/
The Desiree Alliance: http://www.desireealliance.org/
The Prostitutes’ Education Network: http://www.bayswan.org/index.html
You may find a lot of what the women who staff these organizations have to say illuminating.
Maggie McNeill
The Honest Courtesan
He replied within a few minutes with a single line: “Thanks, but I’ll stick with the lies and distortions.”
I then re-replied:
Dear Mr. Ove,
That doesn’t surprise me, but on the off-chance you were a true journalist I had to try.
Maggie McNeill
The Honest Courtesan
So much for truth, justice and the American way. It may be that Stephen is correct in saying that most reporters lack the time and money to look beyond the propaganda, but I’m afraid Mr. Ove isn’t one of them; by his own admission he has drunk deeply of the Kool-aid and found it sweet.
Realistically, I think we can hope for two things: sex worker rights organisations to raise their profiles and efficiency, so that media outlets think of and contact them, and that therefore at least an alternative perspective can be communicated; and secondly that they undertake pro-active initiatives so they are not caught on the back foot all the time.
Stephen is absolutely right, but the problem is that most of the women who are impacted by these discriminatory laws don’t dare to speak up about them; a friend of mine who is still an active escort told me that a recent effort to start up a SWOP chapter in Texas went over like a lead zeppelin. The reason should be obvious; to openly declare oneself a prostitute in the current repressive climate is to risk investigation by every “law enforcement” agency with jurisdiction, at least one of whom will certainly find something to charge one with. Not the least of these is the Inquisition-like “child protective services”, who would immediately abduct any avowed prostitute’s children and place them in “foster care” because obviously it’s much better for them to be given to complete strangers than to risk contamination by sex rays which might destroy their “innocence” by inducing the dreaded “premature sexualization”. And even if she has no children, the threat of a charge of “tax evasion” from the Internal Revenue Service is enough to make Satan cower. So, it’s pretty much up to us old retired ladies, except that most retired whores want to vanish into the woodwork rather than risk social censure (not to mention the aforementioned IRS and/or “child protective services”). And even those who do care enough and are willing to risk audit are largely ignored by people like Mr. Ove, who can’t even be bothered to listen.
What’s going to be needed is for some big moneybags like Bill Gates to get behind sex worker rights so we can advertise and thereby attract a bunch of empty-headed Hollywood stars who are looking for a new cause to adopt. In the minds of the hoi-polloi, the opinion of one celebrity who knows nothing about the subject is worth the life-experiences of a thousand veteran whores, and once the cause becomes “sexy” enough all of a sudden people will be coming out of the woodwork to support it. Pretty soon it will become a “controversial issue” and a few state judges looking for publicity will overturn their states’ prostitution laws while other states hold legalization referendums and still others react by enacting new and Draconian anti-prostitute laws. About this time all the self-proclaimed “liberals” will start mouthing slogans about our rights despite having vehemently denied them when it was politically correct to do so, then we’re home free.
ant is sort of right about perception, except that when you survey the actual public (our UK public, anyway), some polls suggest that antipathy to the sex industry is nothing like as widespread as people think. I think what holds up progress more than anything is (a) politicians’ understandable fear of media backlash if a more liberal regime is proposed, and (b) disunity among those advocating change, between decriminalisation; various forms of legalisation/regulation; and the Swedish catastrophe advocated by the radfems.
I agree; I think most people are not really all that opposed to us (as discussed in my column of September 28th) and it’s getting easier for outsiders to speak out in favor of legalization without getting shouted down (though still difficult for pros to speak for ourselves as I discussed above). I also completely agree that political inertia is a large part of the problem; after all, the majority of the US population has been in favor of decriminalization of marijuana for over two decades now, yet we’ve only seen the first major cracks in the prohibition dam in the past decade, and in a few weeks the first state election on the issue of full decriminalization will be held in California. But as with marijuana, governments are not above bold-faced lying to keep prostitution illegal, though we do have one slight advantage over the marijuana issue in that there is no federal anti-prostitution law to conflict with decriminalization within a state.
However, I think Stephen has hit dead on the money with his last point; if women had not allowed the feminist movement to be hijacked by angry lesbian man-haters in the late ‘70s, prostitution would’ve been decriminalized in California twenty years ago and most states would have followed suit by now. A comparison with the “gay rights” movement is instructive; their cause was becoming more popular and slowly gaining ground until they invented the mythical “GLBT community” in the early ‘90s. By linking together four separate minorities (homosexual men, lesbians, bisexuals and “transgendered people”, the last an artificial umbrella grouping in itself) into an unreal but politically useful construction, queer activists were able to combine forces with a number of much smaller groups to present one unified front. The results are obvious; the “gay rights” landscape has changed dramatically in little over a decade. But imagine if, having won basic rights, the “GLBT” leadership had not only decided that “lipstick lesbians” were “anti-queer”, but also chosen to actively compose propaganda against them and cooperate with reactionary efforts to suppress them. Because that is what has happened to sex workers; having won their seat at the “big table”, neofeminists have not only turned against us, but have also sold us out to the tyrants by giving them new “feminist” excuses for their repressive laws.
Interesting comparison. Question, do you think the judge in cali that held their law against gay marriage was unconstitutional, could use the same rational for overturning the law against prostitution? Maybe swop should taka a hard look at his decision and see if an arguement using the same sort of evaluative criteria might be worth pursuing.
Any high enough judge in any state could overturn prostitution laws at any time, considering the shaky legal ground which supports them. But don’t count on this happening anytime soon because activist judges care only about issues which are politically correct. 🙁
Yeah, but they generally dont do anything unless someone files suit on an issue. Using his thought process and substituting the fact pattern, and then filing in the same court might be worthwhile to consider.
Prostitution laws are challenged in one state or another every year; last November we were only fighting to maintain status quo in Rhode Island and still lost. Until the cause becomes prominent enough for some powerful group like the ACLU to throw its weight behind us, those challenges will never go anywhere.
The precedent for overturning anti-prostitution laws nationwide could well be Roe v Wade. If a woman’s right to control her own body is important enough that no state can ban abortions, whatever the feelings of that states residents, then how can a woman be banned from using her body to earn a living?
In fact, it’s stranger than that: there was probably no state, prior to Roe v Wade, where it was legal to get an abortion for free, but a crime to get one you had paid for.
It makes no sense that the right to an abortion is settled as a matter of law, but states can still ban prostitution. When the cases are filed, Roe v Wade should be brought into the courtroom.
Every prostitute in America agrees with you, every neofeminist rabidly avers that it isn’t the same and every judge and law professor has remained curiously silent on the issue despite the obvious parallel.
There will, of course, always be the Oves of this world. But I don’t think that should stop the movement setting out its stall to the optimum.
You are, of course, dead right over the role of whore stigma and potential criminal sanctions in preventing sex workers speaking out. Looking at the movement, it is amazing really that it has got as far as it has. Yet there are parallels outside the sex industry – the risks faced by many activists trying to unionise in industry, for example, risking being blacklisted for employment. Yet the union movement carries on.
There might be some logic in local sex workers getting together and, if none feel able to raise their heads above the parapet, retaining a non-sexworker, possibly a lawyer(?), to act as a spokesperson? Could be some legal firms might consider it as part of their pro bono work.
There’s great strengths in having major organisations such as the ones you relayed on to Ove, but local and regional media (IMHO) prefer local organisations, and of course you have the added complication over there of 50 sets of laws and God knows how many enforcement regimes!
Easy for me to sit at a console and spout all this, as for actually doing it….!
Your point about celebrities is very important. I watch opportunities missed. Dame Helen Mirren, for example, spoke against criminalisation after filming The Love Ranch. The rights movement really should have approached her at that point. It didn’t, or if it did it didn’t succeed. Next thing you know she’s narrating a very dubious documentary on one of our major networks here on the terrors of sex trafficking.
Well, Dame Helen has always made it clear that she herself is an acting whore; she really doesn’t care about the part as long as she get paid. When Gielgud, O’Toole and MacDowell were bitching about Caligula a reporter asked her if she regretted having done the film, and she replied, “Not at all; it bought me a new car and my house in Scotland.” 🙂
I note that divisions among the members of activist organizations are also a problem, and one that becomes more obvious as said organizations move closer to mainstream acceptability. I wonder if, should sex workers’ rights organizations ever actually start getting even a fraction of the attention and respect they deserve, this will not start making internal divisions (‘streetwalkers’ vs. ‘escorts’, ‘gays’ vs. ‘straights’, ‘poor’ vs. ‘rich’, ‘White’ vs. ‘Black’, ‘liberals’ vs. ‘libertarians’, etc.) also come to the fore and thereby weaken the strength of the movement. That’s been the experience of ever activism that actually became important, from comunism and trade unionism to feminism.
I wouldn’t call the GLBT community mythical or artificial, regardless of how diverse it may be. After all, we’re all being marginalized by the same social forces — the ones that persecute anyone who isn’t straight. No surprise that it ended up forging a very strong “queer” identity.
And I won’t deny that there are internecine squabbles, with transsexuals and bisexuals tending to take the worst of it, but in my experience it’s always been like a big ol’ fambly.
…I never do address the main point of your posts, do I? o_O
Anyway, this popped out at me too:
>He replied within a few minutes with a single line: “Thanks, but I’ll stick with the lies and distortions.”
HO-LY fuck. I’m going to assume that he was being sarcastic with “lies and distortions,” implying that he thought he already had it right and that he expected YOU to be giving him bad info, but that’s still a dick answer and not nearly as clever as he thinks it was.
I agree. This dick-weed was trying to be cute, and he failed.
In reading this, I once again moved further away from libertarianism. Your suggestions for fixing this problem are flawed and cynical to the point of arrogance, however the way you described the problem made me realize that someone found a way to solve that very problem.
Lenin created the idea of a vanguard party, which is a perfect solution to the problem of people of being too busy with their own problems to work toward fixing the greater problems of society.
See, it’s basic game theory, that people working for their rational self-interest result in poor outcomes.
So somebody has to take the hit and put the greater good first.
I’m quite fond of both Lennon and Marx, as long as it’s John and Groucho. 😉
BTW, I’m back. I needed a new ‘puter and didn’t have the cash for it, so I did what any proud American would do under the circumstances: I took on debt.
Don’t think I care for this new keyboard, though. I’m about this close to plugging the old one back in.
In the first debate I had here on here, you did bring the idea that Libertarianism is the “Marxism of the right” so I’m not surprised that Marxism is the “Libertarianism of the left”
But it’s just so amusing when you realize that Maggie, a hardcore libertarian strongly opposed to “neomarxism” is complaining about how sex workers have failed to develop what is in senses, a “class consciousness”
Doubly funny, both Maggie and Lenin seem to turn to the methods of the state and collective actions.
What’s “funny” is how you can be such a pompous ass that you can’t recognize the difference between people freely organizing for collective action, and a powerful organization forcing “participation” in its schemes at gunpoint.
I am amused that a couple of years later, this post is still in the top three results for that weasel’s name:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Torsten+Ove