Prostitution & feminism

[Juana]

The (potentially) empowering part is reclaiming the right to do that sort of thing from society. *shrug*

All I know is that I've met a lot of prostitutes in my varied and rather slimy collection of careers, and not one of them was "empowered".  Mostly, they were burnt out husks that at some point were someone's children.  By the time I ran into them, they didn't have any child left in them at all, and they had the hardest eyes I've ever seen.

They reminded me of nothing I've ever seen before, outside of a reptile house at the zoo.

Like I said, can/has the potential to. I'd agree that in nearly all cases it's not, because it's not really a profession most people get into because they want to and there's a lot of stigma associated with it, not to mention a whole heap of other issues.

[Elder Iptuous]

The (potentially) empowering part is reclaiming the right to do that sort of thing from society. *shrug*

All I know is that I've met a lot of prostitutes in my varied and rather slimy collection of careers, and not one of them was "empowered".  Mostly, they were burnt out husks that at some point were someone's children.  By the time I ran into them, they didn't have any child left in them at all, and they had the hardest eyes I've ever seen.

They reminded me of nothing I've ever seen before, outside of a reptile house at the zoo.

not having known any prostitutes or having any basis on which to speculate, i wonder whether very high prices prostitutes have less of a hollowing out than the economy priced souls...

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The (potentially) empowering part is reclaiming the right to do that sort of thing from society. *shrug*

All I know is that I've met a lot of prostitutes in my varied and rather slimy collection of careers, and not one of them was "empowered".  Mostly, they were burnt out husks that at some point were someone's children.  By the time I ran into them, they didn't have any child left in them at all, and they had the hardest eyes I've ever seen.

They reminded me of nothing I've ever seen before, outside of a reptile house at the zoo.

not having known any prostitutes or having any basis on which to speculate, i wonder whether very high prices prostitutes have less of a hollowing out than the economy priced souls...

They're normally the same people, after the "porn starlet effect" has had time to work its magic. 

Personally, I think that what burns them out is the fact, ground into them (literally every day), that they're a sex toilet.

Fact:  Most Johns - again, in my experience - either go to prostitutes because they are vile in some way (and can't get any for free), or because they have some hideous kink that the wifey won't deliver on.  The remaining balance usually go because they want to get their rocks off with some strange, and anything will do.

I am not saying they don't exist, but I have never in person EVER met a sex worker who does it because they like the job.  Even the dominatrixes hate what they do, and who they do it with/to.

Again, this is only in my experience.

[Kai]

Nigel, I'm interested in your opinion of prostitution versus pornography, and if the latter can be "empowering".

[Richter]

The role of sex, (need, a want, commodity, right, privilege, etc) changes a lot from person to person, and amongst cultures.  The ethics of it really seem to hinge on what role it's filling.  These same ethics usually fly out the window when bartering or capitalism come in.

Granted, we are also, to some uncertain degree, wired and hormoned to equate sex with relationships, so it seeming odd outside of that makes sense.  Strip that away, and you have one person being paid to rub another person with certain parts of their body.  Not to take an underhanded shot at masseurs here.  If I were being beaten by street thugs to rub between the fetid folds of slathering cetacean widowed oil baronesses while addicted to 3 drugs and having the hemorrhoids of Sisyphus... Yeah, bad scene for ANYONE.  If it was what I enjoyed doing, had a reasonable clientele, and could make a good amount of cash providing that service then, rock on. (Personally, I would still not use any genitals.)

On the commodity side of things though, I'd like to think any person can make themselves more useful than a hole.

[Placid Dingo]

This is something I thought about a lot. It made more sense when you separate prostistution from being inherently related to feminism.

I agree that it can say a lot about sexual atitudes. But also, theres a difference between an attitude to sex, and an attitude to sex in the context of a relationship.

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I agree with your assessment Nigel, but I don't even like strip clubs. I went on my 21st birthday because both my friend and girlfriend at the time insisted that it was a rite of passage or something. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy watching women take off their clothes but when it involves money and a high prevalence of sad, sexually frustrated men in the vicinity it kind of ruins it. The naked bike ride is far more titillating.

I've never had the idea of going to a prostitute cross my mind, even when I had money to burn. Half the fun of getting laid is the psychological and emotional exchanges leading up to it. And I just can't imagine fucking a prostitute would be more gratifying than a good wank either. I just don't get it, so my input here probably isn't very helpful.

[Pæs]

I agree with your assessment Nigel, but I don't even like strip clubs. I went on my 21st birthday because both my friend and girlfriend at the time insisted that it was a rite of passage or something. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy watching women take off their clothes but when it involves money and a high prevalence of sad, sexually frustrated men in the vicinity it kind of ruins it. The naked bike ride is far more titillating.

Strip clubs tend to depress the hell out of me. Something about how obvious it usually is that the stripper is trying to pretend they're anywhere else.

I wouldn't be comfortable going to a prostitute not because of any value I place on sex but because I wouldn't know whether she had sought out the occupation or was a victim of circumstance. The possibility of the latter would make it feel too exploitative.

[The Wizard Joseph]

This subject has been in my mind from time to time for a while.  I have observations and speculations on the subject, but they're a bit disjointed.  Let me clarify my own situation first.

I have never paid for sex and would never.  I've had the offer to get paid.  I'm not saying this to boast.  I turned it down because even as a man "hooking a girl up" it seemed wrong to me on a visceral level.  That said, the offer was during a time of financial security and there was no pressure in that sense.  It is VERY easy in my experience to compromise principal for cash when desperate.

Any real problems with the activity are made worse by the illegality of it.  It's much like when abortion was illegal, dangerous, and sleazy... in my opinion.  Many problems were addressed and resolved with the legalization and regulation of abortion.  The social fallout was immense, but amounted to whining about how things should be like they were in the past because *INSERT MORAL AUTHORITY HERE* said it was inherently wrong.  I have trouble with considering things to be inherently wrong.  It usually means there's a control issue at stake.  I believe sexual function is inherently about control.  Please bear with me.

The horrible side of the sex industry is obvious and pervasive.  I have also witnessed the shells left over after a lifetime of psychological, physical, chemical, and, if I may, spiritual abuse.  It is TRULY horrible, but these exact same things are found in other corrupted sectors of society.  These inevitable sexual activities of ours are seen as illegitimate and cast out into the shadows of our social order.  It's in the shadows that the bad becomes diabolical. 

Even some idealized high-end brothel with happy and well maintained staff engaging of their own free will is likely an outlet for repressed sexual expression for the upper-crust that can afford it's luxury.  They become slaves to both the easy addiction and perhaps the potential blackmail that can result.  This leads to that sector of society becoming manipulable by the very portion of society that has something to gain by keeping the sex industry illegal and sexuality shameful.  The portion I'm talking about are criminals, deceivers, and controllers.  These types often go to great lengths to appear unassailable, morally legitimate, or both.  They are usually neither.

The silly pimps making a game of themselves and the furtive televangelists getting behind-the-pulpit handjobs are the least of the symptoms.  To me the real illness is in the individual people that cannot find expression or have been abused by someone who could not.  It's sick and cyclical.  One abuse leads easily to another and multiplies through those hurt.  It makes me a bit sick just thinking about how easy it is to do damage since there is no easy way to repair the damage once it's done.  Recovery is necessary, but it would seem to me that the answer is in prevention and not treatment. 

I don't have the answer yet.  It's late now and I need to try to sleep.  I'll catch up on the thread later, peace all.

[rong]

it's a touchy subject

[Hoser McRhizzy]

it's a touchy subject

   

Sex can be commodified. I don't think it's healthy to commodify sex, but it's certainly possible.

I think that some of the reaction I got was that people assumed I was placing a moral value on prostitution. One person asked me if I would think less of someone who hired a gigolo. People thought I was passing judgement.

I am. I am judging people who pay for sex as unfit to be my partner. As a former sex worker, and a woman who has had relationships with men who have paid for sex, I am also judging people who pay for sex as being probably a little broken, a little off, and a little disconnected, because in my experience that was always the case.

I've seriously considered hiring someone to scratch my itch dozens of times over the years, simply because I've had this fantasy idea that a person wouldn't expect pancakes and marriage in the morning if money changed hands.  And that's all about broken-off-disconnected stuff.  I don't blame you for judging.  What's really stopped me is the same as His Mighty Kittenish Beard's point.


Were your friends students? Just asking because I attended a course last year or the one before where "sex worker rights" came up in a class focusing on trafficking.  We know that when young, often white, or otherwise heavily monied people start holding forth on The Disempowered for grades or job opportunities, things get sad-weird.*  In this case, the rights of people fucking for rent to have some measures of safety or say over their work conditions got turned into safely sheltered people accusing the rest of the room of thinking sex was bad.  No shades of grey, no actual work conditions, much less "conditions of their labour"  (marxism isn't safely radical enough yet/again   ).



* for example - I read too many resumes.  This morning, under "relevant volunteer experience" (as opposed to irrelevant... I'd love to see that... please put it on your CV...) a young man listed his participation in "the day the world said no to war."  I shit you not.

[Faust]

Prostitution pretty much cant be empowering in the world we live in.

Some of the stories of the women of the temple of Aphrodite and the like from way back do sound empowering but they weren't just selling their bodies, they were selling communion with their god which they could deny to any man they didn't like, and that's an incredible level of power, to be able to deny someone the worship of their god.

Its impossible to see that level of respect placed on it in the western world.

[Jenne]

I used to see prostitution as a simple, black and white no-no...both for the sex worker AND for the john/jane soliciting.  And then I watched shit shows like HBO's Cathouse and Real Sex, and I saw it's a bit different when the folks running it are attracting people who desire to be there.  There are prostitutes working actively, right now, for rights to health care, rights to "come out of the closet" as sex workers, so that they are protected.  They want to work in this industry, and they feel slighted by society's sense of morality in that they can't get equal representation in labor laws because what they do is by and large illegal still.

But then I've seen documentaries on the world behind porn, the sex industry vis a vis hookers on the street, strippers at clubs, etc.  The world these women (and young men) are locked into is a dank, dark hellhole.  Add to that the worldwide phenomenon of child slavery, the picture becomes even darker and akin to outright evil.

So my thoughts on "the oldest profession" have widened and deepend past the initial white-person's-religion-of-the-West knee jerk reaction.  I still don't see going to hookers for sex as a healthy thing.  I see watching porn and going to strip clubs as walking a bit on the wild side because you need an extra bit of titillation than you are getting otherwise.  And perhaps it's always all lumped together because the people making this industry work tend to have to make the more morally degrading decisions and deal with the ugly underbelly of society because they're forced to in order to get it done.

I haven't lived in a culture where there isn't this pervasive guilt about sex and all things exploitative about it.  So I don't know what that really looks or feels like.  I know in America we're a many-headed hydra on the subject--our taboos almost outweigh our permissives.  Which makes the permissives that much more boring.

In my mind's eye, I juxtapose the crack whores on the streets of Chicago with the bunny ranches in Nevada, and the child beauty pageant 3 year old toddlers and their screeching harridan mothers with the porn stars with their pasties and brazillians...and I have no answers.

I do know that I think Nigel is right.  I don't want a partner who seeks sex from a prostitute, and neither do I think I ever would, either.  I do not want my sons to do it, and I don't want them becoming prostitutes, either.

I want better.  And I think I'm quite ok with thinking "other than THAT" is better.

[BabylonHoruv]

Purely anecdotal, but I have been friends with one hooker.  When I first knew her she was someone with a lot of issues, but she did honestly enjoy the job.  She really enjoyed sex and didn't connect it with that emotional connection that is so important for so many people.  She was young though (16) and I didn't see her again for a few years, when I did again, fairly briefly, 3 years later she looked unhealthy and seemed mentally disconnected.  she hadn't been a heavy drug user when I first knew her, I don't know if she was or not when I saw her again but she certainly looked it.  She didn't have much time to talk because she was with a client who decided it was time to go somewhere more private but it definitely seemed to me that the life had taken a hard toll on her.

She was definitely an economy class hooker, not an upscale escort, but more of the barfly sort than a streetwalker, although she solicited at all ages venues rather than bars.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Purely anecdotal, but I have been friends with one hooker.  When I first knew her she was someone with a lot of issues, but she did honestly enjoy the job.  She really enjoyed sex and didn't connect it with that emotional connection that is so important for so many people.  She was young though (16) and I didn't see her again for a few years, when I did again, fairly briefly, 3 years later she looked unhealthy and seemed mentally disconnected.  she hadn't been a heavy drug user when I first knew her, I don't know if she was or not when I saw her again but she certainly looked it.  She didn't have much time to talk because she was with a client who decided it was time to go somewhere more private but it definitely seemed to me that the life had taken a hard toll on her.

She was definitely an economy class hooker, not an upscale escort, but more of the barfly sort than a streetwalker, although she solicited at all ages venues rather than bars.

What I said.  The porn princess effect makes no exceptions.