Many, many, many thank-yous to Maggie McNeil, Drew Johnson, Ken and Patrick at Popehat, and Baylen Linnekin for guest blogging last month.
I’ll let them introduce themselves at length over the next couple days, but your August crew will be: Lenore Skenazy, Jason Kuznicki, Eapen Thampy, William Anderson, and four members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, one for each week of the month.
Enjoy, engage, have fun, and be polite!
We think we know what we’re doin’
We don’t pull the strings
It’s all in the past now
Money changes everything. - Tom Gray
Several of the comments on last Tuesday’s “What’s the Difference?” made the very valid point that sex is an extremely strong drive, as strong as hunger, and that makes it different from other human activities that aren’t attached to such strong drives. Others pointed out (again, quite correctly) that sex is often associated with powerful emotions, and that sexual activity has powerful neurological effects and releases hormones which promote bonding. If I were a less honest person I might pretend that I was trying to elicit those responses in order to make my point, but the truth is that I wasn’t; however, I should have included them in the essay in the first place, because they really do make my point.
Prostitution is, when all the mystery, romanticism (positive and negative) and emotional hoo-ha is removed, a simple business transaction: Party A (the seller) has something she is willing to sell, while party B (the buyer) has money he’s willing to spend. Each values what the other has, so an exchange is made and, assuming neither tries to cheat the other, everyone is happy. So what happens during the transaction? Party A gives party B sex (a completely legal action), while Party B gives Party A money (also a completely legal action). Yet somehow, we pretend that the juxtaposition of these two events makes them both wrong, which is arrant nonsense. Arguments about the emotional and/or hormonal effects of sex are irrelevant, because it is completely legal to give sex to strangers for nothing, or in exchange for food and entertainment, or in exchange for some favor, or even in exchange for cold, hard cash as long as the transactions don’t happen together. If we lived in a theocracy which banned all extramarital sex, a ban on prostitution would at least be consistent…but we don’t. Furthermore, extramarital love affairs – which violate legal contracts and arguably endanger children – are also legal; in other words sexual arrangements in which those hormones are demonstrably in effect are legal, but those in which they are not are prohibited. This is like legalizing the act of driving by a person who is clearly inebriated, while criminalizing it for people who are demonstrably sober, yet have an open container of liquor in the car.
Furthermore, we don’t ban other activities with powerful neurological effects unless a taboo substance is involved; one of the comments mentioned that oxytocin is released during sex, and that’s absolutely true…but it’s also released in nursing, yet wet-nursing is legal. So is surrogate motherhood, despite the indisputable fact that pregnancy generates far more powerful emotions in the typical woman than sex does (N.B.: in Australia, prostitution is legal but surrogate motherhood is not. So much for consistency in paternalistic laws.) And though people of both sexes (but especially women) sometimes develop very strong attachments for children under their care, we don’t ban day care centers, nannies and schools. As for the sex drive being as strong as hunger, isn’t that an argument for prostitution rather than against it? If something is vital to health and happiness, what kind of sadistic monster would try to stop someone from gaining access to that thing in any fair and non-forcible way he can? We rightly prohibit both rape and theft even if they arise from strong urges, yet criminalize the purchase of even badly-needed sex while celebrating the sale of food, even if the latter is consumed purely for enjoyment and has no nutritional value whatsoever.
But what about those brain studies? I’m in favor of total drug decriminalization, but playing devil’s advocate for a moment: surely, if sex affects the brain in the same way heroin does we’re certainly justified in regulating it in the same way, aren’t we? Well, no. Dr. Marty Klein explains:
…when so-called sex addicts are involved in sex (for example, when watching pornography), the part of their brain that lights up (the mesolimbic pathway) is the same part that lights up when a heroin addict has injected heroin. Compelling proof of sex addiction? Not even close. That’s the same part of the brain that lights up when we see a sunset, the Golden Gate Bridge, the perfect donut, a gorgeous touchdown pass, or our grandchild’s smile. Our brain, our blood, and our hormones always react to pleasure—including sexual pleasure. The last 150,000 years of evolution at least accomplished that much with us poor humans…[anti-sex activists are only concerned] about how people become addicted to their own body chemicals when those chemicals are related to sex rather than, say, a walk through the park or a production of King Lear…
In other words, while I might be taken to task for saying that sex is no different from any other human activity, I think most reasonable people will agree that sex is no different from lots of other activities that most people aren’t so uptight about, and that it’s pure mysticism to argue that the mere addition of a symbol of exchange (rather than the thing itself) can magically turn a moral action into an immoral one.
(Thanks to Radley for the first three items, Mike Siegel for the fourth and Grace for the fifth.)
Living a green lifestyle is great – until you see how your life would actually look if you followed the basic recommendations set forth by some leaders of the environmental movement.
Some of the “minor inconveniences” of being green include:
In other words, your life would suck royally – almost as bad as having to watch The Watch once a day, every day, for the rest of your life.
Read the whole piece here.
According to his attorney, guess what former Penn State Graham Spanier is doing now?
Graham Spanier might have been ousted from his post at the helm of Penn State over the sex-abuse scandal that engulfed the university, but it seems he’s found a backup employer: the American taxpayer.
Only a disgraced public figure would consider joining the much-maligned ranks of the federal workforce as a step up, reputation-wise. We can assume there were no openings for a used-car salesman.
Spanier was faulted in an internal Penn State report after the conviction on child-molestation charges of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. The report said he, head coach Joe Paterno and others helped cover up Sandusky’s abuse.
His lawyer confirms to the Loop that Spanier is working on a part-time consulting basis for a “top-secret” agency on national security issues. But the gig is so hush-hush, he couldn’t even tell his attorneys the name of the agency. In April — months after his ouster as president but before the release of the internal report — he told the Patriot-News of central Pennsylvania that he was working on a “special project for the U.S. government relating [to] national security.”
I suppose the guy has proven he can keep a secret. Maybe they’ve put him in charge of answering FOIA requests about drone strikes.
Though he was removed as president, Spanier is also still a tenured member of the Penn State faculty. So after all of this, he’s still depositing two paychecks from taxpayers. That we know of, anyway.
(Thanks to Radley for the first two, and to Mike Siegel, FilmRot Dave, Grace, Teller and Wendy Lyon for the next five.)
I told you I’d keep you posted on the benefit show we’re putting together for Cold Stares singer/guitarist Chris Tapp. Here’s the latest:
We’re going with a themed show called “Nashville Takes on the Blues.” Well have a house band and—as you might guess from the title—we’ll then have a lineup of artists from around town come in to sing a few blues covers each. Local producer Jamie Kenney and the great Nashville-based singer-songwriter Matthew Perryman Jones are helping me put the whole thing together. Perryman Jones will also be playing. It should be a lot of fun.
If you’re in or around Nashville, the show will be August 16th at 3rd & Lindsley. Starts at 8pm. More details to come.
I’ll also soon have more details on where you can give to help Chris out. We’re still working on getting the fund set up. If you’re interested, we’ll also be having a silent auction. We might put a few items up for an online auction if we get some items for which it makes sense to do so.
But if any of you readers have something you’d like to contribute to the auction, please drop me an email. If you’re not in or near Nashville, it would ideally be something or some service that kinda’ makes sense. Examples: Maybe you’re a famous musician who wants to donate a signed guitar. Or an amazing artist who wants to donate something you’ve made. Maybe you own a B&B and want to donate a weekend for two. You get the idea.
BTW, the Cold Stares’ new album has been the top delta blues album on Amazon for a few weeks now. They’ll also have a new E.P. out in the fall, which they recorded just before Chris started treatment.
Okay. Back to writing a book. And back to your regularly scheduled guest bloggers.
– Radley
PS: Here’s some music.
(Thanks to Jack Shafer for the first item, Radley for the next three, Furry Girl for the fifth, and Agitatortot Robert Chambers for the sixth.)
So there’s physical courage—the heroes in Aurora who shielded loved ones from gunfire.
But then there’s moral courage—holding fast to your principles in the face of unimaginable challenges to those principles. Pierce O’Farrill was shot three times in Aurora, once with each of James Holmes’ guns. He gave a radio interview yesterday. So first of all, the guy was shot three times, and he gave a radio interview yesterday. But it’s more about what the guy said. First, he forgave his attacker. Second, he asked that his attacker not be given the death penalty. And third, he reaffirmed his support for Second Amendment rights.
I’m sure my opinion is colored by the fact that though I don’t share his religious beliefs, I do happen to agree with O’Farrill on the death penalty and gun rights. Nevertheless, the guy sounds like a pretty exceptional human being.
–Radley
I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman. – Henri Leclerc
No matter what Western religions claim, sex is no different from any other human activity once the possibility of creating human life is removed by birth control. I strongly suspect that realization is the real driving force behind most of the current American anti-abortion, anti-birth control rhetoric: moralists (perhaps unconsciously) realize that without the threat of lifelong consequences, people will stop seeing sex as a magical sacrament which is “dangerous” without official sanctification. Without belief in the mystical significance of sex, prostitution is just another personal service like massage, hairdressing or wet-nursing. And once one recognizes that, one has to question the necessity for special laws which only apply to sex work.
Take “pimps”, for instance. If all the stereotypes and drama are stripped away, “pimp” is just a pejorative term for a prostitute’s agent; there is no innate moral difference between such a person and an agent representing a writer, actress, football player, etc. It’s true that some such relationships are exploitative, but the same can be said of any other agent/performer or employer/employee relationship: it’s the exploitation which is bad, not the relationship itself. In my column “Thought Experiment” I wrote,
…as I’ve pointed out on numerous occasions…the abusive, controlling pimp of legend is so rare we can consider him an anomaly. In fact, the fraction of prostitutes who have such an abusive pimp – roughly 1.5% – is so similar to the percentage of women who report that their husbands/boyfriends are either “extremely violent” (1.2%) or “extremely controlling” (2.3%) that it’s pointless to consider them a different phenomenon, especially when one considers that any non-client male found in the company of a whore will inevitably be labeled a “pimp” by cops or prohibitionists. The notion that hookers only have relationships with a certain kind of man, who is labeled a “pimp” by outsiders, derives from the Victorian fallacy (alas, still alive today) that we are somehow innately “different” from other women, and therefore our men are different as well.
The rest of that column presents an analogy between whores and barbers which may help you to see through to the truth of the matter. It’s very important that people do understand, because claims of “exploitation” are used to demonize anyone who has anything to do with a prostitute, including clients, drivers, boyfriends, secretaries, landlords, dependent adult family members and even other prostitutes working together for safety; a new law in New York even targets taxi drivers who “knowingly” carry hookers in their cabs. The penalties for these “offenses” are usually greater than those for simple prostitution; the latter is generally a misdemeanor while “pandering” and “avails” charges are often felonies, and if the prosecutor decides to label such relationships “human trafficking” they can result in asset seizure, decades-long sentences and consignment to “sex offender” registries. But since feminists think it’s just grand for a woman to have employees, agents or even a dependent husband if she’s a politician or corporate executive, why does it suddenly become intrinsically “exploitative” if she’s a sex worker?
Sex worker rights advocates, human rights organizations and health experts all support the decriminalization model; this means that there should be no special laws which apply only to hookers but not anyone else. Brothels, for example, are subject to the same workplace safety and other applicable laws as govern any other business, and if an employee of such a place feels she’s been treated unfairly she can make a complaint just as any other employee of any other business could. There is no need for any special “anti-pimp” law, because the existing laws work just fine when the trade isn’t forced into the shadows; in Colombia (which doesn’t have full decriminalization but is much closer than the U.S.), for example, a whore who is cheated out of her fee can summon a cop just as a restaurant owner could…as Secret Service Agent Arthur Huntington discovered to his chagrin.
New Zealand decriminalized in 2003, and though most everyone other than diehard prohibitionists are happy with the results in general, there are still a few bugs:
More than 40 [street sign] poles have been bent, buckled or broken in the past 18 months in one area of south Auckland, New Zealand…“Prostitutes use these street sign poles as dancing poles,” said [a member of the city council. The claim appears in a pamphlet]…detailing frustrations of residents and businesses struggling to cope with [streetwalkers and calling]…on parliament…to give Auckland Council powers to ban sex workers from certain areas…other…incidents [include]…a transvestite [ramming] a supermarket trolley into a woman’s car before lying across the bonnet, and a school-bus full of children observing a transvestite changing her dress…
While I can certainly sympathize with the residents who have to put up with these antics, I feel compelled to ask: aren’t vandalism and indecent exposure already illegal for everyone? Why does there need to be a special law banning all prostitutes from the area? If the police can’t enforce the existing laws against this kind of aggressive and disruptive behavior, how will even more laws help? The answer, of course, is that they won’t; belligerent transvestites and abusive pimps are just the excuses used by prudes to restrict the majority of sex workers who are guilty of nothing other than being sexual.
A heaping helping of links to make you happy, make you think and make you lose faith in humanity.
(Thanks to Radley for the first three items, Jesse Walker for the fourth and Agitatortot David for the fifth.)
The audience Q&A segment isn’t up yet. But here’s the part of the show about Cory Maye, SWAT raids, and civil forfeiture.
I apologize that I haven’t been able to grace you people for a while with my, whatever it is, but whatever.
Take this, punk!
I’ll be talking about Cory Maye, SWAT raids, and civil asset forfeiture tonight on Stossel. 9 pm ET, Fox Business.
Stick around for the audience Q&A, and you’ll see me get exasperated with a former prosecutor turned professional pundit. It wasn’t even Wendy Murphy this time.
–Radley
(Thanks to Radley for the first four items and Jesse Walker for the fifth.)
Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. - Criswell
If the primary purpose of a movie is to entertain, it makes sense that a film can be “so bad it’s good”; some movies are just so incredibly, amazingly, jaw-droppingly bad that we can’t help finding them funny. So it’s not surprising that people are still watching the work of the late Edward D. Wood, Jr., arguably the worst filmmaker of all time. There are bad writers, bad directors and bad producers, but Wood managed to be outstandingly bad at all three: his scripts make no sense and are laden with ludicrous dialog and wholly illogical plots; his direction ranges from the incompetent to the incomprehensible, and his production values are practically nonexistent. Wood’s dedication to keeping costs down is exemplified by his commitment to exposing as little film as possible, and his employment of stock footage even when it was wholly inappropriate. And though it’s not unusual for directors to favor certain groups of actors, it is highly doubtful that any such regular cast was as completely devoid of talent as Wood’s stable, which often included the director himself.
The clip above is from Wood’s first full-length film, Glen or Glenda (1953), a semi-autobiographical piece in which Wood revealed his transvestism to the world. Like all Wood’s early work it gave a prominent role to the destitute, morphine-addicted Bela Lugosi, seen here as a narrator mumbling incomprehensible commentary of his own devising. Lugosi died just as Wood was about to start filming his magnum opus, Plan 9 From Outer Space, but the would-be auteur was undeterred; he incorporated silent screen tests of Lugosi into the movie and cast his wife’s chiropractor as a stand-in for the rest. The fact that the doctor looked nothing like the deceased horror icon was disguised by the simple expedient of having him walk around with his Dracula cape over his face. Plan 9 is certainly Wood’s best-known creation, and was probably responsible for the resurgence of interest in his work after it was named “Worst Film of All Time” in Harry & Michael Medved’s The Golden Turkey Awards (1980); however, it lacks one of Wood’s characteristic cinematic elements: lesbian bondage scenes, which appear in most of his movies from Glen or Glenda to Orgy of the Dead (1965) (possibly NSFW if your coworkers are very uptight):
Wood was only responsible for the script of this one, but it serves as a harbinger of his later work directing soft-core (and eventually hard-core) porn; in it, the “Emperor of the Dead” (Criswell) presides over a ceremony in which ten undead topless dancers perform in a graveyard. My cousin Alan and I rented it one Saturday afternoon in ’96, and this scene became a running joke for us; for years afterward he might suddenly hold up some random object and say, “And what is this?” To which I would reply, “A symbol, Master!” Anyone who hadn’t seen the flick probably thought we were complete morons, but that’s half the fun of a private joke.
I first discovered Wood’s oeuvre in high school, but I only recently found out that he also tried to break into television via several series pilots, all of which were thought lost until one of them was discovered in a private collection. Less than a year after filming Plan 9 Wood wrote, produced and directed “Final Curtain”, the pilot for a horror anthology series to be called Portraits of Terror. It’s as absurd, pretentious and just plain bad as anything Wood ever did, but is less than 23 minutes long; the star is Duke Moore and its narrator Dudley Manlove (both from Plan 9), but look for Wood himself (under a pseudonym) as the only other on-screen character.
Rod Serling it’s not, but if poor Wood hadn’t drank himself to death just two years before the renaissance of interest in his work, he might’ve at last found the fame he craved on the talk-show circuit, and perhaps even made a good living directing kitschy music videos in the 1980s.
(By Maggie McNeill, cross-posted on The Honest Courtesan)
Not to make my posts too Tennessee-centric, but the Volunteer State is about to make national news for all the wrong reasons.
Gov. Bill Haslam hired an amazingly talented business attorney to serve as the international director to handle the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development’s new focus on expanding the state’s overseas exports.
The new hire, Samar Ali, is a Tennessee native, Vanderbilt law graduate, a recent White House Fellow, a former associate attorney at Hogan Lovells and has one of the most impressive resumes of international humanitarian service I’ve ever seen.
She’s also Muslim.
As a result, several county Republican groups and a Tea Party group went berserk and began churning out petitions and resolutions calling for Ali to step down and for Haslam to receive “appropriate action.”
A couple of resolutions also condemn Haslam for allowing “open homosexuals to make policy decisions in the Department of Children’s Services.”
Apparently this small, but loud, group of local loons believe that anyone who isn’t Christian and straight shouldn’t have the opportunity to work for state government in Tennessee.
It seems another concern for these dopes is that, as an international business attorney in Hogan Lovells’ Abu Dhabi office, Ali had to learn Sharia-compliant finance issues – as would any business attorney in the Arab world. It wouldn’t serve clients well if, for example, a business attorney didn’t know that Muslims don’t believe in charging interest, but instead charge fees for borrowing cash up front.
The people in opposition to Ali’s appointment somehow equate her knowledge of Sharia-compliance in her legal work to a desire to inject Tennessee with Sharia law. The ignorance is really mind-blowing.
So, in an effort to defend Muslims, gay people and anyone else being criticized by these small minded bigots, I wrote an editorial for Wednesday’s Chattanooga Times Free Press on the subject.
Not only do I expect that it will go over like a fart in an elevator in an area as culturally conservative as Chattanooga, but I’m speaking at a large Tea Party event on Thursday. This should be fun!
As I say in the piece:
“Hiring the best person for a job — regardless of that individual’s race, religion or sexual orientation — does not make Gov. Haslam a villain. It makes him wise.
Criticizing Haslam for hiring the best person for a job — because of the individual’s race, religion or sexual orientation — does not make you a patriot. It makes you a bigot.”
Here are some links to read when you want to appear as though you’re working really hard, but you’re really just screwing around online:
H/T to Ben Cunningham and Grant Starrett for several of these stories.
Twitter me up: @Drews_Views
Leroy Brown, disgraced former detective for the Rover Avenue Police Department and later private investigator to the stars, has died at the age of 49.
Known on the streets as “Encyclopedia”, Brown rose quickly from patrolman to head of the Rover Avenue burglary and larceny detective squad, based on unorthodox interrogation methods which acquired Brown a 100% conviction rate at the trial court level, a legacy which has never been equaled in the annals of modern law enforcement. It was Brown’s unusual style of police work which led, ultimately, to his downfall, as the detective was excoriated in a series of of opinions from the 13th Circuit Court of Appeals, and, in the groundbreaking case Meany v. United States, the Supreme Court. Brown’s methodology was described by Justice Souter, in the Court’s majority opinion, as “unparalleled fidelity to the truth, combined with reckless disregard of the Petitioner’s Constitutional rights to counsel, and against self-incrimination”:
Petitioner Meany was convicted of breaking the victim’s piggy bank on the sole testimony of Detective Brown, who testified on direct examination that Meany had admitted to being in the victim’s bedroom “while Uranus was in the House of Aquarius”. Detective Brown then explained to the jury that, as had been demonstrated by Ptolemy and the ancient astronomers, it was impossible for Uranus to occupy the House of Aquarius, as the crime occurred on the night of May 14, when Taurus the Bull is the dominant sign. Moreover, as Detective Brown noted, Uranus follows a retrograde path at such times, and in any event, was unknown to astronomers of any sort until its discovery by Sir William Herschel in 1781, long after the traditional astrological Houses had been established.
We cannot disagree with Detective Brown’s flawless logic. Although we are not called upon to do so, we must commend Detective Brown for his sagacity and, dare we say it, encyclopedic knowledge of the principles of astrology. But this Court cannot, and will not, condone Detective Brown’s failure to advise Petitioner Meany of his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and his Sixth Amendment right to …
Turn to page 96 for the solution to Justice Souter’s opinion.
Following his disgrace before the nation’s highest court, Brown was discharged from employment at the Rover Avenue Police Department. After a long and, ultimately unsuccessful, complaint by the Fraternal Order of Police on Brown’s behalf, Brown took up employment as a private detective in Los Angeles, winning fame as an investigator in a series of high profile mysteries, including “The Case of the Purloined Panties”, “The Case of the Sexy Sexagenarian”, and, in the crowning achievement of a long career, turning his skills against the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department in “The Case of the Thirty-Six Cops Who Beat the Shit out of this Guy on the Imperial Highway”.
Brown was eulogized by friends, foes, and clients alike, including Rover Avenue librarian Doris Horus, former President Bill Clinton, and Brian “Bugs Meany” Ash, with whom Brown became friends following Ash’s conversion to Christianity. He is survived by his longtime partner, Sally Kimball.
Freedom and whores are the most cosmopolitan items under the sun. – Georg Büchner
In order to get around the “consenting adults” argument and negate the obvious symmetry between arguments for abortion rights and those for the right to have sex on one’s own terms, modern prohibitionists often argue that whores are incapable of rational adult decision-making and must therefore be “protected” as adolescents are supposed to be “protected” by age of consent laws (a subject for another day). Prohibitionists refer to us as “prostituted women”, passive and childlike creatures suffering from “false consciousness” due to childhood trauma or drug abuse; when we insist that we endured no such trauma we are said to be lying, delusional or afflicted by “repressed memories”; and if we insist that the men with whom we are personally or professionally involved have not coerced or abused us in any way we are said to be suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome”. To support these blanket statements, bogus “studies” of incarcerated streetwalkers are used to make pronouncements about the entire range of whoredom; as I’ve said before, this is rather like doing a methodologically-unsound story of failed hot-dog pushcart operators and then extrapolating the results to all restaurants from food trucks to mom-and-pop diners to fast-food chains to five-star palaces.
That’s why one of the primary missions of my blog is to prove that hookers are no more alike than the members of any other profession. Just as there is no single doctor, plumber, salesman or teacher personality type, so there is no single psychological profile that can describe all (or even most) hookers. One of the ways I demonstrate this range is by featuring (about once per month) a “harlotography”, a short biography of a whore from history who became famous for one reason or another, and even a quick look at the wide range of reasons for their fame is enough to illustrate some of the many differences.
Some of them attracted attention (sometimes of the unwelcome sort) for their success; Josie Arlington and Lulu White owned the two largest brothels in New Orleans’ famous “Storyville” district (center & far right in photo), while Deborah Jeanne Palfrey’s Washington, D.C. escort service eventually became too profitable to escape federal attention. Similarly, the wealth and popularity of the hetaera called Phryne drew legal persecution from the jealous politicians of Athens. And while Ching Shih was also attacked by the forces of government, it was on the seas rather than in court: her career as a brothel-whore eventually led to one in piracy, and she became the most successful pirate commander of all time.
Ching Shih’s success came from being noticed by a powerful man, the pirate commander she married and later succeeded after his death. This is almost certainly the most common means through which harlots are remembered by posterity: the hetaera Aspasia was the consort of the Athenian leader Pericles, and Rhodopis may have become a concubine of the Pharaoh Amasis II. The Madame de Pompadour was the mistress of King Louis XV of France, Nell Gwyn that of King Charles II of England, and Theodora the wife of the Emperor Justinian, who made her an Empress (the Eastern Orthodox Church later declared her a saint).
Theodora and Nell Gwyn (the model for this painting) attracted their patrons’ attentions through another facet of their shared profession: acting, which was up until the early 19th century indistinguishable from harlotry. Dancing was another way for courtesans to advertise their charms, and among those famous for doing so were Lola Montez and La Belle Otero. Another was Mata Hari, though of course she is best remembered now for being executed (probably unjustly) as a spy in 1917. Nor was she the only courtesan to meet that fate at the hands of a French government; Olympe de Gouges was guillotined by the Jacobins in 1793. De Gouges had become quite well-known as a writer of feminist and abolitionist essays, and she and I aren’t the only literary whores; Veronica Franco and Su Xiaoxiao were highly regarded for their poetry. In more recent times, a French streetwalker was discovered while singing in the street and became famous under her stage name, Édith Piaf.
Of course, a few women reverse the usual process and become hookers after they’re already famous; though Madame Pompadour and Theodora won their titles via whoring, the Princess de Caraman-Chimay and the Empress Valeria Messalina had their titles first. And some, alas, never get to enjoy their fame; the five victims of Jack the Ripper are only remembered because they crossed paths with one of the earliest serial killers, and were it not for the diabolical fascination he still exerts on so many today their names and stories would have remained as obscure as those of the many other prostitutes murdered by serial killers since then.
-Maggie McNeill
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
“A sense of obligation.” - Stephen Crane
(Thanks to Radley for the first two items.)
From discussions with friends about getting the remnants of an old band back together. For reference, most of us are college radio veterans.
The name we’ve tentatively settled on, of course, is much better than any of these.
– Patrick at Popehat
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. - Thomas Paine
Every Friday the 13th I ask my readers, especially those who are not themselves sex workers, to speak out for decriminalization of prostitution. This is the third such occasion this year, but it’s also the last one for 14 months (until September 2013), so I want to make it a good one.
Though roughly 10% of modern women have taken money for sex at least once, the great majority of such cases are informal and the payer an acquaintance; only about 1% of women actually work as hookers at some point in their lives, and less than a third of that (just under 0.3%) are thus employed at any given time. That’s a pitifully small minority, smaller even than the fraction of the population who identify as homosexual (which is between 2-3%); in a more just world even the smallest minority would be treated fairly, but since that isn’t the case in this one it’s imperative we have help from outside our own group. Gay rights activists drew bisexuals and transgender people into a coalition, but even that would have been too small a minority to matter without the help of friends, family, libertarians and others.
Sex workers, on the other hand, have allowed our already-small numbers to be divided by laws which make arbitrary distinctions between “legal” sex work (such as stripping, phone sex and in some places porn acting) and “illegal” sex work (such as some forms of prostitution; in most of the US it’s all prostitution). But even if strippers, porn actresses and the various types of what I call “halfway whores” rallied together, I still can’t imagine that making up over 10% of the female population. As with gay rights, we’re going to need the help of friends, family, libertarians and even true feminists (as opposed to the anti-sex crowd I refer to as “neofeminists”).
Perhaps the most important group whose support needs to be enlisted is men, who make up roughly half the population but much more than half of people in positions of power. Kinsey found that 69% of men have directly paid for sex at least once in their lives; some recent studies have returned much lower numbers, but this probably has much more to do with increased social stigma in the past three decades and the construction of the questions (e.g. “have you ever procured a prostitute?” vs. “have you ever paid for sex?”) than with the material facts. Since roughly 67% of men have cheated on their wives or girlfriends, the 69% figure seems highly credible to me; it also jibes with my experience and that of other working girls with whom I’ve discussed the issue. Of those, fewer than half repeat the experience, and less than a tenth make a habit of it; roughly 20% of all men hire hookers occasionally (such as when they’re at conferences or on business trips) and 6% do so frequently.
Even if we assume that the 50% of men who never see a whore again after their first time were repelled by the experience, that still leaves a fifth of the male population who secretly support us (at least financially). So why don’t they speak up? Why are there so few prominent men who are willing to even support our rights as an abstract concept, much less actually admit to enjoying our company on occasion? Obviously it’s mostly due to the deep-rooted moral hypocrisy of our culture, whose members are willing to crucify exposed “sinners” for “offenses” they themselves have committed many times in secret. But there’s also the fact that a large fraction of the 90% of women who have not taken direct payment for sex labor under all sorts of illusions and delusions about harlotry, and even a dedicated contrarian who will enthusiastically fly in the face of social institutions may be (understandably) unwilling to risk the disapproval or even outright hostility of his wife, mother, sisters, daughters, etc.
These factors and others were mentioned in a comment by regular reader B.B. Wye on a column I wrote about the difficulties of “Coming Out”; he pointed out that as hard as it is for prostitutes to be “out”, it may be even harder for our clients, especially with “end demand” rhetoric in the ascendancy. Wye is a musician who expressed his feelings about his favorite type of whore in the song “Midtown Asian Sex Spa”, and in his comment he wrote of his desire to admit authorship of the song and to openly speak out for the rights of women who have given him a great deal of happiness and pleasure. Another reader who felt the same way wrote to ask me for suggestions on how he could find a middle path, speaking out for sex worker rights without admitting his personal interest in us; here are a few suggestions for him, for B.B., for other clients faced with the same quandary, for working girls who can’t come out themselves, and for men and women who have never bought or sold sex, but just care about human rights.
If you’re generally libertarian or civil rights-oriented in your politics it’s easy; all you have to do is argue for decriminalization from a perspective of “people have the right to do what they like with their own bodies”. As I’ve pointed out in the past, every court decision (including Roe vs. Wade) which upholds abortion rights also upholds the right to sex on one’s own terms, even if money is involved (abortion isn’t free, after all); ditto court decisions overturning sodomy laws like Lawrence vs. Texas. And obviously, the arguments for drug decriminalization also apply to prostitution. If you’re an atheist or skeptic, that’s easy too; in addition to the arguments above you can make statements like “prostitution laws are based on religion and xenophobia, not facts” and “the sex trafficking hysteria is a moral panic like the Satanic Panic and the Red Scare”.
The harm reduction perspective is another good one, and is the approach generally favored by advocates who have a human rights background or strong religious affiliation (including some members of the Catholic clergy): Prostitution has always been with us and we can’t make it go away with laws any more than the “Drug War” has made drugs go away. All the Drug War has done is to subject innocent people to invasion of their privacy and make drug users vulnerable to impure drugs, not to mention all those caught in drug-related violence; similarly, anti-prostitution laws help nobody and force prostitutes into the shadows where they can be harmed and exploited. Furthermore, many governments (including those of New Zealand, New South Wales and Brazil) have recognized that illegal prostitution invariably leads to police corruption, just as alcohol Prohibition did and drug prohibition still does.
Finally, there’s the feminist approach: why does society have the right to tell women they can’t make a living with their natural sex-based attributes when it allows men to do so with boxing, bodyguard work, etc? Furthermore, laws against prostitution invariably subject women’s dress and mannerisms to police scrutiny; women are accused of prostitution for dressing sexily, acting sexily, carrying condoms in their purses, being in certain areas, not wearing underwear, etc. This is “slut shaming” with criminal consequences.
Even if you are unable to speak out openly you can post anonymous comments on anti-whore articles online (with links to my site and those of other rights advocates), you can donate money to advocacy groups, and you can of course vote (though there are pitifully few chances to employ that strategy in the United States). Even though any one person’s influence is small, lots of buckets eventually fill a pool. Readers, we need your help and that of every good man and woman, and anything you can do will be gratefully appreciated.
(Cross-posted from The Honest Courtesan, where it appears as “The Last Thirteen for Fourteen”)
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