The weakness of little children’s limbs is innocent, not their souls. – St. Augustine
Neofeminists consistently claim that all prostitutes are the victims of sexual trauma which renders us incapable of making competent choices. They arrive at this conclusion via the psychological defense mechanism known as projection; since the majority of neofeminists are themselves victims of sexual abuse which causes them to hate and fear men, it is their cognitive processes which are warped and delusional, not those of normal women. But since they cannot face the painful truth that their entire world-view is the product of severe neurosis, they explain the difference between their thinking and that of others by concluding that it is everyone else who is irrational while they are paragons of sanity. Since whores do not see the world as neofeminists do, we must in their minds be insane, and to have been made that way by that which they imagine as the source of all evil, the male sex drive. Having arrived at this convenient conclusion, they must then find evidence to support it in order to maintain the pretense of scholarship; this is accomplished by interviewing streetwalkers who are either in prison, drug rehab facilities or reclamation programs (in other words the most maladjusted segment of the lowest class of whores) and making it clear which answers they want by the use of leading questions. Women in such circumstances will generally provide authority figures (including researchers) with whatever answers they think that authority wants to hear, and those who do not provide the desired answers are explained as being “in denial” or suffering from “repressed memories”. In other words, neofeminist “researchers” practice a looking-glass version of science; first they decide on a conclusion, then hand-pick a sample which they believe will provide the proper results, then discard all results which despite precautions still tend to disprove the conclusion. The White Queen herself could not come up with anything more backward. But as I said in yesterday’s column about pimps, those in authority never let facts get in the way of their attempts to control others, and since the neofeminist position gives them a rationale for what they already intended to do anyhow they embrace it wholeheartedly.
Unlike neofeminists and politicians, I do not subscribe to a Machiavellian morality in which any amount of deception or sophistry is allowed as long as it serves to further my agenda. I wish that I could provide you with one study which disproves everything the neofeminists say, but you’ll have to content yourself with looking over a number of them which are generally less accessible because government grants tend to go to those groups which will produce the results the sponsoring agency wishes. I can also suggest that you peruse the websites, blogs and other writings of the literally scores of whores who will tell you the same thing I do: That in the 85% of our profession who aren’t streetwalkers, the majority are happy with our lives and decisions and did not embrace sex work because we were “damaged” in any way, but rather for the same reasons anyone else chooses any career, namely inclination, aptitude and perceived rewards outweighing those of our other options. I can also tell you about my personal history, which will at least explain how one individual whore came to pursue this profession.
I was born in New Orleans in the autumn of 1966 and raised in a small town nearby as the eldest of several girls born to middle-class Catholic parents, and though I’m sure my mother did her best she never quite knew what to do with me. You see, I was quite precocious, both intellectually and sexually. Not that I knew what sex was at that early stage, mind you; I just knew that watching certain scenes on TV made me feel “funny”, and even embarrassed if other people were in the room. Perhaps my early attraction to science fiction was partly due to the fact that a disproportionate number of these exciting situations appeared in Star Trek. In any case, I quickly learned that if I asked my mother about certain subjects I was invariably answered with complete silence, “What are you talking about?” or the dreaded “Oh, you know that already.” She seemed to labor under the misconception that my voracious reading must have already answered any question I might conceivably ask, so no other information was necessary. I suspect this is the reason I never developed the unhealthy attitude about sex with which many girls are inflicted; my mother never told me anything about it, positive or negative, beyond the obvious things like “it isn’t nice to pick your dress up over your head to show people your underwear.”
Mind you, I don’t believe she was that unhelpful with my little sisters; I honestly think I just made her uncomfortable. Because even though menarche took me completely by surprise (I had read about it in The World Book Encyclopedia but didn’t expect it before my 11th birthday), I know for a fact she explained it to my little sister ahead of time. By that point I knew better than to open my mouth about anything connected with sex, so I was forced to attempt to discover for myself the answers to such burning questions as why I found Mrs. Emma Peel so fascinating; not that the books I could find in the public library at that time were much help, but they were better than nothing. I was able to find information on such sensitive subjects all by myself thanks to the instruction of my 5th grade teacher, who also convinced my parents and the principal that I was so far ahead of the other kids I should be promoted directly to 7th grade, bypassing 6th; perhaps the fact that I was already starting to develop also had something to do with their decision to grant her request.
The first time the word “prostitute” was ever applied to me was almost two years later, toward the end of 8th grade; I was 12 years old and despite skipping a grade still the brightest kid in class. At that time the nuns used to give a form of punish-work called a “lollipop”, which was simply a complex math problem which had to be worked in ink with no errors or scratch-outs. I was often given them for talking in class, passing notes or the like, but found them childishly simple; the other kids disagreed, so “lollipops” were fairly dreaded. Well, one day during lunch I saw a male classmate fretting over such a problem, and being an insufferable little snot to people I disliked I couldn’t help saying, “Oh, those aren’t so hard.”
“If it’s so easy, you do it,” he sulked.
“Why should I do your punish-work?” I asked innocently.
“I’ll give you a dollar,” he said. This instantly caught my attention; my parents did not believe in allowances so I never had any disposable income until I could start cutting my grandmother’s grass in the summer. I knew I could work the problem in under two minutes, and $30/hour was pretty damned good for a 12-year-old in 1979. I agreed in a heartbeat, the money was paid and the problem quickly worked. This started a nice little business for me for several weeks; I was perfectly willing to work other kids’ problems for cash, and I reasoned they were still being punished by having to cough up the money. It might’ve gone on indefinitely but for the laziness of the boy who had hired me first. He was given a punishment composition, and I charged him $10 (2¢ a word) and told him he had to recopy it because the teacher would know my handwriting was not his. Well, the retard ignored my warning and turned in his composition done in what was obviously a girl’s handwriting; it was but the work of minutes for the teacher to compare previous assignments in order to determine whose writing it was, and we were both summoned to the principal’s office.
There was no way on Earth I was going to lie to a nun, and I didn’t really think I had done anything wrong anyhow. Ah, innocence! What followed was not pretty. The boy was dismissed and given a new punishment, while I was forced to listen to a lecture from the principal, then to wait in her office after school until my parents were summoned to a conference about how concerned she was about “Maggie prostituting herself in this manner.” That was the term she used several times, both to me and to my parents, and yes I knew what it meant. The trip home was made in silence, which was far worse than any yelling would have been, and later I had to endure several more lectures about how what I had done was wrong. But through all of this neither Sister nor my parents could answer to my satisfaction the simple question I asked more than once: How was what I had done different from performing any other service for money? After all, the assignments were not for grades, so it wasn’t cheating; I had in fact turned down several contracts for doing homework because that would have been. I was subjected to a lot of platitudes about punishment being for the edification of the one punished, and how paying me money wouldn’t teach them a lesson even if I had raised my rates dramatically. But I was no fool; I could see that what upset them had nothing to do with other kids getting off easy, and that if I had done their punish-work out of friendship it wouldn’t have been viewed as such a catastrophe. No, it was obviously the fact that I had charged for my services that disturbed them all so. I had clearly crossed an invisible line, and though my parents walked all around it Sister had clearly used the exact word she meant to use. Despite a middle-class background and Catholic upbringing, despite intelligence and education, despite never having abused any kind of drug, and in the complete absence of any history of sexual abuse, I was already on the road to whoredom. And as we shall see tomorrow, neither high school nor a university education did anything to change my course.
I know that for me, the most difficult part of a punishment composition would have been the handwriting. Copying somebody else’s work would have been marginally easier, because I wouldn’t have to write and think at the same time (I remember once misspelling my own name after three and a half pages of handwriting).
I was only assigned work for grades, though. Helping me out in this way would have been cheating. Punishments consisted of not getting to go on trips, detention, or paddling.
Star Trek, huh? I had a crush on Uhura. Everybody had a crush on Uhura.
I had crushes on Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Yeoman Rand, but I’m sure that will surprise nobody. 😉
Funny — even though I am not gay, my crush was on Mr Spock. I think I also found knowledge (especially its intensity) arousing. (When I saw female Vulcans, I thought they were perfection incarnate!)
I had a crush on Uhura too–and all the girls in obligatory short skirts walking around the Enterprise. When the Next Generation “updated” the Star Fleet uniforms to unisex pantsuits, I started losing interest in Star Trek. After fall of 1993, I never watched any Star Trek programming regularly again.
I once saw Grace Lee Whitney (Yeoman Rand) talking about the sorry state of modern feminism; she said that young women frequently asked her how she could wear such a “sexist” outfit and she had to explain that she helped Bill Theiss design it! These brainwashed young women just couldn’t comprehend that in the ’60s, “liberated” women recognized that embracing our sexuality was empowering, and that it is repressive cultures who force their women to cover up, not egalitarian ones.
Nichelle Nichols was asked (frequently) if she ever felt exploited wearing that micro-mini. She had to explain, over and over, that miniskirts were a symbol of women’s liberation. So no, she did not feel exploited by promoting women’s liberation on television.
And of course, a certain Dr. King was a fan of the show, and of Uhura in particular. Talked her out of quitting the show.
OK, a little back on-topic: is there any correlation between harlotry and being a science fiction fan? I’d (almost) bet money that there hasn’t been any research on THAT! But Maggie might have some anecdotal evidence.
I’ve never known any hookers, unless you count Maggie and the others who comment on here. But I have known several libertarian-types, and I’ve read a lot of libertarian websites, and there certainly seems to be a very high proportion of science fiction fans among them. While this is anecdotal and inconclusive, I’d say it is a good indication of a link between science fiction and free-thinking in general.
Yes, there is a lot of overlap between libertarian types and science fiction types. Of course, I’ve read claims that this is because neither live entirely in the real world. 😉
I only knew two other working girls and a stripper who were sci-fi fans. The two strongest correlations I observed were with the medical professions and witchcraft; I knew three nurses, a veterinary student and a psychologist personally and knew of a doctor who had worked her way through school, and innumerable call girls who practiced either formal Wicca or just general neopaganism as I do. Girls often raised the subject when they saw my altar, and one of my best girls became a Tarot card reader after she fell in love and quit The Life.
That having been said, I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a lot of whores were also sci-fi fans; after all, freethinking and a disregard for convention are disproportionately represented in both groups.
I think science fiction inspired free thinking, and the intensity of thought, discovery, and science itself. I was hooked at age 8, and still am. (I remember continously falling in love with Robert Heinlein’s female characters: they were not very realistic, but my! they were so intelligent, and intensely so. There’s a clear connection in my mind between intellectual passion/intensity and sexual passion/intensity. Heinlein is often been accused of sexism, and I can see motives in his work that aren’t flattering to the fair sex; but all in all I haven’t seen many feminist authors come up with ’empowered female characters’ that were much better than Podkayne or Friday or Dejah Thoris Carter or Maureen Smith.)
I always laugh out loud when some stupid “feminist critic” claims Heinlein’s female characters are “unrealistic”, considering they were all based to one degree or another on his beloved wife Virginia, who gave him considerable input in their creation. And I myself am so much like a female character that on more than one occasion a client or other man asked me, “Have you ever read any Robert Heinlein?” or, even more specifically, “Have you ever read Friday?” 🙂
Have you commented on the brief conversation about prostitution in Glory Road?
In the case of these critics, Maggie, I think the claim that they are “unrealistic” comes from theory — in a male-dominated society women are oppressed, so they couldn’t possibly develop these kinds of personality; also, these personalities are “so obviously male” it’s easy to see they are just Male Patriarchy in drag, etc. etc. etc. I’ve seen some of these, and I don’t like them either.
But there is a different sense in some of Heinlein’s female — and male — characters may be called unrealistic (note: not impossible, just unrealistic), and it’s their purity. Characters like Jubal Harshaw (from Stranger in a Strange Land), Johan Sebastian Bach Smith from I Will Fear No Evil, Maureen Smith from To Sail Beyond the Sunset… They look like walking success machines, always knowing instinctively what the best solution is to a problem, never being trapped into internal problems… They seem immune to agony, self-doubt, insecurity, uncertainty; they are roaring waterfalls of energy that never stops pouring. They are beautiful to behold… but, like Burrough’s Tarzan who could talk to the apes, who could speak English but only read French, not really a very easy-to-find type in real life.
Not that it’s impossible. You do seem to approach the Heinlein type (I had thought of comparing you to Friday but then I saw a post in which you mentioned this had already been done). I have a friend — a guy I dearly love and respect (if I ever turn gay, he’d be my pick for a lover!) who also approaches the enthusiasm and energy of a Heinleinian hero as a ‘success-machine’. And yet… if you get to know him better, you’ll see he has ‘darker’ sides that aren’t quite visible to the casual observer, sides that I’ve never detected in a Heinlein character. My impression is that if I knew you as closely as I know this friend of mine, I’d probably think the same about you. (I don’t have any evidence of that, of course, other than my own experince with people. And I say this, believe me, with all due respect to the beauty of your impressive personality.)
That Heinlein based his characters on Virginia Heinlein doesn’t make them more “realistic”: he may simply have put in them some of Ginny’s features without adding certain others (that wouldn’t be relevant for his success-via-hard-work driven narrative).
Thanks for the great read. You really have a great knowledge and style. I wish more could read what I feel is a far more balanced view of this life. If you feel to have a look at my own blog which details the pay sex scene in Berlin Germany (written in English) from the customer’s point of view.
In closing I will say reading you blog is an inspiration to me and I plan to read it all.
My blog http://www.angusmagee.com (if you do not want the adress posted feel free to delete it before you publish the comment.
Thanks, Andrew; I try to present as realistic a view as I can, and since new people discover my blog every day you’re getting your wish, albeit gradually. 😉
If you put a permanent link to this blog on your site, I’ll provide one for you on my “Offsite” page. 🙂
Hi,
Sorry for my delay in relying but I have been in bed with a cold and more or less off line for a few days.
I am not 100% sure what you mean by a permanent link but I was planning to write up a short blog entry recommending your blog to my readers. I really do think it worth reading. It gives such a good alternate view to the hooker as victim that is so common.
Regards
A
In other words, add me to your blogroll or the equivalent, like my right-hand column there. 🙂
You mentioned you attended an all girls school in another article, however you stated you completed a problem for a male classmate.
I attended an all-girl high school, not an all-girl grammar school. I don’t even think there was such a thing in Louisiana at that time.
[…] and admit that I’m terribly turned on by being tied up, and always have been. In my column of July 28th I mentioned that certain situations on TV made me feel “funny”, but that nobody else seemed […]
I don’t have kids myself, but I do have nephews around that age. And if any one of them was caught coining it with a scheme like that I’d be darned proud of them.