The whore is despised by the hypocritical world because she has made a realistic assessment of her assets and does not have to rely on fraud to make a living. In an area of human relations where fraud is regular practice between the sexes, her honesty is regarded with a mocking wonder. – Angela Carter
I’ve written a lot lately about a change in the wind regarding public opinion about whoring; the more enlightened members of our society appear to be slowly coming to the realization that the concept of a consensual crime simply has no place in a free society, and that for the state to dictate what a woman can do with her own body is not only barbaric, but also cannot be defined as anything other than slavery. And that makes neofeminists and “human trafficking” fanatics the worst kind of hypocrites, because they promote the doctrine that all women should be enslaved to the state in order to prevent a few women from being enslaved by individuals! Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If I must be chattel, I would rather be owned by an individual man whom I can look in the eye, talk to and attempt to influence with my feminine wiles rather than a vast, faceless, amorphous monstrosity which does not even know I exist and has no human feelings to which I can appeal.
But such changes never come without a backlash from the control freaks who feel the psychotic need to judge and condemn others for being different from themselves. Though articles like this one are becoming the norm among rational adults, the cases of arrested development are becoming more and more vicious in their spastic attacks on human sexuality, especially as personified in the persons of whores. Though I have no desire to give a pulpit to these self-appointed guardians of the public morals, some of their behaviors are so revealing of their true motives that calling attention to them actually functions in the same way as turning over a stone reveals the disgusting creatures underneath. Here’s a link to the site of “Morality in Media”, an anti-porn organization, which is currently promoting its “White Ribbon Against Pornography” week; note that despite their faux (and largely self-authored) “studies”, their rhetoric is actually nothing but good old-fashioned religious fundamentalism straight out of revival tents and Carrie Nation. Notice also their chilling slogan: “Promoting a Decent Society Through Law.” Hitler would’ve been proud.
But these people are rank amateurs of hate compared to the lunatic who runs “Whores of Babylon”, a Biblical fundamentalist anti-prostitute hate site which largely consists of gloating over news articles about escorts, strippers and porn stars being murdered or committing suicide interspersed with quotes taken from escort websites and his Biblical “answers” to those quotes, and punctuated with various tirades about sin and damnation. One of the main tabs is called “Why You Deserve Hell”. What a pathetic, bitter, unhappy, fearful life his man must lead! Obviously, it’s never dawned on him that the idea of “Christian hate” is oxymoronic. Take a look at the site if you like, but I warn you that you may feel as though you need to take a bath and clean your computer’s cache after going there.
Of course, there are fanatics on both sides of sexual issues; though I’m all for safe sex, methinks the folks in the following story (paraphrased from an AP original) went a bit too far in their campaign to promote it. They honestly strike me as more than a bit Puritanical, and the toothbrushes sort of emphasize that; it’s a bit like giving trick-or-treaters those obnoxious (but unintentionally funny) fundie comics from Chick Publications.
Daniel and Kathleen Harris, of Silverton, Oregon gave trick-or-treating teenagers condoms in their goodie bags instead of candy as part of what the couple calls their “effort to promote health”; younger kids got toothbrushes with their candy bars. Daniel Cote, the father of one 14-year-old girl who received the condoms, was offended and said it was inappropriate to give them to children without parents’ consent. Kathleen Harris said giving the condoms to the 14-year-old was a mistake; she says their usual practice is to ask teens if they’re 16 or older and to give them a speech on safe sex.
A safe-sex lecture from complete strangers on Halloween; talk about a trick!
But anyway, if you risked optical contamination by looking at that “Whores of Babylon” site, you probably noticed that the guy is also kind of obsessive about Jezebel, a Phoenician princess of the 9th century BCE who married Ahab, the King of Israel and convinced her husband to allow temples of Phoenician gods to open in Israel. Though this was her native religion and she forced no Israelites to convert to it, the mere presence of these temples inflamed the anger of the fanatical prophet Elisha, who is also remembered for summoning two she-bears to kill 42 little boys because they mocked his baldness (2 Kings 2:23-24). Elisha did not dare to move against the throne while the popular Ahab was alive, but after his death the prophet backed a usurper who overthrew the rightful heir and then ordered the palace eunuchs to hurl Queen Jezebel out a window, then commanded her corpse be left in the street to be eaten by dogs. Jezebel’s last act was to dress in her royal robes, makeup and jewelry so as to die as a queen, but since history is written by the victors this was interpreted as “harlotry”. Thus, Jezebel’s name has come down as synonymous with “evil woman” or “whore”, while the man who murdered a defenseless middle-aged woman was celebrated as a hero.
You may enjoy this parody of traditional Christian readings of the story of Jezebel; as you can probably guess, feminists tend to take a dim view of the traditional interpretation, and have rightfully pointed out that Jezebel was a strong and assertive woman who merely wished to assure freedom for her religion, and who died proudly and on her feet after her sons were murdered in a coup d’état. Like Lilith, she has been adopted as a feminist symbol, and indeed there is a semi-third-wave feminist website named Jezebel.com. The site is pretty uneven, but once in a while they have a good sex worker story, such as this Open Letter from a Stripper; not only does she hit dead on, but a great deal of what she says applies to whores as well. The comments are also worth reading because they illustrate exactly what I was talking about in my first paragraph; with only a couple of exceptions, they’re all sex-work-positive. And though I wish the Jezebel site had more anti-prohibitionist stories (and fewer with the faint odor of the “Nordic Model” about them), stripper-positive features and sex-positive commentary are still indicative of the trend.
In the same vein as the “Open Letter” is this cartoon created by an escort; it’s one of those “instant cartoons” I’m seeing more often lately, and it’s absolutely bang on. It’s very funny, but keep in mind while watching it that all of us occasionally have customers who are exactly like this, though the bad traits usually don’t all appear in one client. Not usually, anyway.
But going back to Jezebel (the site, not the mach-maligned lady), I read there yesterday that Kristin Davis (whom I mentioned in my Election Day column), didn’t get the 50,000 votes she needed to automatically legitimize her Anti-Prohibition party, but she did get almost halfway there with about 23,000 votes. I think the governorship was a bit high to aim, but perhaps she might shop around for a district which will put her into the state legislature. If that many people actually voted for her, there are probably ten times that many who sympathized with her platform but didn’t want to “waste their votes”. Even a quarter of a million sympathizers in New York State is a start.
Oh Maggie, dont you understand their mindset is “love the sin and hate the sinner”? The people who complain the most are usually doing the same thing in secret.
Male hooker-haters are so vehement, so full of pure bile, that it’s pretty obvious that their behavior is a reaction to the lust they cannot admit to themselves.
Regular readers know that I don’t approve replies from fanatics because I don’t want to give them free reign to post in the future, but I do want to let y’all know that I just received a reply from someone who is clearly the poor tortured soul who writes “Whores of Babylon”.
Antioch
isaiah666.com
antiochm@yahoo.com
50.10.85.246
2010/11/06 at 10:33 pm
“The lunatic who runs “Whores of Babylon”
“If they called me a leader of demons what names will you call my Sons?” – Jesus
“Do you hate me because I tell the truth?” – Galatians
“If they hated me the world will hate you also because I testify that their works are evil” – Jesus
Don’t flatter yourself, little man; unlike you, I don’t “hate” anyone, not even people who have seriously injured me. Hate is not only immoral and unproductive, it’s actually destructive to the hater. And if I hated anyone at all, it certainly wouldn’t be a pathetic loser whom I don’t even know, who spends all his time cruising escort sites so he can ogle the girls, then blaming them for his perversion. 🙁
Amen.
XX
Hey! You’ve been getting hate mail! That’s a great sign. Congratulations, Maggie. Nice work!
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” – Winston Churchill 🙂
I’ve noticed an increasing frequency of a certain type of joke. Somebody will refer to politicians or lawyers or media as “a bunch of whores” and somebody else will say something like, “hey, there’s no need to talk that way about honest working girls!”
This is meant as a joke, but it may still be a good sign. There was a time when the idea that prostitutes aren’t that bad wasn’t expressed even as a joke.
Yes, that’s part of what I was talking about in my column “Sea Change” a few days ago. I’m noticing more and more people who, while they may not exactly share the Dutch recognition that prostitution is a job like any other, at least recognize that there is nothing intrinsically “wrong” with hookers.
Just my personal thoughts, but i think that (some) people may get more wrapped around the axle because of some of the other things that are (improperly or otherwise) associated with it, like drugs or child exploitation. take those two things away and more people might see prostitution differently. Its about perception, not reality.
The problem, Ant, is that those “perceptions” aren’t natural to the profession; they are not associated with it in the public mind except in relatively recent times. There’s a vast difference between misconceptions which naturally arise due to ignorance and those which are purposefully planted in the public mind via prohibitionist propaganda. 🙁
My flatmate and I thoroughly enjoyed your link to the illustrated version of the Jezebel story.
I remember reading about that in church (I would actually read the Bible during church because I was rarely interested in what they were talking about and I was supposed to stay awake, or retain a semblance of being awake); the story of Jezebel always shocked me. The gross violence against a powerful woman and the way these men reveled in her ignominious death. I never fully understood WHY she deserved to die (so I have now learned something new!), all I knew was here was another example of how Christianity did no favours to women. My sympathies were always with Jezebel and the great harlot of Babylon riding a beast (once again, I wondered why men felt compelled to cut off her beautiful, whorish head).
XX
I don’t think I ever read the story of Jezebel until I was older; the Biblical woman whose fate always shocked me the most when I was a little girl was Lot’s wife. I always thought it was pretty awful to be turned into a pillar of salt just for looking back, though of course at that time I didn’t understand ancient concepts about looking into the face of God and all that. 🙁
It was never Lot’s wife that shocked me, it was that Lot somehow got SO drunk he could fuck BOTH of his daughters and often enough so that they became pregnant — without another male around for MILES AND MILES. Yet somehow this MAN wasn’t a sinner??? Really???
That story always repulsed and puzzled me. How could this man have been doing God’s will to not only drink himself stupid (this was before I knew that alcohol did nothing for men’s sexual abilities), but have sex with his virginal, teenage daughters? Yet I was supposed to wait until I was married to have sex with a non-related, age-appropriate man? Huh?
Nothing like reading the Bible to create massive moral disconnect.
XX
Oh, and let’s not forget the truly revolting beginning of that particular story: how Lot tried to throw his two virginal teenage daughters to the mob. What a fucked-up daddy he was. It’s amazing those girls didn’t become prostitutes, since it’s shit like this that creates prostitutes (so the myth goes).
Lot was one of the original sex traffickers. Or would-be traffickers, since the mob actually didn’t care about his girls — lucky for them.
XX
Oh, I know! Kings like Saul and Ahab punished for showing mercy to their enemies, others rewarded for murder, patriarchs refusing to do their duty (Judah and Tamar) or cheating their brothers (Jacob and Esau) yet still honored for it, and at least half of what Abraham, Lot and company did…ever see the movie Sodom and Gomorrah? The screenwriter had so much trouble finding anything positive about Lot he just decided to call Lot’s people the “Hebrews” (which they weren’t) and show him preaching Jesus’ philosophy about 1800 years early!
Stuff like this is why I abandoned Christianity for good at the age of 13 after struggling to reconcile the contradictions for a couple of years. 🙁
You should have seen my telling the Lot story to my lovely friend. I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head.
The fact that religious people pontificate against sex yet encourage their kids to read dirty Bible stories shows just how screwed up they are. 🙁
Isaac Asimov, who was a very knowledgeable Biblical scholar in addition to his other talents, once had a character (I think it was Lije Bailey in the first “Caves of Steel” novel; Maggie, do you recall?) describe Jezebel straight from the Bible as a gallant queen and dutiful wife who was doing her utmost to protect her family, husband, and kingdom, and he points out (as do both of you) that there was nothing of the harlot about her, but that her actions were political and personal. Changed my whole perspective on Jezebel. I might have to dig those books out of whatever corner of the shelves they’re hiding in and re-read them, just to find that passage.
Caves of Steel is a good one. It may be the only book outside of the Bible to have characters named Elijah and Jezebel. And R. Daneel. Though he isn’t actually in the Bible. Too bad. He’d’ve made an interesting patriarch.
I’d love to see an accurate movie of CoS, but after seeing what H-wood did to Asimov’s I, Robot and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars, I’m thinking maybe leave it for some fan to make his favorite scene (slidewalk chase?) on YouTube and forget the rest, movie-wise.
Maggie and Amanda,
There is a book on the historical Jezebel that I skim-read a while back. Basically the Jezebel-Ahab alliance was to expand the Phoenician trading empire into the Kingdom of Israel. Along with that alliance came the Phoenician gods, which were a crucial component to the trade alliance.
This murder of the House of Ahab and the annihilation of the Baal religion was quite bad for Israel, because it broke the alliance that was necessary to keep away a military invasion from Assyria. Both Phoenicia and Israel were conquered by Assyria after this. There’s a nice picture of Jezebel’s murderer, King Jehu, bowing his head to the ground to the Assyrian king:
http://www.warsofisrael.com/jehu.jpg
So much for keeping out foreigners and their gods.
Thanks, Susan! Now you mention it I seem to recall reading that fact at some point as well. It’s a perfect example of the saying, “Results are what you expect, and consequences are what you get.”
Well, I can’t remember the name of the book or the author, since I merely skimmed through it while in a bookstore. I believe that it was this book, but I could be mistaken:
http://www.amazon.com/Jezebel-Letters-Religion-Politics-Ninth-Century/dp/0800637542/ref=sr_1_16?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289366386&sr=1-16
Thanks for the info, Susan! Especially King Jehu’s disgrace (I’m assuming he was disgraced).
XX
That bas-relief Susan linked definitely made him look as though he was pretty disgraced! 🙂
Well, he is paying tribute as a vassal-state of Assyria, along with a few other vassal-states. But he definitely is not on an equal footing here. Assyria had just conquered Israel.
> for the state to dictate what a woman can do with her own body is not only barbaric, but also cannot be defined as anything other than slavery.
Huh? I don’t mean to denigrate the difficulties you’ve faced., but… slavery, for being told you can’t do a relatively small class of actions? That’s just not what that word means. There are plenty of other strong words you can use ‘oppressive’, ‘unreasonable’, ‘unjust’, ‘stupid’, ‘all-around harmful’, ‘self-defeating’, ‘counterproductive’… but ‘slavery’ doesn’t fit.
What do you call it when someone else has control over one’s body? That class of actions isn’t “small”, as should be obvious from the whole brouhaha over sex rights going on right now. Allowing the state to prohibit a woman from any sexual behaviors sets a precedent for all of them.
Slavery is about compulsion to service. Banning activities is not necessarily a *lesser* thing. It is just a *different* thing – no matter how many activities are banned.
You’re of course correct in that regard; what I’m trying to get at is that the basis of chattel slavery, the thing that allows it to continue, is a society-wide agreement that the government has the power to declare that some minority doesn’t have the same rights as other people have. Then woe betide anyone who can be accused of fitting into that minority, or members of other minorities whose freedoms are abrogated via the original precedent.
Here is a short film on Elisha and his bears for the Honest Courtesan and her readers to enjoy 🙂 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2jmT35fygc