Jezebel

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 9^th 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.