One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity. – Friedrich Nietzsche
As some of you may know, I also post on Bound, Not Gagged, the blog of the Desiree Alliance. I recently had there a rather unpleasant interaction with a commenter, and I’d like to talk about a few issues she raised in that discussion. I do not in any way wish to make this woman look bad; it’s clear from her statements that she is very passionate about prostitutes’ rights, but apparently feels that there is only one “correct” way to fight the oppression of our shared profession, and that I don’t do it in that “correct” way. As far as I’m concerned no way is more “right” than another, but since she did seem a bit confused and/or offended by some of my positions and opinions, I feel it would be a good idea to set those things straight for the record in case she isn’t the only one.
A few weeks ago I posted there on the average age of entry into prostitution (as also discussed here on November 27th), and in the subsequent commentary I made the following statement in response to one of the replies: “Most surveys are indeed conducted among streetwalkers who have been not merely arrested but actually convicted, or else those in drug rehab; in other words, the least well-adjusted and least successful of the lowest stratum of our profession.”
On Sunday night, I received this reply:
“the least well-adjusted and least successful of the lowest stratum of our profession”
…really? really?
I immediately knew that I had run afoul of an activist. Let me explain: Some advocates feel that if we allow decriminalization legislation to exclude streetwalkers, it’s tantamount to “throwing them under the bus” and we should therefore hold out for total decriminalization. While I admire these ladies’ idealism, I’m afraid I’m a far more pragmatic soul who recognizes that if we wait for that we’ll be waiting until doomsday. The fact of the matter, whether one cares to admit it or not, is that many people who would allow discreet prostitution in a heartbeat balk at the idea of streetwalkers, just as people who rent plenty of porn still want adult shops kept out of residential neighborhoods. Most people are at least somewhat prudish, and even those who aren’t often find streetwalkers annoying. If it were up to me I would decriminalize all prostitution, but one must recognize that even if prostitution itself were legal the cops would still harass streetwalkers with laws against loitering and the like. So we may eventually have to accept some intermediate form of legal tolerance (such as that in Canada and the UK) and work from there; gay rights were not all granted in one court decision, and neither will prostitutes’ rights be. Even the Founding Fathers were forced to remove anti-slavery language from the Declaration of Independence in order to secure the approval of the southern colonies, without whose cooperation independence was unattainable.
Even beyond that, these activists tend to be highly critical of anyone who acknowledges that there are general classes of prostitutes or points out that some whores are far less fortunate than others, less in control of their lives, and less able to command prices high enough to maintain a decent standard of living without working themselves to death. They rightfully point out that not all streetwalkers are pimped drug addicts, but ignore the fact that drug addiction and pimp domination are disproportionately represented in the streetwalker population for the simple reason that streetwalking requires less preparation, expense and overhead and is therefore more accessible to women whose personal or emotional problems make greater levels of organization difficult or impossible.
With all that I mind, I responded cautiously:
Maggie: I think it’s fair to say that imprisoned, drug-addicted streetwalkers are the least successful segment; if you have another candidate for the position I’m all ears.
Activist: I do, actually. I would say sex workers who perpetuate “hierarchy of whoredom” and “lowest stratum” bullshit are the least successful, particularly in terms of empathy, ethics, and commitment to social justice. FYI, when it comes to prostitution, arrest and conviction are almost always synonymous. As for “least well-adjusted” I would reference MLK; I too am proud to be maladjusted.
Maggie: “Convicted” and “sent to jail” are two very different things, especially when it comes to misdemeanors. I consider drug addicts maladjusted; if you don’t that is your business. And as for the rest…you seem to have a chip on your shoulder, and since I don’t think it’s appropriate or productive for two people who are on the same side to argue about minutiae, I’ll leave it at that.
Activist: Minutiae, eh? We are not on the “same side.” I am working for sex workers rights, you are working for holier-than-thou “courtesan” rights.
Maggie: You are incorrect and clearly haven’t read any of my writings. As for “holier than thou”, you seem to be an expert on the subject. If you feel the compelling need for the last word, you may have it. Good evening.
I then went to bed, and found this Monday morning:
Activist: All right then, “snobby.” Though I do think both apply. I don’t give a flying fuck about the “last word.” In perusing your blog, all I’ve seen is that you use the term “streetwalker” in a derogatory way in just about every post, that you use deliberately convoluted language to try to appear more intelligent than you are, that you have MRA-like ideas about child support, that you are super classist and whore-phobic when the whores in question aren’t “your kind” of whore, and a number of other things that really don’t make me like you any more than I did when all I knew about you was what you wrote here.
Maggie: I’m not going to argue with you, because this is not the place for it; furthermore, it would accomplish nothing since by your own statement your mind was made up about me before you actually read my blog. I can’t answer your opinions because it is your right to have them, just as it’s my right to have mine. I do, however, feel the need to make three factual points for others who may read this:
1) I don’t use language to “try to appear more intelligent”, but rather to appeal to my own sense of aesthetics (which was largely honed on 19th and early 20th century literature, a time when a more florid style was typical).
2) I’m not sure what you mean by “MRA”, but it’s neither fair nor useful to discuss my ideas on child support without also discussing my ideas on child custody and marriage in general, and this is hardly the place for that.
3) No, I am not remotely afraid of any kind of whore; the very idea is absurd. As for “classist”, I guess you missed the part where I use words interchangeably, the criticism of “platinum pussy syndrome” and the recent column where I talked about all whoring being a continuum. I’m sorry you have a personal dislike for me; in the interests of solidarity I think it best we not communicate any further. I will therefore not answer any additional posts from you on this or any other thread, no matter how deliberately provocative you choose to make them.
I think most of my readers already recognize that this poster was responding to a perceived insult without really getting to know my views. This is not unusual among activists, and I since I must plead guilty to exactly the same error I certainly can’t condemn her for it (though I certainly wish she would reserve her bile for our mutual enemies). But I may not have ever clearly spelled out my views on child support. For the record: In the past men controlled nearly all of the money and there was no adequate birth control, so child support laws were both reasonable and just. But now thanks to modern sexual freedom, dependable birth control, “morning after pills” and accessible abortion, a woman need not have a child unless she wants it; any child is therefore entirely the choice of the woman, and it is wrong and unjust for one free adult to extract payment from another free adult for the consequences of her personal choice. It would be as though you agreed to have a drag race with someone, and in the process you purposefully crashed your car into his and then presented him with a bill for the repairs.
But certainly a marriage is different, isn’t it? If a wife gets pregnant it’s not like a one-night-stand. But modern American divorce practice holds that child support and paternal involvement are separate issues, when logically and morally they aren’t. If a woman doesn’t want a man to be a father to his children she has no right to charge him a monthly fee merely because she used his DNA to create offspring which are otherwise exclusively hers. If I were the dictatrix a woman would automatically be assigned full custody and no child support in a divorce, and if she and her ex-husband wish to negotiate a separate contract detailing his post-divorce financial and parental privileges and obligations that is their affair and not that of the state; disputes on the terms of such contracts would be handled under simple contract law, not a special court which presumes to tell the two of them what is “correct” for them and treats men as “walking wallets” who have many obligations but no rights.
In principle, the courts of law legislate in the interest of the child, not in that of the mother or the father. So even though I can see where you are coming from, I have to wonder: why assign automatic custody to the mother? Sometimes she is not the best of both parents, and it would be better for the child to be assigned to the father.
I guess it all boils down to: should the best interest of the child in cases of divorce be a matter of law? Or should the government stay out of these ‘family/individual happiness’ matters?
To allow any government to decide on what’s “best” for any individual, even a child, is an open door to abuse, and such abuse is now epidemic in the United States. Courts should only have power to act in cases of actual criminal action, and even that gives them infinite potential for tyranny.
By nature, the child is the responsibility of the female; in most animal species the male isn’t even involved. So I say follow nature and let individual humans modify that as befits their own individual circumstances.
I don’t know… If marriage is a natural (i.e. product of evolution) way for getting a male involved in the process of taking care of children, of specific individual children — those that carry his genes — then it feels to me as if nature is not clear on whether the responsibility should be the female’s. Nature is full of animal species in which the male is also part of the process of raising the offspring — which is also one of the advantages of the groups/bands which are also so frequent among animals. It’s usually only solitary species that really leave the female all alone with her cubs — and humans are not a solitary species.
Your position is logically sound. (Are you a libertarian, by the way?) But morally speaking, I would find it difficult to accept the idea of an automatic assignment of custody for a child, without taking into account the specific circumstances of its situation (say, an alcoholic or drug-addicted mother?). It feels like deliberately closing one’s eyes, washing one’s hands, to another person’s future suffering. Also, giving full custody to the mother makes it possible for her to deny contact between father and children by simply refusing to enter into a contractual relationship. As the father of an almost 8-year-old daughter myself, I find this possibility more than a little worrisome.
You misunderstand; I totally agree that a man should be part of his children’s lives, but as American law stands right now a vindictive woman can make false child or wife abuse allegations and thereby deny a man access to his children anyhow, yet he is still on the hook to pay for them. This way, the woman’s cupidity would discourage her from making such accusations because she would need his goodwill to get a check. As for addicted mothers, there are exceptions to every rule.
And yes, for lack of a better label I’m a libertarian; I believe that government is best which governs least.
I suppose it’s because there are exceptions to every rule that laws try to take more cases into consideration. I don’t know — I’ve seen some pretty bad mothers around, so I’m a bit skeptical about automatically assigning custody to them. (To be fair, though, it seems to me that the men, at least in our culture, who would want custody would probably be a minority; either way most children would end up with their mothers after a divorce.)
Thanks for explaining your viewpoint further. I see what you mean now.
I’ll skip over the disagreement about the status of various types of sex work. Personally, I’ve made comments that place working prostitutes on a higher plane than welfare queens. If everyone is equally deserving of respect, then I suppose that was unfair of me.
With regard to streetwalkers, I have a question. I’m assuming that we are both agreed that prostitution, at least as practiced by street walkers, constitutes a business and not just a private personal interaction. Since the streets (actually sidewalks) are public property, street walking should be governed by the same rules that govern other street/sidewalk businesses. Obviously, many cities permit street vendors, so there is already plenty of precedent for such businesses. But, I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that legalizing (or decriminalizing) streetwalking is the same as legalizing prostitution that occurs on private property. In other words, the public has a legitimate voice in what happens on publicly owned sidewalks, so laws against streetwalking have a credible basis that doesn’t exist for laws against privately owned business locations (brothels, bars, escort agencies, etc).
Question: Do pro prostitution activists believe that there is no legal distinction between conducting business on private versus public property?
This is exactly why there’s a controversy over the subject in the movement. Sex workers who approach the issue from a libertarian perspective tend to agree with you, while those who approach it from a collectivist/leftist perspective do not. As a businesswoman (who owns two non-sex-work related businesses) I understand such regulations, and I’d be perfectly happy for prostitution to be regulated as long as the regulations were no different from those surrounding other common skill-based businesses. In other words, if you don’t need a license to be a handyman or a day-care worker you shouldn’t need one to be a hooker, but if handyman businesses and daycare centers employing others need licenses than it isn’t wrong to require them of brothels. And if a city disallows all street vendors, I can’t see why an exception should be made for one specific sort of wares.
A remark like that could alienate you from some people. Conservatives and liberals, for example.
Oh, I certainly hope so! 🙂
“Either they share responsibility for the child or they don’t.”
Indeed, your claim is here perfectly logical, and there is no way I can disagree with it.
Here is another take, though. Child care laws are usually based on the idea of doing what is good of the child, not necessarily for the father or the mother. Now, if paternal child care is not obligatory, then what happens to the child will depend on the mother. In the cases in which she is bad, or for any reasons incapable of providing the child with its basic necessities, it may well be that the father’s child support check is the only way for these necessities to be met. Either that, or then the taxpayers’ money — which everybody would rather avoid.
Here’s the thing for me. In those ‘bad mother’ cases, if nothing is done, it turns out that the person who ends up being punished is the child — precisely the one person in the whole story who never had the power to make any decisions. That strikes me as unfair. So I end up feeling that some other solution must be found for these cases.
If the father’s money is necessary, so is his parental input. Allowing any one group of people (men, blacks, Jews, prostitutes, whatever) to be assigned obligations without corresponding rights makes EVERYONE less free. 🙁
Which is why I wouldn’t be in favor of granting automatic full custody to the mother — if she has the means, she could deny the father any visitation rights, no matter how much the father may want them. Which would strike me as very unfair.
I agree that if his money is necessary than so is his parental input. I wonder, though, if most men would support this. The cliché vision is that most men don’t want to do that (and that interested daddies like me are not frequent), so if they had to choose between just paying the child support and paying child support + giving parental input, they would prefer the (unfair, unbalanced, but less time-consuming) former. (I don’t know if this is true, though; maybe I’m being unfair to most men. I only really know myself…)
Life isn’t fair, and the so-called “justice” system is even less fair than life. 🙁
I agree with Dave above — and with you, on this topic, too, Maggie! (As for liberals and conservatives, they’re far less interesting than people who actually think and talk about issues, without trying to pigeonhole you or decide whether or not you’re “the enemy”, like this poster who had that altercation with you — I’ll write a little comment on that later on).
One could of course claim that the man, having contributed to the offspring, should also have some sort of legitimate claim to the child. But the way society is organized, and given how vital wombs, and womb-possessing citizens, are for the process of pregnancy and birth — it’s difficult to see how society could fail to leave all, or at the very least most, of the decision power about the child with the woman. What do you people think — what kind of claim can a man legitimately have to the baby in the womb of the woman he impregnated?
That’s exactly what feminists who argue this with me fail to understand. The situation right now is inherently unstable; it cannot continue much longer as it is. And as long as the state holds that a man has an intrinsic obligation to children produced by his genes, it is inevitable that men will eventually be granted rights over those children as well. Sooner or later a man will sue to stop an abortion and win on the grounds that the child is his as well, and “automatic child support” laws set the precedent for it.
By sheer coincidence, Maggie, I made this very point in an interaction with a radfem a couple of months ago — just to be again told that ‘I don’t understand the issue’ and ‘it’s her body so it should be her decision’ etc. (I had felt there was a certain parallelism between mandatory child support and the punish-the-john Swedish model of dealing with prostitution.).
I wonder if a case like that — suing to stop an abortion with child-support laws as a precedent — could really fly. It would be interesting to accompany the repercussions.
By that same token, it’s the man’s money so child support should be his decision. You can’t have it both ways; either they share responsibility for the child or they don’t.
I give the same answer as I do for child support: if the two of you haven’t agreed to raise a child together *before* there is a pregnancy (usually by getting married) then it should be her body, her choice, and her responsibility. But if an agreement was made, a court should need a really good reason not to follow it.
Supposing a city permits only food vendors (like those hotdog carts in DC and New Yprk) and shoeshine stands. To be fair, do they also have to permit streetwalkers? And, in the interest of fairness, must they also permit any other business that wants to set up shop on the street?
It seems to me that if one sidewalk business is allowed, all have to be. Aggressive shoeshine boys were such a problem in New Orleans at one time that the cops started harassing them just as they harass streetwalkers.
I have read an argument that a man should also have a right to an abortion. It was pointed out that if the woman wanted one and he didn’t, he can’t legally stop her. Thus, if he wants it and she doesn’t, he should be able to get it anyway.
To me, this just sounds ghoulish. Horrid images of weeping women with bulging bellies being forcibly strapped into the stirrups while ex-boyfriends laugh at them come to mind.
No. No, no, no.
A variant was suggested: he could state his desire for abortion, get it written up in some legal document, and if she disagrees, she doesn’t have to have it. But HE is considered to have “had an abortion.” From that point on, he legally is not the father, whatever the genetics. He can not demand visitation or any other parental right, and he can’t be made to pay child support.
That might be workable. Probably needs a lot of finesse, but it sure beats the first version!
It certainly does! 🙁
It beats the first version, but it would be better simply to assume that the child and responsibility are hers alone unless they have agreed otherwise, probably by marrying. Among other reasons, the “paper abortion” can only work if the man knows about the pregnancy early enough that abortion is still an option — and the welfare moms (and their supporters) who pull this scam on men are experts at “not being able to find him” until after that time.
I’m one of those people that “rent porn but don’t want it in my neighborhood” types. Argh I hate to disagree with some of these principles but I do. There IS a social class within whoredom, there is a ‘lower class’, a middle class, and a high class. HOWEVER, it doesn’t mean that we as a whole should be treated differently from each other. A poor man has as much basic rights as a rich man, a streetwalker should have the same basic rights as a high dollar hotty.
I don’t think sex workers should have the same rights as other vendors on the street level. We are selling sex after all. I think it should be regulated to certain areas so that parents out for a stroll with the kids don’t have to pass by a cart saying ‘blowjobs for $50’ or whatever on their way to get a hot dog. It is an adult business and therefore should be restricted to areas that only adults can access. Am I against streetwalkers plying their trade? Not at all, just allow them a place to do it instead of trying to eradicate them from existence (which hasn’t worked in how many decades?).
I’m not so sure that sex is so bad for children, Ms Deveraux — that, e.g., having to go by stands offering $50 blowjobs would be that much worse that going by stands offering cigarrette packs and soft drinks, or homeless beggars on the street. I therefore consider the think-of-the-children argument logically unconvincing (what exactly is the damage here?).
Of course, the idea children can be damaged by seeing sexual things anywhere, on TV or in the streets, is fairly common, if not the consensus, in America and the Western World — so I am sure most people will agree with you. But I tend to think that, more often than not, our attempts at ‘protecting’ our children from being ‘exposed to sex’ damage them more than the exposure itself would have.
In tribal cultures children see sex from a young age; in the Germanic “mead halls” of the Dark Ages people did it right in front of the kids because everyone lived in one big room, and on farms they see it among animals even if not among humans. . Yet, those kids all grew up to be as sexually healthy (if not healthier) than modern urbanites who hide it from the kids.
Hi Maggie, your comment above is very interesting to me as this is one of them topics which I have thought about, as is within my nature to do, and also a topic in which I have found more pronounced reactions in others, even friends who I consider will discuss a topic no matter what the topic may be. I have on more than a few occasions contemplated why sex is generally done in private. I was bought up in an Oriental family and I’m not sure if you might be aware of this, but Orientals in general, have different quirks about sex than Westerners do, although clubbing Europe, UK, the USA as having the same sexual attitudes is a gross generalisation but I do think that socially, Orientals are more socially reserved about it and Westerners more socially liberal ie sexual attitudes in portrayed in films, TV shows and general conversation etc. BUT, as you have mentioned in one of your previous posts, Orientals are more ‘pragmatic’ about sex within prostitution. Even though it is illegal in China and I’d imagine in pretty much most if not all Oriental countries, it is in attitude and practise, quite the contrary, much like China being a Communist country but is actually in practise much more Capitalist in nature. But, I diverge, back to the topic of children and their exposure to sex.
I have found the more openly tactile relationship in my Western friends parent/child relationships much more desirable to have adopt with my children than the slightly distant, pretty non-tactile relationship most Orientals have, although the degree parental of love and support in each is equally as dedicated and unconditional. So, I am different to most Orientals, and to most Western born Orientals at that so my contemplations on this matter which I will get to asap, do not find many opportunities to be explored beyond my head. I have thought that as my children, my wife, my immediate family then, are my most intimate relationships, just why is it that we avoid, instinctively avoid, them ever seeing us ‘at it’, at all costs? After all, I do not hide my nudity when I get change or wash, neither does my wife make a point of it and my children aren’t really ashamed of their bodies either. We are a tactile family and even though they are now 8 and 10, we still end up all asleep in one bed at times. I love it. So, just what is it that I feel is so wrong? Well, I guess part of it is that it’s a topic that my wife and I have never discussed – so, I guess that even if she wasn’t bothered , she might be concerned how I might feel and vice versa. Which is why when the first time it ‘instinctively’ happened, it was accepted, just like it is presumed and accepted that it’s not the done thing by normal humans and therefore must have a valid reason, well, musn’t it? That doesn’t stop my mind from exploring it however tentatively. Well, to do so would mean that our children would be aware of our sexual side, the existence of our desirous physical urges, our sexual passions, our physical bodies in sexual arousal, our genitals in form and use for a purpose other than for urinating, our facial features convey us experiencing a pleasurable sensation of an intensity not otherwise seen elsewhere and in our children being visually participants of that, in turn means that we might well be visually party to theirs at some point in the future. Yet, it still doesn’t reveal that it is problematic. The problem is, is that we don’t know if it would damage them somehow, if it would mean that we are perverted in someway, what would happen if anyone else were to catch wind of it outside our loving little family? Well, my ruminations don’t stop stop there, I think this is the biggie, it is I feel an entire topic in itself, wait for it – please don’t take this following part out of context to the spirit my comment has been written in; what if they felt, whatever the underlying reasoning, motive or inclination to do so might be – want to participate or experience the union in some way? I end my comment exposed here.
And this is still the situation as I saw it in some Amazonian indigenous groups (though missionaries are busy quickly putting an end to that — can’t do this to the children). As a result, children are ‘sexualized’ in the sense that they know and talk about it all the time, too, just like they talk about their parents’ work or the parties or the fights with neighbors or the last successful peccary hunt, etc. (I remember this little 5-year-old little girl who pointed at two copulating dogs one day and exclaimed, in a little voice full of glee: ‘they’re fucking!’ [that was important to me because the verb ‘to fuck’ in this language had some irregularities that my analysis wasn’t dealing well with — and the form of the verb that that girl used solved one of my problems with these irregularities].)
The point being: I don’t think she was ‘damaged’ in any special way. She said ‘they’re fucking!’ just like my 8-year-old daughter now looks at me or at my wife in our computers and says ‘mommy and daddy are working’ — i.e. not really understanding what ‘work’ (or ‘fuck’ for that matter) entails in terms of social obligations or biological imperatives, but simply very happy because there is some label she can put on the situation that makes external reality seem less puzzling — ‘ah! I know what this is! it’s work! daddy is working!’.
Asehpe:
I don’t think these kinds of taboos have nearly as much to do with protecting children as satisfying the prejudices of adults. At what point in our evolution did we decide that people (including kids) need to be shielded from reality? At what point did we decide that simple reality is friggin’ dangerous? It sounds idiotic on its face.
And these same parents who feel so strongly about protecting kids from the irreparable trauma of knowing about sex, nudity, and where babies come from, thinking nothing of teaching kids that they will burn in hell for eternity of they don’t worship some ancient storybook character.
What exactly is the real down side to children knowing about sex from the very start (I mean once you get past the shame and dirtiness attributed to it by the very people who want to keep it a secret from kids). You see references all the time to people faced with the awkward where-do-babies-come-from question. The idea that children are so fragile that they can’t handle concepts like sex, procreation, and death is an invention of people who have way too much free time on their hands. Kids have been handling those issues just fine for thousands of years and they can handle it just as well at age 4 and they can at age 7 or 9.
I’m not arguing that privacy is bad, but I seriously question the idea that simply doing something where others can see it should be a friggin’ crime. I always thought crime was when someone hurt someone else. But, now it’s just simply a way of enforcing social conformity at gun point.
So there!
Oh, those crazy Classical Greeks! Along with the notion of “childhood innocence” they also gave us politicians, suppression of prostitution, confinement of women to the home, suppression of “dangerous” knowledge by the elite and the notion that it was better to just think about the universe than to actually go out and examine it. 🙁
How very true, in my opinion, your comment ‘better to just think about the universe than to actually go out and examine it’. That sums up the root of so many of my contemplations about us as human beings and our relationship with our shared ‘universe’.
If all street sex vendors were akin to Maggie, Amanda, and myself I doubt if I would see a problem. We are professional, discreet, mature, and like this work as opposed to just making a fast buck. However some can be quite aggressive when it comes to competition and territory and getting the date. Granted it’s not a constant Jerry Springer show out there but outbursts happen occasionally and if a pimp with a gun steps in I don’t want to be in the crossfire (seen that happen on Houston streets). I don’t know how decrim and regs will affect those types of situations honestly, if at all.
As far as shielding the kids, it’s true I probably still hold on to some of the ways I was raised. I try not to shield my kids but if we come across something I try to take it as an opportunity for discussion (things we see on the news or tv programs). In other words I won’t go out and buy porn for them to watch but I don’t cover their eyes if there is a sex scene on a cable show we are watching. Does that make sense?
‘…but I don’t cover their eyes if there is a sex scene on a cable show we are watching’, I like that but I haven’t done so. It’s not just because it’s of a sexual nature but I think also in part because I don’t like the way it is often represented. Maybe it’s just an excuse for me not being comfortable with it but I don’t find it is televised as how I see it. Yes, I could say the same for any televised human behaviour and maybe my exaggerated response is reflective of some kind of repression in myself. Well, I guess maybe I shouldn’t ‘cover their eyes’ and just have faith in their ability to discern fact from fiction as I do with everything else that is televised. Just as a closing thought, maybe it’s because it is a subject matter that will if not adopted well, could result in the loss of a lifelong pleasure, source of joy and healing, only to possibly gain neurosis which often impact their relationships with people in general?
I think it makes perfect sense. Kids’ sexuality should be allowed to develop naturally, without being retarded or forced. They move through the world and ask questions about what they encounter, just as they do with everything else. 🙂
A new family tradition has become that when one of my nieces or nephews hits fourteen, he or she watches The Blue Lagoon. I also make sure to let them all know at about age twelve that I can get birth control if they need it. I don’t constantly harangue them about it, and I don’t pull them aside to tell them in secret; their mothers (my sisters) all know that I’m telling them this.
Well, except for the one in another state. The one who got pregnant at sixteen. Would The Blue Lagoon and my assurance that I could get her BC if she needed it have made any difference? Probably not. But it might have.
I agree 100%. 🙂
I have often seen people like the activist woman who had that altercation with you, Maggie. Such types abound in academia as well (and in my field there are also a few specialists who also feel like Guardians of the One Truth); but I must say that my least successful exchanges with such people were in the area of feminism and gender relations.
Even beyond the desire to abide by ideas that one has either created or through painstaking effort finally understood, perhaps it is a natural instinct in people to try to simplify things (to conclude, for instance, that the leaves moving in that bush over there have to imply that there is a hiding tiger about to pounce on us; there even is an evolutionary advantage to such simplifications).
Normal people simplify problems, dilemmas, issues all the time. But when you deal with activists, there is an added danger. In activism, oversimplification is an occupational hazard: if you are someone fighting for a cause, if you have identified some source or cause of evil in the world that you would like to help defeat, the temptation to simplify situations and peoples increases a hundredfold; because if you spend too much time thinking about nuances you end up with less time for actions, protests, and the ‘real’ fight. It is more efficient to concentrate on the conflicts with antagonists in the real world, and forget about nuances like the possibility that your antagonists might have valid points, too.
So it is easy for the activist to see dissent and disagreement as tantamount to opposition and resistance, or even support of the evil that we are supposed to be fighting against.
The activist who talked to you oversimplifies the issue by conflating those who see a difference between streetwalkers and other kinds of prostitutes with those who don’t care about streetwalkers — she adopts (as a simplifying device to make it easier to concentrate on the fight) the equation: seeing-the-difference = lacking-empathy. To her, a high-caste courtesan who notices that she is one could not possibly be sincerely in favor of the low-caste streetwalker — she must think (like the general anti-prostitution public) that streetwalkers are only some kind of pustulent garbage rather than actual human beings. Any protests to the contrary by said high-caste courtesan have to be either self-delusion or manipulation attempts — both useless categories in terms of the Good Fight for the Final Victory of Our Cause.
A couple of days ago I had a similar exchange with a radfem to whom I pointed out that feminists’ refusal to even talk about false rape claims ends up being a disservice (I called it ‘feminism shooting itself on the foot’) because they are apparently providing their enemies (say, radMRA’s) with a quasi-plausible argument (usable, e.g., to support the contention that feminists do not care about justice, only about ‘more privileges for women’). Instead of reacting to this point, she just repeated that talking about false rape claims ‘inflates the perception of their frequency and makes it more difficult for true rape victims to come forward and press charges’. I provided several counterarguments, but she dismissed them without a word and preferred to accuse me of ‘approaching the stereotype of the mansplainer (ah! bigotry…)’ and arrogantly ‘trying to tell women what to do’ (presumably being a man disqualifies and deligitimizes me as a source of opinion or advice for strategies on gender equality).
In short, she conflated me with some of her worst enemies. To be fair, at the end she did say she thought I genuinely wanted to help, but was clearly misguided and obviously wrong (without actually mentioning why I was misguided or wrong).
What can we do with such people? Just sigh, I think, and point out (probably more for the sake of others who may be reading the thread) why and when they started repeating themselves and stopped actually reacting to the content and opinions in the discussion, and… not a hell of a lot more.
Of course, this hurts — I felt bad about the interaction, and I think you probably did, too, at least for a short while.
Yes, precisely. Another woman who supported her said I had claimed all streetwalkers were addicts, and I replied:
You seem to be projecting feelings into my statement. If I used the sentence “She only likes red-headed men,” nobody would claim that I was saying all men are red-headed. But if I say “prohibitionists only interview drug-addicted streetwalkers,” people want to claim I’m painting them all that way when in fact I’m doing nothing of the kind. Prohibitionists find their interview subjects in jails and drug rehab facilities (most of whom are understandably very unhappy with their lives) and then extrapolate the answers they extract from those women to the entire whore population. I’m sure there are happy, clean, well-adjusted street workers, but I doubt many of them are in jail or rehab telling social workers whatever they want to hear.
You also used the acronym MRA a the activist did; from your context I suspect it means Men’s Rights Advocates?
Yes, it does: Men’s Rights Advocates, or Men’s Rights Activists. Isn’t this acronym by now fairly standard?
I don’t have a problem with MRAs per se — as with everybody else, I listen to their arguments and react on an individual basis, issue by issue. It’s just that, when I look at the path they seem to be taking, I see a repetition of some of the same mistakes that feminists have made. To be fair, there are some good people in there; but most of the ones I’ve had interactions with (the most recent one was the owner of a YouTube channel named TheHappyMisogynist) are showing signs of the same kind of selective bias that radfems/neofeminists excel at.
No student with such an obvious selection/sampling bias would get very far in any self-respecting statistics course. How come they think they are making valid claims?
I sometimes think theoreticians in gender studies (and a number of other disciplines in the human sciences) should stop for a couple of years and concentrate only on reliable, methodologically sound data gathering.
Camille Paglia agrees with you. “Women’s Studies” is a ghetto and so-called “feminist scholarship” is a joke; they all only quote each other, like a huge inbred daisy chain. Thus their peer review is essentially nonexistent and they think belief is more important than facts. 🙁
I’ve heard that; I’m not entirely sure because one friend of mine was actually a Woman’s Study major, and the kind of course materials she showed me looked actually quite all right and not terribly biased or ‘in-bred’. But then again, it was one person, one case, one set of course materials, so I can’t make any big claims.
If Paglia is indeed right, then that’s a pity. The history of gender relations, and the accurate description of their current status, is certainly something worth doing. There are also good methodologies for data gathering and analyzing in the human sciences. These two things should go hand in hand, but I think Paglia would claim that for reasons having to do with the history of the field they don’t.
The reason they don’t is simple; real science, history, etc disprove their ludicrous assertions so they can’t quote them. 🙁
But among other social scientists aren’t there serious people with good methodological training that actually feel interested in the topic, do the research, and they debunk whatever mistakes they may have with data-rich publications?
Of course, in my own field, the wars between formal / Chomskyan linguists and typological/historical linguists show clearly that, even if one group of researchers can publish cogent criticism against the very philosophical foundations of the other group, it doesn’t follow that it will be abandoned. Still, the books with the data and the arguments are out there, students can see and read them; and the group with the better arguments sees their student numbers steadily increase while the other group sees them decrease. It becomes a matter of time.
Absolutely, but since “women’s studies” is a ghetto serious social scientists generally avoid research that could draw attacks from neofeminists, and the few that dare are simply ignored by neofeminists unless their results can be twisted to support the “social construction of gender” agenda. 🙁
I’m one who believes in decrim of all prostitution. I do not believe in regulating street prostitution to certain areas because it always ends up being worse for the worker.
Street prostitution is incredibly common in Asia — even during the daytime. Street workers are easy to pick out as soon as you know the culture and everyone mixes and mingles (this includes children). Granted, the Asian street workers I’ve witnessed are not terribly aggressive — but then they don’t have to be (this changes a bit at night in red light districts but usually families aren’t out and about at that time).
The images we have of US street workers tend to be aggressive. Part of that is American culture itself, part of that may be because they feel they have to be. A change in their legal status might go a long way to toning things down.
That being said, this straddles the big line of how different is sex work from other service work? Is it more like a date? In which case, how can anyone regulate two people meeting on the street to discuss dating? Or is it indeed a service business, which means a certain amount of zoning and/or public nuisance laws?
New Zealand simply sees it as consenting adults having sex, which means the adults are free to do what they want within the laws regulating all adult sexual relations (i.e. no sex in public). Brazil also has completely legal street prostitution, though I don’t know the specifics of those laws yet.
Because people meet and socialize in public, it would be difficult to completely regulate public interactions between sex workers and their clients. Being human, they would find and exploit all loopholes to any law. I’m assuming this is the conclusion that Brazil and NZ came to.
It’s also true that having a mix of legal and criminal laws against various types of prostitution continues the danger for all prostitutes — even the legal ones. Despite what some in the US want to believe, decrim REALLY DOES have to be an all or nothing proposition, otherwise the cat-and-mouse games with the police never stop and clients can still get away with crime.
XX
PS: For the record, I don’t buy much porn, but having a porn shop in my neighborhood doesn’t bother me. You know why? Because no one gets a gun and forces me to buy porn I don’t want. And if I do want some porn, it’s really convenient.
I totally agree with you in theory; as I said in the column, if it were up to me I’d unilaterally decriminalize. But I’m afraid the United States isn’t nearly as mature or sensible as New Zealand or Brazil, and I suspect we’ll have to get to full decriminalization by way of the same route Canada is taking.
🙁
The US isn’t mature but it won’t mature until it takes steps to maturity. Or is forced into it, kicking and screaming.
Canada isn’t the best example but it is better than the US. NZ — from what I understand — made the leap whole-hog. If Kiwis can do it, we can too. 🙂
XX
You’re more optimistic than I am, Amanda; I can’t help but think about the fact that the US is the only country in the entire world which hasn’t converted to the metric system yet. 🙁
We made it legal for gays to serve openly in the military THIS WEEK. We had to have the intermediate step of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
And yeah, we seem to think that sticking to feet and inches is somehow patriotic.
We’re one of three countries still on Imperial measurements. The metric system is no great shakes. Sure, it’s divisible by 10 but it’s completely MEANINGLESS!! What the hell does 100mL mean? I sure know what a pint is, though.
I like our paper money that looks, smells, sounds and feels like money. I like our crazy assortment of measurements that mean something. I don’t like heavy-handed moralizing. Though if it came to a choice, I would convert to dreary old metrics for decrim.
XX
What I mean is, the US spends millions every year to perform conversions back and forth for international commerce because everybody else uses metrics. We’ve been saying we’re going to do it for decades but we never actually get around to it. Scientists and engineers (who use measurements the most) have been pushing for it since World War II, but the politicians don’t do it because of fear of public reaction. See the analogy?
You sure know what a pint is because you’ve had pints your entire life. If you’d had mL your entire life, it would be as familiar.
All of the metric measures are based on something. A metre is one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the pole.(*) A litre is ten centimetres x ten centimetres x ten centimetres. A kilogram is the mass of one litre of water.
Where does a gallon come from? Whose foot? Why sixteen ounces to a pound, and two thousand pounds to a ton? And what the heck is a pound, ounce, or ton anyway?
I’ve had the imperial system my whole life, so every now and then I have to visit http://www.convertit.com/Go/ConvertIt/Measurement/Converter.ASP to get a handle on just what “186 Km” or “63 Kg” means. But the system is better. Not necessarily the quantities themselves (there’s no inherent superiority of this much [holds hands apart] over this much [holds hand apart slightly differently]), but the system is better.
(*) They could have as easily made the metre “one tenth the distance an object falls in a vacuum on Earth in the first second,” and I rather wish they had. This metre would be almost the same as the one we have. This would bring acceleration into the metric system, making “one G” equal to 10 metres per second per second. Instead one G is equal to 9.8some-odd metres per second per second. What I suspect will happen is that “one G” will in fact be redefined as 10 m per second^2, and Earth will then be a planet with gravity equal to 9.8some-odd G. Ah well.
OK, sorry to geek out on you like that.
They could have as easily made the metre “one tenth the distance an object falls in a vacuum on Earth in the first second,” and I rather wish they had.
Actually, that wouldn’t work. Though a falling object is moving at 9.8 meters/second at the end of one second, it starts out at zero velocity and accelerate to that speed over the course of the second. The formula for distance fallen is 4.9 meters multiplied by the square of the number of seconds fallen, hence in 1 second it falls a total of 4.9 meters, in two seconds a total of 19.6 meters, etc.
Uew. Well, that does make a difference. It would need to be the per second per second distance, but I’m not sure how to state it. But the French guys who were putting the system together would have known how.
“The per second per second” isn’t a distance, it’s the acceleration: the change in velocity over time. (The speed at which the object falls gets faster as it falls.)
The meter as currently measured is almost as random as feet and yards, due to the inherent inaccuracies of the measurement methods used when they calculated it, but it does have the advantage of being based on something tangible. I tend to think of our retention of the Imperial system as being a last vestige of libertarianism in a population increasingly confortable with its chains. If they passed out meters and liters with every TSA groping or Federal form for the purchase of allergy medicine, we’d be metric in no time.
Well like I said, I don’t know how to state it. What I “rather wish they had” done was to make the length of a metre such that normal earthly acceleration was ten metres per second per second. This would also have the additional benefit that a kilogram would weigh 10 newtons on Earth, instead of the 9.806649966356376 newtons a Kg weighs on Earth with the metric system we have.
I was being funny about the metric comment. Yes, I know I know what a pint is because I grew up with it. That the metric system has a scientific basis is nice, but it’s sterile and still rather meaningless. No one I know looks at a meter and thinks about traveling to the moon. It’s not all that confusing: I just assume everything is way smaller than what I’m used to. 🙂
It just doesn’t appeal to me and not because of misplaced patriotism. It simply doesn’t appeal to any of my senses.
The US wastes a LOT of money on many more things that doing metric conversions (arresting sex workers immediately comes to mind!).
XX
With the amount of money the US has squandered since WWII on harassing people and just plain nonsense, we could have built a bridge to the moon! 🙁
It’s OK Amanda; I just geek out sometimes. Not sure what you mean by “sterile” but then I don’t have to. Like I said, there’s no basic difference in goodness between “this much” and “that much,” and if you ike one or the other, it hardly makes you a bad person.
{points}
BAD PERSON! BAD PERSON!
Sorry about that; I was pointing at somebody else.
Amanda, I’m Brazilian, so I grew up with meters, mLs, and degrees Celsius; believe me, to me it’s the Imperial system that seems meaningless and sterile. (Come to think of it, what does a ‘meaningless and sterile measurement system’ actually mean, other than one we’re not used to having? Is it like saying that a foreign language we don’t speak is also meaningless?)
I remember my first experiences with the American system. Someone’s temperature is 98 degrees?!? His blood must be boiling! Her weight is 125? She must be one of those morbidly obese people! OK–I didn’t think that, we had learned about crazy American units at school (and from the omnipresent American movies); still, I have no instinctive reaction to them. A man is is 5’10” tall — how the hell am I supposed to know if he’s tall or short? Now, 1m78cm — that I understand!
Sailor Barsoom, from what I remember — and Wikipedia has just confirmed — the SI meter is no longer defined as a certain fraction of the distance between equator and pole, but as the distance travelled by light in vacuum in 1⁄299,792,458 of a second. Since the speed of light in vacuum is Einstein’s most famous constant, the meter should be safe.
The reason for the change in definition of the length of the meter is because we found out, once we could measure it more precisely than we could when we invented the metric system, that our meters were the wrong length. Oops. So now, like the foot, the meter is based on another meaningless and irrelevant measurement. I spend very little time contemplating the distances traveled by light in such short bursts of time. Or longer bursts, for that matter. 🙂
I’ve never liked the Fahrenheit temperature scale; Celsius’ 0 degrees=freezing, 100=boiling is far more sensible to me! So when I bought an electronic weather station ten years ago I set it to Celsius and my husband and business partner have adjusted to my expressing temperatures that way.
Sterile. There’s not the delicious description or memories in “250mL” that you get from a “pint” (of school milk or a smuggled flask). I’m not saying Imperial is simpler, I just prefer it.
No language is ever meaningless because it’s unfamiliar. I would never make that comparison. That someone is speaking it gives it meaning. I don’t find that meaning in mL or grams or meters. They’re sterile terms of measurements.
“With the amount of money the US has squandered since WWII on harassing people and just plain nonsense, we could have built a bridge to the moon!”
And given everyone a free lunch with pints of milk too!
XX
Dave — I’m familiar with who you are. Like I said, I’m fine with street workers. I’m fine with all forms of sex work. How have I intimated that I’m not? If I could actually “demand” rights for street workers (or any illegal sex worker) I most certainly would. I do not see some sort of vast, uncrossable gulf between myself and street workers. Rights for one prostitute is rights for all prostitutes. Splitting hairs over working situations just means someone will continue to be harmed.
XX
But, Amanda, for basically most of the world liters and meters and degrees Celsius are meaningful — billions of people do use and understand them. There are also all kinds of associations and stories — like the children’s books we used to have, in which Liter was a big bear and the subdivisions (decaliter, centiliter, mililiter) were its children in decresing order of size, etc. The emotional connection is as strong, I think, as the one you have with pints, yards, feet, miles, and pounds.
But maybe what you mean is not that the metric system lacks users who ‘feel’ it fully in their hearts (it certainly does, billions of them), just like foreign languages do.
Maybe what you’re reacting to is that the metric system was invented, a carefully crafted system to make changing units easier. To use the analogy with languages, perhaps you think that natural languages like French are full of meaning to its speakers, but artificial, invented languages like Esperanto (or Klingon, for that matter) aren’t.
Amanda says:
Would it be ok with you if someone was peddling porn out on the sidewalk in front of your house?
There is an adult video store/theater here that I would frequent due to being friends with the owner. Some of the guys were scary. I was friendly and smiled (nicely, not seductively) at one and he waited for me in the parking lot. For some reason, bells went off and I waited inside for half an hour before he gave up and left. Another time I pulled into the parking lot to make a phone call from my cell and was approached by two guys while I was sitting there. Again, if people would just BEHAVE I may not have a problem with it in my neighborhood but some people are just stupid, aggressive, and downright looney tunes and they seem to frequent these places more so than running into them at a local convenience store. There they have sex on their mind as opposed to getting a pack of smokes, I still don’t want it in my neighborhood near my 12 y/o daughter who is developing breasts and losing her babyfat.
Dave — People peddle stuff on the street all the time. It’s an annoyance regardless. But someone simply standing out on the road, only talking to certain passerby? Not that annoying. Plus, a hooker will eventually pick up a client and leave the area. There are street workers where I live now. It’s not a big deal. There are hourly hotels in the area where they go with their clients — cheap and easy. I know you see street workers as a scourge. I don’t.
Brandy — But if not in YOUR neighborhood, then where? Zoning laws are used to push legal strip clubs and adult stores out of every part of town in an effort to shut them out of existence. Kind of goes against the point of having a legal business, free speech and being able to conduct your own affairs in the way you want. The more restrictive sex gets, the weirder people get about it.
XX
Argh! Don’t get me started on zoning laws. There’s nothing wrong with them in principle, but then there’s nothing wrong with government or police in principle either. The problem lies in the fact that nobody with power is ever satisfied with the amount he has, and so will employ any means necessary to increase it ad infinitum. 🙁
Amanda says:
And you deduced that from what?
I simply wanted to see if you would grant other types of sex related commerce the same rights as you are demanding for street walkers.
Maggie you sure brought out the discussion in this one! Good job!
Amanda – when I say neighborhood I mean my subdivision, rows of family houses where kids roller skate, ride their bikes, and play in the front yards. The question of where would be areas like warehouse and manufacturing districts, places where the public population does not happen to stroll by with their kids. If there was a so-called “red light district” where sex workers and potential clients knew that they could hook up and meet (freely and in the open) then the public wouldn’t need to necessarily worry that some man is going to approach their daughter with an offer of 50 bucks for a blow job while she is walking to the bus stop. I would think that this would also make it easier to police for violence against sex workers as it wouldn’t be spread out across a city but assign extra LE personnel to that district. If that is where the customers know to go then that is where the sex workers will be. In my way of thinking (which I’m human and could be wrong), it would be a win win for both the public wanting not to see or be exposed to that and for the sex industry as a place to be free from harassment from said public.
Even if pushed out of city limits it could work. Remember The Chicken Ranch. Out in the middle of BFE but was hugely successful regardless and the community of LaGrange had next to zero problems with prostitution in the town itself.
Thanks, Brandy; I just wish I knew how I did it! I can never predict which columns will be popular.
Regarding red-light districts: they work well in some places (Japan and Amsterdam), but not in others. I suspect it depends upon the attitude and accountability level of the police.
Maggie,
That commenter was a perfect example of what is going to keep “our side” from gaining position. Fighting amongst ourselves does nothing but drain useful energy.
I personally am not intimidated by your writing style, but rather appreciate it. I am not an academic myself, but I am intelligent enough to understand that for those who oppose us to hear us and not dismiss us, it is helpful that you write in a manner that reflects education, and intelligence. I thought it was absurd the insinuation that she made.
Decrim will have to be palatable for all parties. If we can gain sex worker rights with regulations such as age of majority and in a private setting, we should be thrilled. At least we have a foot in the door. Alcohol is legal, but it isn’t legal to just wander around the streets drinking it, (unless your in NOLA) To demand decrim of streetwalkers is a whole different ballpark to the average citizen that is not familiar with, or a participant of sex work. It will frighten them. It is in my opinion, the STEREOTYPE that streetwalkers represent that keeps all prostitution illegal. And when I say stereo type, I certainly recognize that it is not always true, or applicable. But it is widely perceived as true.
As for Mens Rights, I would like to see sex worker parents protected from disgruntled, abusive spouses that simply shout “Whore!” at the top of their lungs to the nearest Judge and are suddenly granted custody of children that they were previously arrested for abusing. Really. It happens. Sex Worker rights need to stretch into the family courts, and quickly. I have known more than one woman that gained independence from an abusive, and economically controlling spouse through sex work, only to lose custody of the children in the end due to the sex work. One final, brutal act from the abuser. Domestic Violence groups don’t even want to step in when Sex Work is involved. Wouldn’t want to tarnish their cause with the stigma of Sex Work I suppose.
I just don’t get it. I get a pedicure and see a line of women bent over on stools, scrubbing and massaging feet, telling me of twelve hour days. A son she never sees. I imagine the meager money they take home, and the way their back must hurt at night.
I think of them and I feel grateful for my career. I am grateful for my freedom, for the ego boost that my clients give, for the income that I can generate. I am very lucky in my chosen field. The worst aspects come from the stigma that these outdated laws place on us.
With the money our country owes, and the economic crisis that we are in, my god how bad do Americans think it is to pay for sex that those things are better than making it legal to pay for pleasure if for no other reason than to generate taxes?
We just agreed as a nation that we could not as a nation afford to waste the thousands of patriotic, (gay) young men and women that are willing to serve their country in the armed forces. So we legalized gays in the military.
When will we agree as a nation that we cannot afford to stand and ignore countless hard working, enterprising men and women that wish only to be at peace in their sex work, protected by the same rights as any other hard working American, and pay their taxes at the end of the day?
Seems that a man in debt shouldn’t turn his nose up at work offered him, any more than a government with a deficit so high should be telling hookers we aren’t good enough to pay taxes…(or holy enough, or moral enough or whatever their excuse is) This is not just about our rights, this is about the rights of our children and grand children not to inherit this terrible debt.
Kelly, thank you for taking the time to write this; I think the more intelligent, articulate sex workers speak out honestly about our experiences, our thoughts and our feelings the closer we will come to achieving the acceptance among the general public which is a necessary step toward decriminalization in the United States.
Although (as I said in this column) I would just love to see full decriminalization, you are correct in saying most people are afraid of streetwalkers. They judge all streetwalkers by the poorest, scariest ones and then apply that stereotype to all of us; that was the subject of my very first regular column after my introductory one. And will never make any progress until we show that the stereotypes aren’t even true about all streetwalkers, much less about anybody else.
And as for your last several paragraphs, absolutely spot on. 🙂
While we’re on the record….
First off, I believe that ALL sex workers deserve protection against violence under the law. If violence is committed against a sex worker she should be able to call upon the law to defend her inalienable right to life free from physical coercion or force. The fact that sex workers inalienable rights are not protected under the law because of their choice not to comply with a government regulation (“law”) concerning an action that directly harms no one speaks volumes about the moral standards of our society.
That said, I also believe in the right of the individual to conduct their lives however they see fit free from any outside coercion, provided their actions do not infringe on anyone else’s rights. Public prostitution infringes on the rights of other people who don’t wish to be exposed to it and so it is my opinion that supporting streetwalking as a right of choice has no basis in rationality. However, it is completely impossible to regulate two people meeting in public to discuss anything. I suppose that if prostitution itself were decriminalized then the only crime associated with streetwalking would potentially be disturbing the peace or disorderly conduct…
Great article Maggie and you’re right we do seem to be on exactly the same page 🙂
KJ
As long as we’re on the topic, I have more questions. Presumably there is a lot of support here for the right of sex workers to solicit business on public sidewalks. Would that right extend to all public places, such as parks, stadiums, civic centers, museums, libraries, public universities, etc?
Is this again an instance where fairness demands that any public place where a shoeshine or hotdog stand is permitted must also accommodate any other kind of business? If you permit a popcorn vendor at a public you must also permit the open advertised sale of sex?
Or should specific types of businesses be subject to permission and regulation by an ordinance or referendum? The porn peddler example has already been suggested, but of course, if drugs were legal, it could also include drug dealers, not to mention alcohol vendors, panhandlers, etc.
I’m assuming, of course, that no one who would argue that a private business owner has the right to prohibit prostitutes from soliciting business on their property…
I think, as has been pointed out before, that New Zealand called it correctly; prohibiting individual prostitution is impossible, so it’s ridiculous to try. But the police could enforce vagrancy laws, public nuisance laws, etc to control troublesome streetwalkers and let the inoffensive ones alone.
That’s a dangerous idea. Laws as vague as “loitering” and “vagrancy” should never exist anywhere — because they amount to giving police the king-like power to choose who can be there and who can’t, and that power *will* be used against whoever the cop on duty that day is prejudiced against. You might as well make “contempt of cop” an actual crime and have done.
I find equally naive your earlier sentiment that there’s “nothing wrong with zoning laws, in principle.” Sure there is, if the principle is property rights. The only restriction on how you use your own property ought to be the common law of nuisances (in other words, whoever wants to tell you how you can use your property should have to prove that the way you use it is interfering with his use of his own property). And I haven’t even started on the scam known as urban planning (which is in effect a cartel run by homeowners for the purpose of keeping home prices as high as possible). (For anyone who wants to debate *that* I suggest the transport-policy Yahoo group.)
Whether they should or shouldn’t exist is immaterial; the fact is they DO already exist, all over the world, and police can adequately use them to throw their weight around and enforce the whims of politicians without having to resort to even more laws that criminalize being female (or in the case of “end demand” schemes, criminalize being male and establish women as permanent adolescents).
” police can adequately use them to throw their weight around and enforce the whims of politicians without having to resort to even more laws that criminalize being female”
And I suppose you think that is a good thing? Prostitution laws already exist all over the world so I guess all your arguments about that are immaterial by that standard.
You know, you wouldn’t look so silly if you’d actually read a few columns to learn my opinions about sex work and government power before making asinine and wholly inapplicable comments that come across to regular readers as entirely ludicrous.
Part of the problem I have with those who advocate decriminalizing prostitution is that they sometimes demand rights that they wouldn’t grant to other businesses. I have no moral issues with voluntary prostitution in any form, but prostitution is a profession and a business like any other.
To suggest that some businesses should be confined to a storefront by while prostitution should be legal everywhere seems a bit hypocritical. Once you acknowledge the right of society to regulate business of any kind, don’t be surprised when that regulation is turned on your own business.
It should be noted, that the very arguments that someone might make against permitting the peddling pornography, drugs, or alcohol on a public street corner could be equally applicable to peddling sex.
The argument that you should be able to conduct business on your own private property is likely to garner a lot more sympathy and support in a democratic society than the position that street prostitution should be legalized because, by god, we’re going to do it whether the fuck you voters and taxpayers allow it or not.
“Once you acknowledge the right of society to regulate business of any kind, don’t be surprised when that regulation is turned on your own business.”
I don’t
It should be noted, that the very arguments that someone might make against permitting the peddling pornography, drugs, or alcohol on a public street corner could be equally applicable to peddling sex.
I’ll defend those things.
“By that same token, it’s the man’s money so child support should be his decision. You can’t have it both ways; either they share responsibility for the child or they don’t.”
This. In triplicate. With ranch dressing. I’ve said this for years.
In terms of “The War on Sex,” I’m not sure my perspective on it is well rounded. From my admittedly oversimplistic frame of it, it’s always been the same…rich white men think that they have all the rights, and no one else does. It’s still true…there is no pussy that’s available that is denied rich men, but especially rich white or Jewish men.
So the issues surrounded decriminalizing prostitution continue to baffle me, as well as the issues around sex ed, abortion, and child support. The lines are pretty clear from my point of view.
I do not agree that “sex work is the same as any other skilled labor.” I do agree that there’s a wide spectrum of sex work tho. And I also pretty much agree with the thinking around repealing prohibition when it comes to legalizing prostitution.
If I were the dictatrix a woman would automatically be assigned full custody and no child support in a divorce,
Why should mothers receive custody? don’t boys need their fathers?
I enjoyed that term “dictatrix”
Someone asked me the same question via email last night, so I’ll publish my answer to him here:
In a perfect world I would agree with you, but the fact is that courts already lean toward giving the mother custody, and if she wants to exclude the father all she needs to do is accuse him of something awful like child molestation, which will not only serve her purpose but ruin his life in the process. Given that, I would rather see the woman automatically granted custody so as to spare the man’s reputation and save him both money and heartache. If the only way to get child support was to keep her ex-husband’s goodwill, few women would dare to make such accusations. In other words, my proposal is founded on the principle of damage reduction rather than fairness. It’s an imperfect solution at best, but I think better than the current adversarial system.
How about just getting rid of all the post-1970 laws which make accusations of rape, molestation, and domestic violence as good as automatic conviction? Don’t those charged with the most horrible of crimes deserve due process of law?
Setting aside the custody question, how would you regard the sacrifices either parent makes to raise children. Specifically, when the children are born, one parent may sacrifice potential income, retirement benefits, continuing education, professional networking. Do you feel these losses should be regarded in the event of a divorce.?
Nope. It isn’t the government’s job to enforce vague and shifting notions of “fairness” but to enforce laws, including contract laws. The government’s role in divorce should ONLY be to arbitrate the specific terms of the contract and nothing more. I think the government should get out of the marriage business entirely except to enforce the contracts AS WRITTEN; each individual couple could tailor the arrangement to their own satisfaction without having to worry about the provisions being rendered null and void by judicial fiat in an ensuing divorce, and neither partner would have to worry about the other trying to invalidate agreed-upon provisions via accusations and trickery. The purpose of the judge would ONLY be to adjudicate based upon the specific and literal terms of the contract as printed.
No, it isn’t a perfect system, but it’s a helluva lot better than the expensive, loathsome monstrosity Americans call “divorce law”, in which nobody comes out happy except the lawyers.
You didn’t answer my question wrt. unequal sacrifices for children.
Your opinions seem most focused on elimination of divorce courts.
Is your own marriage written as a contract?
Giving the government power to legislate “for the children” is a spectacularly bad idea because it can get away with nearly anything under that excuse.
Marriage contracts under the current state of US marital law are not very useful because prenuptial agreements are subject to invalidation by divorce judges, which defeats their purpose. They only work when they are A) very well written and B) both parties are inclined to respect them.
I have thought for years that about 90% of the hostility “straight” society feels toward sex work is caused by the distaste many people have for streetwalkers. When I’ve spoken with prohibitionists, I’ve often found that they have zero problems with escort services or brothels, but have had bad experiences with streetwalkers—things like having to walk past them serving their customers where people can see them, being pestered by would-be customers if female, or by streetwalkers trolling for business if male, finding used condoms (or syringes!) all over, and stuff like that. This goes double, triple and with horseradish on it if they have kids—explaining to your six-year-old what that funny lady is doing is a profoundly squicky experience to many people, and even though I’m by no means a prude myself, even I’d be uncomfortable.
And it has occurred to me that, were I a mugger, I could do worse than to join forces with an attractive woman who didn’t mind playing the “streetwalker” part, and use her to lure prospective victims somewhere where I could relieve them of the crushing weight of their wealth.
The thing about streetwalking, though, is that it’s easily controlled with existing vagrancy and “disturbing the peace” laws without having to make up special laws that only affect women.
True—and laws against peddling on the streets would also apply.
Even though what I am going to write may be idealistic and far from ever actually standing a chance of manifesting in a significant proportion of human beings in the world as it is today, but I wonder if it can encompass a lot of opinions, even opposing ones, with a common goal/code/understanding?
“To respect the right to liberty in every individual to do what they see fit, providing that they do not do to another anything against the others’ wishes and to be mindful and courteous to others in conduct as much as possible.”
Sounds pretty reasonable to me.