The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens. – Gustave Flaubert
Last Tuesday (December 21st) I received a request for moderation of a comment on my column of December 13th. As regular readers know, I don’t approve comments from posters who seem very belligerent because once a particular commenter is approved all subsequent comments by that same poster are automatically approved; I don’t want anyone who seems prone to negativity having free reign to scatter such comments all over my board while I sleep, eat or otherwise live normal (offline) life. I have no wish to censor anyone, but I reserve the right to maintain a positive tone in my own site. Since the commenter is a fellow supporter of whores’ rights I felt I should reply via email, and did so. The following is the series of emails which resulted; I asked for permission to publish this and he did not answer, but since he intended the discussion to be read by everyone in the commentary I see no harm in featuring it in a column instead. The following messages are reproduced exactly as written, with no additions, subtractions or modifications other than the correction of four typos (two each) and the truncation of my signature line to simply “Maggie McNeill”. N.B. : The term “cisgendered” is a neologism meaning people who aren’t transgendered.
His initial message:
I don’t mean to defend Burts’ actions, but your critique would do well to exclude the whorephobia and homophobia on which it is founded. Your explicit and stigmatizing language (e.g., undermining Burts’ statement that he has a girlfriend by claiming she is a beard, your overwrought scare quotes to mock homosexual men, and your very clear hatred for gay and-or bi male escorts as perceived vectors of disease) betrays your motivations. Get with it; there are men and women, including transgender men and women, in the sex trade that don’t fit into your neat little hierarchy of needs, and we deserve the same rights and the same respect you demand for nontrans women trading sex.
Also, your assumptions, as well as those of the ACLU’s, about the application of ‘prostitution’ laws being more often applied to women more than men are an oft-repeated and misleading factoid. While it is true that ‘prostitution’ laws (i.e., with ‘prostitution’ in the title) disproportionately affect women, this is especially so for transgender women. Also, studies show that, for instance, young men who trade sex are 160 percent more criminalized than women, only using different laws (e.g., possession, assault, loitering, etc.). See the recent study by Dr. Ric Curtis on minors who trade sex in New York City. The study, which was sponsored by the Department of Justice, also found that an estimated 54 percent of minors who trade sex in New York City are nontrans boys, not all of them gay-identified. Consider that the next time you dismiss queer and trans sex workers, as well as straight-identified male sex workers who serve men, as a minority.
The fact is that queer and trans hookers were throwing heels at the police at Compton’s Cafeteria and Stonewall before you were old enough to buy a beeper. Your consistent misrepresentations are harmful to solidarity in the movement.
My reply:
Dear Will,
I’m sorry, but I can’t approve this sort of comment for my blog. While I accept criticism, I do not allow commentary which criticizes my refusal to subscribe to groupthink and accuses me of nefarious psychosocial motives where there are none. I have written about the misuse of the word “homophobia” (which doesn’t mean what you use it to mean), and though I have nothing against homosexual men you cannot be convinced of that and allowing you to start a flame war is therefore pointless and unproductive. The only “clear hatred” is in your mind; just because others disagree with you doesn’t mean they “hate” you. The presumption that they do is, quite frankly, childish; hatred is an immature, destructive reaction to fear and/or anger and I do not partake of it, not even toward men who raped me.
I absolutely agree that homosexual and transsexual prostitutes deserve equal respect, but since I know nothing about their world it would be extremely presumptuous for me to say anything about them. Others have blogs in which those issues are covered; mine is not among them. My primary focus is on female prostitution, with a strong emphasis on pointing out that we aren’t so different from other women. As you can see if you view it rationally, talking about male prostitutes or transsexuals would result in distraction from that emphasis.
As I said to a commenter on Bound Not Gagged recently, we are on the same side. That does not mean we must travel in lock-step, however, and indeed to promote such unity of rhetoric is destructive to the point we’re trying to make that whores are nothing to be afraid of (and therefore inevitably repressed). Non-whores don’t all spout the same rhetoric, and neither should we. Diversity of opinion isn’t destructive to solidarity in the movement; attempts to impose an agenda of “correct” speech and thought are. I became a whore in part because it allowed me freedom from arbitrary rules, so as you can imagine I’m no more interested in subscribing to your notion of “correct” language and tone than anyone else’s.
If you like, I will print both your letter and this response within a column next week; if you prefer that I don’t I will honor that request. We are not enemies, but not even allies have to agree on everything nor necessarily like each other at all times.
Maggie McNeill
His response:
Glad to hear your snide conjecture and censorious conduct is not just a performance for your readers. Try to hide behind the accusation that this is about being ‘PC’ all you want, but I suspect you’re a cold and selfish egoist who doesn’t have the ovaries to think and talk and work in solidarity with your peers who are equal stakeholders in ending whore stigma and criminalization. Talking about men and women, including transgender men and women, who did not fit into your boxes would distract from the point? It in fact undermines the anti-sex work argument that prostitution is always already ‘violence against women.’ Consider that many straight-identified men trade sex with men for money, and yet the right-wingers aren’t trying to rescue them. You’re repeating the same fallacy as your enemies.
I’m not asking you to stop focusing on nontrans women, I’m asking you to edit your language to indicate that there are others in this trade besides straight cisgendered white women.
My final reply:
Dear Will,
I have never implied that “straight cisgendered white women” are the only ones who prostitute ourselves; in fact I have made many comments to the contrary. It seems to me that you derive your criticisms from the reading of a small number of my posts, and that you interpret not mentioning something as tantamount to condemnation of it.
As for “I suspect you’re a cold and selfish egoist who doesn’t have the ovaries to think and talk and work in solidarity with your peers,” I repeat that groupthink is neither necessary nor desirable in activism. That’s the mistake the feminists made, and it does not behoove us to repeat it.
Will, I have no quarrel with you or with any other person who cares about this cause, but I cannot be bullied into dancing to somebody else’s tune. I will continue to fight the good fight in my own way, just as you will fight it in yours. I wish you good luck on your own path, just as I hope for it on mine.
Maggie McNeill
Since this is the second such attack on my style in just a few days, I think it’s pretty clear some activists are making incorrect assumptions about what I’m trying to do here. Though I stated it pretty clearly in my introduction, I think it’s time for an elaboration and I will publish that on Saturday, January 1st.
Well…it comes as part & parcel of expressing an opinion, even a highly informed one. It’s not possible to represent every element of any given group, nor is it possible to have full knowledge of every possible experience, as no person can have every human experience possible.
It’s the same kind of unfortunate thing we see with African American issues.
There does seem to be something about your style, I guess, that just pisses some people off. Not sure what it is, and whatever it is doesn’t seem to bother me. Now, the people who are thus pissed aren’t necessarily bad people, but I do wish they would allow that maybe, just possibly, you’re not bad either.
I know exactly what it is: I express my own opinion, not anyone else’s, and I do so unapologetically. My mind is my own, and my words are my own, and that angers people who fill their heads and mouths with other people’s opinions and words rather than thinking and speaking about their own.
I think you’re quite right on this one, Maggie. My opinion about such reactions is that when someone does what you’re doing — expresses his/her opinions clearly, openly, and unapologetically — some people have a tendency to understand that as implying negative feelings (enmity, hatred, etc.) towards different, disagreeing opinions.
Of course, this doesn’t logically follow. Simply because I clearly state “I think that X”, it doesn’t follow that I’m claiming that everybody who doesn’t think X has to be stupid, dellusional, etc. Everybody has had the experience of being wrong, of changing opinions, etc. From what I see in your blog, you’re quite open to criticism, and I’m sure that if someone can show you that you were wrong about something then you would change your mind about it.
But because you don’t fill your texts with hedges — “in my opinion”, “it seems so to me”, “maybe I’m wrong, but” — this isn’t so clear. Some people may miss the fact that you’re open to criticism, discussion, and debate. Especially to people who feel attacked and despised by the mainstream (and I’m sure male and transgender prostitutes are not exactly our society’s darlings), the simple fact that someone expresses an opinion that disagrees with them, or happens to criticize something they did in a clear and direct manner, can easily be associated with all the bigotted, irrational, fear-mongering rhetorics that they also get from other people. Given their experience with the latter (which probably they deal with much more frequently than they deal with people like you), they cut-and-paste reactions from the bigotted context to yours.
It’s a like in that discussion we had about male-female differences, in which you said that you had had to defend yourself against stupid idiots so often that you didn’t want to go back and do the whole thing again (when it was obvious that the idiots were wrong, etc.). This guy is reading more into your comments than is there, probably because he also did have to deal with stupid idiots who did include in their comments the presuppositions that he’s attributing to yours–and he got fed up with it.
He’s not right. But his behavior is not so difficult to understand.
Perhaps you’d like (in case you haven’t done that already) to write a full column with all your ideas and thoughts on non-conventional prostitutes — males, transgendered prostitutes, straight-identified male clients who do buy sex from male prostitutes, and the like. (I don’t mean as some sort of apology; simply because this world does exist and may be worth a thought or two.)
As I said to the gentleman who attacked me here, I consider hatred an infantile, unproductive emotion and never partake of it. Anger, certainly, but hate is a very different thing. And frankly, I find those who indiscriminately accuse people who disagree with them of being motivated by hate to be even more infantile.
I call that “text padding”, and I’ll discuss it in my New Year’s Day column. You’re right, I don’t care for it.
You’re almost certainly right, but since he initiated contact rather than merely responding to a contact I initiated, it is incumbent upon him to look before he leaps.
The problem with that (as I’ll also discuss Saturday) is that I know nothing about the subject except what I’ve heard, and it’s not my practice to write columns on hearsay.
And you do so in literate, educated English; rare enough in these days, and far too often found only in those whose academic credentials tend to put them on the side of the groupspeak groupies.
this style, indeed your style of written communication is more powerful and can be far more aggravating when it comes from a woman and I just don’t mean to say “powerfully aggravating woman” or for that matter “aggravatingly powerful man” (like krulak). Unfortunately today, many of our social scolds sporting the mantle of psychiatrist and psychologist label this style as “unfit for acceptance into most social systems”, but when they do judge pejoratively, they expose themselves as psychophants to authority rather than candid, just actors. So what am I saying, Maggie? This dude is bitching at you because he concluded you don’t “hold true faith and allegiance to the same.”
For me in the end, I simply want to know is your verbal communication style similar to your written or does your voice and the absent anonymity in the public venue oral communication modulate the power?
And frankly, I find those who indiscriminately accuse people who disagree with them of being motivated by hate to be even more infantile.
Sure. Ironically, I’ve said similar things to other people before, getting often responses that implied that I was motivated by hatred in saying this… 🙂
I’ll only say that confusing anger in others with hatred, though being wrong, is a frequent mistake. I’ll bet we’ve all made it more than once in our lives.
I’m not on this guy’s side. Like that woman who accused you of not having empathy for streetwalkers, he’s committing a fallacy. I don’t support fallacies. You’re right when you say he should look before he leaps. Alas, people frequently don’t. (As blind leapers go, he isn’t that bad; at least his heart is in the right place, i.e. he defends prostitution.)
The problem with that (as I’ll also discuss Saturday) is that I know nothing about the subject except what I’ve heard, and it’s not my practice to write columns on hearsay.
Fair enough. It seems, though, that his fight — which obviously concerns noncanonical prostitutes more than canonical ones — is related to yours. He — or someone else, more capable of looking before s/he leaps, but also on his side — might be a good ally. It might be worth the while to learn more about the topic.
I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel it’s necessary. Gay prostitutes have both sex worker rights advocates AND gay rights advocates speaking up for them; they don’t need me as well. Female prostitutes, on the other hand, have only our own advocates because most “women’s rights” activists speak AGAINST us. Not only am I tied to my own group by bonds of similarity and shared experience, but they need my voice more. And more importantly, I’m not the only blogger in the “blogosphere” and I will write about what interests ME, not what others dictate I “should” write about.
That is a good point. So, even the gay men who are into ‘normalcy’ (‘we’re just like apple pie’) don’t condemn male sex workers? (In fact, among gay friends and/or bloggers I’ve read, I can’t remember a single one who was against male prostitutes; and they did talk quite a lot about, for instance, George Rekers and the boy he hired to carry his luggage).
On the other hand… don’t at least gay bloggers who mention male sex workers also speak in favor of female sex workers, at least occasionally? I remember reading favorable accounts of female sex work from Dan Savage, for instance.
And I also remember what you said about inclusivity: that the gay movement avoided feminism’s mistake of becoming ‘a house divided’ (they didn’t expel drag queens) and even grew to become LGTB(Q).
Yes, precisely. The gay movement is inclusive, and therefore gay prostitutes have plenty of support already. Female prostitutes, on the other hand, have nobody but ourselves.
There are indeed a few gay activists who remember the old 1970s alliance with prostitutes, but these days I more often see the kind of “queer vs. straight” attitude my critic projects here. 🙁
About the inclusivity of activism LGBT(Q) as compared to feminism, I had a thought that I’d like to know your opinion about. You said feminism had made a mistake by distancing itself certain groups of women (e.g. sex workers, except as ‘victims’), while the LGBT(Q) didn’t make this mistake. It occurred to me that this might not have been so much a tactical/strategic mistake as the result of feminism, in general terms, having already become mainstream — people who will publicly deny that men and women should have equal rights and obligations are few and by default considered wrong, while this is still not the case with people who think homosexuality is a disease that should be cured. Maybe when the basic idea of a certain activist movement becomes broadly accepted in the mainstream, this happens first with the subgroups of this movement that are already more similar to the mainstream (e.g. ‘normal’ women), while other subgroups continue to be stigmatized for secondary, traditional reasons (prostitutes, for ‘selling themselves’). This creates a division between the ‘already accepted’ and the ‘still beyond the pale’ which may result in old alliances being broken up (feminists and prostitutes in the ’70s), and in the creation of new theoretical viewpoints that justify the break-up (the theoretical justification of whores as outcasts via the idea of patriarchal oppression and victimization).
If this is true, then maybe we could expect the same to happen to the LGBT(Q) movement as (parts of) it enter the mainstream. Maybe the gay activist who told you they want to show gays are ‘normal’ will be among those who will part ways with male prostitutes, or drag queens, or transsexuals, or… after the mantle of broad social acceptability falls on their shoulders.
It’s possible, but some feminists were already working to exclude whores in the early ’70s and had succeeded in hijacking the movement by the late ’70s, when “women’s liberation” as it was called then was no more mainstream than “gay rights” is today.
True. But I’ll bet there are some gays who also despised and wanted to dissociate themselves from certain subgroups (prostitutes, drag queens) also in the past. After all, if there are Republican (‘log cabin’) homosexuals, these may be the kind that would think the ‘loose morals’ gays are bad (because everybody thinks we’re like them, and this ‘kills our chances’).
I wonder if at least some higher-level prostitutes wouldn’t want to dissociate themselves from streetwalkers for similar reasons — ‘hey, accept us! it’s streetwalkers that are the problem, not us!’
Which makes me think it would be interesting if you could write a column about streetwalkers — not a general one (you have already done that), but one that would include individual streetwalkers, in case you had sufficient personal experience with specific ones. Didn’t any of the girls you worked with start her career as a streetwalker?
No, though I did know of one case who went the opposite direction, poor soul. She was a heroin addict and eventually couldn’t keep herself organized enough to work for Pam’s service, so she started streetwalking and eventually ODed where there was nobody to save her. 🙁
Besides being very thought provoking, I must point out that this thread is an excellent example of intelligent debate. One person brings up an idea and the next considers what they said and responds with respect whether they agree or not, and vice versa. No hurt feelings, no taking it personally….just intelligent conversation and opportunity to learn, as it ought to be.
Just sayin’ 🙂
Oh yeah? Well look here you liberally conservative commie fascist little…
Oops, sorry. Wrong blog. You’re right, actually.
“I absolutely agree that homosexual and transsexual prostitutes deserve equal respect, but since I know nothing about their world it would be extremely presumptuous for me to say anything about them. Others have blogs in which those issues are covered; mine is not among them.”
That says it all, Maggie.
🙂
It makes sense that you not write about something you know little about. It also makes sense that you not try to become a crash-course expert when there are already others advocating that cause better than you could. It certainly makes sense that you not veer off course from the important work you are doing here in order to do other work, however important, less well than this.
There is one thing you could do, though (unless you’ve already done it and I missed it, which is entirely possible). You could link to the blogs of those who are doing a better job of advocating for these things than you could. This would show solidarity without requiring you to neglect your calling or pretend expertise you don’t have. It might even help somebody who is interested (for reasons ranging from prurience to personal involvement) in such things, but who is skittish about googling “gay prostitutes rights” and comes here instead.
I could, but as you may have noticed I don’t add links indiscriminately; every few weeks I’ll stumble on a new one I think deserves attention, and I’ll add it to my list. The Sex Workers Outreach Project has a “blog aggregator” that collects a number of blogs (including mine) together, and Bound, Not Gagged has articles on all types of sex workers, but I’ve never run into an individual blog of a gay or transsexual prostitute which impressed me enough to add a link for. When I do, you can be sure I will add it just like I have a number of others. 🙂
Coolacious.
If I ever come to value loyalty to a movement above sound reasoning I will become a Democrat or Republican.
Amen! 🙂
Maggie – I think there’s a saying that goes something like “if you’re pissing some people off you must be doing a pretty good job”.
Part of the goal of writing is to invoke emotion through words. Anger is an emotion, and a strong one at that. Goal accomplished. You should be proud of yourself.
The goal of writing as an activist is to present your cause in a way that leads your reader to think along the same lines as you do. Obviously, there will always be people who disagree with you. If you’re doing an exceptional job, they may attempt to discredit you simply because you are too convincing. Consider it proof that you are accomplishing your goal. Again – a compliment.
Will (of the email dialogue) – Your argument makes no sense whatsoever. Derrick Burts has been proven to be a liar and Maggie’s column simply illustrates how his lies gave the government an excuse to attempt further regulation of the entire porn industry. Perhaps you appreciate people who endanger their co workers and then invite government regulation because their own poor character allows them to blame everyone but themselves for their misfortunes; I do not. Derrick Burts has represented gay men very poorly and ought to be ashamed of himself.
I thought Maggie’s “explicit” language which you felt expressed “hatred for gay male escorts as perceived vectors of disease” was quite appropriate, except I didn’t feel it expressed specific contempt for gay escorts. I felt it expressed contempt for any escort advertising unprotected services, which is essentially what Burts was doing when he referred to being “AIM tested” in his ad.
Playing up the role of transgendered escorts, who represent a very small portion of escorts overall, only serves to cause more whore stigmatization from the general public. The public already has vast misconceptions about both transgendered people and whores. Merging the two together only creates further stereotypes about both. Get real.
Thank you so much, Kelly!
Bingo! I thought that was very clear in my text, but there are none so blind as those who will not see. Will wanted to blame my words on infantile “hatred” so that’s what he saw. Any escort of either sex who advertises or implies unprotected services does not deserve my respect.
Again, precisely. As I pointed out in my column of September 20th, there’s already a belief that transsexual hookers are vastly more common than they are; for me to encourage that impression in order to further someone else’s political agenda would not only be dishonest and incredibly irresponsible, it would also help to perpetuate a myth which causes enough trouble for whores as it is.
“Any escort of either sex who advertises or implies unprotected services does not deserve my respect.”
Damn skippy they don’t
Regarding transgendered hookers…”it would also help to perpetuate a myth which causes enough trouble for whores as it is.”
Trouble for whores AND trouble for transgendered people as well. My knowledge on this subject is admittedly lacking, BUT I know enough to know that there is already a major stereotype out there that says all transgendered women are prostitutes.
That stereotype certainly doesn’t help transgendered women gain acceptance in society, IMHO
True enough, Kelly; it makes them doubly-damned in most people’s eyes, doesn’t it? 🙁