Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling? – Bertrand Russell
Prohibitionists have their own terms for nearly everything involving prostitution and their quixotic war against it; some of these are merely jargon of the sort which can be found in any specialized group, but others are euphemisms, dysphemisms or just plain distortions intended to disguise the truth about harlotry (easily discovered nowadays in blogs like this one) and portray it as something ugly, criminal and exploitative of women. So today I’d like to look at a few of these terms, defining them in plain English, so that my readers will understand what the prohibitionists are actually trying to accomplish by their use.
Abolitionist: A prohibitionist. They prefer the term “abolitionist” because they’re working to “free the slaves”. The comparison is a better one than they imagine; though the modern view of abolitionists is wholly positive, in reality most of them (as documented in Russell’s Renegade History of the United States) had an incredibly patronizing attitude toward black people and many of them considered the chief evil of slavery to be the loose sexual morals of the slaves.
Apologist: Anyone who answers propaganda with facts: “Maggie McNeill is a trafficking apologist.”
Backlash: Resistance to injustice perpetrated in the name of “feminism”.
Bought and sold: Engaged in any business transaction involving female sexuality or sex characteristics: “We’re picketing this clinic because gynecologists are bought and sold here.”
Car dragging: A common component of reframing experiences. It’s not unusual to hear a survivor tell the story that she was dragged for blocks down the street by either her pimp or a john, but there are never any witnesses, scars, or police or hospital reports to verify the account. One might point out that real incidents of dragging usually cause major injuries and are often fatal, but the credulous audiences of such tales never think of that.
Consent: The clearly spoken (never merely implied) agreement to engage in sexual conduct with a male on the part of an adult woman over 18 (even if the legal age of consent where she lives is lower) unless the one who uses the term disapproves of whatever it is she’s consenting to. Consent can be revoked retroactively without any time limit. See also rape.
Degradation: Participation in any sexual activity of which the majority of neofeminists or other prudes disapprove. See also rape.
Denial: A psychological state characterized by a sex worker of any kind remembering the events of her life as they actually happened rather than as prohibitionists wish to believe they happened. See also reframing experiences.
Dworkin, Andrea: American neofeminist (1946-2005) who dreamed up a large portion of the inane “rape” rhetoric which characterizes the anti-porn and anti-prostitution planks of the neofeminist platform. Criticism of any of Dworkin’s scriptures, including her violently pornographic novel Ice and Fire, is tantamount to blasphemy in neofeminist prohibitionism.
End demand: The prohibitionist strategy which hinges upon lowering the average male sex drive to below that of the average female by harassment, threats and brainwashing. The male’s higher testosterone level is considered immaterial because all gender differences, including sex drive, are “socially constructed”. See also Swedish model.
Exploitation: Any business transaction involving sex or sex appeal in which a woman is the payee, no matter how highly paid she is. Swimwear modeling and $1000/hour escorting are exploitation, but cleaning toilets for minimum wage is not.
Farley, Melissa: American neofeminist (born 1942) skilled at creating bogus “studies” designed to produce anti-prostitution, anti-porn and anti-BDSM results. Farley utilizes such tactics as interviewing streetwalkers in jails and rehab facilities, discarding the responses which do not conform to her beliefs (see denial), and then fallaciously applying the results to all prostitutes. Whenever a prohibitionist starts quoting statistics, one can be sure that the name “Farley” will appear prominently in the list of sources.
Feminist: The label neofeminists erroneously apply to themselves; see also sex-pozzies.
Hughes, Donna: American neofeminist (born 1954) who couldn’t make it as a geneticist because science kept inconveniently disproving her neofeminist beliefs, so she moved into the ghetto of “women’s studies” where nobody would challenge her faith with facts. Because she is a strong supporter of criminalization she appeals as much to Christian fundamentalist prohibitionists as to neofeminist ones, and was instrumental in the 2009 re-criminalization of prostitution in Rhode Island.
Human trafficking: Prostitution, acting in porn, international marriage brokering or surrogate motherhood, especially in (but not limited to) cases in which a woman moves from one place to another for the work. Moving out of a third-world hellhole to do sex work in a Western nation is “human trafficking”, but working in a sweatshop in one’s own country is not (see also exploitation).
Humiliation: See degradation.
John: A term for the client of a prostitute which is used almost exclusively by those outside prostitution (especially prohibitionists, police and the media).
John school: An end demand scheme in which men caught in prostitution “stings” are forced to endure being screamed at by survivors.
Majority:Small minority; usually proceeded by the adjective “vast”: “The vast majority of prostitutes are trafficked slaves”.
Nordic model: See Swedish model.
People in prostitution: See prostituted woman.
Pimp: Any male who associates with any sex worker (including strippers and porn actresses) but is not a customer. Husbands, boyfriends, drivers, bodyguards, service owners and even some landlords are all “pimps”. See also exploitation.
Pimp lobby: The anti-prostitute neofeminist equivalent of the Illuminati, a vast international organization funded by pornography whose agenda is the decriminalization of prostitution so that prostitutes can operate openly and independently without the need for pimps.
Pornography: To neofeminists, any visual representation of the female body unless made by and for lesbians. To Christian fundamentalists, any visual representation of a nude human body, period.
Pro-prostitution: Since neofeminists represent prostitution as a form of rape, this seemingly innocuous term is actually a slur implying that sex worker rights advocates promote rape.
Pro-trafficking lobby: See pimp lobby, pro-prostitution.
Prostituted woman: A whore. Modern prohibitionist rhetoric teaches that since no woman would voluntarily hire herself for sexual services, all prostitution is involuntary and coerced even if the woman states otherwise (see denial). Hence this term, which casts the prostitute as a victim to whom something is done rather than a competent adult making a free choice.
Rape: Any heterosexual behavior in which the man acts without the woman’s clearly expressed consent, even if that consent is implied. Consent can be retroactively withdrawn at any time, thus converting past sexual encounters into “rape” even if the man believes he obtained consent. Since the consent of individual women is subject to collective neofeminist approval, any heterosexual activity of which a majority of neofeminists disapprove (including but not limited to sex work and BDSM) is automatically rape even if the individual woman involved gives consent. Some extreme neofeminists (including Andrea Dworkin) preach that all heterosexual relations are tantamount to rape because heterosexual women are essentially too stupid to “truly” consent.
Reframing experiences: Lying. “Survivors” are encouraged to “reframe their experiences” in order to make prostitution, johns or whatever seem worse than they actually were.
Research: Designing leading questions to be asked to a carefully-selected sample of sex workers in order to elicit the desired responses, then discarding those responses which do not fit the “theory”. See also Melissa Farley.
Selling: See bought and sold.
Sex-pozzie: Dismissive term for a sex-positive feminist, one who believes in the social goals of feminism but rejects neofeminist anti-sex rhetoric in favor of the heretical notion that adult women are competent to make their own individual sexual decisions.
Sexual violence: Similar to rape, but not limited to physical contact: “Exploitation of strippers is a form of sexual violence.”
Slave: In the rhetoric of trafficking fanatics, a prostituted woman.
Survivor: An unhappy ex-streetwalker or genuine trafficking victim brainwashed by prohibitionists into parroting their rhetoric, often accompanied by reframing experiences; they are the primary tools exploited by john schools.
Swedish model: An insidious form of prohibitionism based upon the neofeminist premise that adult women are forever the equivalent of legal minors, neither able to consent to sex acts of which the state does not approve, nor held liable if they consent to those acts. Since men are fully competent adults, however, they are unilaterally liable just as they would be in statutory rape cases.
Victim: A term whose meaning varies widely depending on the type of prohibitionism.
1) In 20th-century prohibitionism, a prostitute’s client or the client’s wife.
2) In neofeminism, a woman.
3) In Swedish model or trafficking rhetoric, a sex worker.
4) In Christian prohibitionism, either #1, #3 or both (varies by group).
5) In “progressive” American institutional prohibitionism, a prostitute with a pimp, except for those arrested or raped by the police (who deserve what they get and are therefore not victims).
