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).
Nice pic of Dworkin. Wow. What a babe.
Stossel had a segment about prostitution (specifically with reference to Harry Reid’s recent comment about banning it in Nevada). Someone really needs to give that guy some help in picking who he gets to represent the pro-legal side of the issue. He’s has had one or two decent guests in the past, but generally, they don’t come across as intellectually convincing.
So, you need to get on his show. Preferably right after you publish a book, so you can get him to promote it on air for you. You are working on a book, aren’t you?
Eventually. If I don’t get an offer from a publisher by this summer, I’ll probably ask Amanda Brooks’ advice on self-publishing. 🙂
This morning I spent over an hour reading your most recent posts – the first page of your blog. I read it carefully because I had to in order that I would grasp the points you wanted to make. It was compelling reading or I wouldn’t have continued. Neither would I have continued if I wasn’t on your side. So that’s where I am coming from and here’s some feedback …
I think that you very much want your blog to make a difference. It also seems to be a vent for your anger, even rage. Are these compatible bedfellows? Would ‘passion’ be useful?
Your command of language and complex linguistic constructs is exceptional. But I think that to get the same message across in simple terms is the mark of a real master of language – but what do you think?
The points you make are very convincing, also enlightening, to me. What I wonder about is the question of who needs to be convinced and what is the best strategy to get to them. My best answer is that it will take time and you have to address a younger generation. How might you do that?
With my best wishes – Graham J.
Thank you, Graham! I’m afraid I’m an old bitch, and set in my ways; not that I wasn’t set in my ways when I was a young bitch, mind you. 😉 I get lots of compliments on my writing skill, but one thing it lacks is flexibility; I write the way I write, and there’s no changing it. That’s why I’ve never tried to write professionally; I can’t alter my style to fit the requirements of a “boss” such as a magazine, website or motion picture studio. It simply is what it is, which isn’t surprising because my personality is like that as well. In writing, as in working, I have to be myself; those who like my performance tend to really like it, and those who don’t are often left frustrated and/or annoyed.
So what it boils down to is, I’m no good at mass marketing (either of myself or of my work), and I’m OK with that. My work made me plenty of money (not as much as it could have, but still plenty) and my writing has attracted quite a few…I hesitate to say “fans” but I guess that’s the right word. And if I can inspire some younger writer who CAN adapt her skills to reach more people, I’ll die a very happy woman. 🙂
” I’m afraid I’m an old bitch, and set in my ways; not that I wasn’t set in my ways when I was a young bitch, mind you.”
Hysterical! LOL!!
That’s exactly the issue I had with my blog. I was preaching to the choir and I knew my tone wasn’t convincing anyone who wasn’t already sympathetic to my point of view.
But, then I would come over here and Maggie came across pretty even toned, by comparison.
I think the mission of my blog was more like therapy for me than to persuade anyone to come over to my way of thinking.
Fuck. I know, I’m just another Glenn Beck except with a different agenda. 😉
Sometimes preaching to the choir helps convince people who are new or on their way to the choir that they’re in the right place.That may not be why you or Maggie do what you do, but the effect is still the same.
And sometimes, the choir needs the encouragement.
I have a list of reasons that I read Maggie’s blog. Somewhere near the bottom of that list is that I believe her command of the language and her ability to get her point across in an intellectual way will better my way of writing. There are still many a times that I need to have a dictionary open in another tab while I read her posts. There are women who write in more simple terms, myself and Kelly included and I thank Maggie for having our links on the side. This shows that there are many voices, some simple, some complex, some subtle, some in your face.
I’m glad you write the way you do Maggie and I’m glad you are not flexible enough to try to change. We need your voice and the way you write just as we need the others. In this way we can reach greater audiences period.
That’s an excellent point, Brandy; the prohibitionists like to cast the “prostitute experience” as some big monolith of abuse and degradation, and some activists want us to be this big monolith of lock-step rhetoric. But I believe it’s important for us to show that there is as much variation among whores as among any other women, and that we range from the wealthy to the just-getting-by, from the regal to the girl-next-door, from the intellectual to the slow, and from the professionals to the dilettantes. Monolithic representations, whether good or bad, are stereotypes, and I think reasonable people recognize stereotypes as unreal so it’s vital that we show ourselves to be real by letting the world see our infinite variety. 🙂
As my wife said a few months ago, as we discussed a segment of “All In With Chris Hayes” that we had just watched, to say “all people who work as cooks are living a nightmare” is simply untrue. The work experience of a burger-flipper will be very different from that of a short-order cook, which will be very different from that of a gourmet chef.
Some will be there because they like the work; some will be there because they like the paycheck. Some will feel respected; some won’t. Some will have some autonomy in their working-life; some won’t.
Oh, I forgot — a woman will only have sex with a man if she is coerced into doing so. That’s why sex work is different from cooking-work.
Yeah right no.
That is a picture of Andrea Dworkin?
The defense rests. Nothing further, your Honor.
Believe it or not, that’s not the least flattering picture of her I’ve seen. There was one floating around in the late ’80s which made her look like something out of a monster movie. 🙁
People don’t have control over their genetics but they can choose whether or not they are going to carry themselves with pride and treat themselves with care. Ms. Dworkin apparently did not. That says something.
I was just over at Brandy’s and followed a link to Farley (ugh) and from there to Dworkin (even worse).
I’ve never had such displeasure; “philosophical sty” is an understatement. What a bunch of crap. How did anyone even start reading that, much less how did it manage to spread through our culture?
I’m going to go wash my brain now.
There are a lot of desperately unhappy people in our culture, and when someone is drowning he’s likely to clutch at anything he thinks might keep him afloat and hold onto it with all his might. Mere facts don’t provide the certainty such people need because facts can change over time, so most people prefer to grab hold of irrational beliefs which give them something they can be sure of. But the more the belief flies in the face of reality the more defensive its adherents tend to be, and defensiveness breeds hostility. So people who believe in fairy-tales like neofeminism or Christian fundamentalism which are categorically disproven by science tend to be especially hostile, because even their own senses and native intelligence constantly bombard their brains with information which tends to disprove their beliefs. In other words, they’re their own worst enemies; is it any wonder they’re so hateful?
Neofeminists manage to make feminism in general look bad. And they make lesbians look bad. And they make both men and women look bad. Everything looks bad through the lens of these strange beings.
“What I wonder about is the question of who needs to be convinced and what is the best strategy to get to them.”
A large part of those needing to be convinced are academics, as academic research and publications play a major role in the gradual influence of policymaking. Such individuals are generally best influenced by intelligent logic and reason on their own level (for example, the author of yesterday’s Psychology Today article).
Check.
As for those too greatly inflicted with “cognitive impairment” to comprehend Maggie’s complex use of language…well, she has me to break it down to them. I am an expert at the translation of English to Stupid in no uncertain terms 🙂
“I can’t alter my style to fit the requirements of a “boss” such as a magazine, website or motion picture studio.”
So basically Maggie, you have no qualms about whoring out your body but take issue with whoring out your mind. LOL 🙂
LOL! 😀
You caught me. Guilty as charged! 😀
me too 🙂
Morality aside, I don’t know now much profit there is to be made whoring out the mind. Seems like the market’s kinda full.
I’ve met at least a few Christian fundamentalists that are wonderful people. They don’t fit the stereotypes about fundamentalists either. 1 way they don’t is they’re intellectuals and also have a great curiosity about how things work, etc. They also care to do for others and want to change the world for the better. Have I met 1’s that fit the bad stereotypes? Yes, but they were in the minority over all. Unfortunately, the preachers that fit the stereotypes get the most attention. The only good I see from this is that some are EXPOSING them which is very needed. There’s also people who are deceived by them praising them all over the place. Examples of believers who were/are also intellectuals: St. Paul, Martin Luther, Francis Schaeffer and RC Sproul. There’s a lot more than these, but these are 1’s I could think of right off. St. Paul was ONCE a hateful person (and I use him as an example to the ###*** online who think the worst person can’t change), but he changed hugely for the better once he accepted Christ. He still had some faults, but he WORKED on them, which is what Christianity teaches. He didn’t revel in his faults, but unfortunately has had ###*** lies thrown on him since his death. Yes, there are some things with Christianity that can’t be proven by science, but it’s that way with all religions and that doesn’t mean they don’t have any value and can’t change peoples’ lives for the better.
Laura, I don’t deny that there are many wonderful Christians, but that isn’t at ALL the same as a fundamentalist, which is by definition one who believes the Bible is literally true and denies everything which contradicts it. Anyone who accepts science, refuses to condemn homosexuals, etc is NOT a fundamentalist, and anyone who denies proven facts and judges others for their private behaviors is NOT a “wonderful person”. Wonderful Christians, absolutely. Wonderful fundamentalists, I’m afraid not. 🙁
What we think a Christian fundamentalist is doesn’t match. I’ll answer this fully when I have more time.
Laura, correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t St. Paul the guy who urged Christians not to get married at ALL and only to do so if one couldn’t bear to live without sex? Sounds to me like Paul was part of the problem.
I have a bigger problem with the anti-sex feminist left than with the Christians, because people seem to take the left more seriously, intellectually speaking. The irony is that the left’s concept that porn leads to rape and it’s all a source of power for men, blah blah blah is based on theory, not studies. Anyone who has been a man for more than 10 seconds can tell you we don’t look at nude women to get “power” over them.
Anyway, nice post and very insightful blog. But please, no more Dworkin pictures. Have mercy on your readers’ eyes.
I agree with you, Days; neofeminists present themselves as “intellectuals” and “academics” and use flawed research to support their “theories” (as you’ll see in my columns for this coming Saturday and Sunday). Like you, I often wonder how neofeminists manage to convince men of things (such as “rape is not sexual”) that they know damned well aren’t true, and convince heterosexual women of things their experiences with men should tell them aren’t true.
As for your request, well, OK. Not in the near future, anyhow. 😉
I have an addition to the list.
Nikki Craft. Neofeminist, considers herself to be the successor to Andrea Dworkin and owner and protector of the Dworkin Library and it’s interpretation. Nikki is an activist who had some arrests in the 1970’s for her actions in social protests. She uses her closeness to Dworkin as a method to recruit and greatly exploit new activists, usually ones that were victimized sexually. Craft expects those she “allows” to join her to take part in her “wars” against various enemies. She pushes the new, young activist to do things that are dangerous, harmful and often times extra legal so that she doesn’t have to do these things herself. Those that balk or stand up to her highly unethical demands become the target of very public campaigns to discredit them, to destroy their social network and to invalidate their experiences. She is known for mocking rape victims experiences publicly, for taking their experiences often that were shared in confidence with her public and present them in a very skewed, derogatory perspective. She is proud of her efforts to hurt people she feel are enemies and uses feminism, prohibitionist ideology and Dworkin as the weapon to cause harm.
Thanks, Jill. That woman sounds like a seriously sick, tormented soul; I guess extreme ideologies tend to attract extreme personalities. Think of all the psychological problems among high-ranking Nazis, and Stalin could be a textbook all by himself. 🙁
What if Dworkin was TRULY depressed when the picture was taken? I haven’t seen anything positive about her, to be honest, in what I’ve read about her, etc., but maybe she was suffering from depression at the time. Even if she had a part in contributing to her depression, it’s a horrible thing to wish on anyone (depression).
I don’t recall ever reading that Dworkin suffered from depression; people who externalize their negative feelings to the extent she did aren’t generally depressed (which results from a turning inward of negative feelings).
When I said depression in regards to Dworkin I’m wondering if she MIGHT have been. Depression can lead to overeating, etc. It could be that being big didn’t bother her which is a sign of a big problem to say the least. Personally I find those who think being big is OK for your health, etc., to be about the saddest figures there are. I wonder also if Dworkin was so bitter and full of hate that she self-destructed over time in her body as well as her mind.
A woman hitting the gym panders to the Patriarchy, as does wearing makeup, coloring your hair, getting your hair styled, wearing attractive clothing, and getting breast implants. Dworkin understood that a woman putting herself to such effort to look like a major babe to penis-creatures just makes the woman an accessory to her own degradation; whereas a truly liberated woman intentionally makes herself so revolting to men that no man wants to plant a baby in her. Maggie was, I’m sure, in 2005 a major babe who was attractive to any man who saw her; but Dworkin knew that such women were to be pitied, as victims of Patriarchy brainwashing.
/sarcasm off
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I can report that eastern european women do not like feminism one little bit. They know feminism is communism in drag and they despise it.
I date EEW in the range of 30-35. Trust me. They know feminism is poison.
Dworkin, Andrea:
Ah yes…the lovely lady who claimed that for women to be liberated the taboo of incest must be abolished….because, apparently, women can only be free if they are free to have sex with their sons.
Don’t take my word for it. Go look it up. This was one sick woman. It is reported she was a failed prostitute. That must have hurt. To be so ugly that even the most desperate of men won’t f*** you?
Many ‘leading feminists’ like Germain Greer and Betty Friednan report that they were severely abused by their MOTHER and NOT their father. But, for some reason went on to foster man hatred. Being a ‘victim’ is so much easier than being an adult and being responsible for yourself.
“See also Swedish model.”
Maggie,
I see you make comment on ‘swedish model’. I do not know how well informed you are of what is happening in sweden. But it’s NOT pretty. Men a fed up and it shows. I had numerous swedish friends in Dublin. Here are some examples.
We were at the residence of the british ambassador in Dublin and one of the swedish wives went into a ‘tizzy’. She was very, very well kept for her age. She stormed out and threatened to ‘walk home’ in her evening dress and high heels. A considerably dangerous thing to do give the steep descent she would have to negotiate drunk. I went and found her husband who was a good friend and explained the situation to him. His reply? “Why would I bother with her? She’s only my wife.” It sounded rather like “I have an old set of tennis shoes I am more fond of.”
Another? My eldest daughter came to stay with us for a year in 2002. She was 21. A bit overweight but ‘cute’ as young women can be. When we went to Visby on the Ireland of Gotland for summer holidays in 2002. A swedish friend of mine who was my age with an older wife would exaggerately paw all over my eldest daughter and make overt passes at her in ‘jest’ in front of his wife.
One time I took him aside and asked him if he didn’t think that his constant criticism of his wife as ‘akin to a blimp’ next to my daughter and his constant pawing of my daughter might not be upsetting to his wife. His reply was simple. “If she’s not happy she can divorce me”
In sweden? The men I talked to my age? They are fed up to hell and they could not care less about ‘wives’. They were wealthy men who knew that they wives needed them WAY more than they needed their wives. We need only remember that Benny and Bjorn from ABBA were, apparently, ‘not good enough’ and that they did not remarry. Welcome to ‘the swedish model’. Men are seriously unhappy up there. I know this first hand.
“Swimwear modeling and $1000/hour escorting are exploitation, but cleaning toilets for minimum wage is not.”
Maggie,
I am reminded that in 1987 I went to Hong Kong for the first time and I stayed at the victoria hotel for 12 weeks.
http://www.celadon-international.com/images/properties/Project%20pictures/Victoria%20Hotel.jpg
Each morning after breakfast I would need to go to the bathroom…I am only human. In the bathroom was a gentleman who would turn on the taps to make sure the water was warm. I would wash my hands under the water. And he would then dry my hands. I would give him USD1 for the tip and be on my way. Apparently this is not ‘exploitation’.
When I told my then gf this story she was indignant and commented that ‘someone should give him a better job’. Um? Who?
Anyway. As I would walk home from work from exchange square in the evening there would be many hundreds of men (NO WOMEN) sleeping on the walkways on straw mats. Unusually for me they would have card board boxes over their heads with a hole cut into the box for their necks.
I commented to one of my Hong Kong chinese co-workers that there seemed to be rather a lot of these homeless men around each night. She laughed and said they were not homeless at all. They were the men working on the new Exchange Square tower next door. They slept on the walkways to stay our of the rain. They come in monday morning and go home saturday night because it was considered too far and too expensive to commute to the new territories. God knows what they were paid.
But…apparently this is not ‘exploitation’ but a swimsuit model getting the famous ‘I do not get out of bed for less than 10,000 per day’ is exploitation.
I often ask women ‘when are you going to start dying for a living’? This is what men have done for millenia.
hello Maggie,
First time visitor here, and I am very surprised to find a woman, who exposes the hollow lies of feminism even more than some women who pledge support for the men’s movement (if there is such a thing).
I am from South Asia so the standard of living and comparative income is a lot lower, I know pretty much see how hard some men are worked, exploited for wages far less. There are women from the same socio-economic strata who are also overworked and underpaid, like men , but lesser in numbers.
The strange thing is that women from upper classes complain a lot more than women who are is unenviable positions. Well off, highly (overpaid) actresses and models proclaim how hard they work (as do actors), ignoring for the amount of hard work they do, there are millions more working a lot harder, facing more risks and still getting wages per month that these privileged classes spend per hour. One actress tells the media that women in the slums have no toilets. True, but then even more men in the slums and they don’t have toilets either. Such prominent people urge others to donate for causes (themselves donating far less than their disposable income can afford) ..I find it hypocritical. I can’t afford my own house or car yet without a loan which makes the rich bankers even richer …but these people with huge houses in the most posh urban areas with 3 or more luxury cars ask middle-class to be more generous ! (Middle class in India is a lot different than middle class in the west , a fact American car manufacturers realized late,)
The people who complain loudest are usually the most privileged , protected and pampered, and this is especially true of women. It’s a sad result, but feminism actually causes social , economic and legal injustice, feminism causes the equilibrium to go awry and inequalities get even more polarized due to feminism’s warped ideology.
Keep up the good writing, I’ll try and direct women to such sites because the standard dismissal of mens’ sites is ‘men who can’t laid whining about women’ ; never mind that many men on such sites are too old/jaded and some proclaimed celibates. Nuff said.
Well, POD, sex workers are in the unique position of being directly attacked by the neofeminists in a way most women aren’t. Oh, the rights of regular women are attacked as well (by laws which undermine our sexual freedoms and right to adult decision-making), but because it doesn’t overtly affect them on a daily basis they simply don’t see it, just as citizens of both sexes fail to see how the expansion of government laws against drug “criminals” affects non-drug users.
And yes, I myself often marvel at the rhetoric of “women and children in poverty” which ignores the fact that if these women’s husbands or boyfriends weren’t also in poverty they probably wouldn’t be either. How about discussing people in poverty? 🙁
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I didn’t know Andrea Dworkin was dead.
I remember watching her on Politically Incorrect years ago. It was shocking how dismissive she could be of facts and simple logic. It’s hard to believe she could have so many followers.
People don’t follow religious leaders because of facts; in actuality, the more a religious leader teaches faith which flies in the face of facts, the more committed the followers will be.
This is because a contempt for facts and reason filters out the less-than-fanatical disciples.
It drives me crazy when religious people try to use reason to prove their faith (i.e. using “logic” or “science” to prove the age of the Earth). Reason and faith are basically opposites. If they have to use reason to show why their beliefs make sense, doesn’t that mean they don’t actually have faith?
Tho supporting the use of sex work for what it is, harlotry has more zing.
I love the words “harlot” and “harlotry”, and use them as often as possible. 🙂