It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country. – Raymond Chandler
Despite the existence of “truth in advertising” laws, the mind empowered by critical thinking never really expects a seller to be entirely truthful about his product; one expects, if not outright lies, a host of exaggerations, omissions, false comparisons and half-truths designed to make his product seem better to prospective buyers than those of his competitors. But when the sellers are politicians and the product is a political doctrine or platform, all bets are off and anyone who is not hopelessly gullible expects flagrant lies and malicious slanders against the sellers’ political rivals or anyone else about whom it’s convenient to lie. This is the case with the “Swedish Model” of prohibition; since it was first proposed in 1997, the model’s proponents have clearly stated that after it was imposed on Sweden they intended to export it to the rest of the world, much as communist countries used to try to export Marxism. In its burning desire to be seen as the moral voice of the world, Sweden has aggressively marketed its national brand and, as one might expect, has engaged in both egregious misrepresentation and outright lying to sell its product.
According to the Swedish sales pitch, their strategy has been a resounding success; it has supposedly reduced the rate of prostitution and sex trafficking and deterred clients without harming prostitutes in any way, and we are told that the great majority of Swedes (76%) enthusiastically support the ban. There’s only one problem with these claims: Not only are they untrue, several of them are actually refuted by studies within the Swedish government. In other words, though some of the claims are based in willful ignorance or distorted studies, others are outright lies. At an international conference entitled “Decriminalizing Prostitution and Beyond: Practical Experiences and Challenges” held in The Hague on March 3 and 4 of this year, Susanne Dodillet and Petra Östergren presented a paper entitled “The Swedish Sex Purchase Act: Claimed Success and Documented Effects”; it demonstrates, using extensive materials which include many from Swedish government sources, that the grandiose claims for the success of the “Swedish Model” are, to put it politely, full of meatballs.
The supposed reduction in prostitution is mostly claimed from a supposed decrease in streetwalking, which the Swedish government claims represented a whopping 33% of all Swedish prostitution (which would be twice as much as anyplace else in the Western world). But as regular readers know, streetwalking has been on the decline everywhere for many years now thanks to the internet and cell phones; Dodillet and Östergren shows that if there was a measurable decrease in streetwalking at all (which is not well-supported by the evidence), it was part of the same trend which has been observed in other countries. And even the Swedish government’s own National Board for Health and Welfare admits that it can make absolutely no supportable statements about what the Swedes are pleased to call “hidden prostitution” – i.e. escorting and the like, the vast majority of harlotry. As for sex trafficking (which has never been a serious problem in Sweden), just one year ago a Swedish police press release claimed that the ban had actually increased trafficking in Sweden by making it a more lucrative market, just as prohibition of drugs makes drug dealing more profitable. But in the glowing report on the resounding success of the ban released a few months later, the same police authorities had mysteriously reversed that position.
But certainly clients have been deterred, right? The threat of jail time has got to scare them, hasn’t it? Well, not exactly; Swedish judges are apparently far less impressed with the law than those who created it, and have not yet imprisoned even one man under the law, opting instead for fines. Dodillet and Östergren quote from a number of studies (including several based on interviews with sex workers) which conclude that most Swedish men are not at all deterred by the law (most especially not the ones who simply go to Denmark or Germany, where prostitution is legal). The government’s claim of deterrence is based on a single study whose unreliability will be clear to you when I report that it showed the number of men who had ever bought sex decreased by 41% between 1996 and 2008…which would have to mean that a huge percentage of those who had paid for it must either have died or moved out of Sweden, because even if they had not hired a whore since the ban that wouldn’t erase their previous experiences! Criminologists at Stockholm University pointed out that this is impossible, and that it’s much more likely that men are not answering truthfully for fear of prosecution.
What about public opinion, though? If 76% of Swedes think the criminalization of clients is a good idea, it’s at least democratic even if unjust. Except for one thing: the official government surveys are the only ones which show this supposed support. Every week there are numerous anti-ban columns and articles in the Swedish press, not to mention a host of activists, academics and bloggers. Almost 10% of young Swedish girls admit to having taken money for sex at least once, and a recent newspaper survey found that 63% of readers favored abolishing the sex purchase law. When the Minister of Justice, Beatrice Ask, demanded higher penalties for clients, a whopping 88% of readers disagreed, and a poll on the very popular Swedish online debate forum Newsmill found that 81% of respondents reported being “angry” about the law. Despite all this opposition, on May 12th the Riksdag (Parliament) voted to double the possible jail term for the law: the vote was 282 for, 1 against, 66 absent. Presumably many of the absentees were opponents who did not dare to vote against the bill; the one nay vote was from vocal “Swedish Model” opponent Frederick Federley. His speech, translated by Dr. Michael Goodyear of the Center for Sex Work Research and Policy, is well worth reading, as is the Dodillet and Östergren paper; they reveal the true ingredients of this snake oil the Swedes are trying to sell to the world.
I have to hand it to you, Maggie, you do your homework! I wish there were more people like you around.
Most of my friends support legalizing sex work, but a number of them are opposed to porn. I indulge a lot in internet porn and there are some disgusting niches, and I’m a tolerant guy, not easily disgusted by much.
What’s your take on porn?
Thank you, Gawaine! I must give credit where it’s due; a lot of my homework is done for me by colleagues and regular readers who send me articles and links nearly every day. The Dodillet/Östergren study and the translation of the Federley speech were kindly forwarded to me by Dr. Michael Goodyear of CSWRP; without him there wouldn’t have been a column. 🙂
On porn: As I’ve written before I don’t care for porn myself, but I honestly can’t see how a rational person could be “opposed” to it unless he’s also “opposed” to murder mysteries, slasher movies, cop dramas, war movies, adventure movies and horror.
Maggie,
Some thoughts about porn, because I value your opinion;
1) The Neo-feminist hysteria about porn has always struck me as a case of “How DARE men look at any women that isn’t exactly like ME! How DARE they imply that a permanent sense of entitlement and a personality like a wolverine on Meth are turn-offs!”
2) It is my impression, based on reading done more than a decade ago, that “Snuff” porn – in the sense of actually deaths actually filmed for porn – had yet to be turned up in the (so to speak) flesh. Have you heard of any documented cases?
3) I am always, always, ALWAYS leery of giving the State any category of speech that is not protected by the first amendment. Consequently my reaction to child-porn would be to craft laws based on the idea that photographic child-porn is evidence of a crime that should have been turned over to local LEO’s immediately, and to let drawings go on the grounds that if it were against the law to be a creep, most of our elected representatives would be in the Big House.
4) While I AM against censorship, I am also increasingly weary of the display of titillating images. As a guy, I am hard wired to be unable to totally ignore them, and it wears on one. I wish that we could pass LOCAL laws about what could be publicly displayed. Not owned. Not sold. Just displayed in space visible to the general public. But I admit that I do see pitfalls. I’m just SOOOOOOO tired of being wired up by Madison Avanue.
1) Yeah, that and this.
2) I have never heard of a single documented case, and Jill Brenneman (who of all pros I know was closest to a situation in which she could have been used for such a thing if it existed) is of the opinion that it’s a myth; that’s good enough for me.
3) I totally agree. A crime requires a victim, and no children are harmed in the making of drawings. There is even some evidence that use of such material may prevent actual children from being victimized.
4) My television isn’t connected to any antenna, cable or satellite dish; I just watch DVDs on it. What does that tell you?
I haven’t watched broadcast television regularly for something like a quarter of a century. I do watch DVD’s, and that includes some TV shows. But it isn’t the TV content that bothers me; I can turn THAT off (I am appalled at the number of people I meet who seem unable to turn a TV OFF!). What gets me is that I can’t walk into a mall without seeing images calculated to reduce me to a hormonally twitterpated, grunting ape. OK, I understand. Victoria’s Secret has to display lingerie. So, explain to me why the Mall bookstore display window is full of photographs of half dressed girls (They aren’t women, dagnabbit! For one thing, they have no hips)? Or, for that matter, the MEN’s clothing store?
*sigh*
Unfortunately, the way I kinda want to go points to Burkhas. And, no, I refuse to go THERE. One of the greatest failures of the “Women’s Movement” in my eyes has been its obsession with moderate slights (real or imagined) in OUR culture, while being broadly ready to pass over other cultures where women are treated like farm animals.
On the issue of drawings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9tEz-g_rvU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VbUTmC486g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISNMqW-cN6M
Mostly he reviews hentai, particularly games (such as Muv-Luv Unlimited), but lolicon has been getting talked about a lot, so he wanted to address it.
Dear CSP, in the 1990’s in Canada, there was a couple (Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka) that made videos of their rapes/tortures of 2 women. They killed the women, but the actual murders weren’t on the tapes. There were 2 California cases similar to the Bernardo case in that the murderers video and/or audiotaped the attacks on their victims but the actual murders weren’t recorded. These cases are the closest things to snuff I’ve read about.
Thanks to both you and Maggie; I thought that the talk of “Snuff porn” had the smell of something a hysteric had whomped up after seeing too many slasher movies (which are, damnit, porn. I’m not for censoring them, but activists that hate them have a point). If anyone had come up with anything like that circulating underground, I figured the resulting three-ring-circus would have been noticeable from Mars. But I like to be sure; there are some awfully sick people out there, and not ALL of them are in the Neo-Feminist movement.
HA! Speaking of the “The Swedish Crap”, I was going to do a blog post about the following but it is so appropriate here instead….
http://www.thelocal.se/33872/20110519/#
Have fun with it!
Interesting. One wonders if it is a case of Prudish “You did WHAT? Icky!” or Buttinski “How DARE you step outside the Narrative!”.
Well, there’s my column for the 30th! Thanks, Brandy!
Mi pantry es su pantry si?
Glad I read your column before I started mine… synchro much?
I loved this one. You need to put these colums together and publish them.
Thank you, Gorbachev; I’ll probably do a collection of them in the foreseeable future. 🙂
Interesting. When I was in college in the late ’60’s, the image of Sweden was tolerance. A friend of a friend (in other words, a circulating anecdotal story) visited Sweden as a tourist, where me met a local girl, who took him home to spend the night with her, and her mother served them breakfast in bed the next morning. Free love and free food: how could life be any better?
Now comes a darker expression of Swedish character. True, the hypothetical girl and hypothetical mom might still exist, since the sex is without compensation. But — and here’s what’s frightening — the idea of criminalizing consensual sex for money goes almost completely without question there. One courageous lawmaker stands alone in questioning that mindset, and his words are rendered impotent by being ignored.
Thank goodness things aren’t so bad in America! Oh wait … things ARE that bad in America. Our laws against prostitution don’t have quite the same flavor as Swedish laws, but the end result is the same: prostitutes aren’t quite human, and they and their customers must be “educated” to see the error of their ways, all “for their own good” of course.
What will it take to create a civilized society, in which people mind their own business?
You may have meant that last question rhetorically, but there’s a real answer: a frontier. As long as people have someplace else to go where they can set up new communities to be run as they see fit, governments are forced to contend with the possibility of “brain drains” and wholesale migration. History shows that every period characterized by mobility was one in which the individual tended to fare well against the state (for example, the increased liberties all over Europe in the Age of Reason). But eras in which mobility was low, or all the choices equally bad, are those in which the state gains at the expense of individuals. Once the whole world was carved up and modern telecommunications made modern international cooperation possible, it was inevitable that states began to increase in power because there isn’t any place on the face of the Earth where migrants can go to escape tyranny. This trend will continue until either a new frontier opens or a large country overthrows its present regime in favor of a libertarian one, this triggering migration to that country and forcing the countries suffering the heaviest losses to adapt by either closing their borders (thus revealing themselves as despotic regimes) or by loosening their grip on their citizens.
Agreed. Such frontiers are difficult to find in 2011; one attempt is the Free State Project, but they’re locating in New Hampshire, which today is, and thanks to Lincoln, will have to remain for the foreseeable future, a minion of the American monolith. And the U.S. government has a strangle-hold on most of the world, through a combination of bribes and bombings. War on drugs? Sure, America, and thanks for the dollars and helicopters to fight it.
Luckily the American empire won’t last much longer, though perhaps longer than I will. After its collapse, the chance for nations competing for talented citizens by offering them actual freedom to run their own lives, will become much greater.
I wish I was as sure that the American Empire was nearing its end. I strongly suspect that it is, in fact, nearing its beginning.
What follows is my own interpretation of history. I may be wrong on any or all points, but this is what it looks like to me;
In the Middle East there have always been bands of barbarians who raided their neighbors. When local governments were strong they have been limited to banditry. When local governments are weak, they tend to grow into serious menaces, and often cloak themselves in Islamic religious claptrap. They do not honor treaties, and regard treachery as an art form. Nowadays we call them “Terrorists” or “Islamic Extremists” or (if we are severely screwed in the head, and ignorant of their history) “Revolutionaries”. Historically the only way to mitigate their barbarism has been to hunt them, or help those who live near them to hunt them.
They have no more chance of bringing the United States to its knees than they have of flapping their arms and flying. What they CAN do is get us seriously angry. If that happens we really will become an imperial power, and it won’t be pretty. We don’t have the temperament to be the kind of halfway decent colonial power that, say, Victorian Britain was. A lot of our freedoms, however tattered they may be now, will flat out disappear. The only good thing, from my point of view, is that I’m unlikely to live past the early stages … and the early stages are likely to be pretty comfortable for mainstream Americans – or people who can pass for same.
The last Presidential election scared the hell out of me, because BOTH CANDIDATES struck me as egos in search of a mantle of power. I though, and still think, that both Obama and McCain were the kind of arrogant fool who would react REALLY badly to a serious terror attack. They would strike out in blind rage, as Bush (whatever he may have done wrong) did not. I won’t be really happy until Obama is no longer in a position to nuke Mecca in retaliation for some camel pestering idiots making him look like a fool.
I base my assessment on the fact that the U.S. is near bankruptcy. A crisis of confidence in the dollar is just a few years, if not months, away, I believe. When it happens, the government won’t be able to borrow money except at ruinous interest rates. There will be either defaults on national debt or massive printing of money to pay it. Either way, I think our overseas adventures will end because there won’t be anybody to write the checks.
Insert all the usual caveats about how detailed predictions are all but impossible, but I see no way for the U.S. to avoid a serious train wreck not far in the future. I’m 62, and I expect the political goings-on in the remaining years of my life to be interesting, if not gratifying.
Ah, the economy. I’m on my native heath here.
Being too broke to fund it and a lack of authority hasn’t stopped Congress yet.
Never underestimate the idiocy of elected officials. Or, rather, one should always take into one’s calculations the pressing need for Congressman Dipshit McSuckit to get re-elected and whatever lies and machinations/taxes/conscriptions s/he may feel necessary to levy against the constituents in order for this to come about.
I’m calling war as the endgame, for two reasons.
1) In the race-to-the-bottom (We’re #1!!) vis a vis currency and the economy, America winning is not only a game-ender but a game-breaker. The tentacular nature of our economic policies means we bring down most of the big economies with us, globally. This is apt to piss them off, as they might – correctly – identify this as an act of economic war.
For eg; we exported our inflation and that’s what set off the Egyptian riots. If enough of the Egyptians on the ground had cottoned on to this, they’d have howled for our heads. Now picture this happening in a country that thinks taking us on might be do-able and worth it. Ohhh, say, China.
2) Historically, when government feels shaky on its popularity at home, it manufactures a foreign boogeyman and suggests our gods want us to attack it for causing all this mess the citizens have to live in. This revives patriotism and unites the dumber section of the populace (which would be about 97%). Et viola! Government is now the popular savior of The People and The Cause and Mom’s Apple Pie.
But then, I am a cynic. I have yet to see an example of, “If you do that, sure, you might win the next election but you’ll cause a catastrophe down the road of biblical proportions,” to get any reaction from a politician other than, “So, win the next election, eh? Sounds good!”
Being too broke to fund it and a lack of authority hasn’t stopped Congress yet.
True. And as things continue to get tighter, Congress will continue to get more and more “creative” about where they find money. But there will come a day when the options are exhausted.
But then, I am a cynic.
Me too! 😉
Any politician who did decide that avoiding a catastrophe of Biblical proportions was more important than getting elected…
Didn’t get elected. There could be be scores of such elected officials, but they aren’t elected officials any more.
Term limits might put the squash on that. No matter what you do, you can only stay so long.
> I won’t be really happy until Obama is no longer in a position to nuke Mecca in retaliation for some camel pestering idiots making him look like a fool.
…
Now THERE’s something I haven’t heard before.
Hi Maggie
I’ve been receiving your blogs via e-mail and I love having a read. Some of your blogs refer to Australia so I thought you might find this organisation interesting. I would love to get your perspective on it!
http://projectrespect.org.au/sites/projectrespect.org.au/files/PR_AnnReport10_Final_sml.pdf
Maree
Even once decriminalization is achieved worldwide, there will unfortunately always be organizations like this one who believe that prostitution is an “evil” to be “fought”; after all, though evolution has long been established as a scientific fact there are still people who refuse to accept it. Religious convictions have nothing to do with reality. Fortunately, once this kind of “feminism” mostly dies out in the next couple of decades, it will be just viewed as a fringe group like the creationists or the people who insisted the world would end last Saturday.
I see from the brochure their mission is:
“A world where there is no longer demand for prostitution and people trafficking”
So ‘people trafficking’ is equivalent to ‘prostitution’.
I take the position that prostitution is perfectly lawful.
When it is ‘legal’ it is called ‘marriage’.
From the article….this tells you everything you need to know about ‘feminism’.
“In Sweden, there is no prohibition against selling sexual services, however the purchase of sexual services is a crime.”
Hhhmmmm….I wonder who is being discriminated against?
The neofeminist mindset attempts to right the wrong of discrimination against women by discriminating against men instead. It is as if, after the American Civil War, blacks had been freed and whites had become slaves. See, problem solved!
What these neofeminists fail to see is that
a) discriminating against biologically defined groups (like race or sex) is just plain wrong, instead of only being wrong when it’s their own group on the bad end of the stick, and also,
b) when two such groups interact closely and often, you simple can not wrong one group without also wronging the other. The other may not be wrong as grievously or as often, but make no mistake, they will be wronged, repeatedly. School segregation was deliberate discrimination against black children, but by increasing the overall cost of an education system and depriving white children of a black perspective, segregation wronged them too. Not as much, because the white kids got the better schools (separate is seldom equal), but it wronged them.
The Swedish Model seeks to make things right by treating men who pay for sex badly, instead of women who charge for sex. See, problem solved! But of course it hurts the men, which is wrong (yes, even if it’s men), and it also hurts the women who have to deal with the men.
I think affirmative action would be a better illustration, Sailor. Your reasoning is spot-on, though.
To wit:
Look, see, you’ve been downtrodden and oppressed but now you’re free! Free and equal, your own man, able to do anything and be anything with no one to tell you what you can’t do just because you’re black. Except we all know black people aren’t smart enough to get into college on their own, or get good jobs on their own, and black women aren’t pretty enough to win beauty contests on their own, so we’re going to set this up so you don’t have to compete when we all know you don’t have what it takes. That wouldn’t be fair.
At the core, both affirmative action and the Swedish model have the same nasty-minded opinion presented as fact: You are not an adult, you are not equal, you need to let the grown-ups handle this.
A good example of the logical progression is an argument presented to me by someone. She put forth that affirmative action was a wonderful thing, without which Thurgood Marshall could never have become a Supreme Court Justice, or had another black man, Clarence Thomas, follow him. I countered that Thurgood Marshall got a law degree, set up a private practice and was an exceptionally successful attorney decades before affirmative action, and Clarence Thomas is known to have been pissed off since the 70’s that people think he only got a Yale law degree because of affirmative action, rather than being impressed that he truly earned it.
Us old hags who have been flapping around for over four decades remember that in the 1970s one of the biggest feminist buzzwords was “patronize”, as in “stop patronizing me!” or “men are so patronizing.” But then in the ’80s all the good little feminists were brainwashed that being patronized was only bad when individual men did it; it was just fine when other women did it, and in fact desirable when a bureaucracy does it. Except when it’s about abortion.
The problem with your examples of affirmative action is that it assumes that once you take away the “Whites Only” signs, everything becomes equal. The black guy still doesn’t have the well-to-do parents who went to that college (they wouldn’t have been allowed in Back In the Day), and he still went to the school that was segregated until he was in ninth grade, and blacks didn’t suddenly get as wealthy as whites, and even though the legal requirements for keeping blacks out was no longer there, a lot of the folks in charge (people with prejudice didn’t quit administrative jobs en masse in 1964) still wanted to keep them out as much as possible.
It isn’t about “here poor little coloured man, we’ll let you start the footrace five yards ahead because we know your kind can’t run as fast as us white folks;” it’s about realizing that, even though he’s now allowed on the track, society has him starting five yards behind.
All of that said, the goal is for affirmative action to some day no longer be needed. Have we reached that point yet? I really don’t know, but I can imagine it might be time to adjust if nothing else.
A majority-white nation elected a black president; if that doesn’t mean we’ve passed that point, nothing does.
A majority white nation elected as President a Black candidate whose sole qualification was his skin color. He could not have been elected with his radical chic background if he was caucasian.
Not that the Republican candidate wasn’t just as bad, in his own way.
*grumble*
The only white demo Obama won was the under-thirties, the young people who don’t run universities or Fortune 500 companies.
Also, one exceptional accomplishment doesn’t mean that everything is fine. Obama’s election certainly means that we’re further along than we used to be (this is aside from whether or not he’s any good at being prez), but to say “we’ve arrived” based on one accomplishment is premature.
When we elect a black man who can’t put together a reasonable sentence, then maybe I’ll believe that we aren’t misunderestimating anybody.
How ’bout if we RE-elect a black president who can’t get through four words without a teleprompter, takes 23 vacations a year, and shows more interest in his Sweet 16 bracket than the looming economic collapse?
Ugh. I think I’m going to hibernate through the next election. Our options are Shitty Big Spenders and Shitty Big Taxers.
Or a white prez who couldn’t help mangling the language even with a teleprompter?
Who took more vacation time in his first four years than the last two presidents had in twelve?
Who, when presented with a Presidential Daily Briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the US” told the guy who delivered it to him, “OK, you’ve covered your ass” and went back to clearing brush?
Oh wait, he was re-elected.
I’ve decided I’m not voting for Obama. But please, let’s not forget what came before.
It is my considered opinion that we haven’t had a wholly competent president since Truman, nor even a reasonably competent one since Reagan. And my standard of “reasonable competence” isn’t all that high.
Where do you get from my disdain for Obama that I must therefore be giving Bush a pass? I never even mentioned Bush. I just called Obama a lazy idiot, and heavily implied I think American voting morons will re-elect him even now that they know him for what he is.
Sailor, dude, relax.
OK, my bad. It seemed you were suggesting that Obama’s vacation time, teleprompter-reliance, etc. were somehow unusual. Every example reminded me of a Bush example.
So you think they’re both doofuses (doofi?). Such an opinion would seem to be based on assessment of performance, not on partisan selective blindness. Like I said, I have my own reasons for not voting for Obama, so I can respect such an assessment, even if I don’t agree with it in every detail.
I think Bush Redux was criminally incompetent, retaining enough culpability that we ought to be taking him to a grand jury. Him and his little Congress, too. His Sithlord puppetmaster, we shall say no more of.
In re: Obama. It seemed to me you were saying that people elected a black man who seemed poised, intelligent, concerned for The People and competent, so that wasn’t quite the achievement for equality it may seem on face value. I was suggesting that even now people KNOW him for a lazy fool, I think he’s a fair bet for re-election, and jokingly wanted to know if that made American voters stupid yet racially tolerant.
Aha. Aha. Okay, yeah, it was rather a stupid joke.
And there is nothing you can do to the white man, such as make him run barefoot, shoot pellets at him if it looks like he’s winning, or call the race so that the white man is only seen to win what is defined in the law as a racially equal number of blue ribbons, that will change the black man starting five yards behind. All you can do is make it seem as if black men can’t win races against white men without help.
Life isn’t fair. Sometimes people are assholes. Sometimes your parents are poor. Sometimes you’re born with one leg and all this talk about track races seems like trivial bullshit. What is certain is that when you face your obstacles and overcome them, you earn the respect of those who also faced obstacles in their lives (who, incidentally, quite outnumber white American males born to rich parents). Conversely, when you face your obstacles and overcome them when people know some tracks run rigged games, no one notices that you started from five yards behind and won anyways without any help – they assume you ran on one of the rigged tracks and wouldn’t have won at all if you hadn’t had Whitey’s help.
IMO, affirmative action was done the moment it was known universities lowered standards so as to have “enough” qualified minority students. The insult inherent was too great at that point to offset the possible good done. Whatever other people see as the “done” point, Maggie has a fine point; we have/had a black president, black SCJs, black CEOs, black Republican candidates for president, black Secretary of State, etc etc.
There’s also another big problem with the “affirmative action” philosophy; the Irish, Italians and Asians all faced horrific prejudice (in many cases as bad as that levied against blacks) in the 19th century, but they all got beyond that. The two European groups did so by assimilation and the latter by just proving that others’ prejudice wasn’t going to stop them. And if anyone is inclined to claim that segregation and the threat of violence make the black experience different, I suggest you consider the history of the Jews in Europe and learn the original meanings of words like “ghetto” and “pogrom”.
Um, Irish guy here has something to say about this.
I can be as Irish as the day is long, but if I change my name from Sean O’Grady to John Grade, train myself to have a Bronx or Georgia accent, and don’t tell anybody that I’m Irish, you can’t tell that I’m Irish. I become just another white guy. Any prejudice you might about the Irish doesn’t kick in when you meet John Grade, from Georgia.
I can be as black as the day is long, and it really doesn’t matter what I change my name to, what accent I have, or what I try to say about my ancestry. If you are prejudiced against black folks, then when you meet John Grade, from Georgia, and he’s black, your prejudice will still kick in. Let’s not pretend that skin color is a state of mind.
And as bad as it was for Italians, Irish, and Asians, the fact remains that they came here by choice, and were never legally defined property.
By the time Affirmative Action was implemented, not one single living black man even had a parent who had ever been anyone’s property, so that last part of the argument doesn’t hold water. I say “black man” rather than “black person” because up until the turn of the 20th century (two generation after the end of black slavery) women were still chattel in many respects. Also, 99.99% of women can’t hide our sex, either, and remember, black men were legally allowed to vote (though often blocked from doing so) for fifty years before white women were; even after we were granted suffrage there was still widespread employment prejudice against women as well, and we’re also included in “Affirmative Action” mandates. So this is not merely an academic question for Emily and I, even if you consider it to be one for you. I don’t want women to be a coddled, protected, patronized group, and there are an awful lot of intelligent, accomplished black people who don’t want their race coddled and patronized any more than I want my sex treated that way.
I’ve heard it suggested that affirmative action should be adjusted to account for wealth disparities. A black man who grew up rich is not longer at any educational disadvantage compared to a white man who grew up poor.
Even if we haven’t yet arrived, things are better than they used to be. If AA is no longer needed, get rid of it; if it is still needed, it should be adjusted to reflect a changing reality.
When Kennedy first started the thing, slavery was only about a hundred year gone. I suspect that there were some eighty-year-olds whose parents had been slaves. There were certainly plenty whose parents had to deal with Jim Crow laws and such.
You will find a variety of opinions on AA, from “leave it alone” to “time to end it” to “adjust it but don’t end it just yet.” You will find these differing opinions among blacks, whites, Asians, women, men, etc.
I think this is almost the type case of “reasonable people may differ.”
We’re of two minds then.
No one ever won respect by crying about how hard their life was and getting freebies thrown their way out of pity.
Neither AA or the Swedish model are about treating people with respect, or allowing them to win it on their own merit. They’re meant to accomplish the exact opposite – infantilizing entire groups of people and then broadcasting that they are not adult enough to handle their own affairs or live without help from a benevolent establishment.
The AA proponent I spoke of earlier is the perfect example of this. She negated all of Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas’ many exceptional achievements. To her, they were just “affirmative action hires”.
Two minds? It looks to me like we feel exactly the same way about women and blacks being patronized and given special benefits.
Well, that’s what I meant, but hadn’t had enough coffee to state coherently. We agree on all points.
😀
Indentured service, Irish orphan trains. In the case of the potato famine, yes, they had a choice. The choice was “or die”.
Let’s not pretend that life for the Irish was all fairy dust and twinkly rainbows, while black people got off the plantation yesterday.
And, not to take it to silly levels or anything, but everyone who meets me knows I’m of Irish descent and quite noticeably a girl. Sure, I could dye my hair so it isn’t red and the Irish wouldn’t be so obvious, but I’d still be a girl.
Slaves didn’t come here to escape death, didn’t come here expecting a better life.
I’m well aware of where the term “paddy wagon” came from, I’m aware of NINA.
My analogy of society having some people start the race five yards behind was poorly worded. My fault.
The fact is, being a white man carries certain advantages. Yes, white men get benefits just for being white and male. They get to start the race five yards ahead (it used to be ten). When people talk about “special favors” for those who are not both white and male, they forget that there have been, for a long time, “special favors” for those who are.
And yes, if you are an exceptional runner you might still win, even with the other guy getting to start five yards ahead. You shouldn’t have to have exceptional abilities to achieve average results.
Now, if white men are no longer getting to start five yards ahead, then AA is no longer needed. That can be and is being argued, again, by black and white, male and female, Asian and gay and straight and faithful and not.
But let’s not pretend that declaring “you’re free!” gives you Yale alumni parents, or a business to inherit, or makes employers suddenly post-racial egalitarians.
No, it doesn’t; nor does declaring that “women are equal” wipe out the fact that we are the ones who have babies and tend to care a lot more about our kids than about some stupid job. Life isn’t fair, and it can’t be made MORE fair by the government clumsily handicapping others to “level the playing field”by actually making it steeper in the other direction.
Let us neither pretend that all white American males are born to a life of luxury and privilege. Hyperbole appeals to emotion, but doesn’t address reality; and my opinion on feel-good rhetoric which doesn’t actually accomplish anything is well-stated.
Sailor, we are not saying that life is fair for black men. Can’t speak for Maggie, but I’m saying that life isn’t fair for anyone. Setting up minorities for a lifetime of their accomplishments being ignored as something Whitey gave them isn’t going to make it all better. It makes it worse. No matter how fast you run, everyone still thinks you suck.
You certainly speak for me in this case, Emily. Life isn’t fair for anyone, period. The end. It’s not “fair” that I’m more attractive AND more intelligent than most women, and neither is it “fair” that I was not able to do something (namely, carry a child to term) that 99% of my sisters have little or no trouble doing. Should I be penalized for the former and compensated for the latter? I think not.
None of us is born with a little document signed by God in our hands promising that life will be fair; it’s not even why we come to this plane in the first place. Star Trek fans will understand when I say that life is a Kobayashi Maru scenario; the very POINT of the test is to demonstrate how one handles unfair conditions.
a) I am a white American male and was not born to a life of luxury and privilege. I get that just fine.
b) This has now devolved to “life isn’t fair,” an extreme case of stating the obvious which has little to do with anything I was saying. It is one of the most defeatist cliches I know of. I don’t think that I can remain at all civil and, wanting to avoid the alternative, will now drop out of this conversation. I realize that this, too, might seem rude, and I’m sorry. But better that than for me to get ugly and end up offending you and embarrassing myself.
You got a bit of nastiness from somebody on an earlier post, so I do want to go on record as saying: disagreeing with me on AA does NOT make you racist. I know that, you know that, and I’ll leap up and shout at anybody who tries to claim that it does.
I’ve always wondered: why would anybody want to oil a snake anyway?
This site just has me going.
This is the kind of feminism that insults and degrades men.
How?
Well, to be blunt:
Human sexuality seems to be the complaint.
In every country on Earth, throughout recorded history, this woman is right: Men have objectified women (and she reasons that this means they support rape: that’s the summary of all of her points. All further commentary is superfluous.)
I counter with this:
The fundamental problem is that male sexuality has evolved to sexually objectify women.
Do I objectify women? Do I do so visually and sexually? Damn straight.
ALl men who are honest will admit this. It’s why her list condemns all men as rape supporters.
What’s shocking is that this would condemn all human societies in this fashion. Which is her point.
But her revolution is pointless.
Women want to be objectified by the men they’re attracted to and are with. Women dress up to impress other women and men and show off their sexual market value.
And there you are. Once you accept that there *is* a sexual marketplace, with money exchanging hands or not, you’ve objectified the entire human race.
Men are programmed with much, much, much higher sex drives than women; Anyone who denies this is a bald-faced dreamer. It makes women sellers and men buyers, with or without money.
I can’t argue their points. In fact, I agree with them.
But human sexuality is about objectification. It’s about desire and need and want: And satisfaction of that desire.
So what does she want to do? Outlaw human sexuality?
Bitch and moan about it to evolution. Evolution programmed us to want to breed. It placed these instincts in the very core of our being. They’re so deep, they’re definitional.
She may idealize some form of sexuality she can imagine, but she’ll have to face this at some point:
By her definition, men are bastards. So are most women. Humans are biosocially programmed. She may not like it –
But that’s the way we are.
Women are attracted to exactly the kind of men she hates.
The corollary to men objectifying women: Women objectify themselves and their men (or what they can get from them).
The assholes I know get hotter women, more often, in more variety, and with more devotion than any pussy-ish nice guy.
WHY IS THAT?
Not biological programming. Not at all.
I’m sure it’s all social.
There you go stealing my thunder; this coming Sunday’s post is about that loony essay. 😉
The assholes I know get hotter women, more often, in more variety, and with more devotion than any pussy-ish nice guy.
WHY IS THAT?
Not biological programming. Not at all.
I’m sure it’s all social.
I’m not so sure. I think a woman judges a man who’s extremely devoted as having misplaced priorities: he’s likely to be making eyes at her while barbarians storm the gates. Or instead of planting crops. A man who is mean to her is “strong”, and is at least paying some attention, not ignoring her.
But I admit this is entirely speculation on my part: it is a foolish man who claims to understand women’s brains… ;-j
But I admit this is entirely speculation on my part: it is a foolish man who claims to understand women’s brains… ;-j
Whereas women tend to believe they know what men are thinking, and 98% of the time they’re right. 🙁 Reminds me of a wonderful cartoon from the New Yorker years ago: a guy’s lamenting his life to a bartender, with the line, “My wife understands me…”
WOA! Ok swith the words on that site around. So now I, as a female, support the rape of men?? And I am talking in a sexual sense versus a financial one. That is just bizarre!
So post the essay.
You know, I’m tired of reading this complete hornswaggle from feminists. Sorry, anti-sex neo-feminists.
I will, this Sunday.
But implicit in the discussions they create is this notion:
That by using some law, we can rewrite human society (or biology – though they won’t acknowledge biological roots; it’s a form of “liberal creationism”; the same author’s comments about “Brain plasticity: learn it” indicate how poorly she understands what we know of the human brain and human instinct).
So just create some law and you can rewrite society to any shape you like.
Hence: Marxist.
BTW, if you read the rest of her posts, it’s clear: She’s a hard-core marxist.
That’s a lawhead for you; they honestly believe they can alter the nature of reality through legislation, like Ursula LeGuin’s Lathe of Heaven. 🙁
It’s the race for sexual dominance. Not men against women.
1) Remember: Genes currently in females must replicate; they can end up in *either* male or female offspring. They need to program for both at all times. Hence the variation on strategies; we’re the same species, so that males and females represent variations on the same genetic code: take the same code, but replace an X with a Y. They’ll be very similar, but the differences are then the core female/male differences.
2) The same genes that code for “Be dominant over other males (and by extension, females)” also code for “seek out a dominant male to mate with”: Why?
Social dominance: Breeding success (think palaeolithic humans and australopithecines).
These mechanics work for all other primates. They’re studied to bits. But for humans, magically, no no no no no: basic sexuality, the single-most deeply programmed instinct in every single sexual lifeform, more deeply programmed even than some survival instincts, is somehow SOCIALLY DETERMINED and is not hard-wired. JUST FOR HUMANS.
3) This is all seen as “error”: biology codes for reproduction. Sex instincts are all about reproduction. Not about social convenience or absolute equality.
By conflating objectification with rape-support, you’ve defined all human sex from a natural standpoint as rape.
Maybe this is the root of Dworkin’s hypothesis: she thought all heterosexual sex in this context was rape.
Sure. Criminalize being human.
The public should understand where these neo-pretend feminists are coming from.
In reality, they’re misanthropes: They hate humanity (as it is).
It shows the depth of the self-delusional anti-sex nature of
@JDL,
In general, women don’t understand men either.
When they do, they often get very angry.
We have a lot of pretty lies about the opposite sex.
Ours are:
“Women are better than men; women are more moral; women are more generous; women are more loyal.”
To each of these, I say: HAH.
Every single one is untrue. If anything, men have a more profound moral sense (it’s more likely to be based on “fairness” and equanimity); men are more obviously but more honestly hierarchical (women are hierarchical, but they lie about it); men are more likely to fuck you or help you than women are, and when they do either, it has far greater consequences (ie, when men are highly moral/generous/nice, the consequences are great; when they’re bastards, get out of the way); and men are definitely *much* more loyal, as a group, than women. Often stupidly so.
Women bristle at these things, but it’s just a reaction against perceived injustice. Not real injustice.
Women have amazing qualities: but in almost every case, our society paints pictures instead of displaying reality. Women are well-programmed by biology to continue the species; men are, by and large, superfluous in some pragmatic respects. However, it’s to men that have devolved almost all of the creative ventures of human history; and not due to discrimination.
Men are neither saints nor sinners, or better or worse than women. But the absolute dominance of the violent crime/brilliant creative enterprise worlds by men illustrates something:
Men dance for women and each other, to get access to pussy. Women judge the males. They then mate with the alphas. This is the basic clan-australopithecine pattern.
What’s shocking when you study primate behavior is how radically close human behaviors, and social patterns, with all of its elaboration and sophistication, are to the more “base” instincts these animals represent. We’re animals.
when it comes to the sexes,traditionalists had a tendency to paint women as saints, and to pillory women who didn’t match up.
In truth, all women are whores, conniving monsters and traitorous: all men are savage, bestial animals making and breaking alliances.
We’re also brilliant, shiny beings, male and female.
Glossing over basic nature without acknowledging it does no-one any services.
I agree that women and men are both base and brilliant. My quip above about women correctly guessing what men are thinking refers to the fact that men tend to be obsessed with sex, and when a man looks at a woman, it’s not hard to guess that he’s thinking he’d like to boff her. There’s a funny exchange in “When Harry Met Sally” in which Billy Crystal is explaining to Meg Ryan that if a girl is attractive, the man will never get past wanting to mate with her. Meg says “So you’re saying men can only be friends with ugly women.” Crystal: “No, you pretty much want to nail them too.” (dialog approximate, from memory).
Besides being both base and brilliant, humans CAN achieve something else: a spiritual sense which can guide their actions. Of course, most alleged manifestations of the spiritual side are phony, someone trying to gain advantage by pretending to have higher motives than he/she really does. Yet that side does exist.
I think that people who don’t acknowledge their base natures are frightening and potentially dangerous: they spend a lot of energy covering up the obvious. That puts them one step away from committing atrocities under the guise of doing good, all supported by the kind of complicated rationalization(s) that humans are all too adept at displaying.
Funny how those who seek idealizations more often demonize humanity than do those who acknowledge our failings.
I think that people who don’t acknowledge their base natures are frightening and potentially dangerous: they spend a lot of energy covering up the obvious. That puts them one step away from committing atrocities under the guise of doing good, all supported by the kind of complicated rationalization(s) that humans are all too adept at displaying.
This got me thinking and remembering. Endure a long personal blathering. Some things are not simple. It might enable discussions with neo-feminists and female-infantilizers to endure a long discussion to get the gist of nuance, which they never do.
This is why I never trust others who seem to preach for the weak and downtrodden but also seem to be deaf to criticism or self-reflection: ie, people who advocate for the end of prostitution in the guise of helping women, but who have no – NO – solution for long-term employment for these women. Their whole goal is the elimination of Prostitution itself: They still view the actual women who work in the sex industry as disposable, garbage, symptoms of a disease, dirty; their fates are irrelevant. The few organizations that actually help these women tend not to be judgmental about their work choices. And as for exploitation: I could do many jobs. But the ones I often get asked to do are often profoundly exploitative: ie, work for little remuneration, or reward, in hard circumstances, for no gratitude. It’s taken 20 years to get to a point where I can say “fuck you” to these jobs: but I can say this:
A working girl I dated about 7 years ago, when I was in late 20’s-early 30’s, wasn’t a highly academic girl (in Korea, where that’s critical, if not life-defining). She was brilliant and clever in a real-life kind-of way and made shockingly observations of people, life, and ideas, and was profoundly well-read (and watched largely docs on TV; as I worked for a company that made docs, we had lots in common). Her work required her to be up on all kinds of culture and arts, as she was expected to socialize with the bigwigs in social circumstances; though she started in a karaoke-dinner party type environment at 19, by 22 she was a high-class “call girl” who had sex maybe 70% of the time with patrons, maybe even less: half the time, her clients couldn’t be bothered to have sex with her. But she was expected to be adroit, charming, very smart and colorful. And gracious. And she was. For $800 a night, she’d sing or tell men how and exactly why their political opinions were right, wrong or interesting or boring: and able to do it and seem deferential and not at the same time.
We were friends for about 5 months before I ended up in bed with her; in retrospect, it was inevitable. This is what she said to me (paraphrasing the Korean):
“With them, I’m whatever they need: They’re paying me for my acting skills and my attention. If you don’t like it, (politely), kiss my ass. I don’t have to do it. I can get some nameless job in an office, work for 1/10 the money, and be harrassed by everyone and get old on their terms. Screw that.”
I’ve got to say, I found her occupation dirty – but it was hard to fight that logic. She was hardly some waif (though she was a damned fine-looking waif, indeed; but not the prettiest girl in the city.)
I don’t know if she had it when she started, but by the time I met her, she was a spot-on student of human nature. She had no illusions.
I often wondered what she saw in me; why was I not a paying customer? She entertained the idea of keeping me around and seducing me (she always said she fell for guys who had no interest in her; you want what you haven’t got; I’d never join a club that would have me, etc.).
But after 3 months of “dating” (which is what it was, despite my resistance to describing it that way), she told me: I like you because when we’re together, you know who I am? I’m me. No pretense. There’s no exchange just us. AND you spend time with me and don’ expect anything from me. You argue with me and respect my opinion or don’t and you piss me off, and you treat me like an equal, despite that fact that you went to (ivy league school) (In Korea, this means a whole lot – nothing here, but there, it’s gold).
And you like to hold me and fuck me, both.
My society has programmed me so well, I could never have considered us “dating”: It was just fun, and convenient, and she was genuinely interesting in a place where people are profoundly superficial and calculating.
but what’s interesting is when Id have started thinking it that way. After 5-6 months, we ended up in bed (rape story: She was drunk and I was barely sober; did I rape her? Hah). She considered us “dating” from about the 1-month mark, because we saw each other once a week, sometimes even on the weekend (which is a huge deal for workaholic Koreans). And we just met and talked, and we even traveled together in Korea twice during the time. But:
I would have counted it from the time we slept together.
This goes to show three things:
– Nothing is straightforward or categorical. By definition, this girl was raped every time she had sex. Even with me, half the time she seemed to have sex to make me happy, even when I wasn’t pushing: she assumed this was how you made a man happy. I hate to admit it, but she was right: she knew how to relate to a man’s mind and body. She’s going to make an outstanding wife.
– People are filled with contradictory instincts, emotions and desires; they conflict; none of them are simple, even the ones that seem simple on their face;
– Society shoehorns everything into one-size-fits-all categories for ease of regulation. And this …
– Regulation: We are obsessed, like chimps in a clan in a jungle, with regulating the behavior of others, usually in view to further advantage (real or imagined) for ourselves.
So: When people purport to tell you what to do and tell you what your best interests are, or what the best interests of others are (ie, feminists, utopianists, interlopers, angry acitivists, cops, lawyers, the Powers that Be, banks, anyone–)
Be skeptical. In almost every case, you’re being sold some dosage of snake oil.
In my case, with my friend, when I kept wondering what others would think, what they would say, if I was stupid for being with someone who was doing this job or imagining it (how insulted she must have been, though she was quite understanding) – she said:
can we just be human with each other? Who gives a shit what other people think.
She remains in touch with me. She gave be a compliment the last time we met, in an oblique way, that she only stays in touch with remarkable people she can relate to (including her family members): Nobody gets a pass. Given that she now owns two expensive apartments in Seoul, she now has that ability.
I invited her and her fiance to visit me in the States this year some time, maybe after they get married. She said she’d love to.
And the people who judged me most for this whole episode of my life? I’ve told a few, though rarely with details. This is the response I’ve gotten:
Feminist friends, one ex:
– You failed to help an abused woman. My response; I couldn’t if I’d wanted to; she was not weak; she got out herself; I partly agreed with her logic.
– Prostitution is rape. Rarely coherently explained.
– You abuse power. WTF: NO aspect of that relationship was about power. Sure, she DID get into two tight situations, both before I met her. Neither deterred her from her activities, though she avoided Japanese men after that.
– You objectify women. Well, duh. Of course I do. I’ve never tried to hide that: So what? I’m a bastard. Okay. I saw her as a female, and my interest in her was utilitarian in that respect. I’m both a male and human: My interest in her was *also* human and general. Why can ‘t it be both?
When I asked: Is it the one or the other or the lack of the human interest in some cases that annoys you?
Response:
I think women like that are disgusting. They betray the rest of us. That was after 2 hours of debate and she was finally able to be honest.
IE
My ex busted the union. Fucking whore.
All feminist rhetoric about prostitutes in all cases boils down to this.
Conservative men:
– You’re a Bad Man for using a whore. I might do it too, but that’s because I might be frustrated. Insert hypocritical religious/conservative ideology here. Basically the same as Feminists: Shaming.
Alpha men (some friends, two bloggers, general MRM types):
You’re a loser for associating with a girl like this.
bear in mind it took massive resistance breakdown for me to do it in the first place – I could have bedded her after the second week of knowing her, for free, if I wanted to. My befriending her meant I earned her respect; after 4 months, she actively looked forward to my company and didn’t care. She once honestly told me that she might have used sex to keep me around, because men are simple and stupid, but that she didn’t want me to lose respect for her (Didn’t want me to think she was a whore? – hah) – and yet, when we were together, there was immense affection. Human.
So: given that I had vast options and wasn’t exactly monogamous, I actively invested lots of time with her out of interest. But I have to be honest: She was also 22, very pretty and charming – as well as flirtatious. I’m male, with a healthy sex drive. Even when i had no plan to touch her, her presence was deliciously energizing that way.
I tell these guys: Well, I rarely paid for anything; she often paid for me.
And the last few times we were together, it was obviously ending; we got drunk, she got angry at me for no reason, punched me hard and then complained to me; I walked away, and she did the Korean girl thing and followed me screaming why did you walk away — you’re supposed to come get me! Blah blah all the predictable drama ensued.
Then she just stood there in the cold, in a moment when the heat died down, and said:
You’re not supposed to go like that. And I don’t want you to go. And Koreans never say it, but I knew what she wanted to say. We stood for a moment, all fire and argument and resistance – and I just stepped forward we hugged. It was one of those profoundly sad moments: You knew it was over, for good reasons, and yet there was this preternaturally strong bond. I remember her saying life was shit, then we said goodnight. We saw each other for another month, but always with that sadness. The last two weeks, we went out for two weekends: they were more like the times when we weren’t seeing each other; talk and fun and smiles; and I’ll never forget the last time we walked along the river and held hands, and she nestled into me: the little firecracker, obstinate and pushy and at that moment, so profoundly delicate it was the sweetest torture to know that I wasn’t going to be with her like that again; but this was in the back of my mind, because in my conscious mind, we weren’t that even then.
That, and three other experiences or so, profoundly changes my perspective on human nature.
I’ll never side with absolutists, legalists, proscriptive obsessives or vengeance-filled utopianists ever again. They can go fuck themselves.
I ma not know much, but I know these people understand absolutely nothing about human nature: Not their own motivations, not others, not the world around them and assuredly not about the reality of human life.
There are no absolutes. There are no guarantees.
At the end of the day, there’s the vast, immense universe, cold and brutal and disinterested, and our wee tiny animals faced with the uphill, never-ending struggle just to exist, our existence to profoundly unlikely in and of itself, the rest of our lives even less likely.
And in that – a cold march day, when a man and a woman, two human beings, wrapped in the trappings of expectations and needs and misallocated energies and confused understandings– in that malestrom of chaos and contradictory confusions, just two people, and a moment locked and frozen in time.
Whore, prostitute, playboy, expatriate, employee, social outcast, man about town, womanizer, charmer–
nothing mattered. It was so delicately sweet, so irreparably unavoidable, so perfect in its own way, that last walk together–
it’s not possible to place it in any category I’m familiar with. It’s one of the few time sin my life I’ve felt absolutely, totally, completely human without any qualification or label.
And this: Not with my ex-wife. Not with my parents, who are and remain excellent and decent people. Not with my nephews and nieces, even. Not with the woman I chased like a bat after fruit, and may likely marry.
With a 23-year-old ex-karaoke girl addicted to books with big words and biographies and long walks. A whore, for all intents and purposes, who chose to spend time with some arrogant foreigner.
I’d never have guessed it would be a moment like that that I’d remember years later.
This is the nature of human reality. There are no isms or absolutes. We reduce to a tiny nodule of experience.
The primary goal of the rest of my life is to tell the busybodies to fuck off.
Thanks for this moving reminiscence. It seems clear to me that you cared about this girl. I would say, as perhaps you would in hindsight, that you seem to have cared too much what her chosen profession was.
I’m a little mystified when you say, “By definition, this girl was raped every time she had sex.” You’ve described no rapes, only her choosing to sleep with men in pursuit of some end of her own.
The primary goal of the rest of my life is to tell the busybodies to fuck off.
This cannot be a life-long goal. By all means tell those who deserve to hear it to fuck off (when possible, very sweetly), but don’t forget to pursue your bliss as well.
JdL
Thanks for this moving reminiscence. It seems clear to me that you cared about this girl.
I did; but I couldn’t admit it at the time.
What was worse, I left her because I was leaving, but I came back 6 months later. And then I dated a woman for a year, … who would have married me easily. In fact, I loved her profoundly; but I was 32, and she was 23. She was fresh out of college. I thought: We can fool around, but at the time, I didn’t think we could be serious because of the age difference. I learned better, later.
Now, my SO is 10 years younger than I am.
That said, the ex-ex who was a working girl– was a truly remarkable young woman. She still is.
I would say, as perhaps you would in hindsight, that you seem to have cared too much what her chosen profession was.
It made me think our relationship was impossible. I didn’t view it as dating. Years later, I realized she always had; She called me her ex-BF (“The One” she described me to her current Fiance, in my presence; but he’s a seriously impressive, nonchalant Alpha dude from Australia who looks like he’s amused by the notion more than not; his tattoos make him look bad-boy, but he’s a little cat with her, and is relatively well-off running businesses, though not formally educated: Like her, a very impressive guy likely passed up by stupid potential mates in Australia or elsewhere).
When she said that, at that moment, I felt instantly guilty. In lists of ex-relationships, I’d never figured her; in fact, she deserved a solid mention and a high “rank”. I certainly remember our conversations – and bedroom shenanigans – very clearly. We still correspond and when I go over, we meet.
As usual, she found someone interesting, who knows all about her past. Not only is he unconcerned – he couldn’t have cared less – he was interested in her for more than just her finely sculpted ass and cute demeanor. How she finds these men, I don’t know. It wasn’t as a client, for sure. He has personality and charm, in a solidly smart working-class way. With about 30 employees, maybe more, not someone to be trifled with, either.
I’m a little mystified when you say, “By definition, this girl was raped every time she had sex.” You’ve described no rapes, only her choosing to sleep with men in pursuit of some end of her own.
Feminists often claim that she has no agency, because men are paying her. Well, she wasn’t a whore, directly; but then again, she was, I can’t cover it up – see my shame training at work.
The primary goal of the rest of my life is to tell the busybodies to fuck off.
This cannot be a life-long goal. By all means tell those who deserve to hear it to fuck off (when possible, very sweetly), but don’t forget to pursue your bliss as well.
Wait. Yes, in the order you suggest. Bliss first. And telling busybodies to fuck off when they interfere.
@Maggie,
There’s also another big problem with the “affirmative action” philosophy; the Irish, Italians and Asians all faced horrific prejudice (in many cases as bad as that levied against blacks) in the 19th century, but they all got beyond that. The two European groups did so by assimilation and the latter by just proving that others’ prejudice wasn’t going to stop them. And if anyone is inclined to claim that segregation and the threat of violence make the black experience different, I suggest you consider the history of the Jews in Europe and learn the original meanings of words like “ghetto” and “pogrom”.
You’re not allowed to make these obvious comparisons.
Obviously, you’re a Racist. You shouldn’t be allowed to speak.
Affirmative Action is hugely insulting.
Now, it’s screwing minorities, too: In CA, you have Asians being denied university spots to let in people (blacks/hispanics) with less than half the scores the Asians and white students get.
And it’s not educational disparity in funding: Cali spends slightly more per pupil in black neighborhoods.
Something’s up.
AA is no gift to anyone.
This is a hugely interesting read. Unfortunately, I can’t share your optimism regarding the fact that decriminalization will be achieved on a worldwide scale. At the time of writing, other countries like the Netherlands and Denmark, where prostitution is regulated and legal, are considering following Sweden. The reasoning behind this is that legalising prostitution increases human trafficking.
I wouldn’t mind this if there was evidence to back those claims. But there is none. Even the most glowing reports published by the Swedes in support of their policy contain little evidence that they have successfully reduced prostitution. Even those reports acknowledge that there are still migrant women (potentially trafficked) being prostituted in Sweden.
But the Swedes have been very successful in getting the propaganda across, brushing lots of things under the carpet in the process. It won’t be long before they convince others to follow their way.
[…] who have informally or indirectly taken money for sex at least once (which might be as high as 10% of all women). We need all of the men who hire us at least occasionally, which comes to about 20% of the adult […]
[…] who have informally or indirectly taken money for sex at least once (which might be as high as 10% of all women). We need all of the men who hire us at least occasionally, which comes to about 20% of the adult […]
I’ve noticed this comment about exit services in Sweden in a couple of places e.g. ruhama.ie ( who get me annoyed in particular, smiles )
“Sixty percent of the prostitutes in Sweden took advantage of the well-funded programs and succeeded in exiting prostitution”.
That looks like an astonishingly great job by social services across all types of prostitution with addiction and education programmes and good follow-up by support workers so I thought I’d trace the source.
It appears to come from a 2005 article in peacework magazine
http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pwork/0506/050616.htm
which in turn can be traced back to an earlier source which is some material put together for the Scottish Parliament in 2004 by J Bindel of CWASU
That earlier source is the 2nd last page of
http://archive.scottish.parliament.uk/business/committees/lg/inquiries/ptz/lg04-ptz-res-03.htm
which says:
“The Stockholm-based social service unit Pros-Centrum, that works with persons in prostitution estimate that up to 60 per cent of Swedish women in street prostitution have left the industry. ”
So not such a success for the social services industry then and not a claim about prostitutes in general. It’s essentially an assertion that street prostitution has reduced ( true afaik ) and a claim that at the individual level those same street workers have left the job ( which is also believable imv ).
Perhaps I should have posted this in ‘frequently told lies’ but there are quite enough already in there.
[…] sharp drop is very much like the one which appeared in Swedish surveys after client criminalization; it wasn’t that 41% of the men who had ever paid for sex had suddenly died or moved out of […]