And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead [was] a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, The Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth. – Revelation 17:4-5
The whore is, first and foremost, an entertainer; she is hired by a man to, as the phrase goes, “show him a good time” by playing the role of a sex partner for him. Until comparatively recent times the professions of actress and prostitute were one and the same, which is why women were banned from the Elizabethan stage and even as late as Victorian times actresses were considered rather disreputable. Porn actresses are still a kind of whore, and actresses who appear nude and play love scenes aren’t all that far off, which is why I consider the hypocrisy of actresses such as Mira Sorvino, Demi Moore and Ashley Judd to be so pathetic. Conversely, prostitutes who specialize in fetish work (such as dominatrices or role-play specialists) are just as much paid to act as any film starlet is.
Because of this shared heritage and related social function, whores and actresses share one other important characteristic in common: we both tend to be dehumanized into symbols for other people’s psychological needs and problems. In other words, people project their own concepts onto us and imagine us as the external representations of those concepts. Marilyn Monroe famously said, “A sex symbol becomes a thing…. I just hate to be a thing.” But her comment was too narrow; all successful actresses (and actors too) become symbols for one thing or another, if not for sex then for something else. People cease to think of one so objectified as a real human being with wants and needs and failings, and instead use that person’s name and image to represent whatever concepts they’ve attached to it, for good or ill. Think of the words we use to signify successful actors: “star”, “idol”, “symbol” and even “legend”. They all signify things which are admired, revered or even worshipped…but never thought of as human. And though “stardom” may be intoxicating, “fans” can be demanding and unreasonable and may become angry when their “idol” proves to have feet of clay, as many a celebrity caught up in some scandal (or even just speaking carelessly in public) has discovered to his chagrin.
You might argue that the price of becoming a public figure, whether by acting or music or politics or preaching, is that one’s life is under a microscope. Perhaps, but with rare (and generally involuntary) exception, whores are the opposite of public figures, and yet people still project their own needs onto us. Obviously we invite such projection from clients by accepting the role of temporary girlfriend, but since we’re paid for that it’s not a problem. What is a problem is that certain groups, who neither ask consent nor offer compensation, use us as scapegoats for the ugliness they see in themselves by projecting their own perversions and flaws onto us and then persecuting us in order to destroy the unwilling representatives of their own sins.
Religious fanatics are the most obvious of these groups, but no longer the most dangerous by a long shot. To be sure, at one time whores were the most visible symbol of the “worldly lusts” priests fought so hard to suppress in themselves and their congregations, and indeed many such men went so far as to claim that their lust actually came FROM women in general and “wanton” (i.e. sexually functional) women, especially whores, in particular; thus harlots were traditionally vilified in Judeo-Christian religions, but outside of the Islamic world those religions no longer have the influence they once did.
The inheritors of their mantle are the politicians, who see prostitutes as a potent symbol of their inability to control everything and everyone; as I wrote in my column of September 6th, “no matter how many of their perverse desires we may grant in bed, we deny them their greatest psychosexual thrill: The illusion of power over others, which they crave above all else. Most people are willing to crawl to the politician, licking his boots in order to gain a few scraps from his table, but the whore merely laughs at him and reverses the relationship while providing living proof of the inability of his profession to eradicate or control ours.” No wonder so many of them crusade against us, and here is another reason for the increasing popularity of the Swedish Model; it allows the politician to pretend we’re powerless victims who “need” his “help” against the evil men who “exploit” us. Then there are the cops; some of them (especially the higher-ups) no doubt have the same issues with us as do politicians, namely resentment of their inability to control us. But judging by what one sees in interviews, those who don’t merely view us as prey for their sadistic “cops and robbers” games and project onto us their own tendencies toward deception and criminality.
But the worst of all are the neofeminists; they rant about the “objectification” of women, but themselves objectify prostitutes more completely and horribly than the most shallow man ever objectifies any woman. We become to them the external symbols of their twisted fantasies of female subjugation by brutish men, the living embodiments of their sick obsession with humiliation, rape and degradation. They imagine us as victims of the sexual abuse they suffered, and their own maladjustment, neuroses and self-hatred are thus transferred onto us. The fact of this projection becomes obvious the second one hears a neofeminist speak; “no woman would voluntarily agree to prostitute herself” really means “I wouldn’t prostitute myself,” and the “you’re selling my sexuality!” nonsense is a dead giveaway. Whores see ourselves and other women as individuals, but neofeminists are unable to accept this because admitting to individual responsibility would require them to accept the unbearable truth about their own inability to cope with reality. So rather than seeing us as real people who might make different choices from them, they must reduce us to nameless, passive statistics to be manipulated in their pseudo-studies, or use us as dolls at whom they can point and say, “the bad man touched me there!” like children at a molestation trial.
I decided long ago that hookers piss people off because we cannot be controlled. We are almost unique in that respect.
Historically, men had control through financial matters. Women were dependent on men to provide – with the exception of the whore, who was financially independent.
Women controlled other women through quintessential alpha-female herd behavior; the top female in the herd controlled others through bullying, shame, access to food and drink and sexually active males. Well, this certainly doesn’t work on the whore. We get our own men quite well, thank you, are financially independent as aforementioned and if we gave a rat’s flying arse about the opinions of other women we wouldn’t be prostitutes.
But then, it probably doesn’t come as any great shock that I agree with you.
None whatsoever. 😉
Dear Maggie,
Your comment is thought provoking. I think people make objects out to people all the time. Osama Bin Laden was an object of terror just as Dick Cheney is. The new mother is an ‘object’ to an infant, namely the good breast. The woman I love is the object of my desire, and as for actresses and actors, they are objects of modeling behavior, whether they want to be or not, and this goes for athletes too. This does not necessarily mean that these “objects” are exploited by not being given fair recompense, or as steps to greater power. The word object covers a lot of ground and we must keep its political meaning apart from its psychological meaning. I know some people claim that everything is political. At this point I roll my eyes.
There’s a big difference between “object” in the sense of “object of my affection” and in the sense of “inanimate object”. The phrase “sex object” actually means the former, but feminists love to pretend it means the latter. And when a person whom one does not know is reduced to nothing other than a symbol, with her feelings entirely ignored and disregarded, it’s most certainly the latter.
“The fact of this projection becomes obvious the second one hears a neofeminist speak; “no woman would voluntarily agree to prostitute herself” really means “I wouldn’t prostitute myself,” and the “you’re selling my sexuality!” nonsense is a dead giveaway”
There is so much irony in the “you’re selling my sexuality” lament. One: they are so sexless they have nothing to sell, and no prospective takers who’d pay for it anyway. Two: their ridiculous equation that a female who sells sex, is somehow selling someone else’s as well, and which isn’t for sale and which nobody wants to buy (as in case of these neo-feminists). Or I’ll speak for myself on that last part at least: pass. These unfeminine, frigid, sexless harpies are about as appealing as a terminal case of hypothermia.
Its so very Star Trek: ‘we are Borg, you WILL be assimilated.’ Whether you want it or not.
This sounds like someone I really need to meet.
During the part of our relationship where we could still laugh together about such things, my ex-husband told me that during one of her many tirades against me my ex-mother-in-law had called me the “Whore of Babylon”. 😀
“Their inability to cope with reality.”
This his been my mantra for several years now about the ‘perils’ of growing up, which are really all of the fears of the parents projected onto the child, which doesn’t negate the very real dangers in life, but rather highlights the parents’ inability to completely shield the child from it, or control the fact that danger exists in the world.
Also, the way that some men completely freak out over their now adolescent daughters, when nature has decided to grant them an exit from childhood.
But now with this column I see more clearly the plight of the whore, in that all throughout life they receive this intense projection, because, simply put, people just cannot deal.
I also couldn’t agree with you more about actresses that do nudity & the arrogant hypocrisy of the mantra that “it’s just acting.” No…selling the illusion or the simulation of sex isn’t really that different, because you’re getting people off in exchange for their money. Period.
Exactly, Scorch. Doing a nude scene is the exact moral equivalent of stripping, and doing a sex scene the exact moral equivalent of doing porn. And since strippers and porn actresses are sex workers, so is every single actress who’s ever appeared nude or done a sex scene.
“And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of coffee with cream and sugar.”
– Revelation 17:4-5
Revised Revised Standard Version
LOL! 😀
BTW, Maggie:
http://human-stupidity.com/stupid-dogma/teenage-sexuality/teenage-sexuality-the-immense-complexity-of-local-laws-state-lines-and-international-travel?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Human-Stupidity+%28Human+Stupidity%3A+Irrationality%2C+Self+Deception%29
We’re all familiar with the idea of typecasting: an actor plays a particular role, say Superman, and from then on, no matter what role he plays, the audience is yanked out of the narrative and, instead of seeing the cowboy, the astronaut, or Richard Nixon, they see Superman on a horse, Superman in a space suit, or Superman saying that he is not a crook.
Whores have been typecast, and unfortunately, they’ve been typecast into roles most of them have never played. A harlot is seen as either dirty low-down scum who represents all that is nasty and shallow in society, or an oppressed victim who needs to be rescued whether she likes it (knows it) or not.
In my long story, I have Anzu James remark that “…it was kind of exciting, being able to do things that would normally get me branded the Great Whore of Babylon, but it’s OK because hey, the Program. I’m going to have to go back to being a good girl again. Well…” I took a bite of egg. “Mostly a good girl.”
“….use us as scapegoats for the ugliness they see in themselves by projecting their own perversions and flaws onto us and then persecuting us in order to destroy the unwilling representatives of their own sins.”
nice one Momma…very succinct…
Thank you, sweetie! 🙂
Nice article, Maggie! Also it’s interesting what you say about projection in relation to neofeminism, since I’m convinced that its proponents are guilty of this. They regularly accuse males of being ‘entitled’. Desire for a partner? ‘Entitled to women’s bodies.’ Lonely? ‘No sympathy, it implies entitlement to sex.’ Misandry? ‘People who say that have a sense of entitlement.’ (Courtesy of Amanda Marcotte.) Criticism of neofeminism? You guessed it!
Yet the latter is rather telling, considering that a gang of neofeminists in Toronto university tried to blockade a warren farrell lecture (not that I have read his studies and verbally abused anyone who tried to attend his event to the extent that they had to be removed by police. Also it’s disturbing how they claim that due process is ‘bollocks’ when it comes to rape trials (scorpiogrrrl blog) because a guilty man may just slip the net. And what most disgusted me, their grotesque transphobia, in which they persecute transwomen at all woman events because ‘you are NOT a woman’, as just one example. Probably because the feel like they threaten their ‘womanhood’.
Before neofeminists criticise anyone else of being entitled, they should take a good long look in the mirror.
One more thing about actresses and sex work. Obviously, Hollywood and the SAG doesn’t like to talk about it, but I’ve heard that there are many sex scenes in movies which are supposedly fake, actresses have sex with their co-stars for real. There’s no way to prove how often this takes place, but there are rumors that in Monster’s Ball—the movie for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress—Halle Berry actually had sex with her co-star Billy Bob Thornton.
It’s certainly possible, and isn’t that surprising. I know that I’d be willing to have sex, for real, with Halle Berry. I’m sure that there are a lot of women who would be willing to have sex, for real, with Billy Bob Thornton. So did they have real sex on camera? Who knows, but is it strange if they did?