Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. – Groucho Marx
My monthly collection of odds and ends on harlotry and related topics.
The View from the North
While the Canadian government does its best this week to imitate the prohibitionist insanity of its southern neighbor*, the majority of the Canadian people (70% in this online poll) lean more in the direction Australia has taken. And while the typical viewpoint of the American mainstream media is amply demonstrated by the next item in today’s column, the typical view of the Canadian media is demonstrated by this June 3rd editorial from the Globe and Mail entitled “Why the Courts Must Decriminalize Prostitution”. Just imagine an American newspaper of equal stature printing an editorial whose thrust is summed up by the sentence “If you listen to the people most affected – the prostitutes – it becomes clear that the rational thing is to destigmatize the oldest profession, to help it be practised more safely and sanely, as the normal part of Canadian life that, like it or not, it is.” Such an editorial would be greeted in the US by missives from outraged Puritans demanding the cancellation of their subscriptions, bleats and moans from trafficking fetishists moaning “Think of the millions of enslaved children!” and moronic replies on the online version of the column. Nor are Canadian academics cowed by neofeminists as their American colleagues are; this study from the Canadian Review of Sociology demonstrated that most prostitutes are consenting adults who do the work to pay the bills like any other job, that only about 15% are streetwalkers, and that very few are forced into the work by men. I certainly hope you aren’t surprised.
*Incidentally, the first day of that trial didn’t go too well for the Crown; the chief judge kept interrupting with questions like, “Isn’t it self-evident the laws produce harm and don’t protect sex workers? If it’s legal, why would you want to make it impossible for them to work? Isn’t this like passing a law to prevent store owners installing security?”
The Leading Players in the Field, Not
Meanwhile, in the United States, the New York Times published a story about the newest “documentary” in CNN’s Hearstian campaign against “human trafficking”, uncritically reporting that:
Tony Maddox…of CNN International, said of the documentary: “This wasn’t, ‘We’ll get more publicity if we work with someone high profile, so let’s go find someone high profile.’ This was, ‘Who are the leading players in this field?’ ” One of them, he said, happened to be a famous actress.
Gee, wasn’t that convenient? Demi Moore, a “leading player in the field”? Riiiiiiiiight. I guess Tony Maddox didn’t dare call on real “leading players” like Laura Agustín or Ann Jordan, because they’d tell him that his manufactured “crisis” doesn’t actually exist and that would be bad for ratings. An oh-so-sincere Hollywood actress, on the other hand, can be paid to mouth any drivel she’s handed and if it’s already her own pet witch-hunt, that’s even better.
Incidentally, the story reports that the title of Demi’s upcoming (June 26th) CNN special is “Nepal’s Stolen Children”, which talks about “girls as young as 11 who had been forced into prostitution and were rescued by a Nepalese nonprofit.” Of course, the true social background of the Deuki custom is wholly ignored in favor of imposing Western values on a foreign culture: “[Moore] goes home with one victim to find out if the girl’s family will accept or reject her. Rejection is pervasive because of the stigma of sex trafficking in some cultures.” Yeah, it’s because of “sex stigma”; the NGO’s undoing of what the family perceived as a gift to the gods which would win blessings for them has nothing to do with it. As I said in my June 8th column, I will not defend slavery just because it is done in the name of religion or tradition. But haven’t Westerners learned that it’s impossible to win hearts and minds by barging in on an alien culture uninvited, telling them they’re evil, backward sinners and then insisting that we know better than they do how they should live their lives? Apparently Demi Moore and CNN haven’t.
Kristof’s Totalitarian Fantasy
The hits just keep on coming from the New York Times, which published (on the same day as the previous item) a rather ill-informed article from “Creepy” Kristof, whom regular readers may remember for his lurid columns on “sex slavery” which read as though they were typed with one hand. Apparently, prostitution isn’t the only topic about which Kristof feels compelled to make pronouncements despite an almost total ignorance of the subject; his beliefs about economics and international politics are apparently just as ill-informed: “The long trajectory of history has been for governments to take on more responsibilities, and for citizens to pay more taxes. Now we’re at a turning point, with Republicans arguing that we need to reverse course.” In other words, ever-inflating government is progress, so we should just accept that one day all of our decisions will be made for us by our betters and our only concern will be to slave like good little worker ants until we drop while Big Brother manages our money and our lives. No wonder Kristof hates whores; it must gall him that we keep most of our income and ignore the laws and regulations designed to “help” us. This article from Reason exposes Kristof’s claims for the absurdity they are,
and includes the picture I’ve featured here in which Congolese women react with shock and amusement to the spectacle of a stupid American man balancing a woman’s basket on his head…which is sort of the way American women might react to an African man with a big goofy grin walking around town with a purse.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee
As weird as it may seem, my husband and I often find ourselves nostalgic for the Cold War; the growing resemblance of Russia to the U.S. and the U.S. to the now-defunct U.S.S.R. is in my mind at least as unsettling as the prospect of World War III ever was. You know how the United States is bucking the widespread trend in the civilized world to make prostitution less criminal? Well, according to this June 8th story from The Guardian, Mother Russia apparently wants to prove she can be just as pigheaded as Uncle Sam:
Drug dealers are to be “treated like serial killers” and could be sent to forced labour camps under harsh laws being drawn up by Russia’s…parliament. Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the state duma, the lower house, said a “total war on drugs” was needed…Russia has as many as 6 million addicts (one in 25 people). Every year 100,000 people die from using drugs, Gryzlov said in a newspaper. The scale of the problem “threatens Russia’s gene pool”, he said. “We are standing on the edge of a precipice. Either we squash drug addiction or it will destroy us”…Injecting drug-use is also accelerating Russia’s HIV crisis because – unlike most other European countries – methadone treatment is banned and needle exchange programmes are scarce, meaning the virus spreads quickly from addict to addict via dirty syringes. An estimated one in 100 Russians are HIV positive. Under legislation promoted by the ruling United Russia party and now being reviewed in parliament, drug addicts will be forced into treatment or jailed, and dealers will be handed heftier custodial sentences…Activists criticised the idea of putting addicts behind bars, pointing to a growing worldwide consensus that treating drug users as criminals has failed as a strategy. The Global Commission on Drugs Policy said in a report last week that there needed to be a shift away from criminalising drugs and incarcerating those who use them. Gryzlov, however, claimed that “criminal responsibility for the use of narcotics is a powerful preventative measure”…
Several activists condemned Gryzlov’s suggestion to “isolate” drug users from society. “Sending more people to prison will not reduce drug addiction or improve public health,” said Anya Sarang, president of the Andrey Rylkov Foundation…”What we need instead of this harsh drug control rhetoric is greater emphasis on rehabilitation, substitution treatment, case management for drug users and protection from HIV”…Denis Broun, the Moscow-based director of UNAids for Europe and central Asia…[said] Gryzlov’s proposals could make matters even worse. “It has been widely shown that criminalising people using drugs simply drives them underground and makes them much harder to reach with preventative measures,” he said. “This is not an effective strategy for fighting HIV. Purely repressive measures do not work.”
Well, perhaps there’s a bright side to this; maybe Russia will be able to win the title of “police state which imprisons the largest number of its own citizens” away from the U.S.
The Canadian Justice was even more specific than that. He said it was self-evident that prostitutes would be safer if they could hire bodyguards. The objections are the usual stuff you’ve discussed a million times on here. You could almost put together a bingo game while going through the article.
“think of the children!” check.
“Pimps will move into your neighborhood” check.
“Inherently violent trade” check
I live in Toronto, and I’m following this fairly closely.
You mean like this one featured on Feminisn’t a while back?
I did not know that existed. I may have to print it out. It’s perfect.
Furry Girl has some excellent columns on her blog, and today she’s launching her new sex worker rights website, SWAAY, which contains a short introduction to prostitution from yours truly.
The thing Kristof fails to note is while it is every govenrnment trajectory to take on more and more ‘responsibility’ for its citizens that trajectory aways leads to the same place. Said government collapsing under the weight of its needless self imposed burdens follwed by summary execution of the ruling elite not smart enough to skip the country before the shit hits the fan.
As for drug use, I’ve always felt the government should give addicts all the drugs they want for free. One clinic in every county seat, come on down, will put you in a room with everyone else doing the same drug and you can stay until your able to leave under your own power and sober or dead, which ever. It be far cheaper then the war on drugs.
Ofcouse that would be for heavy narcotics and the like, crap like weed which shows a milder effect on the body then coffee should be purchasabel at any gas station or grocey store
I think Kristof hasn’t heard of “Bread and circuses”.
By county might not be the best idea… Georgia has 189 counties, second only to Texas. California has 58.
And Louisiana has 0 counties. 😉
Fair point, but in Louisiana dont ‘parishes’ serve the same administrative purpouses?
Yes, but I think that’s why he put the winking smiley. 🙂
I take his main point as: saying “by country” is a Northeastern prejudice; out west some counties can be as big as New England States, and many are largely empty of human population.
Yep, my county, Maricopa Az is larger then New Jersy
Maggie’s right… and I just remembered that Alaska has boroughs instead of counties, too.
I was thinking of the disparate impact supplying drugs on a county-by-county basis would have on different states.
There’s already a system that exists that can supply drugs — it’s called the free market. It distributes food and other goods quite well. Plus there is redundancy in the system to handle things like natural and man-made disasters.
It already supplies alcohol to users quite well without the violence and impurity associated with the black market. It would do just as well for other drugs.
My problem is I dont like the idea of major mood alterants being sold in gas station and liquior stores, or anyone turning a profit on death dealing stubstances.
Then again god only knows how many people are running not quite amok in public due to hard psycotropics, and no one really has any cause for complait about cigarette companies given all the disclaimers they have to slap on their products.
I suppose my only valid concern about selling hard drugs for a profit as opposed to giving them away for free is that hard core addicts are still going to commit crimes to scrounge up the cash
Luckily, most of the expense of illegal drugs derives from their illegality, just as 80% of the price of cigarettes is due to the heavy taxes and duties and punitive fees. If marijuana was legal it would be dirt-cheap, and heroin and cocaine wouldn’t be a helluva lot more expensive.
There are women out there who have a problem with me turning a profit on their sexuality.
While your concern is indeed valid, by the same logic we should be seriously contemplating whether keeping banking and politics legal is doing society more harm than good.
So long as we keep our perspective here, I have no problem with your problem.
This new reply box sucks balls. The above was supposed to be a reply to lujlp.
I’m honestly not sure what they even mean by that, except for the whole hive-vagina thing which is too ridiculous even to consider. The suspension of disbelief necessary is comparable to that required to believe in a flat Earth resting on the back of an immense turtle.
I hereby declare Discworld to be a demilitarized zone. The Turtle moves.
The Turtle moves!
I think that Pratchett’s argument that childhood belief in the little fantasies (like the Hogfather or Tooth Fairy) is necessary to prepare our minds for belief in the big fantasies (like Justice, Brotherhood and Love), is one of the most profound concepts I’ve encountered in years.
He introduced pubescent kids to “Quis custodes ipso custidiet”, decriminalized prostitution, and a politician who refuses to mess with The People and throws lobbyists in the scorpion pit. Also, he can write circles around the vast majority of mainstream writers. I would shag that man rotten.
What about this man?
Well. That was subtle.
It’s also on YouTube.
And Ray Bradbury has seen it.
And liked it.
Actually, they mean exactly that. (I know, I thought it must be something else too. Because… welll.. that’s just stupid.)
The insurmountable hurdle in every prohibitionist argument is that what two consenting adults do behind closed doors is no one’s business. Decades of the gay rights movement has this engraved on the collective conscious, and those who think what gay men do in the privacy of their bedroom is INDEED their business are not the sort neofeminists can turn to for backup.
The neofeminist must instead present an argument that shows how a consenting female adult’s actions are directly connected to the uninvolved, unaware individual.
They came up with the hive vagina. Everyone I have screwed, they had to screw as well, which means my personal vagina is their problem. Only, it doesn’t count if I screwed them because they were cute enough and I was horny and they’d managed to go thirty whole minutes without saying something stupid, thereby qualifying as Mr Right Now. That was a valid personal choice which embraced my femininity and individualism. My vagina is community property only when fueled by commerce, not libido.
It’s all very meta, in a wanky lack-of-Earth-logic way.
Also I remember a court case out of canada where a woman with a protein deficency or somthing which caused her skin to dry out excessivly argued that it violated her human rights to be forced to wash her hand after using the bathroom while working in a resturant as a food preparer.
And she won.
So public saftey doesnt seem to be that big of a priority to the canadian government if you ask me
They didn’t learn it during either Age of Colonialism… why should they learn it now???
“The Crown … urged Judge Himel to also reflect on the fact that prostitution is inherently degrading”
I love how the author throws that line in at the end with no qualification, implying that it is, in fact, a fact, rather than an opinion.
That which governs best governs lightly.
War on Drugs a failure. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/15/40-anniversary-war-on-drugs-cops-obama_n_877702.html
“…failed policy has led to millions of arrests, a trillion dollars spent and countless lives lost, yet drugs today are more available than ever,”
Not to mention the millions of lives ruined by being arrested and incarcerated for having a bit of pot on them, nor the amount of homes and cars lost to individuals through forfeiture and the jobs lost and unable to find employment because they can’t pass a criminal background check, or ……
“You’re a prolific author, Ray Bradbury.”
Holy crap. Awesome.