Repression thrives on ignorance; when people see others as human beings they are less likely to support the persecution of those people, and when they see behaviors as normal rather than strange and “scary” they are less likely to support bans on those activities. – Maggie McNeill
As far as I’m concerned, the single most important mission of this blog is to make people understand that whores are no different from anybody else, and that prostitution is part of the normal continuum of female behaviors which is not easily distinguished from others (certainly not well enough to base laws around). As I wrote in “Real People”,
On many occasions I’ve written about the fact that whores aren’t all that different from everyone else; that is to say we’re different from each other just like everyone else is different, and we no more share a certain “whore personality type” than all amateurs share a “non-whore personality type”. We’re not all addicts, nor are we all emotionally damaged, nor have we all been molested as children. We’re not all nymphomaniacs or criminals (except insofar as our societies choose to brand us as criminals), or pimped “sex slaves”, and we don’t all have low-self esteem; in fact a disproportionate number of us have high self-esteem, which anyone who actually bothered to talk to real whores instead of just chanting dogma would realize is almost inevitable. We have families, children and friends, outside interests, hopes, dreams, fears and needs just like everyone else. But some people insist on portraying us as somehow inhuman, with dangerous or even fatal results.
Under the “Real People” tag you’ll find lots of examples of articles which illustrate the humanity of sex workers of all kinds, and under “The More the Better” ones about sex workers moving into the mainstream; last week I found three such articles, so I felt it was time for another column spotlighting them (and calling attention to the others). The first appeared in The Gloss and was appropriately entitled “How I Started Seeing Sex Workers as Real People”:
…the truth is that some of the strongest, most diverse, and compelling women I know are sex workers. For me, this was a revelation…my first novel [was]…about a [prostitute] named Edie…[but] she wasn’t…real…[because] I didn’t know anything about sex workers. After a year of trying to write my way into Edie’s world, I [realized]…that…if I was going to write convincingly, I needed to track down a woman with an honest perspective and experience. So, one night, I began to peruse the now-defunct erotic section on Craiglist for research. There I found the ad that started it all…
The author, Emilie Allen, contacted an escort named Jasmin who not only helped her develop “Edie”, but also inspired her to make a documentary called Sex/Touch/Work about Jasmin’s business, an erotic massage establishment in Ottawa. In the process of filming she discovered exactly what I keep talking about:
…I’ve met some crazy cool ladies from roller derby queens, to the Aussies trying to make a buck on their working holiday, to women studies graduate students, to single moms. Actually, it’s the mothers that I’ve been most impressed with. There are a lot of moms out there who moonlight as sex workers. The good money and flexible hours afford them the time and resources that properly raising a child requires. With mouths to feed, most moms take their job seriously and make the best sex workers because they know a secret: men don’t always come to them for sex. A lot of clients are looking for a far more basic pleasure: a sense of care which touch provides…our filming…has brought this up time and again. Clients of erotic massage parlors speak of the touch aspect of the experience much more than they do of the final release…I’d like to suggest that it’s time we move away from our socially engrained fears of women’s bodies and sexualities. People always want to talk about the sex stuff when I tell them about this project (Isn’t it so degrading?). But the women I’ve come to know and love aren’t anti-feminist in the least; a lot of the time they’re simply being paid to touch, to care, no more no less. I for one, see absolutely nothing wrong with that. To want to be touched is no crime, and to know how to touch in a way that makes another person feel cared for is a gift. And if that touch happens to be erotic, what’s the difference?
Allen’s statement about mothers making excellent sex workers, though obvious to anyone who has ever actually known any sex workers, is apparently inconceivable to the “authorities” who all too often use sex work as an excuse to abduct women’s children. This profile of porn actress Stormy Daniels discusses the subject at length:
…Mothers are a powerful influence in our lives and responsible for raising thriving, well-adjusted human beings. We have created a romanticized image that mothers are supposed to be sexless…so when we hear about a porn star who is a mom, it shatters our expectations, and many draw conclusions that these moms can’t be good parents…the 33-year-old Daniels says, “I had to work really hard and prepare a lot to have a baby because…I can’t work while I’m pregnant. I did two years of work in one year.” Wicked Pictures provided Daniels the extended time off for maternity leave and made it possible for her to return to work when she was ready. Daniels’s fans have been supportive of her becoming a mom…but…[she] has had to contend with some ugly criticism. She kept her pregnancy a secret to avoid negativity, but hateful personal attacks surfaced against her and her newborn child when someone congratulated her on Twitter after the birth of her daughter, who is now 19 months old…moms who work in the adult industry are thought to be incapable of nurturing healthy children and imparting good values because their lifestyles and careers are perceived to be immoral…
When the time is right, Daniels intends to be honest with her daughter about her career. She’s adamant about preparing her for the negative backlash she might experience from people opposed to the adult industry. “I’ll tell her Mommy has a job that some people don’t approve of, but Mommy’s proud of it and it’s for adults,” she says. Yet she also thinks it’s important to describe her career to her daughter in a filtered, age-appropriate way. Just like how police officers, bartenders, and emergency-room doctors wouldn’t share all the details of their job with their children, Daniels believes that discussing the adult industry should be no different…Daniels is not an anomaly in the adult industry, and when I asked if other adult actresses have children, Daniels says at least half do but fans just don’t know it…
If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say close to two-thirds of all escorts have children, and in fact as I’ve explained before many of them enter sex work for precisely that reason. But while most of us in the United States struggle merely to be accepted as normal citizens, some in more enlightened countries have much higher ambitions:
…Penthouse Pet and stripper Zahra Stardust has launched a bid to become Sydney’s next lord mayor by being nominated as the Sex Party’s candidate for the council’s top job…Stardust, a human rights lawyer who wants to be known as a feminist stripper, is joined by four others on her party’s ticket in the upcoming Sydney Council elections…Sex Party president Fiona Patten said…the party wanted to bring its policies into the local arena. The Sex Party wants Sydney to operate as a 24-hour city, increase the presence of drug-injecting rooms, lobby for the decriminalisation of personal drug use and end discrimination against sex industry workers…
I don’t really think Sydney is ready for a stripper mayor, but the very fact that she can run for the office without being persecuted by government actors and crucified by the media says a lot about the comparative immaturity and bigotry of American society.
Hearing about Zahra Stardust is really encouraging even if she doesn’t win. I had never heard of the Sex Party in Australia and think it is wonderful. It is also flabbergasting to me to learn the truth about sex workers in terms of them being so normal. I was a prison psychologist for many years before I retired and because our women were almost entirely not sex workers, I never got to hear the truth. I knew that they weren’t the crazy people that they are supposed to be but since at least 90% of ALL women have been sexually abused at some point, I assume that is true of sex workers as well. What do you say?
Define “sexually abused.”
If you mean “raped,” I question that statistic.
If you mean “some penis-person failed to grovel in her presence on a date,” I question your definition.
I’m with Grim Ghost there; any definition of “abuse” which includes 90% of women in Western society is at least 10x too broad to be of any clinical, legal or practical use. As a psychologist you well know that we stopped pretending all noncomformities should be treated as pathologies decades ago.
A new article this fast, now that is a creative spark to envy.
Well my opinion of Australia’s anti-tobacco movement aside (idiots the lot of them), that its a model of progressiveness that a stripper can run for Mayor on actual issues without having her profession repeatedly thrown back in her face. Frankly though I’d think she’d have a better chance of winning as an MP since it would allow her to draw on a more diffuse voting pool instead of running a single locality. She can in turn parlay her party votes into serving her agenda in a coalition government especially if the ruling party ends up shattered but that’s just the ruthless realpolitik in me talking.
Sensible regulation is always better than criminalization, safety is ensured, everyone gets paid, laid and/or high and the only losers are criminals and prudes. Besides sex work is honest work, infinitely more honorable than the most high bred government official who steals from his own people.
Contrast here when the backward Catholic majority is trying to ban the issuance of condoms by government hospitals and the teaching of sex ed in public schools speaks volumes about the gulf between first and third world. Doesn’t help that its election year.
Check the archives; I publish a new essay every day. And honestly, I’m still not sure how I’ve managed that for over two years! 🙂
” And honestly, I’m still not sure how I’ve managed that for over two years!”
None of your regular readers are sure either, but we’re so impressed! 🙂
I’m especially impressed by your level of historical scholarship. I’ve tried to research some of the same stuff and come up with a lot less. I’ll bet being a librarian gave you plenty of opportunity to explore for interesting reading material or even just accidentally run across it.
That, and I’m blessed with an exceptional memory. For most of my life I was a voracious reader, and huge volumes of data were stored in my head; so a lot of the time, I can recall enough to help me search out the rest. In other words my memory often gives me a head start on any subject I’ve encountered before so I’m not going into the research “cold”.
Those who were reading my blog back when it was called Mister Nice Guy, will remember my fond recollections of my lover B, a former call girl who taught me a lot about sexual ethics and, well, ethics in general, and life in general. I like to think that I always thought of sex workers as human beings, but B certainly made it clear to me that she was indeed a human being, working at a certain job, which was indeed a job.
Escorts can be fantastic moms. I have to be careful how I talk about this, because the persons involved wouldn’t like it widely known, but I know of one supermom who’s been a professional escort for years and raised a child to healthy, successful adulthood. (Sadly, these kind of stories are the ones you won’t hear about, because the Moms who are so great at raising their kids will want to keep “scandal” away from them. Even though this is a woman who should be proud of her professional success, has a loving partner and a nice middle class lifestyle.)
the single most apparent lesson from your blog is that whores can not earn respect. Your blog begs “respect me”.
–the quotes from classic literature
–the “honest” in your blog title
–the pseudo science references
The lack of respect is biologically based. Not religious. Not cultural. Not legislated. We can rationalize or cogitate our way around these, but we have inherited biological repulsion to sexual perversions.
I’ve described this before: when we see a young woman with a baby and a husband, we smile, knowing the future is bright. When we see a young woman trading her sexuality for money, we see a biological dead-end.
And when we see a troll, we hope that he won’t ever marry our sister.
Don’t worry I already called Hans the Norwegian, he’ll take care of this. :p
You know what really begs “respect me”? Pop psychoanalysis of someone you’ve never met. You know what blows any chance for that respect? Trying to disguise emotions as facts and a total inability to comprehend Occam’s Razor.
-You do know that I was a librarian before I was a whore, and that my undergraduate degree is in English literature, right?
-You do know that my blog’s title is the literal English translation of the Italian Renaissance term cortigiana onesta (meaning a courtesan who provided real companionship and intellectual stimulation in addition to sex), right?
-You do know that your belief isn’t necessary for scientific facts to be factual, that I have quite a few scientists as readers, and that they never hesitate to call me out if they catch an error or weak spot in my science, right?
The lack of respect from people like you is because you rationalize your own defensiveness and ignorance as an enlightened and rightful view. Fortunately, the journalists and academics who consult me on a regular basis have more sense.
Maggie,
Sounds like you’ve just been trolled by a bio-ethic conservative. They like to dress their moralizing up in pseudo-scientific clothing in hopes that the onlookers won’t realize that the emperor is naked.
Rather like how Intelligent Design evolved from Creationism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design
“When we see a young woman trading her sexuality for money, we see a biological dead-end.”
Standing aside from the ad hominems and inflammatories for a moment to objectively analyze JZ’s assertion…
HOW does it follow that sex-for-money would trigger a biological aversion?
Using the “woman-with-baby-and-husband-triggers-biological-acceptance,” would JZ likewise assert that humans are similarly averse to ALL female non-committed-relationship sex? For example, that any woman known to pursue or enjoy “no-strings sex” or “non-committment sex-for-free” elicits the same negative response from human biology?
JZ’s premise seems to root in JZ’s definition of human reproductive optimalness.
I agree that human biology seeks reproductive optimalness. We do seem to select sexual partners on a basis of genetic favorabilities and benefits.
However, why humans would be wired to view “woman-with-husband” as most-optimally reproductive; or why humans would be able to distinguish between reproductive acts of “woman-with-husband” and “woman-with-client”, JZ doesn’t explain.
To the contrary, it seems to me that “shotgun-spread” NON-committment sex offers better genetic and reproductive success, and therefore that humans would biologically (although not necessarily consciously) view non-committment sex to be as if not more “bright-futured” as “woman-husband sex”.
ALL heterosexual sex at least indirectly connects to human reproduction; for example, fellatio “works” because it’s ultimately connected to the attraction and excitement hetero/bi men experience as a consequence of our species reproducing heterosexually. Therefore ANY hetero sex, committment or otherwise, carries the potential for reproducing and thus perpetuating the humans species. From a species perspective, the more heterosex interaction of any sort is “optimal”, and “woman-with-husband” is actually limiting.
A prostitute (especially until relatively recent history) can potentially become pregnant hence produce a baby as readily as a “husbanded” woman can. Neither sperm nor ova enquire about relational status. Therefore, from human biological perspective, sex-for-sale contains the same potential reproductive potential as “sex-with-husband”.
So, even if sincerely academically-intentioned, JZ’s hypothesis seems erroneous to me.
*plonk*
@Maggie, thank you for responding vigorously; your response reveals the truth of my comments. Your blog is a cry for respect; a satisfaction you can never earn.
Yes, it’s a “cry for respect” from bigots who cloak their silly Christian morality in the language of an evolutionary biology they clearly don’t understand at all. Nice try, but no. This pop psychoanalysis is even dumber than your first one.
I always laugh when people fall back on this sort of argument. In effect, jz, you are stating, “The fact that you disagree with me proves that I’m right.” Also, your tone is one of “nanee-nanee-boo-boo,” which seldom earns any respect from people with two digits in their age.
Maggie has a lot of respect from her readers, and she had to earn it because, largely thanks to people like you, few people will give a whore respect by default. She has earned respect with her scholarship and her skill at stating things in a way which expands understanding and knowledge.
You have earned respect by, um… trolling?
@Maggie, please stay on topic. Prostitution is a biological dead-end reproductive strategy, a perversion. We can try hard to understand it, rationalize it, accept it , but our unconscious brains still find it repulsive.
So, jz, does “perversion” interest you, hmmmm?
Perisistent little troll isn’t he.
Besides to be fair if you are running only on sheer numbers of children monogamy (which likely the terminus of his argument) is the biological dead end.
JZ is a she. Actually, she isn’t a troll; she’s been a regular reader for two years, and sometimes compliments my columns. But every once in a while she gets on this strange “hating whores is natural” hobby horse for a day or two, then lets it go for a while. Despite that, I still trust her to conduct herself politely most of time because she always has.
No, your conscious brain rationalizes it as a perversion. Your ignorance of evolutionary history is appalling, else you would know that prostitution is far older than marriage: the former occurs in chimpanzees, but the latter does not.
Now _there’s_ a mental image!
“So, Blackfur, if you give me your banana, I’ll let you give me your banana.”
Bananas are cheap; they charge meat.
Also marriages involving one or more old people. Dead end perversion. That’s why churches have never sanctioned them.
Ok, I’ll bite. How is it a biological dead-end? Does your body self-steriilize or something if you get paid to have sex? Also, BIOLOGICALLY Speaking of course, I want to make sure we stick to the science, since it’s a dead-end reproductive strategy, how does the body differentiate between a guy handing over 1k for a date, and a guy spending 1k on gifts and enticements which directly lead to him getting laid? Also, if you’d be so kind, can you show me, SCIENTIFICALLY of course, exactly where my unconscious brain is? I’ve been trying to smack the sh*t out of my ID for a while, not sure if he’s hiding behind my prefontal cortex or between my temporal lobe and cerebellum.
> Prostitution is a biological dead-end reproductive strategy…
In what sense? I don’t suppose you think that prostitutes can’t get pregnant – and the practice helps maintain the resultant offspring children.
So… what do you mean?
> but our unconscious brains still find it repulsive.
I’m sorry to hear that. How carefully did you isolate this impulse as biologically rather than culturally rooted?
No, it’s true! Prostitutes really can’t get pregnant! Despite the fact that the majority of women in nearly every young settlement in history (New Orleans, San Francisco, mining towns all over the world, many early cities in Australia) are prostitutes, later generations only claim descent from the small minimum of “good” women! Clearly this means whores must all be infertile, and that bigotry toward us is therefore justified. Because, evolution!
Hi Maggie,
I have been injured and not able to comment for a few days, sorry.
“As far as I’m concerned, the single most important mission of this blog is to make people understand that whores are no different from anybody else,”
This strikes me as a very strange thing to say. Firstly, whores are almost all women, right? So for a start whores are not like everybody else because you are not like men. I think you will concede the point that women are not like men. Never have been and never will be.
Secondly. Why would you want to be considered like other western women? Why would you stoop so low and set your sites so low? When I first came here I made a crack about I was married to a prostitute for 18 years but I just did not know it. One of your readers took that as an insult to prostitutes when it was, in fact, a compliment.
Prostitutes, in my opinion, are far SUPERIOR to 99.9% of western women. How are you superior?
1. You will actually do what a man wants for a set fee (apart from the odd disputes I would guess).
2. You are therefore basically honest in your dealings with men.
3. You appreciate men are the source of your income and, from what I have read here for more than a year, most prostitutes actually like men to at least a tolerable extent. There does not seem to be rage and hatred in the writings of the women on this site.
4. You do not expect men to be your sock puppets providing for your every whim and desire.
That list right there would put any prostitute for whom it was true in front of 99.9% of western women.
What has troubled me is that prostitutes also condone crimes by women by staying silent about them. Prostitutes know full well other women commit crimes such as false rape allegations but there are no women sex workers claiming that false rape allegations are a crime that needs to be punished severely so that REAL rape allegations are taken seriously. Prostitutes know full well women lie in family courts to get the children but they say nothing about that either.
So prostitutes, while being well in front of the average woman, could just as easily take the moral HIGH GROUND and make the claims and back them up.
1. Sex work is LAWFUL.
What two consent adults do is THEIR business and not the business of the state….and especially NOT the business of other women who openly condone and support other crimes by women that are well established as crimes like perjury, kidnapping, extortion, theft and child abuse where there are most definitely non consenting victims.
2. Sex workers stand for the agency of women and we stand for the claim that women are not only able to make oaths and sign contracts and keep them, but we claim and insist that women must make remedy for broken oaths and contracts on an equal before the law basis to men.
3. Sex workers stand for the possibility that ALL PEOPLE are entitles to be treated with dignity and a measure of respect as human beings and those who prove themselves more worthy may be treated with more dignity and respect. Sex workers stand for the possibility that no man or woman can be criminally victimised with impunity for any reason.
If you and your readers and co-workers took the HIGH moral ground over and above other women and other MEN then I think that would be a MORE effect approach.
You could bash the hypocritical men and women with
“While you openly condone false allegations, perjury, kidnapping, extortion, theft and child abuse by OTHER WOMEN where men and children are most assuredly the non consenting victims of criminal women……you persecute HONEST WOMEN of honour and integrity for providing a service that BOTH parties are happy with, BOTH parties consent to and there is NO VICTIM OF A CRIME? You hypocrites. Go deal with the REAL CRIMINAL WOMEN before attempting to invent a crime where none exists and persecuting us sex workers.”
Just my 2 cents…..this is pretty much what I tell people only I use fathers in there rather than sex workers.
Maggie, I really don’t understand why when people come here to offer you little known scientific facts that they just made up to support their arguments, you deal with them in such a difficult way. It’s especially aggravating when you have the unmitigated gall to bring in the truth just to confuse people. (Shakes head disparagingly.)
Ilona Staller was first elected to the Italian Parliament in 1987. Other nations are slowly catching up.
Stormy Daniels’ feminist logic is confusing to me. I’ve never been able to figure out that one tic: how can a woman who is regularly producing children be seen as “sexless”? (I’m basing this on her comments on motherhood.) It’s the equivalent of someone complaining about the low protein levels of buffalo meat, or the lack of power in their Testarossa. Saying that our culture doesn’t see motherhood as sexy is shortsighted; in my time, I’ve met more than a few pregnancy admirers, husbands who had to be dragged out of their post-partum wives’ beds and various men who would suddenly find a woman attractive if she was fit and a mother. If anything, procreation sans fertilization feeds the virginity complex of some men.
That comment always strikes me as equal parts projection (“I don’t feel sexy, therefore no one thinks I’m sexy.”), and attention seeking (“I’m still hot, y’all, even though I had this schmuck’s kid!”)
That’s not really a feminist issue per se, but rather the old Madonna/whore duality. Yes, it’s irrational, but it exists and is still quite prevalent.
It’s too bad that you have to tell the world that “whores are like everybody else,” when this should be obvious. But it’s also obvious that somebody does have to tell the world this, so I’m glad that you’re doing that.