Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness, but enables us to move back from it a little. – Mason Cooley
Psychologists still aren’t entirely sure what makes a given thing funny. Oh, there’s been considerable thought about it in the past few decades, but no general consensus on some important details such as why one person finds something funny while another may not. Part of this undoubtedly comes down to taste; for example, while I find absurd situations intrinsically amusing, others may only find them irritating. And while many people find exaggerated depictions of misfortune hilarious, they only make me uncomfortable. This accounts for my mixed reaction to the Three Stooges; though I find ridiculous scenes like Curly fighting a living clam in a bowl of chowder to be extremely funny, the physical slapstick leaves me absolutely cold. Of course, some humor depends on knowledge; those in the know will get the joke, while those who aren’t, won’t. Sometimes the latter may even take a situation very seriously, while the former recognize the irony and so perceive it as ludicrous.
That was the case when I read this recent story about a “sex trafficking” propaganda session held by Shared Hope International at a Washington State high school. What first attracted my attention to it was the fact that though the speaker admits to having been naïve and ignorant at the beginning of her supposed “ordeal”, she is still just as clueless as ever, but doesn’t realize how her words betray that fact to anyone who’s ever done any kind of sex work (or even set foot in a modern strip club). I planned to use the story in TW3 #318, but the more I looked at it the funnier it got, and I realized it needed the full-column treatment. I hope I’m able to help most of you see what I saw, and if not…well, I guess you had to be there.
…Brianna…sketched a scene of lost innocence. She was in Seattle on a whim to party with two older guys she barely knew. She’d lied to her parents, telling them she was at a girlfriend’s house for the weekend. The guys seemed nice enough, attractive, possibly wealthy. But she soon discovered their motives weren’t merely impure, they were also likely criminal. They told Brianna, who’d just turned 18, she could make a lot more money stripping than she could working her other job, waiting tables…
In other words, Brianna is a spoiled, sheltered moron who thinks it’s perfectly safe to spend the weekend with complete strangers 200 km from home without anyone knowing she’s there. That’s not “innocence”; it’s exceptional stupidity. Even so, these guys (if they existed at all) don’t appear to be “criminals” to me, unless telling the truth has been criminalized in Washington; a good-looking 18-year-old girl CAN make a lot more money stripping than waiting tables. Surely Shared Hope and reporter Tyler Graf aren’t denying this?
“The strip club was really loud and really dark — it smelled,” Brianna said…”Everything there was really sticky. It had germs on it.”
My guess is that Brianna has never actually been in a strip club; her description appears to be a combination of something she saw on a TV cop show and what somebody told her about seedy porn theaters, embellished on suggestion of her handlers. Germs!
The guys told her she could make a lot of money with her young looks. So why not get out of La Center? Why not head down to Phoenix, Ariz., and catch some sun? Why not empty her bank account and hand it over? They’d take care of her. In only a few days, the requests became increasingly unreasonable, and she realized something was wrong. What she didn’t know until later was that she was on the brink of entering the sex trade world.
“Increasingly unreasonable”? Really? You mean, more unreasonable than “Hey, why not travel halfway across the country with two dudes you don’t know after turning over your bank account to them?” Because I’m honestly having difficulty thinking of something that could be more unreasonable than that to anyone who was reared outside of a Skinner box and has a greater cerebral capacity than the average stray dog. Though we aren’t told how Brianna “escaped” from these guys, it’s pretty obvious they did not actually intend to harm or (criminally) exploit her; she clearly lacks the intellectual agility to outwit a goldfish, much less a pair of gangsters (even assuming they were relatively obtuse). I’m also very amused by the phrase “sex trade world”, which was clearly shat out by the same Yellow Journalism Phrase GeneratorTM that produced “sex trafficking world” and “sex trafficking trade”.
Brianna’s brush with sex trafficking two years ago is documented in…”Chosen,” which made its premiere…in front of more than 100 La Center High School students. The 20-minute video, produced by…Shared Hope International, is meant to be an educational tool warning teens and others about the dangers of the sex trade.
Shouldn’t that be “sex trafficking trade”? Or is it “sex trade world”? One needs to be precise about these things.
In the video, another young woman details how a pimp groomed her as a young teenager. He bought her expensive gifts before eventually setting her loose at strip clubs in Portland.
I just can’t help picturing her running around the club going “woop woop woop” and “nyah nyah nyah”, then falling on her side on the floor and spinning around in a circle.
Law enforcement officials consider…Interstate 5…to be a major arterial for sex-trafficking operations, especially of underage girls…
Evidence!
“You might think pimps are cool — like, they have lots of money and cars,” senior Olivia Loreth, 19, said. “They get a lot of women because they’re just that cool.”
You might, if you were a complete imbecile.
…Former U.S. Rep. Linda Smith, the founder of Shared Hope International, says she wants the video to be another tool in fighting the rise of human trafficking…
…which is “an extension of the ‘pro-life’ cause.” Finish your sentences, Linda.
…Smith said more awareness of the realities of sex trafficking needs to be coupled with stronger state laws that punish Johns and pimps but protect victims.
I’m starting to get the giggles every time I see some po-faced twit use the word “john” to mean a client. Even more so when he capitalizes it. And the irony of one of the chief disseminators of “sex trafficking” myths and lies using the phrase “realities of sex trafficking” is just icing on the cake.
Washington has been a leader in this. It’s one of a handful of states that has what’s known as a “Safe Harbor” law, which redefines prostituted minors as victims…
Here’s an example of Washington’s “leadership”, and the truth about “safe harbor laws”. I know this bit isn’t funny, but it does demonstrate Smith’s duplicity and Graf’s credulity.
[A new Washington law] will toughen the definition of sex trafficking, making every minor who participates in a sex-for-money scheme the victim of trafficking…
That’s right, the law has the power to rewrite reality like the Lathe of Heaven and make them victims even if they weren’t. Justice!
In the two years since her ordeal, Brianna has rebounded. She often joins Smith to spread the word about the realities of sex trafficking, and she’s enrolled in a nursing program at Clark College.
If I might offer a bit of unsolicited advice, Brianna, I don’t think you’re cut out for nursing; perhaps fantasy-writing or acting would be a closer fit. Or better yet, stand-up comedy.
Here’s my opinion. You give good career advice to Brianna suggesting acting or stand-up-comedy and maybe fantasy-writing as well. She’s a special kind of whore. She’s an attention seeking whore.
Let me amend this. There’s nothing wrong with wanting attention or being an attention seeking whore. However, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. Brianna chose the wrong way.
So working as a prostitute is OK as long as you are underage… Seems like a strange message to give to schoolgirls before they go off to shop at the mall
While I see your point, it doesn’t make sense to me that a person who cannot legally consent to sex can be convicted of prostitution.
I think the point is, it doesn’t really make sense that a person who CAN legally consent to sex can be convicted of prostitution.
I agree, but I think it makes even less sense if the person is underage.
I see the hilarity in this. You’ve been up and down the hill and here are these idiot wannabes trying prove they have too and they can’t even describe the hill correctly!
It’s the same way with me when people who’ve never been to Iraq or Afghanistan try to tell me how it “REALLY” is there! I always have a big fat smile on my face listening to them!
Exactly so. As Comixchik points out below, this whole thing is about a girl who almost became a stripper!!!!!!!! The lugubrious tone contrasted with the totally-nothing reality and her failure to convince me of even the smallest details of her narrative got me laughing right away, and once I started I couldn’t stop.
Oh, the horrors!
Seriously. As I read this, I thought of Monty Python’s skit about the Five Yorkshiremen, all sitting there trying to best each other on tales of how grim their child hood was. I can just imagine the trafficking version:
“I was forced by my pimp to work the streets 36 hours a day, always in the dark and snow, I saw 88 men an hour, and then, when I came home, my pimp would take all my money and cut off my head. I did that every day.”
And all this over a young twit who ALMOST became a stripper.
I’ve know people who nearly joined Amway, too.
Does Amway sell special cleansers to get coffee out of keyboards? I think I need some now!
Horrors!
Almost joined Amway? Thereottabealaw!
I mean, the trafficking and SALE of innocent soap products. And various unidentified other things that are JUST to GROSS to Contemplate. And they don’t hesitate to get Families Involved.
Well, this started out as an attempt at humorous false equivalency but I think that that didn’t work. Maybe Brianna should traffick Amway products? She seems to have the requisite bullshitting down…
Well, think about it. Who conspires to lure in innocent people with promises of the vast fortunes to be made, and the glamorous lifestyle more than Amway?
And once you join, they take your money.
And if you do make any money, part of it goes to the person (pimp) who recruited you.
Amway fits the traffickers description better than most situations.
If there just a little SEX in Amway, it would be perfect.
So “Chosen” is funded and flogged, but Ms.Michaels is struggling to get “Whoremom” funded. Argh!
Shared Hope International, Statement of Faith: http://sharedhope.org/who-we-are/our-mission-and-values/statement-of-faith/
When Jesus is involved, his good buddy Mammon is never far behind…
The part about the “dark, germ-filled strip club” was especially hilarious. The strip clubs I have been in have been brightly lit. Because, you know, the guys who frequent them want to SEE the strippers! It sounds like her description was based on the kind of strip club you see in TV shows, which are often dimly lit, and in which the strippers strip all the way down to their bikinis, but never any further, because, you know, they’re TV strip clubs and hence about as real as poor Brianna’s strip club.
Plus Brianna appears to have superpowers. To see “germs” in a brightly lit club would be hard enough. But to be able to exercise microscopic vision in a “dark” club, well, let’s just get her an appropriate costume. Lessee, lab coat, specs, hair pulled back in a bun…
And the lab coat MUST be a tear-away!
Brianna really should come here for more career counseling.
> That’s right, the law has the power to rewrite reality like the Lathe of Heaven and make them victims even if they weren’t.
I’m up in the air over whether that’s a worse use of the lathe power than retconning an alien invasion into existence (first iteration). In purity of wrongness, it’s got the invasion beat, but the overall scope of the invasion make me think the invasion is worse. On the other hand, the wrongness of the invasion was so clear that the next use of the lathe was to mitigate it. Hmm.
…and this is one of the things that makes publishing this blog so much fun. 🙂
Two versions of The Lathe of Heaven added to my Netflix queue. Reading descriptions of the premise, I’m reminded of The Meloncholy of Huruhi Suzimiya. Of course, the difference would seem to be that Haruhi is actually God. Or maybe that’s what’s going on in TLOH. I’ll find out, because I’m going to watch the movies, and I might even end up reading the thing.
After I’m done with Robots Will Steal Your Job (But That’s OK) and Twilight of the Elites and Zanthodon and…
“Of course, some humor depends on knowledge; those in the know will get the joke, while those who aren’t, won’t.”
Sometimes the humor comes from knowing others are *not* in the know. I read XKCD, and I laugh hardest when the author references something that I know only a limited proportion of readers will get without resorting to Google. (“Silence” and the “Voyager 1” alt text come to mind)
I also enjoy a well-crafted insult, and there’s plenty of those here. “…anyone who was reared outside of a Skinner box and has a greater cerebral capacity than the average stray dog” was particularly priceless. 😉
I’m glad you appreciated it; I do rather pride myself on those! 🙂
Maggie
I do not comment very often but I do read your stuff every day.
I do not read many blogs every day.
This cowboy thinks you are very, very, off the charts smart. The truth is, I never gave much thought to the whole sex-work question before your blog happened… for all sorts of reasons. But you definitely understand how to make high-grade sense to an extremely discriminating audience.
Regards…
I take that as a very, very high compliment.
My real name actually is John – I’ve had a bit of a giggle with that with the girls I’ve been with.
Why on earth they picked on my name (also the toilet) I have no idea, especially given the meaning of the Hebrew original.
[…] flashing their tits so they can be charged with “prostitution”. And who could forget the hilarity which ensued when Shared Hope International held a program warning high school girls, “Don’t run off to […]