This essay first appeared in Cliterati on April 6th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.
Neofeminists are fond of pretending that women are not individuals, but rather mere appendages of some vast gestalt entity for which the neofeminists are the designated mouthpieces. Many of their arguments against sex work rely on the notion that the private actions of individual women somehow resonate across this vast, incorporeal, hydra-like entity and magically harm all women everywhere in the world. Therefore, they argue, the state is justified in using violence to suppress sex work for the “greater good”. As so often happens with arguments based on irrational beliefs, however, the truth is exactly the opposite; prostitution laws pose a real and serious danger to all women, not just sex workers. As I explained in “Be Careful Who You Rape”,
…women who will take money for sex are indistinguishable from those who won’t up until the moment the deal is made. So it’s inevitable that aggressive campaigns of persecution against the former will ensnare some of the latter. When prostitution is criminalized to any degree, women who carry condoms, answer personal ads, wear sexy lingerie, go without lingerie, fail forced “virginity tests”, ask a cop if he’s a cop, “act sexy”, go out after dark without a male chaperone, or even just “look like a prostitute” are regularly arrested and charged with
having sex for a reason some people don’t like…
If one is prone with a boot on one’s neck, it makes very little difference whether that boot is a left or a right one. Yet political feminists are forever attacking the misogynistic schemes of “conservatives” while actively supporting the misogynistic schemes of their own party, despite the fact that they’re impossible to tell apart from the vantage point of the one beneath the boot. Control of women’s bodies is one issue upon which all statists can agree, and the tactics employed by the Cult of the Allwomyn are indistinguishable from those used by the devotees of other deities:
The sharia police in…[Indonesia] have rounded up 15 young women after they were “caught” in a late-night coffee shop. They have been accused of not wearing appropriate Muslim clothing and for loitering outdoors after midnight…Police chief Rita Pujiastuti [said]…it was believed that certain teenagers choosing to hang out in coffee shops until the early hours were involved in prostitution…police…also arrested…female beauty-parlor employees who were allegedly caught engaging in immoral acts…and…jailed without being given access to legal advice…
If you think this is the sort of thing that only happens in Islamic countries, you need to read the links in both of the block quotes above (not to mention my essay “Savages in Suits”). But hey, you can’t make a morality omelette without breaking a few eggs, right? Surely women should be happy to sit in jail for a few hours (or days, or weeks, or months, or years) if it serves the greater good of feminism (or Christianity, or Islam, or The Workers, or The Children!TM). But speaking of children:
…Cirila Balthazar Cruz…gave birth to her daughter in November of 2008 at Mississippi’s Singing River Hospital. Afterwards, Cruz, who grew up speaking Chatino–an indigenous language native to Oaxaca—was interviewed in Spanish…From Cruz’s very limited Spanish, the interpreter allegedly understood that Cruz was engaged in sex work…[she] was deemed an “unfit” mother, whose failure to learn English “placed her unborn child in danger”…we have no way of knowing how those details were possibly extrapolated from a conversation in a language that Cruz barely speaks…[but her] baby was taken away from her and placed with a foster family for an entire year…
The article goes on to discuss the injustice of using inability to speak English as grounds for declaring a woman “unfit” to be a mother, but totally ignores the other excuse: that she was a whore. Note that Cruz may not actually be a sex worker at all; that may have been a misunderstanding deriving from her poor grasp of Spanish. The mere accusation was enough, however, just as it was for Petite Jasmine (whose ability to speak her own tongue, Swedish, was not a factor). As long as prostitution is defined as a crime or a pathology, it can be used to draw lines between “good” women and “bad” women regardless of whether “bad” is defined as succubus or victim. And as long as the weapon of a prostitution charge is available, it can be used against any woman even if she’s never sold sex even once in her life.
And in this case – with the militant gynocentrists fighting against all other women, men are the collateral damage…
Because those harridans are also completely anti-men…
Indeed. I like to also call them “female supremacists”. The fascinating thing really is that otherwise intelligent women do not see these people for what they really are.
Reblogged this on Pycraftsworld’s Weblog.
recently had the realization that the whole reason “Gothic” is said to transgress the law is because it deviates from enlightenment values. There is more to that than meets the eye.
Awesome article.
You know what’s great about being a white male? I’m not plugged into any “Borg Cube”.
I don’t have to feel “connected” to other white males, in fact – society discourages me from even doing that. Apparently white males have an evil gene and we’re really dangerous when we band together. 😀
So we must be kept apart!
Anyway – it’s AWESOME. I’m free to COMPETE with other white males – and even dislike them. I don’t have to think about … “What will my fellow white male members of my BORG CUBE think of me if I do this?” White males belong to no Borg cube! I don’t have to vote for white candidates. I don’t have to hold certain views. For instance … I’m still a white male if I’m pro-choice … and no less so if I’m pro-life – there’s no “white male” peer pressure for me to join either side of the argument – or be ostracized from the group … there is NO group!
In short … I’m INDEPENDENT … and I just wish I could somehow bust all the other people in other gender / racial groups out of their “Borg Cubes” so they can realize how GREAT life is when you think – and act – on your own.
Now … when I was younger – I remember wanting to belong to an “identity group”. I think this is kind of something that insecure people gravitate towards. The ones I toyed around with was the Mormon Church and later the Roman Catholic Church. But after I read the entire book of Mormon – my mind just couldn’t buy into it. The RCC? Hell, that’s a loose identity at best for anyone. In any case – I couldn’t follow the rules of the Catholic church!
But I eventually grew out of my insecurities and realized I could be my own self and stand on my own.
If I were going to be an evangelist … I’d “evangelize” individualism. I’m pretty passionate about and I’m convince – if people could get over their insecurities and live like this … they never turn back. They’d relish in “standing on the ledge, show(ing) the wind how to fly.”
I don’t think I would have been given this opportunity though if I had not been born white … and male. Well … at least it would have been much harder for me find this path … that is for sure.
Nice! I think the fundamental problem is that most people do never outgrow their insecurities.
But I completely agree. You can only ever be yourself if your values, decisions, views are yours, and not some “canon” copied from the requirements list of a specific group that you want to be part of.
More laws = more “criminals”. Full stop.
I don’t know if someone else has said this first, but any government department/agency will, after its creation, take upon itself as part of its mandate the functions of: increasing its budget, increasing its power, increasing its jurisdiction, expanding its justifications for existence. It matters not the government of the day, nor if it comes into conflict with other agencies. It will act in a manner largely indistinguishable from a virus.
Police/justice agencies are particularly egregious examples of this, but I have yet to see an example of one that limits itself to its initial mandate over its lifetime.
The story of Cruz reminds me of the experiments around the physics concept of the dual nature of light: depending on how you construct your experiment, you will prove either that light is a wave or light is a particle, but you can’t (unless something has changed in the intervening years) prove both. Thus, you will prove what you set out to price…or in this case, you will find what your preconceived biases seek.
And that also pretty much describes police. Or abolitionists.