The prudent Sibyl had before prepar’d
A sop, in honey steep’d, to charm the guard;
Which, mix’d with pow’rful drugs, she cast before
His greedy grinning jaws, just op’d to roar.
With three enormous mouths he gapes; and straight,
With hunger press’d, devours the pleasing bait.
Long draughts of sleep his monstrous limbs enslave;
He reels, and, falling, fills the spacious cave. – Virgil, Aeneid (VI, 566-73)
One of the intellectual tools which is useful in cutting through propaganda to the truth behind it is the ability to recognize weasel-words, dysphemisms and other obfuscations wherever they occur. Over three decades of fighting ignorance and lies I have honed this skill to a very high degree, but a scalpel used without wisdom is a poor tool; four years of hot war against prohibitionists may have begun to push me over the line from skepticism to cynicism, and to compromise my ability to know where and how deeply to slice. Two weeks ago something happened which showed me that my surgery may be growing a trifle overzealous, and I think analyzing it will help me to keep my judgment as keen as my perception. It started when I saw a column by Tina Dupuy entitled, “How to End Slavery in the U.S. (Spoiler: Decriminalize Prostitution)”, which begins like this:
Americans have warmed up to…marijuana being legal. Most polls now report more than 50 percent of voters…are…OK with allowing grownups to indulge in a drug for the sake of indulging…So it’s time for a serious discussion about the decriminalization of prostitution…
And ends like this:
…We are not going to wipe out the sex trade. We will not arrest our way out of having prostitution in our communities…No amount of public shaming, arresting or prosecuting will make us free of sex exchanged for money. What we can do for those who are working in the industry is make it legal. Give them back their rights and access to the courts to redress their grievances. Decriminalize sex between consenting adults. If we really believe in freedom, then let people live their lives and let sex workers work in the light of day…
Those are the parts nearly everyone else saw, focused on and cheered. But as I wrote in “Which I Doubt” almost a year ago, “I sometimes feel as though I’m becoming the Eeyore of the sex worker rights movement, the resident wet blanket who reacts to every bit of seemingly good news cheered by other advocates by letting them know exactly why it’s not as good as they think it is.” Because what I immediately homed in on was not the beginning or end of Dupuy’s essay, but this bit in the middle:
…slavery is…not just a relic of the 19th century. A report last year by Australia-based Walk Free Foundation estimates there are currently 30 million slaves in the world. They report 60,000 of them are in the United States. We have two kinds of slaves in the United States and both are easily fixed by legislation: illegal immigrants (another column for another time) and sex workers…
Naturally, my cynicism kicked in, I harrumphed in disgust and I copied the link into the outline for TW3 #420, planning to file it under “So Close and Yet So Far” with other examples of would-be allies who undermine their own cases by quoting prohibitionist dogma. And that’s where it would’ve stayed had Mistress Matisse not included Dupuy in her tweet about the essay, which also had the effect of calling her attention to my reply that if she wanted to be an ally, she should talk to sex workers rather than prohibitionists. She almost immediately tweeted me back with her email address, and we had a lovely email exchange in which she quickly convinced me that she wasn’t ignorant of the facts at all;
it’s just that she knows her audience and editors (she’s a syndicated columnist) would not accept a decriminalization argument without a sop to Cerberus. As she explained it, “I try to communicate radical (I think sensible) ideas by acknowledging the values and prejudices of [those] who read me every week. And it’s not even my audience, the editors won’t publish it and I won’t get a chance to make my case.”
I very often forget that as a writer, I’m doubly privileged (ooh, that word!) in that 1) I don’t have an editor acting as gatekeeper to my free expression, because 2) I don’t have to earn a living with my writing. In other words, I have the luxury of writing for myself, as a personal avocation, without the real and limiting concern for commercial viability; others are not so fortunate. Of course, the other side of the coin is that my audience is far smaller than that of a syndicated columnist who has to cater to corporate sensibilities: the Maggie McNeills of the world can speak honestly and bluntly about decriminalization, but fewer people are going to hear; the Tina Dupuys will be heard by a lot more people, but can’t be nearly so honest and blunt. Both play an important role, and I need to be careful that I don’t vivisect a real but cautious ally under the mistaken impression that she’s a false one of the sort I collect under “With Friends Like These”. It’s true that in most cases this kind of thing will do more harm than good, but it’s equally true that a wary dog won’t swallow medicine unless it’s thoroughly embedded in something the animal finds palatable. I think I’m probably clever enough to learn to tell the difference, and I thank Tina for calling my attention to the fact that it exists.
Sadly appeals to emotion work on a great many people, its a dishonest method of debating an issue, however mainstream publications have to be focused on being profitable and not necessarily honest, certainly if they are corporations the board has a fiduciary responsibility to focus on increasing the value of the company.
Which is why I’ve almost completely discarded using the mainstream media for news on any subject, for me at least to have any faith in anything posted online the subject of the discussion has to have the option to be debated, within comments like this, not exactly peer reviewed but at least critiqued in some degree.
But I feel that the future is bright since traditional media is increasingly being hammered by non traditional media (such as sites like this), so the public I think are bit by bit becoming better informed.
That of course entirely depends if net neutrality isn’t thrown in the bin, in which case sites like this may find themselves being throttled into the dark corners of the Internet for not coughing up arbitrary fee’s to ISP’s.
I like this article!
Sadly – I didn’t pay much attention to her article when you posted it so this is all kind of new to me.
But my philosophy has always been to try to convince people who are open-minded and “convinceable”.
This nation (US) is polarized right now with about half the population leaning conservative and based in the South – and the other half leaning liberal. There are people on each side who believe they can simply “vanquish” their opposition and stuff the changes they want down the other side’s throats.
There’s also a dangerous trend now, to attempt to REMOVE the political voice and political power from opponents. This is the most dangerous and idiotic thing anyone could do. When you disenfranchise someone – you leave them no other choice but to protect their interests by violent means and – this is especially idiotic when the side doing the political “bullying” isn’t really prepared for a violent conflict anyway.
The U.S. is a LARGE nation – people don’t realize this … the distance from Paris, France to Moscow, Russia is roughly equal to the distance between Los Angeles to Kansas City – and there’s a whole lot of green space beyond that. We will NEVER be on the same sheet of music, politically speaking and we need to realize that and accept it. If the people of California want to ban all guns in the state – the people in Mississippi shouldn’t complain about it. If Mississippians want to carry fully automatic M-240B machine guns – the people in San Francisco need to hush up about it.
I can sit and talk to conservative Christians and have a great time discussing things without getting red faced. I can sit with a liberal from San Francisco (I have a lesbian friend out there) … and we can discuss things without getting upset. She respects me – I respect her. When I discuss things with Christians – I try to approach it from the standpoint of demonstrating to them how adopting my view of things actually will end up benefiting them.
Case in point – Gay Marriage. Now – I’ll tell you right now I don’t like “redefining” words that have been used for eons and “marriage” to me means a relationship between a woman and a man. But what do I care if two gay people want to get married and call their relationship a “marriage”? The problem with “marriage” in general comes from the state sponsorship of it. When I talk to Christians – I always say … “Doesn’t GOD sanctify marriage?” They will always reply affirmatively. “Then why do you need the STATE – an instrument of MAN – to approve what God has sanctified?” God – is REDUCED in this manner and many Christians will scratch their chins and say … “Hmmm … you have a point here.”
You can’t force horsepills of political poison down people’s throats. You have to appeal to their interests and demonstrate that changing their view benefits them.
Sadly – in this day and age – I have ZERO confidence that this approach will actually work. The two sides won’t sit down and talk and seem intent on punishing each other. We’re headed for violent conflict.
Festina Lente
It’s not often that a columnist will reveal the pressures under which they act; the need to be aware of an editorial policy, no matter how poorly annunciated, and the need to modify (mollify?) their comments. And yet, there is the “reading between the lines” that some are still capable of; I have the feeling that, in the past, there were politicians who were masters of this. You did have to read them carefully, but if you did, you saw what their real intentions were.
So, having introduced “illegal immigrants (another column for another time) and sex workers…” I’d really like to think this is a “hook” and that Tina Dupuy will follow up with another column explaining what this really means; you explain that she really does “get it”. She has hinted at this with “another column for another time”, and it would be good to think that she’s been preparing her editors and readers for what’s to come. Sometimes, too much truth all at once is a step too far for many; better to prepare the soil, metaphorically, before the seeds are planted.
Man oh Man! You college people are one of the reasons I read this blog! I learn new shit every day from you guys. I don’t get this at work – all the guys I work with are knuckle-draggers like me. Today my intellectual “chore” was trying to figure why, in H-E-Double Toothpicks I need to have a COOLING system on a piece of equipment that I ONLY USE in the Arctic! LOL
But yeah – I googled that saying and it’s AWESOME …
In a nutshell – what they taught me to do on submarines. And I saw it again when I ran with the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the surface navy? Hehe – not so much.
I don’t want you to feel unappreciated, Korhomme – yeah we disagree occasionally – maybe more than occasionally – but there are times you “school” the shit out of me!
Ah, krulac, I’d guess that we could have powerful craic over a few jars; complete agreement only leads to utterly boring, sterile discussion!
As for Festina Lente I’m hoping I’ve formatted it correctly this time; the literal translation is ‘make haste slowly’. It’s the motto on the family crest over the front door of Ballymascanlon House. I first saw it many, many years ago when we made ‘cross-border’ forays down into the south of Ireland, at a time when there was a ‘currency union’ and the notes and coins were interchangeable. It was even than an hotel; today the grounds have been turned into a golf course (yuk!). A country house such as this in Ireland means that it belonged to members of the Anglo-Irish establishment, the ‘occupiers’. The memory of the motto has stayed with me ever since. I’d post a photo of it, but given my cock up with the formatting above, I’m rather reluctant.
Sex slavery exists, even in the good old USA. But most of the incidents I hear about seem to be cases like those of Elizabeth Smart, or the three women in Cleveland. Sex slavery for prostitution exists as well, we apparently had a case involving a 15-year old juvenile here in the Denver metro area about two months ago. But they are rare…like a winning Powerball ticket.