I don’t often do sequels to previous guest columns, but I thought y’all might want to see this update from “John Seattle”; if you haven’t read his column on Seattle’s “john school” yet, you probably should before reading this one.
Last year, Maggie was very kind to publish my response to Peter Qualliotine’s STOP Exploitation classes. It was written before I had completed the series of classes; the final session ended with Qualliotine giving a pep rally-esque speech in which he asked, “Are you with me? Will you stop buying sex?” This question was met with a long, drawn out silence broken only by my giggling when I realized what had happened. At the time I felt as if I had thoroughly rejected the toxic messaging of his class, but that was not as simple as it seemed. It was Wendy Zukerman’s Science VS podcast episode entitled “Sex Addiction: Are They Faking It?” that gave me insight to the need to understand better the damaging impacts of shame. According to the podcast, the truth about sexual addiction (one of the many toxic messages Qualliotine dispenses) is that no scientific evidence supports its existence; what some believe to be sex addiction is the feeling of shame, which is why belief in “sex addiction” is strongly correlated with religious beliefs that sexuality is sinful.
The “sex addiction” myth is thus very useful for someone who is trying to shame others out of their sexuality. In a local article, Qualliotine was described as someone who “sees patronizing prostitutes as part of a continuum of…behaviors that includes sexual harassment, domestic violence, and rape.” Through psychological manipulation Qualliotine’s message is that “the core of who and what you are as a person is that of a harasser, abuser, and rapist.” What he calls “education” is actually based on sex-shaming in order to change behavior, a social conformity strategy very much like the thoroughly-discredited “conversion therapy” is supposed to “cure” gay people. And even though it doesn’t accomplish what its purveyors claim, subconsciously this toxic messaging lingers, causing emotional damage and isolation in its victims that manifest in harmful ways, such as social anxiety, and despair.
There are a lot of reasons for people to have sex, and none are wrong as long as all partners give consent and treat each other ethically. Undoing the damage caused by the lie that this is not so, that outsiders have the right to impose rules on other adults, is harder than one might think, but there are resources available; Dr. David Ley, Lola Davina, and Maggie are just a few of the writers who helped me to start the process. But the first step is to recognize the damage done by sexual shaming even in people who intellectually know better.
Well written, didn’t have to read the previous article to understand the core of the article. 👍🏻
The State involvement in this is truly frightening.
Thank you Seattle John for writing this. People need to understand how corrupt this Peter Qualliotine is and the extent to which Swanee Hunt has corrupted the Seattle prosecutor’s office.
Meanwhile, does anyone know what happened with the lawsuit that was filed over the massage-parlor arrests? And the status of the trail of those accused in the Review Board case?
Peter Qualliotine is a high school graduate entirely unqualified to understand the topic of men, sex work or anything else. He would be a nobody if not for a dog like blind worship of disgraced pseudo intellectual Melissa Farley and the financial sponsorship of authoritarian nut jobs like Swanee Hunt.
He is there because simply because Demand Abolition needed a back door way to require the Seattle prosecutors to require the arrest of john after they paid them off. No one took Peter seriously until they established that 50% of the money for each arrest goes to his organization and 50% back to law enforcement.
In a more sane time this guy would be unskilled and entirely unemployable. It’s a sign of the sex work panic that the man has a job at all.
A correction: PQ does in fact have a college degree. It’s in art.
Hence, if it weren’t for the sex work panic brought on by fanatics by Swanee Hunt, he’d actually have a productive job. Teach kindergartners to fingerpaint comes to mind.
I wouldn’t trust him with Kindergarteners.
It is sad that people will exploit unreasoning fear for profit. And frightening as well.
The art degree is a common misconception Peter likes to perpetuate.
He went to high school in New York and attended a few years of art college before dropping out.
He regularly misrepresents that he completed his degree to pander to fellow prohibitionist pseudo-intellectuals, but that is not what his CV shows. His credentials are as phony as Melissa Farley’s.
Another lie to add to his pile. Good to know.
The concept of “John School” sounds to me like the straight male equivalent of those Gay Conversion Therapy programs that are now getting banned. Why people want to change the sexuality of others is beyond me.
Anyway, my theory is that the Anti-Sex League people need an enemy. Since it’s no longer cool to bust on gays and lesbians, they’ve taken on Johns and hookers with their new scare tactics, laws, and “remedies.” And, of course, the media laps it up. In much the way we were all going to get AIDS from water fountains in the 1980s, the news people now make like every women is gonna get trafficked sooner or later.