Sunday, July 20, 2014

Prostitution Again

There seems to be a lot of rhetoric on both sides of the abolition/de-criminalization/legalization debate. Very often this rhetoric backs up some valuable insights.

Personally, I can't see that I'd ever use the services of a prostitute. There's too much of coercion and desperation in that line of work. I can't even see myself getting a high-price "escort" (assuming I could afford it) because of the continuities between the exploited victims of human traffickers and the drug addicts and the confident, highly remunerated "lady of the evening."

(Pornography; now THAT's a different matter. For the most part they get to choose who they work with, that is, who they fuck. That's different from going on pay-dates with strangers. Obviously, some women in porn aren't where they want to be, and there a continuities between them and the porn-stars, but my aversion to high-priced prostitution isn't based on rationality. Also, I don't watch pornography that has men slapping faces, pulling hair, choking women. Seeing that makes me queasy. Truth be told, I prefer that men not be there at all. They either look like lumpy things, or scrawny shapeless things. And I always get uncomfortable that they're going to start with the slapping and the choking.)

But a lot of the people using the rhetoric are supposedly not arguing about the morality of it at all, but about the issue of safety for sex-workers, or women's rights (with abolitionists and legalizers taking up that mantle). Even if Dr. Dawg accused the abolitionists of being Miss Grundy's and the abolitionists say that prostitution is inherently about misogyny and male privilege.

Okay: Safety.

"Sooey" of  "Sooey Says" takes umbrage at blaming abolitionist feminists for the male violence that women sex-workers will be subjected to if sex-work is driven further underground by the harpercons' abolitionist new prostitution law. (Prostitution politics makes for strange bedfellows.)

Does the "Nordic Model" work? It's proponents say that it does. It's detractors disagree. (Again I ask; Why is there prostitution in the Nordic countries??? With more developed welfare states than we have?) If it works, then it works. And good. (I guess.)

I'll pick this up later. Maybe make a series of it. Because so many divergent facets are popping into my head as I type.

1 comment:

Edstock said...

"I'll pick this up later. Maybe make a series of it."

Yes please. There are so many XY morons out there, plus XX's with agendas on either side of the debate.