Ok, so earlier I upset maybe everybody with my total breakdown over customers of prostitutes. And seriously, I just got this sort of cognitive blank spot like the ones you get where there’s a word you’ve said all your life and then one day you say it and you hear the sounds of this word coming out of your mouth, maybe even a beloved word, and it just. Doesn’t. Make. Any sense. And there was this whole unreeling-through-history sensation (sort of like that scene in Trainspotting where the Ewan McGregor character overdoses and sinks into this square red-satin hole) where I thought about the whole virgin/whore dichotomy that’s plagued women for all these millennia and it hit me with all the ways it’s hit men as well, and I just freaked out.
Carefully reading everyone’s comments, and having some time to sleep on it, and continuing to try to integrate what amounts to a pretty unsettling chain of ideas has been really helpful. Helpful enough that I think I might be able to clarify all the gallons of virtual ink I’ve spilled in the last two prostitution-related posts into one semi-simple point:
People who think the “joke” that “you can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think” have a serious problem. The problem isn’t prostitution, though, it’s people who think that “joke” is funny.
There. That’s the point. I just didn’t get it.
And no, obviously not all customers feel that way (though quite a few prostitute’s customers I’ve dealt with over the years seem to have felt that way.) And plenty of people who aren’t customers believe the “joke” or think it’s funny, including anti-prostitution crusaders who can’t conceive of prostitutes as anything but stupid, and uncultured.
Now sure, there are other considerations — for instance I wonder if the time, money, and effort spent trying to “root out” prostitution wouldn’t be better spent smashing the whole oppressively centrifugal virgin/whore dichotomy (“if you’re a woman you have to decide which you’ll be, and if you’re a man you can sort of pick one from category A and another from category B but it’s bad form to mix them”), and smashing the whole ageist/abilist/classist/monculture-monogamist/beauty-worthiness/busy-ness business that leaves people believing they have no recourse but to pay each other to do things you wouldn’t even ask your partner to do because you’d divorce them if you thought they’d say yes. And if we did that then an assertion like “you can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think” would stop being funny and, in fact, would stop making any sense at all.
And if we did do all that then you bet, then there would, could, and (who knows) maybe even should be a whole sector of sex professionals that raised no more eyebrows, and no more concerns than body workers, physicians, psychiatrists, hospitality specialists, personal trainers, or food-service professionals do no. And if so then cool! In that world you could probably sign me or my partner, since she, like me, loves to be indulged and pampered and totally respects the skill and integrity of the people who provide us with those things. But! I still think that world must grow on the decayed, composted detritus of “you can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think.” Because that sentence? That’s some kind of fucked up way of looking at women, of looking at men, of looking at the world.
Sorry for any prior confusion.
Submitted by 1980 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-02-29 14:09.
Yep. I can see how sex work could be as culturally uncomplicated as working as a barista or a builder, but it could only happen in a hypothetical other society. It sure can't happen here, not as things are and not given how people feel about women.
Submitted by 1980 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-02-29 14:26.
So, here's another shot at saying something coherent: one target in the vicinity of all that flailing is straight men who act like sex is a service (for men) that should be readily and cheaply available, and the default sexual role for women is as service providers. I imagine these men aren't all or only the clients of prostitutes, but you might think so from the type and volume of obnoxious talk they generate. (Feminist Critics was a prime example last time I went over there: there were a bunch of guys who commenting that prostitution was a natural outgrowth of men's sex drive.) And I don't know for sure, but it's possible that having gorgeous people sleep with you (because you pay them) exacerbates that kind of entitlement.
If male-purchased prostitution really is normal human sexuality, then women like me are out of luck. I really am less tractable than a sex worker, from a service perspective. I don't deliver fantasy blowjobs, I don't have a fantasy body, and I don't dress up in fantasy heels and corset. I can be pretty demanding. I would really really like this to be OK, and I would like my desires to get some place in the sexual economy. This is not a call for the elimination of prostitution, but for more depictions of sex as something other than prostitution.
I'd like to think that prostitution could be destigmatized without being the model for human sexual relationships. Right now I feel like male-purchased prostitution is the model and people treat it as deeply bad and wrong, so we've kind of got the worst of both worlds.
[Nicely put, P. I happen to think it's a mistake to imagine prostitution was the outgrowth since, it seems to me, there would be lots more "prostitution" and zero stigmatization of it if, say, there wasn't that whole other business about *impounding* "good" women to keep them "pure." Where "pure," by the way, means "make sure only their economically custodial male gets them pregnant." And considering that keeping women from having sex from other men (and not keeping other men from having sex with women, by the way) was and in some places *still is* a major factor in social structures. And not to head off on a tangent but I really, really, really agree with your point that a system that leaves men pursuaded that *all* sex for them must be transactional in nature is just... oppressive! --fl]
Submitted by 1980 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-02-29 14:33.
There's an extra "not" in my last sentence; it should say "people treat it as deeply and badly wrong". Anyway, another reason why ridicule for visiting a sex worker is not likely to help.
[Hey P, I cleaned up that sentence for you. Thanks. --fl]
Submitted by 1980 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-02-29 16:54.
I found it interesting to read your post, but I shook my head throughout it. Yes, what you describe happens. Yes, too many feel that way. But there are those courtesans and their companions who have an entirely different view of professional sexuality.
I have several friends who are professional courtesans. They are comfortable attending opening night at the Met, discussing East Asian literature, or performing ballet. Yes, we are always subconsciously aware of the professional part of our relationship but we are also close friends, doing all the close friend kinds of things.
I wish I had more time to reply now but I am off to work. Feel free to drop me a line and we can discuss it further.
Submitted by 1980 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-03-01 05:35.
Thanks for the interesting posts, figleaf.
I pretty much agree with you; particularly the last post. My view can be summed up as: in theory, there is nothing wrong with prostitution; in theory, communism is a good idea.
In both cases, we would have to get rid of a lot of inequality crap before any version of either could work without harming people.
Most prostitutes are drug addicts, most start working when underage. The relatively happy hooker is a tiny minority.
It's pretty interesting how the men insisting that adult women have every right to work as prostitutes seem to have no actual respect for those women...and even less for women who actually like sex and have had it with more than The Socially Approved Number Of Men, and do not require paying..."yeah maybe I could just go with the local bike if I felt horny, oh but why would I want to do that?" kind of thing.
Doing colonic irrigations...or as another example, caring for elderly people in a home, including cleaning up their poop and other degrading stuff...shouldn't be degrading, and if they were actually valued, wouldn't be.
[Hi Butterflywings! Thanks so much. Can I just take a moment, though, to gently push on the assumption that most or all prostitutes are drug-addled. It's certainly the case that substance abuse is problematic among subsistence/street prostitutes, and it's obviously the case that both the most visible and the most stereotypical sex-worker is a street prostitute, but various studies by both law-enforcement and advocacy groups suggests that street prostitution represents only 15-20% of the total pool of prostitution service providers. I bring this up not as a way of saying "well, then, if they're not addicted they must be happy hookers." Because even if prostitution was *exactly* like every other service job then, *because* it would be like any other service job, substantial numbers of workers would not be happy. Instead I bring up the addiction issue because I feel strongly that those and other images of prostitutes contribute to their stigmatization as dehumanized, lacking in any agency, and distanced from "real" people. Which, I worry, a lot, puts them at increased risk. --fl]
Submitted by 1980 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-03-01 15:00.
I know you flailed around a bit and took a lot of heat, but you helped me to have an epiphany. One of the causes of male entitlement is that many women have a strong monetary incentive to flatter men and erase their own desires. It's not just prostitutes. It's also wives whose husbands are their main source of income. And actresses posing nude on magazine covers. Even if the woman is just doing what she authentically wants to, the structure of the incentives is really questionable. And then lots of people blame the women and decide that they're gold-digging sluts without even thinking about the men holding the purse strings.
Now I have a bunch of new questions. How do you tell the difference between visiting a sex worker without being entitled and visiting a sex worker while being entitled? If you're a relatively desirable women, how do you decide when to grin and put up with entitled male behavior for your own personal safety or well-being, and when to stick your neck out?
["Even if the woman is just doing what she authentically wants to, the structure of the incentives is really questionable." Excellent way of putting it, P. *If* that's been not only the expected but the *necessary* stance of women towards men then yeah, both sides are going to have just some plain old structural resentment: men will feel entitled to something women feel they're obliged to give up. You also said "How do you tell the difference between visiting a sex worker without being entitled and visiting a sex worker while being entitled?" The good-news/bad-news answer is you can't tell, but you also don't *need* to. Social transformation in general will transform that in particular. The particular point of my outburst, by the way, was a realization that bringing contemporary attitudes towards, especially, the most at-risk, most visible prostitutes by many customers, predators and nominal "rescuers" is particularly important to that transformation in a way that merely *ending* it wouldn't. Thanks, P. --fl]
Submitted by 1980 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-03-02 19:21.
"If you're a relatively desirable women, how do you decide when to grin and put up with entitled male behavior for your own personal safety or well-being, and when to stick your neck out?"
It's a case-by-case basis, and it always sucks, and it's something women deal with every day of our lives. At a certain point, we stop thinking about it, because otherwise we'd go crazy.
Submitted by 1980 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-03-03 07:09.
"If you're a relatively desirable women, how do you decide when to grin and put up with entitled male behavior for your own personal safety or well-being, and when to stick your neck out?"
This is one reason for the giving of fake phone numbers. (I've never literally lied about my phone number, but I did once, to get away from a drunk at a party, assent to his request for a phone number and not mention to him the fact that the phone in question, since was the common phone for a student house of about forty people, needed to be rung about forty times if you expected an answer.)
Submitted by 1980 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-03-06 16:04.
Hi figleaf. Thanks for the response.
I certainly wasn't saying that *all* prostitutes are on drugs...(intersting, I read that most are; do you have links to those studies?), or that they should be ecstatically happy in their jobs before I think prostitution is OK...obviously, a lot of people don't particularly like their jobs. I also happen to think not really enjoying a job is different from suffering daily degradation and abuse (and no, I'm not saying that all prostitutes do suffer that).
It's possible to view prostitutes entirely as human beings with agency, who have every right to do what they decide with their bodies...and yet wishing that they *had* better choices than to put themselves at risk. I do see them as real people; as I said, in theory, I wish they could get paid to have sex *if they actually, genuinely want to do that as a career* and be totally safe and not stigmatised.
What you say about this attitude of objectifying prostitutes putting them in danger...exactly, that was what I meant when I said that most users of prostitutes don't in fact respect them.
[Hi Butterflywings. I apologize for sounding like I was accusing you of all that when I was making more of a general warning against that tendency. Thanks for following up. --fl]
Submitted by 1980 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-03-11 14:41.
It's a bit late (hellish couple of weeks at work) but thank you for the sensible response. I forgot for a moment to look at the big picture rather than the individual picture.
[Thank you, P! Thanks for checking back, thanks for commenting again. --fl]