When the Friend of Our Enemy Needn't Be Our Enemy

Kind of weird typing "Palfrey" or "DC Madame" into my newsreader search box and finding only "pornstitution" friendly bloggers with anything to say about her suicide by hanging in the face of a 55-year prison sentence. Sure there's that bit of a black eye about Palfrey being a woman, but you'd think there'd be a bit more celebration over the death of someone found absolutely and, worse, unrepentantly guilty of "prostituting" and "trafficking" army officers, law students, and other professional women. And there's the *other* bit of a black eye about how all her predominantly asshole customers are still alive and, well, at worst drawing six-figure Senate incomes and White House office pensions and at best suffering nothing at all. But still I'd have thought Palfrey's death would have drawn mention from *both* sides.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about, because I actually *am* ambivalent about prostitution. Unlike too many people I think prostitution *as a individual profession* (not as an *industry* as it is in, say, Nevada) should be legal and regulated the way other trades are regulated. Unlike too many other people, though, I *also* have a problem with participation in a system that so directly reinforces the "no-sex" class paradigm that says *all* heterosexual sex is asymmetrical: women want only money, men want only sex, and everything else is just haggling over the price. Which is bullshit, of course, which is why the dominant paradigm itself is bullshit.

I have this feeling that if we had a different dominant paradigm -- one that, say, held to the radical proposition that all people are people with agency and autonomy in all dimensions of life, instead of the current proposition that some people are people and pretty much everyone else is, at best, equal to those people only the same way Caligula's horse was -- then opposition to prostitution wouldn't be so fantastically bitter. Because really, if you're out there killing yourself to convince prospective partners and, hell, random guys in bars and construction sites, that your sex life isn't for sale and *doesn't have to be* if they'd just stop looking at your tits long enough to look you in the face then why the fuck would you even *want* to be gracious about someone tattooing a price list on her ass? But then *if* we had a different paradigm prostitution *would* be just another service that... probably wouldn't resemble what people do today at all. At all.

Of course today that's not where we are. We're back here in the old-fashioned 21st Century looking at the peculiar situation where anti-prostitution feminists perceive pro-prostitution feminists as betraying them by ganging up with the anti-feminist majority of the populace that says "at the end of the day all women only have sex for money, some just call what they do 'marriage.'" And where pro-prostitution feminists perceive anti-prostitution feminists as betraying them by ganging up with the anti-feminist majority of the populace that says "whores, like all women, have no, zero, none capacity for, let alone right to, sexual self-determination." It's irrelevant that both side's perceptions of the other are so wrong radar couldn't find them because those *are* the perceptions. And, consequently, with no common ground at all there is no possibility for debate. (And, also consequently, there's no possibility for anything but more of the usual, mutual vitriol.)

So now Deborah Jeane Palfrey is dead, by her own hand, after her conviction for recruiting and managing prostitutes for several thousand extremely affluent, influential, and *colossal* assholes primarily in our nation's capitol. And with her dead I think we've got a little teaching moment for both sides. I'm pretty sure the most outspoken on both sides are set in their ways but what the heck, "if the people lead, the leaders will follow" and all that.

Moment A: Palfrey was kind of a woman who worked almost entirely by herself. That's a bit of a blow to the "women are agencyless thralls" argument against prostitution. She also lived in and, evidently ran her D.C. area escort service out of, suburban California. Which sort of blows the "prostitution exists only when pimps ride herd on their victims" argument. Interview requirements on her recruiting website pretty much screened out women who weren't already in established professions or grad school, nor is there any evidence that those requirements were only for show, which sort of blows the "women become prostitutes only out of dire economic necessity" argument. So *if* one was inclined to be sympathetic towards the pro-prostitution position Palfrey's agency would be a pretty good argument for that position.

Moment B: Almost her entire adult life Palfrey was eyebrows-deep in the dominant one-way-or-another-pussy's-a-commodity ideology. Whereas some of the clients she scheduled escorts for may have been paragons of progressive pro-feminist enlightenment... the ones who've been outed, anyway, have been utter, thuggish, women-hating, woman-denigrating, woman-punishing, woman-curtailing, woman-as-commodity-purchasing, anti-feminist, skin to bone bastards who depended on the discretion of Palfrey and her employees to maintain their public positions as virtuous paragons advocating policies of chastity before marriage, fidelity within marriage, home-binding of wives, lower pay for women so they'd be obliged to *become* bound as wives, anti-choice, anti-contraception, anti-HIV-treatment, and abstinence-only-promotion as the cure for all social and medical ills. So *if* one was inclined to be sympathetic towards the anti-prostitution position Palfrey's agency would be a pretty good argument for that position.

And if you're sitting there basking in Moment A because you think the way out is "hey, my customers and/or pro-prostitution male acquaintances are absolutely cool with what I do and even more fun and more respectful than my family" too bad because you're probably absolutely right. But unless you're willing to deny that *other* customers include men like Senator David Vitters and former White-House Abstinence Ambassador Randall Tobias who manifestly *aren't* then you have to acknowledge that while you've got a good point, Moment B's position, however narrow, is legitimate.

And if you're sitting there basking in Moment B because you think the way out is "but some women are still pimped and trafficked," too bad because you're absolutely right. But if you wish to argue, the way the anti-reproductive-choice crowd does, that *all* women who seek abortions are agency-less victims of abortion doctors, then "some women" just isn't going to cut it. Which means you're going to have to acknowledge that some *aren't,* and if you acknowledge them then you're going to have to acknowledge that while you've got a good point, Moment A's position, however narrow, is legitimate.

And even if you're only grudgingly, teethgrittingly honest enough to acknowledge the other side has a point... then maybe you could begin an analysis that included *both* elements, one that recognized that *maybe* the solution lies not in perpetual attempts at mutual annihilation but agreement that maybe, just maybe *both* sides are giving comfort to the anti-feminist enemy and that maybe, just maybe, even if you can't compromise on your respective positions you might still somehow establish a kind of detente that allows you to engage with and transform the real enemy: not pro-prostitution or anti-prostitution feminists but the anti-feminism that creates and owns the matrix you've been fighting each other about all these years.

Out of respect for a contradictory human being who's no longer bound between the parentheses of birth and death, I'd like to submit this post to both the next Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy and the next Carnival Against Pornography and Prostitution because I'm pretty sure neither side can be complete without the other. (Not, obviously, that anyone is obliged to *include* my submission.)