Sungold of Kittywampus has a beautiful post about sex work, the recently murdered ‘sexy massage’ worker Julissa Brissman, erstwhile sex-worker prosecutor Eliot Spitzer, and social attitudes about all of the above… and all framed neatly with appropriate and still-fresh quotes by Emma Goldman from 99 years ago.
The whole post is great but a one paragraph description of her student’s discussion nicely summarizes the fallacy of pseudo-innocence: the state of believing one’s self above or removed from a problem while benefitting from or outright contributing to it. (Emphasis mine.)
About half of my students worried about the moral consequences of legalizing prostitution. They thought it sent the message that adultery was okay. They feared previously faithful men would be snared on the streets. They fretted that more women would be drawn into the profession. Most of them weren’t any more comfortable with decriminalization as a solution, even though most of them also recognized that prostitutes would be safer if they weren’t hiding from the law.
Never mind that former Governor Spitzer was able to indulge his… probably non-fetishistic, adulterous thrill of non-negotiated sexual choking only because he knew the women he hired could not report him to police, social service agencies, or even his family without facing even bigger repercussions themselves. Never mind that the escort service he booked them through may also have been complicit in providing insufficient preparation for the employees they sent to him.
And never mind that Julissa Brissman is very publicly dead only because (emphasis mine)
Prosecutors believe Markoff launched his robbery spree to finance a gambling habit and preyed on those offering erotic services because he thought they wouldn’t report the crimes.
The great thing about Sungold’s paragraph is that it can be put back into classroom discussions and essay questions with an invitation to unravel the hidden assumptions that permit “moral” concerns about sending hypothetical “messages” to trump what one would think were much deeper, and more deeply held moral concerns about protecting the lives and safety of actual people.
Submitted by 2879 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-04-26 03:09.
the trouble is getting people to see sex workers as people instead of "just whores." i almost think hitmen are higher on the social scale than sex workers are. "sure he kills people for a living, but at least he ain't a prostitute. that's REALLY low!"
i was trying to explain this to a coworker, and she responded with "yeah, i guess i see what you mean, though i would never personally be desperate enough to stoop low enough to be a prostitute."
*sighs* never mind that it's that attitude that just continues the whole dehumanization process.
[Yikes! Yeah, your coworker's attitude is what made it so easy for Philip Markoff to go ahead and murder Julissa Brissman instead of, say, run away. I mean, he *knew* she wasn't going to call the cops, but if he's like pretty much everyone else who preys on prostitutes he figured anyone able to "stoop so low" wouldn't be terribly missed. And, y'know, if it had been a flop-house or airport row instead of a fancy hotel she might not have been. Since most aren't... at least until the body count becomes to embarrassingly high to ignore. Thanks, Nekobawt. --fl]