Chelsea Girl of Pretty Dumb things has a nice meditation on the difference between stripping, which she once did for a living, and prostitution, which she did not do for a living and felt mostly fairly self-righteous about it…

Which is, I have to say, crazy. I have known a handful of women who have spent time escorting. I like them. They have been, without exception, smart, creative, articulate and interesting. Why would I need so desperately to define myself against them and their one-time profession? What purpose does it serve me? Why, in short, does it make me feel better about myself? I still don’t have a succinct response.

I do know that all of this elliptical solipsism has made me realize this: there is, in fact, nothing at all intrinsically wrong with being a fucking whore. There may be problems attached to it—not everyone can do it without suffering emotional scars, as the College Callgirl has recently written. Not everyone does it free from coercion or drugs or fear or any of the many nefariousnesses that surround prostitution. Few people, I suspect, choose to go into prostitution without pressing financial need, but I could be wrong. That could be the vestiges of my preconceptions talking.

I suspect that there will be a chick-and-egg relationship between whoredom and acceptance of it. Prostitution probably won’t be treated with the kind of legal and social understanding it deserves until people see that there’s not much wrong with being a whore, and people won’t see that there’s not much wrong with being a whore until whoring gets the kind of legal and social understanding it deserves. I realize here that I’m conflating all the flavors of prostitution into one flat pancake, and that this conflation is problematic. We as a culture seem to have more compassion but less tolerance for streetwalkers, while we have less compassion and more tolerance for escorts, for example, and that’s a class thing, and it’s a problem. I am, for brevity’s sake, lumping all prostitution into one indiscreet bundle. Whatever the kind of prostitution, I suspect there’s a catch-22 relationship in effect in terms of public perception. It’s a shame.

I suspect, though, that as the Internet has changed so much, so quickly, it will change this matter too. For it has changed me. Reading the writing of women sex-workers I don’t know, as well as meeting a few of them, has made me confront my own hypocritical attitudes. And that’s a good thing.

No one—whore, or not, or something somewhere in between—wants to be a fucking hypocrite.

The rest of her post is just as well written and just as well reasoned. Click here to read the rest.

Like Chelsea Girl the prostitutes I’ve met socially are no more hearts-of-gold than crack ‘hos than moonlighting stockbrokers of myth and legend. Instead they’ve struck me pretty consistently as people. Other than long or short term career choices they’re just not much different from most other people from their demographic backgrounds. Certainly pleasant enough people, no more or less so than anyone else.

So for me, like she, I think the profession of prostitution is circularly stigmatized — bad because it’s bad because… well… only whores do it. And that’s sort of stupid.

A problem I do have with prostitution is the customers. Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, vivisecting a right-wing tool for whining “How the hell did sex get put on the f—ing left? Really, since when are centerfolds images of cultural and political leftism,” puts the issue front and center.

It’s almost as if women aren’t rights-bearing people worth mentioning, just warm, inviting holes that could be available for purchase if it weren’t for those damn anti-prostitution laws.

Way more context for the quote here.

There was a line in one of the early episodes of the Brit comedy Absolutely Fabulous – Complete Series 1-3 where [mumble mumble] tells her daughter she simply can’t pay attention because “Mommy needs to go to her colonics appointment.” To which the daughter replies “You just don’t go poopie like common people do.” And that summarizes my dismay with prostitution customers as well.

There’s nothing wrong with getting colonic hydrotherapy so you don’t have to poop. Similarly there’s nothing wrong with bolting food out of the pot over the sink and calling it “fuel.” And similarly there’s nothing wrong with hiring someone to increase men’s dopamine and other sex-related neurotransmitters (strippers) or increace the neurotransmitters and extract their semen for them either (prostitutes.) But what’s weird is that a lot of people grow up thinking any of the above examples is not like the other one when, in fact, they’re all of a piece.

Well, except for the part where we have more respect for people who vaccum other people’s anuses with soapy hoses for money than for prostitutes. Or the part where we tend to feel more sorry for men who eat over the sink than for those who hire strippers or prostitutes. Or the part where we balk at women extracting semen for cash but not boxing up food to be eaten over the sink. Ok, ok, perhaps I digress…

My real issue with prostitution, I guess I’m trying to say, is that it just wouldn’t exist, or wouldn’t exist in any recognizable form, if men didn’t have this expectation that women’s sexuality is available only through leverage since they have no innate sexual feelings of their own. Or the daft notion that women who enjoy sex as much as men do aren’t the norm or, worse, aren’t “good girls.”

But inside my objection there’s no room for objecting to women who choose that line of work, nor room for a line distinguishing them from women, or men, who provide any of the other services mentioned above. If there’s a problem, they’re not the problem.