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@MmeSosostris: I agree. The use of scare quotes around the word "exploited" in the original article was rather troubling.
@Lux Alptraum: Trafficking and sexual slavery aren't "working conditions", they are trafficking and sexual slavery, and they constitute an enormous share of the "sex industry". If you think modelling is bad....
@hilikusopus: I'm sorry, is there a reason why those should be mutually exclusive? A woman should have the freedom to do whatever she wants with her body, even if its participating in a social dichotomy we personally disagree with. Not to mention, prostitutes need the safety and police protection and health care that would be within reach if prostitution were legalized.
Besides which I would say prostitution, while based on the objectification of women, really is more of a commoditization, and one that can only be cured not by keeping prostitution illegal, but by addressing this push and pull over sex that we've created in our society by pushing the "women don't want sex, all men want is sex" stereotype.
Besides which I would say prostitution, while based on the objectification of women, really is more of a commoditization, and one that can only be cured not by keeping prostitution illegal, but by addressing this push and pull over sex that we've created in our society by pushing the "women don't want sex, all men want is sex" stereotype.
@suck_it_monkeys: Amen.
@Holly: Dearest Holly, while I appreciate your regard for my feelings, I must insist: tell me what you really think.
@Lux Alptraum: The Ivy League Sex Worker is tainted as a figure of argument, I feel, because she is so often used by people who argue that prostitution is harmless.
@MmeSosostris: Oh I get it, here's where you dodge my criticism by trying to be dry and wittily sarcastic.
@hilikusopus: Well, let me put it this way: for hundreds of years, crops in America were picked by an exploited, enslaved people. Are you going to argue that picking cotton is a horrific practice that should have been stopped, or can you recognize that ending slavery and demanding that the cotton picking be done by willing people in safe, nonabusive conditions was the sensible solution?
@suck_it_monkeys: I was just going to mention this. Thanks for reading my mind, saving me from getting into the fray here!
@Holly: Lighten up! As someone else pointed out in this thread, we're only talking about scare-quoted "exploitation" here. Women should be free to do whatever they want with their bodies, and if they WANT to be assaulted by their pimps who are we to say that should be outlawed? Also, your attitude is redolent of Britney Spears' latest foray into the perfume industry.
@MmeSosostris: Prostitution, defined solely as the exchange of sex for money, is harmless. Trafficking and slavery are not. Again, there is a difference between the exchange of sex for money and the conditions under which that exchange of sex for money is conducted.
Slavery is a terrible thing, but it is not, and never has been, limited to sex work. A brief tour of American history might remind you that the cotton industry was, for many years, a horrifying practice that enslaved many people. Yet somehow no one seems to think that picking cotton is a tainted, horrific practice that's fundamentally harmful.
Slavery is a terrible thing, but it is not, and never has been, limited to sex work. A brief tour of American history might remind you that the cotton industry was, for many years, a horrifying practice that enslaved many people. Yet somehow no one seems to think that picking cotton is a tainted, horrific practice that's fundamentally harmful.
@Lux Alptraum @Holly: I'm saying that somebody realized picking cotton is a f***ing horrible existence, even if you're getting paid nickels and dimes, and that's why Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. That was tongue-in-cheek, because we're debating in analogies, so let me say that I'm sure the "mythical liberated sex worker" exists (as Mme Sosostris puts it), but I fear she is the exception to the rule, and that the lives of most sex workers are not so glamorous as the author of this post would have you believe, even the ones who do it out of a joie de vivre.
@hilikusopus: This x 1000000. We should be encouraging each other to make a living with our brains, not our vaginas.
@Holly: Thank you. These are wise words about a contentious issue.
@hilikusopus: But even if the consensual, happy sex worker is an exception to the rule, punishing her does--and historically has done--nothing to eliminate trafficking or sexual slavery. These are two separate issues, and treating them as one and the same--by virtue of the fact that they involve the exchange of sex for cash--is unhelpful. If we want to combat trafficking and slavery, we need to combat those atrocities, in all their forms, not conflate them with sex work and attack men and women who are consensually doing something that hurts no one.
@Holly: "Commoditization" sounds a little silly to me, but I do not disagree with your other points, which were laid out well. I'm not dogmatic about prostitution, in general. But you're talking about ideals, and holding this sex worker's glamorization up on a pedestal as a beacon of enlightened feminism, while the reality is right now the sex industry is a sickening cesspool (and will likely remain so).
@Lux Alptraum: Obviously, this is a contentious issue (as radmadprof points out), so a post ostensibly about a change in Craiglist's pay-for-play section became a proxy for an all out debate on prostitution in this thread. So, some issues have conflated a bit and reduced clarity. I don't disagree with your last, except to clarify that I have not and will not demonize or talk down to sex workers. I offer a reminder that, while stories like that of this worker may be alluring to many of us for various reasons, the vast majority of sex work around the world consists in trafficking and slavery at worst, trafficking and slavery of children even worserest, and, only slightly better, women "willingly" coerced or induced into an unasked for lifestyle with little hope of escape, perhaps because of economic deprivation or for some other desperate reason.
@Ultraumatic: Yeah, I'm ducking my head and making a quiet exit now. :-)
@hilikusopus: Read this, by sex workers for sex workers; actually listen to the women you feel qualified to make decisions for.
[www.spoc.ca]
[www.spoc.ca]
@switchintoglide: I won't bother to read anything if you didn't even bother to read my comments before replying to them (inexplicably in anger).
[www.midrealm.org]
[www.midrealm.org]
@hilikusopus: The cotton gin does not pick the cotton in the fields. It merely separates the fibers from the seeds. Someone still had to sit in the sun all day.
As for the mythical liberated sex worker, the issue is simple. There are some people who sell sexual favors and collect the money. There are others who sell sexual favors and someone elsetakes the money. The former are happy and successful while the latter are exploited.
There is no statistic that indicates the present ratios of successful sex workers to exploited ones. We can discuss it all we want, but such a statistic does not exist.
The only thing that's fairly certain is that the pimps and agencies exploiting sex workers can and will continue to do business as they did before Craiglist's adult section. Craiglist did not boost the amount of exploitation going on so it's removal is unlikely to have any effect on it either.
Remember this - an exploited sex worker is exploited even if she can't find work. And, should she happen to stop being profitable as a sex worker for her "owners," they will put her to work in other ways.
You don't need cotton fields to have slaves.
As for the mythical liberated sex worker, the issue is simple. There are some people who sell sexual favors and collect the money. There are others who sell sexual favors and someone elsetakes the money. The former are happy and successful while the latter are exploited.
There is no statistic that indicates the present ratios of successful sex workers to exploited ones. We can discuss it all we want, but such a statistic does not exist.
The only thing that's fairly certain is that the pimps and agencies exploiting sex workers can and will continue to do business as they did before Craiglist's adult section. Craiglist did not boost the amount of exploitation going on so it's removal is unlikely to have any effect on it either.
Remember this - an exploited sex worker is exploited even if she can't find work. And, should she happen to stop being profitable as a sex worker for her "owners," they will put her to work in other ways.
You don't need cotton fields to have slaves.
@switchintoglide: I'm hearting you for how you have handled all of these comments.
@Lux Alptraum: I'm sorry, do you realize you just called sex trafficking and Sexual SLAVERY a WORKING CONDITION???????? So, being repeatedly RAPED, diseased, impregnated, abused and OWNED is all "part of the job" when you're talking about an unwilling participant??? I hope to god and Buddha that no rape survivor is reading this rhetoric right now where you have managed to reduce involuntary sex, and the experience of a woman being ripped apart from the inside out down to her very soul, to collateral damage of the trade. Somebody get me my f*cking totem.
Eta- Sweatshop free, like American Apparel? Sweatshops are completely off topic, but this is evidence even the *painted* pictures aren't perfect. The only sex worker I do know, nice girl, educated, modelesque, drives a CLS, raped twice, beaten once, been privy to many performances that crossed the line (a hotel phone receiver) She has the same c'est la vie attitude about collateral damage as you. She has more self inflicted Stockholm syndrome than a battered wife in Jonestown. But that's just one girls story....
Eta- Sweatshop free, like American Apparel? Sweatshops are completely off topic, but this is evidence even the *painted* pictures aren't perfect. The only sex worker I do know, nice girl, educated, modelesque, drives a CLS, raped twice, beaten once, been privy to many performances that crossed the line (a hotel phone receiver) She has the same c'est la vie attitude about collateral damage as you. She has more self inflicted Stockholm syndrome than a battered wife in Jonestown. But that's just one girls story....
@OracleofGomorrah: I did not call it a working condition to belittle it or make it seem like something that's too be expected. I called it a working condition to distinguish it from the nature of the job itself. Sex work can be conducted in a wonderful, healthy environment, or it can be conducted in a horrible, abusive, forced environment--JUST LIKE ANY OTHER JOB.
Slavery and trafficking are not limited to sex work. There are a lot of industries that abuse, rape (literally, not figuratively), and otherwise destroy their workers lives. It's great that you think that sweatshops are completely off topic, but trafficked sweatshop workers who are raped, harassed on the job, develop UTIs because they're not allowed to pee (and when they are, have only incredibly unsanitary facilities) might feel differently.
Who's minimizing the issue now?
Slavery and trafficking are not limited to sex work. There are a lot of industries that abuse, rape (literally, not figuratively), and otherwise destroy their workers lives. It's great that you think that sweatshops are completely off topic, but trafficked sweatshop workers who are raped, harassed on the job, develop UTIs because they're not allowed to pee (and when they are, have only incredibly unsanitary facilities) might feel differently.
Who's minimizing the issue now?
@OracleofGomorrah: Seriously, if you're going to get up on your high horse about trafficking, you could at least do your research and realize that sex trafficking is just one variation in the horrible universe of modern slavery: [www.state.gov]
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