Hooker alert - they don't deserve common decency

From the winners over at the Minnesota Daily (the student newspaper at the University of Minnesota):

Prostitute Gone (Legally) Wild

Holla [the paper's editorial/talk back section] realizes that if "Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis is one thing, it's a dirtball. That said, America (and certainly disgraced American Elliot Spitzer) can find themselves behind the smut king this week. Turns out Ashley Dupre, Governor Spitzer's glitzy call-gal, dropped a ten million dollar lawsuit against Francis, claiming that she was exploited and underage when she - uhh -went wild.

First things first, does someone who made a career out of sleeping with sleazy businessmen really have any moral high ground … anywhere? Holla thinks not. Under most circumstances, pulling up your shirt and screeching "WOOO!!!" really takes a backseat to banging the governor of one of the most important states in the union. On top of THAT, it was also revealed that Francis has a video of Dupre showing an ID confirming her age and verbally consenting. Score one for the Grimester …

In an "ONLY IN AMERICA!" moment, comments from Dupre were taken from her publicist. This particular piece of advice should serve as hope for thousands of illiterate and sexy American girls: if you sleep with a married man who's important enough, you'll be famous enough to hire a publicist.

God Bless America. Holla's moral of the story/life moral to carry with you always: hookers, never try to swindle a John. Especially John's with the power to buy every minute of T.V. programming after midnight.

Complete crap. Slut shaming, anyone? Where's the outrage over Spitzer's behavior? Just condemnation for that slut who got caught.

Here's the real moral of the story: Anyone that works in the sex industry is a dirty whore and doesn't deserve legal rights, much less kindness or respect.

Contact for the MN Daily:
Letters to the Editor
letters@mndaily.com
Complaints and Corrections
errors@mndaily.com
Editorial and Opinion: 612-627-4080
opinions@mndaily.com
Front Desk: 612-627-4080

Thanks to K. Elizabeth for the heads up.

Not For Sale

From the European Women's Lobby, a documentary on prostitution, and why full legalization cannot grant women the agency they deserve in three parts:

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Like I have said before in the comments section of an earlier post, I do not support the legalization of prostitution because I feel that legal systems would not be interested in women's rights over the market demand or the privacy of the pimp or john. From stories like the D.C. Madam to the normalization of violence against sex workers, it is very clear that the American justice system is not as interested in protecting the extremely vulnerable women in the sex industry as they are demonizing them. With statistics coming out of European countries like Britain's deplorably low rape conviction rate, it looks as if my skepticism for any legal institution is well founded. Like this documentary, I think that the only solution is to criminalize buying sex and decriminalize selling sex like Sweden did. There are hundreds of trafficked women and children in Sweden, compared to the thousands elsewhere. While Sweden's solution is hardly ideal, it seems to be doing a lot of good.

So while I believe that the best policy is always legalization, and I shy away from anything that looks like morality legislation, there are simply too many human rights violations in the market of prostitution that legal systems are not equipped, or willing, to handle. The interest of protecting women from the most grievous harms trumps any right to buy sex. I have never yet seen any argument that is capable of convincing me that the sex trade is so demonstrably important that it must be allowed to flourish even if the majority of women meeting the demand for sex are raped, trafficked, abused, or coerced. As long as we live in a patriarchy unwilling to hold our agency over our own bodies above any wrongly perceived right to abuse, neglect, harm, and fuck, it is shamefully irresponsible to legitimize the deplorable conditions in which the sex trade operates.

Eww: A Rad Feminist Reads About Johns and Their "Pain", Provides Witty Commentary

Cross-posted at XXBlaze

In my long look into the sex business, I came across many primary sources on what exactly it is like to be a porn star, a prostitute, or a stripper. I felt connected to the experiences of the women I read. I felt that what they did was so normal and wrongly stigmatized. I could see myself doing what they did, hating doing what they did, and most of all, hating the people that asked them to do it. Part of letting go of my zealous relationship with the Madonna/Whore dichotomy was to stop looking at sex workers as whores, manipulative she-witches, and weak downtrodden sex objects.

What I discovered, however, from reading the first hand account of Johns was anything but empathy. I am a serial monogamist. When the inclination to stray is strong enough, I cash in my chips, break the poor guy's (and one woman's) heart, and engage in sowing my oats without being a lying sack-of-shit cheater. The thought that fucking random people would be fun is not something that I have never entertained. However, I have never understood the point of being self-destructive and letting my libido do the driving, so I do not understand the actual action of cheating.

Perhaps I am a rare and horrible imitation of humanity, but the objectification of a sexual partner does not turn my crank either. Paying someone to mimic an intimate action, which should be a gesture of mutual respect and affection, never occurred to me. I'm not a fucking kind of gal. My bullshit detector runs smoothly. I am not some pathetic slob that invents romance and respect where there is none. Chances are that if you shop for a sexual partner with all the emotion of shopping for a television set, you're not getting the best deal.

So I do not sympathize with the two primary motivations for buying sex: (1) I'm too good for monogamy and (2) sex is all about me, me, ME!

Morality in hand, I delved into Letters From Johns, a blog that features the sexploits of random johns, most of which are men. My knee jerk reaction was a feeling of intense sorrow for all of humanity. As I nit-picked through the various misogynistic woe-is-me confessions , I was struck with the thought, "okay, your intense angst is nice, but what about the other side of the equation -- isn't it quite ridiculous to do all of this introspection without once thinking about the humanity of the woman you just bought?"

Well, one sympathetic John was nice enough to make sure that the Chinese woman he purchased was not trafficked. After, of course, he climaxed. Orgasm before morals, you know:

I like Asian girls (have since I was a teen). I like their skin, their soft features, their hair. I ordered one over in the middle of the day a month ago. I was very horny, and only wanted a little talk before sex, but after fucking her, cumming on her face and helping her clean up, it's always a good time to get to know someone with the remaining part of the hour. She was straight off the boat. With Human Trafficking being the boogie man of the 21st century, I wanted to find out how she came to NYC and this line of work.

Retroactive concern does not work. I am guessing that a guy that will fuck a potential sex slave before he determines whether or not he is raping her is not very nice. The half-assed interest in her personhood does not fool me.

I also really liked the guy who was "Faithful in Every Other Sense of the Word" and very good at authoring horribly ironic titles. His reason for buying sex was not the simplification of an entire culture to attractive things to look at while fucking (see above), but because his wife had the audacity to ask for sexual satisfaction in bed:

I'm happily married, but my wife and I don't have sex nearly as often as we used to before our daughter was born, and unfortunately, it's starting to wear on me. Not only that, but when we do end up having sex, I have to do all the work, get her all worked up and then get to humpin' at her command. It's fine and everything, but sometimes it's nice to have someone focus on me, and my sexual needs and wants, for a change.

You mean like porn, right? Where the other half of the equation is nothing but a place to sheath your uncontrollable prick and tell you how much they love it when you ask them to do demeaning things with no regard for their pleasure. Oh yeah, exactly like that:

The last time I went, I got to have sex with an older (then me, she was about 38. I'm 31) Russian lady, who still occupies a warm place in my heart because she looked me in the eyes as I climaxed and genuinely seemed to be interested in my pleasure. That's what turns me on.

I am guessing that she was faking that interest. Probably because you paid her to, genius. I am also guessing that your wife would be more interested in your pleasure if you were more interested in hers. Reciprocity: it's hot. Random John B wants all the pleasure without the work. I also find it unspeakably pathetic that he is bored with his wife and has affected such a world-weary tone at the tender age of 31.

I also found the woe-is-me letters, from Johns that want our sympathy so badly:

The answer that I have [for seeking prostitutes], and that many others in this website have also provided, is rejection. Rejection, and its close associate, the loneliness that comes after it, leads many of us to believe that we are fundamentally unloveable. And for us, the prospect of trading some of our money for the affection and the satisfaction that an escort, or a masseuse, or a prostitute (you name it) can provide is not just about sex--it's more about safety, the feeling that all you have to do to keep this girl by your side is treat her right and pay her promptly.

My guess if that if you have to pay someone to fake liking you that you are generally unlikable. That is probably not anyone's fault but your own, probably because you really do not care if you are raping a trafficked woman:

My latest experience was with an escort called A. She came from the same South American country I did, a tall, dark-haired girl with a great body. She says she's in town to "learn English," which I doubted, but who cares? For an hour and fifteen minutes, I had someone listen to me wholeheartedly, rub my back, provide me with the ersatz-girlfriend that I crave for but feel that I am unable to attract, and then at the end of it all she even asked for my phone number.

"You will call me again, right?" she asks.

I would like to say that I won't. But my hour with A. felt like water washing my wounds, easing the pain of my brutal loneliness, helping me feel accepted and valued again, a feeling that I haven't felt in many, many months.

Some people say that love is priceless. Well, to those people I say, for two-hundred and seventy Canadian dollars, something quite like it is there for the taking. At least until the hour is done.

If you are such a sorry human being that you equate "something quite like love" to raping a sex slave, then you probably belong in jail or the ninth circle of hell. I am also guessing that people that find nothing more sublime that sticking their dick in a woman/object/rape victim because they are "lonely" should probably remain lonely far far away from me and the rest of civilization. The best word I can use to describe someone that only feel goods about himself because he just raped/fucked a potential trafficked sex worker is criminal. Perhaps that's why nobody wants you, even though you describe yourself as "obedient, fundamentally good man in his 20s".

Those gems came from just the first page. The blog is packed of pages and pages of people justifying the objectification of female, and a few male, prostitutes. The harder they try to make their reasons sound plausible, the sillier and more pathetic they sound. Nothing is more unspeakably disgusting than someone that avoids responsibility for their actions with appeals to their humanity while avoiding the topic of a sex worker's humanity.

If it really needed saying after that long post here it is: I am absolutely and fundamentally against prostitution. I commiserate and have nothing but empathy for those women that choose to make a living doing something so potentially dangerous. However this feeling does not extend to the other end of the equation: the Johns that profit off of the exploitation, objectification, and rape of sex workers.

The aforementioned blog does nothing to foster the sympathy for Johns. Our rage should know no limits for those who excuse death, rape, and misery with hollow excuses.

Was this really worth it?

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, recently convicted on racketeering and money laundering charges in connection to her Washington DC escort service, killed herself today.

Apparently before the trial, another woman involved with the trial, Brandy Britton, killed herself as well. (Time)

That's two deaths as a result of the high profile trial. In case you forgot, during this trial, the women who worked at the escort service were asked personal and invasive questions about sexual positions and menstruation and a navel officer was discharged as a result of her participation in the trial. What questions about sexual positions and menstruation were doing at a trial on money laundering and racketeering, I don't know.

In case you were wondering, none of the customers who used the escort service were charged or punished in anyway.

Don't worry - it's the women who worked for the service fault. After all, "when a man pays $250 for 90 minutes of time with a woman, what do most men expect?"

Daddy's Little Girl

On her show yesterday, Tyra Banks talked with women who wanted to be legal prostitutes in Nevada. One particular woman is Summer, an 18 year old wannabe porn star, and her father, who also happens to be her manager. Not only is her father her manager, he helps pick out her clothes, does her hair and gives her bikini waxes, all shown for Tyra's cameras.

He tells her, "Always make sure your make-up is right as you have to be every man's fantasy." Doesn't that imply that she has to be his fantasy as well?

The kicker is at the end of the clip, the father is dropping the daughter off at the brothel. She's crying and unsure of if she wants go and he's telling her, "The decision is made, this is what you want to do. I don’t want to sound unsympathetic but go in there and think happy thoughts." It's hard to not see the situation as coercive... I wonder growing up how much he pushed the idea on her growing up. Talk about the sexualization of children.

I'm so appalled at his behavior and I feel bad for the girl. I wonder if she wouldn't want to be a prostitute had he been a better influence in her life. Someone's going to have a lot of therapy bills, that's for sure.

And by the way, Tyra needs to get more upset about the fact that the father is practically forcing her to be a prostitute than that he's giving her bikini waxes (although that, too, is upsetting. Just focusing on what's a bigger violation).

Video at Jezebel and h/t to the F-Word.

Grand Theft Auto 4 wants you to kill hookers to get your money back

I play video games obsessively. I was probably one of the first people in my area to own a Play Station 3. I have played Rock Band with friends until three in the morning many times. If you have no idea what I am talking about, you should get the game.

However, despite its popularity, I have never really liked the Grand Theft Auto series. I thought it was pretty boring, simply because I wasn't very good at the missions and shooting up cops and jumping off buildings eventually got old, although it was funny the first several times. My male gamer friends love the series, however. They like to claim that I am just being overly sensitive because all the main characters in Grand Theft Auto are male. Although, I loved Assassin's Creed, which was extremely violent and dominated by male characters. If I held my breath waiting for video games that feature women as something other than eye candy or damsels in distress I would have to throw out most of my game collection. At the end of the day, I just got to suck it up and ignore the sexism if I want to have any fun playing video games.

Nevertheless, I simply cannot condone the sexualized violence in Grand Theft Auto 4. One of my friends went to a preview party hosted by Rockstar Games. As is typical for the gaming world, the entire party was a big sausage fest with no women in sight other than the models hired to promote the game. He reported back to say that the highlight of GTA4 was the strip clubs and buying sex. Kind of gross, but that wouldn't make me outright dislike the game. What really stuck out was that you can kill the prostitutes to get your money back. According to that friend, he said what most guys that got to play the preview set up found most enthralling was paying for demeaning sex and then shooting the prostitutes and running them over with their car. "Because it's funny," he said, "and you can also get your money back."

Very classy. I especially like how the game tries to be political by developing these elaborate back stories for fast food workers and victims of the drug war to highlight those issues. However, no word on sexualized violence and the huge problem of violence against sex workers. You can just run them over afterwards to get your money back, it's not like they have a name or purpose other than sex and then dying. From the previews I have seen around the internet, it seems like Rockstar's newest contribution has no other purpose for the women in "Liberty City" other than sex and death. I really like that underlying message.

I'll go on the record saying that I like violent videogames. When most people moan and groan about how video games are corrupting the youth, I think they sound a bit dull. However, I really have to go with the fundies on this one. Sexualized violence and killing hookers is not cool. Thanks for enabling the elaborate joke socialization thinks violence against women is, Rockstar. I just don't think it's at all funny.

Props to Feministing and Samhita for pointing this out.

"When a man agrees to pay $250 for 90 minutes with a woman, what do most men expect in that time?"

Slut shaming!

'D.C. Madam' sighs as jury finds her guilty

A federal jury convicted a woman Tuesday of running a prostitution service that catered to members of Washington's political elite.

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, 52, sighed as the verdict was read.

She had repeatedly denied that the escort service engaged in prostitution, saying that if any of the women engaged in sex acts for money, they did so without her knowledge.

My favorite part of the article:

Three of Palfrey's clients testified during the weeklong trial in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, explaining how they found the service, how often they called, what they were hoping for and whether they got it during their visits.

"When a man agrees to pay $250 for 90 minutes with a woman, what do most men expect in that time?" prosecutor Daniel Butler asked during closing arguments Monday. "In that context, it's pretty clear. Most men want sex."

Well, if they pay for the time, expect and want sex, of course it's a prostitution service. And by all means, those whores should put out. They're getting paid after all! I mean, if you go on a date with a girl and pay for dinner, she owes you. [/sarcasm]'

Edit: I remembered someone recently had written something good about the trial recently and just found it.

Some highlights of the article about the trial from the Washington Post include how the prosecution asked irrelevant and invasive questions about the escort's sex lives such as "Did you specifically discuss what happened when you went in the shower?" and "What would happen if you were menstruating?" and from the article, "[The prosecutor] had her talk about when she was 'aggressive' with a client, when she was 'more submissive,' when she had a difficult client ('he tried to remove the condom') and how often she got 'intimate.'"

Also, the prosecution required the naming of all of the businesses escorts, over 100 women who used to work for the company. Included in this group are a navel officer who has been put on leave after being forced to testify at the trial.

Vanessa over at Feministing has it right: We all know who should really be ashamed here.

When News Turns to Gossip

I have a big problem with most of the coverage on the Eliot Spitzer case, which has focused not on Spitzer and the way he will be prosecuted, but on interviews with famous prostitutes, the prostitution ring itself, and most awfully, his wife. I was home last night and was trying to find something on TV, and I turned on MSNBC and watched a whole segment on whether his wife should stay with him or not; I flipped to CNN and found the same story. In fact the Today Show had conservative, moral values, Dr. Laura on the show, and she had this opinion to share,

"When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings, sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like her hero, he’s very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs."

Wow. How original. Blame the woman for not making the man feel "manly" enough and giving the husband a free pass to cheat on his wife. I mean that hasn't been said since, oh, forever.

I understand that turning this into a human interest story is making readership go up, but this is just insulting to women everywhere. And nobody's business. Since when is gossip an acceptable form of news coverage (and you can't tell me saying, "Why do otherwise strong women turn to putty in these awful moments and allow themselves to be pushed onstage by political handlers—or yanked by desperate husbands?" isn't gossip.)? News outlets should be covering whether prostitution should be legal, human trafficking, the rights of sex workers, not blaming the victims of this "scandal."

Please, reputable news outlets, leave the gossip to Star Magazine and please do some decent reporting.