screwtape wrote:Shatterface wrote:deLurch wrote:I wonder how long Elyse has been a hooker. Despite all of her prior accounts of sketchy behavior, she is so mouthy it is hard to imagine that she wouldn't be boasting of it right away and using it as a victim badge. So I am going to have to assume this is just her new low.
If sex workers were better organised they'd have expelled her long ago for bringing the profession into disrepute.
I'm sure our mechanical friend has some apposite quote from the Honest Courtesan, and more power to both of them in that regard.
With an introduction like that, and since it's apropos of some of your later comments on the world's oldest profession (though some
taxonomists dispute the claim), how could I not rise to the occasion? :-)
The Daughters of Shamhat
May 24, 2012 by Maggie McNeill
She was not ashamed to take him, she made herself naked and welcomed his eagerness; as he lay on her murmuring love she taught him the woman’s art. For six days and seven nights they lay together, for Enkidu had forgotten his home in the hills; but when he was satisfied he went back to the wild beasts. Then, when the gazelle saw him, they bolted away; when the wild creatures saw him they fled. Enkidu would have followed, but his body was bound as though with a cord, his knees gave way when he started to run, his swiftness was gone. And now the wild creatures had all fled away; Enkidu was grown weak, for wisdom was in him, and the thoughts of a man were in his heart. – The Epic of Gilgamesh (Tablet I)
While I understand why many activists and allies argue decriminalization from human rights, libertarian or harm reduction viewpoints, and indeed use these arguments myself because they are all valid ones, it’s sad that almost nobody wants to acknowledge another, equally important factor: human society needs whores every bit as much as it needs farmers, soldiers, physicians and builders, and far more than it needs preachers, academic feminists, politicians and 90% of the other control freaks who work so assiduously at rousing the rabble against us. Our ancient ancestors understood this; it’s not accidental that in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the temple harlot Shamhat is the one who tames the wild man Enkidu, turning him from a beast to a man. ....
Apparently "Maggie" was trained originally as a librarian which may explain her erudition or knowledge of ancient mythologies.
In any case, I quite agree with her argument that "human society needs whores every bit as much as it needs farmers, soldiers, physicians and builders". Reminds me of reading (FTP, Kirbmarc: all the way through!) a book on the history of prostitution in Canada titled
Red Lights on the Prairies by James H. Gray - a fascinating read for many reasons, not least because of a table listing the "Social Centers" in Winnipeg in 1910 and which included 50 Disorderly Houses, 3 Schools, and 16 Churches. Maybe arguably, seems clear that such houses of "ill-repute" played a not inconsiderable role in "How the West was Won".
But part of the many reasons why I think prostitution gets a far worse press than it deserves - as you kind of suggested in your later comments, most of the people in the profession are, or were in my experiences over several decades, rather nice people - some even possessed the proverbial "hearts of gold". :-) Quite seriously. However, I think it is really kind of criminal, a travesty of justice, that negative social attitudes to the profession tend just to give carte blanche for the demented and depraved to ride roughshod over the least protected and the most vulnerable - as in the Jack-the-Ripper case you alluded to, and as in the Green River Killer and Robert Pickton cases I've discussed elsewhere. Although I'll concede that many practitioners are periodically their own, and their profession's, worst enemy - as Stanley Baldwin suggested many years ago, "... power without responsibility — [is] the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages"; maybe not surprisingly, Maggie wasn't particularly impressed with my use of that line of argument.
screwtape wrote:But isn't there something banal about Elyse discovering her new vocation? She seems to be following an old and tired stereotype:
<snip>
and in this setting sex work is a valid and respectable career? Well, at some level I'd say it's valid as it will stave off the consequences of some of the above factors, but I don't think it can be defended as a choice, when there weren't any alternatives open to her.
That issue of coercion is, I think, one of sticky wickets associated with the profession. We all, or almost all, have to deal with "the grim meat-hook realities of life" - as some author of detective thrillers put it many years ago (John D. MacDonald if I'm not mistaken). But the choices faced by some seem to be a little more stark or fewer than those faced by others.
screwtape wrote:From what I've read, and the known circumstances, it may be that doesn't apply to Elyse. But wouldn't it just be typical of a holier-than-thou ex-Skepchick who has been forced into prostitution by an evil combination of circumstances to be the very person who tells us we must respect sex-workers' choices? I guess she has to convince herself more than us.
Karma? Though I'm somewhat curious - did Elyse actually ever look down her nose on prostitutes before she supposedly had to become one herself?