American Chronicle: Are Prostitutes Human? — Since we are thematically discussing all things Las Vegas I thought I’d run this angry rant by an ex-prostitute who seems angry at the world because of something (we are never really told) that happened to her. The long-winded rant gets old fast and ended for me when she said, “Prostitution is a particularly dreadful form of rape, by the way, Ms. Marrin. Any time the man’s pleasure matters and the woman’s is negligible, we have rape.” This is an incredibly callous and horrid attitude since it does not account for mutual agreement, fake orgasms, pity sex or anything else for that matter. Hell, by this woman’s sick perspective, some poor bastard who suffers from premature ejaculation is a rapist by definition. That comment alone weakened any standing the woman had in dictating morality. The entire rant sounds like something from S,C.U.M. and that creep Valerie Solanas. Still, there are some unusual points in the essay I’ve never heard before. That said, the woman is an obvious out-and-out man-hater who needs help. I bet Vegas is full of these women. (The tie-in!)
The recent murder of five prostitutes in Ipswich, a small port town in England, prompted varying responses in the British press. As I followed these articles, I became increasingly annoyed. As an ex-prostitute, I found myself resenting all these journalists making easy, specious pronouncements upon a subject they know nothing about. A ‘popular’ view, supposedly liberal and open-minded, on their part, was the advocating of legal brothels to ‘protect’ the women. As I read their views on this topic, I grew from being merely annoyed to deeply offended and angry.
Chrikey, John C., this psycho woman makes Andrea Dworkin at her manhating worst sound like Mae West…
Now, how long ’til the Bible-thumping dictators of everyone else’s morals adopt her as a mascot?
Looks like a bit of self-loathing going on there. Bad carreer move babe.
She just needs someone to cheer her up. Here’s a joke she’d probably enjoy:
Q: what do you say to a woman with two black eyes?
A: Nothing. You already told her twice.
I wouldn’t let her writings get to you, it is obvious that she is suffers from a mental illness (more likely, multiple instances of many cognitive disorders). Further, it is hard to take her seriously given that she comes across as an immature, young girl (and not a woman). A person can only read so much hate before logical arguments become illogical and (more troubling is that her thoughts lacked a central focus and were for the most part “mad” ramblings. To bad really, just a waste of another life. Maybe with the right structure and education she might have actually been someone (kind of the way I view most members of hate groups and extreme religious groups).
Hate literature is unforgiveable. Pity the man who received this book as a Christmas present.
Let’s face it, little girls don’t aspire to be hookers. Usually it’s circumstance or addiction that leads them there. I’m not familiar with a $1K a pop Vegas call girl, but I do see pathetic drug addicts working city streets. Some are victims of life that hardly stood a chance.
#3, She just needs someone to cheer her up. Here’s a joke she’d probably enjoy:
Q: what do you say to a woman with two black eyes?
A: Nothing. You already told her twice.
Comment by venom monger — 1/16/2007 @ 1:50 pm
Sometimes, some people, just have no sense of what is right. I’m not talking Political Correctness. I’m talking about totally insensitive, asinine, over the top, idiotic, stupid, uncaring, not funny jokes. No wonder you aren’t married.
7. I thought it was hilarious, and I’m married.
#8, Then I sympathize for your wife about the person she married. Spousal abuse isn’t funny. As someone involved in the legal system, you, of all people, should know that. Assault and / or abuse are not funny.
Would this “joke” be funny if the word “Lawyer” was inserted instead? Or “car salesman”. Or “Republican”. Of course not. Yet somehow battering a woman is funny?
Would this “joke” be funny if the word “Lawyer” was inserted instead? Or “car salesman”. Or “Republican”. Of course not. Yet somehow battering a woman is funny?
Actually, it’s equally funny no matter what “oppressed pseudo-minority” you substitute in there. It’s funny BECAUSE it’s offensive, not in spite of it.
What makes you think I’m not married?
I feel equally as sorry for the people who have to (or ever have) pay for sex…
Then again.. it’s tough to argue against supply and demand
I bet she is a feminist
C’mon, Fusion, it’s a joke, fer Chrissakes.
Laughing at something ≠ endorsing the action portrayed.
A man was at the country club for his weekly round of golf. He began his round with an eagle on the first hole and a birdie on the second. On the third hole he had just scored his first ever hole-in-one when his cell
phone rang.
It was a doctor notifying him that his wife had just been in a terrible accident and was in critical condition and in the ICU. The man told the doctor to inform his wife where he was and that the he’d be there as soon as possible.
As he hung up he realized he was leaving what was shaping up to be his best ever round of golf. He decided to get in a couple of more holes before heading to the hospital. However he ended up playing all eighteen, finishing his round shooting a 61, shattering the club record by five strokes and beating his best game by more than 10.
He was jubilant…. then he remembered his wife. Feeling guilty he dashed to the hospital. He saw the doctor in the corridor and asked about his wife’s condition. The doctor glared at him and shouted, “You went ahead and finished your round of golf didn’t you! “I hope you’re proud of yourself! While you were out for the past Four hours enjoying yourself at the country club your wife has been languishing in the ICU! It’s just as well you went ahead and finished that round because it will be more than likely your last!” “For the rest of her life she will require ’round the clock care. And you’ll be her caregiver!” The man was feeling so guilty he broke down and sobbed. The doctor slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Ahh, I’m just fucking with you. She’s dead. So, what’d you shoot?”
Wow, you don’t want anyone convincing people that prostitution is bad. I’m shocked!
I like to play a little game by myself, of reading thought the dvorak.org/blog rss feed, and trying to guess which stories are actually JCD’s. I saw the word ‘prostitute’, and hey…I wasn’t wrong.
#15 – Mike N:
“Wow, you don’t want anyone convincing people that prostitution is bad. I’m shocked!”
Although I’ve seen sarcasm done better, your comment seems to imply that you think so. Like to elaborate? The arguments this woman makes are fact- and Logic-Free®™.
So prostitution is “bad?” How so?
I have to say… I agree with her general sentiment.
I’ll never be a Libertarian because I believe that some behaviors are so self-destructive that they should never be legal. Heroin use, for example. Prostitution is another.
If self-destruction involved only the “self” and the self-alone, maybe I could see the Libertarian’s point, but self-destruction always has a societal cost.
Every man on the face of this planet PAYS for sex. Don’t kid yourself.
Every woman therefore COULD be considered a prostitute.
The money a guy pays to go out on dates, pay for all these expenses and then gets lucky maybe on the second or third date, unless your morals are such that you WAIT until marriage, is similar to most hookers if not expensive hookers.
And if you wait until marriage, that can be a big price tag as well, if you are lucky her family picks up the tab or part thereof (which means the daddy is paying for YOU to have sex with his daughter FUN huh?), then you are into BIG BUCKS. The average cost in the US is close to 30k. For sex???
Then it doesn’t stop there. There is a house, clothing, bills, kids, college, vacations. Yeah sure maybe she and you share these expenses, but the guy still in this idiot 5000 year old marriage racket of the man supports the woman and the woman does what he says (reality does not work that way) still is expected to be the provider.
So really if you want to pick at it, wives are the most well paid hookers on the planet, whom are STILL routinely beat and abused by their husband/pimps. So you can build an argument for ANYTHING really if you want to.
The point is that human relationships have been so overburdened by tradition and rigid adherence to social mores from a time long since past. Nothing is going to change so long as we still stand steadfast behind these anachronistic fairy tales of relationship.
Cursor_
Is Cursor_ ECA in disguise?
How about this tasteless statement. A forehand slap is abuse. A backhand slap is discipline.
#19 –
Cursor_, you’re a realist. I like that.
ALL human interaction, at one level or another, involves quid pro quo. People exchanging tangibles and intangibles is the foundation of human society.
An amusing aspect to this is the absurd hypocrisy of the right-wing, which worships at the altar of the “free market.” What could be a better example of citizens participating in a free market of supply and demand than individuals who do not have access to a sex partner, whether through inability or disinclination, fulfilling their needs by purchasing what they cannot get otherwise, from willing sellers?
It been said innumerable times, but some people just never wake up to the reality; the government has no interest or right in interposing itself into the sexual interaction of any two consenting, competent individuals. As long as (a) there is no coercion involved, and (b) both parties are competent to decide to engage in sex (i.e., both parties are sane adults), then there can be no justification whatsoever for society to intervene. The justifications used to regulate sexual behavior are religious and moral judgments wherein certain groups impose their unfounded, or at best unprovable, belief systems on those around them, who do not necessarily follow those partisan beliefs.
We have deviated so absurdly far from the simple, basic original precepts of American freedom, I literally never cease to be stunned by the utter boneheaded stupidity of people born and raised in this country who have never gotten this simple message: In America, you have the right to conduct your life as you see fit, but only up to the point where you interfere with the right of others to live their lives as they see fit.
If I want to smoke dope, hire a prostitute, worship the FSM, wager my money… these actions are my choice and neither you nor the Government have any right to interfere. They are, plainly and simply no one else’s business.
THAT is the principle this country was founded on, despite what those who would prescribe our morals may tell you. My body, my mind, my property. Keep your hands off, and I’ll do the same for you.
That’s too deep for some, alas.
21,
You forgot about the Puritan influence in the US. It was never THAT free…
Maybe before the Natives were slaughtered, but after that.
#21, The justifications used to regulate sexual behavior are religious and moral judgments wherein certain groups impose their unfounded, or at best unprovable, belief systems on those around them,
Agreed for the most part, such as when sex is between two competent and consenting adults.
We have deviated so absurdly far from the simple, basic original precepts of American (sp) freedom, I literally never cease to be stunned by the utter boneheaded stupidity of people born and raised in this country who have never gotten this simple message: In America, you have the right to conduct your life as you see fit, but only up to the point where you interfere with the right of others to live their lives as they see fit.
Sorry but this is where you are totally wrong. America was never built or evolved from the concept that you are free to do anything. The entire revolution was about changing Masters from the English King (and his proxies) to the American Plantation owner and business class. Slavery was even written into the Constitution. Suffrage was restricted to those “intelligent and wealthy enough” to know. The ordinary Joe in the street didn’t count for squat except as a census number to influence the number of Congressmen.
Shoot, it was only a few years after the Revolution that the Whiskey Rebellion broke out. Did you forget the Alien and Sedition Act? Did you forget that the strength and might of the “white folks” annihilated the Indians (which was integral to the cause of the revolution)?
THAT is the principle this country was founded on, despite what those who would prescribe our morals may tell you. My body, my mind, my property. Keep your hands off, and I’ll do the same for you.
I disagree. While in essence I agree, reality rules otherwise. You can’t isolate yourself from society unless you manage to escape to some backwoods cabin. Every American is a member of society. That has certain responsibilities as well as benefits and we can’t just take the benefits without honoring the responsibilities.
We don’t let people die in the streets, the germs can spread. We don’t allow people to be held in servitude (slavery) as that is not good for society. We don’t let children engage in sex because it is harmful to them. We don’t allow criminals to wreck destruction on us; we could be the next victim. In other words, we protect each other so that we might all be useful members of society.
Regulation is good until you don’t like that regulation. They can regulate the meat sold in a Supermarket. They can regulate that products like cars are safe to drive. They can regulate that physicians are competent. But damn it, don’t let them regulate my “right” to get all drunked up and drive down the highway I payed for.
BTW, Lauren, although I disagree with you, you can make a good argument.
How about, crap writing is crap writing. Gender, age, race, nationaltity, sexuality. Doesn’t matter.
For myself, hyperbole doesn’t turn my crank. Neither does exaggeration.
Sorry that got to you John. Two studies showed that 50 and 60% of the women who cried rape later admitted that they were lying. A police officer friend of mine estimates that 90% of all the alleged rapes he has been called in on were bullshit. That one in four number that feminists throw out is crap too. See this link: http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9502/sommers.html
If a woman has had one drink, that means she cannot possibly be of sound enough mind to consent to having sex and was “raped”.
The two most high profile rape cases, Kobe Bryant and the one at Duke, fell apart. The Duke case should be an all time low for an accusation of rape, but seeing as how these women can lie about being raped without repercussions, I expect the lies to continue.
I remember talking to a woman about a joke Rush Limbaugh made where a woman charged a man with rape because she wanted to stop after having consented to sex. He joked that men now needed to get consent thrust by thrust. I told a woman that joke, and she said that she believed the man charged did commit rape. I then asked her if when she is on top, did she get consent with every bounce? I am still waiting for an answer on that one.
These days whenever I hear or read of women complaing about being raped, I just think they are full of it. Way too often it is a ploy to gain attention, sympathy, or power. Women have just cried wolf way too much. Maybe when I finally see and believe a woman who cries rape who has actually been raped I will change my mind. I know it can be devastating to a woman who has been raped, but in my opinion, the great untold story is the abuse men have endured when falsely accused of rape. I cannot see a woman being raped as being worse than what those kids at Duke and their families have been put through.
#15 – Mike Novick:
I fully understand why you haven’t reponded when I asked you to clarify what you meant in implying that prostitution is “bad.” You don’t really have an answer that doesn’t involve shoving someone’s ‘morals’ down everyone else’s throat.
#28 >>The author of that rant, Valerie Solanas, was molested by her father and stepfather when she was little. No surprise there. She died at age 52, sick, broke, and alone.
The few prostitutes I’ve talked to or heard the stories of were just like this — with some sort of horrible victimization, usually sexual, in their background.
The Johns were just re-victimizing them, again and again.
It might be better if the woman got rich being a victim but, almost always, someone else makes the money and the woman dies sick, broke and alone.
Are the men who use prostitutes unaware of this or do they not care?
#31 – Greg Allen:
“The few prostitutes I’ve talked to or heard the stories of…”
Exactly and forever, this is a major flaw in reasoning that leads to all kinds of wrongful conclusions. The fallacy is, those you cite, the “few,” are not in any way a valid representative sample of all prostitutes. You haven’t heard the ones who enjoy their chosen path, or in any case, have no complaints about it – precisely because they have no complaints!
I have known more than a few. In my youth, I drove a cab in the North Miami / North Miami Beach area, where there was a fair number of strip clubs. As I worked late nights generally, I had a fair number of strippers as fares, often ferrying them from one club to another.
Some people are unaware that stripping and hooking overlap to a degree (at least in places there IS stripping). It’s not so much that strippers are whores, cause many aren’t – but a number of whores strip, not least because it’s a very effective form of advertising,
Anyway, these girls ran a wide gamut of lifestyles, from exhibitionists to whores to students paying their way through school to perfectly nice girls who liked the easy money. Virtually none had pimps or worked in a house, they were lower-level call girls as opposed to street whores, so there weren’t many hard-drug users or alcoholics among them, although the proportion of those were admittedly higher than in the gen pop.
A number had some hair-raising tales of misadventures with bad guys, and with the cops. But they were subject to little or none of the evils that this loony woman claims, insanely, that ALL prostitutes suffer. Not even most do (in most of the First World, anyway).
What I want to point out is, virtually all the evils described regarding prostitution are consequents of the underground nature of the profession, operating almost everywhere in violation of the law.
As with all the victimless crimes, like drug use and gambling, the law is the CAUSE of the problems, not a solution to them. Where it is accepted, the law protects them from abuse and victimization. Where it’s most strongly prohibited, the girls are at the mercy of pimps, slavers, abusers, because they cannot seek help from the authorities, being de jure criminals themselves.
Here in Houston we have more whores than anyplace I have ever seen, which is a good few. The streetwalkers are often mentally ill women who have fallen through the cracks of the system. They’re also very often crack addicts. They lead miserable, dangerous, demeaning, destructive lives not terribly different from those in the rant. But few of them chose to become whores, they were usually forced into it by drug dependence, poverty, broken homes, &c.
They indeed suffer, but the prostitution is a side effect and symptom of their already fucked-up lives, not the cause.
OTOH, you hear few complaints from the many girls who voluntarily chose to sell sex. And there’re plenty of them. Many strippers / hookers have 5 and 6-figure incomes, drive Vettes, M-B SLs and similar, often paid for in cash. They have posh high-rise condos, shop at Neiman-Marcus and Nordstrom, have investment portfolios. They’re not white slaves, they’re not victims.
And in the end it comes down to this: that rant is totally subjective and one-sided. The author’s experiences are unfortunate, but are likely due to her own poor life decisions. The slavery and abuse are consequences of a hypocritical, judgmental society’s disapproval and rejection and criminalization of an occupation that has always existed and always will – because it serves an eternal human need.
When a grown adult chooses to make her (or his) body available to others for monetary gain, no person or government has the right to assert control over that person’s sovereign body. The ultimate human rights come down to making your own choices, good or bad – and having the only say on the disposition of your body and sexuality.
Laws against prostitution are not only violative of human rights but the cause – either directly or indirectly – of most of the misery suffered by prostitutes. Substitute the word ‘drugs’ for ‘prostitution’ and it’s every bit as true.
“She died at age 52, sick, broke, and alone.”
As opposed to all the other people in the history of mankind who have died sick, broke and alone.