So The Independent recently ran a piece by Catherine Murphy of Amnesty International, explaining why the organization is calling for the decriminalization of sex work.
In the comments, someone calling themselves THEMISHMISHEH offers a unique take on the issue.
And by “unique” I mean “seemingly from another planet.”
Shades of Tom Martin, huh?
I’m getting tired of Jimmy Johns exploiting my desires for sammiches, myself.
…I think you’re confusing “exploitation” with “indulgence”. Which is essentially the opposite, though not any less problematic when it is a problem.
I suppose it could be looked at as “exploiting a moral weakness inherent to some people”, except not everyone agrees that desiring sex outside of very narrow proscribed conditions (typically, while married, and only to have children) is necessarily immoral. I certainly don’t.
Sure, right, okay. I’m sure you really meant to use the generic you, for real, instead of just saying “prostitutes are exploiting the innate sexual desires of men”. Right.
Considering both are trafficked, but drugs are inanimate and aren’t alive and made to be addicting, unlike sex and humans beings, I think you really need to rethink why you even thought these two are even slightly comparable.
http://media2.giphy.com/media/12Nxp9loRy1yPC/giphy.gif
I’m looking back, this guy has been here for hours. They’re not even entertaining.
@THEMISHMISHEH,
You are accusing the sex worker of exploitation for providing a service which other people want?
Are novelists exploitative for selling stories to people who enjoy reading?
Are painters exploitative for charging people who enjoy having paint on their walls?
Are chefs exploitative for people who like their food cooked and well prepared instead of raw and basic?
Mishmisheh, there’s a reason you think sex working is exploitative and these things are not. I welcome you to think of what that is.
@Kupo
Please, elaborate.
That is a very good/clever question.
As human beings we are driven by desires. A desire for food when we are hungry, for example, drives us to satisfy our hunger and and thus provide us with the energy needed to power our internal processes, which help keep us alive. We have a desire for money. A desire for companionship, for children, a desire for achieving the highest grade in an exam perhaps. The pathway to fulfilling these desires is the issue here. This pathway determines whether the whole process is right or wrong. For example, I can get high grades in an exam thereby satisfying my desire for excellence by studying hard or by cheating. In cheating, the outcome is the same but the pathway is perverse and damaging, not only to myself but to others around me. The same applies to prostitution.
Men have an innate sexual desire for women. They can fulfil this desire by pursuing a destructive pathway such prostitution. A prostitute exploits this innate desire for financial gain. Sometimes it is not men but younger boys who are exploited by these women for money. It is, really, the worst kind of sexual exploitation.
Sexual exploitation in itself is defined as the abuse of a person by the exchange of sex for money amongst other things. One should not have to pay another human being for them to enjoy their company. It is slavery, it is exploitation of the worst kind. What blinds you people to this exploitation is your sexist ideology, which renders you blind to the obvious. It encourages you to look at the suffering of one gender and ignore the other because that is the only way you can confirm your victimhood.
MISH seems somewhat adjacent to the “vagina socialists” I’ve seen, who want women to be stripped of their rights so they are forced to marry, thereby ensuring that every man has a wife to take care of his sexual needs. From each woman according to what the man wants, to each man according to what he wants.
If both of these human beings mutually wish to enjoy each other’s company, then, sure, neither of them should have to pay the other.
If one of these human beings is not inclined to wish for the other’s company, though, then they are by no means obligated to endure it. The person who wants company is just going to have to try to find someone else.
People can sometimes persuade others to do services they would not be inclined to provide for free by paying them. This is a common element of our society, there are many people who make money by providing services. Janitorial staff, therapists, IT people, so on and so forth. While you MAY be able to find someone to clean your bathroom or listen to your problems or fix your computer for free, generally these are people who already like you or owe you a favor. The rest of the time you either take care of the problem on your own or you find someone to pay to do it. That’s the way our society works.
Out of (morbid) curiousity, what is your ideal alternative to prostitution? Do you believe that women should be obligated to have sex with men for free, on demand?
Oh God. “Men want to do something so it is up to women to take responsibility for their behaviour.” Groundbreaking. We have never ever heard this argument before.
A guy cheats on his wife with a prostitute and it ruins his marriage. Therefore, it is the prostitute’s fault. Because men’s actions are always women’s responsibility. Any “damaging” consequences due to the transaction are the fault of the prostitute because the poor, wilting, helpless man who cannot be held responsible for his actions because boners.
I thought this was at least going to be some new hot take on misogyny, but it’s literally the same argument we’ve heard since the beginning of time. Men are helpless to women’s bewitching wiles, and women are seductive succubi that control their minds for that sweet, sweet cash. Blah blah blah, I wonder what’s on TV.
GAWD what an utter assfactory.
Elaborate on what? It’s a question addressed to you.
No, it’s really, really not.
http://i.imgur.com/oyrIHeR.gif
Women also like to fuck and they go to sex workers for services as well…? Do you not know that women also like sex…?
Newsflash: You don’t need to have sex to have an orgasm. That’s what fleshlights were made for. Or even cheaper, your hand. Unless you don’t have hands but, like, I guess there’s a good thing some people are willing to jerk you off or finger you or whatever for money, amiright?
…Are you saying that paying for sex is like slavery?
Who would have thought we have gotten so wrong? Of COURSE it’s the people providing a service that are the REAL PROBLEM HERE. Just imagine if we just got rid of all the paid sex in the world, that totally will solve the problem. I mean, people won’t want sex if no one is available for it, am I right? Obviously the service existed before the demand! It’s supply and demand! No supply, no demand!
If a woman pays for sex, is she being exploited?
^ Judging from THEMISHMISHEH’s comments (how dare he have a name that shortens to Mish, our Mish is much better than him and does not deserve the slightest connection) about paying for sex being the equivalent of slavery, I suspect that he does not view women (or at least not individual women) as the ones doing the enslaving. Because slavery implies that a person is forced into performing labor for their masters, and johns don’t perform labour for sex workers; they do it for their bosses.
So it logically follows from this premise that the men are in fact enslaved to their jobs/society, and that sex workers are basically the carrot and the stick keeping the men in line.
So women can’t be exploited when they pay for sex, because women aren’t people who can be exploited. They’re just objects there to torment or reward men.
@ THEMISHMISHEH:
I’ve been thinking about what you said and running through the logic of it. I have three questions, if you please.
1) Based on what you’ve said, I understand that you believe that society should be set up in such a way as to allow all humans to achieve their desires.
How do you reconcile situations where two humans have conflicting desires? For example, I have the desire for you to apologise to WWTH, and you have the desire not to apologise to her. Which of our desires is paramount? Is it at all relevant that more people share my desire than share your desire?
2) You’ve said that you believe that men desire sex, and phrased it in the abstract sense as if sex is a fungible quantity like water. I’m a man and that’s not true of me: I desire sex from people whom I love and whom I’m dating or in a relationship with. If a stranger were to approach me in the street and suggest sex, I would say no.
Do you believe that this is the same of you and of other men? Do you also only desire sex from certain people, or is it merely the abstraction of sex that you desire?
3) Are you opposed to the concept of paying for other things that we desire, or just sex? If so, how do you work through the economics of that?
The reason I ask is that I would really, really like my own personal orbiting infrared telescope. I don’t need it in any biological sense of the word “need”, but it would be so totally cool to have and it would make me a vastly happier astrophysicist. The James Webb Telescope (the followup to Hubble) is forecast to cost $8.8bn.
If I asked NASA to make me one too, they might reasonably ask me to stump up that cash. Is this exploitative of them?
@EJ : of course it is, how can anyone have a fulfilling live without exclusive access to state-of-the-art equipment ? They also refused my supervillain lair in a volcano, citing concern about how the middle of a magma conduit isn’t a good position for a dark matter detector. The NASA is the worse !
@Ohlmann:
In fairness to NASA, they’re a space agency. Building underground lairs in volcanoes isn’t really their business.
It is, however, totally exploitative that you haven’t been given it instantly and for free! You’re male, dammit! That means the world owes you the complete, instant and free fulfillment of all your desires!
@EJ
I briefly imagined a telescope which orbits one’s person. 🙂
I just got back from a disappointing attempt to watch and photograph the perseids. Why does the weather forecast never consider cirrus clouds?
There are a lot of interesting comments. I’m very much enjoying this debate, if you can call it that.
@Kupo, weirdwoodtreehugger, ktoryx, others
That’s a good question that a number of you seem to be asking.
The majority of prosititutes are women and the majority of their ‘clients’ are men. My argument here is based on the same feminist theory regarding rape. Males get raped by women too but feminists counter this argument by saying that women are in the majority of victims and therefore this gives credence to there being a gender issue that validates the idea of there being a sexism against women. If you don’t like this mode of reasoning you shouldn’t be a feminist because most feminist theory on gender inequality is based on this premise.
If this modus operandi for making a case for sexism is good for one gender, then it should be for the other.
Feminists claim that prostitution is ‘globalised commercial sexual exploitation’ of women. The article on which I left my comment bases its entire argument for decriminalising prostitution on this premise. Apply your logic to this premise and it would refute it. Let me elaborate; women choose to do something (prostitution) and feminists want to hold men responsible for the behaviour of women.
You reinforce what I wrote in my previous comment about feminists. You look at life through a sexist keyhole that encourages you to look at one gender and disregard the other, thereby confirming your victimhood. It is the only way you can make a case for sexism. If you looked at both genders equally, if you looked at the whole picture as apposed to just one half, you would disprove the idea of sexism against women.
Let me give you a quick example. I was watching a debate on television a couple of years ago. The guest was a feminist and the host a Marxist. This lady is from a country in the middle-east, which is in the middle of a conflict at the moment and suffering great pains on many levels. The interview was about sexism against women in that particular country. The host asked the feminist to give him an example of how women ‘suffer’ sexism in that country. Her example, was that she was not allowed to ride a bicycle when she was younger whilst her brother was allowed to do that and that was her case for sexism. Its a ‘solid’ case for sexism, not being able to ride a bicycle. Now lets put that into perspective. Boys in that country as young as ten work the streets in 50 degree celsius heats risking suicide bombings and abuses of the worst kind to feed their mothers and send their sisters to school, whilst deprived that right themselves, because they were born male. To me that makes a stronger case for a matriarchy than the bicycle case does for a patriarchy. Do you see where I am going here?
If you look at the suffering of both genders equally, apply the same standards and critique to both, you will totally refute the idea of feminism that of patriarchy and social and cultural sexism.
@Kupo
No? Lets have a look at how feminists define sexual exploitation.
Sexual exploitation as it is defined by Professor Donna M. Hughes Chair of the Women’s Studies Program at the University of Rhode Island is:
“A practice by which a person achieves sexual gratification, financial gain or advancement through the abuse or exploitation of a person’s sexuality…”
This is the same definition for sexual exploitation used by feminist organisations worldwide. Organisations like the Women’s Support Project, a ‘women’s rights’ advocacy group based in the UK.
This is the very same definition of prostitution as we have discussed it so far, in that prostitution is achieving financial gain through the exploitation of a person’s sexuality. According to the definition of feminism, prostitution is sexual exploitation of men. Feminism, in its hypocrisy and utter absurdity refutes itself. All you have to do is just open your eyes and think outside that box in which you are placed by this warped ideology.
@EJ
I have no idea how you came to this understanding. It is not even remotely close to what we are chatting about. So, the answer to your first question is an unequivocal ‘no’.
With regards to desires we were debating this question
My argument was that the pathway to attaining certain desires determines wether the outcome is evil or virtuous. Please, refer to my reply to kupo (yesterday at 10:48pm) for a more in depth rebuttal.
Your interpretation of my comments is extremely perplexing. It almost feels like you are purposely misinterpreting my comments in an effort, perhaps, to mold them into a form that is more manageable, a form that is more agreeable with your stereotypes of people who don’t agree with your ‘ideology’…I don’t know.
I am referring to the INNATE biological attraction that men have for women. I was very careful in calling it an ‘innate’ quality so as to make it clear that I am referring to the sexual, biological attraction that males have towards females, which prostitutes exploit, in vulnerable men, for financial gain.
3) Are you opposed to the concept of paying for other things that we desire, or just sex? If so, how do you work through the economics of that?
This isn’t an answer. When a man is a victim of rape, feminists still call it rape. No hedging or anything. So, if a woman pays for sex, is she being exploited? Yes or no. Simple question.
I am so not surprised you’ve completely ignored the existence of gay and asexual men. That’s some fine men’s rightsing you’re doing there!
I’d address more of your “points” but I have to go be exploited by the internet. It’s going to oppress me by fulfilling my innate desire to watch the Olympic trampoline competition.
Antifeminism in a rather verbose nutshell: Men actively prevent women from doing X and then spend the rest of eternity whining about having to do X themselves.
men: *prohibit women from getting loans*
also men: *complain about being held accountable for debts accrued by their wives*
men: *refuse to let women serve in armed forces*
also men: *complain that men die in combat disproportionately*
men: *insist on paying the bill on a date*
also men: *complain about being expected to pay the bill on a date*
Dude, weak. Please tell me you don’t also claim to be more rational than feminists? That would just be sad.
Despite the fact that this is looking more and more like simple bad faith, I’m going to respond to one part of that for the sake of lurkers.
Women are not a fungible commodity. You cannot simply say “men are innately biologically attracted to women” because that’s a grotesque simplification. Some men are not attracted to women at all. Many men are attracted to some particular subset of women; the specifics differ from man to man. For example, at the moment the list of women I am attracted to consists mostly of “my significant other.”
This community is full of awesome women whom I am proud to call friends. They are extremely admirable people. They are not my significant other and so I am not attracted to them, regardless of the assertion that men are attracted to women in some biological-magnetism sense.
At the moment, my significant other in Paris and I am in London, and therefore I can’t have sex with her. Nonetheless, I am not going out and sleeping with someone else because, as mentioned above, women are not fungible. Right now, I am happiest sleeping alone.
This is true for most men that I know.
If you can link me to a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal which shows that I and the men I know are anomalous, then I’m happy to concede the point. Otherwise, I’m going to suggest that you’re simply extrapolating your own extremely low standards to the whole of my gender, which is (amidst other things) downright misandric of you.
(By the way, I’m a scientist by training. I’m familiar with what it feels like to talk to an expert and what it feels like to talk to a charlatan. Experts tend to be very happy to cite studies, to quote figures, to be enthusiastic to educate others, and to show humility when they deal with matters they don’t know about. Charlatans tend not to do these things. If you say something like “do your own googling” or “I’m not your research assistant” then it’s very clear to everyone, even yourself, which one of the two you are.)
@kupo:
Because cirrus clouds hate us. They resent the fact that we hairless monkeys can fly higher than them, and they’ve never forgiven us for that.
The Perseids were pretty though. Kudos to you for going out to look at them! There are some awesome pictures of them on instagram and twitter.
@weirwoodtreehugger
You misunderstood what I wrote.
1. Whether or not feminists recognise rape of men for its evil, isn’t my point.
Let me break it down for you. Feminists claim rape to be a case for sexism against women because the majority of the perps are male whilst the majority of victims are female.
Feminists say that rape is mostly perpetrated against women by men. This according to feminism is a case for sexism. I use a similar argument for prostitution. If you think its wrong and nonsensical then you think feminism’s arguments for the sexism of rape is wrong and nonsensical.
Yes! men who prostitute themselves to women are sexually exploiting them…but apply your feminist logic regarding rape to this argument. Men who prostitute themselves to women are a non-existent minority. The majority of prostitutes are female and the majority of their ‘clients’ are male. There is a clear gender bias here where men are being victimised by women.
2. The vast majority of sane people regard rape of men by women as something heinous and despicable…but feminist organisations in ‘Israel’ disagree. They have successfully campaigned to cancel laws in that country of charging women who rape men, of rape. This is what they had to say about this issue
“The law treats men and women as being equal when it is obvious that in these matters, the men are the stronger ones.”
This how much nonsense and hypocrisy you have in feminism. Here she is actually saying that the law treats men and women as equals and that it should not do that…it speaks for what feminism is all about. It is not about equality. It is about female privilege and superiority. It’s about giving women special treatment.
Men are physically stronger than women and so therefore a woman cannot rape a man…this is, in part, their case. They were successful in cancelling laws that would charge women of raping men from being passed. A woman can rape a man in ‘Israel’ and not be charged with the crime of rape, thanks to feminist organisations.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Womens-groups-Cancel-law-charging-women-with-rape
These are the fruits of your destructive, hypocritical, deceptive, evil, mysandric, sexist ideology.
The bulk of prostitution involves female prostitutes exploiting the innate sexuality of male ‘clients’.
That’s not really what feminists claim (at least not the vast majority). Rape is not in and of itself sexism. Rape culture is misogynistic though. I’m surprised an intellectual giant such as yourself cannot grasp the distinction. It’s not even that subtle of a distinction.
Can you please learn to read for comprehension? I was responding to your claim that men have an innate biological attraction to women. I know you’re weirdly obsessed with sex workers, but not everything in the world goes back to them.
While I personally agree that being made to penetrate should count as rape, you are being very disingenuous here. The article was specifically about made to penetrate rape. Your own source states that if a woman sodomizes a man without his consent, that was and still is rape in the eyes of the law.
@THEMISHMISHEH
I’M GOING TO HAVE TO AGREE WITH YOU THERE, CAPSLOCK GUY.
THE CONDUCT OF FEMINISTS IS AN INSPIRATION TO ME, AND IT REFLECTS FEMINISTS’ VALUES: EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY, PEACE, AND LOVE.
From that article that the troll linked:
…Is this just written incredibly poorly, or is this proposal basically saying that any woman who makes it possible or causes a person to engage in sexual activity should be charged with a crime? Including fully consensual sexual activities?
I’m opening a book on whether or not those scare quotes are a coded indication that our guest doesn’t recognise the state of Israel.
Any takers?