i was watching MSNBC's Morning Joe, and co-host Mika Brzezinski was extremely agitated about one of President Trump's interminable, mind-dulling tweets. well, so what if Trump did call Sen. Gillibrand a whore -- well, he insinuated it, did he not? -- in a tweet? the only damage done by the attempted insult was to Trump's (lack of) character, not to Sen. Gillibrand's reputation.
please stop acting like whores are society's black sheep; they're not. they perform a necessary function, in return for which they are maligned, mistreated, and morally defamed. place any anger, blame, condemnation -- the "abc's" -- on the men (and women?) who use and then abuse them; not on the women (and men) who provide the services. in these particular transactions, the customer is RARELY right -- the working girl or guy has got to be ultra-careful in an unregulated business -- because customers aren't usually so careful or conscientious ... because, since it's illegal and therefore unregulated, they don't HAVE to be careful. further, ask yourself why it's the sex worker who bears the brunt of the punishment and not the procurer, who initiates the transaction, engages in the agreed-upon activities, and then reimburses the business-person with the agreed-upon sum of money? it sounds to me like a contractual agreement between two (or more) parties, upon the completion of which a monetary exchange ensues.
let's choose to treat Trump's tweet as (1) a miserable moral reflection on his innermost soul (such as it is), (2) an unintentional compliment to Sen. Gillibrand, offered up in the form of an intentional slur, and her timely demands upon such a flawed figurehead to resign, and (3) an out-loud ask of our secular government to legalize and regulate the profession of the working girl and guy. they do indeed work hard for a living, in the worst of circumstances, and under a cloud of condemnatory religious morality that has no place in our 21st-century secular society.
the current and ongoing #MeToo Movement might be well-served by removing sex from the sole control of men. they ought to willingly relinquish their dominance over women in all workplaces and public AND private spaces. think of the positive effect this kind of sea change could have on how men and women behave towards each as we go forward in our evolutionary process.
the only reason that sex work is illegal -- which doesn't mean that it doesn't exist; only, that it's forced into a black-market Prohibition-like situation -- is because of what the religiously-inclined among us choose to define as Morality ... not only as THEIR chosen version of Morality but as EVERYONE's obligatory version of Morality.
however, atheists and other secularists don't share the traditional judeo-xtian version of Morality. in America, we have a secular Constitution and a Bill of Rights (e.g., the first Ten Amendments). our legal documents set out the THEY-SHALT-NOTS -- i.e., what "the federal government and its minions" may not do to We the People. the judeo-xtian Ten Commandments, OTOH, set out the THOU-SHALT-NOTS -- i.e., what "We the People" may not do because forbidden by somebody else's version of god instead of We the People's version of secular federal government. i say BULLSHIT to that latter interpretation.
it's past time that we bring our sex workers into the bosom of society and treat them like the human beings that they in fact ARE. they need healthcare, insurance, the protection of police officers and not their abuse and enmity. sex work should be regulated and taxed, just like any other legitimate business -- not just in Nevada! there's plenty of hypocrisy in the sex trade, but none of it is practiced by the sex workers. the hypocrisy is all shared -- by the willing clients, the courts of law who insist on punishing the innocent purveyors of products the Public is all too eager to partake of, the law enforcement officials with blinders on when they want them to be, in a completely arbitrary game of Hide-the-Salami, and so forth. in this Age of rampant STDs, why do we continue to play the fools and ignore Reality? why, Religion -- THAT's why. enough is enough, America. wake up and smell the coffee!
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That sex has a dollar value I find disgusting.
If we could but be honest about sex/nudity/ sexual orientation etc a lot of our political corruption 'scandals ' would be proven to be nonsense. Kiddie porn would not exist if not profitable. Pornhub would die without the dollar.
So the problem seems to be the insistence of putting an arbitrary value on 'love' companionship'' 'sex' and confusing that with the false values of a "dollar".
It is only the 'forbidden fruit" syndrome that encourages the exchange of dollars for sexual titillation and perversion, coupled with the greed of unregulated capitalism we have a never ending circle of abuse, creating more abuse, creating a demand for further and worse abuse.
I was making a lot more sense until the last glass of Barossa 2015 shiraz kicked in...
i both agree and disagree with you on this one. as to the MANY instances of political hypocrisy and corruption, most often but not solely involving the Family Values Party -- the Clintons (both of whom i voted for, he less reluctantly than she, because Bernie) and Sen. Conyers having all felt the sting of my disapprobation -- surely Larry Craig's "wide stance" was among the more amusing explanations. but it is very obvious that the party quick to align itself with the likes of god and religion in America is the party Most Likely To Offend. it's not a question; it's a statement: They have no shame. allow me to throw out a few non-political names: Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard, Joel Osteen of the flooded/not-flooded Lakewood Church during Houston's Hurricane Harvey, even the fictional Elmer Gantry -- why not include a fictional shepherd, when their god is just as fictional?
one of my dearest friends used to be a sex worker. she is a very astute judge of character, while i am completely lacking in common sense. consequently, she has taught me a lot. to her, the business was contractual. when both parties got what they had contracted for, everyone was happy. there's nothing wrong IMO with putting a dollar value on Contracted Sex, and there are diverse reasons for contracting sex. it's an intimate part of the hospitality industry, i guess i'd say. the sex worker is performing a service, that's all.
titillation and perversion, OTOH, exist in the minds of the participants. have you seen the 2002 film SECRETARY, starring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal, music by Angelo Badalamenti (BLUE VELVET, Twin Peaks -- my favorite film/tv composer)? the film is about a relationship that many people might find offensive -- D/s, which stands for Dominant/submissive. i discovered, during the course of watching it, that, were i, say, 30 years younger, i'd most definitely have been spanked -- i would have required it! i have to admit that i found it humorous (and i know that, in the #MeToo era, i'm not supposed to crack a smile ... but i've never been very PC) that one of Charlie Rose's accusers said that he made her sit through an explicit sex scene from SECRETARY once, when she went to his home as an intern to do some work for him. why did i find that humorous? because, it being one of my fave films, i know it backwards and forwards, and there are NO explicit sex scenes in the film. female frontal nudity, yes, but no explicit sex. and i know from explicit sex -- one of my youthful jobs was as a semi-dressed (lingerie-clad) counter salesgirl in an Adult bookstore. i've seen many of the films, from HORSE-CUNT CATHY to DEEP THROAT. they run the gamut, but what they always do, is show either a penis entering either a vagina, an ass, or a mouth, or definitely a cum shot -- often referred to as the "money" shot. SECRETARY had none of that. (HORSE-CUNT CATHY had the cum shot; nothing else was anatomically possible.)
when i was 20, i read Flaubert's highly regarded "Madame Bovary," and it pissed me off big-time. so i avenged Emma Bovary by creating Berry Evans, a young Midwestern housewife who needed some on the side. my porn writing is pretty good -- one must be adequately descriptive and have command of a sufficient number of prurient adjectives -- and i churned out half a novel before i lost both interest and energy. (one of the many stories of my life.) my mom nicknamed it "Madame Ovaries," which stuck. at the time, a friend of mine, Joe, was in Basic Training; whenever i sent him a letter, i included both a batch of home-baked brownies or cookies -- i'm an excellent baker -- but also my latest chapter. Joe later told me that my letters to him were the most popular correspondence in the barracks. i still get a kick out of that.
then, when i was 22 and living in New Orleans, i had an opportunity to appear as an extra in Brooke Shields's first major Hollywood film, PRETTY BABY; i played a two-bit whore calling for tricks, leaning over a balcony in the French Quarter ... and i was completely nude. it was just a background scene, so if you don't know where to look, you'll miss me, but working nude in the French Quarter in front of somewhat of a crowd of curious onlookers was exhilarating. back then, i was in terrific shape and a shameless exhibitionist. i knew, then, that when i was older (like, now), it would be a priceless memory. and it is.
My wife and I volunteer at an organization that advocates for "rights not rescue" for sex workers.
excellent! i like that slogan. the only thing sex workers need rescuing from is the hypocrisy and hatred of Organized Religion. between the two groups i just mentioned, the sex workers are the honest ones ... except when the hypocritical laws of our nation force them to lie for their own self-preservation. they should be permitted the respect to take pride in the service they offer and the good they accomplish, not be made to skulk around in the shadows of society.
A politician calling another politician a whore is a bit like a Volkswagen calling another Volkswagen a Ferrari, isn't it?
;)
cute :) ever since Trump's famous "shithole" comment, i've taken to calling politicians "shitholes." Trump was correct about the adjective -- shithole. he just misplaced the noun -- politicians, not citizens or countries.
it's the shithole politicians who are the pirates and thieves, robbing the citizens of generous worldwide donations and the countries of valuable resources. it's the shithole politicians who rape the people and the land, robbing them of the wherewithal to craft proper infrastructure able to withstand the furies of nature and natural disaster -- storms, floods, earthquakes, and so on.
and right here, in America, the biggest rape and robbery is currently being played out on the national stage, via the Twitter account of the shithole POTUS. infrastructure is next on his list of FOR SALE items. i'm sure his "friends" are lining up, eagerly awaiting their opportunities to bid on lucrative highways, railroads, and bridges, among other choice finery. it's nothing more than three-dimensional Monopoly to Trump ... with other peoples' money -- We the People's money -- and THAT's the only game in town for this con man. don't flatter him by ascribing a fourth dimension to him; his little hands have trouble enough with three.
I once heard a man say, “The problem with the world is that the women control the pussy.” I think that may be a more pervasive opinion than anyone would like to admit.
i'm not sure i can agree with your statement. judging by our elected officials and the laws they keep trying to get enacted, it seems to me that the majority-male legislative bodies are doing their damnedest to control all aspects of a woman's life, including the pussy.
one of the obvious ways America resembles a judeo-xtian nation most is in its relentless zeal to crush the woman under the man's thumb; hence, the ferocious backlash. today's brand of feminism seems more an object of ridicule in its febrile attempts to become relevant by manipulating the conversation, going from #MeToo to #NeverYou quicker than a Kierkegaardian leap of faith. there's something wrong with a brand of feminism whose chief proponent appears to be the hate-mongering hijabi militant, Linda Sarsour, wouldn't you say? we've gone from pussy-grabbing to emasculating in a seeming split second.
i really don't like where the national conversation seems to be trending, so i'm trying to wrest control away from the fanatics, back to the realm of We the People, the realm of the Commonweal, where there can be a modicum at least of balance instead of the increasing insanity.
men and women need to meet on a more harmonious playing field. i believe that will happen when sex workers are granted the right to do their job and granted the respect due to equality. the men must cease and desist in their attempts to control the pussy; the women must do likewise in their attempts to control the men.
Sounds like I wasn’t appropriately clear...i think too many people dislike that women have ANY control over their bodies. When he said that, I heard, “ Damned upity women...”
Edited....freaking autocorrect! Meant upity, not unity...repaired now.
SUGGESTION: turn Autocorrect to OFF -- use the Grammarly app instead. it's free, and it suggests rather than assumes. by highlighting questionable grammar and spellings, it forces you to reread your text, effectively helping you edit as you perfect your communication. plus, it allows you the option of saying "uh-uh" to a suggestion, whether in spelling or grammar. i take great liberties with my native tongue, and Grammarly is just the app for me!
PS: it's "uppity," with two "p"s. Grammarly seconded me on that :)
Too bad there’s not a utility like it for punctuation and appropriate use of capitalization. ;-)
if you're referring to moi -- i punctuate, but capitalization i reserve for emphasis, titles, and (some) names. gods and names of religions and holey books don't merit the uppercase letters. like i said, i take liberties.
I don't advocate making prostitution illegal but I do want heavy regulation to protect the people that work in the industry as well as the customers. The problem with it right now is what is wrong with all capitalist businesses and that is exploitation of workers, customers, and the environment. Could you imagine if prostitution was legal and Exxon/Mobil was the biggest player in the industry? There would be tampons and condoms everywhere you looked, they would never admit that any disease was sexually transmitted(producing pseudo-science that claimed that false fact), and they would lobby against regulations and oversight. They would scream for "self-regulation", they would have a monopoly, the customers would be overcharged, and the workers would make less than minimum wage because they would be illegal aliens.
oh, dear, that's brilliant! but i believe in a Goldilocks zone of regulation -- neither too heavy nor too light. we need to avoid making that leap from capitalism to crony capitalism. with Trump in charge, the latter choice would be the likely one. but with the base that he's cultivated, legalized prostitution would never get anywhere. the hypocrisy runs too deep.
also, sex workers run the gamut from common streetwalker to high-priced escort -- male and female. they wouldn't all be illegal aliens.
Germany , Holland, Denmark and Sweden all have well regulated sex industries.
The Brits (like everything to do with sex) pretend it doesn't exist or is only to do with 'foreigners' .
In France it is technically illegal but very public.
America...well as a christian nation, founded by pioneers who availed themselves of courtesans and prostitutes of every strip and colour. Seem to want to persuade that in movies all harlots are good hearted working girls while, in reality rounding the oppressed, disadvantaged sex workers off the streets and banging them up in chokey. Hypocrisy much?
i spent a couple of semesters at Oxford in '73-'74. the most popular play in London was "No Sex, Please; We're British." "Rocky Horror" was still only a stage musical at the time! in A'dam at that time, i was free to smoke pot in public, too.
hypocrisy makes me so mad. blatant arrogance and privilege.
Took the words right out of my mouth, Old man!
Here's a link on prostitution in Europe:
https://www.thelocal.fr/20131129/prostitution-around-europe-which-countr...
Not all countries adopt the American style of capitalism holus bolus for all things. Or anything. In fact, some of us will fight to the last one standing to prevent it. My own country, Australia, is a mixed bag on the legality of prostitution and brothels.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Australia
My own problem with the word "whore" is my deep disappointment the slut shaming it encapsulates still exists. I'm 52, and I'd hoped to bequeath a world without gender double standards to my children and grandchildren.
Yep, the lovely policy of "containment' seems to encapsulate the worst of hypocrisy and the maximum amount of corruption ...welcome to Western Australia.
I advocate for legal prostitution. Regulation can be handled through voluntary accreditation methods like JCAHO or Michelin.
@ Chimp 3
Where regulation exists it is Government based and outlaws pimps and Madames. Working hours are strictly regulated, working conditions and cleanliness monitored, medical exams compulsory with a requirement to display a current certificate of health.
Teams of Inspectors work every permitted location with the consent and support from the workers themselves.
This results in any illegal trafficking or illegal treatment of clients or workers being reported very quickly indeed.
A voluntary system would nether have the muscle nor the force of law to achieve such aims and be open to all sorts of corruption. .
Old man: I agree to some extent. But, how many hospitals are JCAHO certified and are not inspected by the state? Many! The state defers to the JCAHO inspection which is more stringent.
@ Chimp 3
Then what is in practice a State/Industry co operation model would be the best (and it seems de facto) answer.
Yes! As long as we cooperate we might evolve to a point where we do not need state interference in our sex lives. We can only fantasize!
no pimps, i agree 100%. but when it comes to Madames -- or Monsieurs -- they can be very helpful for customers and to workers alike. some people prefer working alone; some prefer working with others. an experienced MC would be a boon to the smooth running of any brothel IMO.
terminology is important. i think "MC" -- Master or Mistress of Ceremonies -- is preferable to either Madame or Monsieur. also, i've viewed the etymology of every word commonly used to mean "whorehouse." they're all offensive or insulting in some fashion. maybe there's something more appropriate in Brave New World or somewhere in Heinlein's oeuvre. suggestions, anyone?
@Miss Hollis Re: "suggestions, anyone?"
Well, if a woman/man prefers to work independently, then that is just fine. But I would agree that any establishment of multiple employees would most definitely run smoother with some type of "director" or "manager." So, how about Director of Services? Sounds very official, and it is gender neutral. Recreations Manager would be another idea. As for an esthetically pleasing/"official sounding" name for the business (for, like, tax purposes and such).... Hmmmm..... Let's seeee..... Oh, got it!
Stress Management Enterprise. Or, maybe....... Stress Management Facility? (Matter of preference, I suppose.)
That sounds quite respectable indeed! *Big Grin*
That being said, however, it should be noted that most (if not all) folks in that business tend to have a fairly decent sense of humor, meaning they would likely not be too upset with a more lewd or risqué title to their business. LOL
Director of Services is good -- if you wanted to be devilish, you could write it "D/s" -- a widely used abbreviation referring to a "Dominant/submissive relationship." in my world's sensayuma, that would tickle my funny bone. Recreation Manager sounds too cloning-oriented (re-creation ...), like Huxley's Bokanovsky Process, e.g.
i like acronyms, so i'm thinking that you could take "Stress Management Enterprise" and compress it into "StreME" -- that could appeal to the seculars; you know, the ones with a sensayuma. and that's astute of you to bring that up; i firmly believe that in order to be morally healthy -- yes, there is such a thing, i should think -- a reasonable sensayuma is essential. it demonstrates a sense of balance, of harmony with the world and one's place in it. hmmm -- maybe "SexStreME?
@Hollis Suggestions, anyone?
Relief manager
Matchmaker
Or perhaps something borrowed from the churches:
Pastor, vicar, cardinal, verger...
your suggestions are humorous. the first one reminds me of THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE (Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Broderick, Bridget Fonda, John Cusack), the second will invariably have people humming the "Matchmaker" song from Fiddler -- so those won't do, i'm afraid. listen to me -- as if i'm the ultimate arbiter! haha
the church nomenclature is definitely too dark; reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale," among many other examples of borrowing from church terminology. remember "Gott mit uns" -- it started well before the Nazis; they just showed its real secret identity.
but i really do appreciate your playing along with me in getting this planned out properly. don't stop trying, either -- there are so very many words in our versatile language. if the subject is one you enjoy, have you read any books by John McWhorter? he's currently a Professor of Linguistics at Columbia and has written a number of books on language and on race relations -- sometimes, a combination of both. several years ago, while he was still at Stanford, we enjoyed a brief e-correspondence; he agreed with me, i'm pleased to say, that Philosophy ought to be taught in public schools, K-12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McWhorter
Hollis:
No. I haven't read anything by McWhorter. He looks interesting. I'll check out what he has to say. Whorf and Sapir were still the thing when I studied linguistics back in the Middle Ages. So I'm of the view that people shape language and language shapes people. I also agree with Orwell that when we lose the words, we lose the thoughts. And that's doubleplusungood.
Nowadays I struggle to stretch the versatility of English to accommodate the even greater flexibility of Japanese in my work as a translator.
The church nomenclature is definitely too dark
I disagree. I think church language would provide a wonderful frisson of sin and sacrilege and would have the added benefit of embarrassing evil men in black dresses and dirty habits. But unlike some others here, I don't claim to be an expert on the brothel business. [LOL]
i love that you used "doubleplusungood" -- it's a word i use often. i also enjoy doing sashiko embroidery and i used to do a decent amount of origami, but i never learned Japenese, to my regret. Hannah Hart of Youtube hit My Drunk Kitchen is a Japanese speaker, too. but not on MDK.
when i was in high school, Russian was the new addition to Language Arts, so i took Russian and French. as a result, i can sprinkle my writing with French mots justes and still remember how to pronounce words in Cyrillic. i grew up surrounded by people speaking Yiddish, but that didn't take, either; although Yiddish DOES have some awesome words and incredibly colorful curse-phrases.. i'm only good at English.
i'd like to know ancient Greek and Latin, just to read them -- i used to have a killer password that was 3/4 ancient Greek, 1/4 Douglas Adams. it was such a great password, but i got hacked, anyway. but i'm as anti-theist as Hitch was, so i dislike using church terminology. i don't even like the classic SF story, "A Canticle for Leibowitz," just because of the word choices. i know it's silly, but i'm very extreme in my intense dislike of church things.
there's a line in a Kris Kristofferson song -- i don't know the song or the title, only the line; i remember it from TAXI DRIVER, when Cybill Shepard's character quotes it to DeNiro's Travis Bickle: "You're a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction." that's how i feel about theism, sometimes. sometimes i really don't like it; sometimes, the hate is overwhelming. and those evil men in the black dresses with the dirty habits? -- they're a lot like Trump; they can't be embarrassed. it's not in their DNA. even the one in the white dress -- just a little while ago, didn't he say that the abused children were lying? dark, REALLY dark.
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