> I don't like markets in general. Prostitution is just a commercialization
> of another human relationship.
>
> I think Fred Lane is onto something in looking at the class nature of th
> subject.
>
> Some sleeze cruises around and picks on a poor young girl who has few
> options in life. He has the upper hand in every sense. I think that Jim
> Craven is thinking of such people.
>
> When toe-sucking Dickie Morris pays a couple of grand to his sex worker,
> she is in a position to look down on him. So he calls up Clinton to
> impress her -- and apparently did not succeed.
>
> I see different power relations working here. The woman from Berkeley
> presumably was not cruising the street, but because of her gifts of
> education and probably physical attractiveness probably was mostly in
> command of her situation.
>
> Rather than criticizing the people we should take note of the
> circumstances that make them have to do what they do.
>
> I assume that if society presented better opportunities even our happy sex
> worker might have chosen another path.
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
>
> Tel. 530-898-5321
> E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Michael,
I take it ever further. Some sleaze, who has been with many
prostitutes, gives this young girl a deadly disease along with using
her desperation to take another piece out of the heart and soul of an
already very abused person; then that sleaze also goes home and gives
the deadly disease to his wife and perhaps even creates a child born
infected with this deadly disease. This is no game or parlor debate
for the vast majority of women and young males who sell the only
commodity they feel they have to sell.
Then some self-professed "sex worker", who on the one hand professes
"solidarity" with other sex workers, while on the other hand
carefully differentiating herself as educated, articulate, free from
puritanism and certainly not like one of those low class "lumpen"
street hookers, purports to generalize from a rare and insulated
experience, levels of "freedom of choice" and "mutually beneficial
exchange" simply not found among the vast majority of women and
young males involved in prostitution. Concern for very real, brutal
and unconscionable forms and conditions of prostitution are summarily
dismissed as "puritanism", "born again virginism", parochialism or
whatever.
I'm sure that the few rich Jews of Hungry had rationalized away or
insulated themselves from knowing exactly what fate awaited the other
Jews that they helped to identify, register, collect and have
deported. What they did was generalize from their limited, insulated
and pampered experience, what might await others. Since Eichmann was
solicitous and careful in dealing with the Jewish leadership (he had
been in Palestine studying Jewish culture and religious practices),
this pampered and insulated leadership suggested that these
"cultured" and "educated" Nazis had not shown the tendencies that
would confirm the worst fears of the many Jews could be trusted to
deal with the non-privileged Jews as they had superficially dealt
with the priviliged ones. In other words, the insultated and
privileged extrapolated from their positions of insulation and
privilege to conditions in general that simply did not and could not
prevail and rationalized their insulation and relative privilege.
There were other rich Jews who knowingly and calculatingly set up
other Jews knowing full-well the fate that awaited them (One of the
main ones was assassinated in Tel Aviv after his role became public).
So of course a few hookers who attempt to sanitize it all with the
title sex worker as part of the entertainment "industry" can work
under conditions and with protections that few if any prostitutes and
sexual slaves will ever know; it is they who are the truly insulated
and even arrogant ones. To the extent to which they attempt to
generalize and rationalize from their very limited and privileged
market niches, conditions and sentiments simply not found among the
many involved in prostitution, they play the same role as the rich
Jews who purported to extrapolate and rationalize from their
insulated and privileged positions what the vast majority of Jews
would likely face when dealing with Nazis as they purport to speak to
the issue of what the vast majority of prostitutes will face and
endure under the normal conditions and with the usual clientele and
extreme risks with which they have to deal.
Jim Craven
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