Talking points

Melissa Gira thought she noticed a pattern behind some of the language being used by “abolitionist” folks at various blogs, as she mentioned a few posts back under You’d Think On a Blog Called Jezebel There’d Be Some Sense About Prostitution. I guess she was right.

Melissa noted this comment over on the blog Jezebel as being similar to the language coming up in some of the blog-in comments that we were seeing:

SARAHMC AT 09/19/07 03:02 PM

[…]

Amsterdam, Sweden & Germany are all changing their laws because it’s not working.To truly regulate prostitution you’d need a cop in every room, making sure there’s no abuse. You’d also need to ensure that cops respected sex workers and treated them like people; they do not.

There is no humane way to legalize and regulate the selling of human beings for the sexual gratifcation of others.

Compare this comment at Torduange’s blog:

#4 josie Says:
September 15th, 2007 at 12:37 pm

[…]

Germany, Sweden, and Amsterdam were the pioneers in trying out legalization as a solution. All are now in the process of reversing those policies. They simply found themselves swamped by the human disasters of the sex trade.

There is no humane way to sell people for sex.

And this comment at The Curvature:

unfortunately on September 15th, 2007 3:43 am

How on earth do you regulate prostitution? They tried in Amsterdam and Germany, and they are giving up and reversing their pro-prostitution laws.

You would need to have a cop sitting and watching every session of intercourse to make sure it was not abusive. What if the john slaps her? Is that a health code violation? What if he calls her a whore? Is that creating a hostile work environment? What if he wants her to talk baby talk and call him daddy, do we have automatic child abuse reporting paperwork to fill out?

How do you regulate the use of one person for another person’s sexual gratification? It’s not possible to create humane prostitution working conditions.

[…]

This can’t all be a coincidence and the above doesn’t read like it was written by the same person. So somebody in the Farley camp is actually issuing talking points to post on the blogosphere wherever the subject comes up. Taking one from the Karl Rove playbook, I guess.

Dangerous, Scary…Designing Adult Web Sites

A Web designer posted a question on a Web site forum I belong to. He has been contacted by escort services (and other adult sites) to do work. He wondered if he should accept the [tainted] jobs or not.

There are five pages of posts and I’ve copied several comments here. I found it interesting to watch the debate by people who have zero contact with the adult industry in any form (except for a couple of the posters). In fact, if I want to toss around stereotypes, I could say this debate was fueled mostly by people whose only knowledge of the adult industry is that it costs $29.95/month to access.

Speaking of Being Privileged…………….

Josie posted on this board about how we’re a privileged group who doesn’t represent all sex workers, even though none of us claim to represent all sex workers.  However, speaking of being privileged, what about Melissa Farley, whom Josie has expressed much support toward.  Unless I missed something, Josie has said nothing about Farley’s position of privilege as a women with a high level of formal education (a Ph.D); and as somebody who runs her own organization, receives grant money, has been published various times, and has been deemed by the FEDS and the media as “an expert on prostitution” even though various sex workers have expresed otherwise. 

And one more thing, Josie….. you also have access to a computer.  If we’re privileged for having access to a computer, then so are you. We don’t represent all sex workers, but neither do you and neither does Farley or any of the other prohibitionists.