The Spitzer saga (and prostitution as “work”)
[Hat tip to Kathy M]
Liberal apologists seeking to normalize Spitzer’s behavior are forced to resort to the same lies about prostitution indulged by Dershowitz. They ignore the fact that by defending men’s right to paid sex with women, they applaud the atrocious exploitation of the same sorts of market inequalities they decry when the victims are blue-collar workers.
Long duped into believing that treating the sex industry as legitimate work will foster a more “humane prostitution” while satisfying natural, male impulses, such liberals deny prostitution’s well-documented harms. In fact, the condescension that allows the confounding of prostitution with legitimate, but unpleasant labor betrays a strong bias, both against workers and against women.
Les:
So the sex workers who make those claims secretly hate themselves? I love arguments that effectively silence the people directly involved. Nothing says liberation like “shut up, I’m speaking for you.”
12 March 2008, 10:06 pmRB W/Mi:
The Sheriff of Wallstreet probably had his food doped w/ super aphrodesiacs, all these years–or sprayed often w/ it, then tempted by pimps for the elite…as the “plot” by unhappy speculators.
OR … this is all some Hollywood stunt. Eliot Spitzer in this short NOW article: http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/spitzer.html is a Progressive, superman, one of the greatest Attorney Generals of modern times! Look who is taking over for him ! His Lt. Gov an Afro American, whom is leagally blind.
Chomsky reports that the war, and the economy- in -free-fall is not of any importance in the election selections…there’s no talk of Winter Soldier. I’m hoping the world is causing CONTAINMENT of the US Imperial Power, the way the West contained the Soviet Union in the past, and the Rising Tide of SOCIALISM can be realized in our time, like on “60″s” Danes the Happiest People…no inequality, no exploitation, no plundering by bankers, speculators n politicians.
OR this world is all my own computer simulation; we each have our own matrix ( per The Daily Show” writers) ; being 100% VA, post coma; this Internet is all a delusion. It’s all ending soon — infinity doesn’t have the “have nots” nor the “have mores”…that’ll be nice.
12 March 2008, 10:26 pmStan:
Spoken like a real man, Les.
Here’s something to chew on:
Here is the link… Yeah, I changed a word or two.
Here are a couple more links:
Link 1
Link 2
Rhetorical question: If I am a white, middle-aged, Southern-US male, does that mean I cannot point out that there is such a thing as internalized oppression among, say, African Americans or women? Would that mean I am “speaking for others”? You see, I hope, where this phenotype authenticity leads, right? It’s just a gambit for an argument that is otherwise cornered. Prostitution is irrevocably and inextricably an aspect of male social power.
13 March 2008, 6:19 amProgressive Traditionalist:
Hello, Stan.
The view of prostitution as a happy, jolly workday seems to forget that things happen for a reason.
And whatever it is, what desperation could lead someone to sell their bodies like that is certainly not a pleasant thing.
And the issue of human trafficking rarely comes up. But I suppose we could confine the topic to the domestic citizen prostitutes.
13 March 2008, 9:09 amThe common denominator is exploitation.
Da' Buffalo:
The fellow I do audio transcription for did a couple of commentaries in the last few days about the Spitzer story from a ‘Hipp’ male perspective:
[March 11 2008] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: I Can’t Put My Finger On It… [giggle], But ‘Perversion’ And Politics Seem To Go Together Like Dick N’ Jane
At My Site
Or Archive.org
[March 13 2008] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Can’t ANY Of These Testosterone Driven Power Elite Males Tell The Truth About Their Unbridled Taste For Pretty Women And ‘Pussy’?
At My Site
Or Archive.org
As mainstream news media (..and not JUST news media) goes, sex sells and money laundering doesn’t, which is how Spitzers foibles were initially noted as he juggled money from bank account to bank account while procuring his pleasures through a nationwide prostitution ring.
According to my best sources (and I have friends in ‘low’ places’) there is no such thing as a $3000 dollar an hour (the media stated fee) hooker. I wonder where the money was going?
Thanks to the sexual content orientation of the US news media, we may never know.
13 March 2008, 1:10 pmDeAnander:
Class is invisible in American discourse, of course… As I’ve pointed out many times over the decades, I’m sure there are self-confident, professional, well-paid prostitutes who are not intimidated by rapacious madams and pimps and who provide only services they feel safe/comfortable offering — just like there are a handful of highly successful female couturiers leading the fashion industry, for whom working in “the garment trade” is fun, rewarding, and creative. And then there are the ordinary millions labouring in sweatshops around the world, who have very little choice and very little control over any aspect of their lives.
Then there is the question of the purpose of the industry itself… there are happy, self-confident, cheerful people delighted with their positions in the US Armed Forces, enjoying their years of service, but that doesn’t make the US military any less of a weapon of mass destruction and misery as it serves US corporate interests and delusions of world empire. As Stan points out, prostitution is an aspect of male social power, just as — say — cruise ships or SUV manufacturing are an aspect of USian (and Northern, and industrialised and Anglo) social power. A service industry exists to serve someone; relations of power are revealed by considering whom it serves and who is in service. The existence of a specialised sexual service industry, overwhelmingly staffed by females, dedicated to coddling male egos and mass-producing male orgasms, indicates a caste system at work just as surely as the existence of a specialised domestic service industry almost exclusively staffed by people of colour, cleaning the homes of whitefolks, or a specialised stoop labour sector of underpaid Hispanics picking crops for whitefolks’ tables.
Part of what the whitefolks are buying — or what the men are buying — is not only luxury but the comforting knowledge of caste superiority to the person who must perforce do a kind of work that the privileged caste would rather not do. We have no name for this double aspect of work that is not just the work of the hands, bodily labour, but the work of assuming a subservient role so that another person can feel superior. When it is deliberately chosen for strategic purposes in a hierarchy we call it “kissing ass” or “sucking up” (note the sexual overtones of these phrases) but we have no word to call out, explicitly, the kind of “work” that means acting out obedience, deference, slavishness at another person’s behest. When we call prostitutes “sex workers” as if they were secretaries or taxi drivers, we render invisible the humiliation-quotient of a day’s work, a factor that varies from one trade to another but increases as we get into the service sectors and the closer we get to old-fashioned body-service, the salaried equivalent of the domestic slaves of olden days.
An individual “worker” may be lucky and clever and find a niche in which personal risk is minimised; she may manage to establish relatively human relationships with clients. She may find a steady protector/client, or make enough money to invest wisely for security in later life. All of this is possible, just as it is possible to have a rewarding career in the armed forces; but it doesn’t change the structural facts. Individual accommodations to a racist, or a patriarchal, or an imperialist system do not prove the system benign — though they may prove how adaptable and clever human beings can be, given a little luck to start with. Nor do they erase the immiseration of the majority.
13 March 2008, 2:39 pmrootlesscosmo:
We have no name for this double aspect of work that is not just the work of the hands, bodily labour, but the work of assuming a subservient role so that another person can feel superior.
In her study of various kinds of “service” jobs (flight attendant was one) Arlie Hochschild used two terms: “emotional labor”–where the job requires that the customer be made to feel some pre-defined emotion, rather than simply supplied with a product or service like getting brakes relined–and “smilework,” since performing [sic] these jobs almost always demands maintaining a sunny demeanor. And inasmuch as no one can possibly feel that cheerful all the time, enacting cheerfulness means suppressing or concealing one’s own emotional state–an act of submission in itself.
13 March 2008, 3:15 pmpeggy:
So here is a question: Is a prostitute always a victim? Or more generally, are those who sell their bodies and minds for money always victims? We are all victims in some sense of capitalism. Some benefit financially, and others don’t. “Them thats got shall get, them thats not shall lose. So the Bible said and it still is news.”
“Got” is money, or something that can be sold for money. Body, mind, talent, land, connections.
Spitzer was got the best of, let’s face it, by a call girl. Now he’s lost his job, and she is famous. Who’s on top here? Who won?
The best thing to do is legalize prostitution. Not make solicitation a crime. Not make asking or taking money for sex a crime. Make pimping a crime. Make sexual use of unconsenting people a crime. Let sex-workers be protected by law.
14 March 2008, 3:29 amDa' Buffalo:
Spitzer “…was got the best of…” by a flock of suspicious bank fund transfers that were noted by federal authorities looking for money laundering operations.
Sex workers (like drug addicts, which the workers often are as well) are, despite the apparent wild lifestyle, the ultimate sociological conservatives. No change in their life routine is the ideal. They ARE NOT ‘whistleblowers’, or s*it-stirrers in any sense of the word, although they are wide open to coercion. They are victims when this happens, as much as the junkie who gets rode around in the back of a police car until they get sick enough to tell the police whatever they want to know despite the consequences.
14 March 2008, 9:07 amProgressive Traditionalist:
Just a few things to throw in there, additions or augmentations, or what-have-you:
DeAnander states:
[W]e render invisible the humiliation-quotient of a day’s work…
I think they probably get de-sensitized to the humiliation factor fairly quickly. But I’m sure they still feel the loss of dignity in some way. And I’m sure they carry that loss of dignity with them through their lives.
And Peggy states:
Is a prostitute always a victim? Or more generally, are those who sell their bodies and minds for money always victims? We are all victims in some sense of capitalism.
True enough. But there can be capitalism without depriving another of their dignity. It’s simply not necessary to treat a worker in an undignified manner. But there are definitely things which can rob a person of their dignity.
I don’t think the best of all possible solutions would entail the legalization of prostitution, but rather eliminate the sense of desparation and necessity that would lead a person to enter in to it.
14 March 2008, 9:27 amroy belmont:
peggy: Making things “a crime” may not be the most effective solution for serious problems. It hasn’t done much for the problems of drugs or alcohol.
14 March 2008, 1:23 pmIt’s hard to imagine a world where “sex work” becomes legal yet pimping gets outlawed. What’s maybe wrong there is the attitude toward and conception of sex to begin with. As long as the majority’s sexually ill no legislation or criminalization’s going to fix anything.
And it may be that the pathology in the exchange has a lot more to do with the elevation of money above the biological imperatives of sexual breeding. Divorcing sex from its reproductive origins, reconfiguring it as one more consumer appetite, and linking sexual success, the acquisition of desirable partners, directly to financial success - that may be where the real problem is. The emphasis on male dominance in this culture and its institutions, including religion, certainly has a lot more to do with Spitzer’s amazing hyprocrisy and its consequences than whether prostitution’s legal or semi-legal or straight up outlawed.
Charles:
We have no name for this double aspect of work that is not just the work of the hands, bodily labour, but the work of assuming a subservient role so that another person can feel superior.
^^^^
14 March 2008, 2:48 pmCB: How about wage-slaves ?
Charles:
Or specially oppressed wage-slaves.
14 March 2008, 2:48 pmY.K.:
Sociological analysis of top “tier” prostitutes:
http://www.slate.com/id/2186491
14 March 2008, 5:17 pmLinda C.:
OK, Charles - so wage-slave? I work for a company that has one of the highest pay scales in this area. We get more than generous Christmas bonuses, regular bonuses once a month, birthday bonuses, 2 weeks paid vacation each year plus a weeks worth of pay (to pay for the vacation). We are expected to do our jobs - but we are also expected to put up with a lot of CRAP. I constantly look at derogatory clippings on the owners door about the “Bitch” that is running for the office of presidency of our country. I, also, am subjected to constant degrading remarks about liberal thinkers, progressives, and almost anyone that isn’t REPUBLICAN….. It is a “subservient role so another person can feel superior”. Yes, I am a wage-slave and also a prostiute of sorts. I am within reach of financial “freedom” - and in another year I will be able to tell my “owner” to KISS OFF. I am a typical American - an opressed wage-slave and a prostitute of the “legal” kind.
So, wage-slave, yes. I am a wage-slave with a purpose. The purpose being - to be able to provide for and take care of myself in independence. Prostitutes are in many forms - some legal and some not - but all come with a BIG moral “?”……..
14 March 2008, 11:02 pmMichael Anderson:
Thank you, DeAnander, for talking about structural facts—this needs to be shouted out to a greater audience. I come from a small lumber town in Oregon that was heavily influenced by economic factors from outside, a town effectively in the “periphery”, as Mr. Hornborg would put it. The class structure (and the hypocrisy involved) was readily apparent if you cared to look, but most “decent” folks didn’t. Doesn’t matter what you do; selling your body for sex (and a wage) or selling it as a tool to industry (and getting a wage)…still subservience.
15 March 2008, 1:48 ampeggy:
Prostitutes refer to themselves as sex-workers. I am just following their preference for what they want to be called. It is similar to the fact that African-Americans are almost universally demeaned, but that does not justify us calling them niggers, so as to speak the “truth” of their situation. I hope this analogy makes sense.
I know of several countries where prostitution has been decriminalized. In one, this decriminalization was in response to pressure from prostitutes and at least one PhD thesis by a prostitute, who explained how their lack of legal protection endangered them financially and physically. None of these women are fancy well-paid courtesans. Such women are more likely to be wives - bought for life by men who can afford to own them. Nor were they little crack-addicts on the street, or girls who have been smuggled in. As far as I can tell, they are in the middle of the continuum.
Work is work. You wouldn’t do it if you didn’t get paid. Some work is fun and enhances one’s life and other work is hell. But happiness does not track very well with how much you get paid, nor with how much stuff you have.
End of lecture.
15 March 2008, 9:10 pmCharles:
Linda,
Groucho says somethings that are similar to what you say below, especially this part:
[Prostitution is only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the labourer, and since it is a relationship in which falls not the prostitute alone, but also the one who prostitutes – and the latter’s abomination is still greater – the capitalist, etc., also comes under this head. – Note by Marx [31
Private Property and Communism
Finally, this movement of opposing universal private property to private property finds expression in the brutish form of opposing to marriage (certainly a form of exclusive private property) the community of women, in which a woman becomes a piece of communal and common property. It may be said that this idea of the community of women gives away the secret of this as yet completely crude and thoughtless communism.[30] Just as woman passes from marriage to general prostitution, [Prostitution is only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the labourer, and since it is a relationship in which falls not the prostitute alone, but also the one who prostitutes – and the latter’s abomination is still greater – the capitalist, etc., also comes under this head. – Note by Marx [31]] so the entire world of wealth (that is, of man’s objective substance) passes from the relationship of exclusive marriage with the owner of private property to a state of universal prostitution with the community. This type of communism – since it negates the personality of man in every sphere – is but the logical expression of private property, which is this negation.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
Karl Marx
20 March 2008, 4:05 pmEconomic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
Charles:
since it is a relationship in which falls not the prostitute alone, but also the one who prostitutes – and the latter’s abomination is still greater – the capitalist, etc., also comes under this head. – Note by Marx
^^^
Translation: Who you callin’ a prostitute ?
Black women commonly refer to men who sleep with a lot of women as “ho’s”.
Instead of the man as a “John” and the woman as a prostitute, we should call the womn a “Jane” and the man a whore.
31 March 2008, 2:46 pm