Monday, August 22

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

Another hot summer day. Not too humid.

The contractor and his wife worked today in the basement. It interrupted my sleep, but not too badly.

What I don't appreciate, is that the contractor feels the need to comment on my sleep pattern. I have already given him a chance a few days ago to satisfy his curiosity about it, and I made it clear that it is just the way I am, not an illness or a horrible burden, just how I am.

Today though, he had to remark upon it again, as if he really didn't believe me the first time. Like, wow, you really DO get up in the afternoon! This gets old pretty fast.

I spent a big chunk of the day trying to make more decisions about exterior doors, and connecting with my husband about the options.

It is a surprisingly fraught thing, to make decisions about things like doors and windows, because you will be stuck with those choices for quite some time.

Then I decided to just go kayaking with Roxy. I feel like I barely get to do pleasant things anymore, and there is always the pressure to PULL MORE WEEDS or SAND MORE DRYWALL, and I feel like my whole life is trying to get things done.

It was a beautiful evening, not a lot of wind, no bugs out on the water, and I am very glad we went. Roxy loves being in the kayak, she usually falls asleep at some point. I love how quiet it was out there, just us and the birds, some distant sounds but not much.

There is almost never anyone else out on the water, and I never understood that. Does no one else kayak or canoe on smaller lakes? It is very enjoyable, because there are no motor craft allowed here.

When I came home, my Sweetie and I were finally able to sit down and look at the same sites and look at door options together. We settled on an idea, and we just need some estimates.

I want to open up a giant can of worms, if anyone is up for a civil conversation. What do you think about legalizing the sex trade?

Today I learned about Pheasant Island, a tiny, uninhabited island that is jointly owned by France and Spain, and for six months it is run by France, and for six months it is run by Spain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheasant_Island?q=Pheasant+Island&_ext=EiQp4Kt8JOCrRUAxgD9cNLc%2F%2FL854Kt8JOCrRUBBgD9cNLc%2F%2FL8%3D

Comments

[ratunderpaper]

I have mixed thinking about legalisation.

It's mostly a trade that involves women and transsexuals as workers. Men account for a very small percentage. If legalising the trade aimed to protect the health and well-being of workers, I'd consider it a positive step.

But - and it's a big but - men have always controlled women's social and reproductive rights in one way or another; it is societally ingrained and hard to change. Look to the US to see what is happening with women's reproductive freedom.

I can see how legalisation would serve to take the stigma from soliciting, (there are a few chest-thumping Libertarian johns who bleat publicly about this) but how would the workers benefit? What about health care?

[gottawonder]

Interesting views. You're right, it still feels like it would be controlled by men.

I am really on the fence with it. I too, can see how it might make things safer for women, or at least end senseless acts like forced eviction from their apartment or losing their day job, or being endlessly targeted by police.

There is still this part of me that feels that maybe sex just shouldn't be available for money. That people should have to cultivate an actual relationship with another human being, even if it is for one night. If you are unappealing in some way, you should have to actually work on that. Maybe one should have to risk having it come back on them later, if they are married (buying sex typically buys discretion).

I guess there are just things that shouldn't be as simple as buying lunch. You should have to work on it, and it should be important.

If you are loathsome, you deserve to be lonesome.

I hear so many people comparing sex work to therapy. That the Johns are often socially awkward, nervous people unable to connect easily with others. That sex workers service the handicapped. They help others work through consent issues, trauma, and self-esteem issues.

I don't know what percentage of people have that kind of experience with sex workers. I always thought it was a large number of men on business trips, or just average guys unable or uninterested in forming a meaningful relationship.

I guess in my heart, I don't want it to be normalized. Something your niece ends up doing to get through school, something that the job counselor suggests to single moms. A normalized gift to someone on their 18th birthday, or a weekly routine for a married man that shows up as "services" on his credit card bill.

Yes, I'm sure it is plenty available already, but that bit of stigma and tiny risk of being arrested still keeps it out of the mainstream (unless I am lying to myself).

In my context, I suppose I am thinking of "full service", not just strippers or porn stars, all of whom I guess are here to stay.

I'm really not sure I'm ready for open brothels, the way that now we have neighborhood weed stores. I'm still adjusting to that one, too.

[ratunderpaper]

I think that legalising it is meant to take the "ick factor" off solicitation, not off workers; women or trans sex workers never have been and never will be respected.

I'd like to think that legalisation would be good for something, but again, it would regulate the health of workers, not that of clients. It would do nothing to eliminate violence or trafficking. The idea behind legalisation is to make life simpler for johns, normalising something (intimacy performed for money) that is not really normal.

I have to agree - if you're loathsome, you're lonesome.

I mentioned a little while ago that I read a graphic novel that was pretty much an argument in favour of legalisation of solicitation. It had an enormous appendix that amounted to a great big Libertarian polemic. I think he believed that it (the Libertarian polemic) justified his preference to see sexytime as a simple, noble, consensual transaction. How convenient for him.
(I don't think he understood how loathsome he came across as the starring character in his own book - a 38-year-old guy, scunnered by an old woman of 28... when 18 was more to his taste,)

[gottawonder]

What you have said really solidifies the nascent wisp that I was trying to see more clearly.

Yes. My suspicion is that legalizing sex work is to try to take the ick factor off of Johns, and the stigma out of buying sex. It is a way of making sex convenient FOR MEN, as I don't think a lot of women would be interested in hiring a male sex worker. And, it would likely still be the same women selling their bodies. Women with issues, financial or mental (even though I have seen LOADS of interviews with "healthy, happy, sex workers who LOVE what they do").

I am not sure why so many women seem supportive of the idea, except maybe they get caught up in it being seen as cool and Feminist. Any woman caught saying they don't support legalizing prostitution, encouraging porn stars and online cam girls, etc. is going to be called a prude or anti-feminist. We would WANT women to be ashamed of selling sex (yes)!

Again, would it make sex safer for the sex workers? Maybe for some of them. It has been pointed out though, that there would always be a sex underground of people outside the system, who either have diseases or mental health issues or addictions that would mean they were ineligible for work in regulated brothels, people who don't want to declare taxes, people who would...do things not allowed in regulated brothels.

I imagine that at the very core of the issue, is that men who like prostitutes actually like the power dynamic. There might be many who would be okay with a simple drive thru hand job every day at lunch time, but many who are driven by darker impulses, like violence and hatred and domination that would not be satisfied by role playing. There would still be sex slaves, abducted or abused women, underage women, disadvantaged women forced to be prostitutes, women even killed by Johns who pay more for the privilege.

It would do nothing more than create a two (or more) tier system where there would be "socially accepted prostitutes" that would be protected by laws, and unregulated "bad prostitutes" that no one would protect, including other prostitutes.

So, I feel like we would not only lose the stigma that might at least attempt to act as "social conscience" towards paid sex acts, normalize increasingly more transactional sex that is socially acceptable because it has been "sanitized" and stripped of all meaning, but we would still have the sexual underground that would still have every current social ill that we currently say would be stamped out by legalization.

I don't even believe that the government or police would even CARE about unregulated prostitution.

All around, a big win for men, and the government (who could say they wanted to solve the problem, generate a huge amount of tax money, and then stop telling police and social services that they need to help women out of prostitution).

All things said and done, would I want it if it really made it all safe and clean? Maybe, but underneath it all, sex is meant to be so much more than drive through hand jobs devoid of all meaning.

[ratunderpaper]

It could be that women are tired of bearing the shame attached to "the world's oldest profession" and want to take back their dignity if their choice of work is, indeed their choice. (Maybe it beats being penniless on the streets or in a different kind of menial, low-paying job.)

I agree that men at large like the idea of controlling as much as they can - there's an element of equal parts of shame and rage in solicitation that I can't exactly prove by example or fact, except to note the high rate of violent crime associated with it.

With the overturning of Roe v Wade in the US, what do you suppose this means for solicitation?

[gottawonder]

That is a very interesting question.

Unfortunately, horribly, it will likely mean the increase of illegal abortions (which have probably never gone away) and more abandoned babies, more beating of the pregnant woman to force an abortion.

It won't affect wealthy women as much.

I too, understand how sex workers would like to just live their lives and not have to hide or be ashamed of what they do for a living.

I don't know how it is possible, but I don't have a problem with a person who is a sex worker, but...I wish they wouldn't exchange money for sex?

I do have a problem with the Johns, though even there, supposedly there is that group of handicapped/horribly socially awkward/very lonely people that truly benefit from the existence of sex for money. Again, in a better world maybe there would be different help available to them to deal with their barriers/issues?

We could just DO BETTER THAN THIS.