May 1, 2009
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Sex workers don’t get the respect they deserve.
As much as I deplore most politically correct jargon, using “sex worker” instead of “prostitute” seems marginally okay to me, just because it can be spoken with respect. Prostitution has gotten a bad name, and a bad rap. I even prefer, “hooker,” over “prostitute,” because so many of the people I hear using the latter term look, sound, and act as if they have big, stiff uncomfortable sticks up their asses, or, if they don’t, they SHOULD.
On the other hand, I’ve known hookers who called themselves and each other hooker without any sense of disrespect or shame. Conversely, I’ve known some who, even though they’ve been out of the life for most of their lives, can’t seem to live down the shame. To me, that really is a shame. I suppose it all depends on how they were programmed as children. I don’t think very many little boys or girls want to be hookers when they grow up. Most who get into the life are either pulled into it by an exploiter or driven to it by economic necessity.
It is widely understood among scholars that some ancient cultures considered the sex act sacred, and respected or revered their “temple prostitutes.”
The Hebrew Bible uses two different words for prostitute, zonah (זנה) and kedeshah (קדשה). The word zonah simply meant an ordinary prostitute or loose woman. But the word kedeshah literally means “consecrated female”, from the Semitic root q-d-sh (קדש) meaning “holy” or “set apart”.The notion of “sex for hire” is not inherent in the etymology, which rather suggests one “exposed to lust.”But that’s just mincing words. This culture generally judges prostitution as a “bad” thing, and most states have laws against it. That attitude, in many cases, is hypocritical. I don’t hear much outcry for legalization from the men who support prostitution by paying for a prostitute’s time. That is hypocrisy. So is the social acceptance of a woman who engages in unwanted sex with her husband because he’s paying her bills. There’s less of that going on now than there was in my youth, but it still happens, and a lot of the hypocritical whores who do it wouldn’t dream of befriending or associating with an honest hooker.Hookers have a reputation among some “decent” folks as being dirty and/or diseased. I suspect that the average amateur bimbo some horny guy might pick up in a bar is more likely to give him a sexually transmitted disease than the average professional call girl would be. And that same sexually-motivated young woman cruising the meatlockers is certainly more likely to catch a sexually transmitted disease from her one night stand than the average careful and aware call girl would be.
Male prostitution is different. For one thing, the hookers are guys. For another, they get even less respect than female hookers do, if that’s possible. They’re just as likely to be beaten or killed by their customers, or more so, and they are generally more likely to pick up STD. They are not, however, any more immoral or worthy of disrespect than their customers are. The biggest difference between a hooker and a john is that the john is the one doing the paying — unless he doesn’t. Hookers get stiffed just as waiters do, and robbed quite often too. What are they gonna do… call the cops? I don’t think so.
About the only prostitutes who get any sympathy are the exploited children, and even then, when the kids have been so soiled and degraded, even after they’ve been rescued and rehabilitated, many “good Christian” mothers wouldn’t want their kids to associate with them. And there, gentle readers, are the roots of the problem: prejudice, religious dogma, and moralistic judgment. Many of those same morally upright citizens wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me because I’m a former drug addict and jailbird. That’s okay with me, ’cause I’ve got some wonderful broad-minded friends. Some of my best friends are hookers.
Comments (12)
Preach it sistah.
You know where I stand on this one.
Nuff said.
No one gets the respect they deserve.That was an interesting post.
@jrmaxwell - Oh, somebody must get what he or she deserves. Many get much more respect than they deserve, and many get less. Surely there’s a middle ground there where some justice exists?
I can only hope that that is true. However, when I lived in India I saw that some received so little.
Keep well, keep posting. I am enjoying your insights.
It’s one of the things that I think ought to be legalized, or at the very least decriminalized. Other than that, I don’t feel anything about it one way or another. It’s not for me, but then neither are a lot of other things. *shrug*
There is a need for prostitutes in every community…and their are the willingness to pay for it in every community. One should respect those who give their body in service of others. respect individuality and the choices people make as long as they harm none.
I just saw a show on Oprah…one of the interviews was a gal that worked in Nevada at the Bunny Ranch (I think that is what it’s called). Hopefully that interview changed some people’s minds.
Personally I have no problem with that line of “work”, and I think that there are way too many bad ideas floating around about it. I think that if it were legalized there would be way less stigma.
Much like legalizing drugs, I may be of a eutopian thought, but if we do legalize and regulate drugs I feel that the quality potency and awareness of what it is doing to people will make things far better…if someone wants to get high, they take and assume certain risks for which taxes and extra charges should be taken from the use of legalized drugs to deal with. Not at all a part of the non drug user scene.
The same for prostitution. Some situations I have known include having no other alternative than to resort to prostituting to take care of things financially. The thing I have with it is indeed hygiene, not of the hooker but the person who also is looking for a hooker. I would imagine the high end places like the bunny ranch demand a high dollar for sex, but also require a condom and possibly even a good shower before the hooker will have to engage in whatever might be the demand. If things were legalized, there would also be an industry created to help with hygiene, health and standards for these ladies and men too if they do the same thing. It protects both sides. It might cause a more standard expense but it also might allow the prostitute to earn a living and control more of her life without being vicitmized by organized groups, drugs and the economy itself.
A society that does not allow for men to have a way to release their sexual frustration might very well be compared to places where terrorists exist..that frustration turns to something more dour and dark than need be. You think of the Bimbo and the girl who will sleep with men in order to find Mr. Right as well. They are more susceptible to things because of low self esteem than anything else. It is a silent part of our society that no one has ever dealt with, but the repercussions of women with low self esteem is horrid. They are the mothers left single and without any means or hope of getting things done right for them. They are the ones that are taken from and are given the label “whore”, “Bimbo” and the like. Men are going to do the triple F on them, find em, fuck em and forget em. The cycle does not end. It causes a situation of poor parenting, it opens the door to drugs or other illicit means of support without ever really giving the woman support. She falls prey to her own susceptibility. I believe that the legalization of prostitution too might cause a good momentum in the mass consciousness where a woman might indeed value the incredible resource her body is to society as mother, lover, object of desire and sometimes the only reason men get up in the morning to be successful.
@CastroCafe - ”the legalization of prostitution too might
cause a good momentum in the mass consciousness where a woman might
indeed value the incredible resource her body is”
LOL As an old-line feminist, I’d also like to see society as a whole place more value on women’s minds. But I’m really not a feminist these days. I just want to see the sexes working together, making good use of our varying viewpoints and strengths in cooperation, not competition. Fat chance, I know, for at least a few generations, but that’s my dream.
More to your point or points, my Old Fart and I often discuss what kind of things this benighted culture could get done if they quit wasting resources on fighting nature — human and otherwise — and learned to work with it. Fear of scarcity and the greed and selfishness it breeds, coupled with superstition (just a different flavor of fear, born of religious traditions), make it unlikely to occur in our lifetimes, but I’m just going to keep on doing what I can to shock a few people awake.
I cringed as I typed those words: bimbo, whore, hooker, prostitute… they’re all women, my sisters, but sometimes I feel a need to talk to my audience, not over their heads… and I do greatly enjoy making people stop and think about their own preconceived notions.
This brings to mind a few questions… what if… male or female, you find yourself very senior and still had the desire for the physical. What if, your spouse is incapacitated and you are looking at years of caring and loving this person, but you still have physical needs? It has nothing to do with love that you have for your spouse or significant other. Young men get girls pregnant and who knows where the years of problems bring them.
( I’d like to add that rape is not about short skirts and sex. It IS about power over another.)
When a person has to get married or decides for what ever reason, to get involved with another personality that may involve splitting up a family, just to have a natural desire met. How is that right?
Abstinence is never going to be the answer because it goes against nature. While I may applaud those that try, I have never seen it work out in the long run. Nature has given us a highly charged reproductive system for a reason.
We have all seen man’s failure when we go against nature.
I am still conflicted in some ways on the issue, but, I do see an honest need for hookers. Aside from the religious war for the minds of the masses, I realize that it is not a one size fits all answer. I can say that I am free enough to look at the issue.
@DancingBrush - To your “what if” about the “very senior” person of either sex, still wanting a partner for sex, I’d say he or she would need (for the sake of his or her vanity and ego) to find a sex worker with a lot of compassion and acting skill. Our “highly charged” sex drives are, in the neuroelectrochemical sense, identical to our other addictions, except for the particular mix of chemistry involved, and, of course, the myth that surrounds them. Some people are capable of autoeroticism, others just settle for masturbation. Whatever, as they say, turns your crank.
But seriously, although I do try to cycle from positive to neutral and stay out of the negative range, sometimes I feel a huge sense of outrage at the ways in which culture has perverted nature. …as if the way things really are isn’t good enough.