Month: May 2009

  • We should get our act together and take it on the road.

    Mom (to kid gettng ready to make sandwich):  While you have the cheese out, slice some off for me and I'll make nachos,
    Kid:  Is one slice enough?
    Mom:  If it's thick enough.
    Mom:  (later, looking at chunk of cheese) When I said, "thick," I was thinking something about half this thick.
    Kid:  (with mocking emphasis) That would be a THIN slice.
    Mom:  No, a "THIN" slice would be one I could read through.
    Kid:  You can't read through cheese.
    Mom:  You can if it's sliced thin enough.
    Kid:  ...or if it's Swiss and you move it around enough.

  • 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.