Pandagon panders to panderers.

At any rate, I rather like the sound of that. In this post, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon takes Melissa Farley and Some Dude seriously regarding What To Do about legalising prostitution.

The assumptions that all men purchase sex to punish women are appalling in their bizarre self-righteousness. It is one reason, but not the only one. It’s required that some women be degraded for the edifice to exist, yes, but it is not a requirement or truth that all men buy sex to treat women like trash. Some pay to treat women well, or be kind to them as they understand kindness. Selling sex gets very complicated even though it is meant to offer uncomplicated alternatives to romantic and marital relationships.

As far as the legalisation argument goes, the problem with legalisation is– how do we define what’s legal? Whatever answer is determined almost certainly will penalise ’small operators’ such as the escort who works off craigslist, or the street girl without a pimp, or the four girls who pool money for their time-shared incall location.

It’s private labor, like childcare and housecleaning. And like those, too intimate to regulate at the level most people prefer to keep them at (small). You have to instead create a situation where only brothels are legal, and only large childcare facilities are legal, and only large companies funded and run by men are legal.

And everything else is on the edge.

It’s beyond legalisation, and I’m not sure I think that part’s a problem. This is why simply failing to prosecute (decriminalisation) can be a start, if it’s done with an eye to protecting the ability of small operators to operate safely. That doesn’t usually happen. Canada is a rare exception, with brothels being illegal and small-scale operating being legal (going to the guy’s hotel, or having him come to your location). And even there law enforcement has trouble accepting the law. But that’s a more valid way to go if you want the girls to be harmed less, if you care a damn bit about them being able to GET customers who aren’t there to treat them like trash.

Invoking Melissa Farley=lose. It’s not that she hasn’t done the work (she hasn’t), it’s that she has no care for the women. In this world, in the larger societies of this world, some women will offer. And they must be protected if people won’t find them other ways to earn livings. I think of the Ghanaian women, devout Christians, pleading with relatives in bordering countries for money to buy food with and being told ‘no’. But those same relatives shame and berate them for working in the new strip clubs in Accra. That’s unChristian, but it’s also the world we live in. The sin of not starving is an understandable one to commit, there. More so than the sin of self-righteous refusal to take care of relatives in need.

The work is tempting, compelling, alluring precisely because it isn’t always degradation and harm to the woman doing it. And Marcotte simply doesn’t acknowledge why women are drawn to make the offers in the first place. There is power in selling sex, though one can certainly dispute what kind it is and its limits.

Marcotte doesn’t understand that even Ms. 10$ blowjobs in the rain has the right of refusal. Yes, even her. It is a serious and difficult and nuanced topic, prostitution, because it involves women, who are also nuanced in their reactions and attitudes towards the work. I can’t even agree with her that HappyHookerdom is the problem in this case. She’s committing the FarleyError of thinking that even if there are women outside the HappyHooker and CrackWhoreInTheRain categories of prostitute, they don’t count because by using that binary distinction, they technically don’t even exist!

You aren’t real to Farley if you aren’t a traitorous HappyHooker (for claiming it can ever be enjoyable work) or bitter OppressedHooker wanting out. You break the binary, distort the clean little narrative. And that Marcotte swallows her poison bait so completely is just, again, appalling in its very bizarre self-righteousness.