Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ChainsandFreedom
And I'm wondering if he's actually been reading the post's in the thread, or maybe if he's just responding very selectively....
Responding very selectively.
I'm not here to "sell" my opinion.
I'm mostly here to read interesting stuff.
I comment when I have a comment to make.
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There's a big differance between a gift, which is intimate and serves a specific purpose, and cash, which has general use-value and is anymous.
Personally, I prefer a cash gift, as I know what I want more than the person giving it to me.
Took me ages to convince my family that cash makes a good christmas gift for me.
Spent a lot of time throwing away well-intentioned gifts meanwhile.
And being frustrated at people wasting their money.
If you don't like giving me cash gifts, I will also appreciate if you spend it on yourself.
That way, you would be giving me the priceless gift of giving, which I do value.
A "thoughtful" gift that doesn't respect my wishes? Not so much.
Other people's mileages will vary, of course.
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A gift, dinner, ect. can be used as an act of sharing between two individuals, while cash (or drugs, if its that kind of prostitution) is divorced from any form of physical bond.
No. It's divorced from any form of cultural bond.
When people talk about giving each other the stars and the moon (don't get me wrong, I like it, myself), they are, in a way, talking about the joy of giving, devotion to each other, and the transfer of intangibles. Money is an abstract concept. Giving money is giving something that is an idea, something intangible. In a way, it is giving away the essence of any givable gift (as opposed to the essence of giving; please don't miss the distinction), which is value. Giving a gift has two components: the mental/spiritual (the giving itself) and the physical (what was given). By giving money, you are allowing the recipient to choose the physical part of the gift themselves, by giving its essence instead.
Our society tends to regard money as bad, or "base", for some reason.
I think that's a fundamentally flawed position: money is a thing not yet given form.
As far as I'm concerned, spending money to buy me a gift is spending part of the gift.
Handcrafted gifts, however, are a different matter.
Those have additional qualities that provide a bonding element.
Unfortunately, far too few people give any handcrafted gifts nowadays.
Seems there's a cultural element that handcrafted gifts are "cheap", which is apparently worse than being "base", a notion I find rather paradoxical, considering how giving the value itself- in the abstract form of money- is a bad thing. How can less of a bad thing be a shortcoming?
But I digress...
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Also, if the only reason you're taking a woman out to dinner is to get in her pants, your porbably not going to be very sucessful.
At some point, I will probably add a disclaimer to my posts:
These posts do not necessarily represent the views or desires of al-Aswad himself.
I wasn't saying I buy women dinner or whatever to get in their pants.
I was saying a lot of men do, without admitting it, and getting what they want.
I see that all the time around here, and I see women consciously aware of this fact.
But rather than rejecting such advances, a lot of them accept them, and the idiot gets laid.
A common thing around here, is for teenage and early-twenties girls/women to go to town with the intention of getting drunk, with no money, and no booze, expecting to have the guys pick up the tab, and expecting to at the very least make out with them in return, quite often expecting sexual contact, and almost always aware that this is the nature of the "arrangement".
I have trouble respecting that.
I have no problem with prostitution.
I have a problem with hypocrisy, however.
Call it what you will.
It doesn't change what it is.
Only whether it's socially accepted.
You might want to have a look at a woman's writings for a different perspective.
One that is more extreme than mine, is the Slut Manifesto, pen name Lizzard Amazon.
As for me, I just call 'em as I see 'em.
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By your logic, a mother fixing her child a meal or a father putting a roof over his elderly parents heads is buying their love and thus prostitution, also.
No, there is no exchange of sex.
Prostitution is not about love.
It's about fantasies or sex.
Providing for someone isn't even an exchange.
And there is no physical reciprocity.
Giving for the joy of giving.
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You cannot divorce the occupation from its conditions and thats why society makes it illeagle-to protect those who would enter into it as well as those who patronize it. It's physically and emotionally exploitative and leaves the worker with little to fall back on should they become unattractive or sick in terms of alternate employment.
Err... you should have a look at how those conditions come about.
Or perhaps listen to the organizations for them, in countries that allow it.
Those who would enter it would be far better protected by being legally recognized, and there are countless benefits to registration, if done right. Organized crime drops, as you get less demand for unregistered prostitutes, and STD problems are limited, as having a valid licence is a prerequisite to practicing legally (and thus having market access) and such licences generally require regular STD panels.
Physically exploitative? Well, yes, that's the nature of physical labour.
Emotionally exploitative? Depending on circumstances, as with any work.
Lack of fallbacks? If they don't plan ahead, yes.
If you're worried about the lack of fallbacks, let them earn a pension like anyone else.
As for age, in some areas, the older ones get more money and better clients. We are not talking about streetwalkers in this particular case. But an older friend of mine who used to be a sailor, noted that the crew would pay more at the brothels for the older ones, because they have more experience, and are better at what they do. That's in ports where brothels are legal, though. Haven't a clue about elsewhere.
As a point of reference, I have an aunt who walks the streets to feed her various drug habits, and have talked with her both when she's sober and when she's wasted, so I'm not entirely clueless about the subject. Her problem, however, is the habit. Without it, the sex work would not be necessary, which is where it gets ugly: when you burn out, but can't stop anyway. Throw drugs into the mix (a common reason for getting into it in the first place, among the street walkers), and you have a recipe for what people think prostitution has to look like.
I've also seen mothers who decide high class prostitution is a viable way to supplement their income. A few clients a week to keep the black book warm, about USD 300-500 per hour, protection and so forth. It doesn't seem to be anything other than a line of work to most of them, if you talk to them about it outside work. Being able to pay the mortgage in half the time, keeping twice the standard of living of other families their age, and so forth, seems to make up for whatever unpleasantness they deal with every day.
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You compare computer programming/corporate whore-dom to prostitution, which is very Marxist, but you have the benifit of specif job skills and training which are sought after and worked for to put you in that place.
No... I compared IT consultancy in general. Programming is just one form of it.
And Marxists will be the first against the wall if I ever start a revolution. 
But being sought after for what you do seems rare at the low end.
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You have the benifit of having chosen your profession, and the luxury to trade your skills for alternate employment should conditions become unbearable.
We all choose what professions to enter.
Prostitutes choose their work, as well.
None choose completely freely.
We do as we must to live.
As do prostitutes.
And switching to another profession that will allow me the same standard of living is not at all trivial. Of course, I don't have a drug habit to pay for, so that avoids one of the problems most low-class prostitutes have. Some colleagues do, however. And I haven't always been in a position where taking time off would have been viable, financially speaking. Early on, I actually would have picked prostitution over what I was doing, if there had been a market for it that I knew how to get into (street walking doesn't work for guys around here).
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High class or cheap, too many sex workers enter into the industry either out of desperation or greed.
Same thing for any line of work. We all have to make a living, and do it in the manner that seems most appealing (or, if dealt a poor hand in life, the manner that seems least repugnant to us). It is unfortunately the case that many have had their lives screwed up by drugs before they start, so they end up low-class and grind down from there. Some enter it high-class, however, usually those without such a problem, and those fare fairly well.
If you can view it as work, it is viable work.
If you can't, it isn't.
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Just because bordello's are leagle in Amsterdam or Reno doesnt mean their workers dont pay a price which cannot be compensated for with money.
Again, it depends on how these things are managed, and what the cultural stigma is.
Sacred prostitutes were viewed differently than modern prostitutes, for instance.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: Sex workers in the BDSM and D/s lifestyles - 
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