I was thinking overnight about my last post. With so much rubbish out there on the Internet why did I post on this, something well outside any areas of expertise I have?
Am I going to end up like the figure in the xkcd cartoon?
Part of it is that this was a piece of stupidity coming from a perspective I have some time for. I'm not planning on chasing down every bit of madness from misogynist men on this topic, be they those who want to abuse sex workers or those who want to persecute them in God's name.
But the other thing was that this is such an unusual argument, yet one from a source that seems to be granted considerable credibility within that wing of the feminist movement. The most hardline members of the anti-sex work wing of feminism want to stop all hetrosexual sex. Yet here is someone effectively calling for Johns to stop seeing prostitutes or strippers and instead ask more women to sleep with them unpaid. Weird. So weird it just called out for a post (or two).
True the author says respect is required. I'm sure that everyone can agree on that. But in some ways respect makes things worse. Giving the flick to a guy who lurches up and "says how about a shag?" is not always easy, but it can be a lot harder to reject someone you like as a person, but have no interest in sexually. When I've expressed interest in romantic relationships with women I knew and been turned down it didn't look like they were enjoying the experience.
Again, all this has little bearing on the author's core position, but in some ways that makes it even stranger - why put it there when its not even a necessary step?
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
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