This is the third and final post in a series of responses (starting here) to an opinion piece by Melissa Farley and Norma Ramos arguing that the customers of prostitutes are sexual predators and should be punished as such. The article made me angry, and I’m trying to explain why.
The equation of slavery and prostitution appears several places in the piece I’m responding to and in other writings by Melissa Farley and others at her website Prostitution Research and Education. For example, here’s a summary of an article by Janice Raymond:
This article discusses how prostitution is exempted from other kinds of violence and human rights violations, how prostitution is legitimized by distinctions between “forced” and “consenting” prostitution.
Maybe I’ve spent too much time among the libertarians, but reading that excerpt literally makes me sick and angry. I can feel my gut churning. With that one sentence, Farley is casually dismissing the most fundamental concept of libertarian philosophy: The distinction between choice and coercion.
This is the crux of why I hate Farley and Ramos’ article: They want us to believe there is no difference between letting someone do something and forcing them to do that same thing. It’s a disturbing bit of moral blindness that leads to public policy madness. If we blithely dismiss the difference between freedom and force, there’s no limit to the insane implications.
For example, since road construction is a dangerous job, and since many construction workers lack a college education, are we to conclude that construction work is immoral—“roads built on the blood of dead workers” and so on—and that making a distinction between “forced” and “consenting” construction work is a way of excusing reckless disregard for the welfare of men?
Or how about the men who serve in our army? That’s a very dangerous job, and it’s well known that soldiers are disproportionately minorities and poor people. Is it a lie then to say we have a “volunteer” army, since clearly no normal person would “volunteer” to be shot at?
Thinking about military service should remind us of one more evil consequence of confusing choice and coercion: We can make that mistake in reverse. That’s why fools like Congressman Charles Rangel argue in favor of military conscription on the grounds that letting minorities and poor people volunteer for the military in disproportionate numbers is somehow unfair. As if forcing people into the military could ever be more moral than letting them volunteer.
I don’t know how people think that way, because it seems so simple to me: Unless someone is mentally incompetent or a child, you can’t harm them by increasing their choices or help them by taking choices away.
By ignoring the difference between force and freedom, there’s no limit to what Farley and Ramos could define as a crime, simply because they don’t like other people’s life choices.
I assume they sincerely want to help women live better lives, and they believe they can do so by preventing women from choosing prostitution. However, by ignoring the difference between sex slavery and voluntary sex work, Farley and Ramos are disrespecting the choices these women made. They are showing utter contempt for the way some women choose to live their lives.
In this, Farley and Ramos have a lot of company.
Many people in the world want to “protect” women from their own choices. For years, women were not allowed to choose to be police officers or fire fighters…or doctors or lawyers. For years they were not allowed to choose to fight in our nation’s military forces. In Saudi Arabia, women aren’t allowed to choose to drive cars, or leave home on their own, or show their faces to the world.
Where do you draw the line? I doubt that Farley and Ramos want to go as far as the Saudis to protect feminine virtue, but what exactly do they want to stop women from doing? If they don’t want woman to trade sexual intercourse for money, then how do they feel about massage parlors where the women only give hand jobs? How about strip clubs? Are they bad too? Does it make a difference if it’s lap dancing or air dancing? If stripping is too much, how about dancers who wear bikinis? How about Hooters waitresses?
If it’s the money that matters, what about nude beaches? What if it’s a private nude beach that allows women in for free but charges men? I assume Farley and Ramos oppose pornography, but how about artistic photography of nude women? What if it’s not so artistic? Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler? Or is Hustler going too far? If I’m photographing a nude model just for fun, am I exploiting her? Or am I only exploiting her if I “buy” her by offering her money to pose?
That would be a strange definition of exploitation—you’re only exploiting someone if you pay them—but then I gather Farley and Ramos are okay with women having sex, just not getting paid for it. What if a man buys a woman a nice gift after sex? What if she insists on it? What if he leaves her money to buy her own gift?
I suspect Farley and Ramos would accuse me of posing all these questions not to get answers but just to muddy the waters and draw attention away from the more important issue of protecting women.
I guess there’s some truth to that, because I don’t really need to know how Farley and Ramos would answer all my questions. You see, I already have my own answers, which are far more respectful to woman than what Farley and Ramos have written. It’s easy to have all the answers, because it’s the same answer to every question: Let the woman decide.
You make the mistake in assuming that Law Makers make laws for moral puposes. They make laws for the purpose of profit only thus eventualy everything a person can concieve of will become illegal over time.
Follow the money honey.
I assume no such thing. Sometimes lawmakers are genuinely trying to outlaw something they perceive as immoral, and sometimes they’re even right, but a lot of what they do is in service of their own interests and little more.
Libertarianism is an ideology devised by and for white, heterosexual, middle-class (or higher) males (and I’m guessing you’re one of them too, Mr Draughn) to justify their reluctance to get off their asses and help those, who are underprivileged, under the guise of ‘freedom of choice’. A lot of that reluctance probably stems from the fact that had they actually ‘did’ something to make the world a better place for others, they might lose their own priviliges. Who would want that, right?
Libertarians don’t care that many of those women who ‘choose’ to become prostitutes have been taking part in ‘sex games’ involving adults as early as at the age of 8 or 12 (at least in my country, where I’ve thoroughly researched this issue), thus growing up with a conviction that such activities are ‘normal’. Libertarians don’t want to stop and ask themselves – are these girls making a truly ‘free’ choice?
What disgusts me the most about libertarians, though is the fact that the whole world is just a ‘market’ to them. Everything has a dollar value slapped on it. They don’t seem to perceive the difference between slapping a price tag on a loaf of bread and slapping a price tag on a human being.
It would seem that the authors of the original article, Farley and Ramos, are trying, as radical pseudo-feminists tend to do, to create a virtual horror world where everything women do is dictated by predator-patriarchs who enslave women wherever they go. A mall minority they blow up an all-embracing victim-womanhood, see: 1 in 3 women get raped; 1 in 3 women are battered, etc. etc.
Facts are: rape as well as battery has receded in the last two decades by over 40% – but female violence has risen by 102%, and more women go to prison than before. Why? I’m afraid: Women’s Rights have eroded Chivalry as a patriarchic insult to women, and so, reality is coming through.
As for the “ladies of the night” – if they are the oldest profession, they must have been around before any patriarchy, and the temple prostitution in the times of ruling Ishtar or Aphrodite points in that direction.
As for now – radical feminists wish to tell us that every husband is a “John” and rapist – and every wife a prostitute and rape victim. There, the whole matter is: are wedding vows a voluntary contract, including sexual activity, or an enforced statement of consent? If the consent is not there any more, the solution is easy today: divorce. But then, the matter loses in profit for the female side.
In the street, matters are different. I agree: about 1/3 of prostitutes are coerced in one way or the other), and our authors seem to overlook the number of women involved in selling young girls to mama-sans in brothels (at least in Asia), from whence they are then transported to other places. The pimping and selling world is very much populated by mothers, aunties, grandmas et al.
The other “ladies” can be divided in full-time professionels and part-time amateurs – in growing numbers housewives (in Japan etc. scholgirls), not forced but making up for economic downturn (or/and designer clothes).
Farley and Ramos are, once again, just running the old treadmill of lies we have been graced with day-in, day-out (and, unfortunately, too many men are stupid or chivalersque enough to believe them, to their own peril), which are have just one common denominator: Woman good – Man evil;
Woman victim – Man vicious beast.
The original Feminsim (with a big ‘F’) was truly libertarian. And it is still kept alive – but on the verge of drowning in what the late Andrea Dworkin had warned of: ‘attitudes of Superiority of one sex over the other are not dissimilar to Hitler’s views of Aryans and Jews’: FemiNAZIsm.
Caveant Consules, ne quid detrimenti obtulerit!
Dr. J. Boost
I responded to olympe’s comment here.