Someone calling you a prostitute isn’t equivalent to accusing you of a crime. For one, as I’ve already stated, prostitute is both a codified legal term (in some jurisdictions) and a common-usage word. Secondly, this is a multinational message board–and in some places the most blatant forms of prostitution (exchanging penetrative sexual intercourse for money) is entirely legal. You can’t really expect that people monitor their word usage and consult the laws of whatever jurisdiction the poster to whom they are referring lives in, that is ludicrous–especially when no one is making any criminal allegations but rather applying what they believe to be the most accurate general descriptor.
You do have something of a point that it is a distinction that most people do not make. However, I think it becomes an important distinction to make when you’re dealing with a profession that stands a chance of being falsely accused of the crime, simply for doing their jobs.
To make a different analogy: some strippers engage in prostitution, and many strippers are prosecuted for prostitution, some more accurately than others. Stripping looks a lot like prostitution, if you cast it in the right light (you get naked and grind on his crotch for money? yeah, sure, it’s not a sex act - and people who engage in sex acts for money are prostitutes). Strippers are, therefore, understandably touchy about being called prostitutes (or hookers, even more charmingly). It’s an important distinction to make, because a) it’s legally wrong and b) it’s factually wrong - the situations are materially different.
On preview: you know, part of what I’m taking issue with here is laziness. People don’t want to use a perfectly accurate word or words that are unfamiliar to them, so they jump to a different (and much less accurate) word. There are LOTS OF OTHER WORDS BESIDES PROSTITUTE that could easily be used, and people jump to prostitute anyway, regardless of its inaccuracy. I don’t expect everyone to pre-emptively censor their use of particular words; however, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of common courtesy to ask that a particular word not be used, when it’s provably inaccurate and stated to be undesirable.
Or, to put it in your analogy: if you killed someone in a drunken brawl, and then participated in a thread about the effects of having killed someone, I don’t think it would be unreasonable to ask participants in that thread not to refer to you as a murderer, given that the accusation of murder has a direct bearing on your life.
Well, because it’s more difficult to catch someone in prostitution. It’s a whole lot easier to catch them hanging out a sign that says “Massage” without a massage license. It’s used because it’s a common front.
After checking out Dio’s posts in the thread in question, I can’t help but wonder why he would bother to hang in there toi the extent that he did.
I get the logic, at least mostly - it’s a matter of practicality, and prosecuting the thing that’s easiest to get a slam dunk on.
It doesn’t make it less amusing to me that it’s so hard to enforce the laws for their intended purpose that they end up busting people for licensing and code violations when their real crime is sex.
(I think now we have three mini-threads in one, and I’m starting to go in circles. Forgive me if I’m making less sense than usual.)
OUCH.
[sub]That is all.[/sub]
But we are not lawyers, and we are not in a courtroom. It is silly to get offended at people because they are not using the proper legal terms outside of a legal setting.
Your position, in summary, is “It’s not prostitution because they get the johns to shove the dildo up their own ass!” Do you really have such a hard time understanding that some people don’t buy this argument?
Dude’s like a pit bull sometimes.
Do you really have such a hard time with the concept that it’s not polite to continue using a term to describe someone after they’ve asked you not to use the term?
When the term in question is a perfectly polite, accurate, and widely-accepted, yes, I do. It’s not polite to make silly, arbitrary demands of people.
“Don’t call me a faggot, that’s offensive!” - fine, no problem.
“Don’t call me a nigger, that’s offensive!” - fine, no problem.
“Don’t call me a prostitute, I am very careful to avoid doing anything that can legally be classified ‘prostitution’!” - yeah, whatever.
See, where you’re wrong here is, if someone asks you not to use a term to describe them, and you insist on using that term anyway, you’re not being polite. Accuracy and acceptance don’t enter into it. If you know a guy named Robert, and you keep calling him Bobby even though you know he doesn’t like that name, and has politely asked you not to use it when referring to him, you’re just being a dick. If professional doms don’t like being called prostitutes, and you insist on referring to them as such, you may be right, and you may have the majority opinion behind you, but you’re still being a dick.
Why not? It’s not costing you anything or inconveniencing you in anyway, so how is it rude to ask people not to use a particular term when you’re talking about them? How is it not rude to refuse to do so, simply because you don’t think they should mind being referred to by that term? How is it that you get to decide how they should feel about that?
I would classify it as seen through my wife’s eyes. If I pay someone for a session (any kind of session) that provides me an orgasm, I’ve seen a prostitute. Likewise if someone shoves something up my ass, they’d better have “M.D.” after their name, or I’m in a world of trouble.
I think it ought to remain legal, as I feel “standard” prostitution should be, but attempts to divorce it from “sexual gratification for hire” are disingenuous.
It is an inconvenience, however slight, to have to adjust my vocabulary to suit the whims of every person who is unhappy with the English language.
You passive-aggressive motherfucker! Why can’t you bring your namby-pamby, liberal ass to the point of having an opinion? (dancing with my elbows at my side, my forearms at a 60 degree angle, and my hands flopping in rhythm with my words) Are you afraid you might offend some of our whorish (wow, the spell checker accepted that! must be a real word.) or johnish members?
Pussy.
I disagree. I don’t accept your distinction. I think it’s bullshit and I think you’re kidding yourself, and I think that YOU think there’s something wrong with conventional prostitution. You’re protesting WAY too much.
I’ve explained that I don’t CARE why you object. You don’t have a right to dictate my subjective opinions of what constitutes sex for pay.
I disagree. I think that’s EXACTLY what it means, and I think that sexual service for pay --whether you want to call it an “act” or not – is prostitution. If you don’t want to call it that, I don’t care, but don’t tell me what I have to call it.
Who are you to decide what’s an acceptable term to use?
No matter how many times you scream that, it will still be nothing but your own personal, subjective distinction with no “factual” weight whatsoever.
First of all, I said I wasn’t making value judgements about prostitution or sex workers. The thread you’re quoting from had nothing to do with professional sex work. I never said I don’t pass value judgements about anything. Of course I do. What kind of sociopath doesn’t? Incidentally, I was 100% right in everything you quoted (playing sex games in front of children is bad, m’kay?).
Opinions were being elicited about who was rude, the hooker or the John. I said the hooker. You’re also distorting what I said about what sex workers “have to do” during a session. My position was they don’t have a right to decide what the JOHN has to do.
Backpedal, my ass. I don’t have a problem calling them hookers. I don’t have a problem calling them whores.
This is completely false. I never said that. I was saying the hooker doesn’t get to determine what the John has to do.
I don’t give the slightest fuck, believe me.
Tough titty. Her’s some more inflammatory language. Fuck you.
Well, Jesus Christ, aren’t you just a delicate little flower.
Can you point to where anyone was taking a position counter to that?
Everybody who says the customer was being rude.
So, apparently, are all these hard-code “professional” BDSM types that supposedly get all offended about my “impolitely” calling them what they are.
It’s not so much your total failure to understand what’s going on here that rankles, as it is your insistence that you actually know what you’re talking about.
Honestly, can’t you just accept that the BDSM community has a particular set of customs and manners? And that people who are a part of this community just might possibly have a better grasp on what those customs are than you do? And that maybe - just maybe - by the customs of the community that this guy belongs to, he was in fact being rude? Is that too hard a concept for you?