Birds of a feather and all that.
Sure, why not? If prostitution was punished by execution I think one could easily judge our society by that.
Our society is pathetically hung up about sexuality. Every single topic that touches upon sex becomes blown out of proportion. Every error, misunderstanding or disagreement becomes cause for a knock down-drag out argument, lawsuit, or criminal prosecution.
I would say how a society treats its minorities is EXACTLY the thing to make judgements on.
mswas, my English is just fine, thank you, and I could probably give you lessons. However, I can’t be arsed right here and now. I will say, though, that you should maybe focus a little more on your own incoherence before you start crying out on other people’s language and comprehension skills. If you insist on composing a ridiculous post then you have no-one but yourself to blame.
Ridiculous? Well, you contradict yourself:
“Prostitution is terribly dangerous”: “Prostitution is nowhere near as dangerous as Hollywood would have you believe”;
“Whores are horribly underpaid”: “Whores make loads of money”;
“Prostituting yourself is so repugnant they must drug themselves to endure it”: “Prostitutes can have fantastic sex and amazing relationships with their clients”;
you advance the easily-rubbished notion that “disapproval of prostitution” and “hatred of women” are one and the same (never mind begging a huge question over the “hatred of women” in the first place);
you not only make up statistics but you admit you did it and couldn’t care less.
The response to this thread doesn’t validate your point in the slightest. You title your thread as though you were about to demonstrate some common ground between prostitution and feminism and you proceed to put together an extremely feeble case for treating prostitutes with more respect. I am not particularly disrespectful towards whores; I merely point out that your argument doesn’t hold water. If that validates your point – though you promptly state that you don’t have a particular case to argue, anyway – I’d love to know how. You then witter on about society’s intolerance for prostitution being a barometer for its hatred for women, with no evidence other than your own wittering, and you refuse to explain further except to scream “Everyone’s ignorant except me!”. Pathetic.
Roughly translated, you’ll interpret anything anyone says, unless it’s flat-out agreement with you, into an excuse to carry on riding your pet hobby-horse. Well, punk, don’t let me stop you, as long as neither you nor anyone else is under any illusions about what you’re doing.
Personally, I think this: Those drugs you’ve been doing, you’ve either been doing them too much or too recently. Come back and post again when you’re thinking more clearly. Your posts have the air of a guy I knew once who was convinced that he was being deep, mystical and wise beyond the lot of lesser men, when what he was actually doing was filtering all his thoughts and perceptions through a haze of methadone, and talking completely incoherent bullshit. (Credit to him though, I met him a few years later when he had got his shit seriously together. Go thou and do likewise.) Meantime, you walk through the door marked “Pit”, you know what to expect.
I can’t support the makin’ up of statistics, mswas. Don’t do that. Just admit it’s an estimate. That said…
Look, the OP was basically a rant, ok? Someone’s own perceptions. We don’t need pages of bilious condemnation. Maybe it would be interesting to try and understand the experience of other people. Or you could just heap a bunch of dehumanizing, unsupported bullshit on them. Just curious here, but have either MGibson or Malacandra ever met a prostitute? I’m sure you guys have lots and lots of scientific information to support your views, unlike mswas. :rolleyes:
A good friend of mine from years and years back became a prostitute. She was funny, beautiful, smart, and from a very whitebread middle-class family. Then she started dating a man who shot heroin. As soon as people heard she was “tricky,” everyone turned their back on her. No family, no friends, no support. No way to get clean or get a job “pumping gas, flipping burgers, or stacking shelves.” Last I heard she was dying of AIDS. This was before antiretrovirals, so she’s certainly dead by now.
So pardon me if I think you guys are self-righteous Pharisees spouting meaningless shibboleths. There but for a prick o’ the needle go thou. Asshole.
How misogynist of you! The best way to tell how society treats its women is to look at how it treats its statisticians (at least the female ones).
Who cares about the numbers when you’ve got anecdotal evidence? :rolleyes:
I thought it was so you wouldn’t have your argument rebutted and the gaping holes and irrationailty pointed out, like Malacandra did.
You must have some inside information; I haven’t seen any evidence that Malacandra himself treats prostitutes like shit, or that he is a jackass, other than the fact that he dares to disagree with you.
Oops, missed another contradiction:
“Prostitutes are forced into their profession because they can do no other work that would pay adequately”; “Prostitutes possess levels of job skills that compare favourably with those required for more ‘acceptable’ and well-paid occupations”.
’possum stalker, who’s being a Pharisee? All I’m doing is showing that mswas is full of shit.
I am going to the wrong dopefests. Pray tell, at which Dopefests were women sexually harassed that the 99% of the other participants didn’t beat the shit out of someone groping their good friends?
rofl this from mswas:
… is a signature-worthy quote. 
Too bad you weren’t joking.
Speaking of statistics, I heard in college that the average life-expectancy for a prostitute is like 28? Could that possibly be true?
I’m a woman who supports the concept of legalized and regulated prostitution, but this OP was just bizarre and did not help the cause at all.
This is patently false. Comparing the way a prostitute manages tricks with the way I manage millions of dollars of engineering projects, including selling those same projects, is highly insulting to me and any real businesswoman out there.
That is really, really ironic, and one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read on this message Board. Let’s look at how prostitution is treated in some (but not all) Muslim countries, shall we?
http://www.protectionproject.org/
I’m not even going to get into the case of civil rights violations perpetrated against women daily in some Muslim countries and under Sharia law, as that’s a can of worms that I have neither the time nor the professional qualifications to open. I think the Search engine here will show numerous threads in the past that covered it in excrutiating detail.
Perhaps you should modify your OP so it actually has some facts in it on exactly how women and prostitutes are treated in many Muslim countries.
And what about those of us who simply refuse to have anything to do with those sorts? I’ve been accused of being an compromising moralist before; its probably a good label. But if I knew someone who is a worker in or frequented the sex trade, then I could not in good conscience be their friend. I don’t demand that everyone meets my standards of morality to the letter, but I cannot respect someone who, in my view, shows such blatant disrespect for theirself.
Bwah-ha-ha-ha!
If anything, I expect they would be even more despised outside their circle of business. At the very least, the thought of such misdeeds makes me physically ill.
Or that might be the squashed PBJ I just ate.
You know, I’m really tired of people who feel that they deserve respect no matter what, or that others deserve respect. I reserve the right to not like anything I want, and I am tired of people lamenting things like prostitutes not getting any respect. Plain and simple, I can’t respect it as a “profession”, because it offends me.
I feel that sex is a beautiful thing to be shared with someone special. I am not religious at all, I just regard sex as deep, meaningful and highly emotional. There is a tremendous attachment involved that I cannot just ignore, and so any instance where sex is commodified, or cheapened, is distasteful to me. So when a woman is so-called “forced” into prostitution (I know that most prostitutes have unfortunate backgrounds), I don’t feel that I need to respect her because she’s doing something I find abhorrent. So stop bitching about how prostitutes are treated, because I’m willing to bet many people think like me.
In any case, any credible psychiatrist or psychologist will tell you that sex has a powerful intrinsic effect on people. It is human nature to be moved by it, and that is why people resist anything that makes it less significant and special. Prostitution does this, and that is why it has always been relegated to the back door of human society.
mswas, if you are going to post on a public forum, especially this one, you had better be prepared for a reaction. You probably won’t like it, because smart, logical people tend to congregate here and they will tear you apart (since your reasoning skills are obviously so poor), and show you even teh smallest hole in your posts. I don’t post that much because I want to be sure I am thorough and logical and most importantly right in any post involving facts. Never, ever post numbers without a cite, unless they are common knowledge. And never, ever be stupid enough to tell people that you use your own two eyes to see the truth of the world, because then you cheapen the value of anyone else around you and their observations. We are a conglomerate of personalities and intellects, and only by working together can things progress. Relying on yourself for everything will get you nowhere. In fact, I think Malacandra’s posts were both fair and even-handed, and the reactions to them are typical of non-logical minds, people who think more with emotions and intuition than rational thought. He summed it up best with this:
I’ve met people like that, and it is a frustrating thing to deal with, because their view of the world is entirely arbitrary. The fight goes on.
So this is what a train-wreck looks like!
She told me she loved me like a brother. She was from Arkansas, hence the Joy!
Taking the post as a whole, I tend to agree with the OP. How society treats it’s “minorities” can be very enlightining. Wasn’t there some saying, how society treats it’s prisoners reflects society as a whole fairly well?
This is what the OP was ranting about (rather weakly). Everyone deserves a basic level of respect. When you treat people like shit only because of what they do reflects poorly on you. I dislike slow drivers but I’m not about to treat them like insects because I disagree with how they drive.
It’s great that people treat sex as some magical interaction between humans but really, sex is sex, and what you think sex is shouldn’t change how you feel about others who treat it differently. Do you treat religious people the same way scule? Since you’re not religious do you scorn people who treat religion differently?
I also want to point out a whore and a prostitute tend to be different things (at least where I grew up). A whore is the female equivalent to your average horny teenage male. A prostitute fucks for money.
**
Which of my views required scientific information?
**
That’s unfortunate. Is it suppose to make me feel bad and embrace prostitution as I would other professions? It is unfortunate that your friend’s self-destructive behavior led to her condition and unfortunate that she had nobody to turn to.
Oh yeah, I’m just a hair’s breadth away from prostituting myself out and shooting up. I don’t like prostitution but that doesn’t make me a hypocrit, self rightous, or a member of an ancient Jewish sect. I support legalization because I believe it would cut down on the abuse they’re currently subjected to. Of course I could be wrong since I didn’t scientifically come up with that idea.
Marc
Meh. The OP is such a rambling mess that I’d have to disagree with it just on general principal, or until such time as it’s rewritten into something more coherent.
Personally, I favour full legalization, regulation and appropriate taxation of prostitution. Beyond that, how much people “respect” hookers is none of mine (or the government’s) business.
This topic hits some personal feelings, as you can tell. I was out of line to call y’all assholes, Pharisees, etc. The OP sets a semi-coherent yet accusatory tone which effectively precludes rational argument, so I’m just gunna let this one sink.
Felicitur.
'PS
’PS, spoken like a gentleman. I’ll meet you this far: so far as I’ve been fortunate enough never to have to beg or steal for a living, then yes, I’ll put my hands together and say a big “there but for the grace of God”. Refusing to become a smackhead, however, was my own judgment call - I didn’t want to ever do something that would fuck up my life as royally and, perhaps, irrecoverably as that - and I think I deserve credit for my own good choices, on that one.
Concerning your friend - I naturally know that there are some prostitutes who started out as “nice girls”, who came to tragic ends, who fully deserve my pity for the waste of what could have been a bright young life. And I don’t believe you’ll find anywhere up there points thumb up thread where I said differently.
Are we talking about “respect” as how you treat somebody, or as how you feel about them? Everyone deserves a basic level of respect; no one should be treated like shit. Right; good; I agree. Let’s just make sure we’re not saying that everyone deserves equal respect. I don’t have nearly as much respect for, say, child molesters and serial killers as I do for actual Good People, and yes, that lack of respect is directly because of what they’ve done and the paths they’ve chosen.
Way to twist his words there! He said “meaningful,” not “magical.” And if sex isn’t meaningful to you, fine, but it’s a bit much to ask that how people treat what’s meaningful to us not afftect how we feel about them.
What, someone who’s not gettin’ any? :dubious: Or was that just me?
Here’s the Village Voice on the liberated prostitutes of New York.
All I can say, having lived in a neighborhood that had a few, is that they have messy lives. They fight with each other. They scream and curse and litter and frankly seem really dumb.