Well OK, as you like.
I certainly stand by that statement. Call it what you wish.
Ah, the devastating “I know you are, but what am I?” defense. Could you point out where I made any reference, explicit or implicit, to equating blacks and gays with sex workers? While on the other hand, you brought it up:
Wow. You’re seriously straining my efforts to remain polite. I’m working very, very hard to discuss this coolly and clearly. Can you please moderate your tone, and leave the sarcasm out, or start a new thread in a pit? If you’re actually interested in discussing this, then obviously so am I. But I’m not going to continue to be baited by your insulting tone, particularly when you stand ready to make any such breach on my part the entire focus of your participation. I won’t be baited to match your tone. If you want any further specific response from me, please be a little more respectful and a lot less sarcastic.
Wow! I did not know that. For some reason, I thought that sex work did not have the same type of stigma in Asia as it does here in the U.S. Consider my ignorance diminished slightly.
This has been an interesting thread!
Well, there are probably some places where it doesn’t – see Siam Sam’s post earlier about Thai gals who just go back to their villages once their tour of duty is over–I don’t doubt it, especially in poorer countries. But for Confucian-influenced cultures (1 billion+) and AFAIK Hindu and Muslim influenced cultures (another 1 billion+), having that kind of thing in your background makes a big difference not only in your job but more importantly your marriage prospects (which is usually the bigger factor in a woman’s future standard of living).
Okay, then I retract the “Protestant” part of it. I did not know that about Asia. Regardless of geographic similarities, it’s still just silly.
Just wanted to point out that the word prejudice carries about the same load as bigotry in a lot of circles. While I understand that this was not lissener’s intent, I can understand why some people would be offended. There are much less controversial terms. (Take a quick look in a thesaurus.) If someone chooses not to use them, then they shouldn’t be surprised when people take offense.
Can you suggest a more accurate word for the context? I can’t think of one. If you get defensively ruffled when someone points out your prejudice, I’m sorry but I know who’s problem I think that is. My intention was accuracy and straightforwardness and basic, respectful politeness; I’m not gonna bend over backward to sugarcoat my words when I’m point out prejudice to someone who’s being prejudicial. Don’t want people to point out your prejudice? Don’t say prejudiced things on a public message board.
Jonathan Kellerman, a psychologist and author of novels about a psychologist, said in one of them about porn workers that many of them had borderline personality disorders that enabled them to compartmentalize their sordid professions with normal life. I would believe that, why not? And I have personally known two ex-strippers in their 40’s. One was a waitress in a diner, the other was a barfly accused of child neglect. That’s all I got.
They have a union of sorts in Thailand: Empower. Their office is in the Patpong red-light area. More info here.
Taking the word “prejudice” with a completely neutral value, then, the question arises: so what if it’s prejudiced? Sometimes prejudice is justified. There may be individual cases of the nicest, most psychologically healthy and down to earth people you’d ever want to meet, giving lap dances or sucking a john’s dick in a back alley. But is it really so shocking that I assume such cases are pretty rare?
The issue with prejudices against blacks and gays is that they are unfair and unjustified, and therefore bigoted. But if I assume that most lawyers are analytical, most telemarketers are thick skinned and most politicians fudge the truth, does that make me a horrible person?
ETA: On the other hand, maybe I am completely wrong, and sex workers really are folks just like you and me. So, enlighten me. But getting angry because I’m being “prejudiced” isn’t going to do you much good, because I know I’m prejudiced. What you need to convince me (“me”, I think being representative of most people) is that the prejudice is an unfair one.
Uh, two things: I wasn’t really angry; you were projecting. I was addressing your ignorance and prejudice. And second, if you know you’re prejudiced, then why did you get so upset when I merely pointed it out?
Anyway.
You acknowledge you’re prejudiced, but insist that’s OK because it’s “justified.” You realize what that sounds like, right? “It’s not racist if it’s true” is the battle cry of the unrepentant bigot.
My point in bringing up other prejudices was to try to put yours in perspective by suggesting that, like racism and homophobia, you are conflating what a person is with what they merely do. Racists and homophobes do not distinguish the two; if they see one black person behaving in a certain way, they believe that the behavior is somehow inherent in who that person is, and comes with the package along with the skin color.
You make the same mistake with sex workers, presuming behavior is inseparable from who they are as a person. As you acknowledge, prejudice. It’s disingenuous to compare such “if A therefore B” prejudice with the innocuous tautologies of your exampled lawyers and telemarketers.
[Moderating]
I think the debate about the morality of sex work is getting a bit overheated for GQ. Let’s tone it down, or better yet focus on the question in the OP rather than the side issue of moral judgements. Those who wish to debate these issues are invited to open a thread in GD.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
There are sex workers’ unions in a lot of different countries, and also of course a number of advocacy groups that don’t quite fall into the category of “union”.
The Lusty Lady Theatre in San Francisco has been worker-owned for several years. How that unfolded is an interesting story, for those interested in sex workers’ rights (or workers’ rights in general)… plenty of info available by Google.
She could be a firefighter…
I was surprised to find out that the dental assistant who works with my wife used to be in the sex industry. She’s about 45 now and for all intents and purposes appears to be a normal mother and wife, but she once told us about her ‘wild times’ from her late teens to her early 30’s.
I guess on some level I always knew that “all porn stars wind up facedown in a ditch” meme was always overblown, but until then I can’t say I’d ever met one. And if she hadn’t said anything, I never would have known or guessed it.
Her only complaint about it was that it gave her some difficulty when she was trying to get started as a dental assistant, because she didn’t appear to have any work history for 10 or 15 years, but after a few years that wasn’t so important.
HorseloverFat said:
Well, I might argue the numbers, but you’re not wholly wrong. I had a conversation with a guy who markets porn vids (makes, stars, and sells). He explained that many of the young ladies appearing in the videos do it for a few months to a couple years, then move on and go about their lives not telling people about their past.
However, there are people in the porn industry that do make it a career. Those are some of the bigger names that you might be familiar with.
Well, someone like Ron Jeremy was never marketing on his appearance. But yes, appearance does play a factor.
You are correct that many retire from the industry and find other work. However, some do continue to circulate in industry circles. As I said, there are conventions held around the world where they travel and sell merchandise and autographs, just like any other fan field (like science fiction). A few do try to ride their historical legacy, even if the fresh opportunities are few or gone.
Moving into directing/marketing is one direction. Shifting to an industry related field is an option (porn video/sex toy/lingerie stores seem to be fairly popular at the moment).
As for strippers and some prostitutes, they may be doing it for short time to earn cash for school, or until they develop other options.
One friend of mine is an ex-stripper, not a particularly stable personality. She is common-law married with a guy who has his own lack of motivation issues. They are getting by with whatever they can. Last I heard she was working for a temp agency as a secretary or data entry type.
Koxinga said:
Then they do what a lot of people do, and get a degree or job training. Then they have credentials in their respective field, even if no experience, and are just like every other new grad/starting employee.
Fotheringay-Phipps said:
The vast majority of people would not be truck drivers. Or professional athletes. Or actors. Or firefighters. Or small bookstore owners. Or kindergarten teachers. The number or percentage of people who would take on a career in porn, stripping, or prostitution is not really different than many other fields. The only distinction seems to be a judgment about the field itself.
I don’t think “shelf life” makes a difference when it comes to outcomes. In any case, the person leaving a career needs a way to make a living for the rest of their life. If they haven’t managed to save up a very large nest egg, they are going to need an alternate source of income. Regardless of whether they used to be a baseball player who blew it all on gambling and drinking, a lumberjack who now has a bad back and bad knees, a basketball player with messed up knees, a teacher who just can’t get by on her salary, or a prostitute who isn’t a youngster any more, they all face the same challenge. How are you going to earn money now? Your previous experience probably isn’t going to be directly relatable, so what do you do?
A lot of people wouldn’t take up a career cleaning potties (i.e. janatorial services), or working in a convenience store, or professional speaking. Saying they are different isn’t helpful, unless you distinguish in what way they are different and how that difference affects their situation.
Lemur866 said:
Asking what it is that brings people to be sex workers is a different question.
Some of them do it because they feel they don’t have other options. They come from a bad family history and don’t have the money to go to college. They’re single mothers with no job skills. Others are into a party lifestyle and don’t have a moral dilemma about their job - they like what they do. (A lot of them are in to drugs and sex, so getting paid isn’t bad to them.)
And to some extent there is a distinction about the particular sex field. A porn star’s motivations are probably different than a dancer, who may or may not be a prostitute. Some people view getting in to porn as a way to flaunt power over others, to get admiration for their beauty. They think it might be a doorway into acting, or it might be a fun experience to earn some quick cash. The ones who get into porn as a career tend to really enjoy sex, and don’t have a problem with having lots of partners. It doesn’t have to be about a relationship, the sex and getting paid is enough.
salinqmind said:
Maybe some of them, but I think a lot of them have a different attitude about the job. There’s nothing “sordid” about it. They don’t have to apologize or keep it on the down low. They are proud of it.
As far as strippers, I have met a few and many of them who are not prostitutes (some are, some aren’t) use psychological games to justify what they do. In fact, the non-prostitute strippers I know are some of the most judgmental people when it comes to prostitutes. This is, I think, a coping mechanism. “What I do is good, clean fun, I’m not one of those prostitutes.” I may be overextending from a small sample size, but this makes sense to me.
To me, I don’t necessarily think that they start with an ability to compartmentalize, but they might develop it as a coping mechanism.
Judgment is exactly the point. The vast majority of people are not interested in any particular field that you happen to name, but they would not specifically object to these fields in the way they would object to sex work. So the difference in attitudes about work and lifestyle (as relates to work) is not as great between your average small bookstore owner and kindergarten teacher as it is between either of these and your average sex worker.
Even if it’s not directly relatable it’s at least admissible - you can note it on your resume, and you’ll get credit for at least having worked for that time. (In the specific case of professional athletes - who also have short shelf lives, as several posters have noted - I imagine you can get considerable credit for that experience in any sales-related field, and probably elsewhere.) Not so for a sex worker. Someone above noted an instance of someone who had to overcome that hurdle to become a dental assistant.
In addition, ISTM that the difference in working conditions/structure/lifestyle between sex work and your run-of-the-mill 9 to 5 job or small business might be greater than between one 9 to 5 job and another.
[Note again that I’m not saying that any of this proves that sex workers can’t later blend into society. Only that you can’t just assume that they do this based on the notion that they’re no different than anyone else.]
Well, let’s put it this way. For most of my twenties I worked as a self-employed tutor. I taught homeschooled kids, kids who needed help with their homework, kids who needed enrichment, and so on. While I charged a decent amount, I still had a low income because it was difficult to arrange very many billable hours in a week.
After a while I got tired of the irregular pay and went into software testing. I took a 3 month certification course, and put out my sketchy resume that had 10 years of vaugeness. Luckily for me I got into the field in the late 90s during the dot com boom, and I got my first job, and that job showed I had job experience, which led to my second job after the dotcom bust, and the third, and the forth, and so on.
Now, a hiring manager looking at my resume wouldn’t see much difference between me and someone who had worked in the sex industry. There were about 10 years of working at no particular job. I wasn’t able to show 10 years of employment as a Software Test Engineer. But once I got my first job, the rest of my resume didn’t matter.
If I was really worried and wanted to imply a longer employment history and hide what I had really been doing, I could have gotten a random entry level job where they don’t care about your resume, and work there for a few months, so that I could put down the name and address of a real business for my last employer. And then sort of pretend that I had been working at the same sort of jobs for a while back, but all short term and the business folded, and so on. Or you could just put down “actress” or some other artsy-bohemian type job, where no one expects a detailed resume.
There are plenty of jobs that don’t require 20 years of experience, and plenty of people do those jobs every day. People hiring store clerks and barristas and cleaning staff and wait staff don’t do an extensive background check. Or you could move into other aspects of the entertainment industry. Or just get your first position, and then no one cares.
Some of you seem to think a ten year gap in your resume dooms you to a lifetime of scrubbing toilets. But that’s just not true–especially if you’re willing to fudge a bit. The hard part is getting that first job in your new career, but once you’ve done that no one cares about the random stuff you did previously.
I would’ve thought they’d have taken her oral experience into account.