Your essay reminded me instantly of a "meme" image a cousin emailed me a few days ago. It consisted of a picture of a guy I assume is the male character in "Fifty Shades of Grey" which it then describes as "only romantic because the guy is a billionaire. If he was living in a trailer it would be a Criminal Minds episode."
I think the most pertinent line in your piece is when you say “nothing is sacred”. I believe this is the root of the problem. If life is just a meaningless pursuit of pleasure by individuals then anything goes. It is incumbent upon us to find meaning, to connect with the sacred nature of all things, so that we may build an alternative at story to the one that currently dominates culture. A story of connection and village mindedness.
Honestly, I'd like to take these "anything goes" people to any inner city ER on a summer Saturday night. Maybe after seeing the 3rd prostitute beaten, slashed, or suffering from a herpes outbreak on her (or his) colostomy opening, they would begin to see the harm they advocate.
These men approach like vampires, blood literally dripping out of their mouths, talking about women’s liberation via allowing themselves to be physically harmed for someone else’s pleasure.
Louise Perry, I think, had a wonderful summary of her book in the Wall Street Journal where it said that a main obstacle for a woman to become a prostitute is the instinct to vomit. She has to learn to swallow back vomit. That’s the prerequisite skill. Talk of consent all you like. That is mistreatment and there is no honest rational argument that it isn’t.
Women via feminism have given cover and legitimacy to the worst male behavior. And they refuse to about-face. The direct harm is to women but the long-term soul-rotting harm is to men also. I am not going to even mention children who of course only lose here.
That a society so lies about right and wrong, and about who is vulnerable, and instead points to anyone who advocates for conventional morality as the bully, is deeply sick. Women who know better should refuse to let men talk over them, when men say that taking advantage of women who either financially or emotionally cannot care for themselves enough to avoid these behaviors, is legitimate and not hurting anyone. How would they know that? And their bias is evident. But all the self-righteous vitriol women can muster has been used on men who say that the lives of the unborn are important. Those men are immediately silenced. But men advocating the worst mistreatment of women a person could imagine, they have the right to speak as to what women want, and what is fair to women. Feminism chose abortion as its key issue, and in so doing, gave up the opportunity for real choice for the poorest and most ill-treated women- true bodily integrity, true self-determination. It’s a tragedy. Feminism has rewired the brains of humanity- via propaganda, via pharmaceuticals, and it has achieved its goals. But those were stupid goals. Especially with so much power.
They used to call feminism women’s liberation.
Do the comments here sound like women have been liberated? Mistreated women can terminate their pregnancies. But no man needs to apologize for taking advantage of a woman in the worst way. Is that a gain?
I want to come at the sex work/porn angle from something a little more nuts-and-bolts (recognizing that even one pun in that sentence is one too many and begging everyone's forgiveness up front for that). "Laws" against such things require enforcement, since laws themselves don't magically stop behavior. What is a "just" punishment for a prostitute or cam girl? Who administers it?
Don't be too hard on sexual revolutionaries. "All beginnings are weak" as your father liked to say. Perhaps the most profound technological development in human history was the invention of the birth control pill that became available to millions of women worldwide in 1964. All of a sudden the ancient rules no longer applied: women could enjoy sexual intercourse without fear of becoming pregnant, just like men. Each woman had to work out what the rules were for herself.
I am in too much pain to go deep but I agree. Age 59, lived through the seventies permissive culture that groomed both myself and my perpetrator for my sexual abuse. I see us going from reasonable sex positivity as a goal to incredible sex negativity. I've been thinking about this quite a bit. Sex is being destroyed for people in ways the moral majority couldn't. Great essay!
It is, of course, true that sin and the harmful results of sin have been around for a very long time. What is different is that the prophetic signs of end times are here now. Sure, there have always been people who thought that the end times were approaching, but now the biblical signs are here in abundance. I can't go into all of the biblical and societal stuff in a short comment but there are a lot of resources on the subject at places like olivetreeviews.org. I would just say that nothing now stands in the way prophetically of Jesus Christ returning for his church in the Rapture at any moment. If things are bad on earth now, they will be much worse when all of the true Christians are taken to heaven in the Rapture and unbelievers are left on earth for the horrible seven-year tribulation to come. There is no time like the present to make a decision to follow Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture.
Having spent a little time in other parts of the world where prostitution is partially outlawed but still legal in many respects, I know more than a little about it. Although prostitution as such was not legal in most Asian countries, it was still practiced. In Asia, women are down a few notches on the totem pole. I don't know how most of the girls I knew got into the business, but I doubt that any of them would have considered themselves to be prostitutes. Rather, they were bar girls, B-girls. They were employed by the bars to solicit drinks out of their customers - young American GIs. After the bar closed, they were free to go with the guy they had been hustling or not. Some would but others would backdoor their customer - they'd tell the guy they'd meet him at the front door then go out the back. I knew one girl in Okinawa. She was a very pretty girl with Caucasian features although she was vague about being Amerasian - she did have some Amerasian friends, including the reigning Miss Okinawa (who I met.) I once asked her why she worked in a bar and she replied "Beats working in the sweet potato fields.)
Whorehouses were illegal in France but prostitution was not. I never went there but there was a hotel near the base where girls set themselves up and it was thus legal. In Spain, where prostitution was illegal but also legal. girls would patronize nightclubs where potential customers would come up to them and negotiate an arrangement.
My point is you can whimper and whine all day about it, but you're not going to stop either pornography or prostitution, no more than you're going to stop drug use, alcoholism or any other vice.
It’s not about stopping it, it’s about not celebrating it, or worse holding kink up as some kind of virtue. Men who use porn or prostitution should rightfully be ashamed of their behaviour.
There is nothing complex about sex. Sex is a reproductive function. Nothing else.
Of course that when the degenerate Uman animal Thought takes over "sex" becomes a "complex" thing.
"I grew up in an environment that had nothing bad to say about the sexual revolution that broke out in the late 1960’s.", it was due to that sexual degeneration that GRID manifested itself.
Next comes the Past... Since we aren't willing to CHANGE the Present the Future will be just like the Past. The only difference will be the toys we use.
My wife and I have never had any interest in reproduction, yet sex has always been a very important part of our marriage. The emotional closeness and depth are brought to their most intense level during physical love-making, regardless of the fact that it's not being done to make puppies. It's quite sad for you if you've missed out on that experience.
I had to look Allela up to remember who she it, then I found a story about her I'd read a while back.
When it comes to prostitution, most Americans have no clue that the United States is the ONLY country in the world where it's not legal - it's legal in the US in a couple of counties in Nevada. Other countries, including Ireland, do not prohibit prostitution but they prohibit brothels and in some cases, as is the case in Ireland, prohibit paying for sex (sort of a conundrum there.) Prostitution is as old as the human race. Several women in the Bible were "harlots," prostitutes. Some of them became respectable women and were ancestors of none other than Jesus of Nazareth. Irish immigrant women to the United States in the nineteenth century were notorious for prostitution.
Pornography is not prostitution and to attempt to link them is dishonest. Rather, it's exhibitionism. The women and girls who engage in it want to be seen. It's been around as long as there have been cameras.
As far as the "sexual revolution" goes, I'm not so sure it actually happened but was more of a media invention. I was a single young adult in the 1960s and seventies and knew a lot of single women. NONE of them were particularly promiscuous, well, maybe one. Some would Jimmy Buffet, meaning they'd get drunk and screw. The only thing that really changed was the advent of birth control which may or may not have given women more freedom - there are a lot of people around whose mothers were on some form of birth control. Prior to the pill, the means of birth control was the rubber. There had always been sluts around, girls who would screw because they liked it. The "sexual revolution" gave them legitimacy. The factor that truly gave women more freedom was higher education, particularly after it became coed. Women and girls humped their bottoms off during World War II, and not just in England where a vast army of young American troops overwhelmed the population.
By the way, crusading against prostitution, and now pornography, is as old as the hills. People are going to do what people are going to do.
Murder is also as old as the human race but it’s seen as antisocial and it’s outlawed. Some women have historically turned to prostitution because that was one of the only ways to support herself if she didn’t have a husband or a decent education. Some even went to the convent because that was the only way for females to get an education. It was very convenient for males to have the pick of the females, and the rest would have to go spread their legs for those men who chose to stay unattached or wanted female attention available while on the trail. Emotionally disturbed misogynists, both male and female, use the term “slut” to refer to females who don’t hide their liking for sex. It’s another way to force women in a box. If a woman admits she likes sex, she’s a slut and unworthy of attachment. Other parts of the world admit the libido of females is as strong as the males, but some of those cultures cover the females with tents and/or cut off the offending parts that threatens the sense of male entitlement to be the only ones to get to enjoy sex and to control the female without having to worry about paternity. She becomes a hole that can gestate his babies. Extreme social pressure does much the same thing by calling women sluts and ostracizing them from the herd. Much of pornography is prostitution (including some of the sex scenes in “respectable” movies) and it’s also damaging to males, but there is the added physical threat to women. The sexual revolution did happen, whether or not you want to admit that, and birth control certainly freed women from having to constantly worry about unplanned pregnancy. There’s no such thing as a “slut.” Most men and women desire sex but in the recent past, only women are supposed to be coy about it and be tarred and feathered if they admit to such. The men and women who use that pejorative despise those women who admit to having a libido. Promiscuity in males or females doesn’t usually lead to healthy outcomes but in my own experience, promiscuous males are less likely to make good partners. Females can repair themselves and still form healthy attachments. My speculation is that is due to the female gestational function that men don’t have.
I hate to be combative generally, but I find you a little too smug and supercillious. And it's a pity, because I expect on the issue at hand I agree with you maybe ninety-five percent. But your argument as I understand it, is a fallacy of motive. It's an ad hominem fallacy - name-calling, basically (e.g. "useful idiots").
Surely, you realize this? An argument is either false or true or it's not an argument. It doesn't matter what the motive of the person making the argument - in terms of evaluating the argument. The motive maybe base as all get out and yet correct. In any event I don't think their arguments have any merit.
Nevertheless, I would probably enjoy watching your combat with these people whom - like you - I tend to abhor. Who doesn't like seeing abhorrent people made to look foolish? It is a crude pleasure though.
To Sam McGowan I would argue that the fact that some prostitutes eventually become respectable is irrelevant to the issue of prostitution per se. So what? Some criminals become respectable too, does that mean they didn't commit crimes? But I agree with the him that "Pornography is not prostitution and to attempt to link them is dishonest." But I would disagree with him that it is exhibitionism, at least in the sense that they do it because they get off on it, which is generally what that means. It is _like_ prostitution in almost all cases because they are being made to do something degrading and distasteful which they would not do if they weren't being paid money for it which they couldn't get without the degradation some other way. It's the degradation part that is different from, say, working at a job like being a janitor or some other generally low-skill looked down upon job by a large portion of the population but don't carry the degradational weight.
Prostitution - and now pornography - are activities that appeal to what people intuitively understand to be baser instincts, and those who engage in them are correspondingly ranked lower by others - much lower - within our status hierarchies. There are sound, evolutionary-based reasons why this is so - why our brains are wired to view each other this way. All these attempts by people to "normalize" these kinds of behaviors not ultimately going to work, although they may befuddle some for awhile.
Uh Jeff, my point is that prostitution in some form is legal and thus NOT A CRIME in nearly every country except the United States (with the exception of certain counties in Nevada.) Don't be surprised if you were do a genealogy and find that there are some whores in your family tree.
Very good! 🤣 Thank you for sharing. It really is revenge of the nerds.
Meghan Murphy and her followers have been doing something similar -- pointing out over and over again that the men who are defending porn (in particular) are doing so to protect their vices, but just giving it a veneer of respectability.
Your essay reminded me instantly of a "meme" image a cousin emailed me a few days ago. It consisted of a picture of a guy I assume is the male character in "Fifty Shades of Grey" which it then describes as "only romantic because the guy is a billionaire. If he was living in a trailer it would be a Criminal Minds episode."
I think the most pertinent line in your piece is when you say “nothing is sacred”. I believe this is the root of the problem. If life is just a meaningless pursuit of pleasure by individuals then anything goes. It is incumbent upon us to find meaning, to connect with the sacred nature of all things, so that we may build an alternative at story to the one that currently dominates culture. A story of connection and village mindedness.
Honestly, I'd like to take these "anything goes" people to any inner city ER on a summer Saturday night. Maybe after seeing the 3rd prostitute beaten, slashed, or suffering from a herpes outbreak on her (or his) colostomy opening, they would begin to see the harm they advocate.
| suffering from a herpes outbreak on her (or his) colostomy opening
Please tell me you made this up. Please.
Nope. Wish I had in a way (but super glad my mind isn’t that creative). It is a situation one does not forget.
The only way to respect a prostitute is to not pay them for sex.
These men approach like vampires, blood literally dripping out of their mouths, talking about women’s liberation via allowing themselves to be physically harmed for someone else’s pleasure.
Louise Perry, I think, had a wonderful summary of her book in the Wall Street Journal where it said that a main obstacle for a woman to become a prostitute is the instinct to vomit. She has to learn to swallow back vomit. That’s the prerequisite skill. Talk of consent all you like. That is mistreatment and there is no honest rational argument that it isn’t.
Women via feminism have given cover and legitimacy to the worst male behavior. And they refuse to about-face. The direct harm is to women but the long-term soul-rotting harm is to men also. I am not going to even mention children who of course only lose here.
That a society so lies about right and wrong, and about who is vulnerable, and instead points to anyone who advocates for conventional morality as the bully, is deeply sick. Women who know better should refuse to let men talk over them, when men say that taking advantage of women who either financially or emotionally cannot care for themselves enough to avoid these behaviors, is legitimate and not hurting anyone. How would they know that? And their bias is evident. But all the self-righteous vitriol women can muster has been used on men who say that the lives of the unborn are important. Those men are immediately silenced. But men advocating the worst mistreatment of women a person could imagine, they have the right to speak as to what women want, and what is fair to women. Feminism chose abortion as its key issue, and in so doing, gave up the opportunity for real choice for the poorest and most ill-treated women- true bodily integrity, true self-determination. It’s a tragedy. Feminism has rewired the brains of humanity- via propaganda, via pharmaceuticals, and it has achieved its goals. But those were stupid goals. Especially with so much power.
They used to call feminism women’s liberation.
Do the comments here sound like women have been liberated? Mistreated women can terminate their pregnancies. But no man needs to apologize for taking advantage of a woman in the worst way. Is that a gain?
I want to come at the sex work/porn angle from something a little more nuts-and-bolts (recognizing that even one pun in that sentence is one too many and begging everyone's forgiveness up front for that). "Laws" against such things require enforcement, since laws themselves don't magically stop behavior. What is a "just" punishment for a prostitute or cam girl? Who administers it?
The way I see it. The way they’ve not just walked off the cliff but driven off in a drag car. The inevitability is children. Thats how I view it all.
Don't be too hard on sexual revolutionaries. "All beginnings are weak" as your father liked to say. Perhaps the most profound technological development in human history was the invention of the birth control pill that became available to millions of women worldwide in 1964. All of a sudden the ancient rules no longer applied: women could enjoy sexual intercourse without fear of becoming pregnant, just like men. Each woman had to work out what the rules were for herself.
I am in too much pain to go deep but I agree. Age 59, lived through the seventies permissive culture that groomed both myself and my perpetrator for my sexual abuse. I see us going from reasonable sex positivity as a goal to incredible sex negativity. I've been thinking about this quite a bit. Sex is being destroyed for people in ways the moral majority couldn't. Great essay!
It is, of course, true that sin and the harmful results of sin have been around for a very long time. What is different is that the prophetic signs of end times are here now. Sure, there have always been people who thought that the end times were approaching, but now the biblical signs are here in abundance. I can't go into all of the biblical and societal stuff in a short comment but there are a lot of resources on the subject at places like olivetreeviews.org. I would just say that nothing now stands in the way prophetically of Jesus Christ returning for his church in the Rapture at any moment. If things are bad on earth now, they will be much worse when all of the true Christians are taken to heaven in the Rapture and unbelievers are left on earth for the horrible seven-year tribulation to come. There is no time like the present to make a decision to follow Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture.
Having spent a little time in other parts of the world where prostitution is partially outlawed but still legal in many respects, I know more than a little about it. Although prostitution as such was not legal in most Asian countries, it was still practiced. In Asia, women are down a few notches on the totem pole. I don't know how most of the girls I knew got into the business, but I doubt that any of them would have considered themselves to be prostitutes. Rather, they were bar girls, B-girls. They were employed by the bars to solicit drinks out of their customers - young American GIs. After the bar closed, they were free to go with the guy they had been hustling or not. Some would but others would backdoor their customer - they'd tell the guy they'd meet him at the front door then go out the back. I knew one girl in Okinawa. She was a very pretty girl with Caucasian features although she was vague about being Amerasian - she did have some Amerasian friends, including the reigning Miss Okinawa (who I met.) I once asked her why she worked in a bar and she replied "Beats working in the sweet potato fields.)
Whorehouses were illegal in France but prostitution was not. I never went there but there was a hotel near the base where girls set themselves up and it was thus legal. In Spain, where prostitution was illegal but also legal. girls would patronize nightclubs where potential customers would come up to them and negotiate an arrangement.
My point is you can whimper and whine all day about it, but you're not going to stop either pornography or prostitution, no more than you're going to stop drug use, alcoholism or any other vice.
It’s not about stopping it, it’s about not celebrating it, or worse holding kink up as some kind of virtue. Men who use porn or prostitution should rightfully be ashamed of their behaviour.
The only way to end the sexual degeneration requires the extinction of the animal generating it. As long as the animal lives there is no end to it.
"With something as complex as sex"
There is nothing complex about sex. Sex is a reproductive function. Nothing else.
Of course that when the degenerate Uman animal Thought takes over "sex" becomes a "complex" thing.
"I grew up in an environment that had nothing bad to say about the sexual revolution that broke out in the late 1960’s.", it was due to that sexual degeneration that GRID manifested itself.
Next comes the Past... Since we aren't willing to CHANGE the Present the Future will be just like the Past. The only difference will be the toys we use.
https://postimg.cc/D4VtsGQv
"Sex is a reproductive function. Nothing else."
My wife and I have never had any interest in reproduction, yet sex has always been a very important part of our marriage. The emotional closeness and depth are brought to their most intense level during physical love-making, regardless of the fact that it's not being done to make puppies. It's quite sad for you if you've missed out on that experience.
Thank you for reproducing exactly what I described... All of what you mention is a mere byproduct of Thought.
We can make almost INFINITE claims about it, but in the end the raw reality remains the same.
Okay.
I had to look Allela up to remember who she it, then I found a story about her I'd read a while back.
When it comes to prostitution, most Americans have no clue that the United States is the ONLY country in the world where it's not legal - it's legal in the US in a couple of counties in Nevada. Other countries, including Ireland, do not prohibit prostitution but they prohibit brothels and in some cases, as is the case in Ireland, prohibit paying for sex (sort of a conundrum there.) Prostitution is as old as the human race. Several women in the Bible were "harlots," prostitutes. Some of them became respectable women and were ancestors of none other than Jesus of Nazareth. Irish immigrant women to the United States in the nineteenth century were notorious for prostitution.
Pornography is not prostitution and to attempt to link them is dishonest. Rather, it's exhibitionism. The women and girls who engage in it want to be seen. It's been around as long as there have been cameras.
As far as the "sexual revolution" goes, I'm not so sure it actually happened but was more of a media invention. I was a single young adult in the 1960s and seventies and knew a lot of single women. NONE of them were particularly promiscuous, well, maybe one. Some would Jimmy Buffet, meaning they'd get drunk and screw. The only thing that really changed was the advent of birth control which may or may not have given women more freedom - there are a lot of people around whose mothers were on some form of birth control. Prior to the pill, the means of birth control was the rubber. There had always been sluts around, girls who would screw because they liked it. The "sexual revolution" gave them legitimacy. The factor that truly gave women more freedom was higher education, particularly after it became coed. Women and girls humped their bottoms off during World War II, and not just in England where a vast army of young American troops overwhelmed the population.
By the way, crusading against prostitution, and now pornography, is as old as the hills. People are going to do what people are going to do.
Murder is also as old as the human race but it’s seen as antisocial and it’s outlawed. Some women have historically turned to prostitution because that was one of the only ways to support herself if she didn’t have a husband or a decent education. Some even went to the convent because that was the only way for females to get an education. It was very convenient for males to have the pick of the females, and the rest would have to go spread their legs for those men who chose to stay unattached or wanted female attention available while on the trail. Emotionally disturbed misogynists, both male and female, use the term “slut” to refer to females who don’t hide their liking for sex. It’s another way to force women in a box. If a woman admits she likes sex, she’s a slut and unworthy of attachment. Other parts of the world admit the libido of females is as strong as the males, but some of those cultures cover the females with tents and/or cut off the offending parts that threatens the sense of male entitlement to be the only ones to get to enjoy sex and to control the female without having to worry about paternity. She becomes a hole that can gestate his babies. Extreme social pressure does much the same thing by calling women sluts and ostracizing them from the herd. Much of pornography is prostitution (including some of the sex scenes in “respectable” movies) and it’s also damaging to males, but there is the added physical threat to women. The sexual revolution did happen, whether or not you want to admit that, and birth control certainly freed women from having to constantly worry about unplanned pregnancy. There’s no such thing as a “slut.” Most men and women desire sex but in the recent past, only women are supposed to be coy about it and be tarred and feathered if they admit to such. The men and women who use that pejorative despise those women who admit to having a libido. Promiscuity in males or females doesn’t usually lead to healthy outcomes but in my own experience, promiscuous males are less likely to make good partners. Females can repair themselves and still form healthy attachments. My speculation is that is due to the female gestational function that men don’t have.
Prostitution is not outlawed in most countries. The United States is an exception.
"Some of them became respectable women and were ancestors of none other than Jesus of Nazareth. " how did they became "respectable"?
They got married and stopped whoring.
"stopped whoring" is all that takes...
Just dropping this here https://nordicmodelnow.org/2018/07/01/working-as-a-receptionist-in-a-legal-brothel-prostitution-is-anything-but-a-normal-job/
Give it up. The Supreme Court has ruled that pornography is free speech. You or no one else is going to shut it down.
The SC is filled with degenerate uman animals (most likely they also engage in watching porn) so no wonder they ruled like that.
I hate to be combative generally, but I find you a little too smug and supercillious. And it's a pity, because I expect on the issue at hand I agree with you maybe ninety-five percent. But your argument as I understand it, is a fallacy of motive. It's an ad hominem fallacy - name-calling, basically (e.g. "useful idiots").
https://open.lib.umn.edu/goodreasoning/chapter/chapter-8-fallacies/
Surely, you realize this? An argument is either false or true or it's not an argument. It doesn't matter what the motive of the person making the argument - in terms of evaluating the argument. The motive maybe base as all get out and yet correct. In any event I don't think their arguments have any merit.
Nevertheless, I would probably enjoy watching your combat with these people whom - like you - I tend to abhor. Who doesn't like seeing abhorrent people made to look foolish? It is a crude pleasure though.
To Sam McGowan I would argue that the fact that some prostitutes eventually become respectable is irrelevant to the issue of prostitution per se. So what? Some criminals become respectable too, does that mean they didn't commit crimes? But I agree with the him that "Pornography is not prostitution and to attempt to link them is dishonest." But I would disagree with him that it is exhibitionism, at least in the sense that they do it because they get off on it, which is generally what that means. It is _like_ prostitution in almost all cases because they are being made to do something degrading and distasteful which they would not do if they weren't being paid money for it which they couldn't get without the degradation some other way. It's the degradation part that is different from, say, working at a job like being a janitor or some other generally low-skill looked down upon job by a large portion of the population but don't carry the degradational weight.
Prostitution - and now pornography - are activities that appeal to what people intuitively understand to be baser instincts, and those who engage in them are correspondingly ranked lower by others - much lower - within our status hierarchies. There are sound, evolutionary-based reasons why this is so - why our brains are wired to view each other this way. All these attempts by people to "normalize" these kinds of behaviors not ultimately going to work, although they may befuddle some for awhile.
Uh Jeff, my point is that prostitution in some form is legal and thus NOT A CRIME in nearly every country except the United States (with the exception of certain counties in Nevada.) Don't be surprised if you were do a genealogy and find that there are some whores in your family tree.
Nothing would surprise me about my or anyone else's genealogies - after-all, we all have ancestrally roughly twice as many mother's as fathers.
Very good! 🤣 Thank you for sharing. It really is revenge of the nerds.
Meghan Murphy and her followers have been doing something similar -- pointing out over and over again that the men who are defending porn (in particular) are doing so to protect their vices, but just giving it a veneer of respectability.
I like to ask why, if sex work is work, more men don't do it.