Quote:
Originally Posted by oldmarine
Give me a break! This thread is totally tasteless and degrading in the extreme.
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Tasteless I agree. Degrading I can't fully agree since no woman's (or
any person's) value as a human being is, in my humble opinion, contingent on what anyone else is prepared to pay her for her services. Part of the problem, and again this is only my opinion, is the prevailing view of sex work as such a delicate subject, which in turn, I think, stems from a prevailing view of sex as sacred. The problem with that view is that sex isn't always sacred to everyone all the time. Sometimes it's just enjoyable physical exercise. By isolating sex work into its own category and treating it as if we are buying the person rather than the person's services, I think it serves to perpetuate the stigmatization of the entire profession.
Simply put, I think a lot of people see asking a sex worker her (or his) price as asking her how much for her, not her services, and I suspect this is in turn because of the prevailing objectification of women's bodies, not as a sovereign tool she can use, but merely as a thing she can rent out or sell (which is how I think most of society has viewed marriage for most of human history). I guess one could call this the Lay Back and Think of England school of sexonomics.
Let me ask you a question. Replace sex worker with any other kind of skilled labor such as electrician or portrait painter. A thread like this would still be tasteless, sure, but would you consider it degrading to practitioners of those professions? Would you consider negotiating with a painter or electrician in any manner to be degrading, i.e. is is degrading
because it's done tastelessly, or just because it's always degrading to negotiate? My question isn't rhetorical. I'd really like to hear what you or others think.