I just want to say this: Why are the sex-poz’s all fired up that we should find some mythical study or some mythical anecdotal evidence from a prostitute who would properly represent ALL PROSTITUTES? I mean, seriously. WTF? The street whore turning tricks to support a drug habit doesn’t represent everybody, the Asian woman sold by her parents and forced into prostitution doesn’t represent everybody, the fourteen-year-old trans kid whose parents beat the shit out of her so she had to run away from home and turn tricks to survive doesn’t represent everybody, so let me ask this: How the HELL does a $300-an-hour penthouse babe with lotsa lucre in the bank account and her own health insurance represent all of whoredom? Tell me that. I’m dying to know.

If we’re going to talk about the problems inherent in prostitution–and we should, because although the liars and elitists here are determined to twist this around to make whoring look like nothing more than an annoying low-paying McDonald’s or call center gig, those of us in the reality-based community know that’s not the case one bit–perhaps we should talk most about those areas of prostitution in which, OMGWTFBBQ, WOMEN ARE HAVING THE MOST PROBLEMS.

Duh.

If you LOOOOOVE being a whore and don’t mind one bit those fun moments where you no longer consent to what’s going on but you can reduce it in your own mind to merely “not having fun” then fine, that’s you. But really. If a crack-addled street prostitute isn’t the face of WOMEN WHO ARE COERCED INTO PROSTITUTION, YOU sure the hell aren’t. So shaddup.

Seriously, I ain’t going in for this coddling-the-opposition bullshit. Too many lives ride on this. Tell you what, let’s GET RID of all these circumstances wherein women must be forced into prostitution because they can’t survive any other way and THEN maybe we can talk about how great selling your ass for money is when you can afford to say no or no more.

But we aren’t there yet. So how about let’s quit slamming the radfems and try, JUST TRY, to actually give a damn about the specific women radfems are trying to help. Because I’m not seeing that concern here. I’m seeing downplaying, and it isn’t even from the women who are actually suffering (walk your talk or STFU, people)–it’s from women the patriarchy and prostitution are BENEFITING. Conflict of interest, in other words. Shame on you.

It’s not really going to be possible to critique any of those studies unless we pop round to Weitzer’s office and take look at his copies. So we’ll never know whether they were methodologically incompetent or tendentious. What we do know is that Weitzer quotes selectively from research to give a skewed picture as we saw from that BMJ article. This must be what passes for discourse in prostitution apologists’ circles.

KH has reduced to likening us both to children now I see Pony. Of course children often ask direct and useful questions which is why so many adults get pissed off with them.

As for Weitzer, yes I know we are discussing his paper. We have been since before you arrived here, and I made my definitive comment on it then.

Indeed, Weitzer has publihed other articles. He references himelf several times in his opinion piece.

I do encourage you to smear Weitzer some more, please. The difference between the Farley & Weitzer papers is that the former is a methodologically incompetent & tendentious research report & the latter is a literature review article, a perfectly normal form, as you’d know if you had even passing knowleddge of any academic literature at all. Weitzer has, of course, also published reports of his own primary research & is, unfortunately from your point of view, a well-respected person in the field.

This is what passes for discourse in abolitionist circles.

They may. They may not.

You have no idea what those references say or support. You only have Weitzer’s word for that. You haven’t read the papers and studies he references.

In response to a previous question about why we should give more credence to Farley’s work than Weitzer’s; Farley used primary sources, Weitzer did a survery of other people’s work and gave us his opinion of that.

‘If it’s so easy to find, why didn’t you find it yourself? You had a computer in front of you, & you knew what article you were searching for; it would have been easier for you to find it by searching than for anyone else to find it. It took me about ten minutes to find it (it would have been much quicker if you had provided the title of the article, or the publication) – Weitzer had three different articles regarding prostitution published in 2005, but only one included a page 218.’

Excellent question! You cut to the nub. Let me explain. Please understand, I didn’t even think this was my argument. I turn on my computer & there Delphyne is, demanding that somebody (I don’t even remember who) cough up references to some sort of studies. I put my 2¢ in & go about my business. I don’t re-read the whole thread, being busy with other things (don’t ask). You should also note that Delphyne has been very mean to me lately, & I think technically is still observing this rule she made up that she’s gonna ignore me (this is her 2nd or 3rd time, I think, in the last month). I try to act all smart & make these serious arguments & it seems like all she ever has to say isn’t even really that serious, not like she’s stupid but something’s going on. So we have this personal thing going, not really love-hate, but some kind of hostility, in case you really need to know. So I’m determined to play it cool & not get drawn into some argument that ends in tears & bitter recriminations. Again. Right? (Later on I’ll tell you what she said about me. It’s not as bad as Mildred but it’s still mean.) So she gets all huffy & says gimme the URLs, & I don’t even know if they all have URLs, so I say sorry, no can do. Anyway, there’s a lot of things that are easy to find, & I don’t have any reason to go find them all, & that’s really the answer to your question. It’s really her deal, I’m not even really paying attention to what she’s saying, & I already gave her the reference, which I did go to some trouble to do, probably more than the 10 minutes it took a certain person to find one simple article, & I figure she can find it herself in 5 seconds & she shouldn’t be depending on other people for every little thing & making up these ridiculous little petty grievances. I do her one favor & now she’s getting all high & mighty because I don’t do her another one. And I’m thinking, are these really competent adults making a big deal about this, like does this really advance our understanding of these issues, or is this really some kind of hanging offense seeing how she’s not talking to me anyway & this isn’t my argument anyway & does anybody really want to make some kind of big drawn out deal about this, not knowing of course that you’re gonna raise it again later, which is odd incidentally because of all the nastiness in this thread why would you only comment on this one unless it’s okay when somebody on your side acts badly. Whatever, I figured it wouldn’t take more than 5 seconds because I’d already specifically mentioned which one of the 2005 articles I was talking about when I gave her the list of references in the first place & anyway you can see right there on the screen that that’s the only one with a page 218 & you’re wrong about me not giving the title & the name of the journal, so all you’ve gotta do is copy & paste the title into Google & it pops right up. Anyway, long story short, it wouldn’t have taken you so long if you just paid attention.

‘Page 218 does have a lot of references to support the idea that the majority of non-streetwalker prostitutes like their jobs & have healthy self-images. (What’s not addressed is what they think of legalization.)’

You’re right about that one, different researchers ask different questions & they don’t all ask whether you like legalization, but I think Delphyne wanted data about more questions than just what do you think about legalization. But I could be wrong. Anyway, several of the papers you’re talking about were done in jurisdictions where prostitution is legal. The Netherland & Queensland & Nevada, I think. And if you ask someone how they like their legal job & they say great, I can see how, the way this debate is going, there’ll probably be some big argument about whether they still wish their legal job that they like was made illegal. I think this debate is lowering my IQ. So anyhoo, gotta run, bye!