Comments on: Only Losers Dine At Le Cirque: The Stigma on Sex Work Customers

by: Being Amber Rhea » Blog Archive » links for 2008-01-24

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:22:53 +0000

[…] Only Losers Dine At Le Cirque: The Stigma on Sex Work Customers | Blowfish Blog “‘I’m not going to pay someone to cook for me. What kind of loser has to pay for a meal?’ If that doesn’t make sense when it comes to food, then why does it make sense when it comes to sex?” (tags: sexwork society stigma stereotypes sex Reference) […]

by: Are You a Sex Addict (Part 1) | Blowfish Blog

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 05:11:17 +0000

[…] And as I’ve written before in this blog, I don’t consider the mere fact of hiring sex workers to be unhealthy. I know it’s scorned and condemned by our culture; but unless hiring sex workers is getting in the way of your pursuit of romantic relationships (that is, assuming you want a romantic relationship), or unless you’re spending more on sex workers than you can afford, I don’t see why this is automatically a sign that you have a problem. In fact, I think it can be a sign of a very healthy attitude towards sex: it shows the ability to know what you want, and to openly and unashamedly seek it out from someone who’s willing to give it to you. […]

by: C4bl3Fl4m3

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:02:18 +0000

This reminds me of a sci-fi/fantasy story my ex-girlfriend told me about. (I so wish I remembered the name of it.) It was about someone getting dumped into a different time and place, as sometimes happens in sci-fi. The person was walking down the street and saw lots of people having public sex… in the park, where ever. Sexuality was a healthy, normal part of people’s lives and no one had a problem with it. So the main character walked into a shop, bought a sandwich and sat down on a bench to eat it. And while they were eating it, people stopped and stared, shocked. The cops were called and the person was treated like a horrible criminal. They were locked up and the food was confiscated, scarfed down behind the doors of the police cruiser, in secret and in shame.

Turns out in their society, sex was just fine but EATING and FOOD was extremely loaded, to the point of being culturally taboo. People ate in their houses alone and felt terribly guilty about eating at all.

I wish I could remember the name of this story. Perhaps I’ll point her over to this post and have her comment on it with the name. She’s French, so there’s a chance that the story’s in French and not translated.

by: Iamcuriousblue

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 01:54:58 +0000

“Come to think of it, I could easily imagine an alternate reality in which paying for sex is an openly practiced, completely accepted part of the economy and the culture . . . but paying for food is considered shameful at best and immoral at worst, an illegal black market economy in which the providers, no matter how skillful they are at their craft, are defamed, marginalized criminals, and the customers are mocked into thinking there’s something sordid and pathetic about what they do.

‘I’m not going to pay someone to cook for me. What kind of loser has to pay for a meal?’”

The anti-restaurant thing isn’t actually as far-fetched as you’d think. There’s a group of British anarchists who have published a very elaborate tract called “Abolish Restaurants“. They seem to be dead serious. Their arguments about restaurant work, interestingly, come across like many of the feminist arguments against sex work – restaurant worker’s are terribly exploited, they fundamentally hate their customers, and the only way to solve it is to get rid of restaurants entirely as part of a larger transformation of society.

Its probably not an argument most people would entirely buy, even if there’s a lot of truth about non-so-great labor conditions in the food service industry. On the other hand, it seems like a lot of people buy these arguments about the sex industry, even though its not inherently worse than a lot of other industries as far as the percentage of workers who are subjected to exploitative working conditions go. Hence, customers, who “drive demand”, end up being demonized.

Of course, the perception that anybody who pays for sex is a “loser” is even a more basic kneejerk reaction than assumptions about the nature of sex work. There’s a ready assumption that if one is even halfway well-adjusted that one can find a partner who can satisfy all of your legitimate needs. (And if you can’t readily find a partner who can satisfy a particular need or desire, then there’s something wrong with your needs and desires.) Such, of course, is not the reality, for a lot of people, for all manner of reasons. “Paying for it”, whether its as simple joining a porn site or elaborate as having an escort for a whole night, is simply a way of bridging that gap.