I think a really important thing to remember is that a lot of this empowerment is indistinguishable from objectification. It feels good to be liked, and it even often feels good to be seen as a sex object, but perpetually being the object for consumption really only gives you the power to please other people. Taking the next step, and empowering yourself to obtain your own pleasure, is where women often get stuck - it will never be as glamorous or make you as popular as flashing your boobies will. I think it's another case of women being encouraged to rely on the approval of others in place of actually deciding for themselves what makes them happy and sexy.

Jessica - I'd be really interested in hearing you go into detail about this, even if it's barely coherent. I'm confused about the issue. I know a number of sex-positive feminists, but there seems to be a cultural subversion of the feminist idea that women have a right to express the fact that they are sexual beings into the much older patriarchal mold of women as sex objects. I really have no idea how to fight it or even of where the boundary lies. Women who play to the patriarchal mold under the cover of the sex-positive feminist ideal reap substantial short term rewards, but in the longer term it seems to me that there is considerable damage caused - or is there? I'm genuinely confused.

I can't help wondering what the original generation of American feminists in the nineteenth century -- women like Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- would have thought of this.

For them, feminism was the struggle for basic civil rights like the ability to vote, to obtain higher education, and to not be treated under the law as their husbands' property. For their self-proclaimed modern-day heirs, feminism seems to have become little more than a celebration of sluttiness and promiscuity.

It's pretty sad to witness the complete moral and intellectual degeneration of a once noble cause.

-Krotos-

Your confusion would be cleared if you read the book.

You've exemplified the big old glob of naive pro-raunchiness all over this blog, but because you pointed out the supposed difference between young feminists and girls who buying Porn Star shirts I'll tell you I first heard of your blog hearing you tell Janeane Garofalo on Air America you thought buying Anti-Bush panties women could flash at people was a feminist thing to do.

I've read the book and the author asks the feminists who say porn, prostitution and stripping are empowering for women, "How, exactly, does that work?" How is a picture of a woman with a man's hand over her mouth pro-woman porn? How is a photo of a heavily make-upped blonde women in black underwear pointing a gun illustrating healthy sexuality? You never provided answers to these questions when you promoted porn and prostitution here as pro-woman and the women promoters of commercialized sex interviewed in the book don't have answers either.

Way to restate the very conflation with which Jessica took issue in the first place. Suicide Girls is not Nina Hartley is not Annie Sprinkle is not Michelle Tea is not Femina Potens is not Exiles is not Nerve is not Cake is not Harlem Shake is not On Our Backs is not Harlem Shake is not Good Vibrations is not flea is not Amandapanda is not Jessica herself. An analysis of those-factions-frequently-grouped-together-under-"sex-positive" has no validity if it cannot be bothered to take into account the differences between the women crowded under the umbrella. You could say the same about an attempt to analyze all feminism at once: senseless.

It's like attempting to "critique" "trans theory" without admitting that there are crucial differences between Patrick Califia and Kate Bornstein, or between Judith Butler and Riki Wilchins, or between the lived experience of Jay Sennett and the lived experience of Nick Kiddle. It produces useless analysis, and its very refusal to admit complexity on the part of its subject is an indication of its desire to marginalize the women it frames.

Follow the money.

Its not women or girls who are spending 10 billion dollars a year on porn and prostitutes, it's MEN. Don't kid yourself that it's empowerment, it's just another form of prostituiton and/or approval seeking.

Sorry I don't know any cool names to drop.

prostitution
exists under the umbrella of class
and capitalism
sometimes in a good , empowering
form
sometimes as fascism
raunch and
womens freedom of expression
be it sexual or otherwise
exist
because women
choose them to exist

when there is choice
there is freedom
when a society
takes away choice through politics
or economics
or violence
we have fascism

anyone care to tell me where our country, our culture is today?

sex-positive is fully a good thing. pretending for money is bad. being a stripper or a prostitute or a porn star if you hate it is no different from working at starbucks if you hate it. both are fine jobs if you love sex or coffee.

(Sorry about the double posts, Jessica.)

If you're not acquainted with any of these people, you don't know anything about sex-positive or sexual feminism.

>>Its not women or girls who are spending 10 billion dollars a year on porn and prostitutes, it's MEN. Don't kid yourself that it's empowerment, it's just another form of prostituiton and/or approval seeking.>>

And this is just nonsensical in context. The raunch article talks about women as consumers as well; most feminist critiques of sex-positive feminism include women as consumers. There are also venues for women, some of which I mentioned. Women do consume porn, in increasing numbers, and that is an important part of the debate.

Oh, and? If you have a connection to teh intarweb, you've got google at your disposal. Most or all of the people and organizations I mentioned have websites. They don't count as obscure.

Oh Terpiskore, how I look forward to your comments.

First of all, I have never said flashing your panties was a feminist thing to do. If I remember correctly, we were discussing the controversial Axis of Eve underwear and whether or not they were an effective tool for mobilizing young women to vote. If you need a refresher, I believe the archived radio show is still up.

Your simplification (and misrepresentation) of my comments really just proved my point.

Any "power" that derives from presenting yourself in such a manner as to make someone else feel powerful OVER you is not power.

The only reason strippers et al are "empowered" is because they make men feel like the King Shit. By giving men power, do they become empowered? Sounds sort of Taoist-y on the surface, but why don't men ever have to give up power to get power?

Pretty simple to me: it's not actually power. If someone else chooses to grant it to you or not, based on what you do for them or how you make them feel, it's not power in any sense of the word. The house slave does not have power when the white master expresses gratitude for his dinner by giving him permission to eat a snack in the kitchen. The porn star does not have power when her male master expresses gratitude for swallowing his jizz and smearing it on her breasts by giving her a joint and a couple bucks to hand over to her pimp and/or husband. The stripper does not have power when her male master expresses his gratitude for his hard-on by slipping a $5 in her g-string and copping a feel on the way out.

If stripping/porn/etc is so empowering, why don't any women do it for free? You know, just for the sense of power, as a hobby? (obviously, the women who are sold into sexual slavery - that being a not-insignificant percentage of white women and an insanely disturbing percentage of asian women involved in the idustry - and the women whose husbands/pimps beat them if they don't do it, and the women who do it in return for drug aren't really doing it "for free")

At Fairy Butch and Madame Maraschino's, women do do it for free. Also for charity, for performance-art, and for barely-break-even fees. There's also the strippercize classes mentioned in the article.

You beat me to it, piny.

My sister's active in the queer community. There's a fair amount of amateur stripping going on via burlesque shows. You can consentually play power release games because you're sexually stimulated by doing so: hence, BDSM. The problem is not playing sexual power games where you willingly consent to the *perception* of power over, but being in a situation where you're not having any fun yet have no other choice but to relinquish your sexual power. So rape fantasies can be a turn on for some, but never rape. There is a strong line here. In the case of stripping, the perspective is in the head of the woman *doing the stripping* if (and only if) she has the ability to quit.

For a woman who has never had sexual respect, I imagine the game of relinquishing sexual control would not be in any way satisfying. It wouldn't be a game, would it? However, both men and women who have had plenty of respect of their sexualities can and do play at humiliation or masochism: there's a *thriving* female dom industry, where *men* relinquish control, and I see no reason to deny women the same satisfaction should they wish it.

I know two women who have stripped for a time because they found it an interesting idea and a turn-on. Both of them ended up having problems with the industry of sex work - which is disempowering to women - in that after buying costumes and paying floor fees and everything else they were making next to no money, and that in some establishments, their bosses were horribly exploitative and disrespectful. (Implied demands for prostitution, disrespect of their intelligence, etc.) However, the stripping wasn't the issue for either of them: one of them still does amateur burlesque for fun and one of them enjoys Bettie Page nights.

It's very true that the SYSTEM of the sex trade sucks and disrespects women. However, it's also disrespectful to ignore that there are some women who might make these choices for themselves. I wouldn't enjoy it, but I'm a very different person than my friends and I respect their intelligence, agency, and personhood.

If we worked on improving the atmosphere around the sex trade, (sex trade unions? worker owned cat houses? co-op strip clubs?), maybe it'd get a little better for everyone: there'd be less opportunity for slavery, pimping, and exploitation. To do that, though, we need not to shame the women who choose to use or enjoy their bodies this way. We need only to shame those who willingly exploit and dehumanize others without fundamental respect for their personhood.

Dang-a-lang, I wish I had more time to enlarge on this topic, but here's the short version:

Porn exists solely to glorify the patriarchal/hetero model of dominance/submission that plagues, in one way or another, every single human relationship, from the one between you and your boyfriend to the one between the US government and the victims of its wars. Until this douchey model is abolished once and for all, there's always gonna be oppression, racism, sexism, misogyny, and poverty. In a patriarchy, where women are the sex class, "sex-positive" can only mean "oppression fetish." I mean, I get it: girls just wanna have fun. But fat chance; you CAN'T have fun when the state owns your fucking uterus. Taking "raunchiness"--a learned submissive behavior created by and for the male boner--and making it your own is not radical. It's just saying "you pro-patriarchy motherfuckers were right all along."

piny, the list you gave has everything important to the issue in common, as Jessica puts it "we whole-heartedly support our sex worker sisters in their struggle for decriminalization, workers rights and access to health care."

And if millions of prostitutes-cum-"workers of the sex", the overwhelmingly majority of them, don't want to be fucked by hundreds of men each month, don't want you masterbating to the porn they were forced to make, don't want free access to all the antibiotics, abortions, pain medications, and AZT their penetrated, exposed bodies can stand...ah well, sometimes you need to break a few eggs to make sexually entertaining omelets? But instead of eggs broken, young and vulnerable people are broken, and the cultural splatter messes up the stove for all women not actively in the frying pan.

Of course some women strip and make porn for free in a world where male attention and male acceptance are rewards in themselves. That's the point of Levy's book, that men put a sexy carrot in front of women and women chase it *spending* money on it because there is nothing more important than being considered sexy, certainly not something as fuddy duddy as women's equality and all that other libber shit. Male attention is the reward women seek, but it's not respectful attention they get. Men don't fuck dominatrix sex workers because Andrea Dworkin was right, men view having sex with a woman as a way of demeaning and defiling her and the whole point of a dom is that she's above him, not beneath him like the women he sticks his dick in. Having sex with a dom would mar the sexual thrill of his fantasy of her superiority.

Jessica, the point isn't about your pair of Give Bush the Finger panties, it's about how you've not yet explained why you think a picture of a blonde woman with one man's hand over her mouth and another hand behind her head makes for alternative, healthy, feminist, sexual imagery.

The first time I asked how the porn you promote is different you didn't answer. The second time your answer was "Just because I don't have time to answer every comment on this site doesn't mean I'm 'running away' from a conversation." The third time, when you told people here to go get a copy of SMUT magazine, I asked "Can you please explain to me why you think this is feminist?" and you didn't reply. Why are you so petrified of answering the question of what makes the porn you've promoted on this blog more feminist than other porn?

You put a useless yellow ribbon on the Sex section of this site saying "Support Our Sex Workers"
that is about you more than sex workers because what they don't want is you enabling their continued sexual exploitation. Everyone knows pro-prostitution women consumers of sex industry products are 7.32 times sexier than other women, and pro-prostitution women profiting from selling the products of prostitution are 18.66 times sexier. Okay I made those numbers up, but sexists love to throw "Women do it too!" in
feminist faces just as racists relish reminding reparation seekers "Blacks sold slaves too!" and it should bother you that you're the woman they're pointing at to justify their own sexism.

Whoa. If I can't fuck, I don't want to be part of your revolution....

ps: I have a vulva & uterus & love sex. Looove it. Didn't always: do now.

I'm also Canadian (no legal restrictions on abortion and relative ease-of-access to the morning after pill), so perhaps I'm a little confused about the 'state' owning my uterus. In fact, my 'state' has provided me free contraceptive and reproductive care.

As for this: "men view having sex with a woman as a way of demeaning and defiling her..." -- that's not a man, that's a rapist. Rapists are often, but not always, men; faulty syllogism, as well as ethically offensive, to conflate the other way.

I've had experience with both consensual sex and have been molested and exploited in my life. It's sort of throwing down a big red flag in front of me, at least, to suggest that they're the same thing.

Andrea Dworkin's "Pornography: Men Possessing Women" (I haven't finished it yet) is so far the best explanation of the entire phenomena. Linda Lovelace's "Ordeal" is another fabulous one (she may have written it under her real name, but I can't check at the moment).

Yes, if the system wasn't so fucked up, being publically sex-positive would be a viable choice for building an internal self-esteem. Unfortunately, the system IS fucked up, and millions of women every year are raped, tortured, butchered, degraded, humiliated, debased, and enslaved to feed that system. How any ethical being can know what most of the women in porn go through and still orgasm while veiwing it is entirely beyond me. Sure, any given magazine may have a "No womenimals were harmed in the making of this particular hate speech publication" disclaimer on the bottom, but (A) they're probably lying and (B) even if they aren't, they're still feeding and enabling an industry that exists solely to portray the rape of women in pictures and videos. That screaming fake orgasm? It's a lie, for one, since I don't know anyone who screams when they masturbate, and it's also not too far away from terror screams of someone being raped. If the similarity is unintentional (which is arguable), that means men are UNCONSCIOUSLY turned on by the sounds a woman makes when she's being quasi-raped, which is a scary-ass thought. The other lies porn tells (orgasm solely from vaginal penetration, speed of orgasm, sexual act ends when the man is done, etc) are all conducive to and present in rape, but not in serious committed lovemaking.

Ms Dworkin said it best when she said that pornography does not cause rape; pornography is rape.

When women can freely walk around a city topless without inviting verbal and physical assaults from every man in a five-block radius, maybe then we'll live in a society ready for truly feminist, empowering, and sex-positive erotic imagry. Until then, I agree 100% with Twisty (TWISTY/BIDEN in 2008!). The sex industry serves men. You cannot have true, independant power while still serving others. The industry is disempowering, and anyone who promotes the industry, even the "different" (allegedly and inexplicably) parts of the industry, is aiding and abetting the disempowerment of women (not to mention the rape and abuse of women who don't happen to work in a union porn shop but who are veiwed by the folks whose appetites have been whetted by the "good" porn).

Good discussion! However, there is one point I'd like to make.

If you believe that Porn should be legal then, by definition, you also believe that there are 'Acceptable losses' as it pertains to women.

In saying, "Pornography is my right and it shouldn't be tampered with" you're saying that a certain amount of children can be sold, raped, abducted or otherwise forced into the industry to feed your 'Rights'. In thinking that your First Amendment Rights should cover your porn you are saying that a certain percentage of women can be sacrificed to onscreen rape. In saying, and defending Pornography you are explicitly saying that an industry that buys sexual slaves and rapes and beats women is acceptable so long as the skin flicks are there to consume.

You're not saying that? Not true. For anyone to think that Pornography *should* be legal they are also (though never aloud) saying that there are Acceptable Losses. The fact of the matter is that women and children ARE abducted to make porn. Women and children ARE being forced into Pornography. Women and children ARE being raped to create the overwhelming need for flesh. This is utter and absolute fact. It's happening. Now. As I type this. As long as women's bodies are being bought and sold, as long as there is a price to be paid for "Hot lesbians fucking" there will be sexual slaves, there will be abuse.

To believe that Pornography is your right you also say that *their* rights, their right to not be raped, beaten or bought and sold are secondary to YOUR right to consume the finished product.

What number is acceptable? If one teen is abducted and forced into Porn is that too many? How about a woman being gang raped, really, honest to frigging god, being gang raped and having that sold for profit? Is the number 1? 10? 100? 10,000? Just where do *you* draw the line? What number is 'Acceptable' for men and women to have the "Right" to masturbate?

For me, I say that there is no woman who is expendable. There ARE no Acceptable Losses.

"Men don't fuck dominatrix sex workers because Andrea Dworkin was right, men view having sex with a woman as a way of demeaning and defiling her and the whole point of a dom is that she's above him, not beneath him like the women he sticks his dick in. Having sex with a dom would mar the sexual thrill of his fantasy of her superiority."

Terpiskore, you may be speaking exclusively about BDSM as sex work, which is not something I have any experience with. However, I can tell you that as a het switch, what you describe is not my lived experience with my wife. She likes penetration, and she envelopes my penis regularly while topping me, sometimes telling me I'm not allowed to climax and punishing me if I do. My wife is the person I share my life with, and I do not view her as degraded by having sex with me, whether she penetrates me or I penetrate her, and whether I top her or she tops me. The idea that penetration is inherently submissive or degrading is one I reject out of hand.

As I said, I don't know if you meant to confine your remarks to the sex work context, but if you were remarking on BDSM generally, what you said is contrary to my lived experience.

If the sex act is over when you cum, then you're in power.

You seem to say you're not in power all the time, when she doesn't let you cum. Why is that some sort of shocking news flash? There was an article right on this very site that talked about the study which said only 22% of women experience orgasms during sex. So you don't get to cum once in a while, and that makes you ubersubmissive? That sort of means that 78% of women are in the same position, and hell, they NEVER cum. You get to sometimes. So even at your MOST submissive, you're still more powerful sexually than 78% of the female population.

Think about that for a bit.

biting beaver, i wonder how your logic would apply to the use of automobiles, (one of our nations biggest killers) Selective surgery, flying in airplanes, crossing the street, hiking a mountain, or any other number of activities that people do every day that have a very real risk of loss. the fact is, we do accept a certain amount of deaths every year as part of the convenience of owning automobiles.

Yes, and some women who become sex workers will have a bad experience. Some women may get raped. Some may get aids. that is life. everyone dies in the end.

Alpaca Rider, you really don't understand pornography. Much of porn is basically a masturbation aid for men. SO, yea the action ends when the dude shoots his load... much like when a guy wicks himself off. Porn is by and large not "entertainment" in the sense a movie is. Most porn is like this cause most porn is made for men.

if you think women may at some point be consuming as much porn as men.. well, hey that is an idea for you. Plenty of enterprising women are getting in on that market, and making material for women.

So, in your opinion unless we are living in some type of utopian society, people cant be sex positive, pro wicking off, pro porn that helps people get off. In my opinion, your opinion is just Stone Age moralizing dressed up for contemporary minds.

Tell ya what JJS, I'll play along just for fun.

IF people were being KIDNAPPED and being FORCED to drive cars I'd begin to see your point.

IF people were undergoing 'Selective Surgery' and then, on the table, being gang raped by the doctors I'd start to see what you mean.

IF people were being bought and sold and forced to drive airplanes for hours and hours a day and then being physically assaulted in the process, I might see what you're saying.

IF children were being forced to cross the street as a car was coming by I'd actually give your argument more credence.

The point, if you'll actually ALLLOW the point in past your cloud of willful blindness, is that women are being sold, as animals, to other MEN to MAKE YOUR PORN. Children are being videotaped by their Grandfathers to MAKE YOUR PORN. Ever look at Asian porn my friend? How 'bout actually giving a flying fuck and doing the research (I've spent the better part of 12 years researching the topic) It's quite likely that you've masturbated to sexual SLAVES.

The fact is, no matter how much you'd like to believe otherwise, (and I'm quite sure that you'll completely forget everything I'm saying because you simply do not WISH to believe it) is that women and children are being raped, beaten and sold into this market.

You're entire stance appears to be that women and children are choosing this. You so badly want to believe in the Jenna Jameson myth, the myth that all women who play in porn are just as well off as she is, that you're being willfully blind, or even worse, twisting what I'm saying to tell your own psyche that women are choosing this.

That is NOT the case. Many, many women are NOT choosing this and your nifty, fun, *erotic* gang-bang is quite likely to be an ACTUAL gang-RAPE. Have a look sometime at the Congressional hearing reports on Porn. Have a look at the testimonials. These are testimonial about American porn featuring even some MEN who had starred in Porn. These men told their own stories about seeing women raped on set. Seeing them injured and crying as they were being raped and having it FILMED.

You can candy coat it all you want, I just want to be sure that I know where you stand. Let me sum this up.

You believe that it is acceptable for children to be abducted and forced into sexual slavery to give you your Right to Porn?

You believe that a woman who signed up to do a porn movie but was subsequently Gang-Raped is acceptable in the quest to satisfy your Right to Porn?

You believe that it's acceptable for an abusive husband to force his wife to have sex with upwards of 100's of men is acceptable to quench your Right to Porn?

It's simple. If you don't believe that these scenarios are acceptable then stop looking at the porn. Stop feeding the industry that exploits people all across the board.

If you DO believe that it's acceptable for children to be sold for your First Amendment then fucking admit it so that we know where the lives of children and women RANK in your paradigm.

Stop dancing and be honest.

Why do so many women who have never even worked in the sex industry purport to know what it's like or what the men who indulge in it are like?

Sure, some men are misogynistic and objectifying, though from what I've seen, they're in the minority, and not very obvious during the encounter. For the most part those types are sexually frustrated, and feel chronically rejected and emasculated by women. Often they feel ashamed about having to pay for it. They don't understand that despite the sexual revolution, women are still far less inclined to engage in casual sex outside of a relationship. So they either have to wait until they are dating someone somewhat regularly, pay a pro, or develop a likeable personality and spend a lot of time in bars.

But most of the men I've met in the business have fallen somewhere in the nice to really great range. I'm not going to lie and say that the sex is always great. Some men just want to be pleasured, and some men put your acting skills to the test. On average, I would say it's quite enjoyable, and sometimes it's really fantastic. You get to set your own hours, be your own boss, and it allows for plenty of free time to pursue other interests.

Some of the most physically gratifying sex I’ve had was for pay, and some of my deepest emotional connections have been with men who started off as clients. I listen to what troubles them, and get to hear what turns them on. We discuss politics, current events and marital woes. I’d say it’s nice work if you can get it. The biggest downsides stem from the illegality of it. Anyone who gives a damn about the safety of sex workers should support decriminalization. Don’t fool yourselves into thinking you’re doing us any favors by fighting it.

As for the Asian sex workers here, most come here voluntarily, because they can make a lot of money and go back home a lot richer. Just take a look at that disgraceful “operation gilded cage.” Made all the papers, but KCBS was the only news source I saw that reported the outcome. Apparently they came voluntarily, and some of the women who had the day off when the raids went down, hid in their apartments with hardly any food for days while the Feds went door to door in the Korean neighborhoods looking for them. The whole thing was a sham and as helpful to the women as “no child left behind” is for school children.

As an aside French Kiss, I'm not speaking from a place that doesn't know about sex work. I worked as an escort and a stripper years ago, when I was sixteen. Yes, you heard right, 16.

Perhaps your experience has been a happy, joyful, free, fun sex experience, but I think it's important that you recognize that many other women found the experience NOT to be a fun filled romp in the park with happy-go-lucky men who are looking to sexually satisfy them. Women ARE raped, they ARE beaten, they ARE sold. Quite frankly I find it to be extrodinarily selfish that their PAIN and their very real agony is secondary to your purported pleasure.

Sounds suspiciously like men who take the same position.

It also appears that you're suffering from 'Jenna Jameson complex' the one that states that just because Jenna Jameson is in a good place that she's somehow indicitive of the industry at large. That statement is categorically false.

"If the sex act is over when you cum, then you're in power."

I didn't say the sex act was over when I come. I did not mean to imply that, either. When my wife is topping, the scene is over when she's finished. That may be when she comes. That may be after she canes me, or pierces my scrotum with hypodermic needles. It may be after she brings me to orgasm, but only if that's the way she wants it. It is not unusual that I do not climax during a scene.

In a sense, if you know anything about the BDSM community, you may know that one can make the argument that the bottom is always in control. When I top my wife, she's got a safeword. When she tops me, I have a safeword. If I really can't deal with where the scene goes, I've got an out. And in a larger sense, since BDSM is an intimate exchange for us, our desires always control the scene: she does things to me that she expects I will find, if not pleasurable as the term is usually understood, then at least moving, intense and personal.

"There was an article right on this very site that talked about the study which said only 22% of women experience orgasms during sex. So you don't get to cum once in a while, and that makes you ubersubmissive? "

You're comparing apples to -- not even oranges, really, but perhaps onions. I was responding to something Terpiskore said about BDSM. Now, you're trying to apply the terms "dominant" and "submissive" as I was using them in the technical context of BDSM, and instead use them to describe social phenomena which are the product of sexual repression of ignorance, rather than the product of alternative expression and exploration.

From your remarks, I take it you have some broad problem with BDSM in general, yes?

Why is it selfish to believe that consentual commercial sex between adults should not be a crime? I never said that underage prostitution, pimping or violence against women should be tolerated, nor did I say they didn't exist. I am all for increased police effort to stamp out those truly criminal things. But LE keeps going after independent adult sex workers and massage parlor women who paid good money to come here to work.

Trust me, I know that sex workers get raped. There was a man in Oakland who raped easily 100 women, and ripped off many more. Numerous women were forcibly sodomized without condoms or lube, others were held for hours against their will or had the condom mysteriously disappear. And yet despite the fact that his name, address and telephone number were known, not a single victim was willing to press charges out of fear of incrimination and societal backlash. If a woman testifies in court that she was raped by a trick and she is publicly exposed as a prostitute, she risks being evicted by her landlord who cannot knowingly rent to a hooker without committing a misdemeanor.

Here's an article that mentions him (towards the bottom under "Disposable Women" http://www.sdcitybeat.com/article.php?id=658

And the majority of Asian Massage parlor women working in the US are here of their own volition. They keep shutting these places down using the sex slave myth, but read up on it a bit. Most of these women return home, usually empty handed, after their testimony doesn't match up. I'm not saying that involuntary or deceptive trafficking doesn't happen, but for some reason none of the busts seem to involve them. If only the cops could find a way to go after the sex slave dens instead of the voluntary ones, it would be great.

In the meantime they've redefined trafficking to include consentual, informed international transportation of women for the sex industry. I feel really bad for these women who got sent home empty handed after working here for months.

Thomas, dominatrix sex workers is what I said and that's what I meant.

FrenchKiss, what you're saying here doesn't connect with what the rest of the world knows, which is women don't want to be whores, not even illiterate Asian girls. You say poor young Asian immigrant women want to be whores in Western countries where they don't speak the language because of the big cash, independence and fulfilling jobs, and I say if you want to know where the most healthy and lucrative jobs are DON'T look at jobs where poor young Asian immigrant women are clustered. You're not going to convince class-conscious feminists that poor Asian immigrant women are highly likely to be living the prosperous sex working lives of their choice with plenty of freedom to dictate their working conditions and a viable exit should they want out.

The very fact that there is no small amount of sexual slavery, trafficking, child prostitution and extreme amounts of violence against prostitutes makes your "what about me?" protest an inexcusable reason for tolerating the monumentally damaging effects of prostitution. Women's human rights trump your capitalist rights.

I bet the wives and families of the married men you take money from might have something to say about how you think men "have to" pay for it because the poor dears are rejected and emasculated by women. If you really think about it, it's women's fault for making men "have to" pay for sex and feel ashamed because women just aren't putting out enough to make prostitute-using men happy.

Terpiskore, I hate to disappoint you, but you're wrong. There are plenty of women who choose to be whores. You're the one calling Asian women illiterate, not I. I guess you see them as uneducated third world bumpkins who need you to save them, but maybe you should try walking into an AMP and getting to know some of them. Most poor Asian women are poor due to the economic conditions of their country, not because they're stupid. The same can be said for Eastern European women.

Don't you think you're being a bit irrational? I have clearly stated that forced prostitution is wrong and should be erradicatded. Can't you meet me half way and admit that women should have the right to choose what they do with their bodies so long as it is between consenting adults? No woman should be forced into prostitution. Sure, some women choose it because it they live in abject poverty, and selling sexual services is preferable to the situation they're in. But apparently you would rather not let them make that choice.

Believe me, I am all for women's rights, and I extend those rights to deciding whether or not to be a prostitute. I never said that it was for everyone, nor did I say that there aren't women in the business in bad situations. I'm all for helping those women get out of the business and into a better situation. But their troubles aren't caused by the women who want to be sex workers, and if anything, the illegal nature of the business makes it easier to exploit them.

Being a hooker doesn't make a woman a sex object anymore than being a house cleaner makes one a toilet object. Sure their customers may be seeing them just for sex, just like a cabbie's customers see him or her just for a ride. If you think having sex is something to be ashamed of, that's your problem not mine. And I can assure you that even if my clients saw me as a sex object, it doesn't guarantee that they would see you that way.

Warning: long, mixed-up first comment ahead written by a coffee slut whose daily fix hasn't quite kicked in yet.

Terpsikore, a friend was a pro domme for a period of time and the chief reason she (and others) didn't have sex with her clients was very simple: to avoid running afoul of the law. It's the illegality of prostitution (and drugs, and gambling, and poaching, and alcohol during Prohibition) and the resultant lack of legal recourse that makes illegal recourse by force a necessity for the black market. If you could hire a bored college frosh for $7 per hour to sell your home-grown organic weed in the mall for $20 per ounce, would the entire business not be completely uninteresting to the criminal element?

bitingbeaver, I think what you're saying is that the danger in sex work is because workers don't have a legally supported "right to refuse service to anyone". How is pushing pornography and sex work further underground legally supporting their right?

Alpaca Rider, I don't consume mainstream porn, because a two-dimensional naked woman just isn't arousing to me (and heaven knows I've had my share of real-life experiences with two-dimensional naked women). I even refuse to subscribe to SuicideGirls solely because of their mild (compared to what has been described) jerking around of their models and photographers.

It takes plenty of anti-sex conditioning, a certain level of desperation and a lack of imagination to be aroused by mainstream pornography. That those three conditions are the greater part of the American school curriculum is interesting in its own right.

All those of you who oppose porn, ideally what mindset about sex would a man have?