Tuesday, June 05, 2007

SAVE TRADITIONAL HETEROSEXUAL MARRIAGES! COLLECT VALUABLE PRIZES!

You know, you wouldn't think this would piss me off quite so much as it does. Assholish on general and feminist principles, yes, horrid to a friend, yes; but is this about me?

Heranonymous said...

Here's what's natural...if my husband has sex with a prostitute, my natural instinct is to scratch her eyes out. I don't care if it's legal or illegal. I don't care if she is a feminist or not.

And that is why the stigma will never go away. Women who are trying hard to raise children and keep their families together don't appreciate what you do and wish you would stop. Get it?


Ren says…

You might want to be careful about that, most prostitutes have pretty long nails and are adept at using them to a stunning degree….

But the question is, Heranonymous, why is your venom not directed at, oh, the married man, the husband, who is spending money he could be spending on his family on a prostitute, or stripper, or porn, who is hiring the woman (instead of the other way around)? He is the one making the decision to hire a woman for sex. He is the one going outside the marital bond. He is the one lying to his wife and family. In short, he is the one fucking you over. Literally. Why not claw his eyes out instead and give him the stigma? After all, he is the one initiating the sex and the transaction…not her.


So girlfriend responds, in the comments:

You all can piss and moan at me for bringing it up, but the fact is we are angry at you for sleeping with our husbands. You didn't have to do it. You chose to do it. As for him approaching you first, all I can say is HAH! That's a good one. Are you honestly trying to tell me hookers don't advertise? HAH! HAHHAH! TOO FUNNY!

Prostitution will always carry a stigma because married women, especially those with children, see you as a threat to our families and there are more of us than there are of you. And we vote.


WELL then.

No, I'm not a prostitute. Never had sexual contact with a married man (unless you count...well, never mind), certainly not without the wife's permission.

But you know, I -care deeply- about the Institution of Marriage, (it's natural!) and will of course ferociously leap to guard it against any threats. And the Family. Think of the Children! Specifically, -your- children.

Because, you know, you VOTE. Unlike the rest of us. And pay taxes, and are Fine Upstanding Members of Society. Unlike the rest of us. And the continued stigmatization of the rest of -us- (oh, I'm getting to that), well, that has -nothing to do- with your positioning, of -course-. No.

oh, well, anyway, as girlfriend later reiterates,

There are more of us.


Isn't that -lovely?-

Yeah, lady. I know there's more of "you." I know it very well. And, you VOTE. And how.

Specifically, a bunch of -you- (hey, if you refuse to see other people as individuals who may or may not have done the thing you're blaming the group in question for, turnabout is fair play, cupcake) -voted- so that -other- people, people who've been together for ten years and more, people whose relationships and emotional skills are actually strong enough that they can deal with such things as infidelity all by their very selves, correctly, people who -work hard- and -pay taxes- and -vote- and even -have children- and very probably provide some service or other you take for granted...

...cannot take part in this fine fine institution.

But, there's more of "you," and that makes it all okay, right? Certainly there's no such thing as a straight married woman who might actually notice that there are other people living in the world besides her own myopic nuclear ass, and it might behoove her to take notice, on account of if the institution she's counting on to support her is so -fucking fragile-, then it makes more sense to try to take a closer look at those underpinnings instead of just stepping down more and more firmly.

More to the point,

What do you mean 'we', straight girl?


There are more married women in this country than prostitutes, that may be true. And there are more married hets than there are queer folks in this country, true. Hell, there may even be more -assholian-, reactionary hets like yourself than all the queers -and- all the sex workers -and- all the non-assholian fine upstanding straight people put together.

But, that might not last forever.

And: if "more of us" is your only weapon? You might want to check around and see -just how many ways- you -really are- in the minority. And just how precariously you are perched in that position, and what's--who--is actually keeping you there. For now. In this country, on the planet. And in how many ways you might be pissing those other people off by your very -existence-, you sad, frightened, unconscious fool.

Quick, better step down harder. Nice dainty pointy stigma-heeled shoes. Smaller, so it doesn't hurt so much.

Yeah, what would happen if you let that snippy little rage out at (heaven forfend) the actual huz-bin instead of some unknown sex worker (i.e. a stand-in for the one your Prince Charming actually stepped out on you with)? Goshes, maybe there's -more- trouble in Paradise? What is it, girl? Has our marriage fallen down the well? You mean the Dream actually isn't all that? You mean, everything you worked for and believe in -might not be all that?- You mean someone out there who didn't buy into the good l'il wifey routine not only "steals your husband" but actually -might be happier than you?- Oh, shit. Is it "no special rights" time again?

Better shore up that marriage. Better seal up that institution. Close the doors, lock 'em tight. Stick your fingers in your ears. No, no, it's not our fault; it's all the fault of those -outsiders.- Nope, nothing wrong here!

Keep telling yourself that.


'Night.

Sweet dreams.

x-posted to Big Queer Blog

33 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh fer chrissakes! How deluded is that women?

Punish the prostitute because her husband can't think past his dick?! Please! The sex industry exists because there is a market for it. Period. Once that market disappears, ie: when men like her husband learn to stop thinking with their penii, those scary prostitutes will go away too.

And those politicians she's voting for will probably pass plenty of anti-sex industry de facto legislation. But oh trust, it's those politicians that also like strippers and whores the most.

J. Goff said...

Are you honestly trying to tell me hookers don't advertise?

Are you honestly trying to tell me your husband wasn't "in the market", so to speak? Sheesh.

belledame222 said...

Of course not. He was just minding his own business, when s came up and she put a spell on him, the way scarlet women do. Sheesh.

Anonymous said...

This woman's husband, may God have mercy on him, is much more likely to have sex with a (male or female) non-professional than with any sex worker. Her neighbor, for instance, or her younger, prettier sister. And that's how the paranoid stance is born.

(And when her marriage ends, it's statistically much, much more likely to be because he just isn't in to her than because he's chasing hookers. Who're you blame for that?)

Renegade Evolution said...

Don't worry Belle, I am prepared to claw her eyes out. Heh.

ANd no, dipshit delluded Idiot does not even begin to cover this whitebread cheesehead.

Sassywho said...

snort....

husbands wouldn't cheat if they didn't have anyone to cheat with....

snort

Sassywho said...

not my vernon....

belledame222 said...

husbands wouldn't cheat if they didn't have anyone to cheat with....

in which case the best solution would be to

1) kill everyone else on the face of the earth, or at least every other woman (because hubby would never stoop -that- far, no doubt)

2) isolate him, a la Rapunzel, or possibly Cask of Amontillado if he still doesn't behave.

yes, #2. definitely, #2.

Sassywho said...

belle,

i'm with #2 also, it's that same kind of thinking behind rape prevention vs. resistance.

which also brings another interesting conversation, how many closeted married men are having homosexual encounters? answer is... drum roll please... a lot.

suzy creamcheese may not be so pleased to hear that.

Anonymous said...

Lemme try to be more compassionate. The lady’s pretense only to be offering a sociological observation, w/o judgment, is obviously bullshit, but as a matter of brute fact, there’s probably a measure of truth to what she says. A lot of women aren’t really crazy about hookers - it's faintly refreshing that this one admits it -, & one reason is that they’re convenient scapegoats for everything that makes other women feel jealousy. More men have left their wives for co-workers than for sex workers, & on any given day more women have anxiety about their husband’s secretary than about the hooker on the corner, but sex workers are safe, socially acceptable targets for all that resentment. Jealousy is a socially disruptive & sometimes stigmatized emotion, but it's OK to vent it on hookers.

And some women, even ones w/ no cock-eyed partner to worry about, would resent even hookers who only went w/ unattached men. They may imagine, not always w/ good reason, that sex workers are heroically sexually attractive or accomplished, & that can be threatening. This is all so obvious it doesn’t need saying, & it’s – the jealousy, not the particular mechanics of who gets scapegoated - pretty deep-rooted. It’s not the only source of the animus, but it’s one.

There’d be a fair bit less misery in the world if we only had to worry about men’s contempt.

belledame222 said...

The lady’s pretense only to be offering a sociological observation, w/o judgment, is obviously bullshit, but as a matter of brute fact, there’s probably a measure of truth to what she says. A lot of women aren’t really crazy about hookers - it's faintly refreshing that this one admits it -, & one reason is that they’re convenient scapegoats for everything that makes other women feel jealousy.

Absotively! And in the spirit of blunt truth & laying feelings on the line! voici! a response! i've got compassion and empathy coming out the wazoo.

baby221 said...

Generally, I've found that the only way to talk to people like this is to approach them on their own ground. Since hubby is clearly not responsible for any of his own behaviour, that must mean it's his wife's fault he's cheating on her with a prostitute. I mean obviously if she were taking better care of him, he wouldn't need to stray.

belledame222 said...

and what better way to take care of him than to lock him up where she can keep an eye on him 24/7? see, I've thought it all out.

Cassandra Says said...

Her faith in the power of advertising is touching. Someone get that woman a job at Saatchi and Saatchi!

Belle and Jack - Don't you get it? That nasty prostitute rugby tackled her poor husband and then forced him at gunpoint to pay her for sex. Because she's just evil like that. The poor man is a victim!


Even though as has been pointed out he's actually far more likely to be shagging the neighbor.

belledame222 said...

Now she's made a comparison to drug dealers. Someone forgot to tell the poor man about Just Say No, apparently.

Anonymous said...

One index of morbid jealousy - which isn't normal - is that the risks are wildly exaggerated. For example, when you imagine that more marriages are destroyed when sex-addicted husbands (it’s like a drug) run off w/ the corner hooker than are ruined by morbid jealousy (or a thousand other things that the lady’s not so angry about).

The cliché is that male jealousy is more focused on sexual infidelity & female jealousy on emotional betrayal & the diversion of resources. But here? The lady claims she’s afraid of the latter – that he’ll set up house w/ a sex worker? –, but what are the chances any hooker – they're not selling love & long-term commitment – would even have him? No, if the marriage ends over this, it’ll be because she leaves him. Or rather, the hooker makes her leave him.

Dw3t-Hthr said...

Huh. And here I was thinking that the best way to protect my marriages from oathbreakers was to not marry people who can't be trusted to keep their word.

But then, I'm silly and hold people responsible for what they do and what they say they're a-gonna do (and whether they back that up with reality).

belledame222 said...

Yep, she's kidding herself.

But can we talk for a second about the whole "neener neener, I've got a ring on my finger and I'm not afraid to use it"?

Cassandra Says said...

Well, yeah, she does seem to think that marriage magically confers virtue, but so what? It's nothing new. Just the same old nice girls vs sluts crap all over again.

It is however amusing that she assumes that prostitutes can't vote.

belledame222 said...

Oh no, she just assumes--*says*--"there's more of us."

It's nice girl/bad girl, but it's more than that.

Dw3t-Hthr said...

But can we talk for a second about the whole "neener neener, I've got a ring on my finger and I'm not afraid to use it"?

Maybe she's the Green Lantern?

(... Okay, I am such a big nerd.)

Octogalore said...

"But can we talk for a second about the whole 'neener neener, I've got a ring on my finger and I'm not afraid to use it'?"

The whole "us wholesome family values folks are more plentiful so we will overpower you" thing is disingenuous in so many ways:

-- apparently some of the family-values folks are straying -- how virtuous is that (assuming a non-open marriage)?

-- and apparently they're straying to non-family values people. Madonna-whore syndrome much?

-- what she doesn't realize is that some of the wives may be straying too, they just don't get caught as often

-- a ring doesn't automatically confer a lobotomy (at least, not ALL the time). Some of us with rings are able to correctly attribute blame. A cheater is a cheater is a cheater ... and it doesn't much matter whom the cheatee is. It will happen. Even if one eliminated the entire sex industry, he'd find himself a cute Starbucks Barrista.

Octogalore said...

Not to mention, how is "using" a ring a big threat? You're going to vote for someone who will what, eliminate sexual temptation? Yeah right...

Cassandra Says said...

Octo pretty much unpacked it already.

She's wrong about there being more of her sort, too. I mean more married women than prostitues, sure, but more people who think like she does? Not so much.

That divorce rate doesn't seem to be dropping much, after all.

Anonymous said...

Does anybody have any sense of how much of womens' antipathy to sex workers is based on the perception that they threaten their relationships with their mates? I go back & forth.

belledame222 said...

I think if you extended it to a more general, inchoate sense of -they're getting something I'm not and it isn't fair,- it becomes a lot more.

As a direct threat to the happy home? Well, in theory that shouldn't be a -feminist- concern -at all,- right? Maybe more so among mainstream/conservative women.

But, I dunno, stigmas seem to be self-perpetuating. And I think, all the usual ways apply as well: -there goes the neighborhood-, -dirty-, -dangerous-, etc. etc., you know.

Anonymous said...

I’m not even sure what a good explanation would look like, how different explanatory levels relate, etc. It’s complicated. Presumably, deep-rooted propensities are at work, but there are wide differences across individuals & cultures. Although this lady puts it in crass, almost Darwinian terms, attitudes obviously are mediated by a sense of moral rules, fair play, etc., like resentment of scab labor. But quasi-economic explanations can’t be adequate. I don’t know how ideas of pollution, etc., fit in, but they do. I assume that where there’s strong resentment, feminist arguments rationalize something else. It’s not a trivial question. Women’s hostility to sex workers makes it harder to deal w/ their problems, which can get grim.

belledame222 said...

yeah, I agree, economics aren't sufficient. I don't think it's just her meal ticket she's concerned about, anyway. It is something else.

Zan said...

A lot of it is probably her self-image. Think about it, what kind of woman/wife/sex kitten is she if she can't even keep her husband from /paying/ someone else for sex? I mean, sure, men have affairs but those are about emotions and love and well, you can't fight love, can you? But prostitutes are about the sex and the nasty things good women won't do and isn't it an insult to her that her husband is so desparate for sex that he's willing to /pay/ someone for it? It's so base, it's so animalistic, it's so.....naughty. And she's a good, decent, MARRIED woman, by gods! She doesn't do naughty. (And he should have known that when he married her. Hmp.)

Really, I think it's a lot more to do with how these women see themselves than anything else. They're projecting onto the hookers, but what they're really thinking is "How could he embarass me like this? Couldn't he have at least had an affair with his secretary?" But, because they're invested in protecting their image, they can't blame HIM. No, no. That would be admitting they picked a weak mate, a cheater. Which reflects so badly on them, you see? So, instead, it has to be about HER. About that evil whore. And that full-page ad she took out in the Financial Times that let her husband know where to go for some play-for-pay. Which also contained subliminal messages that wouldn't let him just shake his head and turn the page and forget all about her, see? It's all a plot!

Unfortunately, a lot of people never emotionally evolve beyond high school. It's always someone else's fault that things fall apart. It's never her fault, or her man's fault. It's always an outside force. It's not that she did, in fact, pick a cheater. Which happens to people all the time. There's no real shame in that. You just dump him and move on. And, excepting rape, no one forces anyone else to have sex. It's a mutual deal, partularly if money is changing hands. If not? Well, then her husband should file charges, dammit. He's been raped and robbed.

Believe me, if anyone cheats on me, THEY get the blame. Because they're the ones who made a committment to me, not the other person. They're the one who has an obligation to me, not the other person. They're the ones breaking faith, not the other person. How hard is that to understand?

belledame222 said...

well, as you answered yourself: pretty hard if you've got a lot invested in NOT understanding.

Anonymous said...

Hey belledame222,

Thought I'd stop on over to your blog and take a look. VERY nice site, BTW!

I whole-heartedly agree with you on this issue. Disgusting. I don't know who Heranonymous thinks she is, but I can tell her she's fooling herself if she thinks prostitutes and strippers are forcing themselves on her husband. She reminds me of some of those mousy little cowards that say, "Yes dear" to their master husbands and turn around and take it out on any woman around her. I've always had contempt for types like her.

belledame222 said...

hey, thanks, scarred, and welcome!

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