genderberg.com

post 172 http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/?p=459


I’ve been putting some thought into the idea men can’t change their sexual behaviors to lessen deadly harms like spreading AIDS or hurting women but women can and therefore men can’t be expected to change but women can. It dawned on me there is one lever of action-changing pressure that can be brought I don’t think has been attempted before.

Tricks fear arrest mostly because they fear being caught out on their prostitute use by the wives 60% have and the girlfriend/partners 85% have. If men are slaves to their sex drives and can’t change like women, maybe it’s time for a massive media campiagn directed at changing the reluctant attitude of women who are wives and girlfriends to tricks.

There could be a website, blog, ads and editorials written under an eye-catching logo and piquant title; how about “Janes of Johns School”? If men didn’t care about getting caught by wives and girlfriends it would certainly speed the way to prostitution becoming more acceptable as just a job. How would you construct the argument for women fully acepting and hopefully one day encouraging sex worker use among the men in their lives, from sex partners to fathers to sons? How could we convince wives to smile and say, “It’s just sex” when they learn their husbands are spending money on prostitutes?

This is what pro-pornstitution folks say they want, full acceptance of prostitution as a kind of specialized bodywork. If a boyfriend’s massage or Rolfing doesn’t arouse unsettling feelings of intimacy betrayal in a girlfriend then neither should paid-for fellatio or intercourse the claim proceeds. We could make guesses about which pro-prostitution feminists would be the first to come out publicly and say they are absolutely comfortable with their boyfrends and husbands paying for sexual services every now and again.

Think I could get a grant to fund this pro-sex worker’s rights education project teaching wives and girlfriends how to not feel a little queasy at the thought of the men in their lives using prostitutes regularly?

I've been following your posts on that thread to the best of my ability given various constraints, and I just wanna say that you blow my mind: with the breadth of your knowledge and with the writing skill you deploy in sharing same. At any one time, I might have one or the other (knowledge and skill) but I hardly ever have them both at the same time - or when I do, it's never sustained. Rock on.

You are going to do a book at some point, aren't you? ('Cause if you don't, I will have to fuss at you without mercy.)

I too will fuss at you. Write a book!

Seriously, this site keeps me sane.

Thanks so much for the votes of confidence. As long as I know women are getting something good out of all that writing I'll keep doing it.

When I think of the difficulties anti-pornstitution feminists have getting published I decide to save myself the headache of going an official publishing route. I was involved with plans and edited several submissions for a compilation on women's experiences with pornography but the difficulties for the project coming to fruition were enormous. About two years ago I had a chapter of a book accepted by two feminists with a publisher but when the publisher decided to make it an academic book instead of a popular culture one it died.

I'm a writer. I write. Sometimes I write online and sometimes I write in newspapers, in magazines, in bookstore books, on bathroom walls, on cars in strip club parking lots, and my own body when the mood strikes. While I wouldn't turn down a book offer if one came my way, Andrea Dworkin already wrote in books variations on most of what I'm writing and she's a much better writer.