Urban v's the Commentariat

[el-ahrairah]

sometimes i feel a bit sorry for laurie penny. her oft-publicised pro-sex work choosy choicy liberalism is being challenged by a former prostitute who says that her experience doesn't match penny's ideas. the poor woman doesn't want to either retract her hip liberal stance, or tell rachel moran that her experience isn't valid to her opinions. so she squirms and prevaricates. it must be difficult being a brand sometimes.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

sometimes i feel a bit sorry for laurie penny. her oft-publicised pro-sex work choosy choicy liberalism is being challenged by a former prostitute who says that her experience doesn't match penny's ideas. the poor woman doesn't want to either retract her hip liberal stance, or tell rachel moran that her experience isn't valid to her opinions. so she squirms and prevaricates. it must be difficult being a brand sometimes.

That whole conversation is worth reading. I note that nobody really offers a straight answer to "if sex work is just work, and there's nothing inherently degrading about it, you'd be willing to try a few weeks in a brothel, right?"

Top marks for "choosy choicey liberalism"

 

[J Ed]

That whole conversation is worth reading. I note that nobody really offers a straight answer to "if sex work is just work, and there's nothing inherently degrading about it, you'd be willing to try a few weeks in a brothel, right?"

Top marks for "choosy choicey liberalism"

It's a complicated issue and I can see why both sides are right re: prostitution but one thing that I hope that we can all agree on is that only one participant in that conversation should be writing and the other should shut the fuck up and listen/read.

 

[J Ed]

Oooh look at me I've had sex therefore I understand all the ethical dimensions of prostitution.

 

[J Ed]

?

 

[tufty79]

?

Ffs

 

[rekil]

Lots of zingers in this piece by LP.

The voices and opinions of sex workers, however, are usually silenced in "mainstream" debates about prostitution.

[...]it's the "sex" part of those activities that really causes knickers to be twisted in the icy corridors of bourgeois moral opprobrium.

Laws regulating sex work are written, in most cases, by people who have never done sex work and who have no sustained contact with those who do.

Note how the latter clause allows Laurie to insert herself as an authority. Them law squares don't even tweet obsequiously at stoya.

 

[equationgirl]

Lots of zingers in this piece by LP.
Note how the latter clause allows Laurie to insert herself as an authority. Them law squares don't even tweet obsequiously at stoya.

The following bit stood out most for me:

So-called 'radical' feminist groups point to high rates of rape and assault experienced by sex workers as if this were an inevitable, natural consequence of selling sexual services rather than an atrocious working condition made actively worse by the fact that so many sex workers are even more afraid than other women to report their rapists to the police - particularly if they are black, Asian or transsexual. It’s as if someone who sells sex should have no expectation of consent at work.

Now, I haven't personally polled sex workers on this but I was always under the impression that it's not that they were necessarily more afraid to report their rapist to the police, but that one factor is the attitudes of the police towards sex workers i.e. it's an occupational hazard of the job, can't rape a prostitute, the usual tired myths. There's not one single reason why a woman doesn't report a rapist, but it's well documented that police attitudes and prosecution rates are certainly key.

It's just another piece of her writing, this week's latest key issues to be taken up by her.

 

[DotCommunist]

soi disant again

 

[J Ed]

Millionaire pornstars in the US who have a financial interest in saying that they enjoy sex work say that they enjoy sex work and Laurie has hung out with them while spending time with other millionaires. "Sustained social contact" with one kind of sex worker confers a full understanding of the experiences of all sex workers. Fuck the opinions of the vast majority of poor women in sex work.

It's almost as if there is some sort of lens of class privilege through which Laurie sees debates like these which blinds her to the experiences of the majority of sex workers and indeed the majority of people.

 

[The Pale King]

Millionaire pornstars in the US who have a financial interest in saying that they enjoy sex work say that they enjoy sex work and Laurie has hung out with them while spending time with other millionaires. "Sustained social contact" with one kind of sex worker confers a full understanding of the experiences of all sex workers. Fuck the opinions of the vast majority of poor women in sex work.

It's almost as if there is some sort of lens of class privilege through which Laurie sees debates like these which blinds her to the experiences of the majority of sex workers and indeed the majority of people.

Spot on. I may come back on this tomorrow if I have time but for now will observe that she is treating the category 'sex worker' as unitary and unproblematic when it is anything but. And as you point out taking certain voices as paradigmatic of the category - i.e Stoya and the like. The quest for subcultural capital trumps any kind of analysis that might disrupt that quest, as always with Laurie Penny.

 

[DotCommunist]

Spot on. I may come back on this tomorrow if I have time but for now will observe that she is treating the category 'sex worker' as unitary and unproblematic when it is anything but. And as you point out taking certain voices as paradigmatic of the category - i.e Stoya and the like. The quest for subcultural capital trumps any kind of analysis that might disrupt that quest, as always with Laurie Penny.

addiction never plays a part in the trendy liberated sex worker narrative. It can't. To acknowledge it would mean acknowledging that coercion not choice is the driver for most sex work outside of laurie approved burlesque and monetized hotness. Strange when in any other industry the drivers are well recognized and lamented at by that crowd. It's not a far mirror from some pretty woman tart with a heart crude drawing.

 

[DaveCinzano]

The following bit stood out most for me:

So-called 'radical' feminist groups...

soi disant again

Also the sneery quote marks around ‘radical’ seem - to me at least - to indicate that she doesn't understand the particular meaning underlying the term ‘radical feminism’ when considered alongside other distinct feminisms.

 

[DotCommunist]

it means feminists who have disagreed with me rather than inheritors to third wave

 

[J Ed]

'Radical' feminism vs 'I have sex, watch a bit of porn and chatted with Stoya in an art gallery so I totes understand what it's like working in a brothel in Phuket or wherever' feminism

 

[rekil]

The following bit stood out most for me:


Now, I haven't personally polled sex workers on this but I was always under the impression that it's not that they were necessarily more afraid to report their rapist to the police, but that one factor is the attitudes of the police towards sex workers i.e. it's an occupational hazard of the job, can't rape a prostitute, the usual tired myths. There's not one single reason why a woman doesn't report a rapist, but it's well documented that police attitudes and prosecution rates are certainly key.

It's just another piece of her writing, this week's latest key issues to be taken up by her.

How Laurie flounced from that row so she could go and bang on about doctor fucking who. It was an interview with Taz.de that prompted this exchange I think. it's interesting to contrast how she claims to deal with sex workers there (last para) with how she chose to treat Rachel Moran whose 7 years experience from age 15 to 22 is waved away as "dogma", just like that. So much for privilege checking, intersectionality etc.

 

[Bakunin]

She's a serial liar, a fake 'Prada-Meinhof' radical, arrogant, hypocritical, ignorant, self-serving hack. But that's nothing new.

 

[el-ahrairah]

dogma lol.

 

[J Ed]

I think that by dogma she means identifiable principles. It is absolutely possible to persuade someone to shift, alter or reframe their principles through reasoned debate though less easy perhaps than it is to get someone to adopt or abandon platitudes which are held purely to accumulate subcultural capital.

 

[butchersapron]

I think that by dogma she means identifiable principles. It is absolutely possible to persuade someone to shift, alter or reframe their principles through reasoned debate though less easy perhaps than it is to get someone to adopt or abandon platitudes which are held purely to accumulate subcultural capital.

That's a great piece of no-fucking-aroundery.

 

[DotCommunist]

dogma lol.

I was sold from the minute Chris Rock fell out of the sky. Oh and the bit with the shit-demon. And metatron.

 

[rekil]

Btw, there's a bit from that Moran link that's pertinent to LP's flounce and her assertion in the NS that opposition to prostitution stems from prudishness ("the icy corridors of bourgeois moral opprobrium")

Yet even faced with these bald truths, they tell us over and over that we are talking nonsense; that the opinions that have emerged from our own lived experience are nothing but propaganda sprung from some poisoned fountain of religious fundamentalist ideals. But it is not so much what these happy hookers tell us that frame’s the bigger part of the picture; that is concealed by what they do not tell us.

They do not tell us – for the reason that they’d like to conceal it – about the same disconnect that academia isn’t telling us – because it is incapable of revealing it.

They do not tell us about the soul-level injury that capitalism and patriarchy have combined to create. They do not tell us about that precise point at which female sexuality is severed from the self. They do not tell us about what it means in the mind and the heart and the spirit, when you’ve been paid to say ‘yes’ and behave ‘yes’ and perform ‘yes’, so that you are mute – and rendered mute by the very reality of the transaction that has bought your silence – but everything non-audible that makes up who you are is silently screaming ‘NO’.

 

[butchersapron]

Bit essentialist. I thought she was one of dose Jesuits anyway?

 

[Buckaroo]

She's a serial liar, a fake 'Prada-Meinhof' radical, arrogant, hypocritical, ignorant, self-serving hack. But that's nothing new.

She's the voice of a new genderation.

 

[butchersapron]

Dey paid me to tealk to shut me uyop.

 

[rekil]

Jesuit jiggery pokery eh?

 

[Bakunin]

How Laurie flounced from that row so she could go and bang on about doctor fucking who.

I find it very hard not to post a Youtube clip of the song 'Run, Rabbit Run' at times like this.

 

[FNG]

I think that by dogma she means identifiable principles. It is absolutely possible to persuade someone to shift, alter or reframe their principles through reasoned debate though less easy perhaps than it is to get someone to adopt or abandon platitudes which are held purely to accumulate subcultural capital.

PARKLIFE!

 

[equationgirl]

LP seems obsessed with people calling her a 'bad feminist' (amongst other things). I'd say her particular brand of feminism is bad as it embraces capitalism, intersectionalism and ignorance in a dangerous mix.

 

[Bakunin]

She's the voice of a new genderation.

Littlejohn of the Left, more like.