Showing posts with label SEX WORK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SEX WORK. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Wednesdays With Kyle (Working Girl Edition)

Remember Kyle? My favorite e-correspondent on the ins and outs of third wave feminism recently pointed out that I don't make clear on this blog my stance on prostitution. We agreed that you can probably guess based on my posts about other things, but hey--let's actually talk about it!

-I believe that prostitution should be decriminalized and regulated.
-I believe our justice system's MO of prosecuting the hooker and not the john is both stupid and reprehensible.
-An underage girl having sex for money should be treated as a victim, not a criminal.
-I am appalled by the way our society frequently treats prostitutes as negligible human beings.

I do recognize that this is a tricky subject. Obviously, many sex workers would rather not be in their line of business, and rather than punish them further we need to provide more alternatives to poverty. The Clinton administration slogan on abortion was "safe, legal and rare*"-- I suppose my stance on prostitution is "safe, legal and willing."



*Speaking of which, this phrase has been dropped from the 2008 Democratic Party platform--in exchange for more detailed language which many feminists feel improves the platform, in that it is more specific in its support for comprehensive sex ed, family planning, and post-partum help for women who DO have children. Hooray for saying "choice" and meaning it! (And it was primarily written by Obama's policy director, Karen Kornbluh!)

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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

More On Sex Work

Coincidentally, there's a new community post on Feministing, written by a woman who works as a stripper and identifies strongly as a feminist. It's short, to the point, and worth a read.

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