dagblog - Comments for "The TR Show"

Mmmm....sewage....

jollyroger — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 00:51:44 +0000

In reply to I realize you were being a

Mmmm....sewage....

I realize you were being a

artappraiser — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 00:22:19 +0000

I realize you were being a little tongue in cheek, but I should probably chime in. And say I believe Manhattan pre-TR was far far from being a little bit of "heaven on the Hudson." As long as you're using H's, I'll guess go with libertarian hellhole on the Hudson, beating Dickens' London by a mile. The suffering would include prostitutes and their johns, as well as most ordinary citizens, oppressed at the hands of many, not the least of which: criminal rings and corrupt law enforcement (using and abusing Mr. Comstock's law against vice) and politicians, sundry slumlords, mob violence, unrestrained pickpockets, muggers, rapists and murderers.....then there was the rotten food, sewage on the streets....etc.

sell her body Rent.

jollyroger — Sat, 15 Feb 2014 18:10:04 +0000

In reply to The basic issue is that men

sell her body

Rent. Otherwise, spot on.

The basic issue is that men

Anonymous PP — Sat, 15 Feb 2014 13:56:30 +0000

In reply to Well, I am certainly willing

The basic issue is that men have been typically shits to women, and women's choices given that background frequently are poor to desperate. The German woman who figured out fission was only allowed to work in a physics lab for free, and then the guys she worked with got all the credit including the Nobel. Meanwhile you've got the crazed militias in the Congo that prey on women and have some kind of awful jungle-based Road Warrior ethos for the last 20 years. If a woman wants to sell her body, it's fine with me - I don't see it as that much different than being a pro athlete of some sort, and possibly better than late 1800's sweatshops. But continually being pushed into that decision by our skewed social economic systems isn't right.

That said, there's been quite a lot of progress in the last decades, and while the general bolstering of the oligarchy class and the continual tea party attacks on women threaten that, overall women have more choice & control these days.

You know Roger, we actually

ocean-kat — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 20:39:21 +0000

In reply to Well, of course not everyone

You know Roger, we actually agree on that too. I don't think vice is the most appropriate term either but I couldn't think of another short designation so I just used it for brevity.

Well, of course not everyone

jollyroger — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 19:13:16 +0000

In reply to There we're in total

Well, of course not everyone would call drug use or sex work vices, but let's agree on what we can.

There we're in total

ocean-kat — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 18:37:31 +0000

In reply to Well, I am certainly willing

There we're in total agreement. Criminalizing prostitution, like criminalizing drugs, does nothing to solve the problems of those vices. In fact criminalizing creates all sorts of new problems that wouldn't exist if the vice was legal and regulated.

I humbly suggest that if 40

Michael Wolraich — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 17:54:00 +0000

In reply to There is evidence he would

I humbly suggest that if 40 million allied troops and millions of German casualties could not sway the Kaiser to withdraw, TR's browbeating would hardly have accomplished it. His "big stick" brinkmanship was effective in 1903 because the Kaiser was not willing to go to war over Venezuela. Alsace-Lorraine was quite different, obviously. Germany did go to war over it and kept fighting even when the US joined the battle. So in this case, the big stick wouldn't have worked.

Moreover, when Wilson pushed for "peace without victory" in 1917--after three more years of stalemate and carnage--the belligerents still weren't ready to come to the table. One critic scoffed, "Peace without victory is the natural ideal of the man who is too proud to fight." That critic was Theodore Roosevelt. As you'll recall from the third of Morris's books, TR had been stridently demanding war on Germany ever since hostilities broke out and indeed wanted to lead his own Rough Rider regiment into Belgium.

Well, I am certainly willing

jollyroger — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 14:37:45 +0000

In reply to What makes you think that

Well, I am certainly willing to admit that my wife's experience, and that of her friends, was only anecdotal. She had graduated from Unv. of Delaware, was a lesbian before (and, I guess, after me) and worked in Berkley, Ca, where at the time the attitude of the police was perhaps best exemplified by the policy then in place that any cop making a marijuana bust had to fill out an eleven page form explaining why he hadn't found any more pressing instances of crime to fight.

That said, and bearing in mind that she and her friends worked for the most part independently out of a "trick pad" so there was no issue of coercion by an agent/protector, what have you, the principal differential as far as I can tell most closely impacting the welfare of sex workers is the extent to which they are the object of societal opprobrium//legal persecution.

It is fundamentally odd that sex work is the only activity that is legal for free but proscribed if money is exchanged. You can be a paid friend (therapist), hair cutter, foot massager, etc. but you cannot be a paid sex partner, at least not in cash but a valuable trinket is just fine.

My remarks about TR's anti-vice crusade should be taken in this context--I deplore any mobilization of police power to imprison sex workers (mostly but by no means exclusively women, and increasingly men employed by women).

What makes you think that

ocean-kat — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 08:46:44 +0000

In reply to What makes you think that

What makes you think that these women were any more economic slaves than their married sisters, who couldn't own property and were the legal prey of their husbands?

They may not be any more economic slaves than their married sisters but were they any less? That may not be saying much more than each group was severely oppressed. As to which group was more severely oppressed we'd have to find out how many 19th century whores would have chosen to be one of the married sisters if given the opportunity.

You may not be in the position to do first hand research on the topic (my third wife was a hooker) so listen to this instead:

The positive experience of a some hookers isn't indicative of the majority of hookers. I spent 3 months in a cheap hotel in Guadalahara, Mexico that doubled as a whore house. All the women and girls I talked to were fleeing a desperate situation to be slightly less poor and desperate hookers.

In point of fact, prior to 1960 roughly 80% of the women earning over 60k per annum were sex workers.

Again this doesn't tell us anything. Few women worked prior to 1960 so prostitution may have been higher paying for some hookers. But the more revealing statistics would be what percent of women earned more than 60k, what percent of prostitutes earned over 60k and what was the average yearly pay of the average hooker. It also doesn't tell us any thing about the life of the average hooker, or the life span. Just as the fact that Jenna Jameson made millions doesn't change the fact that the majority of porn actors are poorly paid, used, abused, and discarded with little to show for it than a video record that makes it difficult to find work in the mainstream vocations they will have to find after porn.

Don't conflate all sex workers with 13 year old Indian girls sold by their parents to a brothel.

Also don't conflate all sex workers with Jameson. Most sex workers lie between these two extremes. The revealing statistic would be where the majority lies between these extremes.