box of Jack

The Sydney Morning Herald has a piece by Sam de Brito called All Men Are Liars where he discusses responses to an article about visiting a prostitute.

I read this and I don’t believe there’s much of a grey area here. The guy is sick of the dating game and he visits a prostitute instead of lying to women. What’s the problem? It sounds like the common sticking point is that he visited a sex worker. For shame.

It’s ridiculous. People talk about these sex workers as damaged women who have no choice but to sell their soul and blah blah blah. I’m not here to belittle the hard choices of women that are forced to sell their bodies but there are some women that are generally happy with being a sex worker. I’m sure someone can quote me a million articles about women suffering all sorts of atrocities and yes, it’s a serious problem but I believe it’s a symptom of greater social ill. It’s a problem that needs to be fixed but uses these sorts of arguments to complain about this article is like telling a child to eat their food because there are starving children in Africa: it’s waving an under-informed world view in order to guilt someone into conforming to your beliefs.

I don’t think I’m qualified to draw any conclusions about this “Shannon” that the author visited but I think there are women who are happy with being a prostitute and enjoy the entrepreneurial nature of it. I think to label these women as psychologically damaged or victims is condescending and discriminatory.