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Hi Ogre. It is a delicate subject, and I'm no expert. Of course it is possible that some woman somewhere has chosen to be a prostitute completely of her own free will (as Sister Quaterstaff posits below). However, I do think in most cases women end up as prostitutes due to a lack of power and/or money, or due to abuse.
CNN ran a story today that quoted the MySpace page of Ashley Dupre (the prostitute in the Spitzer case):
"Dupre writes that she left home at 17 to begin "my odyssey to New York." "It was my decision, and I've never looked back," she writes. "Left my hometown. Left a broken family. Left abuse. Left an older brother who had already split. Left and learned what it was like to have everything, and lose it, again and again. "Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone. I have been alone. I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless. But, I survived, on my own. I am here, in NY because of my music."
"Dupre writes that she left home at 17 to begin "my odyssey to New York."
"It was my decision, and I've never looked back," she writes. "Left my hometown. Left a broken family. Left abuse. Left an older brother who had already split. Left and learned what it was like to have everything, and lose it, again and again.
"Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone. I have been alone. I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless. But, I survived, on my own. I am here, in NY because of my music."
She had an abusive home life, as well as a more recent history of drug addiction and financial destitution. This isn't to demean her in any way, but simply to point out that she was in a situation where she had very little power.
Also today on CNN is the story of a 16-year-old girl from Mexico who was kidnapped, brought to the United States, and forced into prostitution. Obviously many men paid to rape her without caring about the fact that she was padlocked in a room.
While not every single prostitute is necessarily being held down by violence or an imbalance of power, the industry as a whole encourages -- and even depends on -- coercing women against their will.
by Shelby Meyerhoff on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 01:48:05 PM PDT
[ Parent ]
No argument.
But Dupre chose a means of making money that didn't demand 40 hours a week of often boring work. I've known artists and musicians who were all about their art... and were making donuts or waiting tables.
I'm not judging an act of desperation, but what appears to have been a way of, well--her words--"having everything" (again).
The sense that one is entitled to having everything is, I think, a major cultural flaw. She hasn't stated it, but there's a sense in that quote that honest, crappy paying work is perceived as being beneath her. It's the same psychology as people who've had rough lives and are dealing drugs (not at the street level, which is fiscally and otherwise on a par with street prostitution).
Self worth set in dollars, perhaps--a very, very dangerous thing to do (and one that I'd like to point out that UUs are dangerously vulnerable to).
The light is at home in the darkness. -- Parmenides
by ogre on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 02:41:01 PM PDT
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