> never, never
> >understood why it is that strippers, prostitutes,
> etc. claim to be
> >empowered by taking money for sex..
My observations also lead me to wonder the same thing.
I was friends with a couple of the girls who work at Mitchell Brothers Theater here in San Francisco. A female friend of mine was actually a close friend of these girls and that is how I got to know them. The girls I knew were all confused about what they were doing...on the one hand they seemed to get some sense of self-esteem from it, but I sensed that it was a very hollow self-esteem. However, the girls I knew had little in the way of employable skills and they made super-big bucks at this place. They felt bad deep-down about what they were doing, but found it hard to give up a rich lifestyle to go and work in a restaurant.
At least from my narrow experience with two or three of these women, I do not see how the sex-trade is in itself empowering. They're selling themselves as commodities just as the rest of us are. The "empowerment" talk seems like a rationalization, a justification. On the other hand, is what they are doing, selling their labor , any worse than what the rest of us do? Were their deep feelings of worthlessness, the fact that none of them could have a decent relationship (even though they wanted one), not just the products of a puritanical society?
That said, it goes without saying that I support their unionization, and the legalization of prostitution.
Thomas
===== "The tradition of all the dead generations
weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living"
-Karl Marx
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