I've been reading Lewis's blog for awhile, so I'm obviously biased about her. She's a superb writer. But I think she provides that much needed perspective: not every sex worker is up there enjoying every minute of what she is doing.
But as I asked long ago at the old blog, why the HELL is it that we (I mean the sexpos feminists) feel compelled -- or at least some do -- to insist that, when Nina Hartley is performing, she's really really having a great time. No one gives a flying fuck about whether Angelina Jolie is having the time of her life getting it on with her leading man. As Melissa Gira said at the time, it's that incessant need we have to know "the truth" of sex -- not a natural need, but the instrument-effect of the confessional that is post/modernity.
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She is a great writer.
And you're right: there is a tendency in sexpos circles to emphasize enjoyment...cue Zizek to link this to Lacanian jouissance.
You mentioned Our Lady of the Blessed Celebrity, Jolie. We can use the same method when discussing so-called 'ordinary' lives. No one expects an electrician -- even one who genuinely loves the field -- to *always and forever* have a smile on his or her face while working. Melissa G might very well be right; it may be that, spurred on by a (post/modern manufactured) desire for a 'confessional' we insist upon joyful narratives.
Plus, my intuition (unscientific, but often on to something) tells me that some of this insistence on enjoyment! is covering fire. That is, sexpos ideas still face so much resistance and aggression there's a reflex to use enjoyment as a counter-measure.
Because, as you know from the feminist bloglandia wars, any sex worker or sex worker ally who asserts that their life isn't a phantasmagoria of tears, excrement, meth and sinister menz can expect a hail of incoming rhetorical bullets -- every prohibitionist/gender difference feminist has an inner Capone who's impatiently holding a Tommy gun, itching to get out for a bit of the old ultra violence.
shag wrote:
It's also not that Lewis doesn't like men (Sex and Bacon makes that clear), it's that she doesn't like her customers. But she's not living up the glamorous life of the call girl, either.
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Yup.
Actually, Rabbit and I argued about this very topic. After reading Lewis' stuff, it was clear she didn't hate men (quite the contrary) just, as you say, the scruff buckets she had as customers.
But again, (the "again" being the covering fire reflex I mentioned above) Rabbit is so used to hearing the argument that customers are bad - all men are customers at some point therefore, all men are bad -- a POV which doesn't agree with her experience -- she strongly reacts against anyone who even appears to be pushing that bad medicine.
.d.