Letters to the Editor

• WHY?

  [Read the article: A new kind of sex tourism]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  I can't believe there are people who are calling this issue "sticky". It really isn't, and here's why...

  Buying the body of another person is wrong.

  It's wrong whether you do it at a slave auction (more shades of Africa), on the street, or through a newspaper ad. Whether for an hour or a lifetime, doesn't matter. Buying another human being is wrong. For those who insist the whores like it, some slaves could be found to defend slavery, too. A few turned down freedom after the Civil War. Does this make slavery right? Reliance on the testimony of victims is a dangerous road to take. So we can't say that the fact that some women think whoring is a fine line of work to be the final word on the matter. I think of AKA Smith's story and think they are absolutely typical. Every man who bought the bodies of these women was victimizing them further. Every British woman who buys the body of one of the Queen's former colonial subjects is contributing to all the inequity and misery that is going on in the world (and don't think those black kids who are selling to old white ladies who have spider veins and wrinkles aren't building up any anger, either).

  Well, it's getting long again. Repeat simply: Buying another person is wrong. This is a really, really basic moral and ethical standard. Where's the grey area when you get down to it?

  For those who equate any kind of employment with prostitution, and those who insist that dating is really prostitution, you are guilty of a false equivocation fallacy and also lack the ability to make distinctions.

  Again I invite people to think under what circumstances they would "willingly" trade access to their body cavities for money. Do you think others are happy to do it?

  Some of you are apparently confusing having no morals whatever with being "open minded". Making a decision based having some morals is not a dirty thing, okay? And why should absolutely everything be consigned to "market forces at work"? That's dehumanizing and speaks of phony academia-speak. Some things aren't covered by market forces. Hugh Grant going to drug addicted slum dwellers and paying them to be all nasty for his amusement is one of them. This is just evil at work.

  It's wrong to buy other people's bodies.

  It's wrong when men do it. It's wrong when women do it. The fact that African men travel to other countries for the trade of servicing white women leaves a whiff of racism in the nostrils.

  Gaahhhhh. So stupid arguing with the kind of people who think Bob Geldof was being deep instead of an asshole when he wrote "This Christmas, let's thank God it's them instead of you".

  Indeed.

  Permalink Wednesday, November 28, 2007 06:14 AM

• oh, I would imagine....

  [Read the article: A new kind of sex tourism]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  that young women who have to sleep with flabby old Viagra-popping men for money are harboring plenty of resentment as well. No difference.

  What older women (and I am one) should really be offended by is the word "cougar" and its verb form, "cougaring". How stupid. Most "cougars" I have known are not glamorous older women but rather pathetic ladies who have given up on finding real partners anywhere near their own age (I don't count 5 or even 10 years younger as a big age difference), and have settled for fleeting, sordid encounters with men a quarter century their juniors who want to experience bondage or something else kinky and deviant. Often it's on the side of their "real" girlfriend, who won't shell out the really dirty stuff. In other words, the "cougars" are desperate and lonely, and eating other women's leftovers.

  When I was in my early twenties, I dated a man who had learned the ropes with a so-called "cougar"(shall we call abusive stepdads who kill their stepkids "the lion kings"? 'cause that's like, what lions do, and human and animal behavior always compares well, doesn't it?).

  Dropped her like a hot rock the second he got me. Of course. She used to fly out to see him in a hotel after she moved. Came out to try to get him back, cried a river of tears...his answer, "well, what did you expect, honestly? You knew we were just fucking. You're old!"

  Exit "Cougar". Sheeesh.

  Okay, end of that rant. You say this is not prostitution because there is no third party involved, and a third party must be involved for it to be prostitution. In this I think you've come up with a new definition of prostitution that not many people would agree with. But fine. I would argue that there is a third party involved. The name of this pimp is Poverty. For some, the name of the pimp is Meth or Crack or Hungry Kid. See the film "Going South" (It involves women going to the Caribbean, but same topic). It makes very clear the all-important role that money--or "presents"-- plays in these "arrangements". It also makes clear that the women are kind of sorry creatures.

  Oh, and it's "pesto" that comes in the jar, not the "pasta". Keeping the pasta in jars is for yuppies.

  Permalink Wednesday, November 28, 2007 07:40 AM