Spitzer’s Real Victims?
March 11, 2008
Amazingly, we cannot get away from this subject, but its not our fault we keep coming across little gems hidden in the collective outrage of the blogosphere, like this one from Feministing, whose author apparently believes that the real tragedy hidden in all of this scandal is Americans will continue to condemn men for visiting prostitutes, who are just out to make an honest buck.
What I don’t want to do is chastise a man for potentially having a sexual kink (I’ll let the wing-nuts hypocritically take care of that), not because I am all for protecting Eliot Spitzer’s sexual kinky rights (ew, barf, ew), but because I think it tells a bigger story of patriarchy, heterosexuality, legalization of sex work and the ethical treatment of sex workers…[A]s progressives, we shouldn’t jump to attack politicians when we find out that they committed a sexual “indiscretion.” As someone who supports the decriminalization, I don’t think we need anymore fodder for the right-wing “I hate sex” machine to use in their purity crusades…
Hilarious. Where was the protectionism of freedom of speech when Larry Craig was busted for tapping the stall in Minneapolis? How about Duke Cunningham? That dude who got caught with the DC Madam? Apparently, there’s a limit on outrage, and that limit should be right in front of a Democratic politician whose been a shill for “feminist” policies (and Eliot Spitzer was one hell of a shill).
We’d love to dissect this piece from piece, but its just too…ugh. First of all, no one gives a crap about what Eliot Spitzer does in his spare time, except that it implicated federal and state law, not to mention international laws against trafficking women for sex work, and that he paid for it by moving money so suspiciously, he got reported by his bank to the IRS. It may have also involved some shady financial dealings. If Eliot had done the legal thing and taken a few trips out to the Bunny Ranch, people would still think he was a schmuck, but at the very least, he’d be able to Clinton his way out of being impeached.
Whatever way you cut it, hiring a prostitute feeds — or should feed — directly into the theory of Patriarchy. What is more evident of male desire to oppress women than paying a girl to use her body? Does this mean its okay if the girl gets to come away with some cash? Because thats not always what happens, nor is that girl always a consenting adult. Many, many, if not the majority of “sex workers” in these high class, high powered sex rings are trafficked women, who are either stolen from or sold from their homes in the developing world to organized criminals who take them across the globe, and who are exposed to extremely dangerous situations in their line of “work.” Its no coincidence that the Act being used to chase the scumbags who ran Spitzer’s ring is the White Slavery Act of 1910: its a recognized, if not horribly omnipresent problem across the globe. By frequenting these kinds of operations, people like Spitzer are contributing to the global oppression and mistreatment of women — as this woman says herself, Spitzer hiring a woman for sex was a gross abuse of masculine power — and turning sex into a commodity, that in turn makes these women nothing more than a commodity. That should be enough to outweigh any fake-y concerns about the state of the psyche of men who have sexual hangups and their place in society. Counseling would work wonders for that, and counseling is legal.
Posted in Uncategorized
March 11th, 2008 at 10:43 am
This feminist response trumps Jezebel, where they laughably threw up their hands and decided there was actually a silver lining in all of this — the final proof apparently that all men just suck.
March 11th, 2008 at 10:59 am
I have learned one thing today though, about legalizing prostitution. Prostitutes don’t want it. Weird. But this also brings up the difference between legalizing something and considering it morally acceptable. I think this woman, whoever she is, misses the point of the difference between something being okay to do legally and just okay to do period — even if you legalize prostitution, you don’t have to accept that its a good (though you do so implicitly by legalizing it) and it certainly doesn’t mean that a man cheating on his wife with a hooker is a moral good.
March 11th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Not to sound too crude, but wouldn’t legalizing it increase competition and lower prices?
Feminists are kind of a in catch-22. Their ideology as it is today doesn’t permit them to delineate between what’s legal and what’s morally good, because that road leads to abortion discussions and a whole host of tough subjects. Thus they come up with weird positions on issues like this. Or they say nothing. And all the while this just empowers a very real display of patriarchal behavior, one that the Elliot Spitzers of the world so cling to.
March 11th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I can think of a few other victims, like his wife and daughters, and the citizens and taxpayers of New York, all the people he victimized, threatened and harassed while he was AG, the unborn…
I think I’ll stop there.
regards,