If you think she really likes her job, you're a bigger putz than I thought....

There's been an interesting series of comments over at Alas, a Blog on the issue of prostitution and whether or not it should be leaglized.

Among the banter, there has been agreement on the economic fact that prostitution, especially at the streetwalker level, is a social class issue.

At least we're not thinking that streetwalkers are coming from good homes--although alot of escorts do.

I am, though, continually dismayed by the comments regarding the legalization of prostitution, which do not take into consideration the unique social structure and mores of the U.S., and that what works in other countries might not work here because of these factors.

Also, I am sick and tired of men believeing that prostitutes are somehow in that line of work because they really, really like sex. That's the old nymphomania justification for women getting into sex work.

The thing is, most women who think of going into sex work, unless they are going into it as some kind of a college-age lark or dire economic necessity, are into it because underneath there may be some issue that has damanged the link between love and sex for that woman.

When it comes down to it, for some women with the love/sex split, sex is an act--something done to get the approval or acceptance from a man. It is not a free, fun-loving, joy of sex, happy hooker kind of thing. It is performance, pure and simple.

And the better a woman is at performing the most intimate act she can, the more money she can make.

I think often that men do not want to consider that the woman they are paying for sex really doesn't like them, thinks men are scum, more than likely doesn't even like sex, and certainly doesn't want sex with him. It is a performance, for the money, that's it.

Then again, I'm not in the minds of men, and perhaps it doesn't bother many of them that a woman is just acting the part of sex bunny for their benefit without any enjoyment of the act at all. She is meeting a need they have, they are giving her something for it, and that's that. The transaction is clean and clear-cut.

Now, I'm not saying that we have to start acting like the morality police and go on a huge campaign to change the circumstances that cause women to get that love/sex split so that prostitution (and other forms of sex work) eventually fall by the wayside. That's not going to happen. The things that make sex, and the decision to go into sex work different from one woman to the next aren't going to change no matter how many social programs and mind-conditioning exercises we develop and implement. These factors also won't necessarily change a man's thinking about sex and sex workers. Sex work happens. Let's just not function under delusions that it's all great fun and that the women involved are all happy nymphos.