Monday 5 March 2012

"The Worlds' Oldest Profession"

If one does any amount of research and applies the least bit of critical thinking to said research on the subject of prostituted women (and women that appear in various forms of pornography) then one will find that, time and time again, 99.9% of them don't fucking want to be there. Indeed the vast majority of prostituted and offered up women, a majority so huge that it might as well be an absolute, are there against their will, either forced by a person, persons, or the pressures of a society set up to objectify, commercialize and destroy women. So, when I hear the tired old phrase "The World's Oldest Profession" it makes my fucking blood boil. I've stated before I'll only use the term prostituted women here because terms like 'sex-trade worker', even though I'm told they're politically correct, still make it seem like these women choose this life of their own volition, which as I've said, is utter fallacy.

So, if prostitution isn't the world's oldest profession, what is? Well, how about slave trader, or what they're commonly called these days, a pimp? Indeed, since women were barred from officially working for so long (that is, because men decided that waitressing, teaching, nursing and mothering aren't real jobs), how could the worlds' oldest profession be one that is so dominated by women and girls, even to this day? No, prostitution is not a career, not a job, not an industry. But the ownership and exploitation of women and children, THAT'S the worlds' oldest profession right there. The first paragraph of Wikipedia's definition of the history of slavery goes like this:

The history of slavery covers slave systems in historical perspective in which one human being is legally the property of another, can be bought or sold, is not allowed to escape and must work for the owner without any choice involved. As Drescher (2009) argues, "The most crucial and frequently utilized aspect of the condition is a communally recognized right by some individuals to possess, buy, sell, discipline, transport, liberate, or otherwise dispose of the bodies and behavior of other individuals. "An integral element is that children of a slave mother automatically become slaves. It does not include historical forced labor by prisoners, labor camps, or other forms of unfree labor in which laborers are not considered property.

So, that's right. Humans that own other humans. When a human is the property of another. When a human can be bought and sold. When a human can't escape and must perform the work without a choice being offered. That sounds like prostituted women. They're not the workers. Workers have rights. The owners, the pimps are the workers. The women are the product. Bought and used by all the johns of the world. But yet, the onus is still put on them. They carry on the "worlds' oldest profession" even though they have no say in it. It's bullshit. Is the horse called "the worlds' oldest vehicle"? Of course not. A horse is a horse is a horse, of course (unless his name is Mr. Ed). So, why this rhetoric, this catch phrase about prostituted women?

Well, no fucking doy, dude. It's because it benefits men. If the rhetoric goes that women choose this life, and that they have chosen this life since time immemorial, then it becomes so much easier for everyone to just let shit slide. All womens' lives are at risk in one way or another because of prostitution and pornography. But, most people don't give it a second thought. Because they're told it's just "the worlds' oldest profession", that "it's gone on for years, and it'll go on forever", that "women just charge a fee for what men really want" and blah blah fucking bullshit ass blah blah barf.

The next time you hear that old bullshit about the "worlds' oldest profession" tell whatever dumbass fucker who's saying it that the true oldest profession is that of the pimp, or slave trader, and see what they fucking say. Prostitution and pornography is slavery. Just because something's been around forever, doesn't mean it should be allowed to continue, or that if it's ignored it'll go away. The more prostitution and pornography are normalized in society, the less safe spaces women will have. Legalization is not the key. Abolition is.