Playing the Hole Card

"We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution. " - Victor Hugo


Prostitution is commonly defined as "sex acts for hire", but what if you're bad at it? Is a black velvet painting of Elvis comparable to the Night Watch simply because they're both paintings? At what point does an amateur sex worker deserve the full-blown, so to speak, designation of "prostitute"?

I guess that's part of the reason that there are so many women prostitutes and so few males. After all, a woman only has to be 'there', if you know what I mean, while a male sex-worker-bee has to actually manifest some aptitude, possibly show some honest interest. Otherwise "Pffft!".

Guys all think they're good at 'it' which is puzzling because they're the one's that will happily pay for 'it'. If men were that good women would be lining up with charge cards in hand. But while I'm wishing I might as well have a pony, too.

No, if anyone is driving the payment for sex trade, it's us guys. So why are there more women in jail for prostitution than men?

This common injustice is one of the reasons I'm saddened by the 'suicide' of Deborah Palfrey, the famous DC Madam. She had a thriving escort business among the suits in Washington, D.C. for over a decade and no one said "boo" to her or her employees. Things turned sour only when the Jack Abramoff scandal brought her agency to light and the Republicans decided they needed a sexy scapegoat, a shiny salacious object, to wave in the face of this toothless dog we call the Fourth Estate.

Understanding she was being tossed to these wolves, however decrepit, Ms. Palfrey threatened to release her clients list, rumored to include Dick Cheney his ownself, but when it finally arrived it had been thoroughly sanitized of anyone of note by a string of conservative judges.

She had said time and again that she would never kill herself but that those who feared her list of clients would happily do the job and make it look like a suicide. Whatever the real story, the Republican party is no less responsible for her death than if they put both hands around her neck and squeezed the life out of her.

Are there currently other escort services in Washington? Of course, and they're here to stay as call girls no less a perk of the office than free health care and a fat pension. Eventually one or more of these businesses will come to light when another powerful politician feels the heat and needs another woman to go, as usual, down.

PS, It's come to light that this is the second escort involved in this case to commit suicide... also by hanging. Brandy Britton  died January 30, 2007. This is doubly odd as statistics show that women suicides rarely hang themselves, only about 13% of the time. They tend to prefer drugs as the painless way out.

This stinks.

=mike=

Great segment about the Palfrey case on Geraldo.