11 Jul Two smug journalists decry prostitution – Updated

Two prominent columnists, one Canadian, one USian, have weighed in bravely on the moral depravity of prostitution. In Canada, it was the Globe and Mail’s Peggy Wente:

Many sassy young progressive commentators (including women) assume that prostitution is like marijuana – that the moral issues are as outdated as hoop skirts, and anyone who thinks otherwise is an uptight reactionary old prude. After all, women should have a right to do whatever they want with their own bodies, and what happens between two consenting adults is nobody else’s business. Prostitutes are no different from piano teachers, so get over it! They sound like Hugh Hefner circa 1962. Personally, I eagerly await the day when these women’s husbands come home and say, “Sorry I’m late, honey, I stopped off on the way for a blow job.” I am sure they’ll think nothing of it.

In the US, Bloomberg’s Chris Thompson attempted to conjure the mindset of a wealthy Google executive arranging a fatal assignation with a call girl:

You’re a guy in your early 50s, with five children from your wife of 17 years. You make a pretty good living at one of Silicon Valley’s biggest names, buying what you want when you want it, but, as we all know, you’re still not satisfied.

Because men your age aren’t like they used to be. Age and maturity stretch and bend now into different dimensions than when our dads or granddads were that age. Those successful enough to rise to the top at relatively young ages tend to stay younger. They’re fitter and more playful, and they often emerge from a social scene where impetuousness brought delight and moral strictures were diluted by a modern mindset.

So if you’ve got a yacht in Santa Cruz to which you can squire a high-end call girl, why not? These games and pleasures are your secret rewards for your achievements and they keep you young. You don’t do this all the time, and it’s not like you don’t love your wife and kids. It’s just that there’s a side of you that, while it will never die, you still have to keep alive.

You’ve seen this professional before and trust her, and tonight she’s lookin’ alright-alright. You could probably do without the tattoos and dark eyes/gothy thing, but she’s probably not especially set on fire by your well-fed midsection, khaki Dockers and the job they did on you at the Hair Cuttery either.

Doesn’t matter. You’re here to party, you’re comfortable with each other, and tonight she’s brought a little bit of fun in her purse. You probably won’t get far into it — a few grams of smack is more than you’re in shape for, but one or two hits always make the rest of the proceedings feel so…pleasurable.

As usual, she’ll do the fixin’s and the work for you, and the first rush — it’s always a thrill, but this time it feels different. You dissolve into the comfy swivel chair down in the yacht’s galley and wait for the stardust to start falling softly, but this time it’s coming fast, and now you’re a little short of breath.

Was that — ? What was. What.

You were already asleep and producing unpleasant bodily functions when she threw back the last gulp of wine, set a few things right and hopped off the boat. It wasn’t how you expected to go out, and you wouldn’t know how to explain it to those waiting at home for some word of your whereabouts, who relied on you, but it was an accident, an honest mistake, and there’s just a side to you your wife and kids will never know:

The victim of a second-degree murder.

I hate to spoil the fun, but both these pieces reek of middle-class smugness I was happy to leave behind in the 1950s.

I suppose it’s possible some “sassy young progressive” advocates for prostitutes’ rights have argued prostitutes are “no different from piano teachers,” but if so, I missed it. What I have heard them say is that prostitutes want a safe, warm, clean place to work indoors, and freedom from hypocritical, sexist law enforcement that places them at risk of imprisonment, bodily harm, rape, and death. Could Peggy pause her pandering to the peanut gallery long enough to tell us whether she disagrees? And if so, why?

Does Chris Thompson really think yacht-owning men of our parents’ and grandparents’ generation were were both morally superior and less prone to indulge in prostitution than our crowd? Bloomberg’s value is supposed to rest on evidence and data. Here I see only self-congratulatory righteousness.

[UPDATE] Journalist Bethany Horne points out what I missed: Wente’s apocryphal “sassy young progressive” was actually a gibe at fellow Globe columnist Tabatha Southey, who wrote a nuanced analysis of Bill C-36 June 6, under the headline, “Don’t piano teachers deserve the same ‘protection’ as prostitutes?”

Horne calls Wente’s sneer “a crass oversimplification” of Southey’s column, which did not equate sex work with teaching piano, as Wente implied, but rather looked at how the health, safety, and wellbeing of piano teachers would be affected if a government bill treated them the way the Conservative’s Bill C-36 would treat sex workers.  It’s a fair question. After all, it’s called the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act.