So, I'm NBA players-owners agreement.
You are?
And you've been here the whole time?
1: I don't know what you're talking about, old bean.
I'm so exited that I'm going to watch 10 times as much pro basketball as I intentionally watched last year.
I don't have any actual facts but I suspect the players were sold out by their union and would be better off with no union.
6: You think each of the players should negotiate individually? Or would you favor some other sort of association? Or what?
I'm waiting on the details. Most, like Yggles say the owners won, because of the drop from 57-50.
But the owners, for instance, wanted to eliminate two teams, what, 30 players, x % of jobs. Does that stand.
Did the players gain greater free agency or a soft salary cap?
The details are important.
World Champ Mavericks.
Yeah, I care that there will be basketball.
What if they got a different union and you got actual facts?
If not for the unfortunate specificity of "players", 6 could be an incredibly versatile Shearer comment, suitable for trotting out in every single thread in which he'd like to participate.
Who could possibly claim that professional athletes have been well-served by union representation, anyhow? Let us go back to the halcyon days of the kindly, father-figure owner, helping their charges find a bed for the night, avoid swearing, and occasionally put together enough spare change for a lovely cup of soup. You didn't have these terrible scandals in those days, boy. A spirit of godly privation suffused the players' ranks.
12: Michael Jordan could have dunked twice as many balls, but for the constraints of the guild.
I have strong, well informed opinion but I'm not going to type them on my phone. So ask me tomorrow if you want a long answer but overall i think the players did reasonably well -- based on the rumors I've seen today.
7
6: You think each of the players should negotiate individually? Or would you favor some other sort of association? Or what?
IANAL but it is my understanding that if the players were not represented by an union then the owners would be subject to antitrust law (baseball is exempt because of an old nutty decision of the SC which I believe is baseball specific). So any rules restricting what the owners can pay players would be illegal restraints of trade (entitling the players to triple damages). So the owners benefit from a powerless union which exempts the owners from antitrust problems while not achieving anything positive for the players. The union's only leverage is the threat to dissolve but the owners seem to have correctly believed it would not be exercised as that would leave the union leadership without jobs.
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http://www.good.is/post/what-women-want/
It will be interesting to see if people start making porn with no actual sex for Twilight demographic:
Emily runs a Tumblr blog dedicated to her two obsessions: Twilight and James Deen. Thanks to Deen, Emily is no longer watching porn for the generalized humping. "When I watch his videos, I don't really pay attention to the sex," Emily says. "I watch his videos for his reaction. It amazes me."
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My entire rooting interest in the NBA revolves around the Heat not winning a championship. I was, therefore, pulling for a strike.
12
Who could possibly claim that professional athletes have been well-served by union representation, anyhow? ...
The baseball players have unquestionably been well-served by their union. Other athletes not so much. Perhaps because the baseball player's union is not morally compromised by knowing the players would be better off if it didn't exist.
As long as a baseball player can, without conviction by a jury of his peers, be sent to play for the Pirates, I don't think you call say the baseball player's union is not morally compromised.
JBS, you should just absent yourself from the discussion if all you want to do is drop invective. As the saying goes, either put up, or make like a tree and get out of here.
The players recently disbanded the union and filed suit which is what finally resulted in a deal. They should have done so long ago. (Really what they should have done is gone on strike before the playoffs, though I'm glad that they didn't do so.)
I really wish we would go to a capitalist sports system like what they have in Europe. Donald Stilrling's team should have been relegated decades ago so that he'd lose money for refusing to field a competitive team.
The players definitely got screwed, but they didn't have a viable plan and left the owners with all the cards, so it's not so surprising that they got screwed.
"When I watch his videos, I don't really pay attention to the sex," Emily says. "I watch his videos for his reaction. It amazes me."
I guess she can't say she watches it for the articles.
I used to feel bad about lacking interest in the NBA, for reasons vaguely associated with guilty white liberalism, but recently it occurred to me that I can spin it as aversion to Bill Simmons.
James has a point that it would be helpful for someone to really challenge the major sports on antitrust grounds. It is risky and could take years though, which athletes with short careers don't have...if the players had been serious they would have decertified and sued this summer soon after the championships were over. Also, I believe the major sports leagues have a statutory antitrust exemption for their broadcasting packages, which is the major source of money.
The NBA players previous revenue share was 57 percent, which I'm pretty sure is slightly lower than the overall labor share of income in the economy. So it wasn't economically out of line in that sense. The owners also weren't counting their sizable capital gains on team values, just making claims about operating losses.
I think in the settlement the players went down to 50 percent but fought off a hard salary cap.
26
Interesting point. It appears that labor's share of income is historically around 65%, but has recently dropped to a low of 58%. So 57% was already low by historical standards. It's interesting to think about why labor's share of income should be so low in professional sports. One thing is that it's not clear how much of sports revenue goes to other labor (other employees). If it's a substantial amount, it's not so clear that sports are out of line with the rest of business, and so it's not clear that anti-trust would change things so much. Throw in racism, and a strong sense among people that athletes don't deserve to make so much money and it doesn't seem so surprising.
good point about other employees. But you might expect labor's share to be even higher in sports, as the players are so integral to the product and the major delivery mechanism (the stadiums) usually get heavy public subsidies. Of course what's happening is that the owners grab a lot of the revenue stream from the public subsidy.
it would be helpful for someone to really challenge the major sports on antitrust grounds. It is risky and could take years though, which athletes with short careers don't have.
What's the risk? Why wouldn't a lawyer jump all over this claim?
29
What's the risk? Why wouldn't a lawyer jump all over this claim?
There is no claim as long as there is an union.
And it is always risky to challenge a group of rich and powerful people.
22, 23, and 26.1 get it exactly right. I don't think the players had all that much leverage save antitrust, but they did get screwed.
Also the whole idea that "competitive balance" is good for the NBA as a sport is completely fucking nuts. The sport has been most successful with 4-8 strong teams, in major cities, and a bunch of patsies. If Joe Smallmarket owner wants to compete, pull a Cuban, nut up, and spend some money smartly. Sadly, it's a cartel so it will protect the smallmarket owner schmoes.
Apparently, though, relative to various likely outcomes, this one wasn't that bad for the Lakers, so I guess I'm happy. Plus we get a season.
And it is always risky to challenge a group of rich and powerful people.
Indeed. Hence unions.
Come on, just because Shearer wants to malign all unions by association doesn't mean they don't on occasion work against the interests of their members.
I would be amused if a bunch of Shearers unionized.
33
... just because Shearer wants to malign all unions by association ...
Hey, I said the baseball player's union does a good job for its members.
Also the whole idea that "competitive balance" is good for the NBA as a sport is completely fucking nuts. The sport has been most successful with 4-8 strong teams, in major cities, and a bunch of patsies. If Joe Smallmarket owner wants to compete, pull a Cuban, nut up, and spend some money smartly. Sadly, it's a cartel so it will protect the smallmarket owner schmoes.
I thought the small market owners were the ones who wanted to cancel the season because there isn't any revenue sharing, and it was the big market owners who finally forced a deal with still no revenue sharing because they actually make money on every game their team plays.
I'm shocked the owners agreed to go ahead with the season given that basketball is so highly unprofitable.
16 is interesting, but I don't think its claim that Deen is the only non-repulsive man in straight porn makes any sense. What's more interesting to me is that his fans are young women who don't seem to be interested in porn generally, but like him as a sort of exception. There was an anti-porn article somewhere recently in which the author repeatedly displayed her ignorance of pornography, trotting out tired myths, etc. When Lux at Fleshbot wrote a really nice takedown of it, she commented on Lux's post with a sad face and a pout about how maybe James Deen would never have sex with her now. I didn't understand at the time why she likes Deen but hates porn, but I guess that's kind of a thing.
The NFLPA under the late Gene Upshaw was, notoriously, repeatedly rolled by the owners, to such an extent that Bryant Gumbel said, re: the succession of Roger Goodell: "Before he cleans out his office, have Paul Tagliabue show you where he keeps Gene Upshaw's leash. By making the docile head of the players union his personal pet, your predecessor has kept the peace without giving players the kind of guarantees other pros take for granted. Try to make sure no one competent ever replaces Upshaw on your watch."
38: It does seem plausible (I don't actually know first hand -- I think the last time I saw video porn was before the kids were born) to me that there's a standard male porn-actor look that doesn't come from consulting the preferences of the mass of straight women, because straight women aren't thought of as a primary audience for video porn. So an actor might easily be able to stand out by being unusually appealing to women.
38: do you have any ideas about why that might be the case?
The NFLPA consistently pursued Shearer's suggested strategy of threatened and actual antitrust litigation and don't seem to have been very successful. They seemed to have had reasonable success in court but only limited ability to move the owners. The wiki doesn't say much as to why that is so; perhaps the possible damages weren't high enough to make the owners give way? The antitrust exemption for broadcasting rights may have had something to do with it, if the revenue from those rights were not available for damages that's a big problem. But I'm not a lawyer and I don't know the details.
I think by the nature of football it's going to be more difficult for NFL players than players in other sports...lots of faceless football proles with short careers.
It's weird, because Deen does lots of violent sadist scenes, humiliation, DPs, anal, all the stuff those same people (like the author of the anti-porn article) complain about. It's not like he only does softcore, or couples porn or something. He has refused to be in scenes in which the woman appears to be raped, but I think the female fandom precedes that incident. I think women like him because he seems to genuinely enjoy having sex with people; he doesn't come across like he's having a separate experience from the women in the scenes like some porn actors do. I don't understand, though, how admitting that you like Deen is different from admitting that you like porn.
Hmm. Yeah, the article in 16 mentioned that he'd turned down some stuff because it was "too rapey"; it was easy for me to assume that meant he was against, well, all the stuff the people you're talking about complain about, rather than just being against depictions of rape. Oh well.
It's weird, because Deen does lots of violent sadist scenes, humiliation, DPs, anal, all the stuff those same people (like the author of the anti-porn article) complain about. It's not like he only does softcore, or couples porn or something.
I think this is what's interesting. It's like they're watching porn with the same the subjective experience and fantasies at play in standardly chaste, obsess-at-a-distance teen idoldom. It's the mismatch between the content and how they're using/consuming it that's really interesting/weird.
Friendly Sadist is like the archetype of male porn characters.
[T]he mass of straight women....
Irrelevant anecdote: Discussing the screenplay for You Only Live Twice, the producer instructed Roald Dahl that "[t]here are three girls, and Bond has them all," in what I think Dahl described as a tone distressingly void of lechery. Dahl replied: "Separately or en masse?"
I don't understand, though, how admitting that you like Deen is different from admitting that you like porn.
The difference between porn=filmed depictions of people having sex and porn=whatever exactly that it is that you probably encounter if you go out looking for porn? I'm speculating here, but possibly conventionally available porn tends to be unappealing to most straight women for straightforwardly esthetic reasons -- not that they object to it in principle, just that there's a standard look and approach that most straight women don't find hot. If that's the case, and this guy has a look that's unusual for a porn actor, he might get a class of fans who had thought that they didn't like porn in the sense of filmed depictions of sex, but discovered that they had just found all the actual porn they'd previously encountered unappealing.
I mean, the sadism/humiliation/rapiness of lots of porn is probably independently offputting for plenty of straight women, but if the esthetics is a separate barrier, it makes perfect sense to me that someone with a different look might be more appealing even working with basically the same content.
45: Yes, exactly. They're watching a guy tie up a girl and fuck her in the ass as part of a gangbang and then fantasizing about going on a date with him. What I don't know is whether there is a similar experience that some straight men have, in which they watch porn and then imagine what it would be like to hang out and chat amiably with Stoya. I bet there is.
The fan interview linked in the article is fascinating. The girl doing it is in Deen's house, talking to him and flirting and worrying about whether they're going to do it or not, and he's obviously flirting with her and basically inviting her to live out her fantasy with him on some level, and she realizes that she doesn't want to. Even though every detail of the fantasy is there--he's nice and nerdy and fun--it has to remain a fantasy.
It's like they're watching porn with the same the subjective experience and fantasies at play in standardly chaste, obsess-at-a-distance teen idoldom.
I think the explanation here may be that you're right it's the same subjective experience, but you're wrong that the standard teen-idol obsession is chaste.
A discussion of the rare, and eccentric, intersection of actual pr0n0garphy and What Women Want deserves a reference to Martin Amis' (to my mind) damning remark that (if memory quotes accurately) "[p]ornography exists, and exists as it exists, because men want it to exist, and to exist as it exists."
I'd agree with 49/50. There's probably a transitional period during which one says "I hate porn, but I guess I kind of like this one actor because he's so different from all the rest" and eventually one realizes that the distinctions one is making are kind of silly. Of course there are other porn actors who aren't idiot meathead psychopaths or grotesquely leering old men. Someone like Xander Corvus, who is also young and cute and seems nice, doesn't have the same kind of following, though, and I wonder if part of it is that he doesn't tend to do super-rough sadist scenes, but is in more plot-based/romantic stuff. The James Deen appeal is, like the girl says during the interview, that girls hate him and like him and hate that they like him.
54: There's also probably a huge network/reputation effect. I don't watch porn, not out of principled opposition in general (that is, I'm willing to accept the possibility of non-exploitative porn in a way that I have much more trouble with in terms of prostitution), or because like it doesn't seem plausibly like an entertaining sort of thing to watch, but because what I've seen has been unappealing and I'm embarrassed and inhibited enough about sorting through piles of disturbing crap to make it not worth the effort finding something I might like. A convincing recommendation from someone who shared my tastes might get me to watch what had specifically been recommended. If Deen happened to accidentally break through into a generally non-porn-watching community, I could see the reputation of "This guy is really different" spreading even if there are others just as appealing but less known outside the primary porn audience.
I think the explanation here may be that you're right it's the same subjective experience, but you're wrong that the standard teen-idol obsession is chaste.
But see 51 last. "Chaste" may be the wrong word, but the primary manifestation of Beatlemania wasn't teenage girls actually masturbating to images of the Beatles. There seems to be something essentially removed, fantastical, and abstracted-from-the-dirty-details-of-actually-having-sex that seems to be basic to the eroticism involved (as in Twilight). And what's striking about this example is that they literally have to ignore the sex in order to indulge that type of eroticism.
I think it's still pretty queer to be a girl who likes porn, and there's something disturbing about a girl who knows a lot about porn (e.g., can name several actors, or identify particular scenes in the context of whole films). The Deen tumblrs, which I had no idea existed until now, and which are very numerous, are all .gifs of hardcore fuck scenes with teen-idol drooly comments under them. Getting off to .gifs of only one actor might be the way for girls to enjoy porn without seeming queer or hideously over-informed.
54: There's also probably a huge network/reputation effect.
This. This, this. Massively easier to become fannish over something for which there's already a fandom.
the primary manifestation of Beatlemania wasn't teenage girls actually masturbating to images of the Beatles.
Not in public, certainly. But I do think that straightforward lust is a significant component of that sort of thing. "I want to have his babies" isn't a fantasy about motherhood, it's a fantasy about fucking, phrased in a way that isn't going to get a teenage girl ostracised.
57: Yeah, I think that's related to what I was saying in 55 -- porn consumption is socially deprecated for women, and plenty of it is also straightforwardly unappealing. If you get someone who's both appealing and who has enough of a fan base among people you think of as like yourself to provide some social shelter, it's not surprising that it would take off.
This earlier interview is informative about what Deen thinks he's doing that is different.
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So is Bernie Fine's wife as blameworthy as Mike McQueary?
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I can manage a lot of sympathy for someone in doubt, who had suspicions but no knowledge -- a large part of what had me so het up about McQ was the absolute removal of doubt from the equation.
the primary manifestation of Beatlemania wasn't teenage girls actually masturbating to images of the Beatles.
Not quite. The primary image of Beatlemania was teenage girls at concerts screaming so uncontrollably that Lennon could sing parodies of his own lyrics and nobody noticed.
BUT, at the time, the word among promoters for a successful gig was "Not a dry seat in the house".
64: For unrelated reasons, Dan Zanes promoters say the same now.
55
... that is, I'm willing to accept the possibility of non-exploitative porn in a way that I have much more trouble with in terms of prostitution), ...
What's the distinction? And how important is what is possible compared to actual practice?
42
The NFLPA consistently pursued Shearer's suggested strategy of threatened and actual antitrust litigation and don't seem to have been very successful. ...
As recall the owners argued (with obvious justification) that the decertification of the NFPLA was a sham. The NFPLA was not willing to genuinely dissolve itself for the benefit of the players (and the owners knew it).
... The antitrust exemption for broadcasting rights may have had something to do with it, if the revenue from those rights were not available for damages that's a big problem. ...
This had nothing to do with whether this revenue would available for damages. The damages would be based on how much player salaries had been depressed by illegal collusion among the owners. How to pay the damages would be the owner's problem.
Porn is legal, and has to abide by legal contracts and labor regulations to protect the safety and compensation of workers. Prostitution in most of the US is unregulated in practice.
Yeah, possibility should have been plausibility there. I don't want to go through the whole prostitution conversation again, but a large part of the distinction seems to me to be volume, the likelihood of complete negotiation ahead of time, safety and health concerns in dealing with other professionals rather than johns, and the differing emotional demands of acting for an audience rather than for the other participant in a sex act.
The problem is that players careers (especially in football, but also basketball) are too short for lawsuits that are in the long term interests of players in general to be in the short term interests of the actual current players. The loss of a year of salary for someone with a 4 year career is devestating. You'd need to not only win the case but also win huge damages.
68
Porn is legal, and has to abide by legal contracts and labor regulations to protect the safety and compensation of workers. Prostitution in most of the US is unregulated in practice.
This seems like an argument for making prostitution legal as well.
69
... but a large part of the distinction seems to me to be volume, the likelihood of complete negotiation ahead of time, safety and health concerns in dealing with other professionals rather than johns, and the differing emotional demands of acting for an audience rather than for the other participant in a sex act.
There is going to be a wide range of conditions in both cases but I would be surprised if high end whores are not better off than low end porn actresses by these sorts of criteria.
70
The problem is that players careers (especially in football, but also basketball) are too short for lawsuits that are in the long term interests of players in general to be in the short term interests of the actual current players. The loss of a year of salary for someone with a 4 year career is devestating. You'd need to not only win the case but also win huge damages.
IANAL but I think if there is no union there is no legal lock out. So you could play under the owner's terms and sue. And antitrust provides for triple damages. You would have to wait for your money and I expect lots of players have a very short time horizon. Which puts them at a disadvantage of course.
It seems quite likely to me that some prostitutes have better working conditions than some porn actresses while still having almost all prostitute working conditions being below the threshold of moral acceptability. No one thinks all porn was produced morally.
It seems likely that at the high end there are prostitutes who have a sufficiently small and rich pool of clients that they can be genuinely selective. In fact at that level the distinction between sex worker and kept mistress blurs a little. But none of us are that rich.
On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog the 1%.
I have never heard a suggestion that you could play under the owners terms and sue at the same time. It seems very unlikely to me that this is possible in practice or else I would have heard about it somewhere. I'm not sure why it's impractical but I can think of dozens of plausible reasons.
Reading that Deen article gave me that dizzying feeling that the world can no longer be parodied. It was like someone took the joke about Lisa Simpson's subscription to Non-Threatening Boys magazine, but then upped the ante by making it about joke about porn.
It seems likely that at the high end there are prostitutes who have a sufficiently small and rich pool of clients that they can be genuinely selective. In fact at that level the distinction between sex worker and kept mistress blurs a little. But none of us are that rich.
In the internet age, you get a fair amount of selectivity at lower levels of the totem pole as well. My friend who works through an online escort service, which charges $150-$250 an hour (she claims fair price should track local attorney fees!), gets tons of solicitations and chooses who she does and doesn't work with. She usually tries to have about three regulars whom she sees weekly.
She does, however, have the advantage that she is working as a prostitute as a second gig, rather than her only source of income.
Also, "whom" not "who".
Can you get billed for increments as small as six minutes like you can with lawyers?
Are you in a rural area, or is your hooker friend tracking the rates of cheap and not very good lawyers? Is she a cheap and not very good hooker?
Porn is capacious, but a difference from prostitution is that there are very clear safety rules. And generally the dude performers don't kinda sorta fall in love and act bizarrely. And there's a camera rolling. Still, not exactly not gross as an industry. I will say that I view Joe Francis/GGW as way worse than mainstream San Fernando valley porn.
78, 79: Is your friend safe? I may be* too sensitive about some things,** and accordingly recalling this inaccurately, but I recall being disturbed to read in one of those Slate stories by that sociologist-of-crime guy that even the most established, careful, self-employed prostitutes whom he interviewed expected to be beaten up by clients 3-5 times a year.
* I.e., am.
** Sex, violence, Internet slang, legumes, that milestone in appreciating an artist's (usually a writer's) work when they cease to surprise or delight you, suggestions that I solicit the aid of college classmates in my career.
76
I have never heard a suggestion that you could play under the owners terms and sue at the same time. It seems very unlikely to me that this is possible in practice or else I would have heard about it somewhere. I'm not sure why it's impractical but I can think of dozens of plausible reasons.
Well if nurses can do it, I don't see why athletes couldn't.
Losers & Winners of NBA deal. Preliminary, final details not out yet, but...
"And if the players are sharing in the league's overseas and national TV revenues, this deal also could look great by the time it's done."
See? If the players had only been sharing ticket sales before, they now get a smaller percentage, but of a bigger pie.
I would like to see a major sport function for a season without a draft, salary cap or, really, the usual apparatus of a league, including scheduling and common television contracts. The spectacle would be interesting.
Kevin Drum wonders why, oh why he cares so much about the big business of sports but not about the commercialism of Hollywood.
Because you're a yahoo philistine, Kevin. As someone who cares a lot about indie and arthouse movies, I am broken-hearted that the best directors in the world can only show their movies on film festival screens. If they can get any financing to make a movie in the first place.
Not merely the usual subjects, but people like Joe Dante, who has made one cheap Italian funded horror flick in the 13 years since Small Soldiers
Are you in a rural area,
No
or is your hooker friend tracking the rates of cheap and not very good lawyers?
More likely, she has no idea what lawyers charge and is repeating a bit of folk humor.
Is she a cheap and not very good hooker?
Dude, that's hilarious.
: Is your friend safe? I may be* too sensitive about some things,** and accordingly recalling this inaccurately, but I recall being disturbed to read in one of those Slate stories by that sociologist-of-crime guy that even the most established, careful, self-employed prostitutes whom he interviewed expected to be beaten up by clients 3-5 times a year.
I had this conversation when she started, but she was kind of resistant to me telling her about her own business. She's very stubborn about dismissing popular/journalistic/academic accounts of the level of risk as being sensationalistic.
So far as I know, the worst thing that's happened to her is a guy getting clingy when they went to a club with his friends (her agency hires out for "the girlfriend experience" as well as more straightforward prostitution).
"the girlfriend experience"
Again, perhaps oversensitive, but this euphemism gives me the creeps.
I'm not too sympathetic with anyone who turns to prostitution for side income, frankly (ie, not out of poverty/exploitation/addiction). I mean, not "put in jail" level unsympathetic, but at about the same level as anyone else in a basically immoral job.
Do you think people who do porn are immoral, Halford?
IME, when you're really poor, there does not seem to be a really clearly visible line between going on dates with someone who will buy you dinner (or theater tickets, or clothes) and prostitution. When I was at my most destitute, I went on about two too many dates with a guy I did not like because I was hungry. I didn't fuck him, but I could very easily imagine thinking it was a good idea.
It's a closer call, but basically, I think, yes.
And 91, sure, absolutely right. I find turning to prostitution out of being poor totally sympathetic. Out of a desire to have some additional luxuries? Not so much. I actually doubt there are very many people covered by the second sentence, but I know of at least one.
Funny, I have nothing against prostitutes, but don't approve of "exotic dancers" who strike me as mostly ripping off obnoxious drunks.
However I do consider the customers of prostitutes to be at best pathetic, I mean, jerk off already, rather than pay an arm and a leg to degrade somebody else for a fucking hour. You're an adult not a child, you can handle being alone.
But I also consider gamblers, drinkers, and people who pay 30 dollars for cinema trash pathetic. And maybe people who go to restaurants, pay insane prices and get food poisoning.
Can you explain what it is you find immoral about exchanging sex for money? I can say there are reasons why I would not do it, but that's a far cry from declaring it an immoral job, like lying for money, or committing violence against non-violent people for money.
95:Well, it's not just sex, is it? It is also a level of pretense, flattery, etc. She/he pretends on some level that she/he enjoys it. That is degrading for both parties, but at least she/he is getting paid and doing the acting.
"I'll pay you $100 an hour to pretend you like me."
Horrible. How can people do it?
98
How is that different from any service job anywhere? Except that you get paid less and don't have to be quite as convincing.
97: Hmmmm:
Dante, as I recall, includes but one prostitute in the Inferno, inserting her, rather surprisingly, into the ditch where the flatterers wallow in shit. Why? Because when a lover would ask her, 'have I found favour with you?" the lady would reply: "beyond all measure."
I'm not an ethical philosopher, but broadly speaking I think theres truth in the notion that there's something wrong about commercializing this sphere of life. I don't know that it's much worse than a lot of other things that are commercialized, but I really really don't think woo prostitution right on is the road to sexual freedom. I do support legalization and targeting our limited shaming resources on the customers, not the providers.
97
And how is this different from what must inevitably happen for many couples at some point in their relationship?
95:
There clearly is an argument that says that undertaking any unenjoyable action purely for money, when you don't actually need the money, is immoral. Back in the dot-com days we used to ask if something wasn't fun, why do it? Being paid for it wasn't an adequate answer because one could get paid for doing stuff that was fun, too, even if not quite so much. The alternatives open to us have now changed, but the principle still holds.
People are said to be prostituting themselves if they do something less than they're capable of purely for the sake of making money that they don't immediately need. That's because engaging in unenjoyable sex purely for money is the paradigmatic case.
It's weird to talk about "sympathy" for people who work as prostitutes because it's a job that they genuinely want and enjoy (in the sense that people enjoy jobs). It's only if it's something distasteful and unenjoyable that there should be special "sympathy."
98: People pretend to like me just to get me to leave, but they rarely go so far as to have sex with me.
103
Umm, dot-commers aside, this describes the vast majority of all individuals in the vast majority of all jobs. The principle is nice, but it's simply not an option for most folks to only make money doing something they consider fun.
broadly speaking I think theres truth in the notion that there's something wrong about commercializing this sphere of life
I'd leave it right there.
What people mean when they say they "enjoy their job" is not what they mean when they say they enjoy a hobby. Jobs always have some aspects which you wouldn't do if you weren't being paid for it. But you can still meaningfully talk about enjoying a job. My job has many aspects that I would do even if I weren't paid for it (thinking about math, giving talks, traveling to exciting places, teaching exciting classes), some aspects which I wouldn't do if I weren't paid for it but still enjoy more than most other jobs (teaching calculus), and some aspects which I find moderately distasteful (writing papers, applying for grants).
Being paid for it wasn't an adequate answer because one could get paid for doing stuff that was fun, too, even if not quite so much.
My dad always expressed similar sentiments. I think it works, if you are using "fun" as it might be defined by somebody who was raised poor during the Depression. You need a hard youth to lower the bar.
106
"when you don't actually need the money" is the operative phrase.
No-one (at least no-one here) claims it's immoral to do what you have to do keep body and soul together -- prostitution included. The claim is that continuing to be false to oneself beyond necessity is immoral.
99:I did say it is the customers I despise more than the service providers
I didn't say woo prostitution right on. It's not a job I would do, and it got to the point that when a relationship I was in made me aware of how he spent money on us in ways I could not, I told him he was no longer permitted to do so, lest I ever feel confused about why I was staying with him. But it's more that I think all relationships are confusing, and money always plays some kind of role in whom you date, whom you would not date, etc. Even if they never spend a dime on you, when you have a life with someone else, you will notice whether and how they spend money.
I can actually imagine spending money on sex, if we lived in a culture in which that didn't make one instantly into a monster. I don't have sympathy for people who abuse women or humiliate or degrade them, but I have a lot of sympathy for people who just can't, for whatever reason, construct a sexual relationship in other ways. Paying would mean not negotiating every single detail, or worrying about attachment or humiliation for being yourself.
104: This may be the rare occasion on which I make an early move to the meta level of condemning the systematic something mumble something. I speculate that prostitutes in 104's latter class so far outnumber those in the former as to render premature, if not risible, the idea of prostitution as potentially legitimate, healthy commerce. In many cases, and in much of the world, "woo prostitution right on" is indistinguishable from "woo slavery right on," and I am sympathetic to the argument that to engage in prostitution voluntarily, and certainly to patronize even notionally voluntary prostitutes, is to, however incrementally, contribute to the continuing legitimatization of activities that ought not to be legitimate at all. I wouldn't go quite so far as to accuse John Bachelorparty in Vegas of enabling the trafficking of minors in Asia, but I'm willing to condemn poor John in fairly strong terms.
Man, I am an exceptionally dreary stick in the mud.
[Moral-pomposity-deflating joke goes here.]
Analogy!
Shit yes, for $500 I will crawl across the floor on my belly for you and kiss your shoes. What the hell.
But I cannot imagine being the kind of person who would pay the $500 dollars. That's sick.
114: Bidding starts at $0.50 for a comment about how awesome capitalism is, I assume?
OK, but what if, instead of it being $500 for a violent, humiliating act of degradation, it was $500 for sex?
I do think that there is something about prostitution, even when it's not literally sex slavery, that touches on something close to slavery. E.g., whatever we think people should alienate, it shouldn't be that, just as people aren't able to voluntarily sell themselves into slavery.
I heard somewhere (probably an urban legend) that the Dutch government would pay for prostitutes for extremely mentally ill people, to give them a sex life. I can see on one level why that might be seen as compassionate but it still feels deeply wrong to me.
Porn is a much tougher case for me because I do think there's a good argument that porn is actually a useful, maybe a necessary, component of sexual freedom and feminism. I think porn and prostitution are extraordinarily different both in effect and in nature, but I admit this is a tough distinction to make and I don't have it rigorously thought out.
I had added a "granting for argument that such people exist" clause to 104, but that sentence had too many clauses already and so I deleted it.
The slavery/trafficking issue is what I see as the key difference between porn and prostitution. Legalizing prostitution doesn't seem in practice to get rid of the trafficking issues, while legalized porn does not in practice seem to have the same widespread problem. The immigration issues get too complicated for a simple solution.
[T]hat sentence had too many clauses already....
"Too" "many"? You're babbling. You're not making any sense. You're hysterical.
108
But your job is probably in the top 5% of "fun"ness. And already you find some things distasteful. I would imagine you would find other middle-class jobs even less fun.
110
What counts as "actually needing the money"? Which goods are you allowed to work a non-fun job to obtain?
The problem was that I wanted both "in the sense that people enjoy their jobs" and "granting for argument that such people exist" but I wanted them both in the same spot in the sentence, and in the end decided I'd rather say the former.
Which goods are you allowed to work a non-fun job to obtain?
Beans?
120: Indeed my job is in the top 5% of fun-ness. And the point is exactly that this is meaningful to talk about even though it involves aspects that I would need to be paid to do. Lots of people like their jobs.
117: I do think there's a good argument that porn is actually a useful, maybe a necessary, component of sexual freedom and feminism.
Feminism? I don't get that at all. I'm not going to argue about it, however.
115:I have my pride
116:You know, at this point, it is not enough. I am weirdly romantic I guess, and Anne Hathaway would have to spend weeks seducing me.
I'm just not social, and it has been too long since I have faked anything important.
113: You're an exceptionally dreary stick-in-the-mud, no question about it. As am I.
These discussions always end up feeling strangely incomplete to me. Like a lot is dependent on subtext that people won't say or don't want to get into. The shaming around prostitution, for john and prostitute, has a lot to do with the 'special' and sacred nature of sex, the way it is supposed to be preserved and safeguarded as an element of lasting romantic connections that have depth and significance. Anyone with a lot of sexual and life experience knows that this sacredness of sex is to some degree a cultural construct...the power is real, and sex necessarily does play a central role in good romantic relationships, but it can play a ton of other roles besides. If you really want to preserve sex as special and sacred you need various kinds of authoritarian interventions to do it. Not necessarily a bad thing, but there's a lot of negative history there. Maybe the other, not-so-sacred roles that sex can play in peoples' lives are psychologically unhealthy. But medicalizing the problem doesn't get you out of the issue of making authoritarian choices around sex. Homosexuality and certainly transgenderism were seen as absolutely paradigmatic examples of unhealthy sexuality for centuries.
I do think there's a purely pragmatic argument about prostitution, which goes something like, as soon as you legalize it the exploitation of inexperienced 18-21 year old girls become a big source of economic value. This is true for porn right now. But if you could create safeguards against this through legalization then prostitution, in theory, seems like it could be one of the more rational and pragmatic ways of handling the problem of accomodating sexuality.
I now think 128 is kinda lame and gaseous. Sorry.
I think porn and prostitution are extraordinarily different both in effect and in nature, but I admit this is a tough distinction to make and I don't have it rigorously thought out.
a prostitute plus a camera equals porn...porn comes from the Greek word for whore. Are you thinking that prostitution has some beneficial effects for third parties (spectators) exposed to it.
In porn, all the partners are paid for having sex by a third party. In prostitution, one partner pays the other. Pornography does come from the Greek for writing about whores, but it's a 19th-century euphemism for a vast range of texts and images that long predates its use in English.
I haven't read this thread at all. My college roommate was a prostitute, however, and in her situation the line between porn and prostitution was very, very blurry.
A person I met in L.A. led me to believe it was incredibly common for people he worked with to hire prostitutes whenever they traveled to Vegas. "Everyone does it," he told me. "Everyone."
Creep-tastic.
130 made me realize that I feel quite differently about the morality of porn depending on whether I think of the third party as the end-user or the director. Having the paying party in the room brings in a lot of the squick factor of prostitution.
It's worth pointing out that "porn" here is just being used for people having sex, and not for "naked pictures." Are there simple terms that distinguish those two things, as they're rather different.
In both porn and prostitution, people are having sex for money. I guess a real difference would be if in porn people had much greater control over who their actual sex partner was, but I don't think that's true. The fact that in porn the money comes from the voyeur doesn't strike me as a salient distinction. If someone hired two strangers to fuck while being watched, I think it would be pretty clear that the people hired were prostitutes and the voyeur was a john.
If pretending to be Eliza Doolittle is annoying, then being filmed in My Fair Lady has got to be an improvement over starring in a stage production of Pygmalion if you have to have your performance seen by the same number of people to make a living.
And I know I broke the analogy ban. I just really hate that play/movie.
136, 137: Tread lightly, Moby. I've had very negative thoughts about people who said only that Audrey Hepburn was "okay, I guess."
Your negative thoughts are considered a badge of honor in some milieu, Flip. Remember Hanoi in '57.
Does anybody else ever post a comment and then think "wait, what the hell am I talking about?"
Remember Hanoi in '57.
[Gets faraway look in eyes.] Those were ... dark days, Sifu. Dark days and bright nights. Bringing the Old Man's charbon down the sticky river in dugouts, passing the leaf-wrapped bricks into the junks by dawn. You should have got out when the Kuomintang did, but you had to push it. I ... now I drink to forget, monsieur. [Polishes glass eye on sleeve of shabby safari suit.]
We don't talk about Breakfast at Tiffany's.
117: I heard somewhere (probably an urban legend) that the Dutch government would pay for prostitutes for extremely mentally ill people, to give them a sex life.
True but misleading. It has been the case that at least one city council in at least one case allowed a long term disabled man on the lowest level of social security to use part of his supplementary benefits to pay for a hooker. These sort of supplements have to be approved on a case by case level and normally are used to get a family a washing machine or something. It's not standard policy to pay for hookers, but it does sometimes crop up.
Prostitution (as long as it is under specific circumstances) is legal in the Netherlands, as is making use of it and the moral taboo against it is weaker than elsewhere. In theory it's no different from e.g. being a message therapist or any other job that involves having to touch somebody else's body, apart from when it is.
144: well, that's one thing you got.
In theory it's no different from e.g. being a message therapist or any other job that involves having to touch somebody else's body, apart from when it is.
Pretty good summary, really. Couldn't put it better.
Audrey Hepburn was half Dutch, of course, but I doubt that affected her choice of roles much.
133
... Having the paying party in the room brings in a lot of the squick factor of prostitution.
Really? So when a host pays for a bunch of whores to service his guests, that's better?
I would argue that the difference between porn and prostitution is that porn is acting (theatre) but prostitution is real. This is probably the best use of Fried's concept of the theatrical I have ever come up with.
Kentucky Fried Theater was a great movie.
150: Working title of Airplane! was Kentucky Fried Airplane. Just thought I'd share.