Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
For the sake of argument, would that be true if it were legal? How much of the exploitation of prostitutes comes from needing a pimp for protection in a black-market transaction?
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Strip clubs and porn are legal. I've read a lot on the subject and it's not all roses and sunshine and buckets of cash for all the strippers and porn starlets out there. And one of my ex-boyfriends has been, at various points in time, a bouncer in a strip club and a part time porn producer. He did not recommend the sex trade as a good career path based on his experience working with sex workers. I consider a lot of former strippers to be friends. None of them got rich off of it.
I'm not saying that I object wholeheartedly to legitimizing sex workers, but I find in a lot of discussions about the subject, most people think in terms of the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas or Amsterdam and forget all about Monster and Bangkok.
Then again, Hustle & Flow got a lot of raves, so maybe people do remember and just don't care.
(Books on the shelf right next to me:
Memoirs of a Sex Industry Survivor, by Anne Bissell,
Bare: The Naked Truth About Stripping, by Elizabeth Eaves,
A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis, by David M. Friedman,
Obscene Profits: Entrepreneurs of Pornography in the Cyber Age, by Frederick Lane,
Ivy League Stripper by Heidi Mattson,
The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry by Legs McNeil and Jennifer Osborne,
A History of the Wife, by Marilyn Yalom. I lent
Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America by Lily Burana to someone and I'm not sure what happened to it, and I've read quite a few others on the same subject. I should have been a researcher at the Kinsey Institute. There's good and there's bad. I'm not quite sure I give a shit about the consumer, but I care quite a lot about the ultimate service provider.)
