That’s not entertainment
No sooner do I upbraid one collection of strategically vague claims than I find myself reading another.
Louis Theroux has compared pornography to junk food and argued that sex work is a valid occupation in the modern world.
The film-maker returns to BBC2 on Sunday with Forbidden America, a three-part series that explores the adult entertainment industry as it grapples with its own MeToo movement.
Sigh. “Sex work” is feelgood for selling access to one’s body to strangers. “The adult entertainment industry” is feelgood for porn, including violent porn. If you’re going to talk about it, talk about it; don’t pretty it up.
Theroux, 51, told Radio Times that he has watched pornography for the sake of expediency. He admitted: “I’ve been a user of porn. I sort of see it as a bit like . . . maybe this sounds harsh, but it’s a bit like junk food, right?”
Wrong. It’s the opposite of harsh. It’s mollifying. It’s self-excusing. The “junk” in his junk food metaphor here is women – damaged exploited women.
“I genuinely see sex work as work, and valid work, and I know that’s controversial in some quarters,” he said. “These stories are hard to tell, because enlightened, thoughtful, intelligent people can disagree passionately about what it means to be paid to have sex.”
Fun fact: the word “women” doesn’t appear in the piece. Not once. You’d never know there was any power imbalance or exploitation at stake – in fact there’s nothing even indicating why his view is controversial.
Sigh. Always, without fail, every time one of these “sex work is valid work” types pops up, they consistently fail to mention that the “workers” almost universally say that if they had a way out of “the life” (as it is called) they would take it. Almost none–with a few rare exceptions–say that it is a choice that they would make again if they could avoid it, and certainly not one that they would recommend to their children.
Another related, annoying euphemism is “Gentlemen’s Club” for strip club.
Nor is there any other ‘profession’ which so thoroughly chellenges its practitioners to hide their contempt for their clients. Perhaps the immortal Mandy Rice-Davies of the British Profumo scandal fame (“he would say that, wouldn’t he?”) came closest to it.
Bringing down a government? It’s all part of the job.
“Gentlemen’s Club” is kind of ironic in that as a general rule women weren’t allowed in gentlemen’s clubs except by special invitation. Not the same thing at all…
If selling your body as a sex instrument was “valid work,” where are all the male sex-workers?
Where are the slick career day presentations? The scholarships?
I said it with the story about the “drive-in” brothels in Germany that ran a couple of years ago, if it’s really not exploitation of women, then let the johns be the ones who wait in the drive-in sheds in the cold, rain, snow, heat, etc., and see how many eager women come rushing over to take their money.
Would there be ‘sex work’ if Universal Basic Income was a thing?