Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Frames of reference,stigma and victimisation
I noticed over the weekend that I had a lot of visitors from Margaret's site. I had a look, and lo and behold, my name had been mentioned. Thanks to my friend James B, no need to apologise James, you did not drag me in. I am clear about your intentions so do not worry.
This is Margaret's profile, she is a Humanist.
"I'm a grumpy old woman. I'd grow old disgracefully, but it’s tiring. That whooshing sound is my life, flying by while I procrastinate. I write, paint, draw, and let the ironing pile up until there's nothing left to wear. Where’s the pause button."
The post that I was directed to, was a response to this one.
This is the post that caught my eye,
"I’ll probably regret this…
In response to my post, "The Oldest Profession", someone calling himself James B Logwriter tried to post a comment that I rejected, but I've been thinking about it. He wrote,
I don’t really agree, because I don't think you know anything about prostitution, and you can't imagine working as a prostitute.
There are many different levels of prostitution, and it has a different significance in different cultures. Since I have written many thousands of words about prostitution on my own blog, I am not going to repeat here, but you might also be interested to read the blog of my friend Nia, who is a prostitute, and also a damn good writer.
I’d dispute the description of Nia as a “damn good writer”, but Mr Logwriter’s taste in writers (and other matters) is clearly very different from mine.
He said, “… you can’t imagine working as a prostitute,” but I can; I’d just rather not. Judging from Nia’s blog, her approach to prostitution might be safer than the street-walkers who’ve been murdered in Ipswich, but it’s still a dangerous game.
Anyway, I investigated Mr Logwriter’s blog, and his friend Nia’s, and several others that link to theirs. They make depressing reading.
In the BHA forum I referred to prostitute’s clients as “… generally emotionally inadequate, for a variety of reasons. They are also highly irresponsible, because most are unwilling to be tested or treated for sexually transmitted diseases - most HIV is spread by heterosexual activity, where men infect their innocent partners and, in turn, their children.”
One of the men who’ve contributed to the thread wrote,
What does “emotionally inadequate” mean? Inadequate for what? I’m not aware that there’s much known about men who frequent prostitutes - they are even harder to study than the prostitutes themselves. What are you basing this assertion on?
I meant that men who regularly pay for sex appear to lack the emotional wherewithal to deal with life as mature individuals, by failing to control their impulses and by treating women’s bodies as commodities. Do they regard prostitutes as different from other women, by deluding themselves that they’re more sexual? Or do they think that all reasonably attractive women are potential prostitutes? However they feel about women in general, their attitude towards prostitutes must involve emotional distance while engaged in sexual intimacy. If they can do this while using a prostitute, is it something they turn on and off at will? How do they relate to the other women in their lives?
Most of the humanists I know try to live ethically – they’re environmentally aware, they avoid doing anything that exploits other people or animals, and they buy fair trade goods. Prostitution isn’t a fair trade. It involves some of the poorest, most vulnerable women, who are manipulated, abused and trafficked in huge numbers. The call girls who are simply expensive prostitutes may say that they do what they do freely, but read what they say and tell me, honestly, that they’re well-balanced, happy individuals."
Margaret's response to some comments.
"Nia, I didn't imagine that you worked for anyone but yourself. However, your post "Trust, betrayal, vulnerability and security" describes a world where you have to be constantly on your guard. As for being "well-balanced"; I don't regard sex work as being psychologically healthy for anyone, however strong a case some "feminist" sex-workers may make. Feminism means the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of sexual equality, and the relationship between a prostitute and a client is essentially unequal.
It's a waste of time trying to achieve any sort of agreement with buyers of sex - I have no respect for them, and never will. Nathan mentioned "brick walls" when we last discussed the subject, very briefly.
The only prostitutes I've known were at the bottom of the heap (as most are). They sold sex for a variety of reasons, mainly poverty, and were definitely not happy hookers.
I've ordered the book by Julia O'Connell Davidson that Nia recommends, as well as The Idea of Prostitution by Sheila Jeffreys, which "explores the idea of men's entitlement to abuse and profit from the abuse of women in prostitution".
The women who've been murdered in my area were young street-walkers, so especially vulnerable. I've considered the argument about legalising prostitution, but the evidence so far suggests that it doesn't reduce the risks to women like them, or reduce all the associated problems with drug use, crime and sex trafficking
However many examples the contributors might offer of supposedly harmless transactions as sellers or buyers, the overwhelming evidence is that prostitution is an internationally destructive activity that exploits and degrades women.
It's unlikely that I'll allow any more comments on this post, unless they can refer me to reliable sources of information about the psychology of the buyers and/or projects that have successfully helped women escape the so-called "industry". (I know about the Poppy project)."
Why Whoremongering is wrong, Margaret's post
Reading Margaret's post raised a number of issues for me.
I feel strongly about what happened in Ipswich, as you all know, and have posts about it.I can understand some of what Margaret is saying, and her concern about what happened.I share Margaret's concerns about women who are coerced or trafficked into prostitution.
However there are a number of things I feel I need and want to make clear to my readers.
The majority of readers of my blog are lurkers, and rarely comment. I have no control over how you interpret what I write. However there are some things that I feel I need and I want to make clear to you.
I work independently, have no pimp, manager or boyfriend who shares my earnings.
2.Why I started escorting.
3. Do I find what I do degrading?
4. Writing my blog is a form of self expression for me. I know that there is a school of thought that believes if you are not an anonymous escort blogger, you need to portray your clients in a positive light at all times; or else you are doomed.
I do not fall into this category, and write about the difficult issues that I face with my clients. So, I guess I am doomed, right?
I am not suggesting that there are not escorts out there who have perfect,lovely, clients at all times. I have just not been that lucky.
Here is an interesting perspective from Mercurial girl. She is a paid companion, who I respect.
5. I need to be on my guard at all times, as any professional or service provider does who works one to one with clients eg doctor, psychiatrist, therapist, masseuse, reflexologist. Yes, the risks are greater with escorts, but other professions carry risks too.
6.Margaret has read some escort blogs that are linked to my blog, and James B's, and she thinks that we(the escorts) are not happy or well balanced.
I am interested in what form of assessment she used to define a healthy well balanced individual.
How does that fit in with Margaret's understanding of Humanistic Psychology?
I am happy for anyone to give me references, from any Humanistic Psychology texts, with regard to the Fully Functioning Person,that state that sex workers, escorts, courtesans, streetworkers, are dsyfunctional. Or that their behaviour is pathological.
I think if anyone were to make a diagnosis regarding an individual's psychological health ; they would need to have a full life history about that individual, gathered from their assessment.
I suppose I wonder how Margaret believes that I, and other escorts who are linked to my blog are unhappy and unbalanced, based on the limited information provided on our blogs.
I share some aspects of my life with my readers, and I do not blog about every aspect of my life here, for obvious reasons. That is my choice.
It reminds me of something that I read about learning to deal with grief cross culturally.
"Another source of understanding is the person or people we are trying to help. Whether they are American men who strive to control their tears or immigrants from the many cultures where people fear that the act of naming the deceased calls up a dangerous ghost, we must be constantly sensitive to their taboos and leanings. Our active curiousity and genuine interest are of the utmost importance. Asking someone to help us understand things in the way that people in their culture understand and experience them is a powerful way to learn what we need to learn.Learning their terms and working at using them properly can be helpful. We should not presume to teach them to feel "grief". It is not merely a matter of working among subtly different translations of the same terms. It is a matter of coming to grips with what may be vastly different concepts and vastly different explanatory systems and interpretative approaches. Those who live in the dominant US culture will never experience, for example, dealing with witchcraft as a cause of death, seeing the next baby born in the community as the reincarnation of the deceased, dealing with the deceased as a god, fearing being haunted by the ghost of the deceased because the proper death ceremonies cannot be performed in the United States, fearing the wind because it brings dangerous spirits-and on and on. We must be skeptical of what people tell us, but we must also be ready to leave our own culture to share in a world that is surprisingly different from our expectations."
Ethnic variations in dying death and grief, diversity in universality by Donald Irish,Kathleen Lundquist and Vivian Jenkins Nelsen
Something else, I read years ago, by two Psychiatrists about Black men who had been misdiagnosed by the mental health system in the UK. The chapter was on insanity and meaning.
"If we can show that the beliefs of someone who is possibly mentally ill are in fact shared by many other people does that explain them?
To accept that different communities have quite different expectations of normality carries certain implications. If we say, for instance, that a particular religous experience is abnormal, we are saying that societies in which it is a common experience contain a large number of unbalanced people or even that these societies are unbalanced altogether.
Every society has its own characteristic pattern of normative behaviour and beliefs. It has therefore to solve the threat not only of antagonists external to the group but also of those inside who may be deviant. If accepted patterns are to be seen as normal, we need a theory of abnormality. The solution is to include both normal and abnormal inside the dominant beliefs."
Aliens and Alienists by Roland Littlewood and Maurice Lipsedge
My point is that as we live we accumulate a continous set of experiences. Out of our experiences we develop a set of beliefs about ourselves, others and the world. These beliefs influence the way we construe our reality, and constitute our frame of reference. Our frame of reference shapes our behaviour which will probably elicit experiences consistent with our original experiences, and thereby help to reconfirm our original beliefs.
7. I now have a recommended reading list on my sidebar, that includes books from a cross section of women and men in the sex industry.
Julia O'Connell Davidson in her book Prostitution Power and Freedom, which is on the sidebar explores the issues that Margaret is raising.
Her research covers women at all levels in the industry. She talks about Desiree who is an Independent.
"Desiree did not enter prostitution from a base of absolute poverty. She owned her own home, she had no economic dependents and she had a job.To be sure this job held out little prospect of ever making her wealthy, but it still made her situation very different from that of , say, a lone mother living in a council propery run away from an abusive parent and who lives on the streets without any source of income.
A factor which I believe contributes to Desiree's power within her transactions is her own character and "career history". Desiree had a great deal more emotional and life experience when she started to prostitute than those individuals who, for various reasons, find themselves involved in prostitution in their early teens. It is also the case that Desiree is an extremely intelligent, well read, perceptive,assertive,charming and socially skilled individual, and these qualities contribute enormously to her ability to deploy her subjective powers to positive effect within prosititution-that is, to negotiate and enforce contracts on terms which suit her, and yet still maintain a stream of repeat custom.
When people have been brutally and unequivocally sexualized in the ways implied by sexual abuse and rape, they are likely to have a strong sense of themselves as nothing more than sexual beings for others, and so to view prostitution as one of the "options," or the only "option" available to them. But it is important to recognise three things about this. First, not all prostitutes have been sexualized in these ways. Several of the women we interviewed who who were involved in informal tourist-related prostitution in economically underdeveloped countries, for example had no prior history of sexual victimization. Economic desperation is enough, on its own, to drive people into prostitution. Second the experience of sexual victimization clearly does not and could not on its own cause people to enter into prostitution or to continue prostituting once involved in it. There are people who have suffered such violence and yet do not work as prostitutes, as well as people who have been raped and/ or abused who have worked as prostitutes and then exited from prostitution. Third it is far fetched(and dangerous) to attribute the complex set of choices that people make within the constraints that operate on them to a single, determining event or psychological factor. Barry bravely acknowledges the fact that she herself was raped(1995,p.252),for example, but I doubt that she would take kindly to someone interpreting the fact that she spent two decades researching and writing on prostitution as a form of sexual violence as a reflection of nothing more than her own personal attempt to come to terms with that event. It would be as easy to interpret Barry's work in this way as it would be to interpret Desiree's decision to remain in prostitution as a direct result of certain events in her life, but I think that in both cases such an interpretation is wrong."
My concern with Margaret, is that her beliefs, experience and knowledge seems to be based around streetworkers. She believes we are all the same,ie,victims, abused,exploited, unhappy, and psychologically unbalanced.
She has ordered Julia's book on my recommendation, and I hope it widens her perspective. I can only try !
There is diversity within the industry as I have pointed out in numerous posts. Before interpretations are made you need to look at a cross section of women in the industry. Differences exist amongst women who work at the same level.
This is definitely my longest post ever, have a good week!
This is Margaret's profile, she is a Humanist.
"I'm a grumpy old woman. I'd grow old disgracefully, but it’s tiring. That whooshing sound is my life, flying by while I procrastinate. I write, paint, draw, and let the ironing pile up until there's nothing left to wear. Where’s the pause button."
The post that I was directed to, was a response to this one.
This is the post that caught my eye,
"I’ll probably regret this…
In response to my post, "The Oldest Profession", someone calling himself James B Logwriter tried to post a comment that I rejected, but I've been thinking about it. He wrote,
I don’t really agree, because I don't think you know anything about prostitution, and you can't imagine working as a prostitute.
There are many different levels of prostitution, and it has a different significance in different cultures. Since I have written many thousands of words about prostitution on my own blog, I am not going to repeat here, but you might also be interested to read the blog of my friend Nia, who is a prostitute, and also a damn good writer.
I’d dispute the description of Nia as a “damn good writer”, but Mr Logwriter’s taste in writers (and other matters) is clearly very different from mine.
He said, “… you can’t imagine working as a prostitute,” but I can; I’d just rather not. Judging from Nia’s blog, her approach to prostitution might be safer than the street-walkers who’ve been murdered in Ipswich, but it’s still a dangerous game.
Anyway, I investigated Mr Logwriter’s blog, and his friend Nia’s, and several others that link to theirs. They make depressing reading.
In the BHA forum I referred to prostitute’s clients as “… generally emotionally inadequate, for a variety of reasons. They are also highly irresponsible, because most are unwilling to be tested or treated for sexually transmitted diseases - most HIV is spread by heterosexual activity, where men infect their innocent partners and, in turn, their children.”
One of the men who’ve contributed to the thread wrote,
What does “emotionally inadequate” mean? Inadequate for what? I’m not aware that there’s much known about men who frequent prostitutes - they are even harder to study than the prostitutes themselves. What are you basing this assertion on?
I meant that men who regularly pay for sex appear to lack the emotional wherewithal to deal with life as mature individuals, by failing to control their impulses and by treating women’s bodies as commodities. Do they regard prostitutes as different from other women, by deluding themselves that they’re more sexual? Or do they think that all reasonably attractive women are potential prostitutes? However they feel about women in general, their attitude towards prostitutes must involve emotional distance while engaged in sexual intimacy. If they can do this while using a prostitute, is it something they turn on and off at will? How do they relate to the other women in their lives?
Most of the humanists I know try to live ethically – they’re environmentally aware, they avoid doing anything that exploits other people or animals, and they buy fair trade goods. Prostitution isn’t a fair trade. It involves some of the poorest, most vulnerable women, who are manipulated, abused and trafficked in huge numbers. The call girls who are simply expensive prostitutes may say that they do what they do freely, but read what they say and tell me, honestly, that they’re well-balanced, happy individuals."
Margaret's response to some comments.
"Nia, I didn't imagine that you worked for anyone but yourself. However, your post "Trust, betrayal, vulnerability and security" describes a world where you have to be constantly on your guard. As for being "well-balanced"; I don't regard sex work as being psychologically healthy for anyone, however strong a case some "feminist" sex-workers may make. Feminism means the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of sexual equality, and the relationship between a prostitute and a client is essentially unequal.
It's a waste of time trying to achieve any sort of agreement with buyers of sex - I have no respect for them, and never will. Nathan mentioned "brick walls" when we last discussed the subject, very briefly.
The only prostitutes I've known were at the bottom of the heap (as most are). They sold sex for a variety of reasons, mainly poverty, and were definitely not happy hookers.
I've ordered the book by Julia O'Connell Davidson that Nia recommends, as well as The Idea of Prostitution by Sheila Jeffreys, which "explores the idea of men's entitlement to abuse and profit from the abuse of women in prostitution".
The women who've been murdered in my area were young street-walkers, so especially vulnerable. I've considered the argument about legalising prostitution, but the evidence so far suggests that it doesn't reduce the risks to women like them, or reduce all the associated problems with drug use, crime and sex trafficking
However many examples the contributors might offer of supposedly harmless transactions as sellers or buyers, the overwhelming evidence is that prostitution is an internationally destructive activity that exploits and degrades women.
It's unlikely that I'll allow any more comments on this post, unless they can refer me to reliable sources of information about the psychology of the buyers and/or projects that have successfully helped women escape the so-called "industry". (I know about the Poppy project)."
Why Whoremongering is wrong, Margaret's post
Reading Margaret's post raised a number of issues for me.
I feel strongly about what happened in Ipswich, as you all know, and have posts about it.I can understand some of what Margaret is saying, and her concern about what happened.I share Margaret's concerns about women who are coerced or trafficked into prostitution.
However there are a number of things I feel I need and want to make clear to my readers.
The majority of readers of my blog are lurkers, and rarely comment. I have no control over how you interpret what I write. However there are some things that I feel I need and I want to make clear to you.
I work independently, have no pimp, manager or boyfriend who shares my earnings.
2.Why I started escorting.
3. Do I find what I do degrading?
4. Writing my blog is a form of self expression for me. I know that there is a school of thought that believes if you are not an anonymous escort blogger, you need to portray your clients in a positive light at all times; or else you are doomed.
I do not fall into this category, and write about the difficult issues that I face with my clients. So, I guess I am doomed, right?
I am not suggesting that there are not escorts out there who have perfect,lovely, clients at all times. I have just not been that lucky.
Here is an interesting perspective from Mercurial girl. She is a paid companion, who I respect.
5. I need to be on my guard at all times, as any professional or service provider does who works one to one with clients eg doctor, psychiatrist, therapist, masseuse, reflexologist. Yes, the risks are greater with escorts, but other professions carry risks too.
6.Margaret has read some escort blogs that are linked to my blog, and James B's, and she thinks that we(the escorts) are not happy or well balanced.
I am interested in what form of assessment she used to define a healthy well balanced individual.
How does that fit in with Margaret's understanding of Humanistic Psychology?
I am happy for anyone to give me references, from any Humanistic Psychology texts, with regard to the Fully Functioning Person,that state that sex workers, escorts, courtesans, streetworkers, are dsyfunctional. Or that their behaviour is pathological.
I think if anyone were to make a diagnosis regarding an individual's psychological health ; they would need to have a full life history about that individual, gathered from their assessment.
I suppose I wonder how Margaret believes that I, and other escorts who are linked to my blog are unhappy and unbalanced, based on the limited information provided on our blogs.
I share some aspects of my life with my readers, and I do not blog about every aspect of my life here, for obvious reasons. That is my choice.
It reminds me of something that I read about learning to deal with grief cross culturally.
"Another source of understanding is the person or people we are trying to help. Whether they are American men who strive to control their tears or immigrants from the many cultures where people fear that the act of naming the deceased calls up a dangerous ghost, we must be constantly sensitive to their taboos and leanings. Our active curiousity and genuine interest are of the utmost importance. Asking someone to help us understand things in the way that people in their culture understand and experience them is a powerful way to learn what we need to learn.Learning their terms and working at using them properly can be helpful. We should not presume to teach them to feel "grief". It is not merely a matter of working among subtly different translations of the same terms. It is a matter of coming to grips with what may be vastly different concepts and vastly different explanatory systems and interpretative approaches. Those who live in the dominant US culture will never experience, for example, dealing with witchcraft as a cause of death, seeing the next baby born in the community as the reincarnation of the deceased, dealing with the deceased as a god, fearing being haunted by the ghost of the deceased because the proper death ceremonies cannot be performed in the United States, fearing the wind because it brings dangerous spirits-and on and on. We must be skeptical of what people tell us, but we must also be ready to leave our own culture to share in a world that is surprisingly different from our expectations."
Ethnic variations in dying death and grief, diversity in universality by Donald Irish,Kathleen Lundquist and Vivian Jenkins Nelsen
Something else, I read years ago, by two Psychiatrists about Black men who had been misdiagnosed by the mental health system in the UK. The chapter was on insanity and meaning.
"If we can show that the beliefs of someone who is possibly mentally ill are in fact shared by many other people does that explain them?
To accept that different communities have quite different expectations of normality carries certain implications. If we say, for instance, that a particular religous experience is abnormal, we are saying that societies in which it is a common experience contain a large number of unbalanced people or even that these societies are unbalanced altogether.
Every society has its own characteristic pattern of normative behaviour and beliefs. It has therefore to solve the threat not only of antagonists external to the group but also of those inside who may be deviant. If accepted patterns are to be seen as normal, we need a theory of abnormality. The solution is to include both normal and abnormal inside the dominant beliefs."
Aliens and Alienists by Roland Littlewood and Maurice Lipsedge
My point is that as we live we accumulate a continous set of experiences. Out of our experiences we develop a set of beliefs about ourselves, others and the world. These beliefs influence the way we construe our reality, and constitute our frame of reference. Our frame of reference shapes our behaviour which will probably elicit experiences consistent with our original experiences, and thereby help to reconfirm our original beliefs.
7. I now have a recommended reading list on my sidebar, that includes books from a cross section of women and men in the sex industry.
Julia O'Connell Davidson in her book Prostitution Power and Freedom, which is on the sidebar explores the issues that Margaret is raising.
Her research covers women at all levels in the industry. She talks about Desiree who is an Independent.
"Desiree did not enter prostitution from a base of absolute poverty. She owned her own home, she had no economic dependents and she had a job.To be sure this job held out little prospect of ever making her wealthy, but it still made her situation very different from that of , say, a lone mother living in a council propery run away from an abusive parent and who lives on the streets without any source of income.
A factor which I believe contributes to Desiree's power within her transactions is her own character and "career history". Desiree had a great deal more emotional and life experience when she started to prostitute than those individuals who, for various reasons, find themselves involved in prostitution in their early teens. It is also the case that Desiree is an extremely intelligent, well read, perceptive,assertive,charming and socially skilled individual, and these qualities contribute enormously to her ability to deploy her subjective powers to positive effect within prosititution-that is, to negotiate and enforce contracts on terms which suit her, and yet still maintain a stream of repeat custom.
When people have been brutally and unequivocally sexualized in the ways implied by sexual abuse and rape, they are likely to have a strong sense of themselves as nothing more than sexual beings for others, and so to view prostitution as one of the "options," or the only "option" available to them. But it is important to recognise three things about this. First, not all prostitutes have been sexualized in these ways. Several of the women we interviewed who who were involved in informal tourist-related prostitution in economically underdeveloped countries, for example had no prior history of sexual victimization. Economic desperation is enough, on its own, to drive people into prostitution. Second the experience of sexual victimization clearly does not and could not on its own cause people to enter into prostitution or to continue prostituting once involved in it. There are people who have suffered such violence and yet do not work as prostitutes, as well as people who have been raped and/ or abused who have worked as prostitutes and then exited from prostitution. Third it is far fetched(and dangerous) to attribute the complex set of choices that people make within the constraints that operate on them to a single, determining event or psychological factor. Barry bravely acknowledges the fact that she herself was raped(1995,p.252),for example, but I doubt that she would take kindly to someone interpreting the fact that she spent two decades researching and writing on prostitution as a form of sexual violence as a reflection of nothing more than her own personal attempt to come to terms with that event. It would be as easy to interpret Barry's work in this way as it would be to interpret Desiree's decision to remain in prostitution as a direct result of certain events in her life, but I think that in both cases such an interpretation is wrong."
My concern with Margaret, is that her beliefs, experience and knowledge seems to be based around streetworkers. She believes we are all the same,ie,victims, abused,exploited, unhappy, and psychologically unbalanced.
She has ordered Julia's book on my recommendation, and I hope it widens her perspective. I can only try !
There is diversity within the industry as I have pointed out in numerous posts. Before interpretations are made you need to look at a cross section of women in the industry. Differences exist amongst women who work at the same level.
This is definitely my longest post ever, have a good week!
Labels: Black escort, books, Margaret, Mercurial girl, Stigma, victimisation
