Why Do We Praise Those Who Kill And Scorn Those Who Give Pleasure

A stripper from the new book Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power asks this powerful question. But before we discuss it I want to make a plug for this book Yes Means Yes. This is a book written by feminists about pro-feminist sexuality. I know some of the writer and have been reading their blog and I know it will be fabulous. Please please buy their book. I don't think that we should look down on the warriors that have sacrificed so much too too often their own lives for our country. As a military family member, son, grandson and great grandson of people who all served this country I would never denigrate their service. But why should we also not denigrate people who willfully dedicate their lives to sex. Are there many people who chose service in the sex industry because of a bad background? Of course, but couldn't that be said of many of the people now fighting in our armed services? The overwhelming majority are from poor families who feel economic helplessness as well as patriotism. Truth is no matter what industry, you will often find people have hard backgrounds, that is the nature of our existence. There are so so many problems in the sex industry but that is because of how society immediately condemns it. We look down on something we all do so much that those who are brave enough to admit they do it and like it are forced to the extreme shadows of our culture. If we were more accepting of genuine sexuality the people who exploit it and commodify it would not have as much power. In other words it would be less dirty and corrosive if we treated sex as adults rather then puritanical children who are scared of the way we were all made. It is so ironic, that we are ok with the images of violence and death, so much as glorifying those who are forced to do it in our own name. (sad because the people that actually fight the wars do not glorify what they have to do for our freedom nearly as much as those who are thousands of miles away from the violence do) Yet people who chose a sexual based job we have so much disdain for. This blog post puts this perfectly: Way back some years ago, at my 10-year high school reunion, I participated in a contest for who held the oddest job. Being a proud stripper, I figured I had as good a chance as anyone. There were about 5 of us, and the winner was an F-15 fighter pilot. To be fair, I came in second place according to audience applause (the method used for deciding the winner), and the young man who won- the fighter pilot- is a sweet young man who was very well-liked in high school. Shortly after the contest, however, I was walking down the hotel hallway towards the elevators, and a young woman (one of the “popular” girls in high school) walking behind me made some remark along the lines of, “I can’t believe you are so open about being a stripper- like you’re proud of it.” It wasn’t said in admiration- more like derision. Of course I was proud of it- should I have been ashamed? Why on earth would I waste my time doing anything I wasn’t proud of? This puzzled me: that a stripper would be derided while a fighter-pilot was honored and revered. Why did this bother me? Because I realized then that violence has always won out over female sexual autonomy. Remember the scene in The People vs. Larry Flynt, in which Flynt (played by Woody Harrelson) shows the court images of violence juxtaposed with images of sexuality? It doesn’t stop there- violent men are not only more acceptable than sexual women, but sexual women are punished for being so: we are criminalized as prostitutes or blamed in our own rapes and sexual assaults. The young woman’s attitude was very revealing. How dare I put myself in the same class as the man who fights for our country? How dare I go there? I’ll tell you how I dare. Because if more people were getting laid, or being sexually entertained, they’d have less time (and desire) for bombing people. We’re terrified of sexuality as a culture, but quite happy to promulgate violence. A fighter pilot, while couched in warm fuzzy “Hallmark” images of bravery and apple pie, is a trained killer. That’s his (or her) job: to kill people. A stripper’s job, while couched in sleezy, evil connotation, is to entertain people in an erotic fashion. Which is more life-affirming? a great question that I hope someday in my lifetime we have the intellectual complexity to try to answer as a culture.