Warren Ockrassa wrote: > >> I'm unsure, furthermore, how you make the jump from paying > for sex to > >> treating the sex partner as an object. > > > > I guess it might be a matter of the amount of choice enjoyed by the > > women. Do they get to set their own price? Do they get to choose > > between prospective customers? I dunno. I think it would be hard to > > avoid feeling like an object if one is selling one's body > for money, > > after all > > one is accepting money for the use of one's body. There is > no guarantee > > of mutual attraction, and nothing else is included in the > transaction - > > not your thoughts, not your feelings.... > > But when you work at any job at all you are doing exactly the same > thing. You're selling your body for money. Even if your work is > strictly intellectual, since there is no way to separate mind from > body, you are *always* trading your body for money.
Um, no. Being gainfully employed doesn't necessarily mean that you are selling your body for money. You might be trading skills, labour, knowledge, ideas, voice, pictures of your face, etc for money, and the nature of the trade might make your physical presence necessary, but that is not trading your body for money. Y'know, the same thing as when you walk into a pub to meet with friends, you are sharing your presence with them, not your body. And you are there because you hope to enjoy their presence, not their bodies. > Unless your employment now makes you feel like an object, I think you > might be able to see how I can question why employing a prostitute is > necessarily objectifying him/her. Well, after reading one of the mails in this thread yesterday, I wouldn't say 'necessarily', but I would still say 'highly likely'. And the reason would be that that is what most of us tend to do with most of the people who provide us with services. [I, for instance, must rate rather high on callousness index as I don't really care about my doctor's or dentists's needs and pleasures - all I care about is their competence and skill.] I see no reason to believe that there is a sudden wellspring of personal interest when the service is sexual in nature. As for the other jobs, well, a certain degree of objectification is inherent in all forms of employment, isn't it? We call it being professional. > That is, a prostitute when plying > his/her trade is no more an object than I am when I'm teaching > (college! no one panic!), editing or writing. Well, I'd have said that while your students and readers must undoubtedly be objectifying you, you are a person when you are teaching or writing. But no, there wouldn't be any difference in the degree of objectification. The difference, imo, lies in the fact that sex is a rather intimate act, and near-constant objectification in this sphere seems likely to have a negative effect on a person's self-esteem. I am not trying to deny the impact of negative social and religious attitudes on a prostitute's self-esteem/ self-image. But even if these two factors were to be removed [as was the case with the dev-dasis in the beginning - they had both the religious sanction and social respect], it still seems like a trade which doesn't really lend itself to a lot of enthusiastic approval from the practitioners themselves. Perhaps it is because we are taught to value the products of the mind more than the products of the body, perhaps it is because of the nature of sex, perhaps the reason is an amalgam of many different factors....In any case, I thought it was a point worth considering. > So again: How does paying for sex automatically make the sex partner > an object? See above, at least for why I think that when one pays for sex, one is likely to treat the sex provider as an object. I'd like to ask you something now - why do you think that it doesn't? Have you come across any accounts from people engaged in the trade in which they say that they don't feel like objects when they ply their trade? Or do you have any reason to believe that a majority of the people who visit prostitutes do not view/treat them in that manner? I am not asking merely for the sake of being argumentative - I am curious about your reasons for questioning the statement. Ritu _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
