I love whores.
Oof, that sounds wrong.
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I love prostitutes.
Still not great.
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I love sex workers.
Yeah, that’s better.
Though “love” is misleading. I don’t love them like I love my wife or my children or my mom or my brothers. I love them like I love short people or Mexicans or ophthalmologists. I love them broadly and abstractly, in a generic humanity way, in a “Love makes the world go round” way, in a “Everybody Love Everybody!” Jackie Moon way, in a “Love thy neighbor way.”
The “neighbor” example is a perfect transition because a whorehouse, sorry, a brothel, sorry, a sex work entrepreneurial enterprise recently opened about 800 feet from my front door. True story. It was called Di Da Di, it was next door to a gas station, and it, completely conspicuously, sold sex: fluorescent facade; pink, bubbly letters; and signage that read “MASSAGE. SPA. CLUBHOUSE.” Clubhouse?! Sex work in the city of Chicago and elsewhere is normally marketed more subtly. Di Da Di was clearly selling blowjobs.
I watched Di Da Di’s doors open feeling not only surprised that sex work had become so commercially overt but also happy that the industry appeared to be continuing down the path toward decriminalization and destigmatization. Others, however, were not so pleased.
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I have a 13-year-old daughter and she has friends and those friends have moms and one of those moms is Allison, a white, Midwestern, Christian-type lady who has good intentions and is, perhaps unknowingly, a total hypocrite. Allison has surely donated to, purchased membership in, and/or canvassed on behalf of the Sierra Club, MoveOn.org, and/or the ACLU. She is a progressive. She works for some do-gooder non-profit. She believes in social justice, she believes Black Lives Matter, and she is a feminist…allegedly.
The Boss was recently sitting on our blue couch, looking rakish as usual, chatting with a friend, when I heard her say, “...like that place down the block where they give happy endings.” Now look, the Boss is worldly, wise, and an absolute wildcat on Saturday nights but, let’s face it, she’s kinda vanilla. So when I heard her mention “happy endings,” I was shocked.
“How the hell do you know about that place?” I asked.
“Allison told me.”
“How the hell does Allison know about it?”
“She’s a busy body.”
It’s true: Allison is a busy body. She pesters the principal about the reading curriculum, she bugs her neighbors about composting bins, and now she’s annoying everyone about the whores, sorry, sex workers down the block. And therein lies the hypocrisy: Allison believes in women’s rights. She believes that every woman should be safe, secure, and free. If I asked Allison, “True or False: Sex work should be decriminalized,” I’m sure she’d say true. And yet, when a sex work pop-up-shop popped up right up the road, she had that shit closed down right quick. Not in my backyard, she said. Sex workers can do their thing in the Gold Coast or out near O’Hare, but not in family-friendly Lakeview.
Hypocrisy 101.
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But let’s back up. Why does Allison, presumably, think sex work should be legal? Why do I think it should be legal? Why do many, if not most, educated, progressive, and Filthy Readers of Saul think it should be legal or, at the very least, decriminalized?
Well, first off, sex work has always existed and will always exist. Lonely cave men offered a shank of mammoth to starving cave women in exchange for some cave pussy. Roman senators frequented local brothels to relieve their stress of running the world. American soldiers in Vietnam killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese fighters and financed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese sex workers.
Despite Sting’s protests, Roxanne put on the red light. Jamie Lee Curtis blessed my childhood in Trading Places. Julia Roberts showed everyone that Richard Gere is more than just a man with a gerbil.
Is sex work rooted in patriarchy? Of course. Is sex work an overall win for society? Of course not. But it’s happening, has always happened, and will always happen, so we can either criminalize it, pretend the laws are working, and push it underground, or we can accept it as a “necessary evil” and do our best to regulate, educate, and protect.
Here’s another reason Allison should support local business: America is already on the wrong side of history for abortion, democracy, and pretty much everything else, so we don’t need to be on the wrong side of this one too. Countries in which sex work is criminalized include the U.S., most of Africa, Russia, and China. Countries in which sex work is decriminalized or legal include most of Western Europe, nearly all of Latin America, Australia, and New Zealand. May just be a coincidence but I’m pretty sure more sex workers speak Mandarin than they do Kiwi.
Allison knows illegal sex workers have higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases. Allison knows illegal sex workers suffer from higher rates of violence, sexual and otherwise. Allison knows illegal sex workers are more likely to use addictive drugs and have unprotected sex. Allison knows sex work is bad, and she must know that marginalized, stigmatized, and criminalized sex work is worse. Instead of using the police to help protect sex workers, however, she called the pigs to shut them down.
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Saul has obviously done his research for this post and he came across this argument: To support decriminalizing the sale of sex would be to support prostitution itself. Well that’s about the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard. Smoking is toxic but we permit and regulate it because we want fewer people to die of lung cancer. War is awful but we permit and regulate it because we want fewer innocent civilians to suffer. Abortion is tragic but we permit and regulate it because we want fewer women to use hangers.
I also came across this: The existence of prostitution anywhere is society’s betrayal of women, especially those who are marginalized and vulnerable because of their sex, their ethnicity, their poverty, and their history of abuse and neglect. I agree. The world fucking sucks and women have been subjugated since forever. But until their subjugation ends, there is no need to exacerbate their betrayal by denying them greater safety and security.
But sex work, like slavery and child labor, is fundamentally exploitative and the U.S. has done away with slavery and child labor. Yes, all of that is true but, unlike slavery and child labor, the demand for sex work has never disappeared. The market adjusted and learned to function without slavery. The market adjusted and learned to function without child labor. But despite hundreds of years of prohibition, criminalization, and stigmatization, the market for sex work persists. What do we do with exploitative markets? We regulate them. We make them as safe as they can be. We try to reduce harm.
And, yes, of course, we need to address the causes of those markets. We should fight for women’s equality. We should fight for women's economic opportunity. We should fight to end conditions that make women so desperate that they feel sex work is their only option. And until that day comes, we should fight to make a terrible thing a bit less terrible.
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I’m sure Allison was just trying to shield her children from the cruelties of the world when she had Di Da Di shut down. But in the process of doing so, she perpetuated another cruelty. So I ask you, dear reader: Are you Allison or Saul? Do you want the doors of Di Da Di shuttered or do you want the facade to be repainted, the electricity to be turned back on, and the juices to start flowing once again?
