Thursday, May 05, 2011

The Hooker Teacher and America's Sex Shame

The Hooker Teacher has written an article for Salon. In it, Melissa Petro describes how she, holder of dual Masters degrees, was revealed to have a past as a stripper and prostitute. Since her past has been revealed, and after being fired, she is entirely unable to get a job.

The degree of the online shaming, and even some of the comments on Salon, reveal in stark contrast what's wrong with America. We are sexist. We are sex-obsessed. And we are disgustingly moralistic.

Prostitution remains a heartbreaking problem not only because it is illegal when it shouldn't be, but because even if it was legal, our culture still shames it. We still look down upon it. People doing it want to keep it secret for fear of events like this. That might not be legal ostracizing, but it is cultural. And that cultural bias will find its way into police work, and prostitutes won't get the protection that they deserve, thus furthering pimps and sex worker violence.

And don't think for a second that this sort of reaction would happen to men who were revealed to be porn stars or prostitutes. For them, culture might see it as a bit seedy, but still well within the boundaries of male behavior. No. Only women are sluts. Men are studs.

This illustration of our sex obsession is also infuriating. Look at religion, look at television, movies, and schools. We are FIXATED on sex. It's everywhere, and nowhere is it more explicitly obsessed over than in the moralistic halls of religion. We can't get enough of it and yet we hate it, and we really hate anyone who doesn't engage in the same self-loathing as us. As such, prostitutes, who, being women, should be especially self-loathing, are looked at as literal pariahs.

This reminds me of the secretary who was recently outed as an ex porn star by a student. The fact that the student tried to blackmail her and demanded sexual favors (this kid was fourteen, mind you) was seemingly missed in the media's focus on her being a porn star. The secretary was fired, because obviously enjoying sex in the past makes you evil.

The root of this problem is male dominated religion, of course. Men are obsessed with porn stars and prostitutes because of the sexual aura around them. I obviously have no support for this theory, but I suspect that religion's obsession with sex is because western religions were started by ugly men who couldn't get laid. Thus, they hated what they couldn't get. That's pretty basic psychology, and I'm simply projecting on those in the past. In fact, the only major religious figure of whom I can think that apparently could get laid was Augustine.

I can also point to current-day cults and micro-religions. Ever notice how they all have a serious focus on sex, and the leader is always a guy, and that guy seems to frequently get in trouble for weird sexual behavior? Yeah.

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