The Myth of the Victimless Crime (NYT)

[musette_sf]

The Myth of the Victimless Crime

By MELISSA FARLEY and VICTOR MALAREK
The New York Times - Opinion
Published: March 12, 2008

WHAT do we know about the woman Gov. Eliot Spitzer allegedly hired as a prostitute? She was the one person he ignored in his apology. What is she going through now? Is she in danger from organized crime because of what she knows? Is anyone offering her legal counsel or alternatives to prostitution?

“I’m here for a purpose,” she said in a conversation with her booking agent after meeting with Governor Spitzer, according to the affidavit of the F.B.I agent who investigated the prostitution ring. “I know what my purpose is. I’m not a ... moron, you know what I mean.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/opinion/12farley.html?ref=opinion

[JDPriestly]

1. Face it. Prostitution and other sexual occupations

are a quicker, at least at first, easier way to make money than clerking at Walmart or some other retail store, waiting tables, working in an office, scrubbing floors or -- teaching school (which, with preparation and grading papers, can involve working 60 grueling hours a week easily for $40,000 per year after taxes and going to school year after year to satisfy credential requirements). And these are the jobs that "these women," meaning most women are going to get. The glass ceiling, unequal pay and juggling family and work limit women's hopes and choices. It's kind of hard for a mother with three children to get out of retail and into a management job that involves a lot of travel. The choice for many is to be single but successful professionals or to accommodate their professional lives to that of their husbands.

So, maybe the victimless crime is the inequality of women in our society.

I met a woman who did makeup for pornography movies. She chose that line of work because she was manic depressive and could reject work when she really wasn't well enough to do it. Childhood trauma, I suppose she had a lot of it, but she was coping. As I listened to her story, I tried very hard not to react with shock. I guess I succeeded because she spoke proudly of the fact that she was able to do provide for herself. Yes, she was always the victim. Everyone had taken advantage of her -- her parents, her husband, her lawyer, everyone. And yes, she had drug abuse problems. But would she have been happier at a 9-5 job where she would have racked up the absences. Probably not.

Were most prostitutes abused as children -- quite possibly? But the inquiry does not end there. That question does not change the fact that they were abused. It does not heal their injury? They would still bear the scars of abuse even if they were not prostitutes, and those scars would affect their lives and relationships.

Is it hypocritical to buy a prostitute for a few hours? Probably if you are Elliot Spitzer. But isn't the greater hypocrisy our blindness to the plight of women and children even in our own country even in our own day? Isn't the real hypocrisy the never increasing minimum wage for the jobs that women and working men do? Isn't the real hypocrisy spending billions on war and next to nothing on health care for women and children? Isn't the real hypocrisy the way we do not educate our children or their parents on how to raise children without abuse?

The hypocrisy is in turning a blind eye to the fundamental wrongs.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. I wish I could nominate your reply for the Greatest Page n/t