I am reminded of an oldie-but-goodie headline from The Onion:
I’m a “young woman today” (same age as your goddaughter) and, no, I wouldn’t find this sort of gig empowering. Granted, I also wouldn’t feel #empowered working 3 jobs or moving back in with my folks (the alternatives you mentioned).
Forgive the tangent, but “empowerment” strikes me as a hollow catchphrase, more often than not. Empowerment = I did what I wanted and it felt good. Feeling empowered is not the same as having real power. Depoliticized, you-go-girl “feminism” like this drives me to drink. Us gals sure feel liberated now that we are no longer expected to be just beautiful, but also sexually virtuostic and aggressively hot to trot! Radical stuff.
To be clear, I don’t have a fundamental problem with sex work(ers) in general, nor with your goddaughter in specific. I make all kinds of choices that aren’t exactly grand feminist statements (quoth MQoS atop her 4” stilettos), and I have friends who’ve done work similar to your GD. I just don’t like being sold a line of bullsh*t that my shoes are a declaration of female agency, or that self-objectifying OF content/IG nipples are somehow a site of resistance against oppressive patriarchal hegemony. Like, c’mon.
Rant aside: Try not to judge her. Are you two close? Or are you just witnessing this new development from afar?
That is wonderful that she is surrounded by support, and that he was brought to some justice for his crime. I am no expert, but I would be surprised if two years of therapy is enough... I don't think of this as something that can be fixed, and then you move on as you would have had it not happened. I believe it is often a lifelong journey and may require different styles of therapy.
Again, I am no expert but my thoughts on this are that being a victim is a painful way of thinking of ourselves; being 'out there' and loving overtly sexualized endeavors is a way to change the narrative. Sort of a self-medication in place of professional therapy. Society has begun to understand that people turn to alcohol abuse and drugs as self-medication for painful pasts/events, I believe this is in the same vein.
But he didn't show me the same respect - he subtly pressured me until I began to feel depressed and broke up with him. Just the idea of people using each other's body parts, people who don't care about each other, is depressing and upsetting to me. What happened to romance???
www.theguardian.com
^^ Yes, I agree that it's work and you have to be creative, but bodies have private parts and that's why we don't walk down the street naked even on the hottest days. I don't think that selling your body is a clever or impressive thing to do, and I think it's MUCH more work to get trained in something and do that job, for much less money than pawn, than it is to sell your body. As women, all of us have the equipment. We could all choose to sell our bodies. I have more respect for people who could choose that but find other ways to make money, than I do for those who choose the easiest option. While earning money is never easy, I think sex work is easier than years of training and climbing the career ladder. JMO.
My GD could teach. She could move home to her supportive parents. She could re-train in real estate. Her mother is a hairdresser and co-owns a salon - she could train as a hairdresser there. She is clever and has resources, options, and lots of friends and family. She doesn't need to do this. I'm shocked and disappointed that she has chosen this route.
But I'm someone who mostly thinks that pawn is a destructive influence in society, anyway. I'm not a cool-anything-goes person. It's so much safer and nicer for physical intimacy to be between loving couples, imo. Pawn breaks up relationships and marriages, gives men unrealistic expectations of how real women look, and exposes women IRL to being expected to do the things that women in pawn do. Not to mention how dangerous it is for the pawn stars. Many women have stories of being abused on set, and then there are the stalkers and other weirdos, and the fact that their private parts and videos of them having s*x are going to be forever available on the internet. The lifelong repercussions for former pawn stars can be intense. I don't agree with the anything-goes attitude of today's society. There are reasons we don't have sex naked in the street or go naked at the beach, and it's that some things are meant to be private.
ETA: And don't get me started on swingers. I dated one once, who professed to be fine with my refusal to get involved - and to my credit, I accepted him for who he was!! Most unlike me.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
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