You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos (18 page)

The federal government has instituted a fundamentalist Christian view of sex into our nation’s educational system. Educators are not allowed to even answer questions about safe-sex aids, unless to criticize their effectiveness.
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They are required by law to teach children that “sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”
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In other words, American children are being schooled not to orgasm until they are twenty-six.
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This program is surreal. In 2003 over sixty percent of American high school seniors had already had sexual intercourse.
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By the age of eleven, twenty percent of boys are masturbating, and by the age of sixteen, ninety percent are doing so. By the age of sixteen, sixty percent of girls are masturbating.
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Ninety percent of Americans have sex before marriage.
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In addition, it is estimated 2.8 percent of males and 1.4 percent of females are homosexual.
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In a society that does not allow homosexuals to marry, it is cruel to teach that they are never supposed to enjoy an orgasm. Sexual education in America is a very expensive hypocritical joke that spreads shame and misery among its young.

With a multitude of studies unable to demonstrate abstinence-only education’s effectiveness, President Barack Obama cut its funding from the 2010 federal budget, but Senator Orrin Hatch added a last-minute provision before the budget’s approval to provide $250 million in funding for another five years.
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Thankfully, the truth about sex can now seep out through different channels in spite of politicians’ best attempts. As with excrement, communication involving the topic of sex is restricted by our government. Sex must be sensitively discussed
over the airwaves from six a.m. to ten p.m. Indecent discussion of sexual organs or activities during these hours on broadcast radio or television can result in the federal government imposing a fine or even revoking a station’s license.
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Sex censorship by the federal government is done with the stated purpose of protecting children from hearing or viewing “harmful” material. How sexual references are harmful has never been scientifically explained by politicians. These “harms” are only alluded to in vague terms, as Senator Jesse Helms did when he introduced, and passed, a 1998 ban on broadcasting all indecent speech at all hours:
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Scientists have attempted to find out and they have found no damage. In the 1995 federal court case known as
ACT III
, Judge Harry Edwards wrote in his opinion that “. . . the simple truth is that ‘[t]here is not one iota of evidence in the record . . . to support the claim that exposure to indecency is harmful—indeed, the nature of the alleged ‘harm’ is never explained.’”
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In addition to the government, social enforcement hampers candid discussion about sex. Prior to the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s, any talk about sex was discouraged. It was a conversation reserved for a husband and wife to discuss in private, if it was discussed at all. Currently sex is commonly discussed among friends, and the closer the relationship, the more detailed the conversations can be. But discussing sex, particularly in detail, can be offensive to new acquaintances.

As for the act of sex itself, the social punishment is largely reserved to women. In the past fifty years this stigma has been moderated. Previously all women who had sex with someone besides their husband were condemned, but now “slut shaming” is largely reserved for women who frequently have casual sex, that is, sex outside of an exclusive relationship. Despite an erosion in the double standard thanks to some prominent sexually liberated women,
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females who have sex with too many partners are still called sluts and whores, whereas their male counterparts are called studs. Sluts and whores are thought of as dirty and dumb, whereas studs are thought of as attractive and powerful.

There still remains a large social stigma around homosexuality as well, but homosexuals are not the only unconventional performers who garner derision. Anyone who strays too far from the conventional missionary sexual position risks being branded a pervert. Social enforcement can range from being called kinky behind one’s back and avoided (for someone into S&M) to being murdered (pedophiles).
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The taboo on sex is still enforced in law. Two adults cannot have consensual sex if there is an exchange of money involved. The sale of sexual services is illegal everywhere except for a few counties in Nevada’s desert.

Laws against prostitution are justified on fallacies. These include:

(1) Prostitution degrades women
—Prostitution is considered degrading because of our culture’s Victorian attitudes toward sex. But large portions of our population no longer share this attitude, including many of the adult women who consensually partake in prostitution. Some sex workers feel more degraded by the slimy men they regrettably had sex with in relationships, and by the legal system that punishes them, than by the men who pay them for sex (johns).
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A number of them feel sex work is empowering and find it
raises
their self-esteem.
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One 1986 American study found that ninety-seven percent of call girls liked themselves “more than before” they began prostitution.
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Those who argue that women should only be financially rewarded for their “minds” disregard models, whose looks are their source of payment. They also disregard female blue-collar workers who are being paid for physical tasks. Critics also imply the poor quality of their own sex lives when they deny that providing orgasms is an improvable skill.

(2) Prostitution endangers women physically
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—Prostitution is by far the most dangerous occupation in the United States
primarily because
it is illegal.
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Prostitutes cannot enjoy the safety of brothels, and johns and pimps can get away with treatment unacceptable in other service industries because a prostitute is not likely to go to the police for fear of being arrested herself.

(3) Prostitution spreads disease
—Once again, this is primarily the product of its criminalization. In the many parts of the world where prostitution is legal, prostitutes are regulated and required to be regularly tested. In a study of sexual health clinics in the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal, female prostitutes’ chlamydia/gonorrhea rates were half those of straight people at large.
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In addition, professional sex workers are highly aware of sexually transmitted diseases and know how to spot and avoid them. In a 1988 study of seventy-eight New York City call girls (who had been prostitutes for an average of five years and had an average of 200 sexual partners in the past year), none tested positive for AIDS.
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As a former escort wrote, “Until I became a prostitute, I did not even know what the symptoms were. When I started working as a professional, I learned about safe sex practices and how to take care of myself.”
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(4) Prostitutes do not want to be prostitutes
—Prostitution opponents make the incredible argument that no woman would become a sex worker of her own volition. To victimize the entire sex worker population, they must make the absurd claim that all sex workers are either slaves or so drug-addicted/psychologically damaged that they cannot think for themselves.

Sex slaves do exist, but in the United States they constitute a microscopic percentage of sex workers. From 2000–2007 only 1,362 victims of human trafficking were identified by the federal government in the entire U.S.
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(This number includes those trafficked for non-sexual labor as well.) In that same time period, there were over half a million prostitution arrests.
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In 2008 there were over five thousand prostitution arrests just on the Strip in Las Vegas.

The argument that all prostitutes are drug addicts or psychologically damaged from abuse is supported by junk science conducted by anti-prostitution activists. Ronald Weitzer, a sociologist at George Washington University, explains that in these anti-prostitution studies “counterevidence is routinely ignored, anecdotes masquerade as evidence, non sequiturs abound, and sampling is biased toward the most disadvantaged segment of the sex industry.”
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One of the most notable of these “researchers” is Melissa Farley, who publicly asserts that
no
woman would ever choose prostitution and that
all
prostitution is violence against women.
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Despite the fact her bias is so blatant that it caused
a Canadian judge to deem her testimony “problematic,”
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media outlets give her voluminous coverage, with a 2011 study of hers released “exclusively” to
Newsweek
.
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(In contrast, the media routinely ignores sex workers’ rights activists, many of whom were once prostitutes themselves.)
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Research of Farley’s ilk often fails to mention the prevalence of drug and psychological issues in other professions as well. For example, estimates of childhood sexual abuse for
all
women can run as high as sixty-two percent.
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Anti-prostitution studies also tend to focus on non-random samples of street prostitutes.
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The ensuing studies, statistics, and media presentations are dishonest because street-based prostitution only accounts for an estimated fifteen to twenty percent of the prostitution in America.
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Many street prostitutes have lost control over their lives due to past abuse, drug addiction, and mental health issues. This is why they are desperate enough to risk arrest and public exposure by plying their trade on the street. However, their situation is more about poverty and the war on drugs than it is about prostitution.

Unlike street prostitutes, many escorts are well-educated and cannot easily be framed as victims. The DC Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, employed over 132 women between 1993 and 2006. She required that they be at least twenty-three
years old and have at least two years of college education. Jeannette Angell became a prostitute after receiving a doctorate in social anthropology.
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Brooke Magnanti worked as a call girl while finishing her doctoral thesis and found sex work “so much more enjoyable” than her previous job as a computer programmer.
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