Update to Fact Dump – Pornography and the Sex Industry

Just a note that a new statistic has been added to the April 14th, 2008’s “Fact Dump” post. Under “Prostitution: Working Environment”, I have added the following.

The workplace homicide rate for prostitutes as of 2004 was 201 per 100,000. Compare to the “Most Dangerous Profession” as of May 2008: Mining, with an occupational death rate of only 30.1 per 100,000.

And under “Prostitution: Effects on Prostitutes”, I have added

The average age of death for a woman in prostitution is 34 years old.

The primary sources are Mortality in a Long Term Open Cohort of Prostitute Women and NYT: Miners Found to Have Highest Death Rate On the Job (which, serendipitously enough, came out just today), but I’d like to give a hat tip to Finally, a Feminism 101 Blog for linking the study. You should check the place out; I’ve literally done nothing at all today beyond eat, smoke, make a blog post earlier this morning, and read that blog.

Something to keep in mind next time some dork dude pulls out the “Men work in all the most dangerous jobs!” canard… apparently, they (and the New York Times) don’t think of prostitution as a “job”.

Oh, and one thing I found interesting and scary and depressing all at the same time, but which doesn’t belong in the fact dump, was this quote from the NYT article:

Among female workers, 42 percent of all on-the-job deaths were because of homicide, compared with 11 percent for males.

Wow. Ok, guys? Seriously? I don’t ever want to hear any fucking nonsense about dangerous, demanding jobs in which lots of guys die, ever again Among all the other things we don’t have to worry about because we have a penis, we also don’t have to worry as much about being murdered on the job as women do. 42% of all on-the-job deaths for women are murders. What. The. Fuck.

I can’t get over how disturbed this has made me. When I started the Fact Dump, that’s, shamefully, all the were: bits of facts that were good debate points but which didn’t really manage to cross the dude-brain barrier. The more I read about feminism, the more they start to come out in living color as events, not statistics, that actually have an impact on real people every single day. Reducing women’s tragedy to a list of numbers is just as privileged as ignoring the tragedy altogether. It’s a lot easier to exercise male priviledge and dissassociate those numbers from the women they represent, than it is to actually think about the atrocities involved, and it’s wrong, and I apologise for engaging in that kind of avoidance-based thinking.

Men Get Different Rules

Do y’all remember, back when you were kids, playing pretend? My friends and I used to pretend we were cops, outlaws, cowboys, superheroes, villians, wizards, dragons, whatever, and we’d use our made-up superpowers to engage in little pretend combat with one another, then when everyone had died about fifty times, we’d get up and go inside for dinner. More recently, I’ve sat and watched my stepchildren play the same kinds of games. It’s cute. It’s imaginative. It’s creative.

But invariably, your little group would always pick up that one kid. That Kid. The kid who would start making rules, usually on the fly, and for some reason it always seemed like the rules would all be in That Kid’s favor. “That’s not fair! You can’t kill me because I have a super-duper god shield on!” or “You can only come back to life if someone uses magic to bring you back!” then “No fair! Only one person can have that magic, and I have it! It’s the rules!” or “You can’t hit me, because I can fly at the speed of sound!” or “No fair! Lightsabers can’t block my death ray! You’re dead!” until the entire thing devolved into a huge argument and everyone went home pissed off.

The point? That Kid grows up. And he becomes your senator, congressman, president, circuit judge, what-have-you, and he keeps making up absurd rules while screaming “No fair!”. He usually pulls them out of his ass, he never writes them down, they change on the fly, and they benefit him and only him.

Not only does the entire male governmental structure seem to be made out of Those Kids, but apparently they infest our media as well. Barak Obama is definitely one of Those Kids. He can say that Clinton’s menstrual cycle influences her choice of add campaigns to run, he can call her dismissive, overly familiar pet names like “sweetie”, and, well, so what? But she says something he doesn’t like, even when it has nothing to do with him, and it’s all “NO FAIR!”, and MSNBC/Fox News/CNN, all made up of Those Kids too, support their brother-in-arms by picking up his whine.

“People turn to god and guns out of bitterness over the political system”? That’s just my death ray, you can’t block it. You should stay in the race just in case something horrible happens to me, so your name is still relevant and out there and democrats don’t loose all the eggs that they’ve decided to stupidly stuff into this one, unelectable basket? NO FAIR! You can’t say that! You’re supposed to be dead now, get out of my yard!

Men get different rules. Barak can say whatever the hell he wants, and it’s cool. If she complains about it, “NO FAIR! You can’t complain about that! It’s in the rules!”. But if she says anything other than “Yes, I will bow before your mighty penis and leave the race to the menzfolk even though my numbers versus McCain are increasing while yours drop precipitously, and you’re only so far ahead in the primary because you decided arbitrarily to not count two whole states worth of voters”, all we hear is “NO FAIR!”

Oh, and don’t forget, Barak can unload a barrage of sexism onto Clinton, but he’s not sexist. However, the rules say that since she’s running for office against a black man, even if she doesn’t say anything about it, she’s a racist. It’s in the rules! It’s fair!

I guess, at this point, it’s appropriate to post a little clip. It’s a great example of how Clinton has slog through rules that Barak doesn’t have to worry about. And whenever Clinton or a supporter gripes, all we hear is “NO FAIR!” from all of Those Kids in the media, the Barak campaign, and the legion of Obamabots that troll the waters of the internet looking for something to scream “NO FAIR!” about.

(Hat tip to Angry for a Reason for the video.)