i met someone yesterday. someone i had encountered before, but never met, as such. someone who visits these pages from time to time. it almost came as a surprise to remember that there are people out there. you are out there. and i am out there. with all the time and attention devoted to facebook these days it nearly surprises us. we are deeper into second life than we imagine.
facebook is the most faceless form of interaction available to us. so this conversation, this retrospective introduction, albeit brief, was welcomed. i visited this someone's blog, and it got me thinking...
about when i volunteered with scot-pep, the scottish prostitutes education project, which 'seeks to promote health and dignity in prostitution'.
i am not a fan of the word 'prostitution' or 'prostitute'. i am much more comfortable with the phrase 'the sex industry', and an industry it is. part of the market economy, whether 'free' or 'black'.
'industry' reminds me of the people who participate in its economy, and how: who buys? who sells? what is sold? at what cost? who is paid?
'prostitution' is value-laden. so is 'sex industry' of course. we can't escape the word games in which we participate either. but 'prostitute' is usually used to describe a sex worker assumed to be female, straight, of dubious morality and powerlessly enslaved to a habit of selling sex.
my encounters with sex workers in edinburgh leave me with a much fuller picture...
one i won't rush to put into words here. but one which leaves me feeling grateful for having had the chance to meet a diverse collection of individuals who participated in this industry in various ways and for various reasons; one which leaves me feeling angry at the poverty and illness with which so many of those individuals struggled; one which leaves me feeling irritated when i hear of 'prostitution' being spoken about as someone else's problem, rather than as part of this city which we share... with teachers, sex workers, accountants, artists, heroin users, politicians, ministers, alcoholics, transsexuals, doctors, pornographers, priests, people who pay for sex, judges, charity workers, government officials... constantly playing more than one role at once...
whitman's the poet for all of this interconnectedness. a few lines from 'Song of Myself':
What is a man anyhow? What am I? and what are you?
All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
Else it were time lost listening to me.
[...]
In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less,
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.
[...]
Encompass worlds but never try to encompass me,
I crowd your noisiest talk by looking toward you.
Writing and talking do not prove me,
I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,
With the hush of my lips I confound the topmost skeptic.
[...]
Let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
And that we call Being.
[...]
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels... I myself become the wounded person.
