In this "I'm not a feminist, I'm an equalist" era, I know what I'm about to say will make me sound shrewish and vile and--nightmare of nightmares!--not "sex-positive", but I have to say it anyway:
Could we please stop pretending prostitution is glamorous? Or that a woman who becomes a prostitute is "making it"? (Yes, ha ha, I get the pun.)
Even if we were magically transported to a patriarchy- and misogyny-free land where sex work was just like any other kind of work, it would top out at just that: work. Drudgery. As it is, the prostitution industry is linked with a lot of violence, exploitation, addiction, human trafficking, and pretty much every other shittastic idea the human race has ever thought up, including the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Reasonable people can disagree about whether the solution is to "écrasez l'infame!" or to fight for the dignity of sex work--to try to make it so that the high-priced call girl with full agency and excellent medical care is not the Sasquatch-rare exception but the rule. But in neither case should pin-up glamorization play a part.
My hatred, it bubbles over**. And this clinches it: I am never subscribing to Showtime.
** Except at whichever of my neighbors did this to the poster in my subway station. To that person, shiny unicorn rainbows forever!
i have NO time.
perpetuating the myth of the high class prostitute as empowered, emboldened woman who sucks men dry as she shucks them aside like empty oyster shells, and the weird obsession current culture (and i use this term loosely) has with it, minimizes the horror of the institution of prostitution; pretending that it's empowering further marginalizes the millions of women and children (and some men, to be fair) who are trapped in a life of violence and poverty.
fuck you, showtime.