Posts by Emma Hart
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Hard to believe I know but Dad was told to smoke by a doctor in the early 80s for a chest cold so it took some time for the message to take.
In the 80s? Wow. Oddly, I was just discussing this on Twitter - last summer I had a persistent dry cough for nearly five months (okay, yes, not all of it summer) and the only thing that made it stop was smoking. But all in all, for anaesthetising the throat alcohol is probably better.
And we'll never see this is the manner it was envisaged, through the smoke haze of the theatre:
Favourite movie of all time, quite possibly. Dr Haywood ensured my undying devotion by giving me a copy of the book.
In the RDJ movie they replaced it with alcohol, which was not right at all, because it's a totally different drug taken for different reasons.
Indeed. It needs to be something, like nicotine, which sharpens your thinking rather than dulling it. Or at least feels like it.
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the stand-in for the dead man appears to be Nat Torkington...
Can't be, I've just seen Nat Torkington win an Emmy
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We'll also be looking at smoking on screen in the wake of the US Centre for Disease Control's call for an R rating on any movies that depict tobacco use. Prudent public health policy or social engineering?
I suppose that means I should finish this-here column on smoking censorship...
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Can we sell Timaru to the Chinese to get our billion dollars back?
Not even close. That's like trying to pay off your mortgage with a lettuce.
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Balance is always worth attempting.
Absolutely. But not easy. I think it requires tempering what you think you're hearing as well as what you're saying.
I am not sure any decent utopia would have work, sex or otherwise.
Having watched my mother deal with "retirement" (HA!) some people appear to go slightly bat-fuck if they can't work. Which I suppose would lead us into a debate on what we mean by "work"...
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You're back! Yay!
What, you're not enjoying this? We could talk about... copyright? Cycling? Slut-shaming?
Also on the subject of balance. (I've been baking, and thinking.) When I look at the figures I linked to before (I love me some sweet, sweet data, it's true), what strikes me is that I don't think anyone looks at those numbers and thinks, "Wow, I thought prostitutes were older, less drug-addicted and better-educated than that." I'd like to know how many people were genuinely surprised. So apologies in slight advance for the huge quote:
Information was collected from 772 sex workers in Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington, Napier and Nelson and the final sample included workers from the diverse sections of the sex industry:
* There were participants from street, private and managed sectors.
* There were participants with the different gender identifications of male, female and transgender.
* There were participants from both large cities and smaller towns.The majority of participants were New Zealand European, female, between the ages of 22 and 45 years, had entered the industry after the age of 18 years and had education levels of at least three to five years at the secondary school level, with many indicating they have tertiary level education. Nearly half of the participants reported having children. Most participants (67.1%) had been in the industry for longer than two years, with more than half reporting working prior to the implementation of the PRA in 2003.
Okay, on reflection I didn't huge-quote. The section related to entering and leaving the industry (which includes figures on drug addiction) is here, but the table formatting is borked and it's giving me headaches.
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I'd just like it if part of the picture didn't become all of the picture by virtue of shrewd wordplay.
This is what happens with this debate, on both sides, pretty much everywhere, not just at PA. Each side believes they're presenting a piece of the picture that the other one is omitting. Each sees the other as universalising a particular experience when neither actually is, so in attempting balance you just end up skewing wildly between two extremes.
I choose Ren to quote a lot partly because she is well-educated and articulate, and explains things well, but also because she works for SWOP, so her own comfort with the job is tempered by her experience of helping other people out of it. Jill Brennerman's story is hardly Pretty Woman.
it would be hard to take his comments as the basis for arguing "it would be a good thing if the sex industry was bigger than it is already", whereas you could probably find some leverage for the proposition "it would actually be better if the sex industry was somewhat smaller than it is today"
Why does the size matter? Rather than, say, working conditions, or the happiness of the people in it?
Someone in a debate in another forum a while back asked people to consider if, in their perfect future utopia, there would be sex work. And after what I've learned over the last five years or so, I'd have to say 'yes'. Or at least, that it wouldn't be a utopia if you banned sex work, because there are people - and it doesn't really matter how many - who genuinely enjoy it.
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They just don't tally with what I see on a daily basis. I don't know how representative those blogged experiences are.
As Giovanni has pointed out, street prostitution isn't representative either. We're lucky enough to have fabulous solid data about prostitution in New Zealand, and 11% of prostitutes are street workers, roughly the same number who work as higher-end "escorts". (That article goes on to lay out the reasons why the Chch numbers are well dodgy.)
So (that taken into account), in my city there are only about 30-40 street workers. Even on Manchester Street I'm only going to see a couple, and I think it would be very dangerous to reach any conclusions on that basis, particularly about what's going on inside their heads. My daughter's "That woman's dressed like Faith" is about as far as I'd go.
Also: what Jeremy and Giovanni and Philip said.
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Oh, and further. I'm not aware of anything operating here, but the Sex Workers' Outreach Program in the States runs 'seminars for johns' on just those issues. How to tell if your sex worker is coerced (in Britain, it's simpler: legally, if your sex worker has an accent, they're trafficked), and etiquette - how your sex worker would like you to treat hir. They started doing this because there was a demand.
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But surely that's a biased selection.
Of course it is. The point was that there ARE people who are sex workers by free choice. That appeared to be the point you were arguing against.