(Title stolen from, but unrelated to a Crisis song)
I’ve seen the light! I think I now understand why sex is evil.
Once upon a time, back when the Earth was full of gods, devils, and ‘innocents,’ all that anyone ever knew were things that they’d seen, or had been told. Folks were just trying to survive, and maybe, make a little sense of a world too full of chaos (theory) for them to see all the connections. Not totally unlike today. But based on their observations, those primordial people jumped to a contusion that we’re still feeling today. They noticed that, more than the prudes and tight-asses, it was the whorish and promiscuous who got ill and had their fun-buttons fall off. It was obvious; their god(s) was punishing them. He hated their wicked ways.
How quaint. One can’t be too upset with our ancestors though; they knew nothing of sexually-transmitted-diseases or safer-sex when they came up with that archaic morality bullshit. But come-the-fuck-on-people. It’s the Twenty-First Century – your slut-shaming is an insult to your own intelligence and makes the rest of us look bad just by being the same species.
When it comes to screwing/fucking we’re just sick – and not in the good/fun way either. For instance, I can’t be the only one who thinks it’s fucked that the words we use to describe copulation (the beginning of life, the thing without which none of us would be here, and on which our species depends, and through which it evolves – words that are supposed to represent the physical consummation of love) are the very same ones we use most often to hurt each other? I can be the only one? “Well, screw you then! Fuck off! I’m tired of dicking around with you pussies anyway!”
It comes out when we feel most victimized too – “We’re too busy getting screwed by politicians to realize how badly we’re being fucked by big business, but still we just bend over and take it.” It’s all so aggressive and so ubiquitous, it’s invisible. As a culture we seem to prefer our aggression over our eroticism. Almost every movie, TV show, cartoon, and comic-book teaches us that violence is probably the best way to solve just about any problem. We think it’s perfectly natural that bloody and gory first-person-shooter games are rated for children, but even a nonviolent game with passing nudity gets every parents-group’s chastity-belt all in a bunch.
Not all that long ago, the Supreme Court struck down a California law that said minors couldn’t buy or rent games with “killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human.” I guess I can see the logic in that. I’m obviously not big on censorship. But all the rationale of letting us make our own choices falls right the fuck apart the moment they upheld the ban on prurient material for minors – and adults.
This ruling was what paved the way for the controversy that came with the release of Grand Theft Auto V. In G.T.A. you never have to kill innocent people, but you can. (Except children, you can’t kill children.) It’s a game all about choices. So, you don’t have to have sex with hookers, but your health-points go up if you do. And you don’t have to drive and back over her, or get out and beat her to death, but she won’t struggle, and you get your money back if you do. (And if anyone out there is wondering, no, there are no male prostitutes in these games.)
So, as far as I can tell, according to the Supreme Court, graphic violence, even if it is sexualized, is protected by the First Amendment, but a little slap-and-tickle is not. Because, you know, consensual sex is abnormal, harmful, and a danger to the civilized world at large.
Of course the problem goes deeper than all the silly laws and censorship; they’re only symptoms of our sick culture. If you think you’re above it, just ask yourself, which would you be more comfortable watching: a murder of an innocent person or a steamy love-scene – while you’re sitting between your parents on the couch?
Grand Theft Auto V obviously isn’t the only place where you can watch a prostitute get murdered. The disposable sex-worker is a well-worn trope of lazy writers of all media. It’d be impossible to count all the dead working-girls on all the Law and Orders, Criminal Minds, and CSIs of the world. Or really any show that needs nameless-someones to die to advance the plot. I don’t own a TV myself, but even catching the little I do at homes of friends or family (Yes, I have a couple of both) I’ve seen dead hookers, sometimes played for laughs, on: Family Guy, True Blood, Archer, Supernatural, How I Met Your Mother, Dexter, and even one episode where Buffy herself joined in the fun and got to kill some vampire whores who never hurt anyone.
Eventually some TV writers must graduate to the silver-screen and head right back to the same never-ending well for their ‘inspiration.’ It’s difficult to keep track of them all but American Psycho, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Boogie Nights, Tropic Thunder, Natural Born Killers, Very Bad Things, and of course the Three breasted woman-of-accommodating-morals in Total Recall, jump immediately to mind of films that had, or joked about, prostitutes that’d been dispatched unceremoniously.
Our entertainment is our fantasies, our wish-fulfillment, so what does it say about us that we normalize violence but insist that sex, and even nudity, has to be shrouded in mystique?
I love comedy and the art of a well put together joke, and as you can probably imagine, I’ve always had a pretty sick sense of humor. So to make this post more fun and interesting I’d considered adding a couple of the best structured dead hooker jokes I could find – but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I could see how once upon a time I might’ve thought them funny – but that was back before one of my oldest friends went missing. I bet you can guess her profession.
She was a pretty young thing from a good Christian background. We met not long after we became teenagers and, like all friendships, sometimes we were closer than others, but we never grew very far apart. She was an artist and a model, a musician and an amazing singer. She was a mother, a daughter, a friend, and a complex and complicated soul. As we all are. It wasn’t too very long after she became a call-girl that she blinked out of existence. She was one of the most gregarious souls i’ve ever known, and since no one’s heard a peep and there hasn’t even been a blip on social media in years and years, I can only suspect the worst. And I can’t help but think that if she hadn’t made money by helping others reach orgasm, that maybe the cops might’ve tried harder, and at least found out what happened to her.
Now, it may appear like I hate our culture’s prudish view on sex, and the way it looks down on the those who work with it. But that’s only because I do. It’s absurd and dangerous to hold on to the out-dated notion that if people have a healthy view of sex, somehow society will degenerate into anarchy. And in spite of the fact that studies show wherever prostitution is legal and regulated there are fewer sexually transmitted diseases and fewer cases of abuse, our culture seems to suggest that, seeing as that primeval god seems to be laying down on the job, we should pick up his slack and punish sex-workers for their wicked ways. Just like he intended.
More and more I can see folks trying to help create positive attitudes towards sex. It’s a beautiful thing, and it’s not very difficult. It just takes us to be open and honest about it, and act as if sex is a healthy and normal thing. Everyone is a freak, they’re just not comfortable admitting it because they all think they’re the only ones. People need to start being honest with themselves and each other about their sexuality because the silence thing isn’t working. It’s fucked up, and it’s part of the reason I’m down a friend. So knock it off!