Sex Worker Article Comment - It seems that Rhea has a uninformed image of prostitution. A life of a prostitute is nothing like what is portrayed in the movie Pretty Woman. Most prostitution is tragic and the people selling their bodies would probably rather be doing something better with their lives. Tragically, Rhea romanticizes the world of prostition. Internet images and radical ideologies due more harm than good for our public health. She needs to step away from the internet to see the world. She obviously hasnot seen families torn apart due to prostitution. It is very tragic.

What I particularly love about this quote is that they accuse of creating a monolithic image of a sex trade worker and don’t acknowledge that they do the same thing by saying every single women feels degraded by worker in the sex industry. I love that kind of thinking for its lack of realization. Interestingly enough if they were to apply the same logic to their thinking that they accuse you of they would end up with a more inclusive view of the sex trade industry. It can be an active choice and if we believe in agency we need to acknowledge that. But what do I know I am just an over sexed woman with no brain in my head right…How dare I defend sex trade worker rights…How dare I believe that they deserve to be treated as human beings and acknowledge their experiences. The world just would not function the way it should if we stopped judging people.

Oh, so because Gower happens to be gay, then that excuses his homophobia??? Riiiiight…and Clarence Thomas happens to be Black. And Ann Coulter happens to be female. And Bill O’Reilly calls himself a “journalist”.

Oh, and this shit about the “angry liberal”…yeah, right, like only liberals can be deranged for being angry. I mean, when conservatives like Gower go off the deep end and attack innocent people for no other reason than his own bigotry and ignorance, he’s not a deranged wingnut, but a “concerned citizen”. When liberals start calling for burning down abortion clinics and hounding anti-war protestors with baseball bats, maybe we can talk about “angry liberals”; until then, the proper response to such nonsense amounts to “SYMoFn’AD and STFU”.

Oh..and a special cookie to this jackass for stealing the ubiquitous “Pretty Woman” meme from the usual radicalfeminists. It’s not as if everyone sees that movie as the absolute model of all prostitutes and sex workers just waiting for a Richard Gere to sweep them away with all the cash in the world…’ya think???

Why is it that asshats like this get all the publicity, and sensible folk get shut out of the debate entirely??

Anthony

the strawman - distorting someone’s perspective, then writing a response to the distortion rather than to what was actually said.

Check. See item 1 on your list.

the angry liberal - an attempt to dismiss someone’s opinion as the rantings and ravings of the deranged. Be on the look out for trigger words like “angry” and “shrill”

Check. See the title chosen for the letter “Angry about sex-worker article,” even though you never used the words “angry” or “pissed off” or anything else that would obviously indicate anger in your letter. You even managed not to call Andisheh any names.

the red herring - throw in something totally irrelevant as a distraction from the core argument.

Check. See your point number three. If this were somehow a coherent argument rather than a smokescreen, it would be…

ad hominem - attack the person making the argument instead of the argument itself.

Let’s pretend for a second that you were actually off base in calling Gower homophobic (you weren’t, but we’re pretending). Let’s look again at his statement:

Another point worth considering: Gower, whom Rhea describes as homophobic, is openly gay.

The unspoken implication is that 1) it’s ludicrous to call a gay man homophobic, and 2) since you made one ludicrous statement, the rest of your statements must be ludicrous.

He took the coward’s route with that statement, however, falling short of making an actual implication. Since the implication happens in the reader’s mind and not in his actual words, he has plausible deniability built in. He can say “I didn’t accuse you of anything, I was just saying that’s interesting.”

It’s sort of impressive how much bullshit he can pack into such a small space. It’s like watching Fox News.