Said Martha Mukaiwa (of Windhoek, Namibia, who has traveled to Thailand, Malaysia, Ghana, Indonesia, Germany, France, and Italy), quoted in "'Don’t Succumb to the Fear': Women Share Travel Safety Tips/No woman is responsible for harassment or any other violent act against her. But experienced travelers and government agencies show how to travel as safely as possible," a NYT article with this correction: "An earlier version of this article misquoted a woman who described her experiences being followed or harassed while traveling alone. She said she has been followed and harassed by men who assume she is 'a sex worker,' not 'a prostitute.'"
I wonder how that mistake happened. The quote expresses disrespect toward prostitutes, whether they are called prostitutes or not. The woman's attitude is how dare men assume I'm a prostitute. What's the switch to a euphemism supposed to do? The disrespect is still there, isn't it? It does say, I want to use the politically correct terms, but isn't that more about wanting to avoid the disrespect of the elite who will think you're not the right kind of person?
There I was tripping through the world with my wonder, awe and privilege, and men interfered with my fantasy by imagining that I was a woman who is working for a living. What's the problem? If "sex worker" means what correct-speakers act like it means, there is no problem! It's an insult only if you think of those women in the way that is expressed by the word "prostitute."
Perhaps that's what caused the transcription error, if it was in fact a transcription error. It's possible that the quote was accurate, post-publication criticism arose, and dignity was restored with the white lie "misquoted." It's also possible that it's a translation glitch, but English is the official language of Namibia.
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Sex worker is to prostitute as platonic employee is to mistress people of the Bush's status.
"There I was tripping through the world with my wonder, awe and privilege, and men interfered with my fantasy by imagining that I was a WORKING GIRL."
FIFH
When she realized she had used the politically incorrect term, she started sweating like a sex worker in church.
She should have visited the US. No problems unless she runs into Joe Biden or Bill Clinton.
How is it possible she encountered any difficulties abroad? There are no Trump voters there. Just magnificent, wonderful, brilliant beyond reproach non-republicans.
Strange.
She has that natural prostitute look.
Richard: I had a friend who was generous with her time.
Gwen: Richard's being modest. He worked for three years with homeless prostitutes in Bengal.
Pincus: You still in the sex trade or...
Gwen: That's inappropriate.
Ghost Town (2008)
They could also say, with great pride, "I'm a grad of the Velvet Jones School of Technology."
https://www.ebaumsworld.com/videos/velvet-jones-be-a-ho/81635666/
This is confusing. The woman wrote "I have been followed and harassed."
Althouse's summation:
The woman's attitude is how dare men assume I'm a prostitute.
...
men interfered with my fantasy by imagining that I was a woman who is working for a living.
...
It's an insult only if you think of those women in the way that is expressed by the word "prostitute."
What?
She wasn't quoted as saying "how dare men" or "interfered with" or "insult". She was quoted as saying "I was followed and harassed."
I remember when prostitutes were called "working girls."
I hate that expression "sex worker."
"Hi, I'm a factory worker! I build those portable stoplights that they use when they repair roads!"
"Hi! I'm a sex worker! I give guys blow jobs & let them come on my face!"
See the difference?
If work is ennobling, is sex work ennobling?
We are led to believe that her conduct is always above reproach? That her clothing choices are never revealing? That her areas of visitation are just cathedrals and secure hotels? No. This doesn't add up. I'm marking this down as a woman who is revealing her preference, while simultaneously castigating men for not being good, "allies."
If women didn't have some way to feel persecuted, they would wither and die away. Our species would go extinct. I don't understand the evolutionary value of those feeling, but they're inescapably a part of human femininity.
"“Don’t be afraid of publicly shaming someone who is harassing you. If you suddenly find yourself in a dangerous neighborhood or situation, be erratic, drool, laugh out loud and mutter to yourself. These are all things I’ve done while traveling by myself all around the world for the past 35 years."
Well at least no one thought she was journalist.
This is a convincing post. I think the PC attitude is not shared globally.
In the West, it once was worse.
After my parents married in 1955, my mother followed the Fleet for a while (they'd had a 3 week engagement and 3 day honeymoon because he had to go back to sea). Traveling 2nd class from Naples to Barcelona by ship, she was protected by 2 British gays. Then she had to hole up in a hotel since a single woman on the street was fair game. She finally saw my dad walking down the street checking hotels and called and waved to him from the window.
Blame the Nigerian Princes. Traveling throughout SE Asia, the ONLY black women that many Asians ever saw are, in fact, sex workers. In some Asian nations, a significant number of white women are in fact Russian Prostitutes.
And considering the...modesty that many American girls assume in the clothing they pick which they figure is theirs to wear by right, and a girl in shorts with the word 'Juicy' across her ass doesn't have a kick coming.
But even less brazen than that. I dined with a missionary couple in Africa. ANY woman who wore shorts was presumed a prostitute in that country. The missionary wife had a number of wrap skirts to avoid offending the locals mores. Which showed a sensitivity that perhaps this woman was less inclined to follow.
The other thing is that the rest of the world doesn't give a shit about PC or 'offending' your view on the incredibly haughty attitude that American women have on their self worth. You are in THEIR country. Which just supports Althouses view against traveling.
Ah, how wonderful; English as the national language of "Nambia."
Someday, who knows? English may return as the official language of the Presidency of the United States.
The idea that women should be free and safe to walk alone anywhere in the world is stupid and dangerous. It's how you end up with Swedish twits getting their heads cut off on YouTube.
Some cultures inculcate Goddess or Whore dichotomy.
Feminist deconstruction loves euphemisms to conceal elitist condescension.
So the ny times is upset and wants us to be upset that this woman is thought to be a “sex worker” by SOME men in the countries she has traveled to. But at the same time doesn’t want us to think that being a “sex worker” is a bad thing. Check.
But these men assume this because most non-white(?) foreign women who are in these countries are “sex workers”. The ny times believes racism is at play when it’s just because this woman is the exception to not being a “sex worker” who fits this description.
Unfortunate for this woman that she fits the description of a sex worker in these countries. Unfortunate that the ny times thinks it’s anything more than that.
@Henry
She said she was "followed and harassed," in other words, she was mistaken for a prostitute and approached for sex. She wants to express negativity about how she was treated. Fine. But she wants to simultaneously express respect for actual prostitutes by using the term "sex workers." If women who do that sort of work are deserving of respect, then what is the basis for feeling bad that somebody thinks that is what you do?
I'm just pointing out the discordance.
well, at least the Vice President of the United States didn't come up behind her,
put his hands on her shoulders, inhale her hair;
and then start kissing the back of her head.
Whether you call yourself a sex worker, or a prostitute; that'd be Creepy as Hell!
As we narrow our language down so that no one is ever offended, eventually everything will be illegal to say. Sounds like fun.
Sex workers are sponges.
"The sponge remains undecided and undecidable. Not because it holds what is dirty and improper, but because it is sufficiently equivocal to hold the dirty as well as the clean, the non-proper as well as the proper. That is why it is not noble, not frank: ignoble, rather...
The sponge is ignoble in that it lends itself to all contraries, both the proper and the non-proper...The sponge is only a muscle filled with wind, with clean water or dirty walter, as may be: this gymnastic is ignoble...
Ignoble as it may be, and lacking in natural nobility; poor in its genealogical extraction, and unable to choose between the proper and the improper, the economy of the sponge is nonetheless better able to resist the oppressor: its ignoble labor enfranchises it."
Signsponge
As someone who was hit on in Geneva, as I traveled alone, I was disheartened to realize someone who might have otherwise been interesting to talk to had only this one dreary objective.
Because that's the most difficult thing, getting to talk to some locals.
This leaves me wondering if the request of sex for money was the harassment or if the man/men did not want to take no for an answer? Did they follow her before the proposition or after? I was once solicited and the man was very polite. I was nervous, uncomfortable, and removed myself from the situation quiclky but he didn’t press me or make any move to follow me.
I was not dressed in any way that should have been construed as provocative.
Henry
“How dare you think I am Irish!?”
Vs
“How dare you think I am from that most noble and honorable of lands, Eire?”
Well, it's hard to find something more pithy that what Howard @7:07 PM said, but the "discordance" noted by our Hostess @9:04 is simply that while "polite" people, i.e., people who subscribe to the Church of Political Correctness, pretend that "sex workers" are e.g., equivalent to women who assemble highway signalling devices, they actually think, like just about anyone with a functioning CNS, that prostitution is inherently degrading especially to the vendor, as well as to the customer, so this expression came out here (so to speak) when that value judgement got pointed in the writer's direction.
Now that was a run-on sentence. My apologies. It might be one of my longest, possibly the longest. But I think it was still reasonably pithy.
@Althouse -- I do see the discordance you are talking about, but I also think that focusing on that word choice results in a strange dismissal about the actual experience of the actual person. Sloppy or equivocal writing by reporters and columnists is fair game, but this is a private person. We don't know what is in her mind. I know women who have been in such situations and the harassment can be relentless and quite threatening.
"If "sex worker" means what correct-speakers act like it means, there is no problem! It's an insult only if you think of those women in the way that is expressed by the word "prostitute.""
That's nothing compared to Canadians who are treated as Americans abroad.
Anyway, the discordance in this case just follows from the general rule that progs don't believe their own BS.
Progs say that abolishing school discipline promotes social justice; none wants to send her kid to a chaotic public school. And so on, and so forth.
In this case, I am somewhat surprised that the NYT allowed the blatant smearing of the non-white male Other. How come gender suddenly trumps race and region? How come the Lust of Others gets presented in this othering fashion?
It was said in the reign of Alfred the Great that a beautiful, bejeweled woman could walk alone unmolested throughout his lands. Of course, she had a Glock and 3 extra clips.
I, as a mostly-white man, travel everywhere in a rumpled state, with an air of being harassed, distracted, and preoccupied. Therefore everyone takes me to be someone important, with some good or possibly vital reason to be wherever it is.
The whole affect comes naturally, sad to say.
I am always treated very well.
A lot is in the personality one projects.
I'm thinking of the Cosby actor working the cash register at Trader-Hoes and #JobShaming.
How many middle-aged, somewhat overweight women in sensible shoes get mistaken for sex workers? This burden will someday be lifted from her. Maybe if she wore tweeds in the meantime. Sex workers never wear tweeds.
The correction changed the onus from on her to on men.
"Prostitute" has historically negative connotations against the character of the woman. "Sex worker" naturalizes the concept, removing the negativity.
There was still a slur contained within her statement that men treated her in some bad manner, but the slur she meant was against the men, not herself. Thus, by changing her self-label, she removed all doubt as to who she thought at fault.
Since the correction was to attitude, and not to any actual fact, it’s worth noting that the correction almost certainly made the story less correct. The men are far more likely to have assumed she was a prostitute than that she was a sex worker.
Lewis Wetzel said...
I hate that expression "sex worker."
"Hi, I'm a factory worker! I build those portable stoplights that they use when they repair roads!"
"Hi! I'm a sex worker! I give guys blow jobs & let them come on my face!"
See the difference?
If work is ennobling, is sex work ennobling?
Beware the common-sense answer that can completely change depending on the descriptive terms you use.
Do they “give guys blow jobs & let them come on my face!" or do they “bring a little relief and joy to the lives of desperate lonely men who may have no other outlet for their needs”?
Black prostitute followed me around in Kuala Lumpur
Instead of dangerous Asia
She might try somewhere safe
Like the Muslim sections of Germany
Wow. I dated and was briefly engaged to a woman from Windhoek, Namibia in the 1990's. Haven't thought of her in decades, probably not cool to look her up today, but I do wonder what ever became of Nerina.
I've argued here before, nobody really believes that sex work is just another job and should be free of stigma. They may think it should be legal, but they don't want one of their daughters doing it.
Phidippus, your sentence is correctly punctuated, so it is not a run-on sentence, which is two or more independent clauses without any conjunctions or ounctuation; neither is it a rambling sentence, several independent clauses joined with coordinating conjunctions. It is a compound-complex sentence.
Thus endeth the lesson.
The upside of hearing politically correct terminology is that you immediately know what you are dealing with - sort of like speed reading - or knowing when to stop reading.
Ms. Mukaiwa has a travel journal / blog which is written in English. There are a couple of stories on her site where she describes being propositioned as a prostitute. She doesn't use the term 'sex worker'. One wonders if the editing was done by the Times.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that. “
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that. “
So is non committed sex bad?
Is earning a living bad?
Is women choosing what to do with their bodies bad?
Is getting paid for sex bad?
These are questions for my betters, those on the left that inform deplorables like myself, how I am to feelz about such things.
Why do leftist lecture me about diversity and acceptance all the time, but when they need an insult, or need a word to disparage, or belittle a person, they immediately land on some word or concept, they insist proves conservatives are bigots, but not leftists.
I'm thinking of "butt buddy" or "cock holster". "Working girl" looks like like the same kind of selective pejorative. Bad if I use it, OK for leftist.
"...men interfered with my fantasy by imagining that I was a woman who is working for a living."
So the men's fantasies interfered with her fantasy?
A woman once mistook me for a country western singer in a Walmart, so...I guess I can kind of relate.
Althouse says: But she wants to simultaneously express respect for actual prostitutes by using the term "sex workers." If women who do that sort of work are deserving of respect, then what is the basis for feeling bad that somebody thinks that is what you do?
I see your point. There's no reason to be insulted; it's as though a person looked like Charlize Theron and was constantly being approached by people who wanted autographs or to tell her how beautiful she is and how much they love her last movie. Very annoying, but not insulting. The Duke Lacrosse "rape" case brought out the same hypocrisy. The narrative began with a severe judgment on the young men for having hired strippers for the party. But those who think sex workers deserve to be respected and able to ply their trade must then admit that there's nothing at all wrong with those who hire the sex workers.
"@Althouse -- I do see the discordance you are talking about, but I also think that focusing on that word choice results in a strange dismissal about the actual experience of the actual person."
No. Not at all.
"Sloppy or equivocal writing by reporters and columnists is fair game, but this is a private person. We don't know what is in her mind. I know women who have been in such situations and the harassment can be relentless and quite threatening."
I agree that it's terrible. It's also terrible to be a prostitute, especially the lowest sort of prostitute that picks up clients on the street. The insistence on the term "sex worker" is a problem in my view because it cloaks the suffering of prostitutes and presents it as an ordinary form of employment.
I'm not letting this woman off the hook, though she had some pain in getting mistaken for a prostitute, but she is claiming privilege in the world. Look, she even used the word "privilege." She's saying she wants to walk free and clear of harassment. I want that for women too. But what about the actual prostitutes? The article initially had her calling these women "prostitutes," and then it was perceived as needing correction, presumably because the privilege and disparagement showed. The officially correct term is supposed to be "sex worker." But you can't fix the problem that easily. That's my issue here.
She brags about being sexy, but she also claims the opposite.
"I’ve gotten used to being invisible."
"I’m a 29-year-old black woman and I’ve never been asked out on a date or for my number in any way that would suggest the slightest view towards twin tombstones. ...
To many white men who date black women, women like me are a little too white. ...
To plenty of black men, black women like me are whole other bag of bad news. ..."
Apparently she has no interest in Asian men - that's deeply shocking.
And -
"I can hardly remember a time before I was afraid of black men."
"Ms. Mukaiwa has a travel journal / blog which is written in English. There are a couple of stories on her site where she describes being propositioned as a prostitute. She doesn't use the term 'sex worker'. One wonders if the editing was done by the Times."
Whoa!
Well, then...
Thanks for finding this.
Wow!
Did I post the link?
http://marthamukaiwa.com/
The writing is surprisingly dull, given the writer and the locations. It's kind of frothy with a salting of anger at racism and sexism. If you told me it was written by an American study abroad student I wouldn't have looked askance.
Oh. I did post the link. Duh.
I was traveling from Vienna to the Czech Republic by train. A middle aged woman joined by compartment and ordered some sushi.
I made the mistake of noting that I had not known you can order food in these cars, much less sushi (who the hell buys sushi in the EUROPE and in a land locked nation to boot?)
Well, that opened the flood gates, alas. She talked to me the entire way to our destination.
Because, as Althouse can attest, there is no charm or anything interesting in my conversation or observations.
I am, however, passing handsome and make a decent first impression.
So let us be clear: when a woman 'wants a sex worker', she finds an attractive guy and makes herself seem interested and available, hoping for the offer. Like this Czech Doctor did.
Men rarely take money for sex
Women do
Hence the disparity of experience. But men also get approached for sex. They are just asked to pay for the privilege to give the woman the sex the woman wants.
I think I have a pretty healthy sense of self-respect and self-worth, yet am deeply puzzled by the attitude that assumes everybody on earth has an obligation to re-arrange their attitudes to align with mine, when I deign to grace their foreign lands with my presence.
I expect reciprocity, though. On my own damned turf, while I'm willing to deal generously with the strangers' or newcomers' inevitable, inadvertent harmless cultural faux pas, they had damned well better not expect me to comply with cultural rules not my own, whether they're here to visit or to stay. If they're staying, I expect them to learn, and comply with, our rules. I expect even a visitor to know and respect the serious stuff - e.g., no free pass for assuming a woman alone is "fair game", because in your country no decent woman goes out alone. (I would only applaud the miscreant getting the savage beating he richly deserves for that level of "cultural misunderstanding".)
Which makes me quite unlike the sjw traveler, who, despite being miffed that furriners refuse to comply with her woke standards on their own damned turf, campaigns to have the same offensive behaviors tolerated on her own, because Diversity. And White Man Bad.
Vote please: who'd hit that? Gah, she's bald!
Not all women take money for sex. However, I think that there is a rather slanted demand.
Plus, isn't it nice that Ms. SJW finds out that despite all the misery and oppression that women experience, locked out of higher education, shunned by retail sales, ignored by mass media, that there are patriarchal places which are, alas, much worse.
This is something that Feminists neglect to educate young women about that.
It is sad that this woman does not actually take a lesson from her experience.
Want to know where men don't ask women if they are sex workers? New York City
Want to know where else? Middle America.
Hmm!
Nichevo,
I went to her website. She is NOT bald. She does, however, post pictures of Women of Wakanda.
Wakanda is not a real nation. If it were, they would have to be the worst human beings on the planet. They are far richer in technology than anywhere else on the planet, but have ZERO interest in immigration or in sharing their technology as everyone around them in Africa suffers from Aids, kills off their animals, and starves to death under dictatorships (something that Wakanda seems fully in favor of. Isn't it funny how many woke films are in favor of royalty? Seems...odd)
Compared to the lavish generosity of America, who has large NGOs, charity, open immigration policies, and as the Clintons can attest, a very broad interest in shipping all our technology to China for speaking fees.
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