Hee hee, being marginalized as an writer is JUST LIKE blowing creeps for rent money!
I’m just shaking my head over here, having spent a little time looking around the website for The Poetry Brothel.
Yes. The Poetry Brothel.
This is a NY-based organzation for poets,
whose mission is to expand New Yorkers’ personal, intellectual and fiscal interest in poetry through events, workshops and other projects.
And through the frilly, soft-focus frame of an olde-tyme-y bordello, where the poets themselves play at prostitution, servicing your lust for sonnets and idylls:
The Poetry Brothel presents poets as high courtesans who impart their work in public readings, spontaneous eruptions of poetry, and most distinctly, as purveyors of private poetry readings on couches, chaise lounges and in private rooms. Central to this experience is the creation of character, which for poet and audience functions as disguise and as freeing device, enabling The Poetry Brothel to be a place of uninhibited creative expression in which the poets and clients can be themselves in private.
Poetry is not sufficiently gratuitous, I guess, so why not just dress it up–literally–as a sexual service, so as to move the merch? Poets, why not promote yourselves–again, literally–as “whores“? So racy! So edgy! Skin-baring women, luring you with their best sexyfaces! A couple of men, fully dressed, glowering contemptuously at their johns and janes!
Fine, I get it: sex sells. And I’m sure that this will actually help some poets get their work heard, and people who don’t want to be seen as horrible sex-negative scolds can be all winky-winky about how “naughty” they are.
I recognize that there will likely be among our readers those who find this appealing. You can defend it in comments if you like, but I don’t seen how commoditizing poetry and/or romanticizing sex work this way is anything but the most grotesque and exploitative of two-fers. I can’t even be articulate in my disdain right now. Christ.
Yikes. Who thought that was a good idea?
Because women who work in brothels are so happy and successful and creatively fulfilled? And their customers all love and support them in their creative endeavors?
Does. Not. Compute.
Does this not in some sense seem like a natural continuation of the “burlesque shows are good olde-timey fun and nothing like stripping and are not in any way objectifying” trend?
baraqiel, I have no doubt this is just a riff on the neo-burlesque “movement.”
I love how sex work is totally the greatest, provided it’s safely framed in the past, so that we can ooh and aah over the fancy underthings and posit objecting others as prudish schoolmarms.
If they think prostitution is so fucking glamourous, then why not bust out the 6-inch lucite heels and Fredrick’s of Hollywood crotchless panties? No one wants to hear your poems? Get a bigger set of tits!
@baraqiel & PhDork: But it’s empowerfuling!
Urgghhhh.
Somebody who is selling a product is not ‘being themselves’, sorry.
Besides, I thought the author had been dead for decades, but this takes the conflation of the author’s body and the body of the text to a whole new level.
@BeckySharper: You mean the happy hookers at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch are lying? Whaaaaaat?
This reminds me of the loathsome Woody Allen’s old short story “The Whore of Mensa”. I’ll be delighted to attend, just as soon as they get some male whores in there. *rolls eyes*
@Endora-I know you didn’t mean it like this but lots of people sell products for a living. That doesn’t mean they’re prostituting themselves.
I clicked the ‘Meet the Whores’ link. There are a few men in there as well. Not that that makes it any better, if you ask me. Also, I get that it’s all old-timey and what not and I suppose they were going for authenticity or something…? But the only Asian-appearing person is called ‘the Opium-Eater’. Yes, I get the reference, and no, drugged up wastrel is not a modern-day Asian stereotype, but…I dunno. It made me squirm a bit. Am I overreacting?
But yes, I agree with baraquiel and PhDork about it being a likely offshoot of the burlesque is suddenly the cat’s pajamas attitude.
I have to admit, the only bit about it that I DO think is clever is the connection with courtesans and poetry. Historically, ‘respectable’ women didn’t participate in the arts. It’s an attitude that persists, though in a milder form, to this day, though the literary arts have been quicker to lose the stigma…except when women write about sex, of course.
Awww, Poetry, you’re so much better than this! I, too, find this disheartening, and partly because it’s such an unimaginative gimmick for a group of artists! It’s no better than a girl in a bikini on top of a sports car on Hot Rod magazine. God, it’s just so dumb – for me, that’s the most offensive thing about it.
Nadia,
I was going to go on a whole riff on that “Opium Eater” character, but I was gagging already. But no, you’re not over-reacting. It’s squicky. If they’re really interested in poets, and not in trying to dredge up gross racist stereotypes, they would have had one of the languid, glassy-eyed men be The Opium Eater, a la DeQuincey, or Tennyson. I guess it’s a good thing that she didn’t call herself “the Dragon Lady”?
I can get that poetry can be seductive, passionate, relieving, and consuming – but that doesn’t equate to an experience of sex. Or using sex as necessary to publicise a rich and beautiful art form.
@Nadia – “Historically, ‘respectable’ women didn’t participate in the arts”… I get this, and think you raise a good point.. but
why not instead play with this trope of ‘respectable’, inverting a dominant paradigm rather than pander to the idea that people who are artists require shady other means to support their art?
Well, I’m feeling sorry that I described this as dumb. That was a little too harsh and unnecessary.
@mischiefmanager: I didn’t mean to say people who sell things are prostituting themselves (my dad sells things!). I was just taking issue with the way they were marketing in it.
I’d argue that when you’re selling something, you’re not being yourself in the sense that you very clearly have an agenda which is guiding you in your behavior.
The poets will clearly have an agenda, they’re just ‘being themselves’ as they would on any other day.
@Nadia: oh, there are menz? I’m on my way? :-/
@Endora: not to go too off-topic, but when you go to work, you generally have an agenda which is not your own. You agree to it in return for benefits of various kinds. (Obviously that’s a very simplistic way of putting it.) I don’t think that means you’re not being true to yourself; we all have many selves.
I totally agree about the ridiculousness of sexing up poetry, but I’m not comfortable with the across-the-board judgment of sex work (even if it’s as simple as “Poetry is nice. Prostitution is not.”). Is prostitution being equated with *forced* prostitution? I know several interesting discussions have already been had on Harpyness about judgment/acceptance of sex work. Your work consistently challenges me to think about these things and reconsider my assumptions.
@Tanja: I can’t speak for PhDork, who wrote the post, but I think the problem is the way this program romanticizes brothels. It’s absurd and offensive to glamorize brothels and imagine one as some romantic paradise of happy workers and loving patrons of the arts. Brothels are hellholes and the misery, violence, and exploitation experienced by the women who live there should not be glorified or romanticized, by anyone.
(And yes, I’ve seen documentaries and reality shows set in legal brothels like Moonlite Bunny Ranch, and they’re hellholes, too. Maybe there’s a brothel out there somewhere that’s full of happy, fulfilled, respected women who had lots of other life options but chose to be there anyway—but I doubt it.)
Tanja, I’m sure that somewhere, at some point, some woman has chosen sex work and been pleased with that choice. Good for her. However, I think that sex work in a Patriarchy/Kyriarchy is inherently exploitative and bad for the women and children (and yes, men) who are part of it.
I know there are a differing opinions on sex work among feminists. I am one who rejects it as a liberatory practice or a net positive, given our current context.
But more to the point of this post: what BeckySharper said. This “artistic” appropriation of a whorehouse is meant to be winky and “subversive,” but all it really does is romanticize a history (and a present) of women’s exploitation and horror.
@BeckySharper and PhDork, I hear what you’re saying about trying to be subversive while romanticizing brothels, and I absolutely agree. I think my problem is the same internal debate that I always have when thinking about prostitution/making judgments about it. I have a hard time teasing apart my personal feelings about it (sex is so personal!) from the reality of our current context (undeniable power inequality between prostitutes and customers) and debating the merits of legalizing prostitution in order to regulate it, reducing forced prostitution and leading to better/safer working conditions for voluntary prostitution. Sorry, this is all way off topic. Thank you both for your thoughtful responses.
It is *vitally* important to distinguish between different kinds of sex work, not just for the sake of accuracy itself but for the sake of women involved in sex work under a variety of circumstances. This means that:
-making a sweeping statement in the title about prostitution being ‘not nice’ is not helpful
- not distinguishing between the prostitution of the early twentieth century and today is not helpful
- the caption “blowing creeps for rent money”, on a picture from the early twentieth century, is not helpful
I agree that this poetry brothel thing is bullshit, but my critique is limited to actual brothels and the history of prostitution, not all prostitutes, in all situations, ever.
This isn’t about being pro- or anti- sex work. That said, I *am* something of a sex worker (porn, not prostitution). I also write poetry (and thought I’d throw that out there for all the people who are assuming that the writers on that site can’t *also* be sex workers.)
@baraqiel Maybe you’d like to learn a few things about political burlesque before you make a statement like that. Here are some good places to start: http://www.browngirlsburlesque.com/ and http://www.hypergender.com/
@Endora and PhDork See above.
In fact, everyone in this thread might do well to look into the above sites and read more about fetishism and kink. Some of us are exhibitionists. Maybe we’re that way thanks to the patriarchy, but it doesn’t change the reality of our sexual desires, and we don’t have the privilege to be able to sit back and snark at all sex workers. Instead, some of us are reclaiming forms of sex work to make them progressive vehicles for our sexual fulfillment. So, yeah, it *can* be ‘empowerfulling’.
LoriA: It’s unfair to assume my perspective on sex work and the neo-burlesque movement is born out of ignorance. It’s also wrong.
Please re-read my comment at 10:05. I understand there are different perspectives. I understand WHY there are different perspectives. However, that doesn’t change my personal opinion on sex work AS A WHOLE.
You do you. I’ll do me.
LoriA, that may be the case for you, but surely you’re aware that as a percentage of sex workers worldwide, the number who do it because they’re empowered exhibitionists seeking out their own personal kinky gratification is infinitesimally small. I mean, really, it’s so vanishingly small that it whenever some woman comes into one of these threads and says “I’m a happy hooker, so your arguments against prostitution and sex trafficking aren’t valid,” it makes me wonder WTF she’s smoking.
If prostitution’s nice for you, great. Carry on. It isn’t for the vast majority of the women who engage in it, and that’s clearly what we’re talking about here.
@PhDork
Clearly you need to re-read my comment if you think it’s valid to have a singular opinion about sex work as a whole. And the ‘you do you’ thing doesn’t really work when you’re talking about me.
@Becky
You seem to have entirely missed my point. It’s *not* clear that that’s what you were talking about.
Also, this? “I’m a happy hooker, so your arguments against prostitution and sex trafficking aren’t valid,” is pretty much the exact opposite of what I said.
I’ll try again: lumping all sex workers together and using the term ‘sex worker’ for someone who has been trafficked both minimizes the experiences of women who have been abused through trafficking and takes away the agency of women who do choose sex work. We may be a ‘vanishingly small’ number overall, by the way, but we’re the ones you’re most likely to run into online, so maybe you should treat us with some consideration by honoring our requests.
At the very least, you could respond to me without pulling an ad hominem attack like insinuating I’m on drugs (which, apparently, makes one’s opinions invalid.)
we’re the ones you’re most likely to run into online .
Yes, that’s true. Because you’re the ones who have the privilege of literacy, computer literacy, computer access, free time to engage in on-line debates, etc. It’s not that your viewpoints don’t deserve to be honored, but it shows remarkable lack of perspective when extremely privileged sex workers like you try to correct feminists when we make statements like “prostitution isn’t nice”, as though you are the norm and we’re just ruining your good time.
I wasn’t implying that you were on drugs so much as using slang to say “if you think that your experience as an empowered, sexually gratified sex worker is the norm, you’re missing the whole fucking point…and living in fantasyland.”
I’ll hold back my ad hominems if you’ll hold back on yours about how we’re “snarking” on sex workers and just not educated enough about the nature of sex work. Neither is true.
Please, LoriA, I’m not going to get pulled into this debate. I say “you do you” as way of acknowledging that my saying “prostitution is not [nice]” does* exactly nothing* to stop you from thinking what you think or doing what you do, and you twist that to be some kind of insult. YOU DO YOU means only that. You have your opinions, and you go with that. I doesn’t bother me in the least what you do. I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT YOU.
You and I have different opinions on sex work. You think mine sucks because it doesn’t take your personal experience into account. I’m okay with that. I think yours is problematic because it’s based on your personal experience and seems to ignore the experience of so many others who are suffering and dying at the hands of (mostly) men. We can disagree. There is no more discussion to be had here.
@LoriA – Nah, I’m cool. But thanks anyway!
@BeckSharper
*You keep making my point for me*: some of us are more privileged than others, some of us freely choose what we do. So don’t lump us in together with the vast majority of sex workers, who are coerced into it by circumstance, and don’t lump any kind of sex worker in with sex trafficking victims.
I know I don’t have to explain this to you, but I will anyway: I clearly care about women who are coerced or forced into the business of selling sex, which is a huge part of the reason I even bothered responding. My existence is not stopping them from speaking out. In fact, by being vocal, I’ll eventually have a platform I can share with others who are less privileged. But, again, I think you do know this. Telling me to shut up and go away is only about silencing someone who is ideologically inconvenient for you.
@PhDork
I’m not pulling you into anything. You’re free to not respond to me. But please stop being disingenuous: when you denounce ‘sex workers,’ you’re denouncing me. And it’s very clear that I don’t think my personal experience is the only thing that matters. I just think it matters, and I think other women matter too. I can’t believe I’m even bothering to state that for you.
I can’t see where anyone has denounced sex workers.
Instead there has been a particular judgments made on the issue and more broadly the institution of sex work.
These are 2 very different things.
*You keep making my point for me*:
Likewise. So this has been useful for us both!
Thank you Mackey, for pointing that out.
Nowhere have Becky or I said a word against sex workers, LoriA. You can’t agree to disagree, you can’t be civil, and apparently you can’t be bothered to read with care. You’re done.
@Mackey
Becky denounced sex workers when she waived away the opinions of women who enjoy the work. And I don’t know how to make any clearer to everyone here that ‘sex work’ as a whole isn’t what she’s really trying to make this post about. Is this post about women like me who enjoy what they do? Is it about porn performers and strippers and phone sex operators? No. So why does the language include us? And then why are we dismissed?
@PhDork
See above. And I fail to see how I haven’t been civil. You’re right, though, I think I’m done here.
i understand denounce means to condemn, often vehemently.
I think there maybe definitional problems between people’s understanding of what it means to denounce something.
Going by what I understand denounce to mean i still don’t see how that can be levelled against any of the posters or commentors, coz only the institution of prostitution has been condemned.
Hello everyone:
I appreciate the above sentiments and can see where everyone is coming from.
As a feminist and poet — as well as an active member in the Poetry Brothel — I would invite you to email me any time with questions or comments as I am interested in your ideas.
It is Lisamarie.basile@gmail.com
Thanks,
Lisa