Author Topic: Prostitution in PC014 and EA  (Read 35701 times)

Void Munashii

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Reply #25 on: July 03, 2008, 05:12:12 PM
In my listening of it, nothing made me think the character in the Psuedopod story "The Cutting Room" was a prostitute, though prostitutes have appeared in other stories there.

  I think she may have been a demon of some sort, but not a prostitute. Did they ever mention the circumstances of her body's discovery? I know they mentioned it being admitted, but the rest of my memory of that story is frankly a gory and disturbing blur.

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errant371

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Reply #26 on: July 03, 2008, 05:19:28 PM
In my listening of it, nothing made me think the character in the Psuedopod story "The Cutting Room" was a prostitute, though prostitutes have appeared in other stories there.

  I think she may have been a demon of some sort, but not a prostitute. Did they ever mention the circumstances of her body's discovery? I know they mentioned it being admitted, but the rest of my memory of that story is frankly a gory and disturbing blur.

IIRC, the body was found in an alley or park (typical) and that there was no cause of death.  The experienced M.E. found the circumstances of the girl's "death" and discovery to be suspicious and irregular, and he also noticed that there was "something" wrong with the body.  Demon works for me too.  I just don't think that the girl was alive in the usual sense, and so I look for a 'supernatural' aspect.

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SFEley

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Reply #27 on: July 03, 2008, 05:29:37 PM
I've only been listening to Escape Pod, but I'm sick and tired of hearing about prostitutes in Escape Pod alone! I think this should stop, but before this happens, to even things up, there should be some stories about male escorts, prostitutes and conmen who extort lots of money out of women, who find them impossible to resist.
EP150: This, My Body for one.
EP010: The Girlfriends of Dorian Gray might also count, at a stretch.

Mur's story, EP061: I Look Forward to Remembering You, is also about a male prostitute.  Why I'm helping with this question I'm not sure, but there  you go.

Ann and Rachel have already made the point that there is no schedule coordination between Escape Artists podcasts.  I have no involvement in which Pseudo and PodCastle stories are scheduled when.  I'm still helping with PodCastle on the technical side, but except for episode #1 I've never advised Rachel on the release order.  In the case of Pseudopod, I usually don't even know what's up that week until I hear it on my iPod like everyone else.  Ben and Al know what they're doing, so why should I look over their shoulders?  And certainly no one can try to schedule around me, because I'm disorganized enough that occasionally I'm not sure on Wednesday which story is going to run that week.

So is it a coincidence?  Yes, it's a coincidence.

I'm not going to address anything deeper in this thread because I'm not exactly sure what it is we're being accused of.  Is the hypothesis here that I have a prostitute fetish, and that's coming across in my story choices?  I'd call it unlikely.  I know my major fetishes, and they don't leave a lot of room on my mental calendar for something as mundane as prostitutes.  My real fetishes haven't shown up at all yet on Escape Pod.  I have to go to other fiction podcasts for them.

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hautdesert

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Reply #28 on: July 03, 2008, 05:34:38 PM


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I doubt anyone is suggesting there's a misogynist prostitue fetish conspiracy at EA.

Ragtime seemed to imply that.  She (I am assuming she is a she) even said twice that it was not a coincidence.

I think it could easily not be a coincidence and also not be the product of a deliberate choice on Steve's part.

If Steve goes down to the corner to get a cup of coffee, and gets a nice big JFK half dollar in his change, when he reaches into his pocket for a coin to flip, he's going to grab that nice big coin.  There's no reason for him to question what comes up when he flips, I mean, a coin flip is practically iconic as a non-biased way to determine something.

If someone comes up and says, "Hey, your choices are not random," Steve has two choices.  He can say, "No, I'm flipping a coin.  It's got to be random, so there."  Or he can say, "Really?  I thought it was all right, because I'm flipping this coin.  Let's see."  And then undertake to test the actual randomness of the coin.

Now, it may be that it'll come out as it should, once the numbers are examined.  Then again, it may not.  Or it may be that enough other coin flippers are using weighted coins that Steve might find he wants to be more aware of a long streak of heads.  Or something.

You're absolutely right, there needs to be more data if we want to know whether it's a coincidence or not.  But essentially every editor is working with a coin that's weighted one way or another (those weights include things like how much of what sort of thing is turning up in slush, as Steve points out in the other thread, that's a considerable weight all by itself and not the fault of the editor), and it's good to question just where that weight is and whether or not it's something you want to take into account.  If no one raises the question, if you don't ever ask yourself, you're stuck just saying, "But it's a coin flip!" and never actually knowing what's going on.



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I don't mean to be argumentative.  If you check out my comments on one of those stories ("The Right Kind of Town") you'll see that I agree that the prostitute trope is tired and rarely used inventively.  I agree with you and Ragtime on the larger issue.  I do not agree with her that there is the appearance of bias when it comes to EA's editorial choices.  I maintain that sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence, and this recent 'to do' is just that.

I'm not allergic to arguments!  :)  But I mostly agree with you.  I'm not familiar enough with the whole gamut of EP stories to make a call one way or the other, but I don't think Steve would ever knowingly pick things that were actively misogynistic.  I'm just saying, since it is so prevalent in other places, when it shows up at EP, even though I know Steve wouldn't do it on purpose, it may still be "not a coincidence" without any malice or action on his part, and it's worth at least asking if it really was, or if there's something else going on that it might pay to be aware of.

The issue is very much worth bringing up.  If Ragtime's comment struck you as confrontational and accusing, it might be worth remembering that "it's just a coincidence" is the automatic answer in places where it is manifestly not a coincidence.  And it's hard, when every time one mentions it the answer is "you're just seeing things", to be even-tempered and pleasant--possibly harder to be even-tempered when it's happening in a place you have otherwise felt comfortable and welcome in.  It's hard not to feel angry.  And sometimes if you're unrelentingly polite and nice, no one actually gets that it's a problem and nothing gets done.



errant371

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Reply #29 on: July 03, 2008, 06:04:21 PM
I think it could easily not be a coincidence and also not be the product of a deliberate choice on Steve's part.

I think his above post puts an end to this part of the argument :)


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Now, it may be that it'll come out as it should, once the numbers are examined.  Then again, it may not.  Or it may be that enough other coin flippers are using weighted coins that Steve might find he wants to be more aware of a long streak of heads.  Or something.

You're absolutely right, there needs to be more data if we want to know whether it's a coincidence or not.  But essentially every editor is working with a coin that's weighted one way or another (those weights include things like how much of what sort of thing is turning up in slush, as Steve points out in the other thread, that's a considerable weight all by itself and not the fault of the editor), and it's good to question just where that weight is and whether or not it's something you want to take into account.  If no one raises the question, if you don't ever ask yourself, you're stuck just saying, "But it's a coin flip!" and never actually knowing what's going on.

Oh there is no doubt.  Wading through slush piles is no fun, I imgaine, and of course every writer thinks that their story is original and groundbreaking (I keed, well, half keed).  With the preponderence of fiction out there I am not at all surprised that these sorts of coincidences occur.  In fact, I am surprised they don't occur more often.  If the coin is weighted it is weighted on the writers' side, I think, not the editors'.  Discussions like this one are the balancer.

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I'm not allergic to arguments!  :) 

That's good!  :D

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But I mostly agree with you.  I'm not familiar enough with the whole gamut of EP stories to make a call one way or the other, but I don't think Steve would ever knowingly pick things that were actively misogynistic.  I'm just saying, since it is so prevalent in other places, when it shows up at EP, even though I know Steve wouldn't do it on purpose, it may still be "not a coincidence" without any malice or action on his part, and it's worth at least asking if it really was, or if there's something else going on that it might pay to be aware of.

Sure, it is worth asking, and Steve did reply.  As did others.  I found Ragtime's comment confrontational, and I think it was meant to be.

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If Ragtime's comment struck you as confrontational and accusing, it might be worth remembering that "it's just a coincidence" is the automatic answer in places where it is manifestly not a coincidence.  And it's hard, when every time one mentions it the answer is "you're just seeing things", to be even-tempered and pleasant--possibly harder to be even-tempered when it's happening in a place you have otherwise felt comfortable and welcome in.  It's hard not to feel angry.  And sometimes if you're unrelentingly polite and nice, no one actually gets that it's a problem and nothing gets done.

This may be, and I do keep it in mind, however, the attitude you describe is held by a great many people who aren't interested in hearing an answer that doesn't agree with their idiology.  These people also tend to be confrontational.  I am not trying to imply that Ragtime is one of these sorts of people.  Not at all.  I have never met her and know nothing about her.  However, if you make a confrontational comment, expect confrontation.  Also expect that you are going to get replies like "you're just seeing things" because in some cases that is exactly what is going on. 

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SFEley

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Reply #30 on: July 03, 2008, 06:06:13 PM
I'm not allergic to arguments!  :)  But I mostly agree with you.  I'm not familiar enough with the whole gamut of EP stories to make a call one way or the other, but I don't think Steve would ever knowingly pick things that were actively misogynistic.  I'm just saying, since it is so prevalent in other places, when it shows up at EP, even though I know Steve wouldn't do it on purpose, it may still be "not a coincidence" without any malice or action on his part, and it's worth at least asking if it really was, or if there's something else going on that it might pay to be aware of.

I took a minute to sit and think about this.  I think it's a good point, and I wish to withdraw the huffy and defensive portions of my earlier tone.

If you want to talk about gender-based patterns in Escape Pod fiction, please do, and I will listen.  I don't promise to agree or to apologize, but I'll try to repress any kneejerk reactions to feeling attacked and consider the meat of the arguments.  I personally feel that my freedom to choose any story I want or to shape EP any way I want is more constrained than an outside observer might think...  But that, too, could just be my perceptual bias and I could be wrong about my own freedoms and choices.

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wintermute

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Reply #31 on: July 03, 2008, 07:29:28 PM
Are prostitutes-as-overused-trope just a genre thing?  Feels like it's ubiquitous, to me.

I think you're right.  They appear in all sorts of fiction far out of proportion to the number of them that could possibly exist in the world.  One website I found estimates that about 1% of American women have worked as prostitutes (http://www.bayswan.org/stats.html) and they do seem to make up a fair bit more then 1% of the women to be found in fiction.

Wikipedia seems to think there's even less of them.  Here's a paragraph listed from their "prostitution" entry

"According to the paper "Estimating the prevalence and career longevity of prostitute women" (Potterat et al., 1990), the number of full-time equivalent prostitutes in a typical area in the United States (Colorado Springs, CO, during 1970–1988) is estimated at 23 per 100,000 population (0.023%), of which fraction some 4% were under 18. The length of these prostitutes' working careers was estimated at a mean of 5 years. A follow-up paper entitled "Prostitution and the sex discrepancy in reported number of sexual partners" (Brewer et al., 2000) goes on to estimate a mean number of 868 male sexual partners per prostitute per year of active sex work, and offers the conclusion that men's self-reporting of prostitutes as sexual partners is seriously under-reported." -- Wikipedia

Those numbers aren't contradictory. 1% have been prostitutes at some point in the past. 0.023% are prostitutes right now. And as Chodon says, we'd need to define exactly what "prostitution" means, in the contexts of these studies.

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wintermute

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Reply #32 on: July 03, 2008, 07:40:42 PM
I've only been listening to Escape Pod, but I'm sick and tired of hearing about prostitutes in Escape Pod alone! I think this should stop, but before this happens, to even things up, there should be some stories about male escorts, prostitutes and conmen who extort lots of money out of women, who find them impossible to resist.
EP150: This, My Body for one.
EP010: The Girlfriends of Dorian Gray might also count, at a stretch.

Mur's story, EP061: I Look Forward to Remembering You, is also about a male prostitute.  Why I'm helping with this question I'm not sure, but there  you go.
A time-travelling male prostitute, no less. And a far better pick than Girlfriends, which never explicitly mentioned sex (that I can recall, anyway), and had nothing to do with money. I'm reasonably confident that you could make a case that the central character was prostituting himself and not get laughed out of the building, though.

And now that I think about it, the prostitution in I Look Forward to Remembering You never actually happened...

I ahve no idea where I'm going with this.

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Rachel Swirsky

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Reply #33 on: July 03, 2008, 08:12:42 PM
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I personally feel that my freedom to choose any story I want or to shape EP any way I want is more constrained than an outside observer might think.

Dude, seriously. I was so convinced for the months before PodCastle started that all the flame wars were going to be over whether or not there was enough traditional fantasy...



Windup

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Reply #34 on: July 03, 2008, 09:32:50 PM
There's nothing "wrong" with prostitutes, but when you compare the percentage of women who are prostitutes to the percentage of women in SF/F stories that are prostitutes, there's something of an imbalance, which makes "coincidences" like this more likely.

If more people thought of it as a "tired trope," rather than an "edgy feature," then we'd only have prostitutes in good stories like this one, and not what has seemed like half of them.


For the record, I totally agree with this.

I just wanted to let you know that all the prostitute stories showing up in the same time frame wasn't planned because the editorial departments for the three magazines are effectively separate (although this story was bought by Steve, and not me, before PodCastle was a gleam in his eye, I can say that I would definitely have purchased it).


Of course, prostitutes are just one of several seriously over-represented professions in fiction.  Detectives (both police and private), reporters, soldiers, secret agents, assassins, millionaire philanthropists, doctors, lawyers, C-suite executives, and for some strange reason, architects all appear in the fictional world far more frequently than their numbers in the real world would suggest. Partially, they're convenient because they naturally interact with a lot of people, tend to be involved in dramatic situations, and tend to have unstructured days into which adventures can be inserted. (OK, I admit this doesn't explain the architects.) If you want to write an adventure story about a Wal-Mart clerk, the first thing you have to do is get him away from his store long enough to have the adventure. (Yet another reason to lament lack of vacation time among Americans...) Their jobs are also recognizable, so you don't have to burn up a thousand words explaining what a Logistics Optimization Specialist does, unless it happens to be absolutely essential to the story.

So, I agree using prostitutes is a crutch, but so are lots of other jobs held by fictional characters.


<<<WARNING: God Juice spoiler coming up; stop now if you don't want to know more about the story.>>>







(I can't comment on how the prostitution was used in the other EA stories because I haven't heard them -- though if one of them is "God Juice," which I heard part of at a reading last month, at least there was a little bit of playing with the prostitution trope?)


Yeah, the hooker showed up to rescue the heroine - she had been hired, it just wasn't clear by who or for what when our unsuspecting villian opened the door for her.  Now, it could have been done with a bellhop or a waiter, but making the rescuer a hooker was way funnier, at least to me.  It was one of several brilliantly-played inversions in that story.

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Roney

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Reply #35 on: July 06, 2008, 12:16:10 AM
Of course, prostitutes are just one of several seriously over-represented professions in fiction.

What Windup said.  Fiction doesn't represent real life with anything like statistical accuracy, nor would we want it to.  Overuse of prostitutes is just one element of this, and I don't think it's worth getting too excited about.  It's not nearly as extreme as the totally unrealistic numbers of starship captains, whom I keep reading about but I believe account for 0% of the general population.



Tango Alpha Delta

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Reply #36 on: July 06, 2008, 02:34:10 AM
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I personally feel that my freedom to choose any story I want or to shape EP any way I want is more constrained than an outside observer might think.

Dude, seriously. I was so convinced for the months before PodCastle started that all the flame wars were going to be over whether or not there was enough traditional fantasy...

Instead, the two biggest fights have been "PC is sexist against men" and "PC's prostitute stories make it sexist against women".

Ain't that a kick in th' head?

But the more this stuff comes up, the more I think this forum needs a FAQ.  Editors/moderators: I respectfully suggest that someone start up a wiki at one of the following sites, or host one elsewhere, so that we enthusiasts may cooperatively throw links to oft-repeated threads, references to frequently linked topics, and various and sundry other things that have been/ought to be "stickied" to the tops of these forums.

(I was just going to start one myself, but this isn't my company, so I thought I'd at least ask first.)

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Anarkey

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Reply #37 on: July 07, 2008, 11:04:47 PM
Oh hey!  This conversation sounds incredibly familiar!

Ragtime, I'm with you, not necessarily on how prostitution is over-represented (I think Windup and Roney have fair points there, and I can't comment on the PP story at all) but on how tiresome and uninspired the overuse is.  Detectives and spaceship captains usually get to do fun and interesting stuff.  Occasionally, they differ from one another.  All the whores get to do is be in danger and be killed, sex up the main characters, or have hearts of gold (sometimes all three at once!).  Yawntastic.  And when someone wants to have a prostitute but make it slightly different they change it into a man!  Whoa!  Because that totally breaks new ground.

Riiiiiiiight.

And when I say I'd like to see stories with fewer prostitutes in them it's never because I have a problem with prostitutes, it's because I'm sick of the shorthand. 

I don't like stories with elves in them either.  Same issue.

So yeah, I'm down with EA checking twice on their prostitution content to make sure it isn't same old, same old.

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SFEley

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Reply #38 on: July 08, 2008, 12:23:03 AM
All the whores get to do is be in danger and be killed, sex up the main characters, or have hearts of gold (sometimes all three at once!).  Yawntastic.

I'm curious: have you listened yet to "The Right Kind of Town?"  Or, for that matter, to "The Grand Cheat?"  (I'm totally convinced myself that the Pseudopod story that week relates to prostitution, so I'm not going to address it.)

I don't think your characterization applies to either story.  I certainly want to be open to criticism, but are you criticizing us for stereotypes that are actually in the stories under discussion -- i.e., for things we're actually responsible for -- or for stereotypes that bother you in general and you just want to make sure we avoid them in the future?

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wintermute

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Reply #39 on: July 08, 2008, 12:47:22 AM
I don't like stories with elves in them either.  Same issue.
What do you think about EP165: Those Eyes?

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Anarkey

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Reply #40 on: July 08, 2008, 01:08:30 AM
All the whores get to do is be in danger and be killed, sex up the main characters, or have hearts of gold (sometimes all three at once!).  Yawntastic.
I'm curious: have you listened yet to "The Right Kind of Town?"  Or, for that matter, to "The Grand Cheat?"  (I'm totally convinced myself that the Pseudopod story that week relates to prostitution, so I'm not going to address it.)

I don't think your characterization applies to either story.  I certainly want to be open to criticism, but are you criticizing us for stereotypes that are actually in the stories under discussion -- i.e., for things we're actually responsible for -- or for stereotypes that bother you in general and you just want to make sure we avoid them in the future?

Nope.  Haven't.  I'm a couple of iterations behind on both PC and EP atm.  However, I did hear episode 134, "Me and My Shadow", where everything I characterized was VERY MUCH in evidence.  I'm only here because of my amusement that this thread seems related to what I tried to say months ago.  Whether what I said then can apply to these two stories I can't say (yet), though I'll admit to trusting other posters and the general tenor of the conversation that this was (likely) the same sort of thing.  I'll definitely let you know if I think these particular two stories get a pass or not, when I've heard them.  I was also trying to (gently) address the parallels that Windup and Roney drew between the excess of prostitutes and the excess of private dicks and architects in fiction.  Yes, neither are in proportion to the population, but that's not the only problem with having too many prostitutes.  It's what the sex workers do and do not get to do in stories, whether they have agency, whether they get to be protagonists, whether they are characterized deeply or used as shorthand or stand-ins for real characters, and whether they represent a whole person or just their given profession.  Maybe all this and more applies to these two episodes (I'm quite curious to find out, now) creating a couple of good iterations of prostitutes, worth hearing. 

Still, I didn't want Cerebrilith or Ragtime to think no one else had ever said anything in this regard, and that they were unsupported or alone in their opinions.  And I am still beating the drums for you to avoid these stereotypes in the future, yes.

I don't like stories with elves in them either.  Same issue.
What do you think about EP165: Those Eyes?

We'll see.  Haven't heard it yet.  Though knowing I have elves to contend with in an upcoming episode of EP is...well...not exactly exciting for me.  Still, I try for an open mind.  Maybe it will be the best elf story since LoTR. 

I tried to write an elf bondage story once, in reaction to the whole lily white eternal perfect elf business, but I got bored with it before I got to the end.  It's still possible I'll go back to it someday.

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wintermute

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Reply #41 on: July 08, 2008, 11:55:06 AM
I don't like stories with elves in them either.  Same issue.
What do you think about EP165: Those Eyes?

We'll see.  Haven't heard it yet.  Though knowing I have elves to contend with in an upcoming episode of EP is...well...not exactly exciting for me.  Still, I try for an open mind.  Maybe it will be the best elf story since LoTR. 

I tried to write an elf bondage story once, in reaction to the whole lily white eternal perfect elf business, but I got bored with it before I got to the end.  It's still possible I'll go back to it someday.
I have to say, I'm with you on the elves. Tolkien gets a pass for having actually been original with them, but there are very few varieties of elves that I can actually bring myself to care about. The elves in Peter F Hamilton's Pandora's Star / Judas Unchained, and Dark Elves in Warhammer Fantasy are about the only examples that come to mind at the moment.

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stePH

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Reply #42 on: July 08, 2008, 01:24:30 PM
I've been wondering about "Union Dues: Freedom with a Small 'f'" in this context.  Stripper isn't the same as hooker, though "car dates" are mentioned.

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SFEley

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Reply #43 on: July 08, 2008, 02:34:59 PM
I've been wondering about "Union Dues: Freedom with a Small 'f'" in this context.  Stripper isn't the same as hooker, though "car dates" are mentioned.

But the only time the protagonist does one, it's to pull a gun on the guy and get information leading to the rescue of an infant.  She wasn't there just to "be in danger and be killed," she was the main character so she wasn't "sexing up the main character," and she certainly didn't have a "heart of gold."

If the complaint here is that sex worker characters are mere placeholders and don't get to do anything, I would offer that story as a counterexample rather than an example.  Same for "Right Kind of Town."  I would agree with Anarkey about Mike Resnick's story, "Me and My Shadow," but so far that's the only Escape Artists story mentioned that seems to meet her criteria for clichés.

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Roney

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Reply #44 on: July 08, 2008, 10:27:45 PM
Oh hey!  This conversation sounds incredibly familiar!

I agree with you entirely on that story (and nearly agreed with you in the thread, except that you seemed to have said it all more clearly than I could).  My impression in this thread was that it was the quantity (or rather, coincidental airing) of stories with prostitute characters that was at issue.  The debate about the quality of each character would be better carried on in the individual story threads.

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And when I say I'd like to see stories with fewer prostitutes in them it's never because I have a problem with prostitutes, it's because I'm sick of the shorthand. 

And it's not just in fiction.  I was sure I'd read somewhere in The Guardian that their style guide frowned on describing someone (particularly a victim of crime) as "a prostitute", because unlike other professional descriptions (such as "Mr Smith, a bank manager" or "Miss Brown, a hairdresser") it's a short-cut in the reader's mind not just to socio-economic pigeon-holing but also to moral judgement.  This is a trick frequently abused by the press in the UK, and not just the tabloids.  (I think The Guardian preferred the clumsy formulation "a woman who worked as a prostitute" partly because its clumsiness draws the reader's attention to the distinction.  But if it is in their style guide, it's not in the online version that I could link to.)

Anyway, the recent characters who worked as prostitutes in PC and EP (can't speak for PP as I'm many months behind) didn't strike me as fitting any lazy stereotypes.



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Reply #45 on: July 13, 2008, 05:52:56 AM
I've got to say, I like the prostitution stories. They're frequently the ones I send to my friends. EP's "This, My Body" and "I Look Forward To Remembering You" actually are two of the ones I recommend to people who don't usually read sci-fi or listen to podcasts.

It seems like there's a pretty good reason there are more stories about prostitutes than anything else: they're more interesting than most groups. It's like complaining that there are more astronauts in sci-fi than there are window-washers. Astronauts, superheroes, werewolves, aliens, elves, prostitutes, magicians, time-travellers and mad scientists  have more interesting lives than, well, normal people do, so of course they're going to be overrepresented.



Cerebrilith

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Reply #46 on: July 13, 2008, 02:31:19 PM
I've got to say, I like the prostitution stories. They're frequently the ones I send to my friends. EP's "This, My Body" and "I Look Forward To Remembering You" actually are two of the ones I recommend to people who don't usually read sci-fi or listen to podcasts.

It seems like there's a pretty good reason there are more stories about prostitutes than anything else: they're more interesting than most groups. It's like complaining that there are more astronauts in sci-fi than there are window-washers. Astronauts, superheroes, werewolves, aliens, elves, prostitutes, magicians, time-travellers and mad scientists  have more interesting lives than, well, normal people do, so of course they're going to be overrepresented.

I don't think that prostitutes really belongs on that list of people with interesting lives.  Everything else on that list is either supernatural or in an active adventure seeking profession.  They have interesting lives for the most part because they seek it out.  Prostitutes on the other hand are generally caught in miserable subsistence lives.

Just because a story includes a prostitute who leads an interesting life does not necessarily mean that that persons life is interesting because they are a prostitute.  Not all, but a large number of stories could be written with the sex worker in question with some other profession leading an interesting life and still work just as well if not better.

I'm definitely not of the opinion that prostitutes or any other character type should never be used, but like anything else if they are over used or used where they aren't really appropriate then they weaken a story.