Porky's Place

Brainy Former Hooker On Men

You may have recently read that the mysterious blogger, author, and former London call girl Belle Du Jour has revealed herself to be one Dr Brooke Magnanti. This unexpected revelation led to someone at mensactivism.org posting a link to a blog post by “Belle” in which she responds to an absurd piece of misandrist claptrap called Schrödinger’s Rapist.
I almost commented on Schrödinger’s Rapist, but by the time piggy got there the big tough women who run the blog had decided they couldn’t take the heat, had shut down comments and were hiding in the back room stuffing their faces with chocolate cheesecake in a futile attempt to ease their discomfort over the discovery that not everyone buys their bullplop.

Given that “Belle” has now been revealed to be someone with a good brain inside her head, I thought I would re-publish part of her post as an example of how someone who can actually think sees the idea that being a man is an eternal picnic.

In response to these lines in Schrödinger’s Rapist ….

“Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones?”

Magnanti writes…

“If you’re reading my blog, then you know I’m a long time, dyed-in-the-wool A-number-1 Fan Of Men. If anything, being a sex worker made me more sympathetic, instead of less so, to their struggles and their lives. And as a result it amazes me just how casually, and how widespread, the assumption is that men have things easy.

Go on, open a Sunday supplement today. How many pages in before you encounter some polly filler by a female columnist implying men in general (or her man in particular) doesn’t pull his weight at home, while she majestically juggles family, work, and the burden of having a vagina which has the audacity to bleed once a month? How many pages before you encounter some self-flagellating male columnist admitting to same?

Let me state for the record that if being a man was easy, hookers wouldn’t exist. Fact.

Come now – being a woman does have its special challenges, and these can be frustrating, time-consuming, impenetrable to outsiders and even in some cases actively dangerous. But so does being a man. It’s called the human condition, innit.

Have you seen The Wrestler? Have you seen Hurt Locker? Those were two examples, in the last year alone, of me thinking damn… I am so glad I wasn’t born a man.

Bottom line, it takes a particular kind of self-consciously middle-class gynocentric view of the world to imagine that the only physical danger men face is in a war zone. As someone who has lived in more than a few dodgy neighborhoods – because sponging off my parents was categorically Not An Option – and been privy to the secrets and fears of my male friends, I do not think they have it easier than we of the XX-type. Different, yes. Easy, no.

There are elements of male life that, as a woman, I am exempt from. For the most part this is reciprocal: in most situations they will never have a fear of rape. But I almost never enter a room worried about who is sizing me up for fisticuffs. When my ex, the Boy, was attacked and sent to hospital with multiple skull fractures by six strangers who jumped out of a car onto him and his brother… I was not thinking, ‘well, at least he had it so much easier because he was male!’ The last time T came back from Brum with a bloodied lip and a torn shirt, it occurred to me yet again that there are plenty of situations that read as ‘Danger!’ to men in which I would get a free pass. Because I’m a girl.

And let us not forget that the sort of men who exercise violent dominance over women do not only do that to women.

But then, it must be beastly difficult to see that from the point of view of a B.A. in Women’s Studies surfing broadband in your parents’ spare room. Very difficult indeed.”

So there you are, that’s what one smart and honest woman thinks, too bad it’s dimwits like Harriet Harman and liars like Hillary Clinton who end up with all the power.

My personal view of prostitution is that hooking is a victimless crime, like wearing red socks with a black suit, and as for the rabid feminist’s question, of course men keep an eye out for danger, why wouldn’t they? After all, men get four times as much violence as women do – women get most of the rapes, men get most of everything else, including the murders! So yes, if you are a man you have to keep your eyes open or they may end up closed – permanently.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

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