Donald Trump has not been accused of paying for sex, but several supporters protesting outside of his trial on Monday wanted to make it clear that they have. It seems the crowds that come out to protest the persecution of the former president are getting smaller, and weirder
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Today, however, the crowd had thinned to a handful of true believers and true characters – those who don’t leave their house without a giant flag, a bullhorn, and an offensive T-shirt they made themselves.
It’s not only that the crowds are getting smaller, it’s that they are getting significantly weirder.
Of the people willing to step up to a microphone outside the courthouse and defend Mr Trump for allegedly paying off a porn star to hide his alleged affair from prospective voters, two offered something of a wild defence: that they opposed the charges because they too had paid for sex on more than one occasion, and assumed most men had done the same.
It didn’t matter to them that Mr Trump is not being accused of paying for sex, but rather accused of having embarked on several extra-marital affairs and falsifying business records over payments made to hide those affairs from the voting public in 2016.
Sex work is work. And if it’s work, there are customers.
There’s probably a long list of reasons to criticize these Trump supporters, including not understanding what this case in particular is about, but being customers of sex work ain’t it.
Demonizing customers of sex work maintains the taboo and hurts the movement to legitimize, legalize, regulate, and provide normal employment benefits to sex work.
Conservatives love to hate on sex workers, particularly when they are migrants or POC or (God help us all) LGBT.
The prevailing view of Republicans in this moment is that Stormy Daniels is trying to extort Trump for more money and using the NY Southern District as leverage.
Far from demonizing customers, this view holds the client up as a victim and the sex worker as some kind of intrusive parasite who has failed to know her place.
Totally agree with you. But this:
Is because their golden god can do no wrong. That every law he broke was somehow not his fault, and clearly the fault of the accuser or corrupt prosecutors. They will shift the focus away from an argument they can’t win, campaign funds being used for non-campaign purposes, to anything they can get the base whipped up about.
But my complaint isn’t even about that. My problem is that this article demonizes these Trump supporters for one wrong reason. That characterizing customers of sex work as weirdos for admitting it, regardless of their presidential candidate of choice, hurts the effort to legitimize sex work. There’s a lot of fish in the barrel of criticism for this group, no need for the author and OP to support a conservative anti-sex work narrative at the same time.
I think its a more broad understanding of sex workers as disposable playthings.
There’s a general generic insult in modern media that boils down to “you’re fat and ugly and nobody wants to fuck you”. And the anti-Trumpers latch on to people visiting sex workers as an opportunity to hurl out this age-old insult. If this was an article about a movie star or popular musician admitting to patroning sex workers, I doubt the criticisms would match.
If conservatives really don’t like sex work because it is exploitative, they should want capitalism eradicated. It kinda shows the real reason they actually don’t like sex work.
Conservatives don’t like sex work because it ruins the “wife will submit to her husband” power dynamic around sex they were taught is the norm.
Sex work being illegal, and as a result inherently ripe for exploitation, is the feature not a bug to conservatives.
Wait! Is prostitution legal in the US?
Only in Nevada, in the form of brothels. And they only operate in a handful of counties.
yeah. I’m not opposed to giving them the wall, but I’m a little opposed to slut shaming them.
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But it’s also about “weirdos” who admit to paying for sex.