Who's zooming whom?

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED:

Warren Kinsella asks for my ''feminist'' reaction to his latest National Post column (pdf) about the ads at the back of Toronto's weekly alternative papers Now and Eye Weekly, the latter being owned by Torstar (which owns the Star which owns this blog but not me.)

There can't be much doubt what they are selling, or what they do to make money. Sasa, Yuki and Mimi are not that subtle. They are "Asian Babies," and you can rent their bodies -- or the bodies of three other girls -- for $80, 24 hours a day, in and around a northeast Toronto neighbourhood.

The postage-sized colour photographs that accompany their advertisement show Sasa, Yuki and Mimi nude, or partially nude. The display ad claims that they are over the age of 19, but the photographs seem designed to suggest they're much younger.

There are many more such advertisements, offering the services of dozens of other prostitutes. A "new student" who is "slim" and who will provide a "nude oral" for $50. Others will wear "school uniforms," without panties, for $240 an hour. A "baby girl" who "luves 2 please." From Japan and Singapore, "young, slim sweet girls" who provide "full service" for $80. On and on it goes like that, for 10 pages.

Not that I am in the habit of doing Kinsella's bidness nor do I speak for Torstar but here's what I think ... as a feminist:

(1) As long as the women are consenting adults and working of their own free will in clean and safe environments, free of exploitative bosses, you go girls.

(2) Better clean, safe, non-exploitative prostitution for women -- so women can make an (in)decent living  -- than child porn, rape, incest or pedophilia.

(3) If these women are selling their services directly to clients and cutting out the middlemen who demand their piece of the action -- really, is there anything lower than a pimp? -- than the ads are a good thing.

(4) Why is Kinsella fixated on the "Asian'' women? Why not the white ones, or the black ones, or the trannies?

(5) Would Kinsella propose that the girls work the streets? (Perhaps he would welcome them in his pleasant east end Toronto neighbourhood?)

(6) The fashion, cosmetics, diet and cosmetic surgery industries use real 14 and 15 year olds all the time in ways that make grown-up women feel inadequate. As a result they resort to spending billions on trying to make themselves look like they're 15 year olds made up to look like 19 year olds. Now that's exploitation.

(7) I have always believed that men, as a whole, are the ones more exploited by the sex industries. Online porn, for example, is by far the biggest business on the web. How much money to men spend for a peek?

(8) Excuse me but does Kinsella ever stay up late to watch some of the infomercials all over the dial including on CanWest's Global?

(9) How come Kinsella isn't listed on the Post's columnist page?

(10) Why has Kinsella still not discussed the single most damaging media story in Canada of the century, the false Iranian badges report on the front of the Post?

UPPITY DATE: Commenter ''Floyd Bister'' (hah!) claims Kinsella did ''write about'' the badges story. Sorry, but that's not discussing it. Not when he just mentions it, almost in passing, in an 800 word column defending the Post's conservative tilt.

What readers need to be protected from, in my opinion, are egregious errors of fact. When the Post recently made a big one -- in respect of an alleged Iranian plan to oblige Jews and some other religious minorities to wear distinctive badges -- it published a lengthy apology and retraction that will not soon be forgotten.

The National Post need not apologize for its conservative editorial tilt, however. I say that on behalf of all the other unreconstructed communist pamphleteers who are also paid to write for it.

LEGAL DATE: Some of you seem to think Kinsella wrote that prostitution is illegal. He did not. Just want to be clear on that, as Ti-Guy points out here. Carry on.

 

Comments

[sooey]

heheh - you should post as "sailor moon" cruising for "afternoon fun" with "mature punk rockers" who like "consulting after hours" on myspace.com, ms zerb. see if you get any "bites"...

[Politiquevert]

Ya gotta love Kinsella, Pied Piper to fratboys everywhere. His blog's just one big keg party for alpha male liblog. Lotta girls invited too, check out all the chick bloggers he links to. Oh, right, not so much interested in the feminine point of view.

[Lloyd Fister]

Lawyer Kinsella mistakenly says prostitution is illegal in Canada. It's not. And does he oppose free speech for sex workers? Who else does he want to stifle?

[sheena]

That totally sounds inspired by getting caught red-handed reading the back pages and having to scramble to explain it as "research".

[Mark-Alan Whittle]

I see you two are at it again, will Warren ever learn?

He's never been the same since Jean Chretien self imolated under the weight of his own arrogance.

When you're of a like mind, it hurts.

Prostitution is all about supply and demand, just like the work Warren does, and we don't usualy refer to him as a 'prostitute' no matter how much he acts like one for the National Post.

Can you picture him in drag on young street, could he stop traffic like the regulars, like Enza?

Those girls do a noble job and deserve just as much respect as the next person, even Warren Kinsella.

It's been that way since the beginning of time, Miller should take over service delivery and management of the local operations, get the girls signed up with his union stooges at CUPE and charge an entertainment tax on every customer they book through their municipal call centre.

Gotta' be enough limos stashed down at Toronto City Hall to make a real go of it.

Now that's cleaning up the streets, isn't it AZ?

Look to the west, they've already got the ball rolling, now that they have a new mayor from the far, far left of the socialist spectrum.

He thinks Castro was Trudeau.

Miller Lite.

I think it was Vancouver, some guy named Sam was spouting off about it recently.

Maybe he's onto something?

[Big G]

I think WK has a crush on AZ and is too much of a geek to ask for a date.

[Michael]

Wow, WK's blog post read like a desperate plea for attention.

"Please read me! Please react to me! And if you don't, well, I predicted as much!"

[hbo]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/05/12/notes051206.DTL&type=printable

Obviously Sasa, Yuki and Mimi didn't have a decent, loving father.....or a ball gown (if they did they'd be wearing it in their ad, right?)

[Ti-Guy]

Pass the popcorn. I live for this stuff. I just hope ol' Warsy drops by. *grin*

[Floyd Bister]

Kinsella did write about the Post's error the week after the event, and wrote that it was an egregious, massive error, or something to that effect, and one that would be discussed for years to come.

[hbo]

"(6) The fashion, cosmetics, diet and cosmetic surgery industries use real 14 and 15 year olds all the time in ways that make grown-up women feel inadequate. As a result they resort to spending billions on trying to make themselves look like they're 15 year olds made up to look like 19 year olds. Now that's exploitation."

Absolutely. But they are not only after us old, wrinkly women with greying hair and low self-esteem, who should know better than to fall for that crap, they are after my 7 year old daughter and her peers. There are a host of fashion and beauty magazines out their that target her age group.

JUST LEAVE HER ALONE - as far as she is concerned she is perfect.

[Dean]

Any day now I'm expecting an announcement to the effect that Mr. Kinsella will be working for the Conservatives. He has had little to do with the Liberals since Martin took over, he writes for the Post (many of his columns there slag the Star in some way, or otherwise say "yaay Post!!"), and frequently praises Harper and Co. The praise seems to go beyond a "we're on opposite sides, but I respect you" sort of way.

Nothing to do with Eye or the matter at hand, just an observation. BTW Hasn't the porn side of the 'net taken away some of that revenue?

[Dan Gardner]

Antonia, I've done a lot of writing about prostitution over the years and I can tell you two facts which every vice cop knows: First, the violence, degradation and misery associated with prostitution occurs overwhelmingly on the street, not off. Second, street prostitution has significantly declined over the last decade, thanks to the availability of cell phones, the Internet and, yes, those dirty little ads in the back of alternative newspapers.

If posturing moralists like Kinsella have some magic new solution that will erase prostitution altogether, I'd love to hear it. Until then, we're left with a choice between offending Warren's sense of righteousness or allowing women (and men) to do what they're going to do anyway in the safest and least disruptive way possible.

Hmmm... On one side, Warren's tender feelings. One the other, the lives of vulnerable women. What to do, what to do....

[thickslab]

Predicted reaction of the self-professed media columnist at the National Post to Antonia's question 10?

[Chirping of crickets, hissing of lawn sprinklers, ad infinitum.]

Yeah, exactly.

[Eye Guy]

and:

11). The National Post, a wholly owned property of CanWest Global, accepts adult escort advertising in their own classifieds section -- see for eg. Pg. S10 of the June 7 issue: "3 upscale well-appointed in-call locations, Blondes, Brunettes, Redheads, etc. 24-hours...". I'd hesitate to call what Warren Kinsella's employers are doing pimping, because it's not. But this moralistic hypocrite may want to have a look at his own garden before he starts tending yours and mine.

[Mark]

I think that Warren Kinsella is the kind of person who would say something along the lines of "well would you want someone you cared about to be a prostitute" when having a debate on wether or not prostitution should be legalized for consenting adults.

My response to these people is simple. There are worse things than (freely choosing) to be a prostitute. Like being a, murdered, raped, beaten or robed prostitute.

It's middle class morality which seeks to "rescue or save" women (and men, but only as a by product) by making life as unpleasant and dangerous as possible for them. It's this mentality that pushes prostitutes into back lain's, darkened side streets, and strangers cars.

If adds in the back of newspapers assists prostitutes in making there live's easier and safer, what decent person could possible take issue with this? In fact, isn't it fair to say that anyone who would take issue with this, could not truly claim to be a decent person at all?

Mark

[sooey]

dan gardner?! my favourite columnist! is that really you?!

[Jiminy C]

Since Worn seems to have got himself wound up over this Antonia - I think your appropriate reply should be - Don't get your knickers in a knot, Warren!

[sooey]

oops, i mean - second. ... third. okay fourth. there. fourth favourite columnist. is that really you?!

ARE YOU BITTER, WAR?

(Full disclosure: About 10 years ago, I was a pseudonymous political columnist for Eye Weekly. Once, I derided the hooker ads at the rear of the paper, but the offending words were removed by an editor, no explanation given. I was fired not long after writing a couple of columns critical of Paul Martin, Torstar's then-preferred Liberal leader.)

[Bill-Muskoka]

hbo,

'Absolutely. But they are not only after us old, wrinkly women with greying hair and low self-esteem, who should know better than to fall for that crap, they are after my 7 year old daughter and her peers.'

There was a sci-fi movie, 'Catwoman', we recently watched on DVD where the bad corporate guy developed a face cream that HAD TO BE USED REGULARLY or the face turned into a massive mess of denigrated tissue.

Consider the ingredients in, say eye shadow or lipstick (developed to 'lubricate' a woman's lips for, well take a guess, eh!): colourant, sperm whale oil, binders.

Production cost of the usable product is measured in mils (thousandths of a cent) and sold for what? WHOPPING PROFITS!

The bloody packaging costs ten thousand times what the product is worth, and it gets buried in landfills as a non bio-degradable waste!

Thankfully, cremation has caught on and the bodies are not taking up all that valuable space for new and expanded landfill sites to bury all the packaging trash!

[Bill-Muskoka]

Mark-Alan Whittle,

'Prostitution is all about supply and demand, just like the work Warren does, and we don't usualy refer to him as a 'prostitute' no matter how much he acts like one for the National Post.'

Recall that the primary difference between a prostitute and a whore is the prostitute will tell you up front what you get and what it will cost.

The whore, on the other hand, pretends they love you, care about you, and are looking out for your best interest out of love!

Want to change your opinion? Feel free mon ami! I know, its just semantics, but very useful!

[Lloyd Fister]

Maybe Eye didn't like Fury's Hour very much.

[matt]

Soooo...while prostitution is legal, "living" on its avails is not (the legal test for which is deriving a 'not de minimis income'). Given the conclusions of both WK and AZ, should publishers then be prosecuted? Those ads aren't cheap to post. Moreover, public communication for the purpose of prostitution isn't legal, and it is an offence to be a party to an offence. Same question results: should publishers be prosecuted? If not, why should anyone else?

[Ti-Guy]

"Lawyer Kinsella mistakenly says prostitution is illegal in Canada."

Where did he say that? Because, if true, that's pretty damn weak. Even someone like me (who needs a cheat-sheet every time someone talks about Canada's prostitution laws) knows that's false. Prostitution is not illegal in Canada.