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Derbs is a creepy, horrible man

Jill

His prostitution solution:

Prostitution, like drug trafficking, is one of those zones where libertarianism bumps up against the realities of human nature.

To a lover of liberty, it’s hard to see why a woman shouldn’t sell her favors if she wants to. Trouble is, weak or dimwitted women end up in near-slavery to unscrupulous men, and I think there’s a legitimate public interest in not letting that happen.

The best private sector solution would be a guild system, like the geishas had in old Japan. There’d be entry standards for the guild. Women would have to pass exams, and have some entertainment skills other than the obvious ones. The guild would police itself, expelling miscreants. Freelancing outside the guild could be under strong social disapproval, even made illegal.

Emphasis mine.

While women who are trafficked or forced into sex work are certainly not all “dimwitted” or “weak,” I think it’s safe to say that people who write for the National Review probably are (doubly so on the “dimwitted”). And comments like that are especially disgusting when they come from pervy borderline chi-mos like John “expiration date” Derbyshire.

45 thoughts on Derbs is a creepy, horrible man

  1. Why give this moron any publicity? Reading him is like being forced to watch some creep showing videos of himself masturbating, complete with subtitles about what a stud he is.

    I mean, this is somebody dumb enough to think that geisha houses were a “guild”.

  2. ewe. Though this kinda makes me want to chain Derb to a dirty mattress, cover him in makeup and then ask if he feels dimwitted and weak.

  3. You know, I can see what he was trying to say, I really can. I can follow the train of thought all the way up to the end of the idea. I understand what he is saying, I just can’t for the life of me understand how he came to that particular string of words to express the thought. Jesus. Its like watching a news story about a man saving a bunch of kids from a burning orphanage and then suddenly realizing he isn’t wearing any pants.

  5. I dunno…you get these guilds up and running, and next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to regulate working conditions. Can’t have that!

  6. Freelancing outside the guild could be under strong social disapproval, even made illegal.

    The cognitive dissonance. It burns!

  8. Does Derbyshire even realize that he’s basically suggesting… UNIONS?!

    That’s probably why he said “guilds.” Harkens back to the good old days of the 15th century, before said guilds started getting uppity and trying to interfere with the treatment of their members, their wages, exploitative situations, etc.

  9. Pretty much, Holly. I’m so taken aback, I don’t know where to begin. Unionized prostitutuion should be legal, but private entrepreneurship should be frowned upon? Made illegal? My feeble little brain is short-circuiting.

    Unions are good.
    Unionbusting is bad.

    Prostitution should be legal
    Prostitution should be legal, except when it should not be legal…and prostitution should not be legal unless one is a member of a union.

    I could go on.

  10. Isn’t this Derbyshire the same jerk who basically called the Virginia Tech shooting victims cowards for not “rushing” the gunman?

    My fondest hope is for Derbs to go up against a maniac armed to the teeth with automatic firearms and see how much “rushing” he’d do. Probably more like “gushing.”

  11. My fondest hope is for Derbs to go up against a maniac armed to the teeth with automatic firearms and see how much “rushing” he’d do. Probably more like “gushing.”

    The shooter at Virginia Tech used Semi-automatic weapons, not automatic ones.

  12. Five posts on Spitzer and the closest this feminist site gets to discussing the problems (or lack of? depending on one’s perspective) of prostitution is quoting someone who does an awful job of trying to address a real problem. come on!

    i’ll ask: i’d like to know people’s thoughts on whether prostitution should be legal or not.

    from what i’ve read one extreme says a woman should have the right to do whatever she wants with her body and the other extreme says that an extremely high percentage of the people who end up in this field are there because they were either abused as children, or have severe emotional problems and thus legalizing prostitution would encourage degrading these women (I’m not sure, but I think that’s Dworkin’s position, though he obviously would have expressed it far more artfully than I did).

    i guess the latter position basically hinges on a factual claim which, if not true, would probably be forced to yield to the former without any other principle.

  13. “Five posts on Spitzer and the closest this feminist site gets to discussing the problems (or lack of? depending on one’s perspective) of prostitution is quoting someone who does an awful job of trying to address a real problem. come on!”

    Probably because there were two or three sex-work posts something like a week ago.

    This one seems to be the closest one to “Sex work: discuss”. There are also a couple over on the front page of Pandagon, if you’re not necessarily looking for feministe-specific discussion.

  14. Okay, I’m sure what I’m about to do is absolutely reprehensible right now, but please hear me out.

    I honestly believe that when Derbs says “weak or dimwitted women end up in near-slavery” he is not speaking of “[those] who are trafficked or forced into sex work,” but of those who chose to go into sex work themselves. None of us like to admit it, but believe it or not, some women have chosen (on their own with little to no outside pressure) to go into that industry. I’m sorry, but not all women are strong, intelligent and capable, and those that have chosen to work in the sex industry more often than not do end up being severely taken advantage of.

    His proposition is almost entirely lifted from the former television seriesFirefly; in which, is a character by the name of Inara Serra, who makes a living as a Companion.

    That being said, everyone has solutions, but these solutions will only ever work in ideal situations. This world is not ideal, we must adapt our solutions to fit it and do the best we can with what we’ve got.

    Also, while I am personally very much not fond of the idea of ‘selling sex’, I do understand that it is going to happen no matter what, so please enlighten me, is it really wrong to regulate prostitution in an effort to try to protect those that choose to go into it?

  16. I’ll probably have a long interview w/ an attorney from The Sex Workers Project up tomorrow, but until then, probably not going to get into it.

  17. That’s probably why he said “guilds.” Harkens back to the good old days of the 15th century, before said guilds started getting uppity and trying to interfere with the treatment of their members, their wages, exploitative situations, etc.

    Bingo, Holly. Conservatives love to idealize medieval Europe and ancient Greece and Rome. They then position themselves as the intellectual inheritors of these civilizations and then affect terms like “guilds” in order to sound erudite, ignoring the fact that the social context has changed since guilds first began forming.

  18. His proposition is almost entirely lifted from the former television seriesFirefly; in which, is a character by the name of Inara Serra, who makes a living as a Companion.

    Some of us are familiar with Firefly, kat. Nice try though.

    Firefly shows us exactly one prostitute who isn’t part of the Companion guild (Inara, without irony, calls her ‘just a whore’), and she’s portrayed as intelligent, tough and likeable; we find out the reason she’s not a Companion is that she got tired of the hoity-toitiness and struck out (literally) on her own. We meet one other Companion in the series who’s a murderous, conniving psycho.

    So if you’re going to be a lapdog and rush around nodding eagerly at Derb’s victim-blaming, at least trying to get your patronizing references to SF television shows correct, eh?

  19. “I understand what he is saying, I just can’t for the life of me understand how he came to that particular string of words to express the thought.”

    Because people like Derb (many of whom, but not all, are conservatives) have an instinctive contempt for (female) weakness. They believe that being victimized is a result of some weakness in the (female) victim – if they were ‘strong’, like Derb, they wouldn’t have ‘let themselves’ be victimized – and so victims are weak and therefore contemptible. It’s the same worldview that sees poverty as an individual moral failure and blames rape victims for wearing short skirts: as long as Derb can successfully other anyone who’s being exploited or victimized, quite literally ‘blaming the victim’, he need not consider either his own complicity in the victimization (after all, he’s a relatively prominent supporter of a patriarchial culture that both exploits women and holds them in contempt for being exploited) or the possibility that he might become a victim himself.

  20. Because people like Derb (many of whom, but not all, are conservatives) have an instinctive contempt for (female) weakness. They believe that being victimized is a result of some weakness in the (female) victim – if they were ’strong’, like Derb, they wouldn’t have ‘let themselves’ be victimized – and so victims are weak and therefore contemptible. It’s the same worldview that sees poverty as an individual moral failure and blames rape victims for wearing short skirts: as long as Derb can successfully other anyone who’s being exploited or victimized, quite literally ‘blaming the victim’, he need not consider either his own complicity in the victimization (after all, he’s a relatively prominent supporter of a patriarchial culture that both exploits women and holds them in contempt for being exploited) or the possibility that he might become a victim himself.

    I think its possible you’ve missed the point of my comment. Derb (or really most people I disagree with) doesn’t sit around in a bright red leotard trying to figure out how to be more evil than he was yesterday. At the core he is trying to get an idea across, trying to propose a policy or advance a position. I understand where the position comes from, that wasn’t what shocked me. What shocked me was how he expressed it.

    I mean, I can think of quite a few colorful adjectives for Derb, but stupid or inexperienced doesn’t make the list. I’m more amazed that he would hamstring himself by using the words he used. Take, for example, someone putting forward and overtly racist argument. They might think “all people of X group are animals and subhuman.” Behind closed doors they might even vocalize their belief in exactly that way. But in mixed company they are far more likely to find other ways to express that belief, ways more likely to convince others.

  21. None of us like to admit it, but believe it or not, some women have chosen (on their own with little to no outside pressure) to go into that industry. I’m sorry, but not all women are strong, intelligent and capable, and those that have chosen to work in the sex industry more often than not do end up being severely taken advantage of.

    So… since Derbyshire was speaking in general about a plan for the sex industry… I take it you think most of the prostitution industry consists of “weak or dimwitted” women who chose to do sex work “with little or no outside pressure,” i.e. not trying to make ends meet, not stuck unable to do other kinds of work due to immigration or discrimination issues, etc? That’s a really interesting overlap — both privileged enough that they don’t feel any pressure, and also weak and dimwitted. Let me guess… you think sex workers are all blonde bimbos from the suburbs who can’t get acting jobs?

  22. I know a woman who graduated from UCLA with an MBA in law. Now she’s out there educating people on youth homelessness and trying to set up community funds to restore bad neighborhoods.

    Why?

    Because when she was 12 she was ditched off on the streets and left to fend for herself. She got forced into prostitution, ended up in juvie a few times, and eventually was able to meet some people who helped turn her life around.

    She was NEVER dimwitted or weak. She was forced into it against her will and did what she could to survive.

    Lots of homeless youth, especially women, end up as prostitutes. But it’s not a choice they get to make. And the longer we go on blaming them for being prostitutes, the longer we allow people to prostitute them.

  23. This is terribly phrased. Is he saying “women can do this if they like, but many are forced into it and we should watch out for that with regulation/unions”? Cuz that would be fine, but plain english, please.

  24. How about having choices for women that preclude the need for prostitution? Most of the hookers I’ve known did it for the drugs, teh menz, or the better working conditions. Yep, letting johns into your pants beat slaving at the local mill, pay was better and the mob took care of the lechers.

  25. I honestly believe that when Derbs says “weak or dimwitted women end up in near-slavery” he is not speaking of “[those] who are trafficked or forced into sex work,” but of those who chose to go into sex work themselves. None of us like to admit it, but believe it or not, some women have chosen (on their own with little to no outside pressure) to go into that industry. I’m sorry, but not all women are strong, intelligent and capable, and those that have chosen to work in the sex industry more often than not do end up being severely taken advantage of.

    Wow. Really?
    Because, uh… I have no problem admitting that there are those who choose to go into sex work themselves. In fact, I fairly regularly read some of the blogs of sex workers who, as far as I can tell, are doing the work because they choose to. And the implication that only weak, stupid, incapable women choose to get into sex work is offensive on more levels than I care to count. Does being dismissed as an idiot constitute “severely taken advantage of”?

    Also, while I am personally very much not fond of the idea of ’selling sex’, I do understand that it is going to happen no matter what, so please enlighten me, is it really wrong to regulate prostitution in an effort to try to protect those that choose to go into it?

    Personally: Depends on what you mean by “regulate”. If that includes throwing women in jail? Yes, that’s wrong. If it means helping them gain the kinds of employment rights and protections that most of the rest of our workforce enjoy? Maybe not.

  26. Yes, Derbs’ words indicate that he may be a “creepy, horrible man.” But he didn’t rent the body of an abused, formerly homeless and drug-using runaway from a broken home who was barely out of her teens, possibly sharing or augmenting whatever STD’s he may have acquired over a decade of similar transactions. So I’m surprised that the words “Derbs is a creepy, horrible man” appeared in this blog before the words “Spitzer is a creepy, horrible man” did. Indeed, the last description of Spitzer was as “the governor [I] absolutely adore,” qualified only by the characterization of his situation as “sad” (as if he were the victim rather than the perpetrator of the tragedy).

  27. Because people like Derb (many of whom, but not all, are conservatives) have an instinctive contempt for (female) weakness. They believe that being victimized is a result of some weakness in the (female) victim – if they were ’strong’, like Derb, they wouldn’t have ‘let themselves’ be victimized – and so victims are weak and therefore contemptible.

    Which also explains his whole argument that the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings deserved to die because they didn’t “fight back.”

    Derb is under the impression that Die Hard was a documentary, apparently.

  28. But he didn’t rent the body of an abused, formerly homeless and drug-using runaway from a broken home who was barely out of her teens, possibly sharing or augmenting whatever STD’s he may have acquired over a decade of similar transactions… that we know of.

    There, fixed that for you. Given Derb’s background in the entertainment industry (you did see the clip of him in that Bruce Lee movie, right?), it’s a little naive to declare that clearly his background must be cleaner than Spitzer’s. Because, as we all know, the entertainment industry is a bastion of clean living and high moral values (and I say that as someone who works in the entertainment industry) and no one there would ever use drugs or be caught with a prostitute.

  29. Five posts on Spitzer and the closest this feminist site gets to discussing the problems (or lack of? depending on one’s perspective) of prostitution is quoting someone who does an awful job of trying to address a real problem. come on!

    Right, I’m so sorry — I forgot that we exist totally at your pleasure!

    Look. I’m in law school full-time. I also work 30 hours a week. I write on this blog for no money, and so I do it when I feel like it and when I have time. This week has been busy. If you have something to say, I hear blogger will give you a blog for free, and then you won’t have to be put out by the fact that we aren’t writing about every topic you’d like us to.

  30. So I’m surprised that the words “Derbs is a creepy, horrible man” appeared in this blog before the words “Spitzer is a creepy, horrible man” did. Indeed, the last description of Spitzer was as “the governor [I] absolutely adore,” qualified only by the characterization of his situation as “sad” (as if he were the victim rather than the perpetrator of the tragedy).

    Thats because Derb was describing women who make choices or are in circumstances he dislikes as weak and stupid while Spitzer was having sex for money. Put another way, Derb was being horrible and creepy, Spitzer was doing something some members of society frown upon. Sure, he’s an asshole for being a hypocrite and a scumbag for cheating on his wife, but that doesn’t exactly hit the same notes that Derb did. Different adjectives for different things, you know?

  31. Derb (or really most people I disagree with) doesn’t sit around in a bright red leotard trying to figure out how to be more evil than he was yesterday.

    Oy, what a mental picture! Now where did I put bottle of brain bleach?

  32. The shooter at Virginia Tech used Semi-automatic weapons, not automatic ones.

    Oh. I’m sure that would make a big difference in Derbyshire’s theoretical heroics.

  34. I played with Derb’s comment to try to make it both true and not insulting and victim-blaming, and here’s what I came up with: The vulnerable end up in near-slavery to the unscrupulous. As far as I can tell, that’s life under patriarchy/capitalism in a nutshell. Surely he’s not advocating doing away with either of those?

  35. Think baby steps here. This guy seems to be a free market fetishist who dimly realizes the power differential between service provider and customer makes the willing-buyer/willing-seller Libertarian mantra inapplicable here. Next he will learn the Easter Bunny does not lay colored hardboiled eggs.

    I’m guessing he was raised without much human interaction, judging from his gratuitous insulting of women and his drawing a solution from science fiction. Without intervention, he will believe himself to be a Nice Guy (TM)

  36. Funny you should mention Firefly. The high class hooker has status, wealth, ease, and protection. The low class whore is disposable, nameless, poor, and forced into overuse. Not to much different from our own issues.

    Male cultures have long had rewards for the fortunate. Hookers with intellect and sophistication were the province of our dads, the Greeks. Many of our elites have had dalliances with mistresses. Kind of “my wife doesn’t work”.

    Stop placing your selves into the picture and look at it from the view of Jane Sixpak. Sleeping around won’t get you sorority points. It labels you as “fair game” for everyone and their cousins. Your bride-price plummets. The men that will have you are not the kindest in the land. Let’s be real, most of our working class still operates under the philosophy of feudalism.

  37. The best private sector solution would be a guild system, like the geishas had in old Japan.

    FFS. The geisha system in Japan didn’t mean that there was no regular prostitution. Geishas were for the very wealthy, the aristcrats. But there was plenty of unvarnished prostitution, where you paid your money and got sex, sans the witty conversation and songs and poetry.

    Granted, I *do* think all sex workers should be unionized. But hey, I’m a sex-hating Stalinist. 😉

  38. Oh. I’m sure that would make a big difference in Derbyshire’s theoretical heroics.

    Oh, I’m sure it wouldn’t, its just a pet peeve of mine. Accuracy in these kinds of things is important because a lot of people on both sides of the gun control debate often don’t know what they’re talking about. Sorry if my own personality quirks were misread.

  39. Accuracy in these kinds of things is important because a lot of people on both sides of the gun control debate often don’t know what they’re talking about.

    Actuallly, William, you’re right, and I remember how one politician in particular tried to advantage of that situation.

    A few years ago, an Illinois state legislator who shall be known here as The Weasel was running for the U.S. Senate. Gun control was a big issue in Illinois at the time—specifically, the state was debating a ban on semiautomatic weapons.

    The Weasel issued several press releases about how he favored a ban on automatic weapons, which, as you probably know, have been illegal for civilians to possess in this country for decades.

    I don’t know how many people he fooled with this (a prominent Chicago Tribune columnist called him on it), but he didn’t win the election.

  40. jill (29):

    first. calm down. for some reason or another, if someone disagrees with you on any topic then for eternity whatever they write you react to it as if it was written in a tone that they’re screaming at you.

    second. i said that five posts had been put up on spizter. as a feminist site (with several law students/attorneys running it) i was surprised the question whether prostitution ought to be legalized or not was not one of them. so i don’t even understand your response. i was talking about the site as a whole, not specifically you. moreover, it was a comment about why those five posts before this one.

    third. as i’ve said before, i’m aware it’s your site. i made that comment a couple of times like when you wanted to act like a jerk to me but expected me to never respond in kind. i said fine.

    so relax. even if i disagree with 95% of what you write, and your tone in 99% of your posts, i still enjoy the site to see what those like you have to say.

  41. jill (29):

    first. calm down. for some reason or another, if someone disagrees with you on any topic then for eternity whatever they write you react to it as if it was written in a tone that they’re screaming at you.

    No, that tone is generally reserved for annoying commenters who only come here to leave obnoxious, ignorant comments. And this one was particularly condescending. Please do not tell me to “calm down” or to “relax,” or I will kindly tell you to fuck off, because you are on my last nerve.

  42. Derbs links this at the end of his screed.

    Can anyone tell me what in Sweet Jesus’ thorny crown this is supposed to be?

  43. geez. ok. don’t calm down. but i do wish you could deal with disagreement, especially given the way you, and everyone on this site, dish it out.

  44. Derbs links this at the end of his screed.

    Can anyone tell me what in Sweet Jesus’ thorny crown this is supposed to be?

    It would appear to be a sappy love song dubbed over scenes featuring two characters in the TV show Firefly. I’m guessing its there because the woman (Inara) is a member of the Companions Guild, which is heavily based on the old Japanese Geisha system. The show also had some pretty hardcore free market/libertarian themes, so thats probably a bonus.

  45. Harkens back to the good old days of the 15th century, before said guilds started getting uppity and trying to interfere with the treatment of their members, their wages, exploitative situations, etc.

    The guilds used the apparatus of the state as well as collective action to retain their monopoly power. If you were accepted as a full member of a guild, you had it made.

    Also the Writers’ Guild and the Screen Actors’ Guild are not exactly pushovers. Guild seems like it’s still a term in vogue for artists who practice an individual craft.

    I know a woman who graduated from UCLA with an MBA in law. Now she’s out there educating people on youth homelessness and trying to set up community funds to restore bad neighborhoods.

    Why?

    Because when she was 12 she was ditched off on the streets and left to fend for herself. She got forced into prostitution, ended up in juvie a few times, and eventually was able to meet some people who helped turn her life around.

    She was NEVER dimwitted or weak. She was forced into it against her will and did what she could to survive.

    Generally, when someone is “forced” into doing something, it is because that person is weaker than the person doing the forcing. It looks like you were so upset by the use of a negative term like “weak” that you couldn’t read right. Derbyshire is just pointing out the same thing I see again and again in feminist discussions; that there’s often a significant power imbalance and someone being taken advantage of, even when there’s no explicit coercion.

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