Prostitution: Yay, or Nay ?
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Prostitution -- like most consensual crimes -- is legal if you have enough money to afford it. And, of course, the good sense to be discreet about it. Escort services are one example...
Like most "moral" issues, they only apply to the class-consciousness that believe the fetters are actually there. I think it really boils down to an income inequality issue, but many people disguise it in their brain as some sort of ethical nonsense. Oh, and there's that whole oxytocin business, too.
Sex on demand is not an issue if your bank account is large enough. The laws seem to apply to the ones that are not able to afford more discreet services...
Anyway:
There is no law beyond Do who thou wilt.
Let's face it -- monogamy, dating, etc. can sometimes be an excuse for "legal" prostitution. Sex in exchange for goods and services could apply to many marriages. And "friends with benefits" does not just refer to coitus -- sometimes, it's just a matter of picking up the bill for sushi and sake before "dessert."
@ David -- thanks for those excerpts! Would Crowley have kept an archive if he had an Iphone? Methinks his money magick would have taken on a whole new ineffable light!
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@ACwroteAzoetiaAt19 said
"@Jim if it was completely professional with std tests and security and protection for the male and female workers than yes this would be ok. Legalize it but it must be profesional and safe this will take crime and drugs out of it. At kasper lol spoken like a twenty year old yes I went off topic but once uve been on this planet longer u won't be so naive about relationships."
That would be exactly the idea.
Ever hear of an organization called C.O.Y.OT.E.? (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics.) It was the successor of W.H.O. (Whores, Housewives & Others). I had a long lunch with Margot St. James sometime in the late '70s at a 4S conference where we were both speaking and, though the basic idea had been clear to me before, she really nailed the point. Laws against prostitution are all wrong for all sorts of reasons that I'm sure I don't have to itemize. Her activism in Rhode Island centered on both civil rights and discriminatory prosecution angles, and she was credited with ending the criminalization of prostitution in Rhode Island for 30 years.
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Sounds good Jim . And sorry Kasper I should not have pulled age card went thru a bad breakup last year . I mean I'm over it now its just I need to set up better ways to protect myself and take my time to get to know someone . Sorry bout that
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@Jim Eshelman said
"
@ACwroteAzoetiaAt19 said
"Well cultural mores have nothing to do with stds and HIV and aids . Doesn't matter ure specific cultural viewpoint, infection, disease, can be the result. Than there's pregnancy and complications with that. If sex was meant to be shared openly oh so beautiful lets just all screw, lol wouldn't be diseases related to the act."These problems are all solved by legalized prostitution governed by the same business laws (including health laws) as every other business. The problem is easily resolvable."
I agree with the above. It's the EXPLOITATION of women that is the problem and that can only occur provided the act itself and the transaction is illegal and criminalized. Make it legal and it can become like any business and women can work for themselves, if they choose. But as Crowley mentioned, as the law of the
new Aeon dawns and comes to fruition prostitution may become the appendix of society, and thus ephemeral and useless. -
@milkboxx my god did u just come up with that response off the top of ure head , Jesus I hope I can be born with an I.Q. Like that in my next lifetime and others that speak that way on here , geez I'm not able to do so but I guess we are all born with gifts
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@milkBoxx said
"It's the EXPLOITATION of women that is the problem and that can only occur provided the act itself and the transaction is illegal and criminalized. Make it legal and it can become like any business and women can work for themselves, if they choose."
Given ACwrote's praise for this, I feel compelled to point out that it strikes me as mostly incorrect.
I'll accept that one can better control for STDs and inhumane working conditions in a legal rather than criminal context. But that alone won't do away with exploitation, at all. Walmart workers can be exploited too, you know. And yeah, I guess, "woman can work for themselves, if they choose," but I highly doubt that legalizing prostitution would eradicate the creature called pimp.
It might be that legalization is the right way to go, but a panacea it is not.
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These ladies of the night hold up red lamps,
And those who know, they cum, they greet HER
Exchange of solar energies, a coupling
Where there is only operation, there is nothing
No emotional ties, the ritual binds
The Earth with the Heights of HeavenBy utilizing a prostitute, one may more easily detach,
Leaving operation unobscured by entanglements -
And able to be concentrated upon a single goal,
Attaining A Sense One Is Whole -
@kasper81 said
"Did you grow up in an Amish community?"
No.
Did you grow up around anyone who went hunting almost nightly for new whores to fuck, to bathhouses regularly for blowjobs from strangers, and who wanked in between furiously, seeking thereby to conjure money, wisdom, love and power while claiming it was all done to fulfill a sanctified higher purpose?
Would you follow a living guru who behaved like this?
What would your mother say? Or your girlfriend/wife?
Crowley's behavior was by any account abnormal. It would be considered by most deeply pathological. Although I have come to adopt much of his worldview, I had not confronted how aberrant Crowley was as a man, even by today's more libertine standards. I had not, in other words, found the need to sort Thelema from Crowleyana. Having read these diaries, I now think this is critical. Especially if one wants to share this worldview newly with others.
Like I said, I suspect many who fashion themselves Thelemites haven't made this distinction. They haven't confronted how nasty "do what thou wilt" can become, what extremes it permits. And they probably haven't looked at how an affiliation with a quasi-religion founded by Crowley could be used to cast its adherents as perverts. This has potentially dire real world consequences, particularly if you work in a professional or political setting, or if you have or work with children.
So unless you are already a deviant (or psychopath) and just don't give a care what anyone else thinks of you, these things are important to recognize and to be prepared to address when they come up. Simply put, Crowley was not being at all hyperbolic when he wrote the following in Liber CL:
"...History teacheth us that the supreme masters of the world seek ever the vilest and most horrible creatures for their concubines, overstepping even the limiting laws of sex and species in their necessity to transcend normality. It is not enough in such natures to excite lust or passion: the imagination itself must be enflamed by every means."
I admit that I'm struggling to be OK with his "every means," but, as I do so, I find that I am penetrating to a new understanding of the Law. -
[rant]
Most of what was said in this thread makes me think the following things:
- By all means, quite some of you guys should really see into it that you get some, regularly, make that a number one priority, before posting again!
- Relax. Really, relax. Relax!!!
- missmaggiemayhem.com/
- Grow up. Please.
One of you has still deserved special notice:
@David S said
"What would your mother say?"
You seriously think about what your mother would say when deciding what kind of sex to have? WTF?
@Liber Al said
"Also, take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will!"
This thread is painful to read ... as if I had entered a catholic convent or somesuch
[/rant]
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@David S said
"Crowley's behavior was by any account abnormal."
Then again, so were his results.
I'm not saying one necessarily has to be so abnormal (and I'm certainly not saying one has to follow Crowely's behavior pattern). Then again, we're all in some kind of closet, don't you think?
"It would be considered by most deeply pathological."
I find it rather exciting and gratifying that someone who saw things differently from other people, thought about things differently than other people, and followed a personal ethical code at odds with that by which most people live... had a psychological and spiritual outcome quite different of that from most people. As anecdotal examples go, it's a rather striking one.
"Although I have come to adopt much of his worldview, I had not confronted how aberrant Crowley was as a man, even by today's more libertine standards."
And I'm sure you haven't read his diaries from thje '40s, in his late 60s and early 70s, which are filled with an insane amount of sex and, primarily, coprophilia.
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Agreed.To me, the most important lesson is: Stop trying to have a religion built around One Perfect Man Who Is Without Flaw. The genius thing that Crowley's life teaches is that enormous attainment is not a consequence of being sinless, and probably isn't per se a consequence of being "sinful" (though some would argue that) - rather, it is simply that imperfect people can have enormous attainment. It isn't a moral issue. The message is never the messenger.
Our system is about the idea, not the ideator.
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@Simon Iff said
"* By all means, quite some of you guys should really see into it that you get some, regularly, make that a number one priority, before posting again!"
Check:
22 years old. Blue eyed girl -- beautiful with very white skin, of Jewish descent. Short dark hair, a blue streak in it, kind of cut like Skrillex on one side. A few facial piercings. Tattoo of ATU X on her left arm, which was based on a scene taken from a T.S. Eliot poem. Rolled her bean until my beanstalk grew. Enjoyed some other garden variety plants as a sacrament prior...
Yoni without an inferior or a superior beard.
@David S said
"Crowley's behavior was by any account abnormal."
@Jim Eshelman said
"Then again, so were his results. I'm not saying one necessarily has to be so abnormal (and I'm certainly not saying one has to follow Crowely's behavior pattern). Then again, we're all in some kind of closet, don't you think? "
What are you insinuating with the closet comment?
Seriously though, accounts can be abnormal -- but what makes them abnormal? The consensus, right? However, this is a consensual crime -- and coprophilia would fall into the same category. No one hurts anyone else -- who cares if someone calls it abnormal? Evolution starts as an "abnormal" adaptation, better suited for the environment...
Btw - I think watching TV is abnormal.
Listen, I'm not saying we should try to make chicken salad out of chicken sh*t. It's just that arguments always scare me if we appeal to them because they're "normal," but they aren't really hurting anybody but our individual sensibilities and preferences...
@Jim Eshelman said
"To me, the most important lesson is: Stop trying to have a religion built around One Perfect Man Who Is Without Flaw. The genius thing that Crowley's life teaches is that enormous attainment is not a consequence of being sinless, and probably isn't per se a consequence of being "sinful" (though some would argue that) - rather, it is simply that imperfect people can have enormous attainment. It isn't a moral issue. The message is never the messenger. Our system is about the idea, not the ideator."
Yes! The difference between atavistic dogmatism and a living, evolving system. Crowley was cool, yes -- but he borrowed heavily on the pioneers that came before him. He was just another cog in the ROTA...and we should be pressing on with the system...which we are.
To me, what Crowley represented is someone who experimented without care for any stigmas, and he kept challenging his own. He realized he could manipulate his excitement levels at will.
He was his own programmer! What freedom! And he seemed to have a blast...
The Magician should devise for himself a definite technique for destroying “evil.” The essence of such a practice will consist in training the mind and the body to confront things which case fear, pain, disgust, shame and the like. He must learn to endure them, then to become indifferent to them, then to become indifferent to them, then to analyze them until they give pleasure and instruction, and finally to appreciate them for their own sake, as aspects of Truth. When this has been done, he should abandon them, if they are really harmful in relation to health and comfort. Also, our selction of “evils” is limited to those that cannot damage us irreparably. E.g., one ought to practice smelling assafoetida until one likes it; but not arsine or hydrocyanic acid. Again, one might have a liaison with an ugly old woman until one beheld and loved the star which she is; it would be too dangerous to overcome the distaste for dishonesty by forcing oneself to pick pockets. Acts which are essentially dishonourable must not be done; they should be justified only by calm contemplation of their correctness in abstract cases.
Love is a virtue; it grows stronger and purer and less selfish by applying it to what it loathes; but theft is a vice involving the slave-idea that one’s neighbour is superior to oneself. It is admirable only for its power to develop certain moral and mental qualities in primitive types, to prevent the atrophy of such faculties as our own vigilance, and for the interest which it adds to the “tragedy, Man.”
[...]
This then in the virtue of the Magick of The Beast 666, and the canon of its proper useage; to destroy the tendency to discriminate between any two things in theory, and in practice to pierce the veils of every sanctuary, pressing forward to embrace every image; for there is none that is not very Isis...
*
All this talk about prostitution is making me super wet. -
@David S said
"Crowley's behavior was by any account abnormal."
Have a look at the line at which psychological, healthcare and sociological professionals currently tend to draw the objective line between healthy and pathological behaviour:
"Any sexual behaviour that is consensual and does not endanger oneself or others, is to be considered healthy; while anything that oversteps that line is to be considered pathological."
@Crowley said
"... our selection of “evils” is limited to those that cannot damage us irreparably. E.g., one ought to practice smelling assafoetida until one likes it; but not arsine or hydrocyanic acid. Again, one might have a liaison with an ugly old woman until one beheld and loved the star which she is etc. etc. ..."
If you got a problem with that, it's your problem, not someone else's mental illness. See how he is saying the exact same as the above, very modern definition?
The moment one has a problem with one's own or other's expression of sexuality - even though it is consensual and doesn't seriously endanger anyone - one has become a slave or a tyrant due to the idea that people's bodies do not exclusively belong to themselves - to do with as they please, when, where and how and with whom they (consensually) wish to.
I do hope I have made it any clearer where I am coming from, I am working with discriminated people as a kink aware professional, their suffering usually comes from opinions like some of those in this very thread ...
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@Simon Iff said
"* By all means, quite some of you guys should really see into it that you get some, regularly, make that a number one priority, before posting again!"
You'd be surprised, I think.@Simon Iff said
"You seriously think about what your mother would say when deciding what kind of sex to have? WTF?"
Not my point (although, at some level, we probably all have a mother complex going on somewhere in the subsconscious). What I was trying to infer is that the outward conduct of the man, Crowley, is uncomfortable for me to admit. That doesn't make him bad or wrong. It says more about me than him. I get that. I simply offer the reaction because I doubt I'm alone in wrestling with this aspect of Thelema.@Simon Iff said
""Any sexual behaviour that is consensual and does not endanger oneself or others, is to be considered healthy; while anything that oversteps that line is to be considered pathological.""
Yes, I think that sounds like a reasonable place to draw a line.
@Simon Iff said
"I do hope I have made it any clearer where I am coming from, I am working with discriminated people as a kink aware professional, their suffering usually comes from opinions like some of those in this very thread"
I think you perhaps confuse my observations and considerations with opinions, but I appreciate the ferocity of your views. -
@Jim Eshelman said
"Then again, so were his results. "
Agreed. I tried to acknowledge this initially, albeit without admitting a link between such operations and the intended results, since I don't have enough experience of my own to go on.@Jim Eshelman said
"Then again, we're all in some kind of closet, don't you think? "
Yes, I think we are all somewhat repressed and restricted. And I actually like how far out Crowley went. It makes me feel somehow more secure pushing to my own extremes.@Jim Eshelman said
"To me, the most important lesson is: Stop trying to have a religion built around One Perfect Man Who Is Without Flaw. The genius thing that Crowley's life teaches is that enormous attainment is not a consequence of being sinless, and probably isn't per se a consequence of being "sinful" (though some would argue that) - rather, it is simply that imperfect people can have enormous attainment. It isn't a moral issue."
I'm personally inclined to go one step further and find a way to accept Crowley, with regard to all of this relatively harmless sex stuff we're talking about, as perfect and as sinless. I'm just beginning to wrap my head around it, that's all. -
@Frater 639 said
"22 years old. Blue eyed girl... "
I'm just quoting you here so I can say I agree with everything you wrote. -
@kasper81 said
"Did it occur to you that he was controlling sexual pleasure upon the point of climax and directing it into the sublimated magical intent? "
Yes. And I thought that method of wielding one's wand to be kind of awesome and kind of preposterous at the same time.@kasper81 said
"i am free of any vindictive impulse when i ask you are you living with your mother at this time?
I am single so that second part was irrelevant"
I don't live with my mother (nor did I take any offense). And I'm really not sure why I thought of her response to AC. I reckon you guys are simply more inclined than I to toss off (so to speak) and disregard conventional views and judgements about Crowley, the man. I admire you all for that, in some way, but I also wonder if perhaps you are ignoring something about being in society that is is more powerful and influential to work with than to disavow.@kasper81 said
"have you ever jacked off to porn? It could be argued that jacking off is not normal as your dick wasn't made for your hand it was made for someone's vagina. You are a pervert dude haha. "
Sure, we all have our thing, and I'm more twisted than some, for sure. But from where I sit, one does not wisely accept poop eating and goat screwing and whore mongering and all that proudly pursued and proclaimed by a teacher of the New Aeon without giving the conduct some careful reflection.@kasper81 said
"i am familiar with this passage and it is drivel ; rambling nonsense."
Class E, agreed. But I still think he meant it. -
@David S said
"I also wonder if perhaps you are ignoring something about being in society that is is more powerful and influential to work with than to disavow."
Wait for it...
@David S said
"But from where I sit, one does not wisely accept poop eating and goat screwing and whore mongering and all that proudly pursued and proclaimed by a teacher of the New Aeon without giving the conduct some careful reflection."
You have, it would seem to me, met the intellectual and ethical (perhaps moral) SHOCK that is magick. Levels yet to go, yes, until you get to that place you claim to "admire." That place where you WILL your intellectual and moral position (as opposed to having been birthed in it) (and SHOCKS beyond will bring you there). Hence, the popularity of "initiations."
#justsayin
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@Takamba said
"You have, it would seem to me, met the intellectual and ethical (perhaps moral) SHOCK that is magick. Levels yet to go, yes, until you get to that place you claim to "admire." That place where you WILL your intellectual and moral position (as opposed to having been birthed in it) (and SHOCKS beyond will bring you there). Hence, the popularity of "initiations.""
Sounds about right, Takamba. Feels that way too.
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"I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say.. lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may."
Tyler Durdan..
