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Point of View with Barb
Sumner Burstyn - November 2002
Predators and their prey
In the 'if it weren't so tragic it might be funny' file, David
Lane the secretary for the Society for the Promotion of Community
Standards has once again stumbled into the limelight. Instead of
trying to get previously censor-approved movies banned, this time
Mr Lane is unhappy with prostitutes.
Appearing before a select committee considering a bill to decriminalize
prostitution Mr Lane described prostitutes as predators. He suggested
there was a weakness in men, which many psychologists describe as
an addiction. By targeting these men, said Lane, prostitutes play
the role of predators, drawing funds from men who are leaving their
families destitute.
Well duh, of course prostitutes are predators and have course they
play on this particular weakness in men. But while the predator
theory might have been a eureka moment for Lane, calling a visit
to a prostitute an addiction is really doing himself and his organization
a disservice.
You'd have thought in the narrow world of black and white definitions
occupied by arbiters of morality that illicit sex would be considered
a moral weakness and as such, open to the exercise of will power.
But clearly moral weakness is out of fashion right now, even for
the members of the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards.
Instead they've joined the growing body of belief that any anti-social
behaviour relating to a lack of will power - from over-eating to
paedophilia ' is now a disease. In other words an illness. So paying
for sex becomes something a man has - like cancer or herpes - rather
than something he does.
The very concept of addiction as a disease is an American prohibition
era idea. Formulated by Dr. Benjamin Rush in reaction to a rigid
moral model of alcoholism as immoral, sinful and in need of repentance,
he began describing alcohol-related medical problems as a disease
and developed the notion of biological predisposition.
His premise of addiction was developed further in the 1960's to
include other substances like cocaine and heroin. But while the
theory of addiction as a disease has prevailed among some professionals
for over thirty years, the etiology of addiction is not fully understood
or even agreed on. While scientists have yet to come up with a cure
for it many physicians, philosophers, legal theorists and policy
makers believe addiction is no more than learned behaviour, something
ingrained through habit.
One of the more challenging writers and addiction experts to confront
the prevailing concept of addiction as a disease is American author
Dr. Stanton Peele. He believes that every tenet of the disease view
of addiction has been refuted in research and field observation.
'The disease theory of addiction,'he says, 'is just that -- a theory.'
Yet, he goes on to say, the addiction concept has extended to behaviors
like gambling, overeating and compulsive sexual activity, thus medicalizing
these behaviors as well, further expanding the disease concept of
addiction.
Take out the theory of disease and your left with what researchers
call 'learned habitual harmful behavior that produces maladaptive
changes over time often resulting in negative and tragic consequences.'
In other words something that is host centered. Something you do
to yourself. Not something a women in leopard print tights standing
on a dark corner does to you.
By classifying having a quickie (and I'm reliably advised they
almost always are) with a prostitute an addiction and therefore
by association a disease Lane is taking away male responsibility
for self control and placing it with the women. Suddenly it's the
sex workers who must guard the moral uprightness of their clients.
In Mr Lane's world it is these women who must carry the weight of
the world, ensuring the wives and families of their otherwise respectable
clients are well feed and clothed, even perhaps as their own families
go short.
Excuse me. But what a cop out.
No matter how unfashionable it may sound, an 'addiction' to sex
with a prostitute is actually a failure of will power. Ask any average
male and they'll tell you that every day is filled with temptation.
Every bared midriff and accentuated breast is a lure. Men are hardwired
that way. But it's not the attraction that's at issue here. It's
what you do about it. Visiting prostitutes is a self-perpetuating
way of life. For a man with other responsibilities and limited resources
it's nothing more than weak, self-deceiving, selfish and self-destructive.
With not so much as a substance to accuse, I suggest the men who
are, as Mr Lane says, having their funds continually drawn by prostitutes,
leaving their families destitute, should accuse themselves for their
wasteful consumption and need for immediate gratification.
But then if visiting a prostitute really is an illness afterall,
perhaps Mr Lane might more profitably use his time setting up a
fund to assist in the treatment of the addicted and let the women
get on with their work.
Failing that he could go live in Nigeria where all the predators
are buried up to their necks in sand waiting to be stoned, and the
men walk the streets in complete safety.
ENDS
© Barbara Sumner Burstyn, November 02
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