Don't you hate radio phone-in radio shows when you are driving and you can't phone in yourself? Especially when even if you could, you would risk giving away your secret identity, with potentially disastrous results for your marriage and career.
I caught the tail end of a show where one of the subjects being discussed was prostitution and Minister for Women Harriet Harman's proposed prohibition law. (Do polititians never learn from history?) One caller, who described himself as a former bouncer at a brothel, made some reasonable comments about how he never saw anybody forced to work there, and while the girls may not have thought highly of the customers it did at least pay well and they were happy enough to get on with the job. Then the host of the show read out a text message (you can text the show - maybe that's what I should try) that went something like "I've known a few working girls, and most of them ended up becoming disillusioned with men and seeking out the company of other women for love and affection." This was read out with barely a comment, then on to the sport and travel.
How about that. Going through the daily misery of having sex with men turns working girls homosexual. I wonder what the official stats are on that. Does it also go for gigolo-type male escorts, becoming eventually disgusted with all that sex with women and turning to other men for love and affection? What about rent boys - does it turn them staight? The Sarah Palins and Harriet Harmans of the religious right would love that, wouldn't they - not only do the sins of working girls lead the poor lambs in their disillusionment into another sin for which as Christians we should pity them while noting how it proves they were wrong to have had all the sex and God was right, but another group of sinners is healed of their unnatural gayness by exactly the same process. Halleluiah!
More seriously, notice the assumption that sexuality is affected by environment. If disillusionment with men can turn straight women gay, then homosexuality is a choice in the first place, or at least something you can be driven to through circumstances, and this justifies a judgemental view of it. If being gay were simply like being left-handed or female then judgement would be irrelevant: you're made the way you are and that's that. If commercial sex could make you gay then homosexuality could be a sin.
What is of course more likely is that the text message to the radio show was made up by someone who believes this old wives' tale because he or she wants it to be true.
I mentioned this to my regular reasonably priced working girl next door Katia next time I was doing the thing the prohibitionists would have me criminalised for, having a bloody sex life while incidentally maintaining a marriage that would otherwise be unsustainable, and she laughed in astonishment. Seriously, anonymous text messager, visit a real working girl rather than one of your made up ones, ask her if she's started to turn gay at all due to all the sex with men, and let me know her reaction.
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