BANGALORE, INDIA: Britain's Labour Deputy Leader Harriet Harman's urging the 'terminator' Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenneger, to close down a website which allows people to rate prostitutes, sounds really funny.
The politician's 'sound and fury' was over PunterNet, which survives on all the vices of 'adult life', which according to her contained “pages and pages of women for sale in London”.
Terming the website as sinister, Harman said the site “fuels the demand for prostitutes”.
The interesting comment that Harman made was, “There is now a website ... where pimps put women on sale for sex and then men who've had sex with them put their comments on line.”
No doubt many sites, including this one, are against the moral and ethical code that we are used to. But the view that sex industry is thriving on such sites seems to be a childish one.
Is it that she was more concerned about the comment rather than the act?! Isn't it a fact that the MCP-infested world has already made women a mere commodity even ages before we discovered the virtual world? Is it that even the bra-burners never succeeded liberating the women from the clutches of such vices?
Her observation that “surely it can't be too difficult for The Terminator to terminate PunterNet,” seems to be a genuine one considering the muscle power of the actor-turned politician. But the red-light areas – be it real or virtual – are ruled by muscles that are even stronger.
Though the virtual market is strong in this business, the politicians feign ignorance about the real ones, which are even worse, where the really poor ones are trapped.
In response to Harman's 'terminator' call, the site is flooded with comments.
In “An open letter to Harriet Harman”, a person identified as Galahad says, “Firstly, PunterNet is not violating any laws. If it were, then surely the many websites catering to the US prostitution scene (where sex for pay is almost completely illegal) would already have been closed down.”
Galahad says in a country which considers freedom of speech the most important personal right, “the Governor (indeed, even the President) has no authority with which to shut down a perfectly lawful enterprise such as PunterNet.”
In a comment to the blog posting, another person, Bert, made an interesting comment, “It's not the sex you pay for but for walking away afterwards....”, which points to the might of the industry which is beyond the reach of any political terminators.
That is why Jerome Taylor's question in response to the comment makes more sense. “Would closing down sites like PunterNet really make the sex industry safer?”
And this is the question that the politicians need to answer. After all sex industry is not a virtual one, and it is beyond the reach of any terminator. All this verbal jugglery is just a virtual escape from reality, I think.
It is easy to launch a virtual fight. But it is the real one that counts.
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Posted on:
10/1/2009 at 9:35 PM
Tags:
prostitution,
virtual reality,
britain,
labour deputy leader,
harriet harman,
women for sale,
london,
harman,
terminator,
punternet,
governor of california,
arnold schwarzenneger
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