When cowardice is made respectable…it easily becomes a fashion.
- Eric Hoffer
So, the saga of the “Zumba prostitute” comes to a close, and we have a new inductee in the Hall of Shame. But I’m getting ahead of myself; here’s the essential portion of the story:
A Zumba fitness instructor at the center of a prostitution scandal…told a judge who sentenced her…to 10 months in jail that she’s happy to have escaped her former life…Alexis Wright said she felt relief when police raided her business on Feb. 12, 2012, because she wanted out. “In my eyes I’m free. I’m free from this,” she told the judge. “I have an incredible amount of strength that I knew was in me somewhere. Now that I have the strength I want to encourage others to come forward”…The former single mother was accused of conspiring with insurance business owner Mark Strong to run a prostitution business in which she videotaped clients without their knowledge…the defense said…that Wright became part of Strong’s private investigation firm and was manipulated into believing she was an “operative” working for the state with the task of investigating “all manner of sexual deviants.” Her attorney, Sarah Churchill, said…said self-deception is a coping mechanism for women involved in prostitution…
Fuck you, Alexis. Fuck you for that bullshit story about how you were manipulated, for that bootlicking garbage about how you were “relieved” at being arrested, for calling your clients “deviants”, and for letting your lawyer mouth bogus prohibitionist “false consciousness” filth. It was obvious from the start that you were extremely unprofessional and had no clue about the ethics of our trade, but hundreds of thousands of your fellow-whores around the world felt sorry for you anyway, spoke harsh words about your persecutors, hoped and prayed that you would get a lenient sentence and be able to put your life back together after this public pillorying.
And how do you repay us? By throwing us all under the bus. By standing up there and embracing every fucking myth the prohibitionists have used to attack us for the past decade. By confirming all the stupid stereotypes of how all sex workers were sexually abused, that we never do it voluntarily, that there’s always a big, bad pimp “exploiting” us, that we’re “relieved” when the cops smash down our doors to “rescue” us by caging us, stealing all of our profits and subjecting us to public ridicule. And worst of all, by letting your fucking shyster stand up there and vomit out Farleyisms about how we “survive” the horrible assault on our sexual purity (which is a woman’s only important characteristic) by convincing ourselves we like our work when deep down we just want out. The message being, of course, “Don’t listen to all those whores demanding their rights; what they really want is to be ‘saved’ by the police.”
Some of my readers may think I’m being unnecessarily harsh, that maybe you really were abused as a child (after all, some people are), that maybe you are as dumb as the proverbial box of rocks and got yourself into a situation you couldn’t handle. Maybe you have such a supple spine that your lawyer bullied you into reciting that script as the best way to appeal to the judge’s and prosecutors’ pathologically-swollen egos. Maybe. But even if that’s all true, it matters not one whit in my opinion of you, because the difference between my level of contempt for evil and my level of contempt for moral cowardice is so minuscule I probably couldn’t shove your scruples between them. Even if you had made all the same revolting claims but left out the bit about being happy to be arrested, I might have found room in my heart to give you the benefit of the doubt. But to sanctify the actions of tyrants, to provide the enemies of all our kind (and that means your kind, sister, no matter how much you deny it now) with another excuse to justify their barbaric tactics to the Great Unwashed, is utterly beyond the pale. You disgust me. The judge said to you, “I know that you will succeed when you’re released,” and she’s probably right because, unfortunately, amoral quislings willing to collaborate with the oppressor to save their own skins usually do.
