Tagged: Best and Worst

Laughing tagged me, and to thank her, I proceeded to fall of the face of the planet - as least as my blog was concerned.



I'm back, at least for the moment, and I won't make a bunch of excuses for my absence. I'll just say that I've been insanely busy. And a lot of it has been good. And some of it hasn't. And that leads us right into Laughing's tag - the best and worst of the first. Except for me it was the second.



I thought about it for a while - since she tagged me about 2 weeks ago, and I'm just posting now. What were the best and worst moments of Law School Year Two?



There were a zillion best and worst moments in my personal life, but I'll still with law school life here.



Best: I gave a presentation in my feminist legal theory class with my dear friend T. The topic was prostitution, and as we began our research, I became really interested in what was happening with young girls and the market for virgins. I was borderline obsessed, and I spent way more time researching than was necessarily merited. I watched documentaries and read blogs, and I think the babe got sort of tired of hearing about it. T and I talked about it all the time. And then we put together this totally kick-ass powerpoint presentation with documentary clips and quotes and numbers and pictures and all sorts of stuff. And we created an interactive portion of the presentation so that we could promote discussion about what it means to be a prostitute and whether people would or would not choose the job as compared to other jobs, like being a medical guinea pig or a porn actress or a secretary or a hired killer or a nude model. The presentation went amazingly and the other students were really interested in it. When we finished, one of them said that it was amazing, and I realized that, like me, they hadn't really known about a lot of this or thought about it before. It felt so wonderful to have shared all of that information - to have opened other people's eyes about what goes on with young girls in this country every day, to have really good discussion about the tension points between victimization and autonomy. It was one of the most proud moments I've had.



Worst: It's hard to pick out a worst moment - I think because the whole year sort of blends together in lots of really awful moments. It's easier to pick out a great moment from there. I'm aware that not everyone feels that way about law school. I envy those other people.* At any rate, I think what I'm going to single out as my worst moment was actually two days during reading week of second semester. I got a journal substantiation assignment, and it was the longest one I had ever had. I had been out of town the weekend before, so the only time to do it was the first couple days of reading week (which isn't actually a whole week). I really don't enjoy substantiation in the first place, but this took hours and hours and hours. Somewhere between 12 and 15 total, which maybe doesn't seem like that much. But when every moment I spent on it felt like a moment that I wasn't spending studying for the three exams that I had coming up, it felt very, very long. I finished it; the jury's still out on one of the exams. And the one that I didn't do so well on - well, I can't really say it was the journal's fault. I don't know. But it sure felt that way at the time.

Because I waited so freakin' long, I'm not going to tag anyone, but if anybody decides to do it, let me know.


*By envy, sometimes I mean hate.

The Night Off

The prostitution presentation is behind me, and it went quite well - if I do say so myself. The class seemed interested, and people were actually looking up from their laptops. Hurrah! If we hadn't had so much to say, there might've even been more extensive discussion. Woops. Seriously, though - there is A LOT to say about prostitution.

I felt really good about the information that T and I were presenting, about us being able to inform people about a really serious problem in this country. And I felt like people were taking it in. It was interesting to feel the energy in the room change after we showed a video clip or introduced a statistic or read a story. I think there's a lot of misinformation or lack of information about the commercial sex industry in this country.

Although I do always have a little bit of a hard time when I opine on the plight of minorities - like poor women of color in the sex trade. I hear this little voice in the back of my head, "What is this privileged white girl doing talking about the problems for people of color like she knows something about it?" I had an ex who used to tell me that white people should never try to talk about the problems facing black people because they really didn't get it, and they just ended up adding to the problem. The voice plagues me sometimes. Anyway...

I've got tons to do now - write a research paper on some aspect of prostitution in place of an exam, come up with a note topic for my journal, do a preemption check, catch up on all the reading I haven't done for this week, start a direct write campaign since no one wants to hire me, and clean my apartment.

But tonight...I'm giving myself the night off. T and I went for a beer to celebrate afterwards. We talked johns and pimps and women's desire to satisfy men. Good times. And now I'm home - I've circled all the things I like but can't afford in a catalogue, I've eaten some yummy chocolate babka from the Babe's family, and now I'm blogging and watching Law & Order.

Tomorrow I begin again.

Sometimes it's the small things. And sometimes it's the big ones.

Last night I laid in the Babe's arms while we drifted to sleep in bed at her apartment. It was that drifting where you've been having a conversation and slowly the comments come further and further apart. One of us mumbled - I can't remember which - "I guess we should turn out the light." The Babe leaned over to turn off the light. We situated ourselves into our respective sleep positions and whispered our nighttime I love you's. And then I slept.

Such a simple thing. And yet, as I've been reading and watching and learning about these prostitutes, I'm thinking more and more about people who have never had and may never have this experience that, to me, seems so simple.

To fall asleep in warmth and safety with someone that you love.

And even on the nights that I sleep alone - I've got warm covers, a comfortable bed, a roof, a door that locks, and the biggest thing - the knowledge that there are dozens of people out there who love me and would help me if I needed it.

I spend a lot of time whining about being in law school, about not having enough money, about not knowing what I want to do with my life. I think I don't spend enough time being really appreciative for the many, many blessings that I have had - the things that I take completely for granted on a regular basis.

I'm sending a thank you out to the universe.

1/1,000th of the thoughts I have on this

I'm doing a project on prostitution for my feminist legal theory class, and it's got me pretty down. I'm reading law review article after law review article and then blogs and news stories, and they're all trying to say what the problem is or isn't and how to fix it. There's little agreement, though, except that the current situation is bad. The dilemma that I keep having as I read through all of the solutions is that the situation has ALWAYS been bad.

There seems to be this idea on the part of the radical feminists that there is some way to move towards a gender equality where men will no longer want to pay for sex. And all I can think in response to that is HA! Haahaha! And I'm not smiling. Prostitution has always been there, or at least since anyone had to pay for it. I guess beforehand, they just took it (not that they don't do that now as well).

And don't get me wrong - I know that a sex transaction does not only happen with the male as purchaser and the female as provider. I know that there is male/male prostitution (although that's most often teenage boys as the provider). I know that there is prostitution with the man or boy as provider and the woman as purchaser. But those are much rarer. When we're talking about prostitution, I don't have an exact number, but I'm going to guess that we're talking 90% male purchaser/female provider situations. At least.

Reading the liberal feminists, I have a hard time viewing it as a choice. I can see that it might be for some - a choice to not live in poverty, a choice to get out of an abusive home. I've read about some who have nice, comfortable lives and choose to start a sex work business on the side to make extra money or engage in fantasies they have had. While I can't say that I understand these choices, I accept that they exist. But I can't separate these women out from the broader picture, which is that I'm reading stories about 13-year old girls who are being invited into cars so that 40-year old men can have sex with them. I'm reading about women who have been working as prostitutes for years to support a drug habit. I'm reading about women who have been stabbed by the men who purchase their services, men who are never caught. I'm reading about women who kill themselves because they cannot live with the life that they lead. I'm reading about women who live in fear of upsetting their pimps lest they be beaten or raped.

Does legitimazing prostitution - organizing unions and working towards legalization - does that help the woman with the sex business on the side or the woman who just got stabbed by her john?

I'm torn between this feeling that legitimization might help the women in the short term - help them to feel safe reporting crimes against them to the police, help them to get medical care. But I agree with the view that if you legalize it, you are telling the men who profit from this system that it's okay. I know, you're telling the women who profit from it that it's okay too. I just don't know the answer here. It seems like the people who are arguing for legitimization are often the women who have the better deal already.

And I guess I just keep coming back to these young girls. These young abused girls who are victimized and, if caught, often serve more time than either the pimps who profited from them or the johns who bought them.

There's a movie about an organization that works with young prostitutes in New York. It's not out on dvd yet, so I've only seen this trailer. I don't know how the women at this organization do it day after day - knowing that you may have helped this one girl but that the day she came in, 3 more girls probably just turned their first trick.