The whoral majority

I think it’s very funny that anyone would be surprised to learn that I’m a whore who’s obsessed with morality.

I’ve tried for years to sum up what unites all my AuDHD special interests. The closest I could come was “justice.” But I think “morality” is a better word.

(I’m thinking about it in part because I just wrote about what I like to write about. Plus

Freddie deBoer

wants to debate

Matthew Yglesias

about morality. And Tuesday’s post is about the health and wellness side of fertility and what interests me most about health and wellness is the morality and justice aspects of it.)

When I tell people how I grew up and what I used to believe, I can tell that a lot of them don’t believe me. I don’t blame them. With the advantage of perspective, a lot of it really is batshit. Even back then, many young Evangelical Christians considered ourselves to be part of a counterculture.

Even among Evangelical Christians, however, I was weird. “I used to be scared of letting the devil in through a CD or a PG-13 rating,”

A Crack in the Stained Glass

wrote in Surviving Evangelicism. While I learned that, and “modesty culture” in church and at my dad’s house, my mom never censored what I read, watched, or listened to. She did not want me to feel ashamed of my body. She did not want me to be naive. Sex was for marriage. But looking hot was for now, while I still could.

Another confusing aspect of my childhood is that even among kids who grew up going to bass-awkwards Southern Baptist Churches three times a week in towns where churches outnumbered gas stations, few drank the Kool-Aid to the extent that I did.

It wasn’t until I got to college that I talked to enough kids about it to realize that it wasn’t normal to debate politics at the dinner table on a regular basis. It wasn’t until I moved to San Francisco that I talked to enough adults about it to realize that a lot of people are genuinely generally unbothered about sex. And I don’t know when I realized this, but, as it turns out, most people aren’t that concerned about morality.

Well, that’s not exactly true. I think most people either are too uncomfortable with ambiguity to question whatever moral framework they were taught as children or are too comfortable with ambiguity to be bothered.

I’m in that fun middle where I’m too uncomfortable with ambiguity to continue to fuck with the moral framework I was taught as a child once it became impossible for me to ignore that it was, by any reasonable definition, fundamentally and irredeemably immoral. But I’m not comfortable enough with ambiguity to just accept that fact and keep it moving.

I think most people, when they hear that someone is a whore, don’t think much about it.

The internet, and analog media before it, has convinced everyone that everyone has strong opinions about everything that gets covered because “most people don’t care” is as true of a statement as “some people love it and others hate it” but the latter makes for a much more compelling headline.

So, while I’m pretty sure most people can’t be arsed about whores, you’re only going to hear from the people who really love or hate us.

And you’re mostly going to hear from the people who hate us because hating whores is a far less costly belief than loving whores. This is due to misogyny, patriarchy, sexual stigma, mononormativity/compulsory monogamy, etc. and not anything that makes any sense. Prostitution isn’t normal? It’s literally the world’s oldest profession, seen more often in human societies throughout space and time than lifelong monogamy, and even happens among bonobos, who along with chimps, are our closest living relatives. Prostitutes carry diseases? Less often than promiscuous amateurs, especially in areas where sex work isn’t criminalized. Similarly, prostitution gets way closer to all other professions in terms of safety and consent when and where it’s not illegal. There’s also no evidence that prostitution has any measurable impact on average marriage or divorce rates.

The only thing prostitution reliably does is give women (and men and non-binary individuals) who weren’t born into money but who are willing to work a way to make money and useful connections very quickly.

Also, I don’t know how many Christians know this, but Jesus kind of famously loved whores.

That Evangelical Christians hate the exact kind of person who the man they claim to worship very clearly and overtly loved is emblematic of why I’ve rejected Evangelical Christianity as a worthwhile basis for morality. Their homophobia and decision to actively help a rapist and serial philanderer get elected to the highest office in the land also played a role.

It’s just wild to me that the same people who actively supported child rapists believe that I’m going to Hell for accepting cash for sex. It’s even more wild to me that anyone who knows that could continue to believe that the Southern Baptist Convention or Catholic Church (or the vast majority of organized religion everywhere and always) has anything useful to add on the topic of what is and isn’t moral.

But I know that’s only wild to me because I care deeply about morality and most people do not.

Because I care about morality, I’ve thought a lot about it. Thus, I’ve thought about what I’d say if you asked me whether I’d trust 1,000 fellow whores or 1,000 Baptist preachers more on any question related to morality. Of course I’d ask, “What say the whoral majority?”