Rooney, middle-class prostitutes and the blame game
There's been so much hand-wringing awfulness spewed out about the whole Wayne Rooney affair that it's hard to know where to start. We've seen, for example, the women dehumanised as tarts and hookers - I'm all for calling a spade a spade, by the way, but I think it's fairly obvious that 'tart' and 'hooker' are somewhat derogatory terms; and let's please not pretend that they were only used to fit the headlines into the boxes.
And now come a slew of articles wondering why on earth people want to have sex with footballers, why people want to have sex with prostitutes, why on earth people want to have sex with people they're not in a relationship with - as if this kind of thing is somehow new and interesting, as if prostitution isn't called 'the oldest profession' for a reason, as if people haven't been straying from monogamy and society's norms about sex and relationships since the year dot.
There seems an added squeamishness about this whole story because one of the women who ended up as a prostitute went to public school. Horrors! Imagine that! Middle-class people ending up doing something that only poor people, immigrants and crack addicts should rightly be condemned to! There's that extra bit of pearl-clutching that strikes right into the heart of the middle-market demographic. Why on earth would someone from a private education end up earning £1,200 a night when they could be sitting in an office somewhere or being married to some nice young man and popping a few kids out? That sort of thing is seething under the surface, though it's usually pretty well masked.
And as ever, we have to have blame. As ever, the blame doesn't seem to rest with Wayne Rooney, for having put his dick somewhere that he promised not to, but with the other parties involved. In fact, the blame can be spread even further - to the parents of the people who ended up having sex with Rooney. I mean, if a man chooses to have sex with a woman for money, the people to blame are clearly the parents of the woman. I mean, that makes sense, right? Well, it does if you're Jan Moir. Ah yes, Jan Moir. It's been a while since I read Jan Moir - I would happily rather put my face into a meat mincer, if I'm perfectly honest. But have a look anyway, if you can. And if you can't bear clicking on the link and going over there, here's where the parents get both barrels:
How could these families have failed to notice what was going on right under their noses? Or not have uttered even a tiny cluck of disapproval as they went clubbing in not much more than a pair of pants and a big, expectant smile?
For most women, the soundtrack to their adolescence is a stern fatherly voice in the background saying: ‘You’re not going out dressed like that, young lady!’ It is Jennifer and Helen’s tragedy - though they don’t yet realise this themselves - that if they heard such a voice, it wasn’t strident enough.
Ah yes. If only the parents had been a bit stricter, then none of this would ever have happened. Adults don't make choices for themselves - it's all about what you're allowed to wear when you go out clubbing. The implication is that these women's career choices weren't choices, but were somehow a destiny, the end of a slippery slope that began with parents being too lenient. There's that nasty, clippy element to this kind of column. Who knows what led to people ending up the way they ended up? Who knows what led from one choice to another? Perhaps people made choices and did what they wanted to do? No, the parents must be to blame, for not being tough enough. That must be it. Pile on the guilt. Pile on the opprobrium. These middle-class parents have FAILED because of what happened to their children.
Moir is following in the tyre-tracks of Bel Mooney, who asked yesterday "What have we come to when middle-class girls like this see whoring as a career choice?" To which it's tempting to reply: what do you mean, 'we'? Is it really some kind of awful tragedy that people decide to have sex with other people for money? Is that really the most terrible thing in the world? Maybe I'm just some kind of overly idiotic dripping wet liberal, I don't know. But I don't really see where the problem is. It wouldn't be my choice for what to do for a living, but seriously, I can think of worse things, more immoral things, more unpleasant ways to earn a living. But then again, I am a man and my entire gender hasn't been tarnished by the activities of these women:
Frankly, I am dumbstruck at their stupidity, their vulgarity and their degradation of what it means to be a woman today, in a world where sexual equality was won through great courage and at great cost by the generations who came before them.
I think of all those who fought hard for women’s equality, and I can hear them turning in their graves at the sleazy stories of Jennifer Thompson and Helen Wood — the two young women who earned £1,200 each for threesomes with Wayne Rooney.
The sleazy stories which the Mail has been delighted to jump onto, by the way. Oh, for all the disapproval and for all the sneering from the likes of Moir and Mooney, they've been lapping this whole business up as well. It's the normal Mail dual approach - act all horrified while offering the titillation at the same time. Now of course I don't have a tremendous amount of sympathy for anyone in all of this - if you end up having sex with someone when you're in a relationship, then you're not really Captain Monogamy; if you end up flogging your story then you're not exactly Captain Classy. But still - if you end up turning your nose up at all this, while latching onto every sordid detail, and shower blame onto parents who don't really deserve it, then that's pretty cheap as well.
I know that the people involved aren't entirely blameless, and I know that it's a pretty sordid tale. But this kind of thing has been going on since year dot, and will keep going on forever. It doesn't make it right, but it doesn't make it extraordinary either. It won't stop, no matter how many middle-class parents tell their daughters off for what they're wearing, and no matter how much blame and shame we try to dump onto the peripheral figures in these stories. I get a bit weary of all the finger-pointing and moralising, the shock and the shame, the maiden-aunt attitude towards sex and relationships that assumes that no-one ever makes mistakes or does anything wrong. Sure, we'd all love to be perfect, but whooping and squawking when someone famous gets it wrong doesn't make us look any better than them.
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Hello. I'm a Bristol-based writer and soon-to-be-redundant journalist. You can read more about me and the Enemies site here, or follow me on Twitter. Email me if you like - antonvowl at live dot co dot uk
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September 10th, 2010 - 09:29
“I am a man and my entire gender hasn’t been tarnished by the activities of these women”
I agree, and yet can’t help feeling tarnished by the activities of all these (male) footballers. So I _can_ understand the original feeling that generates this argument.
September 10th, 2010 - 09:47
I always find it bizarre when feminists rail against a profession a woman has chosen in the name of shaming those who fought for equality. Do they not see the irony? Or do they think that women only chained themselves to railings and protested to be able to do the kind of ‘nice’ jobs that they would approve of?
September 10th, 2010 - 14:32
i am a feminist who is opposed to the sex industry because rarely does the sex industry have much to do with choice. i ‘rail against it’ because:
68% of prostitutes have PTSD
1.2 million people are trafficked in to the sex industry
50-75% of prostitutes enter the industry when they are children
Women in the sex industry are 60 – 100 times more likely to be murdered than a woman who isn’t.
It isn’t about approving of a woman’s job. it’s about saying it isn’t ok to treat women as objects you can buy to w*** in to.
As Anton says, the press don’t seem to be blaming rooney for helping fund an industry that ruins women’s lives. Choice is a chimera in the sex industry. There is no other issue i think where we take the experiences of the few, who make lots of money and ‘enjoy it’ to define the experiences of the many, who are physically, emotionally damaged.
I’d recommend you read these testimonies to see what the sex industry does to women before you criticise feminists for railing against ‘free choice’
http://www.object.org.uk/index.php/testimonies
September 10th, 2010 - 10:42
The only shocking thing in this whole affair is how they let him get away with only £2400. You’d have to pay me a minimum of 20k to allow Rooney’s trollish grasping and toothless maw anywhere near my Calvins. A decent rate card might have prevented the requirement for tabloid bonuses too.
September 10th, 2010 - 11:24
Surely the real scandal here is that Rooney had to pay? What has the footballing profession come to when they don’t get attractive women throwing themselves at the overpaid athletes?
September 10th, 2010 - 11:49
I “can’t bear clicking on the link” it makes my eyes hurt. Your eye-pain-bravery and Daily Mail filter system is a much more plesant experience.
Nothing more to add to that though Anton, you’ve pretty much summed it up. Rooney, couldn’t give a fuck. Middle-class prostitutes, slight grin at the inner pain it’s causing some Mail readers tonight when their 19-year-old daughter is gallivanting off to the local nightclub and (after Mummy and Daddy have read the Mail after tea) Daddy shouts…
“You’re not going out in that, you look like a whore, you’d end up on crack, working as a prostitute, sleeping with footballers…”
Sitting back proud in the knowledge that he’s a strict father and is helping keep the moral standards of this nation from slipping further into the gutter. Puts paper down and ventures out to make his evening visits as the local insurance collector, a moral, upstanding member of the community.
Mummy’s sleeping with his caring best mate.
Daughter’s done a line of cocaine upstairs before heading out for her pole dancing job.
Just keeping up appearances.
September 10th, 2010 - 11:54
I think you’ll find feminists rail against not so much the profession per se, but rather the lack of opportunities some women have had to make a living in other ways, the circumstances that some people (men as well of course) find themselves in which result in substance abuse which requires selling themselves, the men who through threats and violence pimp their partners, or prey on and ‘groom’ young girls whose lack of self-esteem results in their assuming this attention to be ‘love’ and not a potential pay-packet. And so on.
I’d really like to know how many women in the sex trade (or profession if you prefer) actually chose it. Those upper-class call girls might have chosen it as a way of making a quick buck and possibly for the attention and notoriety or fame. They are in the minority.
September 11th, 2010 - 15:22
Well I chose it. And when we talk about what is morally correct. Just look at all the single mom’s in this country, that shack up with men they barely know. The let these men move right in, even though they have small children and then they are suprised when their kids get molested. You buy them dinner and drinks and tell them they are pretty and they jump right into bed with a strange man.
As a call girl, I raised a daughter alone, never got child support and never brought a man or client to my home nor did I even let them know where I lived. I feel sorry for the DUMB women who just give it away because they need attention. Most men lie & cheat to get what they want, they say and act completely different around women, and they spend their time telling women what women want to hear, instead of being honest about what it is they want.
Most women find this out by the time they have been married 10 or 15 years and then find they have wasted all that time on a looser who did not appreciate them. A call girl can find out what a man is about within the hour.
September 13th, 2010 - 10:12
I’m really glad you’re not lumping all young single mother’s and men together in your well thought out, objective not-offensive-in-any-way rant.
“All single mom’s”
“Most men lie & cheat”
“Most women find this out…”
“they are surprised when their kids get molested”
What a crock of shit.
Are you Jan Moir or a Daily Mail Journo? (although, admittedly, in some strange cross-parallel anti-man, anti-women universe)
September 10th, 2010 - 12:21
It’s very sympathetic of the Mailist mindset, isn’t it? Belle de Jour and Wayne Rooney come along and suddenly pretty middle-class girls are tragically selling their bodies.
Obviously before it happens to middle-class girls, it’s not a problem, and before we talk about it, it’s DEFINITELY NOT HAPPENING.
September 10th, 2010 - 13:20
Middle-class prostitutes drifted into it because their parents didn’t raise them strictly enough.
Working-class prostitutes chose the career and consequently don’t deserve our pity when, eg, they get murdered.
It’s really quite simple once you don your Daily Mail X-Ray specs and Moral Decoder Ring.
September 10th, 2010 - 14:58
Exactly.
September 11th, 2010 - 15:30
Women are raped and murdered every day in this country, but nobody looks for the killer when a hooker is killed.
On yesterday news, 1 out of 4 women will be raped in their first year of college and only 5% of the cases are reported. Does not matter how they are raised, they lack life experience at their age.
So lets look at the ” a young man’s behavior” Why are we raising our boys to have such little respect or regard to women. They feel it is ok to get a girl drunk and take advantage of her or just rape her knowing she will be too ashamed to report it.
You would be amazed at how these men talk about you behind you backs, they Marry you to shut you up and keep you under their control.
Hookers get paid cash
Wives get paid by having their husbands pay all their bills
When you get married one knows there will be sex involved and one also knows that something of monetary value will be exchanged. That is the same thing as paying a hooker, expect there is not contract plus we have made it illegal.
September 10th, 2010 - 14:14
Good grief. It’s a while since I read anything as supercilious as Jan Moirs’ article. Although, I can’t claim to be surprised.
Can you post something cheerful for the weekend. *-*
September 10th, 2010 - 14:21
In the old days, a reasonably attractive ex-public-schoolgirl could get a job at Madame Claude’s brothel in Paris and then marry a European Royal.
September 10th, 2010 - 15:48
Anton, you’re falling into the trap of calling people who send their kids to fee-paying schools ‘middle class’. If you can afford to send your kids to private school, you’re not middle class.
I’d like to have seen Moir condemning Rooney for paying for sex rather than the women who sold it. After all, what he did is a crime, their side of the transaction is perfectly legal.
September 11th, 2010 - 15:32
Sure you can if you drive a used car and live within your means.
Now is a hooker sentds her kid to private school, does that make her middle or upper class?
September 10th, 2010 - 19:04
Wow, the Mail actually let in some negative comments! Are the mods on holiday or something?
September 10th, 2010 - 21:39
Women don’t *choose* to be prostitutes. Generally speaking they are forced into it due to a lack of income and options in their lives. I hate it though when journalists act all morally superior in these sleeze stories. If they had a shred of that ‘decency’ they keep on harping on about then they wouldn’t be covering the bloody story. Who cares what footballers do off the pitch? Christ, I don’t even care what they do on it…
September 13th, 2010 - 12:52
Isn’t Coleen’s sole claim to fame that she let the spud faced nipper diddle her? And she has TV shows and clothing ranges now. Simples.
September 15th, 2010 - 11:09
I have written about this, with some sympathy for Rooney and men in general, who I think are also being stereotyped by the press.
http://quietgirlriot.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/rooney-baby/