Calico Rudasil is a feature columnist for Sssh.com, the award-winning porn site for women & couples. With over 18 years’ experience under her belt, writing about and for the adult entertainment industry, Calico qualifies as something of a Web Porn Dinosaur; similar to a tyrannosaurus, only with far more attractive arms and a less pronounced overbite.
In American politics, there’s nothing at all unusual about people supporting a candidate who doesn’t seem like a good fit for them as individual voters, whether it’s because the candidate’s positions are out of line with those supported by the voter, or some more fundamental, ideological mismatch.
A lot of fairly liberal Arizonans, for example, used to vote for Barry Goldwater at every opportunity, despite disagreeing with him on damn near every issue. The reasons were many and varied, but a big one was something hard to quantify: Goldwater was just so Arizona, somehow – and people of all political stripes admired his ornery brand of integrity, irrespective of his voting record.
Sometimes, though, there’s such a fundamental disconnect between the candidate and a given group of supporters it makes it hard for me to wrap my head around, regardless of how I feel about the candidate, myself.
One such disconnect in 2016, it seems to me, is the support expressed for Hillary Clinton by prostitutes working at legal brothels in Nevada, the self-declared “Hookers 4 Hillary.”
The Case For Clinton
According to Ivy Mae, a member of H4H, the women are backing Clinton because she’s the candidate most likely to prevent the Affordable Care Act from being repealed, which is more important to women in Mae’s line of work than I had realized.
“Obamacare allows us to get health care without classifying us as illegal workers,” Mae said. “Not having it canceled is a big deal.”
As reasons to support presidential candidates go, this one is quite rational, obviously – beats supporting an obnoxious reality TV star simply because he’s willing to insult people viciously in between bragging constantly about his own greatness, at least.
One of the other rationales for supporting Clinton expressed by another hooker for Hillary gives me more pause, however, in part because I fear she’s simply wrong in one of her assumptions about her candidate of choice.
“I think she would be understanding to what we do as sex workers,” said Caressa Kisses. “I think she sees everyone as a person and doesn’t judge.”
As the great Abraham Lincoln likely never said, hold the phone, young lady.
What Does Clinton’s Record Say?
While I have no reason to believe Clinton would judge sex workers, I’ll definitely stop short of saying she understands sex work in a way which would make her actively supportive of them.
Luckily, we don’t have to assume or guess how Clinton feels about the idea of legalized prostitution, because she has already weighed in on the subject – to say she’s against it.
“I do not approve of legalized prostitution or any kind of prostitution,” Clinton told the Reno Gazette-Journal back in April of 2007. “It is something that I personally believe is demeaning to women. I have worked against it and I have certainly taken a very strong stand against what happens in many parts of the world where young girls and women are forced into prostitution against their wills.”
That’s a pretty unequivocal stand, I’d say, one without a lot of wiggle room to suggest Clinton thinks there’s anything valid to the idea sex workers can be empowered or take agency over themselves and their bodies through sex work. It’s also not judgmental of sex workers, per se, although I’d say there’s no real suggestion she has any respect for women who go into sex work by choice, or even a recognition on her part there are women who enter sex work by choice.
Would Hillary Try To Ban Existing Legal Brothels?
While the part of Clinton’s comments I quoted above are pretty strong, as a good American politician, she knows how to play both sides of the fence, which in this case meant coming out strongly against legal prostitution, while still assuring local voters she wasn’t going to mess with jobs and revenue in their state. In other words, it was time for “state’s rights” to come to the rhetorical rescue.
“I understand Nevada has a regulated system and it is within the authority of the state,” Clinton said. “So that is not a federal issue that we will have any role to play in when I am president.”
She could have left it at that, but Clinton apparently felt compelled to make even more clear her personal disdain for legal prostitution.
“But I would obviously speak out against prostitution and try to persuade women that it is not – even in a regulated system – necessarily a good way to try to make a living,” Clinton added. “Let’s try to find other jobs that can be there for women who are looking for a good way to support themselves and their families.”
Does Clinton “understand” sex workers? Maybe. Does she respect what they do for a living? I’m going to say the answer there is a big no.
How About “Sluts 4 Sanders,” Instead?
For the record, I haven’t decided which presidential candidate I’m voting for yet – mostly because I don’t have to. For many years, I’ve been a registered independent, and in my state, independents aren’t permitted to vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary, so I generally don’t think about the presidential race until it’s time for the general election.
If a candidate’s positions on things like sexual freedoms are important to you, though, as I figure they probably are to women who work in legal Nevada brothels, you might find interesting a “manifesto on sexual freedom” written by Bernie Sanders as a 21 year-old student at the University of Chicago.
Sanders doesn’t offer a position on prostitution in his ‘manifesto,’ and I haven’t been able to find anything which quotes him on the subject. Offhand, though, if I were to guess which candidate would be most understanding of sex workers, and less judgmental of them, I’d have to go with the guy who once wrote of his school’s code of conduct:
“The administrators are attempting to force the student body to accept their dogmatic beliefs on perhaps the most sacred and important subject of human life. Through their various regulations they have drawn up a code of social and sexual ‘rights and wrongs’ which they feel are ‘reasonable,’ and are forcing their students, on pain of disciplinary action, to conform to them.”
Substitute “legislators” for “administrators” and the above easily could have come from the mouth of a porn star at the CAL-OSHA hearing on mandatory condom use in adult films yesterday.
Normally, “feeling the burn” is something I’d never think of as a good thing for a sex worker, but with a quick change in spelling, it might just be a sensible political position for politically-minded sex workers to take in 2016.
Calico Rudasil is a Sssh.com (@ssshforwomen) columnist and Sssh will be on Peeperz for fun times again in the near future, meanwhile why not check us out:
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