Neo-Puritans Lose
It is really disgusting to deny financial assistance to people who do work some disapprove of.
Sex work is work. Stripping is work.
You can find this work unappealing, immoral, or not for you, and it does not change the fact that it is work: a job people do in exchange for money.
They likely use this money to pay rent, pay school fees, care for family members, and whatever the hell else they choose, same as the rest of us are free to do with our earnings.
Nobody comes to an accountant and says, "Well, I think that's a pretty unappealing job, so you get starved out of the financial help everybody else is getting!"
I'm happy to see that this is now the case for strip clubs. (Sex workers should also be included in any financial assistance.)
Jonathan Stempel writes at Reuters:
May 11 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge ruled on Monday that strip clubs cannot be blocked from obtaining emergency federal loans during the coronavirus pandemic, and declared invalid a rule barring a wide range of businesses from obtaining those loans.U.S. District Judge Matthew Leitman in Flint, Michigan, issued a preliminary injunction barring the U.S. Small Business Administration from enforcing a rule to exclude businesses that present live performances or sell products of a "prurient sexual nature" from loans under the Paycheck Protection Program.
The judge also said the SBA cannot exclude other businesses such as banks, political lobbying firms and restricted private clubs from the roughly $660 billion program, saying Congress intended to support all qualified small businesses, including those it might have been "disfavored" before the pandemic struck.
"Simply put, Congress did not pick winners and losers in the PPP," Leitman wrote.
"It would ordinarily be absurd to conclude that Congress meant to provide financial assistance to, among others, certain sexually oriented businesses and private clubs that discriminate," he added. "But these are no ordinary times, and the PPP is no ordinary legislation."
via ifeminists
Well, they still have Operation Choke Point.
Which puts banks into the position of "yes, you're eligible to get a loan under PPP but we're encouraged to not do business with you." Guess what the bank is going to run with?
I R A Darth Aggie at May 13, 2020 8:22 AM
Amy, this is ridiculous.
Crid at May 13, 2020 8:34 AM
This is what happens when you give government too much power. There have been efforts (as Darth aggie mentioned) to prevent banks from doing business with gun shops, payday loan businesses, and legal pot shops. It is a way for a few gov officials to impose their own morality and over-rule the actual laws.
cc at May 13, 2020 10:45 AM
Strip clubs?
Around 12,000 tax-exempt altar-boy-chasing Catholic churches have applied for PPP.
What's good for the goosed is good for the gandered, I say.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at May 13, 2020 11:19 AM
Had a few friends in college who were the happy, libertine, stripper types. Convinced me to go to amateur one night at a place in Springfield MA.
Most depressing experience ever. They all needed drugs to get through the evening. They were not doing well. They were not stripping because they were in a good place.
I'd hate to think what these women would have had to resort to in a situation like this, when their pay wasn't covered.
NicoleK at May 13, 2020 11:53 AM
> Sex work is work
So is pushing heroin. Also murder-for-higher, grifting of all kinds (even legislative), insurance fraud, conversion, fencing stolen goods…
I'll never understand this childlike, but-Julia-Roberts-is-rilly-sweet enthusiasm for perhaps the most elemental expression of counter-feminist criminality.
Crid at May 13, 2020 12:09 PM
Crid I agree with you - this is not "empowering" in any way.
However... it is impossible to draw certain lines, and dangerous to liberty to try to do so.
Not every Rockette is a prostitute.
And have you seen what is considered "legitimate" theatre nowadays?
Any regulation of these behaviors must be approached very carefully - and is best handled at the level where these issues are a matter of community rather than political policy.
Ben David at May 13, 2020 3:01 PM
Shut up Tranny!
john jacob at May 13, 2020 5:15 PM
The PPP was a terrible program anyways. Even without this I doubt much PPP money would have gone to such places. They are too small to force their way to the front of the line.
Ben at May 13, 2020 5:32 PM
Amy, if you wanted to send john jacob to join BitchLasagna (in other words, the rarely used permanent ban), I would have no objections. That is, if you're keeping score.
Patrick at May 13, 2020 10:13 PM
> Not every Rockette is a prostitute.
Dafuq?
There are plenty of clean lines. The canvas of our planet is richly, proudly, and often precisely delineated.
Crid at May 14, 2020 4:11 PM
I didn't dig into it, but here's a fun thing that happens when people affirm that sex work is unremarkable.
Crid at May 14, 2020 4:13 PM
Also, hire.
Sorry. I'm a finetik kinda cat
Crid at May 14, 2020 4:30 PM
Crid:
There are plenty of clean lines. The canvas of our planet is richly, proudly, and often precisely delineated.
........
1. Obviously not precisely enough - or else "sex worker" "slut walk" and "tranny story hour" would not be (celebrated! Fashionable!) things. So who decides between different groups saying "but i know i'm right"? And maybe it's not so bad to place certain axiomatic moral principles above the tyrrany and folly of the democratic crowd?
Omigosh this is startin to sound like that ole time religion... which leads to:
2. Oh goody. Does this mean you're gonna stop ragging on the judeo-christian tradition? After all if we must let government regulate/impose some morality, it is the most widely accepted and is the historical root of both the stricture on prostitution and our modern freedoms - both of which spring from judaism's idea of mankind in the image of One God, and what the implies about individual worth and equality between individuals.
Back to the sex workers - as GB Shaw said: you've already compromised on the principle, now we're just haggling over the price.
Ben david at May 15, 2020 3:39 AM
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