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We are all animals at night

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Re: We are all animals at night

#231

Post by DJHenk »

julianeon wrote: post #166
bluenose69 wrote: post #52

This is an exceptional piece of writing, finely crafted and suffused with unusually deep insight. I read a lot, and seldom have I run across a writer possessed of this level of skill. A writer's central task is to place the reader in another world, living another life. At this, the author succeeds with what seems like effortless grace. Few of today's award-winning novelists display this power. I do hope HN folks will…

Funnily enough, your observation was the basis of my criticism. I can state it semi-socratically. What is this article about? A woman who did sex work at a massage parlor. Summarize what she did, then. I... can't. I actually thought in the beginning that it may have been sensual, not sexual. Then she described it as sex work - which changed my mind - so it was sexual (incidentally, I have heard this critiqued in piec…

> What is this article about?

It is not an article, it is an essay. Wikipedia defines an "informal essay" as: characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc.

> What did the sex part of it actually involve?

The reason that this part is left to the imagination of the reader is that A) it is more powerful that way and B) the details don't really matter anyway to get the message and image across.

These things should have been covered in your creative writing class too.

Re: We are all animals at night

#232

Post by scns »

smabie wrote: post #105
j-bos wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how I feel coming from the trades into the offices, my colleagues are often surprised when I say the work we do is easy.

I mean, if this was true, then why do office workers generally earn more?

My theory is: The more people you help earn money, the more you earn.

Private Equity is explicitly excluded, maybe they do, who knows?

Example 1 Bill Gates/Microsoft: Provided a stable platform for business software to run on, making it possible for millions of businesses to do accounting/inventory management/controlling CNC machinery/etc.

Example 2 Sales People/Marketing: If you got the best product/software/whatever but zero customers, how are you you gonna pay your bills?

[edit]

Example 3 Jeff Bezos: Building the dominant platform for e-commerce of all kinds. Making it easy for a huge crowd of potential customers to discover and buy your wares.

Re: We are all animals at night

#233

Post by viknesh »

quacked wrote: post #121

[flagged]

> "I once watched a fast-food server placate a violent customer with nothing more than her voice and a stale honey cruller at her disposal." This is given as an example of a "skill" that should be considered admirable. It should be considered unnecessary. It should be considered unnecessary. A fast food worker placating a violent customer with a stale honey cruller is an unwelcome intrusion into a stable society, not something exciting and meaningful to be imitated. No one should be behaving violently towards fast food workers, and if they do, it shouldn't be fast food workers who are placating them. We could just close fast food restaurants at night. We could put people in jail for a long time if they behaved poorly towards service industry employees.

What exactly is your solution for "bad behavior" in society then? Of course nobody should act poorly towards others, but what people should do doesn't seem to stop them.

I don't agree with the author that these skills are as unique as she claims, but your comment reads as if you're projecting your own bias onto the piece. Whether or not it's sex work, front line work, office jobs, or whatever, huge swaths of society work jobs that they don't particularly care for to get paid. Writing off the whole piece as "she had low standards for herself and found sexual validation of strangers easier than grinding out a living" misses the point (and is completely unsupported by the text).

Re: We are all animals at night

#234

Post by askonomm »

vacuity wrote: post #230
throwaway22044 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Offering some amount of consentual self-destruction is absolutely in the business of helping mankind, Prostitution, substance abuse, suicide, and other self-destructive acts, are the only measure that is available to us for enforcing that Leviathan keeps its end of the social contract: that our bodies and minds are first and foremost our own, and only when we infringe on others' freedom may ours be curtailed. The da…

Suicide is an expression of one's ultimate freedom to one's body, but these acts can have consequences beyond oneself. That goes from "oh well, it's your choice" to "don't drag other people down with you". What of a child born from a prostitute? What of others' safety when driving drunk? What of friends and family who expend mental energy and money? Cut yourself away absolutely or not at all, or perhaps in a more mea…

Yeah, that's something a rational person should do. Self destruction hardly ever is rational however, and it's near impossible to see all of the collateral damage you make when destroying yourself.

Re: We are all animals at night

#235

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #199
quacked wrote: post #121

[flagged]

> Then leave. Live in a cardboard box. Go work in a warehouse. Go to Alaska and work on a fishing boat. Go to Omaha, Nebraska and work at a McDonald’s. Nobody made her do this “job” But I’ve seen many, many stories with similar tone from people who have done all those other things. Sex work frequently calls on people to do something that may be the farthest from what their emotional desire is at the time, but that's……

[deleted]

Re: We are all animals at night

#236

Post by imtringued »

ianai wrote: post #131
mise_en_place wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is accurate. Men are often ridiculed for thinking they are entitled anything. But especially so for sex and female attention.

It’s all accurate and inaccurate because people are all very different and come to different positions differently. Some believe they can “sin” under the cover of night and still keep their comfortable places in society as their sins weren’t seen nor known. Secrets and all that. Imagine how such a person would treat a sex worker. Could be very starkly different than what they’d expose the rest of the time. You’ll not…

She only has experience with customers who seek her out though.

What about the type of men who would never ask for her services? She knows nothing about them.

Re: We are all animals at night

#237

Post by imtringued »

bell-cot wrote: post #129
raincole wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have men been told they're entitled to sex and attention for free tho? I kinda feel it's the exact opposite. Men are told they need to pay for meals, rooms, travel, and housing and custody later. Men are told they should be the proactive side and take the risk of being rejected. I'd even say (at least in TV shows and movies) men are expected to be the funny ones and provide entertaining values in a relationship. I'm…

> Have men been told they're entitled... Well...it is nice that you seem unaware of Andrew Tate, and the millions of boys and men who are eager followers of him and similar creeps...

The only thing I know about Andrew Tate is from this video (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=93i7xJDgUxQ) and I have come to the conclusion that he is hardly a person to aspire to.

Re: We are all animals at night

#238

Post by dragonwriter »

smabie wrote: post #105
j-bos wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how I feel coming from the trades into the offices, my colleagues are often surprised when I say the work we do is easy.

I mean, if this was true, then why do office workers generally earn more?

> I mean, if this was true, then why do office workers generally earn more?

Because the work (1) takes particular skills, and (2) skills that are functionally gatekept so they are disproportionately found in people coming from a middle class (or, at minimum, proletarian intelligentsia) background.

It has work that is (compared to lots of more poorly paid jobs) hard to find people minimally qualified to do, but its not hard (in the sense of arduous) work, for the most part. Work being arduous doesn’t make it well-paid.

Re: We are all animals at night

#239

Post by srean »

scns wrote: post #226
raincole wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have men been told they're entitled to sex and attention for free tho? I kinda feel it's the exact opposite. Men are told they need to pay for meals, rooms, travel, and housing and custody later. Men are told they should be the proactive side and take the risk of being rejected. I'd even say (at least in TV shows and movies) men are expected to be the funny ones and provide entertaining values in a relationship. I'm…

> Men are told they should be the proactive side and take the risk of being rejected. Walking up to a woman takes courage, which is a desirable quality. Why should a woman wan't a man, that lacks the balls to talk to her? The mating dance of many species has rules they have to follow. Complaining about them does zero for your dating success. The female decides if his display is good enough for her. The App Bumble has…

The point that the OP was speaking to (refuting) is that men expect favors for free. OP's point is that they are not free at all and earned by subjecting oneself to risk and absorbing the adverse consequences of taking that risk.

Re: We are all animals at night

#240

Post by tsss »

whimsicalism wrote: post #55

Beautifully written, even if I don’t necessarily agree with every single point made. Especially towards the end, I feel that she tries to emphasize the nobility and radical nature of this work, taking umbrage at Eric Adam’s use of the word “low-skill” to describe some of these sorts of jobs. But it seems somewhat belied by the fact that, afaict, as soon as she had the means to escape, she did. And the romanticization…

She can write, I'll give her that, but contentwise it is exactly the unreflected pseudo-intellectual crap you'd expect from a "journalist". How can you be so naive to sign up to become a propaganda foot soldier for the culture industry and then expect anything else but soulless stab-in-the-back ass-kissing work? This sense of comradery she is missing is the glimmer of class consciousness. It's strangely real, it's people who know they are at the bottom and they're in it together. The corporate world on the other hand is fake. It consists of bosses who want to be treated like a friend or a royal when it suits them. It consists of colleagues who will throw you under the bus for that promotion and you will do the same, but you both act like you don't know it will happen. It is that subconscious shame of betrayal from people like the author, who romance about the precariat on their personal blog and then go back to work to beat down on their former friends with the proverbial cultural stick in service of the man.
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