I found the narrative very useful. For example, she asserts that rape and prostitution feel very different, and that American laws (compared to UN ones) consider them similar in that there can be no consent in either case. But if she had just said they are different, it would just be a meaningless opinion.
Instead she tells her whole story and gives you the facts and feelings that occurred when she was raped, and the ones that occurred when she was a prostitute, the helps you understand for yourself why they are different. That's a much stronger effect on the reader than just reading person A asserts fact B without them showing the work.
Similarly the story about the drudgery of other jobs she performed that were not prostitution helps you compare what her life would be like if she didn't have that option. Then the same thing happens for filming porn vs. doing privates. A lot of people without experience might think porn stars/models don't often also do prostitution, so it's important to bring up in the narrative that a lot of the film stars were also doing privates the whole time, which makes the film work seem less pure and separate from other sex work just because it is legal.
> “That's a much stronger effect on the reader than just reading person A asserts fact B without them showing the work.”
Exactly. That stronger effect is a very bad thing. In this article maybe it was used for morally good purposes to help you understand the differences in treatment of consent in rape cases or prostitution cases.
But then tomorrow someone uses the same rhetorical trick to have an emotionally “stronger effect” on the reader because of some one-off harrowing tale about a consensual prostitution story that turned out very badly, and now suddenly readers’ emotional judgments have swung back the other way and they feel like so-and-so’s gripping op-ed justifies a belief that prostitution cannot contain consent.
It’s naive to think this kind of “dress up the facts with a narrative” approach would only serve “good” purposes, rather than being used to reinforce existing harmful biases or prejudices, fan the flames of nationalism, etc. It’s pretty much equally naive to think you can personally identify when it is “good” emotional rhetoric vs when it is bad. It’s like saying, “advertising doesn’t work on me.”
This is why regardless of the effect in this one idiosyncratic situation it has got to be systematically ignored and boiled down to analytical judgment not significantly affected by emotional or situational window dressing.
This process of boiling down to facts has got to be elevated as a more important social norm in our world.
Instead she tells her whole story and gives you the facts and feelings that occurred when she was raped, and the ones that occurred when she was a prostitute, the helps you understand for yourself why they are different. That's a much stronger effect on the reader than just reading person A asserts fact B without them showing the work.
Similarly the story about the drudgery of other jobs she performed that were not prostitution helps you compare what her life would be like if she didn't have that option. Then the same thing happens for filming porn vs. doing privates. A lot of people without experience might think porn stars/models don't often also do prostitution, so it's important to bring up in the narrative that a lot of the film stars were also doing privates the whole time, which makes the film work seem less pure and separate from other sex work just because it is legal.