Tag: harlots

AND ADDITIONALLY

If anyone’s like “BUT IT’S THE 18TH CENTURY”

I know that motherfucker, and guess what?  I’VE READ A BUNCH OF STUFF ABOUT AND BY HISTORICAL SEX WORKERS AND YOU KNOW WHAT’S MOTHERFUCKING HILARIOUS?????

It’s the same.  It’s always the fucking same.  We joke around behind Johns’ backs and our lives are like… often really normal.   They’re not super dramatic action packed nonsense like this and I’m just sick of being endlessly ENDLESSLY portrayed as simultaneously tragic and unceasingly disloyal and immoral (like telling Quiggly about Emily).  We’re usually sort of bawdy and snarky and tough.

Nancy and Violet are both totally real though and I love them

Whorephobia in Harlots and Harlots Fandom

Honestly, a lot of the fandom is whorephobic and terrible and a lot of the writing is whorephobic and terrible (and lazy and unrealistic) 

Like Haxby is a little shit, your ship is gross.  He’s been blatantly, unforgivably HORRIBLE to Charlotte. 

The ship with Marney is honestly amazing because it’s two sex workers who get the biz, who get each other being together HOWEVER it’s being handled in the shittiest fucking “Let me take you away from all this” way and I hate it.

Sex work is being treated as ultimately demeaning and degrading REPEATEDLY

All the misery porn, all the suffering, the fact that Lord Scumbag turned on Charlotte just to make it so that no one could be good at this and be okay with their work, all sex workers have to suffer.  They should have let him continue to be the kind of client he is, an impotent pouty man-child who wants the glamorous status symbol and is vexed by her, but like… doesn’t turn massively spiteful and over the top vengeful because he’s not even that determined.

The type of suffering, in my experience as a sex worker, is unrealistic.  It should be the moral crusader as the main antagonist, not the rival madame.

The fact that they’ve made pretty much all of the notable clients sadistic fucking monsters says a lot about their view of sex work and sex workers, most clients are just… dudes who want to get off and be told they’re real good at it.  You don’t have to make them the antagonists but the writers CHOSE to.  They chose to make another madam and the clients their main antagonists when there are SO many other options.

We’re not helpless victims, our clients are largely not monsters.

Can our work never be portrayed as just work?

This should be a lot more slice of life and a lot less over the top and I’m honestly just SO fucking angry with so many of you.

Like Harlots should feel more like Call The Midwife and way way less like Sons of Anarchy, cause like honestly EXTREME DRAMA all the time isn’t the way the industry works and I’d be really happy with like mild human drama, and like entertaining clients, and maybe one extreme thing at a time, because it doesn’t fit the subject matter to have it be like “OH SHIT EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE” constantly.

And honestly I think it’s somewhat whorephobic that we can’t have a slice of life drama about 18th century sex workers, and not have everything be all terrible all the time, and like all Johns are sadistic monsters and shit because THAT’S NOT FUCKING TRUE also Quiggly running her brothel in her like over the top sadistic fashion feels unrealistic, like essentially indebted to the company store and frequently locked in, sure, but like if you’re running a high end operation, your workers aren’t going to put on a good performance if you’re terrorizing them all the time.

Harlots

Harlots has officially jumped the shark in terms of believability.

Like I could believe one or maaaaybe two of these storylines at once but like… 

(spoilers and TW: Rape and murder and racism under the cut)

But like the fuck-murder group, the scary dude being switched out for lord rapist and then lord rapist getting fucking murdered all of a sudden, the Christian crusader lady’s secret past, Satan McMonster being so unbelievably awful to his stepmother (which like I’d believe but it’s like past the point of like even moderate self-interest and he’s just so obsessive in his hatred, which combined with Quiggly having such intense, irrational hatred AND Lord Rapist being all about intense irrational hatred, it just feels like they’re using that to move the plot forward a bit too much), and like fucking the butler for why?  And just like you could do like two of these things, but all of them together feels a bit y’ know?  Weird.