Secretary Clinton’s Sex-Worker-Positive Comment Causes Conservative Spit-Takes

Hillary Clinton needs to be applauded — and loud. During a speech at an event sponsored by the State Department and an LGBT employee group, she said meeting with and talking to sex workers was important as part of the global struggle to advance LGBT rights.

But at Free Republic.com, “America’s exclusive site for God, Family, Country, Life & Liberty constitutional conservative activists!,” they don’t even need to comment on Clinton’s statement to communicate the ultra-wrongness of her sentiment. The shame game has already begun.

“Meeting with whores?” the site seems to say, just by posting it. “Yeah, I bet!”

And my view is that this is a potential new front in the culture wars — for better or worse.

Mrs. Clinton gave the speech at an event celebrating Pride Month co-hosted by the State Department and the organization Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies (GLIFAA). You can watch the video of the whole thing here at state.gov, if you like. Here’s what FreeRepublic.com quoted, generating Hillary-ous proclamations of right-wing outrage in the comments.

Clinton: Meeting With ‘Sex Workers’ is ‘People-to-People Diplomacy at Its Best’

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday that State Department officials meeting with “sex workers” in the cause of protecting LGBT rights is an example of “people-to-people diplomacy at its best.”

“I want to applaud all of our diplomats and our development experts who continue to reach out to those advocating around the world in Uganda, Malawi, Russia, Turkey, China, and so many other places,” Clinton said in a speech on Monday.

“Our colleagues are meeting with human rights activists, health authorities, youth activists, sex workers, the full range of people who are involved in and working to protect LGBT people’s rights and lives,” Clinton said. “This is people-to-people diplomacy at its best.”

The story excerpted originally came from the conservative mouthpiece CNS News, from which the anonymous Free Republic poster duplicated the headline. That headline, as you may note, fails to mention that she also talked about human rights activists and youth activists — who may, incidentally be one and the same as “sex workers,” and “the full range of people who are involved in and working to protect LGBT people’s rights and lives” certainly includes many sex workers.

Anyway, someone conservative clipped a 1:18 clip of the speech here, I presume with the sole purpose of taking the “sex worker” comment completely out of context. CNS News also mentioned that Clinton said, in additionally:

“…It truly is a great tribute to those who have fought for these rights, for those who have sacrificed for them, and mostly for our country, because it is our country and our values that truly are being put at the forefront.”

…which seems to actually get that LGBT rights, and everyone’s rights, are what America is all about. The Secretary of State! Who’d-a thunk!?

The truth is, Sec. Clinton even acknowledging that sex workers from other countries are worth talking to is an absolute earthquake in the foreign policy world as far as I’m concerned. It would certainly be nice to hear her acknowledge that sex workers in this country (that is, the U.S.) were also worth communicating with on human rights issues — but then, strictly speaking that isn’t Clinton’s job.

I’ve never been a supporter of Hillary as a politician. I didn’t like Bill, either, at first, and didn’t vote for him in ’92. I found Bill and his cabal had a tendency to govern by poll, which to me is like washing out the gaping shrapnel wound of the Reagan years with only sorta-dirty toilet water. The result was that Clinton waffled whenever it suited his purposes — one prime example coming early in his administration, with the reprehensible and insulting DADT compromise. I never forgave him for that.

I believe Hillary’s presidential campaign showed that she intended to govern exactly the same way her husband did — relying on realpolitik instead of sticking to principle, and never taking a stand without clearing it with “the people” first. She also made it clear she intended to forge ahead without having learned the lesson Bill should have learned from DADT: that for a Democrat to cave under the slightest hint of public pressure gives Congressional Republicans the scent of blood they so richly crave. I have been a lifelong Democrat — or, as Will Rogers put it, “A member of no organized political party.” Democrats make themselves most vulnerable to right-wing attacks when they act as if they want people to like us rather than when they want people to do the fuck what we say. Republicans as a party have always been fairly good at the latter strategy.

I worry that in this instance, when Mrs. Clinton had the brass ones to mention sex workers in the first place — again, good on that, by the way — she will find herself the target of conservative haters — imagine that! — who want to shame her into never saying the word again. I worry even more that she — or her boss — could prove just wimpy enough to take it to heart.

Why do I care?

I care because I see the powder primed for a conservative anti-sex-worker hate-party starting up. The nightmare I have is of conservatives trying to pit “respectable” and to some degree privileged gays and lesbians against “whores.” This would only piss me the fuck off “enormously” if they were targeting sex workers in the United States. Then it would outrage me…no question about it. I would also be duty-bound to take it more personally, since any outrage against sex workers as a whole in the U.S. is, by any definition you wanna use, an attack on some of my very best friends. Such outrage could also — depending on what definitions you want to use — be construed as outrage against me, though I don’t personally identify as a sex worker (but some activists would define me as such).

But the thing is, for conservatives to try to get a bitchfight started over the fact that Clinton advocated communications with sex workers while discussing the human rights of LGBT individuals in countries like Uganda, Russia, China, Malawi and Turkey?

That is beyond motherfucking outrageous, but it’s terrifyingly smart. That scares me, and it makes that annoying little vein pop out on the side of my head…the one that makes people say, “Dude, are you all right?”

See, if there’s an anti-sex “backlash” in the making, it’s no accident that its promulgators chose the targets, and chose them right now, of Hillary Clinton and the members of the GLFIAA — an organization for LGBT individuals working in the foreign policy wings of the Federal Government.

That’s ’cause unlike sex workers in Uzbekistan or trafficked Somali women in Saudi Arabia, members of the GLFIAA have a lot to lose, and a hell of a lot of potential to lose it. The fact that this happens so soon after the recent New York State decision to legalize same-sex marriage is not exactly an accident.

Mind you, I do not like to draw political and class lines through the queer community. I believe that attempts to do so are by their nature divisive, and in some cases utilize the most reprehensible hate speech — then justify it by retreating into the speaker’s claimed lack of class privilege. Polemics against “rich queers,” “Castro clones,” “DINKy fags,” “Soccer Mom Lesbians,” and the like strike me all too often as the heartbreaking transposition of  a very real class struggle from guilty parties to potential allies — those allies being the potential allies of underprivileged queers. In my experience, this is done far more often by members of middle-class upbringing who self-identify as “working class” or “underprivileged” based exclusively on current income and self-perceived future income potential — than by people who were actually raised poor, or homeless, or in countries other than the United States.

But in any event, the GLFIAA is unquestionably made up of queers and allies with a certain amount of privilege — and that tends to be who, most of the time, campaigns for LGBT rights worldwide (with some significant and notable exceptions through history). I do not dispute the fact that there is a concrete experiential difference between an underprivileged queer sex worker and the kind of queer adult who is able to get a job with the State Department. Is it an important one? Hell, yes. Is it important here? Only if conservatives and “moralizing” shame-slingers can make it so, by drawing a dividing line between “sex workers” and “LGBT people,” as if those two groups were even…groups, to speak of. They’re broad descriptors at best, fuzzy terms that don’t actually mean anything, but can end up meaning everything.

For the record, I think there’s no damn chance of conservatives getting any traction with this as an anti-Hillary issue — largely because conservatives long ago blew their last drizzly wad in the Hillary-hating orgy. As far as I can tell, anything a conservative says about Hillary merely outrages the ones who are already outraged by her very existence, and falls on deaf ears everywhere else.

But any conservative moral crusader who wants to stop the activists in the GLFIAA from having conversations with sex workers in Congo or Rwanda or South Africa or India or China — those verge, given the very real dangers faced by sex workers in other countries, on being would-be killers in the same way as someone who tries to divert media attention from a third-world atrocity for their own political gain.

The danger I see with Secretary Clinton — both now and in her political future — is the same governing-by-poll habit that her husband showed. Throughout his presidency, Bill Clinton managed to project an image of relatively confident leadership partially because he could spew the most god-awful milktoast bullshit he thinks people want to hear, while oozing charisma — this is a trait, frankly, of half-assedly successful politicians and those who run “moderate,” “centrist” — that is to say, “Democratic” administrations. Bill Clinton waffled on everything the public wasn’t sure about. As a result, during the critical culture wars of the ’90s, there was a lot he wasn’t sure about.

Similarly, in her campaign, Hillary utilized her husband’s network of political advisers, pollsters, hucksters, and Caution Commandos. As a result, she always seemed unsure what she “really believed” until she’d seen her poll numbers on a particular issue. Sure, she was trying to woo “the public.” But “the public” is 300(ish) million people in the U.S. Half of the people out there haven’t got the foggiest idea what they think, until they see their poll numbers. They like Democrats far better when the Dems are saying not “Please like me!” but “STFU and do what I say.”

Hillary Clinton needs to be applauded — and loudly — for acknowledging the importance of sex workers in any conversation about human rights. I implore you to applaud her, and make sure everyone knows it.

For my money, the State Department should encourage human rights over political expediency at every opportunity. It’s rarely proved any good at that. Mrs. Clinton’s comments are a small attempt to move that direction.

And I’ll always remember the day Hillary Clinton was willing to use the  term “sex worker” in public in a positive context. It ain’t Selma…but it’s a start. Don’t let a conservative “backlash” prevent our Secretary of State from ever saying the term “sex workers” in a speech again.

Image: Amsterdam’s red light district, by Smudo.