Review: Paying For It, by Chester Brown

[ed_rex]

You're a dirty whore-monger, Chester Brown

Autobiography is a risky endeavour at the best of times; not only will the memoirist's craft be scrutinized and judged, but so too will his or her character. So it is probably a good thing for Chester Brown that he is one of the best cartoonists of his generation, because he really does have sex with prostitutes.

In fact, his latest book, Paying For It, is all about his decision to give up on romantic love in favour of sex for money.

It has become almost trendy to dabble in the sex-trade. Bookshelves groan beneath mounds of tell-all memoirs and fictions, and even relatively mainstream television has gotten into act, with no less than one-time Doctor Who companion Billie Piper disrobing on a regular business as Belle du Jour. But memoirs and fictions glamorizing the life of johns?

Maybe not so much

It is one thing to admit to taking money for sex; to confess paying for sex, on the other hand, remains quite outside the bounds of polite society.

If Brown doesn't make an explicit analogy between his "coming-out" as a john and the struggles of gay men and lesbians who braved arrest and assault when they refused to any longer closet their sexual natures, Paying For It certainly implicitly invites the comparison, if only by Brown's refusal to be ashamed.

As Brown's friend (and ex-girlfriend) Kris tells him, to most people, johns are "... creeps. Who knows what they're capable of? If I had a daughter I'd be worried about what would happen if she was in the same elevator as one of those guys."

So would you want to read a comic book by and about one?

Click here for my full review, with inevitable spoilers — not safe for work.

Comments

Ick?

[ed_rex]

For perhaps the first time in my life I feel the urge to say "I"m sorry you were offended" rather than apologizing.

Perhaps you'd care to expand your regrets about the analogies the text under discussion bring to mind.

[highways]

Well for one I assumed while reading your review that the analogies were stuff you thought up, rather than stuff the author actually said, so if my issues are actually with him then I apologize. Your defensiveness and the way you wrote the review sort of suggests that this is not actually the case, though. And I doubt it's the first time in your life you've ever said that!

But anyway.

You are implicitly implying two things which are pretty offensive. First off, by comparing people's snide comments about johns to actual institutionalized oppression based on sexual identity you're suggesting that they are in any way remotely similar. They are not. You're also basically calling "willing to pay for sex" a sexual orientation along the lines of "being gay," which, yes, is super ick.

Defensiveness

[ed_rex]

My defensiveness was largely due to the fact your comments were one-liners. As I saw it, I could either ignore them, or else make presumptions about what you meant by them. Hence my own rather snide tone — so thanks for expanding on your thoughts despite that.

Brown might have made the gay/john analogy explicitly someone in the appendicies, but if so, I don't remember the specifics — so I'll take credit (and blame) for the analogy as I've used it here.

First off, by comparing people's snide comments about johns to actual institutionalized oppression based on sexual identity you're suggesting that they are in any way remotely similar.

That's not quite the comparison I was making. As I said later on in my essay, I think "...there is a deep-seated contempt for those (men) who pay for sex that is eerily similar to that which bubbles beneath the placid surface of those who can boast of many gay friends, yet who still hold that marriage be reserved for mixed-sex couples only."

While I think there is an analogy to be made between gays and lesbians vs johns, it is mostly in the attitudes of other people towards members of those groups.

Someone who commented directly on my site said he doesn't "know if there are any johns who aren't contemptible", which is a pretty sweeping condemnation, don't you think?

Anyway, for the record, I don't think that paying for sex is another sexual orientation. It is a chosen activity. That doesn't, however, mean that knee-jerk condemnations of that activity are legitimate just because we find the activity icky.