Dear Sasha,
I have a friend who is considering becoming a forensic anthropologist, which means that she would be testifying in court. Her professors warned her that she should be careful about who her friends are; courts will use any excuse to discredit you.

I can understand that you may not want to be best friends with a prostitute for the sole reason that it is illegal but she believes that people who work in the porn industry are also people she should be avoiding, as "their values are different from hers and she does not agree with those values." Note that she knows no one in the industry and I suspect even less about their values. Perhaps you do know people in the porn industry and can tell me that they are, as I suspect, individuals who are not defined by their profession and have values as ordinary as the next person's? It seems to me that we should be standing up for people in the porn industry and for our right to be friends with them without hurting our careers. I see my friend's stance as maintaining the status quo.

Alisa

Dear Alisa,
Kathy Reichs is one of the world's best-known forensic anthropologists and she also writes popular novels on the topic. Reichs says in her profession, "one should always avoid association with individuals involved in criminal activity." (Except when they're dead, of course - then by all means have a poke and write a book about it.) With some exceptions, porn is legal in Canada so really, your friend's only obligation is to remain impartial should she ever come across porn industry workers in her line of work. After all, they have lawyers too, some of them as relentless to expose a witness' bias as others are to say the victim asked for it.

Prostitution is also not illegal in Canada, Alisa, and from what I understand, forensic anthropology deals in part with the study of decomposed or mutilated human remains for expert testimony. To be unfortunately blunt, given the flagrant and sadistic murder of sex workers worldwide, it does seem your friend will want to keep her naïve values in check, if only to assert her professional credibility in these cases. Someone who is inclined to use only a person's profession as a compass to their criminality (or their legitimacy, for that matter) won't exactly make a credible expert.

Let me also disabuse you of another common stereotype by saying that several of the people I've met in the porn industry are, in fact, defined by their profession in that they take a profound interest in sexual pleasure and exploration. With all the fascinating and open-minded options available, why would you imagine they'd have any interest in befriending people who maintain clichéd generalizations about them?


Questions? Comments? Contact Sasha at pouledeluxe@yahoo.com.