Hey guys. Hookers are people too! No, really. I know, I know: they're hookers! Slags! Butts of jokes! But they are, in fact, human. If the hooker you are viewing is not human, buddy you have got a whole other set of problems that we're not going to go into here.
Stick with me. I have a point beyond that fact, I swear.
So. Let's operate on the assumption that hookers ("sex workers." "prostitutes." "members of the oldest profession." Pick your term; I am going to go with "hookers" here less for reasons of personal preference than because that's the label The Oatmeal chose) are, in fact, human beings. They show all the biological signs of life. They share their genome with other homo sapiens. They are bipedal, verbal, and warm blooded.
See? Hookers are people, too! You may disapprove of their lifestyle and/or past choices, but you can't deny that they are, in fact, human. I mean, Wikipedia says so!
And that's why comics like this raise my hackles. At first when I read it and reacted badly, I thought I was just annoyed at the "LOL hookers are dumb amirite?!" vibe. Or the fact that the web can still be a boys' club, where women are the butt of jokes, after all these years. But after discussing with some friends about why it set off a "feminist SMASH" involuntary response, I've reached the conclusion that my problem with The Oatmeal's latest comic isn't that I think its author is making fun of hookers or women. It's that in three out of the five panels in the comic, the author is operating as if hookers, and possibly women, are not human. And dehumanized hookers are fucking awesome, man!
Let's break it down, shall we? Go on, open that link to the comic in a new tab, and let me walk you through my take.
5 Super Neat Ways to Use a Hooker
Panel 1: [art depicts three fat, male video game players and a prostitute with a muffin top. One gamer hands a game controller to the hooker and orders her to "play and play well"]
Artist's included text: "Extra Mario Kart player"
My translation: "Haha, you can buy a hooker's time and then have her do something other than sex with you for that time!"
My rating, on a scale from 1 ("Ooh! happy bunnies!") to 10 ("godawful misogyny"): 2 ("Well yeah, but...wait, where's the joke here?")
Panel 2: [art depicts two men riding, horseback-style, on two corpulent hookers in a joust]
Text: Jousting
My translation: "Hookers are fat, amirite? Like cows! And cows are close to horses, and what do we do with horses? We use them like beasts of burden in dangerous war games! So, go buy yourself a hooker and ride her like the animal she is!"
Rating: 8 ("There are so many things wrong with this that I can't even...I can't...agh!")
Panel 3: [art depicts a man working out, lifting a large weight. A fit-looking hooker, in fishnets, stands over him acting as spotter. The man is berating the hooker to be a better spotter]
Text: Spotter
My translation: "You can buy a hooker's time and then have her do physical work you can't get another person to do for you because you're a jerk to the person doing it!"
Rating: 2 ("Well yeah, but...wait, where's the joke here?")
Panel 4: [art depicts a joyous-looking man hiding under a couch-cushions-and-bedsheets fort, kiddie style. On the other side of some cushions from him stands a blank-faced hooker with a muffin top, wearing a handwritten sign that says "Whore Mountain" and holding up the bedsheet that forms the roof of the fort]
Text: Couch Forts
My translation: "You can buy a hooker and put her to work as an inanimate object, labeled with the scarlet letter she deserves to wear. 'Cause she's a hooker, bro!"
Rating: 7 ("Yeah, there is something seriously twisted here.")
Panel 5: [art depicts a man in a rocking chair, reading a book on bird watching and pointing threateningly while he orders a chubby hooker to not dare move. The hooker is standing, arms out like a scarecrow and her head tipped back like a sword swallower. Birdseed covers her arms and fills her open mouth, and a bird perches on her head]
Text: Bird Feeder
My translation: "Hookers are inanimate objects who do not need to breathe. Fill their bodily cavities with whatever you feel like using. If they claim they need to breathe or move, they're being a bad hooker!"
Rating: 10 ("Pretty sure this is depicting, jokingly, rape and suffocation of prostitutes. Backing away now...")
Are we seeing a theme here, folks? I mean, arguably any comic about hookers and using their services is in bad taste, but it's not plain old "bad taste" that set me off. I can be as annoyingly classist (and yeah, that's what mocking sex workers kind of is) as the next girl, but when it comes to making jokes based on the apparent lack of humanity of a group of The Other...you're getting into dangerous territory. Territory that borders on "Those People don't need rights, because they're not people!"
Back away now, The Oatmeal. Go back to the anthropomorphized tapeworms and grammatical errata we all find so awesome. Leave the dehumanization to other, less talented people.
