Catherine Healy Becomes A Dame For Services To Prostitution

Here’s an amusing divergence between current right on thinking and establishment such. Catherine Healy has just become a Dame – something of an establishment recognition of having a damn good job, vry well done there. It is, to inform those unlucky enough not to share these blessings of Empire, the female equivalent of being a knight, “Sir Bob” and so on. She becomes “Dame Catherine.” The interesting thing being that she’s been appointed to this honour for her work as a prostitute. No, not for the excellence of her bedroom skills – although that has certainly happened in the past, a number of the Ducal families are descended from bed mates of a King – but for her campaigning with the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective and her and their role in the eventual legalisation of the industry.

I regard this as a major step forward in human and civil rights, that consenting adults get to do as consenting adults wish without the law trying to ban such consensual behaviour. Not to my taste but to be a liberal is to really believe in chacun a son gout.

The amusement comes from the divergence with current “liberal” values which regards any form of sex work as oppression and something that must be banned. Thus silliness like the Nordic model, where consumption of the service is illegal and supply isn’t.

I think the establishment, not the progressive liberal, is correct here:

On Monday, Healy was made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the rights of sex workers.

“I was very daunted and found it very hard to believe,” she said. “You look around and there are many people I admire and you kind of figure out where you fit in society. I did not ever think this was a possibility.”

In 1986, Healy helped found the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective, an organisation that supports sex workers’ rights.

There is an added benefit here, this will entirely enrage Julie Bindel. A reasonable definition of good policy being something that will enrage Julie Bindel.