Actually, I'm pretty miffed about the abolition of the "tart with a heart", too. Here's what's said about that, for the avoidance of doubt (and ex post facto editing):
4. the tart with a heart It’s not just that it’s a horrible cliché centuries past its sell-by date. Think what it says about your invented world. If prostitution exists, or even flourishes, then it is not an equal society. It is patriarchal. And that makes it sexist. Is the human race – one half of it, at least – doomed to be sexist until the heat death of the universe? Biological apologists are no better than creationists. Leave regressive crap like this where it belongs – in religious books.
So - either one has to leave out prostitution altogether or make everyone involved in it heartless? Unpersons? Because I can imagine prostitution - in one form or another - indeed existing until the heat death of the Universe. And you know what? I'd rather believe that than that the working girls I've known in one place or another, or the ones my mother knew or whose mother my mother knew - including the one killed by the Yorkshire Ripper (not an accredited death and none of the police could be arsed to investigate) have their stories written out of history as "centuries past their sell-by date."
Because, Mr Sales, when you tell me that the story of the tart with the heart is centuries past its sell-by date, and I turn round and say, "I see you outside for that" and you say, "You and who's army?" I say, "Empress Theodora's army, that's whose." Because the day stories like Theodora's stop being told, then that's the day to die.
no subject
So - either one has to leave out prostitution altogether or make everyone involved in it heartless? Unpersons? Because I can imagine prostitution - in one form or another - indeed existing until the heat death of the Universe. And you know what? I'd rather believe that than that the working girls I've known in one place or another, or the ones my mother knew or whose mother my mother knew - including the one killed by the Yorkshire Ripper (not an accredited death and none of the police could be arsed to investigate) have their stories written out of history as "centuries past their sell-by date."
Because, Mr Sales, when you tell me that the story of the tart with the heart is centuries past its sell-by date, and I turn round and say, "I see you outside for that" and you say, "You and who's army?" I say, "Empress Theodora's army, that's whose." Because the day stories like Theodora's stop being told, then that's the day to die.
Any other women's myths Sales has in his sights?