The word spy also does not appear in any US government job descriptions. It’s an informal term. In the NSA-command-chain military a “spy” is an officer who works in intelligence while a “spook” is an enlisted person who works in intelligence. Someone who works in a country on behalf of a foreign government generally has agency and is equivalent to an officer rather than an enlisted person, whatever intelligence activities they may participate in. By the informal language of our intelligence community, she’s a spy. For whatever that’s worth.
Well, whatever label we put on her primary activities, “Agent, Operative, Plant, Spy?” there should be the addition “and Whore.”
I don’t think it’s being sexist to say this. Anyone, male or female, who willingly uses their body to further “state” goals is still a prostitute. Maybe she doesn’t deserve the fate of Mata Hari, but as a “gun rights activist” it would be fitting.
How utterly fitting that this appearance is on “The Ingraham Angle.”
Of course Laura’s going “all in” in defense of a Russian spy, doing her bit, you know, to get “the truth out there.”
FWIW I’m a lawyer who also doesn’t dress to the nines, though I do show up in court with a coordinated shirt and suit. But this, on national teevee?! Un-freaking-believable. He doesn’t even know how to tie his tie.
Well, granted, what we think of as nice people don’t use sex as a means of influence or a medium of exchange. But the Russkie intelligence services know it works so they use it. I have to say my own reaction is she’s pretty cold-blooded but my stronger feeling is contempt for the men who let themselves get used. They’re not nice people either. If you confine your social life to other nice people who hang out because they like each other you won’t end up sweating through an interview with the FBI and maybe catching a charge or two or three in the end.
It’s not sexist, it’s just too judgmental. One big challenge in discussing prostitution is defining it.
What about a woman who has only 2 or 3 “clients”? What about a woman we call a “gold digger,” marries a man for his money?
And a woman who does one-night stands, big in the 70’s? Are they all prostitutes or whores?
Fact is I don’t know. Neither do people who try to study the matter with some objectivity.
In WW2, more than one woman working for American or Allied intel used her body to gain valuable intel. Are they “whores”? I can’t bring myself to call them that.
I had some reservations about my original comment and I suppose you put your finger on them. The point about some women using sex in furtherance of Allied espionage during WWII is well taken: No, I wouldn’t call them “whores” though I think such acts are a terrible price to pay for intelligence. The question is, whether the personal sacrifice was worth it.
In Butina’s case I see a premeditated and amoral use of sex in a very bad cause: undermining our democracy to help install a charlatan and traitor as our head of state, in order to serve the interests of another, genuinely evil regime. Let’s just say that the use of sex to such ends engenders a deep sense of revulsion in me, even if the Russian “honeypot” isn’t necessarily a “whore.”.
“… premeditated and amoral use of sex in a very bad cause…”
Yep, that nails it. I’ve known women who submitted to sex for fear of some kind of injury or even murder.
Then, we had a woman here this forum talk about using sex for a grade or admission to grad school.
She described her behavior as amoral. That was back when Harvey Weinstein was all over the news.
I think any “evolved” – whatever that means to anyone – man feels compassion for any woman who is forced by circumstance to provide sex to a man with whom she would otherwise not engage.
I have an in-law who was raped by her drill sgt in basic training. She was too young, too naïve and too scared to speak up. In the early 70s it might not have bought her anything anyway.
With Buttina, she would presumably know what she signed on for when she raised her hand.
She may very well fit the profile of an amoral person.
