No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change. – William Shakespeare, Sonnet 123
As so often happens, a number of stories have come up recently which remind me of past columns; this time there were so many that I’ve divided them up into two parts.
Cops and Condoms (August 6th)
I’ve written on a number of occasions about the self-destructive male aversion to condoms and the absolute necessity for vigilance on whores’ part to prevent clients from pulling some sneaky trick to get inside a girl “bareback”. I’ve also pointed out that even most streetwalkers are scrupulous about condom use. This story published on the Fox News website on February 2nd (thanks to regular reader Joyce for the link!) illustrates the reason why clients and hookers both should insist on proper protection:
A 45-year-old Denver woman was arrested Tuesday [February 1st] and accused of knowingly spreading HIV while allegedly working as a prostitute…prosecutors say Frances Woodke — who has known for years that she is HIV positive — offered sex to an undercover police officer for $23. Woodke is being charged with two misdemeanors — prostitution and solicitation for prostitution — and a felony count of prostitution with knowledge of AIDS…the woman has pleaded guilty twice before to attempted prostitution with knowledge of AIDS — spending time in prison for the charges in 2000 and again in 2008, according to the Denver district attorney’s office. “It’s going to be difficult for us on the law enforcement side to identify people she put at risk — if there are people she put at risk,” said Lynn Kimbrough, a spokeswoman for the Denver district attorney’s office.
What the DA’s spokeswoman is alluding to in the last sentence is that we don’t know that Woodke ever offered any of her clients unprotected sex; she may not have. But I think it should be obvious that any whore desperate enough to offer her services for pocket change would probably find the lure of extra money for “bareback” irresistible if any man were insane enough to make such an offer. And though the chance of female to male HIV transmission via intercourse isn’t all that high, the chance does exist and such a careless man, if infected, would then be free to carry HIV to any other girl he hired. Girls, never go “bareback” with a man to whom you aren’t deeply committed no matter how generous the offer (if you’re a professional) or how much you “love” him (if you’re an amateur). And guys, please think with the big head when seeing hookers and insist on protection yourself – and if your date offers unprotected intercourse, RUN!
Election Day (November 2nd)
If Kristin Davis had managed a miracle she be Governor of New York right now, but alas, she didn’t get enough votes even to keep her Anti-Prohibition Party alive. And though she can restart the party later by petition, this article which appeared in the New York Daily News last Tuesday (February 8th) tells us what she’s doing in the meantime…and it sounds fishy:
Kristin Davis…plans to use her notoriety to help victims of sex trafficking. She’s starting a nonprofit called Hope House to provide shelter and social services for women in need. Before serving a four-month prison term for prostitution, Davis claims to have run the highest-grossing escort service in U.S. history, supplying call girls to the likes of Eliot Spitzer. She ran for governor last year on a platform of legalizing prostitution, pot and gambling.
Because of her prominence, she says that “hundreds” of women who have suffered in the sex industry have come to her to tell their stories and seek help. To her dismay, she found there were few places to direct them…Hope House will offer women food, shelter, security and medical care, ranging from HIV testing to drug treatment and psychiatric counseling, Davis says. Her plan is to open the full-scale shelter by 2013. She says a 24-hour emergency help line, similar to suicide hotlines, should be up within the next few months. Ultimately, Davis hopes to build the organization into something larger and more ambitious…
…Will people be surprised to see an advocate for legal prostitution crusading against its evils? They shouldn’t be, according to Davis. She says her critics “don’t understand the disparity between a woman who chooses to work and women who have been forced.” Her old agency represented what she calls the “‘Pretty Woman’-ish,” professionalized side of the sex trade — a slice she says accounts for “5% of the world of prostitution…I never forced a girl to do anything,” she explains. “It’s a completely different business model.”
Kristin, Kristin, Kristin. I understand you have a need to reinvent yourself, and your idea of a charity to help coerced girls appears to be a noble one. But you know damned well that there aren’t enough trafficked girls to support anything “larger and more ambitious” than a shelter; maybe if you extend your help to subsistence level hookers, drug addicts and teenage runaways selling sex to survive you might have something. Please, don’t feed the trafficking hysteria by requiring whores to claim they’ve been “trafficked” or coerced in order to earn your help; just needing help should be enough, even if that need was the result of a girl’s own poor choices. And finally, don’t throw the rest of us under the bus with idiotic exaggerations; 5%? You know damned well it’s about 60%, so let’s not launch yet another deception-fueled “rescue” organization when you could do something real and good.
Harm Reduction (January 13th)
In this column I talked about the principle of harm reduction, which holds that because humanity is not perfectible laws which attempt to eradicate vices are not only doomed to fail, but actually create worse evils. Early Christian thinkers understood this and obviously Reverend Paul Turp does as well, as reported in this story published in The Independent on January 30th:
…Reverend Paul Turp – the inspiration for Father Adam Smallbone in the BBC comedy Rev…this weekend strongly criticised a London council for attempting to “impose a moral code” on residents and visitors by outlawing lap dancing, sex shops and adult cinemas in the area. Hackney council voted last week for what it called a “nil” policy, banning any new strip venues from opening and holding out the likelihood that four existing clubs will lose their licences as they come up for renewal. The policy was approved despite more than 66 per cent of people who took part in a public consultation on the plans saying “no” to the ban.
Reverend Turp…said he was “hugely disappointed” with the decision, adding that it will “push the business underground, resulting in more women working dangerously on the streets” and will add to the people who turn to his church for help. The clergyman, who provides refuge for 17 homeless people, as well as caring for alcoholics, addicts and prostitutes, said: “The council have created a problem where there wasn’t one to begin with. They deliberately disregarded the views of the people.”
The local authority’s clampdown on strip clubs derives from the 2010 Policing and Crime Act, which gives councils greater authority in the licensing of strip clubs…[and] removes sex establishments’ rights of appeal if licence renewal is refused. Bill Parry-Davies, a solicitor who is representing two of the existing clubs, said the local authority had abused its powers and plans further legal moves to challenge the ban: “Hackney’s policy seems ideologically driven, regardless of its consequences in the real world. It’s regressive. People fought to protect women by introducing licensing. The courts will want to look very closely at a policy which seeks to deny a licensee’s right of appeal and the courts’ jurisdiction in such a manner.”
…Mr Turp warned that, unless overturned legally, the policy was likely to lead to danger for strip club workers and disruption for members of the public: “A wretched mistake has been made. Hackney 30 years ago was a very dodgy place. I remember the struggle to get these places licensed. Now they are well run and safe.”
Maybe we need to get the Reverend Turp to do a lecture tour in the States; perhaps some self-professed “conservative” politicians would be more inclined to listen to common sense if it came from a clergyman.
Does she really? Considering that few people have any reliable data whatsoever on prostitutes and their motivations, I’m not sure she really knows that. I don’t know what exactly her experience was like (I suppose it must not have been very bad, since her platform included legal prostitution); but still, there apparently are no good estimates that go beyond your own tentative values, Maggie.
That might just about be right! 🙂 (Though conservatives will also often mutter something about “lefty priests”, e.g., in connection with people Catholic Liberation Theology priests… They can always claim to know who the “real priests” are, mumble something about “there will be false prophets” and go on doing what they always did. 🙁
That’s bullshit, Asehpe. She knows it or she’s a retard, and she’s no retard. Every escort service owner has a fair idea of what the hooker population is like in her region; she has to. I’d accept it if she said 50% or even 40%, but she knows damned well it’s not any goddamned 5%. She said that to pander to the reporter’s preconceptions, just like this whole charity is pandering to a damned moral panic. 🙁
That does sound quite probable, Maggie. I’m perhaps trying to play devil’s advocate here; but maybe her personal experience in her area was worse than average. Some people are unlucky.
I have to admit it seems more likely that she’s not being sincere here, though.
With her resources as owner of one of the largest agencies in the country? Not bloody likely.
I think it’s her perception. 5% may be referring to the $2000 to $5000 per hour elite hot stuff in which she may be accurate. It’s still a very snobby attitude to call that section ‘professionalized’ indicating that 95% are of the streetwalker pimped category. We will never get a true figure of the percentages until we are allowed to speak out without fear. Till then it’s just a wild guessing game depending on your agenda with no true facts or figures.
And yes, I too see this as pandering to the public perception which isn’t helping our cause one damned bit.
If Kristin Davis wants to insist that I wasn’t “professional” because I didn’t charge $2000 an hour and abase myself by living in that huge anthill where she did business, I challenge her to a point-by-point comparison of procedures and ethics between our agencies.
It may have been what she was thinking, but it isn’t what she said. 🙁
What is the big difference between the $2000-$5000 sector and the $150-300 one? Is it just how ‘hot’ the girls are? Or are there extra services, extra security, whatever?
But indeed, considering this layer to be the one worthy of consideration is like thinking hotels are only hotels if they charge more than $1000 per night.
In New York, $150-$200 is pretty low-end. Expensive services may give more amenities and the girls may dress more expensively, but the main differences between a $2000/hour girl and a $400/hour girl are A) the $2000 girl dresses more expensively, and B) the $2000/hour girl works a lot less often.
What’s the incentive to pay the $2000 then? I mean, you go to an expensive restaurant because that means something — either the food is in some way special, or the place is, or then you get social points from being one of the select few who eat there. If in the case of escorts it all boils down to the girl being better dressed, that seems too little. Could it be that the girls are more conventionally ‘supermodel hot’? Why does a girl get a job in a $2000 agency, rather than a $400 one?
Nope.
Because she has the presence to demand $2000 and wants to do fewer high-paying jobs rather than more lower-paying ones. Annualized income isn’t much different. I know girls with two online personas and two websites, one which charges $400 and one which charges $800.
Give that man a cigar! 🙂
Hm! That seems to falsify the law of offer and demand!… or the idea that you get what you pay for. If you get the same thing from the $400 personna as you get from the $800 one, then it feels as if more expensive prositutes/agencies are just trying to rip off clients…
Cuban, please. 😉
The guy who pays $800 for an escort is getting the same thing as the one who pays $300 for tennis shoes or $500 for a sweatsuit: a name.
I have to admit to having had unprotected sex with escorts before. I think I’ve mentioned on here, however, I have a two-strike policy for the girls working for me. If I hear about their not using condoms, I suspend them from their requested availability for three days. A second offense is an automatic fire. So far, I’ve had to suspend only two. I’ve had to fire no one over the issue. The risk is too great to the business not to take something like that extremely seriously.
I’m glad you’ve repented from your sinful ways. 😉
Out of curiosity, can’t they lie to you and say they used condoms when in fact they didn’t? There are probably many clients who would cover them up.
Well, Maggie, $2000 an hour is pricey even for Gotham. Even though there are more millionaires per capita than any other city in the US. So she’s saying that you can’t be professional if you’re not charging that much?
That is highway snobbery.
Exactly. Either she’s full of shit or she’s a hopeless snob; I’m not sure which one is worse. 🙁
I’ve heard that Pat Robertson gave cover to conservatives to consider decriminalizing Mary Warner when he suggested it himself.
It may be that only a Robertson would get American conservatives (of the authoritarian sort, not the libertarian sort) to support decriminalization. But Rev. Turp might pull some of the middle-of-the-roaders over.