The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods. – Hannah Arendt
It’s time for my monthly collection of stories related to sex work, the rights of those who do it and the attempts of sex-haters to repress us out of existence.
Judd Not, Lest Ye Be Judded
In my column of April 2nd I expressed considerable anger toward Ashley Judd’s poisonous lie that normal men “buy children for sex” (i.e. knowingly hire underage prostitutes). But after hearing about this new story I have to wonder whether she isn’t completely delusional. Apparently, she recently released a memoir in which she claims to have been raped and otherwise sexually abused by family members and other parties. But when confronted with the fact that most of the events in her memoir didn’t happen as she claimed they did, Judd said on the Today show that “The book is very honest, it’s not necessarily accurate, because everyone in a family has their own perspective and their own experience. But it’s very true for me.” In other words, Judd thinks it’s OK to libel and slander people and accuse them of crimes they didn’t commit as long as one wants to pretend these things happened in order to blame somebody else for her problems, or to hold a pity party for herself in order to prop up a sagging career. And since she obviously thinks it’s acceptable and even “honest” to defame the characters of her own parents, I guess her accusing the majority of the male population of collusion in child sex slavery isn’t so bad. The Salon reporter who wrote this story from April 6th clearly thinks it’s virtuous to trash other peoples’ reputations in order to make oneself feel better, but the majority of the commenters are far more rational.
Breaking News: President Obama has a Human Friend!
I’m glad this “dog bites man” article wasn’t more publicized than it was. The president has a friend who got caught doing what 70% of men have done at one time or another. From the Huffington Post of April 6th:
One of President Barack Obama’s close friends has been arrested in Honolulu on suspicion of soliciting a prostitute. Honolulu police say Robert “Bobby” Titcomb was one of four men arrested in an undercover sting operation late Monday and released on $500 bail. The 49-year-old Titcomb attended Punahou School in Honolulu with Obama. The two often golf, play basketball, go to the beach and dine together when the president returns home to Hawaii for vacation…Titcomb has not publicly responded to the charges, and he wasn’t immediately available for comment.
And just in case you’re still awake, here’s another non-news item:
I Told You So
Same song, 365th verse: the number of men who can make a decent living working as male escorts for female customers is vanishingly small, and I doubt there’s a city on Earth where there are five of them. But TV is not reality and in male fantasyland there are just oodles of women lining up to pay for sex with men. Unfortunately for the Showtime network, in reality women have to be paid to pretend that they’re willing to pay to have sex with men. Yawn.
Also in Jezebel:
Anna North wonders if cops are committing more sex crimes than they used to in a story which compares a firefighting instructor’s use of sexual metaphors with forcible rape. Frankly, Miss North, I doubt they’re committing more rapes these days than ever before; it’s just that because of the internet it’s harder for them to suppress the stories than it used to be.
Video: Sex Workers Refute the Claims of Neofeminist Prohibitionists
Though the sound quality in this video (courtesy of Harlot’s Parlour) leaves much to be desired, the girls in it make many of the same arguments I do about the fact that neofeminist efforts to prohibit sex work actually infantilize women and restrict our rights rather than promoting them as the prohibitionists claim.
Backfire
Demi Moore and her boy sex slave, unsatisfied with merely insulting people who have forgotten more about sex work and migrant labor than they have ever known, have recruited their equally empty-headed celebrity friends to create a new series of commercials with which to convince people that “real men don’t buy child sex slaves.” Because obviously if there are 300,000 child sex slaves in the United States, then there must also be 300,000 child sex slave owners (who presumably store them in cardboard boxes at the top of the closet when not in use), and a series of dumb commercials will obviously convince them to get rid of those slaves, perhaps by flushing them down the loo like unwanted goldfish. But what Demi and company overlooked is that not everyone is a gullible twit who will believe everything a celebrity tells him, and that there are a number of us getting the word out about the falsity of “trafficking” rhetoric. The result: Widespread derision and ridicule of the campaign all over the internet. Even Jezebel, which is usually pretty credulous about the whole “child sex slave” mythology, was unimpressed.
I’m Not At All Surprised, and That’s Truly Sad
Some of the investigators working on the Long Island Serial Killer case now theorize that the killer may be a cop or ex-cop, as reported in this New York Times story from April 9th:
Whoever killed four prostitutes, and possibly four other people, and then dumped their bodies in heavy underbrush along a beachfront causeway on Long Island appears to have a sophisticated understanding of police investigative techniques…taunting phone calls…to the teenage sister of one of the victims…were made from…some of the most crowded locations in New York City…and…were probably chosen because they allowed the caller to blend into crowds, so that if investigators pinpointed his location from the cellphone’s signal, they would be unable to pick him out of the crowd using any nearby surveillance cameras…This fact, as well as the killer’s use of disposable cellphones to contact the four victims who have been identified…suggested to some investigators that the killer was well versed in criminal investigative techniques…and could even be in law enforcement himself. “He is a guy who is aware of how we utilize technology,” one investigator said. “Frankly, people are thinking maybe he could be a cop” — either one still in law enforcement or one who has moved on…the caller kept each of his…calls to less than three minutes…the brief duration…thwarted efforts by the New York Police Department to use the signal to pinpoint the caller’s location and find him…
As we’ve discussed on several occasions, police violence toward prostitutes is depressingly typical, and sociopaths often target prostitutes because of the widespread attitude that we are disposable. But it’s both sad and disgusting (though not, alas, surprising) when both of those motivations occur in one individual.
Soon after the story broke about Obama’s buddy I saw this headline:
“Obama linked to prostitution ring” Wow .. way to leap there you media idiots.
On the Demi/Ashton bruhahaha: I saw portions of their interview with Piers Morgan on CNN. A supposed “victim” of sex trafficking called into the show and Ashton/Demi listened to her story but did not address her (which I though was kinda rude but neither here nor there). What was interesting was seeing Ashton get emotionally upset while listening to her. Seems to me he is upset at the men who “hire/buy” these young girls more so than the traffickers. But if there are say a 100,000 to 300,000 underaged prostituted trafficked girls that are forced to see 8 to 10 men a day (I am assuming that this is 8 to 10 DIFFERENT men) then that would equal how many men buying these girls… Hmmm 100,000 x 8 = 800,000 and then carry it on. So there are 800,000 to 30 million men hiring underage girls. Basically if you walk into a grocery store what? Two thirds of those men hire underage hookers. And in Hollywood? Two out of three of Demi/Ashton’s friends hire underage girls? Man….
Sorry if my math is off but that wasn’t the point.
Your math isn’t as off as theirs is, love. 🙂
Hey, did you notice that the FBI arrested all the proprietors of Internet poker sites?
While this might seem off-topic (I could care less about gambling myself) upon closer inspection it seems another case of the Feds going gung-ho after victimless crimes and claiming they’re a “menace,” which should be familiar to anyone who reads this blog.
I went back and read stories from a few years ago when they first banned Internet poker from the USA (it’s been operating off-shore since). The claims then were online poker was “destroying families.” Pretty ironic at a time when banking practices were, in fact, doing just that.
What is happening with this country? Real crime, it seems, is ignored, especially when it concerns rich bankers (read Matt Taibbi’s pieces on why prosecutors look the other way on Wall St. fraud). Yet constant hysteria is being drummed up about victimless “crimes” between consenting adults, like pot smoking, sex work and poker. This is insanity, IMO. Why is the public so stupid that they vote the same empty suits into office time and time again when it’s clearly not in their best interests?
Yeah, I saw it on The Agitator this morning. Gambling is another of those things (like cocaine) which I personally despise, but I defend the right of others to indulge in it if that’s what they like, and I consider it an abomination that the government indulges in this heavy-handed suppression of it.
As for why the public continues to vote these people in, that’s easy; it’s because most people actually want to be slaves. When it’s not overtly abusive, slavery is easy; one need not think for oneself, plan for oneself or worry about one’s needs because the masters take care of all that. There’s nothing wrong with choosing slavery for oneself; the problem is when the masters try to FORCE slavery on those who don’t want it. 🙁
I’ve gone to The Agitator’s website, and while I don’t agree with his libertarian politics necessarily, some of the (un)law(ful) and (dis)order stuff he had on there is truly frightening.
Like an innocent man going to prison for 18 years, and the prosecutors granted immunity from either suing or prosecution themselves. So basically a prosecutor can deliberately put an innocent person away and get away with it. Truly frightening.
You may have noticed the case you’re speaking of happened in good ol’ New Orleans; the prosecutor in question was Harry Connick, Senior, the father of the singer. I’m glad the son decided to do something constructive with his life rather than following in his old man’s footsteps.
Regarding the show Gigolos, I was approached (along with a number of other escorts I talked to) by cowboys4angels, the agency featured on that show.
So yeah, they were recruiting female escorts to portray clients of these male escorts.
“Show is filming in Las Vegas in November and you are more than welcome to promote yourself or your own website while on the show. You can also just appear on the show as a fun client and remain anonymous as a female provider. This show will air on Showtime.”
I’m honestly amazed that anyone still believes that “reality shows” are real, when it was admitted in the Writer’s Guild Strike of several years ago that most if not all of them are at least partially scripted.
I actually caught the show last week and I was certain it was a fraud on a number of levels. Nothing seemed authentic in the least, especially the “clients”.
I wonder if any of them are not escorts…
By coincidence, I was watching today a movie about marijuana decriminalization, medical, etc. Somebody asked (as a joke, not serious) about “medical prostitution.” As in, if a doctor gave you a prescription, you should be able to be or to hire a prostitute. He said to the pot guy, “I’ll join your fight if you join mine, ha ha.”
The pot guy answered that he thinks pot is a much more victimless crime, because so many of the people in prostitution didn’t choose to be there. And, he added, “The guy you have to see is scarier than the guy I have to see!”
I’m sure this would have been funny if I believed the trafficking/pimp narrative that this man obviously did. But there you go: that narrative is so ingrained that even the people who should be your best supporters, the advocates for ending another prohibition, are against decriminalizing because “they’re forced into it.”
It’s going to be a long uphill battle.
The notion that male whores can exist like females cracks me right the hell up. Go to any deployed coed military unit and see who is paying for sex. I hear the Navy chucks make out especially well.
We’ve probably already talked about this, but please refresh my memory.
I had a very interesting debate last night with two of my best friends, and the issue was basically this:
No woman would choose to be a prostitute if she could make the same amount of money doing something else.
True?
That’s what the prohibitionists WANT you to believe, but it isn’t true. Dr. Suzanne Jenkins’ “Beyond Gender: An Examination of Exploitation in Sex Work” found that 72% of escorts like their work for the independence, 67% for meeting people and 93% for the money. So I think the only fair statement would be “few women under a prohibitionist regime would choose prostitution if they could make the same or more money after taxes working for themselves entirely by their own rules at a usually-pleasant job in which they got to meet people.” And in a decriminalized society you couldn’t even say that; why do women work as teachers despite the poor pay? You just can’t pretend sex is always different from every other human activity; some women would always choose prostitution no matter what, just as some women choose to be nurses or social workers despite other options.
*PINCH* we were typing at the same time LOLOL
LOL! When I was in grade school and someone else said the same thing at the same time, one of the two could say “Jinx!” and the other couldn’t speak until someone else said her name. 😀
You are going to get a variety of answers because it is way more complicated than just an amount of money. I choose prostitution for the freedom is gives me with my time. I do not have to report to a job and be their little slave for an eight hour time period (or more). If my child has a play at 2:00 in the afternoon, I do not have to beg a boss to let me leave early. If my child gets sick at school, I am close enough to her to get to her right away as opposed to working across town and still having to ask permission to leave. Same goes if I get sick, I just don’t schedule anyone that day and stay home in bed as opposed to having to get a doctors note to return to work.
In working a “real” job I may not make as much money but I get a paycheck consistently and there is peace of mind in that. Slow periods don’t affect my paycheck (in general) plus I get health insurance benefits from an employer.
All things considered, a person doesn’t ‘really’ make a ton of money more in this job versus a real job considering what you give up when you become self employed.
BUT this is just IMO and will differ from other ladies.
It’s true of me. I’m to the point I don’t hardly care (at the most) or don’t care at all if anyone thinks that’s funny or stupid.
Regarding Ashley Judd;
Since My Lady was abused by a family member (nobody disputes that he was that kind of swine, so there isn’t much doubt), I have more knowledge that I really want about the sex abuse / recovered memory subculture. There are people who have legitimately recovered memories of abuse that they had blanked out, but there are also a large number of people who have ‘recovered’ memories that are at wild variance with know facts or flat out impossible. There are a variety of reasons for this, not all of which involve dishonesty, but they contradict a favorite “all men are abusers at heart” and so there is a lot of psychobabble out there to “explain” why some recovered memories are, so to say, “fake but real”. And, sadly, there are mental health professionals who push this tripe. My Lady and I have been lucky enough to only occasionally brush up against the fringes of the practice circles of such swine, but they are out there, doing incalculable damage.
In short, Ms. Judd may honestly and sincerely believe the twaddle she is spouting on the subject, having been fed it by a mental health professional who she trusts (but shouldn’t).
Welcome to my blog, CSP! My problem with Judd is that she admits it isn’t factually true; if she were buying into the “recovered memory” mythology wouldn’t she insist her memories were real?
My second university roommate (whom I’ll probably write about one day) was sexually abused by her own father for years, and she remembered it quite distinctly without the “assistance” of a therapist. 🙁
Jon Kyl spent most of his youth being molested by Martians.
#notintendedtobeafactualstatement
Two points;
People who have bought into the therapy-is-so-much-more-fun-than-actually-living subculture (I don’t know what else yo call it, but it’s out there *shudder*) have been trained by their therapists (abusers) to parrot a party line with little or no regard as to whether it makes any goddamned sense. This is how you get witch hunts about Satanic Ritual Abuse in the absence of anything resembling physical evidence, and with accusations that are simply physically impossibilities.
and
People can and do blank out large parts of their memories. When I met my lady she simply accepted as a fact of life that she had few memories of her life before the age of thirteen. Her memory recovery was not a result of drugs or hypnosis, but a gradual process as she forced herself to consider her reactions to some things. When she identified her abuser, the accusation was entirely possible and completely consistent with his known behavior (a sensible family would have pitched him out on his ear decades before he eventually died of AIDS). The abuse My Lady Remembers is consistent with the physical world, the known behavior of the people involved, and explains much of her behavior problems. But that some people have recovered memories that are real does not make ALL recovered memories real. And, sadly, there are people with an awful lot at stake in insisting that they are ALL real. For one thing, if they ANRN’T real then these people are responsible for several grotesque miscarriages of justice.
*whew* long one. But this matters to me. People who want to whip up hysteria about how ALL men want to rape, and will if given the chance, trivialize My Lady’s experience and insult ME. May they all rot.
Post-traumatic stress disorder can cause memory loss. I still don’t have all the memories of the 1st few months of the events that caused me to get it. BUT, over time, more of those ARE coming back which is wonderful! Maybe 1 day I’ll have all of them. My short-term memory is still affected by PTSD. I have to write myself “to do” notes, etc., at work and at home. My concentration level isn’t the same since getting it also. But, you do what you have to do to function and contribute to society as much as possible. Over time I’m having more memories from before the events come back which is great! All these memory problems started to get better a while after the events. I was very blessed to have 2 wonderful counselors over time who literally saved my life. Thank God they weren’t greedy and never pulled any “false memory” thing with me.
Since I’ve been reading and talking about drugs quite a bit lately, somebody asked me flat-out if I wanted drugs decriminalized because I wanted to take ecstasy. I said that it wasn’t so much that I wanted to take ecstasy as I wanted Laura to take ecstasy, in her doctor’s office and under her supervision, probably less that a half-dozen times in her life.
Maybe it wouldn’t’ve worked with her. Maybe her blood pressure is too high or too low, or her family history would warn against it. But damn it, it should have been a possibility.
But no, cracking down on young people dancing with glowsticks was more important than Laura’s quality of life. Unfuck these people.
Sailor B: My dear friend Grace has glaucoma, which debilitates her with severe headaches about once per week. Marijuana has been shown to be extremely effective in the treatment of glaucoma, but instead she’s stuck with $40/bottle eye drops (and it would be twice that if we bought them in the U.S.) which are better than nothing, but not by much.
However, I was in favor of decriminalization long before I met Grace, plus I hate cocaine and heroin and I want them decriminalized as well. It’s simply not anyone’s business what anyone else chooses to do, say, think, read, wear, fuck, eat, drink, snort, inject or spend money on.
Period.
CSP, when you talk about physical impossibilities I was of course immediately reminded of children being flushed down magical toilets into underground chambers. 😐
I totally agree that calling everything “rape” or every man a “rapist” totally trivializes real rapes; this is one of the issues we as sex workers have to deal with as neofeminists refer to our work as “paid rape”, which is clearly an absurdity. 🙁
Magical Toilets? A Harry Potter reference perchance?
I only wish it were.
Holy Cow! I had forgotten that.
On the other hand, IIRC, one of the secret entrances to the Ministry of Magic in one of the HP movies was to stand in a toilet, flush it, and you’d spin around and, Hey Presto, you’re in!
I really, really hope that they weren’t thinking of the McMartin witch hunt.
Maggie,
“got caught doing what 70% of men have done at one time or another. ”
70%? Really? I mean if you discount ‘wives’ as prostitutes I thought it would be lower. Where does that number come from?
I knew PLENTY of guys who worked in Asia who saw prostitutes. They are pretty much free in places like Manila, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur.
It’s from Kinsey. Later researchers found lower numbers because Kinsey phrased the question as “ever paid for sex” while later researchers used phrases like “patronized prostitutes”, allowing respondents rationalizations like “well, she was a stripper, not a prostitute” or “well, it was only once so that’s not really patronage”. It’s all in how you ask; some recent studies have forced the numbers even lower by asking the ridiculous “have you ever had an affair?” which lowers it further still because whores and one-might stands aren’t affairs (“affair” implies an ongoing relationship).
Fascinating.
So there are no male escorts serving females?
I knew of two in Korea; one did it casually (not many customers), one did it seriously (about a dozen women at any time). They didn’t just perform sex: They acted like BFs and husbands, doting on the women and providing conversation and companionship. They did this for mostly 40+ women who were wealthy but incredibly lonely, or unable to secure a BF as opposed to a fuck buddy (In Korea there’s tons of cheating – it’s essentially normal, no matter what people say to save face. Koreans cheat more readily than people I’ve seen anywhere on Earth, and hide behind iron-clad moral rectitude).
That said, there were literally thousands of women who prostituted themselves for everything from cheap sex to dinner dates for every one guy I knew who did this. I worked on a video about love hotels; virtually the entire population that used prostitutes were men with women. Though the majority of customers were cheating men and cheating women (ie, who are the men cheating with?).
There are a very few male escorts in large cities (New York, LA, London, Berlin, etc) who can eke out a marginal living doing regular escorting with an all-female base. But just like the ones you knew in Korea, the only real money for heterosexual male prostitutes is found in being a gigolo, i.e. a paid companion providing the illusion of romance for wealthy old women. Some of those guys can make a fortune, but of course there’s a lot more time investment for them than for call girls and I suspect the work is pretty emotionally draining. Still, it’s not technically illegal so that’s a plus for them.
Pretty much, these guys were “paid boyfriends”. They called, sent texts, had great phone game, brought wine and went out on “dates”. It cost a *LOT* of money for these women. The casual guy was basically a compensated BF for 3-4 women a few times a month.
The point is; They weren’t paying for sex. Even when they had sex, it wasn’t about sex.
When men paid for sex with my ex Mina, they were paying (mostly) for sex. Had she been older (say, 30) and not as pretty, her companionship wouldn’t have been worth the $800-1000 she was paid for a whole weekend night
No matter her class or her erudition or her manners or her charm, men wanted to fuck her, by and large. Except when they didn’t, which frankly still baffles me.
I was dating her, and I can guarantee you: *I* wanted to fuck her. I *also* wanted to do other things like chat and laugh at people while watching them bowl or sit around in spas, and eat ice cream and be generally silly and have conversations over magkoli and movies, but I still wanted to have sex and I chased after her at the beginning because she was cute and sexy.
I have no problem admitting this.
Why can’t feminists and women admit that sex isn’t primarily what women are mostly after?
Because that would require admitting that men and women are fundamentally different, which they absolutely cannot do because it would also mean admitting that A) there are some things men can do much better than women; and B) male behavior cannot be judged by female standards. And there goes their artificial construct of “gender equality” out the window.
The last time I looked at escort ads where I live I found 1 man who sees women only. I found a few men who see women, men and couples.
I still can’t shake the notion that there was an exchange; While we liked each other, and while I felt limited by my judgment of her occupation or chosen financial resource, I wanted sex more than she did, and she wanted companionship more than I did, though we both wanted both.
I get the impression that while different, clerly, we’re members of the same species.
What’s interesting is that Iv’ve noticed this with every woman I’ve ever been with. Same exchange going on.
The old saw is “Men give love because they want sex and women give sex because they want love.” That’s too simplified to actually describe most heterosexual interaction, but it’s basically true in a sort of quick-and-dirty way.
One problem is that both sides too often engage in a sort of “bargain hunting.”
DUDE: Just how much companionship, romance, etc. to I have to put out before I get laid? How much sex can I get for how little romance, etc.? The more I get for less, the more I win.
CHICK: How sexy do I have to be before I get some romance, some companionship? How much romance and companionship can I get, for how little sex? The more I get for less, the more I win.
It’s a wonder relationships ever succeed.
Another problem is this: Men want love too. Yes, we like sex. A lot. A whole, whole lot. Be we also want to be loved. Think of all those romantic adventure novels, and how often romance plays a part in war movies, adventure movies, even cop movies or horror movies.
And women want sex. Not like a guy does, sure. Well, not usually. But it’s like a woman isn’t allowed to want sex for its own sake, ever. So even if she just wants an itch scratched, she has to act like she’s making the exchange, or else she’s a slut, I guess.
Dear Sailor Barsoom, THANK YOU! I wanted love PLUS sex only friendships. I was very blessed to find both. But, finding a few sex only friends who had manners, didn’t lie, etc., took a lot of work. But, like many things in life, the work was worth it. I wanted to be a woman who BROKE the blanket statements like: ALL women ONLY want love. Not true of all women! It’s 1 of the reasons I started posting here: to show that not all women just want love and the only reason they have sex is to get love. I didn’t JUST want to break the blanket statements. After my family tragedy, I wanted to LIVE in so many ways. I “came alive” the strongest I ever had. I know at least part of that came from the fact that God spared me that day. I’m not being dramatic here or just into the mentality of “I can top what happened to others”. I hate that mentality by the way! I had been frigid for years and wanted to make up for lost time also. Anyway, I get very tired of hearing stuff like all women just have sex to get love. Even 1 person breaks a blanket statement/stereotype and that 1 person counts as much as anyone else. I 1st learned this after becoming an MVS. MVS have so many ###*** stereotypes thrown on them. I resolved right away to fight them. Many of the MVS I know have decided to do this also (thank God). They won’t stand for ###*** being put out about us all the time either. Thanks for listening.
A correction: I said 1 of the reasons I came here was to show that not all women just want love and that’s the only reason they have sex. That specific issue can be connected to how I want to put out there that there are women who seek out sex only friendships, i.e., it’s part of that whole “package”. I’m typing this very early (wink) so wanted to be clearer on this. There’s at least a few issues that are part of the whole wanting sex only thing for women.
###*** any acting! We don’t have to do it. I’d rather be called a slut than put on some ###*** act. I think the reason I was never called that during my wildness is because I kept it hidden from almost everyone in my life. The few I told I was blessed in that they didn’t call me anything derogatory. I’ve done enough recovery work now that I don’t care to a fraction of the degree I used to if anyone thinks what I did was evil, disgusting, etc., or that I still have an arrangement is as bad. I was pretty terrified of all but a few finding out until the past few years. Posting here is helping with the whole thing!
“What’s interesting is that I’ve noticed this with every woman I’ve ever been with. Same exchange going on.”
Well of course it’s an exchange.
The realization and acknowledgment of that truth has completely changed my world view, and my thusly my life.
I can’t figure out yet if it’s for the better or not, but the harsh reality is, barring rare exceptions, it’s not really ever going to be any other way.
Thank God for those exceptions I say! I’d rather be 1 than part of some ###*** system.