The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions. – Claude Lévi-Strauss
This time I answer three questions from readers, and present a fourth which the reader answered herself before I could get to it, then shared the information with me.
Several times you’ve mentioned how Kegels keep you at ‘near-virginal’ tightness. Please give us all the details of your routine and how it works. And how do you tell when it’s working? Do you consciously ‘grip’ your partner’s penis during intercourse? (Don’t you get tired?) As an older woman who has had children, I’d sure be interested to know what I can do to restore vaginal tightness (without surgery).
I’ve never had a full-term birth, so I never had the extreme dilation required for it. Also, I was always unusually small and tight, so I have a natural advantage in that department (though I would probably have needed a C-section if I had carried to term). That having been said, the Kegels really do help unless your muscles are too distended to work on (such as if you had tearing or an episiotomy during birth). I’ve been doing it since I was in my late teens, so I never let mine get very far along, but if you’ve never done it you may need to get a Kegels exerciser (it looks something like a dumbbell) to help you (they’re available online, or your gynecologist may know a place you can get one locally). I don’t really have a routine per se; I just do them whenever I think about it, even in the car or while sitting at the keyboard (it’s almost like a kind of fidgeting for me now). If you need the exerciser you of course won’t be able to do it “wherever” and you’ll need a routine; again, your gynecologist may tell you a “best way to do it” but I would think twice a day (say, before you get dressed and again when getting undressed in the evening) would be plenty. You might also be interested in this Wikipedia article on the exercise, which includes descriptions of the different exercisers available.
Since mine are very toned, I can actually feel the flexing, and obviously I get feedback from my husband; when I was still working, the reactions of my customers gave me constant feedback that I was indeed accomplishing something. I don’t constantly “grip” my partner’s penis during the whole process of intercourse, only when I feel like he needs extra stimulation or if I am faking an orgasm (I can simulate the rhythmic contractions by conscious effort). But since you’re just starting out, consciously “gripping” in the early part of intercourse (until you become too “lost in the moment” to keep it up) might be an excellent exercise and also give you feedback from your partner (men will usually say something if they notice you’re doing it; one client teasingly called me a “show-off”). If you’re very worried about not doing it correctly, some of the more expensive exercisers actually use springs and some kind of indicator to show the relative pressure you’re exerting. The PCG is like any other muscle; when it’s in good shape, exertion is not tiring unless you do it very strenuously or for a very long time; when it’s out of shape, exerting it will be tiring at first (but you’ll build up strength quickly).
Did you ever, heaven forbid, have a run-in with a client or co-worker who was HIV-positive? If an escort were to find she was HIV-positive due to an unscrupulous client, would she leave the field or continue working so her income doesn’t immediately end? Though I’ve always used protection with escorts, I’ve become a bit paranoid about it lately.
Though it’s extremely important to use protection when having sex with anybody outside of a committed relationship, the greatest danger isn’t from HIV but rather from syphilis and gonorrhea. HIV is especially scary to most people because it can kill and is at present incurable, though modern therapeutic regimens have greatly reduced its lethality. But despite the damage it can do to a person’s immune system, HIV is actually an extremely wimpy virus; studies have shown the chance of transmission from male to female via unprotected vaginal intercourse may be as low as 0.1%, and the chance of transmission from female to male under the same circumstances is lower still. In fact, the sexual transmission of HIV from a woman to a man is so incredibly rare some have described it as a “myth”, though I’m not prepared to go that far. Repeated unprotected intercourse with infected partners obviously increases the chance of transmission (though some African women appear to have natural immunity), and the chances are higher in heterosexual anal sex, higher still in homosexual anal sex and highest of all with needle sharing…but even that gives only a 10% per incident chance of infection.
I’ve never met or personally known of an escort who was HIV positive, though I’m sure they exist and one does occasionally read of streetwalkers who are. Because such cases are far more likely to have been transmitted through IV drug use rather than sexual contact, I suspect it’s likely such a woman would keep working to feed her habit, so if you’re extremely paranoid about HIV you might not want to hire a hooker whom you suspect injects drugs. But aside from that, considering the infinitesimally low female-to-male HIV transmission rate I honestly don’t think it’s anything you need to be concerned about, especially if you always use condoms and only see escorts who do the same.
One of the things I’ve worried about as a client is the notion that a lot of hookers were molested as children; do you think that’s accurate? Also I quit seeing one addicted provider because I do not want to help her buy the drugs which are apparently killing her. Do a large percentage of providers have such a habit? Lastly, do you think many or most providers are lesbians when it comes to their own sexual fulfillment?
The idea that a disproportionate number of whores use drugs, were molested as children, etc is propaganda used by prohibitionists to imply that our decisions are not valid ones due to “trauma”, and that the state therefore has the right to overrule those choices “for our own good”. Most of these pseudo-statistics are drawn from studies of streetwalkers in prisons or drug rehab facilities; it’s a bit like interviewing unsuccessful hot-dog-cart operators and then using the results to make pronouncements about all restaurants from McDonald’s to 5-star palaces. I discuss the syndrome (and provide links to evidence) in “Out of Context“.
The number of escorts who are addicted to drugs is roughly the same as the number of salesmen, lawyers and other professionals of similar income level who are. If you feel uncomfortable contributing to such a habit, by all means use someone else’s services…but do the same if you discover your lawyer, contractor or whoever have similar bad habits. As for lesbianism, I’ve never perceived it as more common among escorts than in the general population (and I’ve known quite a few escorts). I believe the majority of women are bisexual to one degree or another, but many are afraid to experiment with it due to social pressure. Since whores are already sexual outsiders, more of them are likely to experiment with bisexuality (and certainly it makes a nice change if one sees a lot of clients). But the number of personally exclusive lesbians among pros is not, in my opinion, any higher than among amateurs.
I’m trying to find the Japanese term for Western girls who go to Japan to work in the sex trade. I know about Miss Gone-Overseas, but need the reverse term.
Longtime readers may remember that the term karayuki-san (“Miss Gone-Overseas”) was applied to late 19th century Japanese girls who went to work as prostitutes in China, Korea and Thailand; by the 1910s the Japanese government began to see this as harmful to Japanese prestige and so enacted a series of initiatives designed to discourage it and to encourage the girls who had already gone to come home. I didn’t know the opposite term but promised to look for it, but before I could make good the reader discovered the answer herself and shared it: the term is japayuki.
One Year Ago Today
“The Scarlet Letter” discusses the drive toward increasingly vicious anti-whore and anti-client tactics, including unconstitutional shame-based punishments inflicted without due process.
Yeah, and they’re all packed on an island somewhere that I can’t find! Okay, the plural of “anecdote” is NOT “data” but I have one hell of a lot of anecdotal experience with this question. I’ve met LOTS of Lesbians (no men need apply). I’ve dated lots of women … but I have only found ONE girl who may have been bisexual. I say that because, she “offered” to invite her friend into the bedroom and, I don’t really consider that to be a form of “bisexuality”. Depends on what happens when the deed is done and, in this case – her “friend” was very “butch” and may have had bigger biceps than I have – so I declined on that. What a doofus, that was probably the first and last offer of a threesome I’ll ever have, and that girl probably could have given me some powerlifting pointers afterwards.
**Sigh …
But other than that … all of the women I’ve dated were absolutely disinclined to “fun” with other girls. I don’t how many times I spent hours in the adult movie section looking for a pron tape that had no lesbian scenes in it – because the girl I was dating told me she was turned on to pron – but not the girl / girl stuff. You know how damn hard it is to find a pron movie without a lesbian scene in it? It’s crazy hard I tell you. I don’t even know why I tried – I never watched more than 8 minutes of one of those things with a girl.
And then there are always discussions with your girl about homosexuality – where you’re “probing” her mind. “Hey, baby … have you ever been ‘hit on’ by another girl?” … “Ewww! NO!!” … “Oh come on, everyone knows girls all have a little ‘lesbo’ in them!” … “Yeah, I’m attracted to girls as much as you’re attracted to dudes!”
No dice.
Nope – I’ll die before ever having that experience. I actually thought about getting two hookers for something like this – they’re all over Europe and the prices are reasonable. But I did that, I’d have to get a third one just to keep track of the condom change-outs! “HALT THERE BOY!! Freeze! Change that jacket before proceeding!!”
I’m the “guy” who found Japayuki, only I’m a gal with a guy’s name. Since I asked the question and you responded so graciously, I have been a constant reader for your blog — and enjoying it thoroughly. I’m the author of a recent book called Miss Gone-overseas (historical fiction). I’m planning to use the term Japayuki in an upcoming short story.
Oh, dear, I’m sorry; the name threw me off! I’ve corrected the pronouns now. 🙂
I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog; do you have a link for your book? I’ll bet some of my readers would be interested!
It’s a small press in Austin, Texas, TinyTOE Press:
http://theopenend.com/
Miss Gone-ovreseas also has a fb page, and is available in e-book version on amazon. Every month or so we offer the e-version for free for 24 or 48 hours. Notices of this are posted on her fb page.
My personal experience (mine and women that I’m close to) is that women have a more fluid definition of sexuality than most men. Many women may do ‘something’ for a male partner’s enjoyment, and find that it is pleasurable without freaking out about what that ‘means’ about them. My most bi- experience is accepting a kiss from a waitress in New Orleans, and my male partner’s pleasure at watching was part of the appeal. The kiss itself? Not bad at all, but I didn’t immediately proclaim myself bi. Or not.
As for the professional addicted to something…Maggie is quite right. A percentage of doctors and nurses are addicted to (sigh…legal) narcotics, although they might be obtained illegally–would you not go to a hospital for care knowing that?
It’s one thing to avoid one particular practitioner, but another to generalize to the entire industry.
I personally think that women who are bisexual(which is more than people think) are more attracted to those women EMOTIONALLy than sexually….
Alot of people dont mention this but isn’t kind of ironic how alot of lesbians use phallic sex toys to get themselves off?
Since I am male I am only able to speak from what I have seen and read, but I agree with Maggie that most women are probably bisexual to a degree. I doubt the majority of women secretly fantasise about muff diving, but female sexuality is much more diffuse. Women are clearly more comfortable with close physical contact with other women – holding hands, kissing, hugging – and I doubt even the women themselves realise the degree of intimacy they are sharing. If men behaved like that, it would strongly suggest homosexuality, even if they never actually had sex, but we don’t notice it in women because they have always behaved like that.
An extreme degree of closeness between young women, to the point of romantic infatuation, was actually approved and encouraged in Victorian England. It was viewed (by the men) as a good preparation by the girls for later heterosexual relationships minus the obvious risks of flirting with men.
Yes, like any other provider of a service. I wouldn’t hire a hooker I thought was trafficked (and the odds are pretty low), but I wouldn’t hire hire a trafficked chef, ditch-digger, or soccer player either.
I also wouldn’t refuse to hire chefs, ditch-diggers, soccer players or hookers on the grounds that somewhere, there are trafficked chefs, ditch-diggers, soccer players, and hookers.
Just how good would “trafficked” or drug addicted chefs, soccer players etc. be anyway? Would you trust a trafficked chef to prepare your puffer fish?
The suggestion that many/most (male) clients are happy and eager to use the services of frightened and abused prostitutes if given the chance, is a deliberate attack on men as well as on the rights of women.
If it is accepted that all men like the idea of slave-prostitutes, then all men must necessarily be inclined to rape. Therefore, all heterosexual intercourse is rape. Hmm, that sounds familiar.
“Would you trust a trafficked chef to prepare your puffer fish?”
Hell no, but the idea is that the customer doesn’t know that he’s trafficked. That’s part of what we’re being told: that pretty lady you hired is a SLAVE, and you don’t even know it!!!
Out of the list I used (chef, ditch-digger, soccer player, prostitute), I suspect that “chef” is the least likely job to be held by somebody who is “trafficked” as the term is understood by most. The most likely? Ditch-digger, I would guess. I didn’t have vegetable-picker on the list, but that might be even more likely, EXCEPT for the fact that migrant immigrants (aka illegal aliens) do that, and for little enough that it probably isn’t worth the hassle to abduct somebody, transport him across a national border (evading border patrols and flying drones), keep him fed and watered just enough to do the work, and somehow keep him from running off, just to have nobody pay (the trafficker, not him; he’s a slave) to pick vegetables because hey, the illegal aliens will do it for less. If you’re a trafficker, you have to demand more, to cover the cost of trafficking.
And the same things probably apply to ditch-diggers, too. And, for that matter, it applies to prostitutes. It’s unlikely to be worth the expense to a trafficker, when there are plenty of women working the job without all those added expenses. Part of the reason so many swallow the trafficking stuff is that they assume that there are not enough women working of their own free will. They figure that, since “no woman would do that by choice,” any woman “doing that” must be forced to. It does happen, but it’s terribly rare (or rather I should say, it’s wonderfully rare).
Well, I’m going on and on here, but there you go. I have heard somewhere about trafficked soccer players, but can’t say if that’s real or some kind of urban legend or what.
Soccer players? 🙂 Given the high profile lives that the professional players live, I can’t see how that would work. However, I can well believe that some of them stupidly signed contracts without reading all the fine print, with unfortunate consequences.
What gets me about the “trafficked sex slave” concept is that prisoners occasionally escape even from high security prisons, and yet we are to believe that thousands upon thousands of street walkers, brothel workers and even escorts are held in slavery, while simultaneously wandering unguarded all over the place with cell phone in purse. Yet the only time we hear of an “escape from captivity” is when they are “rescued” by the police and NGOs. The traffickers’ security costs must be huge and more efficient than the SAS.
If the brainwashing techniques used by pimps are so damned effective, they should be selling their services to the CIA or every would be dictator world wide and not wasting their time with selling blow jobs in cars.
Well yes prisoners escape from high security prisons, but these are girls we’re talking about. Everybody knows that they can’t do anything on their own. They need men to rescue them, though at the same time we’re supposed to accept that a skinny woman can take down a big male drug dealer, if the skinny woman is on TV.
Actually, I don’t have a problem with that, as long as there’s some reason beyond “girls can do anything!” No, they can’t. Neither can the guys. If she’s bionic or Kryptonian or filled with ghost energy, fine. But “believing in yourself” doesn’t let you beat up somebody twice your size. That doesn’t work for men, and it doesn’t work for women.
Yeah. From my personal experience: There are no trafficked prostitutes or strippers from Latin America in the US. You’d think with all the numbers they throw around I would have bumped into some–esp. in California–but I haven’t.
(Obviously, I am not saying there really are none, just from my own experience.)
Damn, I’m talking like them now. I meant any Latin Americans, trafficked or not.
Maggie is right I think.
My first experience with a woman was for pay, during a shoot, and I decided after that this wasn’t a bad thing, I quite liked it. Over the years I’ve dated men, and women. Currently, I’m more interested in women. So I suspect Maggie is right on the bisexuality thing.
It’s not the sex. Sex with a man is fine. It’s that I can get to a different emotional level with a woman than with a man.
The problem is that a lot of people, especially women, are very judgmental about a sex work past.
I knew of one hiv-positive escort. I’m not sure when she contacted the disease, but it eventually contributed to her death. She was a inject-able drug user. She was also known for offering sex with out condoms, and as crazy as a March hare. Seriously, the woman had severe mental problems. She worked until rumors of her hiv status began to circulate, and her business dropped off. Mostly though, her crazy antics rather “poisoned the pool” in the city she worked in, and I think that, more than anything, led to her moving on.
Just from personal experience, I don’t think that women are more bisexual than men (there are lots of closet bi-men!), but that they feel less icky about being intimate with another woman even if it doesn’t turn them on.
I’ve suggested that in the future, everybody will be rich, everything will be cheap, and everybody will be bisexual.