Just as the zombies so popular in recent horror films can be recognized as the people they once were, so trafficking hysteria’s congenital racism is still visible under the gangrene and grave dirt. – “Rooted in Racism”
In June of 2011, my traffic hit a plateau of just over 1000 hits a day and remained there until the following January, after which it began to slowly rise again. More accurately, it returned to the plateau it had occupied since February; most of the visitors from MRA sites which had flooded the blog in April and May apparently got bored and wandered off again, resulting in no lasting increase in readership. The traffic wasn’t the only thing that had settled into a pattern, either; by this point my writing style read very much as it reads now, and most of the recognizable features were in place. Though we were still eight months away from “That Was the Week That Was” (though the updates and miscellanea columns were always multi-part by then) and over a year away from “Links”, Q & A columns (though monthly rather than weekly), holiday columns (this 
month, “The Summer Solstice”), harlotographies (“Lola Montez”) and fictional interludes (“A Decent Boldness”) appeared much as they do today. June also saw the penultimate installment of the personal biography series (“Grace”) and the precursor of what would later become the long-running “My Favorites” feature.
By June, I had fully developed the hybrid column which has become one of my mainstays: an essay built around a quote from a current news story. “Mind Reading”, “Perquisites”, “Full of Themselves”, “Public Service Announcement” and “If It Were Legal” are all examples of this genre, as are “Because We Say So” and “Delicious Poison”; the latter two are also among my first to cover Asian topics, an expansion specifically requested by Asian readers. Another international column was “Down Under”, which examined a strong criticism of the Swedish model by the Queensland Prostitution Licensing Authority; quotes in that post from the startlingly bizarre Sheila Jeffreys inspired “In Their Own Words”, which put the madness of 
neofeminists on display. It’s not at all unusual for one column to inspire another in that way; for example, the sheer badness of the first book reviewed in “New Reviews for June” spurred me to pore over the excellent Whores in History again, after which I wrote “Whores in History Revisited”, an extended review. That research in turn inspired me to write “Dirty Whores”, and passages I read during that writing inspired “Déjà Vu” and “Rooted in Racism”.
Rounding out the month were “Handy Figures”, a compilation of linked numbers which I only recently revised; “Blasphemy”, in which I explain that neofeminism is a religion; “Speaking in Prostitute”, an exploration of the way sex workers’ assumptions conflict with those of amateurs; “Here Comes the Groom”, a look at bachelor parties; and “A False Dichotomy”, a deconstruction of the artificial “happy hooker/trafficked slave” dichotomy popular among sex workers fighting “sex trafficking” hysteria. 
Looking forward to visiting all your links for good reads!
I remember when I first read “In Their Own Words” I actually felt a little sick. Those people are truly twisted and completely out of touch with reality.
Quote Melissa Farley:
…”Other ways that they ‘choose prostitution’ include poor or no education and no job that pays the rent. Prostitution is a choice based on lack of survival options.”
Farley is right, for a change. But I’m not holding my breath waiting for Farley and her clique to change this any time soon. Heck, Gloria Steinen had 50 years to make these kind of changes, and she did nothing.
I don’t agree that’s she’s “right” at all.
First of all … all of us have to make “survival decisions” based on a limited number of options. Even a college education doesn’t guarantee you a plethora of options – or even any, depending on what kind of degree you get. I had plenty of college kids with degrees who enlisted in the Navy to chip and paint the ship – because those degrees were worthless. That was the decision they made to “survive” and pay of their worthless college loans.
Almost every hooker I know, isn’t in the business to “just” survive. They picked it because it was the best option for them to “thrive”. Case in point is my ATF – who was one helluva a cab driver before she became an escort. But as a single Mom, she works mostly during the day as an escort and has the evenings with her kids. And she can PAY for things to support her kids.
Now … if that is just “surviving” – then what we ALL do is just “survive”. I would be out of my current job in a heartbeat if I had another option that provided me the pay, the flexibility, and the adventure that my current job does.
Mike Rowe – he’s a guy who understands work – because he’s worked with so many people in the “low rent” job market. I put that in scare quotes because, as Rowe has said himself – these people aren’t low rent in many cases. “Rendering Guys (that’s people who pick up dead animals on the side of the road) whistle while they work!”
One of my favorite jobs on a submarine was cleaning a shit tank. We’d open one up – ventilate it to get the toxic fumes out of there … and I’d dive in with a scrub brush on a broom handle and scrub the shit off the walls (wearing a white paper suit and an EAB breathing apparatus). I LOVED IT! Why? Because I’m a sick motherfucker who got amusement doing it. I kept doing it even after I had reached the point where I could say … “Yo, I’ve done that enough dontcha think?”
Just because a person doesn’t have the intellectual depth to IMAGINE why one person might do what they consider a particularly disgusting job – doesn’t mean that the individual doing it is only doing it because he or she has no other option BUT do it.
I’ll play devil’s advocate here. I’ve been a john for a while now and have used both http://www.rubmaps.com and myredbook and I’d have to say I have nothing against the sex trade and it’s a good industry. I’ve been frequenting the massage parlors and it’s a great thing. The way I look at it, Rub Maps or other escorts just fulfill a nice that can’t really be held by anyone else.