Sex workers know that they are generally not thought of as human by police. – Kristina Dolgin
Old people must be punished for being sexual:
…a man living in a suburban Philadelphia assisted-living facility has lost his housing subsidy after officials found a prostitute underneath his bed…the man, believed to be in his 70s, paid prostitutes using profits earned from peddling alcohol to fellow residents…
A prostitute allegedly killed by one of her customers kept her working life secret from a friend, a murder trial has been told. Lidia Pascale’s body was discovered…in a wheelie bin…two weeks after she had been killed. Matthew Cherrington, 32, has denied murder. Adrian Albulescu …drove [Pascale] to the address…When she failed to reappear after an hour he phoned her “many times” but her mobile was switched off…he also knocked at the door but got no reply…
Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic
…as a sex addiction/trauma therapist…I have spent many hours reading testimonials of former sex workers, many who started their sex working career as a stripper [sic]. I have come to believe strip clubs exploit wounded women who often have severe trauma in their backgrounds…It is very difficult to disconnect emotionally for dancers who perform lap dances or oral sex for money. Many strippers display post traumatic stress disorder symptoms and will often times self-medicate with alcohol or other drugs…Some women in the sex industry develop their own sex addiction as a result of the neuro chemical changes in their brain…Many attendees to strip clubs struggle with communication and intimacy with their wives or partners, which can promote a secret life. A secret life also changes the neuro chemistry in the brain…Often sex addiction co-exists with another addiction such as alcohol or drugs, gambling and sexual anorexia. So…men who go to the strip clubs are also being exploited…Recovery from sex addiction requires exposing the trauma, stopping the behavior, and a commitment to rewire the brain through therapy…
Regarding the notion that the brain can be “rewired” through therapy: that sure worked out for all the gay people who sought to be “cured”, didn’t it?
Even “sex trafficking” fetishists now have to address the debunking of one of their pet myths:
…[Prohibitionists claim] they want to fight the forced sex work…that they say is sure to spike during the many Super Bowl events in the Bay Area preceding the game on Feb. 7. And, perhaps more so, they want to use the football extravaganza…as a platform for their cause. But the linking of human trafficking to the Super Bowl and other sporting events in recent years has prompted a backlash. Critics say evidence of the relationship is weak and overblown, and…sex workers…say the pressure to crack down on prostitution hurts them…But [prohibitionists pretend]…it worsens around big events that draw big spenders. They must, they say, use whatever tool they can to attack [sex work]…
I literally laughed out loud reading this:
…North Carolina regularly ranks in the top 10 worst states for the illegal act. This statistic came as a shock to audience members at a seminar…Many let out gasps…Emily Fitchpatrick…of On Eagles Wings Ministries…[said] “Charlotte is the No. 1 city for human trafficking”…the girls like it so much because they make a lot of money…[there, cop mouthpiece Joel] Shores said…“There have been no arrests, but it is a problem…It’s easier to sell a woman than it is to sell drugs…”…Shores also talked about his campaign to…[arrest people for] sexting and how it can lead to becoming part of this growing illegal industry. “We need to let these women and girls know that they have worth [by arresting them]”…
“…immigration controls are claimed to be a mechanism of protection for migrants, rather than a mechanism of oppression…”: “Ottawa police say 11 women will be deported after a human trafficking investigation into commercial massage parlours…All 11 were found to be working without a valid work permit…”
She’s like the proverbial bad penny:
Disgraced anti-trafficking activist Somaly Mam on Monday appeared on television to promote Afesip, the NGO that she founded…and to ask for donations from Cambodian viewers. Ms. Mam resigned as president of the Somaly Mam Foundation last year after media reports revealed she had fabricated her backstory and coached young girls to lie about their past in order to raise funds. She resigned from Afesip in 2013…
The details surrounding 27-year-old Alix Tichelman’s arrest in Santa Cruz last July—the Lifetime-esque sting operation, the “Harbor Hooker” hook, the drugs, the Google executive with a $345K yacht—were every reporter’s wet dream. But some activists believe the case against her has been distorted by media bias against sex workers…Kristina Dolgin…[of] Red Light Legal…reached out to Tichelman…to offer additional legal services and support; she says she wants people to remember that Tichelman is innocent until proven guilty, regardless of her profession. “They’re using language that is clearly seeking to demonize [Tichelman], strip her of her humanity and make her less than a person—to be vilified and not protected,” Dolgin says…
If this doesn’t make you nervous, you haven’t been paying attention:
…Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes announced today he will testify on Thursday, May 14, 2015 at a Congressional hearing titled A Pathway to Freedom: Rescue and Refuge for Sex Trafficking Victims…Reyes participated in a rescue sting operation with Operation Underground Railroad in Colombia where he and several others liberated over 120 young children from a modern-day sex slavery ring operated by a network of human traffickers. Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R) Founder and CEO and former CIA agent and special agent for the Department of Homeland Security Tim Ballard will also testify on the growth of NGO rescue operations and how organizations such as O.U.R. can complement government agencies in expediting human and child sex trafficking rescue and rehabilitation efforts worldwide…
Naming a fascist organization which works with government to enforce the status quo after an historical organization dedicated to opposing the government-enforced status quo makes me want to throw up.
More on Dutch sex workers’ protests, from regular reader Frans van Rossum:
As sex workers fight back against the Mayor of Amsterdam’s attempt to “legalise” violating their privacy rights, they receive some unexpected and unprecedented support from Magda Berndsen-Jansen, a member of parliament…Her parliamentary enquiry…demands answers to the very questions raised by newly founded sex worker organisation PROUD [and] proves that sex workers are finally being heard…Amsterdam’s mayor Eberhard van der Laan…[wants] city administrations nationwide to collect and…share personal data about sex workers, which the Dutch Privacy Protection Law explicitly prohibits to be collected and shared…[in order] “to combat human trafficking effectively…and…to promote the self-reliance of prostitutes” …if this were to happen, all sex workers could consider themselves de facto outlaws despite the fact that sex work…has been legal in the Netherlands since 1811, and still is…Berndsen-Jansen…demands no less than that sex workers are being treated equally under the law, just as anyone else…
Marching Up Their Own Arses (#535)
This story just keeps getting more horrible:
Producers employed by Relativity Media, the production company behind A&E’s 8 Minutes, manipulated sex workers and did not prioritize their privacy, [said] a person who worked…for the production’s unaired pilot…neither Relativity nor A&E had any intention of directly helping the women, but instead referred them to a local organization in Las Vegas…Mark, whose name has been changed to protect his anonymity, [said]…“Anybody can be pointed to resources …I can tell you, ‘If you’re hungry, you can go to CVS, there’s a bag of chips there that you can afford’.” The charges of manipulation and indifference to privacy are very similar to allegations made by sex workers who were filmed for episodes of 8 Minutes that did begin airing…one of them said the “resource” she was given was just the phone number of a counselor. The interviews with the sex workers, which Mark said usually lasted about an hour, as opposed to the eight minutes suggested by the series, lulled the women “into a false sense of security”…Early in the shoot, the production would start filming the women’s interaction with…Kevin Brown before they were aware that there were cameras; when these unwitting sex workers were surprised by the revelation that Brown is a pastor, most of them would quickly leave the hotel room…[so] the production changed tactics, informing the women beforehand that this was for a show so that they would stay…
Looks like the expensive salons are trying to drive out their more reasonably-priced competition:
…scores of New York City women say they are disgusted that many nail salons pay their workers next to nothing, and vowed to try to help change things by seeking out higher-end shops, tipping more — or even foregoing the finger and toe pampering altogether. “It’s just bad. It starts to feel like prostitution [with the exploitation of women],’’ said Sara Bashor…“I don’t feel good supporting it.” Gov. Cuomo announced …that he is creating a multiagency Enforcement Task Force to fine or shut down nail salons caught violating labor laws. The heightened regulation came [after] a report that the salon industry in and around the city was rife with exploitation as workers — mostly undocumented women — earn paltry wages while breathing in hazardous fumes and plastic dust…
The astounding ignorance of amateurs is highlighted by the notion that whores make low pay under bad conditions.
It’s drivel like this that led me to call my blog ‘Neurodrooling’.
There’s only one thing that doesn’t lead to neurochemical changes in the brain. Having your head frozen solid.
Unfortunately it’s not just psychobabbling ignoramuses who promote the idea that changes in the brain must be either profoundly damaging or fantastically developmental. Highly qualified neuroscientists are the worst offenders.
There was even a recent highly praised TED talk in which a pediatric psychologist tried to ‘prove’ that childhood abuse has long term negative effects by pointing at a whole bunch of ill-defined neurological changes in kids heads. As if there isn’t already a mountain of correlative evidence linking abuse and neglect to poor outcomes without introducing a much weaker and probably irrelevant correlative link into the equation.
At this time the neuroscience community are all fundamentalist physicalists that are in complete denial that there may just be a person being attached to said brain and that they may be completely wrong about what causes what here. To a lesser degree, some parts of the CS “AI” community also promote similar obvious nonsense: Just throw enough computing power together, and you get intelligence.
There is zero scientific evidence for either. (There is no solid evidence for the contrary either, but a lot of good indicators.) This is a pure question of belief. Yet these people always state it as fact and that makes them the worst kind of bad scientist, namely one that cannot distinguish science and personal beliefs. Nothing good can come of it.
I also agree on your analysis of the TED talk: The correlation is there and it is solid. Bringing brain-chemistry into it is just a transparent attempt to dehumanize the issue and make it a physical one, possibly in order to eventually sell some drug that “fixes” the brain chemistry.
“A question of pure belief.” Perhaps. But we must distinguish between belief and faith. Belief is accepting what seems to be the reasonable explanation of how things work: if I say I believe in the big bang theory, say, it means I accept it as the best explanation to date; but if other, better, explanations appear I might well change my mind. Faith, on the other hand, implies that I accept unquestionably the wisdom that has been imparted to me; to question it is to go outside my frame of reference, and I cannot accept that. Faith is the acceptance of ” the inspired, infallible and inerrant word of God”.
See here for more on faith:
http://www.calebfoundation.org/page3.htm
”The correlation is there and it is solid…”
Correlation is not causality. Knowing that X follows Y does not tell you why. We all know that if you beat a puppy all the time he will grow to become a mean dog. Knowing this does not tell us why. Saying that the mind is a special magical thing is just as wrong as saying that sex is a unique and special thing.
What real scientists care about is understanding how things work. But to make a living they have to constantly justify what they are doing. This creates a lot of bullshit, further amplified by the media.
Exactly.
All the brain scanning technology claiming to link neurological structures and activities with specific behaviour or thoughts is nothing but correlation. Weak correlation at that.
However, despite the well recognised faults with inductive reasoning (well recognised since David Hume at least) spotting correlation is very often the first step to eventually discovering causality.
What the pediatric psychologist I cited above has done is take the strong correlative link between abuse and developmental problems and inserted two much weaker links between abuse and changes in brain structure and those changes in brain structure and developmental problems – then claimed it showed the neurological changes were causal. It adds nothing to the understanding of the relationship between the abuse and the problems. There are others doing the same thing with epigenetic alterations. I’d like to see a showdown between genetic determinists and neurological determinists someday – their exclusive territorial claims seem to have a large overlap.
It’s all just a manifestation of the ideology that everything is entirely explicable via the interaction of matter and energy – which is an ontological presumption on par with saying everything is explicable via the will of God.
It’s further aggravated by the need of the scientific method to ostensibly objectify everything. Experiences that are purely subjective – such as consciousness – are therefore suspect and must be explained away by reference to something that can be prodded, measured and fixed on a microscope slide.
”It’s all just a manifestation of the ideology that everything is entirely explicable via the interaction of matter and energy – which is an ontological presumption on par with saying everything is explicable via the will of God.”
Inasmuch as we can understand the universe it has to be done in ways we can observe. Our understanding of matter and energy is limited, but they are observable realities; really not on par with the will of God.
Whenever we are faced with an unexplained phenomenon, it is a reasonnable assumption that there is a material explanation to it. The existence of some other cause is not formally impossible, but it is not a rational hypothesis. The beauty of science is that it’s constantly evolving. If there is some other unknown reality, the scientific method will eventually discover it, so long as it’s not completely beyond our ability.
On the contrary, all observable reality is purely subjective (did you ever watch The Matrix).
If there is a definable, objective, external reality it’s defined purely by interactions. We don’t ‘see’ the apple on the table. There are interactions between photons and receptor cells in our eyes which cascade into other interactions that eventually trigger responses in our visual cortex which are finally assembled into a purely subjective perception we label ‘apple’.
You’ll find that quantum mechanics – which many think deal with fundamental elements of matter and energy – is defined purely in terms of interactions. The idea there are actually particles of some sort at the centre of these relationships is superfluous. William of Occam would have taken a razor to any such notion.
If you start with the assumption of God, you will always find God at the bottom of things. If you start with the assumption of matter-energy you will always find them at the bottom. But strangely enough, if you start with the assumption of object you will always eventually be led back to subject. Or as Descartes simplistically put it, “Cogito ergo sum“.
A hyperbolic faith-based claim worthy of a true acolyte of Scientism.
Science can tell us about what science can tell us about. It is a tool. The fact you’re holding a particular hammer doesn’t turn the whole universe into a nail.
I think you can know whether you’re in love without getting a neurologist to measure your oxytocin levels. I think you can tell right from wrong without getting a utilitarian to turn it into an objectified consequentialist equation. And I think you can actually act according to your own volition, despite the herds of scientific determinists insisting it’s all down to unrelenting sequences of cause and effect with no free will to be found. (If there is such a thing as ‘free will’ it is, by necessity, outside the realms of objectively measurable phenomena and so will never be subject to the scientific method of examination).
The Matrix is crap. The brain does not produce energy, it consumes energy.
I know about quantum physics and I know that perception is not reality. But this is still knowledge that was acquired by science. Science is just a method. We observe something, we formulate an hypothesis and then we design experiments to falsify that hypothesis. This can be applied to anything we are able to interact with and it has produced more results in the last few years than 20 000 years of religion.
I’m not sure what you mean with that Matrix comment. My reference to it was in regard to the way that everyone lives in what they believe to be a real world but which is actually a computer generated VR.
Err, actually it was acquired by philosophers – both religious and not – many centuries before quantum physics. It’s in Plato’s Cave Allegory, in the Rig Veda and (especially) the Upanishads. It’s explored by British empiricists such as Berkley and Hume and very thoroughly developed by Kant as das Ding an sich. And that’s barely scratching the surface. Science has been very much a johnny-come-lately to the notion.
So you don’t interact with the contents of your own mind?
Or do you believe fMRIs are mind-reading machines?
I guess if you measure results in terms of applied technologies (which require more than just science to come online) you could be right. But I think anyone who gauges existence and meaning in terms of the number of toys they have to play with must lead a very impoverished (and unexamined) life.
Besides, there is a strong argument to be made that the scientific method could never have come into existence without theistic notions of a universe that makes sense and is governed by anthropic laws (both of which assumptions are probably wrong).
My Matrix comment was not directly related to your point. It just annoys me to see so called ”science fiction” movie that have no understanding of thermodynamics. Sorry for rambling.
It’s true that everything we perceive could just be a dream or illusion or totally different from what we think we know. Philosophers come up with some very interesting concepts, but in many case we don’t have the means to test them, just as the ancient Greeks didn’t have the tools to really study the atoms they postulated.
As you say, concepts used in modern physics have often been postulated in ancien times. But they have been validated by the scientific method, while countless other competing ideas have been discarded.
To summarise my point, the scientific method is not a way of coming up with ideas or explanations. It’s just a way to figure out whichs ideas work and which don’t. And science does not preclude the idea of a god or other realities that we can’t comprehend. I’m just convinced that there are things that we are too limited to understand. This is not a limitation of the method, but a limitation of our mind and our senses.
The thing here is that purely physical explanations are limited. (Caveat: I am a scientist…) As soon as you bring in consciousness and intelligence (and as far as we know both are not separate things as they are only observable together, unless you believe in p-zombies), the purely physical modeling goes right out the window. It is possible that the models are not complex enough, but AI research has now very seriously tried for 40 years and sometimes with incredible computing power to find and implement better models and it has completely failed to produce even an approximation to human intelligence in very limited scenarios.
To this day, the AI people have absolutely nothing, not even any credible theory how intelligence could be artificially created. The only thing that exists is automated theorem proving, which could in theory create all mathematical theory. The problem here is that in this universe, physics limits the available computing power such that computers will never reach what smart human beings can do in that field. Now make no mistake, the AI field has produced things that can imitate intelligence or replace it in some very specific scenarios, and that is what makes it worthwhile. But none of these mechanisms are universal. Look into the box and you find that there is no intelligence in there at all.
Hence the scientifically sound thing is to acknowledge that we have things we can observe and describe to a degree, but have absolutely no clue how they work and the main thing here is the combination of intelligence and consciousness. Assuming intelligence and consciousness is just physics is highly unprofessional for a scientist and there is absolutely no scientific basis for that assumption. In fact, all research that has assumed this and then tried to replicate it has failed.
Incidentally, at this time it is also not even understood what biological life is. While it is easier to believe that it somehow randomly created itself, we do not know. We do know some things about what happened after it came into existence, like evolutionary separation, but until we can create it, all explanations how it came into existence are speculation.
Two excellent points.
Now if you bring them together you’ll see that ancient philosophers didn’t need science to prove many of their insights. They were available through introspection into their own sensations and thought processes and once they’d explained to others how they did it they too (or at least some of them) could look into their own minds and draw the same conclusions. The fact that the data was not objectifiable or measurable did not mean the theses weren’t validated.
You can see this kind of introspectional inquiry at work in the Buddha’s Kalama Sutta and as you can also see it’s capable of producing quite robust results.
Actually, correlation between two events that are separated by time is often causality, unless they are both caused by a third thing that happens at the same time as or before the first event. Of course it can always turn out that the correlation was a random statistical anomaly, but at least the most common misinterpretation (causality in th wrong direction) can reliably be ruled out.
A strong correlation tells you that there is most probably a causality at work, but it does not tell you what it is. A lab rat can figure out that when it presses a button it gets food. But it does not have the ability to investigate the causality of the phenomenon. Our own ability is also limited but we are improving it all the time.
I agree with a lot of what you say in your other post above, but just because we cannot replicate some complex system now doesn’t mean much. Actually there are quite a lot of evidence that shows life could form from basic elements. But showing that something can happen in a certain way is not a proof that it happened like that.
Back to original question, understanding how the brain works on a physical level is certainly very interesting and useful. The problem for the general public is understanding anything about the current state of knowledge. They read things about science in the mainstrem media, it’s just as distorted and confusing as anything they read on sex work. You have to know the source, understand the methodology used and it’s current limitation.
Not in the least.
If the tribe performs the winter solstice ceremony every year for centuries and following that the days start getting longer it’s very strong correlation but not an indication that the ceremony makes the days get longer.
If your father arrives home at 5:45pm every day and the news starts at 6pm it’s not a sign that your father’s arrival causes the news to come on the TV.
And science is now so specialised basically no-one knows that. Even the most prominent experts in a field rely on expertise outside their speciality to tell them what’s going on (say, with how their instruments work or how pure their reagents are) and much of it they must ultimately take on faith.
Celos’s AI example is a good one. There are very few people who are fully across the fields of cybernetics, computer programming, neurology, sociology and developmental psychology – all of which are critical components of working towards AI.
But the number one field that very few scientists are across is the philosophy of science – particularly its ontology and epistemology – so at the most fundamental level their grasp of the limitations of their methods and understanding is completely crippled. That’s especially obvious in the mind sciences.
But in the exemple you give, there is causality at work. It is the coming of the summer solstice, in conjunction with the fear of people, that is causing them to perpetuate the rituals. It is the fact that most people get home a bit before 6pm that causes the news to be aired at that time.
Also these exemples are from a cherry-picked sample of, respectively, one tribe and one dad. People who did not know anything beyond these reality would have no idea what the real causality is. Understanding the causality of things requires solid evidence. But it can never be perfect of course, so our view of the universe always remains speculative.
But you have to be careful buying women on the street. They are often cut with toxic chemicals. Lipstick, hair dye, perfume, mascara, nail polish …
You might be doing this wrong 😉
I don’t know how much of the recent stuff about nail salons in the mainstream media is true Maggie, but if you’re really getting manicures for under twenty bucks it sits very poorly with your alleged advocacy for a minimum living wage.
If I got laid at a brothel for $20 I’d be in no doubt whatsoever that I wasn’t the only one getting screwed.
I think the comparison to prostitution is the only thing off in this article. Concerns about exploitation of immigrant workers seem legitimate if the prices are really low (I’d need to know how long a nail job takes to even begin to guess what a reasonable price could be).
Nonsense. I pay in the mid-teens, industry standard for Vietnamese-owned salons nearly everywhere in this country. And my manicurist owns his own house, has two cars & visits Vietnam several times a year. At my old parlor in New Orleans, one of the manicurists BOUGHT THE BUSINESS from the previous owner.
Sounds to me like your manicurist is the owner of the salon.
Have you checked whether his/her apprentices earn a living wage?
Think about it Maggie.
How long does it take to give you a ‘mid teens’ manicure?
How many of those could your manicurist do in a normal work week?
What’s the cost of the overheads like rent, maintaining tools (especially hygiene), consumables, utilities, insurance, etc?
Now tell me how you would pay off a house, two cars, and overseas trips on the profit from that?
From the sounds of the NY Times investigation “industry standard for Vietnamese-owned salons nearly everywhere in this country” is wage slavery.
Mind you, it sounds to me like lots of other low end service workers in the US are in the same boat (albeit not so many with the same exposure to toxic chemicals).
Ever read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed Maggie?
Did you miss the part where my old salon was bought by one of the employees? Every salon I know was bought by someone who used to work for someone else. But if you’ve been talking to nail salon owners & nail techs every 3 weeks for 19 years, I’m willing to listen to what you’ve heard.
I wouldn’t have to talk to cops every three weeks for nineteen years to know that if some of them are driving Maseratis and drinking Bollinger they probably have an alternate source of income they may not like people to know about.
However if I had been doing business with them for that long I might be less inclined to question where that money is coming from and more likely to accept their unlikely claims about it.
Which isn’t remotely the same as saying everyone who works in a salon will eventually be able to afford to buy one.
If the NYT report is remotely correct, what you’ve got happening here is essentially a pyramid game where growth and profits at the top are created mostly by an ever increasing pool of exploited people at the bottom. New employees have to pay for the right to work in salons, with appalling conditions ensuring that most will drop out before they start earning a sub-minimum wage.
If you think an employee can put enough aside from her miserable cut of $15 manicures to eventually buy into the top of the pyramid you’re kidding yourself. More likely the tiny proportion who achieve upwards mobility in the industry must do so by taking out unsecured loans at extortionate rates. The high repayments create pressure for them to exploit the bejesus out of their employees and the cycle continues.
The salon owners interviewed by the NYT who do provide humane pay and conditions insist they can only do so by charging $30 per manicure. So for you that would be an increased cost of less than $20 per month. Hopefully there are enough salon clients who think that a reasonable impost to provide for the health and well-being of the people who do their nails to put an end to this sick little racket.
Go to a mid level strip club in the Detroit area. Many girls give handjobs or blowjobs for 40-60 dollars in the lap dance areas. Getting guys off that way in 5 minutes is quicker than doing 3 lap dances that will take about a total of 10 minutes which will fetch them 20 dollars a dance. Believe it or not many do extras that cheap because they can get a higher volume of customers in the night and walk out with $300-400 dollars with mostly blue collar customers as clientele.
”“Charlotte is the No. 1 city for human trafficking”…the girls like it so much because they make a lot of money…”
Isn’t liking what you do and making lots of money sort of like the definition for not-being-trafficked?
11 workers deported, but no criminal charges. Another fine example of ”human trafficking” investigation.
Surplus Women:
It reads as if the killer had been more competent in disposing of the body, he would have gotten away with it. Better make sure your driver or other security-arrangements know what to do.
Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic:
It is incredible how this “brain chemistry” and “rewiring” nonsense is still used. This person is an incompetent hack that harms his patients.
“”liberated over 120 young children from a modern-day sex slavery ring””
How exactly is anyone supposed to fact check bullshit claims like this. Sex slaves are probably missing children. 120 missing children in sex slavery should make a hole no reporter could miss!
I can just picture the response when asking if this is really true, “We can’t reveal names to protect the victims but trust us we really liberated 120 missing children”.
Last month there was an article linked on Tits and Sass about the sex-trafficking hype during the lead-up to a major sporting event… in this case, the Kentucky Derby.
There was a time when I believed a lot of trafficking myths, but even I would have raised an eyebrow at that one.
Neither Addiciton Nor Epidemic:
‘Sexual anorexia’. Really? They’re just shoving words together to make new diagnoses and hoping no one looks too close or asks wtf it’s supposed to mean, aren’t they?
If sexual anorexia is supposed to be anything like plain old anorexia, it baffles me how either sex workers or clients are supposed to have it; it’d seem rather counterproductive to being able to work or being interested in hiring a professional.