Not long ago you linked to a piece about what sex workers want from their clients, and I was deeply depressed by it because of the very low bar for client behavior that it seemed to set. I cannot imagine showing up dirty, nor behaving meanly unless I were greatly provoked. Is that so terribly unusual? What is the percentage of clients who are honest and courteous men? I grew up as a “local” in a coastal resort community, surrounded by wealthy retirees and summer vacationers, and spent several years in retail there. Some of these people were outright asses, some were oblivious or self-absorbed, and some were kind and interesting people. Is it really as simple as that? To some extent, is all service work the same?
In a word, yes. The clients of sex workers are neither paragons of humanity nor the cartoon villains imagined by prohibitionists; they’re just ordinary men. I would say that the fraction of them who are really awful is extremely small; the majority are polite and honest, and anything they do to offend is mostly unintentional (born of social awkwardness, poor habits or a bad sense of sexual boundaries and/or practices). That having been said, it’s a well-known observation that the less a guy pays, the more he wants; girls who charge less probably see a lot more misbehavior than those at a higher price point. I don’t think that has anything to do with wealthier people having more “class”; you and I both know that rich people are very often boorish, rude and unpleasant, and poor people are very often polite and gracious. No, I think it has more to do with the fact that the more people pay for things (and that includes experiences), the more they value them; nearly every whore I know has remarked that men who pay here usually treat her much better than those she dated for “free” before starting her career. Furthermore, I’ve noticed that as I’ve aged, the clients have become much more polite and respectful; part of that may be that older men are on average more mature and better understand how to treat a woman, and part may be that my own presence has developed to the point where it silently demands more respect. Nobody’s ever done a survey, but I suspect that younger sex workers, inexperienced ones and those who charge less see a lot more misbehavior from clients than older ones, those who charge more and those who have the self-assurance that comes with years of experience.
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The cheaper the client, the more value associated with every dollar spent so their demands are higher. $400 to a successful man is discretionary income. To a working class Joe, it is a car payment or half his rent. Because of the limitations of what is considered “disposable income”, folks who don’t have it tend to see every purchase as a big deal and want as much as they can squeeze out of that lemon.
As far as younger providers, guys pursuing them see them as easier to intimidate/manipulate (hence their preference for them) and so, younger providers will deal with twice as many jackass as as a provider over 40.
Celebrity status has nothing to do withis anything except making even the most homely among us suddenly attractive. Ask any Hollywood “character” actor/actress. Danny Devito cones to mind and would testify to this truth.
I fully agree that the more people pay for something the more they value it. For example, I found that if consulting customers starts to expect too much, a tried-and-true method is to remind them of my daily rate while telling them that I would of course to be happy to do secretarial work and hold their hands doing their own jobs and wash the dishes – at my full rate, of course. Of course, this only works because my time is pretty expensive. I do see what kind of pretty bad work outside of their actual responsibilities often gets loaded on people with regular or low rates.
My take is that this is a social status thing: There is a particular species of asshole that thinks it is acceptable to be impolite to people below their own status. (It is not.) They will drop the pretense at being civilized beings whenever faced with anybody they perceive as “below” them. I think that these people are the primary source of problems in the world, because as soon as one of them makes it to the top in politics or any other field, they have nobody left to tell them that what they do is unacceptable, because they will listen to nobody.
Now, the people that are polite to others regardless of social status get it right: You are not polite because of the status of the other person (and hence their ability to retaliate), you are polite to them because because they are human beings, and unless they actually do something to you do deserve otherwise, they deserve politeness on that alone.
Of course, there are some among them where this is learned but not understood behavior and they will be polite on the surface, but not actually respect the other person. That particular species is often found in politics, because they know how to con people into thinking they are a particular kind of person which they are not.
Love the article and how articulate you are. A fan of your blog starting now! 💘😍😇🔱