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Archive for the ‘Guest Columns’ Category

Guest Columnist: Domina Elle

Posted in Current Events, Guest Columns, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , on November 9, 2015| 10 Comments »

Domina Elle is a professional Dominatrix who hosts in her “FUNgeon” in Denver, Colorado. She is also an artist, photographer, member of the Erotic Service Providers’ Union and board member of the Erotic Service Providers’ Legal, Educational and Research Project (ESPLERP). 

ElleWar has been declared upon all American erotic service providers and their clients, and as in every war a propaganda campaign has been set into motion to justify it; no one can argue with “save the children”.  Certainly not the elected officials who have jumped on the legislative bandwagon to further criminalize adult consensual erotic services, and certainly not the opportunistic NGO’s participating in what has become a billion dollar federal grant program via the non profit industrial complex known to sex workers as the “rescue industry”.  Certainly not the law enforcement agencies which justify arresting consenting adults, as they, too generate revenue for their employer the state.  Each day there are new casualties in the war against prostitution; each day immeasurable damage is being perpetrated upon erotic service providers and the body count rises, both figuratively and literally.  We must fight back.  It has become more crucial than ever before that we do so, and in a solid tangible way.

The word “Decriminalization” has become a mantra chanted by sex workers around the globe.  Tears of joy were shed when a council of Amnesty International recently announced its support of the decriminalization of prostitution, just as the United Nations and the World Health Organization had already done.  Even the U.S. State Department, in its 2015 “Universal Periodic Review Of Human Rights“, affirmed United Nations recommendation #86, stating:  “We agree that no one should face violence or discrimination in access to public services based on sexual orientation or their status as a person in prostitution”.  But these declarations are as of yet merely suggestions, and have not translated into harm reduction for sex worker communities throughout the globe.  To ensure that our needs are met we ourselves must transform our rallying cry into a reality, bringing about the emancipation and protections which our vast community so desperately needs.  In America, this action must be accomplished through the courts; it isn’t an easy path and requires much diligence and of course a great deal of money.  While the Erotic Service Providers’ Legal, Educational and Research Project’s (ESPLERP’s) legal challenge has already been filed and is in process, the truly tricky part is the continual funding of the case.  Because we are criminalized and stigmatized, the US sex worker rights movement is not well funded, and the little funding which is available is not being prioritized towards striking down the unconstitutional anti-prostitution laws.  So while some of the most dedicated and diligent activists I have ever known of are at the heart of supporting this challenge, without sufficient funding the case could fall apart (which is certainly what our opponents hope for).

In early August, ESPLERP members, supporters and legal representatives gathered in California to hear the lower court judge’s decision, which was that there would be no public hearing and that the ruling would be announced at a future time.  ESPLERP’s lawyer Louis Sirkin stated that this type of action by the court is not uncommon, and that he wasn’t surprised at all; we were also told that there is no time limit on how long the Judge can take to render his decision, so now we wait.  From day one, our plan was to take this case to the highest court possible in order for more states to be affected, and more people to be emancipated.  If the lower court judge stands by the principles in the Bill Of Rights and rules in our favor, erotic service providers who are criminalized in the state of California will be free from criminalization and the real work can begin in California at least.  If the judge chooses to dismiss the case, we will go up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals; if that court rules in our favor no fewer than nine states will be emancipated from the threat and devastation of criminalization, and other sex workers and organizations in other parts of the US would be able to use the ruling to file similar cases or defend themselves from charges.  THIS WOULD BE HUGE!

A legal challenge such as this is no small task.  My dream, as a member of the erotic service provider community, is to see the emancipation of our people, and this case could be the key to open that door.  Decriminalization is hardly a panacea; it’s only the means of stopping the immediate harm caused by arrest and the life devastation which comes with it.  Law enforcement agencies would no longer have the means by which they literally rape and pillage our community with impunity.  Though decriminalization is only the beginning of what sex workers need to accomplish, it will give the erotic services community a safer platform upon which to openly organize in order to demand and protect our rights that much more.  The storm of oppression is already here raining down upon us, and we haven’t even seen the eye just yet.  We need the legal umbrella provided by decriminalization, and we can rally around this legal challenge to achieve solidarity as we never have before; it can provide a powerful and warm fire around which we can join our hearts and minds to weather the storm together.  We can do this,  but it requires you to be around that fire contributing your fuel to it.  For more information about the challenge please visit decriminalizesexwork.com, and to donate to the legal challenge fund please go to litigatetoemancipate.com.  Viva la revolution!ESPLERP

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Guest Column: Client Survey

Posted in Guest Columns, tagged , on October 12, 2015| 14 Comments »

As regular readers know, I’ve had a really full plate lately between blogging, work, caring for Jae and acceding to the demands of dear friends that I take care of myself for a change.  So although I realized around the 1st of this month that I hadn’t secured a guest column, I got into a peculiar kind of lethargy about it; it was less my usual “Shit, I need to get on that!” and more a sort of exhausted, “Oh, look, that deadline’s approaching really fast and I don’t have anything lined up.  I wonder if someone will volunteer an essay before Sunday night?”  The same lack of energy caused me to sort of miss the fact that some important research was being conducted that I should say something about, but hadn’t.  Well, synchronicity filled in for initiative in this case, and a gentleman who had taken the survey wrote to ask me why I hadn’t said anything about it.  I asked if he’d write something about it, and here it is; it’s rather short, but what it talks about is very important, and if you have ever paid for sex please use the time you would’ve used to read a longer column in taking the survey so we can fight prohibitionist lies with real data.     

UNLV sealPlease spread the word:  A research study currently being conducted by the (sex worker-friendly) sociology department at the University of Nevada – Las Vegas (UNLV), seeks to collect data and broaden the scholarship and research on the attitudes of adult clients of prostitutes.  Customers of both brothel workers and/or independent providers, whether working legally or illegally anywhere in the United States, are invited to take the brief, 100% anonymous survey.  Currently, the research literature in this field is dominated by the junk science of rabid prohibitionists such as Melissa Farley.  This UNLV survey will take approximately 15 minutes to complete and will help researchers to gain a fuller understanding of the clients of sex workers.

Instead of a prohibitionist or “rescue” profiteer, this research project is headed by UNLV’s Dr. Barbara Brents, co-author of the book, The State of Sex (Routledge Press, 2010), as well as many pro-decriminalization articles and editorials such as “Why Decriminalizing Sex Work is Good for All Women” and “Nevada’s Legal Brothels Make Workers Feel Safer”.  Brents has spent more than a decade studying political sociology, gender and sexuality, urban sociology, and public sociology.  Her research focuses on the sex industry as a way to understand the intersections of culture and economics, political debates around sexuality, the relationship between tourism, consumption, and sexuality, and the emotional and bodily labor of selling sex.  You can see other research she has published on her website.

This survey is being conducted under strict Institutional Review Board (IRB) ethical guidelines; the purpose of IRB review is to assure, both in advance and by periodic review, that appropriate steps are taken to protect the rights and welfare of humans participating as subjects in the research.  For more on the university’s IRB protocols for its studies, please visit this link.

To take the survey, please click here.

By the by, those ethical guidelines aren’t a mere formality; researchers like Farley and Dominique Roe-Sepowitz of ASU routinely ignore them, as explained in “The Pigeons Come Home” and “The Phoenix Pharisees“, resulting not only in indirect harm (from the use of their answers to promote violence against them and others), but sometimes direct harm via sharing the data with the police.  IRB guidelines absolutely prohibit any such misuse of data, so readers who take this survey can be absolutely sure that their answers won’t be used wrongfully.

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Guest Columnist: A Client

Posted in Guest Columns, Perception, tagged , , , , on September 14, 2015| 20 Comments »

One of my readers is a long-time client of whores who’s very incensed by the prohibitionists’ demonization of men like him; he therefore wanted to write about the various ladies he’s seen, and I decided to give him a place to share that.

menopauseAbout a year after my wife’s  menopause and plummeting libido ended all sexual activity in my marriage I started seeking sex workers.  A professional sex worker was a better solution than an affair;  I love my wife and don’t blame her for what happened to her body and her feelings, plus I felt it was safer and saner to see pros than to risk entanglements with amateurs. I don’t really crave variety, so I like to find one sex worker I like and continue seeing her until she leaves the business.  The following is a description of all the ladies I’ve loved and learned from.

My first was Kate, a single mom in her 40s with a well-paying job in health care administration.  But she wanted to send her son to a very exclusive prep school, so she set up a website and began escorting.  Her minimum date was 4 hours, and she was by far the best GFE I have ever encountered.  Kate was well educated, extremely smart, and very determined; she and I had many long discussions over the years, on a wide range of topics.  Eventually her son graduated from the prep school and attended an Ivy League college, majoring in the same branch of science I work in; Kate introduced us and I mentored him, using my connections to make  sure he got interviews and opportunities. Once her son was established in his career, Kate married one of her wealthier clients and retired from escorting; she still works in her health care profession and manages a busy social calendar heavy on organizing charitable events.  We stay in contact and I count her as a friend.  After Kate I met Mary, whose day job was in the insurance industry; she wanted the income from escorting to help her establish herself in real estate.  She owned a number of properties, and the escorting income let her make repairs and improvements or pay the mortgages when there were extended vacancies.  I saw Mary for 9 years, by which time her investments had paid off to the point where she no longer needed to escort; she then moved to another city to be closer to her children and grandchildren.  We remain in contact and still see each other once in a while.

After Mary, I went through a period where I had more than one regular, because the ladies I liked were difficult to schedule with.  One of them was Ami; she was a whip-smart IT professional and a marathon runner, and she just escorted because it was a turn-on to her.  She didn’t really need the money and was extremely low-volume; in fact, she would only see me when we could schedule it around her busy work and training schedule.  But because her motivation was sexual, she lost interest after menopause; we still meet for coffee from time to time.  Another was Jane, who lived in another city that I visited several times a year for business; we didn’t discuss her work, income or motivations, but I believe her total income was several times mine (and I consider myself well paid).  Jane was well-connected in the escort world, so whenever we couldn’t get our schedules to sync up she would connect me with  low-volume UTR escorts (mostly part-timers)that she knew.  I never really enjoyed those experiences as much as I did my time with Jane or Ami, though; I just didn’t have a connection with any of them as I did with my regular ladies.  About four years ago it became much more difficult to get in touch with Jane, so I assume she retired; she’s the only one of my regular ladies I’m out of contact with, and I wish it were otherwise.  After Jane I met Candy, a full-time sex worker supporting two children (one with special needs); one of her other clients recently proposed, though, so she has told me she will be retiring soon.

happy older manI feel enriched by my experiences with these wonderful women; I’ve learned valuable things about myself and about life that I never would have known otherwise.  None of these women would stand for being labeled “exploited”; all were fiercely independent and proud to be living life on their own terms, using their intelligence and understanding of men to improve their lives.  In over 20 years of seeing sex workers, I’ve never met or heard of a pimp; none of them had ever  experienced any violence except at the hands of the police, and the only drugs involved were prescriptions for our aging bodies.  I think any of them would have bitch-slapped anyone who tried to “protect” or “save” her.  The control freaks who want to dictate what I and a consenting adult woman can do in her bedroom like to pretend that clients view sex workers as “toilets” or “collections of orifices”, but my experience is completely opposite:  Their professional services and care help me in countless ways.  I’m happier, less stressed, and more focused when I can have satisfying sex every week or two; I am more productive at work, sleep better, and am more engaged with my friends and family.  In fact, I’m quite certain that my marriage was saved by my decision to seek the services of sex workers; when I’m  celibate my judgement becomes impaired and my sexual fantasies and dreams become distorted to the point of being disturbing.  Without sex workers I almost  certainly would have started an affair, made inappropriate advances, or filed for divorce to get “official” permission to seek partners for sex.  Long-term marriage is an economic institution, and my wife and I are healthier, happier, and wealthier than any of our siblings precisely because we remain married while they divorced.  I’m grateful to the sex workers I’ve known for their part in that outcome, and they have continued to enrich my life long after the financial and sexual relationship has ended.

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Guest Columnist: Aya de Leon

Posted in Guest Columns, Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , on August 10, 2015| 7 Comments »

Aya de Leon teaches creative writing in the African American Studies Department at UC Berkeley and blogs here on WordPress; her sex worker Robin Hood novel, Uptown Thief, will be published in the spring.  This essay grew from a conversation she and I had on Twitter; I was so impressed with her ideas, I asked her to expand them into an essay.

Hollywood has a lot in common with the sex industries; for one thing, it thrives on selling sexualized access to young women.  Some would argue that Hollywood only sells images and fantasies of sex, while the sex industries offer more; however, any in-depth exploration of the film and TV industries reveals widespread transactional sex and sexually predatory behavior towards women (we need only look at Lena Dunham’s autobiography or recent revelations about Bill Cosby to see examples).  In addition, women of color are marginalized in both industries, and most female participants are seen as less valuable as they age.  While the sex industries have niche markets for women over 35, and particular actresses manage to remain hot commodities in Hollywood beyond their youth, both industries cater to male appetites for young and naïve ingenue-type women.

Children for SaleRashida Jones (39) and Jada Pinkett Smith (43) are two African American actresses who have recently found themselves standing at the crossroads of Hollywood and the sex industries.  Jones produced the documentary Hot Girls Wanted, and Pinkett produced the CNN special report, Children for Sale: The Fight to End Human Trafficking.  There are vast differences between the two, but what they have in common is the way they reflect both women’s attempts to reinvent themselves from aging black actresses into producers.  Former Hollywood ingenues themselves, both women have seized an opportunity to reassert their relevance via spotlighting the sexuality of younger women, in the time-honored role of moralistic crusader.  Both women concentrate on the sexual exploitation of young women, and in both cases they miss the mark (Pinkett by an especially wide margin).  Rashida Jones faced heavy backlash for her slut-shaming comments when she began to publicly voice her concerns about “pornification” and sexualized behavior of younger women in mainstream media.  But at least Hot Girls Wanted was a collaboration with a pair of women filmmakers who put together a compelling and coherent (albeit problematic and whorephobic) narrative.  In addition, it maintained the focus on the young women, as opposed to including Jones in the film; in contrast, Children for Sale features Pinkett as commentator, and its central story is about her emotional journey around the issue.

The only compelling quote in Sale was Pinkett’s “People who are having sex with children are not johns and tricks.  They are child rapists and pedophiles, so we should call them what they are.”  This crucially differentiates between sex work and sex trafficking, but unfortunately, she doesn’t demand that level of precision around other language in her film.  To begin with, her subtitle “The Fight to End Human Trafficking” is misleading because the vast majority of human trafficking is non-sexual labor; ending sexual trafficking would only end a small portion of human trafficking.  But then, the entire film was misleading and imprecise.  Pinkett claims that girls as young as 11 are being trafficked in the United States, but she presents no evidence to support this claim, nor shows any girls that age, nor reveals any situations where girls were being held in slavery-like conditions.  We see interviews with young (adult) women who go from stripping to full service sex work, and Pinkett slurs stripping as a “gateway drug”, but that doesn’t constitute a story of child sex trafficking.  The central interview subject in the film tells of starting a relation with a seductive older man when she was 14; he later manipulated her to have sex with other men in the back of a barbershop for money, but she continued to live at home and go to school.  While she was clearly exploited and the sexual activity was statutory rape by any definition, this isn’t a story of slavery.

Jada PinkettAnother problem:  from the beginning, the police are presented as heroes and saviors.  There’s a raid, and a young “victim” is found, yet she “refuses help” to return to the “only life she’s ever known.”  A psychologist then attributes this refusal of help to a lack of self-esteem.  But if she’s a victim, why is she being handcuffed and marched into the back of a police cruiser?  And what rescue services do police have to offer young people?  Juvenile hall?  Foster care?  Even the trafficking survivor-led program they profiled doesn’t have long-term housing options.  By aligning herself first and foremost with the police, Pinkett is inevitably unable to effectively investigate anything; as a visiting celebrity, she doesn’t have any real connection with anyone in the situation.  The entire tone of the film is set by various images of blurred face individuals with voice-overs by police and anti-trafficking advocates, and police cruisers driving down streets.

In fact, the film totally fails to provide visual documentation of the “facts” of Pinkett’s narrative.  One segment included a tour of an area where the anti-trafficking advocate says there is supposed to be a great deal of street solicitation, but for some reason it’s quiet that night, and they don’t send cameras on any other night to capture it; we must take their word for it.  There may indeed be 11-year-olds being trafficked in the very places Pinkett was looking, but she never found them.  In other cases, the production manufactures what it fails to capture.  They interview a grandmother who calls a hotline for help with her 14-year-old granddaughter, and the police work tirelessly to find her; she is discovered with another “victim”, a fifteen-year-old, who is allegedly on the way to her first trafficked sexual encounter.  Thus, they “rescue” both girls from “the life.”  Yet all of these assertions remain unsubstantiated by evidence of any kind; only in the hysteria surrounding child sex trafficking could such shoddy reporting get such a large platform.  People have an appetite for sexual drama and tragedy, especially with black women; it need not be well-documented or even have a coherent narrative, only salacious innuendos.

Hot Girls WantedUnlike the CNN documentary, Hot Girls Wanted had a coherent story, following one young woman and her cohort through their introduction and overall disillusionment with amateur porn and the sex industries; the New York Times‘ Mike Hale described it as characterized by “an uncertain tone that vacillates between weary outrage and motherly concern.”  The film exposes some real problems with working conditions with “amateur porn”, which though it is actually very organized and professionalized, sells the scenario of the initiation of a given young woman into porn.  Thus, after the first film, their prospects quickly decline.  However, these labor practices where the “it girl” fades away and the spotlight moves on are not exclusive to amateur porn or even sex work; they are certainly at work in Hollywood, as well.

Furthermore, Hot Girls Wanted ignores the fact that today’s young women face relatively bleak prospects for employment and career development, even if they do go to college, and the internship model for entry level professional positions effectively excludes poor and working class girls.  In this time of limited prospects, sex industry entrepreneurs can exploit young women’s aspirations for something other than dreary work for low pay, no security and no benefits.  Yet Jones’ solution to the situation is to deny young women the choice.  Harvard-educated Jones is the daughter of wealthy celebrities; she has always had access to fame and money without taking any risks of her own, yet she criticizes girls for taking the risks associated with sex work in the hope of gaining fame.  She suggests that a central problem with amateur porn is that the women involved are too young to make their own decisions, but I would argue that the only way one learns to make decisions is by having the power to make them.  Young women entering the sex industries generally face two kinds of older adults:  On the one hand, they face shaming adults with little information about the industries who judge their desires and dismiss what they hope to gain; on the other hand, they face exploiters who withhold information, exaggerate and romanticize the payoffs and underplay the risks.  In either case, the young women generally cannot get the support they need to make informed decisions, which would include access to older adults with accurate information and probabilities about women’s trajectories in the industry, as well as non-judgmental listening and feedback.

Rashida JonesI see both Children for Sale and Hot Girls Wanted as part of a classic cycle for women in general and black women in particular.  Many young black women enjoy the attention that sexual currency brings, yet when they get older, many pick up the rallying cry that “we’ve got to save these young girls from themselves.”  I don’t think it’s coincidence that both of these older African American actresses are making films and speaking out on these topics; after all, the media aren’t interested in what black women have to say about global warming or the IMF, and they don’t put a microphone in black female hands to talk about Middle East foreign policy or immigration reform.  Jones and Pinkett are actually doing the very thing they claim to despise, trading on the public’s fascination with young women’s sexuality.  It’s a quandary all women must face:  when a society is far more interested in a woman’s sexuality than in anything else about her, how can she navigate through her life?  Yet neither documentary includes veteran sex workers, the women who did figure out how to navigate through the sex industries, especially those who entered the industries on someone else’s terms and then figured out terms of their own.  In Children for Sale, they are non-existent; in Hot Girls Wanted, their stories are glossed over.  The girls who stay in the industry are reduced to a footnote, while the film’s main subject quits and moves in with her boyfriend (in an implicit “happily ever after” ending).  Due to the lack of input from veteran sex workers both films lacked nuance, breadth, depth and insider information, and reached deeply flawed conclusions.

As an over-35 black woman, myself, I understand the need to stay relevant and maintain career momentum; like Jones and Pinkett, I’m a non-sex worker who chooses to write about sex work.  However, any vision of justice for people in the sex industries must be informed by a spectrum of voices that centers those currently working in those industries.  Criminalization and social stigma shrouds much of sex work in secrecy and silence, so a casual observer cannot get a clear picture of it (much less a celebrity with a camera crew).  These are areas of society that desperately need clear illumination, not the distorted and exploitative stories in today’s media; unfortunately, Jones and Pinkett chose to produce work suffused with moralistic narratives, which can only fail to change conditions for the young women they had hoped to help.

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Guest Columnist: Hawk Kinkaid

Posted in Guest Columns, Perception, tagged , , , , on July 13, 2015| 4 Comments »

Hawk Kinkaid is the founder and president of HOOK, the association for male sex workers; he’s also the chief operating officer of Rentboy.com.  I met him at a panel discussion a few months ago and was impressed with his personality and intelligence, and since the views of male sex workers are not often represented on this blog I asked him to contribute this guest column.

Does the sex worker movement need men?  No.  Hawk Kinkaid

There.  I wrote it.  It’s what I feel like I’ve always wanted to say when people (frequently) ask me how men and women in the sex industry are different, or why there don’t appear to be many men at conferences or marches.  This is what they are getting at:  what place do men have in the movement, if any at all?  I don’t think it should come as a shock that the movement to decriminalize the American sex industry has rarely involved cisgender men, never actively sought out their participation, and most definitely never needed us to make the incredible strides and achievements made thus far.  The many regional and national programs which seek to represent and provide space for people in the sex industry haven’t needed men to drive significant shifts in raising awareness and developing programs for some of our culture’s most unjust abuses against sex workers (ranging from misogyny, homophobia and transphobia to immigration abuse, coercion, HIV and drug addiction).

Yet at the same time, there is so much left to do.  The same movement that has achieved so much still struggles against potent social stigmas and the shifting sands of public opinion; it has failed to build coalitions that support sexworker-sensitive legislation; and it is currently losing the battle against a polluted “anti-trafficking” sex-negative abolitionist wave.  Perhaps the question of “need” itself needs to be reframed.  What, in fact, do we need?  All of the programs I know have disparate and unique agendas representing their specific constituencies; the lack of a unified agenda appears to be the natural result of a complex network of organizations and networks, mostly at the grassroots level, all working toward independent goals serving their own communities.  This makes sense when you consider the entire legacy:  Our culture still revels in the archaic world where cisgender feminine sexual agency and persona must be policed, interrogated and incarcerated, and many of today’s programs started in response to local initiatives related to these injustices.  These programs range from the important community work of Maggie’s in Toronto, to the St. James Infirmary’s health care services in San Francisco, to NYC’s Sex Workers Project legal support, to HIPS’ DC needle exchange, and each is tied at some level into grant money, foundations and more.

In this tangled network of conferences and fundraisers, the one thing that fractures a conversation faster than an inappropriately placed pronoun is the perception of privilege.  This doesn’t only affect cisgender white men like myself; it is similarly shared by cisgender white women with economic success, or women who work in one particular segment of the industry over another, and so on.  But what happens if the movement is solely focused on messages that exclude sex workers with financial success and social capital (intentionally or otherwise)?  Recently, I was at an event at which a speaker began with a long preamble acknowledging all the elements of privilege we already recognized; I’m sure many in the audience welcomed the overture’s humble tones and quasi-martyrdom, but I tried to imagine the men I work with – the ones dancing in speedos on bars on the weekend, the ones shooting porn for amateur foot fetish sites, the ones working webcams between study sessions, the ones who are traipsing from city to city – feeling like they need to apologize for lives they don’t perceive as at all privileged before they can even speak.  This isn’t to absolve them of their inability to recognize the privileges their status as cisgender white men does, in fact, carry, but what movement has an official guide on how to allow for this?

Will & GraceUsing the LGBT movement as a limited parallel, we can see that recent strides in gay marriage most frequently benefit people who are already in privileged enough positions to normalize.  LGBT people of color, low-income or immigrant LGBT people and trans people struggle for attention in a movement whose focus is now dominated by those seeking respectability through monogamous heteronormativity…and sex work isn’t even a consideration.  When the photos of LGBT success surface the most privileged are always in the front row, buying tickets to the biggest of the celebrations and being asked to pose for the local newspapers, while the less privileged continue to struggle at the bottom.  Yet at the same time, the swift rise to civil rights got much of its momentum from privilege; whether from mainstream pop culture like Will and Grace, or via the murder of a young white man on a Wyoming fence, shifts in the public conversation occurred whenever a certain audience in America perceived something as close to home.  Getting the public to feel invested in the struggles of a minority group invariably fuels significant change.  I’m not advocating that Americans lean on their prejudices in order to justify change; I’d like to think this isn’t the only way forward for a movement, but I’d be ignoring past behavior if I failed to suggest we can learn from example.  And this time, can we please do it better and smarter, and avoid repeating the exacerbation of privilege?  Can we forge a divergent path that is more inclusive, more diverse, and more accepting of transgressiveness than the LGBT community has delivered?  Funding from foundations and government agencies often comes with sex-negative strings; if we enlarge our tent to include successful industry professionals we could potentially avoid the limitations inherent in organizational funding.  In the LGBT rights movement, for example, several porn company professionals bankrolled marriage movement campaigns; is there a place for them in advancing sex worker rights?  What about the high-earning porn performers or escorts I know taking in six-figure incomes?  Businesses historically uninterested in sex workers’ civil rights are starting to change their tune as they themselves come under fire; isn’t that an opportunity to broaden our tent?

I don’t know what place men have within the sex worker rights movement, even though I have been a collaborator and contributor to it for nearly two decades.  We may not be needed in the movement as it is today, but once there is a unified approach that acknowledges that those who work in the industry represent an inorganic cluster of privileges and injustices, it will be possible to develop a plan that all individuals working in the sex industry view as valuable, attainable and comprehensible.  We are, after all, in this together.

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Guest Columnist: Bo Jensen

Posted in Guest Columns, Perception, tagged , , , , on June 8, 2015| 15 Comments »

Bo Jensen is a Danish scholar in the history of prostitution; several years ago he was commissioned by a sex worker group to study the size of the Danish sex industry in order to counter prohibitionist propaganda that the industry was “rapidly growing”.  Regular readers know I’m skeptical about low estimates of the fraction of men who buy sex, but Jensen makes a reasonable case for his 3% regular client figure (about half of my usual estimate) if one assumes that the relatively low number of sex workers and high turnover estimate are also correct.

Denmark has experienced an angry and confrontational debate on prostitution during the last 10 years.  According to several public opinion polls, 80% of Danes who have taken a position are supportive to sex workers and believe that prostitution is a job, but 20% believe that prostitution is a problem for society that must be reduced and criminalized in some way.  That minority managed to get the Swedish model introduced by the government, though it had essentially no chance of passing; the sex workers’ organization SiO mobilized the Danish population so effectively that the government was forced to take criminalization off the table in 2012.  But during that period, the scale and growth of prostitution was a central theme in the debate; prohibitionists claimed that sex work in Denmark was booming, and the rescue industry contributed fake numbers to “prove” it.

According to prohibitionists, virtually every aspect of prostitution is in alarming growth:  Trafficking is growing, child prostitution is growing, street prostitution is growing, the number of rapes and deaths among sex workers are growing, the hazards associated with the job are growing.  It’s hard to separate the facts from the moral panic, so myths replace knowledge and democratic debate is sabotaged; this led the public to demand that the extent of prostitution should be measured by an independent research unit.  To that end, Parliament asked The Danish National Centre for Social Research (SFI) to measure the industry’s size; at the same time, SiO asked me to do the same.  Remarkably, the two investigations reached similar results; this means that Denmark now probably has the world’s most correct and detailed statistics on prostitution.  Most countries have miserable statistics on the subject; take Sweden, for example.  No one knows how many sex workers there are in Sweden or how many there were before clients were criminalized, which means that no one knows if the Swedish model has actually decreased prostitution.  Some German studies claim that there are 50,000 sex workers in the country, others that there are 400,000.  Great Britain has the same problem.  In many countries the debate and political decisions are guided by false figures created to cause panic and to maximize the funding for the rescue industry.

So let’s have a look at the Danish figures for 2007.  16% of all adult men admit to having paid for sex, but most of those contribute to only 3% of the turnover.  About 3% of all adult men in Denmark (roughly 56,000 men in all) are frequent customers who buy sex regularly for many years; these high rollers pay for sex once every third week on average, and each spends on the order of 2,000 € a year.  In total, they buy sex 1 million times during the year, which gives the Danish sex industry an annual turnover of approx. 100 million €.  A million client visits a year averages to 2800 clients every day; since there are about 800 women at work on any given day, they average 3.5 clients each.  And since each only works about a third of the day, there are about 2400 active sex workers in the workforce at any given time (plus something like 100 transgender or male sex workers).  The figures shows that on average, each sex worker has 22 regular clients; I believe that something like this must be the case all over the western world.  Danish sex workers do not have extravagant earnings; their income is only good if you take into account that they work merely 20 hours a week.  At the same time it is evident that the industry does not have such a big turnover that there are room for gigantic profits to shady pimps or traffickers as claimed in headlines.

The Danish sex industry has very high turnover; most sex workers are only in business for a few years, and many migrant sex workers are here for only for a few months.  Because of this, about 4000 women altogether did sex work in Denmark during 2007, though the work force averaged only 2400 women at a time.  This is very important to consider when calculating the true size of the sex industry in a country, otherwise the estimates come out much too high; EU countries have agreed to include prostitution in the calculation of GDP, and the estimates are all too high because they are calculated from the total number of women working in the course of a year rather than the number working at any given time (for Denmark, 4000 vs 2400).  Sex work is not rapidly growing in Denmark; there was dramatic growth in the industry from 1970 to 2000, but after 2000 there was stagnation, then a drop after 2007 due to the financial crisis.

To all those who say that prostitution is impossible to measure because it is clandestine, I have to answer:  Clandestine prostitution isn’t so clandestine, once you have the proper insight.  And the way to get that proper insight is to listen to sex workers and recognize them as the true experts on their own profession.

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Guest Columnist: Ayna

Posted in Guest Columns, Perception, tagged , , , , , on May 11, 2015| 38 Comments »

Though sex workers usually have stage names which are different from those our mothers gave us (or burdened us with, as the case may be), those of us who are activists often have another name.  Ayna is a Seattle sex worker, but that’s not the name on her advertising; you’ll see why when you read this essay.  It struck me as timely given that when I reminded readers of my bisexuality by announcing my lesbian relationship with Jae, at least one reader felt repelled enough to voice his disapproval; I’m sure there are clients who would react in much the same way.

I have a good twin.  Although we are not related we are similar enough in style, looks and interest that people often get us confused.  We are both writers who are short, curvy, bespectacled, curly-haired, queer gamer girls who laugh out loud and spill beer everywhere.  I want her hair; not in some weird hirsute Freudian way, but in a lusty “Rebel Girl” way.
I envy and covet her side shave immensely; side shaves in Seattle are code for queerness.  I become sexually aware in a repressed state adjacent to Washington, so my nascent entrances into queer culture were formed with hidden meanings and slow looks.  My brain goes into Sherlock mode when checking women out – key ring check, side shave check, reusable tote from co-op check – Code Level Purple – flirt is a go.  I still tend to to seek out queer symbols and codes in order to safety flirt with other women, and I envy her side shave because I have long, healthy, flowing, dark, curly hair.  I want her side shave so when I go into the queer spaces which have been my home for so long, I feel like I belong.

I envy my friend’s side shave because she has a job were it is okay to be openly queer, and even though I love doing sex work, it is one of the last places a female-identified person cannot be openly queer.  I still have to pass as a non-queer person to the majority of my white, male, mid-40s customer base; I can’t freak out the normal majority.  Plus, men love my hair; they caress it, run their fingers through it, seek me out because of it.  I give good hair.  We are socially groomed to believe that long hair is the same thing as feminine, and in the type of sex work I do (mid tier escort), the equation is feminine = attractive = money.  A non-sex worker has more freedom in doing what she wants with her body in the world place whereas sex workers do not.  A sex worker’s image, in order to gain the most money from the most clients, must be built, maintained and curated for the gratification of the normative male gaze; if I were to change my hair to a “queer” style (such as a side shave) I would lose money, since I would lose the male gaze.  I would be seen as a “feminist” (heaven forbid), not the (semi) complacent sex bunny that the majority of my clients open their wallets for.

Girl Sex 101I often ask for two hours notice before seeing visitors to my place; I let people believe this is so I can get ready.  But since I wear very little makeup and routinely clean my house, the “getting ready” part takes thirty minutes; what takes the rest of the time is what I call the “Queer Roundup”.  Allison Moon’s Girl Sex 101 quickly hid under the couch, flyers from Insert Coin (a fabulous queer dance party), tossed in the kitchen drawer, “Fuck Your Patriarchal Bullshit” pillow thrown in the closet.  I have to literally “straighten” my place up.  If my queerness is seen, my femininity/straightness is called into question; the idea that a femme presenting person can be queer is a bit beyond the scope of most people.  If there is any question that I am enjoying myself or am off the center mark for bisexual providers (bi enough to do duos for male pleasure, but not enough to actually seek women out), then not only is my sexuality under scrutiny, my business ethics are as well.  This scrutiny comes into play via social mores built by hobby boards/escort review boards.

Escort review boards prize the idea of the “authentic” GFE (Girl Friend Experience); there is a constant conversation/argument about who and what is or isn’t.  Rumors abound of lesbian sex workers and how awful they are by lying to men for money; they are bogeyman stories to scare sex workers into behaving in an acceptable manner.  Men like to believe that sex workers are all natural nymphs and would fuck them regardless of money; this frees them from class guilt, the stigma of paying for sex and other emotions that might accompany seeing a sex worker.  And this happy lie is fed to them in sex worker ad content, promotion and branding.  They believe in this lie so intensely that it becomes cultural truth.  While we accept that sex workers exist outside of cultural norms, they can not exist outside of client-created normative ideals; if I have a client over to my house and it is is covered in rainbow stickers and Queer Liberation posters, and Feeldoes are drying in the dish drain, this happy lie becomes an ugly truth.  And if there’s one thing that the majority of “hobbyists” don’t like, it’s the truth.

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In the News (#530)

Posted in Current Events, Guest Columns, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 18, 2015| 37 Comments »

The war on sex offenders poses perhaps the greatest political challenge for those seeking to dismantle the carceral state.  –  Marie Gottschalk

Divided We Fall

Gay folk who promote anti-whore crusades are about the sleaziest sleaze there is: anti-whore queers

A Kiwi couple needs public help in a quest to take part in a…bootcamp which would help their dream of putting a stop to the forced sex trade industry.  In 2013 Xavier Hartstonge and partner Jesse North created the not-for-profit organisation SweatsHope with the vision of halting the forced sex trade industry in…India…Six people will be selected to receive an all-expenses paid trip to…spend two weeks working with a business coach, life coach and personal trainer…The organisers hope to turn it into a reality TV show.  Hartstonge…says we all know the sex trade is happening, yet we choose to close our eyes…“It’s about empowerment, showing these women they do have the choice and no longer have to do this…It’s modern day slavery and should no longer be tolerated”…

Yes, that’s a gay man demonizing a kind of sex he isn’t interested in.  Breathe deep of the putrid stench of that irony.

The Hooker Vote

The fact that Hof endorsed Ron Paul in ’12 should tell you that this has nothing to do with the candidates’ actual positions.  From a press release that was probably sent to everyone who blogs on sex work:  “Prostitutes at Dennis Hof’s…Moonlite Bunny Ranch…announce their support of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign…” The so-called “Hookers For Hillary” campaign’s embrace of “health care reform” seems primarily an attempt to demonize “illegal” sex workers by casting us as vectors of disease who need to be micromanaged by the benevolent state and licensed pimps like Hof lest we spread plague like a host of scarlet-clad Typhoid Mary Magdalenes.

Shift in the Wind

Is Al Jazeera swinging away from anti-whore hysteria again?

…Because sex work is legal in Ecuador…are, for the most part, allowed to conduct their work openly, without fear of being arrested. In other cities such as Kampala, Uganda; Manila, the Philippines; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Islamabad; Skopje, Macedonia; and Kiev, Ukraine, where it is illegal, sex workers conduct their work in the shadows, which makes it more likely that they will be subject to violence and limits their power to negotiate safe sex…For refugee sex workers in particular, an arrest for prostitution could jeopardize their asylum claim or result in deportation.  The high stakes of getting caught thus force them to take even greater risks, such as working alone or on the least safe stretches of road…refugees, notably those clustered in cities, often engage in sex work.  But international institutions need to do much more than just turn a blind eye to this informal form of employment.  By publicly acknowledging refugee sex workers and establishing support protocols, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other international organizations could help them do their work more safely and ensure their rights — to health, information and dignity — are respected…

Worse Than I Thought

Landlords of massage parlors, spa managers and even motel managers who knowingly allow prostitution on their premises could face prison and fines under [new Rhode Island laws]…The pandering law…would be amended to include those who allow prostitution on their premises, because they derive money from the illegal activity.  That includes landlords, managers, owners of spas or businesses, or any other place where commercial sex is practiced or allowed.  Under both bills, the penalties for a first offense would be one to five years in prison, and fines between $2,000 and $5,000…

It’s like they’re competing with each to see who can inflict the most mindlessly-draconian sentences:

People who solicit prostitutes would face increased penalties under a bill that [unanimously] passed the Florida House…The penalty for a first offense would increase from a second-degree misdemeanor to a first-degree misdemeanor.  A second offense would be a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a third offense would be a second-degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison…

Amsterdam (#45)

Dutch “authorities” outlaw more aspects of sex work, then feigning surprise when the number of illegal whores increases:

The number of licensed brothels and escort agencies in the Netherlands fell to 674 in 2014, compared with 1,127 in 2006…The figures also show six out of 10 local authorities have no licensed sex business within their boundaries….researchers say the decline may be due to the rise in the online sex industry…Justice minister Ard van der Steur says it is difficult to get a grip on the size of the unlicensed industry but that exploitation, human trafficking and forced prostitution are a serious issue…

Chauvinism

You’ll notice that none of these laws really affect picket-fence queers:

…Gay rights groups have made great strides in repealing anti-sodomy laws on federal and state levels, and these efforts should be commended.  And yet, prosecutions for sex crimes are growing faster than any other type of crime, with an exponentially rising rate of arrests and convictions.  Gay men are arrested in cruising stings, HIV-positive men are sent to prison for merely being sexually active, and sex workers and clients are arrested for victimless crimes.  Much of these prosecutions disproportionately affect queer folk, despite advances in civil rights for LGBT people.  Have the baldly homophobic laws of the 20th century really gone away? Or are they merely being repackaged and rebranded for a more gay-friendly public?…

Buttons, Bags & Banknotes

Read this essay by rapid neofeminist Sarah Ditum, keeping in mind that the source of all this bile is that a man went to a strip club:

…Lapdancing is a kind of entertainment that trades on power — men’s power over women, the economic supremacy that gives men the disposable income to buy a woman right out of her clothes, the ritualised submission of the naked women pantomiming sexual frenzy for the men in suits, the little assertions of possession that comes every time a man crosses the line and puts his hand on the skin he’s paying to see. Feminism is the politics of rejecting men’s power over us.  Not eroticising that power, not exploiting it to rinse a little cash benefit out of our own inferiority, but refusing it…Ask…how feminism can tolerate any [sex work]…

First They Came for the Hookers…(#341)

Licensed strip clubs are no longer allowed in Saskatchewan, but the government says it will make an exception for charitable events once a year.  Premier Brad Wall announced…that his government would reverse its decision to allow licensed strip clubs because of concerns about human trafficking and sexual exploitation…

Sex Rays

…the Dutch central bank has fired a 46-year-old female employee claimed to have been working after hours as a highly paid prostitute – specialising in sadomasochism.  The woman, who had been with the central bank for eight years…had allegedly been offering her services under the name “Conchita van der Waal”, advertising under the motto: “the kinkier the better”.  Ms van der Waal also offered to engage in sexual role play…one of the roles in which she was photographed online was that of an SS commandant…the…bank’s code of conduct…forbids “indecent behaviour” – and stipulates that no employee should act in a way which could harm the reputation of the bank or lead to negative publicity…

Catastrophic Consequences

Sex workers in Edinburgh are facing increased health risks following the controversial police crackdown on saunas…Fewer women are attending the specialist NHS clinic set up to support them – and…sexually transmitted infections have increased.  Sex workers are also giving up on condoms, with saunas refusing to stock them because police can use possession of them as evidence of selling sex…many women had moved away from saunas and now operated from other venues, like flats or lap-dancing bars…

The Missing Word

…The US’s current anti-trafficking policy…produces a tangle of finite good and possibly infinite harmful effects…stories of “sex slaves” produced by some advocates and propagated with alacrity by the media and accepted by…US law makers—has permitted…an incoherent spectrum of immigration and criminal law enforcement operating without much critical oversight, let alone public understanding…the media here [follows a]…template of treating exploited (male) workers as migrant labours while reserving the term “trafficking” for (female) “sex trafficking victims”…

Guinea Pigs Motel 6

Pay attention to this: a motel chain is systematically ratting out guests to cops:

The popular hotel chain, Motel 6, has recently decided to partner with the police to violate the rights of their guests.  Without the consent of the guest, or even informing them whatsoever, Motel 6 employees will now turn over the guest information to the police, who will then run a background check on the subject…I highly doubt that all, or even 10%, of the 1,100 Motel 6’s in North America have a huge sex trafficking problem. I doubt many of them have real “major” crime issues at all. Yet, Motel 6 is allowing the police to run the names of all their guests, regardless of probable cause, incident, or reasoning…

Guest Columnist:  Kaytlin Bailey

There’s the old chestnut that’s supposed to help you relax in front of an audience, “imagine them in their underwear,” and its dark twin — the classic nightmare of being naked in public.  For comedians, the Naked Comedy Showcase provides a chance to experience both scenarios…According to New York host and producer, Kaytlin Bailey, “It’s a rush…there’s something about being in the survival mindset and that amount of adrenaline that really brings the performer in to the room and they’re present from moment to moment and that’s great to watch.”  The brainchild of Boston-based comedian, and nudist Andy Ofiesh, Bailey took over hosting and producing duties in…2014 and has been playing to standing-room-only crowds ever since…

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Guest Columnist: Kaytlin Bailey

Posted in Biography, Guest Columns, Perception, tagged , , , , , on April 13, 2015| 35 Comments »

Kaytlin Bailey first wrote to me several years ago; she had started hinting at her sex work experience in her comedy act and wanted my opinion about coming out more fully.  I was honored that she had confided in me, pleased when she started to make it in comedy, and proud for her when she decided to fully own her experience.  We went out together one of the nights I was in New York last summer, and I’m grateful she replied positively to my request for this guest column.  Her story isn’t funny, but it is, I think, a triumph.  Her one woman show will debut in New York City at The Tank Theater July 10th, 11th & 12th. You can follow her on Twitter at @kaytlinbailey.

kaytlin headshot yellowPeople tell me I’m brave.  I try to remind them that I might be stupid.

I will never sleep with anyone ever again who doesn’t know.  Not after he threw me up against a wall, or held me down on the sidewalk until I apologized for the things I had “done to him” five, six, seven years before we met.  I was never afraid of a client, but I was terrified of a man I loved very much, who I thought I knew very well.

I started working as an independent escort when I was 17.  There were other things going on in my life:  I was the president of my high school debate team; I maintained an impressive GPA; I had a nice, age-appropriate boyfriend to whom I had dutifully lost my virginity months before; my parents gave me a generous allowance; I didn’t drink or smoke pot.  I had never been raped, but I was sure that if I ever was I would report it and that my rapist would be punished.  I had never been hit by a man.  All of that came much later. For the first few months I couldn’t even legally rent my own hotel room; I remember one incident where after-school detention cost me over $1,000.

There were, of course, consequences.  Making $400 an hour before I had any bills to pay, and spending hours in bed with deeply-unhappy rich men, gave me a lot of weird ideas about money & intimacy.  I maxed out my Roth IRA for a few years and paid for a few decadent dinners with my friends, but mostly I parked wherever I wanted to; every morning I parked directly in front of the “no parking” sign in front of my high school, and never cared about the tickets because I thought I had “fuck you” money.  I continued to see clients until it wasn’t fun anymore; I had the luxury of doing that.  I went to college, got a few degrees, then started working in politics.  At first I loved it; then I burned out, started doing open mics, became a comic and moved to NYC, in that order.  And that’s when I met the man I thought I was going to marry.

kaytlin on barI had so easily dismissed the slut shaming language of my hometown, the colloquial idea that there was such a thing as “the marrying kind”, or that anyone interesting enough to fall in love with would want such a woman (the kind I imagined busying herself with making cupcakes and saying no to perverse invitations).  I saw the Madonna/whore complex, and maybe I bought into it a little too much; if there were really only two types of women, I was going to be the free & wild kind.  I rejected the pervasive and perverse myth that when a man and woman go to bed together the woman gets up having lost something, and the man gets up having won something.  I thought it didn’t matter how many men I slept with, because I was still me.  And so I told him, and even though I hadn’t seen a client in over 6 years it broke his heart.  His whole body crumpled up, and he shook first with grief, then with rage.  He wanted so badly to make sense of me, to reconcile his love for me with things he thought he knew about “whores”.

Sometimes he would press me to give him the narrative of a desperate woman using her body as a last resort, or a victim of some horrific crime, or a stupid girl who got tricked into turning tricks.  He was enraged by the truth, and couldn’t accept that I had been curious and turned on by the idea.  I was not ashamed of what I had done until I saw what it did to him.  It drove him mad, and so I left him even though I believed that he loved me.  I left him because I knew that if I didn’t, he would kill me.  And after I left I believed for a really long time that he was right, that there was something fundamentally wrong with me.

After I left him I started telling my story; I wanted to see if people who didn’t love me as much as he did could get past what they thought they knew about being a whore.  They could.  I started by telling audiences, tentatively at first.  As a stand up comic I can tell my story with quite a bit of winking distance with lines like “its hard to go from making $400 an hour without a high school diploma, to making $10 with three degrees.”

I know there are consequences to telling my story.  I’m afraid that stupid people on the internet are right.  I’m afraid that when the sum total of my life is calculated I will have taken more than I have given.  I’m afraid of giving birth to children that hate me.  I’m afraid to tell my parents; what if I tell my Dad and it drives him to suicide?  What if I give my mom the ammunition she’s always wanted to prove I’m not just difficult, but crazy?  I’m afraid that I will find myself old, living in poverty, and neglecting myself and my dependent (a smelly dog who, justifiably, resents me).  But at the same time, I’ve always suspected that people without a complicated history aren’t taking full advantage of life’s exhilarating opportunities.  Sometimes I think I’m wired weird; maybe I’m crazy, or a “bad investment.”  Maybe I’ve put myself in a percentile of people who are undatable…unloveable?  But that’s what New York City is for; it’s where all the unmarriageable go to mate with each other.

kaytlin goofyI’m not an activist or a role model.  I know it’s complicated & I don’t pretend to have a prescription for making anything “better.”  I’m not even sure that the human experience can be made to be “better”; it’s pretty messy for everyone, even “the marrying kind” of girls.  People ask me if I’m worried I’ll be pigeonholed.  Yes, but also no.  Was Dave Attell pigeonholed a porn addict?  Jim Norton a pervert?  Amy Schumer a slut?  Chelsea Handler an exhibitionist?  Well, yes, they were, but it didn’t limit them.  I don’t know the future, so I’m choosing to talk about my experience, and I hope my audience finds me.

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Guest Columnist: Mara

Posted in Biography, Call types, Guest Columns, tagged , , , on March 9, 2015| 13 Comments »

I think that one of the most important purposes of my guest columnist feature is to provide a look at experiences I’m not qualified to speak about personally, so when I received this letter I immediately asked its author if I could publish it.  She very graciously consented, and I hope y’all will find it as fascinating as I do.

Dear Maggie,

I’m a middle aged lesbian-leaning bisexual academic who identifies as a feminist.  Your blog came to my attention a few years ago via Twitter, and your daily digest of police state violence against sex workers is an essential part of my political reading.  While you have a wide array of discussions on your blog and in the comment threads, I have noticed one voice missing:  That of The Jane.  Or at least, This Jane.

I am a woman who has paid for sex and I liked it.  If I were a rich woman, I would unabashedly procure sexual services from providers of various genders.  If I were powerful enough, I would be honest and unashamed by such too.

After graduate school in a small southern town, I took a corporate job in a major city.U-Haul  Young, devoted to my work and at that time, well-paid, I would make it a point a few nights a week to attempt to meet women in all the conventional ways including lesbian bars and political events.  What was to follow was a series of disappointments; not because I was not meeting women, I was.  What I wasn’t meeting were lesbians who could just enjoy sex without it being attached to a potential relationship.  We all know the old joke about what a lesbian brings on a second date:  A U-Haul.

Lesbian bars were dreadful.  Full of puritans.  Every attractive butch was in a 12-step program, often full of judgment when I ordered a second drink since God forbid one want to unwind.  If we made it far enough through the evening, I would get propositioned.  No, not of the “Let’s fuck” variety but invitations to play house.  If they were willing to just go back to my place and fuck, I would get lectures about smoking pot beforehand lest it interfere with my enjoyment or more importantly, my ability to consent.  “Consent culture” has been around for a long time; it’s less to do with avoiding accusations of rape, than it is to appease the insecure who think that my enjoyment of recreational drugs, sex toys, kink or any variety of base pleasures somehow implies that they might be sexually inadequate.  Further, there is this notion that one’s sexuality must be “healthy,” even spiritual; I never did figure out what the latter meant, but the former was a return to the days when women kept each other in check by making sure that one stayed virtuous (in other words, not promiscuous).  It’s not that there weren’t any women who did just want to fuck.  The bi-curious women appeared on my TV screen and in popular magazines, but in real life they generally consisted of women whose interest flagged when they reeled in which ever male they were using me as bait to hook, or those who believed that female sexuality consisted of a few slow French kisses, then our bodies would magically meld as we flew over lush fields of green as unicorn fairies.  In other words, they had no idea where the hell to put their tongues.

Then one night, I was with a group of male and female friends when we entered a local strip club as part of a birthday party, and I found a bright and vivid display of women, in every shape and color, who made themselves erotic visions.  I was transfixed watching their stage performances, and after a few shots I worked up my courage to approach them with dollar bills to get a closer look.  The bold eye contact the dancers made helped me to not merely sympathize but to have genuine empathy for men who are intimidated to speak to beautiful women.

Everything about stripping is ultimately more about what is on the dancer’s body than what is removed.  The sky-high heels create the muscularity that emphasizes and aligns the curve of her buttocks, through the smooth upper thighs curving back into the calf; they promote a straight posture and confident gait that turns breasts into beacons of life.  The thongs draw attention not only to the natural peach shape of the female rear, but affirm the wearer’s many hours of fitness and discipline.  Creamy, moisturized skin, long playful eye lashes, full lips brought to a shine and topped off by a crown of hair that tumbles and falls in waves…waves of free spirited sexual freedom.

When I could regain my powers of speech, I tipped one of the dancers and asked her to join us at our table.  Other members of my group were already getting dances; I wanted one too, but not just to titillate the men around me (not that I would have noticed).  Once the dance began, I was entranced by the way she slowly dragged her manicured fingertips down my exposed arms, her body gliding up and down mine as if she were as light as air, and her hands ever-so-discreetly making their way for a moment or two to the sides of my breasts – I was aware of nothing but her.  Our group enjoyed the club until late, then we left.  That in some ways was the best part; I had the high of experiencing female sexuality without having to cultivate an emotional connection that I was neither ready for nor could make room for in my life.

Writing about that was the fun part, but now it gets thorny:  Many years later and some relationships later, I discovered heterosexuality.  It affirmed both my feminism and my lesbianism; the dynamics of heterosexual romances are simply incompatible with the way I live my life.  My work requires me to spend long hours in solitude thinking, researching and writing.  I am married to my ideas, and so am simply unsuitable as a mate in any sort of conventional heterosexual relationship.  Ultimately, I realized I longed for only one aspect of them:  being fucked with a penis.  With age, my needs for privacy had grown; hence, affairs with colleagues were out of the question.  People love to gossip, especially about themselves.  Male friends to whom I felt close enough to ask for sex,  grew attached no matter how clear I made it that I was not able of reciprocating the same sort of love they felt.  Lacking feminine tact or any ability for small talk, the bar scene for straights proved even less inviting than the one for lesbians, and for whatever reason I could never convince myself I felt any chemistry with strangers under those circumstances.

Several months after the end of a long relationship, people who knew me less well were prone to ask if I had started seeing anyone yet (as if there were a social norm about remaining single too long).  Or worse, my lack of interest in dating seemed to indicate to armchair psychologists that I was not “healed” or over my last mate.  In reality, though, I was relieved to be single again, as it allowed me to focus on artistic projects which I had abandoned; I had been so busy maintaining a relationship out of obligation that I had lost sight of my own intellectual ambitions.

Cowboys 4 AngelsIn due time however, I craved the sexual touch of another person.  A few times a month I would get a massage at a nearby Thai parlor which (as far as I knew) was not in the business of providing sexual services; most of the masseuses were petite older women who had studied their craft, and I always left feeling as though my body had been put back in order.  Nothing more, nothing less.  At one visit however, the masseur was a young man I took as gay.  The massage was excellent, but he worked my entire body (including the groin area) in such a way that when I returned home, I did something I rarely needed to do after a massage:  masturbate.  Basking in the relaxation of my own bed alone, it occurred to me, why didn’t such a service exist as an outcall.  I must be horribly dumb after an orgasm, because there is a world full of male prostitutes – albeit one that caters nearly entirely to gay men.  After a quick internet search, however, I found one company that made a ham-fisted point of reminding anyone on the site that it was strictly a “Straight Elite Male Companions For Women” operation.

I made the call.

Two hours and a six hundred dollar charge to my credit card later, “Anthony” appeared.  He was wholesome looking in a countrified way:  lean, slightly muscular and sans tattoos and piercings (which was refreshing having been over exposed to such in the LGBT scene).  I was nervous, but he made me feel very at ease; he knew what to do and when do it.  And when it was over, I gave him a cash tip and spent a very relaxing evening in bed reading.  I had experienced sexual release without any of the complications, drudgery or expense of being in a romantic pairing.

Would I hire an escort again?  Certainly.  The only thing that keeps me from doing so are the rates, but what escorts do is worth the price.  With a professional, I am spared tedious discussions about sexual histories:  I want to fuck, not be probed by a nurse practitioner.  The boundaries, both mine and the sex worker’s, are clearly drawn.  I am not burdening others by dragging around a fuck partner whose name everyone is expected to remember or who needs a special term.  (Referring to someone as girl/boy friend at my age seems ludicrous and “lover” implies I’m a 65 year old gay man — I might be someday but will save my gender issues for another guest column if you so allow.)  Sex workers understand discretion so I am allowed my privacy, something the “friends with benefits/selfie” era lacks, with or without the NSA.  Finally, I do not have pretend to be seeking “romance”  when all I am interested in is sex.

Yours in freedom,

Mara

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