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Archive for the ‘Q & A’ Category

Not a Good Time

Posted in Perception, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 6, 2018| 2 Comments »

I often get questions from women who are interested in becoming sex workers.  Sometimes they have specific questions, but more often they want general advice; you can find past questions like this in my Mentoring tag, or on my “Previously Asked Questions” page under “Mentoring”.  But while I was answering last week’s question I realized that I cannot in good conscience continue to advise young American women to enter full-service sex work (i.e. escorting or other forms of prostitution) at all until “sex trafficking” hysteria has imploded and the ramped-up persecution of sex workers, our clients, our loved ones and our associates has at last died down.  Every day I read stories of women being raped, beaten, humiliated, locked in cages and even murdered by cops who claim either that they’re “rescuing” us or “abating” us (like a disease).  Every day I receive communications from time-wasters and psychos, and read other ladies’ complaints of similar incidents.  Every few weeks another advertising site or escort service falls victim to a high-profile pogrom, and a constant stream of new surveillance weapons are deployed against us (and this doesn’t even count the shockingly-invasive amounts of information websites like Eros are demanding as a condition of carrying escorts’ ads).  On top of all that, I myself keep advising gentlemen to stick to contacting well-known and well-established providers, and to avoid unknowns; that’s excellent advice for them, but very bad for new ladies just getting into the business.  And while the vast majority of clients are probably unaware of my advice, it would be pretty shitty of me to help women get into the business while simultaneously warning men to avoid them.  No, I’m afraid that for the duration of the moral panic I’ll have to limit myself to helping those who’ve already crossed the Rubicon, while suggesting that those who haven’t consider taking up a branch of sex work that hasn’t been criminalized…yet.

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)

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Triple Negative

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , , , , , on August 30, 2018| 4 Comments »

I’m an 18 year old virgin, barely making ends meet at my dishwashing job; I’m interested in making money with my body.  I’ve thought about stripping but I don’t think I have the body for it and I have self harm scars on my thighs; maybe porn or escorting might be another avenue to explore.  Would it be a good selling point that I’m a virgin?  How would I go about advertising that?

Since stripping and porn performing are more visual than escorting, you may be right about the latter being a better path for you than the former two.  I wouldn’t worry too much about the scars if I were you; I have some fairly noticeable scarring on my left arm, and I know a lady with pronounced Cesarean section scars, and both of us are quite popular escorts.  There are three things in your letter, however, which do concern me and you should consider them deeply before attempting to pursue sex work.

The first is your youth:  while 18 is of legal age and I’ve known some ladies (including me) who did sell sex at that age, the ongoing hysteria over “child sex trafficking” has made being so young a liability rather than an asset.  Advertising sites are going to subject you to extra scrutiny, webcrawling programs run by the government and its prohibitionist cronies will flag you for increased surveillance, and your local cops and/or the FBI may even target you for “rescue” (i.e. arrest and use as a propaganda subject) in one of their pogroms if they decide you might be underage or vulnerable.

The second is your use of the phrase “make money with my body”, which to me indicates you’ve absorbed some harmful myths about sex work.  What you’re doing now is making money with your body; unless commercial dishwashing is very different from the home variety, it doesn’t exactly require a lot of mental work.  Escorting, on the other hand, requires considerable emotional labor; creating ads, screening clients and building a brand also require a great deal of head work.  It may be that you’re up to the challenge; since I know nothing about you I can’t say.  But even some very bright people don’t really like expending the kind of mental and emotional energy necessary to succeed as an escort, especially in these times of vanishing advertising sites and increased screening difficulty.

The third is your virginity.  You didn’t say where you live, but your spelling and word use seem American to me.  So unless you’re planning to go abroad, the only way to openly sell your virginity without bringing down hordes of authoritarians attempting to “save” you from a sensible decision (because you’re supposed to give your virginity for free to some stupid, penniless boy who may inflict an STI or worse, a pregnancy, on you) is to make a deal with a Nevada brothel to market that, and they’ll take 50%.  Furthermore, none of the high-profile virginity sales of the past few years have gone well, which rather makes skeptical of the whole concept in the 21st century (though it worked well in the 19th and early 20th).  Furthermore, I don’t think it’s an especially good idea for a young woman who doesn’t even know how she’s going to feel about sex with men to try to make a living at it from square one.

My advice to you is this:  get a bit of sexual experience under your belt (no pun intended) before considering any kind of in-person sex work.  Try doing phone sex (there are some services such as Niteflirt which are quite popular) and see if you like that, then maybe move onto camming.  Do some research and talk to sex workers, and then after you’ve been doing the not-in-person stuff for a while you can try dipping into escorting if you still want to.

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)

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Second Chance

Posted in Miscellaneous, Q & A, tagged , , on August 23, 2018| Leave a Comment »

I had to find a new job and apartment, and in the ensuing chaos I was late and cheap on the last appointments with my regular girl, and I feel like I didn’t treat her very well.  She’s at a new escort agency now, and now that things have settled down at my end, I’d like to try a fresh start, and see if I can maintain a proper regular worker/client relationship, but I don’t know if she would be okay with that or would prefer I simply never see her again.

Unless your lady has indicated clearly to you that she’s angry and doesn’t want to see you any more (and most of us will make that pretty clear), it doesn’t hurt to ask her for another appointment.  The worst she can do is say “no”.  And if she doesn’t, make absolutely sure that you do not run late for your next several appointments; tell her how sorry you are that you were flaky and didn’t treat her as she deserves to be treated, and give her both a nice tip and a gift for your next few sessions.  I think it’s very likely she’ll forgive you.  But if she doesn’t return your calls or emails, or makes excuses to not book appointments with you, you need to accept that she would prefer not to see you again.  In that case, move on, learn from your mistakes, and be sure to be an exemplary client to the other ladies you see from now on.

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)

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Fetish-Focused

Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , on August 16, 2018| 1 Comment »

I’m a trans woman who’s over 50 and working as a white collar professional.  It seems like every guy I meet sees me only as a sex object and nothing else, even though I don’t try to project anything like that; how can I meet people for relationships that don’t seem fetish-focused?  And also, since I seem to attract that anyway, I’ve been thinking about doing a little sex work on the side; I’ve done some photography modeling and have been successful with that (no income, but well received).  However, I’m really turned off by the kink I seem to attract most.  What should I do?

Unfortunately, I’m afraid that having to deal with men who are only interested in us for sexual reasons is a problem all women, cis or trans, have to deal with, especially when we’re older.  Guys are to a very large degree led by their sex drives, and that means women tend to attract men who are interested in whatever sets them apart from other women.  So slender girls tend to attract guys who are really weight-focused, redheads attract guys who are drawn to that, and trans women attract trans fans.  That’s not generally a problem when the woman is in her 20s because there are still plenty of fish in the sea, but when we get to our 50s a lot of the guys have died off (males have a higher mortality rate in every age bracket), and the great majority of the ones who are still alive are already taken.  That leaves men who are divorced, still married or never married, and since there are more available women at that age than men…you get the picture.  You can certainly try the usual dating sites and such, but I strongly suspect a lot of the men who try to date you will still be focused on your trans status (unless they can’t tell, in which case I advise saying nothing; it’s no more their business than any other medical issue like an abortion or an appendectomy).

As for your second question, since you’re comfortable with modeling and already had a bit of noncommercial success, I suggest investigating how you can monetize it.  If you don’t really like the kind of guys who seem to be attracted to your image, that’s not nearly as big a deal in modeling as it would be in something like escorting or camming, because you’re not directly interacting with them except to sell your pictures.  And even if you can’t hide your distaste for them in a one-on-one situation, it shouldn’t be any harder to negotiate poses & payment than it is to deal with annoying folks in the office where you currently work.

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)

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Bareback

Posted in Perception, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , on August 9, 2018| 11 Comments »

I am a mid level ($250/hr) escort in a large US city and have been in the business for a dozen or more years, and I’ve never seen so many clients assume they can have sex without a condom.  It used to be if they even asked for bareback I wouldn’t even see them; now that request is more than half the people I speak with, and a good percentage think they can just hop on bareback without even asking.  Is it because I am older?  One guy said he assumed I would be OK with it because I can’t get pregnant (which isn’t even correct).  Haven’t these idiots heard of STIs?  Also, what is the definition of GFE?  A good portion of men now seem think it means BBFS.  That has never been my definition of those letters.

It’s not because you’re older; it’s because of the government’s war on us.  The increase in stings and persecution of clients has made some guys either stop seeing escorts for a while, or stick with girls they already know and trust, or turn to higher-priced girls with a bigger web presence.  That means a lot of the semi-pros and low-priced full-timers don’t get the business they did only a few years ago, and some of them have (understandably) become more desperate because of that.  Some are lowering prices, others are relaxing screening, and some are doing bareback to catch the foolish guys others are turning away.  Also, with the demise of Backpage, a lot of the budget providers who advertised there don’t know where to turn & can’t afford more expensive ad sites like Eros or Slixa; a lot of the guys who were able to find “anything goes” semi-pros on Backpage are also flooding into other ad sites & they don’t know the rules.  So the whole market is in chaos, and mid-range providers like you are forced to deal with stupid yo-yos who think “STI” is a government agency.

I’ve been in the business since the ‘90s, and I can state categorically that GFE does not and never has meant “bareback”; it has always meant a style that’s more relaxed & friendly, with conversation, kissing & cuddling.  In fact, I remember arguing on hooker boards around 2010 with guys who were trying to claim it meant some checklist of activities (which it doesn’t & never has), but even then everyone understood it did not mean bareback.  I’m not sure where the idea that it does came from, but this is the second time recently I’ve heard this; the other was on Twitter, where someone quoted from an idiot cop’s claim to a court that GFE and PSE both mean “bareback”.  My only guess is that over the past decade some group of really dumb hobbyists, probably on a “bros before hos” site like TER, intentionally decided to try to shift the meaning of GFE (because they’re stupid and think with the wrong head), and now that their site has been shut down due to FOSTA they’re spilling out into the general community and can only be stopped from their filthy habits by scrupulous professionals like us. 

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)

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Real Sex

Posted in Perception, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , on August 2, 2018| 6 Comments »

Many people have used Craigslist to find a “causal encounter”, and some of them got lured into police sting operations.  I’m trying to determine what fraction of the stuff that used to be posted to that section (before Craigslist closed it a few months ago) was real, and what percentage prostitution (as opposed to a real, no strings attached encounter).

All sexual encounters which actually happen are as “real” as one another; being paid for sex does not magically make the ensuing sex imaginary.  Lots of people used Craigslist to advertise seeking or offering sex, and they had a plethora of different motivations; it’s a prohibitionist mentality to pretend that a pragmatic motivation for sex draws a bright, clear line between that sex and other sex.  You seem to want to exploit that imaginary difference to argue that cops stalking and victimizing people for sex in which no currency is directly exchanged is somehow different and worse than them stalking people who make a clear and honest exchange.  I can’t help you with that, and I wouldn’t if I could; the only assistance I can offer is to tell you that most scams only work on those with “larceny in their hearts”, i.e. those trying to get something for nothing.  Men seeking sex would be wise to stop trolling around trying to get it for “free” (the most expensive kind) or cheap, do their research, and deal only with known providers with established reputations.  Furthermore, the idea that sex work can be dependably differentiated from what you call “real sex” is not only wrong philosophically, but also practically; because sex work is only distinguished by its motivation, any procedure intended to ensnare sex workers and/or clients will also ensnare lots of other people.  The only way to ensure that no amateurs are caught up in prostitution stings is to do away with prostitution stings, and the only way to do that is to completely decriminalize all forms of sex work.

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)

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Turning Tricks

Posted in Perception, Q & A, Words, tagged , , on July 26, 2018| 10 Comments »

Where does the phrase “turning tricks” come from? Is there any connection here to magicians pulling rabbits out of hats, or the proverbial bag of tricks?

Savannah Sly asked me his question on Twitter, and I replied that I think it’s most likely from cards. In card games like rummy, a “trick” is one hand, and to “win the trick” or “turn the trick” is to win that single hand, though not necessarily the whole game.  So I strongly suspect “to turn a trick” is closely related to the general “that did the trick”, meaning “that thing just accomplished what I was trying to do in the moment”.  Turning a “trick” in sex work, getting one gig, is like winning one hand in a very long game of cards.

After I’d given this answer, a reader chimed in with this link wherein a non-whore attempts to trace the origin to the French triquer, due to a slang usage meaning “to fuck in a bestial fashion”.  My sense is that this is a false cognate; it’s not unusual for languages to have words which resemble those in other languages, but have nothing to do with them either etymologically or semantically.  For example, the German word gift means “poison”, but the French poisson means “fish”.  The thread following the original attempt at derivation is quite interesting in that it’s made up of a bunch of men trying to trace the meaning of a word used by women to the client side of the equation, when obviously that’s silly.  I’m often fascinated by amateurs’ attempts to explain the demimonde when they know nothing about it, as exemplified by the one dude who attempts to derive it from 19th century criminal slang by claiming that street whores working with robbers was once “common”; of course it was nothing of the kind, as reflected in the fact that there are a number of historical slang terms for such women to differentiate them from honest whores.  Obviously, even professional lexicographers cannot be certain of the derivation of a word, but given the origin of the term in the US of the early 20th century, I think my hypothesis a much stronger one than either the “French” or “criminal” hypotheses.

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)

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Ghost

Posted in Call types, Perception, Q & A, tagged on July 19, 2018| 5 Comments »

On July 6th, Dan Savage asked sex worker Twitter for help with this question:

A lot of people answered, but most of the responses were quite short.  Below I’ve reprinted mine and three others I found notable, but if you’re interested there are more in Dan’s own column on the question.

Me: Sending flowers or similar forms of approach would be a VERY bad idea.  What he should do is search her stage name for a new ad; if there is one, he can attempt contact that way & see what happens.  If he can’t locate an ad, he should just assume she’s retired and move on.

Savannah Sly:  As a criminalized population, sex workers frequently change phone numbers, emails, etc.  I would advise seeing if she’s advertising online anywhere, and reaching out by the means she outlines in her ad.  I would not advise reaching out in person, or sending anything to her house.  Also, sometimes sex workers ghost.  Our jobs are stressful due to stigma and criminalization, our lives are complex.  Sometimes we ghost without notice, because anxiety runs high in our community.  Be patient, look online, be professional during outreach regardless of past intimacy.  Lastly, sometimes we actually disappear.  As in, violent crimes are committed against us.  If you suspect this, I’d advise reaching out to sex worker groups in your area (or as close as you can find) to tell them you’re concerned.  Then step back, and let the community ask around.

Mistress Matisse: OK just to be different: I’m going to go a different way from all the other advice has been given here. Now, all of the other advice IS very good advice and you will not go wrong by taking it.  However, if you would like to make one attempt – and only one – to contact this lady, here is what you might do.  Go to the store and buy a very generic “thinking of you” card.  Or a blank one.  Nothing romantic!  Write in the card something like this: “Dear X, I see that we’ve fallen out of contact, and I just want to say goodbye and wish you well.  I’ve always thought highly of you and enjoyed our time together.  If you ever want to contact me again for any reason, please don’t hesitate, my number is…”  NOTHING ELSE.  Don’t say anything about sex, don’t say anything about money, don’t say anything about love, basically don’t say anything that would sound bad if read out loud in court.  Do that and do nothing else.  If she wants to get in touch with you, she will.  One time and one time only.  Or, take the safer route and follow the advice of my colleagues.  Plenty of other ladies to meet and enjoy in the world.  I’m sure that’s what she would want you to do, meet someone else.

Anjel:  If she has an email or some other form of contact info, trying to send a feeler email out that way would be ok. But she has every right to end the business relationship without explanation.  No one can know how damaging and intrusive getting flowers might feel to her.  She honestly could have lost that phone number and lost all old contact info though.  But if she wants her old clients to find her she would have given them another way to contact her.  If there isn’t another way, accept that it’s over and be grateful for the experience.

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)

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Sugar Free

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , , on July 5, 2018| 3 Comments »

I’ve been a sugar baby for nearly a year now, but I really just want to switch from sugaring to escorting. I’ve used SeekingArrangement to meet clients but this will no longer work for me as they have a very strict anti-escort policy.  Do you know of any real sites I could use, and do you have any advice for a new girl starting out?

Sugaring, as you have obviously figured out, is just underpaid escorting.  This isn’t to say that it’s impossible to find decent long-term patrons on Seeking Arrangement and other such platforms; I have an ad there myself, as do several of my friends, because their “no escorts” policy is a laughable smoke screen designed to hide the fact that sugaring is a form of sex work.  Brandon Wade, the owner of Seeking Arrangement, is pissing himself so thoroughly over the possibility that he could be attacked with anti-whore laws like FOSTA that he not only makes videos filled with asinine whorearchical bullshit, but also employs full-time propaganda writers to convince sugar babies that they’re not whores, because if they understood that they were they wouldn’t sell their time so cheaply.  The engine which drives sugar sites has two pistons: men who want to pretend they aren’t paying for sex, and women who want to pretend they aren’t whores.  So the problem with SA and similar sites for sensible women like you and me is that first piston:  some dudes are so terrified of admitting they pay for sex that they don’t want to give their dates anything useful, like cash; they just want to buy designer bags and shoes and take you on pricey vacations (that aren’t worth nearly the time you need to spend with the sugar daddy).  As you’ve discovered, escorting is more honest, more lucrative and much less time-intensive, and therefore a better choice.  I’m afraid the options for advertising are more limited than they were last year; many sites have self-censored for fear of FOSTA, and Backpage was raided and shut down by the government using astonishingly sleazy tactics.  But there are still Eros, Slixa, Escort-ads and many local escort boards (many of which are free).  The easiest way to find the ones in your area is to do a Google search for “escorts + [your city]” and see what comes up; that’ll also show you what most escorts in your area charge.  As for advice, I recommend you visit my “mentoring” tag and read everything in it, then join Twitter and Switter and follow me and as many other sex workers as you can find.  That won’t exactly give you a textbook, but it’s a good start.

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)

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False Confidence

Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , , on June 28, 2018| 3 Comments »

I’m 23 years old and okay with waiting until I’m where I want to be career-wise to meet a nice girl and settle down, but I didn’t want to stay a virgin, so I went to a soapland.  I was really scared and nervous, but the girl was really nice and I think it was a great decision.  It was like going to a therapist, or a doctor, and even though I didn’t feel any romantic attraction to the working girl, it felt like she was a good friend helping me with my problems.  And of course it felt good to have sex.  I would like to go back, but I have a few questions.  Will seeing soapland girls instill me with a false sense of confidence?  Should I keep going to that one girl or try other girls out as well?  When I left, the people at the front desk gave me the address to a sister branch that was much closer to where I live.  Also, I feel weird when I hog the conversation in a normal situation, and I want to make the girl feel comfortable too, but at the same time I don’t want to pry into her personal life too much.

I don’t think you need to worry about “false confidence” as long as you remember that sex workers are professionals.  We are paid to make men feel good, emotionally as well as physically, and even though a genuine liking can develop it is not the same thing as romance.  I think you already understand this, and that understanding isn’t going to evaporate just because you keep seeing sex workers.  Some men like to keep seeing the same girl, whereas others like a lot of variety, and still others are somewhere in the middle (they have their regular lady but also see others as time & money allow).  I think you should probably adopt that strategy to start: keep seeing the girl you like regularly, say once a month, and if you have extra cash try other girls out.  As you become more experienced you’ll learn what works best for you.  Don’t worry about monopolizing the conversation.  Even if she likes you, it’s still a business transaction at its core, and if it makes you happy to talk most sex workers won’t have a problem with that.  Make conversation just like you’d make it with your barber, manicurist, or any other professional you spend time with, and you’ll be fine; the same rules of good manners (don’t ask rude or prying questions, etc) apply in this interaction just as they would anywhere.  Sex workers are people like any other, and will have different comfort levels; you’ll be able to suss that out just as you would with anybody else.  I understand this is new & strange to you, but you’ll quickly become comfortable with it over repeat visits.  Unless you’re intentionally rude, it’s very unlikely you will cause offense.

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)

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