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That Was the Week That Was (#41)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged Africa, agency denial, anal sex, Australia, Backpage, Backwards into the Future, bogus studies, brothels, California, censorship, Change of Heart, child "protective" services, condoms, cops, disease, Down Under, ethics, Europe, evidence, harm reduction, Housewife Harlotry, hysteria, Lack of Evidence, language, Latin America, law, License To Rape, Maine, Malawi, marriage, Mexico, Netherlands, pimps, porn, rape, Saint Death, Saving Them from Themselves, See No Evil, sexting, So Close and Yet So Far, stage names, stereotypes, streetwalkers, Texas, The More the Better, The Rape Question, Tyranny by Consensus, Umpteen Thousand People, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, video, Without Let or Hindrance, yin and yang on October 13, 2012| 14 Comments »

Prostitution has a social value, and it’s necessary in a city.– Daniël Termont

Without Let or Hindrance

Those who have dealt with “Child Protective Services” know that they are granted powers of which the Inquisition would have been envious. They routinely abduct people’s children on the flimsiest of pretexts, often on hearsay and without even a warrant, and once this happens parents may never regain custody; if they do it is after years of jumping through ridiculous and ever-changing hoops, playing endless games of “Mother May I?” with power-mad bureaucrats, submission to outlandish violations of their rights and privacy, hundreds of hours in court and total financial ruin…and that’s not even counting the emotional damage to the children. On Wednesday, an activist named Kathi Duran began a hunger strike on the steps of the California state capitol to call attention to these abuses; as expected, she was arrested almost immediately. She asked me to call attention to her protest and share this press release, and I’m happy to do so and will provide updates as I get them.

Updates

License To Rape

This result doesn’t happen nearly often enough:

An ex-Houston police officer [named Abraham Joseph]…was sentenced to life in prison…for raping a waitress…Joseph could have received as little as five years…but jurors chose the maximum sentence instead.

News articles always refer to criminal cops as “ex-cops”, implying they had already been fired when they committed the crimes.

Lack of Evidence

The San Francisco Police Department announced…that [it] will [temporarily] stop using condoms as evidence in prostitution cases…Under current city policy, police cannot confiscate condoms…But…police sometimes broke the policy…A July report from Human Rights Watch criticized San Francisco, along with New York, Washington, DC and Los Angeles, for [the practice]…

Spam received by a reader; if this isn’t a hoax, the cops, voyeurs or pimp wannabes who set it up labor under truly mythic levels of ignorance and disinformation.

December Q & A

Sex educator Debby Herbenick on the need for more research on anal sex: “…In an incredibly short period of time, anal sex has become a common part of Americans’ sex lives. As of the 1990s, only about one-quarter to one-third of young [Americans]…had tried anal sex at least once. Less than 20 years later, my research team’s 2009 National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior found that as many as 40-45 percent…in some age groups had…[yet] taboos persist and…the list of what we don’t know about anal sex is far longer than the list of what we do. This makes it difficult for sex educators to feel truly confident in answering people’s very real and important questions…”

Backwards into the Future

Add Malawi to the list of countries whose legal experts understand human rights better than those in the US; one of them said that “Despite the fact that Malawi has not outlawed sex work…police officers on night patrols pounce on sex workers and…charge…[them] with rogue and vagabond…This is a clear violation of rights of sex workers…” He also commented on the unsanctioned compulsory HIV testing I reported in TW3 (#24), stating that it “is not recommended by…UNAIDS” and “it is impractical and unworkable and more effective results can be reached by supporting sex workers’…access [to] testing, prevention, and support…”

Housewife Harlotry

No, marriage isn’t prostitution; not at all:

…Several [New York] attorneys have shared the craziest [prenuptial agreements] they’ve penned…[including] items like “no piano playing while the husband is home”, cash bonuses…if either is caught cheating and an agreement to terminate a pregnancy if one should occur…[some include]a weight clause…[another] said [the wife] would never wear green and if she did, her husband [could]…destroy the item…One husband demanded “wife not allowed to cut her hair”…

The article also mentions the wives’ demands, including husbands being home by a certain time and (surprise!) being paid for sex.

Saving Them From Themselves

Amanda Hess adds to our list of good articles about “sexting” hysteria:

When Polaroid inventor Edwin Land introduced the first commercial instant camera…in 1948, he ushered in what Christopher Bonanos …in The Atlantic calls a “magnificent new era” in photography…for “instant, shareable nudie pics”…The new…format for…nude photographs—sexting—[is]…basically the same: instant explicit photographs, taken under the radar, shared between lovers and friends. In a recent report on a new study of teen sexting…dating “expert” Dr. Wendy Walsh favored terms like “embarrassment,” “shame,” “risky,” and “pressure” to describe the photographic form. And negative terms like those permeate the…discussion around teen photo sharing, though for years research has shown that the media-wide concern-trolling is overblown…

Tyranny By Consensus

On November 6^thLos Angeles county will decide whether to impose AHF’s “condoms in porn” measure; this video explains the real motive behind the whole thing:

Uncommon Sense

…In Ghent’s red-light district, as in many other cities, prostitutes sit in windows to attract potential clients. According to the new law in Ghent, women must wear something in addition to lingerie and may not dance or make suggestive gestures…[Mayor Daniël] Termont…stressed that the measures were intended to reduce the nuisance caused by customers…rather than to victimise the workers.

Saint Death

This US Army report on the Santa Muerte belief refers to it as a “death cult” (technically true, but the phrase has false and pejorative connotations), declares that it isn’t a “true” religion and states that “Although not all members of the cult are criminals, all live an existence that is dominated by crime.” I’m sure that bartenders, taxi drivers and prostitutes (who are not criminalized in Mexico) might disagree that their lives are “dominated by crime”, though cops (another large segment of her devotees) probably wouldn’t.

Umpteen Thousand People Can’t Be Wrong

It’s good to see some journalists finally starting to listen to us:

…Backpage’s critics say they are facilitating sex slavery…[but] all the figures quoted in the media come from a single source, a consultancy called AIM Group…[whose] methodology is shaky at best…they ignore major adult ad networks and mainstream ad networks that accept adult ads…and traffic, revenue and share-of-market numbers, even accurate ones, are no indication of how many…ads…actually convert into…transaction[s]…nor what subset of those…are with a minor or…coerced [person]…Backpage publishes about 3.2 million…ads a month…about 11 percent…are listed in…Adult Services…Backpage removes over a million ads a month…[mostly] for spam and fraud…Only 1.6 percent of the [removed] ads…are from the Adult Category…Only 2 percent of that 1.6 percent, or about 400…a month, are suspected of advertising a minor. Backpage reports those…immediately (and under no legal obligation) to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). In other words, about 1/25 of 1 percent (.04 percent) of the ads Backpage removes…are suspected of advertising a minor for sexual services, a number that represents 1/100 of one percent (.01 percent) of its…ad volume…

Instead of the usual prohibitionists, the article interviewed folks like researcher Ron Weitzer and Kate D’Adamo of SWOP.

The More the Better

…Lucinda Latimer…whose real name is Jan…was…broke, isolated and almost suicidal… she had sold her car and had no idea where her next penny was coming from when she saw a documentary on former career women who turned to the sex industry to make a living. Previously, she had [earned] up to £1000 a night as a graphologist…but ill health and the break-up of her marriage forced her back to Perthshire…[she now does phone sex work and] what has struck her about the men is how normal and pleasant most are and how well educated…Trying to hide her work would have made it shameful and sordid…[so] Jan decided to speak out…she has written…The Diary of a Rookie Phone Sex Floozie, and is about to launch volume two…

The Rape Question

Jezebel’s “sex advice” columnist gives a reader advice on how to shove her finger up a guy’s arse without his consent because she wants “to massage someone’s prostate goddamnit!”. Take note of the tepid protests to the columnist’s suggestions on how to trick and bully him into it, then imagine the firestorm if a male writer gave a man advice on how to pressure a woman into something because he wants “to fuck some chick in the arse goddamnit!”

Change of Heart

I’m never happy to see a sister pilloried, but I suspect the police decision to expose her customers is going to backfire so badly that this may have some positive results in the long run:

[Alexis Wright has]…been charged with running a prostitution business out of her Zumba dance studio [in Kennebunk, Maine] and secretly videotaping her encounters…Police have begun issuing summons to Wright’s customers and will release the names in the weeks ahead. Townspeople say they’ve heard that lawyers, doctors, law enforcement officials, a television personality and other well-known people in town are included in a detailed clientele list police found. A lot of people would rather not see the names made public because it will hurt families, children and careers…

So Close and Yet So Far

Another would-be ally undermines her own case by accepting the false claims of prohibitionists:

…In the Netherlands, prostitution is legal. Nonetheless, over 60% of the women involved in prostitution are involved in the sex trade illegally. The Mayor [of Amsterdam] and others refer to these as ‘trafficked’ – either because they are exploited and involved in the sex trade against their will…or because they are illegal workers brought to the country to work voluntarily in conditions different from those they expect…the argument for legalization included belief that it would…decrease trafficking, it has had the opposite effect…prostitution has gone from a predominantly home-grown industry to one very heavily dependent on illegal foreign workers…a [recent law criminalizes hiring]…a prostitute who is not registered with the government…But…this…means that…[the] information must be public so that…[clients] can verify that the sex worker is…licensed…[this] invades the privacy of both…prostitutes and…customers…

Prohibitionists intentionally confuse legalization and decriminalization, ignore the bottleneck effect of registration, pretend that correlation equals causation and conflate “unregistered” with “trafficked”, and the author, Dr. Nancy Darling, fails to question any of it.

Metaupdates

See No Evil in TW3 (#24)

Ilfracombe, the English town which claims to be unique in the world by being absolutely whore-free, proves it can be as prudish about lumps of bronze as anyplace in the Bible Belt: “Damien Hirst refers to ‘Verity’ as a ‘modern-day allegory for truth and justice’…[but hundreds of local residents and law officials]…call the 66-foot bronze statue of a half-exposed pregnant woman ‘soft porn masqueraded as art’…”

Down Under in TW3 (#40)

Australian sex worker activist Christian Vega has more to say on that “end demand” story from St. Kilda:

…As I read through [the article] the stench of bovine excrement almost made my eyes water…street sex work doesn’t relocate itself to another suburb on the other side of town…there is not an itinerant population of these workers who move en masse from one place to the next like migrating wildebeest across the African savannah…It’s more comfortable for people to think that sex work doesn’t happen in their community…and…that street sex workers must board a shuttle from planet Whore to our neighbourhoods under the cover of darkness before disappearing as the sun rises…

I think I like that imagery at least as much as my own.

This Week in 2010 and 2011

A federal judge enjoyed pleasures he persecuted others for and escaped with a slap on the wrist because officials always have different rules for their own class than for others; they’re also hilariously clueless about sex work and are only beginning to realize what a scam the “anti-trafficking” industry is. I discussed America’s weird love-hate relationship with prostitutes, what a 1947 sci-fi story can teach us about the nanny state, how sex workers arrive at our prices and how prostitution is a much older profession than most people think, and I related the story of a famous whore-obsessed preacher, told some hooker jokes, shared my answers to some amazingly stupid prohibitionist statements and presented two spooky stories for the Halloween season.

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More Hooker Humor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged archeofeminism, bad customers, BDSM, brothels, ethics, Hooker Humor, marriage, porn, stereotypes, streetwalkers, United Kingdom, video on October 11, 2012| 12 Comments »

Congress is furious at the Secret Service for consorting with hookers, which has traditionally been Congress’s role. – Andy Borowitz

Two years ago today I published “Hooker Humor”, in which I shared a few jokes about my profession. It was only a few for one simple reason: though there are hundreds of hooker jokes, the majority of them are tasteless, juvenile, vulgar and rely on offensive stereotypes about our being dirty, diseased, desperate and subhuman. There are, however, some funny, clever and even cute ones out there if one has the patience to look.

The Value of Sex

In the mid-1960s, two young people got married soon after university, where he earned a degree in business administration and she graduated magna cum laude in economics. On their wedding night, she asked him for $20 before they made love; he laughed about it, remembering their discussions about the economic value of women’s labor and the like, and handed her the money with a smile. The same thing happened the next time they had sex, and the next; though he was a bit surprised that she was carrying what he perceived as a kind of joke this far, he was a good sport about it and so made sure he always had a bit put aside in case he got horny.

This went on for 40 years, and even though they had sex less often as time went on she was always enthusiastically available for him (though she did raise her rate to $50 in the early ‘90s). Even before they married they had agreed it made more economic sense for her to stay at home and raise their children, of whom they eventually had four; she was an excellent manager of money, and he was always amazed at how far she could make his salary go even though they sent their kids to the best schools and never wanted for anything.

In later years they experienced a series of financial setbacks which cut into their savings, and as the economy worsened over the past few years the husband started to worry that there was just no way he would be able to retire at 65 as they had planned. Eventually he put aside his ego, sat his wife down at the table and asked her advice about their financial situation. She went to her filing cabinet, brought out a thick envelope and showed him a series of financial statements, stock certificates and the like, explaining that she had invested her earnings from sex in the stock market, and that her good judgment and keen economic instincts had eventually parlayed that long series of small fees into literally millions of dollars. Her husband was overjoyed, and everything was going beautifully until he blurted out, “If I had realized what you were doing, I would have given you all my business!”

Analogy

Joe and Harry were chatting at a bar, and Joe said, “I wish my wife would get off of my back about my watching porn; she claims if I really loved her I wouldn’t need that.”

Harry replied, “Oh, my wife used to say the same thing until I pointed out to her that I love my car, but I still like watching Nascar racing.”

“And that satisfied her?” asked Joe.

“Yep,” said Harry, “but it’s a good thing she didn’t think about the fact that I rent cars when I’m away on business trips.”

Venery

Four Oxford dons were engaged one evening in casual but learned conversation, and the topic turned to collective nouns such as “a pride of lions” or “a gaggle of geese”; since these are also called “venereal nouns”, one of the professors asked what a collection of prostitutes might be called. The four fell into silence for a moment, as they pondered the possibilities.

At last, one spoke: “How about ‘a jam of tarts’?” The others nodded in acknowledgement as they continued to consider the problem.

A second suggested “an essay of trollops.” Again, the others nodded, and soon a third proposed “a flourish of strumpets.” They all then looked to the fourth professor, who was the most senior and learned of them all, and one asked if he had any thoughts on the matter.

He paused for a few moments more and then replied, “An anthology of pros.”

Cheapskate

One evening a man who had worked late was walking toward the train station when he spotted a very attractive streetwalker; since his wife didn’t expect him home for some time he went up to her and asked her price. When she told him it was $100 he exclaimed, “A hundred? Don’t be ridiculous; I’ll give you forty!” She laughed at him and told him where he could put his forty, and he stalked off in a snit.

That weekend, he took his wife out to dinner at a restaurant not all that far from his workplace, and as they were walking back to the car whom should he see but the same streetwalker. He just looked straight ahead, hoping she wouldn’t recognize him, but when they passed she called out, “See what you get for forty bucks?”

The Old Man and the Prostitute

In the Days Before Cell Phones…

A man staying at a hotel in London picked up a tart card from a nearby phone box. Back in his hotel room he rang the number and a woman with a very sexy voice asked if she could be of assistance. “Yes” he said. “I’d like to know if you do bondage and discipline; I’m especially interested in getting a really hard spanking. Would that be something you could provide?”

The woman replied, “I’d really like to oblige you, sir, but if you press 9 first you’ll get an outside line.”

Memory Lapse

A extremely old man decided he wanted sex, so he went to the local stroll and when he saw one woman he really liked, he started flirting with her as if he were making a pass, ignoring her questions about what he wanted. When it became clear that he was just wasting her time, she told him to get lost but he continued bothering her, saying “I sure would like to get some action tonight.”

Exasperated, she cried “You’ve got to be kidding! You’re too old! You’re all finished.”

“What did you say?” asked the old man.

“You heard me – you’re all finished.”

“Oh,” he replied, “how much do I owe you?”

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Thought Control

Posted in Current Events, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Banned Books Week, brothels, censorship, comics, dirty, hysteria, imaginative fiction, law, neofeminism, porn, prohibitionist myths, psychology, Shazam!, Thought Control on October 1, 2012| 57 Comments »

The problem is really simple. You either close down a house of prostitution or you leave it open. You can’t satisfy both those who want it open and those who want it closed. – Fredric Wertham

Banned Books Week is usually the last week of September, but for some reason I’ve been unable to ascertain it is being held in the first week of October this year; it thus started yesterday and ends this coming Saturday. And though, as I said in last year’s column on the subject, “I’m usually pretty skeptical of ‘Official Whatchamacallit Week’ type things…I find the idea of a week specifically dedicated to reading books which busybodies want to stop people from reading to be irresistibly subversive.” Last year I specifically discussed book-banning and listed the most-challenged books of 2010; four of them (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Brave New World, The Hunger Games series and What My Mother Doesn’t Know) were back on 2011’s list, where they were joined by the Internet Girls series by Lauren Myracle, The Story of Life on the Golden Fields series by Kim Dong Hwa, My Mom’s Having a Baby by Dori Hillestad Butler, the Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, the Gossip Girl series by Cecily Von Ziegesar and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. But this year, I’d rather talk briefly about the defective mind of the would-be censor, and how we as a culture have made it easier for him to get his way.

First of all, let’s make one thing clear: the urge to censor is a mental illness. No normal person wants to control what other people think, and no sane person could believe that he can control what anyone else thinks. Only a psychotic believes that he can be directly affected by the thoughts inside another person’s brain, yet time and again would-be censors attempt to circumvent the principles of liberty and individual rights by claiming exactly that; somehow, we are asked to believe, what individuals see and think can magically affect others and is therefore subject to the same sort of restrictions as violent actions are.

In earlier times, it was enough to say that books, pictures or thoughts were “sinful”, because people imagined “evil” as some sort of tangible thing that could affect everyone around it (presumably via invisible “evil rays”). And though that sort of booga-booga nonsense would be laughed out of the conversation now if expressed directly, it still sells quite well as long as it’s expressed indirectly by referring to unproven “negative secondary effects” or burbling inane and incomprehensible neofeminist drivel about how all women are as mystically interconnected as a hydra’s heads. And of course, just about anything (no matter how repressive and totalitarian) can be sold to the Great Unwashed if it’s depicted as being intended to “protect” children, with “protect” in this case being interpreted to mean “lock into a permanent passive and vegetative state”. Young people, we are told, can somehow be “harmed” by encountering ideas and concepts that they are “not ready for”, like the protagonist of an H.P. Lovecraft story driven mad by the blasphemous cosmic truths he discovers in some forbidden eldritch tome. Foremost among these “dangerous” truths are supposed to be facts about the functions of their own bodies, but considering that many of our laws declare that they don’t actually own those bodies until they’re 18, I suppose it all makes a kind of twisted sense once one accepts the outlandish initial premise.

Of course, demands to censor some content don’t even need these sorts of perverse mental gymnastics; those who wish to ban criticism of any given group need only point to the actions of some violent psycho who attacked a member of that group, then pretend that he was “incited” to the violence by the criticism; minority groups are the biggest perpetrators of this odious censorship tactic, but more recently politicians and religious fanatics have adopted it as well and fearful Europeans and Americans are listening. The problem with these people is that they fail to comprehend the principle of legal precedent; once one exception to free speech is made (whether for “obscenity”, “violent rhetoric”, “hate speech”, flag burning, Holocaust denial or whatever), it’s that much easier to make another exception, and another, and another…

The important thing to remember when listening to any demand for censorship is that no matter what excuse the censor presents to attain his goal, he is ultimately lying. It’s not really about “public safety”, or the “children”, or “community standards”, or whatever else he may claim; it’s about the fact that his leaky mind is unable to keep unwelcome thoughts out, so he demands that society do it for him. Fredric Wertham was a child psychiatrist who wrote Seduction of the Innocent, an attack on comic books in which he made the sort of claims which have since become de rigueur for anyone trying to censor music, movies, television, video games, the internet, etc: namely, that the “bad” item harms children and/or adolescents by giving them “bad thoughts” they wouldn’t otherwise have in their “innocent” Rousseauian state. Wertham’s book triggered the Kefauver Hearings which eventually resulted in over 15 years of stifling self-censorship under the repressive Comics Code, but this did not satisfy him; nothing less than a total ban on all comic books would have. My epigram is from “It’s Still Murder: What Parents Still Don’t Know About Comics Books”, a rant published in the April 9^th, 1955 Saturday Review of Books (and quoted in an excellent article on the subject recently published on the website of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund); I chose it because it reveals not only Wertham’s real thought processes, but those of any prohibitionist. Set aside for a minute the absurdity of comparing comics to a brothel and recognize what he’s saying here: to the prohibitionist, it doesn’t matter if a brothel has no negative effects on its neighborhood; it doesn’t matter how it’s run or whether its employees and customers are happy; and it doesn’t even matter if he never goes there, doesn’t know anyone else who goes there and never even sees it. Just the very fact that it exists upsets him, and nothing short of its closure will satisfy him. This is why it’s impossible to negotiate with censors or to cede even the most insignificant-seeming patch of ground to them: they will view any compromise not as an end result, but as the first step toward their eventual goal of a total ban on whatever it is they don’t want to think about.

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That Was the Week That Was (#39)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Above the Law, activism, agency denial, Amazingly Stupid Statements, An Example to the West, Arizona, Backpage, bad customers, Bad Fantasy-Good Reality, Birth of a Movement, brothels, California, Cambodia, Canada, censorship, Coming and Going, condoms, cops, cosmetic surgery, dirty, drivers, East Asia, end demand, Europe, Forward and Backward, France, harm reduction, hysteria, India, Japan, Japanese Prostitution, Korea, law, Neither Addiction nor Epidemic, neofeminism, Netherlands, New York, Not To Be Taken Internally, Parting of the Ways, Pennsylvania, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, Real People, Shift in the Wind, sisterhood, stereotypes, streetwalkers, Swedish model, transgender, underage, video, Washington DC, Worse Than I Thought on September 29, 2012| 15 Comments »

It’s not about promiscuity, which makes you sound square; it’s not about prostitution, which makes you sound dirty; it’s about sex-trafficking, which makes you sound like you’re on the side of the angels, know-nothing though they might be. – Michael Wolff

Amazingly Stupid Statements

“Just Don’t Call It Slut-Shaming: A Feminist Guide to Silencing Sex Workers” is a funny and dead-on-target lampoon of neofeminist anti-whore rhetoric in the form of a mock primer. Definitely a must-read.

Cracks in the Dam

Canadian courts slap down another government attempt to stop sex workers from claiming human rights:

The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the right of a non-profit group representing women…in downtown Vancouver’s sex trade to challenge the country’s anti-prostitution laws on constitutional grounds. The ruling means the Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society can go back to B.C. Supreme Court to pursue a case it launched five years ago…

The government’s argument against the suit relied on the sophistry that one of the parties in the suit (Sheryl Kiselbach) was no longer affected by the laws due to being retired, and that the other party (the DESWUAVS) could not be affected because it was an organization, therefore neither had the right to sue. But the judge realized that the government’s claim that streetwalkers had to bring such suits individually was absurd, and ruled in favor of the group. It’s not only good news for sex workers, but for other marginalized Canadians as well:

…[attorney] Katrina Pacey…explained [that] “This would provide a real opportunity for marginalized people, people with mental health issues, people with HIV, prisoners, refugees, children to form a collective organization whereby they then have the support and capacity to bring these cases forward, as a community”…

Japanese Prostitution

The bad economy and political tensions between their countries have combined to make things increasingly difficult for Chinese whores in Japan, creating a dangerously unbalanced buyer’s market:

…“Rumors have been spreading that Chinese girls have been beaten up by Japanese Johns, and some of them are even begging off on transactions with customers they don’t know out of fears for their safety,” says “pink” journalist Yasuhiro Ebina. “Many Chinese women tend to be blunt and unsociable, but of late they are forcing themselves to smile, and have been primping themselves to improve their appearance. Before a deri heru (out-call sex) service might have charged an additional 8,000 yen for honban (the “real thing,” i.e., intercourse), but now they’ve knocked as much as 5,000 yen off the total price”…women from Shanghai tend to be proud and many refuse to dispense oral sex, but over the past week they are now even providing lip service bareback. And some ladies from Dalian or Harbin are even allowing customers condom-free rides…

Forward and Backward

The stupidity, it burns! “…[Washington, D.C.] police lieutenant Jeffery Carroll told residents at a neighborhood meeting…that [a perceived] jump in [street] prostitution may be related to the surge in construction activity and increase in construction workers in the neighborhood. Carroll told residents that prostitution activity typically takes place between midnight and…6:00 a.m. The recent surge has come between 3:30 and 7:30 a.m. or else at around 3:30 p.m….which police say could correlate to changes in construction shifts…”

Not To Be Taken Internally

Yet another poor fool has died from allowing a non-doctor to inject filth into her arse in a non-medical setting:

…52-year-old Morris Garner…who has had gender changing procedures and goes by the name Tracey Lynn Garner, is charged with depraved-heart murder in the March death of 37-year-old Karima Gordon, of Atlanta…Gordon became ill within 30 minutes of leaving Garner’s house in Jackson after…injection [of a silicone-like substance into her buttocks] but decided to try to make it home to Georgia before seeking medical treatment…[investigator Lee McDivitt]…said her chance of surviving the injections was small, anyway…”The [medical examiner] told me…[that when he] cut the victim open…this material ran all over the floor, all over their shoes, all over the place”…

What I can’t understand is why so many of these self-proclaimed cosmetic surgeons are transgendered.

Above the Law

Once again: As long as government actors have excessive power over individuals, this will keep happening: “…Pittsburgh Public Schools police officer…Robert Lellock…was arrested…[on] 23 counts of crimes including corruption of minors, child endangerment and sex crimes…” Lellock allegedly raped several 13-14 year old boys, ensuring their silence by a combination of threats to kill their families and rewards of marijuana and class-skipping privileges.

An Example To the West

You may remember that DMSC had formed its own football (soccer) team for the children of Calcutta sex workers; well, two of the boys were picked for a world championship team: “Two sons of sex workers from India’s eastern state of West Bengal will play soccer…in the Indian…team for the Homeless World Soccer Cup 2012 in Mexico…’This is a big achievement in integrating children of sex workers with the mainstream sports community,’ said Dr Samarjit Jana of DMSC.”

The Birth of a Movement

This Guardian article is mostly about sex workers’ reaction to the socialist scheme to inflict the Swedish model on France, but it also contains interesting information on French hookers’ efforts to circumvent busybody laws and the sleazy tricks cops use to harass them.

…The “white van women”…embody the French state’s difficult attitudes to prostitution. As in the UK, prostitution itself…is not a crime. But…[a] 2003…law [forbids being]…in a public place known for prostitution dressed in revealing clothes. To get round this, women started working in private vans. Selling sex inside a vehicle was not breaking the law. But police are now using any means to crack down on the growing number of sex-work vans, namely parking tickets and tow-trucks…some…owe thousands of euros in parking tickets and pound-release fines accrued each month…

Shift in the Wind

An excellent op-ed against “end demand” rhetoric appeared last Sunday in, of all the unexpected places, The New York Times; I’ll bet Nick Kristof isn’t happy:

…policy makers have started to push to eradicate all prostitution, not just the trafficking of children into the sex trade. Under the catchphrase “no demand, no supply,” they advocate increasing criminal penalties against men who buy sex — a move they believe will upend the market that fuels prostitution and sex trafficking…[but] the “end demand” campaign will harm trafficking victims and sex workers more than it helps them…End-demand advocates’ prototypical victim — an abused teenage girl…forced into the sex trade…does exist. But they disregard the fact that individuals, including boys, men and transgender people, enter the sex trade for a variety of reasons. The pimped girl who has inflamed the public’s imagination needs government services and protection, not to be made into a symbolic figure in an ideological battle to eradicate the entire sex industry, which, like many other sectors, includes adults laboring in conditions ranging from upscale to exploitative, from freely chosen to forced…despite their righteous anger, the end-demand crowd is quick to dismiss what many sex workers actually have to say. Some activists have gone so far as to brand those who criticize their campaign as “house slaves” unable to recognize their own oppression…

The writer is being polite; Melissa Farley’s actual term was “house nigger”. The article goes on to strongly criticize the Swedish model, flatly stating that it has failed to reduce prostitution and explaining how it harms women; it reports that most abuse of sex workers is by police rather than clients or “pimps” as claimed by the prohibitionists; and it discusses real solutions very much like those advocated in this blog. The article is not long, and well worth your time.

Worse Than I Thought

Proposition 35 is so awful (Chorus: How awful is it?) that even trafficking victim advocates oppose it:

…The opponents, who range from a South Bay nonprofit to a co-author of California’s current law against trafficking, say that, instead of helping, Proposition 35 will set back their work by years. Chief among their concerns is the measure’s focus on hefty penalties rather than a collaborative attack on the problem…That approach, they say, ignores the victims…[they] also condemn the discrepancy between penalties for labor and sex trafficking…Most victims don’t end up in the sex trade…yet Proposition 35 provides for lower penalties for labor victims…

The Phoenix Pharisees

The Maricopa County sheriff’s office only “treats prostitutes as trafficking victims” when they find it convenient: “…Over the course of a month, detectives made 37 arrests on suspicion of prostitution-related crimes…in an unincorporated area of the county tucked between Tempe and Guadalupe…suspects made contact with an undercover deputy, who secured an offer of sex for money and then used a code word as a signal for other deputies to storm the hotel room…” “Code word?” “Stormed” the room? Their pomposity would be hilarious if they weren’t ruining the lives of real women.

Thoughts On My First Conference

I’m the third interviewee in this video. It’s not very long, but I still figured y’all would want to see it.

Parting of the Ways

This Guardian op-ed presents Michael Wolff’s opinion of the Backpage-Village Voice split; though he has no love for Lacey and Larkin he has even less for Kristof and company, and the article provides the interesting tidbit that some of the anti-Backpage campaign was funded by the Church of Scientology in revenge for the Voice’s relentless attacks on it.

Metaupdates

Bad Fantasy, Good Reality in TW3 (#7)

Cambodian cops are learning to parrot their American masters quite well:

Chan Sreynuch, the owner of Mikasa Coiffure and Beauty…was arrested…on suspicion of human trafficking, according to the national military police spokesman Kheng Tito…According to him, Sreynuch would lead young women — often aspiring singers and students — to her salon, then connect them with wealthy businessmen…Three of her manicured and coiffed callgirls were also detained…[and] sent to Phnom Penh Municipal Hall’s rehabilitation centre for “re-education”…

Coming and Going in TW3 (#12)

“Anna Gristina…has pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution…[she] will be sentenced…to time served and probation as part of a plea deal. The judge warned the Scotland-born woman she could also be deported…”

An Example To the West in TW3 (#14)

“Workers in the [Korean] sex industry called…for the scrapping or revision of anti-sex trafficking laws…[which limit their] rights to sexual autonomy and their freedom to enjoy a free sex life as adults…another sex worker surnamed Kim submitted a petition…for…judgment on whether the laws are constitutionally acceptable…”

Real People in TW3 (#21)

British prohibitionist Julie Bindel interviewed the Fokkens sisters, the elderly Dutch whores about whom a documentary was recently made; unsurprisingly, she only reports the negative parts and dismisses the “rosy picture the twins paint of prostitution” as just a kind of weird twin-thing. Of course she is pleased to report that the Fokkens say legalization has been bad for Dutch hookers (largely because of the exaggerated tax assessments European officials commonly use to persecute sex workers), but cannot or will not comprehend that no sex worker rights organization in the world supports Dutch-style legalization.

Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic in TW3 (#29)

If you’re impressed by those brain studies that “prove” porn, sugar, the internet or whatever is “as addictive as cocaine”, you need to consider the study which won this year’s Ig Nobel Prize in neuroscience “for demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere — even in a dead salmon.”

This Week in 2011

My columns on Mabon and Banned Books Week were followed by others on misuse of the word “vagina”, the fallacy of “empowerment”, dehumanization of whores, dominatrices in the news and women’s views of male sex workers.

This Week in 2010

My first Mabon column, the problems caused by unsatisfied male sex drives, my sex-related pet peeves, one of my earliest columns on “sex trafficking” hysteria and an angry reply to it, the growth of opposition toward prohibition and my announcement of the Himel decision.

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Robyn Few

Posted in Biography, Current Events, Harlotography, History, Tyranny, tagged anecdote, brothels, California, courtesans, harm reduction, Kentucky, law, sisterhood, video on September 17, 2012| 21 Comments »

Until prostitutes have equal protection under the law and equal rights as human beings, there is no justice. – Robyn Few

Last Thursday, sex workers all over the world were saddened to hear of the death (after a long battle with cancer) of the charismatic and tireless Robyn Few, founder of the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA. When the day finally arrives on which sex work is recognized in the majority of the world as work like any other, hers will be one of the names remembered as instrumental in achieving it.

Robyn L. Spears was born in Paducah, Kentucky, on October 7^th, 1958, to Virginia Owen Spears; she had an older brother and a younger sister and lived in the small community of Lone Oak, Kentucky. She attended Lone Oak Elementary and Lone Oak Middle School, but dropped out and ran away from home either during or after her 8^th grade year, when she was 13 years old. The causes of her leaving are not clear, but whatever they were she later reconciled with her mother and in fact died while visiting at her home. Like so many runaways she soon turned to survival sex work, and though she later received vocational training to be a materials tester for concrete and tried a few “straight” jobs such as drafting, she was never satisfied with these and became a stripper soon after turning 18. As she says in the video below (recorded in Chicago in July of 2008), “I loved it so much; it was so empowering to be able to get up on the stage…I came alive, and for me being paid to dance and to show my body [that] I was so proud of anyway…it was just an amazing experience.”

After stripping for a while she started working in a massage parlor, then later escort services and a clandestine brothel; in her late 20s she married one of her clients and had a daughter, but after her divorce in 1993 (after which she retained her married name, Few) she moved to California and began to take college classes with the intent of earning a degree in theater. She became interested in marijuana and AIDS activism, but the bills had to be paid so she returned to escorting in 1996 and soon became a madam. Like so many of us, she never told anybody about her sex work; her activism was directed toward other causes until fate decreed otherwise.

The events of September 11^th, 2001 engendered a heightened climate of paranoia, and the enactment of the PATRIOT Act soon made an unprecedented level of funding available to any government agency which could make even a remote claim to “fighting terrorism”. And though then-Attorney General Ashcroft had been strongly rebuked by Congress for devoting more FBI agents to the “Canal Street Brothel” case in New Orleans than to counterterrorist operations, he had learned his lesson and justified later whore persecutions with flimsy “anti-terrorism” excuses. Robyn’s agency was accused of having “terrorist suspects” as clients and she was arrested in June of 2002, then convicted of “conspiracy to promote prostitution” and sentenced to six months house arrest (during which the trial judge allowed her to continue her activism). After her arrest, she was angry to discover that both neighbors and supposedly “enlightened” activists treated her differently once they knew she had been a prostitute; she threw herself even harder into medical marijuana activism, but began to think about how people’s ignorant attitudes and the oppressive anti-sex work laws could be changed.

Her inspiration came a year after her arrest, in the form of the US Supreme Court decision Lawrence vs. Texas: Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out in his dissenting opinion that “state laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of [the overturned Bowers vs. Hardwick decision’s] validation of laws based on moral choices,” and though the other justices tried to pretend otherwise Robyn knew that Scalia was correct, and that the court had opened a door for sex workers’ rights. So after a Berkeley, California high-school teacher named Shannon Williams was arrested for prostitution in August, Robyn gathered a group of sex workers to protest outside the courthouse at Williams’ arraignment in September. Unfortunately (but understandably), Williams wanted the whole mess to go away as soon as possible and so had no desire to become the “poster child” for prostitutes’ rights. Robyn of course backed down, but the fire had been lit; with the help of her partner Michael Foley and sex worker Stacey Swimme (whom she had met earlier that year at a medical marijuana protest), she founded SWOP-USA the following month.

The organization was modeled on SWOP Australia, and Rachel Wotton (who now specializes in sex work with the disabled) was instrumental in securing permission for the American group to use the name and helping to set things up. Within a few weeks the new organization was contacted by Dr. Annie Sprinkle for assistance in arranging the very first Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers, and for the next year Robyn worked furiously to contact politicians and get the attention of the media so as to let them know that sex workers were not going to quietly accept persecution any more, and were mobilizing like those in many other parts of the world to demand our rights. But after the failure of “Proposition Q”, a ballot measure she wrote which would have established de facto decriminalization in Berkeley, Robyn and SWOP settled in for the long haul and committed themselves to the slow, arduous task of reversing centuries of stigma and decades of oppressive legislation.

Shortly after the two shorter videos were recorded at the International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harms in Warsaw, Poland (May of 2007), Robyn was diagnosed with cancer; she continued to work tirelessly for the cause all through her chemotherapy, and though the disease appeared to have gone into remission in January of 2010 it returned by July of 2011, and this time proved terminal. She died on September 13^th, 2012 while visiting her mother, and there will be a memorial service on what would have been her 54^th birthday (October 7^th, 2012) at the Milner and Orr Funeral Home in Lone Oak . I never had the pleasure of meeting Robyn, but as you can see from the personal accounts on her website and the many expressions of grief all over the internet, those who did speak without exception of her warmth, her strength, her good humor, her courage and her plain human decency. And though it’s an oft-used phrase, there is no other which sums up the way everyone in the sex worker rights community feels about her passing: she will be sorely missed.

(I am indebted to the Sin City Alternative Professionals’ Association (formerly SWOP-LV) for information and links, and also to a group of Robyn’s school friends from Lone Oak, who contacted me Sunday morning and filled in a number of vital details I could not find anywhere else. If anyone reading this can correct an error or omission, please email me with the info.)

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That Was the Week That Was (#37)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Obituary, Perception, Tyranny, tagged abortion, Against Their Will, agency denial, All in the Family, Australia, bad customers, Bottleneck, Brazil, Broken Record, brothels, Capricious Lusts, censorship, cops, East Asia, Follow Your Bliss, Hard Numbers, harm reduction, He or She?, How Old is Oldest?, hysteria, India, Latin America, law, Malaysia, Naked Truth, neofeminism, porn, Prudish Pedants, psychology, rape, rescue industry, See No Evil, sexting, Sisters In Arms, sporting events, stage names, streetwalkers, transgender, TSA, underage, video, violence vs. sex workers, Washington DC, welcome to our world on September 15, 2012| 56 Comments »

You need to tailor your response to the reality. You should not tailor your response to the hype. – Ann Jordan

R.I.P. Robyn Few

The founder of SWOP-USA died Thursday (September 13th) at the age of 54 after a long battle with cancer. She became an activist for HIV and medical marijuana in the early 1990s, but prostitution was at that time simply a way to pay the bills ; that changed after she was targeted for her activism by FBI and arrested in June of 2002. In October of the following year she founded SWOP-USA on the model of SWOP Australia, and just two months later helped Dr. Annie Sprinkle organize the first Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers. Biographical details are scarce, but I’m trying to get a proper obituary together for her for this Monday.

Updates

He or She?

Sometimes, men’s transgender paranoia is so severe it can lead to violence:

…20-year-old Christian Ariel Romero met [a] 41-year-old [transgendered prostitute]…and…offered [her] money for sex, Montgomery County police said…[but] when Romero discovered his companion was a man, he…repeatedly stabbed the victim…The judge set bail at $500,000, which [Romero’s lawyer] called harsh…“The defendant is a person who’s 20 years old, never done anything wrong in his entire life. And the person who is on the other side is…a prostitute…with a track record, a history…”

As is typical in stories involving transgendered people, everyone dances around pronouns and facts are sparse or contradictory; the reporter says the victim was a “man” but she may have been a pre-op transsexual. And the lawyer’s insinuation that the victim somehow deserved a murderous assault is “NHI” thinking at its most repellent.

All in the Family

Robin Hustle has a great deal more patience than I do; if I had a story of coming out to parents who were in denial about my sex work, I certainly wouldn’t tell it on Jezebel. The article is intelligent, well-written, right on and even funny, but of course the comments are largely what you’d expect (starting with the very first one, which basically accuses her of lying). No thanks; I learned my lesson with Feministe.

Follow Your Bliss

A disproportionate number of perverts, rapists and pedophiles have been discovered in a job which allows them to grope and fondle women and children with impunity in public. Golly gee, who could’ve predicted that?

Crystal Ball

As I predicted, a few journalists are beginning to question the “sex trafficking” hype; though this article reprinted from Christian Science Monitor overstates the credibility of some of the fanatics’ claims and quotes professional victim Stella Marr at length, it also interviews prominent trafficking hysteria critic Ann Jordan, criticizes celebrity opportunists like Ashton Kutcher and flatly states that the scare-figures are wildly exaggerated:

…the…statistic…that there are 100,000 to 300,000 sex slaves in the US – figures repeated by interviewers, blogs, TV hosts and…movie stars…are wrong…the number of actual sex-trafficking victims has been estimated by the US government to be in the tens of thousands, but even those numbers have been criticized as unfounded and far too high; between 2008 and 2010, federally funded human-trafficking task forces opened 2,515 suspected incidents of human trafficking for investigation. Among those cases, only 248 suspected sex-trafficking victims under the age of 18 were identified…Hype over such high and inaccurate numbers of “child sex slaves” leads to a misguided response at best…At worst, it siphons financial resources away from preventing other sorts of human trafficking…[and] undermines solutions to problems…that lead to exploited youth in the first place…

Bottleneck

Cause: Making it essentially impossible for brothels to operate legally. Effect: Lots of illegal brothels.

…Elena Jeffreys said when sex work was decriminalised 16 years ago, local councils were given the job of regulating the industry…but…they are now knocking back brothels on moral grounds…”Their job is to regulate the sex industry, not just to blanket knock back every single (brothel) application they get. There’s some local councils in NSW that have never approved a brothel application and then they wonder why there’s brothels in their suburb that are unapproved”…Ms Jeffreys said there were more than 6000 sex workers in the state and most people would have lived near a brothel or a sex worker at some point without knowing it…

Capricious Lusts

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an American sex worker activist (other than myself) make this enlightened point:

…Controversial model-actress [Gehana Vasisth] recently tweeted that she wanted to open a…high class hygienic brothel where men could come and satisfy themselves…with professional, medically certified commercial sex workers…According to Gehana, legalising prostitution and pornography in India – like it is in the West – will help reduce crimes against women drastically. “If men can satisfy their carnal desires without any restriction, rape and other crimes against women will be reduced,” she explained…

Metaupdates

How Old is Oldest? in June Updates (Part Three)

Over a year after the controversy which caused his break with Psychology Today, evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa is back with a new blog entitled E pur si muove on a relatively new website named Big Think. And though his debut is not without controversy even there, Kanazawa’s “about” blurb states:

E pur si muove is about science. Science is the accumulation of pure knowledge for its own sake; it has no other goals or purposes. In science, only logic and evidence are the arbitrators of the truth; nothing else matters. No scientific conclusions can ever be good or bad, desirable or undesirable, sexist, racist, offensive, reactionary or dangerous; they can only be true or false. No other adjectives apply. If the truth offends people, it is our job as scientists to offend them. In the memorable words of David Hilbert, Wir müssen wissen, wir werden wissen. If what I say as a scientist is wrong, because it is illogical or lacks credible scientific evidence, then it is my problem. If what I say offends you, then it is your problem. Get over it. Prepare to be offended.

And really, that’s pretty much my attitude in this blog as well; I wish Dr. Kanazawa the best of luck with his new site and hope Big Think proves to be more dedicated to free speech than Psychology Today has proven itself to be.

Hard Numbers in TW3 (#16)

Whenever it looks like something might be decriminalized (such as brothel ownership in Brazil), you can bet the police will launch as many “crackdowns” as possible before their window of opportunity closes:

On the eve of June 14…armed members of [Rio’s] Police…and public prosecutor’s office arrived at a brothel called Centauros…[where] they arrested prostitutes, management and the owner, seized documents, computers…used condoms…and…$150,000…in cash. The owner…spent a week at a maximum security prison. The prostitutes were released the same night and found work at other upscale brothels…Quite a lot of drama when you consider that prostitution is not actually a crime in Brazil…But as Rio de Janeiro prepares for its turn on the global stage – as the host of the World Cup in 2014, then the 2016 Summer Olympics – the city is taking drastic action to keep its thriving sex industry out of the spotlight. Rio has already shuttered 24 sex establishments…and…another 33 venues have been threatened or harassed by the police…It’s the biggest crackdown…in a generation…according to anthropologists Thaddeus Blanchette and Ana Paula da Silva, who have been studying prostitution in Rio since 2004 and have authored almost 20 academic papers on [the subject]…

Prudish Pedants in TW3 (#18)

Keep in mind, California is still under a SCOTUS mandate to reduce its prison population, yet this persecution for profit continues:

Fetish filmmaker and distributor Ira Isaacs’ sentencing was put on hold last month because federal prosecutors intended to present evidence to support…a two-level increase in sentencing…[for] federal crime[s] where the defendant knew or should have known that a victim involved in an offense was a “vulnerable victim”…presumably [this means] an actor or actors involved in films deemed obscene…prosecutors have recommended that Isaacs serve a term of up to seven years and three months in prison, as well as a three-year term of supervised release and a $10,000 fine…[the court also stole] all of his websites…copyrights…computers, servers, props and video equipment.

Against Their Will in TW3 (#20)

Another win-win situation ruined by busybodies:

…The Malay Mail reports [that a] car wash in…Kuala Lumpur…had formed a partnership with a local massage parlour, enabling customers to redeem free sex from the brothel as part of a customer loyalty scheme…police stormed the parlour and found several stamped loyalty cards that had been used by customers…officer Emmi Shah Fadhil [said]…“To get the extra ‘offer’, customers must send their cars for washing nine times within a certain period…The tenth car wash will entitle them to free sex.” The parlour would usually charge between 130 and 180 Malaysian Ringgit ($40-$55) – cheaper than the $65 price for a full-service car wash. Prostitution is illegal in Malaysia. As a result of the raid, nine Vietnamese women aged between 18 and 28 were arrested.

Actually prostitution isn’t illegal in Malaysia; only public solicitation is. However, for the past four years the Malaysian government has been engaged in a campaign to violently suppress brothels under the guise of “fighting human trafficking” in order to win a pat on the head and a “good doggie” from the US State Department.

See No Evil in TW3 (#24)

An anti-sex fanatic’s crusade to criminalize a lump of bronze continues:

…a bare-breasted sculpture in an Overland Park arboretum has triggered a grand jury investigation into whether the city is promoting obscenity to minors. The artwork, titled “Accept or Reject” and donated by Chinese artist Yu Chang, depicts…what the artist statement says is the incomplete identity expressed in one’s digital self — critics contend it promotes “sexting” to children…”The statue appeals to an unwholesome obsession with a sexual act” [said petition sponsor Phillip] Cosby…who calls sexting “the most under-prosecuted crime in America”…

Anybody who claims that any crime (other than those committed under color of authority) in America is “under-prosecuted” is certifiably insane.

Sisters in Arms in TW3 (#29)

If abortion is criminalized, do people really want women who get them imprisoned? Or will this turn into another Swedish Model-like agency-denying thing which only persecutes abortion providers (and maybe men who urge or pay for them)?

Broken Record in TW3 (#32)

Here’s a long but must-read essay by Georgina Perry of Open Doors, a London health organization serving sex workers; she explains how Olympic “sex trafficking” hysteria was amplified by politicians, the police, the media and others, and collapsed when one especially vociferous NGO lost its main source of funding:

For the last three years I’ve been…relegated from a professional considered knowledgeable in her field, to a noisy troublemaker, determined to rail against received wisdom. I’ve had the data I assiduously collect, analyse and make public quoted back to me by law enforcement agencies, the media and NGOs but with clumsy interpretations skewed to strengthen a particular rhetoric…as the 2012 London Olympics drew inexorably towards us, the whole of the UK suddenly became an expert on my job…[the]experience…left me cynical and at times speechless at the sheer effrontery of those who stood to gain from talking up a story that…is not, has not and is unlikely to ever be a reality…

Naked Truth in TW3 (#35)

Melissa Gira Grant was interviewed on “Behind the News with Doug Henwood” on public radio station KPFA in Berkeley, California this past Thursday; she talked about the rescue industry, agency denial and the neofeminist anti-sex work agenda (starting at 30:00).

This Week in 2011

How “feminist” laws infantilize or pathologize women, how Arianna Huffington panders to hysteria, how politicians judge others but never themselves, and why only some religions have freedom. Also, an Algerian tribe in which prostitution was normal and accepted and an essay on whores in the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

This Week in 2010

The importance of caring for husbands sexually, the woman known to history as “The Yellow Rose of Texas”, a few book reviews, a story I wrote when I was 18, “whoredar”, and a little about my lesbian experiences.

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Somebody’s Daughter

Posted in Current Events, History, Perception, Philosophy, tagged Africa, archeofeminism, brothels, dirty, ethics, harm reduction, Madonna/whore, psychology, sex work is work, Somebody's Daughter, United Kingdom on September 11, 2012| 12 Comments »

Every girl who worked for me was someone’s daughter. It would be hugely hypocritical for me to say, “It’s good enough for their daughters, but not for mine”. – Becky Adams

Last week Becky Adams, a retired brothel owner, once again ignited controversy among busybodies, moralists and hypocrites by reiterating her statement (first made publicly seven weeks ago) that like many other people, she wouldn’t mind if her daughter followed in her footsteps:

…Becky Adams, 45…insists she would be happy if [her 16-year-old daughter] Emilia chose to be a “high class escort” — and says she would even help to get the teenager started…“Society may judge her but I wouldn’t. At least prostitution is an honest profession. I’d much rather she work as an escort than a banker. I couldn’t understand her wanting to do something morally wrong, something that could jeopardise someone else.”

…Emilia, who is currently working in a shop and at a car showroom while studying travel and tourism, agrees with her mum. She said: “I don’t have a moral problem with having sex with strangers…I’m not promiscuous but sex isn’t a massive thing for me. I certainly don’t regret losing my virginity at 14…One of mum’s girls in particular became more like an aunt to me. I loved being surrounded by these nice, glamorous women. It was a happy family.”

Becky is glad that her youngest daughter grew up surrounded by her girls and the tools of the trade, claiming that it has made her more open-minded and relaxed about sex…“I think my work showed Emilia that the reality of prostitution is just very ordinary. The girls have their shifts and they go to work. They can have a bad day or a quiet day, just like anybody else…prostitution is a service…Emilia has seen…how it can save marriages — how a man whose wife is fighting cancer will visit a prostitute rather than start an affair. She’s not shocked by anything as a result…”

Those who can’t understand Adams’ position appear to be suffering from what we might call the Fallacy of Universal Mores, the false belief that everyone feels the same way about sex as they do. These people, of whom the “no woman could willingly choose prostitution” crowd is a subset, apparently imagine that those who choose sex work are ashamed of ourselves and hate our lives, and would therefore never want our children to make the same choices we did. They just can’t get it through their thick skulls that some women really don’t find sex work horrible and degrading, and therefore would not oppose daughters taking up the trade if that was what they wanted to do. Here, for example, is a short film of Ouled-Nail dancers taken in 1938; as I explained in my column of one year ago today the women of this Berber tribe often worked as dancers and prostitutes, and daughters were trained by their mothers. As you can see, this little girl is already learning her dance moves:

Even among well-adjusted sex workers who say they would mind their daughters taking up the work, the usual reason is not anything prohibitionists imagine, but rather the stigma and the dangers resulting from criminalization. Some others (myself included) object not on principle, but because of the belief that a specific daughter is not suited to the work; Adams states in the interview that she believes Emilia would do well as an escort but not in brothel work.

But there’s another aspect to the “shocked” reactions which is even more indicative of disordered thinking; as I pointed out in “Mother’s Day”,

…People who [ask, “Would you want your daughter to do it?”]…aren’t concerned with the danger of prostitution, because if they were we’d hear it used as an argument against women joining the military, doing police work or participating in dangerous sports like boxing…Let’s set aside for a moment the obvious point that there are lots of things people wouldn’t want their daughters doing (smoking, excessive drinking, getting pregnant out of wedlock, working at Wal-Mart, going into politics) which aren’t illegal, and the equally obvious fact that we don’t get to choose our offspring’s occupations (though some certainly try). Let’s consider only that people do lots of things their parents wouldn’t like, and that most prostitutes have parents who would be upset and appalled at the choice. It’s not your decision whether your daughter becomes a hooker; it’s hers. And if she does make that choice (which 1% of all Western daughters do for some portion of their lives), do you really want her hounded by cops, forced into dangerous situations, unable to seek legal recourse if she’s robbed or raped, and branded as a pariah for life because of it? Or would you rather she have the ability to repent what you see as her mistake and leave the job later if she chose? Finally, is it worth rejecting your own flesh and blood for making a decision with which you disagree, and which hurt nobody except (in your opinion) her?…

Presumably, those who cannot comprehend why a whore would accept her daughter’s decision to practice the same profession believe that the mother should adamantly denounce her own decisions (thus demonstrating that she has poor judgment and is therefore incompetent to give advice on the subject). Or perhaps they think she should be a hypocrite, indulging in the common parental “Do as I say, not as I do.” In either case, they apparently hold that a mother should reject her daughter for making a decision she disagrees with. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at the lack of thought demonstrated by their reactions, though; after all, these are the same people who support paternalistic laws whose consequences are far more damaging than those of the behaviors they supposedly “protect” people from.

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That Was the Week That Was (#36)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Philosophy, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged Against Their Will, agency denial, Australia, Bad Girls, Bad Jobs, Bottleneck, brothels, Canada, cops, dirty, East Asia, end demand, escort review sites, ethics, Europe, fantasy, France, harm reduction, Hollywood, homosexuality, hysteria, India, Knights Erroneous, Korea, law, My Favorite Updates, Nevada, O Canada!, psychology, Real People, rescue industry, Sex Lies and Busybodies, sex work is work, Shift in the Wind, Something Rotten In Sweden, stripping, Sweden, Swedish “Feminism”, Swedish model, The Course of a Disease, The Naked Anthropologist, video on September 8, 2012| 21 Comments »

We should…be open for the possibility that prostitutes are harmed, not because prostitution is harmful, but because society at present seriously wrongs prostitutes. – Ole Moen

The Naked Anthropologist

Dr. Laura Agustín recently uploaded this video of a talk she gave in 2010 which synopsizes in just a few minutes a number of her most important observations on the roots of “sex trafficking” mythology, agency denial, the rescue industry and more. Her influence on me and many other writers on this subject cannot possibly be overstated, and if you don’t read her blog you really should.

Updates

Madonna and Whore

A new study looked at escort board postings and concludes what I and other escorts have said many times and people like Melissa Farley deny: that many clients really feel a sense of emotional intimacy with some escorts:

…Christine Milrod and co-author Ronald Weitzer analyzed 2,442 postings on…a sex provider review site…Approximately one-third included a discussion about emotional intimacy between sex workers and their clients…“In recent years, we have come to see a gradual normalization of independent escort prostitution, where sexual encounters have come to resemble quasi-dating relationships,” stated…Milrod. “Our study shows that regular clients of a particular sex provider often come to experience feelings of deep affection, which can progress into an authentic love story”…The study uncovered feelings ranging from “counterfeit intimacy” to “authentic emotional bonds” between many prostitutes and their respective customers…

Bad Girls

This is one way to deal with an extortionist, though the idiot is lucky he wasn’t arrested as well. What I’m wondering, though, is why she stuck around after he called the cops? “Police in Ann Arbor [Michigan] say they took a call from a man who was upset that the price he agreed to pay for prostitution services had increased…the…19-year-old woman he had contacted online…upped the cost after taking his money…the woman was arrested and the man wasn’t…[after they] gave vastly different accounts of what happened…”

Bad Jobs

Here’s a new slideshow of the “most stressful jobs in America”; notice that NO sex work jobs are on the list, despite prohibitionist claims of PTSD and other such nonsense.

Real People

“Marc McAndrews…visited the legal brothels in 11 Nevada counties over a period of five years [to create]…the book Nevada Rose, which documents these brothels and their workers, owners and customers. What he uncovered was a view of prostitution that didn’t adhere to culturally appointed preconceptions: of sex work as a living as humdrum as any other…” Unfortunately the article credits the Nevada brothel system, reserving the typical insults and libel for independents. But you’ve got to start somewhere, and this is a big improvement over the typical New York Times “sex trafficking” lies.

Another Example of Swedish “Feminism”

It’s hilarious to watch Swedes trying to reconcile the “whore as criminal” and “whore as victim” myths:

Prostitutes in Stockholm are using short-term rented apartments to sell sex, which is proving to be a difficult case for police…and a bitter pill…for the holidaying homeowners…who…are completely unaware of what’s going on…One woman…[said] “It felt disgusting. I wanted to just burn the bed and move house…[but] when you get a little perspective on things – I’m not actually the victim here. I think of how the girls have ended up as prostitutes, whether they’ve been exposed to people smuggling and how they live today”…

Against Their Will

It would be difficult to imagine a more bizarre combination of agency denial and plain arse-backwardness than this:

Four sex workers were allegedly abducted by an armed gang from a rehab centre…police have registered a case of kidnapping…the gang members were [allegedly] Mumbai-based pimps, whom the girls telephoned and asked to be “rescue’’ from the rehab centre run by an NGO…they were rescued from the flesh trade by the…police and were accommodated at the rehab centre…six months ago…Other sex workers…said life is hell at the centre. “A prison would be better than this,” said a 24-year-old inmate. “Given a chance, we too would like to leave”…

The reversed scare quotes around the two uses of “rescue” are especially striking; their literal rescue by friends or associates is scare-quoted, while the use of the term for abduction and imprisonment is not.

Sex, Lies and Busybodies

Yet another “sex trafficking” liar is exposed:

…William Hillar…was sentenced…to 21 months in prison…for…his scheme to pass himself off as a colonel in the U.S. Army Special Forces…Hillar was also ordered to pay restitution of $171,415 and perform 500 community hours at the Maryland State Veterans Cemeteries……the FBI said Hillar fabricated a gruesome tale that his own daughter had been kidnapped, forced into sex slavery, sodomized and tortured before being hacked to death with machetes and thrown into the sea. He further claimed that this experience and his life story was the basis for the 2008 film “Taken”. The significant press attention…generated free press for his business. Hillar admitted…his daughter…was [actually] alive and well…

Knights Erroneous

Speaking of “sex trafficking” liars: “Ashton Kutcher [in Delhi to film a Steve Jobs biopic]…posted a photo that has him posing with about a dozen…victims of sex trafficking [supplied by rescue industry NGO Apne Aap]…”

My Favorite TV Comedies

“…the cast of the 1990s Nickelodeon series The Adventures of Pete & Pete was reunited…before a packed and ardent crowd at L.A.’s Orpheum Theater for…a…three-hour celebration of the deepest children’s show — and one of television’s best shows — ever.” The article includes an interview with the creators, who explain that a great deal of the show’s unique style derived from the fact that their background was in producing advertising spots rather than situation comedies, so they didn’t know what they were “supposed” to do.

Shift in the Wind

As I pointed out, the public health community almost universally backs decriminalization, and apparently that support has reached the bioethics field as well:

…one of the latest…articles in the…Journal of Medical Ethics…bears the provocative title “Is Prostitution Harmful?” Unsurprisingly, Norwegian academic Ole Martin Moen says No. “More and more of us…believe that sexual encounters need not be deeply personal and emotional…if casual sex is acceptable, then we have few or no reasons to reject prostitution.” Dr Moen demolishes…nine objections to legalised prostitution…but perhaps most interesting from a bioethical standpoint are his assumptions…First, that [if] sex…has no special value, it is unlikely that arguments against selling it will stand. Second, that a utilitarian calculus is the best way to determine the ethics of prostitution…Third, that contemporary attitudes towards homosexuality are appropriate precedents for assessing the moral value of prostitution. Back in the 20s and 30s, homosexuality was deemed to cause people severe psychological problems. But we now know that this was due to social stigma. Homosexuality was also associated with disease, drug use and violence. But we now know that this was due to social and legal oppression. Similarly, Dr Moen suggests, if we destigmatise and liberate prostitution, these issues will disappear among prostitutes as well…

Bottleneck

Behold the inevitable result of trying to stop sex work:

Korean communities in Australia are campaigning…for a crackdown on Korean prostitutes who have entered the country on working holiday visas…The association of Korean communities said Korean prostitutes are a national disgrace. “…Korea’s reputation is being tarnished as they see the country as an exporter of prostitutes,” said an association spokesman…Since the Korean government launched its crackdown…in 2004…many sex workers have moved to Australia, Japan, the United States and other countries…Accordingly, the number of crimes involving Koreans staying on such visas is rising at an alarming rate in Australia and other countries…72…felonies, including murder and rape, committed against or by Korean working visa holders were reported in Australia in 2009, while no such crimes were reported in 2005.

One can’t help wondering if the Korean community’s bigotry is not part of the reason Australian politicians keep claiming that thousands of Asian women are “trafficked”, despite a total lack of evidence .

Metaupdates

Something Rotten in Sweden in November Updates (Part One)

Emi Koyama does it again with this convincing economic analysis demonstrating not only that “end demand” schemes don’t work, they actually increase the amount of prostitution among low-end (street) sex workers:

“End demand” approach to addressing human trafficking continues to gain traction, as law enforcement agencies across the country hold the third “National Day of Johns Arrests”…I have in the past pointed out why “end demand” policies are harmful…and even provided a further explanation for the economics of “end demand” policies. But recently I had an…exchange with someone who…helped me explore a possibility…that “end demand” approach to prostitution, which seeks to reduce demand for commercial sex through public education, prosecution, public humiliation, and other means, may increase prostitution, rather than decrease it…

The nutshell version: As demand drops, so does the price. But because survival and near-survival sex workers are already making barely enough to live on, they are therefore forced to work longer hours and see more clients in order to make ends meet. If any of my readers is an economist and can either confirm or find flaws in Koyama’s analysis, please let me know.

The Course of a Disease in TW3 (#28)

This is really good news; intellectuals are respected and influential in France:

Some of France’s leading intellectuals have poured scorn on the government’s goal of eradicating prostitution…a collection of academics, artists and writers suggest efforts to get rid of the world’s oldest profession are bound to fail…Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the minister for women, caused a stir in June when she announced the new government would attempt to end the sale of sex…the intellectuals…argued that talk of “abolishing” prostitution was based on “two debatable assumptions: that charging for sex is an affront to women’s dignity and that all prostitutes are all victims of their bastard clients…A women who prostitutes herself…is not necessarily a victim of male oppression. And the clients are not all horrible predators or sexual obsessives who treat the woman as disposable objects.” Among the signatories to the article were philosopher Elisabeth Badinter, writer Regine Desforges and film-maker Claude Lanzmann…

O, Canada! in TW3 (#31)

Politicians just can’t resist trying to drum up moral panic, even in soil as unfertile as the largely pro-decriminalization British Columbian academic community:

Recruiters could show up at B.C. colleges and universities this year looking for students to work as strippers, says the province’s minister of advanced education, Naomi Yamamoto. “The [adult entertainment] industry itself has a reputation of exhibiting some risky behaviour, and we don’t want our students exposed to that,” she said, “especially if [it means] aggressively recruiting at our campuses”…She said the issue came to her attention through news stories about the trend in Windsor, [Ontario]…She added that she could not direct institutions to bar adult entertainment companies from job fairs but is “strongly recommending” that they reject any requests for space…A representative of the Camosun College Student Society, Madeline Keller-MacLeod, said she would resist the presence of adult entertainment industry representatives on campus… “Our members are particularly vulnerable to any economic opportunities,” she said…

Ask yourself: what sort of warped mind could produce the phrase “vulnerable to economic opportunities”?

This Week in 2010 and 2011

Three different columns featuring lyrics and video links for songs about whores; two columns defining various terms used by hookers; a short history of New Orleans’ famed Storyville and a biography of one of its most famous madams; and an analysis of why politicians persecute whores. We also see that genitals come in “All Shapes and Sizes”, that a picture really can be worth “A Thousand Words”, and that many feminists will cut off their noses “To Spite Their Faces”. Plus: my very first update column; another one featuring items on trafficking myths, an odd breach of confidentiality and prohibitionists using feminist and Marxist rhetoric; and another with items about fornication laws, sex rays, Michael Weinstein and a less-fortunate counterpart of the client from today’s first item.

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Bottleneck

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Australia, Bottleneck, brothels, cops, dirty, disease, Europe, harm reduction, law, lawheads, Nevada, politicians, Swedish model on September 3, 2012| 63 Comments »

I respect orders but I respect myself too and I do not obey to foolish rules made especially to humiliate me. – Jean-Paul Sartre

When pouring something out of a bottle, it’s important to hold the container at such an angle that the contents reach the mouth in a steady stream and thus flow out smoothly; when done correctly, this can be achieved from a great height without splashing (I often do it when pouring drinks to amuse myself). See, it’s not the velocity of the liquid which creates turbulence, but rather the size of the opening relative to the volume of fluid moving through it. If the bottle is tilted too far from the horizontal for the degree of fullness, the liquid trying to escape the bottle blocks the smooth flow of air into it, thus creating the turbulence which makes the familiar “glug-glug” sound and leads to splashing. And if the mouth of a bottle is very narrow and the container very full, it’s difficult to get the liquid to pour out without making a mess no matter how low the angle of elevation.

No, this isn’t a lesson in fluid dynamics, but rather the setup for a metaphor. We’ve all seen this principle in action, but apparently prohibitionists and politicians are unable to recognize that it works the same way with people. Whenever a government uses law or procedure to restrict the natural actions of human beings, the result is a situation exactly like that I described. As long as the regulatory “mouth” is wide enough and the number of people desiring to move through it small and gradual enough, there is no problem; for example, every student can graduate from school as soon as he completes the required course of study. There is no arbitrary cap on the number of graduates per year, nor a waiting period for entering school in the first place, nor a shortage of desks: the mouth of the jar is wide enough to allow a smooth and even flow. But as the “opening” is narrowed by restrictions such as licenses, quotas, partial prohibitions and other such measures, the fewer the number of people who can make it through in any given time period; if a very large number of people want to engage in the restricted activity, turbulence is generated just as it is in the highly-angled or narrow-necked bottle.

This is a major problem with “legalized” prostitution; it creates a bottleneck which is always smaller than the number of women who wish to engage in harlotry. Licensing impedes any woman who is unwilling or unable to secure such a license due to a criminal record or lack of a proper visa; registration impedes any woman who does not wish to be on a public “known prostitute” list; restricting the number of positions (such as Amsterdam-style windows) impedes any woman over that number; legalizing only brothels impedes those who are temperamentally unable to dance to someone else’s tune or practically unable to keep the required schedule, etc. But as in the case of the liquid, inability to flow through smoothly does not mean total stoppage; rather, it leads to a chaotic, uneven situation which results not only in the marginalization of a large fraction of the hooker population (80% of Nevada whores and 95% of Greek ones work illegally), but also establishes the opportunity for official corruption, enables exploitation of the sort fashionably labeled “sex trafficking”, and creates an underclass who are ripe targets for violence because they dare not report it for fear of being arrested themselves.

Prohibitionists are fond of pointing to such problems in legalization schemes in order to argue that the “neck” should be made smaller still by criminalization, which as the experiences of the United States and Norway have demonstrated is rather like trying to stop the flow from a garden hose by putting one’s thumb over the end. The recent report by the Kirby Institute on the sex industry in New South Wales points out the superiority of decriminalization over legalization:

…reforms that decriminalized adult sex work have improved human rights; removed police corruption; netted savings for the criminal justice system; and enhanced the surveillance, health promotion, and safety of the NSW sex industry. International authorities regard the NSW regulatory framework as best practice…Licensing of sex work (‘legalisation’) should not be regarded as a viable legislative response. For over a century systems that require licensing of sex workers or brothels have consistently failed – most jurisdictions that once had licensing systems have abandoned them. As most sex workers remain unlicensed criminal codes remain in force, leaving the potential for police corruption. Licensing systems are expensive and difficult to administer, and they always generate an unlicensed underclass…[which] is wary of and avoids surveillance systems and public health services: the current systems in Queensland and Victoria confirm this fact. Thus, licensing is a threat to public health…

Unfortunately, politicians are always happy to ignore facts if they think it will make them political coin:

The state government will take over the licensing of brothels from councils and establish a new authority to oversee the entire sex industry in a bid to rein in corruption and threats to workers. A new squad will clamp down on the running of brothels by organised crime groups, shut down illegal brothels and prevent the exploitation of workers as sex slaves in NSW. The Brothel Licensing Authority would also look at strip clubs, massage parlours and escort services, some of which “have functioned as pseudo-brothels”, Special Minister for State Chris Hartcher said yesterday… “One of the biggest issues is the exploitation of women, particularly Asian women”…

This is despite the total lack of any credible evidence for “organized crime”, “sex slaves” or anything else; as the Kirby report stated, “Some individuals…contend that hundreds of Asian women are trafficked to brothels in Australia but present little evidence. The Federal Government…found no evidence of recent trafficking of female sex workers in the Sydney brothel survey…” Luckily, not all legislators are lining up behind those who intend to cut off their noses to spite their faces:

…Greens MP Cate Faehrmann says a brothel licensing scheme will be a public health disaster for NSW, and could lead to increased rates of HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases. “The evidence against licensing is overwhelming. It will lead to poorer health and public safety outcomes, not just for sex workers but for the entire community…Licensing schemes have been a dismal failure in other states. Where they exist they are extremely expensive and have the opposite effect of what is intended, creating a more dangerous environment for sex workers and their clients. In contrast, NSW has an enviable record on HIV prevention, and this is partly down to the decriminalisation model…In Queensland, where brothel licensing scheme operates, around 90% of the industry has been forced underground. That means the majority of sex work is unregulated, illegal and therefore more dangerous. Workers and clients simply don’t have the kind of access to health services and law enforcement that is necessary. The timing of this announcement is typical. This isn’t about protecting women and cleaning up the sex industry, this is a cynical attempt to politicise another controversial issue for political gain…”

Alas, most politicians don’t care how many people get hurt if they think they can profit by it; they are willing to lie, to ignore well-supported findings and the experience of other governments, and to completely abandon common sense and basic human decency in order to gain some advantage, however small and fleeting, over their competitors. In this they are exactly like the “big box” retailers who hold “Black Friday” or Boxing Day sales with ridiculously low prices only available for one day, thereby creating a very narrow bottleneck in time and space which is virtually guaranteed to result in chaos.

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Q & A (August 2012)

Posted in Miscellaneous, Q & A, tagged brothels, East Asia, escort review sites, Europe, genitalia, internet, law, Malaysia, psychology, sex work is work, yin and yang on August 31, 2012| 24 Comments »

It is easier to judge the mind of a man by his questions rather than his answers. — Pierre-Marc-Gaston, Duc de Lévis

Got a question? Email me at maggiemcneill@earthlink.net and I’ll do my best to answer it!

How do I let my regular escort know that I truly value and appreciate her personality without coming off as creepy or patronizing? I don’t want to send her mixed signals, but I do want to show her that it’s her brain and her heart that keep me one of her regulars and not just her vagina.

Just tell her. Don’t make a big deal about it, but the next time you’re having a conversation with her while on a date, just say something like, “See, this is why I like you so much!” She’ll understand. Another good way is to find out if she has an Amazon wishlist or the like, and get her a present that leans in the direction of mind & personality; for example, if she has both a bottle of perfume and a book on science or politics there, get her the book. That will say “I appreciate your mind” as loudly as anything.

I’m a recent university graduate in Malaysia and can’t bring myself to apply for a normal 9 to 5; I’m simply not that interested in the profession I was educated for. Now I find myself toying with the idea of becoming a harlot; how would I go about setting myself up in this business? How much can a freelance prostitute make? I know there are some inherent risks and dangers that come with the job, but I can only assume the higher end of the spectrum not only pays more, but is also somewhat safer, am I too naive to believe this? What is the long term prospect for a girl like me? And how do I keep my working life completely out of any circle that I, my family or my friends move in?

If you were in a Western country I could speak more authoritatively, but the best I can do for Malaysia is to give you a general answer. According to my reference prostitution is legal there as long as you don’t solicit in public; however, the United States has been encouraging your government to violently persecute sex workers, so it’s impossible to tell how that might impact your work in the near future.

That having been said, I suspect some things will still be the same; escorts advertise via websites nearly everywhere in the world, and always make far more than other entry-level jobs (usually as much as early-career lawyers if they work full-time and are good at it). You’re not naïve in thinking higher-end sex work is safer; every methodologically sound study ever done shows it, and simple reason will demonstrate why it is so (better class of clients, less exposure, relative invisibility to police, etc). Long term prospects are like those in any job: if you are good at the work and apply yourself, making sound and sensible business decisions, you will tend to do well unless some unpredictable circumstances intervene. As for keeping your personal and professional lives separate, that depends on careful planning. Maintain a high level of privacy with your family, and don’t allow them to “drop in” on you without prior contact; don’t see clients any place family members are likely to go, and don’t give enough details in your professional life (including pictures showing your face) to allow anyone to connect your two personas.

I have two suggestions for your next step: Get Amanda Brooks’ Internet Escort’s Handbook, which will help you decide whether the work is really right for you. Also, do some research on local escort websites; see what the other girls are saying, how they advertise, what they charge, what their concerns are, etc. After you do those things I think you’ll be in a position to make an informed decision. Either way, good luck with whatever career you decide to pursue!

I was wondering if you have any advice (or columns) for an aspiring plus size courtesan? I’ve done some escort work before (when I was thinner) and though I’m trying to work towards losing weight I’d like to start working sooner rather than later if possible.

I’ve never been in that group, but I know it’s not really an issue; there are a lot of guys interested in BBW escorts! The important thing is to clearly advertise yourself that way, and make sure your pictures are current and accurate so no nasty men can play games by claiming you misrepresented yourself. I believe that there are some BBW-specific sites, but I’ve seen them on general escort sites as well.

In your experience, are tall men more endowed than those of average height?

There’s no correlation at all between height and penis size. In fact, one reason porn stars often look so huge is that a short actor’s penis looks bigger in proportion to his body than that of a taller man with the same endowment.

Do you have any resources about pleasing men? I think Western women don’t go further than your typical Cosmo article on 134 ways to please your man, which I would assume is different from the way girls in Southeast Asia do it; the best description I found was that they “treat them like kings.” So what is the difference?

Pleasing a man doesn’t require tricks, tips or a manual; all it takes is paying attention and a true desire to please. Nine men out of ten will TELL you exactly what they want, but a lot of Western women react to such suggestions with, “Ick, that’s nasty; I’m going to try this ridiculous Cosmo suggestion instead.” WTF? Here they have men telling them exactly what will turn them on, and they shun it in favor of ridiculous antics that, if they really worked, would appear in every porno movie. I wrote about this in my early column “A Whore in the Bedroom”; what it basically boils down to is, concentrate on what turns him on even if it does nothing for you, and even if you think it’s ridiculous or disgusting or “degrading”. That’s the real “secret” of both the stereotypical Asian girl and the successful whore: she will say “yes” when the typical Western woman will say “no”. And considering that women are much more sexually flexible than men are, a woman often finds herself turned on by something she never cared for before, precisely because it excites the man she loves.

My boyfriend suffers from erectile dysfunction – the erections don’t last long and when he has to put his penis into me, it just goes soft; I wear sexy underwear and had Brazilian waxing done, but nothing seems to help. He is 36, in generally bad shape, has circulatory problems and his diet is based on pizza and Coke. I try to persuade him to walk more or ride the bike, and to change his unhealthy habits, but is there anything else I can do?

I suspect his circulation problem is the major culprit, but his poor physical condition and diet probably don’t help, either. Also, the Coke may very well have a lot to do with it: in the United States, soft drinks are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, which (in addition to its many other bad effects) raises uric acid levels; this stiffens arteries, thus raising blood pressure, impairing circulation and discouraging the body from producing nitric oxide, the chemical which triggers erection. I don’t know if soft drinks in Europe are made with this thoroughly nasty stuff, but if I were you I’d read the ingredients on a can to see.

If his soft drinks do contain HFCS, he needs to switch immediately to some other beverage that doesn’t such as coffee, tea, flavored water, etc. Even if the soft drinks are sweetened with sugar, cutting them out would certainly help him lose weight because sodas add calories without making one feel full. Keep working on getting him to exercise; your doing it with him should make the prospect more attractive, especially if it’s something fun like bike riding or swimming. He should also talk to his physician, and if the doctor just tries to “patch” the issue by giving him Viagra, you need to speak up: in a 72-year-old man erectile difficulty is to be expected, but in a 36-year-old it’s a sign of major problems which will almost certainly lead to other health issues and should therefore not be ignored.

Getting a man to change his habits isn’t easy, but I’m sure he’d love to have stronger, more dependable erections again so that’s a factor in your favor. Once things start to improve, you can also encourage him to keep it up by demonstrating in a practical way how happy you are with the results. Good luck, and please let me know how things turn out!

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