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Playing the Harlot

Posted in History, Perception, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 16, 2010| 21 Comments »

And they shall burn thine houses with fire, and execute judgments upon thee in the sight of many women: and I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot, and thou also shalt give no hire any more. –  Ezekiel 16:41

In the replies to my column of October 10th, Bredstik asked a question which I first started to type a reply to, but then quickly realized it deserved a whole column.  Here is his question:

I feel compelled to ask possibly a few more…

Generic statements, so I don’t have to write a whole book, in order to frame the questions below. Truthfully, I’m having a hard framing the question succinctly so I’m trying to carefully blurt out what’s in my head as clearly as possible….hope it makes sense…

In the U.S. (and other places), the major religions are monotheistic. Of these, when they speak of ‘God’, it is basically identified/understood as being male (as a protector/father figure). There is no balancing feminine “force” in these religions that gives the feminine side equal consideration/status/dominance. Male “ideals” are predominant, female ones are … not as dominant . Even though the core teaching of the morals/ethics of these religions are frequently non gender specific, there is a sense that there is a male deity watching over and guiding things/events.

Question(s):
Do you think that religious views are *the* major factor in people believing what they do about prostitution (girls needing to be protected, male dominance, immoral, etc)?

Regardless of the answer above, do you have any info/data/good links/thoughts on how prostitution is viewed differently by countries (in current times, nothing ancient) where there is balanced or less pronounced “male dominant” deity (are prostitutes socially better off, worse off, or basically the same)?

I don’t think monotheism is really the culprit as much as patriarchal culture is.  Despite neofeminist dogma about prostitution being a manifestation of patriarchy, the truth is actually the opposite:  Prostitutes had our highest status in the ancient Goddess-centered cultures because we were rightfully viewed as the gateway between mortal men and the great Feminine Principle.  It wasn’t until the patriarchal cultures succeeded in subordinating the Earth Mother to the Sky Father that our status started to slip, and that preceded monotheism in most of the Western world by several centuries.  For example, by the 6th century BCE  free temple prostitutes in Athens had largely been supplanted by slave-girls given to the temple as donations, and the Athenian leader Solon tried to eradicate secular prostitution by establishing cheap state-owned brothels and persecuting streetwalkers (as discussed more fully in my July 31st column).  In general, male-dominated governments are not really happy about being unable to control prostitutes, and maladjusted men are unhappy that women they don’t own can demand (and get) generous compensation for their sexual favors while men cannot make similar demands from women.  Just look at all the TV and movie fantasies (such as Hung) of male prostitutes who can make a good living from an adoring female clientele, or of male pimps controlling harems of beautiful hookers.  These shows are about as realistic as your average cartoon, yet insecure men love to make and watch them because they’re a fantasy inversion of the uncomfortable truth:  That women control male access to sex, always have, and always will.

That having been said, I think Judeo-Christian religion is a major source of the West’s extreme version of the Madonna/whore dichotomy (and thus an aggravating factor in the generally shoddy Western treatment of prostitutes).  To understand the reason for this, it’s necessary to go back to the origins of the Hebrew people.  The Hebrews were one of a number of Semitic tribes who probably entered Egypt during the rule of their Hyksos kinsmen in the 17th-16th centuries BCE; thus, they became rather unpopular when the native Egyptians overthrew their foreign overlords and restored native rule with the 18th dynasty (“Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.” – Exodus 1:8).  And though it is highly unlikely that they were actually enslaved as in the traditional conception, it is very likely that they were subject to severe discrimination and probably persecution as well.  Then sometime around 1300 BCE, a lesser Egyptian prince whom history calls Moses forged himself a bloodline and in partnership with the Hebrew leader Aaron offered to lead the tribe back to Canaan, land of their ancestors.

Moses was no fool; though he had been passed over (no pun intended) as heir to the throne he had been schooled in leadership as every prince was, and well understood what was needed to forge a loose agglomeration of related clans into a nation worth ruling.  He seems to have favored the monotheistic model of his ancestor Akhenaton, but transferred Aton’s characteristics to the Hebrew deity El-Shaddai, whom Moses referred to as Yahweh (“I Am that I Am”).  Unfortunately for Moses’ plans, the Hebrews were not yet ready for monotheism and were perfectly happy to continue in the polytheistic ways of their ancestors and cousins.  Moses soon recognized the need for a set of strict laws and customs which would unify his followers into one tribe, a “chosen people” separate and distinct from all the related peoples of Canaan; when he decided to codify the laws and pronouncements he attributed to Yahweh, he therefore included prohibitions against nearly everything the Canaanites did.  If you’ve ever wondered why Mosaic law bans such innocuous activities as eating shellfish, now you know; the desert-dwelling Hebrews were unused to them anyhow, so Moses forbade them as a “Canaanite food”.  Since the Canaanites were a settled agricultural people (unlike the Hebrews, who were nomadic herdsmen) they had a well-established system of religious fertility rituals, most of which had sexual components.  Hence the plentiful sexual prohibitions in Mosaic law:  By specifically banning the Hebrews from every kind of sexual behavior which formed a part of one Canaanite religious ritual or another (including male homosexuality and women having sex with animals), Moses kept the Hebrews from participating in those rituals and thereby prevented them from being tempted away from the cult of Yahweh.

But barring Hebrew women from becoming temple prostitutes certainly didn’t keep the Hebrew men from patronizing native ones, so the successors of Moses (the Judges and later the prophets) developed a robust tradition of condemning harlots and harlotry wherever they saw them.  Since the Hebrews were staunchly patriarchal and thereby had the same public misgivings about our profession as every other patriarchal culture (discussed above), they developed unusually vicious anti-whore rhetoric which was if anything only intensified in their religious heirs, the Christians and Muslims.  But while most majority-Muslim countries still have official bans on prostitution, most enlightened majority-Christian countries allow it to one degree or another (though many of these, such as Canada and the UK, practice institutionalized hypocrisy by decriminalizing prostitution itself but criminalizing every activity which is involved in its practice).

Here is a map of the world which shows the legal status of prostitution country by country.  Nations where prostitution is banned are red, those in which it is restricted in some way are beige, and those in which it is at least technically legal are green; there is also a table below the map which explains the exact legal status country by country.  Note the illustrious company the United States chooses to be in; practically every other “red” nation is either a majority-Muslim state, a totalitarian one or one which has only recently emerged from totalitarianism.  Contrast this with the green nations:  All of Western Europe, most of Australia, all of the Western Hemisphere except for the US and a few tiny, poverty-stricken third-world states, and even several African countries.  The few “restricted” countries include Japan (where every kind of prostitution except “full service” is legal), India (much like Canada but worse), Norway and Sweden (where it is illegal to buy sex but not to sell it).

Looking at Bredstick’s final question in light of this map, I think we can safely say that there is very little correlation.  The patriarchal Judeo-Christian sky father is indeed pre-eminent in the prohibitionist Muslim countries and the US, but Europe, Australia and certainly South America are primarily Christian and yet grant their women rights denied to us in the US.  China and the former Soviet Bloc countries have no officially recognized religion, yet engage in the same paternalistic control of women’s bodies as the largely-Christian United States.  The two countries Sailor Barsoom mentioned which have prominent female deities (Japan and India) are not exactly known for the high status of their women, and they restrict their whores with the same kind of arbitrary legalism as is present in de facto criminalization countries such as the UK.  If I had to pick one factor which seems to correlate most closely with the legalization status of prostitutes, it would be the general attitude toward sex in that country; most Europeans and Hispanic people have far healthier attitudes toward sex than the prudish Americans, Muslims and Marxists who run the majority of prohibitionist states.

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All in the Family

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 4, 2010| 17 Comments »

The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you. –  Kendall Hailey

Like everybody else, whores have families, and every family is different, including those of whores.  Some families reject prostitute daughters (or else would do so if they knew), whereas some are accepting or even supportive.  And others carry the principle of family togetherness to a level I daresay few people would feel comfortable with.

As I mentioned in my column of July 30th, my mother did not take well to my becoming a stripper; in fact she stopped talking to me altogether, and despite several attempts at reconciliation (by letter) from me, we haven’t spoken in almost 13 years.  So one can only imagine what her reaction would have been had she learned her eldest daughter was a prostitute; she would’ve had a fit.  Or perhaps not; it’s possible her extreme reaction was due to her equating the two jobs in her mind, so that becoming a stripper was the same to her as entering harlotry.  Well, she always hoped I would be a writer someday, so in a way she got her wish; it just didn’t happen in the way she would’ve liked.  The only members of my family who knew about my career were my second sister (the one who looks and thinks most like me) and one male cousin I’m close to.  I’m sure my cousin Jeff would have been supportive; he applauded my decision to become a stripper, and had he lived a few years longer I’m sure his reaction to my taking up “the world’s oldest profession” would’ve been similar to that of another dear male friend:  “I was wondering how long it would take you to get around to that.”

From what I’ve seen, my situation isn’t at all unusual; most working girls I’ve encountered hide their profession from their families.  Those who weren’t from New Orleans had the least trouble because their families were in other states, but I can remember at least two times when a girl had to take off for a week because her parents were coming to visit.  I know that I was several girls’ “good friend Maggie” when they needed to make excuses to their families, and one girl actually told hers that she was a drug dealer because their priorities were so screwed up they actually thought that was better than being a hooker!  One common cover-up is to take a “regular” job and pretend it pays better than it actually does; I had one girl who did this for years.  Her degree gave her a job which was long on prestige but short on both hours and hourly pay, but she let her family believe it was not so and made all her real money as an escort.  And back when Grace was escorting in Atlanta, she simply told her mother she was a stripper (which was actually true since she did both); her mother didn’t like it, but did not equate the trades as my mother apparently did.

Whores who are close to their families yet can’t tell them the truth about their work sometimes encounter the problem of a mother or sister dropping in unexpectedly; whenever such a girl answered her phone and started spouting inappropriate blather at me, I would know she had unwelcome visitors and would simply ask, “Can you get rid of them to take this call?”  Sometimes they could, and other times they were forced to pass, but I had one girl who tried to have it both ways.  She was a very pretty Arabic girl and the customers liked her, but her family would drop in without notice and she could never get rid of them.  I could’ve worked around that, but she had the bad habit of setting up appointments and then simply not showing up; when I called to find out where the hell she was there would be no answer, then the next day she would call to tell me her family had suddenly and unexpectedly dropped by her apartment before she could leave to go on the date.  Sometimes I could replace her with another girl but at other times the call was lost, and though I charged her the fee anyhow one simply can’t run a service like that, so I soon let her go; do you know she actually had the gall to try to argue with me about it?

Some other girls’ families are much more accepting of their profession; as I mentioned in my column of August 29th, Barbie’s mother and sister would babysit her children while she went on calls, and Florence’s mother knew what she was doing to raise the money for her son’s therapy.  I had another girl who lived with her father, a jazz musician; though he wasn’t happy with her career choice he really couldn’t say much because he didn’t make enough to pay the bills alone.  And I had a couple of girls say they suspected their mothers knew what they did but wisely avoided the subject.

Even when parents are kept in the dark about their daughters’ careers, sisters are often in on the secret; my situation was not at all atypical in that respect.  Sometimes the sisters are escorts as well, and I had such a pair working for me for a while.  Well, I really should say they worked for everybody; they were so well-known in town that most agencies simply referred to them as “The Sisters”.  Sorry to smash your fantasy, guys, but they never worked together; in fact they specifically told agencies that they wouldn’t.  Neither minded knowing that the other worked, but they weren’t about to work in the same room together, much less in the same bed!  And even if they had, nobody would’ve believed they were sisters anyhow; they were of mixed race, and the older sister strongly favored the mother’s race while the younger favored the father’s just as strongly.  Their personalities were also quite different; the younger sister was a good, dependable worker while the elder was a typical “empty box” type (see my column of August 24th) whom I soon stopped using and advised to return to stripping.

But their level of mutual acceptance was as nothing compared to that of another family I knew.  I first met the mother when she was house mother at Rick’s Cabaret while I was a dancer there; I doubt I would’ve remembered her but oddly enough she remembered me, and reminded me of our previous acquaintance when she first applied to me for a job.  She wasn’t the prettiest employee I had, but she would do just about anything and was willing to work the weirdest hours, and since the clients to whom I sent her seemed satisfied she got plenty of work.  Then one day when she was calling on (i.e. letting me know she was available) she said to me, “You know, my daughter works, too.”  Well, I certainly thought that was interesting but not so weird; it’s actually not all that uncommon among prostitutes from working-class backgrounds.  I told her I would have to meet the girl and she agreed, then asked “You don’t have male escorts, do you?”  I assured her that I did not, and she continued, “Because my son is a gay escort.”

Now, I’m as open-minded as the next madam, but I must admit that surprised me.  Some families have a hard time accepting a gay son or a prostitute daughter, but this woman was so accepting of her gay prostitute son that she didn’t mind helping him find work!  As it turned out, the son worked for Doug, and when I mentioned it to him later he said, “Oh, yeah, it’s a family business with them.”  It wasn’t long afterward that I found out just how true that statement was; I heard through the grapevine that the rich cokehead I’ve mentioned several times before had hired all three of them one night, and that as part of the festivities he had them put on a show for him.  All three of them, together.  I hope y’all don’t think me a prude for admitting that I find that just a little bit disturbing.  OK, I’ll be honest; not just a little bit.  There’s just something icky about it which somehow goes beyond the mere incest angle.  Talk about family drama…

Yet at the same time, I have to say that whatever one might think about their sexual behavior, their family dynamic was remarkably healthy in an Addams Family sort of way.  They accepted each other without reservation or judgment, and clearly were totally honest with each other; isn’t that better than having to lie to one’s mother because she won’t accept one’s choices?  And even if one questions the way in which this woman raised her children at least she loved them for who they were, which is more than I can say for my mother.

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He or She?

Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 20, 2010| 33 Comments »

What a strange thing man is; and what a stranger thing woman. – Lord Byron

Tomorrow I’ll be doing a question and answer column, but there was one query which I realized needed a column all to itself because the answer really isn’t as interesting as the question.  It was, “How can you tell a transsexual from a biological woman?”  Most of my female readers probably consider the answer to be obvious, but since many of my male readers may be equally convinced that it isn’t I think it’s best to examine the reasons for the question before moving on to the answer.

You would probably have to have lived at the bottom of the sea for your entire adult life to be unaware that some people born male are, to one degree or another, uncomfortable in their gender role; obviously some born-female are as well, but while many women who feel that way attempt to deny all gender by becoming neofeminists, men adopt a variety of behaviors ranging from cross-dressing to sex-change surgery.  Women who cross-dress for sexual reasons are pretty rare and female-to-male transsexuals are unimportant to this  discussion, so when I use the term “transgender” in this column it will heretofore mean only a male-to-female transsexual.  The term “transgender” started out as an umbrella term for many kinds of gender nonconformity, but has settled in to basically mean what used to be described by the term “transsexual”.

Most cross-dressers are perfectly happy being male; they are not attracted to other men and their attachment to women’s lingerie probably arises from the same murky swamp of male sexuality as so many other “perversions” do.  Indeed, most escorts have probably encountered clients who ask if they can wear women’s lingerie during sex or even answer the door in such garb without asking first.  I never had a man surprise me that way, which is a good thing because my feelings on it would be the same as mixing BDSM with full service; I just can’t let a man inside me if I can’t take him seriously.  Dominatrices cater to clients who wish to be “forced” to cross-dress as a BDSM “punishment”, and some of these men even derive a sexual thrill from going out in public and attempting to pass as women.

But that’s not the same thing as a transwoman, who actually feels uncomfortable as a male and really wants to be a woman.  There are three types of transsexuals, Type 1, Type 2 and Extreme; as Dr. Helena put it, Type 1 transsexuals feel as though they are women in men’s bodies, Type 2 transsexuals only think they feel as though they are women in men’s bodies, and extreme transsexuals actually are women in men’s bodies.  Type 1 transsexualism appears to derive from some childhood environment which stunted the development of a male self-image and caused the transsexual to pattern his psyche on strong female role models, while Type 2 appears to derive from trauma which causes the transsexual to reject his male identity.  And extreme transsexualism (AKA gender dysmorphia) appears to derive from neurological causes which actually program a biological, XY chromosome male to think and feel like a woman, though he still has a physically and hormonally normal male body.  At one time strict standards were in place to allow all extreme transsexuals and those Type 1 cases who could learn to live and behave like women to be recommended for gender reassignment while prohibiting Type 2 cases from doing so, but in recent years “queer activists” and easy international travel have combined to wreck or circumvent many of the safeguards which were designed to keep disturbed individuals from implementing irreversible changes to their bodies and later regretting it.  Gender reassignment does not consist merely of sex-change surgery; it requires years of hormone therapy and electrolysis to remove his beard and other female-inappropriate body hair, and the candidate who wishes to do it by the numbers rather than simply flying to Thailand has to undergo years of psychological therapy as well.  The costs of all this are astronomical, many tens of thousands of dollars, so a certain percentage of transsexuals turn to prostitution (generally at the street level) to earn it.

So in any large city, there is a small population of prostitutes, mostly streetwalkers, who dress as women but are not biologically female.  Some of these are transsexuals earning their fees, while others are simply ordinary homosexual prostitutes who dress in drag; since all of these individuals lack female equipment they generally work at the low end where they can make a living only providing oral sex (unlike escorts, whose clientele presumes that full service is on the menu if desired).  Traditionally these drag prostitutes did not openly advertise their masculinity (though it was generally obvious to those with eyes to see), but in modern times the internet has provided them with a venue to seek out those men who actually want to have sex with pre-operative transsexuals (also called “she-males” or “chicks with dicks” by their aficionados).  But while some men actively seek transsexuals and some don’t care if only oral sex is involved, a much larger percentage are repelled by the thought of sexual contact with a male, however disguised, and in a few this goes beyond mere aversion to active concern.  For whatever reason, these men are haunted by the thought that a prostitute they hire might be a post-operative transsexual.

Let’s face it; men really don’t look much like women.  Even with padding in the right places they’re taller and larger, their faces, shoulders and waists are wider, they have thicker skin and deeper voices and hair everywhere, and their mannerisms aren’t much like those of women even when they try.  In Hollywood comedies, men often dress as women and succeed in fooling everyone, but in the real world someone encountering the title character from Tootsie would be more likely to say, “Why is Dustin Hoffman in drag?” than “Wow, what a babe.”  Normal men do not have access to Hollywood makeup artists and are seen from every angle rather than photographed in carefully-planned shots, and real people can’t help noticing the heavy theatrical makeup men need to cover their beard stubble.  Even drag queens who perform in clubs benefit from dim lighting conditions and the distance of the audience from the stage.  As I said above, transsexuals are physically and hormonally male; even years of hormone therapy and full-body electrolysis cannot erase greater height and larger bone structure, and once the larynx expands during puberty not even voice lessons can disguise the male vocal timbre.

Yet the myth persists; some men are absolutely convinced that a large percentage of escorts are actually post-operative transsexuals, and that it’s difficult to tell even when naked in the same bed with them!  I suspect this idea is really just an exaggeration of the fact that some streetwalkers are either pre-operative transsexuals or drag queens, and the fact that a blow job from a fully-dressed streetwalker in a dimly-lit car is a far cry from a full-service call with a naked escort in a well-lit hotel room gets lost in the paranoia.  Tourists to New Orleans, with its large homosexual population, seem especially worried about this; every week at least two or three guys, always tourists, asked if the girl I was about to send was a “real” girl, and every so often the number of such inquiries would explode for a few days (presumably after some “cautionary” TV show aired or magazine article was published).  In truth, I knew of exactly four transsexual prostitutes in New Orleans; three were streetwalkers who worked out of the seedy Tulane Motel and one was an escort whom I never met, but was described to me by Doug as looking “like a stevedore in drag.”  Despite the popular myth of their prevalence in the Big Easy, no service with which I was connected could even supply a transsexual hooker if a client wanted one!

But let’s assume for the sake of argument that a post-operative transsexual whore was short (by male standards), slender, possessed of very fine features and a high-pitched voice, and had received sufficient hormone therapy to give her a feminine shape and soft skin, and enough electrolysis to absolutely remove all facial hair and unfeminine body hair; are there any unalterable characteristics which would still allow one to tell that she was not biologically female?  Obviously fleshy tissues can be surgically altered, but bone structure cannot, and there are a few such ways in which the average woman differs from the average man.  The most obvious is in the proportional size of the hands and feet; even a short man tends to have larger hands and feet than a woman of the same physical size.  The necks of women are proportionately longer and more slender than those of men, and this cannot be altered even if the Adam’s apple is shaved down.  Also, women are leggier than men; though my husband is 8” taller than I am my waist is only barely below his, and I’m sure many of my readers have made comparable observations with their spouses.  Finally, the index fingers of women are generally the same length as our ring fingers or slightly longer, while those of men are usually shorter than the ring finger.  Of course none of these are foolproof tests; Uma Thurman has huge hands and feet, as did Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and I’m sure there are some men whose hands and feet are as small as a woman’s.  I’ve met men with long, slender necks and women with bull necks, and I had a friend whose legs were so short that even though we were the same height standing, she was noticeably taller when sitting.  And some studies suggest lesbians have longer ring fingers than other women, so that their hands are of similar proportions to those of men.

The short answer to my correspondent’s question, then, is that though there is no foolproof test, there are a few which would usually serve to allow a post-operative transsexual to be told apart from a woman of similar size and build.  But I have a rhetorical question for you:  Far be it from a bisexual woman to presume to understand a heterosexual man’s thinking, but why does it really matter?  If your escort looks, sounds, acts and performs so much like a woman that you need some sort of Blade Runner replicant test to tell the difference, then what is the difference?  If you were looking for a wife and planning to have kids I could see how it would be important, but for an hour’s diversion why is that particular aspect of an escort’s medical history more important than any other?  You’re not going to turn gay from unknowingly copulating with her, so I don’t think I’m out of line in saying that when it comes to whores, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.

UPDATE:  Since I first wrote this column, my thinking on the subject has evolved considerably; I now realize that despite the positive ending, I inadvertently perpetuated some harmful stereotypes and slurs in the text.  See “Due Consideration” for further discussion, and please accept my sincere apologies for the unintentional negativity.

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The Myth of the Wanton

Posted in History, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 20, 2010| 29 Comments »

Penis envy? You’re kidding, right? With what I’ve got between my legs, I can get a penis anytime I want one.  –  My friend Liz

Since the beginning of civilization men have been mystified by feminine sexuality; in the earliest times they even considered it magical, tied to the moon and the fertility of the crops, and whores were priestesses.  Then slowly, over time, the reproductive aspects of the mystery faded and with them male reverence for women in general and whores in particular.  The reverence was eventually replaced in many cultures by a resentment of the nigh-uncontrollable power of male desire for women, made all the more bitter by the ease with which women manage our desire for men.  Men in general were (and still are) galled by the fact that no matter how much stronger, tougher, better at mathematics and more inclined to dominate their environments they are than women, when it comes to sex they need us a great deal more than we need them.  So I suppose it’s not surprising that, in the face of this humbling and annoying fact, many of them simply choose to deny it.

It has been an article of faith in the Middle East since Biblical times that the lust of women is stronger than that of men, and that women thus draw men into sin; the widespread interpretation (though certainly not the original meaning) of the story of the Fall is that Eve’s offering Adam the apple is symbolic of her tempting him into carnality, and to this very day Muslim men pontificate from the pulpit (and on the internet) about the greater lustfulness of women.  The Classical Greek philosophers taught that woman was like an animal always in heat, and the mythology of every part of Eurasia is full of temptresses, seductresses, succubae, enchantresses, whores and other wanton women whose entire reason for existence seems to consist of luring men into sex.  The fact that all of this is observably untrue makes no impression on men who want so badly to believe it, and once Platonic doctrine came to dominate Western thought around the beginning of the modern era, even reasonable men could be convinced; Plato taught that since the senses are fallible, the observation of reality leads inevitably to error and thus only pure thought is reliable.  In simpler terms, the Platonists believed that no matter how it LOOKED like women, planets, ballistic missiles or anything else were acting, they were really doing something else which could only be “discovered” through philosophical contemplation.  This of course conveniently meant that philosophers, scholars and priests could say whatever they wanted about female behavior and motives, and it would always be right even if women didn’t actually behave that way.

In combination with the Madonna/whore duality this was devastating to any kind of male comprehension of female sexuality, and even after the Renaissance replaced the Platonic principle with the scientific one men still seemed unwilling to give up their cherished beliefs; in the Age of Reason even the existence of God was questioned, but the doctrine of the wanton woman was not.  In fact, the division of womankind into the pure and the purulent became even more severe; during the 17th century witchcraft hysteria many thousands of women who were judged “bad” in one way or another (including, of course, many prostitutes and other “loose” women) were tortured or burned to death all over Europe.  And though this bloody horror eventually spent itself, the doctrine which had helped spawn it only grew worse; by the middle of the 19th century the general consensus among learned men was that “normal” women had no sex drive whatsoever, and that any woman who did was an atavism, a primitive and uncivilized beast in human form.  Is it any wonder Freud, reared on this poison, came to the rather strange conclusions he did about female sexuality?

But whatever Freud’s shortcomings, he had opened the door to the study of the mind, and by the middle of the 20th century understanding finally began to dawn in the minds of those men brave enough to look at the subject honestly.  Old preconceptions were, at least among sexologists, cast aside and replaced with conclusions drawn from actual study of the behavior of real women viewed without a filter of dogma.  The “sexual revolution” of the 1960s accelerated the inquiry, and the new climate of sexual openness resulted in a veritable avalanche of articles and books, including many for the lay reader.  The new “men’s magazines” featured explicit discussion of sex, and by the early 1970s even pornography came out of the closet and became more acceptable to the general public.

And that, unfortunately, was where things started to go wrong again.  Porn and girlie magazines are commercial enterprises; they must sell in order to turn a profit, and they must please their customers in order to sell.  And since the overwhelming majority of those who purchase porn are male, it should come as no surprise that the product which sells best is that which appeals most strongly to male fantasies…especially our old bugaboo, the wanton woman with the uncontrollable hunger for sex.  This strange creature infests porn to the virtual exclusion of all other female imagery, and as a result an entire generation of young men has come of age believing the same thing as their ancestors did for the past several millennia, that many if not most women are really sex-starved no matter what we pretend in public.  Nor have the feminists helped in this regard; the “pro-sex” feminists, in their headlong rush to eradicate any and every distinction between the sexes, encourage young women to seek out casual sex as men do whether they actually want it or not, and the neofeminists’ insistence on interpreting any and every male behavior as symptomatic of “patriarchal oppression” results in their attacking porn, prostitution, stripping and any other service which caters to men’s sexual needs as vehemently as any 19th century “purity” crusader ever did.  So, the “pro-sex” feminists unwittingly reinforce the age-old fallacy of the “lustful woman,” while the neofeminists screech that any heterosexual act which is initiated by the man or even pleases him is somehow “demeaning” to all women.  I’m not even going to try to discuss what impact all these contradictory messages have on society at large; even considering it makes my head hurt.  But what I can do is to tell you a little about how this affects working girls and escort service owners.

Every whore who has seen more than one client in her career has encountered the stereotype that we enter this profession because we’re “horny” and “slutty”.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked if I would like to “hang out” (and provide more sex, obviously) with a client after completing a call; this naïve request obviously springs from his belief that I just couldn’t get enough and would therefore be happy to spend my off-time in bed with a stranger.  Others believe the exact opposite, that all whores are “frigid” and our careers are actually quests to find that one man who can arouse us; presumably the money is merely a fringe benefit.  The neofeminists also ignore the commercial gain, and claim that we’re all poor brainwashed victims of the almighty Patriarchy who allow ourselves to be “exploited” because we were “damaged” by childhood sexual abuse; whores who experienced no such abuse are claimed to be “in denial” or suffering from “repressed memories.” And so on, and so on, ad absurdum.

But the strangest symptom of the general ignorance about women’s sexuality is the persistent myth of the female customer, the woman who is so desperate for sex that she’s willing to pay a man for it.  Hollywood loves to perpetuate this one, and not a month passed that I didn’t get a call from some guy who wanted to work as a male escort catering solely to women.  Despite the fact that my ad clearly stated “female escorts,” I always took the time to explain to these fantasy-addled men that the only way for male prostitutes to actually make a living is to see men; I was generally met with incredulity and I’m sure a number of them only called another service after hanging up with me.  They just couldn’t get it through their thick skulls that WOMEN DON’T NEED TO PAY FOR IT.  This obvious fact even seems occasionally to escape the minds of people who should know better, because every so often somebody announces that she’s going to open a brothel or escort service featuring male prostitutes who cater strictly to women.  The service opens to great fanfare, then within a few months either closes or starts accepting male customers.  A friend of mine who owned a male stripper service in addition to his escort service eventually had to stop offering so-called “bachelorette parties” because none of his boys would do them anymore.  The reason they gave?  “Women are lousy tippers and they’re more interested in the buffet than the dancers.”  Even the professional “all male revue” strippers generally travel unless they’re in really big cities, which are also the only places a few male prostitutes who refuse homosexual trade can eke out a living; they profit by the Law of Very Big Numbers, which states that given sufficient opportunity even a rarity becomes a certainty .

Yes, there are a few women out there who will pay for no-strings sex with a man (the gigolo is an entirely different phenomenon because what he sells is the illusion of romance), but unless you live in a place where several million people are crowded together I wish you luck in finding one.  In all the years I owned a service I never once had a serious inquiry for a man from a lone woman, and the other service owners with whom I was friendly had the same experience.  We had drunk coeds calling on dares, crackheads with no money and the occasional psychotic, but no actual customers.  Twice in my career I was hired by a lone married woman seeking a lesbian encounter; couple calls I’ve already discussed at length, and on a few occasions (in several years) we had calls from men who hired other men to screw their wives while they watched.  And that’s it.

Really, how could it be otherwise?  Every attractive woman gets offers all the time, and if she goes into a bar she practically has to beat them off with a stick; even less-attractive girls need only wait around until most of the guys put on their “beer goggles.”  And if even ugly girls can get it for free, why in the world should any woman pay for it other than to experiment or to prove a point (neither of which occurs with remotely the frequency or dependability of the male sexual urge)?  Yet the myth persists, despite its incredibility; now, as for most of human history, many men’s egos are so invested in the idea that women need sex as much or more desperately than they do that they simply cannot bring themselves to acknowledge a fact which should be as obvious as the sun in the sky.

And they say we’re the irrational ones.

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