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June Q & A

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, Q & A, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 30, 2011| 12 Comments »

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.  –  Friedrich Nietzsche

It’s time once again for me to answer reader questions!  If you have one of your own, please email it to me and I’ll be happy to answer you to the best of my ability.

I wondered could you give me a quick definition of archeofeminism and how it differs from neofeminism?

What I call “archeofeminism” is the exact opposite of “neofeminism”.  “Archeofeminism” (from the Greek “archeo-” meaning “old”) is the recognition that men and women are already socially equal by nature, and the only way in which we become socially unequal is by the actions of laws.  Archeofeminists recognize that men and women are by our very natures different; we think differently, act differently and want different things, so though it’s good for a society to say “individuals can pursue whatever path they like,” it’s stupid to expect that large numbers of women will ever want to act and live like men, and forcing people to pretend otherwise is tyranny.

“Neofeminism” (from the Greek “neo-” meaning “new”) is the belief that there are no natural behavioral differences between the sexes and that all gender (other than genital dimorphism) is “socially constructed”.  Neofeminists believe that if infant boys were “socialized” in the same way as girls they would act exactly like girls, even into manhood.  Furthermore, since neofeminists don’t believe in sex differences they believe the female standard of behavior is the only “right” one, and that male behavior is therefore pathological.  Paradoxically, they also believe that power systems arising from natural male behaviors (such as corporate and professional hierarchies and externalized validation) are preferable to less competitive female norms, and that women “should” seek externalized achievement, competition and validation as men do.  The upshot of all this is that they advocate the brutal legal suppression of all traditional gendered behavior, whether public or private; they believe that women who make their livings by traditional female paths such as sex work or marriage should be forced into male-like careers, and that sex should be entirely controlled by the state so as to promote neofeminist ideas of “equality”.  Ultimately, most of them would probably like to see the development of parthenogenesis so that men can be entirely eradicated.

Since you’re a former sex worker and current wife I’m interested in your take on the “Obedient Wives Club”, a bunch of wives who blame high divorce rates and the like on wives not satisfying their husbands.  They’re obviously a fringe group, but I get the sense they’re getting at something real.  How many husbands with neo-feminist influenced wives are unhappy?

In some aspects of their beliefs they’re in the general vicinity of something real, while in others they’re pretty distant.  It’s obviously a dramatic overstatement to claim that “all” male-female issues are the fault of rebellious wives; if couples took the trouble to find out what each needed from the other and to clearly set forth their expectations and make honest compromises and realistic promises, there would be a lot fewer unhappy marriages.  IMHO a lot of the dissatisfaction and unhappiness of modern women derives from neofeminist teachings, specifically the ones which concentrate on a woman’s “rights” in a marriage while pretending that the man has none, the denial that relationship sex is transactional, and the refusal to accept that most men are by nature dominant and tend to feel unhappy and restless if they feel their lives are out of control.  A wife who constantly argues about everything and insists that even the smallest details of domestic arrangements be negotiated (except for sex, over which she retains absolute control) is going to make her husband miserable…and usually herself as well.

I’m sure you’ve read about how transsexuals and closeted homosexuals are usually unhappy as teenagers; they have far higher suicide rates than other adolescents and their early relationships are nearly always troubled.  Why?  Because they’re trying to be something they’re not.  When one is forced by social pressure to conform to a mode of behavior at odds with one’s guts, one is bound to be miserable and to make others miserable as well.  Certainly there are some women who really do prefer to “wear the pants” in a relationship, or who really do enjoy discussing everything to death, but the majority of women are unconsciously disappointed when their husbands allow them to run all over them, and it rots the relationship from within.  This is because most women are attracted to strength and competence in men, and find male weakness and submissiveness repulsive.  The neofeminists claim that’s due to “social construction of gender”, but tell that to lions, bears, elephants and most other mammals.  Most women who try to convince themselves that they don’t want a strong man, and indeed tell every man within earshot the same thing, are miserable if they get what they claim to want and miserable if they don’t because their minds and their spirits are going north and south.  This does not mean I believe this club is right in espousing unquestioning obedience; though some women can handle that sort of relationship and even thrive in it, it isn’t for everyone.  Most women absolutely do want their voices to be heard and their wishes considered; they just don’t want a spineless wimp.

For the sexual part, they’re pretty close to the mark, though they again assign too much weight to the woman’s behavior.  Men crave sexual variety, so even if a wife gives a man everything he wants in bed he may still stray, and if he does so she had better hope he goes to one of those prostitutes the club hopes to drive out of business rather than some available bit of amateur tail.  I do think that most men’s need for variety can be satisfied by sexual experimentation and fantasy inside the marriage, though, and that a wife who gives a husband what he wants in bed as often as he wants it, dramatically increases the chance for a happy, fulfilling marriage for both parties.

I haven’t had very many sexual relationships in my life, and have become so used to masturbation that I can’t have orgasms with other people.  I would very much like to be able to orgasm with my girlfriend, but haven’t been able to yet; do you think that a professional sex worker could teach me to have an orgasm with a partner?

I think it’s certainly possible that an experienced pro might be able to teach you, but of course it depends on your finding the right one.  I suspect your problem might be due to performance anxiety, which means a man worrying that he won’t do a good job, that his partner will be unsatisfied or even look down on him (especially if he climaxes too quickly).  Men who suffer from this worry so much that they often can’t climax at all, which is much worse than coming quickly!  The main cause of the problem (which is far more common than it used to be) is that men are constantly bombarded with the ridiculous idea that women just want to be pounded for hours, and that if the man orgasms too quickly the woman is angry.  While in many cases that may be true to a degree, what men think is “too quickly” and what is really too quickly are two different things; as long as a man can keep going for five minutes, that’s plenty for most girls no matter what porn tells you (especially if he gives her plenty of foreplay).  Many women can’t even achieve orgasm from intercourse at all, and for those oral or manual stimulation is much more important than an interminable simulation of a piston in a cylinder.

The reason a good pro might help is that you don’t have to care about her satisfaction; she is there to help you with YOUR needs, and therefore you can orgasm any time you like without having to worry as you might with a woman you love.  It may take a few sessions before you can achieve orgasm with an escort, and you’ll have to decide for yourself whether several sessions with one girl or with different girls might be better (my instinct is toward the latter because you don’t really want to get too comfortable with one woman; the idea is for her to be a stranger).  If I’m right, once you are able to orgasm with a woman you should be able to achieve it with your girlfriend because the mental block will be broken.  It’s certainly worth a try, and if it doesn’t work you can always try a sex therapist.  The most important thing is that you don’t get discouraged; if your anxieties are causing the problem, the more you worry the worse it will get.

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March Q & A

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 31, 2011| 74 Comments »

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer. –  Bruce Lee

Another monthly collection of (I hope) helpful answers to questions posed by curious readers.

How do you expose a gay man pretending to be a woman on a chat site?

Well, first of all, not every man pretending to be a woman on a chat site is gay.  As I discussed in my column of November 14th, some are trolls or “geeks” desperate for attention, others are cops or injustice perverts trying to trick people, and many are probably just horny guys trying to create interactive porn stories they can wank themselves to. But no matter what the motivation, a guy is a guy and will tend to act and think like a guy despite his best efforts to disguise himself.  It’s a pretty safe bet that any chat-room “woman” you get a really strange “vibe” from is probably a man, and if “she” wants to start talking about sex right away or asks you to describe or send pictures of your penis, you’re almost certainly talking to a guy.

But let’s assume your cyberdrag aficionado is practiced enough to avoid such rookie mistakes; how can you tell then?  Well, you could ask questions that real women can answer easily but men tend to have trouble with, like bust size; confused by porn and men’s magazines, guys will often combine a bust measurement with a cup size to create hybrids like “42D”, which would be the bra size of a rather big woman.  The relationship between measurements and dress size is also a mystery to most men; if your self-proclaimed “hot babe” claims to be busty but supposedly wears a size 2 dress, it’s either a guy or a fat woman with a really low opinion of your intelligence.  Just for comparison, I’m 5’5” tall and 132#, wear a 34DDD bra, my waist is 25” and my hips are 36”, and I wear about a size 7 if the dress is cut loose or made with spandex, 9 if it’s tight or of stiffer fabric.  There are others, but obviously you might just be a “cyberqueen” yourself trying to trick me into giving you a checklist.  Your best bet is just to pay attention to conversational style, which is hard to fake.

In the comments for my February Q & A column Americanus wrote, “It’s very nice to see women giving such great advice on blow jobs.  It may sound selfish but I certainly would be open to advice on how to improve on oral from my end as well.”

The single most important piece of sexual advice I can give a man is “pay attention”.  Most women are very sensitive to our partners’ feelings and often aren’t entirely honest about what we like for fear of bruising male egos; we thus tend to remain silent when we don’t like something because the truth is often greeted with the sort of hurt look one sees on the face of a kicked dog.  So we fake orgasms, endure bad oral sex and suggest changing positions to escape activities which have become intolerable.  And even if you have unusually high self-esteem and can accept the sexual criticism most men cannot, your partner may not know that and probably won’t risk finding out.  But there’s a way to break the cycle:  don’t listen to her words, pay attention to her reactions.  As you try your favorite oral technique on her, watch and listen for sounds of pleasure and arousal; if you don’t see them, try something else until you hit on something that seems to work better.  Do more of whatever she seems to like and less of whatever she seems to dislike or not care about, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly your technique improves.  Ladies, this works in reverse as well; most men will unconsciously pick up on such cues, so make sure you visibly and/or audibly react to things you like so as to encourage them, and go quiet and still for things you dislike so as to discourage them.  This lets him know your preferences without the risk of hurting his feelings, and has the advantage of letting him think the changes in technique are his idea.

A few dos and don’ts are in order, though; guys, the most sensitive part of a woman’s sexual anatomy is the clitoris, not the vagina.  Licking and (if it’s large enough) sucking on the clit will accomplish a lot more than trying to stick your tongue inside her or lapping her vulva like a dog drinking from a bowl.  Some women’s clits are so sensitive they cannot stand to have them directly touched; if your lady is like that just work though the hood.  In other cases (including yours truly) the clitoral hood is so thick that unless it’s moved you won’t accomplish anything; this is a prime example of the need for paying attention.  Finally, remember that the entire area is very sensitive; a stubbly face rubbed or ground into a woman’s crotch can be acutely painful.

Though there are a few constants, different women like different things so there is no substitute for learning your partner’s individual preferences.  And I suspect we’ll get a demonstration of that over the next few days as my female readers chime in on what they enjoy best in oral technique.

Recently, a guy started a thread on ECCIE in which he asked why mature escorts are still interested in sex while so many middle-aged women aren’t.  He asked if they used hormones or special exercises or anything like that.  What’s your opinion on the subject?

Don’t tell me, let me guess:  The thread was full of escorts talking about how “horny” they are all the time.  I really don’t know why guys start threads like that on hooker boards; do they actually expect honest answers, or are they just looking for fantasy material?  If any of those women answered honestly it could adversely affect her business; most men prefer to embrace the myth of the wanton than to acknowledge the uncomfortable reality that escorts have sex for money, not because they’re nymphos who want nothing better than to jump into bed with an endless series of (often unappealing) strangers.  Obviously, escorts are generally more open to sex than many amateurs or else they wouldn’t be very successful, but for the most part the reason they’re more “interested” than wives is that their livelihoods depend on it.  In defense of the wives, I must point out that if their husbands flattered and pursued them like they do whores the wives might feel (and act) a whole lot sexier.  Of course, the average high-dollar hooker puts forth a lot more effort to be sexy than the average wife, so it cuts both ways.  If both husbands and wives tried a little harder, their sex lives might not go south quite as badly.  As for the hormone thing, I already discussed that on February 5th.

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A Moral Cancer

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 6, 2011| 13 Comments »

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. –  H.L. Mencken

Moralists are never afraid to pronounce that all manner of social ills and personal problems derive from sex (though many of them are magically rendered harmless through a spell cast by a priest after purchasing a sacred scroll from the Holy State).  But there is another, much larger group we might call crypto-moralists; they avoid words like “sin” and eschew religious rhetoric, and may not recognize their own moralism even if confronted with it.  Such people are always (perhaps unconsciously) looking for ways to prove that vices really are objectively “bad”; they delight in cirrhosis and emphysema, secretly love syphilis and AIDS and pore over each new “discovery” about the deleterious health effects of good-tasting foods with the same rapt attention as a normal person might read a letter from his accountant informing him that his taxes had decreased.  And when they encounter some connection between an illness and a sexual activity they can’t resist slanting the story to blame the activity rather than the lack of prophylactic measures, which is rather like blaming a person’s choking on the type of food consumed rather than on his eating it too quickly.

These are the sorts of thoughts which passed unbidden through my mind when I recently read this article from USA Today which essentially claims that blow jobs cause cancer:

There’s a worrisome uptick in the incidence of certain head and neck cancers among middle-aged and even younger Americans, and some experts link the trend to a rise in the popularity of oral sex over the past few decades.  That’s because the human papillomavirus (HPV) is a major trigger for these cancers, and HPV can be transmitted through this type of sexual activity.  “It seems like a pretty good link that more sexual activity, particularly oral sex, is associated with increased HPV infection,” said Dr. Greg Hartig…[of] the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine…

According to Dr. William Lydiatt…of…the University of Nebraska Medical Center…the overall incidence of head and neck cancers is going down, largely because fewer people are smoking…but the incidence of cancers of the tonsil and base of the tongue have been going up over the past decades…and those are the ones that are more likely to test positive for HPV.  “It’s gotten to the point now where 60 to 70% of all tonsil cancers in the U.S. are HPV-related,” Lydiatt said.

Although the link between HPV and these types of cancers is indisputable, the association with oral sex is strong but a little more speculative…A 2007 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that younger people with head and neck cancers who tested positive for oral HPV infection were more likely to have had multiple vaginal and oral sex partners in their lifetime.  In the study, having six or more oral sex partners over a lifetime was associated with a 3.4 times higher risk for [these]…cancers…having 26 or more vaginal-sex partners tripled the risk…cancers of the tonsil and base of the tongue have been increasing every year since 1973, and…”widespread oral sex practices among adolescents may be a contributing factor in this increase.”

Because, you know, it couldn’t have anything at all to do with “virginity pledges” which increase the chance teens will engage in oral sex without looking for signs of STDs or using condoms because those topics aren’t covered in their “abstinence-only sex education”.  And it certainly couldn’t be blamed on the fact that a vaccine for HPV has been out for years, but parents aren’t letting their daughters receive it because only “bad girls” need to prevent venereal diseases (which is also why the STD rate is five times as high among university students as among streetwalkers).

…So does the increase in incidence mean that recent generations are having more sex than their grandparents?  “The general consensus on the street is that because people’s (sexual) practices have changed over time, we’re seeing an increase in these cancers,” said Hartig.  “I don’t know why they’re having more oral sex (but) the concept of having oral sex is something that seems less obscure to you than it did to your parents or grandparents.”

“The thought would be that the baby boomers — the ’60s and early ’70s generation — probably had more freedom in sexual relationships in general, including oral sex,” added Dr. Bert W. O’Malley Jr…[of] the University of Pennsylvania.  And at least in terms of oral sex, that appears true for those younger than boomers.  The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that, in 2002, some 90% of males and 88% of females aged 25 to 44 reported ever having oral sex…comparable figures from 1992 showed that about three-quarters of men aged 20 to 39 and closer to 70% of women aged 18 to 59 having ever given or received oral sex.

Why does every generation want to believe it invented sex?  Anybody who thinks that oral sex was “obscure” to his parents and grandparents is living in a fantasy world.  If your grandmother was upper-class and educated at a private all-girl school it was almost certainly obscure to her, but you can bet your grandfather knew about it.  And if your grandmother was working class or middle class and/or attended public school, especially a coed public school, so did she.  Suffering Sappho, some of my generation’s grandparents were in high school or university during the “Roaring Twenties”; if you believe they were less aware of oral sex than you are, you need to read more about that era.

But if the rate at which teenagers engage in it has really increased since 1992, doesn’t that mean something?  Sure it does; good ol’ “abstinence only sex education” started in 1992 and really took off in 1996.  But obviously preaching abstinence and denying information on birth control can’t possibly be the cause, so let’s blame…the internet!  Yeah, that must be it!  The internet causes oral sex, which causes cancer, therefore the internet causes cancer.  Q.E.D.

The silver lining is that the HPV-related head and neck cancers are eminently more treatable than those attributable to smoking or drinking, even though they tend to be diagnosed at a later stage…about 85% of non-smoking people with HPV-positive tumors survive…and tongue and tonsil cancers remain relatively rare in the United States.  The other good news — at least for the younger set — is that there is a relatively new vaccine to prevent against HPV infection.  It’s not going to help those who are already infected, but it…could help those who aren’t yet infected with the ubiquitous virus.

Of course, the part about how even with the “uptick” this type of cancer is both rare and highly treatable, and especially the part about it being preventable, has to wait for the very end of the article.  After all, we wouldn’t want to do anything that might interfere with our attempt to blame teen sex for a cancer epidemic that doesn’t actually exist.

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February Q & A

Posted in Call types, Miscellaneous, Q & A, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 28, 2011| 32 Comments »

No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious. –  George Bernard Shaw

My monthly dip into the electronic mailbag for questions from my readers.

Maggie, I live in (an American city), do you know someone who works here?  I don’t know how to find someone like you.  Can you tell me how?

Most of the escorts I’ve known personally lived in New Orleans, and because there’s a fairly high turnover in our profession I probably couldn’t help you directly even for that city.  I can give you some general pointers, though.  You can always go to the phone book for an escort service, but nowadays unless you’re in a rush you’re probably better off going to the internet.  Eros Guide is a popular escort advertising site, but it’s mostly limited to larger urban areas so if you’re not in one of those it’s not very much good.  If you Google “escorts” and the name of your city you’ll see ads for escort service sites there, and of course there’s Backpage; the disadvantage of that site is that, though some quality girls advertise there, there are also a large percentage of part-timers and very low-end escorts.  Your best option if you’re patient is probably a hooker board; there are a number of large ones such as The Erotic Review, Big Doggie and ECCIE which vary in popularity in different parts of the United States, plus a whole host of smaller regional ones.  Besides the escort ads, there are also customer-generated reviews of most of the girls which will give you an idea what to expect from them.

The disadvantage of both escort boards and Backpage is that cops can find them just like you can, and can create fake escort ads on Backpage or fake client profiles on the boards in order to further their usual sleazy attempts to victimize hookers and/or customers.  Big Doggie was the subject of a major sting a few years ago and Montgomery County, Maryland infested TER last year, so use caution and only contact established escorts with a number of reviews.

Would you please give us a few pointers on how to perform oral sex on a man?

I think I can do this without being pornographic; at least I’ll give it a try!  The problem most women have with fellatio lies in the unconscious assumptions they make about it, and if you correct those mistaken assumptions you’ll be well on your way to a professional performance with very little instruction from me or anyone else.  The two most important things to remember are: 1) Your mouth is not a vagina; and 2) A man’s penis is analogous to a woman’s clitoris.

The first one may seem obvious, but it’s apparently not; I’ve done enough couple calls and two-girl calls to see a lot of really amateurish blow jobs.  Now, I have heard many guys say “there is no such thing as a bad blow job,” and though I believe them I also recognize that there’s a vast spectrum of experience between “not bad” and “fantastic” and if you didn’t want to be closer to the “fantastic” end you wouldn’t have asked the question.  Though both mouth and vulva have lips, only those on the face have the power of volitional movement, and the vagina has neither tongue nor teeth (legends of vagina dentata notwithstanding).  From a mechanical standpoint and psychological considerations aside, if you aren’t using your lips, tongue and (very gently) teeth you might as well just be doing cowgirl.

Most of my readers probably knew about the second factor as well, but let’s look at what it really means from a practical standpoint.  All fetuses have a “sex button” which, if exposed to testosterone, develops into a penis.  But from a neurological standpoint, this development is a lot like blowing up a balloon; the number of nerves doesn’t change, they’re just stretched over a larger area.  Compared to the clitoris, the nerve density in the shaft of a man’s penis is actually pretty low; the area of highest comparable nerve density is in the glans penis, or “head”.

Given these facts I think you can figure out for yourself what’s wrong with the typical woman’s technique.  She uses her mouth as though it were a mobile vagina, forgetting she has lips, a tongue and teeth (the latter often to her male companion’s great chagrin), and she spends most of her time stimulating the least sensitive part of the penis.  Start by concentrating on the “head”, using the lips and tongue, and paying attention to his reactions; do more of whatever gets a good reaction and less of whatever gets little reaction.  The well-known bobbing motion is good later in the process, but it’s a mid-game maneuver rather than the whole thing as many women seem to believe.  Don’t worry about deep throat or other fancy maneuvers; you can learn those later.  Concentration on using the right part of your anatomy on the right part of his is at least 80% of the secret.

Why do so many more escorts kiss nowadays?  It used to be pretty rare.

There are also more who will do Greek and more who will allow unprotected oral sex to completion.  We started to see that in the last decade as escort review sites became steadily more common; many escorts wanted something which would set them apart from the competition.  But the trend really took off just over two years ago when the economy went belly-up; a lot of part-timers lost their regular jobs and therefore needed to bring in more money from hooking, and a lot of amateurs who had never before directly asked for cash flooded into Craigslist and Backpage. The amateurs had no sense of appropriate professional conduct and the part-timers were desperate to make up the difference from their lost jobs, and so they started to offer things which, while not extremely dangerous like unprotected intercourse, were nonetheless more personal and “edgy” than what had been the norm even as recently as 2007.  And once that happened even many full-time professional escorts were forced to change their policies in order to remain competitive.  The good news is that (judging by the chatter on hooker boards) there is still almost universal censure of the rare, desperate whore who will offer bareback full service; let’s hope it stays that way.

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Crime Against Society

Posted in Current Events, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on February 26, 2011| 24 Comments »

Simply put, commission of what the Legislature determines as an immoral act, even if consensual and private, is an injury against society itself.  –  Judge Chet Traylor, in the majority opinion for State vs. Smith (2000)

In my column of August 17th I wrote about Louisiana’s tyrannical “Crime Against Nature” law and the New Orleans Police Department’s evil game of charging prostitutes under this law so they can be persecuted for at least a decade by inclusion on “sex offender” registries. Since escorts can usually afford lawyers to arrange plea bargains to avoid the “sex offender” status, those convicted under the law are nearly all streetwalkers and the overwhelming majority of them are black or transsexual. The column also discussed Women With a Vision (WWAV), an organization whose “No Justice Project” is dedicated to overturning the convictions of these women so they can begin the process of reclaiming the lives destroyed by the so-called “justice” system.  Well, on February 17th regular reader Joyce sent me a link to this story which appeared in the Times-Picayune the day before:

People who must register as sex offenders because they were convicted of engaging in oral or anal sex for money filed a lawsuit against state officials last night [February 15th], arguing the requirement is unconstitutional and discriminatory.  Only in Louisiana can people convicted of selling their bodies be required to register as a sex offender, according to the lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights…The registration requirement only affects people prosecuted under the state’s “crime against nature by solicitation” law, which is used when a person is accused of engaging in oral or anal sex in exchange for money.  People accused of prostitution, which includes any sex act, are not required to register…

The lawsuit was filed anonymously, but describes the difficulty the plaintiffs have experienced obtaining work and finding housing because they are registered sex offenders.  In Louisiana, the driver’s license of a registered sex offender is inscribed with those words in bright orange letters…[they also] appear in a state database and must notify neighbors of their legal status…attorneys for the plaintiffs said the registration requirement erects “insurmountable barriers” to people who are trying to restart their lives.  In New Orleans, nearly 40 percent of the people registered as sex offenders are on the registry because of a “crime against nature” conviction.  The label…often keeps people from being able to access drug treatment or domestic violence services, said Deon Haywood, director of Women With A Vision…”The toll it takes is devastating,” Haywood said about the registration requirements.  “They did what they did to survive and put food on the table.”

Louisiana is the only state that has separate laws depending on what kind of sex acts a prostitute engages in…The Legislature in the last session changed the penalties for “crime against nature by solicitation” to make the first offense a misdemeanor, which matches the potential sentence for first-offense prostitution.  Previously, a first conviction of “crime against nature” was a felony.  But while a person convicted of prostitution is not required to register as a sex offender, a defendant convicted repeatedly of “crime against nature by solicitation” would have to…plus, people who were convicted…before last year, when the law was changed, still must remain on Louisiana’s sex offender registry…all of the other offenses that require registration…involve some kind of force, coercion, or exploitation of a minor…[such as] rape, aggravated kidnapping of a child or prostitution of a person under 17.

I’m not sure what their chances of winning are; Louisiana has a long history of aggressively repelling all challenges to its 205-year-old sodomy law.  Even after Lawrence vs. Texas struck down all such laws in the United States in June of 2003, the state doggedly held onto its “crime against nature” statute unchanged for a year until a judge specifically invalidated portions of it, leaving intact provisions for prosecuting homosexual groups and those “promoting prostitution”.  Also, Louisiana is the only state to have (since 1982) a separate law criminalizing “Crime Against Nature by Solicitation”, and since this law only applies to prostitutes it remained unaffected by  Lawrence vs. Texas despite being clearly rooted in the same unconstitutional and discriminatory motivations.  However, this is the first challenge in federal court, which could make a big difference.

A week ago yesterday (February 18th) I called Lorie Seruntine, my contact at WWAV, to ask what part the organization had played in organizing the lawsuit (since the news story doesn’t really make it clear), and she explained that WWAV had contacted the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Loyola University Law Clinic and presented the requests for help they had received from the many women involved in the No Justice Project; the case is thus the culmination of about two years of work by WWAV on behalf of these severely oppressed women.  Lorie told me that everyone in the program, both staff and members of the community, is very excited about the case and the attention it has attracted in the national media.  She furthermore let me know that a long-anticipated revamp of the WWAV website had been completed and asked me to provide a link; observant readers may have noticed its appearance in the “Resources” box in the right-hand column last Friday.

Of course the filing of the case is only the beginning of the fight, and WWAV, the attorneys and the plaintiffs have a long and arduous fight ahead.  But regardless of the outcome of the case, you can be sure that WWAV will continue to fight the good fight; Lorie assured me that the organization has developed other strategies toward defeating this terrible law in the event that the court continues the long Louisiana tradition of allowing the government to invade people’s bedrooms and dictate their private activities.

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January Q & A

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Q & A, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 31, 2011| 10 Comments »

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer. –  Jacob Bronowski

It’s time for another round of questions sent in by my readers; if you have a question for me please send it to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net and I’ll answer it next month.

You mentioned in one of your blogs you’re not a big fan of either  cunnilingus or analingus, why is that?  I’ve had women tell me that they can’t relax enough because they are worried about how they smell down there, is that a major concern for some women?

Actually, I like analingus on me just fine; I just refuse to do it to a man.  I don’t care for cunnilingus for the simple reason that I can’t usually climax that way; once in a blue moon somebody puts enough pressure on the clit to accomplish it but generally not.  And even when it works it’s totally unsatisfying for me, like the “junk food” of sex; I just don’t really feel satisfied unless I’m penetrated, so I could never be an exclusive lesbian no matter how much I like girls.  As for the second part of your question…oh, definitely!  Even with my experience, and despite the thousands of times I’ve been told how sweet I taste, it still makes me tense until I’m sure the guy is really getting into it.  You have to understand how paranoid women are about hygiene, and those who watch too many TV commercials are even worse.

You mentioned once that you had electrolysis on your bikini line; is that hair permanently gone or do you need to touch up down there?

Those who saw my picture on December 17th probably noticed that my skin is extremely fair and my hair rather dark; this is a deadly combination because even when one shaves one’s legs, the stubble is clearly visible under the skin.  As a teenager I existed in a permanent state of mortification over this issue; I had no aversion to miniskirts because I just wore hose with them, but informal shorts were out and so was daytime swimming (though I loved pool parties after dark).  So in my early twenties I decided to start experimenting with other means of hair removal.  I had already discovered Nair did absolutely nothing for me, nor did any other common depilatory, so I tried the stronger ones and left them on for twice the suggested length; I got chemical burns on my skin but the hair stubbornly remained.  I tried sugaring (which worked great but was expensive and time-consuming), home waxing (ditto) and this crazy mitt thing that was supposed to rub the hair off, but none of it really satisfied me.

Then I discovered that boon to womankind, the epilator, a device which looks sort of like an electric shaver but has a rotating head covered with little tweezers; one runs it over one’s legs and it literally plucks the hairs out by the roots.  They take quite a while to grow back and when they do they’re finer and lighter.  The first time I ever used the epilator I was smart enough to do it one day after shaving my legs, so the hairs were very short; I did it twice the first week and then once per week ever since.  The first time it was very uncomfortable (some might say a bit painful but I have a high threshold of pain), the third time only slightly uncomfortable, and by the fifth or sixth week I barely felt it.  I was (and still am) absolutely delighted with it; after 15 years of weekly use I no longer have any leg or arm hair to speak of, though I still epilate every Tuesday to clear off the peachfuzz my husband swears exists only in my imagination.

When I first started stripping I had electrolysis on my bikini line, eyebrows and underarms (I had so few hairs there to start with I just figured I’d get them permanently zapped).  Electrolysis is indeed permanent but since I still have hair along my labia I just get it with the epilator.  Since as you might expect that area is much more sensitive than my legs it was pretty painful the first half-dozen times, but as my Maman used to say “You have to suffer for beauty”.  And after all these years, I barely notice it any more unless I carelessly get too close to the remaining triangle of public hair; that, I notice.

I just heard about the “Video Vigilante”; is what this guy does legal? It seems like stalking if you ask me.

The soi-disant “Video Vigilante”, Brian Bates, is a perfect example of reaction formation; he is an Oklahoma City man who is so obsessed with streetwalkers that he has spent huge amounts of his time for the past 14 years driving around areas they frequent, videotaping men who try to pick them up and then turning the videos in to the cops as “evidence” and also posting them on his website “JohnTV”.  Clearly, this is not a mentally healthy person, but unfortunately under Oklahoma law his behavior is mostly legal because he videotapes events which occur in public.  A few years ago he was accused of paying streetwalkers to set up potential clients so he could tape them, but the charges were eventually dismissed because, though highly credible,  they appeared to be the result of a long-standing feud between Bates, the police and Oklahoma City District Attorney Wes Lane.

Other states have different rules about public videotaping by individuals; a number of them consider the act to be essentially similar to wiretapping and so apply the rules of consent which regulate the latter to the former as well.  Illinois’ wiretap law, the strictest in the country, requires both parties of a conversation consent to being recorded, and this also applies to videotaping.  That sounds wonderful until one realizes that it means videotaping occasions of police brutality is a felony unless the cop consents to the taping (hah!), and the city of Chicago has on a number of occasions charged bystanders and even victims with this law in order to prevent their actions being exposed publicly as has become so common in other states.

But in Oklahoma it’s business as usual for the Video Voyeur, who continues his weird antics to the present day and apparently only takes breaks to go on self-promotion tours and talk shows.

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December Q & A

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on December 28, 2010| 23 Comments »

The question you’re not supposed to ask is the important one. –  Mason Cooley

Our first question was posted in a new comment on an old post by a reader who resides in the Netherlands:  Just today, when we were coming back home from a restaurant, my 8-year-old daughter, out of the blue, asked: “Daddy, what’s a prostitute?”  Before I could answer, my mother-in-law (who went with me, my wife and my daughter to the restaurant) launched into a short description of the standard stereotype (“pariahs…” “dirty…” “horrible lives…” “bad women…”).  Since I don’t think it’s a good idea for adults to fight in front of children, I let her go and kept silent. I’m still thinking about what I should tell my daughter later on… and how long I should wait.  Any advice?

At her age, you might try something like this: “Sometimes men get lonely when they don’t have girlfriends, and a prostitute is a lady whose job is to keep them company for a little while so they won’t feel so lonely.” It’s inexact, but it covers the basics in terms an 8-year-old can grasp. I wouldn’t wait too long; since your mother-in-law has already said something you might explain that some people think prostitutes are bad because they think they’re trying to fool the men, but that isn’t really true.

If your daughter responds with something like “That sounds nice, I want to be a prostitute when I grow up,” you might say something like, “Well, it’s sometimes hard work, and some people might think you’re bad if you do it, so it’s probably best to wait until you’re grown up to think about that.”  After all, you wouldn’t want her going around telling people her daddy said she could be a prostitute when she grows up!

I don’t see escorts very often, but I treated myself the other day; she was a polite and reasonably attractive brunette, a little older than me.  Unfortunately she wasn’t very tight down there, so with a condom on it was hard to get any friction going to keep it hard. I was able to finish but it took A LOT of work on my part.  I’ve never experienced that with any woman before; I know each person is different but when you ran your own agency did you get complaints of  workers being “too loose”?

Everybody is indeed different, and some women are large to start with, but the degree of looseness you describe almost certainly resulted from having babies (especially if they were large or the births were difficult).  Contrary to popular belief no amount of intercourse can loosen a woman permanently like babies can, not even several times a day for years.  The lady you saw could probably have restored much of her tightness with Kegels exercises, and if that proved insufficient there is plastic surgery which can do the trick.  Either way, if she intends to stay in the business she probably should do something about the issue or she’s going to get more complaints than she might like.  I never received any complaints like that on any girl I employed, and certainly not on myself!  But then, I was small to start with, never had babies and perform my Kegels religiously.

I’m a new reader to your blog with a question, and I was just curious as to what you would define as a slut? Is a slut just a promiscuous woman who isn’t a whore or something else? Also, is a slut the same thing as a nymphomaniac?

I don’t really care for the term “slut” myself because I feel it’s both pejorative and imprecise, but if I were going to define it I’d say a “slut” is a woman who is promiscuous without a profit motive.  I think, however, that the average man uses it to mean any woman he wants to insult (regardless of her behavior) and the average woman uses it to mean any woman who is more promiscuous than she is!  Given that, I just don’t feel it’s a really useful term even if it weren’t so judgmental.

However you use it, though, a nymphomaniac is definitely something different; nymphomania is a psychological disorder which causes the sufferer to be obsessed with sex and to have a sex drive so high that it causes her distress and serious problems.  Nymphomaniacs are usually unable to maintain relationships for obvious reasons; the behavior is compulsive and thus results in trouble like any other compulsive behavior.  Therefore, you might say a nymphomaniac is to a slut what a kleptomaniac is to a thief and a pyromaniac is to an arsonist.  Incidentally, the term “nymphomania” applies only to women; the corresponding disorder in men is called “satyriasis”.

What does it mean on a escorts ad if it says willing to see basic plus one or two?

Preferred 411 (P411 for short) is a verification service which does a background check on its male members, so if you’re even a basic member girls know you aren’t a cop or other type of liar.  Whenever an escort member sees a client member she can give him an “okay”; the more “okays” the more girls he has seen who will vouch that he’s an acceptable client (not abusive or scary).  So “basic plus two” means she’ll only see a guy who has two or more okays.

My husband wants to try anal sex but I’m afraid it will hurt.  Is there a right way to do it so it doesn’t?

There sure is; you’ve got to relax.  Ask your man to follow your instructions exactly, and use plenty of lubrication (I don’t care what you’ve read, spit is NOT enough).  Make sure he’s rock-hard; semi-soft won’t work for anal.  Tell him to put it inside you just until you start feeling discomfort, then stop and hold it right there; this is the part where trust comes in, because a man’s natural instinct once he’s inside is to start stroking and if he does it will hurt you.  Remain in that position, breathe regularly, and calm yourself; within a minute or two your sphincter will relax and the discomfort will pass.  Then tell him to start stroking, slowly at first until you adjust to the feeling, then give him the go-ahead and tell him not to hold back.  This form of sex is VERY intense and you won’t want it for more than a few minutes.  Done correctly, it is very pleasurable for both partners and can be an interesting variation on your regular lovemaking.

A note to my male readers:  If your wife or girlfriend doesn’t want to try anal, don’t coerce her because if she gives in just to placate you she will NOT be able to relax and it will be a bad experience for both of you.  Tell her you would like it, ask her to consider it and even show her this column, but beyond that leave it alone.  If she agrees, follow her instructions exactly and don’t hold back once she tells you to start stroking, but climax as soon as the urge strikes you; anal sex is like cheesecake, best enjoyed in small servings.

Would you rather have a guy who was well endowed but so-so in bed or smaller but a studly lover?  I’ve always wanted to ask a lady who knew what she was talking about and I consider you a subject matter expert.

Thanks for the vote of confidence!  It’s hard to answer that because it really depends on so many factors.  I personally am not really a connoisseur of male sexual skills; I just enjoy being “screwed into the mattress” as Amanda Brooks says.  But many other women do appreciate technique.  Plus, if I’m in love with a man none of that matters two cents, and I’m not remotely alone in that opinion.  In the final analysis, only guys with really, really tiny cocks need to worry about the issue at all, and even a man like that could be compatible with a woman who loves cunnilingus above all else.

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Liar, Liar

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 13, 2010| 14 Comments »

Liar liar pants on fire, hanging from a telephone wire! –  Traditional children’s taunt

Poor, innocent Derrick Burts says he was misled by the porn industry; he claims that he was never really informed of the risks of sexually transmitted diseases and that he contracted HIV during oral sex in a gay porn shoot in Florida.  He claims that the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM) told him that they’d traced his infection to a “known positive” but wouldn’t tell him who it was, and denied AIM’s public statement that he contracted HIV through personal activity.  “That’s completely false,” Burts said Tuesday (December 7th );  “There is no possible way.  The only person I had sex with in my personal life was my girlfriend.”  He claims that AIM warned him against contacting the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), and that he only went (anonymously, of course) to an AHF center in Los Angeles on November 24th after AIM “neglected” him:  “AIM promised they would help me set up a doctor and get treatment,” he said.  “They did none of that.”  He claims that he never identified himself as “Patient Zeta” (the code name used to protect his privacy until he outed himself last Tuesday), but was so pleased with the care he received from AHF that he contacted the organization and offered to speak out in favor of mandatory condom use in porn:  “AIM likes to state that testing is enough.  That’s completely false,” he said, adding that before he tested positive for HIV he had also contracted chlamydia, gonorrhea and herpes.  “It’s very dangerous,” he said of adult film work.  “It should be required that you wear a condom on the set.”  All in all, he claims lots of things which might make established industry procedures look pretty bad…if he wasn’t such a poor liar.

Dick Butts rentboy adIn my column of December 9th I insinuated that Burts’ so-called “girlfriend” is actually a “beard”, slang for a woman used by a gay man who for some reason wishes to pass himself for straight; I also wrote, “His claim that AIM told him that he contracted HIV through oral sex (despite the fact that, as I have said before, there has never been a single documented case of oral HIV transmission) is even less credible than his claim…that he wasn’t screwing other guys outside of film sets.”  At the time, that was just an educated guess fueled by instinct; now I have proof thanks to this article published in the LA Weekly yesterday.  Behold the ad “Derek Chambers” (Burts’ gay porn stage name) placed on Rentboy, a gay escort site, in which he promises a “hott session” [sic] and boasts that he is “AIM tested”.  So much for “The only person I had sex with in my personal life was my girlfriend.”  Raise hands, who still believes he contracted HIV on a film set?  It’s pretty obvious that Burts is a conniving little liar whose dangerous off-camera choices endangered everyone he worked with, but when the piper’s bill arrived he tried to stick AIM with it.  And given AHF’s sleazy tactics and Burts’ proven disinclination toward veracity, does anyone believe that this coat-turning was as innocent and selfless as it was represented to be?

Governments, however, care nothing about truth and are perfectly happy to hop into bed with anyone who promises them even the smallest particle of increased power; AIM was shut down by California and Los Angeles County officials  the morning after Burts and AHF held their press conference.  The following is paraphrased from a story which appeared in the LA Weekly on Thursday (December 9th):

The Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM) was served with a cease and desist order today and Los Angeles County authorities shut it down, according to California public health spokesman Al Lundeen.  The shutdown comes on the heels of an HIV-positive performer’s outcry against the clinic and industry, though the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), who sponsored Burts’ press conference, claims there is no direct connection between the events:  “It truly is a coincidence that this took place the same day [sic] as Derrick Burts came forward to tell his story,” said Michael Weinstein, the president of AHF.

Steven Hirsch, founder of Vivid Entertainment (the country’s largest adult studio), said Vivid would continue with production despite AIM’s closure.  “We have been in contact with AIM and believe that the current situation is temporary and will be quickly remedied.  There are other alternatives that we can utilize in the meantime and will do so.  We believe the current system of testing works.  Our productions will proceed as scheduled.”

Lundeen confirmed this view, saying that AIM submitted an application for a state community clinic permit in June after the state told AIM officials that such a license was required.  He said the clinic’s application for a license was denied on Tuesday, but that the grounds for denial were a lack of proper paperwork, including a “transfer agreement” that would tell the state it had an agreement with an area hospital to accept patients it wasn’t qualified to treat.  Lundeen made it sound as if AIM would be up and running soon and that its denial was based on a minor technicality.  “We’re working with the facility to meet the requirements under the law as quickly as possible,” he said.

Michael Weinstein

But even if Weinstein and his group truly had nothing to do with AIM’s closure, he was quick to seize upon it to advance his agenda; he called on porn producers to shut down shoots while this mess is worked out, and insisted that the city’s film permitting organization, FilmLA, stop issuing permits to porn productions and that the county shut down all existing productions in the name of “safety.”  He especially demanded that the city of Los Angeles deny film permits to the biggest studios, including Vivid and Hustler.  “This is the touchstone moment,” he said. “This is the tipping point.  The adult film industry needs to be shut or use condoms starting today…the people who come out flagrantly and say we’re never going to use condoms, like Larry Flynt and Steven Hirsch, they should never issue permits to them,” Weinstein said.

The state requires technically does require porn performers to use condoms, but the industry has resisted because customers don’t like seeing them and California workplace health officials have said they don’t have the resources to enforce the law.  And while Burts claims he got HIV on-set, some people have come forward to note that he’s offered his services as a male escort.  The last HIV scare in porn, in 2004, happened when an actor claimed to have contracted the virus from a heterosexual film shoot outside of AIM’s testing protocols — in Brazil.  Some doubted that story as well.

If it’s true that AIM’s license was denied due to a technicality, why the grandstand play?  Was it really necessary to send cops to shut down a clinic due to incomplete paperwork?  Can any reasonable person believe that it was due to mere happenstance that an application pending since June just happened to come up for review the day a patient accused the clinic of wrongdoing, and that it was somehow in the public interest for Los Angeles County to ostentatiously humiliate AIM with third-world dictatorship tactics rather than simply having a secretary call them to say, “Hey, we need one more document to complete your application; can you fax that over today?”  It’s pretty obvious that decisions are being made behind the scenes which will strongly affect the industry, yet as so often happens with sex workers those who have the ear of authorities (in this case, AHF) presume to speak for us yet never bother to consult us about what we might actually want.  With this in mind, St. James Infirmary is hosting a community forum for adult film performers this Thursday night, with an eye toward giving them a voice in the process; though I doubt the state and county will be easily persuaded from the course they seem set upon, at least the lies of Burts, Weinstein and company won’t go completely unchallenged.

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Meretrices and Prostibulae

Posted in History, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 3, 2010| 20 Comments »

Blessed be they as virtuous, who when they feel their virile members swollen with lust, visit a brothel rather than grind at some husband’s private mill. –  Cato the Younger

We’ve all heard the “fun fact” about Eskimos having something like 20 different words for “snow”; since the stuff factors so importantly in their lives, it stands to reason that they would talk about it a lot and therefore require words with finer nuances than the few we have (snow, slush, powder, drift, etc).  But if the number of words for a concept says something about the importance of that concept to speakers of the language, we must conclude that the Romans were almost obsessed with whores.

Brothel fresco from Pompeii, 1st century

Prostitution was neither illegal nor stigmatized in ancient Rome, and in fact it was not unusual for an independent-minded upper-class woman to become a courtesan; when Augustus decided to encourage reproduction in the upper classes by taxing unmarried adult patricians, many women registered as whores so as to avoid being forced to marry.  This loophole was later closed by Tiberius; he simply banned women of senatorial rank from working as prostitutes.  But upper-class women of below that rank were otherwise free from the arbitrary regulations inflicted on their lower-class sisters, such as restrictions in the type of clothing they could wear or the hours in which they could do business.  They were even exempt from the law which required prostitutes to register (as were actresses, dancers and other part-time prostitutes).  But few if any lower-class harlots complied with the law because they could not afford the fees and taxes, and even many middle-class prostitutes chose to gamble by working unregistered, because once a woman’s name, family, birthplace and stage name were recorded in official records it could never be removed; besides, if she got caught a middle-class doxy could simply pay a bribe to be ignored.  Registered prostitutes were called meretrices and unregistered ones prostibulae (which as you can probably guess is the source of our word “prostitute”).  Meretrices were for the most part mid-range girls; both the more expensive and cheaper girls were all prostibulae.  But inside those broad categories were a bewildering variety of terms for whores, especially among the lower-class girls; today’s column is a kind of lexicon of these terms and those for a few other related concepts.

Acca Larentia:  A legendary courtesan of very early Rome who left her sizeable fortune to the Roman people and was later deified and revered in a festival called the Larentalia on December 23rd.  She was referred to as the “most noble whore” and was sometimes associated with  Lupa, the she-wolf who nursed Romulus and Remus.

Aedile:  The official whose duty was to register prostitutes and arrest those practicing without a license; since he and his men could usually be bribed with money or favors, he is the prototype of the sort of official pimp so common in European countries of later centuries.  The aedile’s only positive function from the whores’ point of view was that a meretrix could summon him to enforce payment from a customer who was trying to cheat her.

Aelicariae (“baker’s girls”):  Girls who worked outside the temple, selling both sexual favors and small cakes made in the shape of male or female genitalia for sacrifice to Venus or Priapus.

Amasiae:  Girls who whored part-time as a form of worship of Venus.

Ambubiae:  Professional singers, most of whom whored at least part-time.

Amica (“girlfriend”):  A prostitute who also saw female clients.

Ancillae ornatrices:  Maidservants who helped brothel-whores or courtesans to clean themselves, fix their hair and repair their makeup between customers.  Courtesans hired their own, while brothels supplied them for employees.

Aquarii (“water-boys”):  Boy servants in brothels who served wine and other refreshments in addition to carrying water for washing.

Blitidae:  Roman “B-girls”, hookers who worked in taverns and took their name from the cheap wine (blitum) sold there.

Bona Dea:  A goddess whose festivities included prostitutes engaging in public lesbian activity with one another.

Bustuariae:  Professional mourners who prostituted themselves in graveyards between funeral gigs.  They usually entertained their customers sitting on tombstones or lying on crypts.

Camp followers:  Roman “comfort women”, slave-prostitutes who were made to serve the Roman legions in their endless campaigns; these miserable women’s only relief from constant sex was when they were forced to cook, dress wounds, mend clothes or clean the camp.  Such a slave’s only hope for escape from endless exhaustion and degradation was to attract the eye of an officer who could buy her from the army for his personal use.

Casuaria:  Roadhouses, which nearly always had brothels in the back.

Ceres:  The grain-goddess (the word “cereal” derives from her name); though not specifically a whore-goddess, her clergy tolerated lower-class whores entertaining their clients in the porches and fornices.

Citharistriae:  Professional harpists, most of whom whored at least part-time.

Copae:  Serving-girls or slave-girls who whored on the side.

Cymbalistriae:  Whores who also hired themselves as cymbal-players.

Delicatae:  Courtesans from the middle class, some of whom were also actresses; see also famosae.

Diobolares:  Very cheap streetwalkers who charged only two obols (only twice the fee of an Athenian brothel-slave).

Diversorium:  A boarding-house which rented rooms to prostitutes.

Dorides:  The Roman equivalent of incall escorts, who advertised their services by standing naked in the doorways of their homes.

Famosae:  Courtesans from the upper classes; see also delicatae.

Fellatrix:  A whore who specialized in fellatio; most fellatrices worked in bath-houses.

Flora:  Another Roman goddess with a whore-aspect, sometimes associated with Acca Larentia.  She was honored with an elaborate public festival from April 28th-May 3rd; on the last day a group of prostitutes would strip and perform erotic dances until young men in the audience were enough overcome by lust to throw their clothes off and join the prostitutes in the arena for ritual public sex.

Forariae:  Country girls who plied their trade on rural roads.

Fornices:  The arches underneath large Roman buildings, in whose shadowy recesses many streetwalkers entertained their clients.  Our word “fornication” is derived from this practice.

Temple of Fortuna Virilis in Rome, 2nd century BCE

Fortuna Virilis:  A goddess popular with lower-class women, worshipped by dedicated acts of prostitution or bathing in men’s public baths (which were frequented by prostitutes).

Gallinae (“hens”):  Thief-prostitutes.  Some of these were extortionists, others practitioners of cash-and-dash and still others petty thieves; the most dangerous sort were actually just the girlfriends of robbers who lured men into traps.

Ganymede:  A homosexual god whose temple was used by male prostitutes just as Ceres’ temple was by female ones.

Isis:  An Egyptian goddess whose cult was wildly popular in the Roman Empire, especially among women; the cult may have had some sacred prostitutes but this is not certain.  In any case, her priestesses allowed streetwalkers who belonged to the cult to meet their clients in the temple much as Ceres’ priestesses did.

Leno:  A brothel-keeper (see lupanar).  A female brothel keeper or madam was a lena.

Lupae (“she-wolves”): Wandering streetwalkers who attracted clients by making wolf-cries.

Lupanar:  Brothel.  The cheap ones were staffed by slaves belonging to the leno, while the better sort simply rented rooms to meretrices who preferred not to work from their homes.  Under Roman law, brothels were only allowed to operate from 3 PM until dawn.

Mimae:  Mimes, nearly all of whom were at least part-time whores.

Noctiluae (“nightwalkers”): Streetwalkers who specialized in the very late hours.

Nonariae (“nine o’clock girls”):  Low-class meretrices whose limited licenses only allowed them to work from 9 PM until dawn.

Pergulae:  Balconies, on which high-class meretrices displayed themselves.

Proseda:  A meretrix who leased a room in a lupanar.

Quadrantariae:  Slave-whores whose fee was about ½ cent in American currency; though obviously this had a lot more buying power then, it was still a pitifully meager fee.

Scorta erratica:  Streetwalkers.

Scortum:  Strumpet; a general term for any low-class whore.

Stabula:  A brothel consisting of one large room where sex took place in full view of other patrons and whores.

Tabernae:  Bakeries.  Most bakers rented small cells in their cellars to streetwalkers (see also tugurium), but since these premises were frequently raided by aediles looking for unlicensed whores those who used them tried to get in and out as quickly as possible.  Bakers of course also supplied cakes to the aelicariae.

Tugurium:  A hut rented for an extremely low price to streetwalkers whose clients wanted greater privacy.

Turturillae (“pigeon houses”): Large pigeon coops in which some streetwalkers entertained clients; they were particularly favored by transvestite male prostitutes.

Venerii:  Harlot-priestesses of Venus who taught sexual techniques to courtesans; according to some authorities they practiced a spiritual discipline similar to Tantrism.

Venus Volgivava (“Venus the Streetwalker”):  An aspect of the goddess Venus, patroness of whores, whose festival was celebrated by prostitutes on April 23rd.

Vestal Virgins:  Though in later times these girls were literal virgins, in pre-republican times they were probably sacred prostitutes whose virginity was ritually reinstated at the close of their term of service so they could marry honorably.

Villicus:  The cashier at a brothel, who knew the skills and attributes of the various girls and answered customers’ questions.

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Scary Movies

Posted in Perception, The Dark Side, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 28, 2010| 26 Comments »

Pornography does not inspire violence, but you can break a leg trying to imitate it. –  Mason Cooley

Like most women, I don’t really care much for porn.  I have nothing against it in principle; I understand most guys like it and I consider neofeminist claims that all porn encourages violence against women to be ludicrous.  I’m just not as visually-stimulated as guys are; though I find some erotic pictures to be stimulating, I generally like stories better so porn movies without interesting stories tend to bore me.  My extensive sexual experience also makes me hypersensitive to fakery, so what passes for “acting” in most porn annoys me and the ridiculously unrealistic and unfeminine behavior of many of the actresses actually turns me off.  In addition to all this, I also understand firsthand how difficult some of the actions and positions are to achieve or maintain, which takes me out of the action and shatters my willing suspension of disbelief.

Let me give you an analogy; when you watch a movie or television show which involves some aspect of your profession, don’t you find yourself watching it with a far more critical eye than you might watch another program?  If there is a character who is supposed to be a member of your profession, don’t you unconsciously dissect everything that character says or does without even meaning to?  And if the situation, “facts” or character wanders too far from reality, doesn’t it tend to ruin your appreciation of the show because you just can’t ignore the mistakes?  If I watch a movie about doctors or scientists or detectives, I know that they’re making mistakes and diverging from reality, but because I’m not a doctor, scientist or detective I can ignore that because I don’t usually recognize the mistakes when I see them.  But since my business is sex, I understand it intimately; I know what’s comfortable or even possible and what isn’t, and I know how people tend to behave in real life.  So when movie trickery, camera angles and staged situations are used to make it look as though, say, a really punishing activity is going on for a tremendously long time, I automatically recognize that such tricks have been used and my mind pulls back out of it as abruptly as you might pull back when you see the zipper on the monster costume or the wires holding the spaceship model up.  And then there’s character motivation; when I see some porn chick get into a room with three strange guys I ask “why is she doing this?”  If they just included a scene where the men paid her I would enjoy it a lot more, though I understand it might have the opposite effect for guys.

Porno movies, like all movies, are fantasies, but since sex is a real-life activity some men seem unable to separate porn from reality where whores are concerned.  I really don’t know if most men try to act out things they see in porn with their wives or girlfriends because most of the porn available when I was dating (early to mid ‘80s) was pretty basic so there was little there we didn’t already do (except maybe big orgy scenes).  I would suspect at least some do, but many try it with escorts for the obvious reason that we are professionals and our business is to cater to male fantasy.  The only problem with that is, a lot of porn is unreal even when the willingness of the woman is assured by sufficient payment.  There are four main reasons for this: 1) Clients are not porn stars; 2) Not all women have the same abilities and characteristics, so just because Slutyoni Soverydeep can take a 10” cock to the hilt with her knees pressed against her shoulders doesn’t mean every woman can; 3) Porn movies are not filmed in real time, so what seems to take 15 minutes might have been filmed over several hours and two dozen takes with breaks in between; and 4) Porn movies are filmed under rigidly controlled conditions with prescreened actors posed carefully by a director and photographed from the best angles with crew all over the place so that everything is safe; consent has already been obtained from everyone before filming starts and nobody has to worry about being arrested in the middle of a scene.

I hope you can see where this is going.  A middle-aged, overweight businessman on blood pressure medication could not perform like a 28-year-old porn star even IF the film was done in one take, but Aphrodite knows he’ll try.  And then there’s the girl; porn starlets have their specialties and their movies feature those specialties and avoid things they aren’t good at, but some clients expect every working girl to be skilled at every specialty of every porn starlet he’s ever seen, even though the stars themselves aren’t!  Then, some clients want to try things which look easy on film, but are difficult in real life; or they forget that when porn actresses say how great something feels they may be ACTING, and in reality that position or activity might be uncomfortable, unpleasant or even acutely painful for the woman.  Finally, some men forget about the safety factor; porn actresses know their coworkers and are surrounded by chaperones, and they’re all regularly tested for diseases.  But hookers are alone with men they do not really know and are therefore not usually willing to participate in activities which may risk their safety (such as choking or bondage) or health (such as ingestion of semen or “bareback” penetration).

Obviously, most girls don’t mind catering to reasonable porn-inspired requests; I never minded guys giving me “facials” or ejaculating onto my tits, and I pretty much expect to be slapped on the rump periodically when being taken from behind.  Many girls even specialize in the “Porn Star Experience”, an energetic performance which includes such porn staples as cowgirl, deep throat, loud noises and dirty talk, etc.  But porn can also have a more widespread effect; it was after porn models started shaving or waxing off all of their pubic hair that many strippers and escorts followed suit and many clients came to expect it, and since the advent of “squirting” videos (showing women expelling fluid due to “G-spot” stimulation) a lot of girls now advertise themselves as “squirters” and some men will seek them out.

Rocco Siffredi, one of the most popular creators of the milder sort of misogynistic porn

But in the last decade or so a lot of porn has been getting a lot more misogynistic.  Now, hear me out; y’all know I don’t use that word lightly.  I don’t simply mean (as the neofeminists do) that the on-screen whores are catering to their on-screen male partners or off-screen male customers; that isn’t “misogyny”, it’s simply good business.  Nor do I equate onscreen male dominance (either implied or overt) with “misogyny”; as a sexually submissive woman I recognize that domination does not automatically imply hatred, no matter what the neofeminists (and even many mainstream vanilla women) seem to believe.  I and many other women are strongly aroused by the fantasy of  being captured, controlled, forced and/or enslaved by men, even to the point of being whipped; I therefore can’t see how it suddenly becomes “misogynistic” for a man to share that fantasy.  But from what I’ve seen, read and been told, a lot more porn is moving away from the stylized enslavement-fantasy of BDSM and toward realistic-seeming depictions of assault, violent rape and undeserved cruelty (including strangulation, mutilation, etc).  One popular subgenre shows forceful irrumation to the point of tears, gagging and even vomiting, which is definitely outside of my comfort zone.

Of course, this is all filmed under controlled conditions; the women are in no more danger than actors who are “murdered” in a thriller.  Even if their physiological reactions to being slapped, gagged, choked or whatever are real, there are still a dozen people standing around to stop things if they get out of hand.  But anything which appears in porn is going to inspire some clients to want to try it, and indeed there have always been some girls who will allow themselves to be choked, gagged or whatever.  The problem lies in the fact that, because of our prohibitionist laws, this kind of activity generally takes place nowadays outside of the controlled environment provided in the past by brothels.  As the prevalence of such practices increases, more and more girls will cater to them, especially girls in depressed markets like Dallas who are desperate to win a larger market share at any cost.  In an ongoing BDSM relationship such risky practices are at least bounded by procedures the couple has established (safewords, etc), but in a typical hooker/client session there is no established trust or procedure, and I cannot help but think that when an inexperienced dominant tries a risky behavior he saw in a movie on an inexperienced submissive he has just met, possibly even without securing her permission first, it is a recipe for trouble and possibly even tragedy.

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