Tales from the Dark Side

An inability to tell fantasy from reality would normally be considered evidence of psychosis, but in law enforcement it’s a job requirement.  -  Maggie McNeill

Since at least the time of Plato, the natural world was generally viewed in Western thought as corrupt, foul and bad; this idea entered Christianity via Gnosticism and dominated philosophy until the advent of the Romantic Era in the late 18^th century.  Anything of the natural world (including, of course, sex) was to be looked down upon and avoided wherever possible; the things of the mind and spirit were what was important, and those who wished to appear superior to others removed themselves from the natural world and eschewed the “pleasures of the flesh” (at least in public).  The Romantics, however, rejected all that; they taught that the natural world was innately good, that childhood “innocence” (i.e. closeness to the natural state) was a thing to be cherished, that primitive people were “noble savages” and that “natural” living was purer and better than “artificial”.  This was decidedly a minority viewpoint; the growing middle class of 19^th-century Europe and America still saw untamed Nature as rather nasty, and those who lived closer to it than they (in other words, the working class) as inferiors to be “improved” by curing them of their dedication to physical pleasures such as sex and liquor.

But humans are not known for logical consistency, and the bourgeois less so than most; as the Victorian Era wore on, some elements of Romantic philosophy were absorbed into the common weltanschauung, even when they contradicted other aspects of it.  For example, the “innocence” of children became the center of a veritable cult despite the fact that adults were expected to behave in an incredibly artificial manner, and “natural” foods and medicines were all the rage in the “social purity” crowd because they were believed to excite the (natural) physical passions less than highly processed ones!  But if the Victorians’ beliefs were incongruous, those of the neo-Victorians are even worse: while they reject the belief that sex is innately bad, they also believe against all reason and evidence that it’s something like a radioactive material which must be handled with special and elaborate precautions or else it becomes the single most destructive force on Earth.  They imagine that engaging in sex for the “wrong” reasons, or without the benediction of elaborate rituals of consent, or with people separated from one another by more than a very few years of age, is terribly harmful.  They believe that merely taking pictures of the taboo act creates a kind of Gorgonic icon which drives its viewers mad, and that the mere existence of such images harms women and children who are not even in close proximity to it.  And they fervently assert that it is so incredibly dangerous to the sacred “innocence” of “children” (a term which refers not to true children, but to a ritual category which actually includes some adults), for strangers to even imagine sexual contact with them causes such tremendous harm that those who indulge in these Forbidden Thoughts deserve penalties greater than those for violent assault, followed by lifelong social ostracism.

Needless to say, most of this has only the most tenuous basis in reality, and some of it none at all.  But the desire to describe Nature (especially sex) as “good” or “bad” is a very strong one, and for the neo-Victorian mind to accept sex into the “good” category it must be ritually purified by amputating all of its darker aspects, branding even the discussion of them as “violence”, and even pretending that they aren’t even sex at all.  This belief flies in the face of reality; sex, fear, dominance and violence are inextricably bound together, and only by living in a state of complete denial can someone pretend that the only valid, “healthy” and legal sex is that which is so sanitized and neutered that it resembles the real thing about as closely as a hamburger does a heifer.  Even many unadventurous people have a few rather dark fantasies or repressed turn-ons, and a few have fantasies that if acted upon would be evil indeed (as my friend Philippa used to say, “good fantasy, bad reality”).  But the mere existence of violent, dark fantasies does not indicate a corresponding plan to carry them out; probably 99% of all sexual fantasies are never acted upon, and when it comes to those involving unquestionably evil acts I’m sure the percentage is higher still.  Furthermore, the mere discussion of such fantasies with others does not constitute a conspiracy to turn them into reality.  But in a world where prosecution for thoughtcrime has become a grim reality, it might be wise to restrict such discussions to fully-anonymized online accounts and to encrypt any files referring to the fantasy; otherwise you could end up like Gilberto Valle:

…agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation took Officer Valle into custody…after they uncovered several plots to kidnap, rape, cook and eat women…the officer’s estranged wife recently contacted the F.B.I. to report that…[he] viewed and kept disturbing items on his computer…[though he] never followed through on any of the acts he is accused of discussing.  His lawyer…said the officer committed no crime.  “At worst, this is someone who has sexual fantasies…There is no actual crossing the line from fantasy to reality,” she added…

At first I leaned toward believing the allegations, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that these were almost certainly no more than extreme fantasies used by a vindictive ex to put him away; the only reason I had given the story as much credence as I did was that it’s very easy to believe a cop capable of acts of extreme, non-consensual sadism.  Then just a few weeks ago, I went from “almost certain” to “dead certain”:

A high-ranking police official…and a former high-school librarian were charged…in a plot to kidnap, torture and kill women and children, federal prosecutors said.  Richard Meltz…and Robert Christopher Asch…were held without bail…Peter Brill, an attorney for Mr. Meltz, said his client “had no interest or intention of hurting anybody…it was never anything other than a fantasy”…An official said the case against the men grew out of an investigation in which a former New York Police Department officer was charged and convicted in a plot to kidnap, rape, cook and eat women.  The former officer, Gilberto Valle, was convicted in March and is awaiting sentencing.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of an organized interstate gang of serial killers who plot capers for months on the internet without ever carrying a single one out.  I think it’s pretty obvious that what the defense attorneys in both cases said is true:  these are men with a very extreme BDSM fantasy who are being sacrificed to further the dominant cultural myth that sex can be purified, sanctified and tamed.

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Preventative Measures

Ian Ironwood of The Red Pill Room writes:

I lurk at your site frequently, and love the way you write.  My own blog deals with…marriage topics, and one of my most popular subjects is “girl game”.  In these posts I try to explain to my female readers some of the psychology behind why and how men like to have sex, and what they can do to cater to it.  Most of the time I’m actually explaining the usual “why men go see whores” meme in different ways, and I have had some good response to it.  I’ve covered the GFE, the Happy Ending, and a couple of other professional go-to moves, but I was wondering if you had any further ideas in that direction.  What were the common reasons men saw you when you practiced, and how could their wives have countered their decision to go to a pro by giving them what they wanted at home?

The three most common reasons married men see whores could be abbreviated as “She doesn’t”, “She won’t” and “She isn’t”.  The first is wholly in the woman’s court, the last wholly in the man’s, and the second somewhere in between.  “She doesn’t” means the wife just doesn’t provide enough sex, or that the sex she provides is so lackluster it isn’t satisfying to the husband.  “She won’t” means the wife won’t do something the husband really yearns for, whether that be a particular activity (such as oral sex) or a mode of behavior (such as role-play or just being enthusiastic).  “She isn’t” means the wife is simply no longer sufficient for the husband’s desire no matter what she does; either age or weight has made her unattractive to him, or he can’t see her as sexual after having kids due to a bad case of the Madonna/whore duality, or he has a strong need for variety.  ”She doesn’t” and most “She won’t” are completely under the wife’s control; giving one’s husband the kind of good, enthusiastic sex he craves will go a long way toward sapping his desire to see whores.  If the man’s desire is for something the woman actually can’t provide (such as an energetic PSE when she’s over 50 and no longer athletic), a frank discussion of alternatives which might do the trick is in order; if it’s something for which she has a visceral repulsion (such as cross-dressing), he may not even dare to mention it to her and then, obviously, it moves into “She isn’t”.

By definition, there is less a woman can do to circumvent “She isn’t” issues, unless they’re purely dependent on something like her weight.  That’s quite rare despite what you might think; I can’t recall very many cases of a man telling me that his wife was still very interested in sex, but that she was so fat or old or whatever that he couldn’t get interested.  Though some feminists like to rant about male shallowness in this regard, the truth is that in the overwhelming majority of cases it’s a wife’s attitude and behavior which turn her husband off rather than her physical appearance (though obviously, if she pointedly insists that she doesn’t care about her appearance it says a lot about her attitude, no?)  The need for variety is a tough one, but not insurmountable; if a wife comes up with ways to spice things up (or even just responds favorably to her husband’s ideas) his hindbrain can often be tricked into perceiving her as different, and therefore satisfying to his need for variety.  If that’s not enough, there are couple calls and wife swapping, which allow the husband to satisfy his craving for “strange” under controlled conditions rather than acting behind the wife’s back.  Of course, if it’s the illicit nature of trysts with hookers which turns him on, that’s going to present a problem; if he craves sneaking around behind his wife’s back, he’s not likely to be satisfied with activities she attends, arranges or even simply condones.  The same could be said of the Madonna/whore issue, which might require some kind of counseling to help him get over it.  Still, those represent a very small minority of cases; most of the time, an attentive and caring wife can keep her husband from straying by simply taking her own responsibilities seriously, and by helping him to do the same for his.

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That Was the Week That Was (#317)

The laws just don’t make sense.  They don’t help sex workers.  They don’t protect sex workers.  They increase their risks and they make it harder for them to do their jobs.  –  Chris Bruckert

Cops and Condoms

Ugandan men are even worse about condoms than American and European ones; the sex workers interviewed for this article say that only about 20% of clients will agree to use one,  even when the worker tells them she is HIV+.  The problem is that many workers there will provide bareback (“live” in Ugandan slang) on demand, so a woman who insists on condoms is at a competitive disadvantage.

See No Evil

A New Zealand court has sentenced a man to three months in prison for downloading cartoon porn.  Ronald Clark has previous convictions for sexually abusing a minor, but the Japanese hentai he watched…[involved only] drawings…[and these were not even of humans, but rather] “elves and pixies, which led to concerns the images were linked to child sexual abuse…“

The More the Better (TW3 #4)

Heidi Fleiss…is…helping to renovate Dennis Hof’s Love Ranch…in Crystal, Nevada… “this…was very similar to a women’s penitentiary…You had to go through all these weird bars and buzzers, and someone’s peering out the little peephole, scoping you up and down… It was really a creepy feeling.”  [Fleiss says she wants the brothel to be] ”…not the dirty little secret where people drive up and sneak in…and then afterwards they’re full of shame…It’s something where people are so proud to be here, not only do they come back, but bring their friends back.”

The Notorious Badge (TW3 #15)

In The Client List…Jennifer Love Hewitt plays a struggling housewife who takes a rub-down side job in order to support her kids after her husband disappears.  The show…has always struck us as more campy nonsense than an accurate portrayal of the erotic massage business.  But how could we tell?  We asked an escort to watch the show and help us tell fact from fiction…

Little Boxes

Young people being pragmatic and sensible about sex?  We can’t have that!

…around 85 per cent of sexually active teens in the Bahamas are engaging in some kind of transactional sex…the majority of middle and high schoolers…are not sexually active.  But of those who are, the majority are involved in risky behaviour…Transactional sex…differs from prostitution in the sense that only a portion of the needs of the person providing the sex are met through the practice…“Many young people put themselves through high school and college in this way…They feel that if a man wants to deal with them he has to pay in some way and they are not prostituting themselves by doing this,” [NGO official Prodesta] Moore said…

Somehow I doubt an American court would accept “this isn’t prostitution because I have another source of income” as a defense.

First They Came for the Hookers…

What selfless devotion to duty!  Several different Oklahoma “law enforcement” agencies partied for four months at a strip club in order to “keep the citizens safe” from the scourge of private, consensual sex!

A Coweta strip club was busted on prostitution charges…Cherokee County deputies [investigated] the Secret Cavern strip club [for] a total of four months…[Alcohol Beverage Laws Enforcement Commission] agent [Pedro] Zardeneta…[said] “different agencies from different parts of the state worked well together to keep the citizens safe”…

The Widening Gyre

Dear “Sex Trafficking” Fetishists, please keep up the good work; we couldn’t possibly make y’all look as ridiculous as y’all make yourselves look:

Dear Michelle Obama…you were recently quoted as saying that Beyonce is a great “role model” to your two daughters…I think it’s time to stop suggesting to very young girls that ultimate feminine success…comes with the…expectation for them to undress…Variations of Beyonce’s body suit can be found in brothels, strip clubs and red light districts across the world – where sex is for sale…Remember that in the USA, the average age of a girl when she is trafficked for sex for the first time is 13…by drug dealers who promise her a celebrity lifestyle, clothes like the ones Beyonce wears…we are feeding a demonic myth that women must make themselves sexually available to enjoy ultimate success…It can take years of a young girl’s life away from her when she tries to escape a life of abuse at home…only to be sold for sex, beaten, and made addicted to drugs…

Bogeymen

A study conducted by a University of Ottawa criminology professor has confirmed what sex workers and those in the industry have said and known for years — the laws meant to protect sex workers from exploitation by targeting people who work in the industry but don’t actually do sex work end up putting those who do at much greater risk…These could include drivers…security personnel…website designers or photographers…receptionists…or the more traditional pimps or madams…Under current Canadian laws, all of those people, even the ones doing jobs that have mainstream counterparts, could be criminally charged…[despite the fact that] anything a third party could do to exploit a sex worker is already illegal if it were done to someone else…

Too Young To Know

Another sign of the decay of “sex trafficking” hysteria: even the most ignorant, dysphemism-riddled “sex trafficking” scare story chock-full of bogus statistics (“About one-third [of runaways] will be approached by a sex trafficker within 48 hours…the average life span for victims is seven years“) may admit to some real truth these days; this one, for example, recognizes that “pimps” don’t abduct screaming girls from their middle-class homes.  It will be interesting to watch as they start contradicting each other.

Bottleneck

…Jules Kim – migration project manager at Scarlet Alliance…told the [federal] inquiry into slavery and human trafficking…[that] the  current “scatter-gun” approach in which police look for trafficking victims by raiding Asian brothels was an “enormous waste of time, resources and misdirected energy…that has resulted in a gap between law enforcement bodies and…sex industry workers…People change the nature of their work to avoid that harassment…because constant raids on your business have an implication…None of the cases involved deception or trickery of the fact the person would be doing sex work.  Instead of an evidence-based approach addressing real vulnerabilities, Australia’s approach continues to try to detect the mythical trafficking victim and trafficker that is a media-driven stereotype”…

Poe Folks

According to a report released in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, watching porn only affects [young adult] sexual behavior in a negligible way.  Other influences such as personality type, educational and family background and poverty hold more girth than viewing sexually explicit material.  The study…surveyed 4,600…people between the ages of 15 and 25 living in the Netherlands during 2008-2009…

Another Small Victory (TW3 #133)

The fight in the SCOTUS over the “anti-prostitution pledge” began Monday.  On the side of Good:  The Open Society Foundation, the ACLU, the Cato Institute, the Gates Foundation and even such unlikely supporters as Fox News, the New York Times and MSNBC.  On the side of Evil:  The usual suspects, including the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women.  Here’s Melissa Gira Grant’s look at the battle-lines as they were set up on Monday; note the important point that the whole thing has been framed as a question of free speech (hence the support of otherwise-hostile media outlets) rather than a referendum on the rectitude of the War on Whores.  No matter which way this goes, the persecution will go on until our “allies” stop vomiting out moronic filth like “Sex work is everywhere.  It is a brutal system.  It is an exploitative system.  Nobody thinks it’s OK.”

Big Sister (TW3 #138)

An excellent article, though I must point out that only someone hopelessly mired in the “left-right” myth could seriously consider Iceland “ultra-liberal”:

Ultra-liberal Iceland wants to ban online pornography…[as] the latest step in its attempts to eliminate the sex industry entirely.  In 2009 it introduced fines and jail terms for those who patronise prostitutes (whom it treats as victims).  In 2010 it outlawed strip clubs…No country has yet wholly succeeded in controlling commercial sex, either through legalisation or criminalisation…Iceland’s proposal is in its early stages and may lose momentum after an election on April 27^th, which the government is expected to lose.  But its plan puts it in some odd company.  Saudi Arabia similarly bans strip clubs, prostitution and pornography…Prostitution has proved hard…to police and stamp out…[but] regulating pornography is hardest of all.  Distributing and selling it has been illegal in Iceland since 1869…[but] a ban would be legally dubious, technically unfeasible and ineffective, argues Smari McCarthy…of the International Modern Media Institute…In an open letter to Ogmundur Jonasson, the interior minister, he and other opponents compared banning online pornography to repression in China, Iran and North Korea.  Iceland’s constitution forbids censorship…and…Studies in America, Denmark, Germany…Sweden…China, Finland and Japan…show that as pornography became increasingly available, the number of rapes in those countries remained stable or even decreased…

Anatomy of a Boondoggle (TW3 #314)

Florida rapists are cleverer, excusing themselves via the moral panic du jour:

…Police in Florida [went nude] during an undercover prostitution investigation at a Hallandale Beach massage parlor…and…arrested three women…attorney…Howard Finkelstein…said. “It is seedy, back-alley, icky, and we don’t want our cops doing that, especially so when it’s meaningless.”  But Florida ranks third in the nation in the number of reported cases of human trafficking…”This is not just an act of solicitation, but an organized crime effort,” [said] Police Chief Dwayne Flournoy…”It is not just a street-walker. It is a more sophisticated operation…”

The More the Better (TW3 #314)

She hated it so very much that she married a client and went on to own a brothel.  That’s deep hatred, y’all!

Linda Fondren, a mayoral candidate in Vicksburg, Miss., not only admits to a past life in prostitution, she says her husband was one of her Johns.  ”I was a working girl in a legal brothel over 30 years ago.  It’s true, my husband was my client…[we've] been married for 28 years”…Fondren tried to hold off making that admission for weeks…she…[says] she only did it to support herself after she got pregnant at age 14 and…her mom died of cancer…“I hated it.  I hated it.”  She also said that she would not support legal prostitution if elected…

That last bus-throwing line earns her a nomination for my Hall of Shame, though she’ll have to be still more disgusting to actually be inducted.

Held Together With Lies (TW3 #316)

Step 1:  Define some normal behavior as a problem.  Step 2:  Redefine it so you can claim it’s “growing”.  Step 3:  Increase “regulation” so as to narrow the bottleneck for “legal” behavior:

After years of dispute, Germany’s center-right governing coalition has agreed to enact tougher penalties for human trafficking and forced prostitution…and [to] more strictly regulate the commercial activities of brothels…brothel operators will need special authorization…authorities will be required to enforce hygienic standards and operators will be screened for prior criminal offences…recently, a report by the European Union…showed that human trafficking in Europe has risen sharply.

Step 4 (early next year):  Complain that “criminality” has increased, and repeat step 3.  Proceed until full criminalization is achieved.

The End of the Beginning

Down near the end of this article about another idiotic and dangerous “sex trafficking” law is a reason for hope:  “A bill focused on tightening punishments for pimps…[which] would require some to register as sex offenders, is progressing in [Texas]…Opponents believe the…requirement for sex offender registration may overwhelm an ‘overly broad database that includes too many offenders who are not threats to the community’…”  In other words, these opponents recognize the “pimp menace” as hype and the “sex offender registry” as far too large.  The same could be said for the reporter covering this story in which a Florida police department is claiming that the law says it “has to” humiliate so-called “sex predators” with huge red warning signs in their yards; she seems extremely skeptical of these theatrics, and asks a number of very sensible questions which the police chief of course answers dishonestly and smugly.

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They Don’t Want to Know

We live in oppressive times.  We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder “censorship,” we call it “concern for commercial viability”.  -  David Mamet

It has been said that every man has sexual fantasies which would horrify the average woman.  And while I can’t deny that this is probably true, have you ever stopped to wonder how it could be true?  Back in the days before printing, and for the roughly 400 years after it that most women were illiterate, this ignorance was unsurprising; a typical woman would only know about such things if a man chose to tell her, and if he did she was probably a whore.  But after the sexual revolution, and especially since the invention of the internet, it seems as though Western women who were ignorant of the depth and breadth of men’s erotic thoughts should be a small and steadily-shrinking minority…and yet they’re not.  Many women don’t have a clue about the more extreme (by female standards) male fantasies; these are the chicks whose idea of “kinky” is having sex in the living room or, if they’re real party animals, putting whipped cream on their tits and letting a man (*gasp*) lick it off!  Others are fully aware of the variety of male fantasies, but convince themselves that only a small “pervert” minority think about them, and that most men’s interests are as non-threatening as theirs.  A smaller fraction are either relatively kinky themselves or at least sexually literate enough to be accepting, but still believe the majority of men are vanilla (those who believe only 15% of men have ever paid for sex fall into this category).  Just about the only ones who really get it are the whores and the few really adventurous and open-minded amateurs who have been around enough to learn.

But again, how could this possibly be true in the internet age?  I think it’s partly because women have their own dichotomy, similar to the Madonna/whore dichotomy but less talked about; we’ll call it the Adonis/pervert dichotomy.  Like its better-known sister, it is the fallacy that all members of the sex to whom it is applied are either sexually “pure” or “dirty”, and those who are “dirty” are social misfits to be shunned.  But while men afflicted with Madonna/whore thinking still consider whores to be suitable bed partners, women laboring under the Adonis/pervert delusion think of men with earthy sexual desires as “creeps” to be avoided; neofeminists could be considered victims of an extreme form of this paradigm in which most or even all men are perverts and therefore dangerous monsters.  As with all belief-systems, people mired in these fallacies about the opposite sex become emotionally invested in them and will generally reject information which threatens their mental status quo; furthermore, most of the popular media are bound and determined to perpetuate the ignorance of their readers.  Take, for example, the experience of writer Chad Kultgen:

…My books [are]…sexually frank to a degree that some people think borders on pornography…[so] I was surprised [when]…a popular women’s website…wanted me to write a thousand words on what a man really wants from a woman in the bedroom.  My first question for the editor was:  ”How honest do you want this to be?”  She told me to make the article 100 percent honest — no punches pulled, no holds barred.  I could be as vulgar as necessary in order to get down to the real dirty details.  With those marching orders, I sat down and cranked out an article that outlined what I think most people already know.  Guys are filthy.  We like really dirty things — far beyond anal sex, swallowing, and threesomes with our significant others’ best friends, although those were all certainly included in the laundry list of “what guys really want in the bedroom.”  The point of the article was, essentially, that guys want a sexual partner who is open to anything and enthusiastic about everything.  The language was vulgar…to reflect the way guys actually think about these things.

So I turned in the article, feeling confident that I delivered exactly what they asked for and excited to see the reaction — because, in tone and content, there was nothing like it on their site.  A week passed.  Then I got an email from the editor…[containing] an edited version of my article and a writer’s agreement that needed to be signed…I assumed the edit would be toned down a little, but not too much, based on the editor’s assurances that the site wanted a piece that was honest.  My assumption was incorrect.  Every instance of vulgar language was removed…any reference to a sexual act beyond missionary, doggy style, or girl-on-top was removed.  Any reference to anal sex…was changed to “the back door.”  Beyond the [removals]…there was another component…that astonished me.  Someone had…inserted new writing — including puns like “Arma-get-it-on”…throughout the text…Needless to say, I wrote the editor back thanking her for her time and respectfully declining to sign the writer’s agreement on the grounds that the article in its edited form was not only stylistically incongruent with anything I would ever write before suffering from a stroke or undergoing a lobotomy, but also because its content was so dishonest.  In fact, it had become the exact opposite of what was asked of me in the first place…Is it that people…don’t actually want the truth when it comes to sex?  I can’t imagine that’s it…I think it’s that the media outlets who circulate these things, by their very nature, can’t deliver the truth when it comes to sex…giant media companies are beholden to their sponsors, and…have to uphold whatever standards those sponsors dictate…

I think Kultgen is right on the money there.  It’s not that the owners of these companies are all a bunch of prudes; it’s that far too many of the people who buy their products are, and they can’t afford to take chances in a world where “offense” is as fetishized as it is today.  So even though both the information and the means of disseminating it exist, the most prominent sources are controlled by people whose legal and marketing departments have informed them that a very large and vocal minority (most especially in America) don’t want other people (especially not young ones) to know the truth about sex, and are willing to lie, cheat and buy politicians to censor most sources and drown out the rest in a flood of disinformation.

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Vice Versa

A reader asks:

I read your post and answer to the question: “How does one find a male prostitute for a straight female?“  Is there really a market for females that want male prostitutes?  Could you recommend a male prostitute that a man could fashion himself after (both physically and mentally)?  And could you recommend any books, websites or articles on the topic?

I’m afraid there just isn’t much of a market for heterosexual male prostitutes, which is why that reader had so much trouble finding one.  While every town in the world has female hookers and most make much more than they could at other jobs for which they’re qualified, men who want to do sex work usually deal mostly with men.  This isn’t to say that no woman ever pays a man for sex, but those who do so are statistical outliers and therefore not a dependable source of income.  The English sex worker Sensuous Amanda expressed it quite well:

Whilst I won’t say there is no market for straight male escorts, I will tell you that it is a teeny tiny market and it is awash with bright eyed hopefuls.  As far as I know, even the successful guys do it part time and have another job to pay the rent…Boys, go for it if you want, but don’t rely on it for income.  For instance, my ex – a tall strapping chap, pretty good looking, in his early 30s at the time – advertised his services.  He’d seen what I was earning and decided that he wanted in on the action.  He never made a sodding penny.  Nothing.  Not so much as an email or a call.  Not even a timewaster.

That article also suggests a helpful model:  Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice.  No, he wasn’t a sex worker, but that’s exactly the point; as Amanda writes, “in general, women don’t want [it]…to be a charade.  We want a man to be all of those things to us because he wants to be.  Not because we’ve just handed him a wad of twenties…”  Or as I expressed it in “Just Drawn That Way”, “it is a rare woman indeed who will pay for sex with a man [because] it is an undeniable statement that he is not attracted to her, and that invalidates the primary reason for which [most women] might seek unprofitable, non-relationship sex.”  People try to refute that by pointing to female sex tourists, but the exception proves the rule because what these women are looking for is adventure and romance rather than sex per se,  which is why they seek this in exotic places rather than at home.  Furthermore, you must remember that dollars, pounds and euros go a long way in such locales; what constitutes a generous fee there might be only a small sum in the Global North.  That matters because women tend to be cheap tippers, especially where sex is concerned; as I explained once before, “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.’”  The good, dependable income in sex work is from male clients, whether the sex worker is male or female; as Amanda put it, “You wanna be a male escort?  Fine, you go for it sweetie.  You wanna make real money as a male escort?  Lube up, bend over and take one for the team.”

I don’t know of any other resources for heterosexual male escorts, but by serendipity one of them (who says he has 15 years of experience) posted a reply just a few weeks ago on the very same Sensuous Amanda post I quoted above.  He confirmed that he couldn’t make enough to live on, points out the difficulties of trying to see more than two to three clients a week, and explained that his sessions have to be open-ended on time rather than by the hour as with female escorts.  He has a lot to say that I think you’ll find enlightening, including the fact that 75% of his clients were couples; this of course reinforces what I said above, because if it weren’t for the man’s interest in the fantasy you can be sure his wife wouldn’t be there.

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The Story Behind the Story

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.  -  Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

I’m sure most of you recognized yesterday’s column as a tribute to Dr. Seuss’ first published work, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street; you may even have recognized that it’s a line-by-line parody, and that I retained the good Doctor’s own words wherever I could.  But it just wouldn’t have been half as good without the Seussian illustrations; they were kindly provided by Ricardo Cortés, illustrator of the bestselling Go the Fuck to Sleep (and now that y’all know he’s a fellow reader, I’m sure some of y’all may be even more interested in some of the other books he’s illustrated).  Anyhow, Ricardo had a few questions about my parody and since I’m sure some of you have similar ones, I figured I’d share my answer.

…I’m curious about the context of the piece, and why April Fools?  It’s clearly a response to the all-sex-workers-are-slaves narrative.  Is it directed to a particular event or charge?  Obviously any Save-Them-All campaign is limited and patronizing. On the other hand, there certainly are prostitutes who are exploited and trafficked, etc., no?…perhaps you can direct me to some writing you’ve already made about this question…I’m curious as to how you address the other side of the equation (when sex workers are actually exploited by organized crime, etc.)

I wanted to do it on April Fool’s Day just because it’s kind of silly; I’ve never done a full-blown parody before so that seemed like a good day for it.  Though it is in part a response to the “enslaved whore” narrative, it’s even more a sharp criticism of the neofeminist practice of “re-framing experiences”.  Unhappy ex-hookers who are recruited by anti-whore organizations are encouraged to “re-frame their experiences”, which means make up things that didn’t happen so as to “sell” the public, media and politicians more strongly on the “evils of prostitution”.  Women who resist lying in this way are chastised, browbeaten and (if they persist) kicked out of the “movement”, while those who play along are praised and rewarded with money and attention.  An example of a reject is Jill Brenneman (who discussed the matter in her interview on this blog two years ago); an example of a perfect shill is Stella Marr, about whom I’ve written on several occasions.  The most striking example of “reframing” I’ve written about so far is the story of Long Pros, whom celebrity prohibitionist Somaly Mam used to advance her crusade:  Pros was a Cambodian girl from a poor family who never did any sex work in her life, but lost an eye to a tumor; under Mam’s coaching she invented the lurid story that she was a “sex trafficking” victim who had been enslaved in a brothel and had her eye gouged out by a brutal pimp.

The really creepy part of the whole thing is that the longer the “survivor” stays in the movement, the more her stories start to converge with those of others; she internalizes the preferred narratives, and they form a pattern in much the same way that any mythology begins to form a whole.  In the early ‘80s, the preferred feminist “survivor” narrative was that the “victim” had been abused by her father, uncle or other male relative; in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s it was that her abusers were part of a Satanic cult, and by the late ‘90s they had morphed into “sex traffickers” driven by profit.  By the early ‘20s it will change again, but of course we have no way to predict what that change will involve.  It’s fascinating from a psycho-sociological perspective, but extremely dangerous because the courts have abandoned the necessity for proper evidence and the presumption of innocence, so that even the most outlandish “eyewitness” testimony is taken seriously.

As for “organized crime”, that doesn’t really mean what the tale-spinners want you to believe; in criminology, “organized crime” just means any group (which could be as few as 3 or 4 people) who plan to carry out illegal activity together.  My escort service would be classified as “organized crime” because we “conspired” to “commit prostitution”.  The same goes for so-called “human traffickers”; two guys in Nigeria with a friend in Denmark and a border guard who is paid to ignore them sneaking willing immigrants into the country, make up an “international human trafficking ring” if the women work as maids, and an “international sex slavery ring” if one or more of them works as a hooker.  It’s not about enormous criminal cartels smuggling thousands of crying women in cages as the propaganda wants you to believe.  The best book for putting this all in perspective is Laura Agustín’s Sex at the Margins; Agustín has been studying migration and sex work for twenty years and will open your eyes to the truth of all this.  But for the most part, so-called “sex trafficking victims” are really just women going from a relatively poor country to a relatively wealthy one to do sex work, sometimes breaking the rules of the destination country in the process; anyone who helps her is therefore a “criminal” and a “trafficker”, even if the “victim” entered into the arrangement willingly and is as satisfied as any conventional worker with the terms of her employment.

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Mulberry Street

With sincere affection and admiration for the work of T.S. Geisel; all illustrations done specifically for this presentation by Ricardo Cortés. 

When I first joined the Rescue League
The leaders said to me,
“Marcia, you must open up,
The truth will set you free.”

But when I talked about my life
To the assembled band,
They looked at me and sternly said,
“Your story’s much too bland.

“It just won’t do, your tale so tame.
To fight prostitution you must re-frame.”

So, what can I say
To reporters today?

They all want me to say
That I was “prostituted”
And the money I made
By “exploiters” was looted.
But I walked into hooking
Upon my own feet,
And my usual stroll was
On Mulberry Street.

That’s nothing to tell of,
That won’t make the score…
Just a typical street
And a hard-luck-case whore.

That can’t be my story; their interest will fade.
I’ll say that a PIMP forced me into the trade!
He played on my trust, and he threatened to beat,
And he sent me to turn tricks on Mulberry Street.

Yes, the pimp is just fine,
But his method is weak;
Being talked into hooking
Makes me look far too meek.
The story would really be better, I hope
If the pimp had controlled me by giving me dope.
A dope-addled hooker is something to meet,
Looking for johns out on Mulberry Street!

No, that’s much too mundane…
Why not say he used pain?

Brutal beatings are better;
Give the sadists a treat,
To visualize that
On Mulberry Street.

Hold on a minute!
I just had a brainstorm!

It would really feed their tragedy-hunger
If I claimed that I started out very much younger.

It would be a more pathetic scene
If he turned me out at age thirteen.

Hmmmm…a teenage runaway…

But that whole thing’s been done to death;
The runaway hooker on crystal meth.
If I can’t do better, I’m wasting my breath.

If I ponder this problem, I’m sure I can lick it…
A whole GANG of pimps!  Now there’s the ticket!

I’ll invent one with plenty of power and size:
I was the white victim of forty brown guys.
And then, just to make them a little more vile,
I’ll say they tattooed me in some branding style.

SAY!  That makes a story that no one can beat,
When I say it all happened on Mulberry Street.

But now I don’t know…
It still doesn’t seem right.

Even if I could see fifty clients a night,
Split up so many ways would be income too slight.

It would be worth their fuss
Were there eighty of us!

To provide for that many would take lots of dope;
Half the gang would be needed in order to cope.
I’ll make them drug dealers!  Then some of their stash
Can be used for the hookers who bring them more cash.

But for drug-dealing on that kind of scale,
It would make far more sense if they bought it wholesale.
They’re top-level importers, real kingpins of crime,
And they smuggle in girls at the very same time.

But now there’s a hitch of a whole new order;
Mulberry Street isn’t close to the border.

A trafficking business on that kind of scale
Needs special protection, or else it would fail.

Organized crime will do the trick;
Those big-time gangsters are mighty slick -
And shady lawyers don’t miss a trick.

They know just who to lean on, and just who to pay
To ensure the police will not get in their way.

They’re bribed not to see things that just might look “funny”,
And they stick out their hands for a cut of the money.

Other public officials are on the take, too,
In every town in the Red, White and Blue.

And that is a story that NO ONE can beat
When I say that it happens on every street!

The pimps sell their sex-slaves through ads on Backpage,
And they’re fed on dog food, and are kept in a cage.
And that makes a story that’s really not bad!
But it still could be better.  Suppose that I add…

…GPS trackers placed in the girls’ purses…
A black magician casting curses…
Each girl makes 300 grand a year…
No time for more, the press is here.

I heard my name called
And I felt my heart sink;
As I walked up the steps
I just couldn’t help think,

“There no way that these writers will buy all this bunk!”
As a sex-trade “survivor”, I knew that I stunk.

But they listened intently
To all I averred,
And I saw they believed me…
Yes, every last word.

I was wholly amazed; were they really this dumb?
Were their critical faculties totally numb?
They started applauding; each rose from his seat,
And continued to clap as they stood on their feet.
What a wonderful day!  How it made my heart beat!

And I knew once I learned it through endless repeat,
I’d believe my own story of Mulberry Street.

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Quack, Quack

A quack doctor can kill you without a knife.  -  Chinese proverb

A male reader writes:

So, I was talking with my therapist, and one of the things he asked me is if I had paid for sex.  I said no, I want to have a connection with my lover.  But what he said next shocked me:  he claimed that ALL prostitutes are either sex slaves or owned by a pimp of some sort.  Not some, not many, ALL.  How can I show him he’s wrong?

I am not exaggerating when I suggest you should find another therapist.  Anyone who could believe such a thing when there is overwhelming proof to the contrary (in the form of not only studies but personal accounts) is so irrational that it qualifies as a full-blown delusion; a person who could believe that can believe literally anything, including psychological fads like “sex addiction” with no basis in valid psychological theory or study.  He obviously has no idea of how the female mind works, or is in deep denial; furthermore, he has an EXTREMELY low opinion of women’s agency and capacity for self-determination, which will affect everything he tells you about women.  And though he’s not an economist, even the most rudimentary understanding of rational choice theory or the basics of undergraduate-level sociology would make it impossible for any sane mind to believe in such utter foolishness.

There is a MOUNTAIN of information which disproves this absurd myth, much of it linked on my Resources page and much more easily discovered by a quick Google search.  If he believes all this information is wrong, he’s a megalomaniac or a religious fanatic; if he believes it to be deliberately falsified he’s paranoid, and if he doesn’t know it exists he’s woefully ignorant.  In any case, he isn’t the kind of person who should be responsible for anyone else’s mental health, and in fact could benefit from a great deal of therapy himself.  His belief is as irrational as the contention that an anthropomorphic god created the universe in six calendar days 6000 years ago, or that large numbers of extraterrestrials have abducted humans for experiment, or that vast Satanic cults enslave thousands of teenage runaways to breed babies for sacrifice; you should avoid him just as you would avoid a “therapist” who believed in such ideas.

Finally,  There’s also one more possibility:  He could know very well what he’s saying is a lie, and is just trying to scare you away from seeing sex workers.  That would make him an amoral manipulator, which is just as bad as the other possibilities unless you actually want to develop False Memory Syndrome.

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No Friend of Ours

Thus much for thy assurance know; a hollow friend is but a hellish foe.  -  Nicholas Breton

There is a common misconception that Nevada is more whore-friendly than any other American state, but nothing could be farther from the truth (unless one considers a poultry factory-farmer to be a “friend” of chickens).  Nevada was willing to allow a small number of politically-connected cronies to run brothel ranches (switching from one kind of livestock to another) out in the desert far from human habitation (so the “sex rays” from diseased harlots don’t contaminate real people), but this was only because the state needed a means of drawing tourist dollars; it was equally happy to accept gambling at a time when the majority of Americans viewed it as an unsavory activity.  But while gambling has now become mainstream, Nevada still prefers to keep whores hidden away in the desert like a collection of mummified monsters and pickled curiosities in a roadside tourist trap, and to harshly persecute any who dare show themselves in town.  And because of this, both cops and prohibitionists can sell the moronic and puerile “pimps and hos” masturbatory fantasy and the “sex trafficking” mythology just as effectively in Nevada as in parts of the US where more than a short drive or local phone call would be necessary to interview dozens of people who could debunk them.  Here’s a recent example from a Las Vegas TV station:

Nevada has been named a top sex trafficking destination, where pimps force girls, young women and men into the sex trade.  Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto says Interstate 15 in the south and I-80 in the north are trafficking routes for pimps.  Major events attract the clientele, and the internet creates a cyber-gateway.  “James” says he was a successful, non-violent pimp…[who] was a millionaire only a few years ago, making a lucrative and illegal income selling young women — even girls — for sex.  “The youngest was 10 years old,” James said…“You make $8,000, $15,000 a night in cash, and you’re not paying taxes,” he said…he was never caught for pandering…“You lie to them, tell them you love them, basically say I’ll support you,” he said…at one point, he trafficked as many as 15 to 20 girls in five states…James left the sex trade, finding religion, redemption and recovery in a local church…He speaks out now about his life, hoping his experience will motivate parents to bond with their children…

This one short article is practically a catalog of every stupid myth, including the vast pimp income and Nevada’s entry into the “king of the hill” competition.  And conveniently, “James” doesn’t even have to offer any evidence for any of it (not even assets or a tax return) because the idiots will believe him even without it.  Similar unsubstantiated claims permeate this “sex trafficking” scare story; notice that the same person is behind the hysteria here:

…Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto…plans to introduce [a “sex trafficking” bill which]…would toughen penalties for pimps…[to] 20 years in prison…pimps who sell children on the streets, they would face life in prison…About 103 children, most of them between the ages of 15 and 17, were either arrested or recovered by the Police Department’s Vice Squad in 2012.  But Sgt. Ron Hoier…said that for all the children who police manage to save there are always the ones who fly below the radar…there [are] a few naysayers…who warn…[that] tougher penalties don’t…deter criminals…District Judge William Voy…has been pushing for some sort of safe haven as far back as 2006…

Despite all the “child” nonsense, the average age of the arrestees is “between 15 and 17”, probably closer to 17.  But people like Masto prefer to deny their capacity for decision-making and imagine “pimps” who largely don’t exist  except in the sick minds of prohibitionists.  Because the New Order requires “pimps” to be caged as sacrifices (rather than simply admitting sex work isn’t a crime), the prohibitionists have to come up with ways to manufacture them; Judge Voy’s so-called “safe houses” are actually prisons in which juvenile hookers can be held indefinitely until they are willing to tell prosecutors whatever they want to hear.

As for Masto, that bill of hers (AB67) was written by the Polaris Project and is modeled on California’s CASE Act; like it, the Nevada law would define virtually all sex as prostitution and a wide variety of normal human interaction as “coercion”.  But that’s not all; it also broadens the definition of “sex” to such a degree that there is essentially no way to defend oneself against a charge.  AB67 would empower Nevada prosecutors to charge nearly anyone with “sex trafficking” nearly anyone else, with no physical evidence or victim testimony whatsoever, and to lock that person up for decades…unless, of course, he is willing to plead to some lesser charge to avoid a sentence tantamount to death by slow torture.  This is how universal criminality works: as long as a prosecutor has that kind of absolute power, he can force virtually anyone to do virtually anything he likes.  The modern ruling class has become very good at using moral panics to secure such power, and since whores are the target of the currently-popular panic the worst of it falls on us…even in a state where most Americans wrongly imagine our profession to be legal.

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Learning Curve

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.  -  Marlene Dietrich

I’ve noticed a definite trend in the “gypsy whore” and “sex trafficking” hype around Super Bowls over the past few years; the three-word version is “less and later”. For the 2011 Super Bowl in Dallas, the panic was already in full swing by November, and the claims were both grandiose and stated as a certainty.  It’s impossible to guess how much money was wasted on this police theater, but considering that it involved eleven different “law enforcement” agencies (including the FBI) over a two and a half week period, and two dozen extra staff being “brought in” (which means travel, hotel and per diem x 24 x 18), I’m sure you can imagine.  And all this to catch how many “human traffickers” out of supposedly thousands?  One.  Not an international gangster, either, but an ignorant wannabe pimp who got the idea from the police/media hype just a few days before the event.  The number of arrests made by this “task force” – 133 in all – was extremely typical for Dallas, especially considering that only about half were prostitution-related.  And so the cops were forced to rig the statistics and make ludicrous claims about the weather and the efficacy of their “preparations” in order to save face.

Indianapolis officials seem to have learned something from Dallas; though nobody other than sex workers, a few academics and a very small number of journalists dared to question the hysteria out loud while it was happening, the egg on Dallas officials’ face was hard to miss and some Indianapolis officials were a little gun-shy.  Though attorney general Greg Zoeller started beating the drum in July and held his first press conference in September, the police chief of Indianapolis was unimpressed, several reporters called the story into question and Snopes officially listed it as a debunked myth.  And when the imaginary “traffickers” and their white slaves failed to materialize, officials quietly let the matter die in order to save themselves the embarrassment (though Chicago sheriff Tom Dart later bizarrely claimed that a crusade which netted only 565 victims over ten days in eight states [a mere 7 per state per day] was somehow Super Bowl-related).

Since this year’s game was in New Orleans, naturally I was especially interested in how the hysteria would develop; however, November and December came and went with only the most perfunctory idiocy from police officials.  The first article I considered worth mentioning was from the January 7^th Baton Rouge Advocate and, while the reporter allowed herself only token skepticism, the comment thread was overwhelmingly dismissive of the myth.  The police “crackdown” didn’t really start until January 14^th, and the FBI used its existing “Innocence Lost” program rather than establish a special operation just for the Super Bowl.  Furthermore, the ritual repetition of the myth-narrative didn’t begin in earnest until February 1^st, thus virtually closing the window of opportunity in which debunkers could get responses into print before the game on February 3^rd; most tellingly, the “authorities” waited until after the event to hold their big press conference, so they would know exactly what kind of yarn to spin:

In an effort to combat the rampant sex trafficking that authorities say has historically accompanied the Super Bowl, a multi-agency task force arrested 85 people during the week leading up to Sunday’s game in New Orleans.  Those arrests represented just “the tip of the iceberg” of a growing problem, State Police Superintendent Col. Mike Edmonson said at a news conference…Operation Innocence Lost, carried out by the New Orleans Police Department, State Police, FBI and Department of Homeland Security…netted arrests on charges of human trafficking, prostitution, pandering, narcotics and weapons charges, authorities said.  Fifty-three people were arrested in the New Orleans area, while 32 were nabbed in the Baton Rouge area…Authorities booked at least two men on charges of sex trafficking and rescued five women who were allegedly brought to prostitute in New Orleans against their will.  Two were trafficked from Oklahoma; two were brought from Georgia, [said Capt. Doug Cain, a State Police spokesman]…Details on the fifth victim’s story were scarce because she was 17 years old, so she is considered a minor by federal authorities…four other children were rescued in the operation, police said, however they were not themselves being sexually exploited.  Two of the children, ages 10 and 11, were found by New Orleans police officers and state troopers during a sting operation.  The children were waiting in a car outside a New Orleans location where their mother was prostituting, Edmonson said.  “The looks in those kids’ eyes was so sad…They thought this was normal.”  The children are now in custody of the state Department of Children and Family Services…The other two children were rescued from a similar situation in Baton Rouge…The FBI will continue to provide services for the victims…

Okay, let’s get this translated.  First, note the implication that all 85 arrests were both Super Bowl and prostitution-related; in fact only 53 were in New Orleans, and only seven of that 53 were for anything to do with prostitution.  The total number of “traffickers” arrested? Two, and you can bet that means they were either drivers or boyfriends of those five “rescued” (in other words, arrested and jailed) women.  Note that “trafficked” from Oklahoma or Georgia actually means the arrested women had drivers’ licenses from those states; they could have been living in New Orleans for up to a year rather than being recently trucked in like produce.  The most troubling detail is the state abduction of the children, who will now be condemned to the nightmare of “child protective services” (possibly forever) because “authorities” disapprove of their mothers’ work.  If those women are “victims” as claimed, how can they justify aggravating that victimization by stealing their children?  But they don’t want us to think about that; to paraphrase Edmonson, “The filth coming out of these cop’ mouths is so disgusting…They really think persecuting people for consensual behavior is normal.”

Still, it’s good to see this ugly annual drama beginning to fade; next year we can probably expect it to be smaller still, and for there to be an even larger number of critics.  The next Super Bowl is to be held in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and this autumn I plan to start encouraging New York City-area sex worker rights organizations (of which there are several) to make pre-emptive strikes on the mythology by calling press conferences and presenting reports (of which there are many), thus demonstrating once and for all that “Super Bowl sex trafficking” is nothing but a perverse masturbatory fantasy and an excuse for devoting extra money and manpower to the War on Whores.

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