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.
While working as a high-class escort for nine years, Rebecca Dakin saw hundreds of married men turn to her to fulfill sexual needs not being met by their wives. In 2009, she…became an infidelity counselor, using her experience…to teach women about how to satisfy their husbands…Dakin says that the number one reason men look outside of their relationships for sex is because they’re not getting enough of it at home…other reasons…include…feeling bored by the sex they receive…or feeling hesitant to share their intimate desires and fantasies with their spouse…
The pathetic losers who believe young girls can perform complex calculations in their heads are at it again, informing us that if Barbie were both alive and life-sized she wouldn’t have room for intestines. That’s ironic, because it’s obvious that doofuses who obsess about plastic dolls have no room in their heads for comprehending that the smaller any animal is, the more slender its proportions tend to be, and that kids don’t actually notice this kind of stuff in any case.
It’s surprising that this article on Bay Area sex workers (including Kitty Stryker and Siouxsie Q) who cater to the tech sector appeared on CNN, of all places; the phrase “human trafficking” occurs only once, in a very short passage about a vice cop. Maybe a few people over there are starting to wake up (or just seeing the writing on the wall). The same holds true in the next item:
…Mazar…is…Afghanistan’s unofficial capital of prostitution…[this is] partly [due]…to the city’s culture, which is considerably more forgiving of vice than is the rest of the country. Alcohol, though still illegal, can be found without too much trouble. Women…can be seen socializing with men in…public parks, a rare sight even in Kabul…In recent years, the city’s economy has flourished as its proximity to Central Asia and its relative peace and stability have transformed it into a trading hub…The sex trade has [always] existed in one form or another…even under the ultraconservative rule of the Taliban. But officials here say the rapid spread of mobile technology has made the business easier to manage and harder to detect…Women…host clients in a series of apartments…The point of contact is typically a man who orchestrates the meet-ups by cellphone. This has made the business tough to infiltrate for those police officials eager to crack down…[sex workers] are almost always impoverished and typically divorced or widowed, struggling to support a family…they risk death if they are discovered…
Even the police state seems unable to explain what legitimate public interest is served by jailing a 69-year-old quadriplegic polio victim who breathes through a ventilator for the “crime” of having sexual feelings. In 2011 he was “convicted” of helping sex workers find safe clients by running a screening service, and apparently the terms of his probation demand he not be sexual in any way; unsurprisingly, he has been caught violating that condition twice so far.
…As part of a legal settlement, Tennessee-based Stop Child Trafficking Now…will agree to follow a list of requirements if it returns to Missouri…some of the stipulations include [detailing] how donated funds will be spent in the Kansas City area…[and] an accurate depiction of the organization’s accomplishments. A 41 Action News investigation…followed the money trail and fact-checked some of SCTNow’s bold claims made on its website…hundreds of thousands of dollars [went] to fund private “special operatives” teams to gather undercover intelligence about child sex trafficking…[but] when pressed for more details, SCTNow could not point to a single case in the country where information lead to an arrest or prosecution…
Where’s the outcry from picket-fence gay activists? {sound of crickets} I reckon they don’t want to be soil their newfound respectability by speaking up for drag hookers any more.
…outlawing activities accomplishes only one thing…It tells citizens that government has decided something is Wrong…Sending A Message is the principle …behind the Swedish state’s…law against buying sex, and…behind all the [others]…who want the law for their countries. Everyone wants to be seen to be Taking a Stand against immoral behaviour. Try bringing evidence into the conversation and you will quickly learn how irrelevant it is; you can find Swedish promoters themselves saying things like We know it doesn’t work but we want to be in the forefront of Gender Justice…Any other claim about what prohibitionist laws achieve when they outlaw social activities like sex, drinking and drugs is not supported by evidence. That’s because, after the law is passed and the message is sent, individuals deal with prohibition deviously…So buyers and sellers of drugs, alcohol and sex become creative, some of them maintaining a disapproving stance in public at the same time…
A new study, designed and carried out by the network of female sex workers in Latin America and Caribbean (REDTRASEX), has documented legislation that affects sex work – as well as detailing what this means in practice…independent sex work is not prohibited in any of the countries studied. What is criminalized…is proxenetism (or ‘pimping’) and…“immoral” behaviours or disturbances to the peace or public order are applied in relation to sex work. Furthermore…confusing sex workers…with trafficked persons…silences the legitimate voices of sex workers and actually blocks discussions on how to end human trafficking. This creates a framework of legitimacy for police repression and state violence…[and] results in a culture of secrecy around sex work, increasing stigma and the vulnerability of sex workers…
Despite a total lack of evidence (“[trafficking] convictions [declined] 13 percent”), Chicken Licken and other overly-excitable barnyard fowl ordered EU member states “to get a move on with adopting tough new rules against human trafficking or face sanctions as a first report on the problem showed ‘modern-day slavery’ worsening”. Obviously math isn’t the typical politician’s strong suit, but one would think even they could comprehend that the larger estimates might have something to do with the fact that they “[broadened] the definition of the crime” two years ago; now they’re claiming “the trafficking business is second-only in illegal activity to the weapons trade”, up from the equally-bogus assertion that it was third. Anyone want to take bets on whether it will rise to first before the hysteria collapses?
…we’ve been hearing it for years. Gay marriage is a slippery slope! A gateway drug! If we legalize it, then what’s next? Legalized polygamy? We can only hope…let’s not forget that the fight doesn’t end with same-sex marriage…Legalized polygamy in the United States is…constitutional, feminist, and sex-positive…we really can make our own choices. We just might choose things people don’t like…Arguments about whether a woman’s consensual sexual and romantic choices are “healthy” should have no bearing on the legal process…It’s condescending, not supportive, to minimize them as mere “victims” without considering the possibility that some of them have simply made a different choice…
…Who are the organizers of this campaign trying to communicate with? My suspicion is…people who already have a soft analysis of prostitution gleaned from watching 20/20…or true crime TV shows about sex trafficking busts…who is going to step up and be “in favor” of “modern day slavery” or “sex trafficking?” …I really want to know what it’s going to take for people to actually think about how complicated the sex trade is, and that it’s not all the same, and that ads that make us all the victims of overwhelming violence don’t do anything to actually improve our circumstances…
…Fox 2000…[is] adapting Go the Fuck to Sleep for the big screen…the bedtime-story parody, written by Adam Mansbach and illustrated by Ricardo Cortés, has become something of a viral hit…It is unclear how the filmmakers plan to turn what is essentially a nursery rhyme with one punchline…into an entire feature- length film…
I hope this proves lucrative for Ricardo and also opens more doors for him.
To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. ― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
Because I’ve done so many Q & A columns, I’m starting to see some repetition in the questions readers ask. This isn’t exactly surprising, considering that there are over 900 daily columns now and even a person who’s good at using indexes and searches might not phrase the question in the same way as the original questioner. So, I’ve decided to publish this linked list of all the questions I’ve answered so far, rephrased for simplicity and clarity; within the next few days it will be duplicated in a static page that will grow as I answer new questions, and that I can then link in each new Q & A column.
Any man who knows all the answers most likely misunderstood the questions. - Nancy Willard
Please email maggiemcneill@earthlink.net if you have a question you’d like answered; I’ve been rather behind on my correspondence lately, but I should still be able to answer you within a few days.
As a female I’m tired of having to go out and find someone who knows how to make me cum multiple times and has ability to keep going; I’m sick of looking on all these dating sites and I just want a professional who wants my money and has an awesome service to provide. How does one find a male prostitute for a straight female?
The problem is that there simply aren’t enough women who want to hire male escorts to support a male escort service just for women, nor are there any websites (that I know of) that review male escorts for women. I have two suggestions that might potentially help:
1) You could just call a regular service that has male escorts for men; some male escorts are either bisexual or “gay for pay” and would be more than happy to see a female client for a change; or
2) If you’re just looking for oral, you could hire a female escort. Lots of them are bi, and their message board postings could help you to determine which.
Good luck; I hope you find someone who can give you what you’re looking for! You might also watch the comment thread below; my readers very often add helpful suggestions of their own.
I’m close to retirement and have been thinking about opening a brothel in Central America, but I’m trying to figure out how to attract the right girls; do you think they might be interested in alternative business models such as co-ops or other stakeholder arrangements, or do they typically stick (or get stuck with) a straight percentage and room fees?
I’ve never run a brothel, but I did own an escort service, and I got my girls the same way I got my clients: my phone book ad. However, since you’re unable to work there yourself and a brothel really needs at least two or three girls to start, that’s not going to work for you. For anyone who’s never done sex work to succeed at any such venture, he’s going to need a partner who has. I don’t know what connections you have in the place that you plan to open shop, but you’re going to need to use them to get a partner (or at least a manager) who knows the trade while you put up the money. She will know how to interview girls, and to tell which ones will be good and which bad (not foolproof, but much better than you could do). She’ll also tell you what the normal percentages and fees are, so of course if you improve on that a little you’ll be able to attract and keep the best talent.
I’m a man in my late 30′s considering seeing a professional for the first time. However, I’m very risk-averse and I’ve hesitated up to now due to concerns over STDs and law enforcement. I know that escorts make up 0.285% of women and 0.4% of std cases, once you back out streetwalkers, but is there anything beyond wearing a condom that will reduce risk? Since warts, herpes, and other conditions can be spread even with a condom, did you ever happen to contract something in your working years? I know this is a very direct question, so understand if you’d prefer not to answer. Also, how do I find a reputable agency and avoid cops?
Actually, your statistic is just a little off; I said that 0.4% of US STDs are related to escorts or brothel workers, but that’s counting BOTH sides of the transaction. Roughly 6% of men see prostitutes frequently, and though it’s impossible to tell which fraction of them only frequent streetwalkers, let’s presume for the sake of estimation that it’s very similar to the fraction of all whores who are themselves streetwalkers (which seems a reasonable assumption). Since 1/6 is 16.67%, we’ll shave off 1/6 of those clients and just assume 5% of all men visit escorts or brothels but not streetwalkers. That means 2.64% of the population (the combined total of indoor prostitutes and their clients) gets only 0.4% of the STDs, which in turn means that members of the general public are more than six times as likely to get an STD as either an escort or her client. The main reason for this is escorts’ scrupulous use of condoms, coupled with their awareness of the symptoms and avoiding contact with men who even look like they might be infected. In all the years I worked, I never once contracted any kind of STI, nor knew of a girl who did; I do remember one who got mononucleosis, but of course she may have contracted it from a boyfriend outside of work.
My advice for reducing both kinds of risk (disease and police) is the same: hire only established, well-reviewed escorts. Though I did own an agency, it is my considered opinion that it’s better nowadays for clients to hire independents whose reputation and track record they can check online. Even if a lady does not allow reviews (and there are good reasons she might not), if she’s been in the business for a couple of years you can be pretty sure that she’s dependable and knows what she’s doing because even in the absence of published reviews, word gets around among the “hobbyists” if she isn’t and doesn’t.
I’m thinking about hiring a call girl, but I like to kiss and to perform oral sex; is it safe to perform unprotected oral sex on a call girl? Also, I have heard that many have a no-kissing policy; how do I find one who doesn’t?
What you need to do is visit an escort review board like ECCIE or Big Doggie, where you will find both ads for escorts and reviews written by men who have seen them before. Most reviews have an “activities” section where the guys state what they did with the escorts; what you’re looking for is either a narrative stating that a lady you find attractive kisses, or else the acronym “DFK” (deep French kissing). That way you will know before attempting to date any given lady that she is willing to provide what you want most.
The chance of a man getting an STI from performing oral sex on any woman is vanishingly small; though health officials love to overstate risks “to be on the safe side”, the fact of the matter is that unless the woman is menstruating or has some kind of open sores that her lover would surely notice, or he has open sores or cuts in his mouth, there just isn’t an easy route by which disease can pass from a woman’s vulva into someone’s mouth (except for diseases which can be transmitted via mere skin-to-skin contact). The risk is lower still if the woman is a call girl because, as I’ve explained before, professionals in developed countries have a much lower rate of every STI than promiscuous amateurs do; in fact, the only people who have lower STI rates than professional escorts in Western nations are those who are totally celibate.
So, school personnel, think you’re safe because you’ve never done sex work and/or don’t have direct contact with kids? Think again:
…Des Moines school superintendent Nancy Sebring resigned last week…for sending sexy emails at work…Sebring was forced out of her position because school district staffers discovered…emails she’d sent…to an adult man with whom she was engaged in a consenting sexual relationship…district…policy forbids using school computers…for personal correspondence…
Had the emails been about him taking her to a movie nobody would’ve said boo; she was sacked for being sexual, because sex rays can flow through the school’s computer system or become embedded in memo paper and thus imperil students (i.e. helpless, asexual fetuses) in a different part of town.
…[In Chicago] a disproportionate number of transgender individuals are apparently being arrested for patronizing or soliciting for prostitution…Transgender “buyers” are much more likely than non-transgender buyers to be black…[and] are also, on average, almost 10 years younger. We should note that 10.5% of the arrestees were transgender, a shocking statistic…It seems much more likely that these individuals were “sellers,” not “buyers”…
As the Swedish Rot begins to pervade more American jurisdictions, it has become less politically popular to arrest women; so, Chicago cops simply lie and accuse transgender hookers of being clients instead due to their biological gender. Since neofeminists hate transgender people anyway, this is a bonus for them.
Australian politician Craig Thomson is under fire for misappropriation of funds, and though less than 6% of those funds were spent on whores guess what everyone’s talking about? Kelly Hinton of Project Respect comments:
…The question of whether or not [Thomson] actually did this has been lost…as a woman…dared not only to come forward publicly saying she could identify him from a photo, but accepted money to do so. It seems that what she has to say is irrelevant – we have already scrutinized, judged, degraded and discredited her in a public trial by media… from all sides. Owners of escort businesses and brothels in Sydney…have been quick to discredit her (and ultimately, other women in the sex industry)…[by] depicting [them] as stupid…[or] manipulative…Mr Thomson is quoted as saying: “To buy a story from a prostitute is cheque book journalism at its worst”…Is he suggesting that because she has been in the sex industry, we must assume she has no morals, is a liar and will do anything for money?…
This is yet another demonstration of why sex work must be completely decriminalized: any arbitrary limitation which doesn’t apply to other people besides hookers will be used as a weapon by those in power:
…A local sex worker…said prostitution laws in Queensland were much harsher than in other Australian states…sex workers may only enlist the services of a registered bodyguard and a driver. They are not permitted to have a receptionist book their service or handle payments. Detective Superintendent Brian Wilkins…said enforcing these laws helped prevent the exploitation of sex workers…
So to “protect” the girls, cops trick and arrest them, “helping” them into a criminal record and “helping” the state to some of their money. I’m sure they’re very grateful.
Young women who report that their romantic partners look at porn frequently are less happy in their relationships than women partnered with guys who more often abstain… said…Destin Stewart [of]…the University of Florida…Discovering explicit material on a partner’s computer “made them feel like they were not good enough, like they could not measure up”…women who reported that their boyfriends or husbands looked at more pornography were less likely to be happy in their relationships than women who said their partners didn’t look at pornography very often. When women were bothered by their partner’s porn use, saying, for example, that they believed he was a porn addict or that he used porn more than a “normal” amount, they were also more likely to have low self-esteem and to be less satisfied with both their relationship and their sex life…that doesn’t prove that porn necessarily caused the women’s self-esteem to drop…women who feel bad about themselves might seek out or stay with porn-loving guys more often than secure women…
Or, women who believe in nonsense like “porn addiction” might be labeling a normal amount of porn-watching “excessive”, or might even be classifying as porn materials that more secure women don’t think of that way (e.g., I don’t call Playboy porn). Or, a woman with self-esteem problems, or who is dissatisfied with her relationship, could be much less interested in sex, which drives her man to look at more porn. There’s just no way to tell anything at all from sloppy studies like this, but that sure didn’t stop the anti-sex crowd from trying.
I’m really pleased to see more sex businesses counterattacking with civil litigation. Escort review and message board ECCIE is suing a blogger who refers to the owners as “pimps” and has repeatedly accused them of “human trafficking” (sound like anybody we know?); the buffoon doesn’t seem to comprehend that actual felony accusations cross the line from criticism into libel. Meanwhile, Backpage is suing the state of Washington to prevent implementation of a new law which would require escorts to place ads on websites in person rather than over the internet, and would hold any website (including Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc) criminally liable for outside submissions, which as the lawsuit points out would “bring the practice of hosting third-party content to a grinding halt.” Apparently federal judge Ricardo Martinez recognizes the implications, because he has temporarily blocked enforcement of the new law while the suit proceeds.
When one of Dan Savage’s readers asked him for advice on how to become a straight male escort, he enlisted the aid of an expert:
“There is no gigolo industry,” says Dominick, the former escort who writes Ask Dominick, an advice column…at Rentboy.com…“What STUD is seeking is a fantasy—one that has been fueled by cultural products like American Gigolo and HBO’s Hung,” says Dominick. There are no reputable agencies…that book male escorts to see female clients, just as there are no websites like Rentboy.com for straight male escorts. “The fact of the matter is, almost all clients for escorts are male…” When [Dominick] was working as an escort in New York City, his ads stated that he was available for male or female clients. “Over three years, I went on exactly one call with a female client…and one call with a married couple for a cuckolding scene, which was initiated by the husband. During that same period, I averaged about 5.5 calls per week with men”…
A “serious” Spanish company offers a €100 course in “professional prostitution”, at least according to a poster…in the city of Valencia…adult students (both male and female) are trained to charge for sex. They learn the Kama Sutra, both common and uncommon positions, and the use of toys; the number of classes is optional according to student needs. Upon graduation, a student can apply to be a teacher in the school, or explore a world of other possibilities to “make big money quickly and easily”…
The Quebec Council for the Status of Women is calling on the government to decriminalize prostitution, and instead go after the clients and escort agencies…[The group claimed] the average age young women become involved in the sex trade is between 14 and 15 years old. Many, they say, have been sexually abused as children…[and that] bodies need to stop being objectified, including in strip clubs…
…Gardai…are examining information gathered in last week’s…raids on apartments that were being used mainly by foreign prostitutes…all the young women who were detained or questioned said they were working in the sex trade here voluntarily…Gardai disagree with claims by Catholic and feminist groups that there are high levels of human trafficking involved in Ireland’s sex trade…
This account from a Congolese whore clearly demonstrates why criminalization and legalization schemes are dangerous both for women and for public health:
When Redempta…came to Kenya, she quickly had to find a source of income to feed and house herself and her two younger siblings. But as an illegal immigrant with no knowledge of local languages, her options were very limited. “I met some women from my country…and they introduced me to sex work…When I refuse to have sex with [men] without a condom, some threaten to report me to the police. They say they will tell the police I stole from them…I don’t have any papers to allow me [to stay] here, so I just have sex with them without a condom when they want.” Redempta sometimes has up to eight clients in two days, but…has only been tested for HIV once in the last two years. ”I just tested once when they conducted a public one [testing campaign], but I fear going to a facility to test for HIV. I don’t know what the health workers will tell me when I go there because I am not a Kenyan,” she said…
Nadya Suleman accepted a topless dancing gig in order to promote her porn video and says “that she would accept adult entertainment offers, although she ‘wouldn’t even kiss somebody for money’.” But despite her “dreams of building a business ‘empire’ that will pay for food, shelter and college educations for her 14 children” and her “hopes to become a role model for other women facing major struggles”, she backed out of the contract after “the club’s bartender said [in a TV interview]: ‘She must be a little crazy, normal people don’t have that many children’… and…the club’s manager said that ‘maybe after a few shows she gets comfortable, we’ll see more’ [than just her tits].” Wake up, Octomom; your kids can’t eat your pride, and if you’re that easily offended how the hell do you hope to handle Howard Stern’s comments when you ride a Sybian on his show on June 20th?
Another gang leader was sentenced on “human trafficking” charges for the prostitution of female gang members; the story is chock full of the sort of melodramatic language one expects from a 1930s B-movie and of course portrays female gang members as innocent lambs.
A 17-year-old suspected rape victim is being held in a California juvenile detention facility to ensure that she’ll show up to testify against her attacker…“The last thing we ever want to do is put a victim or a witness in custody, but when you have serious crimes of violence and multiple offenses, you have to balance the protection of the community,” [said the]…assistant district attorney…
Once again: never, ever call the cops for any reason, not even if you think you’re dying. Because once you do, they think you are their personal property to dispose of in any way they wish.
In the grand tradition of William Randolph Hearst, the New York Times doesn’t just report the news; it exaggerates, distorts and lies in order to make a “good story”. And since it’s been on an anti-whore hobby horse for several years now, that means stuff like this:
…While the rest of Spain’s economy may be struggling, experts say that prostitution — almost all of it involving the ruthless trafficking of foreign women — is booming…powered in large part by the desires of young men…The State Department’s 2010 report on trafficking said that 200,000 to 400,000 women worked in prostitution in Spain…[and] 90 percent were trafficked…
No, “experts” say no such thing; those who promote this kind of garbage are mostly just making it up, either pulling numbers from thin air or using overly-broad definitions (such as defining any hooker who works in an area other than her native soil as “trafficked”) and then embellishing the numbers with unwarranted adjectives like “ruthless” and presenting scare stories as “fact”. For more Times duplicity, see “Feet of Clay” below.
Sex workers are anti sex-trafficking. It seems obvious…and yet you might not know this because sex workers rights activists have not gotten any air-time from the major anti-trafficking organizations…shutting down advertising sites…means losing the ability to screen clients beforehand…SWOP and other sex worker advocacy groups have ideas around what could actually help trafficking…
…three business students from the University of Mannheim…offer…female students uncomplicated and anonymous one-night stands…posters…promise “Good Grades through Good Sex.” The young men claim that their project is about emancipation…and…should be recognized as more than a mere coital campaign…Female students who spend their evenings drained and fatigued in the library and are in the mood for a little closeness and intimacy are encouraged to send an email. Then one of the three men will meet with them…[they] claim that five one-night-stands have taken place so far…
Since this report is several years old and was not available on any mainstream news site, I suspect it’s an urban legend circulated among animal-rights types; supposedly an orangutan named Pony was “rescued” from a rural brothel in Borneo, where she was employed as a prostitute and shaved several times a week to make her more presentable. Unless someone manages to dig up a properly-documented article, I must point out that claiming huge numbers of men would pay for sex with an ape seems closely akin to the notion that similar numbers want sex with traumatized prepubescent girls: both are prohibitionist myths intended to smear men in general and whores’ clients in particular.
The number of teen births in the U.S. dropped again in 2010…to about 34 per 1,000 girls… Mississippi continues to have the highest teen birth rate, with 55 births per 1,000 girls. New Hampshire has the lowest rate at just under 16 births per 1,000 girls. This is the lowest national rate for teen births since…1940…Researchers…found that teenagers who received…comprehensive sex education were 60 percent less likely to get pregnant or get someone else pregnant. And in 2007, a federal report showed that abstinence-only programs had “no impacts on rates of sexual abstinence.” But 37 states require sex education that includes abstinence, 26 of which require that abstinence be stressed as the best method…research shows that [these] deter contraceptive use among teenagers, thus increasing…risk of unintended pregnancy…
…this week, the Supreme Court decided that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor…Justice Anthony Kennedy explained that this ruling is necessary because [one of the 9/11 conspirators] could have been stopped for speeding. How would strip searching him have prevented the attack? Did Justice Kennedy imagine that plans to blow up the twin towers had been concealed in a body cavity? In still more bizarre non-logic, his and the other justices’ decision rests on concerns about weapons and contraband in prison systems. But people under arrest – that is, who are not yet convicted – haven’t been introduced into a prison population. Our surveillance state shown considerable determination to intrude on citizens sexually…the use of forced nudity by a state that is descending into fascism is powerfully effective in controlling and subduing populations. The political use of forced nudity by anti-democratic regimes is long established. Forcing people to undress is the first step in breaking down their sense of individuality and dignity and reinforcing their powerlessness…the TSA…genital groping policy…is designed to psychologically habituate US citizens to a condition in which they are demeaned and sexually intruded upon by the state…
[Wisconsin governor] Scott Walker…quietly signed three controversial bills on the eve of a holiday weekend…A woman seeking an abortion must [now] undergo an exam and consult with a doctor alone, away from her friends and family. The doctor must determine whether someone is pressuring the woman into the procedure…
Mandatory prosecution laws for domestic violence and Swedish-flavored anti-prostitution laws have established the precedent that women are incompetent to make any decision which involves sex, and that if a woman makes a decision “authorities” don’t like it must be the result of coercion. This merely follows that precedent to its next logical step; look for more like it in upcoming months.
…[Nicholas] Kristof’s own newspaper profits from the sort of advertising for escort services, strip clubs, and other forms of adult entertainment that Kristof has linked to the underworld of child sex trafficking…About.com is “a wholly-owned subsidiary of the New York Times Company”…[which] accounted for 5% of all [company] revenues…in 2011, roughly $100 million…the Times also owns a 49% stake in Metro Boston…[which] also happens to make money from adult advertising…[Kristof’s] salary partly comes from the same ads, and the same allegedly criminal activity, that he tried to pin on Goldman Sachs…Though [it] immediately divested itself of its stake in Backpage.com, that was not enough for Kristof, who told CNBC he would have preferred to see the company apply its investment towards “bringing about change” in the online advertising industry. He added that Goldman Sachs should have sold its 16 percent stake in Village Voice Media to “an anti-trafficking organization.” Will Kristof apply that same standard to the New York Times–and himself? The newspaper and its shareholders must give up over $100 million in annual revenue; are they ready to contribute to the cause? And if not, will Kristof devote his column to campaigning against his employer? Will he appear on CNBC to report “The Times‘ Ties to Sex Trafficking?” If not, why not?
In the TV movie The Client List Jennifer Love Hewitt played a mother who becomes an erotic masseuse to make ends meet, and the movie proved so popular it is now a series. I have been told the character and her work are portrayed positively, and this interview with the actress leads me to believe that:
Since the movie has come out and with the upcoming show, have you been approached or contacted by any women who work in the sex industry?
No, I haven’t. I mean, I’m sure maybe once the show starts airing a bit, I might be able to meet some of those women or they might feel more comfortable to come up and say hello and have open discussions about those things…I feel like [prejudices come]…from lack of knowledge and fear and maybe not knowing the whole story…the more that you look into those industries, a lot of those women are single moms doing the best that they can or are someone’s daughter who fell on hard times…of course, some of them…just chose it because that’s what they wanted to do…I respect people doing what they have to do in order to try to live and be happy…
I sent a message to Miss Hewitt offering to answer any questions she might have, but haven’t heard back yet. The comment thread is a story in its own right; it’s full of holier-than-thou comments from the pompous windbags who apparently infest the massage profession nowadays, as discussed in “Full of Themselves”.
…Thanks to Weinstein’s “leadership” [AHF has] gone from a sizeable healthcare foundation with a good reputation to…a…joke…
A leading AIDS group is battling with FDA over whether the agency should approve the first drug for preventing HIV infection in gay men, and the fight has gotten nasty…the AIDS Healthcare Foundation called for Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to resign over that and other issues, perhaps including egos…Truvada cut the HIV infection in men who have sex with men by 44 percent compared to a placebo…So far, the drug has not been found to work in women…Weinstein worries that the promise of a “magic pill” could reverse progress the AIDS community has made in encouraging condom use over decades…
Mr. Weinstein is actually the only one who’s been branding Truvada as a magic pill, and he’s been citing half truths [and] his own botched survey…Nobody else…has been calling this anything other than…a drug with a promising potential that needs to be truly and thoroughly studied…Maybe it’s time for the AHF to consider whether or not the $366,046 a year they are paying Weinstein is money well spent. Charles Lyons II at Glaser makes exactly $1023 less than Weinstein for running an organization twice the size and scope. And he’s not wasting his group’s time and efforts trying to derail patient care…
Dr. Laura Agustín published two excellent articles on Gloria Steinem’s recent attempt to appoint herself an expert on “prostitution and sex trafficking” in India; her April 6th column discusses Steinem’s many errors, clichés, distortions, biases and moralistic assumptions, including her bizarre description of sex as “body invasion” (apparently a melodramatic twist on Robin Morgan’s ridiculous definition of rape). And on April 9th, Agustín describes an absurd tabloid-style news article glorifying Steinem and other White Saviors descending upon India to “rescue” sex workers “with money and might”.
One Year Ago Today
“The Pro-Rape Coalition” demonstrates why those who call themselves “anti-porn” are in reality pro-rape.
As I said in my column of December 9th, there always seems to be an explosion of interesting news articles at the end of the year, and here are seven more updates. After today, I’m officially done with this sort of thing until January!
In this early post I discussed the awkwardness which results when an escort discovers that she knows a client in real life, but none of the examples I gave can compare with this UPI story from December 3rd:
…Titus Ncube of Bulawayo [Zimbabwe] said he called for a prostitute to come to the hotel room in which he was staying while having marital problems and was shocked when his 20-year-old daughter arrived…Ncube said he collapsed to [the] floor upon recognizing his daughter, who quickly fled, crying. “I am sorry for what I did,” Ncube said. ”I spoke to my wife and daughter. I apologized for my actions as I just wanted my family back. My daughter has stopped doing what she was doing and is going back to school next year. My marital problems are not over, but we have a counselor who is helping us to get over this most difficult period”…
In this article I pointed out that men’s magazine publishers have “to be given credit for pushing the envelope and helping to advance the cause of sexual liberty in the US by bringing both porn and frank discussion of sexual topics (including prostitution) into the mainstream.” Now a new book by Mike Edison explores the history of American men’s magazines in depth so as to prove that assertion, and the author promotes it with “How Sex Magazines Made The World A Better Place” in the December 7thHuffington Post.
From the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger of December 12th:
A truck driver claims his prostitute fiancee suffocated as they celebrated their engagement with a meth and bondage sex party. Then he drove from California to Mississippi with the corpse in the cab…and set fire to the truck – with himself and the body inside. Mark Andrew Rice pleaded guilty to arson and desecrating a corpse and was sentenced Monday to six years in prison…[with] two years…suspended for time served.
Rice, 49…met [Natasha] Carpenter at a truck stop in Texas. He fell in love after several encounters…and [gave] her an engagement ring…[on] Sept. 15, 2009. As part of their celebration in Barstow, Calif., Carpenter agreed to let him bind…and…gag…her…When he found her dead, Rice panicked and bought “all the meth his dealer had” and drove to…[Mississippi, where he] planned to say goodbye to his family and kill himself…[but they] took a gun away from him so he climbed into the rig and set it ablaze. Deputies eventually pulled him from the burning truck…Hancock County authorities believe he would’ve been charged with manslaughter or worse had she died in Mississippi…Prosecutors in San Bernardino County, Calif..said there was “insufficient evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
It’s really quite a sad story, since he seems to have genuinely loved her; I’m guessing the methamphetamine increased her metabolism so that she suffocated more quickly than he allowed for.
In this column I pointed out that “People with a lot of free time and more math skills than sense have published complicated calculations showing that at 1/6 scale, Barbie would be 5’9” tall, with measurements of 36”-18”-33” and a weight of 110#” and that “The campaign to suppress or neuter Barbie derives from the same repressions and insecurities as the campaign to ban porn and abolish prostitution…” And just as neofeminists aren’t too scrupulous about getting their facts right with regard to porn or prostitution, so they aren’t in their Barbie-attacks either:
Galia Slayen…[told NBC's "Today" show that] she first created [a 6’ tall] Barbie-like figure — with a 39-inch bust, 18-inch waist and 33-inch hips…for the first National Eating Disorders Awareness week in 2007 while she was [an anorexic] high school student in Portland [Oregon]…”I’m not blaming Barbie [for my illness] — she’s one small factor, an environmental factor,” Slayen said. ”I’m blond and blue-eyed and I figured that was what I was supposed to look like. She was my idol. It impacted the way I looked at myself.”
The grotesquely distorted microcephalic figure in the picture (which, as you will note, bears little resemblance to a real Barbie doll) is a perfect symbolic representation of the grotesquely distorted “prostitute” caricatures described by people like Melissa Farley, except that Slayen’s distortion of the math isn’t nearly as severe as that practiced by Farley et al.
It’s funny how efforts to suppress consensual activities always end up looking a lot alike, as in this December 5th story from the Associated Press:
…Lithuania’s capital [Vilnius] recently introduced a ban on panhandling that not only punishes those who beg but those who give, with fines of up to 2,000 litas ($770). Outraged rights groups say the ban spells misery for the needy in one of Europe’s poorest countries, as winter kicks in and economic turmoil spreads across the continent…”Begging is a human right,” said Linas Kukuraitis, director of the Lithuanian chapter of Catholic charity group Caritas. ”It was there long before cities emerged. There have always been those who begged and those who helped them.”
But Vilnius Mayor Arturas Zuokas says the ban will help beggars to find more sustainable ways to make a living. “Giving money to people on the street is wrong,” Zuokas said. ”By doing this we doom them to stay there forever”…police…are not issuing fines just yet. Instead they are handing out cards to beggars with addresses and phone numbers of charities and homeless shelters. Stricter enforcement is expected to begin in January. The mayor himself rode his bicycle…looking for violators of the ban. Zuokas made a splash on YouTube earlier this year by riding an armored personnel carrier over a luxury car as a publicity stunt for his crackdown on illegal parking…He said there are plenty of homeless shelters for the poor in Vilnius, “but they stay on the streets because it is a kind of business.”
…Some Asian countries have laws targeting both beggars and almsgivers but European…laws typically focus only on [beggars] and aren’t always strictly enforced. However, police in Ireland cracked down on panhandlers this year…[and] Austria’s Styria province…introduced a begging ban in February. None of them punish almsgivers. By contrast, Norway, one of the world’s richest countries, abolished a more than 100-year-old vagrancy law in 2005, making it legal to beg in the streets. It’s also legal in Sweden, Germany, Spain and Portugal…
Note that Sweden and Norway officially believe that beggars have more right to self-determination and making a living in a way that suits them than women do.
A politician being caught with a prostitute isn’t really news, but for the prostitute to expose the politician is. This one’s from the December 6thHuffington Post:
The…married mayor [of Medford, New Jersey], accused on a website two months ago of having sex with a prostitute at a California hotel, [has] resigned…The anonymous allegation against…Chris Myers…included a photo of…him in his underwear…[The accuser] claimed to be a prostitute…[whom] Myers contacted…through a male escort website…Myers paid him $500 but didn’t fulfill promises of a car and other gifts…[and that] the broken promise was the reason he was taking his story public. The website was [soon] taken down…[and though] Myers…refused to comment on the allegations [he] didn’t deny them…His resignation letter…did not mention the scandal…
The December 10thMiami Herald featured this article on persecution of Umbanda, another syncretism of Christianity with African and Indian beliefs. The crusade is largely driven by Pentecostal Christians who…wait for it…want to “save” believers from their choices:
…many Brazilians…view Umbanda…as…witchcraft…In many parts of the country, [it] was outlawed until the 1950s, and in the following three decades believers were supposed to register with the police…Brazil’s…1989 constitution enshrined [religious] freedom…but…followers say official disdain and intense prejudice still put their lives and shrines at risk…[they] report on average 100…physical or verbal attacks a year…in…Rio de Janeiro alone…Cases…have increased along with the…power of Pentecostal religions…”There is always a discourse of ‘taking them from the hands of the devil’”…[theologian Fernando] Altemeyer said…Such tensions have come into relief in Sao Goncalo, where Mayor Aparecida Panniset, an outspoken Pentecostal, has been accused of failing to protect Umbanda sites, or even destroying them. In October, she ignored pleas by religious tolerance activists to stop the demolition of the house where the first Umbanda rituals were held in 1908. She also turned down requests to meet the activists…then moved ahead with efforts to raze another traditional Umbanda house…
One Year Ago Today
“The Swedish Pimpocracy” shows how the government of Sweden exploits women to “implement a plain old-fashioned tyranny while hiding under the cloak of ‘enlightenment’.”
The freakish is no longer a private zone, difficult of access. People who are bizarre, in sexual disgrace, emotionally violent are seen daily on the newsstands, on TV, in the subways. Hobbesian man roams the streets, quite visible, with glitter in his hair. - Susan Sontag
…and as usual, we give the most freakish and emotionally disturbed of all power over us, like a medieval Carnival celebration writ large and practiced all year ‘round. In today’s collection, I’ve saved those for last.
Not To Be Taken Internally
It’s not too often an article leaves me at a loss for words, but…see for yourself, in this November 19th story from NBC Miami:
A Miami Gardens transgender woman is facing charges of practicing medicine without a license after police say she injected a patient’s rear with everything but the kitchen sink in an illegal cosmetic surgery procedure. Oneal Ron Morris, 30, was arrested Friday after an investigation by Miami Gardens Police and the Florida Department of Health. According to police, the victim saw Morris in May and was injected in her buttocks with a substance consisting of cement, “Fix a Flat,” mineral oil and super glue…the amateur incision was then sealed with super glue…[and] the victim was later hospitalized with a serious medical condition…Morris, who police say is a man but appears to look like a woman and sports an apparently enhanced rear herself in arrest photos, was being held on $7,500 bond. It was unknown whether she has an attorney…
Since then, other victims like this one have come forward. Take a look at Morris’ photo at right and ask yourself, “Would I trust this person’s judgment regarding cosmetic procedures?” The only other thing I have to say is from “February Updates”: “ladies, please, real plastic surgeons do NOT make house calls to hotel rooms!” Nor, I might add, do they perform procedures at parties.
Higher Education
OK, according to American law filmed harlotry magically becomes legal. I wonder how this scheme (reported on November 29th in the Huffington Post) would fly in the US?
The world’s first international sex school has opened which claims to teach its students how to be better lovers. But far from being a cheap thrill, one term at the “hands on” International Sex School in Vienna will cost pupils £1,400. Swedish-born “headmistress” Ylva-Maria Thompson says anyone over the age of 16 can enroll at what she describes as “the world’s first college of applied sexuality”. Students live in a mixed sex dormitory block where they’re expected to practise their homework. “Our core education is not theoretical, but very practical. The emphasis is on how to be a better lover”, the new school head added. “Sexual positions, caressing techniques, anatomical features. And we teach people hands on.”
Thompson is better known for her art exhibitions, including one which displayed 100 casts of Swedish women’s genitals. Raunchy adverts for the school showing a couple making love have already been banned by Austrian TV. “This is wrapped up in a very stylish way but it is just selling sex,” one protestor commented.
One has to laugh at the protester’s inane statement, because selling sex is legal in Austria. I do have to wonder if Thompson’s students could be prosecuted in her native country, though.
Poetic Justice
I hope you’ll forgive me for indulging myself in a moment of schadenfreude, courtesy of Hypervocal:
If you needed any real-world evidence as to why you should never put your name on a building while you’re still alive, former Arapahoe County [Colorado] Sheriff Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. has you covered. The National Sheriff Association’s 2001 “Sheriff of the Year” was arrested on [November 29th], suspected of trafficking methamphetamine, according to CBS Denver. The 68-year-old Sullivan served as Arapahoe County [Colorado] Sheriff for 19 years before retiring from his elected post in 2002. The investigation leading up to his arrest…began on Nov. 17th when several police informants connected Sullivan to the use and distribution of meth. “As part of the investigation authorities say Sullivan agreed to meet a male informant and provide the man drugs in exchange for sex”…
Here’s the kicker: Sullivan, who is being held on $250,000 bond, is sitting in the Arapahoe County Jail. His new home is better known by its updated name: The Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. Detention Facility. Current Arapahoe County sheriff, Grayson Robinson, said Sullivan will likely be charged with a felony count drug count, with additional charges against him and other suspects to follow. If he is convicted of the class-five felony, he faces one to six years in prison…
This story could almost have served as an update to “Wholesale Hypocrisy” or even “Reaction Formation”, since the CBS report notes that this “dedicated, loyal, available,” dope-dealing “hero” who posted bond for drug suspects on numerous occasions over the past few years was simultaneously “an active participant in state and local methamphetamine task forces, helping craft a state plan to deal with the scourge of methamphetamine.” Well, I guess they went straight to the source. I wonder if he’ll be prosecuted as a “human trafficker” too, since he offered to pay for sex and Colorado politicians claim that “end demand” initiatives will “cut down on the enormous public harm that comes from human trafficking”. Alas, it’s much more likely he’ll just get the usual slap on the wrist after his defense says he fell off of his bicycle or became an addict due to some act of wonderful, selfless heroism.
The Clueless Leading the Hysterical
As students of hysteria know, the vast majority of panics would be extremely short-lived if people actually bothered to investigate the moronic claims made by authority figures such as “the average age at which a woman enters prostitution is 13” or “there is a 40% increase in domestic violence on Super Bowl Sunday” (as described in my column of one year ago today). Of course, they never do, and neither do the self-proclaimed “authorities” themselves. All it takes is for some glorified security guard in Arizona to declare that teenagers are using vodka-soaked tampons to get drunk without booze breath and before you know it cops and media from sea to shining sea are reporting it as Gospel. The idea of thinking critically about the claim or simply visiting The Straight Dope or Snopes or Mythbusters or The Honest Courtesan never occurs to these yo-yos, and the result is stuff like this November 30th story from Huffington Post:
The New Mexico Attorney General’s Office is warning parents that an increased sighting of depictions of a cartoon-like bear that is linked to pedophiles could be an indication of increased child sex offender activity in the Albuquerque area. ”Our ICAC unit has received reports that the Pedobear window sticker has been sighted in Albuquerque on at least two vehicles recently,” said New Mexico Attorney General Gary King. The concept of the Pedobear was made popular a couple years ago on the Internet forum 4chan. The bear illustration was a joke aimed at people who were inadvertently creepy about children. The bear, however, has since been embraced by pedophiles, according to the attorney general’s office. The Pedobear, they allege, “has a sexual interest in underage girls” and has spread from use among an online subculture to the mainstream…
Last year flyers circulated of a Pedobear masquerading as a TSA agent, and in May a man dressed as the Internet-based Pedobear was escorted by police from the San Diego Comic Con event, where he had been distributing candy to children. It is not illegal for people to display the Pedobear image in public. Some people may be displaying them as a joke, but the attorney general’s office said they are taking the bear images seriously and are trying to get the word out. “We are very concerned about the potential link between the Pedobear symbol and pedophiles; we also want to increase public awareness of the potential danger to children, especially young girls,” King said.
Because, you know, pedophiles are usually strangers who wear funny costumes to attract the attention of every single adult in the area before swooping down on unsuspecting prepubescent girls, only they’re not. Of course, this isAlbuquerque, the city which seems determined to win some kind of award for police and governmental corruption, incompetence and all-around control freakishness. Still, they’re just taking their cues from San Diego, which started this particular nonsense last year with a hilarious two-page flyer that sounds like it was composed by the bastard child of a cop and a failed writer of vintage Hollywood ad copy. The sick minds of police are compelled to project their own internal ugliness onto the external world, so it’s inevitable that they would fantasize that a tool of community self-policing is “really” a badge of criminality that they have to “protect” people from by imposing further tyranny.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. - H.L. Mencken
One year ago today I published “November Q & A”, in which I answered the questions “Would you like to do a science fiction anthology with sex work as a subject?”, “How were you able to get through anal rape without screaming?”, “Did a condom ever break inside you?” and “Doesn’t monogamy get kinda old for a sexually liberated woman like yourself?” But from an activist standpoint, the most important question was, “So if the average age at which a woman enters prostitution isn’t really 13, what age is it?” In retrospect, I probably should’ve given that question a column of its own or at least led off with it, because whenever I’ve referred back to that post I have to specify that it’s the second answer. So today, I plan to revisit the subject and recalculate the figure using excerpts from previous columns, thus bringing a few threads together in one easily-linked place.
If you’re arguing with someone who has bought into the trafficking mythology and won’t sit still for the recitation of figures, there’s a very simple reductio ad absurdum with which you can point out the impossibility of the claim: If the “average age” of a given group of people is 13, that means that (roughly speaking) for every 14-year-old in the group there is a 12-year-old, for every 17-year-old a 9-year-old, etc. In other words, if the “average age at which a girl enters prostitution” were really 13, for every woman who started at 25 there would be someone who started at 1. Obviously, this isn’t exact; one 40-year-old could also be balanced by nine 10-year-olds, but I honestly don’t think even the trafficking fanatics believe that kind of age imbalance could possibly exist. They simply don’t consider the implications of their bogus “statistics”; they merely parrot them without thought and therefore never recognize just how ludicrous they are. But who started this nonsense in the first place?
As so often happens, the bogus “fact” is based on a (possibly deliberate) distortion of a miscalculation in a deeply-flawed, badly-structured 2001 study by Richard Estes and Neil Weiner of the University of Pennsylvania entitled “The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U. S., Canada and Mexico”, which is also the source of the ubiquitous (and equally erroneous) claim that “100,000-300,000 American children are trafficked as sexual slaves”. Estes and Weiner claim that among the underage prostitutes they studied, “The age range of entry…for the boys…was somewhat younger than that of the girls, i.e., 11-13 years vs. 12-14 years, respectively.” In other words, they claimed that the “13 at entry” figure was only for underage prostitutes, not for all prostitutes, and even then it’s absurd as explained in the preceding paragraph. Without seeing Estes & Weiner’s data we can’t be sure exactly what statistical errors they made, but as Emi Koyama of Eminism explains, there’s a built-in error caused by using the artificial cutoff age of 18:
For the sake of discussion, let’s pretend that in a small town, six minors enter into prostitution each year, one individual each for ages 12-17. That means that there is one 12 year old, one 13 year old, one 14 year old, and so on. The average age of entry in this hypothetical town is the average of these six individuals, which is (12+13+14+15+16+17)/6 = 14.5. But when researchers arrive in this town, they don’t just survey these six minors: they will also survey others who have started prostitution in the years past. So for any given year when the research is conducted, there are one 12 year old (who entered at 12), two 13 year olds (entered at 12 and 13), three 14 year olds (entered at 12, 13, and 14), and so on. The average among all of these youth will be…13.7 – which is almost one year younger than the actual average age of entry. This discrepancy is caused by limiting the research subject to minors. [One] who entered into prostitution at age 12 has six years in which he or she might be surveyed…while [one] who entered at 17 has only one year, which artificially inflates the proportion of research participants who entered early. In short, we cannot know the actual “average age of entry” by simply averaging the age of entry reported by research participants.
Though Estes & Weiner didn’t share their data the charts provided by the anti-prostitute organization Shared Hope International (which seems to be the original source of the distortion from “the average underage prostitute” to “the average prostitute”) demonstrate (as Emi calculates) an average of 15.91, three years higher than their verbal claims and slightly higher than the average reported by the John Jay study, which was 15.15 for girls and 15.28 for boys. Incidentally, it also found that only 15% of teen hookers entered the trade at an age below 13, which absolutely demolishes any notion of 13 as “average”.
In last November’s essay I reported a study of 100 independent escorts which asked how old they were when they entered the trade; it generated the following results:
Younger than 15: 3%
15-17: 11%
18-20: 13%
21-23: 18%
24-26: 16%
27-29: 10%
30-32: 10%
Older than 32: 19%
A secondary poll of the “over 32” respondents revealed that the average age for that category was 42; we can estimate the average for the “under 15″ category as the fanatics’ beloved 13. Given these figures, the average age of entry into prostitution for American escorts is 26.46, which we’ll round down to 26. It’s difficult to know what percentage of all American prostitutes are escorts, but I would suspect 60% is a good guesstimate; with our standard 15% streetwalker estimate that would allow 25% in brothels and massage parlors.
At the time I wrote the previous article I had not yet made my study of the New Zealand figures and so was forced to err on the fanatics’ side regarding the number of streetwalkers who are underage. But based on that data, we can now make a much better estimate: there are roughly 16,000 underage female prostitutes in the U.S., of whom roughly 12,000 (75%) are streetwalkers. The total U.S. streetwalker population is approximately 70,000, therefore underage streetwalkers are about 17% of the total. Assuming that the average adult streetwalker starts about the same age as the average escort (which is probably a bit too high, but we’ll make it up on brothel girls in the next paragraph), and that the average underage streetwalker starts at 15 (the John Jay figure), we arrive at an average streetwalker entry age of 24.
There are about 443,000 prostitutes in the United States, of which we’ve estimated 25% (111,000) work in brothels or massage parlors. If we assume that the 25% of underage prostitutes who aren’t streetwalkers work in brothels (the percentage who are escorts is miniscule), that gives us 4000/111,000 = 3.6% of brothel workers who are underage, essentially equal to the total underage figure of 3.54%. I’m going to err on the fanatics’ side and assume that the average adult brothel worker begins at the overall streetwalker average of 24, and that the average underage brothel worker begins at the same age as the average underage streetwalker, namely 15; this gives us an average starting age for brothel workers of 23.68, which I’m going to round down to 23 to be on the safe side.
So let’s crunch the numbers: if 60% start at an average age of 26, 15% at an average age of 24 and 25% at an average age of 23, the average age at which American hookers enter the profession is 24.95, which we’ll round off to 25; I think everyone can agree that’s safely into the adult range.
Every person knows that he should do what unites, not divides, him and other people. - Leo Tolstoy
In the ‘60s, prostitutes and homosexuals were in the roughly the same place legally; both of us were treated as criminals for our private sexual behavior. Socially and psychologically, though, we had it better than they did: while prostitutes were recognized as essentially normal and sane, homosexuals were considered abnormal and mentally ill. Both groups started to fight for their civil rights about the same time, but while queers have won theirs whores have actually lost ground since then; most people now consider homosexuals sane and more or less normal, while the official position in many countries (especially the United States and several Scandinavian countries) is that whores are abnormal and mentally ill. How did this sorry turn of events come to pass, especially since exclusive homosexuals make up less than 5% of the population while a similar fraction of women have prostituted themselves at least occasionally, and 69% of men have paid for sex at least once?
The answer is simple: gay men and lesbians, two groups with almost nothing in common, banded together to defeat laws and policies which criminalized and marginalized them, but whores have instead allowed other women to undermine us by implementing policies which deny us agency and treat us like retarded children. In other words, “gay rights” leaders built a coalition of a number of very small groups, while women – over half the human race – allowed our energies to be divided by giving a “bully pulpit” to a twisted minority faction whose members hate men, sex and their own femininity, and wish to destroy every aspect of traditional male-female social relations…including one of the oldest forms, prostitution. And while the “gay rights” coalition just keeps growing (from “gay and lesbian” to “GLBT” to “GLBTQ” to whatever alphabet soup it is now), we divide our already-divided energies even further by wasting them in foolish infighting or spending them on “gay rights” efforts despite the fact that few of them help us in turn, and some of them even work against us! Fortunately, now that they’ve won their place at the “big table”, some few “gay rights” activists seem to be recognizing the shamefulness of this attitude:
…What is it that so disturbs us about sex workers? And do we even have a right to that judgment? Specifically, does a member of a marginalized community have the right to condemn another marginalized community? Do they still have that right if they are sitting on a bar stool watching hard bodied go go boys?…maybe it is not sex work we despise, but the public display of same. If that is the case, then what of cruising, and the hyper speed electronic cruising created by various phone apps? Maybe that is okay, and sex work is not, for financial reasons? If the working girls and guys of the world were out there giving freebies would we be okay with it? At that point it is just anonymous sex, and since nobody seems to be looking for a husband on Grindr, I presume we are mostly okay with that…
…The hard fast truth is a majority of sex workers are in the profession completely on a voluntary basis, and for many, it has more to do with the freedom the job offers than any financial consideration. This is the denied voice—the words not spoken when we attempt to co-opt the sex professions for our own advocacy needs. We will not help anyone by demeaning them, and as much as we may wish to rationalize otherwise, we are really just trying to forward our own agendas at the expense of others. Further, people generally make the mistake of assuming sex work is not a legitimate occupation, and so must be looked at differently. Are there sex workers who took the job because there were no others available to them? Because it meets their financial needs better than any other? Who suffer from the choice because they hate the job? Of course, but I know carpenters that would fit that description just as well. Is anyone advocating on their behalf?…How is sex work different?
But, you say, sex work is against the law. Okay, point taken. I can not argue against current illegality of sex work. But I can make the case for tolerance. For starters, the lynch mob, police crack down attitude is useless. Interesting that police are meeting with neighborhood residents to address a large uptick in prostitution, when there is not one. It is not as though a whole bunch of locals decided to turn tricks and all showed up on one block. No, they moved, to escape the last neighborhood crackdown. Sex work is not something you eliminate, just something you pawn off on the neighbor…
…we start by dropping our middle class puritanical objections and learn to accept that sex workers are humans and deserve basic rights and dignity just like everyone. We also learn to accept that they too have the right to self determination, and assure that efforts to help them are never confused with efforts to save them. We further recognize that this is a part of our community, as there are many LGBTIQ identified sex workers…We need to be, dare I say it, tolerant and accepting.
I’m disgusted to hear that some members of the queer community actually argue against prostitution on the grounds that it’s against the law, when male homosexual activity was illegal in most states within the lifetimes of most of these middle-class, puritanical homos, and only became legal in some states in 2003. The existence of evil laws is not a valid argument against whatever it is those laws ban, and it certainly isn’t an excuse for ignoring the rights of those who break those laws; homosexuals of all people should understand this, and it’s sad that some pretend not to. Though the people who have abandoned queerness (with all the word entails) for respectability may object to my borrowing their former slogan, I say to them: “We’re here, we’re whores, get used to it!”
One Year Ago Today
“License To Rape” is a power many cops grant themselves over whores…and some cops grant themselves over all women.
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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:
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.”
