http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/11/prostitution-a-users-ma_n_91022.html
Wow...what a good read...all the comments - very thoughtful.
YMMV
Wow...what a good read...all the comments - very thoughtful.
YMMV
Prostitution: A User's Manual
- Thread starter Silentdude
- Start date
More interesting are the comments.
I’m sure the many nice escorts here on TERB and on MERB as well would be shocked to learn that they have “40 times the mortality rate of the general Canadian population” and that 90 percent of them wish to" leave the industry immediately."
Likewise that they all are about to be blackmailed because their clients are mostly powerful men who want to ruin their lives.
It reminds me of the thread the other day in which I mentioned that the general public can’t distinguish between escorts and street walkers, University Students and Graduates and Drug Abusers.
I’m sure the many nice escorts here on TERB and on MERB as well would be shocked to learn that they have “40 times the mortality rate of the general Canadian population” and that 90 percent of them wish to" leave the industry immediately."
Likewise that they all are about to be blackmailed because their clients are mostly powerful men who want to ruin their lives.
It reminds me of the thread the other day in which I mentioned that the general public can’t distinguish between escorts and street walkers, University Students and Graduates and Drug Abusers.
Yes, i enjoyed the comments. Example:
I find the statement in your article that one in three men will engage a prostitute at some point in their lives to be unsupported by valid research or any other type of evidence beyond anecdotal. Prostitution is the most disgusting human act that is imaginable. Prostitution is the absence of love. It is no accident that genocide always involves sexual oppression. It is no accident that slavery always involves sexual oppression. I live in Austin and in past years complained vigorously about the advertising for prostitution shops in the pages of what is otherwise a very progressive publication, the Austin Chronicle. The percentage of that advertising has diminished over the years. In New York however the opposite is true. The Village Voice, otherwise a well respected publication, is devoid of any redeeming social value because so much of its revenue comes from advertising sales to prostitutes. How can a publication promote progressive candidates and social progress in general while taking so much money from known crime syndicate operations that derive large amounts of their profit from human slavery and drug trafficking?
There is room in the Huffington Post for discussion of the human libido; but if you move in the same direction as the Village Voice you will lose my participation.
Then, in response:
Prostitution is the most disgusting human act that is imaginable? What are you, locked inside some church somewhere??
Go outside and take a look around at homeless people being set on fire, or children in the ER with broken bones, burns, brain trauma from physical abuse by parents. Go to the de-militarized zone and take a look at kids with missing limbs due to land mines left years ago. Go to a trial of one of those "btk" psychopaths who kidnap, bind, torture and then murder people.
God, what ARE you, new?? Did you just arrive on the planet? A person has sex with someone and leaves a hundred bucks on the bedside table and it is the most disgusting human act?
Rent a clue.
LOL First one must be a bible thumper.
I find the statement in your article that one in three men will engage a prostitute at some point in their lives to be unsupported by valid research or any other type of evidence beyond anecdotal. Prostitution is the most disgusting human act that is imaginable. Prostitution is the absence of love. It is no accident that genocide always involves sexual oppression. It is no accident that slavery always involves sexual oppression. I live in Austin and in past years complained vigorously about the advertising for prostitution shops in the pages of what is otherwise a very progressive publication, the Austin Chronicle. The percentage of that advertising has diminished over the years. In New York however the opposite is true. The Village Voice, otherwise a well respected publication, is devoid of any redeeming social value because so much of its revenue comes from advertising sales to prostitutes. How can a publication promote progressive candidates and social progress in general while taking so much money from known crime syndicate operations that derive large amounts of their profit from human slavery and drug trafficking?
There is room in the Huffington Post for discussion of the human libido; but if you move in the same direction as the Village Voice you will lose my participation.
Then, in response:
Prostitution is the most disgusting human act that is imaginable? What are you, locked inside some church somewhere??
Go outside and take a look around at homeless people being set on fire, or children in the ER with broken bones, burns, brain trauma from physical abuse by parents. Go to the de-militarized zone and take a look at kids with missing limbs due to land mines left years ago. Go to a trial of one of those "btk" psychopaths who kidnap, bind, torture and then murder people.
God, what ARE you, new?? Did you just arrive on the planet? A person has sex with someone and leaves a hundred bucks on the bedside table and it is the most disgusting human act?
Rent a clue.
LOL First one must be a bible thumper.
Not all is perfect
Not all is perfect.
But try.
No one is interested in finding a cure for retared people,
Silentdude
Not all is perfect.
But try.
No one is interested in finding a cure for retared people,
Silentdude
How is that a good comparism? Some escorts have started off as SW, maybe cause they were just 17 and could not get hired.
I see little difference between a very good SW and a very poor escort..in fact the SW might be better yet. There are some SW charging escort prices and are comparable to escorts. Taxes are another reason why some gals are SW.
Not all SW are drugies.
1. First, let's get the boring legal business out of the way. What exactly is prostitution?
Prostitution is "the act or practice of engaging in sexual intercourse for money."
2. Okay, got it. So is it common for men to use prostitutes?
According to Dr. Teela Sanders, a senior lecturer at the University of Leeds, and the author of Paying For Pleasure: Men Who Buy Sex, nearly one in three men will buy sex at some point in his life. . .and we're not talking porn.
Keep reading at Tango.
3. But why do men pay for it if they can just do it for free?
Married relationships can't provide this special "time out" stuff. Marriages are centered around finance, around children. This is a time out where it's purely about men having sexual satisfaction outside the bounds of a normal relationship. Men use their financial privilege to buy an intimate experience they can't get in their conventional relationship.
Also, this relationship is protected by the exchange. The men don't feel as though there's going to be some other emotional component, because the contract is very clear. This level of intimacy is an exchange, and the women who do this emotional labor make a lot of money. That's why you see this high end.
Keep reading at Tango.
4. Why do powerful men who seem to have it all, then go and screw everything up?
In [social psychologist Dr. Gerri] King's view, most everyone is reasonably comfortable being an average person. "There's room in most people's self-image for mistakes and foibles and inconsistencies," she says. "If you're just a normal person, you're allowed to be you. What's expected of you is reasonable. You have normal friends. And maybe most of all, you have normal expectations."
But if suddenly you're elevated into an elite level of society or business, you may have to retrofit your identity or conduct. Making these changes in your life can be an unsettling challenge. Let's say you're promoted to group president from a low-profile position.You have to put your characteristic sarcasm on hold during press conferences and corporate events. Your circle of friends or acquaintances may shift, as may your array of choices and freedoms.
Keep reading at Best Life.
5. How do blowjobs fuel the demand for prostitutes?
A 2001 study by Martin A. Monto, published in the Journal of Sex Research, indicates that "the desire for fellatio is an important reason clients seek female prostitutes." Monto's study gathered questionnaires from men arrested while trying to hire hookers; according to the pervy perps, fellatio was the most common practice they "had ever experienced" with a prostitute--a whopping 81% had received a blowjob as compared to 55% who had had sex.
Keep reading at Tango.
6. Why do prostitutes rake in so much dough?
Prostitution is, seemingly, a low-skill but high-pay profession with few upfront costs, micro-miniskirts and stiletto heels aside.
According to data assembled from a wide variety of times and places, ranging from mid-15th-century France to Malaysia of the late 1990s, prostitutes make more money--in some cases, a lot more money--than do working girls who, well, work for a living. This held true even for places where prostitution is legal and relatively safe. ...One normally cannot be both a wife and a whore. "Combine this with the fact that marriage can be an important source of income for women, and it follows that prostitution must pay better than other jobs to compensate for the opportunity cost of forgone-marriage market earnings."
Keep reading at Forbes.
7. How does one become a prostitute?
A flat in a block in a suburb of London: Karen (not her real name) thinks her neighbours probably realise she sells sex for a living. A few years earlier, Karen had left an unhappy marriage and began using internet chat rooms to meet men. "I started going on blind dates and it slowly started to evolve into having sex with strangers," she says. It wasn't such a huge leap, she says, into charging for what she was giving anyway. "I had a bad month, financially, as I invariably would, and it started as a trickle.
Keep reading at The Guardian.
8. What's the craziest prostitution story of all time?
A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town. "I was dumfounded. I thought I was dreaming," the husband told the newspaper. The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.
From The Daily Telegraph.
9. Why is prostitution illegal?
In the late 19th century a variety of changes in Western societies revived efforts to suppress prostitution. With the rise of feminism, many came to regard male libertinism as a threat to women's status and physical health.
In the United States, prostitution was at best sporadically controlled until passage of the federal Mann Act (1910), which prohibited interstate transportation of women for "immoral purposes." By 1915 nearly all states had passed laws that banned brothels or regulated the profits of prostitution. After World War II, prostitution remained prohibited in most Western countries, though it was unofficially tolerated in some cities.
Authorities also intervened to prevent girls from being coerced into prostitution ("white slavery"). Prostitution is illegal in most of the United States, though it is lawful in some counties in Nevada.
Keep reading at Britannica.com.
10. What's new with prostitution outside the U.S.?
Apparently in Japan, a country where shrinks are taboo, visitors to "love hotels" are sometimes just looking to chat, while Kenya has recently seen an upswing in older female sex tourists.
11. What does it feel like for a woman to discover her man is sleeping with hookers?
I stayed up all night that night, unable to sleep or work or even think. I couldn't believe that the nice Jewish guy I was falling so hard for, the one with the high-powered job and Upper West Side apartment, who could be so sweet and tender, was doing this. I felt disgusted.
I didn't say anything to him the next morning. I just gathered what little I'd stored at his place and left. It all felt like a dream--especially since I was so overtired. When I finally confronted him a few days later, he told me it "had nothing to do with me." I was stunned all over again by the realization that he could rationalize it that way. If that were true, his ability to compartmentalize sex--something he also engaged in with me--made me realize we would never have worked in the long-term.
Keep reading at Tango.
12. So do women use prostitutes?
Once, sometimes twice, a month I meet up with Justin, a 36-year-old divorcé. We go out for a meal and maybe to a club before spending the night in a hotel. I am a divorced mum and work part time to spend as much time as I can with my four children. Justin also has four children. But what differentiates our dates from the norm is that I pay for Justin's company, including having sex with him.
Keep reading The Times Online.
13. Are brothels safe?
Since the institution of mandatory condoms in Nevada's brothels in 1988, not a single sex worker has contracted HIV.
Keep reading at LAist.com.
14. This is all very informative. So where can I find prostitutes?
You can find prostitutes in brothels. A couple of legal examples are the (NSFW) Kit Kat Guest Ranch and the Bunny Ranch in Nevada.
Like this story? Get Alerts of big news events. Enter your email address
Dude
Prostitution is "the act or practice of engaging in sexual intercourse for money."
2. Okay, got it. So is it common for men to use prostitutes?
According to Dr. Teela Sanders, a senior lecturer at the University of Leeds, and the author of Paying For Pleasure: Men Who Buy Sex, nearly one in three men will buy sex at some point in his life. . .and we're not talking porn.
Keep reading at Tango.
3. But why do men pay for it if they can just do it for free?
Married relationships can't provide this special "time out" stuff. Marriages are centered around finance, around children. This is a time out where it's purely about men having sexual satisfaction outside the bounds of a normal relationship. Men use their financial privilege to buy an intimate experience they can't get in their conventional relationship.
Also, this relationship is protected by the exchange. The men don't feel as though there's going to be some other emotional component, because the contract is very clear. This level of intimacy is an exchange, and the women who do this emotional labor make a lot of money. That's why you see this high end.
Keep reading at Tango.
4. Why do powerful men who seem to have it all, then go and screw everything up?
In [social psychologist Dr. Gerri] King's view, most everyone is reasonably comfortable being an average person. "There's room in most people's self-image for mistakes and foibles and inconsistencies," she says. "If you're just a normal person, you're allowed to be you. What's expected of you is reasonable. You have normal friends. And maybe most of all, you have normal expectations."
But if suddenly you're elevated into an elite level of society or business, you may have to retrofit your identity or conduct. Making these changes in your life can be an unsettling challenge. Let's say you're promoted to group president from a low-profile position.You have to put your characteristic sarcasm on hold during press conferences and corporate events. Your circle of friends or acquaintances may shift, as may your array of choices and freedoms.
Keep reading at Best Life.
5. How do blowjobs fuel the demand for prostitutes?
A 2001 study by Martin A. Monto, published in the Journal of Sex Research, indicates that "the desire for fellatio is an important reason clients seek female prostitutes." Monto's study gathered questionnaires from men arrested while trying to hire hookers; according to the pervy perps, fellatio was the most common practice they "had ever experienced" with a prostitute--a whopping 81% had received a blowjob as compared to 55% who had had sex.
Keep reading at Tango.
6. Why do prostitutes rake in so much dough?
Prostitution is, seemingly, a low-skill but high-pay profession with few upfront costs, micro-miniskirts and stiletto heels aside.
According to data assembled from a wide variety of times and places, ranging from mid-15th-century France to Malaysia of the late 1990s, prostitutes make more money--in some cases, a lot more money--than do working girls who, well, work for a living. This held true even for places where prostitution is legal and relatively safe. ...One normally cannot be both a wife and a whore. "Combine this with the fact that marriage can be an important source of income for women, and it follows that prostitution must pay better than other jobs to compensate for the opportunity cost of forgone-marriage market earnings."
Keep reading at Forbes.
7. How does one become a prostitute?
A flat in a block in a suburb of London: Karen (not her real name) thinks her neighbours probably realise she sells sex for a living. A few years earlier, Karen had left an unhappy marriage and began using internet chat rooms to meet men. "I started going on blind dates and it slowly started to evolve into having sex with strangers," she says. It wasn't such a huge leap, she says, into charging for what she was giving anyway. "I had a bad month, financially, as I invariably would, and it started as a trickle.
Keep reading at The Guardian.
8. What's the craziest prostitution story of all time?
A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town. "I was dumfounded. I thought I was dreaming," the husband told the newspaper. The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.
From The Daily Telegraph.
9. Why is prostitution illegal?
In the late 19th century a variety of changes in Western societies revived efforts to suppress prostitution. With the rise of feminism, many came to regard male libertinism as a threat to women's status and physical health.
In the United States, prostitution was at best sporadically controlled until passage of the federal Mann Act (1910), which prohibited interstate transportation of women for "immoral purposes." By 1915 nearly all states had passed laws that banned brothels or regulated the profits of prostitution. After World War II, prostitution remained prohibited in most Western countries, though it was unofficially tolerated in some cities.
Authorities also intervened to prevent girls from being coerced into prostitution ("white slavery"). Prostitution is illegal in most of the United States, though it is lawful in some counties in Nevada.
Keep reading at Britannica.com.
10. What's new with prostitution outside the U.S.?
Apparently in Japan, a country where shrinks are taboo, visitors to "love hotels" are sometimes just looking to chat, while Kenya has recently seen an upswing in older female sex tourists.
11. What does it feel like for a woman to discover her man is sleeping with hookers?
I stayed up all night that night, unable to sleep or work or even think. I couldn't believe that the nice Jewish guy I was falling so hard for, the one with the high-powered job and Upper West Side apartment, who could be so sweet and tender, was doing this. I felt disgusted.
I didn't say anything to him the next morning. I just gathered what little I'd stored at his place and left. It all felt like a dream--especially since I was so overtired. When I finally confronted him a few days later, he told me it "had nothing to do with me." I was stunned all over again by the realization that he could rationalize it that way. If that were true, his ability to compartmentalize sex--something he also engaged in with me--made me realize we would never have worked in the long-term.
Keep reading at Tango.
12. So do women use prostitutes?
Once, sometimes twice, a month I meet up with Justin, a 36-year-old divorcé. We go out for a meal and maybe to a club before spending the night in a hotel. I am a divorced mum and work part time to spend as much time as I can with my four children. Justin also has four children. But what differentiates our dates from the norm is that I pay for Justin's company, including having sex with him.
Keep reading The Times Online.
13. Are brothels safe?
Since the institution of mandatory condoms in Nevada's brothels in 1988, not a single sex worker has contracted HIV.
Keep reading at LAist.com.
14. This is all very informative. So where can I find prostitutes?
You can find prostitutes in brothels. A couple of legal examples are the (NSFW) Kit Kat Guest Ranch and the Bunny Ranch in Nevada.
Like this story? Get Alerts of big news events. Enter your email address
Dude
Sorry S.C. Joe, I see a HUGE difference between an escort and a SW! To merely start with the legal, in Canada the former is legal and the later is not. Further from what I've seen of life there is one Hell of a difference between women who are escorts and those who are Street Walkers to describe them as both being prostitutes is like describing Eggplant and Spinach as both being vegetables.
I don't think that the difference between escort and street workers is an essential one (like the difference between eggplant and spinach), but rather mostly a difference of privilege and choice/opportunity.
Although I acknowledge what you are saying Gen, to be personal I don't believe you are being exploited, I do believe most SW are.
Further, I don’t believe you would be happy being a SW and I certainly know that I wouldn’t be happy seeing a SW as opposed to an escort.
Trabant and Daimler (Mercedes) Benz are both German Automobiles there is however a vast gulf fixed between them.
My point exactly. In other words, the main difference between escorts and SW is one of privilege and opportunity (or lack thereof), and working conditions.
Gen, don't you believe that at least some of that is choice or at least free will. You have made choices in your life as have I that allow us to do what we do and which give career choices. When one has failed to make wise choices that limits one.
Although there is room for discussion, when one decides to use additive drugs that cloud one's mental processes and cost a great deal of money seldom is a gun being held to their head. That doesn't mean that I'm not sorry, but free will most times is involved rather than coercion.
Happy New Year and all best wishes for the coming year!
Do street walkers still exist in any significant numbers? I know of areas of Toronto were they used to be common but you never see them anymore.
Also, I am not sure I see the distinction between a street walker and incall operations that advertise for $50 or $60 FS. I recall 30 years ago when I became of the age when I got interested in those things and street walkers charged more. That is not even including inflation!
Also, I am not sure I see the distinction between a street walker and incall operations that advertise for $50 or $60 FS. I recall 30 years ago when I became of the age when I got interested in those things and street walkers charged more. That is not even including inflation!
Tiger Woods hires a few pros and the world suddenly needs to analyze the whole industry? It's there because the clients want it.
I don't think there is any question that sex work in the streets is down. Thank the internet for that. Just about anyone can post an ad on craigslist.
If you are looking just at the price to the john, then no, there isn't much of a difference between street walker and $50 incall. Its difficult to generalize, but just off the top of my head, I think there are several significant differences.
Legal - girls and their customers are much more exposed to the risk of arrest when they work on the streets.
Safety - girls are much more exposed to security risks on the street.
Hygiene - girls working the streets often don't have access to showers. While some may take customer back to hotel, or go to customers hotel, others do it in the car or outdoors somewhere.
Dignity - lets face it. Trolling for $50 tricks on the street is more for the desperate. Its more likely to be done by someone with no options.
I think these four factors alone make for major differences between incalls and street walking. To say that there is no difference is taking a very narrow view of two types of sex work.
Certainly people have agency and make choices. But those choices don't happen in a social vacuum. The choices I made were very much made possible by my privilege social location: I come from a healthy, caring, middle-class university-educated family, with no history of abuse. I am university educated. I have a support system around me made of my family and friends coming from a similar background: whatever shit that life threw at me, I've always had people around me that I know I can count on. And significantly enough, I only have myself to care for.
I don't think you would find many street walkers with a similar background as mine. I also don't think that it's a coincidence that alcohol and drug abuse is more prevalent in poor or marginalized groups. There's also a strong correlation between mental illnesss, drug and alcohol abuse, and poverty. Similarly, there's a correlation between poverty, teen pregnancy, and single-motherhood.
So, while I would not want to portray street walkers as victims only with no agency and free will, I think that there is more to free choices than to not have a gun on your head when making such choices.
End of the Jarvis stroll? Sex workers 'think it's safer inside'
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/cri...is-stroll-sex-workers-think-it-s-safer-inside
You aren't going to get any customers if the sidewalk is blocked," says Ebony, a curvy 23-year-old brunette who stands alone outside the Harvey's – "Hooker Harvey's" – at Gerrard and Jarvis Sts.
In July, most of the remaining women left the Gerrard-Church-Carlton-Jarvis block. Hard hats replaced miniskirts and fishnets as city crews began ripping up the sidewalks. By August, construction was tearing apart Church St.
Ebony prefers working outdoors. She works alone and gets to keep all the cash she earns. "A lot of them have moved to strip clubs or their homes ... they find it safer," she says of the other women.
Street prostitution in Toronto has generally been concentrated in the east downtown core.
The "High Track," where workers earn as much as $300 a trick, is in the Jarvis and Church area. Transgendered prostitutes work in "Trannytown," southeast of Jarvis and Wellesley Sts. Crack-addicted sex workers can be found along River, Shuter and Sherbourne Sts., and earn as little as $20 for sex acts, said a police affidavit submitted in the constitutional challenge.........................................................................................................................................................................................
Well they only have a picture of some 23 year olds back but even from that she seemed to look better than some escorts I have meet in Toronto.
Keep an open mind, those escorts go outside and walk down sidewalks just like we do. Whos to say they never hook up on the sidewalks too?
This is why the police like to run stings. So us guys will keep our mouths shut if we see a hottie outside, cause we are scared she could really be a cop--when most times she isn't.
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/cri...is-stroll-sex-workers-think-it-s-safer-inside
You aren't going to get any customers if the sidewalk is blocked," says Ebony, a curvy 23-year-old brunette who stands alone outside the Harvey's – "Hooker Harvey's" – at Gerrard and Jarvis Sts.
In July, most of the remaining women left the Gerrard-Church-Carlton-Jarvis block. Hard hats replaced miniskirts and fishnets as city crews began ripping up the sidewalks. By August, construction was tearing apart Church St.
Ebony prefers working outdoors. She works alone and gets to keep all the cash she earns. "A lot of them have moved to strip clubs or their homes ... they find it safer," she says of the other women.
Street prostitution in Toronto has generally been concentrated in the east downtown core.
The "High Track," where workers earn as much as $300 a trick, is in the Jarvis and Church area. Transgendered prostitutes work in "Trannytown," southeast of Jarvis and Wellesley Sts. Crack-addicted sex workers can be found along River, Shuter and Sherbourne Sts., and earn as little as $20 for sex acts, said a police affidavit submitted in the constitutional challenge.........................................................................................................................................................................................
Well they only have a picture of some 23 year olds back but even from that she seemed to look better than some escorts I have meet in Toronto.
Keep an open mind, those escorts go outside and walk down sidewalks just like we do. Whos to say they never hook up on the sidewalks too?
This is why the police like to run stings. So us guys will keep our mouths shut if we see a hottie outside, cause we are scared she could really be a cop--when most times she isn't.
