However, remember, he gave his real name when I screened him and I remembered the session from the details he wrote about. I went and found him on facebook. I printed out all his “friend” names. I then created a fake facebook personae and messaged him. I told him if he, under that certain “nom de plume” handle, didn’t delete all his mean reviews about all the girls he reviewed (he used this handle to be a general bastard to many providers) I would message his friends and family on FB and “out him.”

Amazingly the next day all the reviews, including mine, were gone! O.k., so this took an extraordinary amount of work, but boy was it worth it! Muahahaa….

I don’t agree Robin. End Demand is bad for everyone. It’s bad for society. It is a pathetic idea and an even more pathetic attempt at social engineering. It hurts a lot of people not just sex workers.

But maybe we have to play along, with that and with reviews and review culture and with other things like “liking it”/hating it (as Charlotte Shane discussed in a recent post), which I have listed here in increasing order of number of times you have to let the customer one-up you (for lack of a better way to describe it) before the interaction is complete (and sometimes you don’t even know when that is).

Am I the only one who got into this work because I saw how we have to work through these problems even in unpaid life? If we’re doing it anyway we might as well be paid for it, and if we’re doing it and being paid for it, then we (at least those of us who have made it a profession) should do it right in order to work the most efficiently and have the most successful business.

I know you all have realized that for many if not most (if not all) reviewers, reviews are not reviews at all but are an extension of the appointment. I know that there are a lot of issues surrounding this and I know it involves a lot of real problems that exist whether or not we are at work, but for the purpose of work I’d like to suggest, at least as a theory, that we should separate between problems that are within the transaction and problems that are outside of it — that is, between things that interfere with our money and things that don’t (because we can be certain that they will be paid for).

Like I said, this is only a theory because it’s possible that every aspect of the imbalanced client-provider interaction can come into conflict with our earning potential. But what I’m saying here, or, really, what I’m debating the viability of, is a shift in which we stop seeing reviews as outside of or above our money, and start seeing it as another thing that we provide as part of the service.

I know it’s probably an endless loop of one-upping each other (or, our being one-upped by them). I was heartbroken to find that after all the steps of male-female interaction that I went through in order to try and be treated the way I wanted to be treated, reviews stood at the very last one and I could move no further, ultimate proof of the natural inequality that will always exist. But as long as that’s the way it is I’d like to make as much money off of it as I possibly can.

The forums at SAAFE.info have the right idea, I think, but they are based in the UK and most of the SWs who post there are British. They do have special sections of their forum for time-wasters, scammers, and DANGEROUS clients.

The SAAFE forum is also very Escort-centric…probably not a big deal, as I wouldn’t be surprised if some of my fetish clients also see Escorts or private Dancers or Masseuse…

I would TOTALLY participate in an online forum…or even a email listserve, which might be easier to do, at least at first. SWs could submit email addys and we could email dangerous/ripoff client info to one another. While I would be happy to review clients in other ways (Awful hygiene! Showed up falling-down drunk! lol), I think that dangerous clients or those that renege on the fee/steal from you are the most important to know about. I haven’t had many of those, thank goodness, but I can think of at least 3 that I will NEVER see again and I hope that NO other SWs have the misfortune of meeting them….yikes…

If anyone wants to to continue this conversation about the forum/email listserve w me personally, please feel free to drop me an email: piecesofmargo at gmail dot com. I don’t want to be rude and spam the comments here at T & S (unless admin doesn’t mind).

I think Caty has a great idea. A site like that could also be used as a screening tool, I think.

I’m not good with web technology but if someone else got a board designed and running I would totally post, moderate, help spread the word, etc…