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Can You Trust Your Sex Worker?

This Tracy Emin piece is in USB's art collection. Does that make you want to laugh or cry?

In a recent survey about trustworthy professions, Australians ranked sex workers at number 40 of 45, which means we beat out journalists and real estate agents but not bankers(34) or lawyers (33.) I sort of expected myself to be outraged  by this, but for once, I didn’t think it was a matter of stigma unfairly steering people’s opinions.

It’s bad—really, really bad—if these respondents meant that they wouldn’t trust sex workers who say they’ve been assaulted, or wouldn’t trust sex workers who were testifying in a criminal trial. But I don’t think that’s what they meant at all. The survey was presented in way that inspired client vs. professional thinking, and professionals in all service industries have a vested interest in keeping their clients happy. That often manifests in the form of little white lies.

Top 10 Anti-Sex Work Billboards

Have you heard that SWAAY has an Epic Step campaign to create the first sex workers’ rights billboard in America? Epic Step is like the Kickstarter of billboards, so they need your donations in order to make this happen. Just look at how many anti-sex work billboards there are.

10. I feel like twitter is to blame for anything starting with “Dear,” including “Dear John” billboards in and surrounding Chicago, IL. “Dear Starbucks,” “Dear Netflix,” “Dear rain,” “Dear Man Soliciting Sex, We’re watching you in your sleep. Love, Chicago PD.”

photo by Chuck Berman via Chicago Tribune

Buyer’s Remorse and Intoxication at the Strip Club

by flickr4jazz, on Flickr

In the past few years there has been a rash of business men declining to pay their strip club credit card charges. For some unimaginable reason, a guy who racks up a $28,000 titty bar bill at New York’s Hustler Club doesn’t inspire a lot of sympathy. Are they victims of predatory vendors or are they morons with buyer’s remorse? Next to casinos, strip clubs are the businesses least likely to cut someone off as long as they are spending money. Of course, I’ve also known customers who take a pretty “law of the jungle” approach to their strip bar experiences—although usually for a few hundred to a couple thousand instead of $28K.

Journalists get too distracted by stripper-puns (“mammary mecca”? Really?) to provide us with a lot of facts, so I’m left with a few questions. What evidence does the club have that the customer knew what he was paying for? Did he sign for each round or only at the end of the night? How many drinks did he have? Did he have them all at the club? How drunk did he appear? And the obvious: Did he actually consume $28,000 in goods and services, or is that bill padded?

I’m Special, Baby: The Sex Worker Edition of #notallmen

Not all clients are totally predictable.
Not all clients are totally predictable. (image via twitter user @a_girl_irl)

Just as the rallying cry of men defending themselves from those mean, mean feminists seems to be, “Not ALL men!” so does the sex work client object to generalizations about him. In fact, the one thing all sex work clients have in common is that they all think they’re different, special, and  not like those other guys. So, when they throw out that tired line you’ve been hearing ever since you started working, they think they’re being clever. We asked escorts, street workers, strippers, pro-dommes, cam-people, and phone sex operators to get on Twitter on #notallclients and tell us all about it.

From an Industry to A Hobby: How Review Boards Have Changed Our Work

The good old days: 2007 Village Voice print escort ads, shortly before the dominion of the review boards (courtesy of the Design Observatory Group)
The good old days: 2007 Village Voice print escort ads, shortly before the monopoly of the review boards (courtesy of the Design Observatory Group)

When I first started working as an escort in this industry, review boards did not exist. The internet was not as widely used as it is now and I worked for agencies that advertised in the phone book or in local papers. We didn’t even have to post photos of ourselves in a public forum; some operator just described our looks and personality over the phone and clients took their chance at booking us. Business was hit or miss, but I liked the anonymity. Though I heard more and more escorts were using online advertising to promote themselves, I was late to the game. My old way of working didn’t yield me as much revenue as other workers, but it protected my privacy. And then finally the gig was up. I had to change with the times and start advertising online or I would have virtually no business. But I didn’t want a website. And I definitely didn’t want reviews.

I first became aware of escort review sites when I read an article about the Big Doggie debacle of 2002 and even then, I still didn’t quite understand what the website was. Upon visiting TBD for the first time, it looked like a confusing mess of ads and message boards, none of which I could access. Sometime later I found out about The Erotic Review, mostly from the controversy stemming from its founder Dave Elms and the various charges that were brought against him. Either way, I wanted nothing to do with either site. As someone who had already experienced arrest once before while working, I couldn’t believe any escort would want a detailed description of a session with a client posted online for anyone to read, providing law enforcement with another tool to prove their guilt in prostitution cases. Oh sure, the  disclaimer stated that the reviews were for “entertainment purposes only”, but when escorts got “fake” reviews, they were sure to raise holy hell about it and complain to the site administrators to have it removed, which is a daunting process in itself.

Then I got one. A fake review, that is. Yes, my first review was a fake review. It described me as having blond hair (not at that time),fake boobs (I wish) and doing a session I don’t recall booking, but I couldn’t read the rest because I wasn’t a “VIP” member. It was just a fluke that I found it as I never looked at TER, but I was bored one night and there it was, linked to my phone number and email address.