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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?

Is The Client Always Right?: On Professionalism and Boundaries, Part 2

Kristen Wiig knows the secret to our success.
Kristen Wiig knows the secret to our success.

(You can find Part One of this discussion here.)

Lori: Taking a professional approach to my work makes it more enjoyable for me, but I hardly think that’s a universal experience.  When it comes to being a professional and giving clients what they’re “owed”, I think the standards for acceptable behavior are actually pretty low. In most circumstances I’d say clients are at least owed honesty: about how we look, what services we offer, what our rates are, and what our skill levels are (especially as pro-kinksters), if not a certain level of service. But if you need to lie to a john to get by? Fuck, do it. If your rent is due and you’re afraid a regular won’t see you if he finds out you gained weight, don’t mention it. If you need to go food shopping, and a new client wants some elaborate bondage that you can’t do, say you can do it. The worst that can happen is he leaves having a slightly less exciting orgasm than he anticipated, and you get to go on staying alive. Seems like a fair deal to me. (The only exceptions to lying to clients, even for survival sex work, would be your experience with edge-play and high-risk activities—anything that could compromise his safety.)

I don’t want to get too far off-topic, but the civilian men I’ve been with have a spotty track record on boundary-pushing as well. Sexual coercion is a problem with patriarchy and male privilege. It changes based on context and will be worse when men think a woman falls way on the wrong side of the Madonna/whore dichotomy and they can pay her for unlimited access… but it’s not exclusive to that context. The sex industry is patriarchy turned up to 11, but patriarchy is still like a 9 everywhere else.

Charlotte: I agree about what clients are owed; I’m an advocate for accurate descriptions of appearance, personality, and services offered. I’ll get mad on behalf of a client if I hear that he once saw a woman who totally ripped him off or who got so trashed she almost passed out, or even if she helped herself to his minibar without asking. (I’m probably kind of uptight when it come to etiquette like that in general, though.) There have been times when I’ve wondered if women who are pure rip offs even “count” as sex workers. Is it sex work to pretend you’re going to have some type of sexual contact with someone but then take their money and run? I think that’s theft, not work.

But I lie to clients all the time if they push me on things I don’t want to share, like my real name or what I was doing on a weekend when I wasn’t working, or whether I’m in a relationship. I do not think any client is owed information about my private life or identity, even the ones I’ve known for years. And I’m shocked by how pushy regulars can be about that type of stuff. I’m not a good liar, and if someone is really persistent while questioning me about personal details, sometimes I slip and give out something that would be identifying if they went hard on Google. And it feels so violating, to be worn down that way. I hope they don’t understand how violating it is, and that they’re just clueless instead of cruel. But who knows.

I also think clients are owed some emotional honesty in the sense that I do not approve of serious manipulation of the “I love you” variety. Part of me recognizes that this is my own personal moral boundary, and another part of me feels very, very strongly that there is nothing ethical or defensible about telling a client (or anyone!) that you love him in order to get more money. I had a very devoted webcam client years and years ago whom I hustled pretty hard with one huge lie, mostly just to see if I could get away with it. I got a lot of money from it but it wasn’t worth it. If there’s anything in my life I am completely ashamed of, it’s that. The only remotely redeeming factor is that I told him it would go towards my school tuition, and it did.

Just A Regular Day in the Park…

I have a policy that fetish play is just that, play, and as such I am loathe to take it into the public eye. This policy exists for a few reasons, the most important being that I hate when people push their shit on me, so I’m not going to push mine on them. I get grossed out by overly lovey couples, religious zealots, and the lot. Walking a slave on a leash in the middle of Downtown Dallas would be right along those lines as far as I’m concerned.

Having said all that, it is pretty hilarious. I imagine that there are submissives wanking to this as I type, so many people have that “In Public” fetish. Most of them are too chickenshit to go through with it though, so I admire this guy’s bravery. He isn’t even wearing a costume!

Dear Ms. Harm Reduction: Make Them Wear Condoms

Visual approximation of Ms. Harm Reduction as the Durex spokesperson. (Photo by David Lisbona [Flickr user dlisbona] via the Creative Commons.)
Visual approximation of Ms. Harm Reduction as the Durex spokesperson. (Photo by David Lisbona [Flickr user dlisbona])
Dear Ms. Harm Reduction,
I am transitioning into full service work, and need help getting clients to use condoms. One sugar daddy in particular has had a vasectomy, and a recent clean test, so he prefers no condoms for any activity. But I still feel uncomfortable with this. How can I negotiate to protect myself? On a related note, do you know where low income/uninsured women can get the HPV vaccine for free? I am over 26 years old, in California, if that matters. I really want to be as safe as possible while still earning money in this industry.

Best,

Need ‘Em Wrapped