Scandal: “Dirty Little Secrets” [2012]

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July 26, 2012

In spite of Kerry Washington’s awe-inspiring beauty, I really wasn’t interested in watching Scandal, a show about a crisis management firm in Washington DC who works to save reputations and careers when damning personal histories are about to come to light. My boyfriend bought it on AppleTV, though, and like the manipulative man he is, played the second episode one night while I was next to him on the couch. And it had hookers in it! So I was all in. The episode begins as several of head honcho Olivia’s (Kerry Washington) employees are clearing a woman’s home of all relevant and incriminating evidence, beating the police by mere seconds. Who is this conservatively-clad woman evading the police? Why, she’s “DC’s finest madam,” and she’s sipping tea at Olivia’s huge, superhero-y work loft, waiting for her client list to be safely delivered back into her hands.

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Exploitation

By

Tara Burns

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July 5, 2011

We close today with an affecting first-person account of underage sex work. While it should go without saying that Tits and Sass doesn’t endorse underage work, the solution is not continued criminalization and hysteria based on unsubstantiated “facts,” it’s better alternatives, a safety net, and decriminalization. Many thanks to Ecowhore for graciously allowing us to repost this November 17, 2010 entry from her blog.—ed.

Exploitation. They say half of underage girls on their own turn to sex work within 24 hours of hitting the streets. I know when I was a kid I turned to it right away every time I ran away or my dad kicked me out. Big eyes, tits hanging out, thumb out, I’d wait for any man to pick me up and give me money or a place to stay.

They say it’s a bad thing. They say there are pimps and traffickers who will lock those poor innocent children in apartments and make them fuck for up to twelve hours a day. I try to imagine this. When I was a kid no pimps ever approached me, but my step-grandmother-in-law used to warn me about them. Just handle your own business, she would say, don’t let any guy start protecting you, taking your money, next thing you know… She was 60 and fat with eighties hair and sparkly spandex clothes. She’d been a hooker during the pipeline days, when things were really rough, until she’d married my mom’s husband’s father 30 years ago.

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Bad Advice From “Ask A Dude”

By

Bettie

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July 25, 2011

111376445_c05ec90a8b — by smcgee on flickr

At The Hairpin they have this thing where they “Ask a Dude” to give advice on matters of all sorts. Most fall along the lines of “Should I leave this relationship?” or “What does it mean when a guy does this?” type of questions. Last week, though, the featured Dude told a girl that turning a friend into a client by sleeping with him for money was a good idea—forward-thinking, even—and it was horrible advice.

There’s a reason most of us use pseudonyms, screen, and even blur our faces: We don’t want to have relationships with our clients beyond the actual transactional one we will already have. Clients can’t be friends, and friends can’t really be clients in the long run. When you actually know someone and they know you, they anticipate feelings (or you do), but somebody is doing a lot more thinking on the experience than “This is amazing, it feels so good!” In this girl’s case, that would be what her Mom might think and how he can use this as leverage to get more attention from her.

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Romance & Relationships: An Escort’s Take

By

Violet Gartner

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February 14, 2012

I’m lucky; I’ve never lied. I started escorting eight years into my current relationship, and we had an open relationship well before that. Although my partner’s not the kind of guy who wants to meet or know the other people I bang, he’s the first to acknowledge that ending our monogamy saved us from a poisonous end. So when I chose to start doing sex work it was a leap, but a logical one. Our lives are pretty boring, and we let the job be a normal part of it: I complain about illiterate text messages sometimes, and sometimes I want the car when it’s inconvenient. The biggest difference is that we use condoms now. But I’m the only one who complains about that. He likes them fine.

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Dear Prime Minster Dreamy: Reconsidering A Crush After Bedford V. Canada

By

Morgan M Page

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February 5, 2014

Justin Trudeau, Canadian Liberal Party leader, prince of Morgan's heart, and...whorephobe? (Photo by Sean Kilpatrick via the Canadian Press) — Justin Trudeau, Canadian Liberal Party leader, prince of Morgan’s heart, and…whorephobe? (Photo by Sean Kilpatrick via the Canadian Press)

Dear Prime Minister Dreamy (AKA Justin Trudeau),

It’s ok that I call you Prime Minister Dreamy, right? I know that you’re not Prime Minister yet, but I think we feel close enough that I can call you by pet names, because, as I’m sure you remember, we almost met twice.

I’m writing to your eminent good-lookingness in regards to a variety of comments you made these past few weeks on a subject near and dear to my own heart, the legal status of sex work in Canada. We should go through a short recap of events leading up to your comments, just to make sure we’re on the same page before we get to the climax of my letter.

I’ve been following your non-threatening boyish good looks, boxing matches with Conservative politicians, and targeting of the gay vote for some time now with rapt attention. So, of course I was curious about what your response would be to the Supreme Court of Canada’s brilliant decision in the Bedford v. Canada case this past December that unanimously struck down three key passages in the Canadian Criminal Code around sex work. I’m sure you’re very busy campaigning while maintaining such perfectly sculpted hair, so I’ll just remind you that these three passages are:

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