Guys Do It Too

Prostitution

By

-

September 29, 2011

male_prostitute1 — Male escorting at its finest.

As much as we all love our site name—Kat, you are a genius—we know that it may not make us seem like a particularly male-friendly space. But unlike sex work’s most vociferous critics, we are very aware that not all sex workers are women. Just this week, we sent out a call for a straight male escort to review Hung (Fingers crossed!) and we have a list of guys we’d love to convince to write for us. While we get those posts lined up, why not check out this male escort’s story? My favorite part:

It is a very dangerous business because you have to look out for the police, decoys and other people that might set you up.

He goes on to tell a story of how his friend got picked up on the street by a cop posing as a client, which seems to be the only negative experience he’s had. This, in spite of the fact that “Edward” is what’s sometimes called a “survival” sex worker: he only works when he has bills he would otherwise be unable to pay. Therefore, the theory goes, he’s extra vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

Continue

Dear Tits and Sass: How to Retire Edition

By

suzyhooker

-

April 30, 2013

Dear Tits and Sass,

I have been a sex worker for about nine years now, in a variety of capacities. The past three years I’ve lived and worked as an upscale independent escort in a several different cities. I have regulars in three cities, a website, and a mailing list with about 800 people on it. This fall I’m starting school, working towards a professional degree (in a city where I have never worked). I am trying to come up with the best plan for resigning from the business, while keeping the door open to work again if I need to or want to. The risk-benefit analysis favors very heavily on the side of completely quitting and trying as much as possible to erase all evidence of ever having existed (taking down my website, delisting off TER, deleting my gmail account, etc.). In fact, I have become even more paranoid than I used to be about screening, because if something negative should happen now I would likely lose my ability to pursue the professional degree I’m after and have to keep doing sex work (I’m feeling burnt out and ready to move on) until I came up with another plan. But part of me fears losing this business I spent so much time building, in case I should need it (with an already established good reputation) in the future. I also wish to keep the ability to call on my regulars, so as to work without advertising (if I want to)—and I don’t want them to know where I’m going to school or even what city I’m moving to. And, to some extent most relevantly, I want to make as absolutely much money as possible before I retire my online presence (as much as possible, given the number of “stolen” ads of mine that are floating out there) in August. What are the best tips and tricks for getting the most cash out of retirement, and then disappearing off the face of the internet, without burning all my bridges?

Sincerely,

Goodbye To All That

Continue

A Tidal Wave, Not A Fire Hose: Access To Condoms In New York And Why It Is Important To Decriminalization Struggles

By

Emma Caterine

-

June 20, 2014

(Image from the film: Advocating in Albany, (No Condoms as Evidence), Red Umbrella Project)

I’m a community organizer for Red Umbrella Project, and for the past year and a half I’ve been one of the leaders in the struggle to ban the use of condoms as evidence of all prostitution-related offenses in New York. We recently had a great victory in this campaign with a NYPD directive issued that bans the use of condoms for three misdemeanor offenses: prostitution, loitering for the purposes of prostitution, and prostitution in a school zone. Unfortunately that still excludes most prostitution-related offenses which, while targeted at clients, managers of the sex trades, and human sex traffickers, all too often are an initial charge filed against those doing sex work, especially transgender women of color. So our battle continues. But I feel it is important to clarify for people in the sex trades around the world why it is that we as a peer-led group by and for people in the sex trades place such great importance in this issue. While some may say that advocacy of any goal short of the decriminalization of all prostitution laws is selling out, the decriminalization of condoms opens the door for greater possibilities in organizing around other decrim efforts both in New York and elsewhere.

Handcuffs empower no one. Red Umbrella Project knows, from the arrests and incarcerations of our comrades, family, and friends, that the criminal justice system is toxic to the lives of people in the sex trades, especially those most marginalized within it. All too often sex work criminalization goes hand-in-hand with the criminalization of trans women and queer youth of color, undocumented people, and low-income women of color. Believing strongly that a peer-led model personally empowers the lives of people in ways that even the most progressive justice system cannot, we oppose the tearing apart of our communities by arrest and incarceration.

Continue

Activist Spotlight: Nine, on Bad Policies and Holding Abolitionists To Account

By

Miranda Craig

-

February 26, 2013

Nine is an itinerant writer from Northern Ireland, who spent several years working at an outreach project for sex workers in Scotland before being made redundant in 2009. Recently, she has written and spoken against attempts by politicians and feminist organisations to criminalise the purchase of sex in Scotland, most notably in the barnstorming essay “Taking Ideology to The Streets: Sex Work And How To Make Bad Things Worse” and in her zine Sex industry Apologist, now on its second volume. Nine’s writing has also appeared in Autostraddle and The Rumpus.

I’d like to ask about the work you did supporting street-based sex workers, and what you’ve done since that came to an end?

I spent six and a half years at a sex work project, from 2002 to 2009, providing outreach services to sex workers on the streets, in flats, saunas and massage parlors, and online. I gave out condoms and needles, linked people up with specialist services, took reports of violence and circulated them to other sex workers, provided emotional support, gave advice on legalities and personal safety—basically I just responded to whatever issues sex workers brought to me. However, we were sometimes limited in terms of what we could actually do, given that we were operating on pretty much a shoestring, and adequate support was not always available to sex workers from other agencies. I guess that’s what happens when the funding is almost entirely focused on sexual health, as if sex workers couldn’t possibly have any other needs. Hi, I may be ranting already.

Continue

Invisible Men and Blind Curation

By

Estelle Lucas

-

April 29, 2014

The Invisible Men Project, a tumblr-turned-Glasgow-art exhibition, supposedly reveals the previously unknown attitudes of men who engage the services of sex workers. The project was launched by the Glasgow Violence Against Women Partnership who come off as bonafide in their intention and achieve poor results. They do this by constructing a poorly designed mask (a faceless one, because sex workers are faceless, right?) and plucking quotes from the worst reviews written by clients. They paint this in the same manner an artist might paint a mask for a masquerade—with the idea of presenting cryptic truth through ambiguous art.

The Invisible Men Project is a propaganda project that fails as a creative project. They have painted the “faceless” sex workers with the words their clients use for them. As if the client’s opinion even matters. As if the sex worker’s worth weighs solely on their clients opinion about them. They haven’t even thought to use the words of the sex worker in question, they just assumed that the client’s opinion about their work resonates similarly.

Bravo to the Invisible Men Project for creating a space to glorify the misogynist attitudes of these men. And they are glorified. Highlighting their words does nothing but promote their behavior. They’re not ashamed—if they were, they would never had posted their reviews in the first place. The curators are completely aware that attaching a price tag to each piece will further shock their audience, especially if that price seems low. They don’t bother to put the prices in a context that allows for regional or socioeconomic differences.

The sex industry is competitive in its very nature. It’s not odd for fake reviews to be written, especially from the direct competition. Or for them to be exaggerated by a disgruntled client. This often happens because these business dealings are not in the economic mainstream (depending on the type of legal framework the country functions under). Every sex worker and every punter knows to take reviews with a grain of salt. The public doesn’t always know this, and the Invisible Men Project doesn’t bother to mention this.

Continue