Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) proposing to his sex worker girlfriend Vanessa Carlysle (Morena Baccarin) in Deadpool.
When I first saw Deadpool on Valentine’s Day with my civilian partner, I remember leaving the theater on cloud nine, sure that my relationship could withstand anything. The movie made me feel like my job was not an obstacle to be overcome by romantic interests but a core part of me that could be embraced. I remember thinking that Morena Baccarin never had to go back to Joss Whedon to play a laterally whorephobic space courtesan because this film had allowed her to play an amazing sex worker.
I rewatched the film for this review and I have to say that this time it hurt. Watching Vanessa and Wade’s relationship unfurl on screen hit me hard.
Not because it was poorly written, though. Quite the opposite.
My partner and I broke up less than two weeks ago and watching this movie only reminded me of better times. Because Baccarin as Vanessa is awesome and her relationship with the titular hero is everything I have ever wanted from a story about a guy dating a sex worker. And it also represented everything that I wanted from being dated as one, with the addition of bad guys, bullets, and the breaking of the fourth wall.
This obviously doctored photo really sucks you into a heady subject.
According to its wiki, cognitive dissonance is the “discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, performs an action that is contradictory to one or more beliefs, ideas, or values, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.” Mass hysteria is defined as “a phenomenon that transmits collective delusions of threats, whether real or imaginary, through a population in society as a result of rumors and fear.”
Calm your tits is a perfectly reasonable response to a breathless abolitionist who is experiencing either cognitive dissonance or mass hysteria. Last week, Amnesty International released a report that called for the full decriminalization of sex work and harshly condemned the Nordic Model of regulating sex work. The report, of course, is significant in that it validates what sex workers have been saying for decades (stop arresting us!) while also subverting the traditionally accepted “progressive” narrative that sex buyers are bad but sex sellers are victims.
So, how did the remaining norders (that’s the term I just made up for Nordic Model endorsers! Get it? NORD. ERS.) react when the news broke? Let’s just say, their tits were not calm. Here are some of the best examples:
Alisha Walker was just 20 years old when she had to defend herself against a client who was drunk and violent. She was 22 when she was convicted of second degree murder and 15 years in prison for defending both her own life and the life of a friend who was also on the scene. She is now 23 years old and behind bars at Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln, Illinois, seeking new legal representation and awaiting an appeals process.
In January 2014, Alisha Walker and a close friend of hers went to Alan Filan’s house in Orland Park, a Chicago suburb, to do a double session with Filan. Walker had seen Filan at least twice, and she had not screened him through any online resources. Afterwards, Walker told her mother that she immediately knew something was different about Filan this time. He was heavily intoxicated and very aggressive. He insisted that Walker’s friend didn’t look like her photos in the Backpage advertisement. When the two women refused to have unprotected sex with him, he threatened them with a knife. Walker was able to wrestle the knife from Filan and stab him several times, saving her own life and the life of her friend.
Even Alan Filan himself was covered in a veneer of respectability, a seemingly-upstanding community member who taught at Brother Rice Catholic High School. It was easy for the media to portray Filan as a good man, rather than the violent aggressor he was, despite his tendency to be a mean, misogynistic drunk. Our efforts to screen his e-mails revealed multiple accounts of sex workers listing him as a bad client, cautioning against booking sessions with him. Even the articles most sympathetic to his memory recount his casual verbal abuse of the young soccer players whom he coached.
Walker was held in Cook County without bond for over two years while the media sensationalized the death of her attacker with wildly differing accounts of how many stab wounds he’d actually suffered, going so far as to include hesitation marks among the mortal wounds. Accounts of the stab wounds numbered from 10to14 in news articles, though the coroner’s report lists 14 hesitation marks and only two mortally inflicted wounds. Walker’s account of Filan’s drunkenness was confirmed by toxicology reports showing Filan’s blood alcohol content registered at a 0.208 when he was found days after his death.
Filan was remembered as a flawed but lovable man, brutally murdered. Walker, however, was never spoken about as a human being, the devoted big sister and caring and outgoing young woman her mother describes her as. Media outlets covering the story rarely mentioned that she had seen Filan at least twice without incident before he attacked her. Nor did they remark on the fact that she saved her own life and that of another woman’s in the face of Filan’s assault. There were at least 20 Backpage ads printed out on Filan’s desk, but the media often omitted this detail in their stories on the case. Nor did most articles on Walker address rumors that Filan was a habitual client of sex workers, and often (as Chicago sex worker screening sources record) was not respectful of the workers he saw.
Christine (Riley Keough) and Avery (Kate Lyn Sheil).
I didn’t quite know what to expect from Starz’ new escorting drama,The Girlfriend Experience. After seeing the network’s Flesh and Bone (the story of a ballet dancer moonlighting as a stripper and being terrible at it), I had no doubt it would be very dramatic, rather too serious, and visually appealing. After all, as far as visuals go, Riley Keough as The Girlfriend Experience’s protagonist, Christine Reade, has it all—she’s white, she’s skinny, her features are pleasingly symmetrical, and her hair is reminiscent of Kate Middleton’s.
Christine Reade, the law student heroine with the hidden depths, enters our lives walking down a hotel corridor in the first shot of The Girlfriend Experience’s first episode. We see her from behind—sensible hair, sensible clothes. But the dim lights and the plush carpet she’s walking on are promising that some kind of salacious scene is imminent. Not yet though, not yet. Christine is on her way to meet her friend Avery, who has been left alone in a swanky hotel room where she’s determined to rack up the room service bill of her life.
It’s pretty obvious that Avery is going to be the one to introduce Christine to the good life of middle-aged men, money, and endless room service. (Well, not that last one, maybe, since I doubt many clients would enjoy receiving a room service bill that could cover the down payment on a new car.) Avery’s got a benefactor, a booking agent, and a taste for expensive booze. Christine, on the other hand, has drive, loose morals, and student loans. She ends up going on a double date with Avery, her sugar daddy, and a friend of his.
She is offered an envelope full of money just for being young, beautiful and willing to make tedious small talk with a balding stranger. Will she or won’t she? It’s an age old question, comparable to the moment of downfall in Shakespearean plays. In itself, taking the money is a small thing, but society’s judgment of us weighs so heavy that once you take the cash, you’re a whore, and you will remain a whore until you are dead and buried—and long after that sometimes. It’s the beginning of a chain reaction, and it hardly ever ends well—at least, not on TV.
So, in a tasteful restaurant’s bathroom (real towels!!!), Christine takes the cash and the show really shifts into gear. The booking agent, Jacqueline, is introduced. If you know one, you know them all. She’s almost a carbon copy of Secret Diary of a Call Girl’s Stephanie. She likes cash, nice restaurants, and cash, in that order. What she decidedly doesn’t like is uppity girls. Now, Christine has drive, as I mentioned. “Why should I give you thirty percent”, she asks and we want to know, too. She really shouldn’t give it to her, as it turns out. Jacqueline is sort of the Evil Queen of The Girlfriend Experience escorting world, and surprisingly unprofessional.
Somewhere underground, in a cave filled with rats, three witches are convening. The witches—Rachel Moran, Meghan Murphy, and Lena Dunham—are frantic, distressed. They sense trouble. They’re panicking.
Murphy stirs the bubbling witches’ cauldron dutifully. Moran attempts to remain poised and she recites a dark incantation. Dunham merely observes, eager to absorb the methods of her seasoned sisters.
Murphy nods towards Moran, who unfurls an entire Sunday New York Times and angrily thrusts the paper into the cauldron.
“I have called this conclave because a serious problem is developing,” Murphy snarls. “Something has happened.” She glowers. “The narrative is…shifting.”
