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Dear Tits and Sass: The Client Boyfriend

By
suzyhooker
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(image via Flickr user frankieleon)
(image via Flickr user frankieleon)

My BF is a former client. When I first met him I was in my early 30s and really popular. I saw him once or twice… I missed a couple appointments and he stopped seeing me.

Over the years my business slowed down. I operated UTR, mostly relying on regulars…After almost eight years my client who would become my BF contacted me for a date. I didn’t remember him, but he showed me an old review he did about me back then on one of the boards. He started seeing me twice a week. We did some overnighters and we started spending social time together. He was open-minded and generous. At the time, I was barely making it. He started paying for dates in advance. He signed a lease for me and he wanted to move in.

I liked him, but I was still escorting. I wanted him to help me, but I wasn’t willing to give up my freedom. He said he could deal with me not living with him and me continuing to work. He was OK as long as we still saw each other regularly.

[But] after a few months, it was clear that the relationship was really stressing him out. There was tension between us around me not operating securely enough. He tried to give me instructions about running my business. After some arguments, he finally conceded that I had been doing this for a long time and that I knew how to take care of myself.

He never asked me to quit, but I knew every time I told him that I had an appointment it caused him pain. Bottom line, I told him I was retiring. He was so happy. I told him I would go to school and get my education.

So for nearly two years I have been lying to him. I did go to school, but my school closed down. I took down my old contact information, but my review site is still up with all the old information on it. I changed my stage name and I have been operating UTR for nearly two years. He still pays my rent but threatens to cut me off unless we live together. He looks for me occasionally on the boards, but my new name protects me and he wants to believe me.

He loves me. I love him like my generous uncle. His money is not endless and he wants a commitment or he is going to cut me loose. I have mixed feelings. He has been good to me and he has given me a lot. I have a five-year-old. My BF has been generous and kind to her.

I’m getting older, but I think if I was more public I would still have a good five to eight years to make money. Should I give him a break and let him go while he still has some money left?

Sincerely,

A

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The Week In Links—June 5th

By
Josephine
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Happy Blackout Friday! Lady Dee
Cam Model Lady Dee mugs for the camera. Happy #Blackout Day!

Bubbles said it first, but the documentary that “exposes” exploitation in amateur pornography production, Hot Girls Wanted (now available on Netflix), has some problems. Dr. Chauntelle Tibbals offers some constructive criticism of the doc and suggests what points it should also have covered.

Speaking of, what is that agent’s job from Hot Girls Wanted like, anyway?

A Portland sex worker art show/book launch party for the $pread Magazine Anthology got some local press. The show, $pread The Love, the brainchild of our own Tits and Sass Week In Links Editor Red and other Portland sex worker activists, was held yesterday.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes about how the JVTA heedlessly replicates the War on Drugs for Politico; something Melissa Gira Grant reported on a couple of years ago. Politico then ran a rebuttal letter with seven signers. They’re pretty illustrious: Tracy Sefl, is a senior campaign adviser to Hilary Clinton, and, of course, Autumn Hanna VandeHei is married to Jim VandeHei, cofounder and executive editor of Politico.

Sex workers in Zimbabwe aren’t using digital currency because it’s hip and high-tech, they’re using it for their safety.

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What I Do Know: The Colonial Evisceration of Cindy Gladue

By
Ariel Smith
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Medicines at a Justice for Cindy Gladue Rally in Ontario. (Photo via Ariel Smith)
Medicines at a Justice for Cindy Gladue Rally in Ontario. (Photo by Naomi Sayers)

Content warning: This piece contains references to rape, murder, violence against Indigenous women (especially Indigenous sex workers), and other disturbing material.

When I told my boyfriend that I was going to write an article about Cindy Gladue and the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW), he reminded me that I should keep my bundle and medicines close to me. My elders tell me that all important activities should be entered into with good intentions and that the medicines help with this by providing strength and clarity of purpose. With that in mind, I made sure I took a moment to smudge and put out a tobacco offering before sitting down to write this. I know that writing about this is vital but it is also emotionally difficult for me. It is hard to describe through words the visceral sickening grief that I feel when I think about what was done to Cindy Gladue.

Cindy Gladue was a Nehiyaw Iskwew (Cree woman), like me. She had dropped out of high school, like me. She had worked in the sex trade, on the streets, like me. She had experienced a lot of violence and trauma in her life, like me.

On June 22nd, Cindy Gladue was found dead, naked, and covered in blood in a bathtub at the Yellowhead Inn in Edmonton, Alberta. She had bled to death from an 11cm wound on her vaginal wall. She was 36 years old.

A semi-truck driver named Bradley Barton was arrested and put on trial for her murder. Crown prosecutors argued that Cindy’s death was caused by Barton inserting a sharp object into her vagina. Barton claimed that Cindy’s vagina had been injured from him aggressively fisting her during consensual “rough sex.” Either way, Barton left the motel room for work the next morning, knowing that Cindy was in the bathtub bleeding profusely. He didn’t call 911 until hours later and lied to the police at first, saying he didn’t even know Cindy.

On March 18th, 2015 a Jury of 11 people, 9 men and 2 women acquitted Barton of first-degree murder and decided not to convict him of the lesser charge of manslaughter. There were no Native people on the jury.

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Big Mother Is Watching You: Hollywood Edition

By
Robin D
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For her third installment of Big Mother Is Watching You, a guide to prominent anti-sex worker activists and officials, Robin D goes to Hollywood to check out do-gooder celebrities and the whorephobic campaigns they run.

Susan Sarandon and Meg Ryan

Susan Sarandon flexes her activist muscle at the Witness Focus for Change Benefit in 2009 (Photo by Kate Glicksberg, via Witness Flickr account)
Susan Sarandon flexes her activist muscle at the Witness Focus for Change Benefit in 2009 (Photo by Kate Glicksberg, via Witness Flickr account)
Meg Ryan doing a TED talk in 2010. (Photo by Flickr user redmaxwell)
Meg Ryan doing a TED talk in 2010. (Photo by Flickr user redmaxwell)

Susan Sarandon and Meg Ryan were key players in NGO fraud Somaly Mam’s ascendence in Hollywood. Mam is the celebrity activist exposed by Newsweek in 2014, after a slew of articles about her fabrications appeared in The Cambodia Daily in 2012 and 2013. She ran a re-education camp filled through brothel raids and therefore populated by local sex workers held against their will and others deemed to be “at risk” through Mam’s organization AFESIP (Agir Pour Les Femmes en Situations Precaires). Both populations were instructed on at least several occasions to lie about their stories and concoct trafficking tragedy porn to relate to visitors and journalists.

“I have been personally inspired by the work of Somaly Mam and I encourage anyone who can devote time and money to help Mam continue to make a difference in this world,” Sarandon stated on the Somaly Mam Foundation website. Ryan appears in Nicholas Kristof’s documentary Half the Sky, which lauded Mam’s organizations for their work. Both Sarandon and Ryan were photographed multiple times with Mam at various Hollywood events and fundraisers.

Sarandon seems to have missed the point of the May 2014 expose of Mam in Newsweek, saying that she continues to believe Mam’s story regardless. Mam’s victims, though, apparently aren’t worth her consideration. Sarandon has made no public statement on the testimony of the women now saying that Mam coached them to lie and fabricate horror stories about being trafficked, including Srey Mao and Meas Ratha; nor on the medical records on purported Mam trafficking victim Long Pros’ eye, proving that her eye was removed in surgery for a tumor and not by an imaginary pimp gouging it out; nor the untold many sex workers who have been and continue to be imprisoned in “rehabilitation centers,” including AFESIP’s center.

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Dogs & Dollars

By
suzyhooker
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ariels dog 2

I’m Holly, a stripper in San Francisco. This is my 10 week old goldendoodle puppy Molly, posing with my earnings after a decent Wednesday night. She rolled around in it, then tried to take the money and run—just like mom! <3

Sex workers, submit pictures of your furballs and funds here.

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