making escorts do…[whatever]

I need to get back to writing again, so I’m doing a couple posts about online escorts issues.

getting what you really want at a lower rate

I received advertising spam from a combination info-blog/advertising mall except they don’t seem to actually have any escorts signed up with them (they also seem geared toward agencies, not indies). I’m not sure why I got spammed, but the site was entertaining nonetheless. Their stated purpose is to teach clients “learn how to negotiate with escorts the right way to get what you really want. Don’t risk getting ripped off or going to jail.”

Escorts have an adverse reaction to the word negotiate. It’s a business. You pay what the businessperson is charging or seek to engage another businessperson. If you can’t afford Escort A, then there is probably the very-affordable Escort B advertising in Escort A’s city — all you have to do is reach out and email. Don’t haggle with Escort A because that won’t get you anywhere except possibly a complaint on a ladies’ board; just email Escort B and arrange a booking with the escort you can afford.

As for teaching male clients how to “get what they really want” I would highly suggest finding an escort whose personality turns you on, go in without heavy expectations and let the experienced professional do her job without getting in her way (she’s going to try to make you very happy). See her again and again and pretty soon you have exactly the experience you want — quite possibly surpassing your original expectations. (I touch on this subject a bit more here.)

Or…you could send an escort a detailed letter of every little thing you expect from her and every little thing you want her to do — and never see her. She may post this letter on a national ladies’ board for the laughs (or you could live in infamy online as a time-waster), which could mean you don’t see any escort in her city. Or you send copies of this letter to every escort in a single city, effectively screwing yourself out of seeing any escort in that city.

That’s how “getting what you really want” really works in really real life.

Read more

ps: escort plagiarism

— If you’re an escort struggling to uniquely express yourself online, maybe try Better Than Great by Arthur Plotnik.

— One could view The Prestige as a tragedy about stealing another’s idea.

— A good friend of mine is trying to rework her site. I really don’t know why she’s trying so hard. She could save so much time and energy by just finding a site she really likes and copying it. Everyone’s doing it!

— If you’re not convinced by the complaining about escort plagiarism you’ve read here, just Google the phrase “Intimacy and closeness are things I crave.” I don’t what poor girl wrote it first (Chelsy Heyden?), but I feel sorry for her.

— At least one escort explains in her FAQ that others steal her text and photos. Really wish IDoNotHaveaBrain was still around with their “Original Content” badge. Would be even easier for them to check with Copyscape. Sigh.

— Escorts should invoice plagiarists. According to the February 2010 issue of Writer’s Digest, freelance rates for webpage writing range from $40-$125/hr (or $0.21-$2.62 per word); email copywriting $64-$125/hr (or $300 per email!); online editing $25-$100/hr (or $3-$4/page). A pretty nice bill when you add up someone taking your entire ad-text and your website pages! Even better if they take some blog posts too — more billable work for you!

— Geisha Diaries made a post about this very topic the same day I did. They offered some good ideas on content-protection.

often imitated and duplicated — since 2002

The escort world is rife with plagiarism. This is no secret among escorts. One of my naïve goals in writing Book 2 was to give escorts a way to learn how to write for themselves. There are new escorts who have read my books and taken the lessons to heart — the results are easy to see on their personality-driven sites and ads. There are others who took my examples a bit too literally and I have spotted them sprinkled over websites, much to my chagrin. And then there are those who just decided to go directly to the source (me) and lift whatever they feel like taking. How nice of me to do all the hard work for them!

I have a habit of this — I’ve changed escort-text everywhere I’ve worked. I’ve worked under different names and have found my writing appearing elsewhere (and obviously these girls had no clue whose text they stole). And people have seen fit to taken whatever they want from my book’s site too. I’m long past being amused, flattered or anything except completely and totally furious when I find my work stolen. Dragging around a truckload of others is very tiring work. I keep thinking that if I stop writing, they’ll have to go elsewhere for their ideas and words. It’s becoming the more tempting option, frankly.

It seems the issue is getting worse as more girls get online. Many seem to think that Internet = free for some reason. Some surely know better and yet still they steal.

In the online world, words entice, often more than pictures. Words = money to escorts. Copyright violations are violations on a serious level.

Read more

ps: the invisible majority

A few afterthoughts and reactions to my post.

I don’t have a problem with the awareness and understanding of privilege. Being aware of one’s advantages (luck, earned, given) is what’s known as “counting your blessings” where I grew up. It’s something every person should do at regular intervals. Counting one’s blessings is a private moment of personal reflection and it’s not necessary to be beaten over the head and/or ostracized if others don’t think you’re doing it right. There are ways of educating others about the concept of privilege and pointing out ways in which one may have an advantage. Then it’s time to move onto something else of greater importance: like changing laws that affect everyone regardless of any supposed privilege.

I apparently confused some [white] people by using the words “KKK” and “prejudice.” The KKK itself (or those who follow its value-system) hates quite a lot of people for a wide variety of reasons. It’s not all about skin color, folks. Prejudice and racism are different words, which is why I used “prejudice.” There is some overlap in concept (racism being a form of prejudice) but they do not actually mean the exact same thing. I wrote this post as clearly and simply as I could and it still confused people with too much schooling. Sigh. One activist who should know me better reacted as though I was a pet who pooped on the rug. No I’m not, and no I did not.

The UK seems to have some similar issues as the US. If you would like to take a look at thoughts from UK sex workers, please go over and enjoy the musings of Elrond and Douglas Fox — who made the most brilliant statement on the whole issue: “Activism groups have to understand that sex workers have many voices and many political allegiances and many experiences. Our diversity is our strength but instead it is being made our weakness.”

Furry Girl was inspired to bring the issue to a head. She is absolutely right in that it’s a (literal) working class issue. She boiled it down to 4 important points. I look forward to the start of her new project. Changing minds is changing minds. It needs to be done. Period.

sympathy for the she-devil

Years before I ever self-identified as an activist (I usually considered myself “an army of one”), I emailed Michael Connelly complaining about his book Chasing the Dime. A client had given me a Harry Bosch book and I really enjoyed it. When I discovered Connelly had written a book about the murder of a callgirl, I bought it immediately. I finished the book only because I’m a stubborn cuss. Then I hurled it across the room, with great force; and dug up his email address.

I complained because the callgirl who was the driving force behind the entire book was dead before page 1. She was murdered by an advertising mall that reminded me of CityVibe. (I’ll assume Connelly’s research led him to create a company that was a combination of CityVibe and Eros with a whole lot of stereotyping thrown in. Believe me, I don’t think the CityVibe folks go around murdering their Verified Escorts, no matter how flaky the girls are.) The girl even did some BDSM scenes for online consumption, which included the horrors of having hot wax dripped onto her torso by her female modeling partner and the obvious faking of facial expressions for money. I asked Connelly why he felt the need to murder his callgirl, why couldn’t she have been alive at some point in the book, why did she have to be such a victim?

His assistant replied that Connelly was building sympathy for the character. I immediately shot back, commenting that not only was that lazy writing, people are capable of being sympathetic while alive, even callgirls. I never heard back and honestly did not expect to. Why would his assistant waste time arguing about a fictional dead callgirl with some partially-fictional blonde escort in Dallas?

That exchange has always stuck in my mind. Connelly has obvious fictional talents; I enjoyed his Harry Bosch book and millions of other people have enjoyed that entire series. The main character in Chasing the Dime wasn’t very sympathetic, should he have been killed too? On the other hand, this character was so intrigued by the callgirl that he solved her murder. That doesn’t happen too often in real life. Obviously the cops were less than concerned, which reflects reality precisely.

That the only way an experienced crime-writer like Connelly felt a sex worker could ever possibly be a “good girl” is to be a dead girl is profoundly disturbing to me. Millions of people read his books and they’re absorbing his message: the only good hooker is a dead one. The only way they can feel sorry for us is if we’ve paid for our sins with death. Even the mundane details of the girl’s life (she drank milk! she has a good credit rating! a cute little house! a pet! a family who misses her!) are presented as exotica. As if she is somehow completely removed from all normal human existence, as though she was created, lived and worked in a vacuum. Her murder was her only connection to the “real” world in the book.

For Connelly, the problem is that he could not have sympathy for her as a normal, living human being.