Posted on by Amanda Brooks

reactions vii

electronics and water don’t mix

Though I’ve made efforts to maintain my smartphone-virginity, that may change. I killed my beloved Nokia 3600 Slide worldphone that I’ve had for years. I can’t buy a replacement anymore because they don’t make them. I will likely have to get some sort of damn touchscreen thing. I like my electronics as simple as possible. And I have fingernails. Studying Nokia models as we speak. I still require an unlocked quad-band GSM phone.

facebook vs sex workers (again)

I’m not the only one getting kicked off Facebook. Porn stars are too. Facebook is fine with violence, not with sex. Got it.

real virginity

This essay by a real-life virgin shows how unhealthy an absolute focus on virginity is for a woman. History is full of tales of women who were seduced or raped and then had to turn to prostitution because they had no societal value as an unmarried non-virgin. It would be nice if we were beyond that, but clearly not. There’s nothing wrong with saving good sex for someone you love, but putting your whole value as a woman and human being into a state you’re unlikely to maintain if you live your life is whacked. It doesn’t lead to a better sex life if you’re told how horrible and dirty sex is until that magic day when it isn’t. Human emotions and self-image don’t work that way.

If you know someone who wants to take an abstinence pledge, please show them this article and talk to them about it (if you can). And don’t encourage them to faux-marry their father. Ick.

non-pickup artist

One woman has decided to draw the men who irritate her online. I have no problem with that done a personal level to vent, but then she shares it online (with the men and the world). I think that’s a bit much for the level of offense given. It does make me wonder if an escort completely fed up with hobbyists is going to start doing this? It would not be pretty.

male escorts as therapists

A woman who hired male escorts, lost weight, and felt better about herself throughout it. Female escorts have essentially been saying this for years — how we often end up being therapists. I like that it shows professional companionship can be good for either gender. It’s also a great weight-loss plan.

escort photographers are better

After spending the last couple years purusing boudoir photographers and escort photographers, I’ve come to the conclusion that (good) escort photographers are better. I can think of one boudoir photographer I would like to have a session with. Escort photographers not only understand sexy better, they’re more creative on the whole. They’re more into showcasing the individual woman in front of their camera because of how important it is to that woman to have unique pictures. Plus, when you know the pictures you take are going to be plastered all over the Internet, you probably work a little bit harder to impress random viewers. There are a fair number of good escort photographers scattered over the country, each with a unique style, capable of producing beautiful, individualized photos for every escort in their portfolio. I can’t say the same for boudoir photographers.

Posted on by Amanda Brooks

cliches and wrong ideas

I subscribed to The Nation for a couple of years, long ago, and generally liked Katha Pollitt. But, like many otherwise intelligent people, she goes sideways when the topic of sex work comes up. Her essay, mostly taking issue with Melissa Gira’s book Playing the Whore, has a lot of juicy bits I want to chew on. Heather Berg has a completely different, and very valid, view of Pollitt’s article here.

It doesn’t matter to Pollitt that sex workers are not a monolithic group, nor does she recognize that some sex work writers might actually be leftists themselves. She is highly offended that the ideology of the sex worker rights movement doesn’t follow what she thinks it should follow. She gets downright insulting when she attacks the term “sex work.”

sex work is work

“The ‘sex work is work’ cliché is that prostitution is much like any other service job—being a waitress is the usual example. I dunno how many waitresses would agree with that…” First, I love how the extremely important statement that “sex work is work” is relegated to a cliche. Is it? I don’t think so, not until everyone in the current culture agrees that sex work is work, all sex workers are working hard at a respectable job, they’ve heard it all before, let’s move onto something new. We’re not there yet. Not even close.

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Posted on by Amanda Brooks

just add water

“Ode to Instant Gratification” by Guerilla Haiku Movement, is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Reading a self-help book that I unpacked (back when I was unpacking my stored stuff), I ran across the disparaging phrase “instant-gratification relationship,” which was lumped together with such things as drug abuse and alcoholism. Such relationships weren’t mentioned again in that book (which I have since donated). Looking online shows that some people use this phrase but not many.

What got me started was simply wondering what defines an instant-gratification relationship? Sex, apparently. There is no other definition, though there should be. Or maybe another euphemism should be chosen.

Of course this assumes the sole point to a “relationship” is sex. Naturally, one would expect my proud assertion that I’m in the professional instant-gratification business. That’s true…and not true. The relationships my clients (and those of many of my friends) yearn for are hardly instant, they require time to build.

Then I think about the traditional marriage, or even the traditional romantic relationship. Hardly instant-gratification by anyone’s standards. In fact, to hear the partners in these relationships speak about them — hardly any gratification at all. So what if I want instant-gratification from someone whom I’ve decided is going to be exactly that? They have every right to deny me gratification if it’s not for them and I have every right to find it elsewhere.

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Posted on by Amanda Brooks

a natural history of the prostitute

The Origin of the World by Gustave Courbet (he had the right idea)
The Origin of the World by Gustave Courbet

Prostitutes are born.

Not every sex worker in the world enters the work because she has always felt a pull towards it. Many have. I know a number of women who have felt the interest from a young age, including myself (and this was before I even had a clear idea of what sex was). Conversations with these women reveal that we all say the same things about our early interest, we all became interested right before entering puberty and common myths about prostitution were not enough to dissuade us from desiring that life-path.

This is a very small sampling and it’s highly unscientific. Given what we know about genes and hard-wired behaviors — it seems more than plausible. Just as homosexual people are born, I am convinced prostitutes are born too.

My inspiration came last year after reading a US-based survey about attitudes toward gay people. The discovery of “gay genes” seems to have really turned the tide in popular thinking and acceptance of homosexuality. It sounds like an argument of convenience for prostitution. But if the range of human sexual orientation is, in fact, genetic; then how come prostitution — an extremely common sexual behavior — supposedly isn’t? What if prostitution isn’t merely a sexual behavior but is actually a sexual orientation? Why has prostitution always been viewed as a deviant behavior? How come people aren’t willing to examine the idea that a prostitute is a perfectly natural occurrence and that it’s society which has formed the deviant behavior around the prostitute?

If being a prostitute is a natural tendency for a percentage of women, then how can laws be made against who they are?

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