LOL. You got me, there. And if you had said “… people who need to beat/get beaten for sexual gratification …” I’d be willing to leave it at that. But you said, “you people who need to beat/get beaten for sexual gratification” [emphasis mine] which sounds like you have some specific people in mind to me.
I guess my point is moot then. Have a good night.
snort Not only that, but apparently they don’t even give you a decent lay anymore; they just hand you a shit-flecked dildo and tell you into which hole to cram it. Add prostitutes to the list of things that aren’t what they used to be.
A Priori Tea, you’re one of my favorite posters, but I have to say that I agree with Dio on this. I’d be more sympathetic if you were the OP of the IMHO thread, but as it stands, Dio gave an opinion in IMHO.
As an aside, I went back to the OP of the thread and wow, that had nothing to do with this. This has evolved into something totally different than the main topic of the post.
Only on the internet could a conversation go on this long and get this heated about the etiquette of ramming a dildo up a guy’s ass.
As soon as you call me back, you sloppy bitch…
Dio: When so many people you respect for their lack of ignorance group together, abandoning their disagreements, to explain things… You just really need to step back and take a deep breath. Please?
nemmind. Thread’s moved on.
You see, that there was funny.
You just don’t go to the right parties 
Well, I’m finally back and awake, so let’s see if I can catch up a little bit. If I miss anybody who asked me something, please forgive and remind me, and I’ll try to address it.
I agree with you that part of what he did is post an opinion in IMHO, and that nothing he said was over the line of the rules for that forum. If he had been, I’d’ve simply reported the offending post instead of starting a Pit thread. As it is, this sort of aggressive stupidity and unwillingness to see facts is… well, frankly, now it’s amusing more than anything. Some days, though, it pisses me off, and then I end up posting in the Pit. 
That being said - I enjoy your posts as well, and I think that we can civilly agree to disagree on this issue. That’s mainly because you’re capable of agreeing to disagree without being insulting and an asshole in the process, which Dio is (to all evidence) not.
It’s fair to say that at this point, I just plain don’t like Diogenes the Cynic, and I will have a standing expectation that his posts will be worthless, and will view them with that bias. However, the reason I didn’t Pit Fuzzy Dunlop is a little different - I saw the “guest” status under his name, and assumed that either 1) he was a new idiot, and maybe just hadn’t learned yet, or 2) he was probably not going to be around long, throwing stupidity around like that as a “guest.”
I see now that he joined in April 2007, and neither one of those things could be true, so it was an error of omission on my part. If you’d like, I’ll be happy to write a whole 'nother rant about his language choice and willful assholishness.
First: I agree with you that a submissive should be concerned with their physical well-being, and that being curious about the cleanliness methods of a pro he visits is definitely a sign of an intelligently self-interested person. I have no issue with clients asking about my cleanliness methods, and in fact encourage them to ask all the questions they like. If, after having had their questions answered, they want me to do it their way instead, I have several concerns. First, the client’s way is often not as effective or as thorough as my way, and will cause them to be at higher risk than simply letting me do my job. Second, clients who wish to micromanage in some areas often want to micromanage in others, which means we may not be a good fit. Not to say that this is always the case, but it does raise a red flag that I would follow up on before accepting business from them. Third, if they are not bringing their own equipment (floggers are expensive, pros are expensive, and sometimes a client has to choose between one and the other), their requests may well damage the longevity of my equipment, if they do not understand the proper way to sanitize the material in question. It’s not the questions that I find offensive, but the implication (with a request to change my established methods, or to do the often time-consuming process over again in front of the client, with no compensation for time squandered) that the client is better equipped to sanitize my own equipment than I am. When I have had that sort of request, the way I generally handled it was: if you are uncomfortable in any way with my procedures, I encourage you to bring your own equipment, which I will be happy to use. (Hell, for stuff that was not practicably sanitizable, I required them to bring their own equipment regardless.) However, I cannot take time out of my business hours to re-sanitize each piece of equipment I may use on you in front of you, unless you are willing to pay for my time to do so.
For the record: I haven’t ever used a dildo on a client, or told a client to use one on himself. I don’t provide anything in that service range, for the simple fact that I am uncomfortable touching someone else’s used sex toys, and I am uncomfortable using the same penetrative toys on different clients. That is because I am more than a little neurotic about the spread of disease, and one of my hangups is about penetrative toys. However, that doesn’t mean that the pros who use that sort of equipment are less cleanliness oriented - simply that they’re more willing to manage the risks associated with those toys, and in all likelihood (if they’re in business for any length of time) are quite good at doing so. Pros who give people STDs rapidly gain a reputation and lose their clientele.
Which brings me to your second point, and a perfectly legitimate question. In any given area, there are a limited number of people who are likely to patronize pros, and they generally have something important enough in common that they seek each other out anonymously (yay internet!) in order to trade information. There are tons of places you can review pros, and anyone with any intelligence is going to look up the reputation of a service provider before engaging them for something as potentially hazardous as BDSM. Yes, there are bad pros out there - but the reason I keep saying that their professional lives are short is because the clientele talks to each other. On review boards, occasionally through email, and very often just googling the professional’s scene name to find information available through a third party. No, it’s not as thorough or as reliable as proper regulation and inspections by accredited health professionals, and I agree that that would be the ideal. However, it’s what we’ve got with how the legal and moral environment is here, and so that’s what most pros and clients work with.
Thank god for mostly healthy immune systems then. Perhaps the risk taking is all part of the appeal. I wouldn’t know. But I do know that I would never trust my health to a prostitute or other pleasure worker (does that term work?) in such a way. I am more squicked out about that than the other aspects of the dynamic.
I’m turning into Felix Unger. (of course the whole thought of me using such a service is laughable in the extreme. I’m not exactly Ms Adventure).
Last question: if this is personal for you re Dio, why Pit him at all? There are 3 Dopers who piss me off something fierce, to the point where I cannot trust myself to read their posts with dispassion or even an open mind. I won’t ignore anyone, but I do tend to skim their posts and just move on. Just sayin’.
Pleasure worker or sex worker is fine; contrary to some of the posts flying around, I have never denied that pro domming is, at its base, about sex. I could try to explain how I think it’s visceral more than sexual, but even to me that’s a fine distinction, so “sex” works as an approximation. (This is given that most clients that I have encountered patronize pros in order to fulfill a desire for s/m or some specific fetish, both of which are close enough to sex to pass easily. I do agree with KneadToKnow that a good portion for-fun domination is much more about the mind than the genitals, but that is a whooooole different thread.)
It wasn’t really personal with Dio when I started; as I said, I would have included Fuzzy Dunlop had he not been a “guest” whose status I made some bad assumptions about. However, after having seen his continuing posts to the original IMHO thread, and his posts here, my policy regarding Dio is at this point “laugh, sigh, move on.” Because I’ve moved so far into “he’s a useless twat” territory, it does no good reacting to him anymore, so why bother?
And if anybody knows a thing or two about useless twats it’s a pleasure worker who isn’t a prostitute.
I had a chnace this evening to discuss this thread with a friend of mine, who is reasonably active in the kink community in her city.
She had the following reactions:
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There’s a huge difference in self-awareness, acumen, and generla good sense between the people who belong to a club, and those who patronize a pro domme. Typically, in her view, the people that end up with a pro domme are those who cannot, for reasons of social skills, community standing, or the like seek out a D/s relationship in a non-commercial context. She felt that the nature and quality of information exchange amongst paying clients would be of considerably less detail and value than the discussion that goes on in the non-commercial D/s community.
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“Prostitute” is an absolutely fair term to use, and she hastened to add that she feels prostitution should be legal, safe, and rare.
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The client was absolutely entitled to express his converns about clean toys and sanitization standards.
In this specific case, let me suggest pain worker ;).
Thanks for the kind words.
Just some food for thought. People have different styles of managing oh, let’s call it challenge. When we feel backed into a corner, some people get very analytical and others very logical. We think with the side of our brains that we’re most comfortable–the whole left-brain/right brain thing.
When Dio appears cornered, he gets very analytical. That’s why I totally understand him. Other people get very emotional. And when those two people conflict, they retreat more into their own corners and less communication happens. While you certainly don’t have to get along with him, for your own sake, if he’s bugging you, you might want to look at it from that perspective (I know you’re good at seeing things from different perspectives).
As for the colorful language, well, I think that’s just part of certain people’s style and personality. I doubt that it’s a personal thing.
Just something to think about.
The dynamic is really much too different. Hiring a dom is like enrolling in school. While in a technical sense you might be the client, if you tried acting like the boss, you’re going to get booted and there’s no ifs ands or buts about it. Certainly there is some element of choice involved, which activities you are hoping to experience and such, but this is in a structured way and if you want to change your focus, you need to do it outside of class, and not to just start whining right in the middle of a lesson.
What your friend said illustrates your friend’s level of knowledge well, she thinks that prostitution primarily exists for the socially inept. Pay-for-Dom seekers may indeed fit this mold, but the average prostitute john in fact doesn’t. Most people who seek prostitutes are manly-man sorts, quite outgoing, or married. Think more army stud or salesman than Jules the Dork. So while your friend perhaps knows the kink biz decently well, she probably doesn’t actually know as much about the prostitution world as she thinks.
Haven’t read the other thread. Don’t plan to. Dio’s a self-righteous jerk but this particular pitting is a mild and pointless one. A prodomme complaining about being called a prostitute is like a right-winger wanting to preserve “marriage”. It’s just a fucking word - get over it.
I can’t say that I care whether you personally do or don’t call it prostitution, but if you look up in the upper left hand corner of this webpage you’ll see a little statement saying that we’re trying to fight ignorance. In this case the expert answer is that no, it probably doesn’t make sense to call a professional dominant a prostitute. Certainly they are in the business of selling “sex work”, but that’s just as true of erotic fiction authors, call up phone sex workers, porn stars, strip dancers, soapland girls, and of course prositutes. If you ask a prostitute for real live sexual intercourse, she’ll say yes. All of these other professions, they’d kick you out. That’s why they aren’t called being a prostitute, they don’t sell sex.
If there was an umbrella term for sex workers besides “sex workers”, it would make decent sense to use “prostitutes”. At the moment, it isn’t though, and I can’t think of any definition of it that would include dominating.
What definition for prostitute do you use besides “someone who sells sex”?
Definition 3. By definition one, I can give hand jobs and blow jobs to my hearts content and not be “technically” a prostitute.
(I’d say a porn star is a prostitute no matter how you cut it - she is having sex for money - she just isn’t having sex with YOU for money).
pros⋅ti⋅tute
/ˈprɒstɪˌtut, -ˌtyut/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [pros-ti-toot, -tyoot] Show IPA Pronunciation
noun, verb, -tut⋅ed, -tut⋅ing.
–noun
- a woman who engages in sexual intercourse for money; whore; harlot.
- a man who engages in sexual acts for money.
- a person who willingly uses his or her talent or ability in a base and unworthy way, usually for money.