One of my best web design clients is an escort (she doesn’t work for an agency)… it’s strange.
I read a book called… um… let me look it up…
drat I can’t find it. But it was written by a former NV madam and it was quite interesting. Strange world, that.
Yeah, if you are able to. 
Disclaimer: I can only speak for myself, as it would be ridiculous for me to assume I can speak for the other 3 billion men on this planet.
I would never pay for sex, for several reasons:
a) I’m a cheapskate. And when I see some of those sites given, look at how much it costs!
b) (the more important reason) I wouldn’t feel as if I had earned it through a loving relationship.
But take note that I am opposed to inflicting these views on anyone else.
By the way, this is an interesting question you posed, and probably deserving of an IMHO thread of its own.
Not 100% on topic, but if you’re really interested in the day-to-day life of brothels, I highly recommend the fascinating book Brothel by Alexa Albert.
I took your advice and checked it out. It’s a very fast read so I finished it in a few hours.
Very interesting indeed.
Depressing as all hell, too.
I’m hoping Ms. Albert doesn’t pretend to be objective about the issue because the book makes it pretty obvious that she supports legalized prostitution.
However, I did learn a lot. I had no idea that hookers were REQUIRED to use condoms and I didn’t know that they were that scrupulous about making sure they don’t get sick (doctor visits all the time, etc.). I was also surprised to see what a pain in the butt it is to become a “licensed” prostitute in Nevada. Lots of red tape.
Still, I found the book sad and at times revolting. These girls in the book were once sweet little girls … they had parents … what happened?
If my daughter ended up like that, it would literally kill me, and her father too.
hmmm lets see if I can add some expertise to this thread. I was engaged to an ex ‘call girl’ a that biz is what ultimately broke us up. a little bit of back story here for you. I met and fell in love with her when she was taking a break from the biz, and she fell for me funny enough, she explained that she had been working as a call-girl and asked how did I fel about it. I basically said I was selfish and I wanted her all to myself and she quit the biz. our marrige was conditional on the fact that she would never become involvled in the ‘game’ ever again. we she went back after 2 years kept it secret and I found out. it did give me a insight into the working world.
Well to answer these two questions. yes there is pride involved but I personally know ppl that it would not have been a problem to swallow it to get their rocks off. some just dont care or want experience, some have bad marriages, some are lonely and need a chat, some want to have a fling without the risk of the second person falling in love and going to tell their partner all about it. there are lots of reasons. Most of these people are not ugly dumb or stupid, but people from all walks of life, and mostly in the same proportions.
heres another web site FWIW that has some good info on it about ‘working girls’ in the uk. PunterNet
Hattrick
[sidetrack]
Life in this world happened.
:shrug: Heck… Larry Flynt, Jimmy Swaggart, Al Goldstein, Ann Coulter, Howard Stern and the cast of guests of the Jerry Springer Show were all once some parent’s sweet little kids…
[/sidetrack]
Before I read the book about Nevada brothels, I still would have assumed that condoms were mandatory. In this day and age, it’s sort of a big “duh” really.
Actually you’d be suprised at how many active practitioners of “the hobby” wouldn’t have trouble getting laid without paying for it. When I was in college I had this irrepressible thirst for knowledge, I still do. One of the things this led me to do was prowl usenet for various groups I thought might be interesting, sign up for them and read them for a while. One of the groups I did this with was the venerable alt.sex.prostitution By the time I joined there was a lot of spam and the group was barely limping by on a handful of regulars(who had developed some nice homegrown ways to differentiate signal from noise, they put a tag on each of the on-topic messages, yes they really do have far more off-topic messages than on-topic messages. Any alt.sex.* hierarchary will and I guess it was easier to flag the non-spam and just read it than to try to filter the spam out.), but the attitude and people were still real. There were quite a few “working girls” there including a saucy one from Austraulia called Sara. The “Gentleman’s rule” applied to most of the posts, they were not explicit and the conversation was suprisingly pg-13 or lower. Occasionally a lady would post pictures as part of an ad, but those were rare and the regulars didn’t.
Anyway, those are my credentials. I got curious one day in college and started following that newsgroup and have since read a great deal about the “hobby.” I know discussion sites, not unlike the SDMB, where various providers and practitioners discuss everything from morality to politics to technical issues. It’s a community grown out of a shared interest that is often derided by the rest of the world. Think of a “smoker’s clique” but even moreso. I don’t think I’ve ever known a “working girl” IRL they tend to keep these things secret though. If every “escort” in the US woke up tomorrow morning with a large scarlet ‘E’ on their forehead and hobbyists woke up with a large scarlet ‘H’, I’m reasonably sure pretty much everyone would have at least one nasty shock from learning the identities of people who practice or are patrons of “the world’s oldest profession”
**
First things first. There is no monolithic “male culture” or if so I never got my membership card. Stereotypes of “maleness” or “macho men” are rarely accurate when applied to individuals. I’m sure you’d find every type of reaction among men to discovering one of their friends was a hobbyist. Everything from “Me too” to “That’s SICK!” to “Why?” to “Whatever works for you bud.” So the answer to the first question “Is it acceptable in the male culture?” would be… shrug. Depends on your friends and your personal charisma. If you are convincing enough, and your friends open-minded enough, I’m sure you could convince your friends that dating a german sheperd was acceptable.
Secondly, from what I have observed in the writings of those in the hobby(and since they almost always use pseudonyms or other ways of masking their identities they are often very frank about their feelings/experiences), one of the major attractions isn’t just sex. It’s sex WITHOUT emotional strings attached. Think a bit on the difference. If I go out to a bar and seduce someone, then I’ve just set up an emotional relationship. I may have no intention of following through on my part of the relationship after the physical act is committed, but that doesn’t mean the emotions aren’t running high(probably faked on the part of the seducer however). A good many hobbyists are actually retired or semi-retired pick-up artists. They used to do this exact thing, go out and fill their needs for sex with one-night stands. I’ve actually seen messages where such people identified a relationship with an escort to be “more honest” than meaningless sex as a result of seduction. In the case of seduction, it’s only meaningless to the seducer and breaks the heart of the seduced. Sounds silly I know, but it’s true that these guys have pangs of conscience from deluding some woman they meet in a bar, but don’t suffer pangs at engaging in illegal activities with an escort.
These are hardly the only reasons I’ve seen given for the “hobby.” A need for physical intimacy in the elderly/handicapped was the driving force behind one story. A provider had essentially retired and no longer accepted new clients, but she continued her services(often at a reduced rate) for her handicapped or elderly clients. Often enough they were not interested in sex, but enjoyed her company by cuddling or simply having physical contact with a person who had sympathy for them and was willing to reach beyond the physical/age barriers to reach them. How sad that in our society it often takes money to bridge that gap, at least initially. How many elderly widowers do you know who would be immensely gratified to feel the warmth of an intimate(not sex, just naked cuddling) embrace for a few hours? How many handicapped or mentally challenged people do you know who would be? Simply because they’re too old or incapable(physically) of participating in courtship rituals, does this mean they should do without physical intimacy for the rest of their lives?
My maternal grandmother was a widow for over 25 years. Her husband, my grandfather, died of cancer in his late 50s. She lived to be 87. For nearly a third of her life she was bereft of intimate human contact. A piece of advice she gave my mother when my father passed away in '94 was “Don’t rule out remarriage. I’ve spent the last 25 years alone. I would not do it again.” I can’t imagine what that would be like and I’m actually grateful there are people like the escort I mentioned above who try to bridge this gap, and in her case it was not about the money. She could have stayed unretired and made far more money or fully retired because she had a day job she could live on. Her compassion led her to continue to offer physical intimacy to those who had no other source of it. In this case the money was actually a mitigating factor so the clients wouldn’t feel patronized by her companionship. She called the reduced rates “repeat client discounts” and told us in the newsgroup that she would have spent time with them for nothing if she weren’t sure it would damage their egos.
There’s another side to it as well. The women in the equation, although money is their primary goal, also enjoy the freedom that comes with the physical intimacy without emotional attachment. I’ve seen many a message where a “provider” enjoyed the time spent with a customer(and most of the “better” ones provide a service called GFE(the GirlFriend Experience) which includes cuddling, kissing, french kissing, and chatting about life) then simply closed the door on that time period in her life and moved on to the next. It was like a short-term relationship, it was nice while it lasted and you don’t have regrets. No emotional baggage to deal with. No power struggles, no fears of rejection. The lines are drawn before the relationship begins. There’s something appealing to both genders in that kind of stability. A framework where our mutual need for physical intimacy can be met with a minimum of additional trappings.
There are many more reasons for a customer to seek a provider that I haven’t touched on.(and yes there are male escorts and a fairly active female “hobbyist” community. Male escorts aren’t just for homosexual clients. In fact many are hetero-only) Among these would be, desire for a certain sexual behavior/attitude, desire to experiment with various races/genders (read about a lesbian provider who specialized in getting “bi-curious” women completely out of the closet, her claim, not mine!), fetishes, etc. None of them are any more or less justified/justifiable than any other. And from four years of reading ASP and various other forums, I can tell you without hesitation, the “customers” and the “providers” are spread across the entire social spectrum. Fat, thin, ugly, beautiful, macho, meek, rich, poor, conservative, liberal, educated, uneducated, black, white, yellow, purple, green, chartruse, etc.
Enjoy,
Steven
Just out of curiousity, Ginger, how much did the escorts make per year roughly?
It’s hard, ralph124c, really hard.
d&r