Should You Pay For Sex Before You Die?
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Should You Pay For Sex Before You Die?
By Andrea Werhun.
Ah, to be a millennial in 2017. You're young, you're beautiful and tonight, you can walk into any bar and have your pick of the finest sweet things in the room. You pick the hottest one, engage in some harmless negging and ask in your classic cavalier way if this lucky lady would like a drink. Without hesitation, the answer is a self-assured yes. Another easy ask: her number. She gives it freely and with abandon. One "Netflix-and-chill?" text later and she's at your place, ready to fuck. For you, life is full of these easy, non-committal lays with attractive woman who have nothing to lose, right? Life is good. And when life is this good, paying for sex seems out of the question. Why pay for it when you can get it for free?
Speaking as someone who for two years worked in the industry as an agency call girl, perhaps you need to reconsider.
Picture this: after years of living the good life, your career takes off. Work is stressful, so your hair begins to thin. Your sedentary office lifestyle downgrades that once-emerging six-pack into a pre-fatherhood beer belly. You finally choose a girl from the revolving door of babes and continue your American dream, settling down with a couple of kids. After fucking the same woman for a few years, you start to look at yourself and wonder, Who am I? What have I become? What happened to that strapping young buck who fucked a different hot chick every month? Sex used to be easy. Now you can barely get it up.
You yearn for those days of easy, non-committal sex, but look in the mirror: You're not the stud you used to be. Your relationship with the "old lady" suffers. There's daily bickering, a blasé sex life and one too many disagreements on how to discipline the children. One day, without warning, she leaves and takes 50 percent. To alleviate the pain, you download whatever app the cool kids are using nowadays and upload your most deceptively attractive pictures of you at the beach, the club and the game. It takes some time to conveniently crop your ex-wife and kids out of frame. A week later, no matches. For the first time in your life, the reality of being a perennial left-swipe sets in: your peak days are behind you.
You find yourself absentmindedly perusing the adult classifieds where hundreds of women are offering a plethora of sexual services. Seeing a sex worker never occurred to you when you had your pick of the hot-babe litter, but now, well, you've come to accept that free and easy non-committal sex may just be a vestige of the past. There's a sting of humiliation as you realize that an attractive woman's body, the smell of her sweet pussy, her focused attention on your body and your pleasure altogether are all luxuries and privileges you no longer have access to at whim. What exactly do you have to offer a beautiful lady besides your money?
Here's the scoop: You don't need to be a newly divorced bachelor reliving his glory days to enjoy the fruits of a sex worker's labor. In fact, why not pay for sex while you're young—while life is good? Everyone—young or old, male, female, trans, straight or queer—has plenty to gain from the focused attention of a sex worker, whose ability to produce pleasure can do wonders to alleviate loneliness, stress and general discontent. Maybe you're happily single, but experience an occasional longing for physical intimacy. Perhaps there's something sexual you've always wanted to try, but have been too afraid to ask. Sex workers to the rescue! Why not pay a professionally open-minded and non-judgmental lover to satisfy your sexual needs? After all, it could be me at your door.
I can attest to the benefits of seeing a sex worker. Like you, I enjoy having easy, non-committal sex, but unlike you, I enjoyed it as my job. Fucking for money benefited my life in myriad ways: I made a ton of money, paid off my debt, covered my rent, traveled around the world, met fascinating people and lived to tell the tale. Sure, not every day was honky dory—how could it be when [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url] and murder are occupational hazards?—but on the whole, it was a great job.
In my experience, the vast majority of my clients were men between the ages of 35 and 65. They were professionals and businessmen, artists and nerds, the broken-hearted and the differently-abled—oh, and almost always married, but that's another story. Only a few men were under the age of 30, whose lack of manners, sexual prowess and conversation abilities left a little more to be desired. But hell, I was being paid to fuck the youngin's. What of all those hot babes they were having mediocre sex with for free?
While my older clientele tended to be polite, respectful, fun to talk to and skilled in lovemaking, millennial men fucked as if they were filming their big porno debut: Little to no eye contact or conversation and a lot of bravado amid the nausea-inducing haze of Axe body spray in the bedroom of their parents' basement.
You can do better than that. Let a professional lover teach you how.
If you already enjoy the occasional, daily or breakfast-lunch-and-dinner viewing of pornography, consider this: you already rely on the labor of sex workers to meet your sexual, mental and emotional needs. The only difference between watching porn and paying for sex is human connection—and in this day and age, connecting with a real life human is a hot commodity. The bread and butter of a sex worker's job is connecting with her client via listening, eye-contact, touch and sexual pleasure. Talk about bang for your buck.
But I know what you're thinking: Isn't paying for sex unethical? Aren't all sex workers victims of abuse, coerced into exploitative labor that only financially benefits their pimps? That's the stigma talking, baby. You see, as it often happens when sex workers speak for themselves—not as disempowered victims but as people who value their work—our opinions are misconstrued as exceptions to the rule. This so-called "rule" is actually prejudice serving to further disempower sex workers by ignoring their lived experiences.
Don't get me wrong. This isn't to say that some sex workers aren't disempowered victims—not when most of their work is criminalized, they are forced to live and work in hiding, and a predator can abuse them with little legal impunity—but that shouldn't diminish the value of their points of view.
So, should you pay for sex before you die? Sure, if having great sex with a professional—no matter your gender, orientation or perhaps most importantly, your age—is your idea of a good time. You may even wish you'the done it sooner.
But for god's sakes, lay off the body spray.
Andrea Werhun is the author of the forthcoming book Modern *****, a collection of memoir, fiction and photography created in collaboration with filmmaker Nicole Bazuin. Based on her two years as an escort in Toronto, the book is set to be published by Impulse: be in October 2017. Follow Andrea on Twitter: at andreawerhun.
Can Amnesty International Help Legalize Prostitution in America?
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Culture.
Can Amnesty International Help Legalize Prostitution in America?
By Jessica P. Ogilvie.
Illustration by Jun Cen.
May 10,2017.
When Eileen, a former prostitute, was working the streets of Seattle, she dressed more like a mall rat than a sex kitten: jeans, a T-shirt, Chuck Taylors. She chose this look not to attract a certain type of customer, or even to make her days of wandering the streets more comfortable.
"I didn't wear high heels or a negligee," she says, "so I could run from the cops. ".
Now 53, Eileen (who asked that we withhold her last name) is a social worker. Thinking back on her time in the sex industry, she's emphatic in her belief that she would have been safer if her work hadn't been criminalized. In addition to worrying about the police, she was harassed by clients, robbed of her few belongings and unable to access health care for fear of being stigmatized or reported. And too often, law enforcement did worse than make arrests.
"I've had cops tell me that if you do this or that"—I. E. , perform sexual favors—"they'll let you go. It happens every day. There's probably some woman getting shook down while we're having this conversation. ".
For centuries, law enforcement, government and religious organizations have criminalized prostitution and other forms of sex work. But the oldest profession in the world doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and according to both sex workers and a range of experts, keeping it illegal serves only to endanger those engaged in the practice. That's why, in August 2015, Amnesty International—one of the largest human rights organizations in the world—announced it would join the effort to decriminalize sex work.
In May 2016, the group released its official policy paper on the issue. The 17-page document states that continuing to treat sex work as a crime infringes on the human rights of consenting adults. It recommends repealing laws that penalize sex workers, educating law enforcement on how to protect sex workers and providing health care that's free of stigma and discrimination.
Patricia Schulz, a United Nations gender-equality expert who sits on the organization's Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, lays out the cost of ignoring those recommendations.
"When prostitution is criminalized, sex workers risk being abused," she says. "They risk being manipulated. They risk being forced to have sex with police workers. If they're brought to detention, they might be raped by other inmates. They might be raped by other workers. There's a whole series of violations of their rights arising from the situation. ".
This insight comes after years of hearing from sex workers in many countries, studying the issue and, she says, "traveling a long way" from her initial view on the matter.
"When there's no penalty, it means sex workers can have an apartment; they can have an alarm system, a guard to make sure nothing happens," she says. "From a pragmatic position, there's no benefit of criminalizing the activity. ".
Schulz's line of thinking, however, has some surprising detractors. Amnesty International's 2015 announcement was met with a Change. Org petition signed by, among others, Lena Dunham, Meryl Streep, Kate Winslet and Emma Thompson, asking the organization to reevaluate its position. The petition states that "the sex industry is predicated on dehumanization, degradation and gender violence. " It calls prostitution "a harmful practice steeped in gender and economic inequalities. ".
In January, a dispute erupted among organizers of the Women's March on Washington over the inclusion of sex workers' rights in their official platform. Reportedly intended to embrace all groups marginalized under the new presidential administration, the platform initially included the phrase "we stand in solidarity with sex workers' rights movements. " Then, on January 17, reporters covering the March discovered that the phrase had been quietly removed. Following an uproar on social media, it was put back in and currently reads "we stand in full solidarity with the sex workers' rights movement. ".
March organizers made no formal statement about the removal or reinstatement other than to tweet the phrase in question on January 19 with the hashtags #WhyIMarch and #WomensMarch; they did not respond to playboy's request for comment. But the surrounding controversy indicates that even among highly progressive women advocating for their own bodily autonomy, sex work is still a lightning rod.
Savannah Sly, president of the USA -based Sex Workers Outreach Project, has worked for more than a decade in the sex industry. She argues that those who oppose her profession, while perhaps well-intentioned, disregard the basic rights of sex workers to do their jobs and do them safely.
"God forbid something does happen and I'm assaulted or robbed," she says. "I am an outlaw. ".
Opposition to prostitution is as old as prostitution itself. As far back as the year 596, the king of the area now known as France and Spain declared that sex workers should be flogged and banished. Sex work has been frowned upon in the United States since the Pilgrims first set up shop in New England, and by the early 1900's, prostitution was officially criminalized in most USA States.
"There was such social stigma to it," says Melinda Chateauvert, author of Sex Workers Unite. "Prostitutes were considered to be ruined. ".
In recent decades, things have changed. Measures introduced by lawmakers that are based on morality alone—think opposition to marriage equality—tend to face a steeper battle in the court of public opinion than legislation with an eye toward, say, protecting vulnerable members of society. In response, the movement to shut down the sex industry hasn't died; instead, it has grown more subtle offshoots whose rhetoric often conflates all prostitution with sex trafficking.
"Before, sex workers were seen as dirty working girls," says Sly. "Now, these women are victims who need to be rescued. ".
One of the largest antiprostitution outfits is the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, a New York–based nonprofit founded in 1988. CATW's goal, according to its website, is to "end [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord908][CodeWord908][/url] and the commercial sexual exploitation of women and children worldwide. " The group asserts that all sex workers need saving, regardless of how or why they engage in their work. A 2011 paper published on its website claims, "Prostitution is a sexually exploitive, often violent economic option. " (CATW declined to be interviewed for this article, stating, "Please don't take this personally, but we don't interview with playboy or any other pornographic magazine as a matter of policy. ".
The basis of this position—that all sex workers are victims—makes no distinction between consenting adults and [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord902][CodeWord902][/url] or otherwise vulnerable people who are forced into sexual labor. Amnesty International states clearly and repeatedly throughout its 2016 policy paper that the two are not interchangeable: "Forced labor and [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord908][CodeWord908][/url]. Constitute serious human rights abuses and must be criminalized. . [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord908][CodeWord908][/url], including into the sex sector, is not the same as sex work. ".
Schulz clarifies the point further: "The notion of selling sex services is really within the context of a decision made by two adults who negotiate a certain price for certain acts. If a person is being trafficked and is obliged to perform sex acts, it's a form of [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url]. ".
The stigma that all sex workers are damaged, traumatized or victimized spills over into the lives of those engaged even in legal work, with very real and serious consequences.
Porn actress Bonnie Rotten—in 2014, at the age of 20, she became the second-youngest woman to win the AVN Award for female performer of the year—encountered this problem while trying to report a sexual assault to police. Several years ago, she discovered she had been raped in a particularly gut-wrenching way: Her attacker filmed it and posted the video on the internet. She says the man drugged her before assaulting her. "I didn't really know what happened until the video came out," she says.
Rotten hired a lawyer, but by that point she had already become famous for her work in pornography. When she went to the police, they recognized her. "They acted like I was a scumbag for trying to do something about it," she says. She eventually settled two years later, succeeding in having the video of her [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url] taken offline. But the ordeal wasn't without trauma.
"It's very hard for any of us to go to the police when this stuff comes up," she says. "The legal system doesn't look at us as an equal in the community. It's like, 'You guys agreed to this by spreading your legs once on camera. How are we supposed to differentiate?8201;.
Nowhere in this discussion is anyone making the argument that all sex workers love their jobs. Some women (and men—sex workers are predominantly, though by no means exclusively, female) enter the field because of financial problems, a lack of educational opportunities or a dearth of other job prospects. What makes sex work stand out from other lines of employment, though, is that while plenty of people don't like what they do for a living, few industries inspire the formation of nonprofits intent on outlawing them.
With that in mind, it's hard to accept that much of the antiprostitution platform isn't built on the same puritanical values that inspired the criminalization of prostitution. Sex work, after all, touches on some uncomfortable truths about sexual desire—truths that perhaps not everyone wants to acknowledge.
"There is a difficulty in accepting that if there are prostitutes, there are clients," says Schulz. "It's not very comfortable for many women to ask themselves whether their partner goes to see other women, and if so, what does he do that he doesn't do with them?
But sex work's threat—or its power, depending on how you look at it—runs even deeper than that. Emboldened sex workers represent a significant challenge to the current balance of power between men and women. If women are legally able to capitalize on their sexuality and the female body is no longer controlled by male-dominated governments, power will shift. The sex industry will go from a buyer's market, if you will, to a seller's.
"If women can make these choices for themselves," says Chateauvert, "men no longer control the world. ".
Amnesty International's position remains unchanged. "The policy is still as it stood last year," says a spokesperson for the organization, and it "will guide all future actions we take on this front. ".
But the battle for sex workers' rights is still an uphill one. In April 2016, France enacted legislation modeled on a Swedish law that criminalizes buying, rather than selling, sex; though well-intentioned, it effectively stigmatizes and pushes sex work further underground. Stateside, an August 2016 Department of Justice investigation of the Baltimore Police Department found that some officers had targeted "people involved in the sex trade. To coerce sexual favors from them. " Similar acts were discovered during a scandal involving the Oakland Police Department and an [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord902][CodeWord902][/url] prostitute in June of the same year.
Lawmakers seem to be aware of the problem but unable to find solutions. A bill that California legislators introduced last year would have allowed individual police officers to decide whether to send prostitutes to jail or offer them counseling, advancing the assumption that they need either mental health care or a prison cell instead of access to the same support systems as other workers in the state.
It took Schulz a while to come around to Amnesty International's point of view, but after learning about the experiences of sex workers around the world—from Kenya to Thailand to the you. K. To Canada—the choice became clear.
"This is my personal view," she says. "You can't on the one hand say that every woman has the right to decide whether or not to have children, to decide about the spacing of the birth of their children, to decide on an abortion, and on the other hand say that no woman can decide for herself to engage in whichever activity she decides to engage in. There is an element of autonomy that I have recognized. Who am I to say this is a choice they should not have?