Escorts

TIMES are tough for Debbie, a prostitute in western England who runs a private flat with other “mature ladies”. She does two or three jobs a day. A year ago she was doing eight or nine. She has cut her prices: “If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t still be open.” She says that she can now make more money doing up furniture and attending car-boot sales than she can turning tricks.

George McCoy, who runs a website reviewing over 5,000 massage parlours and individuals, says that many are struggling. Sex workers tell him they have been forced to hold down prices. Like other businesses, massage parlours and private flats are suffering from rising rents and energy costs. Even Mr McCoy’s website is under the cosh: visitor numbers are down by a third.

In part, this reflects the sluggish economy. Overall consumer spending at the end of 2012 was almost 4% lower than its 2007 peak. And Vivienne, an independent escort in the south who works part-time to supplement her income as a photographer, says paying for sex is a luxury: “Food is more important; the mortgage is more important; petrol is more important.” She is offering discounts out of desperation, reckoning it is better to reduce prices by £20 ($30) than to have no customers at all. Another woman says that some punters are just as anxious to talk about the difficult job market as they are to have sex.

The days of being able to make a full-time living out of prostitution are long gone, reckons Vivienne, at least in larger towns and cities. “It’s stupidly competitive right now,” she laments. More people are entering prostitution, agrees Cari Mitchell of the English Collective of Prostitutes. Some working women in Westminster say they have halved their prices because the market has become so saturated. In London, and increasingly elsewhere, immigrants provide strong competition. But Sophie, an expensive escort in Edinburgh, says she is seeing an influx of newbies including students and the recently laid-off, many of them offering more for less.

Parts of the sex trade are comparatively hale. At the top end of the market, Marie, another escort in Scotland, says custom has not dried up. Girls increasingly report requests for discounts, she says. But those who lower their prices sometimes swiftly raise them again, deterred by the kind of customer who is attracted to bargains. The market for dominatrices is holding up well, too, according to Mr McCoy. Some of the cheapest massage parlours, such as Club 25 in Sheffield (the price is in the name), attractive to the skint, are busy. Some newcomers are offering cut-price services such as webcams and phone sex.

On the streets, where prices are lowest and life is harshest, things are more desperate. Georgina Perry, the service manager for Open Doors, an NHS centre in east London that offers health services to sex workers, says that in the past few years some former prostitutes who had found low-paid work, for example as cleaners, have returned to the sex trade as other jobs have become harder to find. The women are back on the streets, charging £20 at most.

Many of these changes reflect broader trends in Britain’s unstable, part-time economy. But the danger in sex work is greater than in other industries. Newcomers advertising on websites include photos of their faces, their e-mail addresses and offers of risky services in their profiles, says Sophie, the Edinburgh escort, aghast. Moving around in search of clients, prostitutes must deal with unfamiliar and potentially dangerous men. Since July 310 have contacted Ugly Mugs, a scheme that encourages sex workers to report violence, although only around a quarter went to the police. Sex workers are taking greater risks for smaller returns.

Crossing two taboo topics: prostitution and the sexuality of the physically and mentally handicapped.

NUREMBERG - The cozy office of the Kassandra counseling center for sex workers in the southern German state of Bavaria, features one bright red sofa, a large wooden table and pastel-colored painting on the wall. This is usually where men and women who wish to leave the sex industry come in search of training classes to change careers.

But a different kind of training is underway this evening. Seven workers have come to earn their diplomas in "qualified sexual accompaniment and assistance."

Barbel Ahlborn, who heads the Nuremberg counseling center, is proud of the courses that Kassandra developed with Pro Familia, a family planning center. "This is a unique model project for the nation,” she says.

The training has taught sex workers Erika, Birgit, Kai, Elisabeth and Romy, as well as Richard and Kurt (all names have been changed), how they can help disabled people to blossom their sexuality.

The end of the course is celebrated with some sparkling wine, pizza and salad. But participants know that their having a certificate in accompaniment and assistance is not going to change what many people think – because their very line of work, i.e. prostitution, is still taboo.

Even more alienating to many, they believe, is the idea that paid services should be available to those with physical and mental disabilities. Says Romy: "Public opinion will be split – some will welcome this, but the many who have always been against sex workers will say it’s perverse."

Simone Hartmann, deputy head of Pro Familia in Nuremberg doesn’t see things quite so pessimistically. "Today, the sexuality and sexual autonomy of disabled people is no longer a taboo subject, even if it isn’t yet absolutely normal to actually deal with it," she says.

That much was clear at a Munich conference on the sexual and reproductive rights of disabled people, which was held a few months ago. While many heads of facilities for the disabled no longer disagree with the fact that handicapped people have a right to express their sexuality, to publically acknowledge that their establishment allows sex workers to operate in it is an image issue, they say.

Meanwhile there are frequent discussions on Internet forums about the sexuality of the disabled. Can paraplegic men, for example, have sex? And if so, how? In her blog, the female partner of one such man reveals that: "Over time, by learning to caress parts of the body we didn’t use to find erotic, we rediscovered each other in new, more intense, ways."

Prostitution or “sexual accompaniment”?

Erika, who moonlights as a sex worker, says she thinks people have the wrong idea about “sexually accompanying” the disabled. "It’s not always about intercourse, but also touch and tenderness," she points out. She tells the story of her first visit to an old man in a retirement home, an experience she calls one of the very best she’s had as a sex worker because of something he said. When she left, he whispered: "If the others only knew how wild we were being!” And yet: "All we did was dance and touch each other a little."

Now the Nuremberg native will be providing services to physically and mentally disabled people as well, for which she charges 150 euros. Her partner knows what she does: "He’s a grown man, not a boy, and he knows me and knows I’m not crazy – just a little different from other people.”

Social worker Kurt says that he first became aware of the sexual needs of the disabled from working as a group leader in a facility for the mentally handicapped. "Sexuality is something that must be experienced but these folks don’t have the chance," he says. He doesn’t have concrete ideas about his new line of work yet – "I think a lot of it will be about explaining, helping people learn about their bodies, letting them see and touch a naked man, that kind of stuff,” he says.

Unlike Richard, who only wants to work with female clients, Kurt says he can see himself with men although it would depend on whom. Kurt has grown children. They know about his plans, "and it’s no big deal, they think it’s cool," he says.

But Birgit, a lively slim woman who’s been earning her living as a sex worker for the past 26 years, says that her daughter did not welcome the news when she told her.

While qualifications in sexual accompaniment and assistance may be a new milestone, several therapists in Germany have been urging awareness of the issue since the 1990s , and there are individual practitioners around the country offering services – as a general rule, caressing, body contact, massage, in some cases sexual release but without kissing, oral sex, or intercourse. Indeed, to the annoyance of Kassandra’s Ahlborn, Pro Familia has even drawn a line between prostitution and “sexual accompaniment.”

"Prostitution is legal in Germany. Sex workers are independent business people. They pay taxes,” she says.

Course participant Kai, who has worked as a professional for many years, believes that the prejudice against sex work is unfair. "It’s serious work," she says, pointing out that not all men are lucky enough to find life partners and sex workers bridge a need. She adds that she’s happy that the joint effort by Kassandra and Pro Familia has lent an open “note of seriousness to our work."

For her part, Pro Familia’s Hartmann is aware that prostitution is a sensitive issue. If Pro Familia teamed up with Kassandra to run the course, she says, it was because it was necessary: "Particularly in Bavaria, the need for appropriate and qualified people to work with the disabled in this regard was becoming ever more pressing,” she says.

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It's hard to think of anything more uncomfortable than discussing vibrators and seXXXy Alice in Wonderland costumes with your mother, but for sex shop owner Jimmy Burd, it's all in a day's work: his mother, Ida Burd, runs the West 28th Street business with him, and she told DNAinfothat tag-teaming with him was "the best decision we ever made." Awwwwwww!

Ida Burd, who is in her 80s and has four grandchildren, has apparently owned the shop, now called A&J Lingerie and More (and more), since 1968. Then, though, it was a ladies' dress shop, and probably didn't sell quite as manyfishnet bodystockings as it does now. Jimmy Burd helped her run that shop, but it closed down in 2001 because, according to Ida Burd, "women just don’t wear nice dresses anymore."

Luckily, though, they do wear crotchless lace thongs, and so the Burdses' business was reborn as a lingerie and sex toy emporium later that year. "I thought, in hard times, what always sells? Drugs, alcohol and sex," Jimmy Burd told DNAinfo. And boy, do they sell—12 years later, the duo's still going strong, earning some pretty favorable reviews from Yelpers.

Naturally, the Burds don't gift wrap pocket rockets side-by-side, because that would be weird; instead, Ida Burd works in the front room selling lingerie and costumes, and Jimmy Burd works in the slightly more X-rated back room. The two of them don't have a problem working together: "When times are tough, you do what you have to," Jimmy Burd says. (We called the shop to try and get more details about what that means, and Ida told us she couldn't talk because the Daily News was in the store taking photographs.)

And it looks like they're pretty good at what they do, considering Yelpers say the duo's "very knowledgable" and describe Ida Burd as "cute and super friendly," so if you're still trying to find Mom the perfect Mother's Day gift, maybe consider swinging by and picking up a pack of those dual pleasure anal beads you know she's always wanted.

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Arrangement Finders, a dating website for 'mutually beneficial arrangements,' is causing controversy with two provocative billboards promoting dating a 'sugar daddy' and giving oral sex as aspirational jobs for students. 

The billboards, one in Los Angeles and the other in Chicago, which was promptly taken down,  are accompanied by an image of porn star Bree Olsen - the a spokesperson for the site.

'Hey Students, Need a Summer Job? Date a Sugar Daddy,' one reads, while the another states: 'Because the best job is a b**w job.'

Arrangement Finders, owned by the same company that runs the $90million cheating website, Ashley Madison, which helps married people have affairs, describes itself as 'an exclusive service that connects men and women looking for mutually beneficial arrangements'.

Marketing director, AJ Perkins, explained that the website, which launched in 2009, chose Chicago as a site for one of the billboards because the area has the 'most registered users than any other city in the country.'

The dating site said it had paid for the Chicago billboard, which went up on February 13 near the intersection of Ontario and Clark streets, to be up for one month.

But It only took days for the controversial billboard to be taken down - voluntarily by outdoor advertising company, Urban Core.

The neighborhood's alderman, Brendan Reilly, told the Chicago tribune: 'I just told [Urban Core] it was causing some headaches, that there were some families who were upset about it -- families with young children -- because of its proximity to some of the attractions in that area.'

One commenter, who supported the removal of the billboard, said: 'I'm not against prostitution (I believe it's their choice, it's never going away, sex trafficking is awful, they need to protect sex workers etc.), but this is an awfully trashy ad.'

Mr Perkins, who said Arrangement Finders were 'disturbed' by the billboard's removal after only one week, decided to erect a similar one in Los Angeles instead. 

'We are not surprised that some people don't agree with the billboard, but as they have a right to complain, the first amendment gives us the right to keep it up.'

Noel and Amanda Biderman, the monogamous couple behind Ashley Madison and Arrangement Finders, defended their sites as a public service, insisting it can help save marriages.

Speaking about Ashley Madison specifically, Mr Biderman said last month on ABC's The View: '(Cheating provides) people with an alternative to divorce.

'They find themselves in a sexless marriage, they're caught between a rock and a hard place. For many, infidelity becomes that life preserver. It allows them to stay in a marriage, and focus on raising kids together, while pursuing something on the side.'

Ashley Madison, founded in 2002 with the tagline Life is short. Have an affair,' has 3.5million members.

Mrs Biderman explained she hopes the ads enable couples to talk more easily about cheating.

'All I'm saying is that if you bring the conversation front and center, then maybe it's not as big. It can be broken down and you can know how to address it.'

But she admitted she would 'be devastated' if her husband cheated on her.

'But I would not blame a website,' she said. 'Ashley Madison is not creating cheaters. It is servicing a need out there. And unfortunately, it exists. It's sad.'

The sex industry like most others is feeling the effects of the credit crunch. But in a grim role-reversal, it’s not the booming industry that’s suffering but its workers. As the cost of living rises and wages remain ruefully stagnant, increasing numbers of women have turned to prostitution in order to support themselves.

Its lucrative potential to put a meal on a plate or a bill in an envelope has meant that from the depths of these Dickensian hard times re-emerges the archaic truism: women are driven to prostitution by economic misfortune.

I spoke to a member of the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) which campaigns for the protection and decriminalisation of prostitutes, without endorsing or morally sanctioning prostitution itself. They told me that in light of Mr. Cameron’s cuts, “every time there’s a benefit cut, it forces women onto the game.”

The sucker-punch effects of the economic climate and the scathing cuts to welfare and benefits are even driving many women who had left the trade and turned their lives around to return in order to feed their families. As one travelling sex-worker who works with the ECP explains, “Prostitution is certainly not the worst job I have ever had. I have worked on the fish market and as a cleaner where I was working for people who didn’t care if we were cold or tired or how we were spoken to. I was fed up of being a cleaner, bar maid and shop assistant, often all on the same day.”

There is a gross misconception about prostitution in the UK; about what type of person a prostitute is, and who could never be one. Many have been thrown out of their homes, raped, and are not yet old enough to claim benefits. Many others are women who are forced to supplement their incomes. As the think-tank The Resolution Foundation reported in October 2011, more than one in five employees earn less than a “living wage”.

Another member of the ECP’s network, a part-time street worker, blames benefit cuts and job losses for driving women onto the game, along with negative stereotyping for the lack of awareness surrounding prostitution today: “Everybody has their own view of what a prostitute is. In reality it is your sister, your neighbour, your mother, that has struggled to feed, clothe, heat a home and provide a safe environment for the people she loves. This is becoming more apparent with all the benefit cuts and job losses. The reason it has been so well hidden is because of the criminality of it. That is it.”

Most sex workers are mothers who think “just this once”, “just this week” to cover a heating bill or make something a bit special to eat. Then we get stuck in something we can never get out of. I never thought the first time I went out that I would still be here at my age. Now I have a record so can’t get another job. It was because I care that I did go on the street.”

This sentiment of being trapped in the game is shared amongst women across all demographics. In December 2011, and in light of Mr. Cameron’s initiative to put a tax on knowledge and increase university tuition fees to £9,000 per year, the NUS released a shocking statement that many students were also turning to prostitution to pay for university.

Now that the competition to get a job pulling pints or stacking shelves is fiercer than ever, prostitution has become a viable alternative for students struggling to cover the cost of living and tuition. As soon as Education Maintenance Allowance vanished in a puff of black smoke and university grants metamorphosed into loans, the ECP reported an increase in the number of students who came to them considering sex as a means of financing their studies. Some even stopped studying to work in the sex trade.

But still, even with all Mr. Cameron’s cuts combined with the overarching effects of the recession, there is a much more sinister truth about prostitution in Britain: women are penalised instead of protected by the law.

In an ideal world, women would not be forced into prostitution at all, but British laws on prostitution prevent women from working together safely. The Sexual Offences Act 1956, criminalised keeping a brothel, which forces women onto the streets to be subject to the offence of the Street Offences Act 1959 where loitering or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution are illegal. Prostitution’s place in the British criminal law keeps women with criminal records trapped in this vicious cycle and approximately 200 street workers are arrested each year.

One immigrant sex worker who was trafficked into this country and criminalised for prostitution was able to find a lawyer through the ECP. Now a member of the ECP’s network, she recalls how whilst working as an independent sex worker, the police raided the flat where she stayed: “They say sex workers do bad things, and they threatened to deport me. They even threatened the maid, the lady who worked with me for protection. They said ‘if we find you here again we will arrest you and the girls and put you in jail’.  This happens many times, sex workers are put in jail, even if they have been beaten up and raped by the customers.”

This has forced women to use alternative advertisement, such as in phone booths, because according to the ECP, “it’s 10 times more dangerous to work on the streets, and it’s not expensive to advertise.”

But from every corner of the ring, prostitutes are attacked instead of protected. Since the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 branded carding a criminal offence, the police have hunted down these women. They sometimes pose as prospective punters, track their addresses and ensure they are evicted – either on grounds of illegal immigration, or by informing their landlords that their premises were being used to sell sex.

In 1997 prostitutes fought a similar case against BT when they barred the phone lines of women who advertised in phone booths. The ECP cites such cases as just a few of too many examples where “the police refuse to take attacks on sex workers seriously.” They are devalued, second-class citizens and unequal in the eyes of the law and society.

Prostitution is symptomatic of these hard times in which we live. Criminalising these women shows the short-sightedness of the cultural stereotyping, economic reforms and current laws which punishes prostitutes instead of offering them protection from the streets. Lest we forget, such vulnerable women were the victims of the Ipswich serial killer, the Suffolk Strangler, or Steve Wright, who murdered five women who worked as prostitutes in 2006.

Prostitutes are not Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, who get a happy ending with Richard Gere, nor are they the stigmatised, stereotypical street crawler looking to fuel her drug addiction. Sex workers are women like every other woman. These are women looking to put food on the table for their families and to fund their education. These are women looking to just get by. Mr. Cameron’s cuts, combined with the British criminal laws and the poverty that the recession has brought, ensures that these women are forced to continue prostituting themselves in order to survive.

Leave it to the British tabloid The Sun, which in the past has brought us such considered coverage as "FREDDIE STARR ATE MY HAMSTER", to approach the topics of sex work and relationship advice with all the subtlety of a neon-painted brick: last month they ran a piece with the screaming headline, "I had sex with 1,000 men as £700-a-time hooker ... now I'm an infidelity counsellor."

Take a moment to get the sighs out of your system and it turns out the piece contains fairly straightforward - and even considerate - advice from former sex worker Rebecca Dakin, such as, "I just want to help people stay in relationships. My knowledge comes from experience. When I was an escort about 60 per cent of my clients were married, and that gives me a pretty unique insight into how men work and what they want."

That didn't stop website Salon from weeping and wailing about the piece, with Tracy Clark Florey unloading on the topic, playing into the tired notion of "bad sex workers versus good sex workers" by saying, of another piece by Kitty Stryker, "Her advice boils down to this: talk with your partner.

Rather than giving out grudging blow jobs like doggie treats, communicate openly, honestly and without judgment about your mutual needs and desires. What a concept."

But boiling the particular sort of relationship advice espoused by Dakin down to "have more sex with your husband", it is certainly not exclusive to "racy" editorial; Bettina Arndt has been doling out similar rhetoric for years. So why characterise it as specific to sex work?

What sets The Sun editorial and the Salon piece apart is that The Sun actually allowed a sex worker to speak for herself, and in an era where much of the dialogue about sex work is dominated by non-sex workers, that's becoming increasingly rare.

If there's a titillative or click-baiting side to magazines and sites running "relationship advice from sex workers" pieces - and there's no doubt that in the never-ending quest for traffic, similar articles are commissioned from a rather mercenary stance rather than an egalitarian one - there may also be a positive spin.

"Articles, books and workshops that provide a greater understanding of the relationship between clients and sex workers reduce the power of many of the misconceptions about our work," says Janelle Fawkes, CEO of Scarlet Alliance, Australia's peak sex worker organisation.

"It's clear that much of the moral panic that frames sex workers as women exploited by clients who are men is based on misunderstanding the level of negotiation and boundary setting that takes place in many sex work interactions and how diverse our communities are."

It's a fair assumption to say that many people wouldn't consider talking with clients - a kind of casual counselling - as part and parcel of sex work, which is perhaps why articles such as Dakin's strike a raw nerve with some.

"There is a plethora of literature around the spiritual, healing and counselling aspects of sex work," says Scarlet Alliance policy officer Zahra Stardust.

"Sex work provides an opportunity to share unique intimacies with strangers - which sometimes also act as opportunities for political activism, social work and friendship. But sex work does not need 'counselling' or emotional connection to make it legitimate. This is just one aspect of a very diverse industry."

Indeed, as you might have noticed if you've been unfortunate to read the comments on any article about sex work or, especially, written by a sex worker, everybody has an opinion about the profession. Stardust's concern is that even well-intentioned editorial coverage can be injurious to sex workers.

"The danger can be that sex workers are expected to give up significant amounts of our personal time to convince non-sex workers that our work is legitimate," she says. "Social media forums and the speed of digital information sharing means that sex workers' lives are often seen as public property, open for dissection and discussion - by journalists, policymakers and organisations with specific agendas.

"Expecting sex workers to give our expertise for free for ill-informed, well-intending research projects, or a fascination with the 'titillating' parts of our work but disinterest in supporting our rights campaigns, is a consistent pattern. These patterns means that many sex workers feel exploited by media."

Perhaps, then, diverting the conversation away from tales of woe and exploitation (articles that are, in a bitter irony, exploitative themselves) to relationship and sex advice can be considered a more positive dialogue about sex work.

"It's important to support the general community to recognise that sex work is skilled work," Fawkes says. "One way of doing this is by sharing with non-sex workers the tips, tricks and skills that we use in our work as sex workers. There will be some who overlook the value of these opportunities [for] sharing skill and knowledge and who are blinded by their own 'whorephobia'. I think they miss out on a valuable insight."

Stardust agrees, adding, "As sex workers we also negotiate space, love, sex, family, friendships, communities and work commitments in our personal lives and in our own relationships - there are skills here to be shared as well."

While Dakin's relationship advice - for example - might not suit some, despite society's best efforts to cram all sex work into a narrow stereotype, there is a wealth of knowledge being shared by sex workers who engage in a diverse range of work.

Fawkes encourages casual readers to keep an open mind when reading pieces written by sex workers.

"I hope that what sex workers offer to the community - understandings of sexual expression and exploration, skills and strategies for negotiation and boundary setting, an insight into another person's life - will be recognised and accepted as the extremely valuable gift that it is. An offering to allow others to enrich their understandings of humanity, sexuality and diversity."

Crucially, both Fawkes and Stardust are adamant that if the mainstream media wants to call upon the wisdom and experience of sex workers, more needs to be done to support the very work that provides advice that fuels articles such as Dakin and Stryker's in the first place.

"This intrigue into the experiences by media must go further than curiosity, fascination or just acceptance... We need anti-discrimination protection. We need law reform and funding that supports our organising, advocacy, health promotion. These are urgent issues for sex workers," they say.

"If non-sex workers want access to our expertise, cultural histories and personal stories, they should support the recognition and protection of our human rights."

It's a fair swap, wouldn't you say?

Over the past few weeks, I've been both witness to and participant in a number of conversations around sex work, autonomy and feminism. A recent argument on Twitter had me baffled by one representative from a conservative feminist organisation in Australia, who trotted out the tired idea that sex work degrades and harms all women. Elsewhere, people have been rehashing the argument that the sex industry is a sort of Outland ghetto for traumatised drug addicts, abuse survivors and the mentally ill, all of whom are connected by the singular characteristic of having little to no self-esteem. We can pity them, but gosh wouldn't we just hate for anyone we loved to be them?

Well no, I wouldn't hate that actually. I have a number of friends and acquaintances who have either been or currently are sex workers. No doubt I know greater numbers of women still who may one day become sex workers. And I'm tired of seeing their lives denigrated because of how they choose to make money - as if taking off your clothes for a pre-arranged fee is somehow less honourable than working for a mining company or a tabloid magazine.

Demonising sex workers under the guise of "helping" them is simply a way of expressing puritanical snobbery. As an intellectual tool, it relies more on myths and prejudices than any real knowledge of the lives of sex workers.

So let's take a look at some of those myths, and see how easily they can be debunked.

(Note: This article refers to sex workers, not victims of forced prostitution or sex slavery. They are very different things, and the conflation of the two only makes it easier for real incidents of exploitation to occur unidentified.)

1. All sex workers are women.

This is a good myth to begin with, because the conservative view of sex work as something exploitative is predicated on the idea that all of its victims are women. In fact, there are many men who also choose to participate in the broad spectrum of work that makes up the sex industry. But because men are generally assumed to be less vulnerable to sexual exploitation than women, we tend to view their participation as something different and more autonomous. (What man wouldn't want to get paid to have sex, amirite?! etc.)

The collective cultural view of the sex industry is still one in which women are thought to make up the subjugated parties and men the johns who benefit from them. But what happens when men are the ones pulling a pay check from providing sexual services? And what does it mean if women are the ones paying for it? Would a woman buying the services of a female sex worker be less likely, in our view, to exploit her? Would a man purchasing time with a male sex worker be able to treat him the way we imagine female sex workers are treated? Undermined, degraded, exploited? Or would all of these transactions occur in much the same way as each other - occasionally enjoyable, often as expected and sometimes requiring action unfavourable to those workers involved.

In short, kind of like a normal work day.

2. There's no such thing as real choice in sex work, because no one would ever choose to sell their body for money.

It can be tricky to understand what constitutes the notion of inviolable choice. To some people, sex workers are women to be pitied, either pawns of the patriarchy with no agency of their own or poor women who've had to resort to "degrading" themselves to make a living.

The reality is a little more nuanced than that. A sex worker (and let's assume in this instance that it's a woman) may indeed be poor and untrained enough for socially sanctioned careers to ensure that her available options keep her hovering around the poverty line. On the other hand, she might have a middle-class background, a tertiary education and no apparent "need" to choose an option that so many sanctimoniously assume to be the last resort. While sex work for both these women may just be a way to earn a more than decent income, improving the stability of both their finances and her family (if they have one), it might also be something they enjoy as much as any other kind of job if not more. Validating (and shaming) sex workers based on your interpretation of their circumstances undermines the very same autonomy and choice the sex industry is often accused of denying women.

Much like any career field, the sex industry is staffed by women (and men) of all different backgrounds. Some come from privilege, and have had all the benefits of education that are supposed to "keep" women out of a career path seen as both shabby and tawdry. Do we need to "save" them as well? Or are they entitled to their choice because we assume their privilege allows them to make it more freely than the women we speak for, but not to?

Which leads me to...

3. Choice is fine, as long as it's not made under the influence of drug addiction, a history of abuse and/or mental illness. If you suffer from any or all of these things, you're not capable of making properly informed decisions about your profession.

One of the strongest women I know has been raped twice and sexually assaulted once. She occasionally suffers from bouts of anxiety, and has more than once indulged in the use of recreational drugs while in my company. Is she a sex worker? No. She's a lawyer. Next.

4. But sex work harms women!

I can't disagree that there are elements of the sex industry that are harmful to both women AND men. Chief among these are the ways in which the stigmatisation of the sex industry allows for abuse and exploitation within its ranks. When you force people to work off the grid and to keep their employment a secret, you increase the likelihood of them being disadvantaged. When you demonise sex workers as being damaged goods, who somehow deserve less protection than the women who "have more respect for themselves" then you make it easier for actual abuse to occur unpunished. Yes, women who work in the sex industry are at an increased risk of being raped than women who work in, say, the hospitality industry. Does that mean sex workers deserve to be raped, or experience such abuse in a different way? No. Does it mean that hospitality workers are immune from similar risks? Absolutely not.

There are countless industries that carry a risk of death or severe injury. When miners are killed in tragic circumstances, do we shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, they knew the risks. They had to have expected something like this might happen." No. We expect those industries to identify what went wrong and safeguard themselves and their workers from future accidents. Because nobody deserves to work in an unsafe environment, no matter what the wider public thinks of their profession.

5. OK, well that's all well and good. But come on! It's not like you'd want your daughter to come home and announce she wanted to be a sex worker. Surely you can admit that!

"Sex worker" isn't a characteristic. It's a job, just like any other, and it comes with good days and bad. Expressing the view - especially when done so directly to a sex worker - that you wouldn't want your daughter to grow up to be like her and then expecting her to agree with you is asking another woman to participate freely in her own shaming. It's unexamined privilege based on prejudice and snobbery.

Would you tell a lawyer that you didn't want your daughter to aspire to that profession because law is an area that typically discriminates against its female practitioners via opportunities and wages, and even expectations of attire, and forces them to choose quite rigidly between family and career? Would you tell her that you wouldn't want her to grow up to edit a women's magazine because those magazines contribute to terrible body image and often perpetuate reductive sexual stereotypes that position women as passive performers rather than mutually involved participants? No. Would you object to your daughter wanting to be a model, dancer or an actress, (and as any one of these, she may be required to take her clothes for an audience as well, and a much larger one than your average strip club.) Will you shame her for that too, or is it different when the industry doesn't require a girl to be over-age? I very much doubt it.

I'm not a sex worker, and I don't presume to have the authority or right to speak for them. As an ally, the best thing I can do is call out prostitute-phobia where I see it.

Fundamentally, I support the women and men who choose to work in the sex industry regardless of what may have led them to it. We make choices about our lives for a number of different reasons, and the context of those choices is nobody's business but ours. What everyone deserves is the support of a society invested in keeping all of its citizens and workers safe.The reality is that your daughter may one day grow up to be a sex worker. You can't know her future, only support her as she goes through it. So the real question is not what do you want your daughter to grow up to be, but whether or not you want her to be safe and respected once she gets there. Surely that's a question everyone's willing to answer yes to.

People who visit brothels have many options in the world where they can go to have sex with the sex workers.

Prostitution is the oldest profession in the world. It is discussed in the Bible as well. However, the meaning of prostitution differs from country to country. Many countries have legalized the profession but it’s illegal in many others.

During the Second World War, Japanese soldiers pushed many women into prostitution – mostly among them were Korean and Chinese women. They were sent to Japanese brothel during the war.

Prostitution is legal in many American states and Amsterdam. People who visit brothels have many options in the world where they can go to have sex with the sex workers. Dailybhaskar.com brings the top ten coolest brothels across the world where they offer much more than sex to the customers...

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Sex workers have become much more visible in politics and culture over the last couple of decades. Thanks to a surge of activism starting in the 1990s, memoirs and essays about sex work have become their own subgenre. Even in liberal circles, a lot of stigma still remains, but publicly admitting that you're an escort, stripper, or porn star is a lot more likely to be accepted as a valid choice.

But while the workers have been able to edge ever so slightly into the daylight, the clients have remained securely and silently in the shadows. With their new anthology, Johns, Marks, Tricks, and Chicken Hawks: Professionals and Clients Writing About Each Other,co-editors David Henry Sterry and R.J. Martin, Jr. are trying to shift the conversation to include both sides of the transaction. Sterry, and Martin will be reading at The Booksmith on Haight Street tonight along with several contributors. Sterry, who worked as a rent boy when he was 17, talked to us about sex, money, and how to be a good client.

SF Weekly: Why did you take the approach of doing a book about clients?

Well, the first book that we put together [Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys] was all sex workers. I just felt like it would be cool to see what people who are buying sex are thinking about it as opposed to people who are just selling it. People buy and sell sex for such different reasons, depending on who they are and what their circumstances are. People who are buying sex -- they're not heard from. It's this billion-dollar industry with no customers. So, I really wanted to find people who would write articulately about what the experience is like for them.

Who are some of the people you got to write for you?

I tried so hard to get so many people to write about buying sex, but it was very, very difficult. Much more difficult than I thought. Somehow, at this point in our culture, it's easier to say "I'm a prostitute," than "I'm a John." I have all these sort of liberal, arty friends, and none of them would write about it.

I found much more accessibility in the gay community. The only people I could get who were heterosexual wanted to use a fake name. There's only one person in the book who would use their real name when it came to buying sex. I posted stuff in hundreds and hundreds of places, and I have enormous networks of people. It was shockingly difficult to get people just to write about it, but then to get them to use their real names was almost impossible.

Of the people you got to write about buying sex, what did they have to say about their reasons and what they got from it?

It was interesting. There's a guy who calls himself a "captain of industry," who writes about having sex with a transgendered person and this guy has a high-powered job where he makes these very important life-and-death decisions. And he talks about how he wants someone else to be in charge of him. But he can't do it in his real life, so he pays this transgendered person to take control of him. I saw that myself when I worked, as well. ... People pay sex workers to give them stuff that they can't ask for from people they know.

And then there's Chester Brown, the cartoonist. There's the one guy who's really so out about paying for sex. He has such a different view than the rest of society does about this whole thing. I was talking to him, and I said, "A lot of men say 'I don't pay for sex, I pay so I can just walk away.'" And he said, "Well, I couldn't really walk away, I'm in a relationship with this woman. She's obviously not my girlfriend, and she does have sex with other men for money, but I'm in a long-term relationship with this woman that just happens to involve me paying money to her for sex." And he says that for him, he doesn't like the idea of having a traditional girlfriend, or a wife, or a partnership. ... The whole idea of domesticity kind of puts a damper on the sexual spark that was there.

When you were a sex worker, what were your feelings about your clients?

Well, I wanted to please them. I wanted to do well. I was 17, I was young, you know. The people that I worked for were a very high-end agency, and it was made very clear to me, "If you fuck this up, you're going to get hurt." So there was kind of a pressure from above to perform well.

But for myself, also, I wanted to please these people, these clients of mine. Some of them were really nice to me, and some of them were really mean to me. I'd say about 40 or 50 percent of them, these women who'd hire me didn't even really seem to want sex, which was so weird to me. Like, they just wanted to talk and be listened to. A lot of them wanted to talk about sex, but a lot of them just wanted to bitch and moan about their horrible husbands and their ungrateful children.

Some of them were just great. This one woman who was a yogini, she was so nice to me. She asked me "Would you like to take your clothes off?" Like, no one ever asked me that, as if I mattered. As if what I felt had any importance at all. But she did. That just made me like her so much.

What do the other sex workers have to say about their clients?

Oh, it's the whole realm, you know. The story that starts off the book is by this woman that I just love. Her name's Jessica, and she describes this relationship she had with this guy. He was just another guy, but they've known each other for a decade now, and he's helped her out. When she's in a terrible situation with no one to turn to, she can call this guy who started out as a client and now is almost like family to her.

So, that's on one end of the bell curve, and on the other, this woman was working the streets, and a guy picked her up and pretended to be a cop to try to get free sex out of her. But she called him on his shit: it's really a funny story. Clearly he's not a cop; he's clearly a thief and a bully, and someone who's trying to weasel sex out of her for free. So that's at the other end of the bell curve: people who are violent and abusive and have no respect for other human beings. Probably not much respect for themselves, either.

If someone was going to become a client, what would your advice be on how to be a good client?

My advice would be make sure you're with someone who is very comfortable doing what you want to do. Don't try to force someone to do something that they might not want. Be very respectful. Show up on time. Smell good -- that's very important. It may not seem that important, but smelling good is a very important thing when you want to become a good client.

Give them the money up front, as quick as possible. In an envelope. On the dresser. That's very, very important. And you know, a lot of clients, they agree on something and they keep wanting more stuff. "A little bit longer," "Oh, but you could do this, you could do that." I think that's very bad behavior from a client. If you want other things, arrange it beforehand, and if something comes up, you pay for it. People want stuff for free, and it really annoys me so much.

Try to, if you can, put yourself in the mindset of what needs this person has, and if you can satisfy any of those needs. Put yourself in the other person's stiletto heels, as it were.

When Snoop Dogg called himself a "pimp" back in 2003, he wasn't joking. "I put an organization together," the rapper-turned Rasta artist Snoop Lion tells contributing editor Jonah Weiner in the new issue of Rolling Stone. "I did a Playboy tour, and I had a bus follow me with ten bitches on it. I could fire a bitch, fuck a bitch, get a new ho: It was my program. City to city, titty to titty, hotel room to hotel room, athlete to athlete, entertainer to entertainer."

Q&A: Snoop Lion Strikes Back at Bunny Wailer

While he doesn't name names, he claims professional athletes would use his services. "If I'm in a city where where the Denver Broncos or the Nuggets play, I get a couple of they players to come hang out, pick and choose, and whichever one you like comes with a number," he says. "A lot of athletes bought pussy from me."  

Unlike most pimps, Snoop says he let his women keep the money. "I'd act like I'd take the money from the bitch, but I'd let her have it," he says. "It was never about the money; it was about the fascination of being a pimp . . . As a kid I dreamed of being a pimp, I dreamed of having cars and clothes and bitches to match. I said, 'Fuck it - I'm finna do it.'"

Somehow, Snoop's relationship with his wife Shante Broadus has survived all this. "My wife had to take a backseat to this shit," he says. "And I love her to this day because she coulda shook out on a nigga, but she stayed in my corner. So when I decided to let it go, she was still there."

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