MightyPen

I'm just about ready to watch the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy again. The early James Bond films are fun to watch in series, too. So strange to watch "Dr. No" and see Sean Connery jetting about in 1962... It's just 50 years ago yet the world is barely recognizable. Not just the technology (which is enormous) but people wearing suits... and hats.

I like this question, because it's not "what make someone HOT!?" but rather "what makes someone intriguing, and worth spending time with, learning from, and experiencing the world with?" For me it's a combination of things. Here's my wish-list, though it only takes a few of these to make me say "I'd like to get to know her better!" a) signs that she's walked out in the world for a bit, and been engaged with people and experiences she's encountered rather than observed from a safe distance. (People who have lived a completely safe and cloistered life are less interesting to me.) b) signs that she's suffered a few setbacks and some pain as a result of the risks she took in a), but while she may have bent in the process she's hasn't broken. (People who have never failed or suffered, and who have lived a life of unblemished success, are less interesting to me.) c) signs of honesty, charity, compassion, a tendency to root for the underdog; a sense of connection to all people, not just the pretty or rich or the most forceful personality in the room. d) signs of thoughtfulness and reflection, a desire to learn and understand new things, yet an inclination to action as well as thought. The ability to grow and change. The ability to change her mind when new information is available. That's what comes to mind first, anyway. ;)

Yes, in fact I think it's key to making your point. If you just say "they're like regular guys you see on the street!" then people just mentally downgrade guys on the street. It's easy when you don't know the people being invoked. But when you mention brother, father, etc. then you're saying "they're like the guys you care about." I think that conveys the message much more effectively -- clients aren't just "regular" people, they're good people. Thanks again for raising this topic -- it's a brilliant subject for discussion here.

Huh. I don't have objective data either, but I feel pretty certain that if I told just about anyone I know that I'm a happy, periodic sex work client, I'd meet stunned gasps, lose several friends, and co-workers would look at me askance. BONUS: I just got to use "askance" in a sentence!

It's a good point -- but I think that in every case the high-profile figure is cheapened and tarnished by the association. He drops a couple of rungs down the ladder. It's just that his other obvious assets of money or power are strong enough to keep him pretty high despite this. In essence, "he's rich but suffers from a sad compulsion." More generally, and not really directed at your specific post: So why are men stigmatized in the first place when found out to be sex work clients? It's because of that central role sex has in the historical, conservative underpinnings of our culture: it's one of the primary currencies for measuring people's level of success. - Men who are accomplished are "supposed to" have easy access to sex being offered from adoring women who respond to his success and power. If he doesn't have that, then he must not be successful. And if he's paying for it, he must not have any other access to it -- there's something wrong with him. - Women are expected to hold their sex in reserve as precious currency to secure marriage. If she's spending it too freely, she's cheapened; and worse, if she's selling it, she must be desperate, like pawning irreplaceable heirlooms. These ideas look silly spelled out like that, but they really do hold powerful, often unspoken yet deeply held authority in our sexually conflicted culture. Plus, what exposure do most people have to the industry? Only the media's portrayal, which condemns it with one hand (sex! exploitation! desperation!) at the same time it uses the sexual allure to draws viewers with its titillating side ("Look at those fishnet stockings! Tsk tsk. ...mmmm..."). It's hard to blame people who have nothing else to go on. I think the thing I'd say to try to address the stigma is EXACTLY what Nathalie did so wisely in her first post: "these are the very same guys you know in your own life, and there's nothing wrong with them. It's not the clients (or SPs) that are faulty; it's your own ideas about sex and sex work."

Well, as others have suggested... visiting one of the ladies from CERB always does wonders for my stress levels. :) Failing that: stress usually stems from situations you feel you can't control. To balance that out, try picking a small task you've been neglecting but CAN deal with, and tackle it. This could be something silly like organizing a crazy cupboard that's always driven you nuts, or fixing something around the house, or really scrubbing your bathroom top to bottom... or something more fun like cooking a nice dinner using a new recipe you've been meaning to try. Anything, even a small thing, as long as it's something you can grapple and finish. Sometimes exerting just that much control over your environment will not just distract you, but provide a tiny triumph that can help to pull you out of the worrying frame of mind.

Uh... yeah, we're talking about a vasectomy here, not castration. :) No need to clutch your balls, recoil, and burst into tears at its mere mention! It's a pretty trivial procedure, particularly since for men the part they need to get to is dangling outside the body cavity already, perfect for easy access.

Two replacement attachment heads for a Hoover central vacuum -- one for upholstery and one for bare floors. Clearly I am the most exciting and romantic man on the planet!

It hinges, crucially, on the exact nature of these things that happened or didn't happen, and how reasonable it is to expect sexual services to be dispensed for cash like pushing buttons on a vending machine. Nobody here is defending the right of anyone to commit outright fraud -- arranging for a "boyfriend" to storm into the room and chase a client away, or to smack someone over the head with a lead pipe and steal his wallet. If that kind of stuff happens, then YES the client should have recourse. And you CAN go to the police and pursue the usual legal remedies. Instead, we're talking about something else: what specific acts took place during a session, and how/how often/how well as perceived by the client, and the discretion the SP has in the delivery of something agreed upon in advance. We're talking about the nature of ANY agreement for sexual services, and the ethics of considering such agreements to be binding (upon threat of withholding or reclaiming the fee). This is why I balk at the term "contract" to do X, Y, and Z, and instead would go only as far as "general, nonbinding agreement" to go there only provided she remains willing when the time comes. Regardless of the discussion up front, the fee, in full, buys only the SP's preparation, her time for the session, the setting she provides (for an incall), the personal engagement during that time, and the strong probability of some intimate play -- but never its guarantee. If you thought the money was buying you a list of acts, and everything else just came free, then you've misunderstood the transaction from the very beginning. It's the attempt to push the opposite idea: "no, I've paid, now you MUST do X! DO IT! Or give me my money back!" that I find unsettling and has that disturbing vibe mentioned earlier. 'Cause it's about exerting power over someone else regarding intimate acts -- and you just don't get to do that, not even as a sex work client. Nobody's money buys them that right.

This will be a different take on the subject, but it's something I found myself returning to very recently. Every so often, as a kind of inspiration during an otherwise utterly normal and largely forgettable day, I go back and watch or listen to in the movie "To Kill a Mockingbird". Now, the subject of the speech is great all by itself -- I won't bother trying to provide all the context, but if you haven't read the book or scene the movie I encourage you to. But it's really the way Peck delivers it... methodically, precisely, with quiet passion and dignity and utter conviction... that really gets me. And man... that voice! And Atticus Finch... what a brilliant example of a man. So yeah, this is something I sometimes turn to for inspiration, and as an example of a kind of person, even if just fictional, it's worth emulating somehow, even if you don't find yourself in a courtroom much. :) (Partially too, as a clip and not just stills.)

Hey there splitz: Thanks for sharing your concerns. Like realnicehat my responses weren't meant to dismiss your question, just to convey my own concerns with the idea. I've removed my couple of paragraphs' worth of side story in one post. I intended for that to illustrate that there's nothing we should be afraid to talk about here ("if I can write about THIS, and see, nothing happens -- then surely you can write about THAT!"), but maybe that looked like I wasn't taking concerns about privacy seriously. Sorry if you took it that way. I think one of the site's leading virtues is that everything IS out in the open here, and I'd very much like to keep it that way. The SP-only section is there to support providers' safety in a potentially dangerous profession. And since the providers take by far the greater risks in this industry, I'm happy to cede them some private space if that helps to reduce those risks. I really meant it when I asked in my first post to hear the merits of a private section, because I didn't want to just dismiss the idea out of hand even though I saw a lot of potential problems. But if it's just an issue of shyness or a sense of propriety... I'm still unconvinced. For some stuff there's simply no need for shyness, and it's better that guys overcome that rather than change the site to accommodate them. If it's a sense of propriety and a guy is just reluctant to share intimate details in a public forum, I understand and respect that. But if he's then perfectly willing to discuss those same details in a semi-public forum, as long as it's restricted only to other men... I have some trouble with that. If your sense of propriety tells you that some details shouldn't be discussed in public, it's okay to trust that and decline to share them -- at all. Maybe that feeling that "well I wouldn't want the SP to see this..." is telling you that maybe nobody should, and you should explain to PM-ers that you'd prefer not to elaborate beyond your public recommendation. And there remains that risk of people abusing the private section... not because anyone asking for such a section must want to bash SPs, but because it seems a natural hazard of creating an exclusive men-only area. Plus it wastes one of the best opportunities this site offers -- to involve SPs in discussions where they'd be awesome contributors -- because those discussions are hidden behind a wall in a space they can't see. I guess ultimately my own feeling is that adopting two different spaces with two sets of rules -- one exclusively "men only!" -- just wastes healthy open discussion, and lays the groundwork for a needless division.

I totally read this thread title as "Reproduction etiquette" at first. But yeah, what Realnicehat said.

Yeah but... why create a situation where such getting-back is necessary? I guess I still haven't seen an upside yet.

Hey, now, if you throw in a TREEHOUSE I might start to waver...! :) Offhand I think that yeah -- as you touch upon, it has enormous potential to become a "okay, now that we're in private, let me tell yo the real scoop on X!". That stuff is always hanging over the heads of a board like this, and I think a private section would begin to provide a shadowy corner that would absolutely breed mischief if not closely policed. Oddly enough, I can't think of a single thing I might discuss here that wouldn't be better served by including the opinions of women here too. Testicles? Hell yes! I'll talk about my testicles amongst the women of CERB, at least those who don't click away as soon as they see the subject. :)

Actually, reading over my earlier post I realize I neglected the entire issue of the objectification of women in order to sell beauty products to other women. (And the exploitation of male insecurities to sell perfumes and stuff to them too.) Which makes my statement that "most objectification in ads is of women for the benefit of men" kind of... uh... "no". Ads that seize on people's insecurities, presenting them with images of unattainable beauty and explaining how badly they lack it until they use Product X, that's a different kettle of fish. Particularly when it comes to young people, I think these can do a lot of harm; and if we can control smoking advertising, we should regulate ads that can affect the mental health and developing self-image of young people, too. But that aside, I do think that adults can live the part of, and be entertained by, sexual imagery and scenarios that portray people as simple embodiments of things we desire. But that's only healthy if it's just one part of a grown-up attitude to the many other regions of a complicated sexual map, and with an understanding that people are more than just their sexual selves.

I'm not sure I see the value. What do you think its value would be? What would be discussed there? Why would it be private? If it's about safety, there's already a public bait-and-switch / scams / dangerous encounters thread for each region or sometimes individual cities.

Il Re is right that sex can be used to sell to everyone, and men can just as readily be framed as sexual lures for a product's hook as women. After all, that recent series of commercials poked fun at the idea -- but make no mistake, it was using sexual attractiveness to sell Old Spice to women at the same time it mocked the idea). But without question, the vast majority of overtly sexual selling has been aimed at men. And I think that's for two reasons that both have to do with cultural traditions: men have historically had the buying power and they've been the targets of ads, period; so yeah, it's mostly sexualized images of women that have been used to sell things to straight men. historically, women have been discouraged from indulging their own sexuality, so even when they were the targets of advertising it tended to shy away from anything overtly sexual. Both of those things are changing, though, and I think we're starting to see more balance in the use of both men and women as sexualized objects to sell products and experiences. Now... is there a problem with sexually objectifying human beings? My own answer is... not necessarily. It's not automatically a bad thing to recognize that sometimes, on some level, we really can function as anonymous sexual objects to each other. It's one part of our nature that we can respond to even anonymous and limited images. But it's crucial to also recognize that that's not ALL we are. Otherwise we may come to expect that this one facet of our complex nature alone can encompass and express all we, or members of the opposite sex, have to offer. There are plenty of people who make that mistake. The sexual "realm" offers a whole and healthy landscape of rewarding human expression and experience. Attractiveness is a powerful currency while you spend time there, so there's nothing wrong with maximizing your own assets while you're there by grooming, dressing up, and even adopting a particularly sexual persona. It's fun! And of course, in the sex industry, this is the very thing that you're selling -- allure and fantasy, all that attraction without any complications. We just need to remember that it's a place we and others only inhabit some of the time. If men or women start to think that's where they live 24/7, or if we think of members of the opposite sex exclusively in sexual roles, then we're being immature and wasting large parts of ourselves and our partners.

I can generally describe it as a sense that we're "on the same wavelength": during our conversations our minds are compatible; we don't agree on everything, and in fact her different perspective is valuable in itself; but we can talk about stuff comfortably and learn from each other. she's made an effort, prepared for the session, and she's fully present during our time together. she's sexually comfortable with herself and with me, generally uninhibited, excitable, engaged, and I believe she's aroused and enjoying herself during our time together. I feel I can share kinks and oddball interests, that she'll likely understand or recognize what I'm interested in and how that works, and if not already experienced she's game for trying. rather than just a sense of "aw heck she'd be a great friend!" (though that's cool too), she invokes an air of sensuality, the ability to seduce, and for undefinable reasons provokes my own sexual response. I leave our encounter with a smile on my face and a bit of a glow. It's really much less about appearance, and more about personal engagement, openness, and comfort as well as the potential for some kind of sustainable, in-synch excitement for future sessions.

STOP. :) Relax and take a breath. Nothing is happening, and the cops are not setting up an elaborate surveillance upon you. Your brief tryst was a big deal for you, but the rest of the world didn't notice because it is really quite busy doing other, entirely unrelated things. Did you have a good time with during your appointment? Yes? Great. Let that memory be the thing you take from it. Now take a moment to observe your slight case of paranoia-induced fear, laugh at it quietly for a moment, then throw it away, and move on. ;) And happy Thanksgiving!

Do you think maybe those two things are related, just not the way you think? If thanks to your behaviour the session begins with the SP actually having to come right out and remind you about paying the fee before you'll pay her at the start, then some of that "YMMV" you refer to elsewhere may have kicked in... and you may find the session goes a little more tortoise, and a lot less hare. (Plus, it sounds like you'll have decided that since she asked you to pay up front she must not be "relaxed, fun and for real," and you've maybe gone all pouty and ill-disposed. Little wonder things seem to go poorly on those occasions.) Look, the women here take enough personal risks every day in this profession. As clients, one of our first priorities should be to never contribute further to those risks if we can avoid it. One of those professional risks is guys who dick around about the fee -- negotiating, pleading, or looking for a way not to pay at all. The fact is, when you don't produce the agreed-upon fee up front, it's not clear whether you're planning to pay at all. You've imposed risk on your provider where none was needed. I'm frankly stunned you can find anyone who agrees to this arrangement. Treat your provider with respect and remove that particular risk from the equation. In my experience, paying smoothly and up front establishes your own trustworthiness, and helps gets everything off on the right foot. I'd personally be ashamed if I ever considered doing otherwise.

Wow, that'd be awful to find yourself impersonated -- glad you were able to resolve it. My only other comment is: careful about logging into your CERB account from an SP's computer, because one of mod's tools for the site checks for different accounts logging in from the same IP address (to prevent people from doing naughty stuff with multiple accounts). So you and the SP might get a query from the mod afterward.

Those are all awesome traits in small doses, but become ugly and tiresome when they're perpetual and compulsive. I like someone who can "visit" those wild and uninhibited spaces, but who isn't defined by them, or a slave to some reckless habit. And I try to achieve that balance in my own life. You have to be able to let go of yourself sometimes and go "all-in!", commit to the moment and enjoy it fully. But other times, you just need to make a grocery list, take out the garbage, and wash the dishes. ;) I like someone best who can be a little crazy, but who can also take their turns getting those things done when the time comes, dreadfully boring though it sounds! So my answer to the original question is: YES! A bit.

Yes! The long weekend has arrived. I hope everyone gets a chance to embrace their family -- be that family bio-kin or otherwise. It's the weekend for being around the people who are important to you. Happy Thanksgiving weekend everyone.

I really do love the whole classic meal and the entire production surrounding it. And in fact I'm hosting own my big, extended family's Thanksgiving dinner this weekend. Yesterday I sent an e-mail reassuring everyone that yes, I did obtain a particular brand of cranberry sauce (and with whole berries! it's important!) so not to worry. To be honest it was only half-joking -- everything's got to be just right to keep everyone happy. My one quirk (no, wait, sorry, one of my many quirks) is that the only thing I really like to drink with a big turkey dinner is Coke -- yes, the original stuff chock full o' sugar. As a kid it was really only in our house a few times a year (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve) and so having it with those big dinners again recreates that whole happy atmosphere for me. It's going to be SO MUCH fun!

Wow! Thanks, I'll have to follow those links. I've known her story but not followed it lately. I think her blog and the show based on it are part of a slow, gentle rehabilitation of the concept of escort services, though so far only among those who were already predisposed to hear out the argument. It's a shame to see that even someone so prominent, well balanced, and plainly successful at her professions as Ms. Magnanti can be dragged into court by other people's ugly insecurities, hypocrisy and simpleminded terrors (about the judgement of others and a challenge to their artificial self-concept). I'll follow this next turn in her remarkable life with interest.