SamanthaEvans

Squirrels are awesome. Especially when they've staked out a nut tree and are doing their best to harvest the whole damn thing, but they keep having to stop and sample the wares or chatter at crows who don't really want the nuts but are too curious to allow anyone to have any fun without their nosy involvement.

I doubt that Benny was interviewing the girl. He said that he met her and her pimp at a bus stop. If he took the pimp's word for it, that the girl was over 18, that's not adequate proof. The pimp has an obvious interest in representing the girl to be over 18 and the girl isn't going to contradict him in front of him. Photo ID is objective proof. Benny surely knows that in B.C., they ID anyone who looks to be 25 or under and wants to buy cigarettes or alcohol precisely because it's hard to know how old some people are when they're in their mid to late teens.

I'm sure that human trafficking is a problem, world-wide. Relatively few charges and convictions in Canada can't be taken as an indication of how much trafficking is, or isn't, going on. From what I've read, it's impossible to know how many trafficked labourers of any kind there are. They don't report to some government service or co-ordinating agency when they leave home or when they arrive in their destination, after all. This makes it easy to inflate their numbers; it also makes it easy to discount them. Reports I've read estimate that only 2-4% of trafficked women end up in the sex trade. It's impossible to know what to make of the estimate, though. It seems clear that most workers are in farm labour, industrial labour of various kinds, construction and domestic work. However, sorting out the trafficked from the migrants isn't an easy task. I think we also need to be aware of the biases that are part of being privileged in Canada and elsewhere. For many people, it's difficult to imagine choosing to travel across the world to work in what we may consider to be subsistence employment. If we don't want to work on farms or do someone else's housework and childcare, we may not appreciate why other people might want those jobs. Our lack of awareness about the economic plight of many of the world's people can lead to snap judgments. The real problem may not be that people will come to Canada illegally to work; it may be that economic conditions make it impossible for them to work and support their families at home. Blaming people for finding even desperate solutions to their problems is a convenient way to avoid addressing the real issues. It's not surprising to me that prohibitionists ignore the hard realities that motivate migration. Taking shots at prostitution doesn't require much analysis. But just as prohibitionists skate over the reasons for migration, they also ignore the reasons that many women enter the sex trade. Speaking for myself, I had never considered this to be a way for me to make a living. Only when circumstances made it impossible for me to support my children--when I had no other options that did not include giving custody to their father who would ensure that I had no further contact with them--I chose to become a prostitute. I didn't know if I could do it, or if I could do it for very long. I saw it as a short-term, stop-gap maneuver that might buy me some time. I made most of the mistakes that many women make when they start out; high volume service at low rates seemed to be the way to go. I might have carried on with that had I not had some clients who encouraged me to think differently. Those good men were fundamentally important because, at the time, they were better than I was at assessing me, what I had to offer and how to package it. In Toronto's highly competitive market, I was able to be successful even though I was older than most companions. I'm pretty sure that Joy Smith's simplistic analysis about the sex trade and violence against women cannot take into account the ways that male privilege and family law frequently harm many, many women and their children. Joy might say that it would have been better for me to lose my children than to become a paid companion. She has no idea about the realities of most women's lives. She doesn't trust women to know what is best for them and their children.

Have a great day!

Oh, for sure, WiT! I absolutely agree with you. It explains why these prohibitionists focus on trafficking only when it pertains to the sex industry. They really don't care much about people who are indentured into other occupations where they're badly treated, horribly underpaid and sometimes working in very dangerous conditions. It also seems, almost by definition, that anyone who is working in the sex trade who is not a Canadian is automatically "trafficked," whether the women think that's true or not. Laura Agustin writes a lot about migrant labourers, including sex workers, who leave their home countries to go elsewhere to earn money to send home. Many of them know that they'll be doing sex work and still they come. The majority of Asian women working in the micro-brothels here in Vancouver are migrant workers, not trafficked. They come here for four or five months, work hard, send money home and then go home before their visas expire.

You may be right, WiT. I read the last paragraph in her article as a statement of what she was going to be doing: clamping down on human trafficking because she thinks it's linked to prostitution. She gets to storm around making ridiculous statements about prostitution and she doesn't have to worry about whether they're accurate or not because she can claim that her real issue is trafficking. Trafficking is such a sexy, titillating topic when we get to talk about prostitution! It's nowhere nearly as exciting if we're talking about tobacco harvesters, grape-pickers, roofers and others. We need crops to be harvested and roofs to be nailed onto buildings, which makes trafficking a more complex issue. Joy Smith doesn't think we need anyone to be paid or to pay for having sex. We'll see what happens when the House convenes in a couple of weeks, I suppose.

Interesting! She's working on an anti-trafficking bill and wants to support agencies that work with people who have been trafficked. Fine. She's not saying that she proposes bringing in legislation to outlaw prostitution, criminalize prostitutes or focus on criminalizing our clients. This is useful information, I think. As I argued, earlier in this thread, it didn't make sense for the federal government to be drafting legislation related to the issues addressed by Justice Himel before the SCC hears the anticipated appeal of the Ontario Court of Appeal decision. It looks like Joy Smith is simply going to focus on human trafficking even though she wants to rail about the sex trade in general. I would like to know what she finds inadequate about the anti-trafficking laws we already have. Are the laws ineffective or is there a problem with the police or the judicial will to pursue these cases? I hope that Joy's proposed legislation will not victimize people who have been trafficked. I hope that it will reflect an understanding of the reasons that people get involved in being trafficked in the first place because, from what I've read in Lara Agustin's work, trafficked and indentured workers are not being rounded up spontaneously on the city streets. Most are in dire economic straights at home and desperate to do something to help their families. I am also curious to know what the proposed legislation will say, if anything, about illegal migrant workers. People do come to Canada in order to work illegally. They may not earn minimum wage, but in most cases they're earning considerably more than they would in their countries of origin. It's easy to understand why some migrant workers may decide to enter the sex trade rather than be paid a pittance for harvesting fruit, working in construction or doing housework and childcare. Thanks for posting this update, WiT.

I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing, too, that morning. I was in Toronto in the house that my then-husband and I owned. We were separated but both still living there in an attempt to be civilized for the children's sake. I had a meeting downtown. I was in the bathroom, doing my hair and makeup. The radio was on. I heard the CBC announcer say that there had been an unconfirmed report of a plane crashing into the WTC. I thought it must have been an accident. I kept on moving around the place, finding clothes, checking that I had my daybook, my notebook and a pen for my meeting. It was a beautiful, bright, sunny day. When I heard that a second plane had crashed into the WTC, I was stunned. I didn't turn on the TV. I called my husband at his office-it was kind of an automatic, reflex action. He was very curt and cold, but I told him what they were saying on the radio. He hung up on me. I drove downtown. The person I was meeting with suggested we go to a local bar. We sat there for a couple of hours, watching the towers fall on the television, over and over again. It was surreal. By the time I left, they were urging people to stay away from the lakeshore because they were closing down the CNTower. When my kids came in from school that afternoon, the youngest was very upset, worried that someone would bomb the CNTower, or the Peace Tower and Parliament in Ottawa. He'd heard that people had jumped out of the towers and that frightened him. We sat in the rocking chair for a couple of hours while I read stories and sang songs to him. A lot of things were falling apart in my life at the time. I wanted to keep my children close to me, to make our home feel like a safe, warm, nurturing place even though it wasn't. I don't think I tried to process what had happened until late that evening, after the house was still and quiet for the night.

True! Also, there's not a lot of point distinguishing between oral and genital herpes since one can have oral herpes lesions on one's genitals and genital herpes lesions on one's mouth. With up to 90% of adults infected with either or both forms of herpes world-wide, and up to 5% of those unknowingly shedding the virus when they're not having any physical symptoms, we can never be sure that we or our partners don't have herpes. In the News section there's a report of a woman who is suing her former partner because, she says, he didn't disclose to her that he had herpes when they began to have sex. She was able to have him charged with aggravated sexual assault. bcguy42 provided some very helpful information about herpes and where the panic came from.

Reporting one's STI status to one's sex partners is the responsible thing to do. However, viruses like herpes are ubiquitous and largely benign. Someone can have the bug, not know it and may or may not transmit it to others. Herpes is only potentially deadly to newborn babies. For healthy adults it's an inconvenience, at most. I think that charging this guy with aggravated sexual assault is w-a-y over the mark. Perhaps the Toronto police have been over-sensitized. They have had to deal with a couple of people who didn't report that they had HIV/AIDS when they had unprotected sex with new partners. At least one woman died as a consequence of contracting HIV from one of these fellows. While HIV/AIDS can be managed in many people, the antiviral treatments don't work for everyone. Women appear to become seriously ill much faster than men do, and the disease often seems to progress in different ways for us, as well.

G is for God, as in, "Oh..... God!" particularly when gasped or growled.

For sure! I continue to be amazed by the number of men 50+ who object to using condoms because they've been "fixed" or they think that STIs are only an issue for young men and women. Too often, pointing out to them that STIs are spreading more rapidly among older people than among the young only leads to statements about how I must be paranoid or easily taken in to believe such stuff!

Nice fireman, Notch. He's kinda like women in online games like World of Warcraft whose "armor" would leave them completely vulnerable to mortal wounding from the get-go. :icon_wink:

I agree with Elizabeth 100%. If he wants the relationship to be over, then he has to stick with that no matter how wonderful the offers of kinky sex and other things may be. Remind him that he can get all of that elsewhere without the problems he's getting from this woman. I hope your friend has told the woman as clearly as possible that he doesn't want to have any contact with her. If he has, what she's doing qualifies as criminal harassment. If she's also keeping track of his whereabouts, sitting outside his house, following him, etc., that's called "besetting," and it, too, is illegal. He should write down everything that's happened and keep track of every phone call, e-mail, text, mail and gift she sends him. He shouldn't hesitate to contact the police. They can be very helpful.

Nuzzling and gentle nibbling is okay. I'm very ticklish and I find that more than that is a mood-breaker. Tongues? No thanks. There are better places for talented tongues to work their magic!

Several recent threads in different places have raised questions about sexual health and sexually transmissible infections (STIs). I thought it might be worthwhile to review and discuss some basic information. 1. Perfectly nice, respectable and trustworthy people can carry STIs without knowing it because they may have no symptoms. They can infect other equally reliable people without intending to cause any harm to them. 2. Everyone is responsible for their own sexual health. Only you can ensure that you are practicing safe(er) sex and that you are not at risk of being infected, actually infected or transmitting infections. 3. Free and trustworthy confidential sexual health testing is available in every major centre in Canada. If you're not comfortable asking your doctor for tests, you can go to a free clinic where you will not be questioned or judged. I do this, myself, every two months. The staff are friendly, pleasant, efficient and easy to work with. 4. STI test results are only a "snapshot" of your sexual health status when the tests were performed. They are not a guarantee that you do not have an STI a few weeks later. In fact, since some STIs incubate for weeks or months before producing symptoms, markers in blood samples or showing up in vaginal swabs, even though your STI test results are clear, you can still be harboring an infection that has not yet made its presence known. 5. STI tests should be repeated for at least six months before you can consider yourself likely to be infection-free, assuming that you have not changed sex partners during that time and that your partner(s) also have not had new partners. 6. Most STIs are easily treated with antibiotics. Some, such as herpes, cannot be cured but can be managed with antiviral medication. HIV/AIDS is increasingly becoming a manageable infection in Canada's larger cities. 7. HIV/AIDS is probably the most-feared STI. It is also a very fragile virus that does not communicate easily. You can't get HIV from doorknobs, sharing a plate or a glass, from kissing or from doing someone's laundry. HIV needs easy entry to one's bloodstream, usually via a cut, a tear in one's vaginal or anal mucous membrane, or a contaminated injection needle. In North America, heterosexuals who do not use illegal injectable drugs are at low-risk for having or transmitting HIV/AIDS. The problem, of course, is that because we cannot be certain about our sexual partners' other partners, it is not safe to assume that there is no HIV risk when having sexual contact with anyone. 8. Condoms offer the best protection against STIs. Condoms are effective for oral sex as well as vaginal and anal sex. Non-latex condoms are available and effective for those who are allergic to latex. Female condoms are not made of latex and are also effective for those who have allergies. Condoms made of sheep intestines and other materials are effective for preventing pregnancy, but not effective for preventing STIs. Sperm are significantly larger than viruses and bacteria, which can slip through the membranes of these "natural" condoms. 9. There really is no such thing as "safe" sex. Things such as condoms, dental dams and gloves can make sex safer, however. Even so, the herpes virus is "shed" by up to 5% of infected people even when they are not experiencing outbreaks. This means that one may transmit or contract herpes unknowingly. 10. Some STIs are more prevalent in some parts of Canada than in others. For example, a syphilis epidemic has been going on in Vancouver since the early 1990s. Syphilis is one of the viruses that can inhabit a human throat for months without any symptoms. Nonetheless, even if you and your companion both live in Saskatoon, it may be difficult to be sure that neither of you has had contact with anyone who may have come in contact with syphilis recently. 11. Common wisdom about STIs is usually inaccurate and untrustworthy. For example, one will hear that "everyone knows" there is only negligible risk in oral sex performed on a man. In fact, giving and receiving oral sex places both parties at high risk of STI transmission for all infections other than HIV, in which case the risks are lower. 12. Sexually active people have a responsibility to ensure that they have the best, up-to-date information about STI risks. Only with accurate information can we make informed choices about our sexual behaviour and infection risk. You can get this information many places including the Health Nurse's Sexual Health Information website and the B.C. Centre for Disease Control's STD Resource website.

I agree with Alexandra-Sky. Crap. Unadulterated crap. The media and folks in general panic over Herpes, which is a very common, low-grade virus. Between 50% and 80% of people with herpes don't know that they carry the virus. While it is best to avoid sexual activity when one is having an outbreak, between 2% and 5% of carriers "shed" the virus without having an outbreak. For this reason, "safe sex" practices including using condoms and dental dams do not make sex perfectly safe, they reduce the risk of transmitting infections. See the Health Nurse's STI Risks Chart. We are each responsible for our own health, including our sexual health. Information reported by sex partners is only one aspect of attending to our sexual health care. Sexually active people who have more than one partner should be tested regularly for infections. While most people fear HIV/AIDS, this is still a relatively uncommon infection among heterosexuals who do not use illegal, injectable drugs. More serious are infections such as syphilis for which infected people have no symptoms yet are actively contagious. Only in fully monogamous relationships can we assume that we or our partners are completely free of infection. Most sexually transmissible infections are completely treatable with antibiotics. Herpes is not curable, but medications can shorten outbreaks and lessen discomfort from lesions. Most people with herpes have fewer and shorter outbreaks over time. Herpes' greatest danger is to unborn children. Women who want to become pregnant, or who are pregnant, can still have normal pregnancies and healthy deliveries when they have herpes. They should let their doctor know about the herpes infection so that the doctor can take steps to protect the newborn child. My point in all of this is to say that each party is responsible for their sexual health and, even if the woman's partner had disclosed that he had herpes, not only may she have become infected, anyway, but she may have had the infection herself, already, without any symptoms. A healthy, responsible adult sexual relationship must include accepting certain risks and taking steps to minimize and address them. Blaming someone else if or when we contract a sexually transmissible infection is meaningless when we have not taken adequate steps to protect our own health and well-being in the first place.

If you've asked me when I'm going to be in your city, or to let you know about my plans, I think it's perfectly legitimate for me to PM you and say that I'll be there on these dates and, if you're available, I'd love to see you. This would be part of a conversation we're already having. If I'm planning to go to a certain city, I could put a note in the Advertisement section for that city, saying that I'm considering making a trip and give the dates. Interested parties could contact me, then, and ask about my availability. What I would NOT do is PM or e-mail members with whom I'd had no conversation and pitch my ads to them directly. That would be a kind of solicitation that's not only outside the bounds of this board, but also pretty tacky and tasteless, too, in my view.

The rule about not soliciting in PMs is a good one, I think. I also think that it's one thing to say hello, or thanks for checking my profile, and another to say, "come and visit me--I've got a special deal running now." While advertising happens in the Advertising section, I think that everything we post is advertising, too. We advertise our views and our ways of interacting when we engage in forum conversations. Many of us look up the things a member has written so that we can get a feel for the kind of person they are. Did a recent post seem out of character? Was something someone said intriguing enough that we might want to know more about them? Is this someone we might like to see? I know that there are some here who, because of the things they've written, I feel I would simply enjoy getting to know, in person, if the opportunity arises. Were I to travel to their cities, I might send a message saying that I'm going to be there and would enjoy having a drink or a cup of coffee with them. I would be very clear that I'm not soliciting business, but building a friendship. There are also some here I would not want to meet because, based on the things they write about or the way they express themselves, I don't think we'd be compatible.

On occasion, appreciative clients give me tickets to things like concerts and the theatre. These are great gifts. I'm thinking that the Fat Bastards might enjoy tickets to the demolition derby, right? :icon_lol:

That's true. However, the Canadian Blood Services eliminate anyone who has had taken money for sex at any time since 1977. They also eliminate anyone who has paid money for sex. Anyone who has had sex with someone whose sexual background they didn't know is also not allowed to donate blood.

I gotta get a Buddha for the garden!

I agree with what Elizabeth has said. I get tested every two months at a free clinic. The test results have no identifying information on them so, while they're meaningful to me, you would never know if they were my results or someone else's. Most independent, indoor sex workers are almost rabid about safe sex practices and won't compromise or perform bareback services for additional fees. Frankly, I'm more concerned about your experience of condom slippage. This is something your companion could not have known about in advance. Slippage usually happens when a man loses his erection, partially or fully. He may also have decreased sensation when he's softer. My very strong advice to you is to use a cock ring from now on. You can find them in adult toy stores. They come in several different configurations. Some are stretchy acrylic. Decide what you think you'll be most comfortable using. When the condom goes on, put the cock ring on next. It will hold the condom in place and it will also help you maintain your erection. However, even if you don't stay hard, the condom won't slip off. Don't be embarrassed about using a cock ring! Most of us are very familiar with them and find them to be a terrific accessory to help middle-aged and older men have a complete, fulfilling experience.

Re: deposits and e-mail transfers--they're easy to do and easy to refund, as well. My experience has usually been that the client asks me to hold onto the funds as a deposit for another meeting. That works, too!