Phaedrus

There's definitely a certain type of client who wants to be the first of the day. I think they're the ones that think this means the SPs are "fresh" or something, and who seem to be unaware that this is achieved by means of the modern wonders of soap and mouthwash rather than just sleeping and have it happen by magic.

Thanks, @RayRenpelle! Excellent interview! Like most people, seeing companions just isn't something I talk about. The stigma is most certainly there. This probably isn't helped by the fact that most of my friends are happily married, as far as the world is concerned. But as you say, there must be an awful lot of guys seeing companions out there, judging by the number of them we collectively keep in business!

I think the original incarnation of what eventually became this forum was something called "Lyla's list" or something like that which was set up by JoyfulC - way before my time, though. That evolved into CERB, but the lyla.com URL remained as a redirect to cerb.ca. When C36 happened the mods decided they wanted a slightly more discreet name (i.e. without 'Escort' in it) and so the Lyla name and domain was resurrected. The move to .ch was more recent but probably inevitable given US hostility to sex work. So that's a bit more history, but it still doesn't actually answer the question :)

@vegeta85, I don't have any useful advice, I'm afraid. I just wanted to thank you for kicking off this thread; mental health issues are something that affect many of us, and that many of us really don't want to talk about, and threads like this are really important to remove the stigma that has historically been associated with them.

To some extent, I think it's just always been that way. The *ERBs cater to the big cities. CERB and then Lyla catered to the rest of the country; it was quite Ottawa-centric for a while as Ottawa's the biggest city outside the big three, but the east coast has also always been strongly represented here. CAF seems to be the main board in the prairies. As for changing it... well, it *could* change, but something needs to push that. The clients will follow the providers they're interested in, but the providers won't go where there's no clients to advertise to, so there's a classic chicken-and-egg thing going on there. This board has always tried to stake out some clear ground by being a positive environment (it has always been a recommendation board, not a review board). Unfortunately there does seem to be a prevailing opinion that all boards are shitholes, and if your introduction to boards was the ones where that's true... well, I can see why you'd have given up on boards entirely. The folks who run this board are making a serious and sustained effort to get the word out that this place is different - which is awesome - but it's an uphill battle. One other thing that I think is relevant (at the risk of sounding old): boards in general seem to be more suitable for people who enjoy old-school, long-form communication, and enjoy a sense of community. But a lot of people don't want or need that; the brevity and immediacy of platforms like Twitter seems to be more and more popular with people these days.

Shut up about that! We can't let everyone know! They still think 5G is as good as it gets...

Entirely possible. The use of asphyxia to enhance orgasm is definitely a thing. Here's an example (read about his death).

#1 done, #2 booked - like many people, I should think. I'm really looking forward to being able to check that off.

A lot of folks seem to be doing this. The guidelines went from a 12 week interval to 8 between shots, so there seem to be a lot of folks who are rebooking. I have to say, I'm enjoying the steady drip of posts in various bits of social media of people happily announcing that they're now fully vaccinated. And it looks like the quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated people are being relaxed too, which is a promising sign of getting back to normal.

Thanks, Darcy! Also, I was very amused at the idea of "doing a scavenger hunt up in her vagina"

or... what happens when headline editors know nothing about the subject at hand. https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/international/125484462/england-hooker-tom-youngs-labelled-prostitute-in-headline Well, it made me laugh.

I've totally done that :) I've given up asking if a tattoo is new for precisely that reason...

Yup. Getting tattoos or not should be entirely up to you, and not about what anyone else wants. Ink has never been a factor in whether I saw someone or not. I suppose it *could* be, if someone had something that was truly awful, but I've never encountered that.

Jenesis, you did exactly the right thing. These sites rely on the fact that most people they steal content from won't notice, and most of those won't care enough to do anything about it. It's kinda like killing mosquitoes in that getting one really doesn't put a dent in the overall population, but... it feels good, no? :) The fact that the fight is probably unwinnable doesn't mean it's not worth fighting. I see this as being very similar to the arguments about downloading music for free (by which I mean ripped MP3s or similar, not ad-funded "free" services). Or movies, or any other copyrighted content. If everyone does it, artists and producers won't get paid, and they'll simply stop doing it. And then we all lose. In the case of stolen pics, think about what might happen if it became the norm, and everyone did it. Providers would stop posting their own pics - after all, why go to the expense and hassle of a photoshoot? Why post pics of yourself at all, and accept the risk of someone figuring out who you are in real life? Isn't it much easier to just find some pics somewhere that look more or less like you (or more or less how you want to advertise yourself)? The reason providers post their own pics and put time and effort into doing so is because it pays off: those pics make them stand out from the crowd. But if the crowd just steals and uses your pics, what's the point? I'm not sure how much that would really hurt the providers. But I'm pretty sure that we consumers would *really* notice the difference. You'd have to book someone without really having a clue what they looked like, which would be a problem if you had any preferences at all (let's face it, we all do) and would be a really serious problem if anything related to appearance was a deal-breaker for you. The research that clients do would also become far harder; if everyone's using fake pics, it's now much more difficult to spot the scammers And even if they're genuine, there's no good way to find out whether a given provider is really what your looking for or not.

Something I've read elsewhere, which sounds reasonable (and no, I can't remember where - sorry): If it's something you like, it's a preference. If you're really into it, it's a kink. If you can't get off without it, it's a fetish.

We are all inclined to mistrust what we don't understand. There are really very few people who *really* understand the covid vaccine - how it works, exactly how well it works, what the risks are. And they are genuine scientists, and so they tend to be more concerned about what they don't know than what they do, because a scientist's instinct is always to identify the things we don't understand and then seek understanding of them. But even the majority of scientists and medical professionals don't fully get all of it, simply because they have specialized in different areas. They still have more clue than most of us, but again, they know enough to understand how much they don't know. Or, short version of that: Dunning-Krueger applies. And the other problem, of course, is... ...this. It's a sad fact that everything has parasites, and medical science is no exception. I just really hope that all of these people get utterly destroyed, to the extent that the next person who sees only the dollar signs is put off by the consequences of getting caught. Sadly, none of these people are likely to die alone and destitute, however much they may deserve it.

They do. That's why the cranks pretend to be nurses, or doctors, or whatever. It's blatant theft of other peoples' hard-earned legitimacy. The fundamental problem here is that vaccines (and masks, for that matter) have *become* politics and even religion for a lot of folks. This isn't really a medical or scientific decision for quite a few people - it's about deciding what tribe you belong to. And that's going to be a terrible thing for society if we can't fix it.

Thanks for the interview, @Callista Carter! One thing I'm curious about, if it's not an overly invasive question: how did the fact that you're a victim of trafficking and your experiences with that affect your decision to go into sex work on your own terms?

I've done it in the past, although not recently. Registering a corporation doesn't cost much and is quite easy. But then you do have to do things like submitting annual accounts, paying taxes, etc... which is a bit of a drag, especially if you're the kind of person that finds it hard enough paying taxes once per year :)

Shot 1 is done, shot 2 is booked. And like many people, I'm looking forward to being able to resume my life after a lengthy hiatus!

Perhaps I'm missing something, but why would you give your account number rather than just an email address and use Interac? I'd have thought that Interac is easier. But I don't do this often, so... Crypto has its fans and also its issues... but that's a whole other thread :)

Yes, I've heard that this is a significant problem. And even if the money doesn't get withheld until after the shoot, anyone who doesn't go along with it is still likely to be labelled "hard to work with" and will find their opportunities drying up. There are some explicitly ethical porn producers, but... not enough. Back to front happens all the time. Again, I think it's safe enough when you've spent enough time sanitizing everything beforehand and you're dealing with a rectum that's clean enough to eat your dinner off. But people forget that, and then start to emulate what they see on screen... I'm not even a fan of pina colada, so I'll definitely steer clear of the hepatitis one....

Thanks, @Clara Fonseca! Definitely an important topic... the stigma around sex work is the root cause of many of the other problems that providers and clients experience.

I think one thing that needs to be called out here is the difference between "not right now" and "never". I suspect - purely from what I've seen in various places - that many people are being told the former and hearing the latter. The big problem right now is that vaccines are still much more scarce than we'd like. And so if it's not hugely urgent that you get vaccinated right now because you're young, low risk, not in a critical job, not likely to expose anyone else who's high-risk... then yes, not giving you the vaccine so that that dose can go to someone else who needs it more is probably the right thing for society in general. This will change in due course as the more vulnerable get fully vaccinated and the overall objective changes from short-term harm reduction to long-term herd immunity. At that point anyone who wants vaccination will be able to get it, doctors will stop telling people to hold off, and the problems will change from "not enough vaccine doses" to overcoming vaccine hesitancy and hostility. That might not be too far off; it sounds like parts of the US are beginning to get there now, and we could be there in a couple of months if things go well with the vaccine rollout. The other issue here is the fact that the clinical trials and approval process have been pushed through as fast as possible, and people fear the consequences of shortcuts that may have been taken. That isn't unreasonable, but hopefully it will subside with time; the process has been pretty good thus far and we are, after all, in the middle of a pandemic. The vaccines may not be perfect, but it's important to maintain perspective: a disease that's still killing thousands and thousands of people every day is way, way more frightening than a vaccine that has caused a small number of blood clots. If we want to wait for full clinical trials to be done as they are for most drugs... well, we could, but that will take *years*, not months, and the current intermittent lockdowns will continue throughout all that time. Is that really what we want? Of course, there will always remain some folks who will never be convinced, whether because they're full-on conspiracy theorists like. The anti-vaxxers were around well before covid and I have no doubt that they won't go away. Hopefully they won't be successful enough to ensure we never come out of the situation we're in now... but it's entirely possible. They have managed to create a huge amount of fear around proven safe vaccines that have been around for decades, and a new vaccine for a new disease is much more fertile ground for them. This could turn out to be a real problem for society in general if it prevents us ever emerging from the pandemic, and if it becomes a serious threat then we will have to decide what to do about it.

That's not the vaccine. That's the disease.