Posted on 10/19/2012 8:30:43 AM PDT by AmericanSamurai
The East Bay is home to a new — and growing — group of sex workers who are educated, empowered, and open about what they do for a living. But Prop 35 would force them back underground.
Jolene Parton is a ho. She's also a Berkeley native, a comic-book fanatic, a Dolly Parton aficionado (hence the name, which is fake), an NPR listener, and a big fan of Vietnamese food. She wears big round glasses rimmed in translucent pink plastic, and, in her ears, jade-green plugs. She's redheaded and rosy-skinned and pretty in the kind of way that would be at home in a J. Crew catalog, but for the pierced septum and stylishly half-shaved head and aforementioned plugs; as is, she's probably more like American Apparel material. And she's been working in the sex industry, broadly defined, for about four years, first doing odd jobs at what she describes as the "entry-level" end of the sex-work spectrum — foot fetish stuff, artsy nude photography, one night during which she "cuddled with a guy in his apartment for money" — and then in porn and at various peepshows and strip clubs; a bit over a year ago, she started escorting. And when she says she loves her job — which she does, often and unbidden — she does so with the kind of steady-eyed enthusiasm that's hard to fake.
"It's been great, honestly," she told me a couple weeks ago at an Oakland Chinatown lunch spot, steam rising from the vermicelli bowl in front of her and fogging her lenses.
(Excerpt) Read more at eastbayexpress.com ...
Yeah, maybe Harvard or Yale can be where they start to offer one. Or some other liberal sh*thole Ivy league campus.
Lol - good suggestion!
LOL!
Miss Swan returns!
Ho’ing, the profession one gets when one gets so many tats and peircings that they can’t or won’t find an honest job.
Oh, Good Lord. I’ll bet she has tats where I’ll never look, I couldn’t stand the smell.
You can send the escort away for a year or two, then call her back and all is good
[ Just as every thoughtful gun owner knows that gun control laws won’t stop criminals from getting guns, it must be recognized that laws against prostitution will not stop the sex trade. I have no strong feeling about this issue but it’s hard to defend laws that make it illegal to sell something that is legal to give away.
What’s the real difference between an escort, and having a girlfriend who perpetually needs help paying her bills? ]
Whorin’ should be legal not because we want whorin’ but because by outlawing whorin’ we are infringeing on individual rights to make dumb ass decisions. The whores need to know that we expect them to take full responsibility for whatever happens to them in their chosen profession and not to expect any social acceptance of their trade.
A whore who's a liberal? What's next? A sunny day that's warm? Ice that's cold? Bears that sh*t in the woods? This is breathtaking. I'm waiting for the interview in 20 years... the one where she's still in the 'oh wow it was so liberating'...
Some women are just of low character.
Just ick.
“They aren’t paying any taxes, imagine how much these whores can save if they do save their money.”
They use it on dope. They are almost all drug addicts. The few who aren’t are just crazy.
To do this “work” is extremely self-abusive, and the women who do it for any length of time are either addicts or mental.
Some people are in the business because they are just too unstable to hold a conventional job.
” it must be recognized that laws against prostitution will not stop the sex trade.”
Laws don’t stop anything. They just make certain behaviors more rare.
That’s why we still have theft, and fraud, and murder, etc.
Partially shaved head?
Ever wonder why prostitution became illegal?
And very often, outlawing prostitution makes the woman a victim. Think about it... A john decides not to pay, and as a bonus, decides to beat the crap out of the woman. Because prostitution is outlawed, it's doubtful that police would take her accusations seriously, if she even tried to file a report. At least if it's not against the law, it will minimize the some of the abuse against these women, and give them some protection.
Mark
Not to edit your question but I'll interpret it as why did prostitution became illegal in most US jurisdictions since it is legal in a good deal of Europe and elsewhere.
My view is that two separate drivers pushed prostitution to become illegal; tax issues and the same sort of moral revulsion that led to alcohol prohibition.
Oddly, a form of prostitution is legal everywhere in the US. I can freely pay actors to engage in sex acts and film it for others' sexual gratification. The legal subtlety is that the payment is for the filming, not the sex. I can even fill the role of one of the actors without violating the law.
I imagine it’s the tax thing that really does it, thanks
Guilty. Nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.
Or did they did not realize that prostitution has pervasive societal consequences? Was it because they were unaware of venereal plagues? Was it because most whores were of the servile class, and they had no laws against slavery?
I am no kind of well-informed commentator here, not at all, but as I understand it, even pederasty --- the sodomizing of a young catamite by an older man--- was seen primarily as a defect in personal chastity (and of course much to be deplored) but not as something socially corrosive or exploitative.
There wouldn't have been much sensitivity to the power-difference between a catamite or concubine and the, um, consumer, or (in general) the f***er and the f***ed.
So I don't know what comparison you're aiming to make between the social/legal perspective of classical antiquity, and ours.
Sincere questions, not gotcha questions.
(I trust I am not being too obscure.) Your view?
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