There are times when I, as a non-sex worker, feel that I nonetheless have something to contribute to the debate with my legal education and research abilities. And then there are times when I feel that I can make the biggest contribution by shutting up and linking to something else. This is one of the latter occasions. Read this. Just do it. I couldn’t possibly add anything more to what it says.
And if you can’t read the whole article – but please, please, you really should – at the very least have a look at the Melissa Farley piece it links to. Never have her vicious hatred and contempt for sex workers, beneath a facade of concern, been so clearly exposed.
Feminist Ire 
Geez.
That’s a takedown if I ever saw one.
Just fattening up the comments here (they devolved to one letter wide)…I find it very sad that discussion about one of the best, most insightful articles I ever saw about prostitution has devolved into a platform for a very ignorant and self centred woman to throw around spiteful, half baked accusations…presumably in the hope of abusing people into giving her her own way.
Getting back to Sarah M and her amazing article…if sex work is an available solution to the serious problem of poverty I believe any of us has the right to use that solution without let or hindrance, and, more to the point, nobody has the right, nor an iota of justification, to force us to remain in poverty instead,
To me that is SUCH a no-brainer…
NOBODY has the right to demand another person remain in poverty, when they do not have to, to suit their whims, that is just crazy and cruel.
…and that will always be the bottom line…
Wendy as a woman who was prostituted for ten years I’ve never met a survivor who thinks transphobia should be seen as a central issue in the debate over how to prevent young, vulnerable women from pimps and punters. Yes it is an important issue but it has nothing to do with prostitution. I know a lot of survivors — I’m a one of the proud founding members of Survivors Connect, an international online leaderless network for survivors of trafficking/prostitution,
We get very angry at these polarizing debates such as the one you linked to above — which bring in everything but the kitchen sink and try to use the million of women who’ve been hurt in prostitution as a stand in for everything but who they are. I’ve had people call me a prude because they think that by speaking the truth about my experiences I’m threatening their sexual freedom. Really? A prude? When I’ve been ‘with’ thousands of men? You can’t make this stuff up.
I’ve seen you in conversations on the blogs of known madams, which I do think compromises your ability to claim that you are advocating for women in prostitution. Becaues you are cozying up to their pimps.
But let’s put that aside for the moment. Let’s focus on what women who’ve REALLY experienced prostitution are saying about what they want and about their experiences.
Check out my blog at http://www.secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com
I link to the blogs of six other prostitution survivors who are all brilliant writers and activists.
We encourage either in our activism and support each other with friendship.
Check out the Survivors Connect group blog, which reposts the writings of prostitution survivors and activists.
http://www.survivorsconnect.groupsite.com/blog
I
I am astonished that you think transphobia “has nothing to do with prostitution”. Why do you think trans women are disproportionately likely to go into sex work? Why do you think they endure higher rates of violence than cis-female and male sex workers?
Come to that, why do you think transphobia is so rampant among anti-sex work feminists?
I’ve seen you in conversations on the blogs of known madams, which I do think compromises your ability to claim that you are advocating for women in prostitution.
We can both do this guilt-by-association thing. Your own links to Melissa Farley, who co-wrote that horrifically anti-sex worker piece that Sarah’s article links to, could be argued to compromise your own claim. (I wouldn’t argue that, personally, but someone might.)
Let’s focus on what women who’ve REALLY experienced prostitution are saying
Wow. So are you suggesting that Sarah is lying, or are you just discounting her experiences because they don’t lead her to the same conclusions that yours did?
I’ve never met Melissa Farley. I haven’t read everything she’s written. She asked me to blog for PRE. I have a Columbia University education but I’m continually dehumanized and condescended to when I’m open about being a survivor of prostitution, so it was nice that someone wanted to promote my writing. It’s far from cozying up with madams and keeping them in your blog roll. I’ve started my own blog.
http://www.secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com
If you really care about prostituted women, why are you trying to fan divisive flames instead of find common ground? I refuse to acknowledge a divide. I refuse to be put into a ‘radical feminist’ box or a whatever box you want to put me in. I realize some of your reaction could be the result of your legal training. Necessary skills for the courtroom. I don’t take it personally. Maybe some of the friction between us the sense of a worthy adversary. Why not stop this silliness? If you really care about prostituted women, surely you can see that be disavowing this faux “feminist” divide (which as a prostituted woman I find ridiculous) would be the best way to move forward.
I do feel strongly that any movement that is concerned with prostituted women’s rights should not involve ANYONE who profits off these women’s exploitation. Meaning pimps. As a prostituted woman I have a right to demand this. It’s completely reasonable.
I think Sarah should show us a picture, or a body of work, or a blog. She should have friends who vouch for her. She should show her humanity, not just rant.
And I think she should not be focused negatively on one activist. The issue is women in prostitution and how to improve their lives. It’s not the personality of one single activist.
Transphobia is a terrible problem. Yes. I hate it. But the vast vast vast majority of those in prostitution are genetic women. They deserve our attention just as much as transsexuals. That was my point.
Sorry, meant to add:
You said in another comment that decriminalisation of selling sex was a “non-issue” to you. Well, I agree with that. It’s a non-issue to you in the sense that you don’t seem to be interested in advocating for it at all. Instead, you seem to spend all your time engaging in online battles with precisely the people who are doing the most advocating for it, simply because we believe it should apply to both parties to the transaction.
I could understand you doing that if you lived in Europe or Australia or NZ or somewhere that already had legal prostitution, or somewhere where that was a realistic possibility. But you don’t. You live in a country where decriminalisation of only the sex seller would actually be an improvement on the current situation (and where there is virtually no prospect of full decriminalisation being introduced). So why not devote your considerable energies to campaigning for that, instead of trawling the internet constantly looking for pro-decrim feminists to argue with?
In other words, you want me to shut up. Be voiceless. I’m not allowd to comment on blogs.
You ask “Why not devote your considerable energies to campaigning for that instead of ‘trawling’ the internet looking for pro-decrim feminists to argue with?”
Well, that really doesn’t sound like an advocate for prostituted women. Telling them not to speak out. I do have a problem with that.
What’s more, the first day I published my blog you began following it. I’m not following yours. Who is the one trawling the internet?
The reason I found those vicious comments (where you were also comment, although you did not attack me) on Maggie’s blog is because I was doing an internet search to find the link to an online interview I’d done. And Voila, there was the whole mean mess.
The vicious comments on the Bound not Gagged blog (which you linked to) were thrown in my face during the comments on your feministe article.
We survivors are not going to accept these transparent attempts to silence us any longer. We have had it. Hear us roar.
You don’t know what I spend time advocating for. You spend all your energy trying to silence me.
No matter how you spin it, you are a liar… Stella… and if you don’t know the difference between pimping and pandering- both in reality and in the law, you were never a prostitute. If you equate one with the other, you clearly lack the knowledge you say you have about your 10 year ordeal. Which leads me to believe you are not who you say you are, but are a fraud and impostor. On the other hand, my real name is out there for anyone to look me up on the internet. News articles about the police corruption I was trying to expose when the cops decided to attempt to shut me up are easy enough to find. Anyone who has any intelligence whatsoever and is not hiding behind a facade of her ‘tragedy porn’ story could figure out what was really happening when I was arrested, charged with one count of pandering, convicted and sent to prison… instead, you choose to insist that pandering is the same as pimping when it really is not. I wear my conviction as a badge of honor, because I know that it wasn’t for trying to get my big fat ugly ‘friend’ Penny laid (the pandering charge)- it was for exposing police corruption- of which there was and still is so much- especially involving cops extorting prostitutes for sex, money and information. And despite knowing that cops are violent and use the law as an extortion tool, idiots like you insist that we continue to be put in their care- where they can rape us with impunity. Or you want our non violent, non abusive clients to be punished, knowing full well that the cops will still use the law AGAINST US, to extort us for those sexual favors. If you really want to help sex workers, stop trying to force your rescue BS down our throats and help us work toward decriminalization so that there are resources to help those who are victims, and to keep those victims out of the hands of the cops. Cops can’t be trusted to keep their hands off their own wives and children- 40% of cops engage in domestic violence and spousal abuse according to some sources- which means there are about 360,000 cops out there who might beat up a prostitute who mouths off to them ( http://www.policeprostitutionandpolitics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=92:cops-who-kill-their-spouses-girlfriends-children&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=50 ) is that what you have in mind for us?
why on earth would you or any other of your deluded, rabid abolitionist academic friends want to put us in jeopardy when cops have proven to be rapists and abusers of not just prostitutes but of children and many other non prostitute women?
Norma, it is pretty obvious, just from the article she posted, that you were not even close to taking money or coercing anyone into prostitution. I cannot even understand her point in posting it except to try and intimidate you, and, of course, distract from the excellent article these comments should be about.
StellaMarr, for goodness sake take responsibility for your own life and choices for once, either you chose to “prostitute” yourself for ten years, or you made the whole thing up…which is it?
It is not even likely that anyone in the whole history of the world was coerced into accepting a condo opposite the Lincoln centre by an absent benefactor in return for occasional sexual favours:
http://usedfurniturereview.com/2011/04/14/talking-with-women-stella-marr/
The whole story looks a lot more like pseudologica fantastica than PTSD to me, and I, for one, refuse to humour your foolish fictions any more..
Above, I meant protect young vulnerable women from pimps and punters. Mea Culpa.
Wendy, Sarah’s piece is extraordinary, she says and thinks almost exactly the same way I do (which is a tiny bit spooky too :o) ). I wish I could be as coherent about it all…
As for stellamarr and friends…I am a survivor too…I used prostitution to survive far worse things, and when I had I found better things to spend my survival upon than attention seeking self pity and striving to deny others the only chance that was available to me when I was desperate…
But that is just me.
Wendy, transphobia is a terrible problem, but the vast majority of the prostituted are women. And there is a great deal of energy out there already protecting the transgendered that is denied the vulnerable young women in prostitution. I am not interested in arguments about different branches of feminism. I don’t identify myself in that way. I’m not interested in being divisive. I’m interesting in creating conditions that cause social change, which benefit women in and survivors of prostitution. I am a survivor of ten years of prostitution. I’ve been through conditions that are the same as torture — ten years of that. I don’t care about intellectual conceits.
I care about the women in prostitution.
Wendy perhaps I’ve been too hard on you. Perhaps your rather condescending reactions are the result of your legal training, which i know was arduous. Maybe you don’t really understand what I do about these people. I hope you can forgive me if I’ve been too hard on you. It’s clear to me your very smart and you feel strongly about things. I know Jill at Feministe got into a bad situation with an S&M blogger when that blogger interviewed a ‘feminist’ man who kidnapped an attempted to murder his former girlfriend. Feministe never expected that one. They never saw it coming. I don’t blame them for it. I will they repeat it.
Eileen, You only have two facebook friends, and you seem to devote your facebook time to harassing ruhama. Kinda telling.
There’s a terrible problem the actual survivors of prostitution have to deal with. Which is that there are a lot of people out there saying they are survivors when they are actually pimps. Our exploiters are attempting to silence us and appropriate our identities.
A madam, a manager, and escort agency owner — these are all pimps. For example,Maggie McNeill, the ‘honest’ courtesan is an admitted madam. She admits it because she wants the blog to send her business. But she pretends to be a prostitute so she can misrerpesent suvivors. You cant own the coal mine and say you’re a poor appalachian miner. You can’t be both prostitute and pimp. Madams are female pimps.Wendy links to this madam in the blogroll of this blog. If you scroll to the comments section of this post, you can see that Wendy is present in the comments while the ‘honest’ courtesan and an assortment of Johns are villefying me based on a comment I made in the New York Times. This is the kind of attack prostitution survivors routinely experience when they speak out.
http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/across-the-pond/
Wendy also links to madams who gang up and attack prostitution survivors who speak out. This is very ugly. Wendy links to Bound and Gagged, a group blog of madams.Look at what they did to me for commenting on a blog. Wendy was aware of this, because one of these creepy people posted a link to this post beneath her article in Feministe. Be sure to read the Comment section, and click on the links, which go to vicious posts, including a movie villefying survivor Shelley Dubben and an article talking about another survivor who’s child was run down in broad daylight, requiring extensive hospitalization, immediately after this survivor spoke out against pimps:
http://deepthroated.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/melissa-farley-sends-someone-to-the-naked-anthropologist-to-rant/
Wendy I request that you remove links to the Honest Courtesan and Bound and Gagged because if you truly are an advocate of sex workers, you should not acqiesce those who gang up on survivors. If you care about the human writers of prostituted women, you should join forces with those who mock them.. Jill at Feministe did remove these sites from her blog roll after I sent her these links.
If you continue to associate yourself with these people, you are participating in the silencing of survivors. And that is very serious. A bunch of us survivors have formed a leaderless international online network for friendship, support and activism. We are very angry about people who attempt to silence us. We’ve organized to prevent it. Our voices have power and a great deal of authority. As they should. No one, not even you Wendy, knows more about the sex industry, Johns and pimps than we do.
With love,
Stella
StellaMarr,
“Eileen Lang” is a name created to protect me (much as you invented “Stella Marr”) insofar as possible, while I do all I can to prevent Ruhama and associates from taking away the means of survival and last hope of 1000 or more women who are already suffering far too much without that too.
Under those circumstances playing “mafia wars” and “farmville” does not seem appropriate, much less misrepresenting myself to relate to people on an individual level as if “Eileen Lang” was a real person, separate from me. The way that, for example, you seem to do?
Just confirming the above post is genuinely mine…it went through the wrong way is all. :o)
Eileen if you are looking to connect with other survivors there’s a join form for survivors connect at this link. I”m not interested in arguing with you about talking points which were invented by non survivors. I care about every woman who’s survied prostitution and so do my survivor sisters. Nothing will break the bonds between us.
http://www.survivorsconnect.groupsite.com
Of course, we have to screen to prevent pimps, madams, and Johns from joining. Many have already tried.
No thank you StellaMarr, I am only interested in real people, not in playing silly, spoilt, mind games
You don’t know what I spend time advocating for.
I will happily retract my statement on being shown evidence that it is incorrect.
In other words, you want me to shut up. Be voiceless. I’m not allowed to comment on blogs.
That’s funny, I could have sworn I was letting you comment on this blog. Maybe I’m just imagining it.
You ask “Why not devote your considerable energies to campaigning for that instead of ‘trawling’ the internet looking for pro-decrim feminists to argue with?”
Well, that really doesn’t sound like an advocate for prostituted women. Telling them not to speak out. I do have a problem with that.
I have a problem with you misrepresenting what I say and refusing to actually answer questions, using diversionary tactics like “you’re trying to silence me” rather than addressing the actual points I’ve made.
What’s more, the first day I published my blog you began following it. I’m not following yours.
I’ve never followed your blog, I have no idea where you’re getting that from. And I certainly haven’t posted almost 20 comments to your blog.
I’ve never met Melissa Farley. I haven’t read everything she’s written. She asked me to blog for PRE. I have a Columbia University education but I’m continually dehumanized and condescended to when I’m open about being a survivor of prostitution, so it was nice that someone wanted to promote my writing. It’s far from cozying up with madams and keeping them in your blog roll.
So linking to someone’s blog and posting the occasional comment on it is “cozying up with” them, but actually blogging for them isn’t. Mmm-kay.
If you really care about prostituted women, surely you can see that be disavowing this faux “feminist” divide (which as a prostituted woman I find ridiculous) would be the best way to move forward.
Yet on your very first visit to this blog you made a rather big deal over my being a feminist and holding these views. And I noticed you did the same on Laura Agustín’s blog (in fact, you seem to have C&P’d the exact same post there as your first post here). You’re trying to have it both ways.
I do feel strongly that any movement that is concerned with prostituted women’s rights should not involve ANYONE who profits off these women’s exploitation. Meaning pimps. As a prostituted woman I have a right to demand this. It’s completely reasonable.
I completely agree that you have a right to your view on this. But so do sex workers like Vegan Vixen who reject your automatic equation of “madam” and “abusive pimp”.
Wendy, transphobia is a terrible problem, but the vast majority of the prostituted are women. And there is a great deal of energy out there already protecting the transgendered that is denied the vulnerable young women in prostitution.
I’ll say it again: trans women are disproportionately likely to enter sex work and suffer higher rates of violence in sex work. It is, again, astonishing that you think they are better protected than cis-females. That really is exactly the sort of privilege-denial that Sarah is talking about. Trans women in fact are excluded from some of the projects aimed at women and girls in the sex trade, such as Rachel Lloyd’s GEMS project.
If you scroll to the comments section of this post, you can see that Wendy is present in the comments while the ‘honest’ courtesan and an assortment of Johns are villefying me based on a comment I made in the New York Times.
And if you scroll to the comments section, you can see that I was in no way involved in that particular line of discussion, and my presence in those comments was simply to debate the meaning of the term “legalised”. It’s quite dishonest of you to imply otherwise.
Eileen, You only have two facebook friends, and you seem to devote your facebook time to harassing ruhama. Kinda telling.
What’s telling is the way you continually try to discredit sex workers whose views differ from yours by suggesting they weren’t/aren’t really sex workers at all. Yet you accuse others of vilifying and trying to silence you when they do the same to you.
So you want to distance yourself from Maggie McNeill’s villefication? I’m willing to accept that you were’t aware of what was happening there. But now you are. So why not take her off your blog roll? Show some professionalism.
Re the Vegan Vixen et al — you can’t speak for them. It really bothers me the way advocates trying to be so divisive, and force survivors to ‘choose sides.”
If you care about the women in prostitution you’ll stop doing this.
Re Eileen: Telling me I’m seeking pity is not the usual survivor reaction when encountering another online. I don’t have to accept ciphers as survivors. And it is not your right to attack me for questioning. There’s an extensive history of female pimps posing as surivovrs: Maggie McNeill, in the above cited website, is one of them. Survivors and women in prostitution are sick and tired of madams pretending to be the prostituted women they exploit.
Re what you wrote:
will happily retract my statement on being shown evidence that it is incorrect.
You have ample evidence that I support the Nordic model which advocates for decriminalizing the sellling of sex by prostituted women and gives these women the right to sue Johns and pimps, as well as giving them the status of crime victims so they are given access to enhanced social services to deal with the trauma.
You and I discussed this extensively in the comments section on the blog Feministe run by Jill Filipovic. So you don’t need me to give you evidence. You’re misrepresenting me and attacking me, which is extremely bad behavior on the part of a woman who claims to be a sex worker advocate. After all, I am a survivor.
I’m also a founding member a leaderless online network of prostitution survivors for friendship, support and activism.
http://www.survivorsconnect.wordpress.com
http://www.survivorsconnect.groupsite.com
So don’t pretend I’m not advocating on behalf of women in prostitution. I am grateful for your unprofessional behavior here. It shows me who you are and what you are about.
The “Nordic model” aims to take away the income from women who sell sex…in some cases that could easily amount to manslaughter…an activity, unlike prostitution, with few, if any survivors.
Manslaughter? That’s absolutely nuts.
The Nordic model aims to take away income from pimps who sell women for sex. I don’t see how that’s manslaughter. An important clause of the nordic model includes that fact that the self-selling of sex is never illegal and that the prostituted women can sue their Johns for violations to their dignity, equality and humanity. In other words, they can get financial compensation for what they’ve suffereed.
The nordic model also stipulates that survivors be connected with social services, and that they are given the enhanced status of crime victims to enable them to qualify for enhanced benefits regarding trauma treatment, etc.
That is not manslauguther
What do you think happens when you take away the only way a person has left to survive (as is the case for many prostitutes, it certainly was for me)?
In all such cases the individual in question has already been failed abysmally, or even damaged by social services. It is preposterous to suggest that the same social services that thrust them through the cracks in the system in the first place will suddenly do a complete volte face and get it right instead, however much “special status” that might involve…
…and ten years on, in 2009, Sweden still did not have anything like adequate social services provision in place…even through the boom, it is beyond unlikely that near bankrupt Ireland would be able to produce anything of the kind out of thin air.
The only existing provision, Ruhama, is inappropriate, agenda driven, toxic and unfit for purpose…recently highlighted by their dehumanising refusal to even mention or acknowledge the hardship such a law would cause.
I certainly do not feel any of my clients ever violated me dignity, equality and humanity so I have no right or reason to sue them…but I know that Ruhama have violated my dignity, equality and humanity, as have social services at several points in my life…I should be able to sue them…is that part of the “nordic Model” or is iut just part of reality?
“Trauma treatment” divorced from reality and applied by the lunatic fringe usually does a great deal more damage than good, including, but not limited to, the introjection and projection of critical and irresolveable levels of psychic conflict and cognitive dissonance. (In layman’s terms the bullshit involved can easily drive you nuts all by itself)
In the real world, if the Nordic model is implemented there are people who will no longer be able to survive without their income. The Rescue Organisations are as fully aware of this as I am…which establishes Meas Rea, and thus culpable manslaughter in every moral sense…either way, the victims will be just as permanently dead.
Of many things, there’s one thing Maggie McNeill is not: An abuser of women. A madam is no pimp.
A madam is very much a pimp. Look up the definition in the dictionary. As a survivor I have a right to the language of prostitution. You can’t take it from me.
Ma’am,
You are entirely entitled to any opinion you wish to have. However,
You are not entitled to ownership of the English language; you have nothing remotely approaching a monopoly on virtue, on the experience of prostitutes, or on the experience of any other human being. Your entitlement extends to the borders of your own personal persona.
I have no wish to take anything from you, far from it; I would prefer you to keep it all comfortable and safe.
However, you can’t simply oblige others to define terms which order the world to match your own personal worldview. The language does not belong to you; neither do the experiences of others.
Your self-granted Survivor status entitles you to whatever ad-hoc labels you wish to ascribe in your own personal world; but you do not have the right to define terms for any other person.
All people have the same rights to the language of prostitution as you do. In fact, every other person who has ever worked in the sex trade has precisely the same rights that you do.
Your entitlement is identical in every possible respect to, say, Maggie McNeill’s. There is no difference in any entitlement you may or may not have.
I would never take anything from you – I’m just reminding you that what you think you have unique ownership of is in no way in fact actually yours.
I would never, ever silence you. But you should never claim to speak for others or demand that they redefine their world to match how you conceive of yours.
I’m certain I’m not the first to have told you that you are merely one single individual and that your experience is just that: One unique individual experience. Your response to that experience is itself just one individual response.
You can’t speak for anyone as a victim of prostitution other than yourself. The vast majority of women working in the industry have widely varying opinions – and their voices are precisely as valuable as yours.
You may not like this, but your opinions represent no kind of monopoly.
My opinions don’t represent a monopoly. That’s nuts. Quit trying to silence me.
I repeat, as a survivor I have a right to use the words prostituted women use. We know that madams are pimps. You cannot take the language of prostitution away from me.
You can use any word you want; you can define your private language of prostitution any way you like.
When you use language with others, it’s for communication. Your self-annointed survivor badge does not give you a right to define terms for others.
That’s not taking anything away from you: It’s preventing you from taking words away from others.
By the way, I guess we’re talking about different things, so it may not matter, I was referring to prostitutes; you’re talking about prostituted women. I’m not sure what these women are, but clearly, they must not be prostitutes. So I guess we’re talking at cross purposes: we’re not talking about the same things at all.
Perhaps you’d like to come back to the world of English and the rest of humanity.
Should you decide to do so, perhaps useful conversations could be had.
Okay Stella, on another blog you said I was a pimp- but I’ve never been a madam, never took one cent from ANYONE in prostitution, yet you LIED and made this outrageous claim, further stating that you can’t imagine that someone like me could claim to be a sex worker rights activist… because you said I was a pimp… with no proof whatsoever, because I NEVER was a pimp EVER… so we know that you are a liar, and while I certainly don’t want to shut you up- as your voice should count as much as mine, but why don’t voices like mine count in your world? I understand that Farley’s minions aren’t allowed to even suggest that there is another point of view besides hers, but with so many of us out here, why do YOU of all people pretend that WE don’t count? Why do you need to make up lies about sex worker rights activists like me? You said that I exploited young girls- but what young girls have I EVER exploited? Either you offer proof of your allegations (of which there is none) or you apologize for your lie. I am waiting.
Norma, please don’t equate yourself, and all you have to say, with StellaMarr…she is just an unfortunate soul with a compulsion to seek attention and impose control on her environment…she may have been a prostitute at some point, but that probably has little or no bearing on anything she says.
Don’t let her get to you.
Actually Norma Jean you were convicted of pandering, which is a synonym for pimping. As a survivor of prostitution I have a problem with convicted pimps saying they are advocating on behalf of the women in prostitution. I believe its wrong for convicted pimps to try to assume the identity of a prostitute in order to advocate for legislation that will protect pimp profits. Usually these women are just advocating for their own profits through the sexual exploitation of other women.
It’s an important issue. You admit on your own website that you went to jail for and were convicted of pandering.
Pandering is pimping. What’s more you were doing this while you were a police officer. Many prostituted women have had police officers pay key roles in the trafficking/pimping, and they use their position to intimidate the prostituted women and make them believe that if they can’t go to the cops for help. So a police officer who was convicted of pimping is just about the worst advocate for prostituted women that I can imagine.
I dont’ know why everyone keeps making such a big deal about Melissa Farley with me. I’ve never met her. I am a survivor of prostitution and my voice is my own.
I’m certainly not going to be intimidated by a police officer madam who’s been convicted of pimping.
Here’s proof of your conviction:
http://tinyurl.com/6tqaom7
So now we know that you are a liar for saying that I lied about it.
Why Norma…did you find a way of life you found less stressful and more profitable and share that information with someone you believed to be a friend?
YOU NAUGHTY PERSON!!!
I hate pimps, like poison, but I was always taught that pimps were parasites who lived off the earnings of hookers, not people who shared what they saw as positive opportunities with others…
(Incidentally, has anyone ever told you how incredibly beautiful you were…like a movie star…or is it true that you all look that way in LA?)
But serious now…what you did was young and silly, and you should have had more sense, and I am sure you know it only too well by now…but as pimping goes I reckon it was right there alongside Jesus supping with prostitutes and tax collectors.
Hey, you lying idiot, I was convicting of 1 count of pandering which is NOT pimping- it is “encouraging a person to commit an act of prostitution.” The only MONEY involved was the $100 that I was PAYING to my client to see the 50 year old (this is a young woman????? I WAS 34 at the time and she was 50) ugly hag. You should know that I wrote a book about the whole thing, so obviously I am not hiding anything, including my real name. In fact, it was because I was writing a book about police corruption relating to prostitution that I was even charged with pandering- even the 50 year old hag said that she wanted to stop me from writing a book about police corruption when she was on the witness stand. It was the headline of the Daily News article the next day “Officer wants to stop Call Girl’s Book.”
Pimping, on the other hand, is living off the earnings of a prostitute in full or in part… which is what the LAPD did when they took my prostitute money for my car payment. You can see the interview with Ed Bradley on ’60 Minutes’ here: http://www.policeprostitutionandpolitics.com/videos/
Pandering is NOT pimping in ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM…. Pandering is what two prostitutes who work together do when one calls the other to join her with a client… pandering is what anyone does who shares a phone number with a client… pimping is being paid for introducing a client to a prostitute or vice versa… but it is NOT the same as pandering, so stop lying- you Farley Minion. EVERY prostitute panders if she does a double with a client- so are you going to call every prostitute who ever did a double a ‘pimp’ so that you can discredit what they say?
Pandering is pimping Norma Jean. You aren’t a prostitute. If you had any sincerity about helping prostituted women as an activist you would acknowledge your conviction, not deny it, not pretend it isn’t what it is. Pandering is the legal term for pimping.
Pandering is NOT the legal term for pimping… the legal term for pimping is PIMPING and the legal term for PANDERING IS PANDERING, but if you weren’t an idiot, you’d know that because you’d be able to look it up in the California Penal Code where it defines BOTH and each is a separate offense… and I certainly do not deny my conviction, and I was MOST certainly a prostitute- because that’s what the law says about women like me… so you lying idiot, please do your homework before you start lying about us sex worker rights activists.. because if I wasn’t a prostitute, then you CERTAINLY were not.
You were a police officer convicted of pandering, which means the same thing as pimping.
The law does not say panderers are prostitutes. I’ve read the penal code. I am not talking about legal terms, I am talking about the meaning of the word as it’s understood in speech.
I’ve said what I need to say here.
Here’s the definition of pander from the Oxford Dictionaries:
pander
Pronunciation: /ˈpandə/
verb
[no object] (pander to)
gratify or indulge (an immoral or distasteful desire or taste or a person with such a desire or taste): newspapers are pandering to people’s baser instincts
noun
dated
a pimp.
archaic a person who assists the immoral desires or evil designs of others: the lowest panders of a venal press
Origin:
late Middle English (as a noun): from Pandare, the name of a character in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (see Pandarus). The verb dates from the early 17th century
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pander
The conviction was for pandering, you blithering idiot. You are still a liar. And an evil one at that.
Pandering is a synonym for pimping. I’m not talking about the penal code, I’m talking about what the word actually means.
This is from the Collins English dictionar’s definition of panderer:
1. a person who caters for vulgar desires, esp in order to make money
2. a person who procures a sexual partner for another; pimp
This is a list of words that mean the same thing as pander, from the thesaurus:
Noun 1. pander – someone who procures customers for whores (in England they call a pimp a ponce)
fancy man, pandar, panderer, pimp, procurer, ponce
England – a division of the United Kingdom
offender, wrongdoer – a person who transgresses moral or civil law
procuress – a woman pimp
whoremaster, whoremonger – a pimp who procures
The fact you called me a liar rather than acknowledging that you were convicted of pandering speaks volumes about your character.
Stella dear, I know I shouldn’t pick on people with emotional disabilities, because I can tell that your acute case of PTSD has intellectually incapacitated you. When someone like you exhibits a complete lack of ability to distinguish between their anus and a hole in the ground, it is likely that they not only are suffering from their secondary ailment, but that there is a deeper, more fundamentally problematic mental disorder with which you are afflicted; I would have to say, based on my 60 years worth of observing my fellow man that you suffer from a bad case of Faecal Encephalopathy. Unfortunately there is no treatment and no cure.
Symptoms of this ailment are the belief that one can alter the known meaning of words to suit an ideological agenda. Those afflicted with this terrible disease believe they can simply rewrite established laws and use legal terms interchangeably, terms like “pimping” and “pandering” which have entirely different legal meanings, and which anyone with half a brain can research and find. They deny that there are very real differences between rape and consensual sex, between adult and child prostitution, between force and choice, thereby sidestepping any real dialogue about what constitutes ‘sex work’ and ‘sex slavery.’ They use deceit and dishonesty to discredit their enemies, because they cannot refute what their enemies say. They can’t be bothered to investigate their allegations against someone because the truth doesn’t matter to them.
And if you think that you’ve rid yourself of your pimps, you are very much mistaken. Your new pimps have PhDs. You mimic their words and ideological bovine excrement, saying whatever nonsense they feed you- because you are still locked into the mindset of a victim, which I don’t deny you were. Once you were free of the pimps who sold you for sex, you were scooped up by the academic pimps who saw your vulnerability as a way to manipulate you into being their little dancing monkey and they pimp you out to sell your ‘tragedy porn’ to raise money for their ‘rescue’ and ‘research’ mission.
As an aside, if you are able to research, you will find that not only have I NOT ever denied being convicted of pandering (NOT an interchangeable term for pimping, which is a separate law with a much different definition), I actually have spent the past 28 years publicly discussing my conviction, the reason I was charged with such a ‘crime’ (for writing a book about police corruption, which even the ‘victim’ stated – under oath- was the reason she set me up: http://www.policeprostitutionandpolitics.com/pdfs_all/NJ%20Legal%20Docs%20All/Officer_Testifies_she_wanted_to_stop_NJ_Book.pdf ) and why I wasn’t going to allow the police to stop me from speaking out. My trial judge in the interview with Mr. Ed Bradley (on ‘60 Minutes’) talked about the political reasons I was being prosecuted- which had nothing to do with pandering OR prostitution. I was prosecuted for daring to expose the corruption in the Hollywood Division where I worked for most of my 10 year career as a civilian traffic officer (before there were female police officers), because I went against the code of silence. Everything I say here is a matter of record- my case was completely documented by the media. Anyone can look it up. Saying it is anything else only makes you look stupid.
Norma Jean, pandering is synonymous with pimping as the word is defined in the Oxford dictionary. I don’t look stupid, but your denying your conviction at the beginning of the thread, as well as calling me evil doesn’t make you look too good. This isn’t the only place you’ve attacked me. As a prostitution of survivor it’s my right to use the vocabulary of prostitution. Again, here’s the definition of pander from the Oxford dictionaries
pander
Pronunciation: /ˈpandər/
noun
dated
a pimp.
Pimp is a synonym for pander:
http://www.synonyms.net/synonym/pander
Synonyms, Thesaurus & Antonyms of ‘pander’ Princeton’s WordNet
1. (verb) pimp, procurer, panderer, pander, pandar, fancy man, ponce
someone who procures customers for whores (in England they call a pimp a ponce)
Synonyms: pander, paramour, procurer, ponce, securer, panderer, pandar, pimp, fancy man
Origin:
late Middle English (as a noun): from Pandare, the name of a character in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (see Pandarus). The verb dates from the early 17th century
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pander?region=us
And here’s the definition of “pimp” in the same dictionary:
“a man who controls prostitutes and arranges clients for them, taking part of their earnings in return.”
Clearly that does not describe Norma Jean (and I don’t just mean the “man” part). Not only didn’t she take any of the earnings in return, she paid money. So under the dictionary definition she is not a pimp.
And the dictionary definition doesn’t matter in any case, when you say that someone was “convicted of” something. A person can only be convicted of a crime under the penal code, not a crime under the dictionary.
I’ve asked Norma Jean again to abide by the comments policy and I’m asking you again to abide by it. No more false allegations. This is the last time I’m going to ask.
I do really appreciate you’re trying to silence me and erase my experiences on the basis that I’ve been through trauma. It’s so lovely to be villefied for the horrible things other people have done to you. Thank you for that.
You seek to silence anyone with an opposing opinion by ferreting out pimps (who most escorts in surveys say they have never met in real life – only in movies),, and redefining anyone who disagrees with you as The Enemy or speaking in False Consciousness.
It’s not Wendy who wants to silence others; it’s obviously and most aggressively you.
When you allow open comments on your poorly trafficked blog, I’ll begin to reconsider this evaluation.
Stella, like her mentor, Ms. Farley, deals in lies. While I feel very sorry for her history, that does not give her license to lie about people. Perhaps she made up her history too- because when one makes up stories about other people, it is not beyond reason to believe she made up stories about herself in order to engender sympathy for herself. Just sayin’
We can’t ALL be suffering from a false consciousness, Stella. But clearly Stella suffers from a lack of credibility.
Norma, I just flipped through your link to look at your page and, seeing it, I can assure you that your time and contribution is FAR too precious and valuable to be wasted on a silly, histrionic little madam.
Stop letting her get to you…she isn’t worth it…
I have met pimps, and most of them have scars prove it…but I have never had a pleasant chat with a pimp on a sunday evening, the way I did with Norma Jean and hope to do again.
StellaMarr, the unfortunate fact is that you *are* a cipher (or more) seeking pity…but only secondary to your seeking attention…your account (accounts?) of prostitution is heavily melodramatised, loaded with stereotypes and not even mildly convincing…
That is hardly my fault.
…and I am *CERTAINLY NOT* a survivor of prostitution, prostitution, however unpleasant, was the only means available to me to survive a lot of far worse things….
Elaine your insults don’t hurt me. I wish you well.
The was no insult StellaMarr, that was me straining all I have to be polite out of respect for Wendy.
I am not insulting you StellaMarr, I am trying to be as polite as I can
If you reread what you wrote, you’ll see why I chose that word. Wishing you well. I’ve said what I need to here.
I am usually fully aware of *why* you say the things you do, and far from impressed. I seriously wish you would just shut up and find another issue to exploit instead. i do not think you are fooling anyone.
I’m not tryng to fool anyone. This is my last comment here. I wish you well.
Vegan Vixen hasn’t attacked me. Don’t attack me on her behalf.
Wow, I can’t believe someone said a madame is not a pimp…. That is hilarious. Actually, wait, no – it is ridiculous.
Yeah, it is ridiculous. Thank you.
What is ridiculous is trying to use the dictionary to define what the law defines much differently. California Penal code says this:
Pimping:
266h. (a) Except as provided in subdivision (b), any person who,
knowing another person is a prostitute, lives or derives support or
maintenance in whole or in part from the earnings or proceeds of the
person’s prostitution, or from money loaned or advanced to or charged
against that person by any keeper or manager or inmate of a house or
other place where prostitution is practiced or allowed, or who
solicits or receives compensation for soliciting for the person, is
guilty of pimping, a felony, and shall be punishable by imprisonment
in the state prison for three, four, or six years.
(b) Any person who, knowing another person is a prostitute, lives
or derives support or maintenance in whole or in part from the
earnings or proceeds of the person’s prostitution, or from money
loaned or advanced to or charged against that person by any keeper or
manager or inmate of a house or other place where prostitution is
practiced or allowed, or who solicits or receives compensation for
soliciting for the person, when the prostitute is a minor, is guilty
of pimping a minor, a felony, and shall be punishable as follows:
(1) If the person engaged in prostitution is a minor 16 years of
age or older, the offense is punishable by imprisonment in the state
prison for three, four, or six years.
(2) If the person engaged in prostitution is under 16 years of
age, the offense is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison
for three, six, or eight years.
Pandering: 266i. (a) Except as provided in subdivision (b), any person who
does any of the following is guilty of pandering, a felony, and shall
be punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for three, four,
or six years:
(1) Procures another person for the purpose of prostitution.
(2) By promises, threats, violence, or by any device or scheme,
causes, induces, persuades, or encourages another person to become a
prostitute.
(It is part 2 that I was charged with…. encouraging a person (Penny) to engage in an act of prostitution)
But of course, people suffering with that dreadful disease Faecal Encephalopathy are not likely to be able to figure out how to access real information and rely solely on their academic pimps for definitions.
Under the law, when I sent my prostitution money (which I made selling sexual services to my clients) to the Los Angeles Police Credit Union to pay my monthly car payment, they were legally my pimps- because I let them know that the money I sent them was made through my sexual services. Every cop who received a dividend from the credit union was my pimp. None of them ever arrested themselves…
I’m not trying to use the dictionary to define the legal code. I’m saying that as a formerly prostituted woman I would have called what you were convicted of doing pimping. And I have a right to use that word.
Comparing pimping to a credit union is minimizing that devastating harms many pimps inflict on prostituted women worldwide.
The only point I’m trying to make here is that prostitued and formerly prostituted women have the right to request that no one who has ever been a pimp or admitted to being a pimp (meaning madam, panderer, manager, brothel owner, etc.) be allowed to speak for them and assume the identity of a prostituted person for activist or business promotional purposes.
That is my point. It stands.
Stella,
With al due respect, by conflating terms and using bizarre, meaningless terms like “prostituted woman” to stand in for prostitute, you clearly display an agenda. You have delberately bent words to lend a moral judgment to the terms we would use to communicate basic concepts. This is fundamentally dishonest.
Casual search on internet:
The difference between a pimp and a madam is generally in how they recruit their workers.
A pimp will start by showering a prospective worker with gifts and money and try to strike up a love interest type of relationship, perhaps even using ecstasy to prompt the hormonal feelings of the women. Then the pimp would transition to laying a guilt trip by emphasizing how much he’s already given and would eventually present prostitution as a possible revenue stream, he may also use drugs to build up a dependence as well. The transition is gradual and the women often committed themselves to such work before they realize what has happened, essentially rationalizing themselves into prostitution.
A madam is usually a former prostitute who decides that it is a business and either sets up with other like minded prostitutes perhaps to initially share the costs of an in-call, for mutual safety, for mutual legal defense and to provide clients with variety. The recruitment is either a business arrangement or an attempt to protect a young women from some of the same experiences that they have had. Some of the more questionable recruitment’s may be rationalized as rescuing a young girl from pimps.
In general, I don’t mind the existence of the business like model to prostitution but object to the psychological, chemical manipulations and physical abuse of the pimp model. I believe that legalizing prostitution would encourage the madam model and drive the pimp model out of business via competition. Continued criminalization of prostitution just leads to more drug use, physical abuse and predation on young teens. Of course, this is just my opinion.
…
In places where prostitution is legal (such as Sydney, Australia where I live), prostitutes have easier access to medical services (to control STDs) and are able to negotiate wages and conditions with more power, because they are not faced with the threat of criminal charges.
Re the Vegan Vixen et al — you can’t speak for them.
Oh, I’m quite happy to let her speak for herself. This is what she said: “I don’t agree with conflating all madams with abusive pimps.” That view is no less valid than yours.
It really bothers me the way advocates trying to be so divisive, and force survivors to ‘choose sides.”
I’m not forcing anyone to do anything. You’re entirely free to ignore everything I say.
I don’t have to accept ciphers as survivors. And it is not your right to attack me for questioning.
And now you’re doing it again – denying the legitimacy of someone else’s declared experiences, only two paragraphs after (again) deploring the fact that the same had been done to you. It’s amazing that you don’t see how contradictory this is.
You have ample evidence that I support the Nordic model
Declaring your support for a policy in the course of an internet discussion is not the same as actively campaigning for it (particularly when that policy isn’t even the main focus of the discussion). The people who you are discussing it with have no power to bring the policy in. Many of us don’t even live in the same country. And I never questioned your involvement in support groups for women with traumatic experiences in the sex industry. What I questioned was the amount of time you spend going onto websites to argue with supporters of full decriminalisation, rather than using that time in ways that might actually convince your legislators to bring in partial decriminalisation, as you say you want to happen.
Vegan Vixen hasn’t attacked me. Don’t attack me on her behalf.
So, now it’s attacking you just to point out that someone has an opinion that differs from yours.
PS – suddenly do not seem to be able to post on another thread…no idea why not? Did I do something wrong?
Sorry Eileen, Word Press has an overactive spam filter. I’ve fished your comments out of it now.
And just a warning to everyone that I’m going to start enforcing the comments policy if there are any more verifiably false accusations or personal insults thrown around.
I wonder which word it didn’t like?
Probably the capitalised “naughty person”. 🙂
It did get really poisonous last night though…I was just trying to make fun of the spite for Norma…she is a really fascinating person who shares my compulsion to jump, head first, into hot water in pursuit of justice…and that has got her caught up in a lot more trouble than sex work in her life.
I thank Eileen for the comments- I hope I shall always be a naughty person… because I’d much rather be that than ‘nice’ in the currently politically correct point of view. While I personally have worked for a number of very wonderful madams, I was never a madam myself because I simply don’t have the business acumen to negotiate payments. Which is why I felt more comfortable working for a madam than working on my own. I did not know how to ask for the money. The clients to whom I was sent already knew what to pay me and they all paid upfront without my asking them. It made it SO much easier for me. I gladly paid the madam a percentage for arranging my encounters for me, as she was taking the bigger risk of pimping and pandering (two different laws), and faced serious prison time if she didn’t cooperate with the cops when caught. One madam I did not work for was Madam Alex- who had been a police informant for 25 years and who was lauded for her work for the LAPD. http://www.iswface.org/images/alexinformant90.jpg
The LAPD PAID prostitutes to have sex with other suspected criminals, which made them panderers, didn’t it? The High Court said it was OKAY to do that…http://www.iswface.org/images/CourtOKssex3-87.gif
and it is okay if the cops have sex with prostitutes in order to arrest them: http://www.iswface.org/images/copscanhavesex.jpg
I hope you remain a naughty person too Norma Jean, but please abide by the comments policy in this blog 😀
Stella Mar is obviously a full-blown narcissist. She is spewing tragedy porn in an attempt to be Holier than Thou with everyone she interrogates; she has never once listened to anyone’s objections to what she says, and seems to ignore anything remotely rational said to her.
In fact, she is acting like a prototypical religious zealot. Her language, her tone, her complete and total self-righteousness and dismissal of anything Not Her is characteristic of the worst religious demagogues.
I’m sure of two things.
1) I’m not the first person to have noticed this; I’m sure many people in Stella Mar’s life have said this, so it will ring true to her;
and
2) nobody who ever reads what she writes can possibly take her at her word. Very little of her story is remotely credible. She has obviously embellished beyond all possible recognition; whatever difficulties she’s experienced are lost in a hagiographic, delusional morass of half-remembered half-dreamed sanctimony.
And this is all that really needs to be said about Stella Mar.
Sadly, this also says far more about her than anything else. Calling her a zombie or robot programmed by religious cult leaders would be to insult some very articulate robots.
Sorry about the insult. I didn’t see that message.
I don’t withdraw the sanctimony comment, though. When dealing with these issues, people should be open to other voices; Stella Mar’s sanctimonious attitude reeks of self-righteousness and belligerence.
It just set me off.
I apologize.
Actually, now I know what Stella Mar’s comments remind me of:
The hallucinogenic anti-semitic tracts that blame Jews for bad weather and see conspiracies behind every stone; they go on and on and on about the meaning of X or Y when they’re clearly deluding themselves. What’s tragic is that these people wholeheartedly believe what they’re saying; yo almost need to pity this type of rabid anti-semite.
Her writing uses the same style, format, and tone. And her language bears a striking resemblance to the language used by religious fundamentalists; the comparison is apt. Her rhetorical style is the same: Denial, focus on Naming the Evil Among Us, and then crying martyr–
A martyr, because disagreeing with Stella Mar means you’re silencing her. Opposing her views means you’re taking away her voice. It makes no difference: She can dismiss some prostitutes as madams, and pimps, and therefore devils; she can silence others through intimidation and false concern and pity – the concern that a religious zealot has for someone he or she is trying to convert, not genuine concern. The nice facade is meant to hide an agenda.
If anyone else notices the similarity in approach, I’d like to know I’m not seeing things.
You certainly are not “seeing things”, I see it too…but I do not see any sincere fanaticism…just a lot of cold blooded, self serving manipulation.
Gorbachev,
I think “tragedy porn” is an excellent expression. Because it is all written with so much relish, sexual connotations, chick lit connotations, fetish and salacious detail…like an attempt at a kind of inverted seduction.
I find it really invasive and uncomfortable to read.
Even if any of what she says is true she is just as responsible for her choices as the rest of us.
I hated sex work…I will go further and say that I still have what I would call a “morbid fear” of ever having to do it again…but even so…I wasn’t “coerced” by a pimp (pity the one that would try…I am stronger and have a lot more sense than that!) and I certainly was not coerced by my clients.
I *CHOSE* to sell sex, because, in my circumstances, the alternative was far worse and, realistically, unlikely to involve survival…now that is a horrid situation that did not offer *me* much realistic choice, but my clients were not responsible for that, it was my choice, and if it were not for my clients that last resort would not have existed and it is unlikely I would have found another way to survive at all, let alone as mentally intact as I did!
Most of my clients were perfectly ok people who would rather pay a woman than just use her like a toy…they mostly were not to my taste as men, or even as people, but I am not about to denigrate and demonise them after they and their money have served their purpose in my life.
They had NO IDEA how desperate things were for me…it would neither have been fair, nor made sense to tell them. I am absolutely certain if I had told them they would never have come near me again, which would not have been much good to me either!
“Narcissist” is also a good term, because I see no evidence that Stella Marr has ever been “programmed” by anyone, nor even that she really understands or believe what she is saying, it seems, rather, to me that she is just jumping on the current moral feminism bandwagon for her 15 minutes fame.
Thanks for this comment Eileen, and for your comments above. I made a “do not feed the troll” decision about other material above, but I was really happy to read your comments. The idea of “tragedy porn” as a tactic for avoiding taking responsibility for one’s decisions is a suggestive one. (I read an article about a year back called something like “perfect victims and real survivors” along those lines, except about migrant sex workers… I don’t remember the author’s name, though.)
Jayashri Srikantiah. Good article.
Wendy, it’s very telling that you are allowing your blog to be a place where a domestic sex trafficking/prostitution survivor is villefied. It’s also very telling that you allow someone like Gorbachev (probably a man, as it’s Russian male form of the name) to engage in such hideous attacks.
I find it especially egregious that Gorbachev has compared me to an anti-Semite due to the fact that I don’t think pimps should be allowed to say they are prostitutes.
Here’s a recent post on my blog where I discuss Primo Levi, one of my heroes
http://secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/primo-levi-on-truth/
It’s very telling that you are continuing to engage in vilification and attacks on a former sex worker. Your last post went into spam and it’s going to stay there. Whatever moral right you may think you have to use your own preferred terminology, you’re subject to the same laws as the rest of us and one of those laws says that you cannot willfully and deliberately misrepresent someone’s criminal record in order to harm their reputation. That’s called defamation. If you want to risk finding out whether any court would accept your “language of survivors” defence you’ll have to do it somewhere else. My blog is not going to be a test case, especially for a defence that would probably lose.
I’m going to close down comments completely for this post now, as I don’t see anything more worthwhile coming out of it. Consider this discussion over, too, I won’t be allowing it to continue in the comments to any other posts. That’s a warning to everyone.
Stella,
You’re hallucinating like a rabid anti-semite or a religious fundamentalist. Your arguments all reek of shaming language, distracting non-sequiturs, overweening narcissism and puffed-up self-importance. Most of all, they smell like self-righteous exceptionalism: You are unique, you have a unique voice and that unique voice is more valuable than anyone else’s, and that your means of understanding the world is the only means.
That you can’t see your obvious sanctimony and self-righteous narcissism is testament to a general failure in your recovery from sex work.
Though, I have to say, on balance, your rather elaborated story sounds somewhat hard to believe. Not calling you a liar; but your story is very, very hard to believe.
It sounds like “tragedy porn”. You will likely ignore what I say, because yes, I’m male. But not being a punter or a pimp, I’m just a male. Do males not get to have any opinions at all? I’m no misogynist.
I dated a “whore” for a very weird year some years ago. I was. in effect, her boyfriend. She went through some tragic events in her life, but your stories sound like they’re out of some movie that was fingered for being too unbelievable even for hollywood.
So you’ll excuse me I hope if I go with the others —
You sound like a troll, and not a very amusing one. Worse, disingenuous, misleading and exaggerating.
You do prostitutes no favors at all.