Ok not sure if I'm in right section but.......one thing that really infuriates me is that it is ALWAYS the negative aspect of escorting/prostitution that is found on the media.  It drives me crazy sometimes, no one ever hears about the other side......people who actually do for ok maybe primarily economic reasons, but I for example enjoy most of my encounters.
I'm not looking for stories on individual escorts, because frankly who would talk, but just somehow a little balance..........yeh in my dreams!

A HUGE problem is that the media and Joe Public think/assume that prostitution is illegal. I know someone who did a mag thing last year about "squashing" - the magazine/journo had to doctor the story as they weren't allowed to mention ANYTHING about sex, ESPECIALLY not being paid for sex or sexual services, as "escorting is illegal" and "we can't be seen to be promoting prostitution".

The most pos has been the Belle de Jour series, but that pretty much became fiction once ITV had waved their wand over it...

A HUGE problem is that the media and Joe Public think/assume that prostitution is illegal. I know someone who did a mag thing last year about "squashing" - the magazine/journo had to doctor the story as they weren't allowed to mention ANYTHING about sex, ESPECIALLY not being paid for sex or sexual services, as "escorting is illegal" and "we can't be seen to be promoting prostitution".

The most pos has been the Belle de Jour series, but that pretty much became fiction once ITV had waved their wand over it...

Yes I know; I mean I thought that before I started doing it too - and that was because of all the negative crap thats on about it.  All I ever used to hear about was......Yorkshire Ripper (back in the day) or that guy in was it Suffolk?  And trafficking of course.  Yes all these are terrible of course.
And the derogatory/supercilious manner it was talked about if it was ever touched upon and even if it somehow crops up in conversation with people I know (no one knows what I do).....

But its not all like that and .there are lots of ordinary girls like us who  yes put up with a lot of crap but also  like it on the whole.  No one is forcing us.  I would love to be able to say proudly what I do, but I don't dare.

Yeah, like Tasty said, the reality would be quite boring compared to how we are portrayed.
I'm from Suffolk, and yeah, the murders happened in Ipswich, and I remember all the headlines screaming 'drugs!' and 'prostitutes', the actual murders of women seemed to pale in significance (in the view of the tabloids)
I am not trafficked, nor do I do this job out of desperation, and resent the assumptions made by 'lobbyists' clamouring to 'end prostitution NOW!'.  I would like to see an end to women being taken advantage of, but nobody is taking advantage of me, I am perfectly capable of deciding what to do with my own body!
Mass generalizations never help anybody, and really, it's bloody offensive assuming we all need 'help', and maybe the women who really do need help would get it if these moralists were more specific about who they wanted to 'help'!

Nat.......absolutely my feelings in a nutshell, also have they forgotten it takes two to tango, why doesn't the client need this 'help' that some so patronisingly insist on for us WGs

I agree, too - the moralists who shriek about the evils of prostitution always seem to think only women can be negatively affected by it, or be doing it "for the wrong reasons", or be "damaged" or whatever. I'm not sure why they completely ignore men's issues and problems that clients can be dealing with. I think it comes from the archaic idea that women are delicate and must be protected at all times, while men are robust but moronic and simply want to stick their penis into things at all times. Both ideas equally offensive and quite destructive, really. I always wonder why "save the women from being able to make their own choices!"-types don't see the hypocrisy of their harmful, old-fashioned views.

Now while there are obviously plenty of happy, content clients out there who are not suffering in any way relating to their involvement in the industry as a purchaser of sexual services, I think there are also men who do have issues surrounding their forays into buying sex. I think we've all met at least one client who seemed uneasy, sad or even depressed about his life, and saw his buying of sex as a negative thing? I'm guessing it's a pretty complicated matter and I'm hardly qualified to examine it really, but I do think it's just as important to look at whether men are happy as it is to look at whether women are happy. Not to see one as "victim" and the other, therefore, as "perpetrator".

I found this link a few days ago: http://lettersfromjohns.blogspot.com/ Obviously, being online and anonymous, it's hardly the most valid source of information. But if any of those letters are true then it's very interesting. I personally would be far more interested, were I a researcher or journalist, in looking at how men feel about the sex industry and about their own sexuality and masculinity etc in today's world, than about going, "OMG! Woman who need money turn to a lucrative job in order to earn that money? BY GOLLY! Astounding!!1!" as they all seem to prefer to do.

Just had a look at the letters from johns, ^  hmmm, that will take some digesting.
I was thinking about the less savoury forums, and the posters seem to have a particular dislike for women who post on this forum, calling us 'feminazis' amongst other names.  Is that because this is a site aimed at helping WGs and the majority of saafe posters come across as very capable of making their own choices, so we don't fit in with the stereotype of the 'victim', so are perceived as 'not naice'; (like when you tell somebody 'no' and they say 'but I thought you were a nice girl'...
Compared to how long sex has been bought and sold, prostitutes having a voice is relatively new, and I suppose a lot of people don't want to hear it, and then to top it all off, we don't fit in with the stereotypes they had of us...
I know Belle du Jour was far fetched, especially when T.V. script writers got their hands on it, but it does tell of a woman making an informed choice who doesn't resent being a prostitute.
A comment I get from clients sometimes is 'how come you're an escort? You seem so nice!' I just smile and say 'that's because I am nice...'
I've rambled off topic haven't I, it was just an observation I think, of how human nature likes to put everybody into neat little boxes.

I was thinking about the less savoury forums, and the posters seem to have a particular dislike for women who post on this forum, calling us 'feminazis' amongst other names.  Is that because this is a site aimed at helping WGs and the majority of saafe posters come across as very capable of making their own choices, so we don't fit in with the stereotype of the 'victim', so are perceived as 'not naice'; (like when you tell somebody 'no' and they say 'but I thought you were a nice girl'...

I think you're bang on. Some punters visit WGs because they have a skewed view of women and they can't cope with us having opinions and making our own decisions. That makes it fairly unlikely they'll get sex without paying, so we step in. But then they want to push boundaries or they read these forums and they discover that - horror - even their prossie want to be treated on equal terms. Thus the poor little dears ranting on their forums.

For a very funny funny satire piece on the 'dear me, college students are entering sex work' panic:

Female Grads now have Option of Paying Back Student Loans in Sexual Acts...I found this a while ago and couldn't stop laughing.

http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s2i83194#this

I think most of the positive portrayals are created by people within the sex industry. I really do like these two blogs (and I really enjoyed SPREAD magazine when it was out)

http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com
http://titsandsass.com

The former is a bit too...black and white,  a bit too Camila Paglia on gender, and a bit too authoritarian-happy-hooker-ey. But it's still funny, witty and worth a read.

There's an interview in the LA times with the actor who plays a male escort in Hung talking about his own sex work as a broke actor...

"Hey, you grow up as an artist in a big city, as James Dean said, you're going to have one arm tied behind your back if you don't accept people's sexual flavors. You know, when I was a kid out here in L.A., I was homeless, I didn't have any money and I was living in my car. I was 18. I wasn't averse to going down to Santa Monica Boulevard and letting a guy buy me a sandwich. Know what I mean?"

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-conversation-20111002,0,2768723.story

And this article critiquing the language in anti-prostitution advocacy:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/23/prostitution-sex-trade-demand-myth?newsfeed=true

And two articles, one in the huffington post, one in NYC's village voice critiquing the trafficking panic...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronald-weitzer/human-trafficking-myths_b_935366.html

http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-06-29/news/real-men-get-their-facts-straight-sex-trafficking-ashton-kutcher-demi-moore/

The former, by the way, is by an academic by Weitzer. He really is the only academic I can found that can write and talk about sex work in a completely unbiased, unpoliticized way.

The article:  "Sociology of Sex Work," Annual Review of Sociology, v. 35: 213-234.
(for free on the site) is definitely worth a read, or worth pointing anyone who has any biased and stereotyped understanding of prostitution broadly. anyways, every time I read an article about end demand, trafficking or the swedish model, I get intensely irritated and want to I don't know, create some sort of certification for reporting on sex work or advocating for something relating to sex work. Which would basically involve reading the aforementioned article every night for thirty nights until it seeps in, having conversations with a dozen individuals in different countries and sectors...

http://departments.columbian.gwu.edu/sociology/people/90