My Experience as a Craigslist Hooker.

My Experience as a Craigslist Hooker: A Requiem for Cragislist Erotic Services

Ester Amy FischerWriter, Novelist, Author, "American Courtesan"

Posted: June 2, 2009 11:15 AM


On Wed. May 13, Craigslist announced that it will shut down its erotic services section, marking the end of an era. With the negative publicity generated by the Craigslist Killer and a stampede of outraged attorney generals calling for its demise, Craigslist Erotic Services will be no more. This is a requiem. And a plea for a rational discourse about sex work.

I know it seems strange to eulogize what was basically an online red light district, but in my experience there was a brief moment when Craigslist Erotic Services transformed both the meaning and the means of being a sex worker. There one could open a virtual lemonade stand which operated according to self-imposed rules and regulations. Anonymity was almost guaranteed. Craigslist Erotic Services made sex work accessible to people who would never have considered doing it otherwise. I was one of those people.

It was the autumn of 2003. I'd come back to New York after an extended period away with the realization that yet again, I was flat broke. A struggling writer and artist, I'd been earning a living as a licensed massage therapist. I'd used Craigslist once before to find a subletter for my Brooklyn apartment. That had worked out incredibly well, so I decided to advertise my massage business there (in the therapeutic services section). It seemed ideal.

I confess that at that time, I was pretty disappointed with my love life. Like many New York females in their 30s, I still hadn't found Mr. Right. I was becoming increasingly frustrated at his failure to manifest. Love was desired, but seemed elusive. In the meantime, I dated. Oh boy, did I date. I was a professional dater and a longtime veteran of internet dating. I was on JDate when people found it eccentric. And I was having a lot of crappy experiences with men of dubious integrity. It had occurred to me more than once that I might as well be getting paid.

Thrown into this mix of loneliness and financial need was aggravation, aggravation that when I did begin advertising my massage business in the therapeutic services section of Craigslist, all anyone seemed to want was sex. I was indignant. I considered myself a healer. I had gone to massage school. I had studied a variety of healing modalities and been praised by my clients as being extraordinarily gifted. I could cure sciatica and alleviate anxiety. I could soothe PMS and increase cervical mobility. I just wanted a few good regular clients. I had never blended my massage work with anything remotely sexual.

Nor had I ever so much as glanced at the erotic services section of Craigslist. But one day it came to my attention that many "providers" who should have been posting in the erotic services section were posting in the therapeutic section. I wrote to Craig Newmark. He graciously responded. He assured me that Craigslist would be more vigilant in removing misplaced ads. But for some reason, after that, I kept looking at the erotic services section. Something had snapped. I never would have expected it, but reading the ads had begun to turn me on.

I just want to pause here (in part because I can already hear the voices of my detractors and also because I don't want to appear insensitive to any human suffering). I recognize that I'm a privileged, educated woman who could have done many things for a living, but opted to do sex work largely because it was exciting to me. I recognize that there are women who do it reluctantly and out of necessity. I recognize that there are also women who are forced into doing it. I recognize that violence against sex workers and indeed against all women is a real threat and a dark shame. However, this piece is not about that; this is about me.

And what happened to me during the fall of 2003 was that boundaries I had heretofore firmly established and carefully guarded were becoming blurred. The combination of financial need, dissatisfaction with my love life, sexual frustration and some age-old fantasy that was stirred up in me from God-only-knows-where was taking over.

My world was changing.

The first time I had sex with a client it was entirely unpremeditated. A runner training for the New York Marathon, he'd come for what I thought would be a therapeutic massage. I was encouraged when he'd contacted me. I already had a number of regular clients who were distance runners and I found them to be very reliable -- the best of my clients.

He was trim, nice looking, clean-cut, but seemed a little nervous as I led him into my apartment. I tried to crack a couple jokes to set him at ease, then instructed him to disrobe and get onto the massage table -- underneath the towel, face down. The usual massage therapist schpeil. I left the room.

When I returned he was in position, so I began to massage him. I moved the towel out of the way and tucked it in slightly to cover his buttocks. Then I honed in on his legs since, from my experience with runners, legs are usually the trouble spot. His were long, lean, well-muscled.

But instead of relaxing, he continued to seem uncomfortable, squirming a little on the table, shifting his head in the face cradle.

"Do you not like the face cradle?" I asked.

"No, I want you to massage my whole body."

Perhaps I had been spending too much time on his legs. I began to massage his back and then his arms. But when I started to work on his hands, he suddenly grabbed mine and clasped them in his.

Now, it's not like anything like this had never happened to me before, but ordinarily I would have quickly diffused the situation. What made it different this time was that a little jolt of sexual arousal had seized and overwhelmed me. Maybe I had been thinking about it too much, maybe I had actually already unconsciously resolved that I would do it, but the next thing I knew, I was on the table, naked and he was massaging me.

When it was time for him to leave, he asked me how much he owed me. Now it was my turn to feel uncomfortable. I knew that I had given him extra, a lot extra (although we didn't have intercourse) and I wanted extra. But I was too ashamed to ask for it.

"Well, I usually charge $80, but you can tip me whatever you want."

He gave me $160 and at that moment, I realized I had gone down a path I would never be able to retrace. It had been easy, pleasurable even. I would move on from there to greater and greener pastures.

I read the erotic services section almost everyday, until I found an ad I wanted to answer, an ad for an ongoing arrangement. He was offering a very tidy sum: $3000/month for weekly meetings. I figured I had nothing to lose so I answered it, almost expecting to not hear back. When I did, I was floored. We had an email exchange over the course of the next few days. He wrote that although he was for the most part happily married, his relationship lacked "passion" and "eroticism." His writing was thoughtful and sincere. I became even more intrigued.

I sent him a series of incrementally more revealing photos with the head cropped off -- a virtual strip tease. When he asked to see my face, I told him that I'd have to talk to him on the phone first. He called from a real number, his work phone. The conversation reminded me of conversations I'd had during my internet dating days: we talked about ourselves, our hobbies. I told him about some of my art and writing projects.

We agreed that we would meet in public first and if I felt comfortable, I would give him a therapeutic massage. But since, at that time, my neighborhood hadn't been over run with cafés and condos, there really was nowhere to go. Through our communication, I'd grown comfortable enough with him to invite him over.

I fretted all day and changed my outfit several times in anticipation of his arrival. When I opened the door, he had a jacket draped over his arm and bemused expression on his face. He was in his mid-30s, very conservative looking, wearing a pin-striped oxford shirt and tidy, pleated khaki trousers.

At first I couldn't tell if he thought I was more or less beautiful than he'd imagined I'd be. But as we settled in to what would become our customary positions in my living room, I knew from the intensity of his gaze that I had him "hooked."

In a sense, I was "hooked" too. Not by him. He was, although pleasant looking and mild-mannered, a little bit dull. But I loved playing the seductress, I loved feeling him in my power. Exciting him excited me. The fantasy spurred me on.

We talked for a fairly long time and by the time we got down to the nitty gritty, I was very aroused. He gave me a huge orgasm, then a huge wad of bills. When he left, I was incredulous at my good fortune. "This is the best fucking job I ever had," I thought to myself.

Alan came to see me once or twice a week for a couple of months and then without warning stopped calling. I never knew why he'd lost interest, but I found myself a little distressed: not only from the loss of income I'd come to rely on, but also, whether or not I'd admit it to myself, I'd become a little attached. A friend who was a confidante at that time told me, "Dude's a john, not your boyfriend."

After that, I saw a few more men for both erotic massage and GFEs (girlfriend experiences). They were mostly decent chaps, the kind of guys I might have known in real life, the kind of guys I might have gone to college with. Well, actually over scotch and conversation after a "session," I discovered that one of them did go to college with me.

Never once did I feel that I was in physical danger, although I recognized the possibility. The internet afforded me the ability to screen potential clients. For every ad I posted, I usually received a hundred or so responses. I could be very discriminating, so most of the sex was actually quite hot. I treated it as an extension of dating. And actually, most of the men I met on Craiglsist Erotic Services treated me with more decency and consideration than many of the men I had previously been dating.

I didn't hawk my wares on Craigslist Erotic Services for terribly long, less than a year all told. And while I understand that this is not every woman's experience of being a sex worker, for me at that time in my life, it was liberating in certain ways. It made me feel relaxed with my body and allowed me to be experimental with my appetites. It liberated me from a part of myself that always tied or sought to tie sex to a deep emotional connection. It gave me insight into men and male sexuality that I hadn't had before.

But one thing it never gave me was the answer to a few burning questions:

Why can't we as a society have a rational, meaningful discourse about sex work, embracing all its nuances and contradictions?

How can work which never once made me feel exploited, injure and exploit so many other women?

Why does sex work seem to raise so many people's moral hackles, when what they should be angry about are the class distinctions which never once made me feel exploited?

And finally, why do we think that something which has never gone away can be eradicated by legislation or censorship?

My life as a "Craigslist hooker" ended when I fell in love, which was what I really wanted. Now Craigslist Erotic Services is gone. The providers and clients will undoubtedly move on. Perhaps into the therapeutic services section to irritate other earnest therapeutic massage practitioners like my one-time self. Perhaps the less fortunate will move onto the street where they will face even more grave danger.

5 Countries That Do It Better: How Sexual Prudery Makes America a Less Healthy and Happy Place

By Alex Henderson, AlterNet  Posted on April 12, 2012

To extreme social conservatives of the far right, the word “prude” is not an insult — it’s a badge of honor. “Prudes,” they would argue, should be upheld as exemplary role models because a sexually repressive society is also a society with fewer unplanned pregnancies and fewer sexually transmitted diseases. But not only do the facts not bear that out, they also demonstrate that the exact opposite is true. Countries that embrace many of the things social conservatives detest (comprehensive sex education, pro-gay legislation, nude or topless beaches, legal or decriminalized prostitution, adult entertainment) tend to be countries that have less sexual dysfunction than the United States, not more. And when one compares sexual attitudes in the United States to sexual attitudes in Western Europe, it becomes evident that there is a strong correlation between social conservatism and higher rates of teen pregnancy, abortion and sexually transmitted diseases.

The Christian Right would consider the following five European countries to be quite “permissive” when compared to the United States. All of them make a strong case for social liberalism and sexual openness.

1. The Netherlands
 
The Netherlands has a reputation for being one of the most pro-sex countries in the world, and it isn’t hard to understand why. From comprehensive sex education to legal prostitution (Amsterdam has one of Europe’s most famous red light districts) to nude and topless beaches, the Netherlands is a social conservative’s worst nightmare. On top of that, the Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalize gay marriage (the Netherlands legalized same-sex civil unions in 1998 and gay marriage in 2001). But while Rick Santorum would no doubt view Amsterdam and Rotterdam as a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, the reality is that all that sexual openness is having positive results in the Netherlands. Sociologist Amy Schalet (author of “Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens and the Culture of Sex” and a professor at the University of Massachusetts) has done extensive sex-related research on the United States and the Netherlands, often asserting that Americans would be much better off if they had the sexual openness of the Dutch.

And the data bears that out. The United Nations reported that in 2009, the Netherlands had a teen birth rate of 5.3 per 1,000 compared to 39.1 per 1,000 in the United States that year (teen birth rates provided by the United Nations, the Guttmacher Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Advocates for Youth and other organizations typically look at females in the 15–19 age group). Advocates for Youth has reported that the Netherlands had an abortion rate of 8.8 per 1,000 in 2006 compared to 14.8 per 1,000 in the United States in 2007 (abortion rates, as a rule, are based on the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44). And Advocates for Youth has also reported that in 2009, the United States had three times as many adults living with HIV or AIDS as the Netherlands (0.2 percent in the Netherlands compared to 0.6 percent in the United States). Also, in 2006, there were roughly 13 cases of gonorrhea per 100,000 Netherlands residents in the 15–19 age group compared to roughly 458 per 100,000 in the United States that year. So when it comes to sexual health, the United States is clearly dropping the ball compared to the Netherlands.

2. Switzerland

In 2011, there was some relatively good news in the United States: The teen birth rate had fallen to 34.3 in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That was a slight decrease from the abovementioned 39.1 per 1,000 in 2009 and 41.5 per 1,000 in 2008, and a major decrease from 61.8 per 1,000 back in 1991. The bad news: That is still much higher than countries in continental Western Europe, including Switzerland (where the teen birth for 2008, according to U.N. statistics, was only 4.3 per 1,000). In other words, the United States had almost ten times as many teen births as Switzerland in 2008. Further, Switzerland had an abortion rate of 6.4 per 1,000 women in 2008 compared to 19.6 in the United States that year (abortion is legal in Switzerland during the first trimester). But the fact that Switzerland has lower abortion and teen birth rates than the United States does not mean that it is a bastion of social conservatism by any means. Switzerland has same-sex civil unions (though not gay marriage), a high tolerance for porn, legal prostitution (including licensed brothels) and sex education as early as kindergarten. A few misguided Christian groups have complained about the amount of explicit sex-ed that Swiss pre-teens are receiving, but the vast majority of Swiss educators have no desire to adopt the failed abstinence-only programs of the American Christian Right. Bottom line: Social liberalism is serving Switzerland well.

3. Spain

Sexual attitudes in Spain have changed dramatically since the death of dictator Francisco Franco, aka El Generalissimo, in 1975. Nude and topless beaches are not uncommon, gay marriage was legalized by the Spanish parliament in 2005, comprehensive sexual education starts from an early age, prostitution is widely tolerated (Madrid’s red-light district on Calle de la Montera is right up the street from a police station) and porn companies are not prosecuted for obscenity the way they are in the United States and Great Britain (Barcelona is the home of Private Media Group, the largest porn company in Europe).

Abortion remains controversial in Spain; it wasn’t until 2010 that Spain officially had abortion on demand, which the country’s new prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, opposes (before 2010, abortions were legally performed in Spain only if a doctor said a pregnancy posed a physical or psychological risk to a woman). But many Spaniards agree that the most effective way to reduce the number of abortions is through easier access to contraception and more sexual information, not less. And a climate of sexual openness appears to be keeping Spain’s teen pregnancy rates relatively low. According to UNICEF and others, Spain had, in 2006, a birth rate of 12.1 per 1,000 females in the 15–19 age group compared to 41.9 in the United States that year. However, it’s important to remember that within the United States, teen birth rates can vary considerably from state to state; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that in 2008, the states with teen birth rates exceeding 60 per 1,000 included Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas (all Bible Belt states, where the Christian Right has aggressively pushed abstinence-only sex education), while the teen birth rates tended to be much lower in New Jersey (24.5 per 1,000), Vermont (21.3 per 1,000) and Massachusetts (20.1 per 1,000). But even the most Democratic-leaning states in the United States have higher teen birth rates than Spain, where the teen birth rate was 12.2 per 1000 in 2009.

When Angela Carson (a Los Angeles native/American expatriate who had been living in Spain on and off for 18 years) spoke to AlterNet in early 2011, she said that she felt much better about raising her teenage daughter near Barcelona than she would have in the American Bible Belt; Carson believed that social conservatism was creating a host of social problems in the United States.  And when one compares teen birth rates in the two countries, it isn’t hard to understand why Carson felt that way.

In Madrid, the police recently had a major crackdown on coercive sex trafficking and arrested 22 alleged pimps they believed to be part of a Romanian sex trafficking ring. Illegal sex trafficking has become a major problem in Spain, where prostitution is tolerated but pimping is quite illegal — and the victims of those sex trafficking rings are mostly poor women from countries in Eastern Europe, South America or sub-Saharan Africa. High-priced Spanish call girls, meanwhile, work in much better conditions, often make 300 euros an hour and typically don’t have chulos (pimps); most Spaniards have no problem with that type of consensual, pimp-free prostitution but are happy to see sexual predators (including pimps and child pornographers) locked up. And Spanish law enforcement essentially has the right idea: Go after pimps, violent sex traffickers and child pornographers aggressively, while being tolerant of consensual adult porn and consensual adult prostitution.

4. France

Christian Right activists who rail against abortion in the United States will never admit this, but the reality is that extreme social conservatism results in more abortions, not fewer abortions. And a comparison of the United States and France illustrates that point. In France’s public schools, the types of abstinence-only sex-ed programs that America’s Christian Right has promoted (especially in Bible Belt states) are unheard of; France’s public schools make sure that French youths learn everything they need to know about sex, and that includes proper use of contraceptives. Plus, under France’s universal health care system, teens can obtain condoms free and confidentially. And all of those things reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and therefore reduce the number of abortions. According to U.N. statistics, France had a teen birth rate of 7.8 per 1,000 in 2006 (compared to the United States’ abovementioned 41.9 for that year). The U.N. has also reported that in 2008, France had an abortion rate of 16 per 1000 in 2008 (rather than the United States’ 19.6 per 1,000 that year). And it should be noted that in France abortion providers are not under the constant threat of being firebombed or murdered by far-right Christian fundamentalists the way they are in the United States; rather, the French are smart enough to realize that in-depth sex education and easy access to contraception are the things that reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and the number of abortions. Viva la France.

5. Germany

Someone who wants to make a strong argument in favor of more sexual liberalism needs only to compare the United States and Germany, a country that has comprehensive sex-ed programs, legal prostitution and same-sex civil unions (Germany still doesn’t have gay marriage, although many German politicians have been coming out in favor of it). Germany also has, according to Advocates for Youth, one-sixth the HIV/AIDS rate of the United States (in 2009, 0.1 percent of Germany’s adult population was living with HIV or AIDS compared to 0.6 percent of the American adult population). Germany’s teen birth rate for 2007 was 9.6 per 1,000, and in 2010, Germany had a rate of eight abortions per 1,000 compared to the United States’ 19.6 per 1,000 in 2008. And it’s interesting to note that the United Kingdom (which, arguably, tends to be more sexually liberal than the United States but more sexually conservative than continental Western Europe) is somewhere between the United States and continental Western Europe when it comes to sexual problems. For example, the United Kingdom has the highest teen birth rate in Western Europe (in 2009, it was 24 per 1,000, which is lower than the United States but higher than anywhere in continental Western Europe). So when it comes to sexual health, the United Kingdom obviously needs to be more like Germany and less like the United States.

 Chart Comparing Teen Birth Rates in the United States and Various European Countries

	United States	Netherlands	Switzerland	Spain	France	Germany	United Kingdom
2006	41.9			12.1	7.8		26.7
2007	42.5	5.2	4.3	13.2	10.3	9.6
2008	41.5	5.3	4.3	12.2		9.8	25.0
2009	39.1	5.3		12.2			24.0
2010	34.3

Alex Henderson's work has appeared in the L.A. Weekly, Billboard, Spin, Creem, the Pasadena Weekly and many other publications.

© 2012 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/154970/
http://www.alternet.org/story/154970/5_countries_that_do_it_better%3A_how_sexual_prudery_makes_america_a_less_healthy_and_happy_place

Sex Worker and Mother, It Saved Me From The Homeless Shelter

How I support my family as a sex worker 

Identity Guestpost by Anonymous on February 15, 2012

Photo by -Benedikt-, used under Creative Commons license.

I think I'm a pretty typical mom. I have three adorable kids. I wear comfy jeans to parent involvement meetings at school. I use cloth diapers, amber teething necklaces, and have a Beco, a Moby, and two Ergos (which obviously means I'm way into baby wearing!).

For all intents and purposes I have the perfect suburban mommy resume. With one enormous exception. I keep a huge secret from my family, neighbors, and friends. After a long day of story time at the library, playing with moon sand, and finger painting… I go to work. I don't have a typical mom job. Not by a long shot.

I'm an escort.

Not an escort of the Ford Motor Co. variety. But an honest to goodness escort. The sort they make jokes about whenever Eliot Spitzer's name comes up.

I have sexual contact with men and am paid for the time I spend with them.

Scoop those jaws up off of the floor, moms and dads, because it's true. And it could happen to you.
I don't mean you'll be trafficked into sex work by some skeevy creeper on the internet — I mean that you may some day be in a position you never dreamed you'd be in doing things you never saw yourself doing in order to make ends meet.

Let me rewind to the beginning.

I was a well-educated stay-at-home mom. My husband didn't make millions but he made enough that if we lived frugally, we were comfortable without an additional income. Then one day, he pulled the rug out from under me. He informed me that he had fallen in love with another woman. And then he left. Just like that.

Years of marriage down the drain. Three children, a dog, and a cat together. None of that was enough to make him stay.

So there I was, a young single mom with three children, an apartment, and pets to provide for. I tried getting jobs, but nothing worked. The salary was never high enough and the hours were never acceptable. I have one school-aged child, a toddler, and an infant. I could have put the youngest two into daycare, but there would be nobody to walk my school-aged child to and from school safely. I have no family, no close friends, no support network, no church, no friendly neighbors, absolutely nothing.

I tried to go to the government, but there was no help there. Every job I could find made enough to disqualify me from welfare programs (no Food Stamps, no Temporary Assistance, no Daycare Assistance, nothing) but never enough to make ends meet. My biggest problem was my student loans. None of those public assistance organizations take student loan repayment into account. I spend more on repaying my student loans than all of my other bills COMBINED. If I default on those, I'll never be able to get ahead. The interest and penalties will continue to build, and I'll be financially sunk. I don't get to file bankruptcy on student loans.

Then one day I bumped into an old college girlfriend at the grocery store. We spent some time catching up and I asked her, out of the blue, if she was still in the escorting business. You see, she put herself through college without a single loan, and without having to work her fingers to the bone in order to make ends meet.

She did it by escorting. When I asked her back then how she did it, and she told me, I was horrified. I still adored her, I just couldn't believe how a person could do such a thing.
My, how I have changed in the few years that have passed.

Here I spent all of these years of marriage living frugally and getting an education while raising my little family, and it all blew up in my face.

So my friend from college gave me the contact info that I needed to get involved with her coordinator in the business. I researched. I made calls. I read blogs. I lurked on forums. I was so afraid. But already the collections calls were coming in, my pantry was empty and I knew if I was going to make it, I was going to have to do something that horrifies most people — something that used to horrify me, too.

And you know what? It's not horrible. I don't hate my life. In fact, sometimes I think I have it better than most American moms. I work on the evenings and weekends the kids are at their father's place (a total of two weekends on four weekdays every month). They never even know I'm gone. Then when they are with me, I get to be a devoted single stay-at-home mom.

I'm very careful to have various safeguards in place and I work with a top-notch company that caters to extremely wealthy clients. I don't put ads on the internet, I don't hook up with people on Craigslist, nothing like that. I'm about as safe as I can possibly be in the unsafe world of a sex worker.

It's not an easy job, it's not glamorous, and I know that most people reading this will be looking down their noses just SURE that they would never do anything so demeaning or degrading.

It's not an easy job, it's not glamorous, and I know that most people reading this will be looking down their noses just SURE that they would never do anything so demeaning or degrading. But I'm happy that I am able to provide for my kids. I'm glad we're not living in a homeless shelter, begging in the streets. I'm glad they are warm, I'm glad they have food in their bellies, and I'm relieved that I can provide them with the basics that they need, and a few extra goodies when they've been especially well-behaved.

Being a parent is hard work. If it weren't for my kids, I'm not sure what I'd be doing right now. One thing is certain: when I say that I would do anything for my kids….I mean it.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

MY THOUGHTS:

This story has been played out by a lot of women, especially since the Great Recession of 2007 to present.

What would be better for these women is that their profession be decriminalized, establish licensed and inspected bordellos and licensed escorts, require frequent STD and other communicable disease screenings to protect the public, and create a central provider/john health screening database that can be accessed through biometrics so that provider can check on john and visa versa.

If the sex worker doesn't fear being arrested for her profession, then if a John is being inappropriate or violent in some way, the sex worker can report the problem to the appropriate authorities. If John's know this is highly likely if they misbehave, then they will me less likely to harm the sex worker. This is especially true in bordellos where there are body guards.

Not only are women turning to escorting, but they are also becoming strippers at the local gentleman's club.  Not only can they earn fairly good money, they stay very athletically toned.

If either one of them stays of the drugs and smokes, they can earn good money and keep it.

One thing they don't need are vice cops constantly setting up sting operation to arrest them and the john or if the stripper does something wrong, like show too much in some cities or get a little too friendly in the VIP room. Once you take it out of the under ground world, it is much easier to make sure things are done in a safe way.