The voices for prostitution

B&G reported on a news article about johns, immediately I saw a woman's comment challenging them to come out of their anonymity and debate. But the fact is, the Internet is here and we can't turn back the clock. There are many sex worker blogs and they welcome debates, whereas anti-prostitution policies come up from nowhere. I mean I can't easily find somebody ordinary who is against prostitution and write about it.

I don't like sex worker much, the term that is. I'm not sure if phone sex is included in sex work. There is no sex involved. Stripping is not sex work, unless she has sex in the VIP room or go out with clients with compensation. I'm not picky on definitions either, but in US, the difference is, prostitution is illegal while other sex works are not.

I am happy to see some organized sex workers. But really this is hard. Johns are whores alike, each transaction could be the last. Many people are transients. I don't mean moving around. Many girls work a couple of month, a year or two. Organizing is like fund raising for building something in your college. It's only worthwhile if you send your kids to the same.

And if a girl isn't getting out any time soon, she is busy dealing with advertising, photo shots, and the dreaded message boards. And now maybe blogs too. These things have direct impact on their day to day earnings, while activism will take a lot longer.

I would say the voices for prostitution started in the early days of the Internet, when johns started to use message boards to do free product reviews for offline merchandise. Message boards and reviews were desperately needed as it was so easy to get ripped off. You may not like it, but johns are really pioneers. Now all major (and minor) online retailers allow comments and reviews right below their merchandise. There are also fake and irresponsible reviews for various reasons, but people learned to deal with it.

There are some good things coming out of message boards. In the US, people are less and less afraid. For me, I almost forget that it's illegal. In my previous blogs, I provide date place time and stage names for LE to verify. And it just take a subpoena to get lots of such evidence if you write a few reviews on TER and also paid for membership with your credit cards. And of course, a few johns were bored with all boards, got banned inevitably and went on to write blogs instead.

Message and review boards provide public statistics, that prostitution is popular, is big business, and johns can be everybody.

ps Coming to think of it, my reviews were blogs in disguise, that's why I was so unpopular and got banned eventually.