Legitimately Pissed Off

By now I am sure most of the internet is aware of the revoltingly ignorant comment about rape made by US congressman Todd Akin.
If you're NOT aware of what he said here is the quote:

“It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Yes, that's right. REAL rape doesn't lead to pregnancy. So if you get pregnant from an encounter, obviously it wasn't "legitimate" and so you should shut the hell up and not ruin some poor blokes life with the accusation. How DARE you!

Yeah, @AngryAussie and I thought that was a bit of a FUCKING STUPID THING TO SAY so we made a video of it...

Enjoy

Video response with Angry Aussie to Caroline Norma's piece in the age where she calls for the re-criminalisation of sex work and refers to "Prostituted Women" being exploited and how bad "pimps" are...

Norma-Lising Bigotry

You know those times when someone goes spouting off on a subject they know very little about and, as someone who DOES know a bit about it, you start to get cross that they're misusing information, twisting facts and not really giving out proper, correct information?

Yeah, I hate that too.

Then, imagine that person getting paid to spout these views to a mass of people who really don't know the truth from the lies and so take this person's drivel as truth because, well, they've been PAID to say it in a national newspaper so it MUST be true?

Yeah.

Yeah I really hate that too.

Dr Caroline Norma (a lecturer on Social Sciences at RMIT) has done just this with her poorly researched Op Ed piece in the Age on June 19 2012.

Dr Norma's Piece

Her condescending tone and disgust for the profession is apparent within her first sentence with the obvious use of quotation marks wrapped around the term Sex Worker. Like it's not really a real word. Just one the workers have made up for themselves to feel some semblance of self respect...

She then continues on with her "better than you" type of attitude throwing out "facts" about an industry she has no idea about, as if she were feeding breadcrumbs to pigeons...

Oh wait. She is. Little breadcrumbs of misinformation and bigotry to a bunch of people who really have no idea about the truth.

On the day she wrote her awful piece many sex workers both past and present, both male and female, stood up and said "Hang on,. This isn't right! Can we talk to you about this. Can we offer some real facts, real information, real firsthand actual knowledge..."

And Caroline went silent.

She was appealead to over twitter, over Facebook, over blogs. She was contacted via phone, via email, via calls to her place of work.

Nothing.

For example, Holly (@HollyInAlbury on Twitter) a sex worker from regional Victoria appealled to Caroline in her blog to leave the speaking about sex work to the people who know about sex work. I mean, we wouldn't let a plumber talk to us about heart surgery would we?

You Can Read Holly's Piece Here

Male sex worker, and well-known sex worker rights activist Christian Vega (@ChristianBVega on Twitter) appealed to her on social media and his blog, putting forward a notion that many people don't actually think about (Dr Norma being one of them) that sex workers are not ALL female and that generalisations are harmful and damaging and that stigmas and stereotypes are wrong and can really hurt the movement for acceptance and better laws and regulations.

Christian's Piece is here

Newcastle-based escort Luscious Lani (@LusciousLani on Twitter) has tried to not only talk to her over Twitter, email and phone, she has also extended an invitation to Dr Norma to come to her home. Visit a real sex worker. Talk to her and others about her piece and the ramifications it has to our industry, our jobs and, to be blatantly honest, our emotions (being told you're a down-trodded exploited woman can be quite confronting when you know you're not).

You can read Lani's invitation Here

Has Caroline RSVPd to this invitation?

No.

Has she acknowledged this outcry from Australian sex workers?

No

I too would like to offer myself to Carloine Norma as someone within the industry who spends a great deal of time talking to and talking about sex work and sex workers and who is quite happy and willing to explain some things to her that seem to need explaining.

Like her lack of understanding on the things that most of us Aussie sex workers do NOT have to deal with...Like pimps. Like exploitation. Like drugs. Like sexual abuse. Like danger. Like rape. Like every other bad thing she put through in her piece without acrtually speaking to a single person involved in the Australian Sex industry.

Has she seen that a hell of a lot of us are university graduates and can hold an intelligent conversation?

Does she realise many of us are in relationships and have children and families and great ones at that?

Does she realise that very few of us are drug addicts and do this as a last resort attempt at earning money?

Well, if she doesn't, she will soon because there are a lot of us and we are not happy. All you have to do is search Caroline Norma on Twitter and you will see the army of sex workers, clients and their supporters who have stood up to say "We will not allow your bigoted narrow-mindedness stop us. We will fight for what we believe in and we will prove you wrong."

If you'd like to join the fight for the rights of sex workers not to be exploited and misrepresented in the media by people who claim to be intelligent beings, please head over to Lani's Website (Yep click it it's a link) and look to the left at the "rants and ramblings" tab and add your voice along with many other sex worker supporters, whether they work in the industry, use the services, or just support us as workers in general...

Happy Hooking! - DB!

Video: Craig Thompson and the 1%

Angry and I discuss the allegations against Craig Thompson and the media's unrelenting focus on only 1% of the $600,000 that was allegedly misused...

Breaking the Mould

Stereotypes are interesting things. On one hand they can be a way to define certain groups and types of people, but on the other hand (and most commonly), when you delve deeper into it, they are usually completely wrong and are often quite damaging to the person being defined.

Like for example, all Asians excel at the violin or all blondes are stupid or, one of my favourites, all hookers are skanky, heroin addicts who hate the world, hate men and, most of all, hate themselves.

It just isn’t true. I mean, yeah, in every situation you’re going to get some people that match the stereotype (that's how stereotypes are formed), but you’ll also find a lot of people who couldn’t fit into the mould you set, no matter how hard you try to squeeze them in.

We are all guilty of doing it. Assuming things because of what someone looks like or where they come from, and one thing this job has taught me (apart from really useful things like how to use a strap-on and which angles and lights I look hottest in) is to never do that, no matter how obvious it may seem.

The first thing I needed to learn was to not judge clients as a whole. Before I started working in the sex industry I pretty much assumed that most guys who called for the service of an escort were desperate, unattractive, pervy old men. You know the ones, they ogle you at the bus stop and make lewd comments when you walk past them but I have to say, to date, I haven’t come across many guys like that at all.

Yeah, okay, so I’ve seen old guys, desperate guys, sleazy guys and unattractive guys, but all that unsexy goodness rolled into one? Not that many at all.

After switching my thinking about the people who use the services of sex workers, came the learning curve of not judging individual clients by what they looked like or where they were from. It didn't take long at all, but there were some interesting experiences along the way that instantly taught me to never judge a book by its cover.

The first of these experiences was with Karl.

Karl was a bald headed but bushranger bearded, super-scary looking bikie. He had tattoos of skulls and guns all over his arms and back and a well-known biker’s club patch on the back of his jacket. His voice was raw and husky from too many cigarettes, his body gnarled and covered in scars from things like knife attacks and fist fights and he even had a shotgun hanging up in the wall of his bedroom. I’ve gotta tell you, I was a little freaked out. In fact, if I didn't already have all his credit card details and my awesome burly driver waiting outside in the car I may well have made some excuse and left.

I was really glad I didn't. Not only was he was polite, gentle and funny. He was so much fun! He kicked my arse in strip scrabble and played me some beautiful music on his guitar. That first night I spent about three hours with him, laughing and mucking about and fucking and generally having a really good time. He became a regular client and a friend too. In fact the only reason I stopped seeing him was because he moved interstate.

Then there was Billy. A middle-aged, bespectacled accountant who was wearing (no shit) a brown suit with too-short legs and white tennis shoes when I met him. I expected missionary sex and to be shown his stamp collection. I was completely wrong.

After a few hours of wild sex, in which we enjoyed many different positions and toys and which had me shaking and panting all over from multiple orgasms, we sat on the couch and went through pictures of his last mountaineering expedition in the Himalayas . He went every couple of years and was even hoping to one day conquer Everest. He showed me a video of his first solo sky dive and told me all about the base-jumping holiday he was going be taking in Canada the following month.

Not all black guys have humongous cocks, not all Asians have little ones, Indian men don’t always smell like curry and I have yet to come across an Englishman who never showers. And, one of the most important and totally surprising things I learnt in my first few months of working was, not every booking involves sex. There's dinner and events and cuddles and conversation. Sometimes I don't even take my shoes off let alone my clothes. There is such an amazing array of people and situations I have found in my working life that sometimes the anticipation of a new client and an unknown hour or so is even more exciting than the jobs where I know I'm going to have fabulous sex.

In fact, just about the only thing I can guarantee on a job is, if you do end up booking me we are going to have a bloody great time and if you do use some of that time to fuck me, you’re gonna have the ride of your life.