Spectacular "own goal" by Ruhama

[LaBelleThatcher]

http://theprostitutionexperience.com/?p=62

Just checked with a friend of mine who was at the TORL conference in Buswells (long story) start to finish, and they say:

a) It wasn't that big and there was certainly not an aggressive press presence (the only video cameras seemed to belong to TORL members - that is why so much of it is on youtube).
b) No such contribution was made, nor anything resembling it.

So that, in endorsing this article, TORL mamber groups have just managed to p*ss off every politician that was at the meeting and a few more besides. You do *NOT* b*llshit politicians, that is *NOT* the way the river runs AT ALL...

But that is just a preamble...

The article itself is a phoney as the writer. I really lived through the exact same world "FreeIrishwoman" pretends to have lived through...I often get the feeling she was created with that in mind, specifically to neutralise every truth I can bear witness to, like the staggering benefits of 10 years of unplanned decriminalisation and the deterioration since, but I can't imagine that I am important enough for people to sit around creating imaginary people aimed just at me, so they must have other reasons.

Regardless, I lived the same life and worse, I hated sex work before, during and after...but rather than me tell you...20 years on (an all the time in between) look at *my* attitude to clients as you see it here most days.

You are just people, like me...often people I find myself identifying with strongly.

The only "evil" in sex work is in the people who want to take it upon themselves to make other people's lives impossible in a seemingly bottomless recession, by making the only paid work they are going to be able to get harder, or even impossible, based on nothing but a lot of self involved bullshit that they concocted in their imaginations to make themselves look important, influential and worthy of power to use arbitrarily for the buzz it gives them and the huge NGO salaries.

My father was straight from hell - spoilt brat of a youngest son throwing tantrums at everyone in range...but worse, he still had a core of something tender, human and lovable, but to get near it was a walk through a minefield...and not worth the damage.

I was his favourite and scapegoat...and it was hell...

Most of the kindness and tenderness that showed me another side of men came from the clients I hated having to f*ck but treasured as the human beings they were.

That is real life "FreeIrishwoman" is just a story somebody made up to get their own way...

...and don't ANY of you EVER dare forget that!

[Curvaceous Kate]

I've just read the entire link (which is a first for me) and I have 2 areas of thought that I would like to discuss.

Firstly, what is the point of the account of the Father and daughter? What relevance does it have? No man is expected to protect and care for all womankind. It doesn't happen in any other walk of life, so why with humans? A pride of lions look after there own, they don't provide food and shelter for every lion in the land. This is not natural. Yes of course the same man who is a Father to this child is going to love and adore her, as he will hopefully love and adore his wife, but this does not mean he can not enjoy the company of other women and be detached. Why should he be protective of all women?

In my opinion I expect all people to show me respect unless I give them reason not to, but only the people closest and nearest to look after me and look after my needs, as I would theres.

To me that is only serving to try and villanize men who are quite capable of showing respect without having to be the continual protector. This is not to say that they are deliberately trying to harm the ladies not in their care, but see them as adults and equals who are able to look after themselves.

My second point is with reference to this...


I went on to say I was glad that prostitution and trafficking were being dealt with together, and that I felt they should continue to be addressed together, as the routes into prostitution and trafficking are only two different routes that bring women to exactly the same place. I then explained that it had been family dysfunction followed by homelessness that had brought me to prostitution at fifteen years of age, and that there was no difference to be found in two groups of women selling their bodies because of sets of circumstances that were beyond their control, just because those circumstances were different. I felt a very great weight of relief when I sat back down, that I’d done what I had to do and that it was over.

This may be the case for many ladies that take to prostitution and I'm certainly not going to deny that, but it is wrong to make a sweeping statment that all prostitutes have no choice. For me Escorting was the answer to my situation and I chose to do it as a clear solution, it certainly isn't a problem. I still see it as a solution and I don't hate the sex or the act of sex. Similarly to La Belle Thatcher, I have actually encountered a side to men that was scarcely witnessed before and actually like men more now. I knew there were good men out there, my Granddad was one of them, but I had not experience many first hand and now I have.

This is only my point of view and my opinion. My story could be poles apart from anyone elses, but while my story exists, no one can make a sweeping statement like that above and say that all women go into because of circumstances beyond their control. I have always been in control and it is my choice to continue.

[LaBelleThatcher]

Firstly, what is the point of the account of the Father and daughter? What relevance does it have? No man is expected to protect and care for all womankind. It doesn't happen in any other walk of life, so why with humans? A pride of lions look after there own, they don't provide food and shelter for every lion in the land. This is not natural. Yes of course the same man who is a Father to this child is going to love and adore her, as he will hopefully love and adore his wife, but this does not mean he can not enjoy the company of other women and be detached. Why should he be protective of all women?


It's easy for me to articulate political realities, personal reactions are harder (in case you didn't notice)...but it may have been bleeding out all the same...if *anyone* would be traumatically predisposed to break down and cry uncontrollably at the sight of a man treating his daughter tenderly...IT WOULD BE ME.

Because of my father...*NOT* because I was a hooker. That is completely irrelevant.

There was one time that I was mesmerised watching a young father with his daughter - I just found them beautiful and perhaps a little alien...and here is the thing...I was astonished how attracted I felt to him I because of it (all very respectable, he was a single dad with joint custody). He wasn't a client, he was a potential lover but I was working part time at that time...which he knew.



In my opinion I expect all people to show me respect unless I give them reason not to, but only the people closest and nearest to look after me and look after my needs, as I would theres.

To me that is only serving to try and villanize men who are quite capable of showing respect without having to be the continual protector. This is not to say that they are deliberately trying to harm the ladies not in their care, but see them as adults and equals who are able to look after themselves.


I picked up a weird sense of feminist extremism trying to meet up with an idealised "age of chivalry" (that never really happened) around the back...

...as if no man has the right to be near a woman unless as her "sworn protector" or similar! I really was creepy to me...



My second point is with reference to this...

This may be the case for many ladies that take to prostitution and I'm certainly not going to deny that, but it is wrong to make a sweeping statment that all prostitutes have no choice. For me Escorting was the answer to my situation and I chose to do it as a clear solution, it certainly isn't a problem. I still see it as a solution and I don't hate the sex or the act of sex. Similarly to La Belle Thatcher, I have actually encountered a side to men that was scarcely witnessed before and actually like men more now. I knew there were good men out there, my Granddad was one of them, but I had not experience many first hand and now I have.

This is only my point of view and my opinion. My story could be poles apart from anyone elses, but while my story exists, no one can make a sweeping statement like that above and say that all women go into because of circumstances beyond their control. I have always been in control and it is my choice to continue.

To be honest, whatever, the *less* choice a woman has to take to sex work, the *MORE* wrong it is to strive to take her income away...yet they try to present it the opposite way around.

Like trying to end homelessness by punishing anyone who leaves you to sleep in the street undisturbed...INSANITY...and very cruel insanity that goes on making vulnerable people pay, at that.

I assumed nobody had a choice for a long time, right up to the point where someone told me they had made a free choice...which is where it had to end, as any other mistaken assumption would...as soon as someone tells me otherwise from first hand personal experience!

Like everyone else, I don't get to tell people:

"No, you are wrong, because *I* know more about your life and how you feel than you do"

Still I would make the point that in the current economic climate, regardless of choice to go into sex work, I doubt if many people will have a realistic alternative available at this time if sex work is taken away from them.

...and THAT is the very first thing anyone who actually cares about sex workers should be thinking of...yet...as far a TORL (and all who represent them) are concerned that is just a naughty awkward question that needs brushing under the carpet ASAP.

[LaBelleThatcher]

All of this was banging around in my head last night while I was trying to sleep, and maybe I looked at it from a funny angle or something, but it suddenly became very, very clear to me that this whole campaign is being conducted with the same mein and motivation as the most vicious and spiteful playground bullying.

You have a little group of people, gathered together, for their various, unhealthy, reasons to show other people they can *MAKE* them do whatever they say, and hurt them any time, and any way they like without ever being caught or held to account.

They pick on the sex industry because anyone involved with that is vulnerable...not "shivering wreck" vulnerable, that's no real fun for a bully to impose control upon, after all, it doesn't prove a whole lot about how good they are at bullying, does it, but rather people who are "achilles heel" vulnerable. Smart strong people who are at a disadvantage or two that they are not, and make easy targets.

What shocks me most is that this is all being orchestrated and encouraged by the exact same people who make a living out of providing rescue facilities for the genuinely abused.

So what is the real deal with abuse?

Is bullying and abuse only wrong unless you have a use for it?
Or are they just as bad all the time in ways we are not noticing?

Fer feck sake...when you target the clients of sex workers, you are targeting an awful lot of the same nerds, fat boys and other lifelong victims of, at least, soft bullying who got through their socialisation process without picking up enough of the self esteem or social skills to be able to develop an effective approach to women. You are targetting an awful lot of the guys who have already been hurt far too much.

Start telling guys like that they are "rapists and abusers" (at length and in detail, with all kinds of really questionable psychological conditioning techniques), and you really are kicking the feck out of an injured puppy.

But if you hit on the "pick up artists" and the nightclub predators who *really* think women are something to feck and throw away like used tissue instead, there would be nothing like the same sense of satisfaction in knowing you had the power to really hurt other human beings.

I do not care how popular this form of bullying and abuse has become, nor how much "reassurance" and "reinforcement" they can draw on from similar bullies and abusers in Sweden or the States. It is still just vicious and dishonest abuse.