Paying for Sex in a Digital Age


Book Description

Providing one of the first comprehensive, cross-cultural examinations of the dynamic market for sexual services, this book presents an evidence-based look at the multiple factors related to purchasing patterns and demand among clients who have used the internet. The data is drawn from two large surveys of sex workers’ clients in the US and UK. The book presents descriptive baseline data on client engagement with online platforms, demographics and patterns of frequency in different markets, information on smaller niche markets and client reactions to exploitation, safety and changes in the law. The book makes clear that a variety of situational as well as individual factors affect the willingness and ability to purchase sexual services. The view that emerges shatters the stereotypes and generalistions on which much policy is based and demonstrates the complexities surrounding who pays for sex and the contours of sexual consumption in consumer culture.




Prostitution and Sex Work


Book Description

A fascinating overview of prostitution and sex work in the United States, from the Colonial era to today, examines the issue as it affects men, women, and transgender individuals of all races and classes. Prostitution and Sex Work is the first book since 1921 to offer a historic overview of this controversial topic—and what our views on it say about American society. Exploring key people, places, and events, the guide includes descriptions of the myriad variations of the sale of sex and of the venues where prostitution occurs, as well as recurring themes such as panics about sexually transmitted diseases and the ever-present issue of violence in the sex trade. After reviewing the history of prostitution and sex work over the past 400 years, the book offers detailed information about the legal context of prostitution in America during the last century. It focuses particularly on the period since prostitution was criminalized during a panic over "white slavery" in the early 20th century, drawing parallels with current "sex trafficking" topics. An appendix of materials produced by sex workers is especially informative for those wishing to truly understand both sides of the issue.




Behind the Mormon Curtain


Book Description

“I MAKE A LOT OF MONEY AS A CALL GIRL” wasn't the answer author Steve Cuno expected when he asked a new acquaintance how she planned to capitalize her start-up business.Wait, hold on, he thought. In Salt Lake City? Home to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormon Church, where all it takes to become the object of steamy gossip is for a neighbor to see you take a sip of coffee? In a religion where nonmarital sex is second in seriousness to murder?“You've no idea the people I could get in trouble,” she told him. She'd entertained politicians, police officers, judges, defense lawyers, prosecutors, doctors—all of them married, almost all of them practicing Mormons. Many were highly visible, highly regarded leaders in the faith.So began Cuno's behind-the-scenes investigation into Salt Lake City's prostitution industry. Over the course of three years, he interviewed prostitutes, johns, police officers, social workers, and massage-parlor owners—and uncovered a surprising underside to the Mormon Church's carefully cultivated image of wholesomeness and family values. He found that Salt Lake's prostitutes—“sex workers” or “providers,” as they prefer to be known—don't live in the illusory experience they create for their clients. Many are multilingual and hold college degrees. They fix meals, drive kids to school, help with homework, handle household chores, socialize with others in the community, have love lives of their own—and, yes, go to church, sometimes with the very people who sneak out to meet them.With wit and sensitivity, Behind the Mormon Curtain takes a deep dive into the quintessential American religion and the world's oldest profession, as Cuno tells the story of what he discovered, how he discovered it, and what it reveals not just about Mormons, but about us all.




Paying for Pleasure


Book Description

Drawing on original empirical data with men who buy sex, this book takes a fresh look at the relationships clients have with female sex workers. The core questions that form the backbone of the research are not only the expected inquiry into 'why men buy sex', but also into the sociological and psychological processes that men encounter in order to enter an assumed 'deviant' sexual behaviour as part of their everyday lives. These sociological processes of finding, negotiating and buying sexual services are complicated by the stigma directed towards men who buy sex. Exactly how do men behave with sex workers; what are their relationships like; what emotions are involved and can intimacy be bought? Questioning the dichotomy made between commercial and non-commercial relationships, the data suggests that intimacy and commerce are compatible. Managing secrecy, stigma and the consumption of intimacy takes this book into some of the more challenging theoretical areas of masculinity and emotional consumption in contemporary society. Drawing some parallels from the author's earlier book Sex Work: A Risky Business, the book offers insights into why engagement in commercial sex is prolific as sexual culture is transformed in late modernity.




The Internet Escort's Handbook Book 1: The Foundation


Book Description

Considered the bible of escorts, sex workers and sugar babies alike, Book 1: The Foundation is exactly that. It's an escorting 101 that starts with you to build a safe, sane, successful business. You are the foundation of your success. Book 1: The Foundation is a sex work reference written to create a realistic awareness of the pitfalls and rewards of becoming an independent escort (and it works to answer questions for the curious public as well). Start with the most fundamental consideration of all: --Decide whether escort work suits your personality --Maximize your personal appearance for commercial appeal --Discover personal boundaries and how to maintain them --Escort health and hygiene --Get to know and love condoms --How do you have sex on your period? --Understand the limits of your personal energy --and more! Common newbie questions are addressed; the ones that get asked, repeatedly, on public sex work or escort forums. While sugar babies generally don't want to think of themselves as professional escorts, they interact with their sugar daddies in much the same way and the safety concerns (and questions) are very similar. Ultimately, safe and sane escort work leads to happier, healthier escorts. (And happy escorts make for happy clients.) Written by an escort for escorts.




Paying for Sex


Book Description

This book was written for - and by - horny males who are just too chicken to figure this stuff out for themselves. Commercial sex isn't exactly hard to find no matter where you live, so the main reason why guys who are otherwise interested in this sort of thing haven't managed to indulge in a fully satisfying way is that something - fear - is holding them back. So even if you're a total wuss, we'll show you how easy it is to buy sexual gratification with complete confidence. And if you've dabbled in some kinds of low risk sex-for-pay, such as Internet porn, we'll show you how to safely indulge in more adventurous amusements, such as strip clubs, brothels and escort services - legal ones, that is. If you just want to find some great online porn, have a naked stripper gyrating in your lap or getting laid by an erotic professional without putting your life, health, wallet or reputation at risk, we'll show you how. Here's a review of Paying for Sex by Doxy, who operates the popular web site Phone Slut Diary. "Next things second -- Phone Slut Diary had been featured in another independent publication and I promised to mention it here. Paying For Sex is a fabulous little "gentleman's guide to web porn, strip clubs, prostitutes & escorts without humiliation, job loss, bankruptcy, infection, bloodshed or incarceration." Because it does not address phone sex, but refers readers to my site (bless), authors Kerr Fuffle & Roscoe Spanks (it cannot possibly be their real names, can it?) decided to put in a few blurbs about me and some other net sites. Although I'm not a guy looking to hire an escort (and don't expect to be) I found many of the details and hints fascinating. The chapters on throwing brothel parties were absorbing. If you're a gentleman (or not so gentle man) that spends money on websites, strippers, or other such diversions this is a really handy little manual to getting the biggest bang for your buck without getting ripped off or in trouble. They explain etiquette, precautions, approximate pricing, common (and not so common) practices. Want to find out how to encourage a stripper to give you a little better than the regular treatment? It's in there. So, I'm going to be adding it to my Store shopping section because it's just awesome. And I'm quoted in very cute passages. And, you know, I'm an egomaniacal slut. No, really. Okay, well sometimes."




Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution


Book Description

An astonishingly brave memoir of prostitution and its lingering influence on a woman’s psyche and life. “The best work by anyone on prostitution ever, Rachel Moran’s Paid For fuses the memoirist’s lived poignancy with the philosopher’s conceptual sophistication. The result is riveting, compelling, incontestable. Impossible to put down. This book provides all anyone needs to know about the reality of prostitution in moving, insightful prose that engages and disposes of every argument ever raised in its favor.” —Catharine A. MacKinnon, law professor, University of Michigan and Harvard University Born into a troubled family, Rachel Moran left home at the age of fourteen. Being homeless, she was driven into prostitution to survive. With intelligence and empathy, she describes the exploitation she and others endured on the streets and in the brothels. Moran also speaks to the psychological damage inherent to prostitution and the inevitable estrangement from one’s body. At twenty-two, Moran escaped the sex trade. She has since become a writer and an abolitionist activist.




Cheap Sex


Book Description

Sex is cheap. Coupled sexual activity has become more widely available than ever. Cheap sex has been made possible by two technologies that have little to do with each other - the Pill and high-quality pornography - and its distribution made more efficient by a third technological innovation, online dating. Together, they drive down the cost of real sex, and in turn slow the development of love, make fidelity more challenging, sexual malleability more common, and have even taken a toll on men's marriageability. Cheap Sex takes readers on an extended tour inside the American mating market, and highlights key patterns that characterize young adults' experience today, including the timing of first sex in relationships, overlapping partners, frustrating returns on their relational investments, and a failure to link future goals like marriage with how they navigate their current relationships. Drawing upon several large nationally-representative surveys, in-person interviews with 100 men and women, and the assertions of scholars ranging from evolutionary psychologists to gender theorists, what emerges is a story about social change, technological breakthroughs, and unintended consequences. Men and women have not fundamentally changed, but their unions have. No longer playing a supporting role in relationships, sex has emerged as a central priority in relationship development and continuation. But unravel the layers, and it is obvious that the emergence of "industrial sex" is far more a reflection of men's interests than women's.




Paying for It


Book Description

The critically lauded memoir about being a john. Now in paperback! Paying for It was easily the most talked-about and controversial graphic novel of 2011, a critical success so innovative and complex that it received two rave reviews in the New York Times, and sold out of its first print run in just six months. Chester Brown’s eloquent, spare artwork stands out in this paperback edition. Paying for It combines the personal and sexual aspects of Brown’s autobiographical work (I Never Liked You, The Playboy) with the polemical drive of Louis Riel. Brown calmly lays out the facts of how he became not only a willing participant in, but a vocal proponent of one of the world’s most hot-button topics—prostitution. While this may appear overly sensational and just plain implausible to some, Brown’s story stands for itself. Paying for It offers an entirely contemporary exploration of sex work—from the timid john who rides his bike to his escorts, wonders how to tip so as not to offend, and reads Dan Savage for advice, to the modern-day transactions complete with online reviews, seemingly willing participants, and clean apartments devoid of clichéd street corners, drugs, or pimps. Complete with a surprise ending, Paying for It continues to provide endless debate and conversation about sex work.




Sex in Cyberspace


Book Description

Sex in Cyberspace offers a bold and provocative, yet sensitively written, account of an under-investigated area of sociological enquiry. While there is a considerable amount of research documenting the experiences of sex workers, very little data exists on their male clientele. The first empirically-based volume on the experiences of men who pay for sex, this work presents a significant new source of data. The book is based upon an extensive study of on-line forums in which both the purchasers of sexual services and the workers themselves can exchange information and views - information which is otherwise extremely difficult to obtain. Sarah Earle and Keith Sharp argue that such sites represent a significant change in the social organization of sex work and those who seek and use the services of sex workers. Shedding new light on men's sexual identity, Sex in Cyberspace makes a major contribution to the study of sexuality.