A 20-year-old reminiscence

On the MGTOW sites, the talk about “the red pill”. Here’s one of mine. Please excuse the jargon.

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J and I were in the church band. We shifted in together to share a flat. On a side note, It ended badly. There was a pattern in J’s life – when things got hard, he would simply quit. I lost my job, got depressed, got tough to live with. J simply walked out and left me with the lease. It’s not just women, you know.

J was, I think, an alpha-minus. Tall, good-looking. Son of a pastor, which counts for everything in christian circles. Church women are as relentlessly hypergamous as any you’ll ever meet. The all want to marry a pastor, and J was always going to be one.

(Why do they want to marry a pastor? Because the pastor’s wife gets to boss about all the other women, that that’s the most important thing in a woman’s life: their hierarchy among one another. They are not sweet and communal. They are rigidly hierarchical, more so than men understand.)

Lot of red pills. One in particular.

J married K. K is a career bitch, very much so. For her, J was a trophy husband, a pretty boy. His family reckoned that he married his mother, and they were probably right. He should have married L, but L was a smart cookie and married R, who was (*gasp*) barely even a real christian. R went on to own his own used-car business, and employed L’s brother as a used-car salesman when L’s brother’s church (by which I mean: the church that he was pastor of) collapsed. Smart cookie, as I said. She’s a country-western singer now, with a fan page, and sounds pretty good. Way better than the mousy post-adolescent squeak that she had when I knew her. Well done, L.

Anyway.

J played sax, danced. He had moves. I remember him doing one of our periodic church musical things, playing the sax, being on stage – performing. I was at the mixing desk. K was there, smugly smiling to me, nodding “Yes, and J does his little dance!”, her voice rippling with good-humoured amusement and disdain. Her man, her boy. I knew then, the contempt in which she held him. Probably still does. But there’s another red pill I had in mind when I sat down to write this.

J played sax. He was good – better than I ever was on guitar. After a year or two of marriage, wanted to be in a band. The friction! The drama! The issue was – simply – that K knew that J would cheat. And realistically, she was right. He was going to be having hot, nasty sex with groupies. Eventually, K put the foot down. No: J may not leave her alone in the house and play gigs till 5 in the morning. So K got a dog. A golden retriever. But no, no – not good enough. J may not leave her alone in the house with nothing but the dog for company, either. No sax playing for J.

Meh. Marriage: compromises and accommodations. Fair enough, perhaps. Maybe.

K, “career bitch”, got a very senior role at X. A role that required her often to work late. What an opportunity! What an advancement! She grabbed it with both hands and I’m sure did an excellent job. The job was legit – I don’t think she was having an affair with some man that she could respect more than she could ever respect J. The alpha-male of the site … well, he could do better than K.

Here’s the thing, though: I couldn’t help but notice that now J was alone at night with nothing but the dog for company, exactly what K said was simply not good enough for her.

And there it is. I think he understood, then, the life that he had chosen for himself.

Luckily for J, K’s brother was (probably is) a very skilled musician. They, and some other guys from church, formed a very good local band. He was permitted to gig again, with the brother-in-law there to hold his leash.

It was ages ago. K is a pastor. now – just as he was always going to be. He’s gray these days, and not just his hair. S, who I ran into the other night, told me that he looks so unhappy. He was at one of our gigs (I was in a local band for a year or two). He was so awkward! So out-of-place and uncomfortable, to be at a bar where people were drinking and hooking up and having a good time. A decade ago, he would have walked in and owned the scene.

The band he and K’s brother formed is long since a memory. But whenever I think of that song “The Sweetest Thing”, I always think of their version of it. Better than U2, IMO.

Commercial sex. The shame! The blogging!

So. Someone who I follow on facebook, linked to this – a post by one Lucy Blake about sex industry forums.

For a while, I was – ahh – active on certain blogs. Now at this point, permit me to say I’m kinda over it. I’m 45 – certifiably middle aged. Retired from the scene. I don’t know Ms Blake, have never met or booked her. But she and I are on opposite sides of a certain divide. A political one, for want of a better word.

From my side of the divide, Lucy Blake’s post in relation to punter blogs is notable in a few respects.

Firstly, the sense of entitlement. How dare these men, the “punters”, have forums! How dare they decide who does and does not post! Why: try being a worker on these forums these days! Perhaps. But try opening a mens-only health club these days, or a mens-only anything at all. Women seem to feel they have an automatic right to colonise male space – the very existence of it seems to affront them. Happily, the web is charmingly politically incorrect in this regard. Zionist or Nazi, Black Panther or KKK, punter or WL: anyone can set up a site and manage it as they see fit.

But what of the content? What dreadful discussions take place, that Ms Lucy is so excised about?

• if we may or may not charge extras (and no we may not)
• how much we may charge and if we have the right to charge is debated
• threads are begun re: under what circumstances we must give refunds to clients just to make sure a bad review is pushed home to us and we feel the necessary pain if a review deemed us unworthy and our attempt to make it up to the client fell short in their opinion.
• the color of our bagina’s is described in great detail in reviews, but people forget our height, the color of our eyes and our names
• there are threads on how much do sex workers earn and do we have the right to earn that much considering there is no Uni Degree in hooking. Why pay someone more than $18 an hour if they don’t have a degree logic?

Awww! You’d be forgiven for missing that the WLs actually charge money for sex, that it is – in fact – a business. (Having said that: blackmail is a bad thing, and I agree that threatening a WL with a bad review in an attempt to get free extras is wrong – probably even illegal, strictly speaking. Extortion, you know.). Service providers complaining that their clients discuss money and rate: the hypocrisy leaves me speechless.

Are clients really not to discuss amongst themselves the services they pay for, and the providers that provide them? If a girl decides to charge a reasonable rate, is it wrong for the clients/punters/whatever to decide to go to her, rather than to someone more expensive? I’m sure that might be news to the few girls that do provide a fair service at a fair price, and pride themselves on doing so.

• there are threads on how to get laid for free on adult dating sites on a site sex workers are paying to advertise on

The faux outrage! So many kinds of wrong, it is hard to keep track. Whinging about men trying to get laid for free on a dating site, and not a wisp of recognition that if a site is a dating site, then using it to hook clients for commercial sex is at least as morally wrong. (See Deuce Bigalow for a very fine explanation).

[ed: I misread this – yeah, that’s kinda in bad taste. Like talking up Holdens on a we love Fords site.]

[ed ed: But then again, if the outrage is “OMG, there people that take my money to advertise are turning around and undermining my business!”, you know what to do: stop giving them your money. Ms Blake’s concern is a little misplaced, anyway: men who are happy to pay for sex do not have the time or inclination to dip their toes into “Plenty of Fat”, or the others. Prostitutes provide something that is difficult to get elsewhere.]

Speaking of which:

I am constantly stunned how men on forums are so outraged that their rights blah blah blah are being impinged upon.

Jesus. There’s none so blind as they who will not see. Ms Blake’s post is one long rant on the moral rights and wrongs of how men conduct themselves by – you know – talking with one another online and how it impinges her rights.

Sigh. What else do we have? More of the same, I’m sure, but I’ll look though it:

our PMs and posts are taken across forums without our permission, twisted and used against us. If we try and defend ourselves or another worker, we have a new areshole kindly kicked open for us.

Shock horror! People quote your words back at you! Is nothing sacred? Although fair enough: PMs are a bit of a gray area. Almost as bad as a girl repeating apres-sex pillow talk to another girl (*cough* Tess Ryan *cough*. Why yes, I am still dirty over it.)

Most forums ONLY have male Mods who are not sex workers and if there are female Mods, they are treated as tokenistic at best.

Basically we are contained, we are denied access to information, sex workers have no space to organize within hidden forums like punters do, and we have no authority or decision making ability.
…
If you want to rip any community apart, if you want to disempower what do you do?
You form a cool group or ruling class and give them all the perceived and real power. Conditioning from the time we are born tells us we want to be a part of the cool group or ruling class – aka hidden punter only forums

A) Bawww! Mum! The boys won’t let me in the clubhouse! I been silenced! I been contained! I got no authoritah!

A.1) It isn’t my fault I’m petty! I’m not responsible for my own attitudes – I been conditioned! Conditioned like a lab rat – a lab rat I say! – to want to be cool!

A.2) And incidentally, when the men do anything it’s automatically a “ruling class”. Because they are men. (Thanks for the backhanded compliment. Or is it simply that Ms Blake feels that anything women do is automatically shit?)

B) Yeeees – I’m sure it’s only fair that if men get together to discuss WLs, then WLs must be allowed to monitor and censor their conversations. Yes, censor is the correct word to use. Ms Blake wants girls to be mods – not simply to be able to read posts, but able to close and delete them. That’s what being a mod, as opposed to a regular user, is about. Her complaint is precisely that she is “slienced” by not having the power to silence others. There’s a lot of that kind of thinking on the web and elsewhere.

(Oh Encyclopaedia Dramatica! How I miss you! Only you would dare say “Jews” at this juncture, although here in Oz we have other prejudices. How I miss your opinions on Aboriginals, and pretty much everything else.)

Again, the hypocrisy. And the stupid. How stupid? “sex workers have no space to organize within hidden forums like punters do” Well: start your own bloody website, then, Ms Incapable, Ms “I been silenced unless the big, strong men-folk make space for me on their forums, and let me mod their threads”. You need a) a domain name, b) an internet connection, c) a ‘puter, and d) some free software.

Or just compare and discuss clients in the back room. Like you always have done. Are you seriously suggesting that there isn’t an “ugly mug” list? Of course there is! And fair enough! I can’t recall ever a client saying that it was unfair that you have your own space. I cant ever recall a client suggesting that WLs having private conversations meant that they were disempowered, or contained, or denied access to information.

ed: Speaking of which – “sex workers have no space to organize within hidden forums like punters do” is just an outright falsehood. FIA, for one, did have a WL-only forum. It’s that straightforward – they bloody did. There’s yer space to organise: as if you actually needed one on these punter-centric discussion sites. The only difference is that “The Shed” was hidden and invite-only. Why was that? Because if it weren’t, people like Ms Blake would have started up a never-ending whinge and bitchfest about its very existence. As you see here. How did they know that? Well, a lot of the guys were married.

Of course, some of the guys wanted to see what was going on in the girls room, too. They were never taken seriously – guys can respect other people’s space (and you just already know Ms Blake’s response to that, don’t you? “But, but that’s different!” – “But Mrs Mortiboy, you drank and cheated on your husband, too” “But that was different!”)

How hypocritical?

Organise, come together – join NAUWU, join Scarlet Alliance, join Vixen, join SIN, join whoever or whatever your local sex worker org is

God, do I even need to spell it out? WLs have had forums for years and years. Before there was an online world, even, they had their journals. Am I to believe that al these organisations don’t have web forums of their own? Am I to imagine that security on them is not far tighter than the punter’s forums ever were? Some guys exchange experiences on a website and suddenly the world is ending.

Accept punters are NOT your friends they are your client base and it is only going to lead to tears treating them as your friends. It’s unfair on both the sex worker and the punter to maintain the illusion of bestie bestie friends friendship.

True. I like to use the hairdresser analogy. Why do women pay hundreds of bucks for a hair job? It’s not to get differently-shaped hair at the end of it. It’s to be fussed over, to feel good for a little while. They pay for their hairdresser’s time and attention. That’s what a WL sells – she doesn’t “sell her body”. Her time and attention. A counselor or pastor sells the same. Now, you can chat to your hairdresser and be on good terms, but at the end of the day she sees you because you are paying her. Sorry guys. She probably would not be hanging out with you otherwise. And you would not be seeing her except that you can get sex without all those pesky other things that women usually require: you know – a relationship of some description.

As a parting shot:

YOU DO HAVE THE RIGHT TO EXIST AND YOU DO HAVE THE RESPONSIBILITY TO DICTATE THE TERMS OF YOUR SERVICE AND HOW OTHERS SHOULD TREAT YOU!

Christ! Someone posting on a blog is actually infringing your “right to exist”? For fuck’s sake, get over yourself.

And God, you are claiming that your clients – your clients – don’t want you to exist? Go speak to someone who has studied – for instance – law, and learn the difference between an adversarial negotiation and a hostile one. They are not the same thing.

Now as to “dictating the terms of your service”: yes. Absolutely. Not a hint of disagreement from here. This is the essence of consensual commercial sex. But remember: consent in meaningless if it is not mutual. Do a role-reversal on that sentence. That’s all that the punters are tying to achieve.

GG Week 8 – Salty, but good!

Capital city, and before us, the ivory tower. At last I can be rid of this pestilent burden. I have some curiosity, of course, but my people are not without prudence. To pry unasked into the affairs of the six – I have no idea how this packet might be warded, and I do not intend to find out.

Securing an audience will, as always, be tricky for me. I make my quest known to Kriv, our dragonborn, and he of course announces it to all and sundry. Curse him. All of our unit elect to accompany me on my mission save the beast and his handler, who decide to pursue other business. Drat. Still, perhaps it is for the best. I would not get far, wandering about on my own.

Kriv tels the guards that he seeks to report to the local captain. He then, in some fit of propriety, elects to tell the captain that he has a message from the fort we came from, said message being that here we are. That line of subtlety exhausted, he simply spills the beans and states that we have a message from Veritas for the generals.

We are conveyed onward and admitted. The generals are seven gold dragons who directly serve Bahamut. We are not searched and prodded – the general needs no bodyguards. The one we meet is in the form of an elf. He is … impressive, his draconic might evident even through his chosen form.

I relive myself of my burden, handing him the package. He seems – shocked, if anything. In response to being ask why Veritas entrusted this item to a drow, I reply that I do not know, but clearly he chose wisely, for here we are. The habits of home do not fade in a few short months: never show weakness. Deference, perhaps, but never weakness or uncertainty.

He asks after the circumstances under which I was given the item, and we tell him of the battle between the red and the gold dragon. His grief is evident. He then goes on to tell us what this package contains.

Within is a mithril flask, and within that is a small amount of the blood of Io.

Io! Io the progenitor! Curse it, if only I had known. I carried it, I kept it, I bore it for days and never suspected. Such a relic – there can be no equal to it anywhere on earth. With such a prize, I could be forever proof against the wiles of the spider priestesses. Yet it lies beyond my grasp, now, not ten feet away and in the claws of a great gold dragon.

And while I regret my caution, I also am uneasy. Why tell us these things? Surely he is not so far gone in grief as to forget himself entirely. These things I do not wish to know – must fame dog our footsteps? In an attempt to cut him short, I ask what orders we have. He tells us to report back in two days.

We have liberty for two days. We shop, we drink. I catch a pickpocket in the act, a halfling. In exchange for not carrying out a series of gruesome threats (exaggerating only a little), I receive a little training in certain arts of civilisation.

Yeah, it’s weak. I wanted to take martial training “Thorough Search” – Azroth has a damn good perception so it synergises well. We wanted an in-game excuse, and this will have to do.

Two days later, we report again.

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There is no escape. We return to the general’s quarters. He seems to have reached a decision. We have a mission.

We are to go to one of the hidden cities in the underdark – one I know of. I am: lost for words. After risking so much to leave it, I am to be sent back. But there is more: the key to this city (whatever form such a think might take) lies with a certain orium dragon, Malus. The very same who sent us to protect that diabolist, against whom I have – as far as I am able – been plotting. We are to kill him.

A grim jest indeed, one worthy of the Lolth herself. That the end of my plotting to have him killed should be that I am ordered to do it.

We are no match for him, and certainly this band will not survive an hour in the underdark. The general … hesitates, but his decision is made, it seems. We will each take a sip of the blood of Io.

Astounding! How mad or desperate must they be? Such a thing … such a thing could not possibly be done except at the express command of the platinum one himself. A sip of the blood of Io! Armies would raze cities – no – continents for such a prize. And yet our band of eight is chosen, by Bahamut himself, to be given such.

If I sought escape from the spider goddess, what greater power could I ask? Ha! An easy question to answer: the power to remain hidden. I should have stayed in the forest and hid as best I could. I am enmeshed in the affairs of gods, now. Such rarely turns out well for mortals caught in the mill.

We are to drink, then swiftly enter a telportation circle.

My turn comes. I drink. A sip, a decent swig. It is blood, yet so much more. I feel a change, like the change into my form, but very different. Through the circle and back to our fort. I change, grow wings and copper scales. I am a dragon. A dragon! Not for long, and yet – who of my people has ever approached such might? I fear we shall become legends, if the fates mock us much further.

My companions appear, and each assumes his form: blue and iron, cobalt and green. Our time is short. We take wing and fly to assault the tower of Malus.

We got a bit further than this on the night, but this seems a good spot to finish this blog entry.