About Me 0058: Women Making Money

The last time she hooked up, she said, it was because “his personality put me at ease. He was straight to the point. He asked me the same questions I was asking him.” Plus, she liked that his real name matched his email address. From there, she was able to find his Facebook page, with numerous photographs. When Ashley (not her real name) finally had her rendezvous, she took down his license plate number and texted it to herself on a second cellphone, which she’d left on her kitchen table along with a note for friends and family, just in case she didn’t return. And then she collected her $500 an hour.

Welcome to prostitution in the Internet era.

Fifteen years ago, it was hard to find hookers on the Web. Now they are all over the place. The Internet has given rise to a new generation of sex workers who have more autonomy than ever before, and by and large enjoy a level of safety not shared by their street-walking sisters. Nonetheless, Internet prostitution is a risky business, and those hazards were underscored this month when the bodies of four women were found decomposing on the side of the road near Jones Beach on Long Island. Attention quickly turned to two missing call girls who’d been using Craigslist as their primary means of making connections. It turned out that neither woman was among the victims, but the grisly discovery put an unwanted spotlight back on Craigslist, which in September took down its U.S. erotic-services directory under pressure from law enforcement and human-rights groups. Last week, it pulled its worldwide adult-services ads. (Though Craigslist has managed to get most sex solicitation off its site, it hasn’t completely succeeded, as Ashley can tell you.)

David Henry Sterry has numerous stories about how the lives of prostitutes have changed in the past decade. Last year, he edited Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Prostitutes Writing on Life, Love, Work, Sex, and Money, an anthology that received a stamp of approval from The New York Times. He’s also a former sex worker himself, a rare example of a man who earned his living pleasing older women. (The only common thread connecting his clients, he said, was that they all had money and “most felt powerless because they were housewives, bored, and rich.”)

One of the women who appeared in his book called herself Kat, worked on Craigslist, and had an elaborate screening process in which she would force potential johns to drive up to the location of the assignations, get out of their cars, and stand there while she examined them from a nearby window with a pair of binoculars. Kat refused to talk to anyone with a blocked number. She also chose not to text. If you sent her a photo of your genitalia, a common mistake among potential johns, you were out of contention. “She had developed what she called a ‘hooker’s radar,’” Sterry said. “The tone of the guy’s voice, his walk, she had learned how to instantly size someone up. And if the guy looked sketchy or too much like a toad, she would stop returning his phone calls.”

“People who think they’re going to eliminate prostitution or violence in prostitution by shutting down Craigslist are wildly deluded,” said David Henry Sterry.

Another Internet-era phenomenon that’s friendly to business and helps boost security for prostitutes and johns alike is “the mixer.” This is a cocktail party-like event at which “hobbyists”—the current euphemism of choice for high-spending porn aficionados obsessed with bonking their favorite screen stars—get to meet potential dates. No sex typically takes place on site, explained Daily Beast contributor Richard Abowitz, a chronicler of life in Las Vegas, where the parties frequently occur. “It’s more like a job fair,” he said.

A week after Countdown host Keith Olbermann and guest Michael Moore sparked a Twitter protest over their dismissive treatment of rape allegations against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Moore made an appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show that was much anticipated by those protesters. Host Rachel Maddow opened the segment by voicing their central premise, without directly referencing them, and Moore, also without addressing the protest directly, spoke about the importance of taking rape allegations seriously. He did not apologize for his earlier assertion that Julian Assange was only accused of consensual sex with a broken condom, nor did he retract it.

Maddow did acknowledge the #MooreAndMe protest in a post-show blog post, but not as she introduced her guest, Michael Moore, thusly:

The timing could not be more suspicious. The man accused says he’s being pursued for political reasons. But even if you’re suspicious about the timing, there are two women who went to the police with what are essentially date-rape charges against this guy.

This doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker.

Can your suspicion about the forces arrayed against Julian Assange and Wikileaks — your suspicion about the timing and pursuit of these charges — coexist with respect for the women making these accusations against him and with a commitment to take rape allegations seriously, even when the person accused is someone that for other reasons you like?

To be fair to Maddow, she’s in a tough spot, as her MSNBC colleague Keith Olbermann emerged as a focal point of the protest, but she should have asked this question directly to Moore. Instead, she asked him to explain, once again, why he posted $20,000 in bail money for Assange. In answering that question, Moore volunteered:

Every woman who claims to have been sexually assaulted or raped has to be, must be, taken seriously. Those charges have to be investigated to the fullest extent possible. For too long, and too many women have been abused in our society, because they were not listened to, and they just got shoved aside. . . .So I think these two alleged victims have to be treated seriously and Mr. Assange has to answer the questions.

This was a sharp departure from the remarks that started the protest, and no doubt directly attributable to it, but it was also a subversion of the premise of #MooreAndMe. The protest derived its name from Moore’s debut film, Roger & Me, in which Moore spends the entire film trying to get GM CEO Roger Smith to just talk to him about the harm he’d done. Moore didn’t do that, he pretended the whole thing never happened.

As for the goals of the #MooreAndMe protest, while they commendably got Moore to change his rhetoric, there’s still apparently work to be done:

Please tweet @MMFlint, using the hashtag #Mooreandme, until we have an explanation from Michael Moore, and preferably an apology, and preferably $20,000, donated to an anti-sexual-assault organization of his choice.

You told us the little guy had to stand up, Mr. Moore. You told us the authority had to be held accountable for harming communities. You told us that the Big Lies were worth exposing. But you’re promoting the Big Lie, you’re harming our community, and this time around, the little guy is us.

We can be loud. We can be persistent. I hope you’re prepared.

The balance of the interview featured some smart, tough questions from Maddow over Moore’s Assange idolatry. Here’s the full interview, in two parts, from MSNBC:

Part Two:

About Me 0058

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Women Making Money

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Fox Utterly Destroys Cable <b>News</b> Ratings Competition in 2010 <b>...</b>

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green <b>News</b> Report: December 28, 2010 <b>...</b>

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Fox Utterly Destroys Cable <b>News</b> Ratings Competition in 2010 <b>...</b>

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green <b>News</b> Report: December 28, 2010 <b>...</b>

Fox <b>News</b> - Ratings - 2010 | MSNBC - CNN | Mediaite

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Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green <b>News</b> Report: December 28, 2010 <b>...</b>

Fox <b>News</b> - Ratings - 2010 | MSNBC - CNN | Mediaite

Fox Utterly Destroys Cable <b>News</b> Ratings Competition in 2010 <b>...</b>

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green <b>News</b> Report: December 28, 2010 <b>...</b>

Fox <b>News</b> - Ratings - 2010 | MSNBC - CNN | Mediaite

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