Secret Diary of a Dublin Call Girl

Kooli · 20-02-2012 05:43PM

BarackPyjama wrote: »

As I've mentioned, just because I don't give any credibility whatsoever to this bizarre blog, which is quite clearly fake, doesn't mean that you can tar me with the 'punter' brush.

I've only looked at a couple of entries on the blog, but I'm interested to know what it is about it that would make you say it's 'bizarre' or 'clearly fake'?

To me it seems to really ring true as authentic and real.

And yes, maybe that is because it resonates with what I already imagined the life of a prostitute to be (based on my own experiences and attitudes about sex, the body, relationships etc.) but that's no reason to automatically discount it.

I just didn't read anything there that didn't seem to make sense, and I'm a little confused as to why people would resist the idea that there are a lot of sex workers who share her experience.

fatmammycat · 20-02-2012 05:47PM

28064212 wrote: »

Not really sure where the hostility is coming from This is a discussion board, I assumed if you were posting here you were interested in a discussion

Nothing hostile about it: I said what I thought in my initial post, that's it. I'm not interested in clarifying why I think what I do to you. So if you don't mind, let's leave it at that.

fatmammycat · 20-02-2012 05:49PM

Kooli wrote: »

I just didn't read anything there that didn't seem to make sense, and I'm a little confused as to why people would resist the idea that there are a lot of sex workers who share her experience.

Indeed, and a lot of sex workers in the comments support her experiences.

Kooli · 20-02-2012 05:51PM

fatmammycat wrote: »

Indeed, and a lot of sex workers in the comments support her experiences.

Oh my gosh yes I've just looked at some of the other blogs that are linked in the comments. Wow. Powerful stuff.
Genuinely makes me rethink my stance on prostitution, and definitely more skeptical about the discourse out there about the 'happy hooker'

Ickle Magoo · 20-02-2012 06:13PM

28064212 wrote: »

Not really sure where the hostility is coming from This is a discussion board, I assumed if you were posting here you were interested in a discussion

There are lots of specific function discussion boards. This one is The Ladies Lounge - a forum for female posters to discuss issues from their perspective - please respect when topics are posted in this forum that those who post them and respond have chosen to post in tLL and under tLL ethos over and above any of the other forums available.

Cheers

Eileen_Lang · 20-02-2012 08:26PM

neuro-praxis wrote: »

I have read and re-read this and want to respond with a measure of objectivity. I googled your username to see where else you are posting and I can't quite nail your position.

There does seem to be a lot of contradiction in what you say, on boards and elsewhere. Your bottom line, appears to be, that you consider yourself an authority on the subject (and perhaps quite rightly so) but on the one hand you say you've had it worse than anyone and on the other you say you've had it easier? Some places you say prostitution was the most horrendous thing you have ever been through and simultaneously that you would lay down your life to keep prostitution alive. So I have no idea how to respond to you because I don't understand where you are coming from.

The "contradication" is only in your misunderstanding of what I am saying and flawed logic.

Yes, I did hate prostitution, and I definately have had it worse in life than anything Dublin Call Girl lays claim to (which is not the same as saying "worse than anyone" at all - I could tell you about people who had lives worse than my worst nightmares if you like that sort of thing).

But I am also an intelligent adult with some claims to sanity.

I have never felt an unaccountable compulsion to sell sex just because the market was there.

I made a conscious decision to sell sex because all the material alternatives available to me were far worse, as a lot of women do, just as simple as that.

In my case I have no doubt whatsoever that if I could not have sold sex there is no other way I could have kept finding enough money to survive. Life is like that, whatever the safety nets, there are always people who fall through the cracks. I was one of those people, and so are a lot of womren in prostitution. As a result, when you take away prostitution you are taking away the last safety net keeping us alive.

During there boom there may have been an opportunity to do something to taqke that pressure off many of us, but frankly, nobody really bothered. THe relevant NGOs were too busy consolidating their dominance over any autonomy we might try to express and convincing themselves and others that they knew more about who we are and are better placed to make our decisions, while, with the other hand, maintaining and enhancing the funding streams needed to sustain their salaries.

But now? More people are being pushed through the cracks than ever, and there is, literally, no money available to do anything about most of them.

Make it too hard for them to try and save themselves, and that's it, game over for many of them and their families...and you are DAMN RIGHT I will give my life if I have to rather than stand by and watch that happen without trying to stop it...so sue me...

But there is another side to this...only last night I was taken to task by a very nice lady...because there are other prostitutes who are quite sure that they are not driven by desperation and do not want to be represented as such...much less see themselves that way...personally, I cannot get my own head round that, but that doesn't invalidate what they are saying *AT ALL*...because I am certainly not the supreme arbiter of who other people are, and what they think and feel...

Dublin Call Girl claims that she chose to be a prostitute, under no serious financial pressure at all, and that she did not have a bad time. She had that free choice...yet now she wants to impose a different choice on other people on the grounds that she has decided that prostitution was bad for *her*.

She claims that she made a bad decision for herself, yet now, suddenly, she has become the best person to make similar decisions for other people, sight unseen?

I don't think so.

neuro-praxis wrote: »

I think you've been quick to pretty viciously attack this person here: if in fact the Dublin Call Girl person is just a complete fake then it won't make any difference. But consider that she is real. She says herself that she didn't fit the bill in terms of the average experience of a prostitute. I for example have no idea if you are telling the truth about your experience, so I take it at face value. This is the internet, after all.

If she is in anyway real she needs to wake up, quit hiding in projective identification and attention seeking, take responsibility for her own life and seek help for her significant issues...and reinforcing her in her chosen denial is about the worst, most unhealthy thing anyone could do.

neuro-praxis wrote: »

I think if you can't relate to her that's fair enough. How would you respond to the comments on the blog from other women who claim to have been escorts who do relate to her?

Honestly? (Because I am not prepared to make something up here)

I would be really surprised if most of them were not just the same person...but even beyond that, I have dealt with some of them and find them very manipulative and absent both logic and scruple...there is nothing unheard of about a small group of people colluding in reinforcing each other's attention seeking fantasies...

I have known, literally hundreds of women in prostitution...sat in their houses, met their kids...even met their mothers in a few cases...I know they are distinct individuals and for real...

JuliusCaesar · 20-02-2012 09:04PM

I don't think the blog is fake; I don't think DCG necessarily speaks for every prostitute; I do think that it is psychologically very plausible (and I am a psychologist).

I don't necessarily think prostitution should be made illegal.

But I do think that society needs a rethink about 'punters': those men who use prostitutes need to have a long look at themselves and what they are doing. If society backed up the view of punters as being not just 'losers' but also abusers, there might be less of them.

Babybuff · 20-02-2012 09:21PM

Eileen_Lang wrote: »

Honestly? (Because I am not prepared to make something up here)

I would be really surprised if most of them were not just the same person...but even beyond that, I have dealt with some of them and find them very manipulative and absent both logic and scruple...there is nothing unheard of about a small group of people colluding in reinforcing each other's attention seeking fantasies...

I have known, literally hundreds of women in prostitution...sat in their houses, met their kids...even met their mothers in a few cases...I know they are distinct individuals and for real...

I've read your posts too and I'm also interested in your perspective, however at the moment all I can gather is that prostitution is a horrible way to earn a living yet we should continue to enable individuals, who are or may have already suffered extreme forms of abuse before entering into the profession, to go on doing so as it's the lesser of some other unnamed evil.
It is at the least a mildly confusing point to make.
I don't doubt most women here could empathise with the dire situations that might propel a person into the sphere of selling sex but no one doubts that it must have been easy..or normal.

And on the other end of the scale I'm not sure I understand where the antagonistic attitude toward dcg stems from. There's a touch of paranoia about those who want to condemn what appears to be a heart felt cathartic blog which they believe only seeks to undermine their own position as some form of abolitionist agenda. That comes across as quite cold, callous and manipulative to me. I will try keep an open mind though.

I'd like to know more about the circumstances which were so difficult to overcome that prostitution was "the only other option available".

Eileen_Lang · 20-02-2012 10:01PM

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

I don't think the blog is fake; I don't think DCG necessarily speaks for every prostitute; I do think that it is psychologically very plausible (and I am a psychologist).

The idea of using prostitution (or any state or activity internally perceived as degrading and/or painful by the individual) as a sublimation of self harm stacks up but not as rationale for demanding control be imposed upon the lives of others, nor indeed, any aspect of the individuals's exterenal, as opposed to internal environment.

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

I don't necessarily think prostitution should be made illegal.

But I do think that society needs a rethink about 'punters': those men who use prostitutes need to have a long look at themselves and what they are doing. If society backed up the view of punters as being not just 'losers' but also abusers, there might be less of them.

Not if society was being unrealistic in so doing...

There is more than one perspective here, and no absolute black and white at all.

Personally, I never had a sense of my clients as "losers". For me, in the context of my life and times, they were men who made a conscious choice meet their casual sexual needs through fair and honest exchange rather than through deceit.

The only alternative I have ever experienced is the "pick up artist" approach that involves a kind of ongoing personal challenge to meet casual sexual needs through unscrupulous strategies of deceit and artifice that are pretty psychologically and emotionally abusive in their own right...

I would feel those men as not just contemptible "losers" but also "users"...and I already did long before I ever sold sex.

From another perspective, I accept that any man who knew how distressed I was, and how much pressure I was under, would have to have something very wrong with them indeed to derive sexual gratification from me...which is why I (like many other women) also appreciated the need to deceive them about that aspect...because if they did not want to pay me for sex I would be in far worse trouble...

Catch 22....

The way a human society resolves that dilemma is to prioritise whatever meets the needs of the party with the highest stake at risk...and, that would have been me...and, with no better material alternative available, I needed to be left in peace with a market where I could sell sex to save myself.

There is no such thing as an "ideal world" even from a psychologist's point of view.

strandroad · 20-02-2012 10:04PM

I am also interested how a contemporary woman living in a modern welfare state can have no other options than to become a prostitute, with all the risk and trauma associated; especially that Eileen seems to refer to cases of very rough and risky street life and not high class hookers with private security. The only scenario I can come up with is heavy drug addiction but even then it is surely better to seek help than to sell oneself in the state of such severely limited watchfulness?

strandroad · 20-02-2012 10:14PM

Kooli wrote: »

I just didn't read anything there that didn't seem to make sense, and I'm a little confused as to why people would resist the idea that there are a lot of sex workers who share her experience.

Well the reviews part is certainly true, I read some reviews on the website in question years ago and they were just like what she describes. Some of them were highly disturbing, with punters complaining about girls being "out of it", depressed etc.; for them it was just "awful service, avoid" type of review. Some of the stories were pointing to truly saddening scenarios, though - one of the punters described a combination of unusual booking arrangements (through a third person), the girl having little English and being out of it and unenthusiastic. Another was with a girl who was high on something and mumbling; he had sex with her anyway, but gave her a scathing review. Don't know what it looks like now, I had enough (thanks, boards...). Her explanations as to what some expressions in the reviews mean and what her own experiences were like sound plausible too.

Eileen_Lang · 20-02-2012 10:18PM

Babybuff wrote: »

I've read your posts too and I'm also interested in your perspective, however at the moment all I can gather is that prostitution is a horrible way to earn a living yet we should continue to enable individuals, who are or may have already suffered extreme forms of abuse before entering into the profession, to go on doing so as it's the lesser of some other unnamed evil.
It is at the least a mildly confusing point to make.

Why is that confusing?

What else do you want to do? Humanely euthanise them? Or just congratulate yourself on doing them the favour of making life even harder than it needed to be for them?

We should be doing all we can to optimise our society, make it as safe and compassionate as possible anyway, whether or not people are being driven to prostitution, but that can never be 100%.

Babybuff wrote: »

I don't doubt most women here could empathise with the dire situations that might propel a person into the sphere of selling sex but no one doubts that it must not have been easy..or normal.

(I put the missing "not" in there) ...it certainly wasn't "normal" (whatever that may be) and it was very, very hard for me...but that is no reason to demand I be denied even that last chance...

Babybuff wrote: »

And on the other end of the scale I'm not sure I understand where the antagonistic attitude toward dcg stems from.

I think I have explained that all I can by now...

Babybuff wrote: »

I'd like to know more about the circumstances which were so difficult to overcome that prostitution was "the only other option available".

I can understand that, but, unfortunately I cannot do that without an unacceptable risk of identifying myself (which would probably put me straight back in the same position) - beyond what is already on my site http://www.stop-the-lights.com (currently in a heap due to upgrading to make it interactive and easier to manage - so if you cannot follow enough links from there to get to all the information please do me a favour and pm me so I can fix it?). In my opinion what is there is a very long way from being a full explanation but it is the best I can do...

Besides, I had to live it, I shouldn't have to justify it as well.:(

Babybuff · 20-02-2012 10:27PM

Eileen_Lang wrote: »

Personally, I never had a sense of my clients as "losers". For me, in the context of my life and times, they were men who made a conscious choice meet their casual sexual needs through fair and honest exchange rather than through deceit.

Really? The married men, the ones with wives or girlfriends or kids, deceiving their families, lying to people about where they've been and what they do are not losers? The ones terrified that if it becomes criminalised will lose everything they have if they get caught, not losers. If it's so ok why would they be ashamed of what they are doing.
Wait, I get it, they are just normal men looking for casual sex and they are willing to PAY YOU for it. makes sense.
The entire mentality that sex should be available to men, when they want it and how they want it because they are men and have needs and that women should provide this service for them makes them the biggest kind of losers possible.

The only alternative I have ever experienced is the "pick up artist" approach that involves a kind of ongoing personal challenge to meet casual sexual needs through unscrupulous strategies of deceit and artifice that are pretty psychologically and emotionally abusive in their own right...

I would feel those men as not just contemptible "losers" but also "users"...and I already did long before I ever sold sex.

the difference is you didn't get paid for it and those who have casual sex with pua's are obviously wanting sex too. Without the payment, I may add.

From another perspective, I accept that any man who knew how distressed I was, and how much pressure I was under, would have to have something very wrong with them indeed to derive sexual gratification from me...which is why I (like many other women) also appreciated the need to deceive them about that aspect...because if they did not want to pay me for sex I would be in far worse trouble...

Catch 22....

The way a human society resolves that dilemma is to prioritise whatever meets the needs of the party with the highest stake at risk...and, that would have been me...and, with no better material alternative available, I needed to be left in peace with a market where I could sell sex to save myself.

you know you have the opportunity to discuss with us how you were saved and from what, maybe if we could understand that much we would be making some headway here. Other than that this still sounds like an addict trying to justify their fix.

Eileen_Lang · 20-02-2012 10:32PM

mhge wrote: »

I am also interested how a contemporary woman living in a modern welfare state can have no other options than to become a prostitute, with all the risk and trauma associated; especially that Eileen seems to refer to cases of very rough and risky street life and not high class hookers with private security. The only scenario I can come up with is heavy drug addiction but even then it is surely better to seek help than to sell oneself in the state of such severely limited watchfulness?

In the first place, when it is not legally persecuted, street prostitution is a great deal less "rough and risky" than indoor prostitution. It is also far more independent, less personally invasive and more accessible if you are desperate and have no money, or long term commitment to invest.

Follow the papers...as the recession bites there are more and more people falling through the net every day.

One obvious example is if you are 18 and either need to leave an abusive family for your own safety or are thrown out all you can get is €100 a week...that is not enough to live on let alone find a place to live with.

But there are loads more...just open your eyes and look around. Some people get through those things with the support of community and friends, some get through on blind luck, some (less than 0.1%) get through by selling sex and some become suicide statistics...

That's life. There is always someone being forced into the margins where nobody is willing to look properly, let alone see.

(Incidentally, I experimented with, and rejected, drugs before I was 16 and never really drank until years after I left prostitution.)

Eileen_Lang · 20-02-2012 10:43PM

Babybuff wrote: »

Wait, I get it, they are just normal men looking for casual sex and they are willing to PAY YOU for it. makes sense.

See? You *DO* understand really?

The socially engineering of an improved version of male sexuality is a seperate much bigger issue that is unlikely to be resolved by the fourth millenium.

Babybuff wrote: »

the difference is you didn't get paid for it and those who have casual sex with pua's are obviously wanting sex too. Without the payment, I may add.

If they wanted sex on the same casual terms as the PUAs then the whole PUA industry would not exist...because guys could just walk up to women and say:
"Excuse me, terribly sorry to bother you, but I really fancy a quick sha*g later and I wondered if you would like to join me" rather than studying and applying so many ethically redundant techniques for psychological manipulation?

Babybuff wrote: »

you know you have the opportunity to discuss with us how you were saved and from what, maybe if we could understand that much we would be making some headway here. Other than that this still sounds like an addict trying to justify their fix.

To you, maybe, but thankfully most people have a lot more insight...:rolleyes:

Babybuff · 20-02-2012 10:44PM

Eileen_Lang wrote: »

Why is that confusing?

What else do you want to do? Humanely euthanise them? Or just congratulate yourself on doing them the favour of making life even harder than it needed to be for them?

We should be doing all we can to optimise our society, make it as safe and compassionate as possible anyway, whether or not people are being driven to prostitution, but that can never be 100%.

(I put the missing "not" in there) ...it certainly wasn't "normal" (whatever that may be) and it was very, very hard for me...but that is no reason to demand I be denied even that last chance...

I think I have explained that all I can by now...

I can understand that, but, unfortunately I cannot do that without an unacceptable risk of identifying myself (which would probably put me straight back in the same position) - beyond what is already on my site http://www.stop-the-lights.com (currently in a heap due to upgrading to make it interactive and easier to manage - so if you cannot follow enough links from there to get to all the information please do me a favour and pm me so I can fix it?). In my opinion what is there is a very long way from being a full explanation but it is the best I can do...

Besides, I had to live it, I shouldn't have to justify it as well.:(

I think I've already discussed what I'd like to do. Educate them, protect them and create exit strategys for them. These are vulnerable women. I'm sure they think they're are strong and invincible and able but to me they are just vulnerable women.
I'm a woman, I've been abused, I'm a mother, I've been homeless, I've been addicted. I found a way and it wasn't through selling sex and I don't advocate it either because I do actually care about other women who have had to endure these things too, because I can relate, because I can empathise and because I feel compassion for them and because I know that pain can't be erased by using yourself to buy what you think you need. For the pleasure of a man..ffs

Babybuff · 20-02-2012 10:48PM

Eileen_Lang wrote: »

See? You *DO* understand really?

The socially engineering of an improved version of male sexuality is a seperate much bigger issue that is unlikely to be resolved by the fourth millenium.

If they wanted sex on the same casual terms as the PUAs then the whole PUA industry would not exist...because guys could just walk up to women and say:
"Excuse me, terribly sorry to bother you, but I really fancy a quick sha*g later and I wondered if you would like to join me" rather than studying and applying so many ethically redundant techniques for psychological manipulation?

To you, maybe, but thankfully most people have a lot more insight...:rolleyes:

yeah, losers.

strandroad · 20-02-2012 10:51PM

Eileen_Lang wrote: »

Follow the papers...as the recession bites there are more and more people falling through the net every day.

I fail to see how "more and more people" can fall through the net to a degree when prostitution is their only option. If you have no home, you are entitled to rent allowance or social housing. If you have worked or were self-employed, you are entitled to JSB/JSA and targeted supplements. If you have children, you get lone parent's allowance, children's allowance and a range of supplements. If you're of education age, you can get BTEA. Etc etc.

But even if they are (drugs, debt)... I fail to see how offering them prostitution as a viable option is going to help. It's only going to add a lot of damage, expose to harm, trauma or illness, foster addictions. For a person in trouble it may be one way ticket and you're happy to send them off.

Eileen_Lang · 20-02-2012 11:01PM

creditable wrote: »

I'd like to thank those in this thread for bringing to light what was already blatantly obvious - this is NOT really an issue of human trafficking, but is an issue of FEMINISM. Look at which country happens to be the only one enforcing the proposed new law in which the client is prosecuted - Sweden - The most feminist country in the world. Coincidence?

Of course selling one's body is going to be psychologically damaging for many women, but that's exactly why the pay rates are so high. The view most people here are displaying is one typical of what we see so often from women in feminist countries; they're not having to take responsibility for their own actions. In the case of the author of this blog, no one forced her into prostitution. She willingly chose to do it.

...and now she is going to force everybody else to stop doing it (regardless of their feelings or circumstances) to get her own back...

Thanks for bringing it back to the baseline here...because this isn't about me, or DCG, it is about a general principle...

creditable wrote: »

But in this culture the woman will always be awarded the victim label, while the man gets branded as the abuser. If this senseless new law being proposed does not reflect that fact, I don't know what does.

I was a victim for much of my life, but independent of gender...not as a woman, or a prostitute but as a human being. However bad it was, prostitution was not one of my problems, it was the solution to many of them.

My clients were not my abusers, they were some of my survival resources.

The effect of the 1993 act on my life was dangerously abusive.

The effect of the "rescue industry" on my life has been almost exclusively abusive (in the terms in which they overtly express themselves as well as other ways).

The aspiration for further legislation is even more abusive and harmful to me.

THAT is reality...

creditable wrote: »

I'm sorry to say it, but prostitution is not going away in this country and is hardly going to be legalized any time soon. So the only reasonable solution to combat trafficking for the moment is to implement a permanent investigative team and have far stricter laws put into place.

I don't think the laws could be stricter, but if you decriminalised mainstream, independent prostitution again trafficking would become almost impossible to get away with here...and very easy to prosecute.

Babybuff · 20-02-2012 11:05PM

Eileen_Lang wrote: »

THAT is reality...

no. That's your reality and that's the problem here, you seem to believe it's the only one which is valid.

Eileen_Lang · 20-02-2012 11:16PM

mhge wrote: »

I fail to see how "more and more people" can fall through the net to a degree when prostitution is their only option. If you have no home, you are entitled to rent allowance or social housing.

Not in all circumstances (you are not entitle to rent allowance unless you were already renting from your own resources for a period of time without claiming, you are not entitled to social housing unless you have a percieved need that falls within clearly defined guidleine that rule single people,without children, our see http://www.cie.ie for more holes in the system), and even when you *are* entitled that entitlement is not always available to be given to you.

mhge wrote: »

If you have worked or were self-employed, you are entitled to JSB/JSA and targeted supplements. If you have children, you get lone parent's allowance, children's allowance and a range of supplements. If you're of education age, you can get BTEA. Etc etc.

€100 a week is not enough for an 18 to 21 year old to live without a family, many self employed people are not, in fact entitled to claim anything (for not, that is supposed to be changing). The situation for single parents is so complex I could not even begin to show you the various holes people are falling through...

...AND, to cap it all, whatever you *are* entitled to can take weeks, or even months, to process...

The worst thing about most of the holes in the welfare safety net is that people tend to have no idea those holes exist (or deny them for a sense of safety) until they fall through them...and then it is too late...

...and those are only the normal, every day situations that can affect a lot of people, there are also more unusual situations, or combinations of situations that are not covered by anything at all.

mhge wrote: »

But even if they are (drugs, debt)... I fail to see how offering them prostitution as a viable option is going to help. It's only going to add a lot of damage, expose to harm, trauma or illness, foster addictions. For a person in trouble it may be one way ticket and you're happy to send them off.

Fir a person in serious trouble it is usually the best of a lot of far worse "one way tickets"that add a lot more damage, exposure to harm, trauma or illness, and fostered addictions....what would you prefer to do? Offer euthanasia?

Most people who are driven to prostitution by desperation are intelligent people who are far more capable of recognising a better option if they had one than anyone else would be on their behalf.

strandroad · 20-02-2012 11:27PM

I was in difficult situations myself but also had more than a few friends going through unemployment and assorted trouble in recent years, some of them in difficult situation with welfare, not resident in the country for a good while, with not enough stamps having been duped by their employer, self employed, immigrants, you name it. Every single one of them received some form of welfare and when the claims took a long time to be processed there were extra funds from HSE, CBO etc to keep them afloat for a while. I don't know where your experience is coming from but it's very different to what I know. You do seem to have a different version of reality. I do not believe in prostitution presented as alternative welfare.

Eileen_Lang · 20-02-2012 11:38PM

Babybuff wrote: »

I think I've already discussed what I'd like to do. Educate them, protect them and create exit strategys for them.

That would be my usual preference, where possible, but in the current economic climate I am afraid there are not even the resources to sustain the current safety net, let alone create new ones.

Babybuff wrote: »

These are vulnerable women. I'm sure they think they're are strong and invincible and able but to me they are just vulnerable women.

True, but sadly, vulnerability is no guarantee that there is going to be anyone who can understand and offer the help you need...and while the thought *does* of course, count for something, the wrong help can even make things far worse.

You are never going to be able to understand someone enough to be able to help them while you are determined to define them in their absence and inform them who they are and what they need. As yet, the rescue industry steadfastly refuses to include the women at any responsible level, or listen to them, unless they are just parroting what their latest ideological fad.

Anyone who really cares should be fighting to change ALL THAT, not fighting to change the law and place the women at far greater risk while taking much of their income away.

Babybuff wrote: »

I'm a woman, I've been abused, I'm a mother, I've been homeless, I've been addicted. I found a way and it wasn't through selling sex and I don't advocate it either because I do actually care about other women who have had to endure these things too, because I can relate, because I can empathise and because I feel compassion for them and because I know that pain can't be erased by using yourself to buy what you think you need. For the pleasure of a man..ffs

The need for the basic sustainable safety of a roof over your head, and regular food to eat, is hardly a subjective thing you only "think you need"... without even having to get into more complex, individual problems, that can be just as valid and insumountable even if you and I both cannot even relate to them.

You are lucky you found ways to conquer your problems without selling sex...but that does not mean everybody selling sex has the same problems, or that the same solutions are available, or will work for them.

Legislating to take away the income they need will not change that.

Eileen_Lang · 20-02-2012 11:43PM

Babybuff wrote: »

no. That's your reality and that's the problem here, you seem to believe it's the only one which is valid.

Isn't that a bit of a silly statement to make on foot of what I actually said:

Eileen Lang wrote:

I was a victim for much of my life, but independent of gender...not as a woman, or a prostitute but as a human being. However bad it was, prostitution was not one of my problems, it was the solution to many of them.

My clients were not my abusers, they were some of my survival resources.

The effect of the 1993 act on my life was dangerously abusive.

The effect of the "rescue industry" on my life has been almost exclusively abusive (in the terms in which they overtly express themselves as well as other ways).

The aspiration for further legislation is even more abusive and harmful to me.

THAT is reality...

Eileen_Lang · 20-02-2012 11:52PM

mhge wrote: »

I was in difficult situations myself but also had more than a few friends going through unemployment and assorted trouble in recent years, some of them in difficult situation with welfare, not resident in the country for a good while, with not enough stamps having been duped by their employer, self employed, immigrants, you name it. Every single one of them received some form of welfare and when the claims took a long time to be processed there were extra funds from HSE, CBO etc to keep them afloat for a while. I don't know where your experience is coming from but it's very different to what I know. You do seem to have a different version of reality.

...as prostitutes are less than 0.1% of the population in Ireland it is not even likely that you would have come across the multiple bind situations that tend to force women into selling sex...or that if you had you would know enough to recognise that.

You need to believe that, whatever may occur, you will, essentially, be safe...sadly that is not true for everyone and a lot of prostitutes are people who have found that truth out, the hard way, through personal experience...

mhge wrote: »

I do not believe in prostitution presented as alternative welfare.

Neither do I...I believe it is a last resort when there is no welfare available to cover a specific individual in specific circumstances...a very different thing...

PS Can I solicit you (and other volunteers) for a column on my revamped page (if I ever figure it out), literally a, non-judgemental "Masterclass in playing the welfare system" because I do believe that alone could give a few women realistic, badly needed, options...think about it.

Babybuff · 20-02-2012 11:55PM

It's not the taking away the income that troubles me, I don't want to do that but there isn't a bone in my body that wants to accommodate a male apologists point of view. This is what it boils down to at the end of the day, a service providing men sexual gratification and you don't see anything wrong with that. <Mod snip>

fro9etb8j5qsl2 · 21-02-2012 12:11AM

If I paid €180 for a service and I didn't get what I asked for then I most certainly would complain

What's the chip on yer ones shoulder about like? Nobody's forcing her to do what she does so if she has such a problem with it, WHY DOES SHE DO IT AT ALL??? FFS this 'pity me' sh1te does my head in :mad: She's not going to solve any of her problems by moaning to the work online about it.

Eileen_Lang · 21-02-2012 12:19AM

Babybuff wrote: »

It's not the taking away the income that troubles me, I don't want to do that but there isn't a bone in my body that wants to accommodate a male apologists point of view. This is what it boils down to at the end of the day, a service providing men sexual gratification and you don't see anything wrong with that. <Mod snip>

Right or wrong (and ideologically I probably think it is wrong in a lot of ways you would not agree with) the bottom line is that many, many prostitutes (including me)

"don't think of them as human, don't think of them at all, you keep you mind on the money, keeping your eyes on the wall"...

Because when you are selling sex out of financial desperation that is all you really see...the men are not people, just a survival resource...crisis ATMs with feet.

Though I can see how the men might have something to say about that, it just isn't anybody else's business, because they are not the ones having to sell sex...we are...

Babybuff · 21-02-2012 12:22AM

creditable wrote: »

You're against prostitution because of the potential damages it can cause to women, but what about the potential damages to men should it's accessibility be diminished?

please,indulge me.

How do you know it's simply "a service providing men sexual gratification"? I think you'll find there are many men out there whose only available form of intimacy with anyone is through prostitution. I'd be willing to bet the isolating affects of it being banned would be far more damaging to a man than the affects caused to a woman from selling herself for money.

I'm kinda laughing at this one and only because I know I will get the difference between male sex drive and female sex drive answer but I was celibate for ten fricken years and I didn't die from it. My hands didn't fall off or anything either.

Babybuff · 21-02-2012 12:25AM

Eileen_Lang wrote: »

Yet another ill considered remark when you take it in context:

?????

I was referring to the punters, as as already suggested. I'm sure they have plenty of insight.

Secret Diary of a Dublin Call Girl

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