Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Magdalene Meretrix's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, May 1st, 2005
6:16 pm	Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon I just figured out that I have a Bacon Number of 3! (That's the number you get when you play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.) I was in the movie Madam Kitty's Fantasy Ranch (don't bother looking for me in the credits. I am in the line-up scene but the director neglected to get a signed consent form from me so he included me in the scene but put a black circle over my face. Since my naked breasts and my voice are in the movie, I consider that to be good enough for me to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.) Magdalene Meretrix (Bacon 3) was in Madam Kitty's Fantasy Ranch (1998) with Ron Jeremy Ron Jeremy (Bacon 2) was in Detroit Rock City (1999) with Paul Brogen Paul Brogen (Bacon 1) was in Cavedweller (2004) with Kevin Bacon (Comment on this)
Friday, April 15th, 2005
1:29 pm	Monopolistic Behavior in a Nevada brothel Like most people, I try to find some common ground between things I'm studying at university and experiences in my own life. When it comes to classes on economics, it naturally all comes back to whoring since that is mainly the only work I did for nearly two decades. Today we were discussing the degrees of price discrimination monopolies can practice. This topic especially got my attention because I was forced to defend myself on live radio against an interviewer who was lambasting me for admitting to practicing price discrimination (in that particular case, charging a different rate for male and female clients.) I had no strong defense at the time ... and still wouldn't since academics don't often make for tidy sound bites ... but today I learned that brothel workers practice all three different degrees of price discrimination. I didn't share that observation with my professor or classmates, but I will attempt to share it with you, whoever may be reading this. First I should say that I would class brothel workers as monpolistic competitions rather than pure monopolies or pure competitive sellers. In a market with perfect competition, everyone sells exactly the same item and companies are "price takers" which is to say that there is a market price and everyone has to sell their item at that price. Think of items like paperclips, penny-nails, lawn seed. Every item is just like every other item. Now, as anyone who's ever visited a brothel as a client can tell you, prostitutes are not indistinguishable items! In a perfect monopoly, there is only one seller and they make the price themselves. They choose to produce a quantity based on their marginal cost of production and set a price from there, based on a few other factors. Monopolies are not efficient because there is "deadweight loss," meaning that some surplus is lost. There are two kinds of surplus: consumer surplus, which occurs whenever someone makes a purchase for less than they would have been willing to pay for it, and producer surplus, which occurs whenever someone sells a product for more than they would have been willing to sell it. For example, if condoms cost seventy-five cents but you would have been willing to pay a dollar, you got twenty-five cents of consumer surplus. If the manufacturer would have been willing to sell it for fifty cents, they got twenty-five cents of producer surplus. Together, the transaction has generated fifty cents of total surplus. Well, because of the way monopolies choose to price their goods, some of the consumer surplus is lost. But it doesn't turn into producer surplus, either. It's just lost (through the magic of economics, and explicable in a manner far deeper than I feel like going into today) and that's called deadweight loss. (While I would consider brothel workers to be more like monopolistic competitions (Coke vs Pepsi) than true monopolies (the utility company), I will simply refer to the trade as monopolistic from here on out for brevity's sake.) But there is a way to regain that lost surplus and make a monopoly efficient. The consumer doesn't get it back, but the producer is able to regain it (no one ever said efficiency was fair!) This method is called the first degree of price discrimination. In the first degree of price discrimination, the monopoly stops looking at the overall demand. (I'm assuming that most of you are familiar with the basic law of supply and demand, where prices depend on an equilibrium between the amount of a good supplied and the amount of demand the public has for that good.) In first degree price discrimination, the monopolist will look at each individual consumer's demand for a good and adjust the price on a case-by-case basis instead of looking at overall demand and setting one price for everyone. The professor couldn't come up with any compelling examples and mainly just said that companies don't do this because it is not cost-effective since it would take far too much time to ascertain the demand schedule of every single consumer. Well, that may be true if you're selling Coke vs. Pepsi, but it's not true if you're selling time with Heidi vs. time with Trixie! While workers in some sexwork industries have standard rates, Nevada brothel workers negotiate with every client. The goal of a skilled negotiator is to find the highest price she can get her customer to pay for her services. This is price discrimination since different clients will often pay different prices for the same services with the same worker. This also produces more efficient transactions since there is, at least in theory, no deadweight loss. The classic example of second degree price discrimination is when a monopolist offers a bulk discount on their goods. Brothel workers practice second degree price discrimination when they offer a discount for extended sessions. It's not uncommon for a worker to be willing to accept $X for a one-hour session or, for example, 3*($X/1.5) for a three-hour session. Finally, there is third degree price discrimination. An example of this is city bus fare: a price for small children, a price for able-bodied adults, a price for disabled adults, and a price for senior citizens. This is a form of price discrimination that divides consumers into classes, each of which have a different demand schedule, and charges different rates according to the elasticity of demand (roughly defined as how badly you want something) of each particular group. Restaurants make more money when they charge senior citizens less than regular customers because seniors tend to have more elastic demands due to fixed incomes. (By contrast, government is willing to put heavy taxes on gasoline and cigarettes because demand for these items tends to be very inelastic and consumers will pay outrageous amounts of money to keep getting them.) So when a prostitute charges a different rate for male and female customers, she may be unconsciously (or perhaps consciously) doing so based on a theory of third degree price discrimination, understanding that some classes of customers are more willing to pay than others and understanding that she may make more money if she lowers the price of her services for those particular classes who have more elastic demands. (I say that she may be practicing price discrimination to increase her revenue because there are some workers who practice price discrimination in order to discourage unwanted clients. We see this in the case of workers who find sex with men of certain ethnicities distasteful and so attempt to price them out of their interest in her. In such a case, we would not say that the worker is attempting to increase her revenue but rather that she feels that her distaste for some clients justifies a higher rate since she is, in a sense, giving up more to service that client, thus the time spent with him comes at a higher opportunity cost to her.) I found today's lecture more interesting than most because of how neatly it addressed aspects of my former occupation. It's nice to know the theory behind something I was trained to do "on instinct." (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 18th, 2005
7:13 pm	Women in the early Christian church I haven't posted in a while because, as many of you know, I'm working on a degree in the sciences and so I've been more focused on classes lately than anything else. But a dialogue has been opened between a gentleman and myself on an occultist e-list and I thought I'd share some of my side of the conversation with anyone around these parts who might be interested in these ideas. The topic of discussion is a recent CNN article about Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone's objections to the way the Catholic church has been portrayed in Dan Brown's bestselling novel (which I have not yet read), The DaVinci Code. The fellow on the e-list questioned the Cardinal's assertion that Jesus was never married and we discussed the cultural norms of the times that would indicate it to be more likely than not that he was. I also went on at some length about the Biblical story of the Marriage at Cana and my own insights into the significance that Jesus' first public miracle was performed there, as well as several other details about the story. What I most wanted to share, though, was the part of the discussion that touched on the role of women in early Christianity. My correspondent first quoted the CNN article, saying: In the interview, Bertone firmly rejected the book's claim that the feminine role in Christianity had been suppressed. "This is one of the most vulgar of inventions. The feminine element is present in all the Gospels," Bertone said. And then went on to add: Hmm. I can't remember where the women's role is in the Bible, or in Christianity. If someone can please show me the feminine in the Bible, I'd be glad to recant my previous untruths. So I took it upon myself to expound upon the woman's role in the New Testament, the feminine in the Bible and how it has, indeed, been suppressed as Dan Brown appears to claim (I really ought to read his book, I suppose): (p.s. if you don't happen to have a Bible handy and want to follow along with the citations, you can access several translations of the Bible here. If you really want to get at the heart of the New Testament, though, I do suggest learning Greek.) Apparently, about half of Jesus's followers were female. Not only did married disciples bring their whole households along with them in following Jesus, but scripture specifically refers to several women - Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna and "many others" - following Jesus. (Luke 8: 1-3) The resurrected Christ chose to appear first to women. (Matthew 28: 1, 8-10) The men hid when Jesus was crucified (although one passage describes John as being present) but the Bible says that many women were present with him at the end. (Matthew 27: 55-56, Mark 15:40-41) The first apostles were women (Matthew 28:1-7) Peter quotes a prophecy from Joel saying that both men and women will prophesy. (Acts 2:17-18) Four unmarried women are referred to as prophetesses (Acts 21:9) A woman named Priscilla taught the Gospel (Acts 18:24-26) and is referred to by Paul as a "fellow worker in Christ" (Romans 16:3, 1 Corinthians 16:3) Phoebe is referred to as a "diakonos" of the church in Cenchrea (Romans 16:1) (diakonos gets translated variously as minister, deaconess, and servant (probably depending on how the translators felt about her role in the early church.)) A female apostle, Lunia, is referred to by Paul as "outstanding among the apostles" (Romans 16:7) (Again, various translators have meddled with this one, turning Lunia into Junias and giving her a sex change. This change first occurs in the 13th century.) The following women are mentioned as householders in whose homes churches are held. Chloe (1 Corinthians 1:11), Mark's mother (Acts 12:12), Lydia (Acts 16:14-15, 40), Nympha (Colossians 4:15). Paul writes that "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28) (indicating the equality of all, regardless of race, status or sex) Pauls describes two women, Euodia and Syntyche, as "women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel." (Philippians 4:2-3) Paul's letter titled "Philemon" is addressed to two men and also to a woman named Apphia who is described as "our sister" in their standing as leaders of a house church. (Philemon 1:2) Writings that downgrade women and relegate them to an inferior status begin to appear later, beginning about 30 years after the death of Paul. Some of these writings were included in the canonical scripture [1], others are from the anti-Nicaean fathers, still others from medieval writers. There is no strong evidence that women were held to be inferior by Jesus or the early Pauline church. As such, I'd have to agree with anyone who claims that "the feminine role in Christianity had been suppressed." It most certainly has. -=- [1] Biblical scholars who do not permit themselves to be limited by the Doctrine of Infallibility (the belief that the Bible is perfect and complete and contains no errors) tend to claim that the following Epistles of Paul were not written by Paul himself but by someone else using his name (a common literary technique of the time): Ephesians (probably written before 95 CE but after Paul's death in 65 CE), 2 Thessalonians (written some time between 75 - 90 CE), and both Timothies and Titus (all three written somewhere between 100 and 150 CE.) (For more information about the authorship of the Pauline epistles, see Raymond Brown's Responses to 101 Questions on the Bible, and George A. Buttrick's Interpreter's One Volume Commentary on the Bible) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, January 13th, 2005
7:18 pm	A question for the polyamorous amongst you My correspondent is quite vehemently insisting that I am polyamorous. I have not had sex with anyone other than my lifepartner in several years now. I do not enjoy and have never felt moved to conduct more than one romantic personal relationship at a time (though I was once tricked into a month of living in a polyamorous household by a man who wooed me and brought me home (several states away) while not telling me that his lover of seven years also lived at home with him and not telling his lover that he was bringing a new lover home.) I am not interested in having sex with anyone other than my lifepartner and when I was interested in sexual relations outside the partnership, it was with clients. I did expend energy and emotions on my clients, attaining as open and loving a state with them as was possible to attain, even with one-time-only clients. I viewed my work as a nurturing, healing service profession and attempted to surround each client with the energy often known as love. Now ... my thought on the issue is that an awful lot of polyamorous folks would be pretty upset with me if I were to refer to my work as a prostitute -- loving though it was -- as being polyamorous. Am I wrong about that? Said correspondent turned out to be angry that I had referred to myself as not monogamous and not polyamorous and insisted that I *must* be polyamorous. If I am correct in my belief that the polyamory community would be upset at loving prostitution being referred to as polyamory, what would be the appropriate relationship orientation term for this lifestyle choice? It is obviously not monogamy overall, yet it is monogamy in my private life and not monogamy in my professional life. It is my understanding that there is no term to describe this particular configuration of life-orientation. When I said that I -- on the extremely rare occasions I'm asked what my relationship orientation is -- must give an answer that opens a dialogue and that falling back on the, inaccurate for me, term "polyamory" is dishonest, I appear to have made my correspondent very upset indeed. Those of you who self-identify as polyamorous: what are your thoughts on this issue? Am I right to refuse to self-identify as polyamorous? Or is my correspondent correct in believing that refusing to identify as polyamorous is an insult to the polyamory community and a great failing on my part as one who attempts to educate others about sex and sexual issues? (17 Comments |Comment on this)
4:29 am	What does "open" mean? Someone wrote to ask me: In another journal entry you wrote 'We are neither monogamous nor polyamorous but describe ourselves as "open."' What is the distinction between "open" and polyamorous? Would you label yourself as non-monogamous? How does that coincide with "open"? This is my response: I prefer to label myself as little as possible. Labels can be opening in that they express concepts to others but by the same mechanism that they open lines of communication they can also be closing because it is too easy to confuse the map with the territory. I would not label myself as non-monogamous because I have personal issues with labels that say "I am not-this." I feel that if a label is to be effective, it should say what one *is*, not what one *is not.* If a label only says, "I am not this thing you may know or understand," then it is better to open dialogue than to attempt the categorization of labels. To me, calling one's self "non-monogamous" feels much the way it would feel for me to call people of color "non-white" or to call myself a "non-man". The non-label sets up a dynamic that tends to lend increased affirmation to that which one is attempting to distance one's self from. My definition of polyamorous is seeking or engaging in sexual connections with multiple people. My partner and I are not polyamorous because we are not actively seeking sexual partners. We are open to life's possibilities, but not seeking possibilities in that particular realm at this point in our lives together. When one is not seeking, an interest only arises when someone exceptionally well-suited comes along. We do not bar the possibility of someone(s) well-suited coming along, but we are content with our lives as they are and not seeking additional sexual connections. My definition of monogamous is committed to a single sexual pair-bond. Emotional connections can occur outside that pair-bond, such as friendships, but they are not intimate in nature, either emotionally or erotically. My partner and I are not monogamous because we understand that we live in a world filled with people, each carrying their own universe within them. There may come a person or people whose universe we feel a desire to explore in a deeper manner including a sexual manner. We do not choose to make a committment that would limit that possibility from occuring. We have been together for six and a half years. During that time, my partner has encountered no one else who stirred him to sexual/emotional connection. During that time, I have had many partners, but all have been clients (and I have been in a state of retirement from clients for a while now, so in the last few years I have had no other partners but my lifepartner.) My clients stir many emotions and energies in me, but the relationship I have with them is one of service and of healing. In these last six and a half years, I have encountered no one else besides my lifepartner who stirred me to a personal quest to explore their universe with a sexual/emotional connection. We are very content and comfortable in our life and have no interest in seeking out new connections. A person or people would have to be outstandingly well-suited for us to want to exert the energy required to foster a new connection on the level we would desire. We have no interest in swinging whatsoever - sex without connection is boring and empty to us. But we realize that sex with connection, even for a short period of time, demands an energy committment that cannot be made half-heartedly or on a whim. Inertia keeps us "monogamous by form" because it is so rare that either of us encounters someone well-suited enough to make that committment. I feel that taking on the label of polyamorous when it is no more than a potentiality that may never be fulfilled is not entirely honest. The label then sends forth inaccurate messages to the world, causing others to act on what they believe they have heard rather than on what has actually been said. This is one of those occasions to which I referred where opening a dialogue is more effective and communicative than choosing a label that must be stretched beyond tolerance to fit something it was not meant to describe. If saying 'We are neither monogamous nor polyamorous but describe ourselves as "open."' opens such a dialogue, then it is the appropriate label -- in those rare occasions when a label is required at all -- for us at this point in time. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 24th, 2004
10:21 am	World Views I encountered it again today. It's such a common way of bullying others online. If you disagree with someone, you're "not respecting their world view." But are they respecting yours by trying to force you to agree with them? Some people on a sacred whore e-list were talking about "energy vampires" because one person introduced herself as "an energy vampire and a sacred slut." List members were falling all over themselves to explain to one another how an energy vampire could be a sacred whore/slut when I stepped in with disagreement and disapproval. I am disrespecting others' world view by believing that "energy vampires" are people with mental illnesses and by stating that I would not feel ethical enabling and encouraging someone's illness. But aren't they disrespecting my world view by saying something so disgusting as that being an energy vampire can be a valid and positive path of the sacred whore? The sacred whore gives healing, love, acceptance and a sense of worth. The sacred whore does not "feed" on her partner! Yes, there is an exchange of energies, on several levels. But to put the name "vampire" on that exchange is one of the highest insults I can imagine ... and one I'm stunned to hear coming from people who self-label as sacred whores. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 7th, 2004
3:05 am	New Essay Published I just got my contributor's copy of Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients, ed. Greta Christina, Pub. Greenery Press. My essay is titled "A Dash of Common Sense, A Pinch of Empathy" and is a general-focus essay about getting the best possible service from a sex worker by being the best possible client one can be. I haven't read the entire anthology yet, so I can't give a full review right now, but it looks really good! Some of my best friends in the Biz are featured in it so I can't wait to dig in! (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 26th, 2004
5:08 pm	For love or money I saw someone in The Biz saying "My ass makes me more money than my college degree." and it got me thinking. That used to be the case for me. I remember when my mother could barely control herself because she had worked and paid for a doctorate in psychology yet I was earning nearly double what she made. But Mom kept on working in a field that she can stay in until she's eighty if she wants. Meanwhile, I got old and my ass depreciated. Now she has all her schooling paid off and makes about what I was making before. I'm retired and going to school finally (and if I'd gone to school before, I'd still have to go to school now because a twenty year old degree that's never been used is not worth a lot.) Even if I get a doctorate now, I'll never make the kind of money my mother earns. Maybe I should have gone into production instead of always being the content. Then I could have stayed in one career and might still be making what my mother makes. I would say "or maybe I should have walked the straight and narrow from the start" but I can't honestly say that. For good or ill, sex work has made me who I am today and I don't want to wish for some life that would make me a different person from who I am now. If I were someone else, I would cease to exist. (16 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 12th, 2004
7:06 pm	Woman as an endangered species? This man is mainly talking about his perceptions that white, American, professional women have become cold and genderless, but I was really struck by how he contrasted "professional women" with strippers and portrayed strippers as being the real women in the comparison while professional women came out as bloodless "female people." I'm left wondering how much his words reflect on the current condition of society and how much they reflect on his own prejudgements. I feel that the truth lies somewhere between the two. It does make me wish to know this man better so I can put his words into some sort of context. Maybe I'll read more of his blog (this particular post was pointed out to me in isolation from the rest of his writing.) I'm curious as to what others who read my journal (sorry I haven't posted in a while) think about this man's perceptions of women in general and strippers and hispanics in particular. http://denbeste.nu/essays/femaleperson.shtml (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 23rd, 2004
7:52 am	Boy Butter? Has anyone heard about this new lube called Boy Butter? It's supposed to be "the greatest thing for anal sex" but the person who said that also said that the consistency was just like vaseline which immediately turns me off because vaseline is one of the lousiest things I've ever used for anal sex. But I'm told that Boy Butter also tastes really good, so I'm curious about it. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, April 16th, 2004
10:13 pm	Tough times never last, tough people do I just wanted to say that my thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected financially, emotionally, physically, spiritually or in any way by the current situations in the adult industry. I hope that all my friends in the movie business are able to sustain themselves during this time of tragedy and hardship. I love you all. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 4th, 2004
5:39 pm	Impersonating me? Someone made comments on live journal, while pretending to be me. I felt that my response was very polite and even-handed. I was told that it was just "a joke" and I shouldn't have a problem with it. I ask you, trustworthy fellows, was I in error to want to step in and say that I dislike having people pretend to be me and say things in my name, as a joke or otherwise? How would any of you feel if you stumbled across someone making statements with which you disagreed and claiming to be you as they did it? Would it make a difference if "90% of the people who read this lj know" that it was a joke and that the person who was claiming you believed something you actually didn't was not really you? (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 28th, 2004
1:12 am	uhhh..... "hi i'm ***** im 20m ***** Philippines i 'm here because someone refer me to this group that this is nice and where i could find someone who could help me!!! i'm the one whose supporting my needs.i need help for my financial needs.i hope this group can help me out coz i'm really serious about this" - vampirekiss@*************.** Call me a cold bitch, but I'm so very much not in the mood to teach some vampire kissing man in the Phillipines how to whore himself out so he can "support his financial needs cos he's really serious about this." I'm not nice and I don't feel like helping him. Did I turn into a hardass overnight or has it always been lurking beneath the ingratiating smile? (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 24th, 2004
11:43 pm	Customers who bought this book, also bought..... For a wry laugh, check out Amazon.com's sponsored link on the page advertising my book: click here for a full-sized view Yeah, I guess that's how most people view the work...... (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 19th, 2004
9:29 pm	Outlawing prostitution in Europe? Ireland is about to pressure the European Union to outlaw prostitution. This should be an interesting battle considering prostitution is legal in all EU countries except Ireland and Sweden. Anyone think Ireland has a chance of pulling this off? Article: Ireland to Propose EU-Wide Ban on Paying for Sex (10 Comments |Comment on this)
5:06 pm	He Wants You I just stumbled across the text of Jane Fonda's monologue in Klute. Fonda plays an aspiring actress who became a call girl. The monologue is her talking to her psychiatrist about her work and her life and her frustrations. Some of what she says really strikes a chord in me, especially the idea of feeling separated from others most of the time but finding that connection with a client because the financial transaction states more plainly than almost anything else could that, for one moment in time, there is one person who wants you more than anything else in the world. It's a false connection ... or sometimes it's a true connection founded on a false premise ... but it's heady and it satisfies more than just the pocketbook. Trouble comes when a worker comes to rely on that feeling, but there's nothing wrong with enjoying it so long as it doesn't take over everything else. Fonda's monologue: "All right. Loneliness. Well -- separated. From other people. Forgotten. Well, as if I can be here, I can go through the motions, right? But the truth is, I don't belong. Well, it's more than loneliness. Hate. People hating me -- and watching me and following me and wanting to hurt me -- you know. I'm all screwed up. The truth is I hate them: they must hate me. All right, the money. All right, not the money. A kind of put-on. It gets things back together. Well, let's say I go to one those cattle calls, a tryout. I mean before -- before I got this job -- and they'd always say thank you very much and I'd feel, you know, brought down. They didn't want me. Well, you have a choice, you can either feel lonely -- you know, the hate -- or -- So you take a call and you go to a hotel room and there's some John you've never see before, but he wants you. He must, he's paying for it. And usually, they're nervous and that's all right too, because you're not; you know this thing. And then for a while, boy, they really pay attention, you're all there is. And it's not real and you don't even like them -- you can even hate them, it's all right, it's safe -- you know?" (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 22nd, 2003
10:49 pm	Street Justice! from Yahoo Strange News and pointed out to me by my dearest friend: 275-Pound Prostitute Strips Attacker Fri Dec 19, 4:31 PM ET BAKERSFIELD, Calif. - A 140-pound rapist met his match in an angry, 275-pound prostitute, police said. Adrian Castillo Ramirez allegedly tried to sexually assault a 24-year-old Bakersfield prostitute who was nearly twice his weight. But she took his knife, stripped him naked and paraded him in front of other prostitutes, after asking how many of them had ever been forced into sex at knifepoint. Then she tried to take him ? still naked ? to the police station, reports said. Castillo was charged with failing to register as a sex offender, and with committing forcible sex acts on the 24-year-old and on a 37-year-old woman in a previous incident. He was convicted of four counts of rape in 1988. Castillo pleaded innocent Wednesday, and is being held on $250,000 bail, police said. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 21st, 2003
6:03 pm	San Francisco sex workers demand legal protection Sun Dec 21, 1:00 AM ET from U.S. National - AFP - Yahoo SAN FRANCISCO, (AFP) - San Francisco's prostitutes and strippers are calling on the city's newly elected young mayor to help decriminalize the world's oldest profession and crack down on abuses of exotic dancers. AFP/Getty Images/File Photo Dancers charge that the city's outgoing mayor, Willie Brown, the former lawyer of a prominent strip club owner, ignored years of labor law and safety violations in San Francisco's strip clubs. The California Labor Commissioner has held hearings for a decade in which dancers aired grievances and recovered back pay. But dancers say the abuses continued. Fed up with non-enforcement of labor laws, dancers have filed two class action lawsuits against the city's strip clubs charging that managers seized their tips, failed to pay them wages, and charged them hundreds of dollars per shift for the privilege of working. They say these illegal fees led to a climate that coerced them into prostitution at increasingly low rates. "We are not trying to close the clubs, what we want is safe working conditions and we want to have our labor rights respected," said San Francisco dancer activist Daisy Anarchy. Anarchy and other dancers are particularly angry that police ignored the presence of illegal private booths at the clubs which dancers say led to assaults by customers. When they complained to police, dancers say investigators failed to take their concerns seriously. Local prosecutors say the charges were hard to substantiate. San Francisco police say they will enforce laws in the clubs, but some dancers fear that police will attempt to solve the problem by arresting them. The liberal city's strippers and prostitutes have also criticized police for cracking down on street prostitution and private brothels, which they say has only driven the prostitution business into the strip clubs. Many who support labor rights for strippers here say decriminalizing prostitution is potentially a far more effective solution than attempting to stamp out the market for sex. San Francisco activists have formed a US chapter of the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), an Australian-based group which successfully advocated for the decriminalization of prostitution there. SWOP-USA founder Robyn Few points out that legalization of prostitution typically creates a brothel model like that which currently exists in Nevada. But decriminalization repeals existing prostitution laws and allows women to work for themselves, as opposed to allowing the strip clubs to corner the brothel business. SWOP-USA presented prostitution decriminalization initiatives for the California cities of San Francisco and nearby Berkeley last week. It has also drafted statewide legislation for the 2004 national elections. Shortly after presenting their proposed legislation at San Francisco City Hall, the group held a ceremony at a nearby park to commemorate the 48 women killed by Gary Ridgway, the worst known US serial killer who was Thursday sentenced to 48 life sentences in Seattle. Ridgway confessed to murdering the 48 women, mostly prostitutes during a two-decade crime rampage that the San Francisco prostitutes say was tough to solve, at least in part, because hookers with information distrusted police. During the memorial for Ridgway's victims, which SWOP-USA organized in 17 US, European and Asian cities, the group called for an end to violence against sex workers and equal protection under the law. "I am a human being. I am a valuable person in our society and I want you to see that I am a prostitute and I am worthy," said Few who likened her struggle to that of the gay rights movement. "I am sick and tired of the stigmatization and discrimination that is allowed by the criminalization of prostitution, a commodity that people want and desire, but yet are shamed to say that they do, or want, or desire." (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2003
9:25 pm	I wonder how the quiz maker decided..... You are the Hermit, that is, a Mystic: The hermit goeth solitary, and giveth only of his light unto men. What kind of Thelemite are you? brought to you by Quizilla (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2003
10:50 pm	Dick's Gephart Is that Dick Gephart's .... um.... well, is it? And in that picture to the right, is he verifying the size? (1 Comment |Comment on this)