There's a thread down there that begins with a hobbyist describing a situation where he had been trying to get hold of an SP who was changing/cancelling appts at the last minute, not showing up, and so on.

Now, how many guys out there can say that they've never, ever ended a relationship through avoidance rather than honest and open discussion - not returning calls, changing plans or not showing up, hoping she'll get angry enough to stop calling?  How many people in general can say they've never done that to anyone ever?  I wouldn't have thought that behaviour so common would be considered indicative of mental instabilities.  Yet here, the supposed propensity of the SP population to mental instability and illness is mentioned almost immediately, not by one but by a few people, and it's such a common comment that I want to make it clear I'm not trying to argue with any one person or post, but with a way of thinking.  

I submit that we're dealing mostly with presupposition here.  The role of an SP by whatever name carries a huge amount of cultural baggage in our world, it's inescapable.  If you read or follow media stories that involve prostitutes, for example, you'll find they're often not named or described in any other way.  We're not people like anybody else, we're a category, and the category as a whole is viewed as abnormal.  In other words, you're starting from the position of thinking you know something about "us" - all of us - rather than solely going by your own observations and maybe just common sense.  Unless someone really does have their own research notes I can peruse, including sample size of over 1,000, criteria used to determine "mental illness", compared to a similar sized population of neighbours and co-workers..?

There are actually studies that have shown a higher than average incidence of substance abuse, domestic violence and suicide among dentists and doctors - surely, the clearest indication I can think of of mental instability and illness.  This is also commonly known.  So do we go to the dentists' office assuming they're probably mentally ill?  And if my doctor doesn't return my phone calls, do I start worrying about his mental health, or would I more likely complain about his shoddy business practices?

If certain kinds of personalities are attracted to certain kinds of work, that's no secret.  Every public school teacher I've known socially has this insufferable tendancy to lecture.  Is that a mental weakness, or just the way a "normal" personality adapts to, and is affected by, their circumstances?

And if you insist on believing the stereotype as fact, it paints a pretty grim picture of male/female relationships.  It's either:
a) the business of catering to male sexual desires and needs tends to drive women crazy, or
b) only crazy women tend to get into the business of catering to male sexual desires and needs.
I wouldn't be able to deal with men at all if that's what I thought.

I'm obviously venting a little of my frustration at being painted in such broad strokes.  I question why this is brought up over and over again.  It seems mostly to be used as an excuse to be callous or dismissive - it's rare to find anyone suggesting we help, or even have compassion for, these supposedly ill people.  If we all find ourselves involved in this business, what do the reasons even matter, and what purpose does it serve to speculate other than to  each other's detriment?

And can't we all just be friends? - just enjoy each other's company and try and make the best of things?  And if you promise not to speculate about my mental health, I'll promise not to speculate about yours.  Deal?

-Anya

There appears to be more going on here than the mere quest for clarity.

You said "what purpose does it serve to speculate other than to  each other's detriment?"

What leads you to believe that this is to each other's detriment ?

In what way is it to each other's detriment ?

Do you feel that you are somethow abnormal ? It sounds to me like you have been judging yourself harshly but repressing your conscious awareness of those judgements.



-- Modified on 3/12/2003 12:33:06 PM

-- Modified on 3/12/2003 1:29:56 PM

the fellow who started the thread you refer to said nothing about mental health, as you know - he was just asking a question. the key part of his message was that after a time of unreturned calls, he caught up to her and she agreed to see him, then changed the time, then stood him up. that's rude. who knows why she did it? we can speculate all we want. she doesn't really like him, or she likes him too much; she's a lousy business person; she's a flake; he's a psychotic stalker and she's trying to avoid him without actually saying "no"; or maybe she meant to meet him and got kidnapped by aliens. who cares? tatoogirl gave the best response: get on with your life, big guy. if she REALLY wanted to see you, you'd have hooked up by now.

the fellow who fired the mental illness cheap shot also kindly offered his brilliant and incisive analysis of your post here. just picture him sitting naked by his computer, browsing your website, ONE hand on the keyboard.... images of you in straightjacket and leather bindings flashing through his mind as he tries to calculate how many weeks he'll have to save to afford an hour of your time.....

let me know if it helps

First off, I think it is reasonable that you would find such blanket generalizations offensive.  The escorts that I know well are all well balanced individuals.  I agree that true mental illness is not any more prevalent in internet escorts than in the general population, although I have my suspicions about the street trade.

This may be as much of a man/woman thing as it is a provider/client thing.  Most men joke amongst themselves that all women are insane.  Of course we know that you're not really insane - we just cannot understand you sometimes from our perspective.  To be fair, I don't think women understand men as well as they think they do either.

Bottom line, I don't think there is much to be done about these misunderstandings.

mentally unstable is the same reason that providers worry about whether their clients are mentally unstable.  Perfectly understandable in both cases.  Nothing wrong with keeping your eyes open.  But I agree that it is very wrong to stereotype and make assumptions about anyone based on the group they belong to.

OMG....That's a frightful vision...Thanks Clarence, now I'm going to have nightmares tonight...!!!!

It was inappropriate to say that the lady in question has poor mental health.  It would seem reasonable to say that she is inconsiderate and possibly lacked character.  Ending a two year business or personal relationship where they apparently had seen a lot of each other in this manner does not seem appropriate IMHO.  In life outside of this business I have only rarely seen relationships of 2 years or more fall apart without at least a heated discussion as to why it was happening.  I have seen on a number of occasions ladies in this business decide to retire and simply disappear without any of their clients knowing what happened or that they had retired.  Maybe it is the nature of this business or the nature of those ladies.  I don't know.

clients, even if you feel sure they are safe, or is it best to just make a clean break and leave it ALL behind?  

Any advice?

whether or not a lady has good business practices.  It has nothing to do with her mental state.  There are so many ladies that flounder about in this biz that have no idea on how to run a respectable business and treat it more like a game.  That is the problem.  

Also, there are two sides of a story.  I have myself been guilty of not answering the phone in hopes that the nut on the other end will get the message that I want nothing to do with him.  Some gents will just become too attached, too obsessed and will not take no for an answer.  When a lady receives 13 to 24 calls from one gent in one day, well.......I think there is a problem and the potential for a stalker scenario which is quite common in this forum.  It is called the fear factor.

As to ImWillings question.  A lady with good business practices will at least announce her retirement via the boards and one would hope that she would at least give a courtesy call to her most trusted regular clients to inform them of such a decision, then leave it all behind.

My philosophy is to not burn any bridges, for one never knows when they may have to cross them again in any walk of life.

Lauren

I believe that this study was focused on the "low end" , more towards street and cheap dive places. However, the observations are worth noting... here goes....

People in Prostitution Suffer From Wartime Trauma Symptoms
Caused by Acts of Violence Against Them

"I wonder why I keep going to therapists and telling them I can’t sleep and have nightmares. They pass right over the
fact that I was a prostitute and I was beaten with two-by-four boards, I had my fingers and toes broken by a pimp, and
I was raped more than 30 times. Why do they ignore that?"

- San Francisco woman

San Francisco, August 18, 1998 - Haunted by lives of violence, the majority of people in prostitution suffer from
post-traumatic stress disorder at a level comparable to treatment-seeking U.S. Vietnam veterans, according to a new
international study presented here today at the American Psychological Association’s 106th annual convention.

The study, led by a researcher at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco, discovered that since entering prostitution, 62 percent
of those surveyed in the United States and four other countries reported being raped, 73 percent said they had been physically
assaulted and 68 percent described being threatened with a weapon.

Such abuses are leading causes of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a psychological reaction to extremely stressful
events. PTSD symptoms include depression, anxiety, irritability, flashbacks, insomnia, nightmares, avoidance of reminders of
the event and a general numbing response to life situations.

Overall, 67 percent of the people in prostitution met criteria for a PTSD diagnosis, and the average severity of the disorder was
approximately that found in a previous study of treatment-seeking U.S. Vietnam veterans. Despite major cultural differences
among the populations interviewed, the researchers found no difference in PTSD severity across cultures, and no difference in
the incidence of PTSD in four of the five countries.

Prostitution Study

"The trauma of being prostituted is devastating," said Melissa Farley, PhD, the study’s principal investigator and a psychologist
at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco. "Prostitution as a stressor far outweighs the effects of race and cultural differences.
These findings suggest that the harm of prostitution is not a culture-bound phenomenon."

Investigators interviewed 475 people in prostitution in five countries—the United States, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey and
Zambia. The study was funded in part by Kaiser Permanente and the Prostitution and Research Education project of San
Francisco Women’s Centers, Inc., a non-profit organization.

In the United States, 130 people in prostitution were surveyed in San Francisco. Nearly 40 percent of the U.S. respondents
were white European/American, one-third were African American and almost 20 percent were Latina. Overall, respondents
worldwide ranged in age from 12 to 61, with an average age of 28.

Contrary to Hollywood’s occasional attempts to glamorize prostitution, 92 percent of those surveyed said they wanted to leave
prostitution, but couldn’t because they lack such basic human services as a home, job training, health care, counseling and
treatment for drug or alcohol addiction.

"At its best, prostitution might be called a means of survival: if you want a place to sleep, food to eat and a way to get off the
street for a short time, then you allow yourself to be sexually assaulted," said Dr. Farley. "At its worst, prostitution is
kidnapping, torture and the sale of parts of your body for sex by third parties."

Kaiser Permanente is America’s leading health care organization. Founded in 1945, it is a nonprofit, group-practice
prepayment program with headquarters in Oakland, California. Kaiser Permanente serves health care needs of 9.2 million
members in 19 states and the District of Columbia. Today, it encompasses Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.; Kaiser
Foundation Hospitals; and the Permanente Medical Groups, as well as Community Health Plan in New York and an alliance
with Group Health Cooperative in Washington and Idaho. Nationwide Kaiser Permanente includes more than 100,000
technical, administrative, and clerical employees and 15,000 physicians representing all specialties.

I would imagine these statistic's are based on interviews with "street prostitutes", rather than, in my opinion, the high class ladies we deal with here.  Speculation on my part.

Jim

"Now, how many guys out there can say that they've never, ever ended a relationship through avoidance rather than honest and open discussion - not returning calls, changing plans or not showing up, hoping she'll get angry enough to stop calling?  How many people in general can say they've never done that to anyone ever?"

I haven't, and I think it's just astonishingly rude and dishonest if someone does that to me.  

And yes, the few times thats happened to me, the girl has had some serious mental issues.  Are the two related?  I sure don't think it's a coincidence.

Also, have you noticed that girls who act like this are almost always the ones who complain about having stalkers?  

If a guy doesn't know what's going on, don't be so delusional to think that telling him the opposite of what you actually want to happen is going to clear the air any.

A number of ladies on this board have expressed outrage at what Melissa Farley has wriiten in the past and feel that she has generalized her findings related to street prostitution to include the ladies on this board.  So I don't think many of the ladies here will give her findings much credence.  A discussion of Melissa Farley and her ideas is contained on this board in a thread headed by a post from "Thestudentoflife" dated 7/23/02.

http://theeroticreview.com/msgBoard/ViewMsgBody.asp?BoardID=12&Messageid=25716

It is a long thread, but here a couple of comments about Ms. Farley that are in it:

http://theeroticreview.com/msgBoard/ViewMsgBody.asp?BoardID=12&Messageid=25733

http://theeroticreview.com/msgBoard/ViewMsgBody.asp?BoardID=12&Messageid=25739


-- Modified on 3/14/2003 6:02:56 AM

a couple of things get in the way...

consequently, it is damned hard to find objective high quality research that distinguishes between lower tier sex work, i.e. selling sex out of pure desperation and lack of alternatives, middle tier sex work, i.e. the women who supplement their incomes from incall establishments, have protective buffers of receptionists, security people, laundry etc. and high tier "sex work as art form"...

personal experience strongly suggests to me that these are very distinct domains and should not be crowded together in one definition (or myth) about the way it really is behind the scenes.

also from personal experience, far and away the healthiest women I've encountered have been from the middle tier, those who feel at liberty to drop in and out as needed and who generally have intact family systems in the background. The healthier and richer the family system (at least as far as they tell me about them, which is a lot, as I am genuinely interested in these women as people, although I make it clear that I'm not angling to get into their private lives) the more they are able to let themselves go into total, unedited sexual release. I think this is due to the feeling they have of inner security or sense of an emotional backup... if they let it all hang out and it turns weird they know they have emotional resources to get them through.

E.g. the one that does it for me at the moment works in such an establishment, she is certainly not on par with the perfect bodies, in the TER scheme of things she might rank a 7, but when it comes to real erotocism, her capacity to put the pedal to the metal and hurl herself into the wildest sex humanly possible, she's a 10 at the minimum. Her DFK alone leaves the best, most highly reviewed women I've been with far in second place. Never mind anything else. She's also easily the most emotionally healthy person I've met in the business, has an excellent, stable family system. When her cell phone rings, it's her brother telling her to come home for dinner. She loves her mom... and so on

On the high end of the spectrum I've noticed more problems, but they are not the same problems, exactly, as the street side. My erstwhile ATF, now retired and good friend, is a beautiful wonderful person in her own way, and during her tenure a near celebrity in the business. Such a perfect body, engaging manner, goddess all the way. She can't hold a candle to my current Chinese GFE in sexual performance and never could, but nonetheless I have great affection for her. As I slowly got to know her better and the realtion moved from business to friendship, it was evident that she had (and has) some fairly major problems that might require the services of a psychiatrist as well as a psychologist. I have freely told her about my concerns for her which she generally rejects, but lets out little hints that she might privately be taking my thoughts seriously. Her facade is well crafted so that only very few have had any idea of who she really is or what she is privately like, although hundreds of men have been with her, and I have read many of them claiming to "know" her. But they don't. They know what she wants them to believe about her. That's not the same thing.

do you mean an athletic tube sock or a thin woollen dress sock ?

What is this "it" that the sock goes on ?