Actually, this makes for a nice example of why numeric averages are lousy ways to sum up a lot of data. At the one extreme you’ve got streetwalkers charging an average of $75 for straight-up intercourse — and that’s an average, meaning half of them charge less. At the other end of the scale you’ve got women charging thousands of dollars, with another multi-thousand dollar fee going to their escort agencies.

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nebulawindphone commenting on “For a good blow job, a man will do just about anything. What can I do with that knowledge? I have no idea.

I might be missing the point, but thats not really what an average means at all. Unless by an average you mean a median.

Sudhir Venkatesh’s research that this comment is in reference to is interesting, though.

Legislation and policing practices that deal with the sex trade are guided by assumptions that sex work is deviant and that those who sell sex are morally impaired, whether through birth, socialization or socio-economic status. In labeling the women working in the sex trade as “criminal,” society sidesteps the obligation to deal with underlying social inequalities that impact the work and shape working conditions. Instead of addressing the roots of exploitation, the criminal justice system is used to contain or “cleanse” cities of the unwanted manifestations of the capitalist market. The consultations that gave rise to the communication law were marked by an outward concern, driven by business associations and developers, about the economic costs of a visible sex trade presence.
Since the introduction of the communicating law the focus of arrests has been on street prostitutes. As sociologist Kari Fedec notes, the various laws in Canadian history have been consistent in targeting the sellers of sex for violating moral and social codes of conduct. Sexually exploited women and children continue to be indicted as offenders by local communities and the law, even where they are victims of abuse by male clients.
Issues of power and control are not only expressed in sex-trade interactions, but in police charging practices as well. Sex workers, unlike clients, are perceived to be part of a criminal underclass associated with thefts and drugs and treated accordingly. The arrests of prostitutes and their removal from areas near commercial venues, such as upcoming Olympic sites in Vancouver, is portrayed by police as part of a broader security strategy focused on these other offences.
This ongoing practices of what might be called “supply-side policing” is reinforced in policing policies and practices that exclusively focus on street sweeps of prostitutes and the use of “boundary conditions” that prohibit sex trade workers from being present in specific commercial zones, such as the planned Olympic venue sites in Vancouver.

— Linchpin #11 - The ‘crime’ of sex work By Jeff Shantz

So why would someone pretend to be a sex worker?… Even more puzzling: Why, oh why, would anyone pretend to be a grad student? But for most of us, graduate school is a time of penury. I’m perfectly aware that some grad students choose sex work. I’d say it beats living out of your vehicles – and a recent vehicle-dweller just moved into the rental three doors down from me. Let’s face it – academic credentials don’t give you much of a boost in the blogosphere, especially if your claim to fame is that you host unprotected gang bangs for fun in your spare time. Academic credentials are also tough to fake.

— Beyond the “Faux Hos” – What about the Faux Academics? [via]

I asked several of the hos I interviewed to make generalizations about partners who might milk the income and time of a sex-work employed lover, whether they found this skirt an unhealthy imbalance of natural exchange. S.L. agreed that, “some people become chronic whore daters because of that phenomenon.” She quipped, “What does the stripper do to her asshole before she goes to work?”…..”Drop him off at band practice.

— Aundi, Trickle Down Ho-enomics [via]

The difference between the kind of exploitation experienced by “trafficking” victims and the exploitation experienced by all the other workers facing low pay and poor conditions is not qualitative but quantitative ­ they are at the extreme end of a continuum of misery under capitalism.
So the so-called human rights approach to “trafficking” is based on a thoroughly confused notion of “exploitation” which does nothing to get to the real roots of workers’ misery, whether in the sex industry or in any other sector. On the one hand, it assumes that all prostitutes are exploited simply because they are prostitutes, as if they had no will or agency of their own; on the other hand it also assumes that workers in any other industry are only exploited if they have been subjected to specific types of coercion, regardless of how low their pay or how poor their working conditions may be.
This only reinforces the stigmatisation of prostitutes as “other” and keeps them divided from workers in other sectors.

— Organise! #72 - Sex work and `trafficking’ ­A vile trade?

What K opponents will never say in public, is that it’s not prostitutes that are hard to live next to — it’s poverty. And when I hear even liberal San Franciscans claim sex workers are making San Francisco “unsafe” for them, I never hear them propose what to do to ensure the safety of sex workers.

— Keeping San Francisco Safe From Prostitutes? [via]

But one of the main reasons I enjoy prostitutes is because I enjoy breaking the law - another reason I don’t want brothels made legal. There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it desirable. When I have dinner every evening in Soho I always think: isn’t scampi delicious - what a pity it isn’t illegal. I’m sure I am not alone in this. Even Adam himself did not want the apple for the apple’s sake; he wanted it only because it was forbidden.

— The brothel creeper

So I had to ask myself: just how many anal scenes does it take to open a feminist art gallery?

— Madison Young: Bondage Model. Artist. Feminist.

I certainly wasn’t there to have sex with anybody and certainly wasn’t there to exchange money for it,” said Allen, R-Merritt Island, who was arrested on charges of soliciting prostitution.
“This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park,” Allen, who is white, told police in a taped statement after his arrest. Allen said he feared he “was about to be a statistic” and would have said anything just to get away.

— State Rep. Allen explains sex case: Fear made me play along