Tag Archives: prostitution

Secret Service Agents Fired for Being Cheapskates with Hookers

News, Politics, , , , , , ,

You know, when it comes down to it, the Secret Service agents who were fired (retired, or whatever) from service were let go because one of them allegedly decided to screw over an escort after she had spent the night in his room for an agreed amount of money that he decided not to pay. According to an interview with the woman, she agreed to come to be his escort for the night for $800, and when it came time for paying after it was all over, he tried to give her $30 and send her on her way. Now, you can think whatever you want about whether or not things were right or wrong; the reason this whole situation blew out of control was because one Secret Service agent decided to renege on the contract he negotiated with the woman.

Now, their come-uppance came about because Americans have a problem with anything that involves sex. We’re a repressed country that still seems to be stuck in a Puritan mentality, while we all sit at home and watch debauchery on television as reality programming. In other words, we want to hold people to standards that we generally don’t support ourselves.

It’s the same thing with politicians. We blow a gasket whenever we discover a politican had a blow job from a woman not his wife, but we support all sorts of other people who live all sorts of depraved lifsestyle, buying their books, CDs, going to their movies and supporting them in all sorts of obnoxious ways. Statistics indicate that Americans are imbibers in all sorts of illegal drugs (from marijuana to cocaine), yet we’ll crucify anyone for smoking a joint twenty years ago when they went to college.

Basically, we’re hypocrits who don’t know when to just turn the other cheek.

But back to our Secret Service agents. If this behavior really did take place, what we basically had was a group of executive agents who partied in Colombia with the local prostitutes. It’s not illegal there, so they broke now rules. They broke “moral” codes that are put into writing by government standards. So, as politicians will generally have sex with anything that moves, and then lie about it, anyone else who gets caught is held to standards that, well, no one else follows. The Department of Defense has been releasing statements about how its rules FORBID such activity from its own soldiers, yet if you served in the military, you saw it around practically every military post in the United States and around every military post overseas. At Leonard Wood, Missouri, I remember stepping off post and finding taxi drivers that didn’t even ask you where you were going as they were so used to driving you directly to the whorehouses located all around that particular post. It was so institutionalized that cab drivers would wait in the lobby of the cathouse to get their cut of the transaction. I remember almost getting into a fist fight with a cab driver because I wanted him to drive me to an actual restaurant where I could get something to eat, not to have sex with Asian hookers working at the local whorehouses (I know that’s what they were because the cab driver spent no less than five minutes detailing “how wonderful the Vietnamese pussy is for young GIs like you”. Suffice to say, there wasn’t a single military installation I visited or served on that didn’t have some huge prostitution thing going on around it.

The point is that the miltary didn’t care. They practically supported it. So when I hear that the Department of Defense is “disappointed” in its soldiers who may have been involved, I have to seriously laugh and ask, “what the hell are you talking about?”

What’s sort of funny about this whole “scandal” is that if the executive Secret Service agent had actually just paid the money that the woman claims he promised, he’d still have a job today. Instead, he lost his. And so did a bunch of others who actually paid their agreed upon rates. Talk about being screwed. One guy, as usual, ruined it for the rest of them.

The more interesting factor is that it does open up an opportunity to talk about the real problems of prostitution, sexual slavery and trafficking. But that won’t happen. Our reason for being outraged is exactly for those reasons, the latter ones particularly. Yet, when all is said and done, we’ll railroad a bunch of people out of government service and do absolutely nothing to make life better and safer for women who are forced into lives of prostitution by greedy men who prey on them. The window for opportunity is right now, and instead, we’ll focus on how bad the Secret Service is morally, and then politicians will use it as campaign fodder for the November election. And the band will continue to play on.

What Political Issues Should Be Focused On?

Business, Economics, Education, News, Politics, Religion, Social Networking, Technology, , , , , ,

Every time we come close to a major national election, I’m left scratching my head at the innane subjects that end up becoming “important” politically. You know the things I’m talking about. Stuff like abortion, stem cell research, soccer moms and legalizing marijuana. Sure, some people find them important, but for the most part, they’re fringe topics that tend to get people galvanized around unimportant issues that end up costing votes for elections. And we fall for it every time. So, I decided to look into a couple of topics I thought SHOULD be issues, and then ask if you have any thoughts or ideas of your own.

1. While the economy is an important subject, just focusing on “the economy” or “jobs” are useless endeavors because they really don’t get down to the point of actually doing anything. Sure, I could run for office and say “Duane is FOR a good economy and believes we SHOULD put people to work! So vote me for me!” Sadly enough, a bunch of politicians are probably already preparing their campaigns to say almost that. In rhetoric, it works great. In substance, well, not so much. Mainly because it doesn’t mean anything. Killing puppies is bad, but no one is actually advocating killing puppies, so getting on the side of the pro-puppy crowd doesn’t lead anywhere but to banal arguments that don’t lead anywhere. That’s the economy problem.

So, if I was going to talk about fixing the economy, I could probably focus on taxes, even though those often fall into banal areas as well, because then we end up in a pro-left “more taxes” or pro-right “taxes are bad”. Instead, I say that we k now that taxes are inevitable, so why don’t we focus on what exactly we’re taxing in the first place. And I don’t mean whom, such as rich versus poor. Yeah, I think the rich could probably afford to pay more taxes, but let’s be honest and think about the possibility that perhaps that’s not exactly right either. While they CAN afford more taxes, is it really right to say they SHOULD be paying more taxes? While I could argue that they’ve probably benefited more from capitalism than someone who is poor (which WOULD be a good argument), I’m going to take a different tact and focus on what should be taxed, because I think there are avenues where we are completely missing the boat.

Here me out here. What I propose is that we legalize prostitution and then tax anything and everything that has any ties to sexual barter exchanges. Right now, there is a HUGE blackmarket industry that is nothing but this type of behavior, and the only reason we don’t tax it is because the people who would pay those taxes are afraid to report it because they’d probably then get arrested for all sorts of blue laws we have instituted in our scared of sex morality that exists in our society. Face it. There are people paying other people for sexual behavior, some of it pretty innocent and some of it pretty damn bizarre involving all sorts of devices, machines, trapeze-apparatus mechanisms and some involving things that still shock the crap out of me. But I know it takes place because there are people out there doing it and enjoying it. None of them are evil, bad, dishonest or any other letter-wearing designation either. They’re normal people who have decided that that is how they interact with each other. And some people throw a fit because it doesn’t fit into their sense of morality.

Get over it. If you don’t like it, don’t participate in it. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be acknowledging it and taxing it. Believe me, there’s a LOT of money that changes hands here in this area, and once it becomes legal, you start to clean it up as well. Sure, people are still going to do their naughty things, but legalizing it gets organized crime, gangs and predators out of the business. It also allows women to have an easier avenue to protect themselves from some of the problematic people out there who prey on them because they figure the illegal nature of the business keeps them from every having to face justice.

Now, we could also legalize drugs, but at the same time I realize there’s a more health-related problem involved here that needs to be dealt with. Perhaps if we went into it with all eyes open, we might see drug behavior as a problem that needs to be dealt with through therapy and positive actions, rather than having someone try to get off drugs while in lockdown, waiting for his court case for possessing illegal substances.

2. International Diplomacy. We haven’t gotten this right in over a hundred years now. We’re still dealing with foreign entities as if we’re still part of the Napoleonic era. Governments aren’t that way any more. Major powers don’t really deal with each other on the international stage as they used to with detente and brinkmanship. What is needed is a different perspective, involving a more game theoretic foundation of tit for tat and compliance understanding than “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” nonsense. If you look at the problems the US is having with Middle Eastern countries, almost all of them stem from brinkmanship and religious intolerance (from both sides) than it does from actually attempting to engage with people as part of a give and take relationship. Right now, our foreign policy has more to do with where we might get our next barrel of oil than it does with how we get along with people who like types of music you can find on iTunes, yet much of our actual engagement comes from those avenues through social networking sites than they ever will through economic business ties being handled by corporate entities trying to corner the market on petroleum.

Years ago, I used to have disagreements with a young man who was fresh from Iran (shortly after the Shah was deposed). He was a strongly ideological Persian who believed in east versus west superiority (for whatever reasons, which surprisingly were not religious), but we actually became friends and arguments and conflicts practically ended overnight when I discovered he was a fan of Madonna, and I managed to get him a copy of Madonna’s “Sex” book that he so wanted but couldn’t bring it to himself to buy for himself. To be honest, I never heard an anti-western comment from him after the day he received that book. While I can’t verify he still didn’t feel that way, it was amazing what a sea change was made over such a simplistic gesture.

That our government has NEVER figured this out shocks me more and more as the world becomes a much more dangerous place while still moving towards some bizarre sense of a global economy.

3. Education. This, to me, is probably the most important issue that our country should be dealing with on a daily basis, almost with the same sense we gave to putting men on the Moon. Our whole country should be rallied around the idea of improving our educational system not so that we somehow obtain minimal standards, but that we start to surpass the very dreams we had back in the 1960s about the great civilization we hoped to one day become. Children should be taught calculus by sixth grade as a standardization and expectation because it should be almost second nature. Parents should be irrate that their children don’t know more than they did at their age and do everything possible to make sure that we don’t continue to churn out stupid people. Reality show programming should be seen as the embarrassment to America that it really is, instead of some kind of ideal that people look up to. My god, there are people who want to be Snooki and the Situation, and somehow seem proud of that. College should be an expectation for all, not because it’s an enlightened goal of the few, but because it’s necessary to build a society of free thinkers who should be challenging everyone about practically everything. I would like to see a presidential debate that is moderated by the audience who shows up to the event wanting to know the answers to real questions, not just packaged answers to questions pre-screened by candidate panels beforehand.

That’s all I’ll go with for now, because now I’ve depressed myself as I realize we’re never going to achieve any of this, and we’re doomed to go another century with people striving for the lowest standards possible, mainly because they never learned to challenge themselves.

When it comes to issues of sex, America does not understand redemption

Education, Movies, Music, News, Politics, Religion, Television, , , , , , , , , ,

I’m not one to latch onto another story and then write about it, although I admit there are a lot of bloggers who do that sort of thing. But this was one issue that I found to be so significant that I felt that it needed further attention, and perhaps even more perspective. An article appeared today in Salon.com that contained a personal narrative from Melissa Petro, a woman who had previously outed herself as a former sex worker and stripper before becoming a school teacher. As a result, she was hit hard by the conservative channels of the press, and then right after that by practically every other channel of the press as well. Even the governor felt it necessary to chime in demanding that she be fired. In all, she was completely railroaded out of the teaching profession, and by reading her personal story, you can also get the sense that she pretty much has a difficult time today of getting a job anywhere.

Now, I’ve written before about how I used to go to school with a lot of women who were sex workers while paying their way through school. At San Francisco State University, in certain disciplines, it was practically a right of passage. I couldn’t tell you how many friends I had who used to ask me to come see them dance as a stripper because at the time they were actually proud of what they were doing. Not all of them were, of course, but at one point in someone’s life, there is a sense that this is a perspective of freedom that not many other occupations can allow.

Unfortunately, that occupation is now competing against the sense that mainstream America has that anything involving sex is bad. And if you happen to work anywhere near children, it’s almost a given that you should be tarred and feathered and run out of town like the wandering gypsy you are. I won’t even get into the dichotomy issue of how most of the clients of these women tend to be the same men whose wives are horrified that these women did what they did; there’s always this sense that these “bad” women come from some place that has no interaction with the rest of society. And once they show up, they have to be run out quickly, or little Johnny might grow up to be a bad person, or might be forced into sex with her, or whatever bizarre hyper-fictious ridiculousness seems to be the fear that emerges in these situations.

The simple fact of the matter is, these women are all products of our society and civilization. They were churned out by the system at one time or another, and if we all want to go into this “they’re all bad for doing what they did” then we should take some sort of responsibility for putting them into those positions in the first place. We can’t have the luxury of just assuming that people are bad by nature, and therefore it was their fault that they chose to do those kinds of jobs that the rest of ridicule and condemn.

But even saying that, there’s an immediate assumption that stripping or sex work is bad. Is it really? What is so wrong about someone who does that sort of activity? What makes that person any less “moral” or less worthy of normal civilization than any woman who has carnal knowledge with a man as part of a relationship? Discounting the whole “it’s only okay in marriage” sort of nonsense that predates 1950, “moral” people don’t really make all that much of a fuss about people who engage in sex in relationships with each other. Granted, they don’t wanted specific details, but they really don’t care. So why is someone who is engaged in this activity on a normal basis considered someone to be less worthy of belonging to our daily civilization?

Over the years, I’ve known a lot of women who existed as sex workers. For a time, I got my start creating web pages for professional dominatrices, mainly because they were the ones who really fed the business back then when the Internet was started. Strangely enough, my main clientele were professional dominants and churches. And quite often, the references I received crossed both demographics (meaning that quite often my professional dominants contacts came to me from the web sites of churches I created or maintained, and the other way around as well). We’d like to think there’s a serious disconnect or separation between both avenues, but there isn’t.

What’s really concerning parents these days is not the sex worker “problem” but the belief that sexual activity is starting with people at a younger age, and they need a criminal to point to in order to feel better about the situation. But the reality of the situation is that by compartmentalizing sex outside of acceptable parameters, we make it so that younger people see it as something to explore out of the attention of parents, and then families pay for the consequences. Most young people are getting their sex information by watching Hollywood and the music industry sexualize every woman who has anything to do with entertainment so that the expectation is that it’s something good and to be pursued. There is absolutely no connection between a stripper and a music starlett, yet conservative media condemns the stripper and hypes the product of industry. Yet, if you really think about it, the stripper caters to a clientele that is strictly adult, whereas the music industry and Hollywood will take anyone with access to an MP3 player or a dvd player.

And with all that said, I’ve kind of wandered off the topic of the original person herself, Melissa Petro. In her own words, she actually felt herself empowered by her experience as a stripper and sex worker (well, more as a stripper than as a sex worker as she didn’t seem to say too many good things about the latter). Unlike most stories of sex workers, we’re told of horrible conditions and how they were forced into the experience. She came to it on her own, and it was a productive environment for her until she found her way out. And then she made something of her life, becoming a teacher who works with children.

We should have been congratulating her, not condemning her. If we accept the erroneous argument that sex work is bad, she got out of it and came back to us to live a more productive life. She should have been the poster child for how to win through horrible circumstances. But she wasn’t treated that way. She was eventually fired, and she has little recourse of ever working again, in any job. Her own narrative explains how she moved in with her boyfriend to survive.

What bothers me most is that no one else seems bothered by this. We’ll go on with our lives and criticize her for having made the mistake of revealing her past to the rest of the world. In other words, her was a teacher giving us a teaching moment, and none of us learned a thing.