#street prostitution

[spielzeugkaiser]

hi, first off i really love your art. the h/c and warmth really hit me where i live and your illustration style is fantastic. lately i've been obsessed with the post where an unwell milek thinks geralt will leave him behind. was that an ingrained insecurity, assuming his super-witcher dad wouldn't have time for a sickly human kid?

[MASTERPOST] - Ahh, thank you for the ask! Yes, this scene.. I actually saw this a bit differently! It's not about Milek fearing Geralt will leave him behind, he actually wants him to. They need to find his Pa!! I think he often feels like a burden; Jaskier knows this, but Geralt isn't aware of this yet. Milek just wants to pull his weight, especially with Jaskier. A little sneak peak to their struggles regarding this:

Meanwhile Jaskier continues to struggle with his omega status.

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

I losing my mind https://www.tumblr.com/lesbianchemicalplant/726381536709132288/extremely-unsettling-how-some-people-have-actively

existing in public = having sex in public apparently? no you dont have a right to have sex in public if you have nowhere else to go? i mean ive never called the cops on anyone and i am myself not quite „innocent“ in that regard but this attitude is so odd. my neighbor keeps having really loud sex and it makes me part of something i didnt agree to, i dont watch porn so i certainly dont want to be in live attendance to other people fucking. but people in an apartment or a motel room are not even in public so i dont really see how any of this applies there. being bothered by being made part of a sexual situation you didnt agree to does not make you dangerous or violent what the fuck it just makes people understandably uncomfortable.

yeah calling the cops on prostitutes is something people do and it sucks but also i completely understand people dont want to live next to brothels or in the red light district because its not just people having sex its women being abused right next door and people understandably dont want to be made part of that. and also dont want to walk home and stumble over people having sex or worse, women being sexually exploited in the alley or in a car parked outside their house.

what really took me out is the reply though. no you shouldnt have sex with people who did not consent around and there might be consequences if you do? what is up with these obvious exhibitionists using sex positivity language (consent) and leftist ideas (cops are dangerous) to defend their fetish? if you dont have a private space to have sex, dont have sex. its not a human right, its not a necessity, you can just not have sex, especially if you dont have a private space. yes also if youre gay or homeless.

the only one i agree to obviously is women whose nipples are showing. but i feel like thats kind of thrown in there considering the rest mentioned. and i dont even think men should pee in public. they never wash their hands too. at least try to go somewhere nobody sees you but most men dont give a fuck they will stop walking right in front of you and whip their dick out like its normal. so i certainly dont think people who have sex in public should complain about consequences (like paying a fine, complaints and maybe even having the cops called on you).

another thing that is not even mentioned is that especially in public you dont know if someone is being assaulted? like if i hear something in a bathroom stall or see something in the park or an alley i might be afraid someone is being assaulted right in front of me. because its very difficult to determine as a witness.

this whole post can be summed up as shut up and let me be inconsiderate. porn brainrot guised under concern for marginalised people.

and to those of you who didnt guess it, of course, of course op is a trans identified man calling himself a lesbian. i knew this whole „we just want to exist“ sounded familiar. make of that what you will

[spiderfreedom]

I read a book a while back about the erotic appeal of 'women with penises' (don't close the page yet I promise it's useful). the book was called Ambisexuality. it's basically two things, a history of the sexual fantasy of a 'woman with a penis' and a study of transgender women sex workers in australia. content warning for sex work and children forced into sex work.

in the history portion, one of the things it talks about is how it seems that prepubescent boys who enter the sex industry in some cultures are basically taught to perform femininity. dressed like women, taught to dance like women, perfume themselves like women, basically appear cosmetically like a woman. since prepubescent boys don't look too different from girls, many adult heterosexual johns found this attractive. the presence of the penis was considered a positive, because male customers knew how a penis worked and could understand it. from the book:

References to the training of older boys and young men, in the twin arts of seductive dancing and sex work, can be found in many historical religious texts, not just of Afghanistan but as an aspect of cultures in many cities in South Asia and the Middle East until modern times. [...] The historical record also provides clues that the link between feminised males and sex work even existed in some hunter-gatherer societies. In North America, the journalist and critic, Peter Ackroyd suggests that some native Indian societies accommodated feminised male sex work. The Pueblo Indians for example, maintained a mujerado, a 'trained male prostitute' in each village, who identified as a 'man-woman, not as a male [source mine]. Similarly, records suggest that the berdache were males who took on the roles of wife, communal concubine, prostitute and participant in certain sexual rites of native Indian tribes. The berdache wore women's clothing, did women's work and in sexual relations with their male partners, behaved like women as far as possible. Many Roman brothels offered boys of different races, skin colours and professional abilities. Boys from the Middle East, for example, were prized for their dancing abilities and exotic appearance, while boys from Northern Europe were valued for their bawdiness and sensuality. Some brothel owners refined the process of procuring, raising and training very young boys to an art form. Boys considered to possess the appropriate attributes were purchased as young as two or three years of age and were raised and trained by their owners. Their sole purpose in life was to entertain men and pander to the sexual tastes of wealthy clients. Many of these boys were feminised during their training. They were beautifully groomed and perfumed, had unwanted body hair removed and wore their hair long and curly. Some were trained to perform for their clients - as dancers, mimes, singers and storytellers. All were trained in fellatio, sodomy and analingus.

it's disturbing to think about how femininity is conflated with being attractive to men, so much that you can take a prepubescent boy, dress him up like a woman, and apparently plenty of people go "yeah, this is the perfect sex object, like a woman but better."

it also had a section on how trans women and gender non conforming men who dressed femininely across the world were basically often forced into prostitution. since they could not find employment due to their gender nonconformity, the only place they could get money was as prostitutes. being feminine dressed also meant they could make more money than gay male prostitutes who dressed in masculine style. from the book:

According to some cultural historians, the reason why the xanith presented as women was to enable them to make a living from sex work. As will be seen later, the suggestion that this lifestyle is driven by 'economic necessity' probably belies a considerable degree of individual choice in the matter. For many, the rewards of sex work led to a comfortable lifestyle, which was infinitely preferable to other occupations which paid less, demanded longer working hours and offered fewer other intrinsic benefits such as personal gifts.

there's a myth that there exists a certain type of person who enjoys being prostituted, because of some social category they belong to. it has variably applied to women of the lower classes, black people, gay men, and in this topic, trans women. it exists to excuse the dehumanization of these groups who are excluded from normal labor markets, experience higher rates of poverty, and enter sex work to make money.

i've noticed some radfems have suggested that trans women prostitutes 'enjoy' being prostitutes, on the basis of quotes from bailey's book 'the man who would be queen' and taking twitter quotes from unverifiable 'trans sex workers' at face value. but i would be very hesitant to believe that. just in the same way you would not believe a woman who told you she 'loves sex work' without doing further research on her background to see if this statement is honest or produced by trauma, you should also consider the same for transgender women and gender non conforming men. especially since they are often forced out of legitimate labor industry for gender nonconformity.

the idea that trans women inherently love prostitution reinforces the idea that there are feminine people who it is okay to degrade and treat as sex objects, because they love it. the femininity is taken to be a lure to men and proof that they love being 'used'. there may be some portion who are 'erotic professionals' who love it, just like there are women who say they same, but there's a high rate of traumatic background from trans women who become prostitutes. and that's before whatever traumatization happens during prostitution.

in short, there's a dirty history of treating gender non conforming male people as the sort of perfect sex object, the ideal combination of feminine presentation and "comprehensible" male anatomy. radfems should not help this myth by repeating it mindlessly. all this does is spread the idea that a. being dressed feminine means you exist to lure men, b. there exists a 'perfect sex object' who wants nothing more than endless sex with strangers for money, whose trauma, poverty, mental illness play no role in their life, and c. therefore there is no need to include these people in efforts to exit the prostitution industry, because they "love" it after all. no human is a perfect sex object. accepting that it can happen to one group of people means you naturalize it and allow the possibility it can happen to you.

[handeaux]

Lizzie Manley Lived A Long And Prosperous Life Of Sin Despite A Wayward Husband And A Greedy Spiritualist

What could Lizzie Manley possibly see in George Burgess, alias George Crittenden?

He was a bounder, a cad, a lowlife reprobate of the first water. She was a worldly-wise madam of a very prosperous brothel on Cincinnati’s notorious Longworth Street. Yet Lizzie fell hard for this scoundrel and carried her passion into the spirit realm.

Lizzie and George were married on 2 May 1884. She was 45 years old and he might have been a year younger. Lizzie, despite a string of often abusive paramours, had never married. George had abandoned a wife and three children. Perhaps to keep their nuptials out of the newspaper, Lizzie employed an alias for the marriage license and entered into matrimony as “Elizabeth Brown.”

There was trouble from the get-go. Lizzie’s “resort” kept her in Cincinnati, while George ran a saloon in Williamstown, Kentucky, half-way to Lexington. Although George was out of sight, he was not out of Lizzie’s thoughts and, according to the Cincinnati Post [29 October 1884], she visited Williamstown to check on her husband.

“He went to Williamsburg [sic], Ky., a few days ago, and she, mistrusting he had gone to visit a female, followed, and yesterday cornered him with her little revolver on the streets of Williamsburg, marched him to the hotel, bit a piece out of his arm and ear, and after bringing him to a full realization of the fact that she was boss, led him meekly back home to this city.”

Whatever lesson George might have learned, it didn’t take. Just a few months later, the Enquirer [11 March 1885] reported that Lizzie had once again tracked George to Williamstown and to the arms of another woman, a certain Mrs. Crook. Lizzie barreled into Mrs. Crook’s house, demolished anything in reach and “abused her husband in the most obscene and unbecoming language,” knocking him down and sitting on him until both were arrested. Lizzie appeared in court the next day and paid a $50 fine. George apparently got the worst of the donnybrook:

“George being indisposed from the effects of the encounter, was not able to answer the charges against him. Just how long the quiet and peaceable citizens of Williamstown are going to tolerate such conduct remains to be seen. This is the second time she has waged war in this manner, and our peace-loving citizens are becoming very indignant.”

Five years later, the citizens of Williamstown reached the limits of patience with George Burgess. Once again, he was involved with a woman. Her name was Alice McKinley. She lived a couple of blocks from George’s saloon and, according to the Enquirer [4 December 1890], they had been on “very intimate terms for many months past.” One night, Alice’s neighbors heard a woman’s screams, then a gunshot, and saw a bareheaded man apparently under the influence of liquor, running from her house. A doctor who lived across the street rushed to the McKinley house and found Alice bleeding from a bullet wound, entering just below the left breast and emerging from her back.

Alice’s brothers vowed vengeance and armed themselves, but the doctor advised them to awaken a judge and get a warrant for George’s arrest. They did so, and soon a posse tracked George to his saloon, which the pursuers found locked, bolted and barricaded. A deputy used a beer keg as a battering ram and forced open the back door. In the hallway was George Burgess, unloading his pistol on the lawmen.

“The officers were not idle and were not to be deterred from making the arrest. When Burgess opened fire they immediately followed suit and with terrible execution. Burgess was shot four times in the body before dropping his pistol, having emptied every chamber. He staggered out at the door, and sank to the ground unconscious.”

Distraught at the news, Lizzie immediately hired a Cincinnati hackman to drive her immediately to Williamstown, but George had been declared dead long before she arrived. Lizzie never recovered. According to the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette [11 October 1891]:

“She began to talk strange and incoherently, and avowed that Burgess . . . came to her in visions every night. Somebody suggested spiritualism, and Liz rushed to a medium. She found out all she wanted to know, and a great deal more. She became infatuated with the belief, and is now an ardent worker in the cause.”

Twice a week, Lizzie visited a spirit medium named Mary Englert on Marshall Avenue in Camp Washington. Mrs. Englert facilitated conversations between Lizzie and George and assisted Lizzie as she found solace communicating with an ever-growing household of spirits.

“Troops of angels visit her every day and advise her about her mundane affairs. Last Saturday as she was sitting quiet and all alone in the darkened parlor a spirit sat on the piano for hours and minutely explained the process by which the soul of the dead becomes transfigured. According to Manley, the soul is composed of a mass of minute silken threads, which are constantly in motion, and which are, after the decease of the earthly tenement, woven by angels into a new candidate for eternal glory.”

The Commercial Gazette said Lizzie had become so enraptured by her new beliefs that she forced all the women working out of her brothel to attend seances in the parlor. Although the newspaper predicted that Lizzie would soon be committed to a mental hospital, that was not the fate that awaited her.

Instead, Lizzie spent a decade in court undoing the scams perpetrated by her spiritualist mentor. Taking advantage of Lizie’s infatuation with the spirit realm, Mrs. Englert had Lizzie transfer much of her earthly property – even her brothel at 312 Longworth Street – into Mrs. Englert’s possession. The clairvoyant claimed she needed resources to construct a National Hall for Spiritualists. Lizzie wholly supported the project but, when not a brick was laid, sued to recover her property. In the course of the lawsuit, Mrs. Englert died, which only lengthened the proceedings because the medium was unable or unwilling to provide testimony from the beyond.

Lizzie Manley lived to the ripe old age of 78 when diabetes and severe bronchitis did her in. She owned and operated her “house of ill fame” until her death in 1917. Lizzie was quite the survivor in a cutthroat profession. Court records, newspaper accounts and U.S. Censuses attest that she ran her brothel for at least 50 years, from the end of the Civil War to the eve of World War I.

Born in Ireland, Lizzie emigrated to America when she was around 14 years old. Both her parents died when she was quite young, and she was brought up by relatives in the rough and sordid Gas Alley neighborhood along the river in Cincinnati’s far West End. Although it was a Protestant minister who solemnized her marriage to that rascal George Burgess, and although she devoted decades to Spiritualist causes, Lizzie was, at heart, a staunch Catholic colleen and her earthly remains may be found in the New St. Joseph Cemetery in Price Hill.

The whereabouts of her rewoven soul have not been revealed.

[magnoliamyrrh]

hearing my professor say "sex workers" in class after and while literally and explicitely talking about nonwestern victims of sex trafficking using those terms like. im gonna eat my own tongue. im gonna scream so loudly and so silently it will burst my lungs. im going to become a black hole.

in general i find that term to be so fucking offensive bc it can only maybe apply to a very very small minority of well off economically privileged women who "choose" to do "sex work" (and even many of them talk abt feeling exploited - almost like prostitution is inherently expolitative wow) but. you know sometimes those "sex workers" are the only ones ppl rly picture, they dont picture street prostitution, hitckhiker hookers, sex trafficking, child sex trafficking, that the averege age of entering prostitution is 14, drug addiction, pimps, constant violence, etc

but. dear lord help me. in the context of literally taking explicitely about victims of "sex" trafficking in relation to poverty. to still have this postmodern god forsaken fucking nightmare so dug into your hear you say SeX WoRkErs;;; I ;;; I. Honestly im so offended. Its so fucking offensive. Like i almost wanna fucking cry. And she aint even white lmao shes indian like maam as a fellow immigrant please stop parroting the western bullshit i beg you. its so god damn fucking offensive and this bullshit is passed off as progressive and right and parroted by professors and taught as a given and preached and taught uncritically and then parroted by students and then. someone posts it online and some idiot reads it tells it to another idiot who tells it to another idiot. And then this insanity affects the whole westenrn "FeMinIsM" movement. And then, not only do I personally have to deal with a bunch of fucking idiots who have the gull to tell ME how the fuck I cant or can speak and how I should fucking feel when they dont got a single damn clue, BUT ALSO. this sort of cultural fucking idiocracy leads to real life impacts. Ala, western european states legalizing prostitution, thus the horrid rise of sex trafficking, child sex trafficking, child pornography, etc, of mainly balkan, roma, refugee, immigrant, poor, etc etc women. Ala, there was this article written by a Romanian prostitute in spain. She was complaining about how because of this sex work narrative now even more men come to prostitutes bc theyve bought this bullshit narrative of the "happy sex worker" so. now, they have to put all this extra fucking emotional effort into pretending like theyre enjoying what these men are doing to them and like they want it and all this shit. Which, let me tell you, its a whole lot easier to just dissociate when you get used to being regularly raped than it is to have to pretend like you fucking want it and enjoy it too. Something along the lines, these men want your soul not just your body, and this much worse...... And how, because of this, they also have to invest more in makeup and shit to look "well" which fuether just sinks them into the whole cycle which is quite hard to get out of. So. So.

As far as Im concerned. All the god forsaken postmodern nonsense that is propagated in western social sciences academica - has real life fucking effects. It has. The things written, the things discussed, the things professors say. Ive said before, that maybe postmodernism has some academic value (though we didnt need french people to be like, yo dude did you know multiple perspectives on life exist? inssne!). But. It doesnt fucking stay in academica. None of this bullshit stays in academica. And apart from this sort of bullshit not even being "feminism" and being inherently detrimental to the unity needed for social movements, inherently complacent, inherently antirevolutionary, inherently fucking REEKING of western individualism and selfishness up the fucking ass,,,,,,,,,it has real life fucking affects.

Westerners whove never fucking been through any of this shit sit in universities coming up with all these fucking theories but who pays the price. Who pays the god damn fucking price? Who? For their thought experiments? For these societal experiemnts? For these bullshit western ideas of freedom and progress and feminism? We do. My people do. We do. God fucking damn it

[daydadahlias]

was reading the "Fade into Dark" summary, and i was wondering. what's your definition of "romanticising" something detrimental like those topics?

Romanticizing, in my opinion, is writing a heavy subject in a tantalizing or gratuitous manner so that the appeal of it is the eroticism of the subject rather than the detrimental impact.

[e-m-p-error]

Valentino's Deal With Asmodeus

NOTE: The Asmodeus mentioned here is my own. This headcanon is free to be trashed with other Asmodeus that interacts with him.

When Valentino was alive, he had a younger sister, Maria, a theistic Satanist. Occasionally, he would accompany her to parties with her 'crazy friends,' where he would mostly just wallow in whatever sins they offered to him. During one of these parties, he pledged his soul to Asmodeus, though he had no recollection of doing it. When he woke from the bender he'd been on, he seemed capable of anything.

Erasmo had always been a charming man and had used it to his advantage for as long as he had known he could. After the party, he became nearly irresistible to anyone that he wanted to get his hands on, regardless of his reasons for seduction. If he had a hand in it and it took any level of seduction, then it would be successful. He made twice as much money from his own excursions in prostitution and was able to secure whatever partners he wanted. He chalked it all up to being his own good luck charm and left it at that.

That was, until one night when he noticed a small heart tattoo on the back of his neck. Upon investigating it with his fingers, he accidentally summoned Asmodeus into his apartment, and he learned of the powers that he had been granted.

Other than his heightened charisma and magic touch with sex work, he was capable of spreading lust on Earth in Ozzie's name. Just a few touches could get vulnerable targets to act on their lustful thoughts, and this often came back to him. Era was constantly swimming in all the sex that he could ever want, and his own lust fueled the fire for his patron. He secured triple his set amount of souls for the sin of Lust in just his first year, and by the second he was well on his way to fulfilling the contract early every year.

By 1965, however, he had entered into a monogamous relationship with Trenton, his best friend's older brother. While there was still plenty of sex to be had, his collecting of souls was reduced down to him teasing people more than actually having sex with them. He died on April 15th, 1972, and when he went to Hell, he was legitimately surprised.

In Hell, Ozzie sought him out to end their initial deal, considering Valentino could no longer do things for him on Earth. Val contracted to him again in order to help himself gain influence and power, and shortly after met and seduced an influential Overlord of the time, Ostello. He retained the same abilities he'd had when he was alive, with a few added features.

Every so often, he is given a small vial of Ozzie's blood. It is essentially liquid lust, the essence of it, and Valentino can use it more or less how he sees fit. The vial is 30ml/1 fl. oz, and the essence will dry up within seven days. It dissipates and is completely unusable, and the supply is unsteady, as Ozzie doesn't want to be the cause for any of Valentino's "bullshit," as he calls it. He has made it absolutely clear that this is for a positive, and Valentino is held to using the essence in accordance with Ozzie's wishes.

He and Ozzie don't get along with their ideas of sex work, but Val is mostly not his problem. Ozzie has dominion over Valentino's contracts (and by extension, Vick's), and he is able to put Val in his place when it is needed. He is one of the very few demons in Hell that is taller than Valentino, and Val actively tries not to get on his bad side. That said, he operates under the "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission" rule and has had to cover his ass more than ten times to keep from upsetting his contractor.

When Valentino was sent to Hell, his punishment was predominantly for his lustful tendencies and his deal with Ozzie. As such, he was given Ozzie's intense libido (he is quite literally never satisfied), and has Ozzie's anatomy (fully functioning penis, balls, and vagina). As far as his libido goes, it takes hypersexuality to an extreme, and it often impedes his work. While he enjoys having all of the parts he was given upon his death, he finds it exhausting to keep up with how demanding his body is. Valentino is one of the very few creatures in all of Hell that can keep up with Ozzie round-for-round.

[gotta-bail-my-quails]

i watched goncharov in a dream

[iwant2behappy2]

real talk should i move back to the ghetto

[agoddamnrayofsunshine]

I’m sure someone has talked about this before but one thing I absolutely love about tbosas is how Snow’s descent into villainy is never once presented as something that was inevitable

So many villain origin stories portray this idea of a person who tries incredibly hard to be a good person, who takes every opportunity to be kind and to better themselves, but are ultimately doomed to fail by the narrative. Their environment and their circumstances make it impossible for them to be a good person, and while this is effective from a storytelling point of view it’s not exactly accurate to real life

In real life there is always a point where a bad person makes the decision to do something bad, they make the decision to prioritise themselves, their own power, money or desires over someone else. That’s how real life dictators are made, they are presented with every opportunity to be good, and they purposefully choose to not take it

This makes Snow’s storyline so effective because he is given so many opportunities to do the right thing and yet, at every single turn, he chooses to serve himself instead, exactly like how real dictators are made

Snow, unlike most people we see in the capitol, is in a unique position where he could genuinely have the chance to understand and relate to the people from the districts. He, unlike his classmates, is poor and spends most nights going hungry, he witnessed firsthand the cruelty of the capitol when Clemensia was bitten by the snakes for nothing more than lying about doing her homework, when his sister was forced to sell herself on the streets in order to feed the both of them

Throughout his book, the three people he is closest to are Tigris (who dislikes the hunger games, is a rebel, and a victim of the capitol forced to turn to prostitution), Sejanus (who is originally from district 2, dislikes the capitol and knows he will never be accepted there, and also a rebel) and Lucy Gray (who is a victim of the hunger games, from district 12, and is also treated horribly by the capitol). These are all people who gave him an opportunity to realise the cruelty of the system he was in, a chance to directly confront his prejudices and see that people from the districts are just the same as him, and yet he still refuses to take the chance to change

He is given every opportunity, he’s sent away from the capitol to be a peacekeeper in the districts, he forms personal connections with people from the districts, he helps Sejanus perform funeral rites, and yet at every moral crossroads he comes to he makes the wrong decision. He didn’t have to become a villain, and yet he made the choice to do so anyway, despite every chance he was given

I think it’s a really effective portrayal of Snow as a character, and it’s a very effective villain origin story for the type of villain that Snow is. It never once excuses him from his actions because it highlights just how accountable he was for his actions