Sex Industry Professionalism - A Response to Voyager and a Plea At Large

Voyager has responded to a recent series of posts by myself and Erin on industry professionalism (or lack of) and providers' attitudes towards clients. I make a few points in reply here.

Voyager identified 4 common traits amongst real industry pros that he has met. I agree with each of them (I am certain the man's list is not intended to be exhaustive) and I would add at least one more.

• The real pros have a genuine, strongly held commitment to make the "in-room" and "out of room" (i.e. the professional interactions throughout) a genuinely mutually beneficial and respectful experience

Some essential clarifications to the above point is needed. This does not mean the sexual aspects in particular do not contain an element of the necessary illusions that Voyager and Yana have repeatedly talked about and I can't possibly improve on. Nor is it helpful to the debate to have lazy providers chime in with Master of the Obvious points that people don't always click, providers can try their best yet still fail, or insert whatever other obvious points obvious to any intelligent adult.

My point here is that these real pros consider it a serious business failing and an almost abrogation of decency to fail to provide a good service to respectful, boundary-abiding, and decent clients. They do that by doing the things Voyager identified and more. For that they ought to be applauded.

Perhaps a stronger clarification is in order, however, when Voyager says:

"When you have to deal with the situations I'm going to talk about from the punter side day in day out
attitudes are going to harden no matter how hard you try to deal with it..."

Yes, I agree that punters do not help with their behaviour and the reality is that such behaviour does harden attitudes. But I don't think punter behaviour alone (and I am not for one moment saying Voyager thinks so) explains some of the underlying hatred and sheer cognitive dissonance exposed by Erin. Instead I broadly contend that such malignant attitudes come about through the continuing wilful/un- thought out envelopment of this industry (and its participants) within paradigms of shame, disrepute, "uncleanliness", and zero-sum games ("for me to win in this the other bastard/bitch has to lose"), which sadly both clients and providers wilfully partake in.

The ultimate tragedy

People like myself and Voyager can blog as much as we want (it will help) but it's going to take a long, long time before we see a significant groundswell of meaningful society-wide attitude changes necessary to get rid of the many problems plaguing this industry. Family F**** and the like will continue to be busy attacking it and muddying up the issues. The least the two main "sides" (provider/clients) within the industry can do is to meaningfully reflect on their own shocking to problematic attitudes and behaviours that only serve to entrench the unhappiness or more that keeps so much of what is a legal industry "underground" or manifest in behaviour that only draw critical responses from the "mainstream".

A (hopefully) meaningful anecdote

I have previously mentioned L, a working and well-regarded WL, and her contributions to my interactions with Erin (Erin and L are pretty much the main reasons why this blog got resurrected). L and I have had some casual exchanges of texts recently and a few topics of conversation have come up. In response to our collective observations (which we accept by no means capture every spectrum and person in the industry) that many female providers seem to have an unhealthy class-based (i.e. hating punters because they are punters)  dislike of punters at large, she basically wrote back that she wondered why she has met so relatively few (in her opinion) "normal" (obvious defined as people that don't unhealthily dislike males as a class of beings) people in the industry and expressed the view that the "normal" don't usually work in the industry. Tinged within that reply is perhaps the unspoken fear that she will head down that road also.

This guy cannot say enough how much that response frustrates me. And it frustrates me even more that although L has given me permission to name her working name on this blog, I know (from past direct and indirect observations of WL socialisations and AdultForum activities) that having her name attributed to such seemingly heretical views is liable to open her up to being "eaten alive" metaphorically.

I hate to be so negative but reflecting on many of the themes in this post don't make for much happiness.