Just a really quick post inspired by one of my favourite sex comics Oh Joy Sex Toy about blowjobs. If you like oral sex, but dislike having too much of a guy in your mouth (and down your throat!) then this one’s for you…
http://www.ohjoysextoy.com/quickshot/
John.
As a man I will never need to worry about bras – proper fitting, discomfort, and – most of all – the politics of wearing or not wearing one. This article:
Was a surprise to me, but I guess I have to say, not too much of a surprise. After all, we are all human and people will always find a reason to be uncomfortable with other individuals around them. It’s sad that when a woman chooses not to wear a bra (which is a medically sound decision) she will be subject to public critiscism, by other women.
Just reading this article highlighted the complexity of the way human psychology works. Most of us, most of the time, don’t make decisions that are rational. We are for the most part reflexive creatures. Acting on our instincts before we even realise it, then creating justifications to defend our actions.
We can see it in the people who attack sex work as an industry. They have a problem with commercial sex and they try to hide it behind rhetoric about “saving” sex workers. We can also see it in people who attack, or denigrate the idea of a woman seeing a sex worker. Most of my clients are very selective about who they tell that they have or are going to see a sex worker like me.
There is always the fear that friends and relatives will disapprove and they will suffer from social stigmatisation as a result. It’s a very difficult situation.
In the years that I have been working in this industry I have seen it change – a lot. A big part of that change has been because of positive media attention, in this country. Articles published a few years ago about women buying sex transformed many people’s views. As a result, the industry grew significantly and many women started thinking about and making choices about their sex life that included being able to pay for sex and have it on their terms.
Women are choosing the see sex workers like me to have sex for the first time, to rediscover their bodies and their sexuality, to fill a need that the pressures of life and work prevent them from doing in traditional relationships – or just because they want to!
At the end of the day we can find all of the good reasons under the sun as to why a woman should be able to choose to pay a sex worker for their time and skills, but much like choosing to wear a bra, or not, it should be her choice, free of stigma. Free of judgment. And supported as her right.
John.
In recent times the global battle over peoples’ right to sell and buy sex has come to the shores of Australia. It’s been a difficult time for sex workers (male, female, and trans alike) in Australia. The media has mostly ignored us, preferring to print splashy pieces about “sex trafficking” and abuse from a vocal minority, rather than having an adult conversation about the realities of sex work, why we workers do it, why clients buy it, and what the harms and benefits are.
A big part of the picture of sew work that is missing is the story of women who buy sex (or might want to buy sex). The moral panic is always framed as “abusive men using womens’ bodies” – an untruth of it’s own – but it also (ironically) silences the voices of women who buy sex.
Part of the battle to debunk the moral outrage being spread in Australia by organisations like Collective Shout (who are vehemently opposed to sex work in any form) is hard data. To this end, if you have ever paid for sex, I would invite you to participate in this University of New South Wales study into women who buy sex. You can find more information and a link to participate here:
https://csrh.arts.unsw.edu.au/research/join-a-study/
Or you can email Hillary Caldwell directly: h.caldwell@student.unsw.edu.au
The only way to make good decisions about our society is to have good science, based on real data – something that this study will help provide.
As a sex worker who loves and values his job and – more importantly – sees the value of sex work to both provider and client, I would like to request anyone visiting here who buys sex to take part in this study. Yes it’s an imposition and it’s personal. But it’s necessary!
There is a high likelihood that NSW, one of only two places in the world where sex work is fully decriminalised will introduce a system of licensing in the near future as was done in Victoria and Queensland. And that’s a slipper slope, because the people who oppose us want sex work abolished, not regulated, or licensed, abolished entirely.
If you value being able to freely and legally buy the services of me and my colleagues, then we need – as a community – to take action to protect sex work from people who set their morality and opinions about sex and sex work above the truth, the evidence, and the greater good.
John.
Many women come to me in their forties and fifties, recently separated from a partner, or husband of many years. They are looking for an experience to let them know that they can still have sex. Can still enjoy it. Can still engage with their bodies and feel pleasure and passion.
I have talked about these issues before, but at the end of the day my words are just that – a promise only – much better to hear from a woman who has traveled this path, had a date with me, then gone on to reshape her life and her sexuality in the form that she wants it.
I will let her words speak for themselves.
What I do isn’t magic. But compassion and intimacy can allow us all to get back in touch with the person who we want to be, and to reawaken our sexuality.
If that is something that you would like to experience, then feel free to send me an email, or text, any time.
John.
I have just flown back to Sydney, having been in Melbourne for only two days – it felt like a lot longer though thanks to interesting people, a vibrant city, and catching up with family and friends.
I tweeted a lot of the trip because I was excited to be back in Melbourne and feeling a connection with it. So I thought I would share those tweets…
I flew out of Sydney eventually, but only after Jetstar cancelled my flight and moved me to a qantas flight instead. More aggravation than I needed and it left me lucky that my Monday afternoon booking had cancelled! Continue reading
There are some neat pieces of software out there on the Internet. There are image processing versions of Google’s Deep Dream engine (Google created it for machine anaysis of images). Also a site called Linify that reproduces images using coloured lines.
I picked a photo that I took a while ago and ran it through both systems and I thought I would share it here.
My feathered friends
How Deep Dream sees them after three iterations of the engine
How Linify sees them
John.
Mastercard have been mining the data and come to a disturbing conclusion: people are buying memorable experiences, rather than goods in the post GFC world.
By Leandro Neumann Ciuffo from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Mina da passagemUploaded by Markos90, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19967318
Aside: whenever someone talks about corporations data mining, it makes me think of this – thank you Scott Adams!
Anyway, that’s great if you are in the “memorable experience” business like me, but I guess that it sucks if you sell things for a living, or are part of the supply chain for making and selling things. As a one time industrial designer, I am feeling just a little bit smug about my career change!
It does however make me just a little bit hopeful for humanity to hear this news from Mastercard. Checking off “See the Eiffel Tower” on one’s bucket list may not lead to enlightenment exactly, but it’s definitely better than just buying more “things” to fill up the cupboards with.
At the end of the day, it is experiences that make our lives rich and open our eyes to possibilities that we would not otherwise have considered. This is especially true of our sexuality. Even my society spend a lot of time and effort trying to prevent people from having and enjoying sex. But, I know absolutely that it’s never too late to learn. Be it mathematics, cooking, music, or sex. We all have the ability to make ourselves better. It just takes the right moment and the right teacher. And as adults, we have a lifetime of experience and maturity behind us to make good use of the things we learn.
If you have never had an orgasm. Or you have difficulty reaching orgasm reliably. If you want to broaden your understanding of sex and what it can be. Or perhaps explore your kinky side. Then drop me an email, or a text and tell me what you would like to learn. It would be my pleasure to be your teacher.
John.
I watched the movie Burnt (staring Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller) recently. If you love food, cooking, restaurants, and drama, then this is a fabulous movie. It’s witty, with a great script and cast, it’s also beautifully directed, with outstanding production values, and a great score (including some excellent John Lee Hooker).
For whatever reason, this movie scored very badly with critics, but it really touched me. Perhaps because for me (having run a bakery and loving good food and cooking), I can absolutely understand the passion, the intensity, the need to create and to astound with fabulous food. I also understand the lifestyle that people who work in the food industry live, the long and horrible hours, the poor pay, the work done because you love what you are doing, even though no one else will ever get it in the same way – even as they adore your food.
And then there are the egos. Many chefs truly are like psychotic rock stars. Their staff living in fear of the next outburst, the thrown pots and pan, the broken crockery. Cooper had experience growing up working in kitchens, and he then took that to the next level studying for the part at Gordon Ramsey’s three Michelin Star restaurant in London – as did all of the cast. It really was a movie that took the job of authenticity seriously. You can read more about that here and see what Gordon Ramsey himself had to say here.
It’s a great film – regardless of what the critics say (plebes).
If you love food you should watch this movie. If you also love sex, then come and watch this movie with me and we can have great sex afterwards ;-)
John.
My recent interest in mathematics lead me to this website: http://betterexplained.com and also to the mailing list that the owner Kalid Azad runs.
His most recent email titled The Simple Intuition Behind Counting, is a cracker. I won’t try to explain it, but take a moment, go to the site, have a look at the archive. It really is eye opening to have your fundamental ideas about the things that you “know” challenged.
To this end I want to mention another occasion where I had my beliefs altered by evidence. That was in the debate surrounding sex work. I used to believe that regulation (meaning licensing) of brothels was a good things, while private worker should be decriminalised fully (meaning no regulation, no licensing etc).
It was a naive view that came from a lack of education, even if I thought that it was reasonable. Continue reading
I tend to avoid the parts of the Internet where men (and women) say dumb things like “oh she’s hot, but you wouldn’t want to marry someone who gives it away like that” alongside a photograph of a random sexy selfie.
Today however that part of the net popped into my life in a rather nice way in the form of this thread (below) on Twitter. It’s a great piece of social commentary on the way that women, expressing their sexuality, and enjoying and celebrating their bodies are shamed, while men who do the same thing are either ignored, or lauded for it.
https://twitter.com/megjacka/status/707005154529161218
It’s a pretty nasty double standard, and one that has been exposed to the cold hard light of day by Twitter user Hetero Meg. The thread is long with a range of photos and comments that mercilessly mock the very real misogyny that so many women experience from day to day.
I am lucky to be living and working in a time where women are being given more freedom in society – enough freedom in fact that some, feeling the need for intimacy and pleasure in their lives that men can’t or wont give them will reach out and book a date with me or another sex worker.
Not that it’s easy for women mind you. When men visit brothels, strip clubs, or escorts it’s ignored, or even lauded. But most women coming to me are very, very keenly aware of the approbation that would rain down on them if friends or family knew. I am sure you can see the parallel here…
The response to this thread has been educational. Firstly, tears of laughter from the majority of the women in my Twitter feed, followed closely by the expected snarky comments, attacks on feminism, and general unpleasantness of a bunch of men who immediately respond to feeling threatened by what? Harassing the women who make them feel uncomfortable about their own behaviour. No wonder women are reluctant to tackle inequality, sexual harassment, and the host of other challenges that they face every day.
Anyone who thinks or says that feminism has achieved its goal and is no longer needed is wrong and I would suggest that they look a bit harder. Misogyny is all around us and it will only go away when the searing wit and voice of women like Hetero Meg calls it out and burns it down.
John.
