The future of the hobby

Very insightful post. My initial take on this is that I don't think this will ever be "legalized" per se, however I do see a shift in approach and selective enforcement on the horizon.

The thing we have to remember is that a there is a difference between 420 legalization and prostitution. The former enjoys broad support from both sexes while the latter will likely never enjoy such support from the fairer sex. Bottom line, most of the individuals who partake in this activity are male and it is very unlikely that prostitution will ever enjoy the support of the majority of the female population.

Without their support I find it doubtful that politicians will want to stick their necks out to legalize prostitution.

Maybe I am way off base here and am open to change my mind, but that is my initial thought on the matter.

Excellent point BT77! I hadn't thought of that before but you are totally right. Thank you

Elisabeth, I'm gonna ask a stupid question but can u plz explain the difference between decriminalizing and making it legal? Does it have to do with the type of offense? I bet I need to go research ur twitter page huh?

I actually prefer legalization to decriminalization. I also think everyone should pay taxes on it, from income tax to sales tax. That money can go to protect the participants, and taxes should be as spread out as possible, and everyone should have to pay their fair share.
Decriminalization has constructively occurred in the high end of the market as far as I can tell. Almost no one gets busted who arranges meetings through the internet directly with the service provider. The street scene is not decriminalized, people complain about it and AMP's, and they pay the price in arrests and hassles.
Legalization is better because then it has the legitimate imprimatur of the state. We know we are not doing anything wrong here, but society says we are. I'd like to end that.
I'd like the day to come when prostitutes are looked at as favorably as nurses, because in many ways they provide the same fundamental level of caring and service. Nurses lovingly (ideally) care for you at the most fundamental physical level of your existence, when your life is on the line. Prostitutes make that life worth continuing, but at the emotional level of connection, and with the physical sensation of sex. The only level of service to society higher than prostitution is motherhood itself!!!

Originally Posted by BBW Katrina

We agree on everything these days, don't we Katrina?

You could call it "Preventive Care" or "Marriage Counseling". Haaaaaa

The thought just occurred to me when I saw Jewish Lawyers handle.

Regardless of religion, all the churches would unite against legalizing it. The church going vote would not just be against it, they would be very active in fighting and suppressing it.

And we are in Texas; where abortion was just made real hard to obtain - especially for the poorer women in our state.

I think the best we can hope for is decriminalizing it and going after the darker side. We got some great Internet sta... um.. researchers here. If they would use their talents to save the children, the enslaved, the indentured, and the abused, it couldn't hurt the cause for leaving alone the Indies and agencies playing the game straight up.

We agree on everything these days, don't we Katrina? Originally Posted by Jewish Lawyer

2 peas in a pod!

So, in the original thought of the internet & the hobby, I've heard numerous references to ladies who are attracted to the hobby, who become providers by choice. Socially, this is bubbling up in the rise of surrogates, the success of "my life as a (stripper, hooker, porn star)" literature, etc... It would also seem to be influenced by the availability of porn made possible by the internet. I've also heard media reports of 20's-30's generations thinking it's hip to have been involved in some form of P4P.

Given the current trends, I think the internet will continue the same trends already seen:
- crushing barriers to access. It won't surprise me at all the day I can google "FBSM" and have google return with service providers in the area with reviews posted.
- making the hobby more transparent&visible. I think this will improve social acceptance of the hobby but there is still a lot of issues here (monogamy, marriage and parenting being just a few.) I will be very surprised if there isn't some serious research done in this area to scientifically study the effects of the hobby, infidelity and polyamorous relationships on marriage, the home and parenting.

Unfortunately, this also means, as we've already seen, more and more competition for providers. This gives rise to trends of lower wages broadly speaking but also more complex business strategies -- differentiation, marketing and "brand building"...

And this leads me to my last thought, I think there's going to be a bigger rise in more sophisticated support industry. Specifically stuff like hospitality training, sex technique training, certification etc... Again, you can kinda of see this coming from the surrogate side (but also from almost any "industry" in existence.)

Those who think the hobby isn't going to be legal haven't made any arguments that haven't been made about gay marriage and pot (that I can think of.) Both of which, if you'd said 10yrs ago would be legal -- would have been virtually unthinkable. I can't imagine a ground-swell of support being legalized prostitution, but I couldn't imagine 10yrs ago government supporting legal pot. There does seem to be a case of government by the people being swayed by the social norms. And as various forms of the sex trade become more prevalent, it wouldn't surprise me too much to see a push towards full legalization.

The entertianment production complex has netbots out there sniffing around torrent sites and reporting users of said sites to their ISPs. Big Brother is miles ahead of that. Big Brother is the technological proctologist invading every nook and cranny, twist and turn of your connected lifestyle.

States Rights will play in to legalization/decriminalization, just like with medicinal and recreational weed. But there's little or no money in regulating sex workers save for maybe an annual license fee and a county tax on your "business" residence and the last thing anybody wants is another tax dollar eating social service. How many indies would really sign up to be listed on a searchable government database just like property titles and driver's licenses? I can see this business being legalized through zoning before it ever became widespread, and that would be at the street level, not the ho' next do' level.

There was a time in Houston, though, in the heyday of the studios around the mid to late 90's that you could actually go to a Kroger anchored strip center, get some groceries, drop off your dry cleaning next door, move down past the Asian takeaway, go in and pick from the line up and knock off some strange before picking junior up from his music lesson next to the donut shop. This social experiment functioned well for several years and then fell to a racketeering investigation. Which just goes to show that if you want to be involved in sexual commerce, don't flaunt it or make a lot of money at it until it IS legal.

The only time prostitution really gets any press is around election time, when criminal activity is conspicuous or violent or when some celeb/politician/TV preacher/sports hero gets popped or croaks or ODs in the presence of a hooker. The rest of the time the politicians would rather know that they can buy a nice piece of coed ass when they're off at work and not break a sweat over being the idiot who proposed legalizing sexual commerce.

Who would really benefit from a loud and public discourse over legalizing the oldest profession? Nobody with any political or social clout in this country. As far as Texas is concerned, this place is getting so conservative we ought to start telling people who move here to walk backwards.

Regardless of what would appear to be "large numbers" of particpants (which is a stretch anyway), very few of that number would openly admit to participation or openly support a campaign of legalization for sexual commerce. It might get off the table as a criminal offense from a social and economic standpoint, but I doubt anybody is going to be the Norma Rae for sex workers becoming legitimate and legal any time soon. Especially when droolers like our governor believe God called them office and actually have enough support to win. That should tell you right there which side of the fence most of the people reside on as regards the issue at hand.

I lament the trend to mislabel management as all bad. Girls that have been in the profession and then know how to pick girls who could handle this business would make great madams, as they obviously have throughout history. It is just too much fun for the media to mischaracterize all pimps as big bad black guys who beat their ho's and take all their money.
Who better than a girl who has been there to introduce new girls to the biz?

Perfect. I'll write more later but we do NOT want legalization. We want this to be decriminalized. If it's made legal, I will still be a frigging criminal because I'm not signing paperwork and getting a license to sell what I do.

Decrim. Decrim. Decrim. Get that into your psyche.

Loved what I read above. So true.

And think of the advantages of "this" being decriminalized. I have more to say about the recent changes going on with this demimonde but a lot of it isn't positive and well, I don't feel like hashing out some of my stronger viewpoints at this time.

But I will at some point! Originally Posted by ElisabethWhispers

And neither am I. It hasn't been anyone's public business all this time and it will never be.

The only issue I have with decriminalization is that I believe it will mean a free ride for those who coerce the young and marginalized into this business. This is the reason there will be no decriminalization without legalization. Any middle ground they try to find will not go over well.

I definitely wish that companionship as I offer it was legal, and because I'm old enough to make my own decisions they wouldn't bother me. But if they decriminalize me, they have to not bother the 15 year old posing as a 19 year old sitting in a room waiting on knocks on the door once every hour. They have to ignore the young lady who'd rather deal with a pimp than go home to her parents. That's something that doesn't sit well with me.

And I know some of us have 'grown into' this business from being a young coerced girl, or just a young woman in need, to grown women who have accepted this as a 'chosen' profession. We see this as a highly profitable business that, for some, living a good life wouldn't be possible without. I'm not calling anyone out, or trying to stir the pot. But what I feel a lot of women forget when they're hash-tagging 'Not your rescue project' is where they started.

If you didn't get into this industry under the best of terms, ask yourself what could've been different for you to take a different path. And if all roads still lead you here, how do we create a standard for women to enter into this line of work safely in their own way, and clients to procure our services without intervention from the law or law enforcement.

Maybe some charitable education campaigns aimed at educating teen girls about the traps used to lure them into this life like "modeling agencies", "video ho-finders", "music producers", etc. I think a lot of girls just have no clue that all that fame and fortune selling is utter bullshit. But they wanna believe it bc thru want a way out of a bad home life or other bad situation.

All some of these girls need is better bullshit detector and you don't grow one of those til around your late twenties. Lol

Oops didn't get to edit. By "charitable" I mean privately funded.

Limited time today, so I haven't read all the replies as I usually do. But I have a few thoughts.

First, I suspect that the hobby will continue to spread as the Internet makes is easier and safer for folks to hobby. Gradually, the stigma attached to participation by both sexes will diminish, although not disappear.

We may see some States decriminalize it, but I see less pressure for decriminalizing the hobby than for Marijuana, so I think it will be longer, and a more spotty process. Mores and social habits wax and wane, so today's slightly more permissive environment may become more permissive over the long run, but that will happen in fits and starts, and not in a straight line.

In locations where it is decriminalized, there may well be some government regulation. Occupational taxes in additional to basic income taxes would probably be common to 1) mildly discourage participation (sort of like sin taxes on tobacco and whiskey) and 2) to cover costs of mild regulation such as periodic STD testing, etc. But I doubt that such taxes will be very significant in the grand scheme of things or very onerous.