If you've never watched Secret Diary of a Call Girl on Showtime, you should.  It's based on a british blog about the day-to-day life of a high-end escort.  There's been widespread speculation about "who" really penned this blog with rumors it was a gay escort and not a woman at all.  Most felt that it glamourized sex work.  It does and that's the point.

Well, meet the real Belle Du Jour: Dr. Brooke Magnanti.  Magnanti is a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology in a hospital research group in Bristol. Six years ago, in the final stages of her PhD thesis, she ran out of money and turned to prostitution through a London escort agency, charging £300 an hour.

We're such hyprocrites when it comes to sex work.  When we were in Cuba, the sentiment was that communism was preferable because it kept prositution and drugs out of the culture (and the mafia).  Now China is seeing the return of the concubine thanks to capitalism:

Mao Tse-tung tried to stamp the custom out as a relic of feudalism, but the return of capitalism to China has also meant a major comeback for the concubine. And for the long-suffering Chinese public, the compulsion of rich businessmen and jumped-up party officials to prove their wealth and power by the number and gorgeousness of their mistresses is a major factor in the growth of corruption. The angry gossip online is that behind every corrupt official there is a scheming mistress.

Today I was curious and sought out the legal definition of prostitution in the great state of New York. It says:

"A person is guilty of prostitution when such person engages or agrees or offers to engage in sexual conduct with another person in return for a fee."

I assumed it was the person who hands you the money. The client. Apparently, in NY state, you can pay someone to whip out some sexual conduct with someone else besides you and it's prostitution. How many porn movies are shot in New York where that's precisely the situation?

Supposedly they didn't use jewish women in the concentration camp brothels but political prisoners.  They promised the women release for 6 months per year if they worked in the brothels.  Surprise surprise the nazis didn't honor it:

In 1942, the Nazis decided that forced laborers in concentration camps would work harder if they were promised sex - so they made female prisoners work in brothels for them.

The brothels form the subject of "Das KZ Bordell" (The Concentration Camp Brothel) by Robert Sommer, a book that has been hailed as the first comprehensive account of a little-known chapter of Nazi oppression in World War Two.

Carlin googled me last night and saw that the February 2009 Marie Claire article on me had been published online.

I re-read it and smiled at all that has changed and changed for the better in the two and a half years since I did the interview. (Yeah, it took Marie Claire two years to publish it. I had given it up for dead as I had with other writers who'd come to interview me.)

This video is from London’s first ever Sex Worker Open University where over two hundred sex workers and allies from the UK and abroad took part in workshops, discussions and actions. It's so refreshing to see an empowered image of sex workers.

I love Sasha Grey, Magnolia Pictures tops my list - a big "thank you" for casting a porn star in a leading role, and any film on sex work that doesn't end in tragedy is a must see:

Arianne Cohen has a great piece on The Daily Beast about her experience getting an erotic massage from, and I quote, "kilt man" (I know Lien, kilts are hot).

And who does she attribute with broadening her sexual horizons?  Why Betty Dodson of course:

My friends all ask the same question: Was I attracted to him? It's irrelevant. That's like asking whether you're attracted to your masseuse. I was first tipped off that this might be the case a few years ago by Betty Dodson, Ph.D., the sexpert and author of Sex for One and Orgasms for Two, who once told me about her first sex party. She was in her early 30s and scared shitless. A large, hairy man in his 50s to whom she was not attracted came over and proceeded to perform the best oral sex she'd ever experienced. This was how she learned to broaden her horizons.

The NY Times article about SeekingArrangements.com, a website that hooks up Sugar Babies with Sugar Mommies and Sugar Daddies, showed up just after I posted my essay “The Business of Sex.” I knew I was going to like the author, Ruth Padawer with the heading: “Heterosexual relationships have long involved economic transactions.” No kidding! She could have added "Homosexual relationships" to the mix.

It brought to mind my original 1972 feminist manifesto titled “Liberating Masturbation” that I turned into Ms. Magazine when I was asked to write an article. The opening sentence stated: “Among the many issues involved in the liberation of women, the two major fronts in my own personal liberation have been economics and sexuality. Ultimately they are not separable – not as long as the female genitals have economic value instead of sexual value for women.” Over the next twenty years, I reworded and rehashed that concept endlessly. It was like I'd been given a Zen koan as I tried to fathom, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" My rational mind knew that personally speaking; I had to earn my own money in order to be sexually independent. Whenever I was financially dependent on a lover or my husband, I was unable to speak the whole truth about my sexual desires or share my sexual thoughts.

I wish we had some video of her Holy Dance :(

Anna Nobili is no ordinary nun. The 38-year-old used to be a lap-dancer, and spent many years working in Italian nightclubs.

She is now using her talents in a rather different way - for what she calls "The Holy Dance" in a performance on Tuesday evening at the Holy Cross in Jerusalem Basilica in Rome, in front of senior Catholic clerics including Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Vatican's Cultural Department.

Miss Nobili told the BBC World Service that the transformation from podium lap dancer to nun happened gradually. "It was my mother who went about getting me involved in the faith - she had a powerful vision of Jesus," she says.

This is a very interesting piece on the decriminalization of prostitution in New Zealand by the BBC.  While the rest of Europe including Amsterdam is looking to regulate and criminalize sex work, New Zealand stands out as the perfect case study on this controversial topic having decrimimalized sex work back in 2003.

Betty and I believe that sex work should be legal, regulated, and taxed.  What I loved about this article is that it featured several women who loved being sex workers.  There are people out there with the capacity to share their divinity with others and do so without guilt or shame.  Not all sex workers are drug addicts or abuse survivors.  

There was a time when sex wasn't driven underground by the religious right yet capitalized upon by corporate Amercia creating contempt and disrespect for this most basic human need.  There was a time when sex work was exalted and we went to the temples to seek such comfort.  And thank you, Annie Sprinkle, for this amazing picture ;)

Sometimes you just want to pay to have the job done by a pro who knows what he's doing and then he goes away until you call him for the next time.  No hounding, obsessive phone calls, love notes.  Just a good fuck when you're in the mood:

It's not just men who pay prostitutes to sleep with them. For some women, paying for sex is more convenient than cruising bars and clubs trying to find men. "They don't want to be found out. They want to do something private - it's their own world, a part of their life that they want to be secret."

Nicole runs a high-class escort agency in the West Midlands, whose clients include women as well as men. Her male escorts host "in-calls" for female clients at a large country cottage, three quarters of a mile away from the nearest town. The exterior gives no clue as to what goes on inside and instead looks more like a French chalet.

Yes, I subscribe to Playboy.  I like to keep track of the industry.  Hugh Hefner blew his chance to liberate both men and women sexually because he couldn't see past his own dick; however, he did push the envelope with respect to our right to use the US Postal service to receive adult content. 

Well, this month's issue features an article listing the 55 Most Important People in Sex and guess who's #43: Betty Dodson.  Other notable names include Alfred Kinsey (#1), Erica Jong, Nancy Friday, Dell Williams (who started Eve's Garden the first sex store for women), and Gloria Steinem (#47).