Last week I bounced from a date faster than I ever have because the guy had terrible breath. Cute enough, a little awkward (but possibly that was a response to my complete refusal to face him and risk smelling his nasty breath) but I started plotting my escape within minutes of sitting down.

I know exactly what it means. I still don't fucking like it.

Yes, thanks. I thought I was the only person annoyed by that quote. I get what she's saying, but it's a terrrrrrrrible analogy.

I wish people weren't so hung up on identification. Lots of people call themselves feminists but are total shits, lots of people want to end sexism but don't want to associate themselves with shitty feminists.

Feminist group that supports "end demand" policies for sex work uses sweatshop labor. Not surprising.

Honestly, it doesn't matter if the guy is after sex or a relationship. It's the entitlement. "I'm being nice to you, so why aren't you giving me the kind of affection I want?" is gross no matter what that type of affection is.

Because sexual fantasies are strongly affected by environment, and we still live in a world where racism is prevalent. People of color grow up fearing racism, and some of them eroticize those fears.

There's an interesting passage in Lundy Bancroft's Why Does He Do That? in which he talks about how abusive men rarely "bottle up" their feelings — in fact, just the opposite. They're often more in touch with their feelings than non-abusive men. The issue is that they think their feelings are the only important ones.

Almost no one gets into sex work for personal fulfillment — it's a job with low barriers to entry that pays better than most other jobs accessible to people without much education.

This article has a pretty good summary of a study on the subject, and also goes into some of the problems with a lot of anti-trafficking organizations. At the time (possibly still) it used the largest data set of any previous study on the subject.

Thanks, I was curious. A lot of these operations don't differentiate at all, which is unfortunate, and means I have to read articles like this with a certain level of skepticism. Anyway, that's good to know.

Another thing I unfortunately have to be skeptical about: were they really raped or held captive at all? We know some of them were underage, which is very sad, but doesn't necessarily mean trafficked. In the US, the vast majority of underage sex workers are not trafficked or pimped out — they're runaways fleeing…

Do they differentiate between trafficking and sex work?

In India and Thailand similar rescue operations tend to shove everyone in "safehouses" (jails) where they often get raped by security guards, so um, maybe they don't?

Lots of people have pointed out that "consent is sexy" is a pretty gross slogan for a variety of reasons, the main one being that it doesn't matter if consent is sexy, because not raping someone is more important than having sexy sex. Those people are 100% correct.

I'll admit to being confused about filet mignon until an embarrassing age, and I can totally see how someone would make that mistake, especially if they're from the kind of background where one doesn't run into a whole lot of fancy steak.

"I enjoy my job sometimes, and not so much other times, but I generally don't feel that I'm being abused." =/= "SEX WORK IS SUPER EMPOWERING FOR EVERYONE ALL THE TIME."

Yes, it's 100% a woman's responsibility to make sure that none of her actions encourage men to be sexist assholes. Sexism would go away if women would just start acting like good little ladies! Men are not even slightly responsible for the way they treat women, because the poor things are confused by the fact that sex…

Oops, giant image. How do I change that?

I once got a nice message from a guy, checked out his profile, found him cool and attractive, and resolved to write him a proper message back when I wasn't busy getting wasted with my roommate.