Yeah, I'm trying to remember if I've ever read a novel where the hero and heroine liked one another. That's why I like Elizabeth Peters, because in the Vicki Bliss novels the hero actually likes the heroine and instead of fighting, they've got that zippy back-and-forth that's genuinely funny and shows that they're…

Well, think about what women and girls get told. Did you have boys pick on you in school? I got told, "Oh, he likes you." Well, what the hell kind of affection is that? If you like somebody doesn't it stand to reason that you're nicer to them than to other people? Instead they're worse. it also makes womens' dreams…

A lot of the prostitutes I used to see were so desperate, in such need of money, that they really could not effectively turn down any request. The greater the need, the less the amount of true consent. Waving that kind of power over someone's head is what they want, I think, in a lot of cases. I'm sure my coworker…

I remember being interviewed for a security clearance and the guys asked me, "So can you be blackmailed?" And I thought about for it for a minute and then said,

Still being a really unoriginal third rate troll? Get some ambition at least.

Part of it is that they're selling these books to women who feel really conflicted about sex. They can't want it, so it's got to happen some other way, and then it's not their fault. There's also this very scary under layer of, "Well, he's handsome and dashing and nifty and THE HERO so it's not really rape, because…

Yeah, and I think you can kind of blame the rise in popularity of things like Brazilians on porn, because they were uncommon twenty years ago.

Let me just start making a list......

Well, supposedly that's so the women who read them can say, "Oh, I was forced! I couldn't stop him!" The woman's love turns the bad guy into a great hubbie, blah blah blah.

You know, there are just some things and some people you should not do for any reason.

Ever run into Charlie Sheen's famous quote? Something about how he didn't pay prostitutes for sex, he paid them to leave. What a prince. Notice how the two 'goddesses' were half his age?

God, I loved that job.

Ah, evo psych, the misogynist's excuse for everything men want to do. Rape? Hard wired reproductive tactic. Promiscuity? It's the genes, baby! Gotta propagate the species.

Yeah, he was...unique. He was also a lot older than me and expected me to do what he said. He got a bit more subtle, but putting that into words.....you know, he'd make jokes about how he had to use porn because I was.....Yeah. I was a bad girlfriend. Or repressed. (My next boyfriend laughed at the idea.) He was just…

Yeah, I've seen the same thing. And the stuff in the porn itself? It used to be much, much different, and the change is not for the better.

It's not arousal that's the problem. The second guy——at this straight job I had——-viewed women as a weird combination of commodity and seller together, but the crack about dinner struck me as especially revealing because he seemed to think that the pretense was on the woman's part. He wanted to get the dinner over…

Explicit erotica is the closest written cousin to porn, not bloody Jane Austen.

Yeah, because everybody gets to live a completely unambivalent, uncompromising black-and-white life. And there's no double standard where men are studs and women are sluts, and the consequences for being perceived as the latter are severe: [articles.latimes.com]

Don't most male prostitutes cater to men?

I remember reading one former prostitute talking about her life, and how she was obviously in bad shape, often with bruises and bloody cuts, and the johns would just....screw her and leave, is what she'd say, but more explicitly. And she was a very young girl while doing this. Obviously very young. The johns were…