Sex Work

Despair in the DTES.

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From the National Post, last year:

Years after Pickton’s arrest, the killings have stopped in the Downtown Eastside, the violence has not.

Sam has stepped away from her corner for a quick cigarette. It’s a slow night, mid-week, and she’s willing to talk. “Nobody likes this,” she says. “I’d rather be somewhere else, doing something better with my life.” Sam is a prostitute, one of about 400 who work the so-called low track, an outdoor stroll consisting of a dozen dark alleyways and side streets in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a neighbourhood filled with junkies, predators and creeps.

They call this survival sex work, and it’s as ugly as it gets. Men come here in vehicles for cheap thrills, and they treat the women — most of them drug addicts, about half of them aboriginal — like dirt. “Bad dates” are angry, aggressive guys who think it’s their right to belittle and threaten the women, hurt them. Or worse.

This is where dozens of women worked before disappearing. It’s where Robert “Willie” Pickton prowled about in a red pick-up truck. Pickton took prostitutes from these streets to his messy pig farm in suburban Port Coquitlam, where he murdered them. Pickton was arrested in 2002 and charged with 26 counts of murder, and convicted of six counts of murder in 2007. The remaining 20 charges were stayed.

What has changed? The killings may have stopped, but the violence has not.

“Things are actually worse,” says Dave Dickson, a former Vancouver police officer who walked a beat in the Downtown Eastside for most of his 28-year career, which began in 1980. Mr. Dickson now works for a social service agency in the neighbourhood and keeps in touch with local sex trade workers, at least one of whom he knows began working at the age of 10.

The rest of the article is recommended reading: link.

Formicophilia and beastiality porn, Japanese style: Genki Genki.

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Genki Genki is a style of erotic art/pornography that features women with various creatures, many from the ocean. At the forefront of the scene is a man named Daikichi Amano, who has been recognized worldwide for his work. His images and movies are like nothing you've ever seen before, really. He describes himself as both an artist and a pornographer. You can see samples of his work at his pay-for-access website: link here (extremely NSFW!). He also has an artist website featuring his other work: link here.

Below is a clip of some of his work:

Daikichi Amano

Interview with a phone sex worker.

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From The Frisky:

Frisky Q&A: Phone Sex Operator Sabrina Morgan Talks Kinky Sex, Dirty Talk Tips & Melon Humpers

Be honest: “For A Good Time, Call …” has made you just a tiny bit curious about what it’s like to work a phone sex line. Is it just pervs who call up and pant into the phone before hanging up? Are all the women who do it just paying their way through grad school?

We went to Sabrina Morgan, a 28-year-old phone sex operator in San Diego, for the real story. She got involved in phone sex back in 2005 and was kind enough to answer some questions over email. Everything you want to know about dirty talk, stocking fetishes and melon humping!

Why did you start working a phone sex line? I’d been teased before about having a phone sex voice, and when I was looking for part-time work in college a close friend jokingly suggested phone sex. A friend of mine I knew through volunteering was actually a stripper; she told me where to find out more about the work, and it proved to be such a good fit for the weird hours I was keeping in college as well as for me personally.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Also, check out Ms. Morgan's excellent blog here.

Documentary: Virgin School.

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From the documentary description:

Virgin School follows the emotional and physical journey of a 26 year old virgin as he embarks on a unique four month course for sexually inexperienced men in Amsterdam. The course is designed to boost his sexual confidence. If he makes enough progress the course could end with him losing his virginity to one of the sex therapist coaches.

According to a recent study (by Radio 1, MTV and Durex) the vast majority of people lose their virginity between the ages of 16 and 18. However, there is a small section of society who remain virgins well into middle age. Around 4% of people haven’t had sex by the time they hit 25. James is one of them. He’s ‘never even got to first base.’ He says that ‘Being a virgin you get judged, you’re isolated, an outcast. For me losing my virginity is a rite of passage, it’s about becoming a man and feeling like everyone else, feeling that you’re not abnormal ’.

James has given up all hope of ever having sex or having a meaningful relationship with a woman but that could all be about to change as he heads off to Virgin School.

The documentary is uncomfortable to watch at times, but is also fascinating. This type of school is the sort of thing that could only happen in specific jurisdictions, and raises some interesting ethical questions.

NSFW!

Virgin School part 1

Virgin School part 2 continued

Virgin School part 3 continued

Virgin School part 4 and final

Gay-for-pay.

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In the porn industry, gay-for-pay refers to actors that identify as straight, but appear in gay porn. There are three explanations for this phenomenon:

1. In straight porn, male actors are paid much less than their female counterparts. Male actors in gay porn are, on average, paid more. Also, male actors in gay porn are much more likely to become stars than male actors in straight porn, where they're overshadowed by the female actors. For these two reasons, there's an incentive for straight actors to do gay porn. Criticism from gay actors has led some gay-for-pay actors to claim that they're bisexual to legitimatize their gay porn careers.

2. In gay porn, story lines that feature supposedly straight men being seduced into sex by gay men have become extremely popular. There is the allure of the unattainable, and power associated with being the first to sleep with a straight-identified man. For this reason, actors who market themselves as straight (regardless of their orientation) are sought after, and are a valuable commodity to agents and producers.

3. Gay-for-pay actors are actually closeted or bisexual, and the porn industry provides them a platform to experiment with their sexuality, or a stepping stone to coming out, under the guise of a career.

The following two clips are of a gay-for-pay actor named Aaron James. The first clip is from his appearance on the Tyra Banks Show (I can't believe I'm linking to the Tyra Banks Show - there goes what credibility I might have had). The second clip is from a promo for a porn site (and for Aaron).

The Tyra Banks Show - ''Men who are 'gay for pay''' (Recorded Jan 22, 2009, WWOR)

More clips from the Tyra Banks Show episode on gay-for-pay here: part 1 part 3 part 4 part 5

And yes, Tyra's 'interview' style is embarrassingly bad. There's some interesting commentary in the comments section from an article on this episode here, at Queerty.

So which theory (or theories) seems most credible?

I imagine that all three are somewhat valid, although given the specificity of male sexual response, the third theory probably accounts for more cases. But, without data, it's impossible to say for sure.

Photo essay: Nevada's brothels.

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From the Slate:

Inside the American Brothel

If Zagat did a guide to brothels, they might want to consider a consultation with photographer Marc McAndrews. After all, McAndrews spent five years photographing 33 of Nevada’s (legal) brothels for Nevada Rose: Inside the American Brothel (Umbrage Editions).

The spark for the project came to McAndrews in 2004 while he was working in Nevada. He was asked if he’d ever visited a brothel (he hadn’t), but he was intrigued and showed up unannounced at various brothels in hopes of gaining permission to photograph them.

“My initial motivation was curiosity,” McAndrews communicated via email about the project. “A beautiful thing about photography is the access it can afford you. It’s a reason to get into something, to get past the barriers that people put up.”

[...]

“After I went out to the brothels for the first time I had such a positive response to the work back in New York that I decided to keep going back,” McAndrews said.

“At many of the houses, the women would approach me to be photographed before I even asked them. This occasionally led to misunderstandings while photographing them because many initially thought I was doing nude and sexier photographs for the websites. The regular employees were pretty open and accepting of being photographed. The customers were difficult because I’d usually only be able to approach regulars or men that the women knew well, so the pool of potential subjects was greatly reduced.”

Not until McAndrews had been working on the project for five years did he finally get permission to meet the owner of the Bunny Ranch, Dennis Hof.

The long-sought-after meeting took place in Hof’s office, which doubled as his bedroom. McAndrews arrived just in time to be in the room for a conference call Hof was on with Heidi Fleiss, Larry Flynt, and Ron Jeremy. McAndrews says, “Dennis gets off the phone, turns to me, and says ‘alright I don’t know why you’re here, I don’t want to work with you, but you have 5 minutes, tell me what ya got to say.’ I … have no idea what I said to him, but when I had exhausted every possible angle … he looks at me after an awkwardly long pause and says, ‘Alright, when do you want to take these pictures?’ ”

With all the preconceived ideas of brothels and the cast of characters who both work and frequent them, McAndrews felt he had to give a fair portrayal of them. “Everybody knows what goes on in the brothels.” McAndrews explains. “I approached the brothels the same way I would any other project or assignment, and when I photographed the women (or owners or customers, for that matter), I didn’t want to demonize them for what they did, but I was also careful not to glorify them. I think the fact that I became and remain friends with many of the women that work or have worked in the houses speaks to the honesty of the project.”

See the rest of the photos here.

Sugar babies.

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From the Vancouver Sun:

UVic students flock to ‘sugar baby’ website

The University of Victoria is one of the fastest-growing college markets in Canada for a website that matches “sugar babies” looking for cash with wealthy “sugar daddies” looking for love.

UVic had the sixth-highest number of sign-ups to the website SeekingArrangement.com of any campus in Canada last year, with 117 new users in 2012. The University of B.C. was 12th, with 60 sign-ups and Simon Fraser University 15th, with 52.

“The population of college sugar babies in British Columbia has steadily increased every year, with University of Victoria leading all major universities,” SeekingArrangement.com CEO Brandon Wade said in a news release. “It’s difficult to take out student loans when you aren’t sure when, or if, you will be able to pay them back. By seeking a mutually beneficial relationship while attending college, students will be more likely to find success later in life.”

The details of any arrangements, including whether sex is on the table, are entirely up to the people involved, SeekingArrangement.com spokesman Leroy Velasquez said in an email. The college market is just one subset of the U.S.-based website, which caters to wealthy men and women looking for attractive, younger partners.

Read the rest of the article here.

Another NY Times debate: Is legalized prostitution safer?

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From the New York Times:

Some say laws against prostitution unfairly victimize women. A Canadian court recently ruled that laws preventing brothels endangered prostitutes by forcing them to work on the streets. And as the recent Secret Service scandal makes clear, in Colombia, prostitution is legal in “tolerance zones.” But in Spain, prostitution is essentially legal, and the nation has become a magnet for sex trafficking. Can legalized prostitution ever be safe and free of exploitation? Or should laws against prostitution remain?

The debaters:

And the same comments apply: Keep in mind that the essays are not all based on research; they are mostly opinion pieces. But, they're worth reading, at the very least, to get an understanding of the various viewpoints people have.

Read the essays here.

Twincest porn.

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From Salon.com:

Gay porn’s most shocking taboo "Twincest" is pushing limits in an industry known for extremes. What is it, and why are so many people watching?

Based on their YouTube channel, Elijah and Milo Peters just seem like your average, slightly awkward Czech teenage twins. They enjoy role-playing games and steak. They like frolicking around on the beach in their elaborately patterned underwear and taunting each other while bodybuilding. (“Hey you lazy-ee boy! Put some weight on eet!”) But the Peters twins aren’t quite as innocent as their goofy grins and adorable accents suggest.

Over the past few months, they have become two of the most controversial performers to hit the gay porn world in a very long time. That’s because they’re willing to break a taboo that, even in an industry that thrives on extremes, is too extreme for many: twin incest (or, more succinctly, twincest). While the concept of twin performers is not new to the gay porn world, the Peters twins are notable both because of the extent of their popularity and the things they are willing to do with each other on camera. They French kiss; they perform oral sex on each other; they have anal sex; and most shockingly of all, they do it in a tender and romantic way.

“My brother is my boyfriend, and I am his boyfriend,” says one of the twins during a phone call from Prague (Elijah and Milo sound so much alike on the phone it is impossible to tell which one is speaking). “He is my lifeblood, and he is my only love.”

The twins’ astonishing lack of shame — and their willingness to do anything with each other on camera — has helped turn them into a gay porn phenomenon. Since they first began appearing on Czech porn studio Bel Ami’s website (NSFW, like all links in this story) in 2009, the company’s traffic has doubled to 1.5 million users per month, and Milo and Elijah have become the subject of breathless coverage on adult blogging sites like Fleshbot and The Sword. They’ve even been flown from Prague to the United States for a whirlwind tour of Florida gay nightspots. But their surprising popularity raises some disturbing questions: Who are these twins? What keeps so many people watching them? And what, exactly, are viewers getting off on?

[...]

The twins first appeared on Bel Ami’s site in the summer of last year, as performers in a couple of “group scenes.” At first, Elijah and Milo didn’t really touch each other in their scenes, but over the course of several months, in a rollout worthy of “Cloverfield,” the studio either let them (or pushed them to) go further and further with each other on-screen. At first this involved them jerking each other off during group sex, then, in a scene with a gangly performer named “Trevor Yates,” performing oral sex on one another, and finally, in a much-hyped video, having full-on sex. The studio sent out a press release in the days preceding it, warning gay porn bloggers that “twincest” was coming.

Read the rest here.

Documentary: Virgins Wanted.

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As far as I can tell, this is legit (check the crazy terms and agreements here - of course, they got the hymen aspect totally wrong). Trailer:

Virgins Wanted follows one man (Alex) and one woman (Catarina) as they defy social norms, putting their virginity up for auction to the highest bidder. The series examines their motivations behind remaining virgins, as well as their day to day lives and their hopes and dreams for the future.

 

The homepage is here.

Currently, the highest bid for Catarina is $450,000 - the highest bid for Alexander is $2,500. This massive difference is not surprising. If you rule out attractiveness, there are likely two other factors at play: (1) men's interest in, and willingness to, pay for sex; and (2) that women's virginity is considered a much more valuable asset than men's.

Film: The Sessions.

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Sex surrogacy is a very controversial type of sex therapy. The role of the surrogate is to have sex with the client, the purpose being to foster therapeutic gains. The type of sex, and the interpersonal context of that sex, depends on the client's presenting problem. The sex surrogate is typically part of a therapeutic team, working alongside a psychologist, clinical counsellour or sex therapist. The Sessions is a soon-to-be released film about a handicapped man who wants to lose his virginity. Virginity isn't a psychological problem, obviously; however, with the help of his therapist and the support of his priest, he seeks out a sexual surrogate to meet his needs. The film has been getting good reviews (link here).

The trailer:

http://www.joblo.com - "The Sessions" - Official Trailer Based on the poignantly optimistic autobiographical writings of California-based journalist and poet Mark O'Brien, THE SESSIONS tells the story of a man confined to an iron lung who is determined--at age 38--to lose his virginity.

One comment: After hearing from women who have done sex work, I think it's somewhat problematic that Helen Hunt's character draws a distinction between herself and a "prostitute," as if what she does is more legitimate or commendable. She's still providing sex and intimacy for money, which is nothing to be ashamed of. And if you talk to sex workers, at least the ones that aren't survival sex workers, they'll tell you that many of their clients work through the same sort of issues with their sex worker providers as clients would with their sex surrogates. It's just not in the context of official therapy.

All sorts of wrong.

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From the Huffington Post (thanks Laura!):

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Police in southeast Michigan say a man called to complain that a woman he had agreed to pay for sex unexpectedly increased the price.

Police say the woman was arrested. The man wasn't taken into custody.

According to investigators, the man and woman gave vastly different accounts of what happened. The case is under investigation and prosecutors will determine any possible charges.

The woman was arrested but the man wasn't???

The strangest things people have traded for sex.

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From Find Law's blog:

You've heard of the sex trade, but probably not like this: You may be surprised by the variety of strange things people have tried to trade for sex.

We're not just talking about prostitutes, either. Indecent proposals by some everyday folks -- even a judge and a former "Sheriff of the Year" -- made our Top 5 list of strange things traded for sex.

Here's our Top 5, in no particular order:

1. McDonald's Chicken McNuggets

The Golden Arches regularly touts its nuggets, made from 100% breast meat. That may be one reason Khadijah Baseer, 31, allegedly staked out a McDonald's parking lot in Burbank, Calif., to offer sex acts in exchange for McNuggets. But when customers refused to bite at her offer, police arrived and arrested her.

2. McDonald's Double Cheeseburgers

The Cheeseburglar would be shaking his head at this one: Christine Baker, 47, allegedly agreed to have sex with an undercover Florida cop in exchange for two double cheeseburgers off the McDonald's dollar menu. The cop bought the burgers, but Baker allegedly also asked for a tip in cash. She must've grimaced when police busted her for prostitution.

3. Phillies tickets

A Pennsylvania woman allegedly tried to score tickets to a Phillies-Yankees World Series game in 2009 in exchange for sex -- with a man who turned out to be an undercover cop. Courts eventually cleared Susan Finkelstein, 45, of all prostitution-related charges. But not before her strange approach to securing World Series tickets got her fired from her job.

4. Methamphetamine

A former "Sheriff of the Year" in Colorado was busted for allegedly trying to trade methamphetamine for sex. Ex-Sheriff Patrick J. Sullivan, 68, was caught on tape trying to make the deal happen, and was also charged with manufacturing and selling the drug. He was booked, ironically, into a jail that bears his name.

5. Justice

Pennsylvania Judge Ross Cioppa, 70, was accused of demanding sexual favors from female defendants in exchange for favorable outcomes in court. Cioppa allegedly tried this twice, in two separate cases, before being charged with bribery, indecent assault, and official oppression -- definitely one of the stranger things we've seen allegedly being traded for sex.

Laws against brothels struck down by Ontario Appeal Court.

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This case, arguing against the constitutionality of Canada's sex work laws, has been making its way through the Ontario courts. It will likely end up in Canada's Supreme Court.

From the CBC:

Ontario’s Court of Appeal agrees that sex workers should be permitted to work in safer locations and pay others to help protect them, but not that they should be able to communicate with their clients in public places.

It struck down two laws Monday, calling them unconstitutional, but upheld the ban on solicitation, saying that prostitutes should not be able to communicate with their clients in public places.

The court released a decision on an appeal of Superior Court Judge Susan G. Himel's high-profile ruling that three provisions of the Criminal Code pertaining to prostitution should be struck down on the grounds that they are unconstitutional.

The Ontario appeal court agreed with two-thirds of Himel's ruling, namely that the provisions prohibiting common bawdy-houses and living off the avails of prostitution, are both unconstitutional in their current form.

But the court disagreed that the communicating provision must be struck down, meaning that it "remains in full force."

The court said it will strike the word “prostitution” from the definition of "common bawdy-house," as it applies to Section 210 of the Criminal Code, which otherwise prevents prostitutes from offering services out of fixed indoor locations such as brothels or their homes.

Read the rest of the article here.

Gay-for-pay in Prague.

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If you haven't read the previous post on gay-for-pay, scroll down and read it first.

GlobalPost has put together an excellent report on the gay porn industry in Prague. Prague has become an international powerhouse for porn production of all types. The article in long, as it goes into great detail describing the various stories of people working in the industry. highly recommended reading if you have the time. Here's the opening:

Editor’s note: In this GlobalPost investigative report, Prague correspondent Iva Skoch gained rare access to one of Eastern Europe’s most secretive industries, uncovering a world where shifting human sexuality meets rampant commercial demand. It is an industry where global economic crisis mixes with the latest web technologies, set amid the upheavals of Eastern Europe’s uneven transition from communism to a raw form of capitalism. In this multimedia report, we examine the complex and interlocking pieces of Prague’s booming gay porn business, from its roots in an American entrepreneur, to the cultural, moral and political foundations that make Prague a gay porn capital, as well as the economic necessities that drive many into the industry, and finally, the human toll it takes on workers. It is intended solely for mature audiences.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic — Martin Justel is 20, as old as the Czech democracy and, arguably, just as mature.

He is scrawny and too tall for his body mass. He has a baby face, short auburn hair, long eyelashes and a vacant expression. He looks hardly 18 but his eyes, blinking slowly, convey the gloom and servitude of somebody much older. In the terminology of the American gay sexual marketplace, he is a classic “twink,” a thin, young, pretty boy.

He whispers “hello” as he tiptoes into the Prague film studio of William Higgins, 67, an American producer and “dean of gay porn” who moved to Prague right after communism ended to corner the gay sex market, arriving around the same time two other bearded vanguards of capitalism — Santa Claus and Colonel Sanders — showed up to monopolize Christmas and fried chicken.

All three have found fertile ground here.

“You can take off your clothes,” says Rado Pauer, Higgins’ cameraman, stage artist and translator, as he walks over to Justel to hand him half of a blue pill, which he swallows without question.

Read the rest of article here.

Paying For It.

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Bumped by Marissa (thanks!), an autobiographical comic about being a John - the reviews have been excellent.

 

From the Globe and Mail:

The book begins in 1996 as his relationship with CBC Radio personality and musician Sook Yin-Lee comes to an unexpected end. While most people would wallow in self-loathing, Brown takes the news as an opportunity to explore his feelings about romance in general. Witnessing his ex’s new relationship bloom, then wither, girds him in his opinion that romantic relationships are inherently destructive.

Fast-forward a couple of years and Brown is resolved to try out prostitution as a means of satisfying his sexual desires. From there, he slowly and methodically lays out his progression through the foreign (to most of us) world of prostitution, chronicling his intimate experiences with more than two dozen prostitutes over a five-year period. Along the way, he presents his case for the decriminalization of the profession to his friends and family, which will seem self-serving to some readers.

But Brown is well aware of society’s attitudes toward prostitution and has built this book with such care and precision that I’d be shocked if even my devout Catholic mother weren’t sympathetic to his world view – at least a little.

This care is evident in the various levels that the book operates on. First and foremost, it’s an exploration and justification of prostitution as a logical option between consenting adults. But it also plays out as a tricky tale of unromantic love: a heartfelt argument against the ingrained cultural trappings of romance, and a fierce defence of the often overlooked joys of other forms of love (such as platonic, filial, interpersonal).

And it’s funny. As is the case in most of his other autobiographical comics, Brown sets himself up as the target of the jokes. Joe Matt, a good friend and recurring character in Brown’s work, gets the lion’s share of the yucks here. I especially liked Matt’s reaction after he learns Brown has visited a prostitute: “This is disturbing, but it’s also good gossip.”

Of course, the art is as idiosyncratic as ever. Brown forgoes the six-panel grid and turns down the cross-hatching that he used in Louis Riel for a small, rectangular eight-panel layout inspired in part by the comics of Carl Barks. These oblong panels house some of the year’s most effective cartooning, capable of lending dignity to even the most awkward sex scenes.

Read the rest of the article here.

And the link for the book on Amazon: here.

UK sex work data.

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Via Violet Blue. Data collection, analysis, and report by John Millward:

Dirty Words: A Probing Analysis of 5000 Call Girl Reviews

There is an online subculture of men who review their encounters with escorts using a frank, exhaustive style you’d associate more with reviews of hotels than sex. I analyzed five thousand of these ‘field reports’ to see what I could find out about the punters, their use of language and their outlook on sex for cash.

Punternet.com is, according to the London Evening Standard, “…the most successful of the prostitute-reviewing Internet sites” – and that’s an accolade the site proudly boasts at the top of its front page, right underneath the garish red logo and two fluttering Union Jack animated GIFs, which look like they’re right out of 1999 (the year PunterNet was established). I was 12 years old in ‘99 and don’t think I’d even heard of escorts, much less spent two weeks sorting through 5000 meticulously written reviews of their bodies and bedrooms. That’s the challenge I recently set myself though. My original intention was to find out what words punters most often use to describe the women they sleep with and the places they go to do it. Are they sweet and romantic (sometimes) or boorish, with the air of misogyny you might expect? (Not that I saw.) At some point through the scraping, stripping and analyzing of the million words I got from the 5000 reviews, I decided it would be worth getting a bit more from whole thing than just word choice, like how much men pay, what they do with the women and how long they’re allowed to do it before they get kicked out. I’ll tip the hat a little now by revealing that the ‘girlfriend experience’ is more popular than the ‘pornstar experience’ and that foreplay is ranked 16 out of 20 in the list I compiled of most mentioned sex acts. But that’s just scratching the surface. Let’s rewind a little and start at the beginning: how the data was collected. The thing is, statistics can be boring—so every now and then I’ll throw in an excerpt from a review. Also, if you’re gagging for the juicy details, you can skip straight to the conclusions and the infographic I made to accompany this article.

Go read the rest of it on his blog: link here. The blog includes all the data, infographics, and piles of quotes from sex workers and punters. It's brilliant non-academic work.

Here are a couple of the infographics to spark your interest (click to make larger):

He also started a thread over at Reddit: read it here.