The magazine is run by a non-profit made up of sex industry workers of all stripes - prostitutes, strippers, porn performers, doms, subs, etc. Prostitutes are, in fact, well represented in its pages. Their one qualification for content is that it must be written by a sex worker.

Of course they want subscriptions. It is, after all, a magazine. The Hollywood Reporter seeks subscriptions as well. Does that invalidate it as a voice of the entertainment industry.

I must admit that I was a little disappointed to see that they didn't have an online archive (I myself am an occasional newsstand purchaser of the magazine). However, among the articles that were available online were the interview with Raquel Pacheco I mentioned above, and an interview with the DC Madam, both prostitutes.

I cited this magazine mainly as proof that, despite Tina's claims to the contrary, there are working prostitutes out there who are in fact happy with their occupational choice.

I would not be so foolish as to make a definitive statement about the way all, or even most, prostitutes feel about their career choice. There is no way for me to know that. My educated guess is that most simply view it as a job - as I stated earlier, the best possible option available to them.

However, there is no question in my mind that there are women out there who have taken the "find what you like to do and get paid for it" road into the profession, and who do it because they want to. Though I don't know any personally, I have heard, and read, and yes, seen on TV, testimony to that effect. They are the ones who really matter in this debate, because it is their freedom to pursue happiness that is at stake.

In the porn world, Nina Hartley is a perfect example of just such a person, and as I have stated earlier, the only real difference between porn work and prostitution is legal status.

My dignity resides with my consciousness, not my body. My consciousness is what I demand respect for, and my body is subservient to it. You respect my consciousness by according me the free will to pursue my own destiny, whatever avenue that may take me down. Even if you can't understand the choice, respect it. Its mine, not yours.

Its not that we can't figure out what you are trying to say, Tina. We understand you. We just disagree with you. Thats all.

I think that the fact that sex abuse victims tend to gravitate toward the sex industry has to do with a process of individuation that they may be going through, in which they are, consciously or unconsciously, attempting to embrace and integrate the shadow of their consciousness. That can be a healthy first step toward wholeness, and I believe in most legal and safe situations, it is. It is, however, only a first step. The shadow must be consciously embraced if one is to really complete oneself.

I don't agree with your analogy of the fur trapper to the john. Yes, there are some horrible people who seek out prostitutes because they are vulnerable, but that vulnerability, and the predators that gravitate to it, have to do with the legal status in which prostitutes currently find themselves. Most johns, I imagine, have their own complicated, tangled, but ultimately non-malicious reasons for seeking out prostitutes. I think most of them are going through their own process of individuation and wrestling with their own shadow.

..I said that, in a safe and legal situation, it can be. Once again, I was not asserting that it always and in all situations is. Everyone has to wrestle with their demons in their own way. Is it such a stretch to think that a legal commercial setting can provide the structure and boundaries within which someone could safely and comfortably wrestle with the demon of sexual promiscuity that sex abuse victims often must face?

That's not to say that they necessarily will overcome that demon.

Nor is that to say that the current, illegal market for prostitution is such a safe and structured forum. (That being said, for some women, perhaps it is).

I haven't actually read anything by Jung, but I am pretty sure that's what I am. The psychologist I am currently seeing is very much a Jungian. I have also been exposed to much Jungian though at my church.

I do have Jung on my stack of books-to-read.

...I have never availed myself of the services of a prostitute. At a lonelier point in my life, I did spend a lot of time in the company of strippers, but not prostitutes. I have my own personal reasons for not wanting to cross that line.

Like I said, we all must wrestle with our demons in our own way.