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Sex Work

Starlets v. Harlots: Why Are Liberal Hollywood Actresses Allying with Right-Wing Christians to Throw Sex Workers Under the Bus?

Model: Lady Cadence – Instagram – Twitter

[This is Chapter 1.1 of Sex, Cash & Privacy: The Case for Allowing People to Profit From Their Own Sexuality in Peace. For previous and subsequent segments, click on that link.]

It could have been a porn movie.

With heavy metal blazing, a topless woman with bleached-blonde hair tackles her male sex partner in a fit of passion, rips his shirt off, and makes out furiously with him. She then jumps off him, rips his pants off, and jumps right back on top of him. She slides her head down his chest towards his crotch, as her clutched fingers scratch violently down his chest in tow and her head bobs.

He leaps off the bed, pulls her up while she straddles him, and then slams her back down on the bed, now on top of her still furiously making out. He rips her panties off and starts thrusting her from on top, as he shoves his tongue into her cleavage. She lets out staccato orgasmic huffs and screams at each of his aggressive thrusts. Her head hangs back off the edge of the bed, upside down, and she pushes up on the carpet so as not to fall off the bed from his vigorous thrusting.

She writhes in ecstasy and screams in pleasure even more as he chokes her gruffly. Now he’s leaning off the bed too on top of her, gymnastically propping himself up with one arm, so they don’t fall off together as he continues to thrust her energetically. Now they fall off the bed and roll over onto each other, as they catch their breath in post-orgasmic gasps of air.

It could have been any porn film, but it was not porn. It was a rated-R movie, Normal Life (1996), featuring Luke Perry and Ashley Judd.

February 27, 2020 by Michael Ellsberg

Sex Work

Why Is it Our Fucking Business When Someone’s Business is Fucking?

[This is the Introduction of Sex, Cash & Privacy: A Case for Allowing People to Profit From Their Own Sexuality in Peace. For subsequent segments, click on that link.]

I believe that dictating the way a person relates to their sexuality is one of the gravest wrongs a society can impose, so long as that person is not directly harming others in their sexual activity.

The past sixty years have seen the greatest reduction of this type of societal wrong in human history. In many parts of the world, we have thankfully decided “it’s none of our business” whether another person:

Fucks before marriage
Fucks using contraception
Fucks someone of a different race
Fucks someone of the same sex
Fucks (or is fucked) in the ass
Fucks themselves
Fucks with sex toys
Fucks while watching other people fucking
Fucks multiple people
Fucks rough (consensually)
Fucks with kinky role plays
Fucks while high on cannabis
Fucks in a furry costume (even more entertaining when combined with the previous…)
Etc. Etc.

When society decides that these and other activities among consenting adults is “none of our business,” it does not mean that all people who respect this “bedroom privacy” of others—as I call it—approve of all such activity that goes on in others’ bedrooms. It does not mean everyone thinks all such activity is socially beneficial. It does not mean everyone in society would be happy if their teenagers (or even grown children) engaged in such activity.

And it certainly does not mean everyone would want to try all such activity themselves (unless one is, like me, a “try-sexual”: I’ll try pretty much anything once).

It just means we have decided that what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms. . . is none of our damn business.

It’s not our business to judge, and it’s certainly not our business to get the law, the police, or the courts involved.

February 27, 2020 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

Social Survivalism: Cultivating High-Trust Networks Before Disaster Strikes

On Oct 8th, with ~7 hours notice, I–along with much of Northern California–learned that electricity would be going out for possibly a week. It was a preventive power-outage to avoid catastrophic climate-related wildfires like the ones in the last few years.

This highlighted for me why, of the myriad things I procrastinate on, disaster prep was not a good one. (Especially because I also live directly on top of the Hayward faultline in Berkeley.)

The Pacific Gas and Electric Company site was down due to all the people frantically checking for info. (Hey PG&E, maybe investing in more bandwidth during emergencies would be a cost-effective move?)

From the spotty information (rumors?) I could get online I learned water could go out during this time as well.

Frantic trip to Home Depot for flashlights, batteries, candles, water jugs, first aid kits. Shopping carts full of non-perishables at El Cerrito Natural Grocery (oh God so Bay Area!)–prepping for Armageddon, gluten-free.

Filling car gas tank (could serve as a generator for devices.) Filling up bathtub and every container in the house with water. Making last-minute calls saying I may be out of touch (info online said cell towers would work, but ya never know.)

Seeing how much my life seemed like it could upend with the possibility of ~7 days without basic civilizational utilities, and the degree to which I was reduced to a nervous ninny, brought to mind a series I wrote a while ago but never published on topics related to the end of civilization as we know it. Now seems like a good time to share it!

Social Survivalism:
Cultivating High-Trust Networks Before Disaster Strikes

October 20, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

Finding Your Life’s Treasure Map: The Small Changes That Change Everything

One day many years ago, 47-year-old Steve Cooksey asked his wife to take him to the emergency room, and he collapsed the moment he got there. They put him in a wheelchair and, suspecting the symptoms of diabetes, took his blood sugar reading. It was at 740 mg/dl, which is off the charts. (A normal range, at fasting level, is around 80-130.)

Steve passed out a few times in the ER, and the doctor told him he was on the verge of a full-blown diabetic coma, a medical emergency that can be fatal. They kept him in ICU for four days with all kinds of IVs stuck in him before they could get his blood sugar down to a safe level.

“My lifestyle up until that point, in one phrase, was ‘sedentary sloth,’” Steve told me. “My normal breakfast was going to Bojangle’s Chicken ‘n Biscuits and getting a couple of biscuits with their sweet tea and Bo-tato Rounds® [hash browns]. Then I’d go out to lunch I’d get bread and rolls and buns, and I’d eat spaghetti. If I wanted to eat ‘healthy,’ I’d get a big-ass salad, but I’d use the sugary salad dressing. If we went to fast food, I’d get a big Subway sub, with juice or Gatorade or Pepsi. My lunches were full of carbs. For dinner, I’d stop and eat a Big Mac or a Big Fish sandwich, with French fries and sweet teas. I was feeding that carb addiction 16 hours a day. At my peak, I was around 235 lbs [at a height of 5’10”]—and that was not muscle.”

As they let him out of the hospital, the nurse gave him a copy of the Food Pyramid to put in his pocket and told him to keep his eating below 2,200 calories.

That was the only dietary advice any medical professional at the hospital gave him after he nearly died.

“When I heard that, I thought, ‘That’s basically like I eat now!’ I could still eat bread and cookies and drink juice on the diet they were recommending to me.” Instead of rejoicing at this freedom, Steve suspected there was a deeper issue here. He intuitively felt that there must be some link between all the sugar and carbs he was eating, and his blood sugar issues, even though the hospital doctors assured him there was none. He began looking into the matter–and what he found changed his life.

August 1, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Sex

Practice Loving People You’re Attracted to Unconditionally

One of the greatest positive shifts in my relations with women occurred when I learned to have friendships with women I was attracted to, but who were not attracted to me back. Given that I was constantly attracted to women erotically, and only a fraction felt the same way about me, this shift was as important to make as it was challenging.

It is so easy for a man to remain in a “friendship” of unrequited lust in hopes that he might “get lucky” and “one day” she might see “what a great guy I am.” We men get a lot of cultural reenforcement for these hopes too, as the romantic trope of the guy who “doesn’t stand a chance” but who persists in his valiant efforts to “win her heart” in the face of horrible odds, but ends up “getting the girl” in the end, is the plot line of like 75% of all romantic movies and novels.

But a friendship born of persistence in pursuit of a sexual goal is not real friendship–a friendship with an agenda is a farce. And the attraction ends up coming out anyways, in uncomfortable, unwanted and awkward passes that catch the woman by surprise, make her feel manipulated (as she questions whether it was ever a “real” friendship,) and end up in the man feeling bitter about being rejected and having his desires invalidated yet again in his path towards romance and Eros.

Which–since the traditional Courtship Script has assigned men the role of initiators of romantic and sexual interest and women as the responders–has probably been going on since he mustered up the nerve to walk across the dance floor in the gym at the middle school dance, ask the girl to dance, and get rejected in front of all his classmates. Bitterness and resentment spreads all around, for boys and girls, men and women, and all genders.

Is there a way out? This is an urgent question.

March 18, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

The Secret of Grounded Confidence

When I say the “secret” of grounded confidence, I mean both that there’s a secret to gaining it (which I’ll be sharing below)… but also, that grounded confidence itself is a secret!

What do I mean?

Well, when you hear the phrase “gain confidence,” what comes to mind?

Maybe you think of some kind of pep-talk, from a mentor, coach, “motivational speaker” or “transformational leader.”

(Those in latter two groups sell expensive seminars where you jump in chairs all weekend, scream in groups, and hear inspiring stories about other people who took the upsell seminar and now live on yachts, etc…)

These forms of “confidence” are like jolts of coffee… good for a few hours, or even days (hey, that’s some strong coffee!) But then the crash comes… and you need the next external fix.

In contrast, grounded confidence is based on:

A back-and-forth dialogue between inner confidence, and improvement in external results.

(The last part–external results–is where the “grounded” part comes in.)

Let me tell you a little story about grounded confidence, and how to gain it.

March 4, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

You Are a Contrarian Investment

Most people who haven’t already “made it” are lucky to have a few people who truly have rock-solid, investible faith in them. Maybe their parents (if they’re lucky!) Maybe a few really close friends, or a mentor they’ve been lucky to find.

But in a typical lifespan–before you’ve “made it,” however you define that– the main person who is going to have faith in you is you.

That means, before you’ve reached the level of success you desire in life, investing in yourself is a form of contrarian investing. (Investing that goes against the crowd.) And a form that I think is much more doable, valuable, and safe than contrarian investing in the markets.

February 21, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

The Dirty Secret of the BS Investment Industry

If you’re wondering how you will provide for you and your family’s financial security in the future, you’ve probably considered saving money in your IRA or 401(k), and investing it in broad mutual funds tracking the US markets. Or you may have already done this.

If so, you’ve probably been lulled in by the personal finance industry’s PR that, “in the long run, the US stock market has gone up 7% per year annualized, after inflation.”

Sounds great, right? 7% per year is a doubling of your assets roughly every ten years. Just stick that money in there, don’t touch it again (“buy and hold,” or “passive investing”) and watch your wealth double every 10 years! (That’s a 12-fold increase over 40 years!)

The problem is, there’s a dirty secret to the investment business–one that the people selling you this BS advice don’t want you to know, because it would put them right out of business.

February 19, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

The Key to Fool-Proof Investing

The key to fool-proof investing is truly internalizing the implications of the following unsettling fact.

Most people are fools when it comes to evaluating their own talent in many of their own skills. (Including, as we’ll see in a moment, investing.)

Unfortunately, chances are, that includes us.

Studies show that 95% of people believe they are “above-average” drivers.

February 15, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Sex

Understanding the Debates Around “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”

Have you been hearing debates about “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” and wanting to understand the debate in more depth? I’ve got you covered!

I did a deep-dive on this debate last year. If you just want the net-net (and this is my concurrence with numerous feminist writers I cite, who I think make a conclusive case- not particularly original thinking on my part):

In 1944, when the song was written, it was absolutely unthinkable within “polite society” for a woman to spend the night at a man’s house if she wasn’t married to him. If you look closely (and understand the references in their historical context) this is a song about an unmarried pair on a date who want the night to continue at his place, and are coming up with reasons why she should stay over that will be acceptable to the woman’s strict family and nosy community. The song is a cheeky rebellion against what we would now call the “slut shaming” of the era, celebrating a woman’s desire to stay over at a man’s house if she wants, family and slut-shaming community be-damned.

All that said – and this is more my commentary/opinion now: the culture has changed enough in 75 years (thankfully) that what was once a cheeky rebellion against socially-conservative slut-shaming, now when heard in a ~2020 context – perpetuates tropes that play into what we see as rape culture today. Namely, the idea that, in order to defend her public virtue, a woman needs to hide her desire to sleep with a man casually and say no at first out of custom. With that idea floating in the culture, men are more likely to believe women’s no’s are her just playing “hard to get” or putting up “token resistance” in order to not seem “easy” – thus disbelieving those no’s and not taking them at face value.

December 25, 2018 by Michael Ellsberg

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