DON’T ask a therapist - ask someone in the sex industry.

My friend Meredith sent me this article, asking me what I think. And what do I think? I think it’s bullshit. Let’s fisk it, shall we?

With “kink” more mainstream than ever, educated, professional women are putting on their leather. And they have many wondering: What’s the appeal of being a dominatrix?

“The toughest job you’ll ever love” has taken on a whole new meaning. When it comes to sex work, being a dominatrix is no walk in the park. After all, they do have to wear spiked-heeled, thigh-high boots.

Cute. That line is to attract people that think the sex industry is icky. After all, the mainstream dame only cares about footwear, right? Pfft.

Becoming a dominatrix — a female who takes a dominant role in bondage, discipline, domination and submission — is an attractive option for these women because:

— It offers the convenience of early or nightshift work;

True. In fact, there is a lucrative day trade for this sort of thing, but usually you need your own location. The day-shift customers are more hardcore, and need the props. Therefore, unless you have a fully-stocked dungeon on Wall Street, you are unlikely to snag the high rollers and are looking at the light S&M evening clientele.

— It enables cute women with bodies bigger than the Barbie-esque figure desired of strippers to work in the sex industry;

Close, but not quite. Basically this comment is saying that heavier chicks make good doms, if they are cute. Let me tell you that the last thing some pathetic sonofabitch sub is looking for is “cute”. Doesn’t matter if you’re 100 or 300 pounds - you’d better be a fierce bitch or you might as well stay home with the kids. The girl next door need not apply.

But the fact that they are able to avoid intercourse is the main reason your “average” women in need of cash are going this route.

Usually this is the case. There are exceptions, and in any case, you’d best be ready to pay for hefty leather drycleaning bills. Trust me. Not only that, but you might be surprised at how many of them want a little sexual role reversal, with you as the penetrating party. Do you think the Tupperware club described in this article is ready for that?

Plus, the money isn’t bad (though nowhere near the $500 an hour call girls rake in). A dominatrix makes up to $200 a shift, and the hours don’t have to be steady. But these are definitely “don’t quit your day job” gigs. While we do hear of a few women making a killing at a fetish party ($1,000 a night), these stories are the exception to the rule.

Bullfuckingshit. Dominatrices make considerably more than the average call girl because of the price of clothing, accessories and equipment. PLUS, the clients get off on knowing that they are so pathetic that the girl wants nothing to do with them if the fee is under XX/hr. In Montreal, when the going rate for an escort was $175-250/hr, I was bringing in over $350. Why? Well, did I mention the cost of dry-cleaning leather?

Also, this is not the job for everyone. Sex is easy - whether you’re giving it or selling it. But BDSM is a skill. If you are a cute bubblehead, stick to selling tail. You need an imagination and the ability to keep a straight face in dom work. You can’t giggle because some financial wizard likes to have his ears pulled while jerking off.

With a number of them not even interested in kink, this is a temporary situation for many. Being “glamorized hookers,” as they’re often called, is not easy money. These women work hard. While they do get to run around in black lingerie, garter belts, and stilettos, this is no lounge-around-Victoria’s-Secret fashion shoot.

First, they need to be trained in techniques like whipping and caning. They need to learn how to use the tools for sex acts involving bondage, paddling and sexual torture.

Once with a client, there’s an interview process. They need to find out more about his expectations beyond any initial booking requests. This requires a skill set. The mistress must be:

— Sensitive to others’ sexual fantasies, thoughts and emotions;

— Open-minded and self-confident;

— Empathetic to others’ wants and desires;

— Good in the art of seduction.

Pretty much true. Some basic first aid doesn’t hurt, either. Just sayin’.

Being a dominatrix or “pro-domme,” as they’re know in the industry, is nothing new. Some have been in the industry for years. They either freelance or work regular shifts at a commercial dungeon.

A) they are NOT called pro-domme - they are called dominatrices or mistresses, and B) I would be interested to know what they mean by “commercial dungeon”. This is not a standard service in a house of ill-repute, and any Mistress worth her salt who has her own dungeon doesn’t run a normal call service.. She specifically trains a submissive in the art of domination over a number of years, and then includes them in her business. It is more of a family relationship than a business one. Strangers are not welcome.

Dr. Yvonne K. Fulbright is a sex educator, relationship expert, columnist and founder of Sexuality Source Inc. She is the author of several books including, “Touch Me There! A Hands-On Guide to Your Orgasmic Hot Spots.”

And therein is the problem. Some frustrated “therapist” who has never actually done the job thinks she can come up with a Cosmo magazine-style article on the fun and profit that can be had in the BDSM industry. I ought to put the silly broad over my knee…

In the UK, a young boy aged just 13 years old became a father via his 15 year old girlfriend. Well, at least they think he’s the father. It could be one of the other six guys she was shagging.

To add insult to grievous injury, parents are now being told by leaders of Britain´s Department of Children, Schools and Family that they shouldn’t try to instill sexual values in their children. Instead they should “NOT tell their children what is ‘right or wrong’ about having sex,” but simply serve up information about methods of contraception.

It’s as if Britain has given up on its kids as kids. They are sexualized little adults now, running around the Isles humping and breeding like bunnies.

However, Britain’s shoulder shrugging where child sexuality is concerned isn’t consistent. And that’s what bugs me.

A 15-year-old schoolgirl earned almost £100,000 a year working as a high-class prostitute, it was revealed yesterday.

By day the teenager attended classes but at night she was regularly paid hundreds of pounds for sex.

The girl, who cannot be identified because of her age, is believed to have been working for an escort agency based in Newcastle.

She lied about her age before going on to earn £1,700 a week, meeting dozens of men on school nights and at the weekend.

Her double life was exposed in November when a suspicious teacher searched her schoolbag and found condoms, a card with the name of her pimp and details of the agency she worked for.

The school alerted police and officers later searched the £200,000 family home in South Tyneside, finding £8,060 in cash hidden in the loft, a court heard.

She obviously comes from a decent family, à la Amy Fisher. She keeps up with schoolwork and isn’t a bad child in the sense we know. But she’s underage - an innocent.

Most of you, my readers, know of my past in the sex industry. What you don’t know is that in my teen years, I was using that same entrepreneurial spirit to get what I wanted. It wasn’t cash, but there was definitely a barter system in place. I’ll give you this if you give me that. It’s actually how I passed math. I looked after my body and my sexual health, never got pregnant, never sat around popping out illegitimate brats in a council estate on the taxpayer dime.

So was I an innocent? Or was I sexualized at a young age? I think we all know the answer to that one.

So from an objective perspective, knowing what we know of the way Britain is encouraging its children to hump indiscriminately, what did this 15 year old girl do that was so bad? Was it that she didn’t get knocked up and collect welfare? Was it that she may not have been a victim at all? I sure wasn’t. She followed the rules: used condoms, kept up with her “real life”… the only thing she did wrong was to not depend on the state or cry victimhood.

Britain needs to decide whose side it’s on when it comes to kids and sex. Because right now, their message is more than a little mixed.

If you’re too shy to talk about birth control, you’re too shy to fuck.

Schoolgirls are being provided with contraception ‘credit cards’ so they can get the morning-after pill without the embarrassment of having to ask for it.

The cards will allow youngsters to request the pill simply by placing the card on the pharmacist’s counter.

Supporters of the scheme say it will cut unplanned pregnancies by helping teenagers avoid a potentially “daunting” conversation.

—

The town has an above average rate of teenage pregnancies, and youth workers believe one reason for this is that teenagers are too ashamed to ask for the morningafter pill.

A pharmacist is a professional. If you can’t talk to them to even ask for the goddam pill, what on earth were you thinking when you spread your legs?

“If you are a teenage girl it is quite a daunting thing to go into a pharmacy and say out loud: ‘I had unprotected sex.’ There may be somebody in [the pharmacy] that you know and in the past that sort of thing may have put girls off from asking for emergency contraception.

Remember when that same sense of shame used to keep girls from spreading at all? Now we just make it easier and easier for them to have random sex.

From the comments:

It’s not a pill they need. It’s a cork.

And he’s causing a helluva fuss. Ever since he wrote It’s the Demography, Stupid! last year, and then expanded it into America Alone, it feels as if he has singled me out to personally save civilization by breeding. And as if that’s not scary enough, my biological clock now ticks in his unusual pseudo-British voice.

I am bombarded daily by walking watermelons in the office, oversized prams blocking the sidewalk on my way to Saturday brunch, this week’s Macleans with the cover screaming “Hey Lady! What will it take to make you breed?” and myriad other not-so-subtle hints.

It’s normal to feel persecuted by my own ovaries. I’m thirty years old, healthy, moderately content with life (a massive improvement over how I felt in my twenties!), and female. My brain knows what it wants out of life, but my basest physiology is very much in tune with biology and survival of the species. How in tune? The Steyn-Clock only starts ticking in the presence of an Alpha Male. I am happily married to the world’s most wonderful Beta Male, but Mother Nature and Mark Steyn have advised me that it’s my ovarian destiny to breed super-children with an Alpha Male. And there’s no fooling Mother and Mark.

It’s usually easy to ignore. After all, I live in Toronto. Not a lot of Alpha Males here. So Im able to go about my business, scowling at the Yummie Mummies taking up valuable rush hour space on the subway or at the endless streams of welfare baby-mommas taking up valuable oxygen that Al Gore says we’ll be out of soon. Mr. Right - beloved Beta Male - and I can joyfully and selfishly coexist, with the cats and the dog for unconditional love and (I shamefully admit) the occasional miniature designer outfit. We would be a deplorable parental duo. Both of us far too focused on our own issues and interests. Both of us lazy. Mr. Right is an excellent parent to me, wrangling the demons of my childhood that I carry with me. He’s warm, caring, infinitely patient… but would forget a baby in the bathtub or even the grocery store. I have all the necessary instincts - right down to waking in the middle of the night if I hear one of the kitties being sick - but I would be one of those women you read about and shake your head, the one who drives her minivan full of kids into a lake.

But put me in the vicinity of an Alpha Male, and my ovaries stand up and salute! They sing the Star Spangled Banner. Five minutes with an Alpha, and I’m picking out names. Hawaii was a nightmare for a child-phobe like me - surrounded by the very best America has to offer in the form of Army, Navy, Marines and yes, even the Air Force. Not to say that every one of them is an Alpha - far from it. But the available percentage was much, much higher than under normal circumstances. So there I was, in Paradise, surrounded by Alphas, with Mark Steyn screaming from my nether regions. When it comes to my biological makeup, I’m no better than a cat. Gross.

The biggest problem is that Mark hasn’t quite figured out that we’re home now. We’ve been home nearly a month. But still all I hear is tick-tick-demography,stupid-tick….

Obviously this explains the prevalence of gay marriage, metrosexuals, and Colin & Justin.

Back in the summer of 2001, a team of Canadian and U.S. researchers spiked a lake in Northwestern Ontario with traces of synthetic estrogen used in human birth control pills. They then repeated the unusual treatment for the next two years and sat back and watched what happened to minnows living in the lake.

The results were nothing short of frightening. Exposing fish to tiny doses of the active ingredient in the pill, amounts little more than a whiff of estrogen, started turning male fish into females. Instead of sperm, they started developing eggs. Instead of looking like males, they became indistinguishable from females. Within a year of exposure, the minnow population began to crash. Within a few years, the fish, which at one time teemed in the lake, had practically vanished.

Ok, but what do these fish have to do with Colin & Justin, you ask? Fair question. It seems that the test samples of estrogen were meant to mimic the type and quantity of estrogen that makes it through waste water purification. Which means I - on the Pill - take a piss. It gets cleansed and purified, and your son drinks it. Next thing you know he’s talking about his feelings, writing poetry, and making moon-eyes at the boy next door.

It’s not known what effect, if any, human exposure to estrogen in drinking water might have, although Dr. Kidd said it is an area that should be a research priority. Reproductive problems in human males, such as declining sperm counts and testicular cancer, have been rising in recent decades, and the causes are not known.

“When we see these kinds of responses in fish, it raises a red flag for what these compounds are doing to humans,” she said.

Dear God, what have we done? We take the Pill to avoid having children, and it emasculates our men to virtually ensure that we’ll never have children. Obviously I can’t cast the first stone here, but I definitely think it’s worth further study.

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