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stevenkesslar

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Posts posted by stevenkesslar

  1. I can't tell you how many times clients touched me in particular places without my express permission.

     

    Sometimes it actually felt kind of gross.

     

    There was a simple solution. I asked them not to touch me, and in return I gave them their $1000 back. :oops:

     

    Of course, it's different when you are a paid stripper on a stage at a place like Hustlaball. That is clearly completely non-consensual. :eek:

     

    We have been doing so well for the last decade, guys. Paving the way for same sex marriage, transgender bathrooms, and in so many ways getting people to open their hearts and minds to centuries of deeply felt oppression.

     

    Please let's not fuck it up with this nonsense. ;)

  2. Generally is it because by the time the infection is caught it has spread to far? Or that there are no antibiotics to cure the infection? I'm stupid as far as these things are concerned.

     

    I'm not an expert. But my basic understanding is that once you have sepsis - i.e. blood poisoning - it spreads quickly, and you need urgent treatment. I think the idea is that a localized infection (e.g. a bacterial infection) does not spread easily or quickly, but once it is flowing through your body the entire body, like your vital organs, start to shut down. Once that starts to happen it is game over pretty quick.

     

    Again, I'm not an expert. But I think that's in the ballpark of correct. Any medical professionals please chime in.

  3. It is probably more correct to say he died of septic shock, not the flu. Alhough is his case the flu was the trigger that led to sepsis.

     

    "Sepsis and septic shock can result from an infection anywhere in the body, such as pneumonia, influenza, or urinary tract infections. Worldwide, one-third of people who develop sepsis die. Many who do survive are left with life-changing effects, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic pain and fatigue, organ dysfunction (organs don’t work properly) and/or amputations."

     

    Sepsis and Influenza

     

    https://www.sepsis.org/sepsis-and/influenza/

     

    Influenza and sepsis: Mayo expert describes warning signs of severe sepsis, septic shock

     

    https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-01/mc-ias011315.php

     

    My learning curve on this went way up when I watched my escort friend Bill die in a hospital of septic shock triggered by an infection. I also have a client who has struggled most of his adult life with the results of Crohn's disease , including several close calls with death due to septic shock, and a recent amputation.

     

    It's important to know about the flu. But it's probably even more important to know about sepsis.

  4. No need to intrude if you just give them what they WANT ! He has the advantage of being "out".... now they might try to dig up salacious shit to sully the "party", but if he keeps it Transparent, it'll be OK...

     

    tumblr_n4qz3ln6681sr9z69o1_500.gif

     

     

    Maybe a "Flash Mob" ???

     

    8VyNMZ3.jpg

     

    Hey, I enjoyed watching Bristol Palin on Dancing With The Stars, when she was presenting herself as an activist for abstinence or something.

     

    Maybe Carson can dance as an animal rights activist.

     

    He probably knows a lot about purring, licking, and other animal things.

  5. I'm not all that surprised, and I don't think they go into these careers thinking of that. I think it is purely a matter of entitlement and what they thought they could get away with. When #metoo became a thing, a prominent Australian journalist tweeted asking for women who had personal experiences to come forward, expecting maybe 10. She received over 500, naming over 50 different men [mainly] in the entertainment industry. One prominent television personality was named by over 6o women. One newspaper chain with the national broadcaster did an investigation and went public about a week ago. Executives at the TV station he was on said they always thought he was a sleazebag, but 'there were no complaints'. After the piece aired on the ABC and was published in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, more women came forward. Apparently the next in line will be publicised in the coming weeks.

     

    This whole thing has a long way to go, and almost inevitably there will be some untested and unfair allegations that come forward. The contested motives in the Franken case are a case in point.

     

    11503.jpg?1512081688

    I assume it's only for a day, but I like your new avatar, Mike.

     

    You're a great guy, but you actually never looked better. ;)

  6. Pirro is a loud-mouthed, repulsive hate-mongering liar whose vitriol and malice spews from her big mouth every time she opens it. Her voice makes Fran Drescher sound like an opera singer. She is disgusting, even by Fox News standards.

     

    In other words, to simplify it in Trump's own terms, she'a a 10.

  7. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/11/29/brent-bozell-matt-lauer-and-sexual-harassment-hypocrisy.html

     

    "In a way Matt Lauer's no different from Al Franken, or Harvey Weinstein, or Charlie Rose, or Bill Clinton, or Garrison Keillor or all those other liberals who publicly champion the rights of women at every opportunity while looking for every opportunity privately to torment them."

     

    It's interesting that even the conservatives are not fighting back ....... against the women. What they are mainly focusing on is that liberals are just as bad, if not worse. Which given the cast of characters is actually a fact fact - not an alternative fact.

     

    How refreshing!

     

    It's interesting to see culture change this quickly. It will take years or decades for the dust to settle, but the big guys sure do fall fast, don't they?

  8. Pervy Lauer had a "rape" button under his desk. It was installed years ago for security purposes, but being a practiced predator, he found it useful to trap his victims in the office without having to worry about an interruption from outside. Apparently, other prominent NBC personalities/execs have "rape" buttons too.

     

    https://jezebel.com/matt-lauer-had-a-button-under-his-desk-to-lock-his-door-1820853895

    • During his tenure as co-host of Today, Lauer reportedly gave a woman colleague a sex toy, along with a note about “how he wanted to use it on her.”
    • Another woman colleague recalls a time when she was “summoned” to Lauer’s office; he dropped his pants, showed her his penis, and then proceeded to chastise her for not engaging in a sex act.
    • Lauer would, according to anonymous sources, ask women producers who they’d slept with, and engage his colleagues in a rousing game of “Fuck, Marry, Kill”—a thinly veiled-ruse for sharing which of his colleagues he’d like to sleep with.

    http://static.skaip.org/img/emoticons/180x180/f6fcff/puke.gif

  9. A wise word of warning:

     

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/27/opinions/sexual-harassment-assault-backlash-opinion-costello/index.html

     

    Beware the sexual harassment backlash

     

    "I am ecstatic that so many women are coming forward with stories of harassment and assault. But I also fervently believe we -- as supporters -- have to keep a lid on over-correcting wrongs. We cannot celebrate innocent men paying a price for those who are truly guilty.

     

    We cannot pick and choose who is guilty of sexual harassment based on his or her political affiliation. If Al Franken is guilty of serial harassment, he deserves the same treatment as anyone else. Democrat or Republican, I don't care how sorry he is for past indiscretions.

     

    If we don't heed these warnings, then I fear our courageous stories of abuse will be twisted by men who feel tarred and feathered in our moment of truth, and they, again, will drive us underground.

     

    Don't let them."

  10. I think that these very public cases are just the beginning and the media is informing the public about the those cases that are the most apparent. This is a very good thing because it will both show who caused the damage but more importantly force us to set up a process to deal with allegations. Not every allegation is true. However, we as a society have to make sure that the "accusers" can air their grievances and feel safe about the things that surround those grievances, e.g. physical and job safety. At the same time we must begin to set up processes to protect those who are accused. While we have given it a start (a very, very small start) it is so pervasive that it is going to take decades to make small inroads into breaking down the barriers. A good start would be more women in the upper echelons of power in both government and business. And much of the problem exists in our American culture writ large. Girls and women are treated differently and open to much less opportunity. All that has to change. Having a self-professed sexual assaulter as the country's president does not help but finally airing a bit of the dirty laundry in Hollywood, business, and government does. All hands on deck.

     

    And another thing that needs to be sorted out, that will take decades......................."legacy."

     

    I'm mixing in this article on Conyers to make a point:

     

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/28/politics/john-conyers-push-to-resign/index.html

     

    Several black caucus members in talks with Conyers to get him to resign

    "A staffer to a member of the Congressional Black Caucus told CNN that "there is a feeling among some of our members that we need to protect his legacy," noting that Conyers is a founding member of the group and was a leading figure in the civil rights movement."

     

    I think it's way too early in the game to sort out what impact this will have on the legacy of men like Bill Clinton and John Conyers.

     

    With Bill Cosby, who I was never a huge fan of, I for one don't think of him as a ground-breaking Black comedian anymore. I just think of him as a disgusting, evil human being.

     

    I get the fact that many Millennials who weren't around for 1992 see Bill Clinton as a predator. Period. And Hillary as the wife who enabled him. Period. But as an older liberal Democrat, I don't want to view Clinton and Conyers as just being assholes.

     

    I think part of the reason it would be good for the Clintons and Conyers to just go away now is so that history can redeem the parts of their legacy that are good. Arguably, that happened with Bill Clinton already. Whether you ask historians or just regular people in polls, he stands out as one of the better Presidents when it comes to the economy. But overall, he is ranked in the middle, because his sex scandals dragged him down.

  11. Given the history of sexual antics dear leader Trump has engaged in, I wonder when the finger pointing at him will resume!

     

    This will sound like psychobabble, but I think every one of these men fell because of Trump. Corporate Shill keeps saying, and he's right, that a lot of this shit happened before Trump. Millions of people lost homes. Wages didn't increase. Factory jobs went away under W. and stayed away under Obama. Millions of people got addicted to opioids. And meanwhile there was all this sexual harassment stuff that was going on everywhere, and even more hidden.

     

    The good thing about Trump is that somehow his Presidency seems to be about exposing everything that is ugly about America. In a weird way, he is holding a mirror to the nation, and tens of millions of people don't like what they see.

  12. Exactly...

     

    Although it is not in this video clip, Stephanie Ruhle ended her show this morning tearing up over Matt Lauer. Like Weinstein, he apparently was a known predator, using his power to control the women he abused.

     

    I don't disagree, but I'd be a little more empathetic to the women involved.

     

    For the ones who are the victims of the harassment, there is this self-blaming game that has been perpetuated culturally. It was really interesting to watch Leeann Tweeden. On balance, I quickly grew to have a lot of respect for her. And part of the reason why is nuance and transparency. She comes off as a strong woman with strong values and a great family, but you could also feel her pain as she spoke out. And she wasn't on a rampage to just destroy Franken in particular or men in general.

     

    For the ones who are not the victims, it's got to be even more nuanced. Denial is a powerful thing. Nobody who works with somebody for years wants to see them as an abuser or an asshole.

     

    I don't think we should assume it's only men who are learning from this. I got the sense from watching Leeann Tweeden that she in particular and women in general are learning something from this, too. I think the tears and confusion and vulnerability and transparency are real.

  13. And then for an opposing point of view:

     

    'Toxic masculinity'? Dude, now America's universities are turning men into women

     

    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/01/17/toxic-masculinity-dude-now-americas-universities-are-turning-men-into-women.html

     

    "Brown University has a program titled, “Masculinity 101” – for “students who identify as men,” Campus Reform reports.

     

    Get a load of the course description titled, “Unlearning Toxic Masculinity:”

     

    A few years ago I conducted an unscientific poll to determine what the average American woman looks for in a man.

     

    The poll results were not all that surprising. Ladies want a man who loves God and loves his family. They also want a man who, in no particular order:

     

    1. Has a job;

     

    2. Drives a pickup truck;

     

    3. Uses the bathroom standing up;

     

    4. Eats meat;

     

    5. And is willing to carry them out of a burning building.

     

    In other words -- they want the kind of man made in God's image -- not the image of some effeminate intellectual stuffed in skinny jeans sipping chai tea with his pinky finger extended."

     

    Can you imagine a better description of the Fox News take on the war on masculinity? Is it just a coincidence that Fox is the place that spawned Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly? And smart conservative women like Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly eventually got fed up and said, "Fuck y'all. I'm outta here!"

     

    Here's a confession about my inner bitch, that I let come out at certain times.

     

    This speaks to decades of my experience as an escort and a landlord, relating to the idea that you just have to let some people's fucked up attitudes gradually lead them to failure. It's not so much wishing people harm, it's more that you just let their fucked up attitudes lead where they inevitably lead, which is failure. For example, as an escort, there were certain clients that were their own worst enemies. Like they just sucked at communicating what they wanted. So I knew what was happening, as it was happening, and just let them flail around and walk away disappointed.

     

    Right now I have a Black tenant who is both a nice person and a good tenant. But Section 8 (government assisted housing) changed the amount of rent she has to pay from $350 a month to $700 a month. So she can't figure that one out, and is moving out of a house that rents for $1350 a month, which for years she actually only paid $350 of. In other words, the actual amount of rent she has to pay - even at $700 - is something any other tenant I have would kill for. And she just can't figure it out. She and her two daughters are going to live with her mother. I tried to talk her into the concept that she might want to actually go do something to be able to pay $700 a month in rent - $700 a month is pretty cheap rent for a nice 3 bedroom house worth $300,000. But she's committed to her own path, in my view. And it is about attitude. So she'll move out and I'll rent the house to someone else and get about $1550 a month in rent. I'll come out smelling like a rose, and she'll be the loser, as will her kids, perhaps.

     

    My point is that it is sad to look at people who seem to be their own worst enemies, because they have really fucked up attitudes. I factor in that maybe I'm arrogant and maybe I don't know it all. But it just seems like some people make really fucked up choices that they don' have to make.

     

    So this is playing out on an epic scale with these young White men who love Trump and hate college because they think it is where you go to learn how to grow a vagina or something. Because the reality is that it is where you go to get skills and jobs. All the data show overwhelmingly that if you want to succeed in today's economy, it isn't really about the idea that you carry women out of burning buildings. Then after saving women from fires you go to the gym and get buff and brag in the locker room about how that woman you saved begged you to grab her pussy, or something like that. In reality, though, it's about the idea of dragging your ass to class, and then across a stage to get a college diploma.

     

    There seem to be many, many, many men who seem to be in utter denial of that reality. They are behaving like my Black female tenant, or worse, and they don't even have racism or sexism to blame for their problems. They are White men, damn it! And I'm going to spend the rest of my life looking a lit bit down on them, and the miseries and addictions they brought on themselves. If they vote for Trump and complain about all this PC bullshit, good for them. That won't get them a good job or a satisfied life, though. At the heart of "Make America Great Again" is a cesspool of male unhappiness.

     

    There. Now you've all seen my inner bitch. I consider it part of my feminine side. ;)

  14. This poll was done in the UK, but it's the cleanest example I could find quickly of what poll after poll after poll says about global Millennial culture, and the huge generation gap between younger and older people.

     

    It's a stretch to say that older men who are more "completely masculine" feel that "locker room talk" is fine, and, hey, why not just grab that pussy if you want to? But my guess is the attitudes go, shall we say, hand in hand. ;)

     

    It also may be that "completely feminine" women of a certain age just learned to keep their mouths shut and take it, whereas "less feminine" younger women are turning out to be a little bit more aggressive in fighting back.

     

    genderAge.png

    https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/05/13/low-young-masculinity-britain/

  15. In fact, I suspect it'll become another point of musing about political correctness.

     

    Good points.

     

    The other word that needs to be thrown in is this..................."generational."

     

    This is a little bit like the revenge of the women. Remember when Madeline Albright tried to shame women into voting for Hillary? Well a lot of women said, "Nope." My guess is that women of a certain age - like Gloria Steinem's era - may see things one way. Younger women may see it very differently. Put in the terms you used, for a lot of older people there is this debate about "political correctness." And the phrase itself sort of suggests, "I know I'm supposed to feel this way because it's the correct way to think, but I don't really feel that way." Because I'm older, and know mostly older people, I agree with you that there is a tremendous gap in real life conversations between what is "politically correct" and how many older Americans actually feel. The fact that Trump is President is a great indicator of the size of the huge gap between what is PC, and what people really think. Trump won the Presidency by essentially bellowing. "Fuck y'all with this PC bullshit!"

     

    Among younger Americans - who loved Sanders and voted overwhelmingly against Trump - things may look very different. I tend to think, in part based on reading mountains of polls, that they don't see these things as "politically correct." They just see them as "correct." What many older people mouth as "PC bullshit" is what younger people actually believe. Probably this idea about safe workplaces and zero tolerance for sexual harassment is a good example of a generation gap, if not a generation abyss.

     

    Of course, not all Millennials voted for Clinton. So maybe there are a lot of younger guys who are also viewing this whole thing as enforced and unfair PC bullshit. I don't know any of that cohort. And even if they feel that way my guess is that they are going to learn slowly but surely that they better keep their mouths shut and their hands to themselves.

  16. I have very mixed feelings about the still-developing wave of revelations regarding harassment in our workplaces.

    • Its gone on too long as a dirty, unaddressed behavior.
    • I'm glad its getting attention. Light is a disinfectant, and perhaps the behavior can be prevented
    • I think its important that the exposure may be empowering women to speak out.

    These positives acknowledged, I can't help thinking

    • Its playing out more publicly than I care to see. I dont know what the alternative should be...handling it quietly, secretly, perpetuates the problem. Perhaps the exposures could be announced in a more low-key manner.
    • It feels as if much of the reporting, investigative and exposure, is for sensationalism - and ratings. They're not reporting it and the public's not watching for altruistic reasons. It's become a giant game of GOTCHA.
    • It will come down to money. The women harassed will file for emotional damages, creative charges of career hampering, etc. Many of the claims will be justified, some exagerated, and eventually, exploitive scammers will flock to the playing field.
    • Ruining careers is really not a solution. But neither are apologies and moving-on. Not sure what the productive response is... perhaps a public figure apologizing, entering counseling with public progress reports, and very public service, such as work at women's shelters, or active participation as anti-harassment trainers.
    • Once again, the consuming public will respond based upon their prior attitudes. If they disliked the publiic persona, they'll take some pleasure in seeing him toppled. If they liked the guy, they'll be disappointed or sad. The victims wont be of any significant concern.

    The whole situation makes me feel very cynical about the way we address systemic problems.

     

    This will sound weird, but your post made me feel good.

     

    The word that struck me from that YouTube of Savannah Guthrie above is the word "transparent." That works for me. For the most part, I don't feel like the media failed in the past year. I read TIME and The Economist and I knew everything I needed to know last year about why and how Trump would be a disaster. And guess what? He is a disaster. So I don't feel cynical about the media. They did their job. So now the media is doubling down on bringing the truth forward, and I'd argue it's gradually working. But there's a whole hell of a lot of people out there who just want to ignore facts. To the point of saying The Washington Post and The New York Times are basically toilet paper and the only value of them is to wipe shit from your ass.

     

    So the predatory sexual harassment theme will play out the same. I don't feel cynical about the media on that one, either. They are doing their job. And there is this reaction of, "This is really uncomfortable, and maybe it's unfair." What you said above sounds honest, emotional, and transparent - and conflicted. I'm glad it's getting attention, but I don't care to see it. Savannah Guthrie's very personal statement hit the same conflicted themes: I love this guy, but I respect the courage of the women who came forward and called him out for being a pig. How do you get your mind around that duality?

     

    Your post actually made me feel good, in the sense that this is how change works. There is no easy or simple or clean way to do change. People like Lauer and Conyers and Clinton and Trump got away with this for a very long time. And, yeah, there will be people who manipulate it and abuse it. But mostly it feels like the message is getting through and we are being forced to deal with some very dirty laundry that needs to be cleaned.

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