Posting this for my Client

[Dave]

She recently sent this in to me -

 

"Dave, I don’t know if you recall suggesting that I write an essay on my feelings about the Rentboy raid, but I haven’t forgotten. I wasn’t going to do it because the words don’t come easily these days, but it kept popping into my head. Finally today I sat down and wrote something. I don’t know what, if any, help this brief essay would be to the need for support, but it’s honest. Even if you can’t use it for anything, it was good for me to get my thoughts on paper."

 

So, Forum Readers - here's what she wrote:

 

 

I’m a writer and freelance editor. Today I have projects due, but they’re going to be a little late because I have something on my mind.

 

While I’ve followed posts about the raid on Rentboy since the beginning and have formulated an opinion like everyone else, my life situation makes me feel unqualified to discuss the many nuances—and potentially damaging ripple effect—of the Department of Homeland Security going after Rentboy. I’m a human being, though, and I have quietly observed the developments, read the articles and campaigns, and silently echoed the outrage as it grows among people I have come to recognize on forums like Daddy’s Reviews. And at last, I, too, have something to say.

 

Some people are saying the situation will settle down eventually and online escort advertising and hiring will return to normal. I hope this is true, but deep down I don’t know if I believe it, and much of my consternation focuses on what could happen if it doesn’t. My main thought is this: If the face of the hiring world were to change and the safe process of finding an appropriate, reliable companion became more convoluted, patrolled, and not-so-subtly repressed, what happens to the clients with the most to lose? The ones who are simply…lonely? What about those who are homebound, or somehow compromised so that only through hiring an escort will they have someone to talk and laugh with? What about the people whose privacy is tantamount and can’t easily meet others they relate to? Or those who have lost a partner or spouse and are trying to “get back out there,” and maybe need a date to a concert or just someone to take to dinner, and are so out of practice after years of being half of a whole?

 

I don’t have much experience with hiring, but my understanding is that it’s been a pretty painless process thanks in part to the escort review sites. Companionship has been just an email or PM away; reviews reassure a better chance at a successful occasion. And now, suddenly, the right to pursue human contact, conversation, company through safe and convenient means may not be so easy anymore. If the ripple effects of the Rentboy raid continue and escorts or masseurs no longer feel safe advertising online, and clients don’t feel safe reaching out to hire them, what does this mean for people who can’t get “out there,” who need a few hours of human contact and tenderness, of acknowledgement and mental stimulation?

 

I’m playing “What If,” of course. I’m fretting over human rights in advance and I know the sky hasn’t yet fallen, and maybe the turbulent waters will settle, and Homeland Security will—wisely!—find something more important to hone in on. In the meantime, I, a heterosexual, socially active and healthy female, will continue to be troubled; I’ll continue to regard the Rentboy situation as a sad sign of what’s so very wrong with our government, our society, our culture…and our hearts.

[+ glennnn]

Very well said, Dave's client. And again.... where is the victim? . .where is the crime?