Rolling Stone has a new article about how "sex workers" are supposedly so outraged about the election of Donald Trump that they are now actively working to oppose him. Is that for real? The magazine hasn't exactly had a very good track record on sex related stories after that discredited article about a certain rape on campus has proven.
However, even if the article by Mary Emily O'Hara is not true, I have to give her credit for fictitious comedy writing starting with a social worker named Erin who moonlights as an "escort." The extent of Erin's political opposition to Trump builds to a scene at the end of the article that sounds more like something out of a comedy movie than real life. Before we get to that, first let us read about how the sex workers are expressing their opposition to Trump:
If you’re like most liberal and progressive-leaning Americans, you may not be sleeping much. Daily updates about Trump’s still-forming cabinet are probably keeping you up at night, even as you scramble to attend protests, donate money to the ACLU and book your tickets to march on Washington.
The nation’s sex workers are no different. While some likely voted for Trump, many sex workers – in jobs from nude modeling to prostitution and everything in between – fall into categories that leave them especially at risk under the Trump administration. They are overwhelmingly women, many are queer and transgender, many undocumented immigrants. Nearly all work as independent contractors or even illegally, relying on low-cost health insurance through the Affordable Care Act or clinics that serve the uninsured on a sliding scale, like Planned Parenthood.
That's why, all over the country, a sort of Robin Hood movement is taking place throughout small communities of sex workers. Among a certain class of these women who are financially comfortable and boast disposable income, everyone seems to have had the same idea at once: setting aside a portion of the money they make from America's horny men and diverting it into progressive causes in an effort to bolster them against Trump's administration. Whether their clients are Republicans or Democrats, they all spend the same money.
Okay, it's a bit hard to envision "communities of sex workers" getting very worked up over Trump's election to the extent of diverting funds from "horny men" and funneling it into "progressive causes." But, hey, you're on a roll so don't stop now. So let us meet Ari, the social/sex worker:
Ari, a New York-based social worker who moonlights as an escort, says that Republican clients kept the city's sex workers busy during the week after the election.
"During election week I had sex with a lot of Republicans," Ari, who asked to use only her first name, tells Rolling Stone. "Everyone in the [online] sex worker forums was making jokes about it, because it was banging last week."
Most of the rest of the article is about how politically involved sex workers are working to oppose Trump but it is the final part that really arouses the suspicion of severe embellishment. See, our Ari is bed with a client but she refuses to complete her services unless the client perform a political task that she demands. I won't describe it so as not to ruin the absolute comedy ahead:
While the sex workers themselves have scrambled to divert funds since the election, some are also using their position to encourage political engagement among their clientele. Just a couple of hours before Ari spoke on the phone with Rolling Stone, she met one of her regular clients for a date.
"I was in bed with him, literally naked, straddling him and he started talking about the stupid safety pin movement," Ari says. "I told him that's not activism – that's white liberals trying to feel better about themselves."
Her client asked her what she thought was a more productive alternative to the safety pin. What happened next, as she tells it, was like something out of Lysistrata.
More like something out of Fantasia as you're about to find out from what reads as a most definite fantasy:
"I asked if he's called his state representative yet and he looked at me like I was an alien," says Ari. So she dismounted, pulled up a call script that she had seen passed around on Facebook and made her client pick up the phone – saying she "wouldn’t f--k him until he did it."
The client, she said, read the script into the phone right then and there: "Hi, my name is _______ and I’m a constituent of Representative _______. I’m calling because I’m concerned about Donald Trump naming Steve Bannon as his chief White House strategist."
"Hi, is this Representative Blank? My name is Joe Schmo and the sex worker I am in bed with refuses to continue providing her services unless I call you up and whine about Steve Bannon. I would tell you how ridiculous I feel but it is not in the script she provided me. What? You don't believe me? Hey! I can't blame you but at least this absurd scenario will be reported as fact by Rolling Stone."
