Backpage.com’s Founders Speak for the First Time
I have a friend who used to advertise on backpage. She just did handjobs, not full-service... She was sort-of traumatized by the experience, but learned a lot at the same time.<p>One of my early taxi passengers was certainly a &quot;working girl&quot; [1]. I picked her up at a hotel early in the morning. I called the provided number, asked the hotel operator to give me the room number, and told the man who answered that I was at the lobby. When the passenger came out it was not a dude. She didn&#x27;t seem like she enjoyed herself very much.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taxiwars.org&#x2F;2012&#x2F;03&#x2F;day-12-working-girl.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taxiwars.org&#x2F;2012&#x2F;03&#x2F;day-12-working-girl.html</a><p>Over my 3.5 years in the cab, I had several female passengers who helped me understand more about female attraction. One got in the cab and was speaking German into her phone, so I asked &quot;Sprechen sie deutsch?&quot; My German is not that good, but she insisted in conducting the taxi ride in German. She clearly found me to be intriguing, wondered &quot;what are you doing <i>driving a cab?&quot;,</i> and gave me a kiss at the end of the ride. I never heard from her again.<p>Another woman going home from the bar would&#x27;ve been interested in a date and said, &quot;you have my number.&quot; Things were complicated at the time, so I never called her back.<p>I told another female passenger about my relationship drama. She concluded that ride saying, &quot;well I was about to ask you to make out...&quot;, and commented on how I had a sort of magnetism about me that she found most men lacked.<p>Men frequently have no idea what makes them annoying to women. Even though I&#x27;m not taxi driving anymore, I still practice my people skills. The female staff at my fitness club are interesting: some have decided that I&#x27;m &quot;safe&quot;, while others have their shields up and clearly aren&#x27;t interested in talking to me about anything that&#x27;s not work related.<p>A month ago I ended a comment here with this line: &quot;Relationship coaching for men is mostly about teaching them how to be less obnoxious.&quot; - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17554503" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17554503</a><p>IMHO, our dear leaders would be more productive if they looked at the causes behind the sex industries (prostitution&#x2F;porn&#x2F;backpage advertisements&#x2F;etc). I&#x27;d suggest they start with my post, &quot;The Difference Between Boys and Girls&quot; [2]. I tell this story to women <i>all the time</i> (when contextually-appropriate), and they all laugh.<p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taxiwars.org&#x2F;2016&#x2F;02&#x2F;the-difference-between-boys-girls.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taxiwars.org&#x2F;2016&#x2F;02&#x2F;the-difference-between-boys-...</a> (tl&#x2F;dr: female passenger didn&#x27;t understand her new guy-friend&#x27;s problem with her relationship history. I told her about how women choose who they want to have relationships with, whereas men have to play the numbers game until they find someone who&#x27;s interested in them, and how some men never get &#x27;picked&#x27;.)<p>Sex work is easy money, for women who are wired that way. Like the friend I mentioned at the top of this post, only a few women can do it as a calling; most just find themselves in that line of work because they need money.<p>Another passenger was a stripper that I saw a couple times (randomly assigned by the taxi company&#x27;s computer system; she never called me directly). The last time she told of being followed home from her strip club, that she&#x27;d been beaten up, and that she didn&#x27;t feel safe at her gated apartment complex anymore...<p>If our dear leaders acknowledged that this &quot;oldest profession&quot; exists for a reason, progress could be made in making &#x27;sex work&#x27; safer for women. (I don&#x27;t have any insights into the male stripper&#x2F;sex worker&#x27;s world, certainly they have predicaments too...)