Escorts and the code of silence
The escort industry is a perplexing hybrid of secrecy and public knowledge. The need for discretion is critically rigged against the necessity for escorts to get the word out about their services to the discriminating market from where they draw their clients. But how do escorts and their clients manage this precarious balancing act?
Some handle it with caution and ease. Others have much more difficulty with maintaining an equal division of efforts. Various aspects of the industry led to the difficulties that many escorts have with the balancing act.
The use of the Internet both enables and complicates the escort industry. Where would the industry be today without the development of the Internet? While the industry would likely still be thriving, clients would have a much more difficult time acquiring time with escorts. However, with the Internet, escorts are able to market themselves in a very specific pool of prospective clients through their own websites and dating profiles on various agency and escort directory sites. They are able to tell would-be clients about themselves, along with their rates and services. Without the Internet, the escort industry as we know it today would be quite crippled.
However, escorts are not the only ones discussing the industry online. Hobbyists and other “gentlemen” often weigh in on the subject, too. Through forums and online review sites, clients are able to rate their recent experiences with escorts, sometimes describing their encounters down to the smallest detail. While other would-be clients may find these detailed reviews helpful, they come very close to crossing discretion lines that need to be protected.
The Internet also provides methods for clients and escorts to communicate. Through email, chat rooms and instant messages (along with VoIP experiences), escorts and clients talk about expectations, rates and booking details online. While Internet users often feel that their communications are discreet and private, that isn’t always the case. Email accounts, etc. are very easy to access, especially for professionals with reasons to investigate communications between “suspicious” characters.
Print publications also provide arenas for escorts to share with a desired demographic information about how they can be contacted for companionship. However, these ads and other information placed in certain publications are usually less than discreet about what a client can expect from an escort. This leaves the question as to how much of a priority do escorts place on discretion when it comes to marketing themselves? And, how much should they prioritize it?
Escorts rely on word-of-mouth referrals for many of their bookings. After a client has a good time with an escort, she encourages him to send his friends and colleagues to her, as well. An escort may promise a client that she’ll “take good care” of anyone he sends along to her. This is a great way for escorts to increase their client lists. However, at the same time, she is encouraging her client to blab about his encounter with her, which is counterproductive to the necessity for secrecy. How does one balance this?
This balance of secrecy and openness is an extremely complicated matter that all escorts must learn to deal with in order to be successful. In the industry, there is certainly a need for marketing, advertising, word-of-mouth referrals and online forums that review and share information. However, it is essential that those sharing information realize the ramifications if the information is shared too freely with the wrong people.
One of the most apparent concerns about too much talk going on is that it will get back to area law enforcement, causing an investigation. While escorting is not illegal, prostitution is. Sometimes the line is blurred between the two when two consenting adults spend time doing intimate things during the time scheduled for an encounter. Even though a client may only be paying for time offered by the escort, law enforcement officials are quick to judge and attempt to make more out of the business transaction than is really there. And, clients quickly find out during an investigation, that it’s not just the escort that may be punished in a court of law.
More difficulties arise for an escort when law enforcement authorities get hooked up with an online forum or review site that names escorts and provides details about clients’ encounters. Those details can seriously affect an escort, her livelihood and her freedom, if the police or sheriff’s department begins investigating her for prostitution. While online review sites and forums are intended to enhance the escort industry, it can seriously detriment it, too.
Family and friends represent another real argument for silence about escorts, what they do and who they see. Family members and friends of clients and escorts often need to be protected from the truth, for fear of severing relationships, hurting feelings and damaging reputations.
Whether an escort engages in any sexual activities with clients or not, the escort industry has a negative stigma attached to it, simply because of its secretive nature. When family members of clients find out they’ve been seeing escorts behind closed doors, it often leaves them with feelings of inadequacy, judgment and anger at their loved one. Automatically, family members and friends think the worst, and many declare their rage without attempting to understand why their loved one engaged in such a relationship.
Clients lose credibility with colleagues and peers if word gets out they regularly book encounters with escorts. While indiscretions with random women may be accepted in society with high profile, powerful executives, spending time and money on escorts is somehow seen as trashy or more deliberately deceitful. Too much information shared about their encounters can permanently and severely damage a client’s reputation.
Other times, escorts are ostracized from their families, shunned by their friends and judged by society to be a whore when word gets out publicly that they are involved in the escort industry. Protection from this harsh punishment is sought through secrecy and discretion.
Again, the balance between sharing enough information to make being an escort profitable and keeping certain details private and quiet is a tricky task. Maybe, at best, it’s a work in progress.
No matter how you look at it, it’s definitely an ongoing concern for both escorts and clients, alike. No escort/client relationship should be complete without at least one conversation that eludes to these issues. In fact, this should be a very significant issue to both the escort and the client and an issue that is consistently readdressed, if necessary.