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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31959 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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Aella recently made an online survey about escorting and posted a chart on Twitter. It shows monthly earnings binned by BMI and clearly depicts that escorts with lower BMI making more on average than escorts with higher BMI. I would not have thought anybody would be surprised by that. The comments under the post proved me wrong.

Christ almighty, I had no idea that there are so many statistically literate whores around just waiting to tell you your survey is bad. I also wasn't aware that escorts advertise their services so openly on social media.

The number of escorts, both slim and not so slim, calling her out with little to no argument is mind blowing. The arguments they do give basically amount to sample size too low, BMI isn't real or "your survey is bad, and you should feel bad". Some of them also appear to lack reading comprehension. They point out that a sample size of 30 doesn't tell you anything meaningful. The post, however, clearly states that the sample size is about 30 per bin (which Aella points out is kind of low), making it about 150 total. Some give the argument that they themselves have high BMI but earn way more than that, and therefore the survey result must be wrong. Averages are seemingly a foreign concept to some.

A lot of them don't give much of an argument at all but question her intentions. Why would anyone be posting such dangerous information targeting the doubly marginalized group that is fat escorts? Their point seems to be that such information serves no purpose for anyone and should be kept hidden, which is ridiculous, since any woman considering escorting must have an interest in how much she can expect to earn based on her body type.

Others claim Aella is trying her hardest to stir the pot for attention. That could have been a valid point, if what she posted had been the least bit controversial. If you went out and asked 100 random people, I can't imagine that more than a few would say they believe fat escorts on average make the same as normal weight escorts. I also can't imagine any of these offended women would have any sort of problem with a chart showing that taller men make more on average than shorter men.

A few are asking what Aella's credentials are or whether the survey has been reviewed by an ethics committee, as if you need any of that to do a random google forms survey on the internet. They appear to believe that ethics committees are to protect people who might find the result offensive and not the participants of the study.

I also can't help but find a bit of irony in prostitutes trying to discredit someone based on their credentials.

Anyways, the data from the survey is available on Aella's website. I had a quick look at the correlations. It seems to be mostly what you would expect, but one thing that I don't get is that condom use shows no correlation with contracting STDs, which makes me quite suspicious of the data. It isn't correlated with education level either, but somewhat correlated with doing the job out of desperation (0.19). I would assume it would be the other way around. What is even crazier is that condom use is slightly negatively correlated (-0.11) with having a romantic partner. That seems absolutely insane to me, but maybe they use protection when they are with their partners?

Condom use is an endogenous, equilibrium outcome. You’re more likely to use condoms if you think you or your partner have or are exposed to STDs. I don’t think those unconditional correlations are surprising at all, they’re just not informative in the slightest about causation. It’s just like how if you looked at Covid cases and Covid lockdowns between 2010 and 2022 you’d certainly find a positive correlation between Covid lockdowns and Covid cases. You can’t make a causal statement unless you do careful econometrics.

Two interesting things from this.

  1. Though the error bars are probably too big to really be certain about this result, 20 being the sweetspot and below this being worse points to underweight also being bad. There's a whole bunch of drama about the supposed attractiveness of "size zero" with the implication that beauty standards drive people to be unhealthily underweight, but this data very marginally contradicts that claim.

  2. BMI is about the most mutable characteristic that income could depend upon as a sex worker. Certainly far easier to change your BMI than your height, your age, your sex, or your ethnicity! If anything, these results bode well for the prospects of a wide range of people having the capability to become a high-earning escort: Just be the right weight. If I could double my income by reducing my BMI from around 24 to 20, I certainly would do whatever I could to make that happen.

There's a whole bunch of drama about the supposed attractiveness of "size zero" with the implication that beauty standards drive people to be unhealthily underweight, but this data very marginally contradicts that claim.

Going from my personal experience, there are lots of women who are a healthy size and are quite attractive, but are still convinced they need to get skinnier to be attractive. "Beauty standards" isn't just about male preference, lots of models are unhealthily skinny even though that's not what maximally appeals to men.

Aren't models typically skinnier than men find most attractive because it's easier to sew clothing for them?

Also, straight men are not the target audience for fashion models: women are, and AFAIK a high proportion of men in the industry are gay anyway. Women tend to identify beauty with adult neoteny: adult, but with a body that indicates youth. Slim is beautiful. And fashion models are extreme versions of that ideal.

If women's fashion was aimed at men (imagine a world where men made all the clothing purchases) then I would expect men's preferences to affect the choice of models. Then, I would expect fashion models to look more like porn stars or men's mag cover girls: large breasts and/or asses, and generally a body that indicates fertility rather than youth. Voluptuous is beautiful, with the proviso that neoteny is still desired e.g. slim waists and youthful faces.

That's one theory, and I believe it, but I think the evidence for it is still limited.

WHR is a better indicator of female attractiveness than BMI, but they are sufficiently correlated in women that these results are not surprising. There might be some low WHR/high BMI outliers, but even Christina Hendricks, the heaviest conventionally attractive person I could think of (a BMI of 25), has a WHR of 0.77 vs the "ideal" WHR of 0.67.

WHR is significant, but let's not pretend most of us are not thinking of Christina Hendricks's massive round boobs when making that calculus. Which would increase her BMI and not affect her WHR but increase her attractiveness significantly.

BMI is confounded by breast and butt size, so it's not the most reliable indicator of female attractiveness. WHR tackles half of that problem, but personally speaking, sometimes sheer absolute size can compensate for nonideal ratios.

The more I think about it, the more I am bewildered by this "study" and am in the Aella is trolling/baiting camp. Of course, men prefer not fat women; did we need a survey for this? Of course, you can find 100 proxies to show that. I am just irrationally annoyed by studies/experiments that try to rediscover the wheel, and then discussions where people who don't believe in the existence of wheels come out, and we all need to pretend to discover why wheels are good from first principles all over again. Such a waste of time.

I don't really agree. Lots of things that people assume or take for granted sometimes turn out to be not so true under rigorous examination. There is definitely a loud minority of people who insist that slender women are only valued because of societal values that everyone goes along with because they don't want to be low-status. And it's not like millions of science dollars are being taken away from malaria research to fund this. Aella did this in her free time as a project.

It's also worth noting that societal attitudes can change over time. Men prefer not fat women, but it's conceivable that this could change in the future, and it's worth examining the size of the effect.

and we all need to pretend to discover why wheels are good from first principles all over again.

Well, to me it's more like checking an existing assumption. In this case I think it's appropriate.

I would ask what did you expect? People who call themselves escorts or sex workers instead of prostitutes are going to be very prickly about any perceived slights. "How dare you judge me? How dare you seem to indicate to hint to suggest that whoring is somehow bad? How dare you say that fit/beautiful at any size isn't true? How dare you remind me of the market economics out there, which is that men like curvy women - not too thin and not too fat - and that whoring will only result in a big payout for a small slice of all the women who think that an OnlyFans or going on Craigslist or looking for sugar daddies is a way to make a living?"

It's the stress between trying to overcome their horrible repressive upbringing in the horrible repressive sex-negative society which tells them that being a whore is low-status versus all the political theorising and activism about 'sex work is real work'. And all the theory in the world won't change the realities around sexual attraction and what customers expect from a hired sex provider versus what they would expect in a relationship. It's true for incels - you can't regulate sexual attraction - and it's true for fat women and it's true for prostitutes.

Re: condom use, I have no idea around that except maybe they don't do full penetrative sex, or they can charge more if the customer doesn't want to use a condom. Using condoms with their regular partners makes sense, as they probably don't want to run the risk of infecting their boyfriend, whereas with johns that is just one of the hazards of the job.

Looks like it's less than ten percent of the total, which puts it within the realm of "add lizardman's constant and you get a real statistical outlier that could just be weird because it's a statistical outlier". The other possibility is she got some girls who were not escorts and were sugar babies/paid mistresses/whatever who didn't use condoms because it was an exclusive arrangement.

The ultimate soft spot for women is sexual rejection. It doesn't matter if she wants to sleep with him or not, the idea of him not wanting to sleep with her will generally send a women off the rails. I am not really talking about a guy not being in the mood once in a while in a relationship but rather a guy being in general uninterested in sex with her seems to provoke women to no end. This char effectively called many women undesirable and got the expected response,

This chart effectively called many women undesirable and got the expected response

Well, if it's mostly 'escorts' who are getting riled up about it, yeah that's expected because it is forcing them to re-evaluate their price in the market. They can dream all they want that they're "lush" or "curvaceous" but if they're fat, they are not going to get top dollar (unless it's the chubby chaser market).

The fact that they're getting mad at Aella, of all people, only makes it even funnier.

Female intrasexual competition is vicious to a degree that makes the Sunni-Shia feud look like a junior league soccer match.

It is just fought purely on an informational/signalling/status level, and not physical violence.

And it has intensified in the social media era where instead of vying to merely be the prettiest Belle at the ball one has to compare herself to every female in a 10 mile radius.

And Aella is nearly an apex predator in this environment.

This is absolutely correct. Men are probably biologically programmed but definitely socially conditioned to constantly being sexually ignored by women. So the emotional response women have towards rejection themselves can be a bit alien

I thought maybe BMI was confounded by age, but it turns out age isn't a good predictor of monthly income. Here's a linear fit with age and log(monthly income)


                 coef    std err          t      P>|t|      [0.025      0.975]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

age           -0.0025      0.010     -0.260      0.795      -0.022       0.017

bias           8.2223      0.292     28.195      0.000       7.648       8.797

(n=223)

And here it is with bmi and age


                 coef    std err          t      P>|t|      [0.025      0.975]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

age            0.0034      0.009      0.370      0.712      -0.015       0.022

bmi           -0.0636      0.013     -4.978      0.000      -0.089      -0.038

bias           9.5392      0.383     24.899      0.000       8.784      10.294

Then I thought maybe older women are working more hours, but the regression on log-hourly income (rather than monthly income) is similar:


                 coef    std err          t      P>|t|      [0.025      0.975]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

age            0.0024      0.006      0.416      0.678      -0.009       0.014

bmi           -0.0275      0.008     -3.414      0.001      -0.043      -0.012

bias           6.3876      0.241     26.454      0.000       5.912       6.863

Edit: here is the data in a form more friendly to a python programmer https://pastebin.com/aZqGTbG5

Technical question: why are you using log(monthly income)?

There are a lot of ways of deriving and thinking about linear regression, so I'm not sure I can give the One True Explanation. I'll give a couple though:

The practical answer is "whenever there are order-of-magnitude differences, it's a good idea to take the log".

The intuitive answer is that if we're assuming y is a linear function of x, so a fixed change in x should yield (roughly) a fixed change in y. This isn't really sensible if y covers several orders of magnitude but x does not.

Another answer is that it doesn't really make intuitive sense to use L2 loss when your labels vary by orders of magnitude. If I'm predicting the income of a poor person and a rich person, it should probably matter whether I'm $10/hour off on my predictions for the poor person or the rich person. Taking the log of our labels implicitly converts our loss function from (y - yhat)^2 to log(y/yhat)^2 which matches the intuition that a $10 mistake for somebody who makes $1000/hour matters less than it does for somebody who makes $10/hour.

Another answer is that if you're going to assume Y = a R + b S + c T then the most sensible distribution for these variables is Gaussian, since the sum of Gaussians is Gaussian. From this philosophy, it's sensible to do some preprocessing on our variables to make them Gaussian. Academia often makes the assumption that income is log-normal, so taking the log of income makes sense. And if we look at the histogram of our data, it indeed looks much more Gaussian after the log transform.

Thanks for the thorough explanation.

I've recently become interested in measuring things, so finding related domains that I'm ignorant about is pretty helpful to keep following the thread.

I was wondering if BMI was also interacting with social class.

These are escorts. Part of their whole schtick is being able to consistently ape a upper social class. Aside from some kind of outlier, we should assume that they're all able to do so, and that includes semi-permanent characteristics like conforming to beauty standards, or they would not be working as escorts.

: here is the data in a form more friendly to a python programme

Just pd.read_csv(<filename.csv>) it.

I personally think copying and pasting data into your python file (takes maybe 5 seconds?) is more convenient than downloading the file, copying the file path into your text editor, and then (the real pain point) learning how pandas handles "sheets" (I expect I'm not alone in not knowing how to do that).

As a data scientist, I'm cringing at the thought of anyone doing that (but that's more of my problem than yours), but no point in being elitist about a twitter survey. A good 95% of the time, I work with datasets so large that you would have to be a madman to even think about manually copy-pasting data in, on top of all the other reasons you don't manually copy paste in data. But I would do it the hard way just because.

Moreover, you don't really need to download the data. the read_csv() function can parse web hosted files, and if its more complicated, you can use the requests module, and if its still a pain, there are packages to read google sheet data. As for pandas parsing sheets, it's a keyword argument into the read_<filetype> function. In the case of google sheets, you can specify it in the API endpoint.

Pandas is a powerful library.

If you went out and asked 100 random people, I can't imagine that more than a few would say they believe fat escorts on average make the same as normal weight escorts.

Really? I can imagine it, very easily. For the same reason that the "It's okay to be white" posters cause such consternation when you ask people about them. Their intuitions of what the answer actually is versus what the socially acceptable answer is wedge them between a rock and a hard place, and thus many fail the test of autistic truthiness.

The social taboo against saying that fatties are unfuckable, causes many people to refuse to say that fatties are unfuckable.

I would say that it's actually possible to occur, not just that people might hold that misconception.

Imagine the following model:

  1. A random selection of women want to use sex to achieve their other goals, such as by becoming escorts.

  2. The best retire at 25 and become trophy wives.

  3. The worst quit and spend more time on their day job.

All of the remaining workers would have similar overall quality, but that means there's a tradeoff between attractiveness/interpersonal skills/business acumen/etc.: If they had it all, they'd leave the study population. If they had none, they'd also leave the study population.

Broad (and true) trends don't always show up how you'd expect.

These results do not surprise me . It would seem like thinness is positively corelated with almost all metrics of success . Maybe IQ plays some role, in that thinner people are smarter, which could account for success at a wide variety of things. I have noticed that it seems like there are few fat 'STEM people', particularly in physics and math, compared to other areas (the stereotypical fat feminist).

No, overweight men earn more than slim men

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8468324/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46379465_When_It_Comes_to_Pay_Do_the_Thin_Win_The_Effect_of_Weight_on_Pay_for_Men_and_Women

are few fat 'STEM people', particularly in physics and math, compared to other areas (the stereotypical fat feminist).

Feminists control minds. Physics and math men are near bottom of ladder and full of incels.

No, overweight men earn more than slim men

Looking just at your first study, it appears not to control for age which I would say is a fatal error. As people get older two things happen. First, they tend to move up the ladder of whatever career they have chosen, earning more money because they are more experienced. They also tend to transition to more sedentary jobs, especially if their field originally was more active in the lower rungs. Which leads directly into the second effect, they get fatter. I have a sneaking suspicion that the male half of this study accidentally found a correlation between age and income, not weight and income.

It would seem like thinness is positively corelated with almost all metrics of success . Maybe IQ plays some role, in that thinner people are smarter, which could account for success at a wide variety of things

If that is true then I bet that it is in general correlated with willpower and ability to control yourself, maybe with ability to plan long-term.

More likely the correlation here is something like, if you're serious about making money as an escort you're going to keep your body in peak condition. If you're doing it as a lark to make ends meet, that's one thing, but if you're trying to maximize earnings you're going to get on that treadmill. So BMI probably correlates with a smart fitness plan probably correlates with a whole pile of other similar profit maximizing strategies.

Yeah, that's a possible cofounder. A very small correlation between BMI and income could instead appear as a huge correlation if those that are actively seeking to maximize income correctly identify that they need to have a BMI of 20, and those that aren't maximizing income don't bother. However, "smart fitness plan" probably just means eating less. It's BMI that's being measured here, not muscle mass.

That's why I went with "fitness" rather than "workout," but yeah, BMI is really just weight, which for the vast majority of humans is really just fat.

I have to say I'm somewhat surprised that BMI correlates that well, I've dated some short women blessed in the "weight goes to tits/ass" department who would have lost out on BMI while still having abs, but I've also never paid any money to a prostitute so I'm not really in the sample anyway.

deleted

I... don't know what to say about this. In fact it goes against every stereotype I have about these groups.

It goes against every observation I have of these groups, too.

It's not that I've never seen a thin (non-Asian) STEMer, but I certainly see fewer thin STEMers than thin artistés.

And while "fat feminists" are a thing -- there are certainly overweight women who identify as feminists -- there are also plenty of thin feminists

This is just a truism though, isn't it. "There are both fat and thin feminists", sure, inevitable. The pertinent question is whether or not the distribution is skewed, and I would be very surprised if it wasn't.

It's not that I've never seen a thin (non-Asian) STEMer, but I certainly see fewer thin STEMers than thin artistés.

Isn't this the reverse of what you wrote above:

I have noticed that it seems like there are few fat 'STEM people', particularly in physics and math, compared to other areas (the stereotypical fat feminist).

Who is the fattest poet laureate?

I have coworkers that weigh twice what some Nobel laureates weigh. There's a great abundance of fat engineers.

Before I wrote my post I spent a good 5 minutes racking my mind trying to think of counterexamples... I can only recall one professor (an Indian guy...cannot recall his name) who has a Wikipedia page.

Are they survey and response items up anywhere for people to see still? I ask because a lot of the data in the raw data sheet seems, frankly, weird.

For example, column "O" in "Sheet1" is the question "You typically use a condom:" and the results in the column are almost all integers. It is not clear to me where these integers are coming from, or what units they are supposed to have. Are they the number of the result item the respondent selected? Ex "1" represents someone who picked the first item, whatever that frequency was? If this is the case I am not sure running a regression using these numbers as your values will yield any sensible result. Similarly several rows in this column have an identical non-integer value of "2.293838863". No idea where this value is coming from or what it means in the context of the question.

Or take column "BT" in "Sheet1", which is the question "About how many times in a year do you get tested for STIs?" I expect answers to this question to be nice integers (you can't exactly get tested a fractional number of times) but again a bunch of columns have an identical non-integer value of "6.37414966".

Perhaps relevant to the BMI/income buckets a bunch of rows in the "BU" column ("Estimated Monthly") also have identical values of "1428.597195". Aella mentions this is a computed column but I'm having trouble figuring out how. Most of the non-identical values seem like sensible number ("900", "2700", "9900") that I can see being computed from the given figures of hourly rate (column K, all multiples of 50, no repeating weirdness) and duration (column L, values from 0.5 to 8, all multiples of 0.5, no repeating weirdness). Where the heck did the repeating decimal come from?

You can see this pattern across a bunch of columns where integer values don't really make sense as a response (column N, "What services do you offer, primarily?") and there are some bizarre identically repeating values (all with substantial decimal significant digits). It's not even like it's the same rows that have weird values for every column either. There does not seem to me any relation between which columns have these rows across columns.

I'm also interested in the procedures for generating the correlations in "Sheet3". There are listed correlations for categorical variables (like the aforementioned column N) but what procedure was used to generate them? The procedure for calculating the correlation between different kinds of variables (ex, categorical vs continuous) are different. Were the results of column N treated as categorical (how do you do a categorical calculation with the weird decimal values?) or continuous?

Nice find! Feels like this should be more prominently displayed than just in a box that appears when you hover over column A1 (at least, that's the only way I see it).

Yeah, I totally missed that. I still don't get why the 1428.597195 value is in the estimated monthly column. There shouldn't be any missing data in that column, right?

Correct, assuming it's calculated the way you mention in the other comment. Row 13, for example, has all three of the columns used in the calculation populated but has the autofilled value. Rather, none of the three columns used in the calculation contain any auto-filled averages (based on a quick calculation of each columns average). Honestly, the fact that every field is a raw integer (so she didn't use Sheets built in functionality to compute these numbers) makes me wonder if there was some copy paste issue from elsewhere?

I'm inclined to try and contact her and ask her to upload the actual raw data from the google form. Calling this raw is a bit of a stretch.

I hadn't really looked at the data much, but you are absolutely right. Something is not right. I found what must be the survey responses here. I had assumed that the condom question was answered on a scale such as "never", "sometimes", "often", "always", but that appears to not be the case.

Aella mentions this is a computed column but I'm having trouble figuring out how.

As far as I can see it is computed by multiplying columns

  • "On average, how many appointments do you have a month?"

  • "In general, the most common length of time you tend to get booked for is ___ hours"

  • "Hourly (ADJ)"

This matches the values in "Estimated Monthly" that aren't "1428.597195". I have no idea how hourly rate has been adjusted, though.

First I thought the weird non-integer values were some sort of corruption, but the correlation in sheet3 for BMI and estimated monthly matches the column with the "1428.597195" values, but when I do it with the newly computed estimated monthly values I get no correlation (-0.077). Very strange.

Not a single one of the replies is by statistically literate people. "Sample size" is an applause light, nothing more.

But I've been thinking about this recently, why did fat women become a protected class among the woke? After being recommended, this video about how some Norwegian students found a math question about calories in vs. calories out "offensive".

After all, most woke protected classes share either one of two traits. Historically did not have rights in the US or are hated by the ring wing in the US. Fat women don't satisfy either category. And yes, the "body positivity" egregore speaks for fat women only.

My theory is that it's a memetic mutation. It has all the markers of a true woke cause and can Cuckoo as a woke cause as a result. The fact is self-serving for its adherents might just be a coincidence. Or it could just be the woke female analogue of inceldom. Also probably incentous with the quirky mental illness memeplex. Just fucking madness. I'm not even gonna bother trying to make sense of all this.

After all, most woke protected classes share either one of two traits. Historically did not have rights in the US or are hated by the ring wing in the US

I would argue that fat falls into the latter category of "the right wing hates fat people" especially with the rise of dramatically named concepts like "fascist fitness" (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/mar/06/fascist-fitness-how-the-far-right-is-recruiting-with-online-gym-groups) and "gym bro" culture being associated with the right wing. Even Trump, who isn't exactly skinny himself, could not stop making fun of people's weight.

Fatness also falls into "traditional" conservative thinking re: personal responsibility. You don't like being fat? Great, just diet and exercise. No, don't implement a sugar tax, because it is YOUR problem, not mine. Bill Maher requested that we "start fat shaming people again" back before COVID.

There have been Catholic arguments that fatness is akin to immorality. I know, conservatives are a far greater sphere than just Catholics, but religious guilt can go far, down with the patriarchy, etc.

There are also internet subcultures about "men's self-improvement" that also have encouraged this kind of thinking, as well as the whole "hot trad wife" mindset. While conservative states are the most obese in the US, the cultural pushback against "body positivity" for objectively unhealthy bodies is also primarily conservative.

See also, commentary on Lizzo, especially after the James Madison flute incident. Reddit banned fat people hate in 2015 and that also leaned fairly to the right.

After all, most woke protected classes share either one of two traits. Historically did not have rights in the US or are hated by the ring wing in the US. Fat women don't satisfy either category. And yes, the "body positivity" egregore speaks for fat women only.

The immediate answer that springs to mind is black women:

African American women have the highest rates of obesity or being overweight compared to other groups in the United States. About 4 out of 5 African American women are overweight or obese.

This has become a political issue (see maternal mortality rates as well as general health issues) and feminist theory around hypersexualisation of black women as well as concerns around beauty standards, which include body size:

When compared with White women, findings show that African American women reported lower levels of body image dissatisfaction, maintain a more favorable view of larger body sizes, have less concerns about dieting, weight fluctuations, and fear of fatness, and are less likely to internalize sociocultural standards of beauty. Furthermore, Falconer and Neville (2000) found that African American women with bigger body sizes were more likely to be satisfied with specific body areas. Fewer studies report negative body satisfaction among African American women.

Ergo, judging black women by white beauty standards is racist. Saying any particular black woman, or black women in general, is too fat is racist (see Lizzo).

So if you're fat, white and feminist, this can be included in your schema of why you should not be judged negatively or viewed as unattractive/unhealthy.

Woke is basically a project to change social attitudes to make people idealize traits previously seen as negative. Some of those traits are actually Unironically negative(being neuroatypical is not a good thing, and I would happily trade several inches in height to not be so), many are neutral(having dark skin might require you to take a vitamin D pill if you live in Detroit, and might expose you to discrimination, but it’s not a bad thing in itself). Fat fits in with that project even if it’s stupid, and, well, woke women as often noted tend to have personal reasons to think that one’s important.

While you certainly have a point about the woke being anti-Natalist, they really seem to hate incels.

This is because incels are involuntarily celibate. They think that their lack of reproductive success is a problem that should be fixed, ideally by social intervention to curtail what they see as the modern excessive status of women. If they instead celebrated their sexual exclusion, praising how great it is that modern women have the freedom to reject them and continually reinforcing their claim that nobody owes them anything sexually (as many equally involuntarily celibate, though not incel-identifying, "nice guy" male feminists do), then they'd be accepted (as those "nice guy" male feminists mostly are so long as they maintain the submissive irrelevance befitting their chosen ideological position).

While I happen to personally doubt that sensitive male feminists are having a lot of sex, they seem to me to be claiming they're having it.

Just fucking madness. I'm not even gonna bother trying to make sense of all this.

I can sympathise with that feeling of trying to understand madness all too easily!

But I've been thinking about this recently, why did fat women become a protected class among the woke? After being recommended, this video about how some Norwegian students found a math question about calories in vs. calories out "offensive".

Fat white women are not protected. Because obesity is highest in African American women and WOC overall, there is considerable overlap just by race alone.

My guess is it's an attempt to accommodate body types they associate with the Global south. Primarily Africa, and furthermore West Africa.

Leaving aside your cheap "boo wokes" applause lights, it's not hard to decipher: fat has been a feminist issue since at least the 70s. Short version: a lot of women are fat, losing weight is hard, fat women get shit on a lot, physical attraction is part of the whole patriarchy/"male gaze" memeplex, therefore it's appealing to women for a number of obvious reasons to try to persuade the public that being fat is not unhealthy, unattractive, or their fault. Since it's a lefty/feminist issue, it's a woke issue.

This book is outdated and does not coincide with today's body liberation movement, finding health at every size, and fat activism. This book is incredibly fat phobic and the psychoanalytic approach to being fat is BS. It suggests that women who are fat subconsciously want to be fat, it includes no other contextual factors. I thought this book would be about how fat women are treated by our patriarchal society. It does mention this concept, but the bulk of the book is a self-help guide to overcome compulsively eating to ultimately lose weight.

It appears to be very out of date and problematic compared to modern truths of "queer fat multiplicities that can disrupt dominant systems of subjugation and hierarchies"

There was already a "Fat Studies Reader (An Invitation To Revolution!) in 2009, and by 2019 we had "Queering Fat Activism: A Study in Whiteness" "argu(ing) for a thickened politics of white recognition within Fat Studies, so that scholars can better situate queer codes as aligned with the rejection of white civility"

It's certainly an expanding movement whose goals seem to have changed massively over time.

It's been a long time since I read Fat Is A Feminist Issue, but my recollection is that its basic thesis was:

  1. Fatness is a problem caused by compulsive eating.

  2. Compulsive eating in women develops as a way of coping with psychological conflicts, partly but not entirely attributable to unfulfilable and contradictory social expectations, and as an attempt to fulfil unmet needs for security and self-efficacy.

  3. The pathway out of compulsive eating involves becoming aware of the unconscious processes that drive it, recognising their futility, and supplanting them by being more assertive about one's rights and boundaries. There is an emphasis on group therapy that, while focused on compulsive eating, doubles as political consciousness-raising.

It's definitely not in total agreement with contemporary mainstream feminist attitudes about fatness, as can be seen by reading some of its Goodreads reviews.

But I've been thinking about this recently, why did fat women become a protected class among the woke?

They’re probably a majority constituency from my observations

Some belief is built on systems of oppression thought. In thinking about things primarily systemically, individual agency is ignored as a causal factor. Once you start accepting that, fat isn’t really someone’s fault.

It slides neatly into the memeplex of "men bad," since a (false) story can be told that it's primarily men who police women's bodies and create fatphobia.

For comparison, you'd expect incels' "heightism" to merit at least as much concern as fatphobia, but there's, unsurprisingly, little embrace of it as a cause among the woke.

I agree. The lack of concern for heightism should be enough to convince anyone that wokism is a hammer of the strong not a shield of the weak. Short men face extreme discrimination and there is nary a peep from the woke about the issue.

In modern society, short men are like the Cagots of the Middle Ages, who were hated and considered unclean for no other reason than an accident of their birth. Worse, the hatred of short men today is actively cheered by most women.

There's a recent commercial where a woman is watching a football game during a wedding. When the minister says "are there any objections", she says (watching the game) "he's so clearly short". This is played for laughs. Imagine she had said "he's so clearly black" instead.

Like how being a woman, or not being fat both also mean you live longer?

Women also live longer than men, but that doesn't seem to heavily impact feminist theory.

In modern society, short men are like the Cagots of the Middle Ages, who were hated and considered unclean for no other reason than an accident of their birth.

Surely this is an extremely hyperbolic comparison. Per Wikipedia, Cagots were legally "typically required to live in separate quarters", "not allowed to enter taverns or use public fountains", "buried in cemeteries separate from non-Cagots, with reports of riots occurring if bishops tried to have the bodies moved to non-Cagot cemeteries", "allowed to enter a church only by a special door", "compelled to wear a distinctive dress to which, in some places, was attached the foot of a goose", "prohibited from selling food or wine, touching food in the market, working with livestock, or entering mills", and so on, and so on, and so on.

On the other hand, short men in the modern day... have difficulties getting dates and are made fun of in pop culture?

have difficulties getting dates and are made fun of in pop culture?

I think if you add the parent comment to yours and divide by two you'd get the truth. So a little hyperbole for humor is par for the course here.

As a tall dude, the way short men are treated is beyond "difficulty getting dates". I know men whose SMV would quadruple with another 6" in height. Everything requiring effort and personal quality comes second to a chick standing on her tippy toes to kiss.

I understand it's correlated with dick size but the female height fetish has never been not fucked up.

Even if short men could literally not get a partner ever, this would not take them half the way to the situation of Cagots according to most people's value function (though I have certainly seen a tendency in incel communities to obsess about female acknowledgement/attention to the point that it displaces anything else, and they can truthfully say that they consider deficiency in it worse than the previously listed set of abuses; this seems to me to be pathological).

Moreover, I do not think it is in fact true, unless one is so short as to be disfigured; among all my acquaintances I can not point to a single single guy whose singleness appears to primarily be due to them being short, though there may be nontrivial indirect causality (along the lines of shortness contributing to lower SMV, which contributes to negative experiences, which contribute to personality flaws). I know of two long-term couples where despite the odds the guy is significantly shorter than the girl (and in neither of the two cases does he have any overwhelming compensatory advantages like being rich or famous). Being so short that there are no girls shorter than you at all, for a guy, at any rate would be very rare.

You could argue that the "short->unattractive personality->no dates" pipeline is just "short->no dates" with a technical extra step, but it's not like there aren't plenty of other initial causes that end in "unattractive personality->no dates" for men all the time. Among the people I knew, "got into the wrong kind of anime early on" depressed performance more than "is short"; and while you could argue that getting in the wrong kind of anime is fixable in a way being short isn't, in this case we are talking about either effect being mediated through personality (you can't unwatch Love Live! any more than you can gain height), which in either case is likely fixable, even if you need to get electroconvulsive therapy or something in the toughest cases.

I can tell that subconsciously I'm much more dismissive of men 5" shorter than me, than men around my own height.

Note, this does not apply to short men who are visibly jacked. Take the dwarf pill. Clangeddin be with you.

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You're going with "short people just have bad personalities"? On point for this group, I suppose.

Another interesting variation on "if you can't get dates, you have a bad personality".

It's proxies all the way down.

"Short people who can't get a partner just have bad personalities" (or, I guess, something else wrong with them, but this wasn't obviously the case for any I knew).

If Love Live! is the wrong type of anime, what’s the right type?

(Incidentally I think there are quite a few female LL fans, to the point of reaching parity or even exceeding male fans in some demographics.)

Among the Zoomers that I TAed in grad school, being on point with the JoJo memes seemed to have a decidedly positive effect on getting laid, and I think mainstream stuff like AoT is also at the very least neutral. I even grew up inhaling sekaikei manic pixie magical girlfriend chuuni wanks and the only identifiable adverse effect it's had on my dating life was that it made me worse at processing breakups. Eliezer is a self-proclaimed F/SN fan and he's managed to found a whole BDSM sex cult.

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The worst thing possible for short men would be being accepted into the pantheon of oppression. That's not to say they don't face unfair discrimination; they do (source: I'm a 5'3" guy). But getting caught in the black hole of victim ideology is far worse than having to work a bit harder than the average person.

Others claim Aella is trying her hardest to stir the pot for attention.

The fact that this result is obvious doesn't mean there was no attention angle. A lot of very obvious statements could get heaps of attention; if someone made a twitter bot that just posted inconvenient facts about race/sex/religion/whatever, would you assume it was primarily there to dispassionately convey information to the masses, or to get attention?

That being said, I've met Aella in real life and I doubt her attention is primarily to piss off wokes on twitter. I mean, that might be a bonus, but I think she'd legitimately prefer if the responses were actual discussion of what the result means, meaningful statistical or methodological discussion, etc.

condom use shows no correlation with contracting STDs, which makes me quite suspicious of the data

I don't see a data column for catching STIs (just testing for them). In case I just missed something, then this sounds like a possible result of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson's_paradox, where anyone who doesn't use a condom is compensating for the risk by tightly screening clients for STI status/limiting the acts they perform to limit chance of transmission. Could also be a limitation of self-report. Alternatively, aren't condoms only moderately effective at preventing infection? Could it be confounded by number of clients?

I would assume escorts who don't use condoms are more likely to be desperate, drug-addicted, homeless, etc, and less likely to fill out surveys.

Maybe escorts accepting not using a condom simply charge a lot more as well? Sounds like something that would deserve a good premium. Who the hell really enjoys condoms?

I'm not surprised by the trend but I am a little surprised by the magnitude. A BMI of 26 isn't really that high. A woman with larger breasts and hips can be at that level without even really looking overweight and yet those escorts are making a quarter of what the skinny girls make. I think one factor is that the BMIs are calculated from self reported weight/height and these are likely to be underestimating weight and overestimating height which means most of those 26+ respondents are actually 30+

A BMI of 26 isn't really that high. A woman with larger breasts and hips can be at that level without even really looking overweight and yet those escorts are making a quarter of what the skinny girls make.

It's also possible those women are making decent money, and the ones that have a BMI > 26 without having large breasts/hips are making ~1/16th (or whatever the numbers need to be to make the math work).

It looks to me that 26+ bar has smallest confidence interval, so i doubt your explanation.

Christ almighty, I had no idea that there are so many statistically literate whores around just waiting to tell you your survey is bad.

To drive the point home, these women affect being really anal about methodology – despite being, like you note, often unable to parse the trivial study design. I wouldn't scoff at that merely because of their occupation, escorts aren't street workers and may well be above average in intelligence (though Aella is of course still an outlier) – it's more of a conflict of interest, Upton Sinclair moment, and as is common, it's misguided territorial instinct – they won't get more clients nor higher incomes by making the conclusion of the study or Aella personally lower-status on Twitter.

Crucially, they have strong guild/cabal ethics with their talk about «community» and how she's «new», and a weird idea of the purpose of ethical research guidelines. Or... maybe their idea is the correct one in the current climate?

I've collected their responses (not up to date) because it was just such a perfect example of motivated reasoning and middlebrow dismissal, it reminded me of mainstream skepticism directed at politically incorrect findings we discuss here more frequently, namely HBD. See also: artists and AI, audiophiles and double blind testing, {your own example}.

I don't include links because my goal isn't to bash their looks (by the way, it's not like she got dogpiled by conventionally overweight hookers).

dunno if you have the research qualifications for something with such heavy implications; SW solidarity is something I'd be researching too, but that's just my opinion and I could be wrong.

guessing you are pretty new; also it's <19 not >19 if you wanna get fatphobia correct

You should re-do this with a bigger sample size and more accurate earnings. I would separate full-time and part-time maybe. Fssw and kink etc.

You’re not very connected to the community bc you disregard valid criticisms and emotional reactions (yes emotions matter, ppl aren’t robots) from a wide array of its members

You think you’re right bc you make a lot of money but most of us know better than to equate those things

I don’t think she should be doing it at all unless she herself has a genuine and broad community connection which she doesn’t.

The world doesn’t need another privileged white swer sharing their uninformed opinion on the industry for attention.

Soooo many things wrong with this. A sample size of 30?!?! Mo. income is estimated (by the researcher, not the respondent)? Only using online escorts when many SWs work exclusively in person creates additional bias. Additionally,BMI is outdated & <19 is unhealthy for most people

I have always been a big girl, and if I was making that small amount of money, I would not be a veteran, and still be working in this industry. I am also a older provider well over 40. I actually make more money when I am bigger then when I am smaller. You data is skewed.

If we are speaking of averages, then it would be a very excellent idea to enlarge your focus group. What joke.

This is flawed. Income in this industry is highly dependent on the providers location and touring (if they are available to). Then how much they are willing to place into their marketing (pics, websites, etc).

Calling this “data science” with a sample size of 30. Lol.

She said herself the sample size was “still kinda low”. Her own words. Also implies she is still collecting data and released her unfinished “study” anyway, Mr blank profile.

Also does not check out in my experience. I know big gals making way more than I do. She has even admitted to not being able to get good data because she’s not connected in the industry.

Wildly inaccurate.

Anyone who knows anything about statistics will know how laughable this is. Stop this embarrassment of our community.

"If your sample isn't representative of your population, then you can't make valid statistical inferences or generalize. " where is your sample size? Where is your scientific methods and statistical evidence. You're not proving anything you're making wild inferences in a...

She put out this graph without any context or background, it's just not appropriate method. This is what causes an uproar and when it is found to be false results are swept under the rug because its not as interesting. Graphs are misinterpreted all the time why are you so upset

I’m not giving my data to a woman who thinks she knows better than those of us who have been at it for years. She thinks lawyers and doctor who pay 1k an hour won’t hurt workers and her “advice” is gonna put people in unsafe situations. Also tracking BMI is not a useful metric.

You just love being loud and wrong, huh? I’m honestly impressed at the way you manage to make every tweet worse than the last

I'm fat and make 6 figures.

You couldn't be more wrong.

Stop the lies and perpetuating stigma.

You're a stain on this industry.

“BMI (body mass index), which is based on the height and weight of a person, is an inaccurate measure of body fat content and does not take into account muscle mass, bone density, overall body composition, and racial and sex differences, say researchers from the Perelman School”

As a researcher myself, this is straight up terrible research design and thus garbage findings. Maybe sit down and think about research design and ethics before you go around 'doing research' ie confirming your own biases.

I’m no statistician, but the holes in this methodology are truly incredible. Not to mention the use of BMI, which is a hugely stigmatising metric that fat people have asked people to stop using FOREVER. There are better uses of your time than whatever this is.

I had to read the comments because i couldnt believe someone would do something like this about body mass index. Theres so much fatphobia, classism and whorephobia in one graph. Also as a data scientist why are you using n=30 and no standard dev or error matrix? Bro

This is ridiculous. Look at my photos. They’re accurate. My BMI is 28.6, I make 30k on my worst month.

Y i k e s

Stop it.

Girl... just stop

It’s men in the comments thinking it’s accurate smh

Lol where did you pull this fluff from. Highly inaccurate

This is really stupid lol

this is disgusting, useless and inane. but good that you manage to stay busy i guess.

Why are you doing something this offensive to a community that u just became a part of??

Your provingmy point -your new to this. Only fans hasn’t been around long & is already known to be problematic by far. Content is only a aspect of SW & more removed newer aspect. Please be respectful-your behavior almost reads like your intentionally trying to rile your community

Flipping through your TL your online poles, interviews, etc are incredibly problematic. Maybe pay close attention to the backlash your getting from everyone

She’s not an escort -she’s an O F girl -she’s just promoting not accurate tires tropes that the general public like to push & she’s arguing, blocking & getting a offended that actual real escorts are telling her she’s wrong. It’s obvious

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I’m no statistician, but the holes in this methodology are truly incredible. Not to mention the use of BMI, which is a hugely stigmatising metric that fat people have asked people to stop using FOREVER.

This was my favorite comment. It implies that either

  1. BMI does not correctly measure obesity, in which case it wouldn't be stigmatizing toward fat people because it isn't correctly identifying them

  2. BMI stigmatizes fat people, which means it correctly identifies them, but having a high BMI somehow brings some additional stigma that merely being fat doesn't

What I don't understand is why they're so enraged by it.

If we live in a society that's fatphobic and unfairly discriminates against fat people, should we be surprised if fatter sex workers get paid less? Or is it that the Johns are unique in their tolerance and fat acceptance, standing above the rest of us in their empathy towards women? Or maybe fatphobia is a rare and marginal viewpoint, except for the occasional bad person like Aella?

Right -- and I'd expect Johns to be more extreme, since they are essentially paying for appearance only (vs a relationship, where you're going to have a whole bunch of other factors influencing your choices).

I think part of the rage is that the woke belief system can't hold up to any scrutiny, so it needs to be extremely aggressive to any questioning of it. That's why in addition to calling people racist and sexist for very small thing, you also get meta-attacks on trying to get to truth, e.g. being devil's advocate, "just asking questions", sea-lioning, or providing nuance/accuracy ("Well Akshuallly,").

What I find weird though is that the survey isn't contradictory of the belief system: the obvious response to it should be "Aella has uncovered evidence that society is still biased against fat women and we've got a lot of work left to do." If someone does a mediocre study showing that white people or men make more money than black people or women, you don't see a woke dogpile of people jumping on it saying that it's wrong because nonwhite women can make just as much money as white men.

Something about Aella's identity or presentation triggers an extreme immune response. Perhaps it's because her (very successful) schtick is "I'm a hot but borderline autistic nerdy sex worker who likes nerdy guys and nerdy things," and that's a relatively difficult market to get into with a disliked clientele and so they want to bring her down a peg. Or perhaps the kvetching about sample size is a (badly executed) attempt to peel off some of her customers.

I guess the pile on isn't even bad for her, as it improves her brand among her target market: she commits social faux pas and loss of reputation among her community because of her intellectual meanderings and thought experiments, which is very on-brand. But I don't get how this is even a social faux pas in the first place.

It’s mostly jealousy I think based on the source. Aella is thin and has made a ton of money, they view this as her relationally bullying her fat female peers. What I’ve observed online, women really, really hate other women that put women down in regards to their weight/appearance. It’s probably the worst thing you could do, it appears, especially if you yourself are higher status (pretty/thin). Most women sense this intuitively and behave accordingly, but Aella is… a special case. I think she lacks this sorts of social awareness.

What I’ve observed online, women really, really hate other women that put women down in regards to their weight/appearance.

Surely this is contingent on the environment. I think plenty of women diss other women for being fat and ugly (usually behind their back, but sometimes not). Just depends on what gains social cachet in their immediate circle.

I wouldn't scoff at that merely because of their occupation, escorts aren't street workers and may well be above average in intelligence

Yeah, it was sort of an attempt at humor. Looking at the data, it appears that more than half have a bachelor degree or higher. I don't know how much that that can be trusted, though, since it appears that of those who hold a PhD, half has obtained it before the age of 21. Quite impressive. Furthermore, 9 has obtained a graduate degree before age 23. I hope she has at least removed the most obvious lizardman answers.

these women affect being really anal about methodology

I'm grinning and wincing simultaneously. I suppose it's one of those shots you just have to take.

And how is Aella a newby? I thought she was an expert, writing guides for others on how to camwhore? Are camwhores looked down upon by sex workers, 'all show and no go'? Has she not slept with hundreds of men? At least there are no formal qualifications for sex work, that could only make the whole area even more toxic. I'm sure that innovation is coming, though.

They imply she is new to the “community”. That probably implies some forums and WhatsApp groups or leftist advocacy groups or whatever

If anything, the "newbie" accusation is probably grounds to dismiss the rest of their criticism; Aella's been in sex work since before Tumblr banned porn.

I was about to say "bitch that was like last year," but it really has been a long time, especially measured in hooker years.

I guess I should have added "(pre-Covid)" to that.

If she had come out with results showing the opposite, would there have been nearly as much criticism? I would be willing to wager likely not. A single counterexample can refute a math or physics conjecture, but this does not work in the social sciences ,but people act like it does in giving anecdotal counterexamples.

IIRC isn't it well established that men have a strong revealed preference for the upper end of a healthy weight(which, in childbearing age females, probably means curvy), and that the whole heroin chic extremely skinny twig thing is mostly women doing a bad job of modeling what's attractive to men?

her survey was about income. It's plausible that thin women are able to get higher paying clients , who have different preferences compared to the masses

Or that men have different preferences for women they pay thousands of dollars versus women they marry. A one time indulgence versus a permanent commitment is a very different event, which might prompt a very different aesthetic choice.

While I personally have the preference of "upper end of healthy weight" I haven't seen anything that paints that desire as well-established.

The older I get the more I realize partnering with a skinny woman young is the way to go, as we all get fatter and older it rounds out.

I also can't imagine any of these offended women would have any sort of problem with a chart showing that taller men make more on average than shorter men.

Ask yourself “why would anyone go to wizardchan with a survey showing women prefer tall men” if not to stir the pot. She’s a troll and has been for years. All you’re doing is helping her further her grift by spreading drama over her obviously true survey that just had to be done. Had to be.

I really doubt this. What sort of troll keeps up on one topic for years (outside of like Cathy Brennan or whoever that was)? I don't see Aella as some sort of dramanaut. Maybe too autistic to live in a less-forgiving world, but I doubt you can really say there's malice behind what she does.

I see what you are saying. She doesn't seem like a troll to me, but I'm not very familiar with her, so I might be wrong. In any case the survey is shedding light on an understudied area, and while it might be obviously true that lower BMI makes escorts more money, it isn't obvious how much more.

Showing that being tallness offers benefits doesn't help short people improve their standing as increasing height is impossible. But offering evidence that skinny prostitutes are more succesful, describes a way to overweight sex workers how to get richer.

Any benefits that might come from posting are always secondary to the lulz, trolling, and shit-stirring.

one thing that I don't get is that condom use shows no correlation with contracting STDs, which makes me quite suspicious of the data.

It could be like helmets and bicycling. We have a risk budget and can exchange risk for good things; and when given an opportunity to decrease risk "for free," we take the opportunity to do riskier good things and maintain the same level of risk.

Are you saying that when riding your bike in a low risk environment, perhaps a car free bike path, you don't put your helmet on, but you make sure to wear it when biking on a road with cars? Or is it that you always put a helmet on, but it makes you engage in riskier behavior and increases the risk of injury? Or am I misunderstanding completely?

Or is it that you always put a helmet on, but it makes you engage in riskier behavior and increases the risk of injury?

This is what I meant, though they're similar. Both "when you do riskier things, you take more safety precautions" and "when you take more safety precautions, you do riskier things" would result in the observed effect. Probably there'd be some way to disambiguate them.

when you do riskier things, you take more safety precaution

The old Tullock spike argument for car safety

Others claim Aella is trying her hardest to stir the pot for attention. That could have been a valid point, if what she posted had been the least bit controversial.

Aella is clearly doing it for attention - why that claim is not true? (not that it is relevant at all, and pointing it out by someone with Twitter account is ridiculous)

I mean it’s also sort of her marketing for aspergy tech workers. Post some studies to sound smart to attract higher income clients. That seems like her niche market.

Also isn’t Aella higher bmi. Atleast by my standards she looked plus size.

Atleast by my standards she looked plus size.

What the hell are your standards, stick insects? That is not "plus size" by any sane measure. That's average body build, maybe towards the curvy end but nowhere near fat. This is plus size, UK size 16 and above (even start at 18 maybe), I don't know what sizing that is in US terms. See the Lane Bryant model on their website, that's plus size.

If you are thinking some "thigh gap" nonsense, that's achievable by trickery with stance and how you photograph it, or being anorexic.

Ya i mean I was joking a little. Back when we didn’t have enough food and no one was fat she would be curvy. If everyone maintained appropriate weight she would be curvy or bigger for appropriate weight people.

I guess you could argue that most things posted to social media is for attention. Since she is probably making a living off of the attention she gets, you are probably right. She might have posted the chart expecting the response.

My guess on the condoms is that girls doing it out of desperation rather than as a trendy lifestyle thing are the ones getting fucked by Poxy Steve for $40, and take appropriate precautions. The lifestylers doing it for fun (paid threesomes, say, to shove in the partner thing) can be more selective.

It's been a long time since I took stats, is there a word for that? Using an ejection seat is positively correlated with dying in a plane crash because only men flying riskier aircraft in dangerous situations use ejection seats, etc. If everyone's risks are perfectly calibrated, you'll get no correlation at all between precautions taken and outcome, only correlation between overall risk factors and precautions taken.

If the link to the raw survey data is correct, here's the replies on condom use:

I typically don’t - 8.3%

For genital or anal penetration - 61.2%

Above options + oral, when giving - 16.5%

Above options + oral, when giving and receiving - 7.9%

I don’t perform any of the above activities - 4.1%

PIV + oral when giving always, + oral when receiving as I feel like it – 0.4%

Depends on the price. $300 is condom, if they pay more then no condom. No protection for oral ever – 0.4%

All services are covered – 0.4%

Some of the replies are one person only, so I do see the objections about inadequate sample size. 8% is more than I would expect to never use condoms but maybe they have regular clients and are aware of STI status. I agree with sliders1234 below - I doubt she's getting replies from streetwalkers (that seemed to be part of the salt in the comments about sex workers who exclusively see clients in person not book online) so the lower end of the market isn't being represented here. If we're talking about prostitutes who charge hundreds of dollars per hour, that's for the higher end of the market and that makes sense as regards (1) slimmer prostitutes make more money and (2) STI risk is covered either by both client and prostitute are regularly tested and only work when disease-free.

The lower paid ones who work in-person can be fatter but also need to be more careful around condom use since they're seeing random guys with no idea who is going to give them the clap.

I don’t know her methodology but I highly doubt she even has access to $40 streetwalker types in the study. I would guess these are online whores who atleast can make a website.

I imagine even the stereotypical streetwalker has some form of online prescense, although that could just be through their pimps.

Ya there are still Craigslist type cites around but I still highly doubt those are the ones in her survey.

Also possible that girls who don't require condoms are such extreme outliers it doesn't have much correlation with anything.

After taking a closer look, this seems to be the case. More than 90% use a condom.

Interesting stuff. There's so little research done on anything related to sex since it's taboo. It's nice to see someone taking a stab at it, even though there are obvious methodological issues such that this survey wouldn't stand up to the standards of a normal academic journal. Still, a very rough estimate adds more to the conversation than no estimate.

The headline results are what anyone should expect. The amount women can charge is based on their attractiveness, so something that negatively correlates with beauty decreases income. Duh.

She had another survey that looked at success of escorts by age and found younger more successful, which was apparently not particularly controversial.

But ageism isn't something that ever really caught on with current progressives. I still recall a prominent Babe.net (of Aziz Ansari bad date fame) defender trashing some critic by calling her old, without much pushback.

Your surprise at the reaction to this is why "radical centrism" is actually a thing now. Previously bland, no-shit-sherlock observational territory is becoming verboten.

But ageism isn't something that ever really caught on with current progressives.

Oh, I don't know. I definitely see a lot more complaints about ageism in dating over time and a lot more complaining about age gaps.

Naturally, all the complaints are about men preferring younger women, allegedly cause they're easier to abuse.

Right now it's sort of a FDS/Deuxmoi (aka internet rabbit hole) thing but I remember when we used to laugh at "Tumblrinas" and say shit like "I identify as an attack helicopter" and,well, we are where we are now. I can see it building.

No one seems to doubt that men like youthful women, though. If you point out that women in their late teens and early twenties are considered most beautiful as a cross cultural universal, wokes don’t generally try to dispute it. They’ll argue that fat is beautiful and dark skin is beautiful and western beauty standards are artificial about those things until they’re blue in the face, but generally not the same argument about men’s preference for youth.

Because that one can easily be mapped to "(white) men bad"

No one seems to doubt that men like youthful women, though.

The interpretation of why has changed.

There does seem to be a push amongst some to act as if it is a moral failing of men and mainly a desire on the part of abusers to abuse younger and more vulnerable women. I think you're very much mistaken if you don't think the same sort of delusion that leads people to argue that fatness is stigmatized merely due to arbitrary social norms doesn't lead to them also whining about youth being favored by men. It's out there, it hasn't metastasized yet.

I don't know what percentage of this is bitter, extremely online 30 year old women just whining and competing as they can intrasexually*, or people who've actually worked themselves into a shoot and legitimately believe this.

Given that some people are apparently now convinced that men and women are interchangeable, I wouldn't be surprised if the latter category is much larger than expected.

* Thanks to feminism you can't just attack the young women, but you can attack the men dating them and try to stigmatize the relationship by calling it "predatory" - that way you don't have to compete with more attractive younger women. This path actually allows one to pretend you're doing this to help the younger woman and not to cope with uncomfortable realities of the dating market.

Was the stereotype of much older men taking advantage of the naivety of younger women/girls ever not a thing? I mean, obviously the woke hyperventilate about it, but they hyperventilate about everything. It’s one of the big justifications trotted out for patriarchy- that these men are secretly losers and are targeting young women too naive to see their character for what it is.

Where wokeness and feminism change things is that they can’t use it to justify patriarchal control of those young women anymore, so they redouble on attacking the man, and also can’t endorse more traditional ways that you often had large age gap relationships(because traditional forms of courtship depended on patriarchy). Hence, total condemnation of large age gap relationships because the proper, pro-social way to do them necessarily impedes the autonomy of young women pretty substantially. A full grown man carrying on directly with a very young woman/girl has never been seen positively, for largely the same reasons the wokes don’t like it. Girls/very young women are, to put it bluntly, morons about relationships and generally not competent to pick their own partners, and hence are pretty easy to take advantage of by nefarious actors. Yes, there are exceptions. Yes, wokes sometimes have a tendency to call things ‘abuse’ or ‘harassment’ that are neither of those things. Yes, they talk in a shrill manner about it, but they do that about everything. But ancient and medieval law codes criminalized seduction for a reason. This is just progressives reinventing the wheel and calling it something different, again. The difference is this time, you can’t just talk to her father and have everything be nice and socially approved of. And there’s very legible reasons progressives would insist on that difference. And all of that is pretty compatible with acknowledging that women are most attractive to men from 16-23 and not in their 30’s. And for the most part, wokes and progressives don’t dispute that. They may jabberwok about power imbalances and predatory behavior, but they don’t seem to think they can change Leonardo DiCaprio only dating women under 25.

Was the stereotype of much older men taking advantage of the naivety of younger women/girls ever not a thing?

This is now being applied to cases like this where a 25 y/o almost-certain independent millionaire dating a 40-something y/o millionaire is being harangued enough that she's complaining about it on her page. Or the Al Pacino case where what seems like a 28 y/o gold digger is trying to ride an old man to a position in his will.

Obviously nobody thinks that the predatory male behavior towards immature girls should be tolerated and every society is distrustful of male intentions. This is why we have statutory laws and I'm not even inherently against rules that do things like protect college students from professors, though I do worry about infantlization.

However it seems clear to me that a lot of people are trying to stretch the taboo past that. Part of it may just be the general infantilization of the youth (where college is another state of adolescence).

But I think the reason for that is their own sexual imperatives. And this is revealed in the cases they pick: Florence Pugh is one of the most promising stars in the world, with wealth and status. She honestly was more high status at the time than her partner. If the industry had to pick one... There is no justification for being angry on her behalf. I used to even see women side-eye George Clooney for usually dating ~35 y/os. It never got as big as Leo, since he mainly "tastefully" dated 30+ but it was a thing. Again: once someone is 30 there's no justification for worrying about their consent.

Put it to you this way: this dynamic is actually very similar to black women complaining about "their" men (since black women and older women show preference for black and older men respectively and don't want to compete with perceived more attractive options) being taken. They also come up with their own motivated reasoning for why it's bad.

Do you think black women are actually doing this for the safety of white women? I'm trying to be more optimistic about human nature but...

They may jabberwok about power imbalances and predatory behavior, but they don’t seem to think they can change Leonardo DiCaprio only dating women under 25.

They're deliberately trying to pathologize it.

This to me is like the "I don't think they're trying to cancel JK Rowling". They're not trying to because they're - rightly - fatalist about it; Leo and Rowling are just too insulated and most people don't care about Leo's dating. They'll do what they can on the margins though - aka whining online endlessly.

But, as I said, I no longer take it for granted that these sorts will stay in their niche.

Yeah I should be more specific. At least insofar as young women themselves doing the trashing of older women, seems no one much gives a damn. I think it rises to the level of uncouth but no more.

Christ almighty, I had no idea that there are so many statistically literate whores around just waiting to tell you your survey is bad. I also wasn't aware that escorts advertise their services so openly on social media.

A few are asking what Aella's credentials are or whether the survey has been reviewed by an ethics committee, as if you need any of that to do a random google forms survey on the internet. They appear to believe that ethics committees are to protect people who might find the result offensive and not the participants of the study.

It's as if the burden of proof for something that isn't politically correct is way higher.

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