I appear to be the highest ranked woman on Hacker News. I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent any time on the leader board here (under a different handle).
A number of people on the leader board are millionaires. I have reason to believe their participation on HN is part of what makes them wealthy.
I was homeless for nearly six years and remain dirt poor and continue to get a lot of guff any time I try to talk about that, no matter the reason and no matter the framing.
I have six years of college. Etc.
While I was homeless, men sometimes offered me cash to sleep with them based solely on my looks and obvious poverty. But trying to network with business professionals on a platform that literally helps a lot of people become quite wealthy has done relatively little for my bottom line and I have been repeatedly told "Go get a real job" and this kind of crap.
You said you are paying four times your hourly wage and I imagine that $25/hour is fairly good money for Romania. It would be decent pay in the US where people are trying to advocate for a minimum wage of $15/hour.
I don't know what her cut is out of what you pay and I don't know how much of her time you are getting, but for a lot of women, that would be vastly better pay than they have any hope of making any other way and they will put up with it simply because the alternatives amount to starving to death and may be just as objectionable as sex work.
Lots of low paying jobs are unpleasant work, like cleaning toilets. Lots of low paying jobs subject you to abusive bosses and abusive customers. It's common knowledge that wait staff at restaurants are typically treated terribly.
> While I was homeless, men sometimes offered me cash to sleep with them based solely on my looks and obvious poverty.
The way I find girls is through a community forum which practices reviews. I very rarely visit a "new" girl which doesn't have good reviews from reputable members so while I am sorry to hear your experience, I have never offered money to a girl for sex out of the blue or because I felt she was vulnerable. I've only ever been to girls that explicitly advertise such services.
> Lots of low paying jobs are unpleasant work, like cleaning toilets. Lots of low paying jobs subject you to abusive bosses and abusive customers. It's common knowledge that wait staff at restaurants are typically treated terribly.
You assume I am going to girls that are generally treated terribly, have a pimp that takes all their money and are happy to act cheerful for 100$ per hour having sex with 20+ different men per week.
There's no need for her to act, there's plenty of demand for warm bodies without any need for good social skills. And I believe generally those girls that don't offer good GFE are probably forced into it. That would probably even be the majority of the market. I don't know, I haven't done any field research on this but I assume I only visit like 1-2% of girls and am very rarely dissapointed with a new girl because it's hard to fake honest signals.
However it is not hard to make a decent living as an independent girl. The good ones generally work from 10am to 22pm at most. They take good care of themselves, screen clients and build up private lists where they won't even take new clients. If she just wants to live a basic good life she could take 5 regular clients 2-3 times per month and make 1000-2000$ easily working at most 20h per month. That money could well pay for eating only takeout and have a very nice appartment in Bucharest.
My very first words in my first comment were: I'm not suggesting you are doing anything morally wrong
I'm not making any of the assumptions you accuse me of. I'm just trying to say that the world of work and opportunities available to women are different than for men, so their logic for why they make certain choices may not be what a man would expect based on how he thinks about his choices in relation to how to earn a living.
I'm medically handicapped and for that reason I have been celibate for nearly 16 years. If I thought I could successfully become a sex worker or exotic dancer and make good money for a while to pay off my debts and pay cash for a house, I would likely do that. I have no moral objection to sex work and I've thought a great deal about it and a lot of marriages are thinly veiled sex-for-money deals, in essence.
I would rather get paid by the hour for sex than be some man's property pretending we "love" each other when we don't. I'm crystal clear on that detail.
I'm sorry if you feel uncomfortable with the idea that maybe some of these women don't really want to be doing this kind of work and feel like it's a big moral issue if they don't. But the simple reality is that, say, in Hollywood, women need to look good and be sexy to become successful. In contrast, men are deemed to be sexually attractive because they are successful.
When push comes to shove, women are expected to use their sexuality to some degree to open doors career-wise in a way men are generally not expected to do. This is rampant across multiple industries and it's something people mostly don't want to talk about and it's part of why you see so much sexual harassment of women on the job, etc.
I haven't caved to the pressure to go that route because I have a bigger personal demon looming over me that does such terrible things to a person it is classified as a dread disease.
But trying to get into that probably isn't clarifying anything. It's probably just opening up a giant can of worms pointlessly.
I think I will stop here, whether it served to clarify anything or not. Sometimes the least worst action is just "stop digging your grave deeper."
I won't comment on the personal stuff because I've stopped trying to save everyone. For the record I rolled on random.org with a 20% chance saying I should offer to personally help you and you got 57.
> When push comes to shove, women are expected to use their sexuality to some degree to open doors career-wise in a way men are generally not expected to do
Men are generally not epected to use their sexuality because it doesn't work. If it worked I'm sure some % of men would use it. Proof : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26165800
I don't believe women are expected to use their sexuality. Women just have that tool available to them and some will choose to use it. Some men will only hire or promote those kinds of women and honestly I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, we could debate this for hours.
> I rolled on random.org with a 20% chance saying I should offer to personally help you and you got 57.
Funniest thing I’ve read today. Is that a normal thing you do? Just online or for the panhandler at the corner via mobile? How do you determine the saving throw? So many Q’s..
For a while, whenever I felt tempted to goof off a little, I'd look at my phone. It if was an even number, I followed my desire, if [the last digit of the clock] was an odd number I carried on with what I was doing. Figured it would cut procrastination in half. I think it did.
I absolutely agree that if they could, there are men who would.
I don't agree that women are not expected to use their sexuality. I'm not interested in debating it.
I've stated my opinion. Some folks here will recognize my handle and have some idea of who I am and yadda and others won't. It is inevitable that different people will perceive my opinions differently depending on how much and what they know about me (and no doubt other factors as well).
A number of people on the leader board are millionaires. I have reason to believe their participation on HN is part of what makes them wealthy.
I was homeless for nearly six years and remain dirt poor and continue to get a lot of guff any time I try to talk about that, no matter the reason and no matter the framing.
I have six years of college. Etc.
While I was homeless, men sometimes offered me cash to sleep with them based solely on my looks and obvious poverty. But trying to network with business professionals on a platform that literally helps a lot of people become quite wealthy has done relatively little for my bottom line and I have been repeatedly told "Go get a real job" and this kind of crap.
You said you are paying four times your hourly wage and I imagine that $25/hour is fairly good money for Romania. It would be decent pay in the US where people are trying to advocate for a minimum wage of $15/hour.
I don't know what her cut is out of what you pay and I don't know how much of her time you are getting, but for a lot of women, that would be vastly better pay than they have any hope of making any other way and they will put up with it simply because the alternatives amount to starving to death and may be just as objectionable as sex work.
Lots of low paying jobs are unpleasant work, like cleaning toilets. Lots of low paying jobs subject you to abusive bosses and abusive customers. It's common knowledge that wait staff at restaurants are typically treated terribly.