Throwaway because I'm drawing on firsthand experience from illegal activity.

I think it's important to highlight the diversity of sex work. This one passage caught my attention:

> SeekingArrangement – This website, unlike the above, professes to definitely not allow escorts, and makes it difficult to be explicit about it. Most men connecting through the website anticipate paying around 50-70% less, as women tend to be willing to accept less money if you give them a veneer of not being a real sex worker. You can still attempt to do clear sex work here though – “PPM”, or pay-per-meet, indicates that you want to be paid per meeting, and this is the way to start out the discussion. Seeking Arrangement also had the lowest correlation with arrests,

Nearly all of my experience with sex work (as a client) is off Seeking Arrangment. For those unfamiliar it's a site for people to engage in "sugar dating", where a "sugar daddy" compensates a "sugar baby" to spend time with him, ostensibly unconnected to any expectations of sex. I find these terms cringeworthy, I'll call it compensated dating. In practice there's almost always expectations of sex. There's definitely a sizeable overlap between SA and traditional escorting sites, browse both and you'll come across the same profiles with moderate frequency. But in general, "sugar dating" involves a sizeable chunk of activities beyond having sex. It's expected to take dates out to dinner, movies, and other activities one would normally do on dates.

I think Aella is being a bit snide when she calls this "the veneer of not being a real sex worker". Almost all of the people I met considered it sex work and weren't under any illusion about the fact that money was changing hands in exchange for sex. When I asked why they preferred compensated dating rather than escorting the reasons were primarily twofold:

* Safety. It's not uncommon for people to meet in person once or twice before agreeing to meet for sex. These initial meetings are almost always in public or semi-public places (restaurants, bars, parks, malls). Most people give each other real names after meeting in person. I suppose this could also reduce safety, but there's a M.A.D. element of this that seems to work.

* Sense of connection, quality of experience. Many of the women on SA that I met spoke negatively of instances where men only saw them for an hour to have sex and didn't want to spend time together outside of the bedroom. Do they really just care about "the veneer of not being a sex worker"? Maybe, but I get the sense that many genuinely have a more enjoyable experience - or at least more tolerable experience - meeting someone few times platonically before having sex.

Speaking from the male perspective here, I'm really not sure why someone would prefer escorting over compensated dating. Aella is right that it's 50-70% less expensive. Maybe a bit less if one factors in cost of meals and activities. But $/hr of time spent together is easily 4-5x less than escorting. Personally I'm the type that sees the expectation of spending time together outside of the bedroom as a positive rather than a negative, so it's a win on both counts. Between $1200 for 90 minutes with someone and $400-700 in exchange for having dinner with someone, sex, taking a bath together and talking, and spending the night together the latter is way preferable.

The only potential negative is possibly the overlap of sugar dating and real relationships. I know both men and women who have moved in with, and in one instance gotten married to, people they met off SA. The one negative experience I had was with someone who wanted to have a real relationship and I did not, leading to a falling out and stuff being said about me - fortunately nothing that actual led to significant repercussions.