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Photos of 2 boys I had in Havana ( Dec 17 to 23, 2018)

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14 hours ago, SolaceSoul said:

I used that metaphor to describe the photos because of the harsh, stark power / class dynamic between the geosocioeconomically privileged photo taker and the impoverished, uneducated, unaware, unexposed photo subject without privilege.

Please check your privilege.  You are aware of others abusing class dynamics but ackowledge none of your own (I actually agree with many of your sentiments). 

The reason BiLatin posts seems to have offended many is because of his verbiage. Two Guys That “I Had,” has a totally different subtext then “I played with”

The former is more of a gloating that I was able to have some guy for $10, i.e. take advantage of.  

To be clear, I am not trying to be the moral majority, I would just like people to be a little more respectful when discussing sex workers.

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I appreciate the attempts at phenomenological clarity and common ground related to respect for hires, but play is a flimsy euphemism for purchased sex. I viscerally reacted to "had" as well, but upon reflection determined that it is a valid synonym for my own behaviour. Still, play sounds better. 

That said, interestingly, it is commonplace to brag about a "good deal" in nonsexual commercial transactions and be less likely seen as crass. 

I think that the central dilemma is simple and longstanding: sex is sadly and mistakenly socially constructed as dirty and degrading. This idea does not represent any impressive insight on my part.

Sex and its overall complex bundle, like other distorted, stigmatized, and loaded topics, is also conveniently misappropriated to support one point of view over another. 

Edited by Riobard

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2 hours ago, riorockstar said:

 

To be clear, I am not trying to be the moral majority, I would just like people to be a little more respectful when discussing sex workers.

 

To the contrary, your writing indicates that your beliefs are consistent with the views of the now extinct Moral Majority organization. 

Please realize, you are addressing people in a gay sex chat forum rather than in a Jerry Falwell - holier than thou - conference.  

Oh, and did you vote for Trump?  I suspect you did. 

Happy New Year.  

220px-Jerry_Falwell_portrait.jpg
 
Jerry Falwell, whose founding of the Moral Majority was a key step in the formation of the New Christian Right

The Moral Majority was a prominent American political organization associated with the Christian right and Republican Party. It was founded in 1979 by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell and associates, and dissolved in the late 1980's. It played a key role in the mobilization of conservative Christians as a political force and particularly in Republican presidential victories throughout the 1980's.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority

Edited by mvan1

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2 hours ago, riorockstar said:

Please check your privilege.  You are aware of others abusing class dynamics but ackowledge none of your own (I actually agree with many of your sentiments). 

The reason BiLatin posts seems to have offended many is because of his verbiage. Two Guys That “I Had,” has a totally different subtext then “I played with”

The former is more of a gloating that I was able to have some guy for $10, i.e. take advantage of.  

To be clear, I am not trying to be the moral majority, I would just like people to be a little more respectful when discussing sex workers.

I now see your problem here. You really DO believe that any sexual transaction, whether mutually consensual and mutually beneficial or not, between adults of two starkly different socioeconclasses must, by default, be problematic — no matter the players or circumstances involved. That is something that, at least academically although probably not practically, is worth examining. I can agree that we all with mere first-world problems very well should “check our privilege” — and often. I am, as a man of color in America, constantly made aware of my lack of privilege here compared to others — yet reminded of privilege I receive during my frequent foreign travel, simply by virtue of my Americanism and relative economic security — so unlike many here, I experience both sides of the privilege coin. Thus, I am arguably more keenly sensitive to how sex workers (both professional and amateur) are treated by privileged travelers in foreign, more impoverished lands — especially the non-white ones.

I was much more struck by the photos than the language used. I suppose our mileage does vary.

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What the hell did I just read?

Guys stop feeding trolls....especially the ones who pretend to be some kind of Brazilian ethics experts or some kind of NGO owner in a forum about escorts.

Just to inform people who have never been with a brazilian rentboy in Brazil, or to the ones who are bad observers.

WAKE UP!!!! It's 2019 even in Brazil. The time of "desperate" guys selling their bodies to eat food in Brazil is well over for the vast majority of them (it's 30 years that the government is spending loads of money in social welfare) . The 2 sauna guys that i've been with on past tuesday, did have phones (iphone XS, 7000 BRL,; Iphone XS MAX 8790 BRL), clothes and bodies that would require monthly payments of at least 2 times the minimum salary (1000 BRL, the most common in Rio) for the next 12 months, while living both into a favela-looking bairro.

Most of the rent guys are selling their own bodies because it's the best and quickest way to earn a TON of money for brazilian standards; and that's the amount of money required to buy those useless privileges (BRANDED THINGS) that we all like and  which are at the opposite side of where an essential good would be.

And there's nothing wrong about this, especially in an extremely openminded culture like the brazilian one.

These guys are doing a job which involves meeting even rude customers or lowballers....don't worry....they're not stupid and they know how to act.They could not care less about getting referred as goods.

What these guys really need is respect, treating them like professionals, selling a service... and trying to make them looking like poor and stupid hungry desperate people, unable to do anything but getting abused by rich tourists from around the world...it's far from being respectful.

Edited by likeohmygod

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1 hour ago, likeohmygod said:

 The 2 sauna guys that i've been with on past tuesday, did have phones (iphone XS, 7000 BRL,; Iphone XS MAX 8790 BRL), clothes and bodies that would require monthly payments of at least 2 times the minimum salary (1000 BRL, the most common in Rio) for the next 12 months, while living both into a favela-looking bairro.

Most of the garotos I deal with laugh at me because I am an American professional and *only* have an iPhone 7 Plus. The guys I see regularly have brand new iPhones or Samsungs, motorcycles, Nike gear, Invicta watches, Wireless Beats By Dre headphones, the latest LeBron James shoes, etc. Quite a few have their own cars that have been paid for with cash (or in at least two cases, bought for them). At least half have been on all-expense paid trips out of the country while the clock was still running, so they also got paid. 

But, sure, let’s keep up this stereotype of the poor, desperate garoto. 

They’re professionals and they’re on a job. They should be treated as such, not as charity cases or newfound lifetime loves.

 

Edited by SolaceSoul

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Yes, we all should be respectful of our fellow human beings, but did I misread the title of the thread?  I thought it read as: "2 boys I had in Havana."  Did I read correctly?

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On 12/28/2018 at 2:37 PM, mvan1 said:

To the contrary, your writing indicates that your beliefs are consistent with the views of the now extinct Moral Majority organization. 

It’s unfortunate that you’re incapable of engaging in nuanced or higher-level discussions (i.e. those above an 8th grade level).

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7 hours ago, SolaceSoul said:

They’re professionals and they’re on a job. They should be treated as such, not as charity cases or newfound lifetime loves.

This is where you confuse me a bit.  If rentboys are highly paid professionals, then how does that reconcile with your posts about stark class imbalances and lack of ability to give true consent to photo taking.    

I am willing to consider that Cuba is a different dynamic than the commercialized setting of a brothel in Brazil.  Somehow BiLatin’s post came off as far more exploitive than what I have read about garotos in Brazil (for example in Numazu’s thread).

24 minutes ago, riorockstar said:

This is where you confuse me a bit.  If rentboys are highly paid professionals, then how does that reconcile with your posts about stark class imbalances and lack of ability to give true consent to photo taking.    

I am willing to consider that Cuba is a different dynamic than the commercialized setting of a brothel in Brazil.  Somehow BiLatin’s post came off as far more exploitive than what I have read about garotos in Brazil (for example in Numazu’s thread).

I hesitate to join this discussion as I'm very new to this forum. However, when I post it is from experience and a knowledge base, so I'm going to go ahead and comment: Riorrockstar, my experience tells me that it would be far more polite to have many more posts under your belt before you turn rude. Not only does mvan1 have vastly more posts than you, but it also seems that the community overwhelmingly agrees with him. Some advice one newbie to another.

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2 minutes ago, paborn said:

it also seems that the community overwhelmingly agrees with him.

Groupthink should not be a goal of any forum.

Regardless whether you are a newbie, Paborn, feel free to post your opinion without worrying whether or not it will be popular or overwhelmingly agreed with.

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53 minutes ago, riorockstar said:

This is where you confuse me a bit.  If rentboys are highly paid professionals, then how does that reconcile with your posts about stark class imbalances and lack of ability to give true consent to photo taking.    

I am willing to consider that Cuba is a different dynamic than the commercialized setting of a brothel in Brazil.  Somehow BiLatin’s post came off as far more exploitive than what I have read about garotos in Brazil (for example in Numazu’s thread).

I never stated that ALL rentboys are highly paid. You might want to re-read my last comment more carefully. I was referring to the garotos (a term which refers to the garotos de programs in Brazil) that I personally deal with. But as has been said by myself and others, even the ones that aren’t as I described can make a comparably comfortable living for a few years in the legal sex trade in Brazil.

We can agree that this is clearly not the case in a place like Cuba, where the ability to earn and acquire much at all from any kind of side hustle is much more severely restricted — and a side hustle of prostitution or pornography, if prosecuted is punishable by years in tough, unforgiving Cuban prisons.

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding your beef, but you somehow seem to believe, oddly to me, that there is some correlation between the amount of money paid to / earned by a sex worker and their ability to consent to photos used for the internet. 

In my observation, the stark class imbalances come not necessarily from what the garoto or sex worker can earn or buy from his sex work, but from the comparative differences of socioeconomic class between the sex worker in the area where the client is traveling and the actual tourist client. This is where class and race / color get tricky and sticky, because (and you will probably agree with me here) it’s clear to me that the darker the sex worker and the poorer the country, the more liberties some clients and posters here seem to be much more willing to take with them — like gratuitous photos, identifying information, and low-balling offers for their work.

This conversation seems to be turning into an academic dialogue. I’m not prepared to defend my dissertation — especially since no one gave me a stipend for my extensive research.

Edited by SolaceSoul

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21 minutes ago, paborn said:

I hesitate to join this discussion as I'm very new to this forum. However, when I post it is from experience and a knowledge base, so I'm going to go ahead and comment: Riorrockstar, my experience tells me that it would be far more polite to have many more posts under your belt before you turn rude. Not only does mvan1 have vastly more posts than you, but it also seems that the community overwhelmingly agrees with him. Some advice one newbie to another.

I could be wrong, but I am thinking riorockstar is an old poster who is now posting under a new screen name. It’s quite unusual for a totally new poster to just jump into a thread in full throttle attack mode like he did.

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5 minutes ago, SolaceSoul said:

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding your beef, but you somehow seem to believe, oddly to me, that there is some correlation between the amount of money paid to / earned by a sex worker and their ability to consent to photos used for the internet. 

In my opinion, a highly paid professional garoto would know much more clearly the ramifications of consenting to nude photos vs. a naive non-professional teenager in Cuba.

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22 minutes ago, SolaceSoul said:

This is where class and race / color get tricky and sticky, because (and you will probably agree with me here) it’s clear to me that the darker the sex worker and the poorer the country, the more liberties some clients and posters here seem to be much more willing to take with them — like gratuitous photos, identifying information, and low-balling offers for their work.

Exactly, in BiLatin’s original post he did make a point of noting that he only had to pay $10 to the darker skin guy vs the lighter skin guy who he paid double to ($20).  In retrospect there were several things about his post that caused me to become “triggered”

Edited by riorockstar

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23 minutes ago, SolaceSoul said:

I could be wrong, but I am thinking riorockstar is an old poster who is now posting under a new screen name. It’s quite unusual for a totally new poster to just jump into a thread in full throttle attack mode like he did.

Exactly! 

Perfect observation.  

Edited by mvan1

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6 minutes ago, riorockstar said:

 

In my opinion, a highly paid professional garoto would know much more clearly the ramifications of consenting to nude photos vs. a naive non-professional teenager in Cuba.

I don’t know what you consider the threshold for “highly paid”, but are you aware of the number of garotos (their pay to me is mostly unknown) that have become angry when they discover that their photos are posted on this forum?

Edited by SolaceSoul

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5 minutes ago, SolaceSoul said:

I don’t know what you consider the threshold for “highly paid”, but are you aware of the number of garotos (their pay to me is mostly unknown) that have become angry when they discover that their photos are posted on this forum?

To me that just indicates consent was not actually given.  The client likely mislead the garoto on the intent of the pictures (private use only vs. posting on a public forum).

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