Melissa Petro

For someone like me — someone with difficulty forming and maintaining relationships, who has struggled with commitment, and who’s got intimacy issues galore — surely, you can see the appeal. You don’t need to be Freud to figure out why, at a disturbingly young age, I looked forward to the day a man would commit.

It's pretty well understood in 12 step programs that "who you see here and what you say here, stays here."

Would Sheryl Sandberg be able to get away with leaning in while donning Zuckerberg's signature v-neck T-shirt and jeans? History says no.

Drunk or not, it’s a fact that white people are more prone to acting like assholes to authority figures—because we’re more likely to get away with it.

Is there anything problematic about trading foot rubs for blow jobs? Or is it a healthy way to add a little spice to a long term relationship?

Sure, "friends forever" sounds nice. In theory. But sometimes it's better that two people just not be friends.

I do have one advantage when it comes to meeting people online: I really like dating. I like getting dressed up and going out. I even kind of dig meeting someone new. I know these are aspects of dating other people dread, but I’ve always enjoyed these things. Perhaps this is one explanation for (or else a result of) my sex work past, I dunno. I know that, in the beginning, I thought of dating as an adventure. I didn’t take it too seriously.

After gaining as much as forty pounds and pushing a cantaloupe out my vagina, I wondered: will my body ever be the same?

“If you believe in the decriminalisation of sex work,” Ian Dunt rightfully points out, “you will instantly come under a sustained and highly emotive attack on your morality and your identity.” In this vein, when a man comes out in favor of sex worker’s rights, he becomes “a betrayer of women, a gender Judas encouraging violence against them.”

“If someone’s crying at work, it’s because it’s their only outlet to release tension,” says Greg, age 30, a public school teacher. When people cry at work, Greg says, it’s because they’ve became “overwhelmed” or perhaps feel as if “they’re not meeting their goals.”