PAID FOR by RACHEL MORAN is DEVASTATING MEMOIR about HER LIFE THROUGH PROSTITUTION

One of the questions I have - we have - here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT - is the question of sex for pay and how that may or may not relate to being a Mistress.  I feel that the stereotype of a Mistress is that she is much like a Belle Epoch Courtesan, which is to say, if we consider our Mistress of the Month Valtesse de la Bigne and her 19th century contemporaries as an example, a high class prostitute.  However, this is a stereotype that I do not believe fits the contemporary Mistress who is more likely to have a relationship founded in a love affair with one married man (at least one at a time!) and consider herself to be married to him even if he's legally married to another.  One of the purposes of this blog is to look at the grey areas.  For there is an argument that relationships, including legal marriage that might accommodate a Mistress, are of choice, and that not everyone is a serial monogamist.  While I believe it is true that sexual attraction is a strong reason for becoming Kept, I also do not think that sex keeps a relationship together.  More has to happen and that more is often love.

The word "devastating" in the title of this post, is not hyperbole. I read this one by listening to an e-book and the reading was intense, as was the sophistication of the understanding Rachel Moran came to about herself, her life, and her profession. This woman's testimony will grab your heart and cut it into little pieces, as you read about the terribly impoverished childhood she had in a large family with parents who were both mentally ill.  You can feel that ache.
Listen up, please!
Like so many of today's teenage runaways and street children, Rachel's entry into prostitution was one of survival out of homelessness. She left an intolerable home life (which did not include being molested by her dad).  At fifteen she got a boyfriend, also a homeless person, and well, she saw the logic in becoming a prostitute, which she was by age fifteen, and she says telling men how old she was excited them.  For two years she managed to limit her sexual repertoire with paying men so that she did not have intercourse with them, but you will be riveted to hear of some of the perversions she encountered and complied with, including S and M relationships.  It was dehumanizing and she lost her self worth.
While there are a full range of sexualities to identify with, including asexuality, and some prostitutes are going to, like Valtesse, move forward into being the Mistress of just one man or a wife, Rachel Moran has a mission.  To let the world know that "real men" do not pick up prostitutes, even if they are called "call girls" or "escorts," or "exotic dancers."  She is a brave woman, and she has achieved freedom from her past as best as she can, after years of having her lack of self esteem reinforced through degradation.  Her advocacy against legalization of prostitution, includes the honest of this book, the many interviews she has done, videos ... in 1998 at age 22 she got out of the life.


Go to her website SPACE INTERNATIONAL RACHEL MORAN in order to learn more about her advocacy, her prestigious speaking engagements.... From that site, "In the millennium year she returned to education and completed a degree in Journalism from Dublin City University. She has been involved in the political push for the Nordic Model in Ireland since she first addressed the crowd gathered at the launch of the Turn Off The Red Light campaign in February, 2011. She has spoken at numerous international locations, including the United Nations Plaza in New York and Boston’s Harvard University. She works in conjunction with the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and the European Women’s Lobby."