Photo by Flickr user KK+. Used under a Creative Commons license.

So a little while ago the (NSFW!) Tumblr sex blogger Kat Kinx, was subjected to a particularly nasty spate of anonymous commenters more or less demanding that she hook up with them, Skype with her, post specific photos or stories and performing particular acts, and otherwise totally overstepping boundaries. Oh yeah, and when she started telling them to buzz off at least one of them threatened to try and get Tumblr to cancel her blog. Because (like about 70-million other blogs on Tumblr, it has "sexual content.")

This is actually a pretty common assumption -- that to describe one's active sex life in the first person... or even just blog about one's active sexual imagination in the first person... you are or should be making yourself virtually or even actively available even to anonymous readers.

One of Kat Kinx (non-anonymous) readers snarkily but accurately put his finger on the fallacy.

“See, it’s totally your fault for being a sexual person and expressing it on your SEX BLOG. People are nuts…. That would be like posting cookies on a baked goods blog and assuming that every anon is going to get some fucking cookies!”

Johnem

Source: banter-tits

Yup. Very early in my blogging career I made the same mistake a couple of times, and had the same mistake made to me as well, before I realized there was a problem with it. But as much as I love food/sex analogies I never thought of a cookie-baking comparison. But it really illustrates the point beautifully.

Via the invaluable and also highly-NSFW Geeky Vamp

Image via AddictingInfo.org.

So thanks to the network effects inherent in Facebook and, I guess, inexpensive cable modems, I've slowly become friends, or at least friends of friends, with a surprising number of men and women from my previous life back in Southern Appalachia.  Most of the men, at least, don't post much, and when they do it's almost stereotypically about bars they used to drink in, or guitars they wish they had, or about high gas prices, or (a lot of them) about the 12-Step Meetings they're attending and/or sponsoring others through.  Oh, and/or a lot of Pot-Farmville posts. You know, salt of the earth type guys but not really particularly connected to current events.  (This on my personal real-name account, not my basically neglected and otherwise unused figleaf one.)  In other words people pretty much just like me before we went our separate ways, and who turned out the ways we did more due to chance than apitutde, ambition, or intent.

Anyway, when I got home today and logged in to Facebook again (hey, evidently like a lot of other people I'm starting to find work!) something was different.

All those guys?  The ones who still drink whatever's cheapest in totally non-ironically-named bars and fix their Ford and Dodge slant-six cars themselves?  The ones who call each other "pee-pencil peckered sons of bitches" when they're mad?  The ones who've been through bad divorces and don't like to go to Red Lobster even after a wedding because it's too fancy?

Four or five of those guys were posting or reposting those photos of that buttwad all-male panel Darryl Issa called up in Congress to talk about how it's immoral for insurance to pay for contraception for women that have been making the rounds all day.

They were not, um, supportive either of Issa or the male panelists or that it was a good idea for a whole row of men to sit around brassing off about how depriving women of healthcare as a matter of "religious freedom."

That's... pretty different.

It's not like these guys were ever likely to vote for Republicans.  They're more likely not to vote at all!

But this got their attention.

If you're a right-wing extremist with an eye on the November elections that can't be good a good sign.

Update: I don't want to give the impression these are all guys who live so close together they've all got the same in-laws. One of them lives in northern Alabama, another in east Tennessee. One's been in Montana for more than 20 years. Another's actually from the middle-Appalachians, in Rick Santorum's rural Pennsylvania. I'm just saying it's weird to hear from any of them in a given month. To hear from all of them in one day, and all about the same thing, is... pretty unusual!

Anyone else noticed anything like this or is it really just a total fluke that I happened to see it?

Update #2: Also to be clear (because there seems to be some confusion) I'm not saying it's unusual for these people to say these things because "people like them" don't support women's rights or women's health.  Instead it's ususual because they rarely comment on politics at all.

Photo via DailyKos.

C'mon! They're not even trying any more!

I sometimes chaff at Amanda Marcotte's assertion that men just want to hurt women. Or even that men have an "I poke it I own it" attitude. And since, in fact, most men actually don't want either to hurt or own women, it's a bit offensive that fucking choad-wads like Issa assemble panels of Y-chromosome dil-dopes all selected based on their opinion that, no, in fact, law of the land should be that if they ever manage to poke it they deserve to own it.

Remember, we're not even talking about abortion here. We're just talking about plain old birth control! Sweet mother of pearl!

---

For those of you playing religious assessment at home check out the official King James rule book.

• ^{Matthew 23:13} "But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
• Matthew 23:4 "For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on [wo]men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers"
• Matthew 23:15 "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves."
• Matthew 23:23 "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

Point being that, yeah, there's a strong sense among people of faith that religion is under assault in America. And so it is. But the assault comes from within. Opposition from without is driven far more by alienation than antipathy.

Photo by Flickr user Simply Boaz. Used under a Creative Commons license.

First of all it could be true that basically all relationships that begin with sex on the first date tend not to become long-term relationships.

Hetero relationships anyway.

I mean yeah, I'm skeptical, but it really could be true.  I just don't know.

But while cooking spaghetti sauce from scratch this evening the thought popped into my head that while It's certainly true that most relationships that begin with sex on the first date but then don't pan out it's also true that don't begin with sex on the first date also don't pan out.

If you're in a society that piles sex with great huge loads of signals, signifiers, and consequences then you (and everybody else) is going to notice when sex on the first date doesn't lead to a longer relationship.  But that's not quite the same thing.

At all.

This does not mean I think everybody, hetero or otherwise, should have sex on the first date!  There are still plenty of perfectly fine reasons to do so there are probably even more equally good reasons not to.

My very strong suspicion is that fear of blowing something longer term probably isn't one of those reasons.

In the course of saying 13th-Century-thinking presidential candidate Rick Santorum is an idiot, Will Wilkerson says

It's really is amazing how far we've come in such a short time, equality-wise. Within the span my own lifetime, it was thought that women ought to be barred from the Olympic marathon due to the inherent fragility of the female. Now we've got Haywire and an unreconstructed, full-on patriarchal, old-school Catholic, Republican office-seeker saying maybe women shouldn't go to the front-lines because men are too hopelessly emotional.

Source: Big Think Proxy

The context, of course, being Santorum's pretzel logic assertion that no amount of professionalism or experience can possibly prepare male soldiers for the emotional reaction of seeing women soldiers put "in harms way" on the battlefield. Wilkerson correctly concludes that if Santorum was right that men are really that flighty and distractible in combat then the logical thing to do would be to replace them with cool-headed professional women soldiers.

Of course Santorum and his ilk aren't right. About that or anything else having to do with the "true nature" of either women or men. Yet another reason to question his qualifications for office.

Even more proof (if we ever needed it) that for all the right-wing handwringing about feminists being "man haters," nobody anywhere has a frothier mix of hatred and contempt for men than anti-feminists and other gender "traditionalists."

Update: two other things. 

First, my quote above really doesn't do justice to Wilkerson's post. I always hope that when I quote someone that readers will go read the original.  (Hey, I'm old enough to remember when following links to the source was the whole point of "web logging!"

Second, and more importantly to anti-feminist gender discrimination, is the implied assumption that while men would be "upset" if women squad members were injured or killed in battle they must necessarily not give much of a shit if their male squad members are.  Talk about conservative man hating!  Sweet mother of pearl!

Going a step further, what are the odds Santorum & company imagines that women soldiers wouldn't be terribly bothered if their male squad members were injured or killed.  He certainly doesn't raise that possibility in his objection to women in combat.  Which implies a couple of things, the biggest being an assumption that women think of men as disposable or expendible the way assholes like Santorum do.

Quick question: besides being politicians and nominally having XY chromosomes what important trait do all of the following men have in common? It's a quality that culturally almost all of us "know" extremely well, but which turns out to be surprisingly "wrong."

• Carter, Jimmy , Nobel Peace Prize recipient; 39th President of the United States
• Clinton, Bill, 42nd President of the United States
• Colson, Chuck, former top aide to President Richard Nixon
• Gore, Al, Vice-President of the United States from 1993 – 2001; 2000 Democratic presidential candidate, Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
• Harding, Warren G., 29th President of the United States
• Yukio Hatoyama, 60th Prime Minister of Japan.
• Huckabee, Mike, (R) former governor of Arkansas and 2008 Presidential candidate
• Jackson, Jesse Louis,American civil rights activist and ... He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997.
• Johnson, Andrew, 17th President of the United States
• Johnson, Richard M., United States Vice President under Martin Van Buren (1837–41)
• Claude Kirkpatrick, former member of the Louisiana House of Representatives and director of his state's department of public works; involved in various ... activities within Louisiana ...
• Lincoln, Abraham, 16th President of the United States. Lincoln was a ... but,for the sake of the country he kept it to himself as an adult
• McCain, John, United States Senator (R) Arizona, Presidential candidate
• Paul, Ron, United States Congressman (R) and former Libertarian Party Presidential candidate, who is known for his libertarian leanings.
• Rockefeller, Nelson, U.S. Vice-President under Gerald Ford (1974–77)
• Truman, Harry, 33rd President of the United States

Before you look at the answer (here for the impatient)

Consider Ozymandia's rumination about what everybody "knows" about men.

The funny thing about Stuff Men Like is that proving it wrong only requires about five seconds of thought. If I consciously think “hey, men all like anal sex,” my brain will instantly crowd with counterexamples, namely, every man I’ve ever slept with. But if it’s just there in the background, as an unstated premise, the cultural detritus picked up from years of living in sex-negative society… well, I start arguing against “sex-positive feminism gives into the patriarchy because it encourages women to do what men want in bed” with “no, it encourages people to do what they want in bed, that is the whole point” as opposed to “what the fuck does that even mean?“

I mean, Christ. We’re going to try to get Tim Gunn, Maymay, James Deen, James Dobson, and that one porn star who keeps making women vomit with his cock to agree on what a fun sex life looks like? Good luck.

Zie said it here.

Or look at what we "know" about the Republican party and reproductive choice!

Or look at what a lot of people seem to "know" about what all feminists are like.

And so on.

The point isn't to say "gee, everything we 'know' is wrong." Because, for instance, we all no-scare-quotes know that pretty much everybody's different. So I'm just saying, as I often do, that it's a good idea to constantly assess our assumptions about what we "know." For instance, extrapolating from my own personal assumptions and stereotypes (hey, if nothing else remember the motto of this blog is "learning from my mistakes so you won't have to"), if I say "Southern Baptist" there's a pretty good chance your mind's eye summons up a pretty specific image...

The trick is that, depending on your background experience the vision you call up for "Southern Baptist" may be pretty different from mine. For instance I might think "Jimmy Carter." You might think "Martin Luther King" Someone else will snap as quickly to "Billy Graham." Those are pretty seriously different people, though, with often radically different political, cultural, economic, and even plain-old religious outlooks. Add in Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Rockerfeller, Ron Paul, Al Gore, and Yukio Hatoyama and...

Ok, it's like this. If our stereotype of X, Y, or Z is that one individual is representative -- that, say, our stereotype of men is that they're all like James Dobson*
or our stereotype about feminists is that they're all like Geraldine Ferraro -- then we're necessarily erasing a heck of a lot of people who actually are an X, Y, or Z without being at all like our designated type.

Oh, and it suddenly occurred to me, apropos my paragraph on the Whoopie Goldberg / Roman Polanski "rape-rape" debacle, that this type vs. stereotype business cuts both ways.

In the world of Legos it's not really possible for some parts to fit but not others. In spy movies each piece of the evesdropper's or assassin's equipment always fits precisely into its molded case. In those cases if a piece doesn't fit in its place it doesn't belong at all. I'm not sure why we so reflexively assume people's qualities are like Legos or spy equipment (ok, at least I keep finding myself reflexively making that assumption, but I'm pretty sure I'm the only one.) But... but... people just aren't one thing. You can be an acid racist and a Southern Baptist, which fits a lot of typical stereotypes. But you can also be Dr. Martin Luther King or Abraham Lincoln or Tina Turner or Justin Timberlake (who knew?) and a Southern Baptist. You can be a Geraldine Ferraro and be a feminist, which fits a lot of people's stereotypes. But you can also be Betty Ford or bell hooks or Barbara Bush and be a feminist.

* Dobson is not, my stereotype was surprised to learn, a Southern Baptist.

The headline for Jessica Pieklo's post says it all: "Ron Paul, What Exactly Is An “Honest Rape?”

Just in case there was any question, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) is no friend to women. The latest evidence came during an interview on CNN where he told Piers Morgan that only in cases of “honest rape” would he consider abortion acceptable, and even then in he would just advise the woman to go to the emergency room for “a shot of estrogen.”

Source: Care2 Causes

All I can say is there are just way to many people making assumptions about what is or isn't rape. As far as they're concerned, of course. I think it's a really bad idea to make any assumptions at all. I'd have been tempted to add "if you're a guy" but really, what's the difference between Ron Paul's "honest rape," or Whoopie Goldberg's "rape-rape," or so many other people's similar variations on "real rape."

I guess there are plenty of reasons for trying to construct a distinction.

For people like Ron Paul (who despite some nominally libertarian window-dressing, behaves indistinguishably from the average old, white, southern "states rights" conservative Republicans) terms like "honest rape" refer to the conventional belief among anti-abortion activists that exemptions in their anti-abortion laws are a bad idea because it just "encourages" women to "circumvent" those "safeguards" by pretending they were victims.

For people like Whoopie Goldberg (who despite the serious lapse is generally pretty savvy about the issues) I'm afraid words like "rape-rape" tend to mean mostly "something my accused friend wouldn't have done." For others it means "it couldn't have been what I did."  And for still others, maybe a lot of others, words like that mean "that couldn't have been what happened to me."

For others it can mean "but ABCs can't be raped by XYZs."

For others it can mean "but she/he didn't say 'no.'"

Sometimes, I guess, you can say the distinction arises out of a paradigm-driven urge to blame victims -- in those cases they're not so much interested in absolving perpetrators (for whom lurid punishments are often proposed), just hammering the (generally perceived as female) victims for any perceived or perhaps even imaginable "lapse in virtue."

And of course a heck of a lot of the time it just arises out of a desire for... what?... "dishonest" rapists? ... "non-rape-rape" rapists? ... "unreal" rapists? ... to absolve themselves by saying "well, that's not how I do it."  Or "but if men (it's usually men they have in mind) can't do X, Y, or Z then they can't have sex at all."

But here's the point: what all the above have in common is that they're sure they know what the difference is.  I'm... pretty sure that anyone who assumes they know they can is unlikely to have the faintest clue.

I gotta be really clear here (it's central to the post, actually) that there's a large difference between sex and rape.  And I think it's relatively easy to tell the two apart.  But not if you believe there's a difference between "honest" rape and some other kind.

That's a perilous state for sexually active humans to be in: if you're sure you know the difference then, like Ron Paul, or Whoopie Goldberg, or Roman Polanski and his victim's parents, or like me and a heck of a lot of people who came of age in the 1960s, or 1970s, or 1980s, or sometimes even the 1990s and beyond, you are, or have been, or in the future might be a potential danger both to others and to yourself.

Update: As I predicted last night (as did most spectators), the recent uproar has caused Komen to back down. And since they've a) backed down in a particularly smarmy way and b) they haven't asked the acidly anti-choice vice president who brought this fiasco down on their heads to resign, I would argue that they still haven't even begun to restore the placid apolitical credibility expected by corporate sponsors whether they're very large and well-heeled or small and serving progressive markets. Furthermore, the Foundation has only retracted one reason they gave as the "main reason" for defunding Planned Parenthood -- the "under investigation by Congressional witch-hunters" one. They remain silent on the other "really, this is the main reason" reason -- that beginning yesterday they're only funding organizations that provide on-site mammograms (if their initials also contain the letter P.) In other words, I'm not really seeing any change.

Image via Barbara Kelley at Undecided.

Well, this line from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Corporate Partners Page sounds a little creepier than the flacks who wrote it originally intended

Our corporate partners provide us with the opportunity to reach people where they live, work, and play.

Um, yeah. To reach people where they live, work, and play and... jam crappy hate-filled and, frankly, spiteful messages down their throats.

Right-wing hysteria notwithstanding, Planned Parenthood has long enjoyed thoroughly bipartisan support. Prestigious support at that! For instance the late Prescott Bush, former senator, former board member of Fortune 500 banks and manufacturers, father of one President and grandfather of another, was also Planned Parenthood's founding treasurer. And today it still enjoys considerable personal and corporate support from companies large and small across America. And why not? After all, until about a day ago the Komen Foundation supported Planned Parenthood as well.

If you visit their page and look down the list you'll find many, many companies that have supported Komen -- some having gone so far as to re-brand their products in Komen's signature pink!

But if you look down the list you'll also find that many of those same companies also support Planned Parenthood -- both through corporate direct giving, through executive board members, through charitable funds-matching, and other sources.

I'd never, ever consider boycotting a company who'd just been blindsided by the underhanded scheming of a previously singularly uncontroversially benign organization.

But if, say, I worked for one of those sponsors, particularly one that's also supported Planned Parenthood in the past, or if I served on one of their boards or advisory committees, or if I was a shareholder, or if I was a client, I might quietly inquire higher up whether it was still in my company's interest to continue sponsoring Komen.

It doesn't even have to be a matter of whether one is pro-choice or anti-choice, by the way. What really matters, to a lot of those large firms, is perception, stability, predictability, and lack of controversy. Not to put too fine a point on it, here, but if Komen fishtails back the other way tomorrow (I'm guessing the odds are better than 50/50) that just further indicates they no longer can be counted on to be consistent, non-politically-charged, or able to stay on message.

It only takes a little bit of Googling to find... quite a few companies that may have found themselves involuntarily embroiled in Komen's new entirely political agenda. Check them out.

3M, ACH Food Companies, AT&T, Alternative Apparel
American Airlines, Anchor Bay, Ansell Healthcare, Ask.com
Avcor, Avon, BIC, Bank of America
Battelle, Beemster Cheese, Belk, Berkley Packaging
Black & Decker, BoConcept, Boar’s Head, Bob Evans
Boots, Boston Proper, Boston Warehouse, Brinker
Brown Shoe, Caché, Caltrate, Canari Cyclewear
Caribou Coffee, Carlisle Collection, Caterpillar, Century Payments
CenturyLink, Chasing Fireflies, Chesapeake Bay Candle Co, Citizen Watch
Clean Ones, Clear Channel, ClearVision Optical, Coach
Coldwater Creek, Collegiate Shipping, Corning, Crayola
Dallas Cowboys, Dell, Deluxe Checks, Designs by Lolita
Deuce Brand, Discover Financial Services, Disney on Ice, Donna Karan
Dots, Eggland's Best, Emdeon, Energizer
Este Lauder, EuroBlooms, Evian, Evite
Exercise TV, Exhale Enterprises, FUZE, Fable Designs
Foot Solutions, Ford Gum, Ford, Forever 21
Freed’s Bakery, Frito-Lay, GUESS, Garden State Growers
General Mills, Georgia-Pacific, Global Filtration, Globe Electric
Goldtouch, Graphique de France, HUE, Hallmark
Hampshire Designers, Hand & Nail Harmony, Hanes, Helzberg Diamonds
Hewlett-Packard, Holland America Line, Honest Tea, HonorBib
Hunter Boot, Igloo, Imperial Headwear, Inliten
Interfresh, Jason Aldean, Jersey Mike's Subs, Kent International
Kentucky Fried Chicken, Kentucky Oaks Ladies First, Key Brands, KeyBank
King’s Hawaiian Bakery, KitchenAid, Kobian, Kodak
Koi Design, Kraft, Kyocera, LPGA
La Madeleine, LaCroix, Liberty Mutual, Lifetime Brands
Louisville Stoneware, Lowe’s, Macy's, Major League Baseball
MegaGoods, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Merck, Meredith Corporation
Microsoft, Mobile Edge, Mohawk Flooring, Mottega
Mrs. Baird's Bakeries, NBC Today Show, Napa Valley Naturals, Nature's Flowers
Nestle , New Balance, New Global Charities, NewBalance
Nordstrom, Not Your Daughter's Jeans, Nuun, Oil Can Henry's
Old Navy, On The Border, Oracle, Oreck
Oregon Cherry Growers, Inc., Oriental Trading Company, Otis Spunkmeyer, Palmer's
Pandora Jewelry, Paris Accessories, Payless, Pepperidge Farm
Pepsico, Philips, Pier 1 Imports, Pinnacle
Planet Smooties, Postmark, Pottery Barn Kids, Premium Outlets
Pretzel Crisps, Princess Cruises, Progresso Soup, Prolacta Bioscience
Provide Commerce, Purina, REMAX, Rally for the Cure®
Ralph Lauren, Redken, RiceSelect, Rich Products
SELF, Saks Fifth Avenue Samsung, Santa Barbara Design Studio
Sarah Fisher Racing, Savvi, ShoeDazzle, Shoutback Concepts
Shuman Produce, Simon Malls, Skinny Cow, SodaStream
Specialized Bicycle Components, Springs Global, Stanley , Stanley Steemer
Stein Mart, Stylemark, Sy Kessler Sales, T-Mobile
Teasdale Quality Foods, TeleTech Holdings, The Columbus Dispatch, The Hillman Group
The Maryland Jockey Club, The Mohawk Group, The Republic of Tea, Tiger Balm
Tim Hortons, Titleist, Trident Seafoods, True Religion Brand Jeans
Tubbs Snowshoes, U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation, Verbatim, Wacoal America
Walgreens, Wells Lamont, Woman Within, Yoplait
Young Dental, Zumba Fitness

Again, it's really, really important to remember this is an easily but hastily compiled list, based on nothing more than Google results. Not all the named companies have been closely associated with Komen. Not all the named companies are still associated with Komen. Many of the companies were partners and/or sponsors with state or local chapters of Komen what have (or I'm sure soon will) dissociate themselves with the extremist turn the national organization has taken. And absolutely, definitely, certainly not all the companies named (or possibly any of them!) can be assumed to actually approve of the new, anti-choice direction coming out of Komen HQ.

I'm... pretty sure, even assuming they take an official position at all, that many and possibly most of these companies would prefer not to have been dragged into this mess.  And if you're associated in a positive way with any of those companies and organizations (or others not on the list) then keep your association positive -- just quietly and calmly express your preference, suggest that there remain other perfectly respectable organizations that could still use corportate sponsorship, and let them know that you're sure that just as in the old days nobody ever got fired for buying IBM, these days nobody's likely to get fired for sponsoring, say, The American Cancer Society instead of Komen.  Meanwhile, if your association with one of these companies or organizations is not positive... eh, please remember you can catch more flies with honey than with bile... and that when someone has perhaps learned to prepare to be antagonized they're even more susceptible to calm words and sound advice.

An interesting exchange posted at Sex Worker Problems raises what seems like an imminently testable research question into whether or not sex-work legalization increases or decreases worker safety. First, here's the post

Anonymous asked

I am a dancer. Yes, though I may face social stigma as well, my cash flow is at least legal, so I couldn't even imagine the terror of possibly facing legal issues to earn my income. Out of curiosity... is the issue of illegality daunting/frustrating/scary? --- Much love and respect. This blog is amazing.

Thank you so much! The issue of illegality IS really daunting and scary. There are of course all kinds of resources for sex workers to do their best to screen clients, but yeah, the likelihood that a cop or a serial killer might be the next person you meet is… well it’s not high, really, but it’s much higher than it is in a lot of other occupations.

Source: Sex Worker Problems

And now here's the research question. Two questions, really.  Ok, actually maybe a whole series.

First, what are the assault, robbery, on the job harassment, and law-enforcement-action rates against dancers vs. otherwise comparable non-dance customer-contact employees (wait staff, bartenders, greeters, etc.) in "strip clubs?"

Next, what are the assault, robbery, harassment, and law-enforcement-action rates against dancers vs. otherwise comparable non-dance customer-contact employees in non-"stripper" bars and nightclubs?

In both these cases, above, both indicated professions are legal.  (The comparisons would be even more informative if data could also be gathered in areas where dancing is not legal.)

Next question, slightly further afield:

What are the assault, robbery, harassment, and law-enforcement-action rates against "escort" sex workers vs. otherwise comparable non-dance customer-contact workers who work in similar circumstances (e.g. massage therapists, housecleaners, or even legal "strip-o-gram" delivery persons.)

Offhand my guess would be that in all cases where both sets of professions are legal rates will be fairly similar.  My further guess would be that in all cases where one set of professions is legal but the other is not, workers in the non-legal arena are subject to considerably greater jeopardy.

I'm... pretty sure the results would not be prediction-defying.  It's also entirely possible that the research has already been done.

Still, considering the rather incessant drumbeat about the relative perils of legalized vs. non-legal sex work it would be nice to have some solid data to base actual policy on.