Rant of the week — terminology

I’ve expressed before my distaste for the term “clockwatcher,” my belief that “MILF” should be dropped as essentially meaningless, and my confusion about why the P4P community happened to choose “MSOG” as a metaphor.  I’ve talked about how participants in the P4P community refer to each other.  And, although I may not have mentioned it, certainly a common topic in the P4P community is the lack of a consensus on what “GFE” means and why it is used misleadingly. 

But in recent months another acronym (OK, technically an “initialism”; see the distinction here) has cropped up that has become, I think, my new “least favorite term used in P4P.” 

GPS.  In civilian-speak, that would be “Global Positioning Satellite”; in P4P, “Golden Pussy Syndrome.”  Used to refer to escorts who have an over-elevated opinion of their desirability to clients and who, because of that, behave in ways that other escorts do not and/or that P4P clients find objectionable or offensive.

Leaving aside for the moment the possible inherent hostility and borderline misogyny, it bothers me because in several ways it’s a logically incoherent concept.  What the hell does it mean?  From the use I’ve seen of it, there appear to be two primary prongs.

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The first, I think, relates to being difficult/impossible to work with.  In short, being demanding, unprofessional, or unreliable because she believes that her desirability insulates her from the consequences of such behavior.  In some respects, I can understand using GPS to describe such escorts.  Such behavior can be pretty annoying.  But there are a couple of problems with it. 

For one thing, GPS implies an arrogant attitude on her part: that she knows it’s wrong and does it anyway because she thinks she’s so hot she can get away with it.  But for many ladies who engage in behavior, I suspect it’s not really arrogance.  There are some young, flaky ladies who just seem incapable of professional behavior, not because they’re arrogant but because they don’t even realize that anyone would consider their behavior objectionable.  That doesn’t seem to fit well with the label GPS.

For another thing, the objectionable behavior that qualifies as GPS is already starting to be “defined down.”  Blithely no-show a confirmed appointment, without a second thought, because she decided to go to the mall instead?  Sure.  Lackadaisical attitude about responding to email inquiries?  OK, I can see that too.  But having strict screening standards???  Irritation, when the prospective client asks for something without bothering to check her profile where it states she doesn’t do that???  Not being available on a convenient schedule???  Clients are on their way to defining GPS as anything other than what the client wishes they would do.  It’s not all the way there yet, but there are signs that GPS is beginning to morph into a sense of entitlement by the client rather than a response to truly objectionable ways the lady chooses to run her business.

If a lady is truly unprofessional and unreliable, just tell us in what respect.  Using “GPS” isn’t necessary, or even meaningful.

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The second prong on “GPS” relates to price — that the lady is setting her price too high.  But that whole concept falls apart on examination, I think.  “Too high” for whom?

If they’re saying “too high in the consensus of the community,” it’s often illogical, false, and/or unverifiable.  A lady’s rates don’t have to be at the “right level” for the majority of the community, only for enough clients to give her the volume of business she wants.  So the consensus of the community is an illogical standard.  If 95% of the community thinks she’s over-priced, that’s meaningless if the other 5% want to see her.  There are thousands of P4P clients in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area; any one lady only needs to see a relatively small fraction of that population.  Arguably, that makes the “too high” also false.  If a lady sets her rate at $500 and gets as much income as she wants, her rates obviously are not too high for her or for her clients.  Even a temporary reduction or offering specials don’t necessarily demonstrate that her rates are too high; they may only be a response to the current economy in general, and may return to what they were before in the near future as the economy improves.  It takes time to be sure that a lady has really over-priced herself, and a conclusion that she has is often premature.  On top of all that, the “consensus of the community” is not exactly verifiable, is it?  You may know what a small group of the most active members of a particular P4P review/discussion board think.  But what about all the members that don’t post or review very often?  Not to mention all the P4P clients in the area who aren’t even members of that site?

And if they say “too high in my opinion,” well, that may well be true, but so what?  P4P is not a fungible service where it doesn’t matter from whom you receive it, and WALDT/CASG.  That a lady’s rates are too high in Joe’s opinion is (or should be) meaningless to George, because George and Joe may have very different opinions about the desirability of time spent with that lady. 

There’s actually some built-in but often unnoticed arrogance by this use of “GPS.”  Those who use it this way, I suspect, are thinking something along the lines of “Mary isn’t worth $350 because Jill is just as good if not better and she only charges $150.”  These clients are not only projecting their opinion of Mary onto everyone else, but also exactly the same for Jill.  Jill is a bargain at $150?  No, not necessarily.  I may see Mary and pay $350 whereas they wouldn’t be willing to pay more than $150; but they might see Jill and pay $150 whereas I wouldn’t see Jill even for free.  I suspect that such clients: (1) think it’s entirely acceptable to post that Mary has GPS, because she charges more than they would pay; but (2) might be upset if I posted that Jill had GPS because she charged “more than she was worth” to me.   Maybe they would accept my judgment of Jill as equally valid to their judgment of Mary . . . but I suspect not.

If you think a particular lady charges more than she’s worth to you, that’s just WALDT/CASG.  We don’t really need to know it, and if you feel compelled to share, “GPS” is an arrogant and meaningless way to do so.

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I said above “leaving aside for the moment,” so let’s return to that now.

Part of the reason I dislike the term “GPS” is what seems to be a level of hostility, perhaps even misogyny, that is unnecessary from my perspective.  (The following focuses on the price aspect, although generally applicable in the unprofessional/unreliable aspect as well.)

Would I prefer that the ladies I see only charged $150 an hour?  Hell, yes!  I’d like to make my P4P budget stretch further, as much as the other guy.  If they don’t, though — well, if they’re still within my budget, I’ll see them.  If they’re too high for my budget, I won’t.  But in either case I don’t waste time and emotional energy complaining about their rates.  Their rates are what they are; I accept or decline, as the case may be, and then forget about it. 

Are some tickets for the Dallas Mavericks way too expensive for me?  Sure; some of those go $90K for a single seat for the season and I don’t enjoy basketball that much.  Are there some bottles of single-malt Scotch that are way too expensive for me?  Sure; I’m not going to routinely buy $500 bottles of liquor because it’s not worth that much to me.  But I have better things to think about than the fact that a particular good or service is priced for more than it’s worth to me.  Once I decide I don’t want to purchase that good or service, it’s just off my radar screen.  Or, in the context of P4P, as someone put it rather bluntly once: spend your time thinking about who you want to fuck, not who you don’t want to fuck.  You’ll be much happier.  (Yeah, I might be much happier if I also just ignored things like this that irritate me — but if I did, I’d also be kicked out of the Fraternal Order of the Elderly Curmudgeons.)

I’m actually puzzled a little bit by what often comes across to me as anger expressed in the P4P context about prices.  If it’s not anger/hostility, why do they express it so freely?  Do those same people bitch and moan that way about other goods and services that are priced higher than they would like to pay, or do they just ignore those the way I ignore the cost of Mavericks’ tickets or high-end Scotch?  Is their resentment of prices expressed that fervently only (or almost only) with respect to P4P?  Maybe some of them are equaly opportunity complainers, but I suspect a fair number of them are not.  For that second group, I’ve not yet thought of a better explanation than negative emotions and motives.

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Well, it’s a catchy little phrase and there are a lot of people who enjoy using it, so I expect it will stick around.

I still think it’s a stupid, annoying term.