By Peter Berton

YNOT – Entertaining. Thought-provoking. A peek behind the scenes in the daily life of a beautiful Canadian T-girl escort. These descriptions and more are apt for TS Sunshine’s long-running blog.

Sunshine took a few minutes away from her writing to tell us why she started the blog and why she’s kept at it.

Prepare yourselves. Sunshine wields her intellect like a surgeon wields a scalpel — and the two instruments are equally sharp.

YNOT.com: What motivated you to start blogging?

TS Sunshine: Escort websites are a relatively new idea. Twenty years ago, there was no such thing.

The term call-girl was, only a few years ago, well suited to describe how to access escort services. You picked up the phone book or newspaper, found an ad that appealed to you and dialed the number. Within an hour, the girl would be at your doorstep, ready to provide the sort of companionship you wanted.

As the internet became a source of information for more people, escorts created a presence on the net or risked going unnoticed by prospective clients. Now, you are more likely to find what you seek on one of many websites that list escort services. Many escorts do not have a website proper, but many of the professionals do.

My first website left a lot to be desired. I put it together using FrontPage, and it was far from being a work of art.

I found a professional designer, and she put something together. The site went through several incarnations and, each time we redesigned, I added features that might be useful to viewers.

The blog came about when I wanted to address certain topics but, owing to the site’s design, had no place to put the information.

I don’t write often enough to call it a true blog, but it is a repository of semi-permanent articles which address issues as they arise.

What role does your blog fulfill for you, in terms of reaching clients?

Clients who are considering seeing a T-girl usually have many questions. They wonder about their sexuality; they wonder about what will happen during an encounter. While these questions may seem unique to them, they are, in fact, the same questions for every person interested in the third gender. Why not address these concerns on my site? This was the utility of the blog space at the onset, and those early articles are still posted, still read and still appreciated.

Since then, more transitory issues have been addressed on the blog. These articles come and go. I also use the space to hold pictures and video of an adult nature that have no home on the main part of the site. These articles are password-protected. I make the password available to the members of my mailing list and to anyone else who asks to see un-retouched pictures and explicit videos.

Let’s talk about some of the topics you have covered to date. Why did you write the post “Why Choose Me?”

This is an article that addresses a problem in advertising on the internet. The sites that run escort ads stipulate the format and content of the ads. The posting constraints are so rigid, all the ads look alike. It is perturbing to be forced into this homogeneity. A prospective client might well think that, barring the appearance of the escort, they are all alike. When it comes to T-girls, nothing could be further from the truth.

A T-girl who has transitioned yet still maintains her ability to achieve an erection and to ejaculate is as close to the fantasy term “shemale” as you can find. There really is no such thing as a shemale. It is a word made up by the porn industry. However, a preoperative or non-operative T-girl may approximate what it means to be a shemale.

Personally, I like using the term. In my opinion, this is what clients want when they seek out a T-girl escort.

Shemale escorts are rare; beautiful providers even more so. What you normally find are people masquerading as shemales: men who have not transitioned and have no intention to do so. Some also work as male escorts at the same time as they post ads representing themselves as shemales.

At the other end of the spectrum are T-girls who are no longer functional. They can only bottom. Without useful sexual organs, they cannot be considered shemales either.

I’m not a mind-reader but, based on my experience, most clients want to be topped. What is the point of seeking out a T-girl so you can top her? May as well be with a woman or a man. They are in for a disappointment if the T-girl can’t achieve an erection or ejaculate — or, expecting a shemale, they find themselves with a man in a dress.

Many T-girls advertise being fully functional, but it simply isn’t true.

What about the post “Finding the Right T-girl?”

Along the same lines as the previous article mentioned, I wanted to inform clients about the truth. They certainly weren’t getting it from the ads.

There’s money in escorting. There will always be people who want a piece of the pie. Scams, rip-offs, dishonest and unscrupulous advertisers — these are all too common. This is such a problem that many clients report being turned off by the whole experience and refuse to visit shemale escorts ever again.

While the scam artists may not care, I certainly do. I’m a legitimate escort, and I want clients to have a pleasant experience. I’m also a non-operative T-girl, and it offends me that scum give us a bad name.

If the ads didn’t permit advertisers to stand out, there had to be a way to do it. The blog was my answer to this problem.

A few years ago, before clients used the internet to find resources, there were clearly defined types of service providers with very little crossover. Now, all providers are lumped together under the same heading with no way to differentiate. Not much has changed in terms of the type of service providers that exist. What has changed is that they are all portrayed as being the same when they are not. A professional escort is described in the same way and using the same terms as a drug-addicted scam artist who will take your money and put you out or worse.

When you look at ads for T-girl escorts, you find everything from legitimate professionals to men wearing dresses. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with male escorts. What’s wrong is that clients have no way to differentiate between the ads. The only solution is for the client to research providers thoroughly before making a choice. That’s what I advocated in “Finding the Right T-girl.” It may seem like common sense, but it isn’t obvious to many clients.

One of your posts is titled “We are all created equal, but some are more equal than others.” What elicited that post? Was it an intentional nod to Orwell?

Recently, a scam artist came to Calgary and posted three different profiles, one male and two different shemale profiles. This person even took the trouble to create websites for the profiles to lend a legitimate air to them. All the information was false and all the pictures were stolen and were not pictures of the person perpetrating the scam.

It upsets me when I see this happening. I want to publicly denounce people who do this sort of thing, but I can’t. If I start posting the truth about other advertisers, I will be perceived as attacking the competition. My hands are tied. I can’t say anything.

In fact, it is the clients who should speak up, but they don’t say a word. That’s why these scams go on. If a single client spoke up on the forums, the scams would end.

There are many other instances of deceptive advertising which can be nullified by good research. The truth is it takes years to transition.

A beautiful T-girl doesn’t just appear from nowhere and hang up a shingle as an escort. If she is going to escort, it is during the expensive and difficult transition period. Clients who research will see her go through transition. They will be able to trace her history.

The only thing I can do is to explain the risks in general terms and advise clients to research providers before making an appointment.

What responses have you had to the blog?

My site has been around for a few years now. I get many responses to blog articles and, generally, people tell me they like the site.

It’s difficult to ascertain the number of people who read the blog and whether many find benefit in the information. I’m happy to keep the blog up and running as long as it reaches even a few people. It isn’t the main feature of my site, but it’s a useful forum for expanding on topics of interest.

Does the blog give you an unimpeded voice in the world?

Is it me or is this a strange question? You don’t need a blog to have an unimpeded voice in the world. In North America, everyone is free to say whatever they want, as long as it is not a prejudicial statement about a group.

Does the blog permit me to widely disseminate my message? That depends on readership. I can assure you, my readership is not high enough for the blog to be listed anywhere. It’s an escort website, not Wikipedia.org.

I have opinions like anyone else, and I understand the sex industry because I work in the field and I’ve read on the subject. The articles I write share these two perspectives.

This question brings up another matter: Is the internet a public space?

At first it was, to be sure. When the net was created, it depended on telephone lines. Snail mail and telephone communications were covered under common-carrier laws. These made it illegal to discriminate between pieces of mail or telephone calls based on content, point of origin or destination.

Each telephone call or piece of mail was treated like every other, none receiving a lower priority. Since the internet was initially telephony-based, it was included as a common-carrier facility, even if the signal was data instead of voice.

However, when broadband arrived, the internet was carried on cable wires, satellites, microwave and radio networks. Each of those carriers had different rules and, apart from telephony, none were deemed common carriers. Consequently, the internet is no longer considered a common carrier.

What this means is that carrier companies may, at their discretion, treat certain content with prejudice, slowing or blocking transmission, altering content, censoring, etc. These decisions are made from the perspective of profit, not the free flow of information.

I don’t believe escort websites are being blocked in North America, but certain content is blocked. Just as television news is biased, so is the internet becoming biased. Although I am not affected by this in my business, I am in favor of the internet being once again considered a common carrier. This is the only way it can remain free. But because government has been subverted by large corporations, I have little hope of this happening.