‘Tis the strumpet’s plague/To beguile many, and be beguil’d by one. – William Shakespeare, Othello (IV, i)
In a reply to my column of July 18th, Sailor Barsoom said “Everybody talks about streetwalkers and pimps, but I hear that pimps aren’t as common as they used to be,” to which I replied “They were never as common as they used to be.” I promised to explain this more fully, and today is the day. As we have discussed before, most people think the vast majority of whores are streetwalkers; they also believe that nearly all of us have “pimps”, men who dominate and control us, beating us up and taking our money. Ignorant men like to believe this because it reduces the whore to a slave under male control; cops like to believe it because it lets them pretend they aren’t the chief danger in our lives; neofeminists like to believe it because it feeds into their lurid fantasies of male oppression and the whore as damaged, exploited victim; legislators like to believe it because it gives them an excuse to harass us even in countries where prostitution itself is legal; Hollywood likes to believe it because it’s tawdry and provides material for cheap melodramatics; and moralists like to believe it because it gives them something to “save” us from even though extramarital sex no longer carries a social stigma. The fact that the pimp as he is generally imagined is actually relatively rare does not matter to any of these people; after all, if the facts do not conform to the theory it is the facts which must be disposed of.
We’ve all played the game of looking for shapes in the clouds, and many have taken the Rorschach test which asks what we see in inkblots. The ancients made pictures out of the stars, and fundamentalist Christians used to take great pleasure in playing records backward in order to “find” Satanic messages therein. The human mind is very good at imposing order on chaos, and this is harmless unless we start to delude ourselves that what we see is actually there. Unfortunately, many people do just that, and others to whom they point out these imaginary patterns usually see exactly what they’re told they will see. This is a universal tendency of the human psyche, and not one limited to the stupid or weak-minded; many a scientific experiment has been ruined because of “experimenter expectation”, the tendency of even the intelligent mind when confronted with data it does not comprehend to interpret that data according to its preconceptions. Put more plainly, when any person looks at something he does not understand, he tends to see exactly what he expects to see. So when an outsider looks at a whore’s life, he tends to interpret every non-customer male who has any kind of relationship with her as a “pimp”, because of course everybody knows that all whores have pimps.
If we’re going to talk about the men who aren’t pimps, it’s probably a good idea to start by defining what a pimp is in the first place. Once all emotion and exaggeration is stripped away, a pimp is essentially a manager (and indeed some girls even call their pimps that). He may book calls or provide housing for the girl, advertise for her, protect her, and arrange for bail if she is arrested; in return for these services she pays him a percentage of her earnings. As in any business, there are good managers and bad ones, and a bad pimp can be very bad indeed; the fees he demands could be wildly out of proportion to the services he provides and he might use coercion, intimidation, violence or even more extreme means to have his way. But the same thing could be said of husbands or boyfriends; what makes a pimp different? Now, at this point I must disclose that I am very prejudiced against pimps; the idea of an adult man being supported by a woman grates on my nerves like nails on a chalkboard. However, I am trying to view this subject dispassionately, and as I said in my July 14th column my dislike for something is insufficient grounds for banning it. In a way, I’m almost as much of an outsider to the reality of pimps as you are; I have never had a pimp, and only rarely encountered girls who did because they’re quite rare in the world of escorts. In all fairness, I don’t know for a fact that even those were pimps; it may merely have been my perception. And though it galls me to have to say this, is a non-abusive pimp really anything different from a low-class, low-rent, unprofessional escort service? I’ve run into service owners who were only barely above the level of pimps; one in New Orleans whom I will discuss at length later was referred to by escorts who had left her service as “Pimp Mama” because of her lack of concern for her girls and her frequent attempts to control them by threats and histrionics. Despite my dislike, is it right to oppose pimps merely on principle, even if they treat their girls well and actually give them their money’s worth as good escort service owners do? In good conscience I must say no. The government must judge criminality on the behavior of an individual, not merely his status, and the right of individual choice MUST be respected in a free society, even if the majority don’t like that choice.
The stereotypical pimp is male, but in most times and places prostitution was a female business controlled by females; until recently streetwalkers always ran their own shows, and most brothels were owned and managed by women. The only places in which this was not true were those in which the state controlled the brothels, and even in those most were still run by women and the only men involved were the government bureaucrats sent to collect the state’s cut. Considering that these governments gave whores nothing but the promise that they would not be beaten, raped and arrested, they could be considered the first pimps. This system of “toleration” became widespread (most notably in France) in the early 19th century; though prostitution was not technically illegal, the police were given wide powers to “control” prostitutes and generally did so by what later generations called a “protection racket”, squeezing whores of every level for money and beating, raping and/or imprisoning those who refused to pay up. I find it terribly ironic that modern police tend to be so sanctimonious about pimps when they in fact were the first men to use violence to control and exploit whores, and even today tend to be a much greater danger to those at every level of the profession.
Pimps as we now know them did not appear until just before the turn of the 20th century, when the widespread “purity movement” (an outgrowth of early feminism which was also responsible for such brilliant ideas as Prohibition and attempts to prevent little boys from masturbating) pressured legislatures throughout the West (especially in the US) to ban prostitution outright rather than merely seeking to “control” it. Since under these new laws women could in many cities be arrested on suspicion of prostitution for simply walking in the street unescorted, streetwalkers began to employ men either to escort them so as to throw the police off, or to keep a lookout at the ends of streets so the whores could rush inside when the cops showed up. And when a whore was busted despite precautions, a male contact who held some of her money could arrange bail. In other words, the first true pimps appeared as a direct result of the criminalization of prostitution, which puts modern “anti-pimping laws” on shaky moral ground indeed. Sadly, this is not the only time in which the government’s excuse for some tyrannical law is the suppression of a problem which would not exist but for other tyrannical laws. If prostitution were not illegal there would be no need for pimps, and the streetwalkers who keep pimps only do so because they fear the cops more.
Even among streetwalkers, though, the stereotyped abusive pimp is fairly rare. American studies show that fewer than half of all streetwalkers have pimps, and of those that do the majority of them control the pimps rather than the other way around. The English Collective of Prostitutes estimates that fewer than 10% of English streetwalkers are encumbered by a “heavy ponce” (abusive pimp) and French estimates are lower still, about 5% of streetwalkers. Using the English estimate as a median between the higher American and lower French figures, and applying it to our standard 15% estimate of the percentage of all whores who are streetwalkers, we arrive at a figure of roughly 1.5% of all Western prostitutes who are controlled by pimps. This is a far cry from the “vast majority” claimed by the anti-whore propagandists who infest government and the feminist movement, and similar to most estimates of the number of women with abusive husbands or boyfriends.
Given these figures it seems likely that there are more pimp wannabes in this country than actual pimps. So, who are all of these men that the authorities and neofeminists claim are pimps? Many of them are simply boyfriends or husbands of whores; my own husband could have been accused of being a pimp from 2004-2006, a period when my income exceeded his by a narrow margin. Some are just male friends or roommates, including gay prostitutes. Others are men employed by escorts or call girls as drivers; some girls prefer not to worry about parking, and it’s nice to know there’s a big burly man nearby who knows exactly which hotel room one is in should a problem arise. Still others are dependent family members, such as minor sons or invalid fathers or brothers. The assumption that any man who keeps company with a whore and isn’t a customer must be a pimp has its roots in the old Madonna/whore duality again, specifically the virulent 19th-century “whore as monster” variety, because it pretends that whores are abnormal and therefore incapable of having the same sort of romantic, familial or economic relationships as any other woman.
As I said in the first paragraph, though, most people never let the facts get in the way of their preconceptions, especially when there’s political coin to be made. So in many countries (such as Canada and the UK) where public opinion and/or feminist pressure has caused laws criminalizing prostitution itself to be repealed, there are still plenty of laws which criminalize nearly everything a prostitute might do either to perform her trade or even just to live, and some of the most pernicious of these are the “living off of the avails” laws. These laws, supposedly intended to control our old bogeyman the pimp, criminalize any person who is supported even in part by a whore. So though prostitutes themselves are no longer criminals their boyfriends, university-age dependent children, invalid parents, other prostitutes with whom they share expenses, or anyone else they as much as ASSIST with money are. Thus whores are once again made pariahs, prohibited by law from having families or even roommates, while the legislators can feel “progressive” about repealing their old discriminatory laws and replacing them with ones intended to “protect” us from domination by males (except, of course, for the male government officials who write laws to control us and collect “fines” from our earnings). So at the end of the day abusive, controlling pimps who steal whores’ money and give them nothing in return really aren’t that rare after all; they just have government plates on their pimpmobiles and wear uniforms or judicial robes rather than garish outfits with silly hats.
I guess I’m probably the closest thing this board has to a pimp on it. That said, my ladies and I don’t think of me that way. Basically I perform the role Maggie noted led to the creation of what we think of as a pimp: I provide them with an added layer of protection against dangers in society. I bail them out if they get in trouble. I follow up on them to make sure clients don’t hurt them, and I provide them with rides to places they need to go to make their money. It’s a symbiotic relationship, and we’re all perfectly happy with it since it provides them with a way to make a lot of money relatively safely and me with a way to make up for income I’ve lost since a knee injury cost me a very lucrative job as an oil-field roughneck. Society looks down on all of us connected with this particular industry because of various sanctimonious, moralistic reasons. What all those reasons basically boil down to though is a desire by people in or out of power to impose their personal mores on others. This kind of megalomaniacal thinking makes our industry much more complicated and dangerous than it needs to be. It also makes things that should simply discreet venture into the realm of the clandestine, thus further arousing societal suspicions and calls for more laws to “eliminate” what these girls have found a high-paying market for. It’s sad when you think about it. The US was founded on the concept of freedom and individuality, yet large segements of our society want to use the rule of law to interfere with others’ ability to make money and use their bodies in ways they see fit.
I don’t think of male escort service owners as pimps simply because of their gender; Doug, whom I mentioned in my July 25th column, was the best service owner in New Orleans beside myself. He cared about his girls and their safety and if he felt even the slightest bit wary about a customer he mentioned it when offering the call. Contrast that with “Pimp Mama” whom I mentioned in the text; not only did she not mention forebodings to her girls, she would even keep offering an iffy call to different girls until she found one who would take it. Professionalism and genuine concern for others are the criteria by which a service owner is judged, not gender.
[…] and fear-mongering going on in the area of sex and sex-related crimes. Consider e.g. traffickinge, pimpse, satanistic child-abusee, and campus […]
Westminster UK “living off the avails” law, here known as “living off immoral earnings,” has been replaced by “controlling for gain,” so now – to the relief of some sex workers’ families – it is legal to live off a sex workers’ earnings so long as one doesn’t ‘control’ her (or him).
Problematically, the Westminster statute does not define “control” (though Scottish law – which does not require the ‘gain’ element – does). Notwithstanding some ministers’ evidence to the contrary, some receptionists have been prosecuted for control, a good example being here:
http://stephenpaterson.wordpress.com/2009/03/04/the-wolverhampton-wanderers/
Scottish law defines control as anything that aids or abets the prostitution, so that if a man was propositioned and declined, but indicated perhaps that there were many men in an adjoining street who may be interested, he could be prosecuted.
It’s amazing to me that with all the information available to modern people, so few recognize vaguely-worded laws as the clear and present danger to freedom that they are. The less specifically a crime is defined, the more people police and prosecutors can attack with it, yet most people still do not protest vague words like “control” in these laws. 🙁
…and, of course, the more expensive it is in terms of both time and money for the courts to sort it out later.
The word “brothel” has never been defined in statute in Westminster either. In 1885, they created a law making it illegal to own or manage a brothel, then left it to the courts to decide what a brothel was. We’re still living with the upshot.
Some basic quality control mechanism for our legislation would seem a good idea, given that Parliament doesn’t bother.
If it’s any consolation, Congress doesn’t bother either. 🙁
Thanks for the links to the streetwalker and pimp posts, Maggie! (You quote the English Collective of Prostitutes as the source for the 10% figure of prostitutes with pimps in England; where do the figures for America and France come from? I’d like to know what studies you mentioned as having these figures; they probably also describe their estimation methodology, which I would like to know more about.)
A tangential question: if, as you describe them, pimps are really more like managers, then it is hardly the case that they are “adult men being supported by women,” but actually adult men providing services to, and being paid by, women — like cab drivers, lawyers, or dentists could also be. Why the visceral reaction (‘like nails on a chalkboard’) then? Or were you thinking about some specific subgroup of pimps?
The American and French figures are from research quoted by Nicki Roberts in her excellent book Whores in History, which is reviewed on my bibliography page.
My feelings about pimps are visceral, and inspired by the bad ones who are essentially lazy, abusive boyfriends supported by their women. Even though that sort are in the minority, I still tend to dislike all pimps because of them. It’s not rational, but I’m only human.
I know — it’s like me not ever wanting to eat shrimp just because it reminds me of cockroaches. Irrational, but I’m human, too.
[…] the crime of prostitution allows women to report those assholes. I highly suggest you read http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/pimps/ to get the REAL story of this pimp […]
In this post you say that the thought of an adult man being supported by a woman grates on your nerves. Why is that? Do you feel the same way if a man were supporting an adult woman?
Nope. Just old-fashioned, I reckon.
i have been pimped before by different men and they are all lazy manipulative and rely on a womans sexuealacts to provide them with money and 80 percent of the prostitutes dancers and escorts i know have pimps.i have never met a girl who is truly happy with her pimp and most of us go with one because we have no family and or friends so we basically pay them to care
Ava, it sounds to me like you either need to move in better circles, or else you’re making the same mistake as amateurs in equating any male companion as a “pimp”. Nearly every escort I know has both family and friends, and I feel truly sorry for those who don’t; that’s a very hard road to travel.
Maggie, I just found your column and feel like this is the first well spoken thoughts I have read on the business I have been in for almost a decade. I have never thought of myself as a pimp, but I do own a service and have been running it for years. I am wondering if there really are decent people still in the business as I have yet to meet an honest agency owner here in Los Angeles and have heard some absolute horror stories from some of the girls I have employed. I don’t know if it’s the whole LA thing, or if it has just gotten worse, but I am currently planning my exit strategy, especially in this economy. Would love to hear back but understand you are busy. Keep up the amazing writing.
Welcome, Joey! A lot of the anti-prostitute fanatics characterize agency owners as “pimps”, but I never have; I’ve written on a number of occasions about Doug, a service owner in New Orleans, who was about as un-pimplike as I can imagine.
I don’t think it’s just an “LA thing”; there are dishonest service owners everywhere just as there are dishonest owners of every business. The difference is that in most businesses workers have some legal recourse to complain, while in the U.S. sex workers lack that right because the anti-whore crowd encourages government to treat as as non-persons, objects to be “rescued” but neither cared about nor listened to.
[…] with which we’re unfamiliar; sex workers have to deal with the same thing, as I explained in this early column about how outsiders perceive just about every non-customer male in a hooker’s life as a […]
Hello, I have been reading your blog today and I must say I have learnt more than my female relatives have taught me for the past ten years. Though I am not associated, nor know anyone who is, with the profession, I am glad to understand a subject which has always been a taboo in my family.
Seems I never commented on this one. Don’t know why not.
Thanks for setting us straight on this issue.
Interesting. Thanks for the discussion.
[…] prostitution of children. The brothels were closed, girls were forced into the streets, and the pimp as we know him today first appeared; in the name of “freeing” women from male “exploitation,” these so-called […]
[…] ett krig mot barnprostitution. Bordeller stängdes, kvinnor kastades ut på gator och hallicken så som vi känner honom idag kunde göra sitt första framträdande. I sin kamp att frigöra kvinnor från det manliga […]
I wonder how many women who ARE engaging in prostitution at the urging of, and to the financial benefit of, abusive men do so in part because they do not see themselves as whores or want to be whores, but rather are clinging desperately to some myth about love and “sacrifice” that the abusive male feeds them. The only two cases of actual abusive pimping I have ever come across were both situations in which women very, very desperate for a man to love them, and also confused about what love meant; being in one case rather young and immature and the other, remarkably stupid, they believed that finding a man who would “really love them” was the answer to all their problems and would automatically mean happiness and safety and fulfillment. Unscrupulous predators latched on to both of these women, quickly convinced them that Prince Charming had arrived, swept them away from any previous social support structures, and only then started suggesting that feminine love and devotion should extend to having sex with whoever the boyfriend decided. In one case, he used some threats of implicit violence to manipulate her, but in the other, all that was required was emotional blackmail in the form of “if you don’t do this then you don’t really love me and we aren’t really soulmates and it would just kill me, and how could you want to hurt me, baby, look at the romantic poetry and jewelry I have brought you in the last week!”
Leaving a pimp who “controls” a woman by means such as those is similar to leaving any other abusive, controlling male with whom any woman has a relationship, the primary psychological barrier being that the woman wants so badly to believe the illusion that he offers her (I really love you, baby, I don’t mean to hurt you, you just drive me so crazy because I love you SO much) and does NOT want to give it up, or have to admit to herself or perhaps others that she is not living in a wonderful romance, but being used by a parasite, or face trying to live with the reality of being a divorced ex-wife of a batterer or victim of a con man. The madonna-whore dichotomy, that font of endless lousy consequences for honest intelligent persons of both sexes, reinforces the problem for victims of pimps because it means that a woman who has sex is only “good” as long as she is motivated by love for the right man (not the wrong one, no no no!) is one of the nastiest myths that encourages women to lie to themselves and to men about sex and money. Criminzalization, of course, makes it much easier to threaten such women, and the general social deprivation of the rights and privileges of humanity is a potent lever used against them.
[…] as heroin addicts. The proportion of prostitutes with abusive pimps in the general population has been estimated at […]
[…] no good data to suggest anything but a tiny fraction of sex workers are trafficked. (She estimates the percentage of prostitutes controlled by pimps at 1.5%.) What’s certain is that a lot of prostitutes who choose the work because it pays well […]
[…] considered a prerequisite for being “sex trafficked.“ And of those pimps, at least half are likely to work for the prostitutes rather than vice versa. So describing Backpage as a “notorious“ place to pick up an underage […]