Virtue has a veil, vice a mask. – Victor Hugo
Last Tuesday (February 1st), someone calling herself “Bedelia” tried to reply to my “Numerology” column with the following response. As regular readers know, I don’t allow troublemakers to post freely on my blog; though I certainly believe in free speech, there are already beaucoup venues for trafficking fetishists, religious fanatics, neofeminists and other undesirables to spread their filth without my having to allow them into my online “house”. And like the unwanted visitors in the famous Monty Python sketch, once one admits such people they always wreak havoc and there is no guarantee that they’ll ever leave. I have nothing, however, against caging up such creatures in the back yard and letting my guests look at them while I point out their features of note. Here is one such trespasser; the first thing I want to point out is that, since she cannot refute the statistical analysis in the post to which she tried to reply, she does not even make the attempt but rather tries to misdirect the reader’s attention from the facts with a lurid story which also serves the rhetorical function of a gambit to establish herself as a more credible authority than I am. In other words, the reply is a stab at an “end run” around both the statistical facts in the essay and my established reputation.
I was a hooker for ten years in New York. Nearly every one I worked with had had an ‘entree’ into the life that included a systemic breaking, gang rape, and captivity. We were working under conditions extremely similar to trafficking. In my experience most ex-prostitutes are so traumatized they are extremely unlikely to tell people of their experiences. It took me 14 years to get to the point where I can talk about it anonymously on an online website.
The writer may indeed have experienced this or something like it, but this invalidates neither the experiences of other women nor the demonstrable fact that the vast majority of prostitutes are in the profession voluntarily. Pay close attention to the cleverly disguised attempt in the second-to-last sentence to cast doubt on the veracity of all of us whores who write online by the implication that “real” prostitutes are too traumatized to do so (she attempts this trick again, though much more directly, in the second excerpt below). It is certainly possible that “most ex-prostitutes” of Bedelia’s experience have indeed been traumatized, but she tells us nothing about what that experience might be. Is it limited to meetings held by trafficking fanatics, or to holding cells? And if the latter, on which side of the bars was Bedelia? It certainly doesn’t involve any interaction with the typical independent internet escort like 60% or more of prostitutes!
If I was raised in a convent I might well believe the statement “most women are celibate”, but that wouldn’t make it true. And limited experience is no excuse for ignorance or misrepresentation in this age of easily-obtained information; activist Jill Brenneman has written many times about her three years as an involuntary prostitute and she is quite clear on the differences between trafficked sex work and normal sex work. If Jill knows the difference, so should Bedelia before presuming to set herself up as an authority on the subject. But even if she’s simply ignorant or misguided, it doesn’t excuse this:
Sexual exploitation is what it is. Those who try to hide it or whitewash it behind rhetoric are using the voicelessly disenfranchised millions of women who suffer abusive, violence, and rape in prostitution to further their own political ends. It is possible to be doing this without being conscious of it — Usually when a woman is posing as a prostitute in favor of the sex industry, as Maggie is, she is making money off pimping (or being a madam). It’s an old trick (no pun intended).
The incredible hypocrisy of the second sentence (I think we all know which people are using women to further their own political ends) is followed by a blatant reiteration of the accusation from the first section above, and though I am the one she directly names the mud is clearly intended to splash on every other sex worker who speaks or writes in favor of decriminalization. As I pointed out in several recent columns (especially this one and its sequel), trafficking fanatics obviously don’t have a very high opinion of their audience because they clearly expect their statements, no matter how ludicrous, to be accepted at face value. It’s sad, however, to see that “anyone who would defend a witch (communist, pedophile, etc) must be one herself” is still the weapon of choice for those who dare to challenge the verity of statements and accusations made by witch-hunters.
Every day I wake up thinking of the women I worked alongside, the two who were murdered by my pimp, the one who took a fatal overdose and called our madam asking for help. THe [sic] madam did not send help, but later did send goons to the dead girls [sic] apartment to remove all signs of the madam’s associaiton [sic]. You see, the madam didn’t want to do anything that would bring attention to her business.
Beside the lurid appeal to emotion, the rest of this is exactly what those of us who support decriminalization constantly point out. Because our trade is illegal, shady escort services and abusive pimps can conduct their sleazy business unhindered; nasty things thrive in the dark. And as activists constantly point out, whores are not free to report rapes, theft, overdoses, trafficking or anything else because the cops simply arrest the reporter and ignore her report (a fine example appears in this coming Wednesday’s column).
Nearly all prostitution is backed by organized crime, and this threat on the prostitutes is ever-present.
This is the most blatant lie in the entire piece, and the one which most causes me to doubt the sincerity of the whole thing. The “organized crime” myth is favored by only one group, the police; even trafficking fanatics prefer to represent most pimps as “networked” but independent operators, with only some large operations backed by organized crime. Are there escort services owned by the Mafia, massage parlors controlled by Asian organized crime and girls trafficked by Eastern European syndicates? Undoubtedly, but to declare that mobsters are shaking down “nearly all” independent escorts and buying up agencies wholesale, or that every two-bit pimp is a card-carrying gangster, is like something out of a 1930’s crime movie.
I do think it should not be illegal to be a prostitute. I believe the best model is the Swedish and Norwegian legislation, where it’s legal to be a prostitute, but not legal to be a pimp or a John. The Canadian model, where pimping is illegal, but collecting money for sex is not illegal, is an improvement over the US system.
This last paragraph, I think, is the key to recognizing “Bedelia’s” scam; her support for the Swedish Model marks her as a neofeminist, and her claim that the omnipresent male oppressor is organized crime make me suspect she’s a policewoman; I’ve also never heard a real hooker use the word “john” for a customer, though perhaps New York streetwalkers do. Accusing one’s enemies of criminal motives is also a typical police-style propaganda trick, especially when accompanied by a conscious or unconscious assumption of authority as in the second and fourth excerpts above. Obviously, there’s no way to be sure of this because she isn’t going to admit it, but I suspect “Bedelia” to be an indoctrinated neofeminist, possibly a policewoman, attempting to win prostitutes and our female supporters over to the “Swedish Model” but too poorly-informed to realize that real escorts and others who know the truth about our lives can spot her a mile off.
To paraphrase:
“Gee, Maggie, I’m an advocate for women’s rights! Like you, I’m all for the legalization of prostitution. I just think all the customers and everyone else who helps facilitate the business of prostitution should be locked up.”
That makes about as much sense as saying, “I’m a big supporter of baseball. I’m just totally against the manufacture of balls and bats.”
The “Swedish model” is a con job on its face. It’s an insult to anyone with a brain.
Don’t forget the part where she accuses a coach who used to be a pitcher of “exploiting” the players for nefarious ends. 🙁
Was I so completely traumatized by my “entree” into the lifestyle, the beatings and gang rapes, the imprisonment by my pimp? It must have been so traumatic that I completely don’t remember any of it…. Oh wait, That’s because it Never Happened!
Noone ever coerced me, beat me, tricked me. I liked it. I still like it. Other than the cat and mouse game that we are forced to play with the police.
What do you think of False Memory Syndrome? I wonder if many “rescued prostitutes” that speak like this very suspicious self proclaimed prostitute do in fact have these memories planted just like so many children in sex abuse cases. Just a thought. I have known alot of hookers, and hookers who know hookers, and I have never heard of this initiation that she speaks of.
If she is a cop, it’s kind of funny that she would be writing these “I was a poor imprisoned hooker once” fantasy pieces….Maybe she is really a sub.
She could indeed be suffering from False Memory Syndrome; I didn’t think of it until you mentioned it but it’s certainly possible. It’s also possible she’s telling the truth about her experiences and exaggerating everything else, or that she completely made it up to give herself what she believes to be “street cred”…and failing miserably.
Cops make up all kinds of fantastic garbage, so it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if she were one, and perhaps not even really a “she”; for all we know “Bedelia” could be one of these Injustice Pervert types who likes to think he’s Batman because he sits on a computer all day pretending to be a teenage girl and having sex conversations with men in order to entrap them into saying something prosecutable. There’s simply no way to know; all we can say for certain is that “her” spiel is a mass of falsehoods, but not how or why they were spun. 🙁
We should contact Elizabeth Loftus and invite her into the discussion…
Good idea to publish and take apart the criticism instead of ignoring it. I’ve tried long-term correspondence with anti-sex crusaders, and although they don’t admit they’ve learned anything from me, I suspect that reason eventually has an effect on people.
I won’t ever be the one to make an argument that a survivor’s experiences aren’t true. There is no way to know and the risk of causing harm to someone that has already suffered isn’t worth it for purposes of making a point.
Taking Bedelia at face value, my guess is that she has just started coming out with her experiences, the anti’s are the ones that she has met and found support from and thus she is heavily influenced by their politics. It’s common for someone who has suffered a trauma in prostitution to find support within the anti movement because the movement often is attractive because it gives a political viewpoint and a support network to lash about at particular abusers by virtue of lashing out at oppression on a macro level.
The problem with this, is the anti movement only presents part of the story to the survivor and dumps a bunch of scary propaganda about the evil “pro prostitution” movement which they then make that alleged evil into the sex worker rights movement. Thus the anti movement recruits it’s newest soldier to fight their war against us, pumping the survivor with adrenaline of fighting back for all oppressed, fighting against their on oppression. They also make it very clear to even consider the sex worker rights position or have an amicable relationship with a sex worker rights activist is absolute heresy which comes with the heavy price of being expelled from the anti movement, losing an entire support network and being named as evil. The anti movement goes for the throat.
My guess is she doesn’t know what the sex worker rights movement truly stands for and has only the knowledge fed to her by her current allies. Allies that are in all likelihood pimping her as cannon fodder for their battles.
Jill, thanks so much for weighing in; I was really hoping you would give your perspective since of all the activist writers I know, IMHO yours is the most valuable in this instance. 🙂
I smell a little pork there too. My guess is it is really a male though.
It isn’t her story that brings thoughts of false memory, it is the way that she projects her experience to “nearly every woman” that she experienced, or worked alongside.
That notion that this happened to nearly everyone is what makes me think that this could have actually been a suggested memory. What she describes is the exception, and not the rule, I find her suggestion that her experience is commonplace among us all as highly suspect.
All I can think is, something in the milk ain’t clean.
Her perspective is cliche 90’s era radical feminist. Although I too struggle with the concept that a majority of who she has met has gone through what she has. I came from the opposite perspective in that I believed I was likely to be the only one to go through something like that. While I don’t really have an issue with her story, her political positioning of it at macro level speaks to me as added baggage to the story that doesn’t necessarily make sense. I mean, it’s counter intuitive to believe captivity would be the norm for a majority of prostitutes. How she arrives at that view is suspect.
Jill, that’s how I felt as well. If she had said something like “I know this isn’t common, but you have to recognize some women are indeed coerced and here’s how it happened to me”, I would tend to believe her because such a story is credible. But as soon as “every” and “nearly all” were trotted out and she (twice) accused all activists of deception, I got very suspicious very quickly. 🙁
I wasn’t specifically thinking of Bedelia in terms of false memory, but rather the more general case of prostitutes being given incentives to claim victimhood. After enough interaction with law enforcement, courts, and rescue organizations, you might be inclined to tell them what they want to hear. Whether that qualifies as false memory syndrome, I don’t know, but people who present themselves as victims in order to get more lenient treatment, could easily start to believe in their victimization.
ah, Bedelia. Yes, I had a run in with her myself here http://sincerelykellyjames.blogspot.com/2011/01/ignorance-of-week.html. I caught her running her mouth on the Rumpus about how Robin Few is a pimp and SWOP is a front for pimping.
I already tried to set her straight by being rational and kind towards her but at this point she’s simply trolling. Very nice job of eating the trolls Maggie 🙂
Wow, how did I miss that post? Was that the week I was sick? Good grief!
Y’all, it turns out I was giving Bedelia way to much credit when I wrote that she was being clever, and far too paranoid when I said I suspected she might be a cop. But now I’m extra-glad I didn’t give her access to post. Take a look at this thread; it’s definitely the same person, and according to her every single person in the sex worker rights movement is a pimp and she’s the only “real” hooker on any of these blogs and boards. The poor thing is definitely a few fries short of a Happy Meal, to say the least; I’m not a psychiatrist but her stuff reads like full-blown paranoid delusions. Yikes!
maybe more than a few fries short….that Rumpus thread was like wow right? so much so that I actually had pangs of conscience over being sarcastic believe it or not! but then I just couldn’t help it as the sheer volume of her posts indicated trolling…I dunno…but you’re right – you don’t need that kind of mess all over your digital floor!
Either trolling or plain bat-shit craziness. Considering she calls COYOTE a “front for pimps” and refers to strip-club house mothers as “madams”, I think it’s safe to assume the latter. 🙁
I thought that name was familiar! I read that blog post at Kelly’s site along with what she wrote in the Rumpus room. Bunch of blah blah blah that turned out to be.
Here’s what kinda makes me skeptical about Bedelia:
“It’s an old trick (no pun intended).”
Is she serious? I mean, come on.
Wow, and here I thought I became a prostitute because I like both sex and money. And most of my clients were sweethearts!
LOL, that is a very reasonable reason 🙂
I’d like to believe you’re a hooker because you like sex and money, but because I’m a product of the mainstream press, I know someone must be holding a gun to your head forcing you to say that because all prostitutes are tragically forced into the business as children (age 12-14) and later forced to stay in the business to feed their drug habit, withering away from sexually transmitted diseases, even as their own children are held hostage until they too are forced to work the streets and back alleys (which, as everyone knows, is where all prostitutes work).
You’re right! I’m typing this right now in a hovel with a gun to my head. Or am I an evil madam? Are madams controlled by pimps as well or are they independent members of the Patriarchy? Is it still a patriarchy if there are women in it? Help! I don’t know which lies to believe! 😉
me too…noooo Mr Pimp put the gun away! My pimp forces me to sell my time, takes all my money, and then he forces me to write all this shit defending prostitution as an individual right! Help!
lol
LOL! 😀
Well, the Bedilias of the world were going to find you sooner or later.
Okay, after watching Python on Youtube for an hour or so (damn that list of videos to the side)…I remembered what I wanted to add.
Most escorts/massage parlour girls that I’ve encountered first entered sex work through stripping (or cocktailing at a strip club). I hesitate to say this because I don’t want to make the argument that strip clubs are a “gateway.”
The reason for this waitress/stripper/escort path is simple: strip clubs are legal and fairly safe environments to learn about sex work and male clients. More money can be had by moving out of the strip club and so the women who wish to pursue that path do. Plenty of women remain as strippers because they don’t wish to go further into sex work. Interestingly, many high-end escorts first started out as strippers.
All this illustrates is that the majority of sex workers are adults making their own choices about their work.
Trafficking victims exist, but their numbers do not make up the majority. I daresay many trafficking victims do not wish to remain in sex work after leaving their situation, which would lessen even further the number of victims still active in sex work. (I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to remain in sex work after going through the experiences of being kidnapped and “groomed.”)
Jill and I have discussed many times the rather insidious agenda of the antis and how they blatantly exploit trafficking victims for the victims’ valuable stories. It’s a re-victimization and exploitation that’s approved, condoned and makes good money for the big-name feminists who “groom” the victims for speaking events.
XX
Sorry about distracting you with Python! 😀
Fortunately, I met enough feminists at UNO in the mid-’80s for my eyes to be opened to their agenda, and by the early ’90s their Neomarxist “end justifies the means” philosophy and total disregard for anything real women might want had become abundantly clear to me. But I really feel sorry for the women who fall into their clutches and don’t realize that all mainstream feminists want is power for themselves by any means necessary – including the exploitation of vulnerable women. 🙁
Her misinformation about Coyote and SWOP. They are the classic lessons taught to new activists by the antis. Instantly making SWOP and Coyote and enemy without so much as a thought.
There is a lot about Bedelia’s story that is intertwined with politics at too advanced a level for someone who just came out. I’m not saying her story isn’t true. But is she as new an activist as she states? Or if so, the likelihood is that she is fronting for someone who has the academic knowledge but lacks the street cred. Another thing common to the anti movement.
What strikes me as counter intuitive is naming her pimp in capital offenses. Who is behind that? That isn’t something that logic would say take on as a new activist. I’m decades from my time with the pimp and he still scares the shit out of me. I don’t need to be in his radar again.
I won’t go in the direction of either false memory syndrome or accusing her of making it up. But the backdrop she frames her experiences in doesn’t make sense to me. If it took her 14 years to dare to discuss it why would she dare to name him in capital offenses? Something sure to get his attention. That doesn’t add up. Someone, Farley, Craft, someone, is likely pushing her buttons and exploiting her for her experiences. Cliche for antis as the elite of the movement have no street cred. So they act as manager to someone new to mix the political with the life.
IMO, whoever advised her to publicly state her pimp killed multiple prostitutes is an exploitative piece of shit. If someone kept you captive, raped and tortured you and had that much control over your life, would you ever feel safe enough to risk their wrath again by naming them in capital offenses? Maybe i’m just a coward.
You, a coward? Like Hell you are. I’ve read enough of your writing to know that you’re a lot braver than I am. It wasn’t until after I read your post about your rape by the air marshal that I had the nerve to publish the story of my own rape by cops, and even then I couldn’t be nearly as graphic as you were.
so the antis are exploiting the experiences of traumatized trafficking victims who are already a few fries short as a means to their own ends.
real fucking nice. that really makes me sick 🙁
I think it’s more likely that they took advantage of her trust to steal those fries. 🙁
Bedelia is likely being fed the concept that she is fighting her oppressor and recovering by lashing out at the evil “pro prostitution” people as a vicarious attack on those who harmed her. It is the standard anti firing solution at their supposed enemies. They will use Bedelia for as long as she will do their bidding and be the good soldier. They will encourage her to open up all the harm done to her to the world. Regardless of whether or not she is ready to open that up and regardless of the harm done to her. Depending on who she is aligned with, they probably will encourage her to reframe her experiences to make them worse.
My guess is she has been played but doesn’t realize it. The people she is aligned with are as much a danger to her emotionally as any pimp. More harm emotionally was done to me by rad fem activists than any pimp.
I”m not defending Bedelia. I don’t like her spewing hatred at people in our movement. But I can understand from experience where she is coming from. The difference between her and I, is that I never cared about the alleged pro prostitution evil side thing. I had no interest in fighting with people that I didn’t even know. If anything most of my fighting was with anti’s who considered themselves the leaders of the movement because I balked at their fucked up bullshit and their ethical breaches. That they talked down to me and others who had been in the sex industry and hadn’t ever been in it themselves always pissed me off and I tended to be vocal about that.
I don’t believe she has false memory syndrome. I do see a probability that she has been encouraged to reframe experiences and is using revisionist history encouraged by whoever she is being supported by to better her arguments. I agree with Maggie, they took advantage of her to steal those fries and want to replace them with their own pre programmed fries.
@Maggie, I just read what happened to you with the police. First, I’m really sorry you had to go through that. You did absolutely nothing to deserve anything like that. IMO you did the right thing in not fighting them either during the rape or afterward. It is a slow motion gang rape to try to go through the system and fight back. Especially against any kind of law enforcement. You can’t win that kind of fight.
I really wish you didn’t have to go through any of that. That you opened up publicly about it is really really brave. You are certainly as brave as you see me as being. You did the right things, did what you had to in order to survive. Ultimately surviving is the only thing that matters.
Thank you, Jill. I have no tolerance for women who haven’t been raped trying to tell those who have been what they “should” have done; I’ve even seen men try to give such unsolicited advice, which is not only insensitive but mind-bogglingly presumptuous. 🙁
Dear Maggie, as an MVS (which stands for murder victim survivor. We are the surviving family/friends of murder victims) I’ve heard this kind of garbage also, unfortunately. I’m sorry you have. It’s disgusting. 2 of my favorites: an “expert” online who went to 1 class to teach him about crime victims told me I hadn’t recovered enough, wasn’t healed enough, etc. I had some dear friends defend me against him which I was very thankful for. I also was told by another online “expert” that I handled the stalking/harrassment I experienced at work a few years ago the wrong way. I haven’t been through exactly what you have, but do know how horrible it is to have people who have never been through the same thing do this.
I would never claim that only a person who has been through x experience can talk about that experience in an academic sense; what I object to is unsolicited criticism of the coping strategies, healing progress, etc of someone who been through a given trauma from those who have not been through anything like it. Everyone is different and has her own path to recovery.
I agree 100% that even those who haven’t been through something CAN talk about it in an academic sense. 1 of the worst things in society is the spoiled brat mentality of wanting everything NOW. This extends to those is recovery, unfortunately. These people want you to recover FAST and have NO struggles. That’s an evil lie. 2 terms that MVS HATE and I hate them along with my fellow MVS are: move on and get over it. We should hate these terms as they’re very arrogant and cruel at the least. Recovery takes TIME and WORK and those who want the easy way out don’t want to hear that. Thanks for listening.
@Maggie. My feeling is that each person is different. What we do to survive is different. Certainly during and after a rape, it varies from person to person what the best answer may be or may have been. But to me, if you survive, you did the right thing. No matter what you had to do, what you didn’t do, what you did do, anything that got you through that and gets you through the aftermath is the right thing.
I too hate unsolicited advice. I have been very aggressively challenged more than once on what I let happen. Yes, I let a lot happen. I have never seen the point of spooling up someone that is going to hurt me one way or the other by being defiant. People have chastised me over and over for that. Like somehow I should have spit in the perps face and fought until totally subdued or dead.
I chose many times not to resist and instead to live and try not to spool up the anger and sadism of the perp.
Jill, looking at your profile, I feel like asking you if there are more solid statistics anywhere about prostitutes and their reasons for entering the industry. If in the end everybody talks from personal histories and the people they met, then we have the old problem that data is not the plural of anecdote.
Nobody wants to deny Bedelia’s story; everybody here is only concerned with the fact that she projected this story onto a whole group without the necessary data to validate this move. But then again, does anybody have solid data to validate whatever viewpoint — or are we all thus far limited at best to guesstimates like the ones Maggie proposed?
Someone should get the data at some point. If nobody ever does that, how is the shouting match ever going to end?
Getting good data on a prohibited behavior is impossible. You want good data? Decriminalize. That’s the only option.
{takes a note}
OK, there’s one more good reason to decriminalize.
Maggie,
I feel bad that you had to go through all of that. But I’m glad that at least two of the cops got at least some of what they deserved.
As for somebody raping me, I have never been forced like that, but I’ve experienced plenty of sexual harassment like most women have.
Unfortunately.
Well, Susan, I tend to look at it philosophically these days; horrible as it was it taught me several valuable lessons. That doesn’t let them off the hook karmically, but it helps me put things in perspective.
That’s the best perspective to take indeed. When we can get to that point, the hardships lose a lot of their power on us. Well done, Maggie.
Maggie, I think the best perspective on the Bedelia incident is that your visibility and importance as a blogger are increasing. The anti’s are beginning to notice you. Others like her may come and do their deed here in the future; and this will again be an indication that you are becoming more visible. All in all a reason to rejoice. 🙂
Yes, my husband and Sailor Barsoom both observed that as well. 🙂
@Asehpe
I don’t know if there are other solid statistics out there. Probably not because of criminalization. There are a lot of statistics out there which I believe to be total shit like all of Melissa Farley’s “work”.
Please know, I am not defending or advocating for Bedelia. I REALLY don’t like her diatribe on Rumpus. At best I am curious as to who in the abolitionist movement is pushing her buttons because her actions read cliche.
Surely ,there are other ways to do research about the number of prostitutes and the ways they got into the profession, and their status and how well off they are, mentally, physically and personally: do we need a long-form census of all prostitutes to come to any conclusions?
Countering neofeminist data with solid studies has to be possible. Such studies must exist.
??
There have been a few, which I mention in my column of April 3rd, but no overall census so far.
“I’ve also never heard a real hooker use the word “john” for a customer, though perhaps New York streetwalkers do. ”
When I lived with sex workers in Sydney in the 1980s the term ‘john’ was pretty common parlance among them.
And BTW, the brothel scene in Kings Cross and Darlinghurst back then *was* dominated by organised crime (working hand in hand with corrupt cops – the biggest criminal organisation in the country). One of the great outcomes of decriminalisation was an end to that.
Alongside SWOS and the Scarlet Alliance, decriminalisation was by far and away the best thing that ever happened to sex workers in NSW. What’s more, by breaking the nexus with organised crime and police corruption it also helped clients and residents of red light districts.
A recent NSW Attorney General was corrupted by his links to organised crime via illegal brothels back in the bad old days when he was a western Sydney ALP councillor (who campaigned against street prostitution). He retained those links right through his political career. Hopefully he was the last of the crop of NSW politicians who were criminalised via the criminalisation of sex work.