I was…trying to create a voice for women who had actually been in prostitution within a framework that was largely made up of activists who hadn’t and who didn’t particularly want the opinions of those who had. – Jill Brenneman
This is the conclusion of an interview which started Monday; if you have not read it please go back and read that part first, but be warned that the first two parts are the most graphic, disturbing narrative I have yet published or am likely to publish again, and I must caution sensitive readers to consider carefully before proceeding. Today’s installment also contains one intense passage, but if you’ve read the others you should be able to handle this one.
Maggie: So due to Christine Stark’s resignation, you found yourself in charge of Escape immediately after you embraced harm reduction; what happened next?
Jill: Less than a month after International Day of No Prostitution, I sent a public press release and also modified the Escape website to advise that we were now modifying the existing operational model and bylaws to make harm reduction a major component in our ideology and services. Christine resigned entirely from the organization and the radical feminist and anti-trafficking communities were quick and very strong in their condemnation of adding harm reduction. They demanded my termination or resignation and there was an abundance of criticism, hate mail, a death threat and efforts to get me dropped from scheduled speaking events. I reached out to the sex worker rights movement, and though I expected a very negative response given my activism over the previous 3 years the response I actually got was supportive, warm and open. That same month Christine and I and another member of Escape fulfilled a contractual obligation to make a presentation in Washington, DC at a Justice Department, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention conference. When I arrived, the moderators spoke to me about what they had been told about my “conversion to pro-prostitution” and gave me a list of topics and words that were banned; it said “harm reduction” was a banned topic, “sex worker” a banned term. I still used both in the first breakout session and was advised immediately afterward that my input had been excluded from the record and that my services were not needed for the remainder of the event. I was fine with that, and I flew back to Minnesota, brought in new members with a harm reduction and/or sex worker rights viewpoint and refused to sign the anti-prostitution oath attached to a $10,000 grant offer (which cost us the grant). In 2006, what had once been Escape officially became an autonomous chapter of SWOP called SWOP East.
Maggie: What amazes me is how incredibly ignorant the “antis” are, and how much they want to remain ignorant; most activists have been directly affected by whatever it is they’re trying to fight (people who join MADD have usually lost love ones to drunk drivers, etc), but it seems most of these anti-prostitution crusaders don’t have even secondhand knowledge of sex work. Their opposition appears to be entirely academic and based on fallacies and lies. Would you say that’s a fair statement?
Jill: I would say it is entirely fair. For the most part they are ultra second wave feminists who have taken it to an extreme. It’s like their goal is to impose their ideology onto the world from an angle of a political tyrant. Dissent is not tolerated. They are easily threatened by activists with actual experience in the sex industry; they view them as damaged, unreliable and essentially good only for doing the footwork in whatever battle they are wrapped up in. Donna Hughes used to whine about how taking on the issue of prostitution had so harmed her career and how we, meaning those who had been prostitutes, didn’t appreciate it. Nikki Craft said she hated prostitutes. Others said they wished they had been prostitutes because they would have the experience without being fucked up like we were and have their academic credentials for credibility. Of all the former sex workers I did activism with on the anti side in the late ‘90s, all but one have left or have been driven out of the anti movement. Most gravitated to sex worker rights or harm reduction or left activism on the issue entirely.
The antis encourage lies, which they call “re-framing experiences”, to make their point. As difficult and extreme as my experiences were, they wanted me to re-frame them, meaning add things that didn’t happen to make it worse.
Maggie: Eventually, you returned to sex work, but this time as a consenting adult in charge of your own life. Obviously that happened after you broke with the antis, but what inspired you to go back to a type of work that must’ve had some terrible associations in your mind?
Jill: I returned to sex work in 2009. Just a month prior, desperate for a job after the flight attendant job ended with the airline going bankrupt, I accepted a position as a valet parking attendant for a local hospital. It was 3/10 of a mile run for each customer’s car in the parking deck. At 43 years old, I lasted 9 days running roughly 8 miles a day before seriously injuring both knees on a misstep from a curb to the pavement. Both knees required surgery and long rehab, and the workers comp carrier paid $106 dollars a week which didn’t even cover the rent. Needing money and having very limited options I met with a local escort service that agreed to market me as 34 rather than 43 and I started taking outcall clients. My years of counseling had paid off as had my time in the sex worker rights movement, because I found that I could set boundaries with the clients and that it wasn’t as it had been with Bruce. I wasn’t a slave this time. I couldn’t care less how the clients felt. The deal usually was one climax or one hour, with very few exceptions; I found that I had no stomach for the longer sessions that some wanted even though it was more money. Sometimes I had to catch myself as falling into the slave mode still wasn’t that far a jump from the present moment. But it worked, although I often felt dejected that I was a prostitute in my 40’s. Somehow I’d envisioned a different picture for my 40’s.
The true challenge came in July of last year when I was violently raped and assaulted by a client whose full time job was as a Federal Air Marshal. Being handcuffed again, having someone hold a trashbag over my head until I stopped resisting and being forced to swallow the used condom as his point to fully ensure that I understood that he was alpha. The rape set me reeling emotionally, and the past flooded back. A few days later I flew to Vegas for the Desiree Alliance Convention but was non-participating; I was emotionally lost and mentally affected by the concussion he had inflicted. Rather than attend breakout sessions or speeches by my friends and colleagues, I was lost in flashbacks and had difficulty determining reality and separating the present from the past. I became suicidal and spent time getting prescription meds from my psychiatrist faxed to a pharmacy in Vegas. I think a close friend that I was sharing a room with realized how far over the edge I was because despite my protestations they wouldn’t let me be alone.
Maggie: From your writings I can see that by September at least that depression had turned into anger.
Jill: After I physically recovered I felt a strong sense of rage. It fully struck me when the escort service called me and asked me if I would consider a date with the air marshal again even though I had told them what he did. They said he praised me and offered more money to have me again. I was powerless to do anything to him because he was law enforcement, I am a prostitute and as such, I likely would be the criminal to the police. I had no evidence because he made me swallow the condom. But ultimately my anger is at abolitionists who fight so hard to keep prostitution criminalized. Criminalization denied me any hope of justice and protected a rapist from prosecution just as it had when I was a runaway teen. Their criminalization efforts and their faux rescue ideology are as much to blame for the rape as the rapist himself; criminalization gave him a blank check to do what he wanted to. It reminded me just how easy it was for a client to reset the clock and turn me back into a slave captive to his violence, with the alleged rescue/feminist abolitionist movement cheering the whole process as saving innocents. All of us doing sex work remain in danger because of criminalization and because of the “work” of the abolitionist movement. I realized on the flight back from Vegas how easily anyone at the convention, any one of my sex worker friends and allies, could be quickly reduced to where I had been without recourse, with no legal protection and with an alleged anti-trafficking movement helping enforce the victimization.
While I’m still doing sex work because I need the money and lack other options, my sense of safety is compromised. I’m haunted by the fact that it happened before and can easily happen again. I realize how close I still am to being the devastated teenager lying on a cold cement floor unable to move from the pain of violent rapes and physical and sexual assaults, yet chained to that floor for the visual stimulation of a predator. I feel like those same chains are still there, they still rattle, only now they are invisible, they are instead criminalization. That criminalization is advanced by academic activists who have never been on that floor and are doing their “work” not because they care about saving anyone but because it advances their careers and gives them an ideology in which they can claim moral superiority and starve their “enemies” of human rights…enemies who are sex workers trying to make a living.
A completely devastating account of what can and does happen in this world of ours. Ms. Brenneman has graciously shared with us one of the most horrifying tales of abuse that I have ever read.
My heart goes out to her. But a giant thank you for having the grit to share this story with others. Also, for pointing out the arrogance of others, which is so pronounced in current activism attempts, and the naysayers that are totally clueless but have the mad man convictions of their beliefs.
It’s disheartening and makes me physically ill to think that some people have such warped perceptions of something that they know nothing about.
Again, thank you Jill for sharing this story with us. My best goes out to you.
Sincerely,
Elisabeth
With all the hysteria over “sex trafficking” these days, Jill and I both feel it’s especially important to call attention to the fact that prohibiting prostitution hurts not only the voluntary adult prostitutes who make up the vast majority of our profession, but also the coerced and/or underage girls which the prohibitionists claim they’re so eager to save. And though you or I can say that until we’re blue in the face, when a woman with real-world experience says it, her words are not so easily ignored.
Therefore I, too, must deeply thank Jill for having the courage of her convictions (since she stubbornly refuses to admit to any other kind) and standing up to share this painful story with others in order that they may learn from her ordeal.
We should keep in mind that the origin of this tragic story was the incompetent parents. They were guilty of gross neglect, and it was their mistakes that set the stage for the tragedy.
Society treats parents as if they are saints, and parents take full advantage of their undeserved status by watching TV instead of learning how to take care of their children.
I don’t think the psychotic animal trainer would be competent to stand trial for what he did. But I would like to draw attention to his parents and the fools who protect parents’ traditional “right” to create such monsters.
Yes, my husband and I were discussing the same thing and Kaiju also pointed it out in the comments on part one. As horrible as Bruce was, Jill’s parents were equally to blame because it was their responsibility to protect her from such monsters and they not only shirked that responsibility but completely abdicated it; that’s criminal negligence of the worst kind. 🙁
Forgive me if I appear… unaffected by this interview, but I’ve been on autopilot from the moment you warned that it might be disturbing. All of my shields have been up. And they’re still up. I’m not as good at lowering them as I am at raising them. Let’s just wait & see if I have nightmares.
What I’m curious about is whether Brenneman is actually her real maiden name. I don’t think I would have kept that reminder of my parents if I had been in her situation. A name is a powerful thing, as someone once said. But then again, Bruce is the bigger villain in this story, at least from what I understand about her perspective, ie when I try to put myself in her shoes, and she does seem to have experienced some loss of affect from the whole experience (or maybe she’s just talked about it enough to be on autopilot too). She might just not care anymore about that either just like she doesn’t care what happened with that SOB.
I tried googling her for the answer because I felt the question might seem insensitive in this context, but Google just sent me back links to your blog, some other interviews of her, and hundreds of profiles of women named “Jill” on Facebook & LinkedIn (your blog is first btw, congrats!). Idk why I thought she might be on Wikipedia. It seems stupid in hindsight. I recognise the possibility that it might not even be her real name but see no reason for her to keep using it in activism.
So here’s my question again, without all the apologies, speculations & round-abouts:
Is Brenneman the name she was given at birth or did she change it for whatever her reasons? And if it isn’t actually her name but just her working girl name, does she still use her old family name outside of the Life?
Well, no nightmares. But I was still on autopilot the whole day. I’ve never messed up so many things in a single day before. Guess I did get affected…
Ah. I must say I disagree…in part.
Clearly Jill’s parents were negligent and their actions indefensible but in my opinion the person responsible for what happened to Jill (aside from the broad concept of “society”) is Bruce, and unfortunately I’d bet money that she was not his first nor his last victim.
I have sick fantasies about getting my hands on that mother****** but rather than dirtying my own hands I would like to see him brought to justice – thrown into general population in prison as a known sex offender who rapes women and girls.
Kelly, I never intended to make it sound like I was giving Bruce a pass on his part in this story, I simply feel that so much could have been avoided had Jill’s parents found another way to act.
If she’s not on the street, this doesn’t happen to her. You are completely correct that it doesn’t mean Bruce wouldn’t have found someone else and another, possibly even more tragic story takes place, we can’t possibly know that.
Her treatment at his hands was some time ago. Perhaps he’s already found himself incarcerated.
Well, she was freed by the cops arresting him on a warrant, but it couldn’t have been for rape or anything like that or they wouldn’t have accepted their story so easily. Also, it couldn’t have been an extradition warrant for previous crimes in Kentucky because they told her how to bail him out, and she couldn’t have bailed him out in California on a Kentucky warrant. So what was he arrested for? No telling, but I suspect something violent. 🙁
I understand what you’re saying Kaiju 🙂
I just haven’t yet gotten over my complete and utter disgust with Bruce to have the chance to fully contemplate Jill’s parents, ya know? sigh.
btw Maggie – do you realize how much content you’ve accumulated here? I find myself using this blog as a research tool for a wide variety of topics…and everything I click is always interesting 🙂
230 daily posts so far, not counting the bibliography, filmography and quotes page; it would have been several books so far if published on paper, and that isn’t even counting reader input! I reckon one of the reasons the blog is getting popular is that I do touch on lots of different topics, so Google is running into me from many directions. If I can just make it to 365 daily posts I’ll feel comfortable slowing down a little in my second publication year, starting in just over four months. I’m really glad you and so many other folks find it all worth reading! 🙂
Did she ever hear anything from her parents? Do they even know what happened to her? I can’t imagine throwing out a child to begin with but I can’t imagine not even caring about what happened to her for .. what? … 30 years? Aren’t they even curious?
I think I can answer that one. I know of a girl whose mother threw her out (though at 18, not 14, which is a huge difference) for admitting (under pressure) that her father had forced her to have sex with him for years, and they not only never had contact again AFAIK but also kept the rest of the family from doing so. My mother had the decency to wait until I was 31 before cutting of contact, but has rebuffed my attempts at reconciliation for 13 years since. Parents who do this kind of thing when the child is a legal adult obviously turn some sort of switch in their minds so as not to care; I suspect Jill’s parents did much the same thing.
I sure wish I knew where that switch was because I can’t ever voluntarily stop caring about people I’ve been close to, even ones who don’t deserve my concern. 🙁
I had some experience with similar situations, and I’m afraid Maggie’s account is pretty realitistic. Sometimes parents simply decide that they don’t care anymore; and it just stops there, and there isn’t much you can do about it. It has to do with all that the child has come to symbolize for the parent: betrayal, denial of one’s favorite belief system, sin before god, “shame”, whatever. But the end result is that the child stops not simply being part of the family, but even being human.
One sometimes hears that parental love, unlike romantic love, is really forever, selfless and other-oriented. It is not. Even when it works (and be it said in its defense, in the overwhelming majority of cases it does), it is not that simple. With humans, it never is.
[…] an interview conducted by former escort Maggie McNeill. Elsewhere in the interview the above victim says she was […]
It’s exactly the same situation with the air marshal as it was with Bruce: Jill couldn’t call the cops because, technically, she was a criminal herself. The same thing happens with drugs (I can’t call the cops or sue if a dealer sells me bad stuff), and I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened with porn in the days when that was illegal. Really, the wonder is that it doesn’t happen more often.
If criminalization actually put a stop to prostitution, or reduced it to something that only a thousand, say, people in the US were doing, then maybe things would be different and experiences like Jill’s could be avoided. But criminalization can claim no such success (in fact, antis are always quick to say how many thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of hookers there are).
Even if one is opposed to prostitution on moral grounds, even if one is so opposed that one considers it worth sacrificing the occasional Jill to eradicate prostitution,* it isn’t worth all the costs when the goal remains forever out of reach.
* And if one thinks that is justified, I have to wonder how moral that person really is.
It does happen all the time. The rates of violence against prostitutes in the US is very high BECAUSE of criminalization.
Violence against prostitutes happens everywhere there are prostitutes, but the levels of violence are fairly low in areas where prostitutes have legal rights (imagine that). It’s why we’re fighting for it and a fact the antis ignore (they like to claim consensual adult sex is violence itself — stories like Jill’s show that claim is patently false, consensual sex is NOTHING like nonconsensual violence).
As an added bonus, where prostitution is illegal, cops and other authority figures factor largely into the violence done to prostitutes. Jill’s story illustrates exactly why that happens.
“And if one thinks that is justified, I have to wonder how moral that person really is.”
Indeed.
Quote:
“Donna Hughes used to whine about how taking on the issue of prostitution had so harmed her career and how we, meaning those who had been prostitutes, didn’t appreciate it. ”
Oh, can’t you just hear the dramatic violin music in the background? Can’t ya? We have ourselves a real martyr here in Donna Hughes. Them damn Hos done cost Donna her career, dontcha know?
Seriously, the last time I checked up on Dat Bitch she was still a professor, so quit the whining already.
ROTFLMAO
If anything, Hughes benefited from anti-prostitution work. As in government money. So any sob-story routine from her is dishonest.
If she’s going to pick on the hookers, I wish she’d at least leave the pornographers alone.
32 air marshals who have been accused of misconduct
Another one, not included in the last list, accused of rape at gunpoint
Federal air marshals are, apparently, scum.
Reading Jill’s story makes me want to become a vigilante.
Well, they’re just cops in the sky, after all. 🙁
What I would like to know is how Jill thinks the run in with Bruce could have been avoided. What I mean is if there had been a youth drop in shelter that she could have gone to, would she have? If she had been educated to the fact that there are creeps out there like Bruce and the signs to look for to avoid nutcases like that, would she have not gone with him?
I think she already knew there were creeps like Bruce; remember, when he “offered her the job” she asked if it was prostitution. And certainly we were all told not to get into cars with strangers. It’s simply that she was so desperate she was willing to risk it. 🙁
Oh I definitely understand. I prostituted myself as a teenage runaway for a hot meal and a hot shower as opposed to dumpster dining. Luckily I never ran into a ‘Bruce’ type character. Even though I knew there was such things as pimps and not to talk to strangers etc, I don’t think I realized the full extent of what could have happened. It was more like being taught I could be kidnapped and raped and killed but if I had known there may be experiences like Jill’s (repeatedly raped and tortured and the details of such) I wonder if I would have been more careful than I was. Would I have been willing to risk what she went through had I of known the extent. I don’t know.
I think I was unusual at that age in that I had read a great deal of adventure fiction but didn’t wall it off in my brain into a “that could never happen in real life” space as most people do. And on top of that, Jeff worked to impress it in my impressionable little mind, so by 14 I was fully aware that I could be captured, tortured and carried off into slavery in real life, and that unlike the novels I might not be rescued by the timely arrival of the hero.
Would that have made any difference had I been truly desperate as Jill was? I don’t know. Maybe the dire warnings would have made a difference, or maybe I would’ve fooled myself into thinking a guy who seemed nice as Bruce did at first was an exception. But I know one thing: It’s absolutely criminal to fill the heads of women and girls with pie-in-the-sky bullshit about how they have a “right” to go into dangerous situations alone without fear of being raped or worse. This is another thing we as whores can teach our amateur sisters: We freely choose to be alone with strange men, but we do so without the delusion that the client, the police or the government is responsible for our safety in such situations. And thus we take responsibility for our OWN safety rather than abdicating it to others who cannot help us.
I don’t remember if you ever did a post on safety measures against violence from clients, and what the “taking responsibility for one’s own safety” means in this situation. If you haven’t, this might make an interesting post.
IMHO the most important safety measure for any hooker of any kind is for someone to know exactly where she is and when she got there, and for the client to know that someone knows by her calling in right in front of him. Now that screening is available that’s an important measure as well (it wasn’t really feasible in the days before the internet), but even screening can’t prevent a man from doing something unpredictable. The third factor is being completely aware of one’s surroundings and the client’s actions at all times. NONE of these is foolproof (as both Jill and I can attest), but they dramatically reduce the chances of a bad date.
Agree with Maggie on this one. I’ve thought of hosting a call in center where ladies who lack friends in the business or for other reasons, can call prior to a date – with information on where she is, how long she expects to be there, and whatever client information would be needed should she disappear – and call again after the date (if not within a certain time then we would call).
Many an independent sex worker will disagree on the brothel type of business. Not like the Vegas ones but more like Bon Temp in New Zealand. A multi bedroom incall to take clients that is neutral and has security (even in the form of a non working girl at the time ‘in the lobby’) to be alert and ready should the need arise.
My friend and I had a one bedroom apartment for business only. We made appointments online and screened like normal but one of us would always be in the apartment while the other one had the date. And yes, the clients knew. We made sure they knew. If they had a problem with it they were free to leave, no hard feelings. In the few years that we did this I think only one person ever left. At the beginning we did a few outcalls but always drove there together and the one without the appointment would read a book in the car outside or have a drink in the hotel lobby. Pretty soon we just quit doing outcall altogether. It worked great.
I’ve brought up ideas like this on hooker boards and to friends before and while they may say “oh yea, sounds great but I’m fine and don’t need it or wouldn’t bother with it or whatever.” Sometimes I think some ladies have gotten complacent and/or over confident after a period of being safe and harm free. Those women should read this series about Jill. But that can be a whole other topic in itself 🙂
Quite interesting suggestions, Brandy. They sound so commonsensical, I surely hope they will someday become standard procedure.
Becoming complacent is a normal human phenomenon: Westerners who don’t have that much experience with real danger situations tend to believe everything is always going to work out well. If indeed at least some ladies in your business can get complacent, this says something about there actually being fairly good levels of safety already: most clients are probably not out to harm anybody and the ones who are, are probably few and (relatively) far between.
You’re correct, Asehpe; really dangerous clients are pretty rare at the escort level. But the less a woman charges the more dangerous and even criminal specimens can be found among her clients, and streetwalkers also have to put up with more violence from cops as well. 🙁
Rare indeed but it only takes one Federal Air Marshall to bring that wall crashing down around you. Nothing can compare to the confidence a woman feels (be they escort or streetwalker) when she knows that someone has her back right then and there.
I have literally just returned home from Chile and am going to take a nap for a while as it is about 18 hours of airport/flight time to complete the journey. But there had been discussion of the desire for a Q&A with me. I am totally fine with this. We can do this here on this thread or wherever Maggie sees fit. Feel free to ask whatever you would like to. I’m open to any question.
As for catching up to the posts, that will take me a couple of days. First I have to deal with jet lag.
I think the easiest thing would be to do it via the commentary right here (and on the other days); it’s really the only way to get a back-and-forth in this format. But once the questions die down, what I may do is collect everything together and put it in one column for ease of consultation by future readers.
Should a Q&A session start here, Ms Brenneman, my first question to you would be the one I asked in the other thread (to part II of your interview): did you ever find out what Bruce’s ultimate fate was, and is it of any iimportance to you? Do you harbor resentment, or desire revenge? Do you feel a need for something to give it closure?
I am also curious about how you feel about your parents and other family members, if you want any contact with them.
Jill, when you were at home, what did you want your parents to do that they weren’t doing, or what did you want them to stop doing? Your answer might help other parents keep their kids at home.
You mentioned that you were the victim of abuse. Was it only the abuse, or was there more to it? I have an audio tape of a young woman who describes the incestuous relationship she had with her father for six years. But the first 5 minutes of the tape are a calm description of the years of abuse, while the next 20 minutes are a tearful description of the day she revealed the abuse to her mother and the latter’s hysterical reaction and its aftermath.
In other words, the rescue industry has persuaded the public that indecent exposure and inappropriate fondling are worse than death, and hence we all need to pay for the rescue industry’s products, services, protection, etc. But in reality a meta-analysis of many studies at Columbia Univ. found that children suffer more from how the abuse is interpreted and handled afterwards rather than the sexual experience itself.
I’m wondering if you were yet another victim of the rescue industry’s advertising.
Wow, I just sat down and read all four parts of the interview today. It was so real. I mean, I know all the events actually took place but there was a realness to everything that made you unable to look away. Maybe that doesn’t make sense…
I cannot even imagine what Jill has gone through and I don’t think that I could be that strong. I found her insights into the anti-prostitution movement to be very enlightening because I was never fully aware of the intricacies.
I was always someone who was pro-prostitution but whose argument began and ended with ‘Well, violence happens to some people but not all. Legalizing prostitution can make them safe.” This interview brought so much depth to why criminalizing prostitution is a bad thing for everyone. I feel better armed for the future.
Here in Canada we are on the verge of potentially legalizing prostitution and I couldn’t be happier. Right now it’s decriminalized which is better than outright banning it but still causes its share of problems. (To put it lightly.)
I think the most discomforting part for me was not the graphic details of abuse (although that was horrible) but rather the way the anti-prostitution activists pushed aside the sex workers as if their opinions didn’t matter.
As someone who used to work for a homeless advocacy group, I saw the same thing. People would try to ‘solve’ poverty and ‘fix’ homelessness without even asking someone who was homeless what they needed.
It disheartens me to think of so many women out there without a voice. That is the real danger of criminalization.
Jill, thank you for sharing your thoughts so openly and to you as well, Maggie. This blog always gives me alot to think about.
Lindsey, I’m glad you and so many others found this helpful and eye-opening; Jill told me she feels that if she can play a part in changing at least some people’s minds from a pro-criminalization view then her suffering will have been for a purpose. I honestly feel honored to have met Jill, and privileged to have been able to provide her this space for her to tell her story.
Through this series and the commentary posted at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/22/harry-reid-ban-brothels-nevada_n_826734.html I have a better understanding of the differences between pro-prostiution and anti-prostitution. Even I, at first, though we were on the same page as far as helping women were concerned but I thought we were just attacking the issue from different sides. Sadly, not so. Abolitionists it seems don’t give a dam about prostitutes unless they stop prostituting (and maybe not even then). They don’t care what happens to these ladies should the brothels be illegal and don’t care that they are placed in more dangerous situations. Maybe we should advocate less for a woman’s right to do with her body as she will and push the harm reduction in order to achieve the same goal (or vice versa should the case be).
You’re right; prohibitionists don’t care in the least about real women, otherwise they’d pay attention to the fact that rape rates dramatically decrease in every country where prostitution is decriminalized. Neofeminists do not care how many women are raped, unemployed or living in poverty as long as they can continue to punish men for being men.
Did you notice the link to the story about America’s first legal “prosti-dude?”
He quit.
I’m sure it was due to the fact that the jackass only wanted to see women and therefore couldn’t make a living. Do you have a link?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/29/americas-first-legal-male_0_n_516817.html
It was linked to after the Reid article.
Exactly. How many times does this need to be said before guys and clueless feminists get it? WOMEN DON’T PAY FOR SEX, except for bored rich women doing it as a lark. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying or delusional.
Calm down, Maggie. I’m almost sorry I ever brought up this topic… Anyway, whatever happens in the real world is not going to depend on our opinons. 🙂
That wasn’t directed at you, Asehpe, but rather at 1) all the clueless men who call escorts services looking for jobs but saying they’ll only see women; 2) Hollywood; and 3) clueless sex-positive feminists who want to force women to act like men sexually whether they want to or not.
Since you said “anyone” I felt as if it referred to me, too; thanks for clearing that. The root of our disagreement is already in that other thread (basic point: very few people actually like caviar, yet there’s a market for it: it’s all a question of offer and demand, so I’m sure there are circumstances under which pay sex for women would work, just not the current ones; the guys who call the escort services haven’t understood the offer-and-demand thing), so no need to go back to it.
Clueless sex feminists who want women to follow one specific standard are just as bad as the religious old guard with their particular stereotypes. Which suggests the problem is the attempt to reduce everybody to the same Procrustean bed. Let’s not imitate them on that.
Is it even ethical to require the signing of such ‘oaths’ before granting money to an organization? Brr…
Not remotely, but it became the norm under the Bush administration and Obama has happily continued it.
{Silent nod}
{Applause}
All I can say, Ms Brenneman, is that your words should be printed and reprinted all over the country.
Should a Q&A session start here, Ms Brenneman, my first question to you would be the one I asked in the other thread (to part II of your interview): did you ever find out what Bruce’s ultimate fate was, and is it of any iimportance to you? Do you harbor resentment, or desire revenge? Do you feel a need for something to give it closure?
I am also curious about how you feel about your parents and other family members, if you want any contact with them.
@Asehpe, answer to question one. I did not ever find out what Bruce’s ultimate fate was. I have never once even looked. I still fear him and want to stay off his radar. I would get no justice and no emotionally reward by finding out anything about his current status. Just a re-activation of acute fear. He is a psychopath. While I don’t assume he would have any use for me at this point. Who knows what is in someone like his mind.
Do I harbor resentment? Sometimes. I wonder about what life would be like had I never encountered him and miss what could have been.
Do I desire revenge? No. I’d rather have answers from him to my questions about why he did the things he did to me. Why he was so violent and sadistic when he didn’t have to be. He had me under his control. I wasn’t fighting him or trying to escape. I never understood why he was so violent with me on so many levels. There is so much more that happened that really has never been released publicly. It was so much more violent and cruel than virtually anyone knows.
Do I feel a need for something to give it closure? The closest I can come is speaking about about what happened to try to protect others. There won’t ever be closure. I don’t believe it’s possible to achieve closure with something this devastating.
About family. I re-established minimal contact and was present the day my brother’s baby was born. No one in the family has ever asked what happened to me. I don’t have much contact with them, they have so little part of my life.
You know how the anti porn radfem types go on and on about how porn desensitizes those who watch it? Supposedly it does affect a certain part of the brain, as does violent TV and video games. The brain becomes conditioned to it and needs a greater level of stimulation – sex and violence that is even more graphic – to produce the original reaction.
Bruce had something very wrong with that same part of his brain, he was born that way. He was also born without normal capability for empathy or compassion – he was born without a conscience. He couldn’t feel love and he couldn’t feel pain…therefore being so violent and sadistic was the only way he could feel anything at all.
(or so I’ve deducted from reading at least)
There is no rational explanation on a human level because he is not human….and so there are no satisfactory answers to why. I can drive myself crazy wondering why certain people are the way they are but it’s impossible to rationalize the irrational. It’s simply irrational.
I have a question – You must be angry…at least I know I’m angry..angry like if given the opportunity I don’t think I’d have any problem personally flipping the switch on his electric chair kind of angry. How do you deal with the anger?
@Lindsey, thank you for the kudos but they are unnecessary. I speak out about the past in hopes of preventing a similar future for someone else. IMO, that doesn’t make me deserving of honor or of reward, it just makes me human and means that I learned something from the violence that I was able to apply to myself to be more of a human being than I would have been otherwise. In some ways it is much better that I experienced what I did. It gave me an understanding of myself that made me stronger and more empathetic.
@Frank, It wasn’t so much about what my parents weren’t doing that I wanted them to. It was that they never wanted me at all and made no secret of it. I was malnourished and had very few articles of clothes. I froze in the winters for lack of winter clothes. I was an unwanted child in an era pre-dating Roe V. Wade. I was born many weeks premature and wasn’t supposed to live in an era where premature births almost always ended in death.
There was a lot of sexual abuse from a non family member that got extensive access to me with a blind eye from parents. I wanted that to stop.
I had little choice in the leaving home matter. Quite simply no one wanted me there in the first place.
That you still came out as a decent and actually pretty good human being despite such background and the subsequent appaling experiences certainly speaks volumes against the belief that we are simply products of our environment.
From reading what you’ve written here, I have the impression that your life history makes certain things — intimity, friendship, trust (especially of men) — much more difficult for you than they would otherwise have to be. This is a sobering perspective for people who take such things for granted, and gives to your tragedy a depth of dimension that is really very moving.
I really wished there was something I, or anyone, could do to eradicate the evil and the harm done to you by this evil. Life would be much easier to accept if evils like that could be undone.
All I can do I say that you still managed to came out of it with the most important parts of your heart and soul still alive. They were not simply destroyed and replaced with conditioned responses. This is in itself such a powerful human achievement, I am sincerely moved to tears just thinking about it.
The flip side is that having these parts of your heart and soul still there means your suffering is probably stronger, even now, than it would be if you had become a robot. This simple fact — the sheer injustice in it — is sufficient to make me see that there clearly are oceans of pain out there where I have never swum.
The history of childhood shows that parents have always abused, neglected and even abandoned their children. The sexual witch-hunters today claim there is “excessive” love for children, but nothing could be further from the truth.
The really tragic epidemic is pedophobia. Parents don’t have childen because they love children, but because they love themselves and see kids as extensions of themselves or a form of personal property.
A premature baby is more likely to be rejected by the mother, especially if the baby is given breastmilk substitutes (bottle formula) instead of pumping breastmilk from the mother’s breasts.
Suckling and skin contact stimulate the production of maternal hormones, but the $30 billion/year bottle formula industry bribes doctors and nurses to discourage breastfeeding.
Read “The Politics of Breastfeeding: When Breasts are Bad for Business,” by Gabrielle Palmer. By not being well-informed, parents become dupes of the many profiteers out there, and children become the victims. http://www.books4parents.org
There’s also cases where the children are wanted in the beginning, but the abuse starts later. This is what happened in my family.
That was also my experience.
Dear Asehpe, I’m very sorry you’ve also gone through the hell of abuse. I’ve done a lot of years of work with counseling, etc., to resolve mine and still have problems at times with the huge amount of anger that was repressed for years (the abuse went on until I was 24). But, the work has been worth it as without it I could have easily ended up COMPLETELY like my abuser, etc. My hope is that more abusive parents will get help for THEMSELVES to break the evil cycle. Again, I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. Take care.
Same thing here, with the added fact that I wasn’t the only, or even the main, harmed person in this adventure. I don’t think counseling helped so much (though I had my share of it); it was more life, and people who I met. (In many case women, I must say.)
The idea that the victim might end up just like the abuser is a specter that has haunted me my entire life, and still does. There were some moments in my life in which it almost happened. When I think about them, I really can’t explain why it didn’t. It’s almost as if I had thrown a coin, and got the right side up. Luck.
Ultimately, I don’t have the slightest idea why I turned out not to be the same as my abuser. And that’s a scary thought.
That, my dear, is where the soul comes in. We are not mere machines to be programmed as the Behaviorists would have it, and two people of similar personalities subjected to the same ordeal do not react to it in exactly the same way.
It is very hard to find all the questions and answer them. Some may need to re-ask them so that I can find them and answer them. The articles published while I was in Chile with limited internet access.
One of them was what could have prevented me from ending up with Bruce, or something to that effect.
The answer is perhaps a drop in center. The likelihood is nothing could have been done. He offered what I needed right then, when I had nothing else. I knew partially the risks yet went with him anyway. I can’t say that I would do it differently if the same scenario happened again. The warning bells of hunger, homelessness and basic needs ring louder than those of potential threats. It was a case of actual threat vs. possible. The only logical answer was to go with him.
By the time I got to his car and he wanted me blindfolded, nothing had changed. I still needed what he claimed to offer. I had nothing else. I knew at the time I was probably going to be raped and hurt. I expected that to be part of the trade off for food and shelter. I just didn’t know the rest. I couldn’t have, I’d never even heard of most of the rest.
I was not ever given breast milk. I was in an incubator for over four weeks. My understanding is that once out of the hospital and home, I was often given small doses of sedatives to force me to sleep rather than allowing me to cry.
I wasn’t expected to live when I was born. I am one of the few people to have received last rites before baptism. But then again that was the idea. The very early pregnancy was an effort to terminate it when abortion wasn’t legal. The only reason for my conception in the first place was to change my fathers draft status to avoid serving. When events changed his draft status regardless of my birth, that birth was no longer needed and thus the attempt to terminate the pregnancy.
This isn’t speculation. This is fact as described by my mother and by relatives. It wasn’t a secret.
that’s horrible.
I love all little tiny helpless creatures. I don’t understand how someone could not love a little tiny beautiful baby in an incubator 🙁
what the fuck is wrong with people.
What I meant was, what could your parents have done for you to keep you from leaving? I guess the answer to that should be obvious.
If they had taken the trouble to learn what young people need (e.g. by reading Robert Epstien’s “The Case Against Adolescence”), then you wouldn’t have been easy game for the many monsters out there.
You needed love, sensitivity and understanding, and instead they said something like: “Ask not, what your parents can do for you; Ask: What can children do for their parents?”
Hi sexhysteria, unfortunately, my parents would have had to take the first step of not throwing me out. While I’m described as a runaway by my own mislabeling, the fact is, they threw me out before I could run away. There was no option to stay.
Even if I had a choice, for me to stay would have meant the sexual abuse by my mom’s boyfriend would have had to stop, there would have had to be some concession on the amount of hatred she felt for me and directed at me, I needed more food, clothes that weren’t falling apart and were warm enough for a very harsh new england winter.
My only support was from a paternal grandmother who died just before I was thrown out. Without that I had nothing left and it was a matter of time.
If only…
I had a time machine I would go back and adopt you 🙂
Asehpe,
I’ve learned over time how to build and maintain strong relationships with female friends which last well as long as sex isn’t involved.
My relationships with men are virtually non existent. While I recognize there are good men out there and have met some of them, I have virtually no ability to form any kind of trust with them. The best hope I can achieve is seeing that some of my friends are in relationships with good men and being happy about that situation.
It is easy to understand why it should be so, given your story. When I look at the happiness that women around me who did establish relationships with good men derive from said relationships, I can only be saddened at the harm that was done to you.
It reminds me of the history of a holocaust survival here in the Netherlands who became incapable of listening to certain pieces of classical music because he heard them too often in the camp where he was a prisoner and associated them with the everyday hell he went through.
I agree with Brandy above. If I had a time machine, I would go back in time and try to take you from your uncaring family. (I also came from an uncaring family; I have some idea of what you went through there. But there never was any Bruce in my life.)
Perhaps if you at some point found a good man who needs your help, who was equally scarred by life… this might allow you to develop a relationship. Nothing makes us feel more like we’re healing than helping others heal. Cleaning other people’s wounds has a soothing effect on our own. But even this is very iffy; I wouldn’t bet much money on it.
How do you manage to do sex work despite your scars? This must take a lot of self-control and self-discipline. I wonder if this doesn’t cause misunderstandings with your clients, who probably expect girls that at least look enthusiastic.
It’s so sad. So terribly sad.
As an additional question, where do you see yourself going in the future? Do you have plans for the rest of your life, or are you just living each day as it comes? Are you going to continue being active in the pro-prostitution / harm reduction movement?
Dear Jill, I’m very sorry for all that happened to you. Take care.
I would like to clarify one thing: there is no such thing as a “pro-prostitution” movement. There is a “sex worker rights” movement.
“Pro-prostitution” is a label dreamed up by the antis who like to throw it as sex worker rights advocates. Fighting for human and civil rights is very different from being “pro” anything. (The antis also like to claim that the vast, worldwide “pro-prostitution lobby” is funded by porn and encourages sex trafficking. That does not describe the sex worker rights movement at all.)
Just like to make that clear.
Thanks for saying that, Amanda; I’m in favor of decriminalizing all drugs but I’m not “pro-cocaine”.
An important distinction, which I will keep in mind.
For the record, though, I am pro-prostitution. I think that sex workers, from centerfolds to strippers to escorts to streetwalkers should have the rights and protections and responsibilities of any other service providers, yes, but I also think that prostitution, with certain exceptions such as the real-life cases of coercion and abuse, is a good thing.
And while I’m not pro-cocaine, I am pro-MDMA therapy and pro-psychedelic therapy, and even pro-recreation, in sensible moderation.
Sailor — I’m not “pro-prostitution.” I’m pro-rights and pro-choice; sex workers need their rights and be supported in making the choices to enter/leave sex work. But I will never, EVER say that I’m pro-prostitution. It is not work for everyone and it’s work that can cause a lot of harm if safeguards aren’t in place.
I’m not sure if there are any sex worker rights advocates who consider themselves “pro-prostitution.” Please consider the distinction I (and Maggie and Jill) make when we discuss sex worker rights. You can be “pro-prostitute” without being “pro-prostitution.”
Because of the way the term is used to make life tough for prostitutes, I’ll avoid describing myself as “pro-prostitution.” I don’t want to give the impression that I’m pro-rape or pro-slavery.
Sorry about that, Amanda. I’m not sure I agree (if in essence prostitution is a job like any other, why is it wrong to be “pro-prostitution”? The case against, say, “pro-abortion” is much easier to see), but if people do think that “pro-prostitution” is offensive and if it is associated with the antis and their tactics, then I take it back.
@Kelly, I never really found the anger. Bruce’s violence and the violence that surrounded him through his associates and clients, along with the endless role plays to make sure I acted the way I was prepared rather than with anything I felt took an enormous emotional toll. My assumption is that was Bruce’s plan from the outset. I was far too scared and far too emotionally and physically wounded to do much other than what kept him from being more violent. Essentially fear was overwhelming of any other emotion.
Freedom never really changed that. While the fear went down over time, I have never really had much anger. Even to this day, therapists and psychiatrists have tried to get me to access my anger to break the cycle of depression and PTSD. I just haven’t ever really found it. Ultimately I probably bought his point that it was destiny and have yet to find a way to move beyond that.
Jill – I understand….almost kinda thought you’d say that.
I’m sure as hell angry that happened to you and I bet if I told you that what happened to you happened to me, you’d be really angry.
What is it all the shrinks say…depression is anger turned inward? or some kind of crap 🙂
What happened to you was a random fuckup of natural order just like Bruce is a random fuckup of whatever created the human race. It was random chance that you were walking down the street you were walking down when you met Bruce – not your destiny. It could have happened to any one of us. It was simply bad luck that it happened to you, and it’s okay to be angry at the monster who perpetrated it.
Perhaps some self defense/martial arts classes would give you a way to physically express anger and help you get over your fear.
sorry if I’m being presumptous…I’m certainly not a therapist, I’m much too fucked up myself to advise others on how to live their lives LOL
Self defense, as an aside, is a skill that could be extremely beneficial to all sex workers. Although I have a pretty decent amount of confidence in my ability to defend myself, taking classes is one of those things I’ve always meant to do but haven’t gotten around to.
@Kelly, You are entirely correct. If you told me what happened to me, happened to you, I would be really angry. While I’m never a good advocate for myself, I am always a really good advocate for others because then I can find the anger. The shrinks probably have a point with me.
As bad a case of luck as it is that I happened to be the one who ran into him, I honestly feel better with the concept that it was me than anyone else here or really for that matter anyone else. Although there was another girl who was involved for a short time. The day she was no longer there was the same day we left for Los Angeles. I don’t know what happened to her. I’ve always hoped that she simply escaped. I can’t accuse him of anything other than making her suffer while she was there like he did me because I don’t know.
You know, I’ve got 2 years of self defense training. As a flight attendant after 9/11, I found a serious need for it in order to feel safe working flights every day. Although he is such a large man, I’m not sure even what I know and have practiced over and over in self defense class could overcome the size difference.
My fear of him is more about what lengths he would go to in order to get vengeance for me escaping. I’ve always feared his return in my life would come at a time I was with a friend and a lot of thought has gone into how to deal with that so that at least the other person had the ability to get away from him. I would hope self defense would at least buy some time.
Actually, Jill, what most protects you from any reappearance of Bruce (assuming he isn’t in prison or dead), is the fact that you’ve gone public. We all know who you are and what he did to you, there are others who know, and you could not disappear without it being noticed. Somebody would look into it, and Brace can’t risk that. That’s why creatures like him select runaways and throwaways: their absence won’t be noticed. Yours would be.
While Bruce was certainly not a good man, from what I’ve read he wasn’t a particularly stupid man either. If I can figure this out, so can he, and he won’t risk it.
Sailor is right.
However, if that ever were to happen I hope that the friend you are with is me because I will shoot him and consider it both a privilege and a public service.
One of the only things I like about Arizona law is that we have managed to retain the right to bear arms.
When we first bought our rural property, there was a cougar who would come fairly close to the house, so my husband insisted I always go armed when going out of the immediate area. I modified a standard shoulder holster to sit comfortably under my left tit and got quite used to walking around with it. Well, one day I went to get some gas for the jeep and forgot I was wearing it; I went into the store, paid for the gas and left without anyone batting an eyelash, and didn’t realize I was carrying a loaded pistol in a public place until I got home!
There is some dispute about the existence of so-called “repressed emotions.” The theory of “repression” is contrary to what empirical science can verify about how the brain works.
But repression is a very profitable concept for “therapists” to prolong their services and milk patients as much as possible.
Here’s a book on the subject your therapist probably hopes you won’t read. “Try to Remember: Psychiatry’s Clash over Meaning, Memory and Mind,” by Paul R. McHugh.
@asehpe, I agree with you that helping others is cathartic. I’m empathetic by nature anyway, but found reward in being a crisis counselor in Minnesota, by being a non judgmental friend and hopefully have been supportive. That certainly has been the goal. Helping others clean their souls has helped me a great deal. I had to learn how to do it. I’ve been fortunate to have made some really wonderful friends over the years that I have been able to learn from and regain my humanity. I would like to believe and hope that I have been able to give back more than I have taken from the world. I had to learn it. I wasn’t a particularly quality human being for years after I got away from Bruce. I’ve been very fortunate in having had the opportunity to learn from mistakes and be able to make amends to the people I hurt and prove I could learn humanity.
As for how I am as a sex worker. I suck at it. I’m amazed that I have repeat clients. Whatever success I have probably still comes from the training from the era with Bruce. Some clients have left the date very unhappy with zero feeling on my end. I’m a sex worker because I need the money and at present lack other opportunities.
I got lax with self discipline and self control with the Federal Air Marshall. I let my years as an activist, and my years of harm reduction training and crisis counseling give me a false sense of my own safety. He wasn’t happy with the results, wanted what he didn’t want to pay for, he also wanted more enthusiasm than I was giving. He insulted me and I reacted with a smart ass comment. He reminded me of the risk of a mistake. He had me down, handcuffed with a trash bag over my head and then restarted the negotiation. He could get everything he wanted at no additional charge including enthusiasm and I could get to breath and take no more blows that worsened the concussion he had given me. It was my fault. The only person I can truly blame is myself. I knew better than to get cocky and aggressive with my sarcasm with a client and let my ego get in the way of doing the job safely.
Since then I have been much more careful.
It’s hard to have gone back to sex work. While I totally respect that many of my colleagues enjoy the work, take pride in what they do and do it well. I’m not in that space with sex work. I’m haunted by the violence, not sexually attracted to men and offer the clients more of what they want physically but very little emotionally. I am able to recognize the difference between the past as a runaway teen and now as an adult consenting sex worker. And despite what the anti’s say, there is a huge difference. In some ways, I feel better about my activism now that I have returned to sex work because of a sense that I am with my colleagues doing sex work and activism rather than just being an activist. But from a client’s perspective, I admittedly suck.
I don’t have plans for the future. I never have. I never felt safe making them. Life can quickly take away what it has given. I try to focus on remembering the gifts that I am given of love and friendship in each current day. I would like to be a flight attendant again. I miss that. But who knows. I’ve found it just isn’t wise to make plans for the future as they seldom work out. I’d rather focus on what I have today then even ponder the future.
yes, I will remain a sex worker rights/harm reduction activist. It’s a passion for me. I suffered some horrendous things. Some really awesome people taught me that I could be loved, could give love and could make a conscious choice. I could let the horror of my past make me into a monster, I could do nothing, or I could use it to understand oppression, to understand violence, to hate to see others suffer and try to make a difference for them when they are not able to do it for themselves. In retrospect even if I knew what I was facing with Bruce before I got into the car with him but knew what I could learn from that and that it could be the very events that made the difference whether I grew up to be shallow and empty or to have humanity and to be able to rely on my own sense of right and wrong through experience to try to do what is right. I would still get in his car. I would not be who I am today had I not gotten into his car. I will always do the activism because I have something to give as a result of my past. Something that perhaps is a bit different than others, something that may bring constructive social change to someone.
This is… unsettling. It’s almost close to identifying with one’s victimizer, Stockholm syndrome, etc. Yet I understand what you mean. Perhaps what you’re saying here is that, in your own way and following your own path, you are finding ways to accept and love yourself, and you’d rather be yourself — including all the horrible experiences in the hands of a sadist in the worst possible sense of the word — than someone else. Maybe you’re hereby accepting yourself, at deeper level than you do when you simply smile at the face in the mirror. You’re changing your ordeal into a source of strength. And this is good.
Flowers do, after all, grow from excrement.
And phototropism means that plants do, even when twisted out of shape, grow towards the light.
What you say about sucking as a sex worker almost breaks my heart. Even though I can see there is a positive side to your work — the closeness you feel to the people whose cause you’ve taken as your own, whose cause indeed now is your own — from what you wrote, it still seems to be something you’d rather not do. Perhaps you should try to be a flight attendant again, or something else. Maybe a writer? Your story sounds like it might become a successful book, perhaps even a movie.
Not at all; though my own suffering was not of comparable magnitude to Jill’s, I understand what she’s saying; it’s that everything has a price, and if the price of being what she is rather than some useless twit was going through that suffering, then so be it. I feel exactly the same way.
My Granny used to say, “You have to suffer for beauty.” And though she meant it in a physical sense, it’s true in a spiritual sense as well.
Yes, that’s the point I was trying to make. Adjusted of course for the higher order of magnitude that suffering took in Ms Brenneman’s life.
Somehow, I don’t think that Jill was destined for twithood, Bruce or no Bruce. She just isn’t the sort of person who turns out that way.
Just as I suspect that you, Maggie, would have been speaking out on some subject, something meaningful, even if you had never so much as danced nekkid. It would have been something other than decriminalization of prostitution, but you are just the sort of person who would be speaking out about something.
My sweetie has had some rough times, and they’ve both harmed and strengthened her (I’m not going to go into detail because that wouldn’t be fair to her). But I don’t think she would’ve been a twit either, even without the specific event I’m thinking of.
@asehpe,
My meaning was that given the way I was “raised” before I was thrown out, there was little that taught me right from wrong in a bigger sense. Sure there were the lessons of don’t steal, don’t hit, don’t be mean etc, that all children get. But I grew up in an environment that rewarded those who put themselves first, who risked nothing to help someone else, who feared anyone who was different and that felt oppression was just laziness and complaining.
I transcended that because of the horrible things that happened with Bruce, the people that I met afterward, the counseling it took to deal with the memories.
I’m not identifying with Bruce. He was a monster. The only thing he taught me was the amount of pain I could suffer and to do it in silence. But the experiences themselves I did learn from. One of the lessons was that fear can’t dictate the actions one takes to choose between doing what is right and wrong.
Stockholm Syndrome would imply I identified with or even loved Bruce. I did neither. I did what he said and did not do what he said not to do because I knew doing so would cause pain at extreme levels.
@Amanda, thank you for illustrating the point about “pro prostitution”. There is NO “pro prostitution” as it is represented by the anti’s. I don’t know that people without experience from within the anti movement realize the horrible meaning the antis attach to that.
The anti’s believe that all prostitution is bought and sold rape. What they are saying by calling us pro prostitution is that we are pro rape, that we are deliberately trying to get as many women raped, assaulted and hurt as we can. The malign the sex worker rights movement and it’s activists with that terrible term.
I have never met anyone who was “pro prostitution” as they represent it. Even many of the staunchest supporters of sex work have suffered rape and violence in their lifetimes and I don’t know anyone in our movement that wants anyone to suffer bought and sold rape.
Thus as Amanda illustrated, it is imperative to remember when describing yourself as pro prostitution the meaning is completely different from how people here understand it and how the anti’s understand it.
@Kelly, I too love all tiny helpless creatures. I can’t understand how anyone could harm one of them either. A tiny baby in an incubator is simply unfathomable as to how to have hatred for that tiny little child fighting essentially alone for it’s very survival.
It hurts me inside when I have to kill a spider that I find inside my apartment because I recognize that it is poisonous and could hurt me or my doggie.
I don’t understand the thought process that motivates people to harm anything helpless. Especially a baby,. I can’t even find a mechanism to relate to it.
@Elisabeth, thank you for your wonderful, warm and supportive post.
@Sailor,
I agree with you, the threat of Bruce to me is minimal both for the reasons you describe and he would be approaching 60. If he did come after me, it would not likely be to recapture me, but to get vengeance.
@Kelly, I can’t say I’d lose much sleep if it were you and I together when he reappeared and you exerted your right under Arizona law. It would be a public service that probably should have happened 50 years ago.
In the sense you describe here, of course nobody is pro-prostitution; but then again, why are they the ones who have the right to define what ‘prostitution’ means? Why can’t the sex workers’ movement reclaim that word?
It may of course be a practical question. The available words — prostitute, whore, sex worker — have different connotations (and denotations); and maybe you’d rather simply play with the cards you’re dealt instead of trying to change them.
Maybe it is necessary to make abandon the word ‘prostitution’ and embrace only ‘sex work’, if one thinks that the antis have tainted it enough already. But in an important sense this is sad.
(And it’s not like they aren’t trying to make ‘sex work’ get the same bad vibes that ‘prostitution’ has, from what I’ve been able to see.)
@Asehpe, saying one is pro prostitution may not be bad to most people who feel they are. My feelings about the term come from the inside knowledge of how the anti’s use the term.
Although, I myself am not pro prostitution even in a straight forward sense. I’m ambivalent about sex work. I do it out of economic need and lack of other options at this time. I don’t oppose others doing it, I support their decision and hope only that they do it safely.
The radfem ‘champions of sexual justice’ resorted to DEATH THREATS?!? to try to stop harm reduction workers from taking over?
I’ll refrain from commenting on that little tidbit. As a new visitor from Stephen Paterson’s site, I don’t want to get deleted on my first visit.
This is the best pro sex worker site I’ve seen yet. Keep up the good work. I’ll be taking a look around over the next few weeks.
Thank you, Xena! And don’t worry about getting deleted; you’d pretty much have to work at it to accomplish that. 😉
Oops, yours is the best site written by actual pros. Mr. Paterson’s is still the best I’ve seen that was written by somebody outside of the industry. He’s a very astute man.
Thank YOU, Maggie. It’s nice to know what the “be nice” rules come down to when I visit a blog. I get pretty salty when I read about people like–oh, radfems–who constantly spew ‘saviour’ rhetoric, and then turn on the people they claim to be trying to protect. Being a golddigger is forgivable if one can be more or less honest and generally sincere about it, avoid scamming and injuring innocent people, etc., etc. People who claim to be all idealistic and good and then turn around and make death threats piss me off to no end!! My response to that would have been BRING. IT. You, me, and my crowbar, Miss radfem hypocrite. But that’s just me. As Jill said, her passive demeanour was what saved her in the workforce. My big mouth gets me into more trouble with authority, law enforcement, mean girls, you name it. Violence doesn’t touch me, but, oh those clever bureaucrats and their vicious little loopholes…They manage to “hang” me every time.
It’s nice to see that Jill’s found her voice, in spite of being crushed in so many ways.
The story highlights such an awful conundrum, tho. I’m very much a liberal with a harm reductionist view, but I’ve noticed some awful changes in the industry where I am. Terri Jean Bedford and Vallerie Scott’s efforts have been squashed for the moment, and the vacuum left in the nearly legal but poorly regulated industry is tragic to behold. The pimps and crackheads have taken the radfem narratives to heart and flipped all of the “oughts” on their heads! 15 years ago, clean, self respecting, $200-$300/hr escorts were the norm, and slaves numbered about 20% of the girls in the industry, from what I could tell. Now Toronto is overrun by battered $40 crackheads. And everybody thinks this is ok! The prices have hit a 30 year low.
Legalization would go a long way toward getting rid of mentally diseased pigshit like Bruce, but the biggest problem with legalization, as I see it, is regulating the prices, bc there’s always some cheap trick who says “well so and so does it for $40”. And the less the girls think they should accept for their services, the easier it is for the pimps to scam their way in. I miss the days when there were enough independents around that the older girls were the ones who trained the new ones, taught them THE RULES. Some of them–like Use Condoms For Everything, Even Handjobs–were punishable by a beating from one of the other girls, if someone broke the rule.
Tragic that governments don’t have the intestinal fortitude to legalize and regulate the prices on sex work. Yet they think it’s ok to regulate oil prices by killing hundreds of thousands of civillians in Iraq. That is skullfuckery that will annihalate the entire frikkin species within a few centuries or less. What a buttload of bassackward rhetoric.
Did Bruce ever get any punishment for his horrifying actions?
I just read Jill’s story in “Enslaved” and was researching it in further detail on the internet. Was he ever jailed for this obscene injustice?
I’m afraid not. She talks about how she feels about that in the follow up Q & A sessions.
Ok, this might sound like a stupid solution but I was wondering about having a hidden camera in the room to catch any future police rapists? Or even a body guard? It’s the only way I can think of to protect sex workers. And by the way, fligth attendants are always needed! People with experience always get hired before people without!!!!
That kind of video evidence would also constitute “evidence of prostitution”, and guess who’d end up serving the longer sentence? And a bodyguard would be good if a girl could afford one, but usually it takes a large business (such as a brothel) to afford that. Girls can work together for safety, but in many countries (Canada, UK, France, parts of Australia…) where prostitution itself isn’t illegal, working together is. Laws restricting the rights of sex workers ALWAYS endanger us; the only real solution is to abolish the harmful laws (which is exactly why the Ontario Court of Appeals just upheld a lower-court decision doing exactly that).
Thank you for sharing your story. Stories like yours are so vital to the sex workers’ rights movement. I’m somewhat of a new activist and my run-ins with abolitionists have thankfully been few; but even still, they insinuated that I was a liar and my husband my pimp and on a second occasion called me (and other sex workers who were with me) racists and colonialist collaborators and asked a colleague and friend of mine if she had ever been raped. What did I/we do to incur such aggression? I was on CBC and Conservative MP Joy Smith (she’s the one behind Bill C-310, an Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Trafficking in Persons) and has campaigned to try to introduce the Swedish Model in Canada) called in to deny everything I’d said and in the second instance, we were a group of sex workers quietly standing outside an anti-sex work presentation at Women’s Worlds, just to indicate that there are other sides to this discussion (we were wearing shirts that read “Sex work is real work”), when they came out and surrounded us (about 30-10) and started yelling at us and hurling abuse. I don’t see how you can say you care about women while verbally abusing them.
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