Last week I published a letter from an exceptional woman: though she’s a Christian with a strong personal aversion to sex work, she has deeply considered the issues and realized that there are many, many problems in “anti-trafficking” discourse. After my last letter she wrote again with more good questions, but her letter was so complex that I have separated out the individual questions not only to make this column easier to read, but to protect her privacy by eliminating personal details. If you haven’t yet read last Wednesday’s column, you really ought to do so before proceeding with today’s.
A friend of mine belongs to an anti-trafficking ministry which gives out gift bags to ladies in brothels and tries to build friendships with them. The gift bag includes shampoo and sometimes cookies and earrings, and also a packet of tissues, inside which they have slipped a hotline for getting out of prostitution. Would you personally find such a message with a hotline number insulting?
Most sex workers would probably consider that more funny than insulting, because the idea outsiders have that we’re all “trapped” or “victims” or “slaves” is very amusing when it isn’t backed up by uniformed thugs. But once the cops start smashing down doors, beating, raping and robbing sex workers before caging them and giving them criminal records that will follow them for life, it goes far beyond mere insult. The idea that we’re “victims” is a symptom of what you mentioned in your first letter: the refusal to listen. It’s kind of like the way gay people are treated in some churches: “I can’t understand how a man could be attracted to another man, so there must be something wrong with them.” The old narrative was that sex workers were “bad” women, but over the past 800 years Christianity has slowly shifted toward viewing us as “fallen” creatures to be redeemed, and that became the dominant social discourse in English-speaking countries from the 1880s on (largely due to the influence of the Salvation Army and other groups promoting the “white slavery” hysteria). After criminalization became the norm in the US (from 1910-1914), people naturally started seeing prostitutes as “criminals”, and that view persisted until the beginning of the present moral panic in 2004 (though several years earlier in Sweden).
I have seen sites that quoted (at least they claim) comments from clients about prostitutes, 95% of which were horrendous. So why do clients come to you? Is it really that men who are willing to buy women are often aggressive and do not respect women in general?
Those “client quotes” are totally cherry-picked. The idea that men pay good money to spend time with women they hate is about as absurd as anything I can think of; it’s related to the radical feminist notion that all intercourse is rape. The fact is, I was often treated better by the men who paid me than guys who just dated me, and that’s a very typical experience. The majority of sex workers’ clients are either horny or lonely, and that’s it. They’re not looking for women to “objectify” or “abuse”, and the only people who can believe otherwise without being lied to are people who believe the Marxist foolishness that all economic transactions are innately exploitative, or those who believe that all sex not sanctified by marriage (or all heterosexual sex, period) is bad. The only reason they pick on sex work is that when they try to apply those ideas more universally, most normal people mock, shun or ignore them. Sex workers have been turned into a pariah caste against whom rhetoric that wouldn’t last five minutes when directed against anyone else, suddenly becomes palatable. The most common form of prostitution these days is probably GFE escorting, where GFE stands for “girl friend experience”. In other words, the majority of clients want a girl who is nice and friendly and chatty and sweet, just like a regular date. Yes, there are bad clients…but that’s true of every business in the world, as anyone with experience in retail or waitressing can tell you.
Do you not mind when a man comes to you only for your body, with no interest in your personality, your soul, your mind, your history? Although if I must think of sex work as normal work, I suppose it would be as ridiculous as if I asked an office worker, do you not mind that your boss has no interest in your personality etc and that you are reduced as just a working cog in a cooperation. In an office, ideally you’d find a caring manager who does care about your well-being – and I guess there are clients who are similar?
As I explained above, most clients are. If you talk to sex workers who have had “straight” jobs, you’ll find they usually felt far more objectified in those than in sex work. People who talk about “bodies to be used” must have a very low opinion of men, to believe that that’s how men see sex. In fact, one of the most annoying client behaviors is when they go on about “I want to give you pleasure” and “what would you like to do?” and that sort of thing, which many of them do. We hate it because it makes it much harder to satisfy a customer who won’t say what he wants, but as you can see it’s exactly the opposite of that “objectification” jazz. When I was an escort I advertised myself as “the thinking man’s companion” because I have a hard time “dumbing down” my conversation and wanted to attract men who liked that…and there were plenty. You were talking about reviews earlier; you know who gets the worst reviews? Girls who just lie there like a “body to be used”. What prohibitionists claim men are looking for, is actually the thing which will probably kill a sex worker’s business faster than anything else.
My anti-trafficking friend never says “prostitute”, but rather “ladies in the sex industry”; she also never gives out their names “in order to protect their confidentiality”. But if sex work is just work, what difference does the word make? And why wouldn’t prostitutes want people to know their names?
If sex work were completely accepted, normal and legally protected, I would agree with you that there would be no need for aliases. But that isn’t the way it is, and it won’t be in our lifetimes. Your friend is wise to be discreet. As for the term “prostitute”, it’s a very legalistic word that has acquired considerable negative baggage. So while I myself use it because many outsiders with whom I discuss it (especially lawyers & politicians) see it as a neutral term, it is in fact pejorative and should be avoided. “Sex worker” is considered the most polite term; “prostituted woman” is the most insulting and demeaning because it casts us as passive, inert victims without intellect, will or agency.
I’m uncomfortable saying that sex work should be okay and treated as any other job, but I’m also uncomfortable with criminalization because everyone has the right to choose what they will do and how they want to live their lives. How do I resolve this conflict?
Now we’re getting into the philosophy of harm reduction, which is quite complicated but here’s the nutshell version. I personally think cocaine is awful; I hate the way people act when they use it, I hate the way it makes their noses run and their mouths get crusty, I hate the weird fantasies they have when they’re on it. Eventually I got to the point where I’d refuse clients I knew were using it because I didn’t want to deal with it. However, the harms that result from cocaine aren’t nearly as bad as those that result from attempting to suppress it, such as the establishment of a surveillance state, empowerment of police to violate civil rights on a massive scale, bloody cartel wars, bad (even fatal) reactions to tainted drugs, the attraction of criminals to the business, the vast waste of money and the highest incarceration rates in history. I don’t have to like cocaine or approve of its use to recognize that its prohibition is a horrible thing and the wellspring of myriad evils, and you don’t have to like or approve of sex work to have the same view about its prohibition. And considering that it is the prohibition of sex work that is the chief enabler of coercion, I would think that every moral person who is truly concerned about that would join with the UN, the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and many others in calling for the decriminalization of sex work.
Very down-to-earth and reasonable responses result in a high believability factor. I stumbled upon your blog by accident, but now I must follow it to see what else I might learn. Thank you for an interesting read.
You’re very welcome, Steve; I hope you find a lot more to interest you here. 🙂
Just about any office or factory worker is “objectified” far more than any sex worker.
I (and I would guess most men) actively seek to see and understand the person that we are with when engaging a sex worker, simply because that is what we are looking for – intimate contact with a woman, not an emotionless sex machine.
Some women may be shocked to know that the vagina does not possess some miraculous pleasure giving property. In fact, I can give myself pleasure more easily and reliably than when having intercourse with a woman, professional or not. It is the addition of the personal contact and the companionship that makes going with a woman worth while (sometimes).
With regard to the “aid package”, shampoo?? Really? Now that I find insulting. Why not add a lice comb?
Just about every sex worker I meet nowadays has her face buried in her smartphone, texting away like her life depended on it. I doubt that finding someone to help her escape the clutches of the noticeably absent slavers would not be beyond her ability. A simple “Help me!” on Twitter would probably do the trick.
Don’t read too much into that. The shampoo really isn’t some deep “Freudian” revelation of the mind of the people giving it.
I send care packages to deployed Sailors and Marines (all the time) – particularly a group of medical personnel on an aircraft carrier that helped me in a time of medical need last year. Building care packages ain’t that easy. I usually put bottles of shampoo in them though – not because I think Sailors are dirty – but because the female Sailors really only have access to a few brands and, well you know girls …
I put a lot of chap stick in there … Starbucks coffee … and I use twinkies as “packing” – I use ’em instead of bubble wrap.
Of course – the Twinkies are the most popular thing!
That’s just it. They see being in a brothel as equivalent to being on deployment or sent off to some god forsaken battlezone, a place of restricted freedom and hardship.
The brothels are almost certainly in urban areas with a 7/11 or equivalent round the corner. But to them it is a Stalag or Alcatraz and they see their packages as equivalent to Red Cross packages.
If they had filled them will chocolate and Twinkies I would bet they would have been better received (and more useful). Hand cream might be good too.
I see what you’re saying but everyone has those kinds of mistaken notions
I had a conversation in a San Francisco coffee shop, years ago, with a girl who was going to Berkeley. I have long hair – no one can really guess I’m retired military. She felt very comfortable telling me, with a very sad face by the way … how awful it was that the military took advantage of uneducated young men and those with learning disabilities. To her, everyone who enlisted in the military was either “uneducated” or had a “learning disability”.
Then she proceeded to tell me about how the military “programmed” these dim individuals and made them killers … and, even years after they were discharged – they could still “activate” that programming in these people and make them do horrible things that really weren’t their fault … but were the fault of the government. Of course – she was a “liberal” and this was when Boooooosh was in office.
I didn’t get offended – because she hadn’t done anything to me except show me her thoughts and how clueless she was.
When I do get offended it’s when someone’s cluelessness kind of impacts my life – or my ability to live it the way I want. This happened at a popular nightclub in Waikiki back in the ’80’s. The nightclub elected to BAN ALL military members (except for female service members). Hey, personally I think they have a right to do that – but it was still offensive to me.
Man, a lot of people in the military today simply can’t remember when we were classed in the same socio-economic outcast group as Whores were. Back in the 80’s, before the first Gulf War – we WERE NOT considered “heroes” like the military is today. We were considered dirty, syphilis infected, drunken, thieving cretins.
Well – LOL – some of us were also BLACK and the NAACP got involved and stopped that shit. Unbelievable – I was actually a beneficiary of something the NAACP did one time.
The Marx disciples claim that it is labor exploitation, but it’s really the free enterprise aspect that bothers them. They might consider state-run brothels or heavy regulation, but the moralistic austerity of communism requires that all activity serve the state, and that wages be uniform, so well-paid sex entertainers are too decadent to be allowed.
This “rapist john” meme will not die. 🙁
I love Christians – though I am not one and I have many friendly disagreements with them. One of them is this …
What is the purpose of life, from the Christian point of view, if it’s not to prove one’s devotion to the Lord by navigating an obstacle course of evil? The “obstacles” are important and God allows them to exist for a reason.
Who would you minister to if you had no sinners? And …
Did Jesus really argue that Christian laws be forced on all? Where is that passage? I do know that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah – but he didn’t destroy the righteous there – he saved them (there were only a handful apparently).
So what’s with the Christian effort to turn us all to their morals?
Christians need to realize that their moment in the sun – when they could make all the laws and enforce them on everyone – has come and gone. Now – the tables have been turned – and the pendulum won’t be swinging in the direction of the Christians for quite some time to come – if ever again. Christians are under assault – the Catholic Church is now forced to provide contraceptives in its health care plans. Christian icons, though historically relevant to our past, are now being torn down simply because they are on government property. Christians can’t pray in schools.
I don’t agree with any of these assaults on Christians – but I also don’t agree that Christians should be allowed to impose their morals on everyone else.
Soooo … it would seem to me that Christians need to adopt an “I’m okay, you’re okay” kind of “Libertarian” position. Let everyone do their own thing. What Christians can’t seem to realize – is that the very prohibitionist structures their forefathers put in place – are now being used to punish … THEM.
Help us to get rid of those structures.
I don’t agree with any of these assaults on Christians – but I also don’t agree that Christians should be allowed to impose their morals on everyone else.
These “morals” are not Biblical.
Consider an old translation like the King James Bible:
“There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel”. (Deuteronomy 23:17).
And compare the same verse in a more accurate, modern translation like the New International Version:
“No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine prostitute”.
Or the New Living Translation:
“No Israelite, whether man or woman, may become a temple prostitute”.
Anti-sex types deliberately distorted the text to push their own viewpoint; now with Hebrew and Greek interlinear texts and concordances, these mistakes are easy to spot. To cut a long story short, secular prostitution is not a sin, and never has been.
Never said anything about “Biblical” – morality or otherwise … except for the part where I was asking for someone to supply a passage from the Bible that shows Jesus advocating that morality should be imposed on others by government.
I mean – you and I both know that Christians believe things and cling to morals that have no real basis … “biblically”.
And I won’t get into a debate about “translations” of the Bible because … the NIV is just as suspect to me in that department as was the King James version. Now, just as then, political motivations and “agendas” influence the translations. I got a giggle when the NIV was “revised” a few years ago. Really? There’s been new gospel promulgated that required the revision? Nope – the revision was because (a) They got it wrong the first time (which means they probably have it wrong now too) or (b) The first version didn’t go far enough in accomplishing political agendas or (c) Too many people “bitched” about the language (which kind of indicates to me that many people “wishcasted” what they thought Gospel should read – rather than what it actually was. Or … (D) – all of the above! I choose answer “D”. LOL
I’m not a Xian, but didn’t Jesus say that harlots would be the 1st to get into heaven?
“Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.” – Matthew 21:31
@ The Questioner and Maggie: This is an interesting dialogue to watch, even though it is unfortunate that Blog cannot see the important parts of the connection between the two of you. That is the quality and accuracy of the meaning, truth or values being transferred between you. As Blog readers we have to applaud and respect that there is not enough safety in Blog to have this explorative and revealing conversation between equals in blog form for others to see, hear and understand your truths.
@ Maggie: Thank you for taking the care to respect the humanity of the questioner by offering to hear her (we now not she is a she) Last Wednesday, “if I miss anything, please reply and ask it again.” This Wednesday, “but her letter was so complex that I have separated out the individual questions not only to make this column easier to read, but to protect her privacy by eliminating personal details.” Thank you Maggie for providing a safe forum where by you and the questioner could continue to be understood and reveal new information to each other.
@ The Questioner and Maggie: We miss the details of the Questioner’s letter being complex, therefore the likelihood is reduced that we can hear and understand her truth — see her as a human being. Separating out the individual questions removes the reader from the complex context in which they were asked. But it does increase the safety and serves “to protect her privacy by eliminating personal details!” Creating safety is the first step in seeing other’s humanity and being open to hearing new information! Thanks be to both of you for doing just that.
@ The Blog: Even though this is stilted Question and Answer dialogue, we can see the care each is taking with the other — to hear and understand each other’s meaning. We can also see where each is taking ownership and responsibility for impacting and being impacted by the other, absorbing new information and allowing that to impact them and be changed by it. We as outsiders have no idea what they actually mean. Only they do. We are enlightened by hearing them ask what is the essence of what you heard – asking the other to reflect back – to check to make sure their words were understood as the speaker wanted then to be.
@ The Questioner and Maggie: It appears that the quality of the conflict over “trafficking” is less intense because each of you are willing to be moved by new information and are impacted by the humanity of each other. It is unfortunate that the Blog is prevented from seeing much of this humanity. Hopefully both of you are willing to continue this dialogue in safety and give the Blog an update next Wednesday.
@ The Blog: Let us join in praise of people willing to risk themselves for better understanding of us all.
I’ve read this and the previous related blog post; and I think I get your general messages. I’m a bit confused by some statements you make, though perhaps it’s a bit unfair to take them out of their context. You say:
“I was often treated better by the men who paid me than guys who just dated me, and that’s a very typical experience.”
“The most common form of prostitution these days is probably GFE escorting, where GFE stands for “girl friend experience”. In other words, the majority of clients want a girl who is nice and friendly and chatty and sweet, just like a regular date.”
“In fact, one of the most annoying client behaviors is when they go on about “I want to give you pleasure” and “what would you like to do?” and that sort of thing, which many of them do.”
“When I was an escort I advertised myself as “the thinking man’s companion” because I have a hard time “dumbing down” my conversation and wanted to attract men who liked that…and there were plenty.”
Are you saying that there is a difference (in men’s minds) between a ‘regular’ girlfriend and a GFE? And if many men are nicer to escorts than to their girlfriends, what’s so bad about asking the girl what they would like? Or is it more like pestering? OK to ask them once what they like (or don’t like) but don’t go on about it? Or just ‘role confusion’? Perhaps I should add that I’m very poor at reading people, and do have to ask; whereas so many girls can see right through me—really, alarmingly so at times.
And as for the ‘thinking man’s companion’, does this mean that many ‘regular’ girlfriends dumb down when it comes to men? If so, why?; it seems odd to me.
[Those in the UK with long memories may remember the TV presenter dubbed ‘the thinking man’s crumpet’ 🙂 ]
“GFE” is the “fantasy girlfriend”. The girl who gives it to you and blows your mind away and makes it feel to you like she’s doing because she feels a connection with you.
Yes – there is a difference between a real “girlfriend” and a GFE. There should be anyway – otherwise the client is living in a dangerous section of the universe of his mind. He needs to be able to walk out the door, slap himself in the face and realize it was all illusion.
GFE dates don’t normally last for DAYS … but rather hours – so yes, men come to them more prepared to show their “gentlemanly” side – they only have to uphold the illusion a few hours – you can’t do that with a real girlfriend that you have to deal with constantly who does stupid things that annoy you occasionally.
Case in point – I tell guys … “When you get a new girlfriend … as soon as you’ve got the hook set in her, find a good moment and FART for her.” Just get it out of the way … you’re gonna eventually rip one around her anyway so get it over with. Another thing … stink up her bathroom real good too cuz that’s going to be happening a whole lot and she needs to be conditioned and you need to feel comfortable about doing it. LOL
Just turn it all into a “joke”. “Hey, quit holding your nose … sexy! You should smell that shit your dog puts out!!”
You don’t fart around escorts and you don’t stink their bathrooms up either. NOR do you pee in their showers. I don’t pee in the shower anyway … but I do remember a hooker bitching online … “Guys, DO NOT pee in our showers … WE KNOW when you do it!” Which is some strange kind of whore-voodoo … they can detect pee somehow when they’re not in the shower and after it’s been thoroughly flushed down the drain.
I hope you have a pencil in your hand and are taking notes, Korhomme.
“I hope you have a pencil in your hand and are taking notes, Korhomme.”
Yes, I have, teacher 😉
BTW, there is a theory that peeing on your feet in the shower prevents athletes’ foot. Useful excuse.
Yes, but you need to fill your boots with urine to make it work properly. It’s an army thing.
The answer in the New Scientist isn’t very encouraging:
http://www.newscientist.com/topic/lastword/water-cure-2/
“one of the most annoying client behaviors is when they go on about ‘I want to give you pleasure’ and ‘what would you like to do?’ and that sort of thing, which many of them do. We hate it because it makes it much harder to satisfy a customer who won’t say what he wants”
I’ve seen this mentioned a couple of times in the archive. What if, in a sort of Mobius twist, ‘what he wants’ — that is, what will satisfy him in a visceral sense, not merely as an obligatory sacrifice — is a woman who will say what she wants?
I have a few concrete scenarios in mind here. One where a guy gets off on the idea of a woman who is unapologetically self-aware about her lusts; one where a guy simply enjoys getting women off for its own sake; and one where the guy is an Aspie or similar, and is frustrated by being expected to mindread desires in normal relationships.
Any of the above can be (maybe have to be) mixed with the simpler case where what the guy *wants* is to “satisfy a woman” in the same sense that you are using ‘satisfy a customer.’
I leave the question of which of these applies to me as an exercise to the reader. I suspect the answer to the what if is “well, then he’s screwed,” because of the infinite loop involved.
In terms of some sex workers using “work” names, that’s not so different from every other occupation. For example, various mainstream actors and actresses also use stage names. Some sex workers may also create names that have meaning to us, and describe who we are and what we stand for. One such name is the one I’m using: Vegan Vixen.
I don’t oppose providing resources to trafficking hotlines in case people are trafficked or learn of people who are, though I do feel anti-trafficking groups distributing these need to learn about the organization running the hotline and find out if they are mainly focused on stopping slavery and assisting people out of such situations, or if they’re mainly focused on using the issue of trafficking as a smokescreen to promote their anti-sex work agendas. Also, considering that trafficking happens in various industries, why just give hotline numbers to people in one industry. If the focus is really on stopping actual human trafficking, then why not distribute such numbers to people in any industry where trafficking occurs.
In response to the question about whether customers want to learn about us personally or are just visiting us for our bodies, my perspective is they’re visiting us for our time and services. I’m a very introverted, private person and don’t want the customers asking all about my personal life, though I do voluntarily share that I enjoy hiking and this has been a great topic of discussion with some clients who are also into hiking. I prefer when the customers just compensate me for my time and services (basically, paying me to do my job), than when guys I meet outside of sex work just hit on me for free when I just want to be left alone. My experience is that clients don’t really “hit on me”—they just visit me and then leave when the time is up.
Reblogged this on Pycraftsworld’s Weblog.
“Is it really that men who are willing to buy women are often aggressive and do not respect women in general? ”
Clients do not “buy women”. We buy their *time* and *attention*. Same as any other personal service worker, whether hairdresser, personal trainer, therapist or priest.
Always very nice when somebody notices their preconceptions may be wrong and actually does something about that instead of putting their head in the sand! This lady is very much on the right track.