The Madame of the house

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brothels, clients, decriminalisation, feminism, law reform, laws, madames, Melbourne, money, personal stories, pimps, Relationships, sex industry, Sex Work, south australia, stigma, the boss, Victoria, worker rights

This is a story about the time I jumped the desk to become the Madame of the house. Its about running a business in the South Australian sex industry, about who has control over who and about the myth of easy money. I wrote this for the feminists who believe our industry is dominated by male bosses that make big bucks by controlling female workers. I wrote it for every 5^th client I see who has multiplied the money he spends on sex by the hours in a day and the number of rooms in a house and thinks he has hit jackpot. I wrote it for the politicians who worry about organised crime taking over the sex industry. For the wanna be bikies n thugs that fancy playing boss man to some ladies of the night, for the desperado that thinks owning the business will control the girl and for the saviours that honestly believe they would treat their ‘girls’ differently to how we are treated anywhere else. And I wrote it for the sex workers that don’t like their boss, or are sick of having a boss, or think they could do it better, or just feel like trying something different.

This story is from many years ago, sometime after my second brush with law and before my forced break from the sex industry. I was between jobs when a friend of a friend introduced me to Neil who apparently had an interesting proposition for me. I had heard about Neil the wanna be pimp before. I use the word pimp flippantly, I’m not sure Australia has pimps, but if we do, Neil would probably LIKE to be one. He definitely had the sleaze factor to fit the stereotype but lacked the backbone. Neil had a reputation in the industry as a slimy sucker, with more money than sense and a boner for big talking. Needless to say I was curious about his proposal, but wasn’t surprised when he told me he was having another go at opening a brothel. I say another go because, as legend had it, he had tried to open a number of brothels in the past and had failed.

One of the difficulties Neil had always encountered was that he was a man. There is not much of a role for a man in a South Australian brothel, other than client. A lot of female sex workers aren’t that keen on having men hanging around on premises and the cops generally aren’t that thrilled with it either. So Neil had decided he needed to pay a female manager. In addition to that, clients are generally put off if their phone calls or door bells are answered by a man, so Neil would also need to employ a female receptionist. It struck me as ironic that in order to brag about being a big brothel boss, he had to remove himself from any actual brothel bossing. He was forced to downplay his involvement in the brothel, hand over control of the brothel, stay away from the brothel, and give up a decent amount of profit from the brothel, in order for him own a brothel.

But Neil must have been impressing someone with his brothel bragging because he was determined to try his hand at the game again. When he met me, he already had the lease on a town house in the city and had furnished it simply and adequately. He knew a few workers from other brothels who were ready to jump ship and take advantage of the new businesses honeymoon period, one of which was the friend that had introduced him to me. At the time I was in a relationship with one of those partners that made it difficult for me to do sex work, and I had been missing the industry. So when Neil asked me to manage his new business, I was excited about the opportunity to be involved in the industry in a role that I hoped my partner would find more palatable. I accepted the offer immediately.

From the beginning Neil and I disagreed about everything right down to the goofy name he had given the business. I fought for what I considered to be fair pay for all the workers of the business, I pushed for flexible conditions and I advocated for an increased budget for advertising. But Neil was stubborn or stupid and wouldn’t give. He had a bottom line that wouldn’t budge. So for those first few weeks, we did it his way. But it didn’t take long before Neil was again learning that the sex industry is not easy money and opening a brothel is not a get rich quick scheme.

Business was up and down and Neil was becoming anxious. After paying the manager a cut, the receptionist her wage, the rent, the overpriced advertising, the utilities and essential supplies for the business, Neil quickly discovered 50% of a coupla jobs a day doesn’t go far. He responded to his anxiety by reducing the advertising budget further, cutting receptionist wages and introducing ‘shift fees’ for the workers.

But it’s a vicious cycle. Without enough advertising, business became even quieter and without clients bringing in the money, the workers became unhappy. When Neil introduced the shift fee, the workers felt disrespected. Who would be happy about coming to work, sitting around all day for minimal pay with the risk being caught up in a raid AND then being forced to pay an illegal shift fee!??! They began to resent working there and those that stayed were unreliable.

Anyone who fantasises about making easy money off the backs of hookers is going to struggle. Hookers are not that easy. Many of us chose sex work for the flexibility it offers us, so we expect a flexible work place. Many of us chose it for the money we can make, so we expect to make money. Many of us chose sex work because we are good at it, so we expect to be appreciated by our employers. Neil offered his workers none of that.

But an empowered hooker is a powerful force. A hooker that knows there are ten other businesses in the vicinity that need staff (and there usually is) will not settle for anything less than what she expects. A hooker that knows its OUR service that makes the money will expect respect. And if that hooker works for a boss that disrespects her, she will disrespect them right back.

None of Neil’s workers respected him, and the business suffered because of it. One typically quiet Saturday I caught out the receptionist and worker on shift doing something dodgy. I knew they had done two jobs, but the bookwork indicated only one. They had decided to not record the second job, splitting the business’s 50% cut between them. I couldn’t blame them. They were making next to nothing and Neil’s decisions were only making it worse.

I was frustrated. I knew Neil was not meeting his target, or even covering costs, but less advertising and unhappy, unreliable and resentful workers was not helping to bring in the clients or the cash. And the expenses were still mounting.

That’s when I decided to go around him and do what needed to be done. I started taking the money from one job a day off the books and used the money to pay for more advertising. I also introduced a small retainer for the staff to cover lunch and maybe a cabfare, on those occasions when they didn’t do any jobs. And when no workers showed up to shift, I did the jobs.

At the same time Neil seemed to have an epiphany. If he wanted money he needed clients, if he wanted clients he needed workers, and if he wanted to keep the workers, he would have to loosen his rules. Since he couldn’t work himself, he was on his knees. He had no choice but to give the workers the flexibility and work conditions they were demanding. Its not unusual for sex industry employers to take advantage of the criminalised setting by attempting to control us like they would an employee but only giving us the pay and conditions of a contract worker. But in a situation where there was little money to be made, not many would accept a bad boss.

So Neil began to back off and let me take a bigger role in managing the rosters and staffing. Sneaking around behind Neils back doing jobs myself and advertising more, started to pay off and I managed to keep the business afloat a little longer. The staff appreciated the token retainer and the more flexible conditions and when I abolished the shift fee that Neil had introduced the mood shifted.

The flexible, fair and friendly work environment resulted in word of mouth reaching the workers of a brothel that had been closed down recently. It was early one quiet weekend when Winnie, an unremarkable woman in her mid 30’s came in for an interview. Looking like a proper house wife dressed in ladies floral and a perfect perm, Winnie was an unlikely looking hooker, but she bought a huge loyal and very regular client base with her. And the good fortune Winnie bought us did not stop there. She immediately sent for her two friends who she had worked with at the previous brothel. They were impressed by the guaranteed retainer our business offered and were keen to start work straight away. So at that moment, our luck had changed and business looked up. Winnie had swept in with a hoard of clients and a couple of fresh faced workers under wing and saved the day, and the business.

And so it was, that due to the decision to treat our workers well, my ability to perform ALL the duties necessary, and a little bit of good luck, business began to boom. And Neil didn’t know the half of it. His pressure was gone and he was making enough to cover his costs as well as a reasonable profit for doing nothing. He could finaly hold his head up high while he bragged round town about his latest business venture. I kept lying to him about how many jobs we were doing so I could use the extra money to continue paying the staff well, stock the business with nice things, pay for adequate advertising and offcourse I gave myself a bonus.

Everyone was happy, business was flourishing under my management, the workers were all content and making money and even Neil was satisfied. Everyone was happy except my partner. The generous pay packet I was bringing home did not sweeten the deal for them. Running any business is hard work, and clearly a sex industry business is no exception. I was on call 24/7, I was stressed about the threat of police, and I was doing lots of unrostered work relieving staff when needed. Stopping sex work and taking up this new role as manager was meant to appease my partner who was uncomfortable about sex work, but instead I had succeeded in making the sex industry a bigger part of my life than it had ever been before. My partner didn’t know about the occasions when Id provided the service myself in order to keep the doors open, but that didn’t matter. They didn’t want me involved in the industry at all.

My job was beginning to cause problems for my relationship which was probably a good thing. Looking back on this time of my life I’m glad my controlling and jealous partner made my life hell to the point I ended up walking away from the business all together. Because I nearly did something that coulda been mighta not ended well.

Neil was a shmuck. Worse than a shmuck. He was a sleazy roadblock to our success and he made me cringe. I was sick of answering to him, lying to him, even seeing him. Basically, I was sick of having him on the pay role. He was the ‘owner’ of the business, sure, but what exactly did he own? The workers? No, certainly not, most of them at this point had never even met him, and would never work for him under the conditions he wanted me to apply. Did he own the clientele? Definitely not, some clients will perhaps follow a worker from location to location, but generally clients go everywhere and belong to noone. And the clients we got came from the advertising I DID, and it was the happy skilled workers that kept them coming back. Did he own the business name? well, sure, he owned a ridiculous goofy name he chose, but that wasn’t the name that I used in our advertising, or the name that the clients had come to know, or the name that the staff and I used. The name we used, was the name I chose. Did he own premises? Well sure, he had the lease on the townhouse we operated from, but, after being there for 8 months and with a steady stream of business coming and going, it would be time to move on soon before we attracted police attention anyways. So what did he own? Some of the furniture was his, but I had also bought a lot of newer pieces for the business since we opened. And he owned the phone number.

The workers and I began talking about ditching Neil and taking complete control of his business by simply shifting the location to a new premises that was in my name. We even joked about diverting business phone to our newly connected number until Neil noticed and got round to disconnecting it.

A sex industry business, in an illegal setting, is nothing. In an environment where businesses have to move regularly, operate discreetly out of residential properties or under the masquerade of health clinics or massage parlours, a reputation or a name, an address or even a permanent phone number is not something any brothel in South Australia has. Places and faces pop up and get shut down all over town all the time, and while certain individuals may have a reputation in the industry, finding a brothel you like, is largely a case of trial and error for both sex workers and clients. So when people talk about buying a business in our industry, I always wonder what they think they are buying, and when I thought about leaving Neil and setting up shop elsewhere, I didn’t feel guilty.

I started looking for a new place to operate from and found a perfect house. It was fully furnished, in a central location and it oozed executive luxury, which was a long way from the plain and simple townhouse Neil had rented. The landlord approved my application and I was excited, nervous and determined to break away from Neil. But the night before I was due to sign the lease, my partner gave me an ultimatum. My relationship or the sex industry.

To be honest, I didn’t think too long about it. I was so sick of fighting about this, and the stress at home combined with the stress of running a business was getting too much. I allowed my partner to believe that our relationship won and the sex industry lost the competition for my loyalty. In reality, I knew I wasn’t leaving the sex industry, just leaving this role in the industry.

I suddenly realised that while there was some satisfaction and profit in successfully running my own business, it was also hard work, with big legal and financial risks. I reminisced about how easy life was when I just had to suck cocks and count cash. That night spurred on by my partner’s ultimatum, I did a 180. The next day I left the business, its workers and Neil to fend for themselves. And the next week I left my partner and went back to fending for myself.

Soon after I heard that Neil’s business had been visited by police and had been closed down. I felt a mixture of regret and relief about what was and what could have been.

Now when I reflect on the business owners and employers I have known in our industry I notice that those that have survived in the industry the longest are current or ex workers themselves, and I think that’s due to the fact that they willing and able to jump back over the desk and into the bed, in order to keep the doors open when business is tough.

The South Australian sex industry is also made up of lots of collectives of workers and private and independent workers. Having these choices easily available to us is an important aspect in ensuring we have the power to negotiate pay and conditions that suit us.

However, the fear of the police and the law does mean many workers are reluctant to work for themselves, as part of a collective or open their own business. Criminalisation does mean that many workers will not be willing to risk taking out a lease on a property in their own name and instead will opt for working anonymously for a boss. We NEED law reform urgently in this state, but any new laws we consider must support our choice to work in a variety of ways. We do not want laws like those in Victoria that favour big business and make it impossible for the average worker to try out other roles in the industry, or to work for themselves, or that stops a group of sex workers from working together. Any new laws must not take away the power we DO have. That’s one of the reasons I advocate for decriminalisation. It is the only model of law reform that protects and empowers sex workers allowing us to work for ourself, in collectives, or even to open our own small business. It’s the only model that supports our cottage industry here in SA.

But until we get decriminalisation I will continue to giggle and enjoy the stories I hear about bosses who attempt to rip off workers but end up getting ripped off themselves. Because its true that the most successful businesses are those where the workers are happy and respected.

Dear South Australian MPs and sex worker allies

Tags

brothels, clients, consent, councils, decriminalisation, discrimination, feminism, law reform, laws, licensing, mandatory testing, Melbourne, nursing homes, personal stories, Queensland, rants, regulation, safe sex, sex industry, Sex Work, south australia, stigma, street workers, the boss

Dear Ms. Key, Ms. Gago, members of the South Australian parliament, people with influence and anyone following the latest attempt at sex industry law reform in this once progressive but now somewhat stale state.

Please stop it! You’re making it worse!

You may think you’re doing the right thing but The bill you’re debating has been cut and paste so much in order to appease and play politics that what remains is not workable or fair and will not improve the lives of sex workers or anyone else. It’s not a game of bluff, nor is it a matter of compromise. The bill you are considering is a big step backward.

This is ridiculous. Why are politicians sitting around and deciding how sex workers should best practice safe sex. Why should they be able to criminalise some consensual sex acts between adults just because there is payment involved? Why do they get a say on how adults are allowed to negotiate sex and money. And why do we need to be kept 500 meters away from schools? Is it me who is the danger to children and does that include my own children? Or is it my client who is the dangerous monster? What is it about paying an adult for a sexual service that you think has anything to do with kids at school? What exactly are you scared of? And we’re not talking about inappropriate signage or amenities, because that is covered by different laws. And frankly, sex workers and our clients are generally discreet. You don’t even know that I’m selling sex from my home right next door to yours! And why is no sex work allowed near churches? Who is that clause designed to protect anyway? And why bother even worrying about schools and churches when the bill gives all the power for approving any kind of sex industry business to the councils, who have made it clear that they will never support brothels! So even if I tried to comply with this new law and secured a suitable location and put in a planning application, it’s going to be rejected on moral grounds and I will be back to square one. In reality councils will have about as much luck of stopping sex work from occurring as they do now. And just like now, most will be sex industry businesses will be forced to remain unregulated and underground.

And why is it anyone else’s business who I entertain in my own home or how they compensate me? Can you see through walls? And what’s the deal with all the hate on sex workers who solicit in public places? What exactly is so offensive about a woman standing on the street at night time anyway? And I don’t believe that she is propositioning your children, because it’s unlikely your children could afford it. Personally I feel more uncomfortable walking past a building site in the broad daylight than I do going to the pizza shop on Hanson Road.

And why should we have to deal with police on regular basis. I have had a lot of different jobs in my time, and never did the police come and check to see if I was bending at the knees when lifting nursing home residents, or displaying a slippery when wet sign when I mopped the floors of woollies. Why are we still being treated like this? Sex workers are not criminals. Stop making us into them. In some states of Australia it is illegal to discriminate against sex workers but the bill you are debating is discriminatory. It treats sex workers differently to other workers in comparable industries and it discriminates against different ways working in the sex industry. But even less forgivably, it will make our lives harder, not better.

Yes it’s true that most sex work in South Australia is currently criminalised. And that most of us already dodge laws, deal with police, and work underground. It is true that our laws are the oldest in the country. But please don’t change them just for the sake of it. Do not change them unless you are changing them for the better. Sex workers know what we need, its decriminalisation. Every credible report from the last 10 years names decriminalisation as the only model that will promote sex workers health and safety. Every state and Territory in Australia has a different model of regulation for the sex industry and if you need any more proof that the only workable model we know of to date is decriminalisation, all you have to do is speak to sex workers about our experiences of working across Australia. NSW and NZ have successfully decriminalised sex work for more than a decade. In those places sex workers are not criminals. We have full access to all the services and structures, protections and rights that every other worker does, and employers have the same obligations as any other employer. Sex workers all over the world are begging for decriminalisation. Its not rocket science.

In stark contrast Victoria and Queensland have different versions of licensing mixed with criminal laws that govern various aspects of the industry. Special bodies have been set up to monitor the laws and the police are still heavily involved in regulating sex workers work spaces. Not only have those laws been ineffective but they have also been expensive and dangerous.

When I went to Victoria to work I had very little option but to work in a brothel for a boss under their rules. I wasn’t able to work for myself because the only way I could advertise was to first register myself as a prostitute with the government. This process is expensive and it is unclear who has access to those licensing records or if it is possible to get your name removed from the list. Even if I was willing to buy a licence and register, I would still not have been allowed to have the clients visit me in my hotel or home. The law states that I was only allowed to visit them at their home or hotel. So I worked for a brothel. But before I was allowed to work, I was first forced to have a full medical examination, as is the law. The nurse visited me at the brothel and took swabs while I lay in an undignified way on the brothel bed. The nurse insisted I needed an anal swab too, even though I objected and told her that I did not provide anal services to my clients. But unlike when my clients ask for this service, this nurse was not going to take no for an answer and she unconsentually and unnecessarily stuck her swab in my ass.

If I didn’t want to work for a boss in brothel conditions and I wasn’t in a position to register myself with the local authorities, my only option was to solicit publicly. Street based sex work is illegal in Victoria, but obviously still exists and in larger proportions than here in Adelaide. Victorian police have taken to dealing with this by placing female police officers posing as sex workers on the streets in order to bust potential clients. What criminalising our client’s means is that sex workers are pushed further underground in order to ensure their clients safety and the booking. It means the possibility that only the clients with nothing to loose will be willing to take the risk of visiting sex workers who publicly solicit. Essentially it decreases the amount of “respectable” clients willing to see street based sex workers and leaves us more vulnerable and fewer options.

Another huge slap in the face was working recently in  QLD. I worked alone from a hotel which is legal as long I work completely alone. Not even with a friend. This is obviously not ideal, but it’s workable. Until I found out that I also can’t work in same hotel as any other sex worker. I can’t do doubles with another worker unless the client organises it. Infact I cant even have any friends who are sex workers. I was told to be careful even having lunch with another worker whilst answering my work phone. It felt crazy. I got the distinct feeling that I was viewed as a piece of property by QLD government. As a sex worker in QLD I must belong to one of the only 25 government approved registered brothels in the state or I must completely exile myself from the rest of the industry. I must rely only on my clients or my employer for support. And on top of all this, they have entire sections of the police force dedicated to ringing up private workers and trying to convince them to offer a double service or a blow job without a condom, so that they can bust them. All in the name of protecting sex workers.

And then I come home to Adelaide where the old and unworkable laws are……. well, old and unworkable. I can advertise and work for myself in ways that I choose with minimal difficulty. I can work with friends as a collective, I can work from home, I can work for a boss or opportunistically. Its all equally illegal, and easy to remain anonymous, unless I’m a victim of crime and need police assistance, or unless I’m working in a brothel that police have singled out for a raid, or unless I don’t know my rights, or unless I haven’t yet learnt the police evasion strategies. Our current laws are bad, but the new laws being proposed will only make our lives harder. They won’t work and rather than address community concerns they will highlight them. The issue of sex work regulation will not be resolved until we get sensible fair and workable law reform.

We already have sophisticated systems to deal with all areas of work, industry, OH&S, public health, zoning, amenities, child protection, industrial rights and any other areas of concern. Stop with the politics and just let us access them already.

I am a whore

Tags

discrimination, feminism, language, prostitute, rants, sex industry, Sex Work, slut, stigma, whore shame

And other words you shouldn’t call me…

You may have noticed the name of my blog and my frequent use of the word whore. A lot of people have wondered why I use that particular word and many have suggested that I shouldn’t. Some people have told me that in order to win more friends I should not use such strong language, others have told me that I shouldn’t put myself down like that, I should have more pride. I’ve also been told that it is such an evil word that we should rid it from our language,  no woman is a whore.

I would just like to respond to those comments before I continue:

• I’m anonymous, I don’t need to compromise who I am here in order to make friends. This blog is not about conforming to appease people, it’s about sharing myself in order to offer a perspective on… being a whore.
• Thanks for your concern but I have so much whore pride its dangerous, have you read my blog? Does it look like I’m consumed in hooker shame? Whore isn’t my confession and I’m not asking for your forgiveness.
• And guess what? you’re wrong! some women (and others) are whores… Hi! Sorry, you can’t rid me from your language!

Whore is a word I am choosing to reclaim to describe the job I do and the stigma I face. The fact that it upsets so many people only reaffirms my desire to call myself a whore and watch the people squirm. Why does a sexually and/or financially independent or liberated or adventurous or nonconforming woman stress you out so much? Why is whore so much more offensive than say – wife or student or nurse and all of the stereotypes they imply. Who cares if I’m a whore! Whore whore whore whore whore!! I like the word slut for the same reason. As women these words control us in ways that are so ingrained in society and in our own psyche we barely recognise them. What are we so ashamed of? What are we scared of? Or who cares so much about the sex life of the person next to us? And what even is a slut or a whore? Just words often used as nasty insults rather than a descriptions of someones sex life or work life or both. Lets face it, how many people reading this have been called a whore or a slut, or called someone else a whore or a slut and it had absolutely nothing to do with sex or money? Anyone has the potential to be called a whore or a slut, these words serve to control us all by shaming some of us. The more we all run from these words, the more power they have. By reclaiming the word whore I feel like I am taking away its sting and its ability to hurt me and at the same time I am standing up to the whore hating slut shaming bullies. Standing up with woman kind, with slut kind and with whore kind, with human kind, standing tall and united.

When you call her a slut, you call me a slut, and we are all sluts… now what? Yes I am a whore, I have sex for money which makes me a whore.. so what?

Not only that, I think Whore is so powerful and strong and has an ancient and sacred context. Almost a modern day witch. I am a whore. Hear me roar!

That doesn’t mean all of us are ok with the word whore. Given that it is still used in very derogatory ways, and is considered an insult of the worst kind by most people in our society, you better be careful who you are calling a whore. Sex worker is the politically correct terminology. If you are referring to another sex worker you should use sex work and sex worker unless told otherwise.

Sex worker is the preferred language because it places sex work clearly as work. It doesn’t hold any connotations and it doesn’t make any judgements. It includes all of our community in all our diversity and shows respect to our stated wishes. Basically you should call us sex workers because we said so, and you don’t need a better reason than that.

You should not call us prostitutes. Well not without our permission. In Australia many sex workers find the ‘P’ word offensive. In everyday language prostitute has come to mean sell out or without morals and has nothing to do with the type of work we do. IE/ ‘he is now prostituting himself to corporate sector’. Even when describing our work prostitution is not always accurate. Prostitution generally refers to full sexual intercourse whereas many sex workers do not provide intercourse. I personally am not upset by the word prostitute, but if you are in the media or in politics and you use the P word despite having being asked not to thousands of times by sex workers and our representative organisations, then shame on you! You should know better! Sex worker is what you have been asked to call us, have some respect!

Other names I have been called include hooker, escort, masseuse, working girl, lady of the night, mattress actress, call girl, ho, street walker and many many many more.

They all hold their connotations and we all identify with and/or hate them differently. I personally do not identify as an escort because an escort visits the client in their hotel or home or whatever whereas I more often provide an inhouse service. I don’t mind being called a hooker, but if you’re using the word ho or whore you better use it with love. And that’s just me.

If you don’t know what language someone uses to describe themselves, use sex worker. If you’re speaking formally to or about sex workers, say sex worker. At parties and BBq’s, in the media and in online conversations, say sex worker. Inhouse sex workers, street based sex workers, escort/visiting sex workers, sex workers in strip clubs and in the porn industry, phone sex workers, male, female and gender diverse sex workers, young sex workers, migrant sex workers, private and independent sex workers, sex workers employed in brothels and agencies. Sex workers, sex workers, sex workers. You get the idea.

I know it might sound confusing, I can call myself a whore or whatever else I want but you have to call me a sex worker. If you think about it though, you will notice many marginalised groups are reclaiming and using language that was once used derogatorily against them, while at the same time asking people outside of their community use language that is neutral and respectful. You have no right to reclaim language on behalf of a marginalised community you don’t belong to unless you have been given permission. And even then, permission is usually only good for a specific circumstance or context and does not necessarily give you a free pass to say what you want when you want just because you once dated someone who didn’t mind being called a prostitute. If you are not a sex worker and you choose to use language that holds negative connotations to describe us or our work without any right to do so, you are being disrespectful. If you continue to use disrespectful language even after you have been asked not you, you are a bigot.

To put it another way,

I am a whore amongst whores, a sex worker in public and If you are lucky enough to meet me socially or get me behind closed doors… you can call me Jane.

But baby, just think of what we could do..

Tags

brothels, couples, discrimination, feminism, friends and family, Love, money, parenting, personal stories, Relationships, sex industry, Sex Work, single mothers, south australia, stigma

Another love story. Complete with love, lies, sex, summer holidays and a little bit of communication. When I met Luke I was happily hooking in a brothel 2 shifts a week, studying part-time, working a ‘straight’  job and parenting but I still found time to do a little partying. I was single, my kids spent a couple of nights a week with their father and I was still young so every now and then I’d go out on the town with my besti’s and on some of these occasions I got lucky. Or I should say, sometimes I went home with someone and they got lucky!

By this point in life I had made a decision to keep my sex work job a secret. I had children to think of, I had an ex partner, the father of my kids, who I didn’t want to give ammunition, I had study, a straight job and a future. I was not ashamed of my sex work, it was just such a non issue that I couldn’t be bothered dealing with the stigma if I didn’t have to, and I wanted to protect my children from it. It was sex work that had allowed me study part-time, given me the freedom  to be a single mum rather than stay in an unhappy relationship, allowed me pick and choose straight jobs, only accepting those that were flexible and willing to work around my family and my study. It  was sex work that meant I could buy the expensive texts books I needed for Uni, and take my kids to overpriced music lessons and still left me with enough money to have a big night out every now and then. I was desperately scared of having to give all that up and I thought that keeping it a secret would prevent that from happening.

And it worked. I didn’t tell Luke the night I met him at the party. Actually we had met quite a few times over the years, but he had never really left an impression on me before. But that night he did and we spent the night together and then later in the week another night and then an afternoon. I didn’t want to tell him my secret because then it’s not a secret. What if we stopped  seeing each other after a short time and then he told everyone else. I decided it was none of his business and that if we were still seeing each other after 3 months I would tell him.

3 months came and went and Luke and I were still seeing each other. He spent time with me and the kids and it was getting fairly serious. I had dropped my shifts in the brothel back to only one per week, and I didn’t want to tell him. I knew by now that he would hate it. I knew that he would make me stop. I knew he would be upset I had kept it from him. And I knew it didn’t have to be that way. We were not living together so I still had my own expenses, and my brothel shift just moulded seamlessly into my busy and respectable life, I wasn’t technically lying…… I just said I was going to work.

I didn’t want to give up what I viewed as my independence and so I kept sex working and I kept it a secret. For nearly two years.

Possibly not the right thing to do, but I am certainly not alone. Half the people I worked with at the time were hiding it from their partners as well. It seems easy to justify when you know it’s just work. And as time went on, it just seemed more and more impossible to tell him. I wanted him to know, sometimes I felt like he just didn’t want to know. I mean, why didn’t he ask more questions, Even if he didn’t notice the extra money I was sure I was dropping hints. But no, I worked once a week in a brothel for more than 18 months and it seems my partner had no idea.

And then one day, in the middle of a big blow up argument, about something unrelated and I can’t even remember what now, I yelled the words at him. “I DON’T CARE, I’VE BEEN A PROSTITUTE THE WHOLE TIME YOU’VE KNOWN ME”

I meant it as a cutting end to our argument, to our relationship, to my lies, and possibly to my job. I had thought about what would happen if he found out and I knew he’d be pretty pissed! I wouldn’t have been surprised if he put a hole in a nearby wall. But I screamed it at him and he just looked at me blankly and said “you are not!”

And so I told him everything. His calmness floored me, so my manner changed. I lost my anger and I felt guilt and sadness for hurting him. I explained myself, I consoled him, I explained myself some more, I apologised and, of course, I did the inevitable. I promised to stop working. We  talked and to my surprise  he was willing to forgive me, and I guess that made him even more appealing to me.

I quit my job, took up extra hours in my straight job, and moved in with him to save money. I felt like I gave up some of my independence  but I was ok about that. I kept it up for around 12 months but after a year of no sex work, and less flexibility in my other job, I was suffering financially. So was my partner, he had acquired an instant family to help support and we were all feeling the pinch. I had been faithful to my pledge to not do sex work, but we were struggling. It was on my mind, and I began making jokes about it. The bills would come in and he would be complaining so Id say, “one night in a brothel, I could clear them for us”, he would ignore me or give me an annoyed look. But neither of us could deny that money was tight and something had to give. I kept making my jokes, but I started throwing in extra sweeteners “we could even go on a holiday!”

“But honey, just think of what we could do!”

He still didn’t agree, but he seemed more open to the idea the more I kept bringing it up. One day he snapped at me “Oh for gods sake, you want to go back to work, just do it then”. I nearly squealed with excitement, but thought that might be an unhelpful reaction. So we sat and had a very open and long conversation about it. I asked him what his main concerns were. He said he trusts me, he knows it’s just work. I reminded him that he knows it wont effect our relationship, because I had already been doing it in the past and he didn’t even know. Eventually he confessed one of his biggest fears about me being a sex worker, was that I might fuck one of his friends or colleagues as a client, or I might be recognised and outed in public.

Jealousy is an awful emotion, and one that is difficult to control. Everyone experiences it differently and for different reasons. His fear seemed silly to me, but I was glad he was able to figure it out and communicate it to me. It meant that we could find a way for me to do sex work that he could live with. We decided that I would go away to work outside Adelaide, where it was unlikely I would see anyone either of us knew and where I could remain anonymous. So for the next 12 months I went away once a month to rural and regional South Australia for working weekends with friends.

And because I felt privileged to be able to go back to work with my partners blessing I used my money very wisely. I knew we were taking a risk in our relationship and I wanted to make it worth it. In 12 months, I managed to pay off our credit card debt and saved enough money to take us on that holiday I had suggested.

I used to joke that I was bribing my partner to “let me” work by paying for us to go to the Greek Islands, but it wasn’t actually like that. I did have to convince him to be ok with me going back to sex work, but we were a partnership, and I felt equal in that partnership, we had developed an arrangement that worked well for us, and sex work had become a part of that arrangement.

And it is hard to argue while holidaying in the beautiful Mediterranean summer!

Stop the Trafic – The Red Light

Tags

brothels, consent, discrimination, feminism, laws, money, rants, sex industry, Sex Work, south australia, stigma, the boss, unions, work, workers rights

This is part three in my series of posts about trafficking. I previously wrote about my suspicions in regards to the portrayal of sex trafficking in the media, and the motivations of the anti trafficking industry in Peak Hour, and the negative outcomes of the trafficking hysteria in The Car Crash. This post is the answer. A green light for migrant sex workers and a red light for trafficking.

If you follow on from my original post the answer seems really obvious to me. There are many sex workers all around the world who travel or would like to travel. Just let them do it.

Let people apply for working Visa’s in Australia as a sex worker. As I have mentioned, I personally have the contact details of at least 10 sex workers currently working in China who would love to come to Australia to work in your brothel, if they could get a Visa. The barrier is that they are unable to get a working Visa as a sex worker. Not to mention the process of applying for Visa’s to enter Australia is extremely difficult because we conveniently do not translate the required documents, so people who do not speak or read English, often need a third person to help them apply for their travel documents. Some of the sex workers I referred to have considered paying a third person a lot of money to assist them in travelling to Australia to work, and some knew other workers who had done that. Obviously being in a lot of debt to the person assisting you travel or your employer does create vulnerabilities for the worker though, it can take away a some of their bargaining power and in some cases could restrict the sex workers choices.  A few simple changes could allow sex workers from around the world to come to Australia willingly to work. There would be no demand for stolen or coerced non sex working Asian women in the sex industry, because lets face it while having sex slaves in place of willing workers might be slightly better for short term profits, it has got to create some serious challenges. Cut out the middle man and the demand by allowing migrant sex workers to enter and work in Australia legally and independently.

That is ofcourse if your concern is stopping trafficking, and not stopping sex work.

It might also be useful to educate all sex workers, our employers, our clients and the general community about our rights, in appropriate and useful ways. Through our peer organisations and that are supported to make sure they can outreach to all sex workers from all backgrounds making sure people know their rights. Make sure we all know what we should expect and what is not OK at work so that we are less likely to be exploited or treated badly and we know what to do or who we can get more information or support from if we do have problems at work.

Of course, where I live in South Australia that would mean giving us some rights in the first place. Decriminalise sex work, and give us our rights!

Educate the wider community, health and welfare services and the police to treat sex workers with respect. Help break down the stigma of being or seeing a sex worker, so that we can talk to people about what’s going on without fear of being judged. The discriminatory perceptions that exist about sex workers and our clients doesn’t make it easy for us to share anything openly or honestly, or to voice our concerns.

Take crimes against us seriously. Dont turn it into a witch hunt on an entire industry, or blame my choice of work, just give me the support I need and deal with the crime at hand. Create safe spaces for people to report crimes, concerns or suspicions and then treat those reports seriously, and respectfully, like you would if the crime or complaint had been committed in a restaurant.

Encourage and  support our organising. In Australia, we havent got our own union, but we have our own workers rights groups and organisations. Many sex workers are members of those organisations and many many many more sex workers receive support, information or advocacy around workplace issues from these groups and organisations. They are also fighting for our workers rights at a state and national level. Strong sex worker organising reduces the risks of us being exploited at work.

Stop the police raids. Stop pushing us and our workplaces, industry, employers and clients so far underground that we can barely see the light. Change the approach and try protecting sex workers instead of scaring us. Save the raids for actual crimes.

Is it really that difficult? Want to stop slavery? Free the slaves.

Seriously, allow sex workers to travel to Australia and work in the sex industry legally, educate them on how to do that, give us rights, make sure we know our rights, create safe and supportive spaces for us or our clients to report crimes or concerns or to make complaints, treat those reports with respect and take them seriously, stop thinking and suggesting that being treated badly is part of doing sex work, support us to organise to improve our work conditions for all sex workers and make the cops protect us instead or raiding us.

Stop the traffic – the car crash

Tags

consent, discrimination, feminism, laws, Melbourne, money, rants, sex industry, sex trafficking, Sex Work, south australia, stigma

Like the car crash you can’t look away from….

I explained my suspicion of the anti trafficking rhetoric and I promised I wouldn’t leave it there. I want to tell you about the harms being created by the trafficking hysteria because the problem is not only misinformation and preconceived stereotypes, it has actual detrimental real and measurable effects on the daily lives of sex workers, Asian sex workers in particular. Get a load of this:

Knee jerk reactions to the 4 corners one sided story on trafficking in the sex industry resulted in immediate promises from law makers to introduce tougher laws. The four corners ‘expose’ relied on one sad story, lots of bad recreations, the occasional sound bite from experts only where it backed up the ongoing spin and ofcourse sex work abolitionist and founder of project respect, Kathleen Maltzhern. All set to a predictably dark and sinister soundtrack. Well done 4 Corners  award, you certainly got people to bite. even before airing of the show and still continuing media are all over it, opportunists using it and the politicians responded.

Now specifically and admittedly in response to 4 corners sensationalism New South Wales is likely to “toughen up laws on brothels”. NSW has the best laws in the country, and just like that it’s going to be taken away. And WA have just introduced a bill into parliament that among other shockers, criminalises ALL migrant sex workers. Even if you don’t share my opinion about the lack of actual trafficking in our industry, surely you understand that bad laws are not the answer. We already have laws about trafficking, how about we use them rather than making more and more laws that only serve to push us all further underground and make it more difficult for all of us in every way and do not work. Awesome 4 corners is now creating our public policy.

And in states like South Australia, where we are all illegal anyway, it means Asian brothels get raided more often. elping the sex slaves by regularly arresting, harassing and intimidating Asian sex workers, their employers and their clients more than usual. Despite all the hundreds of sex work related charges laid each year, there are very few cases of trafficking ever found. And the few cases where victims of trafficking have been identified, criminalisation did not or would not have helped them. And in some cases victims were not treated appropriately by the cops.

Not only are sex workers generally feeling the effects of harmful laws, and Asian sex workers get more attention from the police, but, our saviours come out of the woodwork, ready to sniff out the sex slave and try out their scriptures or skills. What this means for us? More patronising visits from various health services, church groups or any other outsiders forcing themselves into our workspaces and being inappropriate. In Adelaide, it’s RAHAB. A church group who run a ministry training course charging young Christians good money to do outreach to sex workers. These people visit Asian brothels (among other parts of the industry), forcing themselves onto people while they are at work, often with nothing translated, nothing practical to offer and asking personal questions. Sex workers feel pressured to play along and be friendly because there is a suspicion that they will inform the police if they are not allowed in to a particular premises (on the presumption that we must be harbouring slaves). No one in the industry wants to talk to them, they are untrained and inexperienced christians who say completely offensive things and give us patronising bars of soap and deodorant sticks as bribes. They have even been known to break the conidentiality of one Chinese woman in a serious and kind of shocking way.

Not that publicly outing someone matters when you’re intent on saving a sex slave. People and their lives are just vehicles for furthering an agenda in most cases. Victoria’s Project respect, headed up by the afore-mentioned Kathleen Maltzhern whose agender shone through the 4 corners special, was trading on the misery. Sure enough no sooner had the show finished but there were calls for donations to her organisation everywhere. As mentioned in my previous post on the subject, everyone jumped on board ready to ride the wave, all hoping to get some air time, or some funding or public support. From big sex industry business associations wanting to minimise competition to abolitionist feminists and church groups. And they are all getting the airtime and using it to make things worse while groups that actually represent us desperately need the same support.

And I suggest a lot of the willingness to believe the hype is due to a touch of racism effecting people’s views of Asian women and preconceived ideas about sex work generally. Add that to some sad music and some recreations and the proble seems likely. And so it feeds your views of sex workers and Asian women further. It’s a vicious cycle. I once heard a woman who did outreach with a church based group speak at (one of the many) anti trafficking forums. She told a story about the night she saw trafficking with her own eyes in a South Australian brothel. It was late one night and she said she couldn’t really know for sure if “lets call her Lucy” (her words not mine) was trafficked or not, but it seemed probable for the following reasons (explained in a sad knowing kind of way):

1. “Lucy” didn’t engage at all with the christian outreach worker but sat quietly in the corner listening, with a “sad look on her face”

2. “Lucy” didn’t speak English

3. “Lucy’s” Thai boss spoke English and chatted with the church outreach woman and explained how “Lucy” lives in Melbourne and is only in Adelaide for 2 weeks and will be going home soon.

4. The Thai female boss had a white Australian boyfriend who likes to travel.

That was it.

She told this story to a room full of other keen would be “helpers” and interested public who didn’t seem to bat an eyelid. I shudder to think what urban myths that presumptuous story has now created, and the effects of that story being recreated over dinner tables everywhere.

Can i just mention as a side note, that the constant portrayal of Asian women and sex workers as submissive, exploited and/or abused, is not good for business. It keeps the good clients away and attracts the creeps!

It’s like – what do you want from us?! No one is listening unless we give them victim porn! Reading the accounts by Nicholas Kristof in this awful book (that was a best seller but I had to abandon half way through) about buying the freedom of young sex workers in places like India and Thailand, and he spends an uncomfortable amount of time describing her physical features and her sad brown eyes, before going on to gloat about his own saint like characteristics. JUST PAY HER AND LEAVE HER ALONE ALREADY NICHOLAS!! And you lot just eat it up. Salivate for it even. White saviours rescuing pretty young sex slaves and returning them to innocence. To the point that for some people to believe me,  i first need to break down and disclose any traumatic experience i may have had right there in front of you. Before you even hear me! Here – Elena says it better than me.

*End rant*

(Stick with me on this, I am getting to the friendly bits where I hand out all the answers)

Stop the Traffic! Peak Hour…

Tags

clients, consent, discrimination, false consciousness, fantasy, feminism, friends and family, laws, money, rants, sex industry, Sex Work, south australia, stigma, the boss, trafficking

Hot topic of the moment – human trafficking. Not to be confused with people smuggling. But feel free to mix it up with sex work and migrant workers, or just Asian women generally. There’s been a lot of media about the problem, politicians are discussing it, feminist and church groups are concerned about it and 4 corners is exposing it. Well I’m calling bullshit and here’s why!

I’ve worked in nearly every brothel in Adelaide for many years and I’ve never worked with anyone or met anyone who has  worked with someone who was being forced into it. If I or anyone I knew, ever worked with someone who was there against their will, we would call the cops.

It makes sense that sex workers would care the most about this sort of thing. If it’s happening, it’s happening in our industry, to our colleagues, in our workplaces, by our bosses and with our clients. Of course we would know and ofcourse we wouldn’t do nothing while this happened to us or our colleagues!

Maybe we don’t know about these sex slaves in our own industry. Maybe they are not in the brothels that I work at, or anyone I know has worked at, but in some secret dark and unknown brothel that no one knows about. Well there are still some people who would need to know about it – the clients.

I’ve seen a lot of clients in my time and I have had a lot of requests. Clients generally seem to prefer workers who want to be there, or are at least very good at pretending they enjoy their job. Most of my clients ask to kiss and cuddle not to have me sad and broken. 

Our clients are not demons. They are just clients. If you went to a restaurant do you want to be served by someone who is being forced to work against their will under awful conditions, or do you prefer to think your waiter is treated well and therefore treats you well? I have faith that there is more business in happy hookers than there is in Asian sex slaves. Not to say that there isn’t any money in Asian sex slaves, but happy hookers can play that character if required.

I have worked in Asian brothels. I worked for 12 months in a brothel that was run by a Chinese sex worker and had many workers, mainly Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean. These women were not your stereotype victim. They were very often strong, clever, motivated women who worked hard to provide for themselves and often their family. They were also very good business women, who knew how to manipulate the industry to bring in the maximum profit.

That includes playing up to your stereotype, if that’s what will make them money. We all do it. Find our niche and work it. I loved listening to the workers play up their soft accents or act out the submissive Asian girl character for the sake of taking his money. Just like most of us hookers, they knew how to be a mattress actress, while skilfully and assertively negotiating their terms and providing their service without ever breaking character. Until the client leaves. And then its back to loudly laughing and teasing each other, cooking the whole place a feast or yelling down the phone to their family and friends.

And these workers know how to make money.

There are a few well-known cases of rich old white men roaming around South East Asia or poorer parts of India trying save the prostitutes by “buying their freedom” from the brothel that has captured them. In many of these cases the newly freed victim returns to the brothel of their own accord and it’s usually blamed on drug addiction, inability to cope in outside world or economic necessity. But it makes me wonder because I can totally picture a sex worker in a Thailand brothel meeting one of these geezers while they are on shift, he starts talking about buying her freedom and the $$ flashes above his head. She goes down to the boss and says something like “it’s another one of those knight in shining armour fantasies again, I reckon he’s rich, lets tell him its US$5000 to buy my freedom”. She goes back to his hotel with him and tells him sad stories, he then takes her “home to her village” before he trots off to write his award-winning saviour book and she goes back to work having made a months wages with that one client.

In the Asian brothels I have worked at, I have been treated better than in many of the other brothels I have worked at. The working conditions were better. My cut of the service fee was fairer, and I felt like part of a family. Lots of the workers came and went, but that’s because most of the workers I worked with in Adelaide Asian brothels actually lived in other states. They came to Adelaide to do sex work because they wanted to remain discreet. They didn’t want to do sex work in their own small communities in their own home states because of the stigma we all face. But we felt like part of a family. Often the workers would live and work in the brothel for a few weeks at a time before returning home and the coming back every few months. This meant our workplace was also someone’s house so we’d share home cooked meals and intimacies that you share when you spend that much time in someone’s living space. This community was networked and looked after each other.

I have been to parts of Asia and Pacific countries and hung out with sex workers there. When I was in China recently, all the sex workers I met wanted to come to Australia. They asked me so many questions about how they could get here. Many knew someone, who knew someone, who could help them come here for a considerable fee. Many knew people who had decided to take that option and had been happy with their business arrangement. No one knew people who had been tricked into doing sex work in another country. Although some people knew some sex workers who had been mislead about work conditions or contract arrangements, but they weren’t told they were going to be a waitress.

Why would traffickers have to trick someone to come to Australia to work as a sex worker, when I could right now give you the contact details of 20 gorgeous young Chinese sex workers who would pay you money to bring them here to work happily and voluntarily in your brothel? They can even  play a perfect game of submissive sex object if you’re willing to pay.

Why would someone take these risks for an unhappy unwilling worker when other sex workers and our clients will not tolerate it?

It doesn’t ring true to me. It isn’t logical. There is no evidence and I call bullshit.

And it’s more than that. I was reading this great book about the history of sex work in Australia and it talked about in the early 1900’s the media and public concern with the “white slave trade” back then it was all about young white girls accepting overseas domestic jobs with evil European or Japanese villains who would then trick them into prostitution. There was very little evidence of this however and infact it seems there is a lot of evidence of workers of all nationalities migrating for better work conditions, include young white Australian female sex workers. It also tells of how the Salvation Army and many feminists attempted to save sex workers by forcing them to work in laundries in sweatshop like conditions, and had their pays docked to cover lodge and boarding. It’s still the feminists and the salvation army who are trying to raid our workplaces, rescue sex workers and rehabilitate us into a less than suitable job.

That rings true to me.

And it’s more than even that. If people care about us, how come the cops don’t do anything when you tell them your boss is withholding pay or taking unlawful fines or blackmailing you but they jump on the trafficking bandwagon, taking it upon themselves to raid Asian brothels intimidating everyone they find. How come the same feminists who fight to close our workplaces now act like they care about us but don’t listen when we fight for workers rights. How come the church groups that used to be about saving us from our sins now want to force themselves upon asian sex slaves and call themselves an anti trafficking group. And how come adult business groups (big bosses of big legal brothels) are so quick accuse their competition of trafficking, the same brothels they used to accuse of spreading disease. Why don’t any of these people care about trafficking in other industries? And how come I still haven’t met any of these trafficked sex slaves. It’s because these groups have seized the few sad stories they have ‘exposed’ to serve their purpose and further their agenda. Sex workers have been yelling for years about our problems, but no one is interested in sensible boring workers rights and anti discrimination strategies.

Sex workers DO experience exploitation at work. Migrant workers DO have barriers to accessing support and services. Our immigration and our Visa systems DO make Asian sex workers vulnerable. We DO want allies and attention to these issues. We DO need urgent legislation reviews and reforms.

But you’re getting it all wrong. Media hysteria and more cops and reactionary policy and strengthened stereotypes and preconceived ideas and misinformation and salivating over discovered victims and villains and then some more cops. It isn’t helping!

I wont leave this here,  I’ll write more about this very soon, in particular about the real life harms of the sex trafficking rhetoric and what sex workers want to address these issues. Up next in the ‘stop the traffic’ series is ‘the car accident you can’t look away from’ followed by ‘the scenic route’ .

How to spot a hooker

Tags

clients, discrimination, feminism, friends and family, Love, parenting, personal stories, rants, Relationships, sex industry, Sex Work, single mothers, south australia, stigma, whore shame

Have you ever met a sex worker? Shall we do the math?  Lets say there is 1000 sex workers in South Australia working in any one year and 85% of them are female (an estimate shared by the SA Police, the local sex workers health organisation SIN and quoted in the media). That would mean 850 women have done sex work in any one year in SA. In June 2010 South Australia had 1.09 million people of working age between 15 and 64 years old (from the Australian Bureau of statistics) and roughly half of them (545 000) were women. Using these statistics 1 in 640 working aged South Australian Women have done sex work this year alone.

Now lets say their average length of time in the industry is 10 years (It was more like 5 years in research done with Australian sex workers in 1991 by Roberta Perkins some of which is published here and in a book called Working Girls) and your working life lasts 50 years (based on the ABS age range used above) I could take a leap and say that over a 10 year period all the current sex workers have left and a new 850 have entered (overall, on average, generally, based on these estimates). My sketchy brain (and dodgy calculator) work that out to mean that 1 in 65 South Australian women will do sex work at one point in their life.

Does this math add up? That seems like a lot! And I am using conservative figures. Any way you look at it, it’s a good proportion. Someone pull my math apart, because I just sent my brain into a gooey mess.

And while we wait for the judges to get back to us, I’ll tell you why I wouldn’t actually be surprised if my guess was close to accurate.

You may think you have never met a hooker (except the one you paid maybe) but a lot of my friends, family, lovers and even partners have thought they never met a hooker either. You see, most of us sex workers don’t wear a sign on our head, we don’t have a red light on our house and we don’t advertise our identifying details on a billboard.

Many of us hide our work from some, or most, or all the people we know and meet or maybe we just hide it just from you!

Many of us are only sex workers when we are at work. The rest of the time we are people’s friends and family members and community members. Maybe yours.

Some of us may want to suss you out before we make ourselves vulnerable by sharing our secret. It’s not that we are ashamed, but maybe we have reasons to hide from the discrimination. Maybe we are testing your values and your trustworthiness first to make sure our secret life is safe with you.

Some of us have detailed cover stories so when strangers ask about our work we easily talk about our job in telephone sales, converting stories about our clients into a story about an interesting call we took at work. Maybe we can’t be bothered doing a sexwork 101 class right now, or maybe we’re saving you the embarrassment that we suspect our disclosure would elicit.

Some sex workers will never tell a soul, taking their secrets to the grave. The only people knowing are other sex workers and their clients. They have decided that the risk is not worth it. Perhaps they are a student who is scared about jeopardising their future career, a single mum who is only working for a few years to set herself up. For many of us, sex work is just a job that is meeting our needs. Sometimes its only a temporary plan and we decide that coming out and fighting the stigma for the sake of a short term job is just not worth it.

I feel privileged to receive emails from people sharing their own experiences of sex work with me, stories that they have never told anyone else. If you have never met a sex worker, you are missing out.

I had a partner for three years and I never told him that I was a part-time sex worker. I guess the thought of me in that line of work never occurred to him, because he never suspected. I didn’t find it difficult, I just went to work as per normal, did my job and came home. He even met other sex workers who I worked with, but he presumed they were co workers from my “straight” job. It wasn’t a big deal to me, and I didn’t want to make it a big deal to us so I kept it to myself.

If a client complains about the lack of sexual attention they receive from their wives or girlfriends I will often make the joke “maybe she is just too tired from working at the brothel all day”. Everytime he will laugh heartily assuring me that for whatever reason this is a ridiculous suggestion. And I giggle as I respond with “yup, that’s what my partner thinks about me too”. Then I sit back and watch them consider my words.

Have you ever met a hooker? Maybe you’re married to one, or maybe your mum is one. Maybe one of the people in your class is a hooker, or maybe your best friend has done sex work. Maybe the person on the bus, or at the party, or your mates partner or family member or the person that helps out at the canteen or maybe even your child has done sex work. If my maths is right, its likely nearly everyone has met a sex worker at some point. Some of you might love one.

Maybe we havent told you because we don’t trust you. Or maybe we trust you, but we don’t know if we will be able to trust you next week. Or maybe we don’t trust your friends.

But  mostly we don’t know who we can trust.

Don’t let your friend or loved one be the ones who dies with their secrets. Or the one who emails a stranger with their amazing stories but can’t tell anyone in their lives.

If you want to spot a hooker:

Don’t presume you are not talking to a sex worker when you make that nasty comment about us.

Don’t presume there are no sex workers in the room feeling uncomfortable or unsafe when you pass judgement about us.

Don’t presume that you are not talking about someones loved one or family member when you discuss stereotypes and misconceptions about sex workers.

We are not just in the brothels, we are everywhere. Perhaps even in your home.

Don’t fail our test.

If you haven’t heard stories like mine before, you haven’t been asking the right questions.

Do you ever have female clients?

Tags

couples, disability, escort, fantasy, female clients, feminism, money, personal stories, sex industry, Sex Work, sexuality, south australia, stigma

This post is part of the Sex Work 101 series, along with other popular questions and answers such as what was my most interesting booking? What do you tell your kids? And various other questions to be answered in the future such as, do you pay tax and what’s the worst booking you’ve had. But this post will answer the ever popular question about whether I see female clients.

Yes. I have had female clients. But not many. The majority of my clients, by far are men. And I am fairly confident in saying the majority of most sex workers clients are men.

Most of the women I have seen were part of a male/female couple, who had booked me to join them. I have done many many bookings with couples over the years and have always really enjoyed them. When I take a booking for a couple I generally ask to speak to both of them to make sure everyone is equally as enthusiastic. The last thing I want is to get caught in the middle of an awkward relationship drama.

More often than not I am told that it was the womans idea to hire a hooker because she was wanting to experiment. Obviously there would be times when she just wanted to please her fella, but that was definitely not the case for most. There was one couple i used to see a lot, she was about 10 yrs older than her boyfriend. The second time I visited her she waited for her boyfriend to leave the room and whispered that she used to be a sex worker as well. I saw them lots after that.

These couple bookings are probably different to how you are picturing. Again they are heavily negotiated. I know what they want from me, what their rules are, what they don’t want. I am careful to respect both people and their relationship and nearly always focus most of my attention on the woman. Rather than being some kind of porn scenario acted out for the males pleasure, I often use these sessions to encourage the male to help me pamper the woman. It is very nice massaging a woman after massaging so many men.

I have seen some women clients by themselves as well. But in all honestly, I can count them on one hand. I know other sex workers have had more female clients than I have had, and there are even agencies and brothels that specialise in catering to female clients in the eastern states. But I have seen only a few. 3 of them were women experimenting, 1 of them was a lesbian, and one was a closeted married woman in her 50’s.

Even the male sex workers I know mainly see male clients. Although one of my friends has a number of female clients who have disabilities. They are women who have been very assertive about their sexual desires and pushed hard to get access to a sex worker. Often women’s sexuality is not considered and way too often a woman with a disability is considered asexual.

It also seems, anecdotally, that a lot of female clients are or have been sex workers themselves. I have stories from other workers about female clients who are or used to be a sex worker. They either wanted to see how it was on the other side or they just felt like laying back and being pampered. I even know a sex worker who hired another female worker when she was visiting Adelaide from interstate.  I have to admit, it does sound appealing, but I’m too cheap to hire a hooker 😉

Why so few female clients? Well, we can only speculate. Depends on what lenses you use to look at the world through I guess. Some will say, men need or want more sex and women can get it for free. Some say men are given access to women’s bodies due to patriarchy, and I say:

A little from column A) and a little from column B)

Men are often encouraged to embrace and promote their sexual urges. Men often have more access to a disposable income. Women are often discouraged from acknowledging their sexuality at all. Women often have less access to disposable income.

Combine that with an entrepreneurial instinct and a desire for independence and you have yourself supply and demand.

The sex industry is a reflection of society, warts and all (lol – see what i did there?). The sex industry is not the cause of societies problems but it is affected by them. But as society changes, so is the sex industry. There are many male sex workers catering to men who have sex with men, and the number of female clients is slowly increasing too. We know that the number of women viewing porn on the internet is huge, there are female only strip clubs and porn producers.

I look forward to a day when I can confidently tell you that 50% of my clients are women.

Mother and a Whore

Tags

discrimination, feminism, friends and family, Love, mother blame, parenting, personal stories, rants, Relationships, Sex Work, single mothers, stigma, whore shame

I also wanted to title this post:  Wont somebody think of the children!!

There will sometimes come a time in a persons life when they fall in love and ‘settle down’. And I quickly realised that for a lot of people ‘settle down’ means I am expected to stop sex work and find something else to do to make money and fill my time. So when I met and started dating  Jack I knew it was just a matter of time before he voiced a problem with my job. Things got serious and we moved in together and sure enough it wasn’t long before Jack told me that he loved me so much that I had to find a new job. I had been through this before and so I pretty much gave in to his insecurities straight away. I stopped sex work and started applying for ‘straight work’.

Skipping through the long and not very interesting story, Jack and I had babies, fell out of love and separated.  I immediately went straight back to sex work. It was a choice. Yes it was a choice made by a single mother, but it was my choice just the same. I reduced the hours I was working in my ‘straight job’ and started back working for a local escort agency while my kids were either at school, childcare or at their fathers. Instantly I felt the judgemental double sting of mother blaming joined with whore shaming. Those who always knew and supported my choice to do sex work, had a different opinion now that I was a mother. There are people who believe that being a sex worker automatically makes me a bad mother. Maybe even the readers of this blog have questions. So in order to continue telling you my stories I thought I should get these questions out of the way – upfront.

What will you tell your child?

How would you feel if your daughter turned out to be a hooker?

What happens when your son finds out you fuck for money?

What will their friends think of them at school?

Im going to answer these questions here and now, once and for all, in response to all those well meaning people who seem to struggle to get their head around me, my work, my relationships, and my family. I may follow this post up with answers to other popular questions such as “Is there a difference between sex work and ‘real sex’”  “how can you ask me to be faithful when you’re fucking all those other men?” “do you have any self respect?” and my favourite usually asked at completely inappropriate social functions…..“will you fuck me if I pay you for it? What about your friend?”.

But for now im going to start with the ones that I find most offensive, and that’s the ones that involve my motherhood.

What will I tell my child?

I, like other working mums, tell my child age appropriate information that describes what mum does for a job. Unfortunately, I have to be careful, because I don’t want my little tacker running off to school ruining his social calendar for his entire school life because he told Tommy who told his mum that his best friend’s mum is a hooker. So I choose my words carefully. Mum works at a massage centre. At a young age they don’t know enough about the world to say much more than that anyway.  When they get a little bit older and the conversation comes up or when they ask, I might say something more like: mum gives sexy massages. Over the years each time the topic comes up I will tell them a little bit more. After all I don’t see this as any different to what I vet might say… “I fix animals when they are sick” The vet doesn’t say to her 4 year old that sometimes she has remove a uterus or cut off testicles or give lethal injections to cute kittens etc. There is no need for that child to know the finer details yet, but as they get older, they will be given more information. No different to my plan, except of course I have to deal with the fact everyone else thinks im a bad person. So at some point I have what I see as a harder discussion. Those are the discussions about what everyone else thinks of my job. These are discussions that are hard and hurtful to my family.

How would I feel if my daughter became a hooker?

I hope my children grow up to be happy, healthy and respectful adults. That’s all I wish for them. I know for a fact that being a hooker doesn’t mean you can’t be happy, healthy and respectful. However I do know that everyone else’s attitudes to sex work can create barriers to a sex worker being happy. But I feel those are my children’s choices to make. If being a hooker made my daughter or son happy, I would not have any concerns. What would hurt my son or daughter and our family, all sex workers and their families, is the attitude everyone else has to sex work and sex workers.

What happens when my son finds out I fuck for money?

To be honest I can’t imagine my children using those words with me. I do expect there will be some words about my job thrown at me during different phases of rebellion as I imagine most parents deal with..…even non whores. If I try to be honest with them, my children will grow up respecting me and sex workers. It is possible that the attitudes of other people may encourage resentment in my kids towards me or my work, but if that ever happens I am confident that once they move through the rebellion phase they will again see that my job was a positive thing for our family, that it was just a job and that the rest of the world is unfair in its discrimination of me and my work.

What will their friends think of them at school?

This is an area that I have no control over. It is an area that I have the most sadness about and the area I wish my kids didn’t have to deal with. However I don’t see other people’s attitudes as my fault. My kids have never suffered because of my work, to the contrary, they have a happy, healthy respectful mum who has a well paying flexible job that allows me to be the sort of mother I always wanted to be. In my own way I try to educate people to see sex work as work, nothing more or less than a job. Once again I see other people’s stigma and discrimination about sex workers as the only innate problem of my work. It all comes down to what other people think. It means I have to have conversations with my kids about being careful about who exactly they say what to and about other people’s bad attitude. I might even have to teach them to lie so they can protect themselves from your stigma.

It is because of other people’s ignorance that my children may suffer. Not because I am a sex worker.

You feel sorry for my kids? Do something about it and examine your own discriminatory attitudes.