What's true for me is true for everyone*

A lot, perhaps too much of my creative energy goes into creating scenarios in which my audience can enjoy the pleasure of watching people make love, free from concern about what less than idea motivations my subjects might have for appearing on camera. Watching people have sex because it feels good to do and feels good to be watched is fun. Watching people have sex so they can pay this month’s rent maybe is not so fun.

Once, a long time ago, I had a potential client try to talk me out of my price on the basis that I enjoyed my work (at the time, commercial photography). Every one knows that if you truly love what you do, you’d never charge for it – and certainly not a premium.

Right?

-T.C.

The one thing I keep noticing lately is how life is so complicated that I wonder if such a thing as solid “answers” exist. Today in my class the topic of sex workers came up, and I was quick to point out that I’m friends with two - who are both intelligent, educated, feminist and stable women. That while the exploited street worker does exist, that’s not the entire story for sex workers. (My class is on myth in the modern day - the “stories” we tell ourselves… about sex workers, about marriage, about who we are, etc.)

The key is to find someone with your agenda. Obviously the article in question had an obvious agenda and probably many hidden one. To get people together you have to agree on the primary agenda and the secondary agenda items and work to those goals. Papers and new services are the worst at slanting every story to their personal views. Stereotypical views sell and are easy to get people to believe.

I could write a bit more on this, but I’m busy & on deadline at the moment. But suffice it to say that I made this point months ago on Feministing.

Harlotry does engender some substantial risks. Most of these are reasonably well known and condoms and a good diligent education on the subject of disease and risks would go a long way to alleviate these risks.

There are many more jobs in the US that are both more exploitative and far more dangerous. Hard rock mining is one, ditto for coal mining, fishermen, and most migrant labor including the entire meat processing industry from chickens on up.

Why we continue to pretend otherwise is a continual mystery to most serious pubic health students, but must be chalked up again to the neo-puritan theocrats who now run the government.

The desperate circumstances described by the ‘poor fallen woman’ certainly still exist, but more so in 3rd and 2nd world contexts than here or in Europe, and that’s another story.

The risk of disease is not insubstantial, and needs to be recognized and treated like any other public health threat; with comprehensive education for everyone, and plenty of preventive measures being taken by everyone. This is best done with accurate adult minded education programs, not juvenile scare tactics straight out of the cannon of the Church of No Sex, unless making babies.

But it needs to be acknowledged that there are far more desperate circumstances that exist in the big city. Most of the more common areas of concern would be for mothers and young children, who may naturally lead desperate poverty stricken lives, yet exist unseen all around us. These are the universal victims of society everywhere. Not much is being done for them, and certainly not enough anywhere.

Most prostitutes are NOT ‘emotional cripples’ or ‘emotionally retarded’. Most are adult women. If they are not adult women, and in fact are indeed afflicted with Trisomy-21, or Turner’s syndrome OR are underage, they deserve the protection of the state. But I imagine this is truly rare for whores in a western context. That’s a crime.

To describe what has been going on for all of recorded history between men and women in such a manner is nothing short of an abomination. It’s an affront to ALL women, and infantilizes and negates their own personal moral authority. Most women get there by their own volition. Many did have abusive childhoods, many did not. To deny them their own authority to do with their own bodies what they will is the most heinous crime of the ages. It’s the last and final assault you can ever make on a person.

It is this state authority imposed upon the free will of women that is what kills AND endangers them to a far greater degree than their clients. That’s pretty clear. And no, this is not to condone nor to belittle any violence against women. But it’s the state enforcing laws against a mainly non coercive basic economic activity known to every human context throughout history that is what sets this job apart from others.

Describing this exchange as one between ‘cripples’ on one hand and ‘abusers’ on the other is just so much useless criminalized hyperbole. It’s wrong, it denies reality, and is harmful to both the real cripples out there, and all those truly abused by intimate partners. If we can’t get this right, it’s really hopeless for anything much more complex, right? Cheers, VJ [No, that’s not my email, but Dacia has it.]

wow, some people just can not see something for what it is. prostitution is a choice. we live in a society that you can say no. people want to put a spin on some shit that is simple. i am entertained by your long and winded answers. we live in a world that is black or white not grey. these people choose to live this way. it is that simple. they can leave it if they want. sometimes these people need to eat there ego, which for the life of me i cant understand the ego they have, but realize maybe you have to take a job at mcd’s instead of sucking dick. when you make a life difficult it is. i live in the real world i work in bedstuy, brownsville,ocean hill,harlem, south bronx and i see it everyday. some people who dont know what they are seeing have a first reaction of we have to do something for them, like myself when i was 21, and working in these areas. Now i am 34 and i see that it is a way of life. i feel sorry to a point. but you know what they choose to live that way. they choose not to go further than the corner for a job. they refuse to piss in a toilet in there house instead of the street or the hall way. they choose to allow drug dealers over run there buildings. they choose there destiny. so for all of you who feel sorry and want to keep giving them shit, remember something why do something to improve yourself when someone gives you everything. the goverment gives these people better health care than i get. the goverment gives them day care that i cant afford. the goverment gives them a 2,500 dollar three bedroom apartment for nothing. the goverment gives them food stamps that they can become obese. the goverment, or shall we say our tax money or shall i say my tax money. so when we start saying we have to help them, yes we do we have to stop having kids and not taking responsiblity for them. we need to educate them, not with tax payers money but with making sure parents take part in their kids lifes. call me inconsiderate and non compatient. let me tell you something i build section 8 housing for the city. i build brand new apartments and houses for people that get housing supplied by the city. i see these neighborhoods everyday. i am around these hoods from 5 in the morning until 5 at night. i get pulled over by cops because my license plate isnt from that area, i supply the water that cleans the bloody sidewalks in front of the buildings that a build, i see how parents talk to there kids and the things they do to them. it is a lack of education. a lack of education that comes from something that seems very simple to me but i guess i am not an educated dick wad who went to some top notch school, but the answer comes from no parental guidence. weather it is single moms, who are 15, or no parents only grandparents or another family member who does not want to have any part of it. so tell me how do we stop that. giving more money into education? giving more money to the guardian who doesnt give a fuck? only thing is more money means what? there is an answer it is called we all make our own decisions in life. people who choose to suck dick are dick suckers. i dont have a problem with that. it is the oldest profession in the world. go interview some of them. ask them why they still do it. you got a hundred dollars in your pocket get on a fuckin bus and skip town how the fuck is your pimp going to find you? ive seen women fuck for old as vcr’s because thats all the truck driver had. or a crack head offer to suck my dick for a cup of coffee. hm you think you would say dam i am sucking dick for a cupof coffee, maybe i should stop sucking the crack pipe!!!! choices that is what it is. dont make it soem shit that it isnt.

As a sex worker, I’m a bit confused by chris’s comment—are you saying that most “dicksuckers” are also on government subsidy and refusing to go forward in life? I think it’s impossible to make any sort of statement about the lives of streetwalkers without considering the socioeconomic factors. And sucking someones dick in a truck in exchange for a VCR doesn’t really seem to me like an easy way out. I mean, that sounds pretty awful, doesn’t it? At least get a DVD player, you know? (kidding)

A girl I worked with was arrested and forced to go to a class with other arraigned solicitors, where she was lectured on the importance of getting her GED and finding other options. She has a Masters Degree from an Ivy League University. Most of my coworkers have similar “credentials,” yet the assumption is made that the sex industry, for us, is a “last resort”—rather than what it actually is; a job that gives us the financial ability to live in an expensive city with the time to pursue our dreams (most of us are artists in some way or another, or in school) and not be treated like crap. I waited tables for five years…at least in sex work, we’re getting paid to be the “tarts” we are expected to be when peddling spinach salads with five dressings on the side and no feta cheese for ten to twenty bucks an hour. Any restaurant in this city expects 40 hours, no complaints, and endurance through the slowest Monday lunch as well as the busiest Friday evening. The way waitresses are treated, both by customers and managers, verges on abusive, especially in New York.

At least our boss values our work and treats us with respect. It’s not a perfect industry, of course, and I recognize that there are women being victimized, absolutely. But when I read that Village Voice article I was apalled by the aforementioned statement regarding all prositutues as mentally damaged “we”s. For some of us, this isn’t a last resort. It’s a place where we can do something fun, meet interesting people, and participate in the only industry where women are capable of making more than men. The feminist movement is still a fairly new one, and although change over the past three decades has been rapid in this country the divide is still a ridiculous, gaping one. I do not provide actual sexual intercourse where I work—that’s something I couldn’t do, but I don’t judge those who can. But we are safe. Sex work isn’t the easy way out—anyone who’s done it can tell you, but that’s not because we are victims or being violated but rather because there is a hell of a lot of pyschological games to be played, and that can be exhausting. Nevertheless, I find it challenging and invigorating, and I can only hope that our country will jump on the bandwagon with the rest of the Non-Muslim world and legalize prostitution, and then begin the much-needed proccess of actually finding victimized sex workers and helping them, and allowing the rest of us to do our work.