Some facts about prostitution
Amid the salacious detail in the red tops about the Suffolk “Ripper” are a few facts about prostitution rarely – if ever – reflected in mainstream publishers’ contribution to the debate about women selling sex. Whereas the Ipswich sex workers murdered or living in fear talk about heroin addiction and kids in care, the happy hookers presented by book publishers are “empowered” post-feminists: less street walkers, more street cred.
Belle du Jour and Brazilian Bruna Surfistinha, to name but two, write about the high end of hooker life. They visit good hotels in exotic locations, do it with millionaires and are chick lit city (call) girls from nice, middle class families, who chose to do what they do – in return for a nice lifestyle.
The 17-year old Surfistinha writes in her blog: “If I’m going to be a prostitute, I don’t just want to be a run-of-the-mill one.” While Belle emphasises her choice in selling sex. They are, for the middle-class male journalists getting hot under the collar about whores, proof that “nice girls do” and a reason for punters not to feel guilt.
These woman are a male fantasy. What Surfistinha calls “run-of-the-mill” prostitutes are women more often than not living in horrible and degraded circumstances, whose choice was taken away with their passports or the first time they smoked crack. There is nothing glamorous about the world they inhabit.
Prostitution and paedophilia have an uncomfortably close relationship. It is one publishers would do well to remember next time they publish a book glamorising the business. Belle and Bruna may be above the age of consent, but according to the Home Office (Paying the Price. 2004) the average age women become involved in prostitution is 12 – one out of every two prostitutes become involved in the trade before they are 18.
Particularly heart-breaking about the women in Ipswich is their youth – Tania Nicol was 19, Anneli Alderton 24 and Gemma Adams 25. The two women feared missing, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls are 24 and 29.
The myth of choice peddled in happy hooker lit is made more insidious when one talks to agencies working with sex workers, who report increasing numbers of trafficked women working in brothels. In its 2003 report, Sex In The City, the POPPY Project, which works with trafficked women, reported a rapid rise in the number of women forced into prostitution.
Though data is difficult to collate, it found that in every borough there were trafficked women. POPPY also found that 25 per cent of the London sex workers mapped in its research were from Eastern Europe, 13 per cent from South East Asia, 12 per cent from western Europe and 2 per cent from Africa. It also quoted PunterNet, the website for “Johns”, who frequently refer to buying sex from women who are reluctant, unhappy and in pain. “Some of these women will have been trafficked,” the report states flatly.
No wonder these women feel “reluctant” to service their punters: the Metropolitan Police estimates that trafficked women forced into prostitution see between 20 and 30 men per day (source: Amnesty International UK).
Even if they are not trafficked, the statistics for UK sex workers do not paint a picture of a happiness. The Home Office’s Paying the Price found that 85 per cent of sex workers reported physical abuse within their families, and 45 per cent reported familial sexual abuse. This reflects my own anecdotal evidence from working with street sex workers in Holland. One woman I knew who had become a prostitute at 14, was raped twice, when she was seven and when she was 13. She ran away from home and was forced to live on the streets. Prostitution was not her “choice”, it was her means of survival.
Time and again the reports about the women in Ipswich mention drugs. The website End Violence Against Women quotes another Home Office report from 2004, Tackling Street Prostitution: Towards an Holistic Approach, which found that 87 per cent of women in street-based prostitution use heroin.
I write this, not because I think that prostitution is wrong, but because I believe it is time we legalised this work and offered protection – and a way out – to the women and men caught up in the trade against their will. It’s time we in publishing stopped peddling myths about sex workers that pander to those who exploit women, men and children.
If you think these women do not deserve protection, here’s another harsh statistic: Paying the Price found that two thirds of the women involved in prostitution had been violently assaulted by their clients, but only 32.4 per cent reported attacks.
The attacks in Ipswich are being taken seriously by the papers now, but they are not always, as Maggie O’Kane revealed in her 2002 Channel 4 documentary Sex on the Streets. She found that in the 10 years to 2002 60 prostitutes were murdered, more were missing, but the violence these young, vulnerable women faced was rarely reported on.
* Eaves, the charity behind the POPPY project, which works with vulnerable women, has launched a Christmas appeal. You can donate to it by clicking on the following link: Eaves Christmas Appeal.
16 Responses to “Some facts about prostitution”
Reading the profiles of the five victims in the Guardian this morning of the 5 victims was just heartbreaking.
I don’t think that a high proportion of men have fantasies about paying for sex. Most men find it abhorrent. I have been witness three times to a man telling a group of men about an experience with a hooker. On all three occasions the rest of the men were appalled.
For every happy hooker, I bet that there are thousands living a thoroughly miserable, degrading, violent and often short life. This aspect of the game is less commonly depicted in books and films. Usually, we get the type of hooker played in “Trading Places” by Jamie Lee-Curtis or even more ludicrously by Julia Roberts in “Pretty Women”.
I don’t have any solutions to the problems associated with prostitution. We live in a society were prostitution is illegal, yet widely tolerated. But, understandably, people do not want prostitutes walking up and down outside their house. The bit of the NHS where I work does its best. For example, sex workers are given a card so they can jump the queue in the sexual health clinic. But the relevant services are always stretched and always competing for resources with other, less controversial, service improvements.
Sorry if I have rambled around a bit. I sometimes find the news upsetting.
An excellent article Danuta! Facts and figures are out there, as is the anecdotal evidence that you have shared. So much is buried under the carpet and it’s good that it is now being examined. There are many risks to sex workers, even before the risk of murder that has materialised for these unfortunate young women in Suffolk. I was simply horrified to see the news and saddened at both the loss of life and the stories of the victims’ lives behind that.
I’d add one point in relation to the published “memoirs” that seem to have been a bit of a “hot topic” in recent years, and on which you make an excellent point. I read Dawn Annandale’s “Call Me Elizabeth” last year. This did not glamorise prostitution. In fact it came across as very factual; telling the story like it was in reality and how it happened. The writer acknowledged her “luck” in finding the type of men she did when she started out (for financial reasons). She also recounted an incident when she was physically attacked.
But I think the most shocking element came early in the book for me. She let her office colleagues know what she was thinking about doing and how she intended to go about it. They proved to be a support and no one seemed to question her or suggest any other route to resolving her financial difficulties. Her thoughts were merely accepted. Can this option really be so acceptable in certain areas of life where we’d hope a second thought might divert someone down a different path?
I read the book always questioning in my mind “You did this to keep your children in private educaton?” I didn’t know whether to admire the woman or feel sad for her. (I ended up with both.)
She was in the “middle ground” of the industry, I suspect. But she told it like it is. Many tempted to see prostitution as their life saver would do well to read this book.
Thanks for your feedback guys. I feel one positive thing we can salvage from all this is that it has challenged perceptions of sex workers and humanised the women working the streets.
I’m afraid, crimficreader, that I felt pretty appalled when I read about Call Me Elizabeth. I haven’t read it, so I am talking with extreme prejudice, but it was the fact that she was paying for her children’s education. It suggests that this is a “suitable profession” for women, a valid economic choice, a sign of the woman’s underlying materialism (Good Time Girls etc) and offers the idea that the reasons women fall into prostitution are trivial and not about drug and sex abuse and violent pimps (it isn’t just drug habits that are making some of those Ipswich women go back on the streets, I am sure).
The fact that familial sexual abuse is so common in the backgrounds of sex workers – male and female – should disturb us all.
A friend made a documentary about trafficked women a few years ago and the stories she told me are horrifying.
The other thing as well is that, if this is such an okay option for women, why do so few women here choose it? A sign that they don’t is that brothels face a labour shortage and so resort to people traffickers.
And Peter, it is great to get your comments. I know it isn’t a fantasy among all men – its like the myth that all women have rape and prostitution fantasies. They don’t. I think the technical term is for that is “bollocks!”
Danuta – Crimeficreader forwarded this article to me as she knows my interest in the subject having read my 2nd novel, Trading Tatiana, which deals with sex trafficking and global prostiution rackets.
Thanks so much for providing the facts and figures and giving a context to the current hideous situation in Suffolk.
It’s interesting that the media has put great emphasis on the one Suffolk victim who came from a middle-class background. As though it’s acceptable for women from backgrounds of deprivation to ‘choose’ prostitution, but more shocking when people feel it could be their own daughter.
You’re absolutely right about the level of constant violence against prostitutes that is ignored – almost seen as acceptable. It’s only when the public imagination is captured by a serial killer that the media sit up and take notice.
Sorry – to ramble. It’s a subject I feel really strongly about. BTW, I’ve linked to you on my blog – hope that’s ok!
Danuta,
Having read the book, I didn’t feel that it did make a statement that prostitution was a viable economic option when it came to paying for your children’s education. For “Elizabeth” it was an act of desperation and covered more than simply the private education of her children. She was bright but did not have the opportunity of making the most of education herself; she then brought her children into the world and wanted the best for them. This included education and family life, as well as, misguidedly I thought, addititives such as riding lessons. But the crux if this is – she had established a family life for her offspring that was far better than she had experienced herself and she, above all, wanted to maintain it when the chips were down.
However, I still questioned “why” as I read. But all things are relative. Her driving motivation was always the life experience of her children, and as I’ve previously said, I question that decision to pursue prostitution to maintain it. Perhaps when you’ve experienced nuggets yourself and then see your own children with a gold mine at hand, but about to be dispatched, you are that desperate. Luckily in life in comparison, I don’t know these circumstances and I cannot comprehend, thus I will not judge, even after reading the book. Our different senses of values will always lead us into different directions. One thing I note: the author of that memoir finished her writing with comments that indicated her life was on the “up” and that life with a “good man” beckoned. I do hope so. Many never get that chance.
But, back to your original point, Danuta, when it comes to publishing “Call Me Elizabeth” did not glamorise prostitution. It appeared on the shelves on the crest of the “Belle de Jour” wave, but it was different. And from what I read at the time, I’d consider it an antidote to that wave of gratuitous publishing of glamorised prostitution.
Which brings us back to “Belle de Jour”, for which a second tome of memoirs is on the shelves right now (and just in time for Christmas, God help us). It no doubt brings in the money, but when it comes to “Belle de Jour” herself, just how many times over has she been exploited, including by the publishing industry?
She may have deliberated over thongs, but the reality of life for some, including the Suffolk victims and those that continue to work in such circumstances is that the deliberation goes no further than consideration of money earned to meet the cost of the next fix.
The fact that it has come to light that this is so rife indicates that society has lost values that previously served us proud and made for some good. A cycle exists and if something good can come out of these murders, let us break that cycle of drugs and prostitution in honour of these victims. They all deserved a better life, and others continue in their vein right now.
I’d like to see the root causes addressed and dealt with. Human life is to be experienced and enjoyed. Exploitation of the vulnerable has to be curtailed. The dire situation in Suffolk has highlighted what has been trodden on under the carpet for years; it is now time to put an end to this.
I hope that our authorities and the government will make it a priority.
All life has value and no one should be demeaned. No one.
Wow, what thoughtful and interesting replies. thanks guys. Thanks for filling me in crimficreader about CME, which sounds more interesting than the other books on the shelves. I remain unconvinced that Belle du Jour is female, I’m afraid!
And Debi, your book sounds really interesting.
If Belle du Jour is male as you suspect, Danuta, does that not multiply, even more, the exploitation of women?
God help us!
I have inside info – Belle is NOT a man – and the word is that she’s genuine.
You make many interesting points, however I wonder about the average age at which women start in prostitution being as young as 12.This would mean that half of prostitutes start at an age younger than 12.
Clearly a large proportion of the women who enter prostitution in the UK are products of the care system, and families of the criminal underclass, failures in the educational system, and hard drug users. Prostitution can’t really be seen as divorced from the problems of poverty and social pathology.
My own girlfriend is a former prostitute–though not in England–as that was the only way she could get money to feed her children.
Prostitution is a bit like using LSD–no one who admits to using LSD is credible, and no one who has never used it really knows what it is like.
Based on my knowledge and experience, prostitution is just a job, a way to earn money. Like any job it can be awful, or it can be easy and pleasurable.
There is nothing inherently noble about working hard long hours in a dirty factory for low wages, cleaning up other people’s poop, washing dishes, and many other jobs. No wonder some women choose prostitution. On my blog you can see one or two pictures of prostitutes going about their business–but not having sex–and they don’t seem too unhappy.
i’m very uncomfortable with the new wave of happy hooker novel/journals that are being churned out as fast as the publishing industry can go. it seems to me to be just another layer of exploitation in an already exploitative industry, here safely sanitised and even glamourised, that invites salacious interest while keeping the seedy reality of prostitution at a safe distance – like a peep show. “intellectualising” prostitution or, at least, abstracting it to a point that it becomes a comfortable subject for the chattering classes simply glosses over the abuse of power that prostitution is predicated upon. what’s really grotesque is that the supposed post-feminists writing this nonsense are, in fact, seemingly willing partipants in their own exploitation, smiling and waving as they go. in fact, they’re simply the latest in a procession that includes maria schneider, linda lovelace, sylvia kristel who came to realise, too late, that they had been groomed and manipulated into a collaboration that was ultimately destructive to them and a generation of women who believed the myth they promulgated. you need look no further than the sickening combination of prurience and prudery in the reporting of the recent spate of murders to see how entrenched mysogyny and sexual disgust are in the uk. far from transcending these attitudes, the books are reinforcing them.
I totally agree. I feel very uncomfrtable with the whole idea of women “enjoying” working as prostitutes. It smacks of grooming, especially when I hear of men talking about using women, and reminds me of something a friend told me about paedophiles. My friend is a probation officer working with sex offenders. he is sceptical that much can be done to change their attitudes after having offenders tell him that the children they abused (some as young as one) were giving them the “come on”.
On another level the reporting of the Ipswich victims smacks of the modern celebrity culture we live in. The women were marked by notoriety, made famous by their deaths at the hands of that most glamorous of criminals the serial kiler. Much of what was written about them in the tabloids read like the gross celebrity suffering memoirs currently in fashion. In view of that, one has to ask, how much of the reporting really shows a shift in attitudes towards prostitution?
A great blog and a very good read is by Katheen Glyde. Her blog, I believe, can be found here http://www.kglyde.blogspot.com
Danuta,
Your article on prostitution was quite interesting. Thanks for writing it. I am actually a sex worker myself (currently an erotic masseuse, although I did used to work as an escort) and I think that women who haven’t ever been involved in the sex industry can’t really understand it very well. Sex workers are not all fucked-up, abused drug addicts.
However, on the other hand, though, I will admit that I did have a childhood that most people would consider emotionally abusive. I don’t know if that’s why I became a sex worker or not. It was probably part of it, for sure, but I think the reasons were more complex than that.
I could go into them here, but I just wrote a mammoth blog entry about this very topic, so if you care to read it, here’s the link:
http://serizy.blogspot.com/2007/01/sex-workers-and-self-esteem.html
I brief reply to a previous comment by “Peter Underwood”.
As I understand the law in the UK, prostitution is perfectly legal. Making a living from the earnings of prostitutes is one of the many things that is illegal, but not prostitution itself.
I have been working as a prostitute on the higher end of the scale for the last 4 years. I started when I was 19 and am now 23.
Although I was never on the street and always worked as an independent, operating from a nice apartment, I feel that the psychological effects from this profession are in a way, sometimes more devastating than the physical ones can be. I believe that there is no such a thing as a ‘happy hooker’. I used to feel powerful that I was earning an absolute fortune and of course that gave me a temporary ‘high’, and shopping trips for me were like letting a ‘kid loose in a candy store’. Despite this, it’s mainly recently that I have been feeling a great sadness for myself and this profession. Prostitution is prostitution at the end of the day, whether you’re a crack addict on the street, or a ‘high class’ hooker like myself who can earn a grand in a day. Every time I see a client, I know that I’m chipping away at my soul. I’m not the same girl that I used to be and have even less self confidence than I used to, despite people constantly telling me that I’m beautiful. It means nothing to me because I can’t see myself as beautiful inside. This profession eats away at a women’s well being and even though it seems glamorous, it certainly is not. And if you enter into it on the higher end of the scale, it is extremely hard to stop and takes great strength to lead a normal life again. Towards the end of the year I am starting full time education and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I stick it out and don’t go running back into this fake world.
Escorts lose touch with themselves, become jaded and very paranoid. It is hard to have normal relationships and ever trust a man without thinking that he is going to cheat on you. As a sex worker myself, I am now realising after 4 years that the money and occasional adventures that this line of work may sometimes bring, just isn’t worth the emotional pain and psychological harm. It will stay with me for a long time but I’m hoping that there is still time to get back to my old self and heal my soul.
I would advise any woman who is considering entering into this profession to think long and hard about what they are doing and ask themselves if they are willing to sacrifice losing their sense of self, and reality. After all, when you hear yourself complaining that you only earned a few hundred pounds that day, as opposed to a thousand, it does make you stop and think for a moment just how unrealistic the industry is.
Is Nacatenus Kathleen Glyde? He’s one of only 2 reviews for her on the
hooker review board at Captain69 so you have to ask… When I read her blog
seems like one of those uncomfortable glib ‘happy hooker book’ blogs Meg
wrote about but it’s not interesting enough to ever be a book. It made me
feel pretty queasy to be honest. Anyone with half a brain cell will work
out that this lady is a fake and a spammer but blogs like this suck.
Educated in Switzerland? Noble heritage? Based in Monaco? With that taste
in fancy dress? It doesn’t smell right does it?
Maybe this lady deserves pity more than scorn but it’s worse than an idle
fantasy for a middle aged housewife. She sells an alluring and wicked myth
like most of the other high class companions on the web. Like them I guess
she keeps her prices high to avoid having to actually see any real punters.
If she was a real hooker she’d know that hookers don’t spend their lives in
fancy restaurants or chocolate shops. They don’t make a mint. Most of them
don’t even make enough to get by and those who do have another job.
I know you probably won’t publish the email but for God’s sake take down the
comment from “Nacatenus” before some innocent follows the link and decides
this might be a new career for them
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