While men are afforded a more holistic approach to being human, women are held to an impossible standard literally demanding that which is entirely impossible to achieve. The Virgin Mary mocks every mother on the planet who hasn’t found a way to retain her virginity while giving birth to an angelic baby. And Mary Magdalene would seem to announce the need for forgiveness for any woman who has fallen short of the virgin mother ideal.

Lesley Hazelton, author of Mary: A Flesh and Blood Biography of The Virgin Mother protests “I think there was a very strong-felt need on the part of the church fathers to put women in their place. So, by dividing women into madonnas and whores, they could either be all good or all evil.”

While you might think historical figures from over 2000 years ago are old news, the battle between “good” and “evil” girls continues. Just today, news of Colorado high school student Sydney Spies’ possible lawsuit claiming censorship, hit the headlines in all the major news outlets. Sporting a tiny black top and a short, yellow skirt, Ms. Spies bared her midriff and shapely legs for the camera with every intention that this sexy photo would serve as her senior portrait.  But the yearbook editors claimed her photo was unprofessional and inappropriate.

I have heard these adjectives before. Unprofessional and inappropriate are actually code for “slutty.”  And what exactly do we mean when we call a woman “slutty?”  It can mean vastly different things to different people.  But once that label is affixed to a woman, she falls into dangerous territory where almost any mistreatment can seem justified.

The same applies to the label “whore.” While we can refer to men as “man-whores” and “pricks,” the words don’t carry the same sting or stigma. Men can laugh off such labels and watch their credibility and popularity rise with every “bad boy” scandal.  Meanwhile, women may lose their homes, their jobs, their children, their credibility, their membership in society and sometimes their very lives. Women who are perceived as “sluts” and “whores” can be potential targets for rape and murder by predators.

And meanwhile, popular programs still tell “dead hooker jokes” with impunity.  It is enough to make this sex worker activist want to scream.

As someone who routinely educates the public on the topics of sex worker rights and a sexual bill of rights, I encounter plenty of negative commentary from readers, listeners and attendees.  For instance, I often hear variations on the following:

“I think there’s a world of difference between a woman who takes on as many lovers as she pleases vs. a woman who has sex for money. Sex is sacred, not to be monetized and manipulated.”

At first blush statements such as these sound credible. They conform to the current cultural stance and sound “right.”  But are such assertions right? Does prostitution necessarily “manipulate” and does monetizing the sex act remove the aspects which can be considered “sacred?”

Frankly, as someone who has worked with domestic violence survivors, I have been witness to plenty of manipulation and lack of sacredness in the context of marital sex.  Why does marriage get a pass from us while prostitution remains suspect?  I have been married and I have worked as an escort. Both experiences were positive and negative at turns. It all depended upon our intentions.  Certainly no piece of paper has the power to distort sacred intentions nor imbue loving intentions where there are none.  And that applies equally to the paper used to make marriage certificates as well as hundred dollar bills.

So let’s get real here. Society doesn’t give a rat’s ass about women being “treated with respect” or “being protected.” The current culture is designed to keep women suspicious of each other and divided instead of united. It is designed to deny us access to the same power afforded men and when you get down to it, that power is often defined by sexual and monetary proficiency. I can only imagine the stark raving terror that the good ole boy network must experience when they entertain the idea of the other half of the world’s population gaining control over the holy trinity: birth, sex and money.

By now you no doubt have heard about the massive arrests in Phoenix, Arizona which targeted Tracy Elise’s Goddess Temple. Thirty people were indicted and Tracy Elise is being held on a million dollar bail.  Meanwhile, tantric practitioners and sex worker rights activists have weighed in on the merits of Tracy Elise’s defense which is that she was not practicing prostitution, but rather exercising her freedom of religion.

Some have scoffed. Others have been supportive. But in the final analysis, I believe we need to suspend our judgments and refrain from applying our personal standards to this situation. This is an important moment in history which may advance sex worker rights and sexual freedoms or catapult us into an even more draconian era of sexual repression. If we desire the former, our stance must be inclusive, not divisive.

If we come together to assert “standards” against which we feel entitled to measure the motives and veracity of others who are doing NO harm, then we run the risk of emulating the very oppressions we seek to rise above. Instead, let us support the freedom and choice of ALL those who put healing into the world. Our only standards should be that NO harm is done. Consensual, adult behaviors must be protected as the freedoms we all have an inalienable right to. It is not our business to determine what is “real” religion, “true” spirituality or “right” tantra.

Live and Let Live should be the maxim by which we live. And in the context of a sexual bill of rights it is imperative that we support all who are seeking to create a peaceful, pleasurable world in stark contrast to the predominantly violent and sex-negative world we currently live in. Certainly we want to distance ourselves from and even enact sanctions against those who would use “sexual freedom” as an excuse to perpetrate against anyone who is underage or otherwise unable to give consent. But short of that, we must stand firm for the rights of others to practice any form of religion, spirituality, sacred sex, tantra, sacred prostitution, prostitution, or sex work they feel called to.

Let’s build bridges not barriers.

What I found particularly intriguing was how many of these same men hungered for a sexual companion who was anything but malleable. It led me to begin referring to this phenomena in this way:

Our culture prefers that Wives are Dumb and Docile but that does nothing for the Libido. Men may want wives and girlfriends who are easily controlled but in bed they prefer a companion who is powerful and challenging. It is the electricity of some level of intellectual and emotional challenge which drives desire. This is why the Patriarchy requires the Whore/Madonna Complex: a splitting of femininity into two camps so that women feel compelled to pick a side and thereby deny half of their reality as a whole human.

There is a beautiful movie entitled Dangerous Beauty. It is about the life of a Renaissance courtesan from Venice, named Veronica Franco. The movie illustrates perfectly the choice women faced of that time between being accepted as a person worthy of marriage (wives were not allowed to read, write or pursue an education) and being a free woman fully empowered to delve into domains normally reserved for men. Veronica Franco was simply too independent and intelligent to be a wife and her mother despaired for her future, so she instructed her in the ways of a courtesan. As a courtesan, Veronica Franco, learned to read and debate men in conversation. She took up fencing and she wrote her memoirs. This was a life of power reserved for courtesans. The price for admission was living outside the protection and approval of society.

Today, we speak of prostitutes as if they all live and work in the squalor of the streets. The fact is that the majority of modern prostitutes operate from their homes discreetly supplementing their incomes and/or financing their dreams, whether that is an education, a sole proprietorship or perhaps their art. They too, are women who are not satisfied with the “good girl” role. They probably feel stifled and silenced and confined by popular feminine behavior. And breaking free of that provides a sense of power they have rarely experienced in other contexts.

It isn’t all sunshine and roses. There are possible arrests and evictions and serial rapists who love to prey upon sex workers because the law affords almost no protection for a “fallen woman.” But for some, the risks are worth it. Anyone who thinks it is just about sex doesn’t understand this fatal split in the feminine. Anyone who thinks is it just about money, doesn’t understand how deeply many humans crave freedom of expression. Sex work is about sex and it is about work, but more importantly it is about breaking free of the rules which dictate women are either “good” or “bad” – either worthy of protection or worthy of persecution.

Few sex workers relate to this on a conscious level, unless they are sex worker rights activists or sacred prostitutes. But I have seen the light in the eyes of women just contemplating sex for money and they look positively excited and energized with the anticipation of what that might feel like and look like for them. I always caution them about the down side – the risk and the illegality and the very real prices I have paid for my choice. I don’t choose to encourage anyone to do something with such a high price tag. But once a woman has crossed that line and experienced her power to reject the shame bestowed upon the “whore” she will likely never be able to return to ways of being in this world which require her to repress her true feelings.

That doesn’t mean she won’t move on to another profession at some point. It does mean that she will be very unlikely to work for an employer once she has tasted her independence. It can also translate to putting up with less domination or abuse from men in general. The woman who has been paid for her companionship is much less likely to put up with anything she doesn’t enjoy or appreciate in a personal relationship. Of course this generalization does not apply to street prostitutes who enter the business under the tutelage of an abusive pimp. Nor does it necessarily apply to prostitutes who work in legal brothels because by definition they have abusive employers. But for your average middle-class, college educated escort, independence of thought and action becomes a privilege few are willing to sacrifice for the approving nods of the masses.

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 6,000 times in 2010. That’s about 14 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 3 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 13 posts. There were 3 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 292kb.

The busiest day of the year was May 21st with 67 views. The most popular post that day was The Blame Game.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were realprincessdiaries.com, susiebright.blogs.com, facebook.com, ingodwetryst.blogspot.com, and gq-magazine.co.uk.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for veronica monet, veronica, “veronica monet”, kyla ebbert, and whore.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

The Blame Game May 2007
5 comments

Why Sex Workers are SO Scary January 2010
6 comments

Nothing But a Whore January 2008
8 comments

About May 2007
1 comment

“I’m going to kill you, you professional sex worker” – Ira Glass on The Daily Show November 2010
1 Like on WordPress.com,

I am a huge fan of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show but I was disturbed when last week’s Thursday episode trotted out an old and tired source of humor – that of murdering whores. The show segment featuring Ira Glass in a green body suit, running gun in hand as he weakly declared, “I’m going to kill you, you professional sex worker,” was intended to spoof the controversy surrounding violence in video games. It wasn’t apparent if this “moment of zen” was making light of concerns that minors are playing violent video games but there was no mistaking the show’s reliance on the fact that audiences will laugh at dead hooker jokes. 

I understand there isn’t much comics can make fun of nowadays without running afoul of the PC police or getting picketed by some special interest group. But in my opinion, humor which relies upon lampooning a downtrodden sector of society is just plain lazy. More pertinent to this sex worker rights blog, perpetuating the idea that dead sex workers is funny, helps to create a culture which insists upon denying the most rudimentary human rights to men, women and transgenders who work in the sex industry.

Prostitutes Call for a Ban on GTA: Sex workers cry foul, say game “accrues points to players for the depiction of rape and murder of prostitutes.”

By Tim Surette, GameSpot

Posted Feb 14, 2006 3:48 pm PT

The Grand Theft Auto franchise is getting attacked from all angles. Joining the ranks of politicians, policemen, and attorneys in their crusade to see the game lifted from shelves are the nation’s sex workers. On its Web site, the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA is asking parents to assist them in calling for a ban of Take-Two Interactive’s controversial game.

Citing a 2001 document from the National Institute on Media and the Family’s David Walsh, SWOP is calling “on all parents and all gamers to boycott Grand Theft Auto.”

The organization quotes various points from Walsh’s paper, including, “Children are more likely to imitate a character with whom they identify with. In violent video games the player is often required to take the point of view of the shooter or perpetrator.”

Though the organization admits to being “adamantly opposed to any and all forms of censorship,” as concerned parents themselves, they “wish to inform other parents of the potential danger extremely violent video games pose to children.” Likewise, in the interest of promoting the rights of sex workers, the organization is opposed to the depiction of the rape and murder of prostitutes.

In the games, players can solicit “services” from prostitutes by driving their cars slowly near them. No sexual acts are in clear visible view, but during the “transaction,” the player regains health and loses money. Though the player cannot actively rape prostitutes in the game, a possible rape is alluded to once during the storyline of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The prostitutes, like every other character, are also subject to homicide at the hands of the protagonist.

According to its Web site, SWOP USA is an organization dedicated to improving the lives of sex-industry workers and to the promotion of a safe working environment for the industry.

I wrote the above referenced call to boycott the video game GTA in 2006. Despite the pains I took to decry censorship, many readers conflated the issue of hate speech with first amendment rights. GTA gamers responded online as well.  Here are some of the more memorable comments (and no, I haven’t bothered to protect their identities – given the circumstances it just didn’t seem appropriate):

“raping prostitutes, isn’t that like having your cake and eating it too?”   -lmelo

“Grand Theft Auto taught me how to boink hookers.”  -AgeOfConsent

“….. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha….. stupid hookers….. no one is going to listen to you….. you’re not even real people”  -uncle_cheddar

“prostitutes and parents unite hmm does those parents know tat prostitute is spoiling thier kids more than GTA?? banning gta won`t make them become a better person but banning porn should help them more”  -Lazberia

“I have to laugh to that Prostitutes Fighting BACK!! LMAO!!”  -murrayblake339

“I don’t rape the prostitutes, I just kill them cause thier in my way.”  -Kayrod29

“prostitutes have no right to complain so they can stfu for one thing and leave there moaning for the back seat of some old farts car”  -stayc360 

“How can they blame a game for the rape and murder of prostituts??? I’ve been killing ho’s since 94′ and I blame nobody but my parents….(My dad tought me how)”-mhpfly

“How can you rape prostitutes? That’s kinda the whole point…”  -Megadanxzero

“You know… i’m sorry but when a pimp wants his money back in the game after a nice knocking in the car… there’s only one thing you CAN do… kill a b**** !! hahahahah.”-SN1P3RZ

While games like GTA may express violence toward a wide variety of people – not just prostitutes – prostitutes remain a population which IS targeted for violence in the real world.  Other populations who face threats to their safety have succeeded in convincing some video game companies to alter the content of their games. For instance, Take-Two Interactive Software, the parent company of Grand Theft Auto manufacturer Rockstar Games, was pressured to remove racist dialog from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City in 2004 because the game targeted Haitians, a minority which is targeted in real life.. Other games such as Resident Evil, Ethnic Cleansing, RapeLay and KZ Manager Millennium also contain extreme forms of racist and sexist content but efforts to modify the offending content or remove the games from circulation have been largely unsuccesful.

Gaming enthusiasts insist that the violence which occurs in video games is “just for fun” and has no residual effects which might extend to family, community or society at large. Many parents fail to investigate the content of the videos their children and teens play. Yet these same people are convinced that pornography is “harmful to minors” and would be horrified at the thought of allowing their children to view a pornographic film depicting sex without violence.

The idea that one form of entertainment has absolutely no effect on the minds and emotions of children while the other form of entertainment can cause irreparable damage to young minds is ludicrous. You can’t have it both ways. Either our brains, emotions and behavior are impacted by the images and stories we expose ourselves to or they are not. To say sex can corrupt but violence only entertains is the height of stupidity.

The Supreme Court is currently reviewing  Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 08-1448, California’s 2005 law which would prohibit anyone under 18 from buying or renting games that give players the option of “killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being.”

At issue of course is our constitutional freedoms. Justice Antonin Scalia said “It has never been understood that the freedom of speech did not include portrayals of violence. You are asking us to create a whole new prohibition which the American people never ratified when they ratified the First Amendment.”

I find his obvious omission of sexual material to be glaring and almost comical. Are we meant to believe that the founders wished to protect our right to consume violent images while prohibiting images of consensual sex? And since our federal government DOES control sexual imagery, is it really such a stretch to include violent images under that umbrella of control?

Justice Stephen Breyer also smells an hypocritical standard. He posed this question: What if a video game showed “gratuitous torture of children? ‘Now you can’t buy a naked woman, but you can go and buy that,’ you say to the 13-year-old. Now what sense is there to that? Why isn’t it common sense to say a state has the right to say, ‘Parent, you want this for your child? You go buy it yourself?’ “

Mark Twain was quoted as saying there are three kinds of lies: “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”  There is a lot of truth in that statement and as someone who has spent a great deal of my free time reviewing various statistics, I know how easily the facts can be bent to create a desired outcome.  And in fact there are many seemingly contradictory studies and findings on the topic of video violence. However, if you spend a few hours reviewing the literature, it becomes apparent that violent video games have an effect on human behavior. Even Christopher Ferguson, one of the more vocal defenders of gaming violence, admits to negative short-term effects.

Craig A. Anderson, Ph.D. (Iowa State University) had this to say at the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing on “The Impact of Interactive Violence on Children” in 2000:

 ”The effects of TV and movie violence on aggression are not small. Indeed, the media violence effect on aggression is bigger than the effect of exposure to lead on IQ scores in children, the effect of calcium intake on bone mass, the effect of homework on academic achievement, or the effect of asbestos exposure on cancer. . . Repeated exposure to violent media also reduces negative feelings that normally arise when observing someone else get hurt. In other words, people become desensitized to violence. Finally, exposure to violent media teaches people that aggressive retaliation is good and proper. . .  The more relevant question is whether many (or most) people become more angry, aggressive, and violent as a result of being exposed to high levels of media violence. Are they more likely to slap a child or spouse when provoked? Are they more likely to drive aggressively, and display “road rage?” Are they more likely to assault co-workers? The answer is a clear yes.”

Of course these comments come from a university professor who has built his career around criticizing violence in all forms of media – not just video games – and his research has garnered more than a little criticism. But what do people who work in the video game industry have to say?

Gamasutra blogger, Adam Bishop, had this to say in his October 16th post last month:

“One of the things that often comes up from people who defend that sort of behaviour is that it’s harmless and not really an indication of anything in the broader world.  Well, in my experience that’s very wrong, and I’m writing this post to demonstrate how.  Earlier this year and last year I worked at a large game developer where I witnessed sexual harassment on a scale I’ve never seen before in any other industry that I’ve worked in.   One distinguishing factor of a lot of this behaviour was one of the justifications for it that was given by some of the people engaged in it – that this kind of behaviour should be expected because this was the video game industry and this is how gamers behave.”

In his May 31, 2010 article in PC World, entitled ZOMG, that’s racist! Exposed: the most culturally insensitive video games of all time, GamePro Australia’s Chris Jager, had this to say:

“Without a shadow of a doubt, the most culturally insensitive thing about gaming is the gamers. If you want proof, just play a few online rounds of your FPS of choice. If you don’t get called the N-word, the F-word or a portmanteau that combines both, then you probably need to get your headset fixed. From the constant, foul-mouthed tirades against gays and blacks to the grotty practice of corpse-humping, online gaming brings out the absolute worst in humanity. Nothing is off-limits when it comes to trash talk — colour and creed included. In comparison, most of the examples on this list look like all inclusive hippie love-ins. Can’t we all just get along?”

If only things were that simple.  One thing is for certain – when you feed any thought or feeling, it has the effect of making that thought or feeling more potent. Playing video games which encourage us to rape a mother and her two daughters (RapeLay) or pour gasoline over someone, set them on fire, and urinate on them (Postal II) may not cause you to run out and kill someone. But what does it do to your ability to feel empathy for the plight of others? What effect does it have on your propensity to create loving, positive interactions in the world?

Sex workers, like other minorities, already experience less safety and fewer rights than other members of society. While they work to secure the most basic human rights, jokes, humor, games and other forms of entertainment which make light of their plight exacerbate an already dangerous situation. I do NOT support censorship. But information is power and it is a constitutional right to vote with your dollars. Educate yourself to the content of popular games and movies and if you are a parent, get involved in what your children under the age of 18 are viewing and playing. If you are an adult who enjoys gaming, pay attention to your own reactions and mind-set after playing a violent game. Do you find yourself feeling more inclined toward conflict or prejudice? If so, you may want to reconsider your recreation. After all, in a free world, it’s up to you to choose whether you will be a force for good or for evil.

Some people – women especially – just hate what you do for a living.  Their distaste for  your profession is completely out of sync with any personal impact it could possibly have on their lives. If you have ruled out jealousy, competition and/or fear of the unknown – what is left to explain the almost rabid and allergic reaction to the way you pay your rent or mortgage?

Recently it dawned on me that very much like the gay rights movement, our movement – the sex worker rights movement – suffers its worst insults from closeted whores and johns (If you find those words offensive I invite you ask yourself why. Personally I am all about reclaiming the words used to oppress us). Let’s face it the men who are most adamantly opposed to decriminalization often turn out to be regular clients of sex workers. The most publicized example of this is of course former New York governor Eliot Spitzer who had built his career with a promise of “ethics” and the prosecution of prostitution rings but was later found to be a regular client of prostitutes.

And what about the women?  I have often envisioned them as insecure wives – worried that I and my sex worker colleagues were out to fuck their men – for free if necessary – just to show them up as the incompetent and unalluring losers they worry they are. But I don’t think jealousy is the big motivator we have allowed ourselves to believe it is. Instead I wonder if our most vehement opposition comes from women who have more in common with us than they would like to admit.

When I recall the cruelest and most dismissive reactions to my choice to become a sex worker, it has often been from female “friends” who were former sex workers or extremely promiscuous or at least prone to dating for money. The truly asexual or bashful female friends have usually been more curious than offended by my choice in careers.

Recently I began attending a church well-known for its tolerance of all lifestyles and beliefs including atheism and paganism. I didn’t imagine that my former identity as a working girl would hold much interest for the congregation. After all, I have been semi-retired for over five years and live modestly as an author and couples consultant.  My motivation for attending church was twofold: I hoped to find a venue for my workshops on peace and I wanted to add a little ritual to my life. For instance when my dog got cancer I found the “Blessing of the Animals” to be of great comfort.

So imagine my surprise when the witch in charge of the pagan meetings (no, I am not trying to insult this woman, she really is a witch) launched an effort to expel me from the church. Initially, I thought she was simply offended by my approach to world peace: polyamory as modeled by the bonobos.  Yeah, this is another topic and not really relevant to this blog entry but suffice to say that I believe a lot of violence results from a sex negative culture and I have a lot of research and evidence to back up that claim.

But even after I abandoned any aspirations I had to teach workshops at this church and simply attended the pagan meetings as a student in search of more knowledge of the various forms of paganism, the witch persisted in her campaign to drive me from the congregation. She called one day to suggest I attend pagan workshops at a local bookstore where their approach would be more “adult.” For the umpteenth time she told me how her workshops would be “family friendly.”  I told her this might come as a shock to her but I have a family and I am a mother to four step-children. The silence on the other end of the phone was deafening. What was she thinking? Was she shocked to think former prostitutes might have families?  Or was she offended to think I had ever been allowed to parent children?  Who knows but she certainly choked on the news.

Since I have only been to about five church services and my interactions with this woman have been brief and polite, I am quite certain that her reaction has very little to do with me personally. But I do represent something that appears to terrify her. For one of the pagan rituals she held at the church, she wore a costume which reminded me of the ancient sacred prostitutes. The skirt was constructed of sheer chiffon adorned with beads and coins. I couldn’t help but wonder if she understood what her costume signified in days of old. How could she sport coins on her person without comprehending the significance of money sewn into a garment? True, some will argue that this was “dowry” money but the fact remains that the coins were sewn into the garment as a reminder that the dancer expected to get paid for her performance while she was performing – very much like strippers are paid today.

We could now have the argument of whether belly dancers are sex workers or we could ask ourselves why it is so important to draw this arbitrary and nonsensical line in the sand between the “good girls” and the “bad girls.” And that really is the point to this blog entry. Women are insanely invested in distinguishing themselves from the “bad girl” and the more closely they skirt the “bad girl” lifestyle, the more obsessive this drive to say “I am NOT a whore” becomes.

A similar phenomena is well documented in the gay rights movement. It is now common knowledge that some of the worst hate crimes against gays are often perpetrated by closeted homosexuals who are full of self-hatred and denial. Similarly I believe our sex worker rights movement would do well to understand the self-hatred and denial which fuels hate crimes against sex workers. I think we will find that our most vocal opponents are quite literally in bed with us as clients or metaphorically as self-hating closeted sex workers.

What might we do to win these closeted clients and sex workers over to our struggle for civil rights and the dignity of choice?  I’m not entirely sure. If I find a way to assuage the terror my existence has created for the witch at church I will let you know. I DO know this though. Every effort to decriminalize or legalize prostitution has been blocked by the “good women” of the community in question. Historically both prohibition of alcohol and prostitution have been feminist endeavors as championed by many of the suffragists of the early 1900′s. So although present day feminists might think their stance against prostitution reflective of political evolution, it is instead a fairly old-fashioned and conservative take on the oldest profession.

Many political movements will dissociate from other more controversial causes for fear that their primary objective will be lost. Early feminists were afraid of accepting lesbians and the gay rights movement didn’t want to champion transgender rights. This fear of being associated with others perceived as “less deserving” of civil rights is a noxious but all too human failing. I wonder if it has its roots in basic human survival and perhaps that is the impediment we battle when we seek to assert our civil rights as sex workers. Or perhaps the broader issue here is that neither men nor women possess a sexual bill of rights and rather than fight to assert their rights alongside sex workers (who are working for the rights of all adults to have sex as they see fit) they recoil with the fear of losing what few freedoms they do have.

What do you think? What is is that fuels the disrespect and even hatred we often encounter from second wave feminists, from wives and girlfriends, from concerned parents, from law enforcement, from landlords, from child protection services, from neighbors, from family, from former friends and even from our own clients?

Veronica Monet's 1998 Guest Appearance on Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect

If you know anything about the all too human failing called “projection” than you know humans have a history of blaming their foibles and fears on individuals and groups of people known as scapegoats.  Rather than engage in the all too rare virtue of introspection, the disappointingly lazy human will choose to project their lust, fear, weaknesses, taboo fantasies and secret cravings on anyone they can designate as “other.”  The scapegoat often becomes someone of a different race or gender or perhaps sexual orientation.

For instance, AIDS was initially blamed upon homosexual persons.  Disease is usually blamed upon immigrants.  Poverty is blamed upon minorities.  Sexually transmitted infections are generally blamed upon sex workers although prostitution can only account for 7% of STD transmission.  Yet the myths and the prejudice persist.

This special form of societally sanctioned hatred has taken many forms over the years.  Just a few hundred years ago, hatred and suspicion of women who owned property and lived alone translated into the infamous “witch” burnings.  It was quite common for suspected witches to be stripped naked and tortured sexually until they “confessed” to the sexual fantasies which took up residence in the twisted minds of their persecutors.  Once the “witch” confessed she was often killed and her property absorbed by the “good” people and their “holy” institutions.

Today’s prostitute is a convenient scapegoat for society’s discomfort with its own sexual desires and while the prostitute approaches sex as a job, her detractors often see her as sexually wanton and lustful which is an obvious projection of the motives of one who would choose to purchase the services of a prostitute.  Second wave feminists take the opposite approach and cast any female who makes the choice to put a price on her sexual behavior, a victim in need of being “rescued.”  The second wave feminist cannot imagine choosing to engage in sex for pay unless something horrific had forced her to do so and since this is true for her, she assumes it is true for all women.

Either way, the mind and motives of the individual sex worker are never accounted for and the net effect is one of obliterating the sex worker as a viable human worthy of a modicum of respect.  Whether one of my clients fantasizes me into some kind of nympho or a feminist accuses me of “being in denial” I am effectively reduced to the cartoon in its originator’s head.  What I really think and feel is of no concern.  How my life can serve someone else’s deep psychological processes becomes paramount because in the final analysis, prostitutes are NOT people.  We ARE of course.  But we are NOT percieved as people by anyone but ourselves.

Of course the sex worker rights movement is entirely about procuring rights and human dignity for sex workers and it is why I devoted so many years putting my life and my personhood on the line publicly.  I paid a price for all those television appearances.  I was jailed, audited, fined, evicted and nearly lost visitation of my stepchildren. But those are just the headlines. The part that hurt the most and continues to take a toll today even though I have been “retired” from escorting for five years now, is the perception of being either evil or pitied.  If I am seen as strong then I am also “bad.”  And if I am seen as sweet or endearing than I am to be pitied and pathologized.

Today someone saw the spiritual side of me and came to the conclusion that I should abandon all this talk about sex because apparently in their world sex and spirituality are incompatible.  In addition, they blithely announced that I “am finding my way” as if I had been lost and was finally getting my life together.  That I refuse to “repent” or disavow my past as a prostitute or porn actress creates so much cognitive dissonance in the vast majority of people that they simply rewrite my script to suit themselves.

In their world I must choose one or the the other.  I cannot be both spiritually enlightened and pro sex work.  I can’t move on to a second career unless I am prepared to lable my years as a sex worker as somehow “unfortunate” but perhaps “necessary” to my personal journey.  When I speak about how much satisfaction and yes even fun I had as an escort, I get looks of disapproval and concern.  If I speak about those aspects of sex work that I liked less, the understanding nods of approval commence and once again my truth becomes irrelevant in the telling of my life.

My story isn’t unique.  Every prostitute finds himself or herself relegated to a stereotype at some point in their life and career.  If they hide their profession from family and friends, they still have to navigate the stupid assumptions  made by some of their clients – or at least would be clients.  Someone at some point will inevitably reach into the deep recesses of their own tortured psyche, grab a handful of smelly shit they should have dealt with in a therapist’s office and hurl it toward a prostitute with the moral conviction and piety reserved for  “good” people.

Just Another Day at Work

A few weeks ago I wrote the title of this blog entry on a blackboard in a classroom.  I was lecturing at Sonoma State University and trying to find a way to reach the students on the topic of sex worker rights. In the last few years I have noticed a huge shift in attitudes among the college aged regarding pornography.

Sometimes when I walk into a classroom early I will find the professor from the previous class handing out pornographic DVD’s like candy for kids.  No one blushes about sex and video anymore.  And surveys show a marked increase in the percentage of females who view porn.  The women are still a little behind the men in this avocation but they won’t be for long.  Pornography is fast becoming a standard form of entertainment for both genders.

And yet even with this new-found acceptance of sex for pay – and let’s face it that is exactly what the porn industry is – students still toe the party line on the topic of prostitution.  In fact the anti-prostitution rhetoric is gaining momentum with buzzwords like trafficking which seem to arouse consternation in the most liberal thinkers.  And that is the problem with the word “trafficking” – it bypasses thinking and aims itself at primal fears about “those other people” from “other countries” who kidnap our innocent youth and turn them into “sex slaves.”

Mind you I am not suggesting that these things don’t happen but so far very little proof has been produced to support the assertions that sex trafficking is the huge problem it is being touted to be.  Instead most anti-trafficking efforts purporting to “rescue” sex workers from a fate worse than death are in fact simply harrassing immigrants.

For every heart breaking story about a true trafficking victim, there are hundreds of more mundane stories about coming to America or Europe to make big money but getting deported instead.

The trafficking debate reminds me of domestic violence.  Having volunteered for a domestic violence shelter when I was in college, I am intimately acquainted with the very real problem of family violence.  And yet as a society we don’t indict the idea of family because some people suffer violence in the home.  Instead we look for ways to make families safer for all of us.

I long for the day when voters, lawmakers and social workers will see prostitution as a viable profession worthy of such an approach.  It would be so much more productive to offer sex workers opportunities for empowerment, safety and worker rights.  But right now the trafficking mentality would rather patronize immigrants by “rescuing” them – even if it means forcing them out of a trade they have freely chosen.

But back to that Sonoma State University classroom: I asked the students to list all the “bad” things they associate with porn and with prostitution.  Both lists were fairly long and mostly redundant but prostitution came out as the greater societal evil.  Porn has become acceptable to the masses and prostitution is not.

When I pressed the students for an explanation for this differential treatment they couldn’t produce one.  In short order, they began to see the hypocrisy of considering one form of paid sex (the kind that puts billions of dollars into corporate pockets) as OK while the other kind of paid sex is still deemed responsible for the downfall of all that is good and right in the world (you know, family values, the sanctity of marriage and crime free neighborhoods).

But I wasn’t satisfied with this transformation, I wanted to go further.  So I asked them if any of the arguments against either pornography or prostitution could be applied to marriage. In other words, could one make an equally valid argument against the institution of marriage using the same criteria used to discredit the sex industry?

And of course you can.  Marriage creates even more violence and crime than either branch of the sex industry.  People are killed every day because  they had the misfortune to fall in love with someone with anger management and control issues.

No, I am NOT suggesting that we do away with marriage.  I think that is a personal choice just like porn and prostitution.  And I think there is a lot to recommend all three.

What I am suggesting is that it is time to sort out the salient issues and stop conflating what people do for love or money with the dysfunctional ways some people do life.  Violence is a separate issue.  It really doesn’t have anything to do with how you make a living or how you love.

Violence can take many forms and includes domestic violence, stalking, trafficking in any industry, kidnapping, etc.  If we can stop with the smokescreens we might even be able to do something to reduce violence in its many forms.

Maybe you and your friends can have a similar discussion.  Just make three lists of all the “bad” things you can associate with Porn, Prostitution and Marriage.  You might find they have far more in common than you have been led to believe.  And that alone might help shift our conversations about dysfunctional and abusive behavior to something more productive.

First, I want to point out that “dignity” is a code term.  It evokes extreme emotions in most people and is rarely questioned for content.  But just exactly what does it mean? While the dictionary defines dignity as “the quality or state of being worthy of esteem or respect” the term is most often employed to arouse feelings of shame.  Individuals who violate societal norms are admonished that they must not respect themselves and that they are degrading others and human “dignity” with their actions.  So the term dignity becomes a word intended to CONTROL the actions of others.

If in fact human “dignity” is the true value being expressed, then the actions resulting from this kind of speech should reflect the respect it refers to.  In other words, if those who enforce laws and punitive actions against prostitution really were concerned with human dignity, they would NOT use the word as an excuse to punish, humiliate and degrade people involved in prostitution.  As we know, most of the moralists who invoke terms such as “dignity” and “self-respect” take every opportunity to unleash verbal assaults on those who violate their sense of moral propriety.

And the enforcement of moral code is really what is at work.  Most “moral” values are relics from religion so inculcated in society that their proponents no longer remember where the moral codes originated from.  But since those most easily influenced by moral pleas are given to emotional reactions instead of calm logic, there is no need to make sense or even conform to the available statistics.

The fact is that arresting prostitutes and/or their clients does NOTHING to preserve human dignity.  It DOES however, preserve archaic and dysfunctional views of sex and gender roles while ignoring the economic and racial disparities which tend to drive ALL forms of employment and commerce.

Consequently, most major USA cities spend upwards of $10 Million dollars annually to put mostly women of color through the arrest-jail-fine-release machine repeatedly.  This mindless machine grinds up its victims so that they have an arrest record and could not find employment elsewhere if they wanted to.  It also puts the women back out on the streets to earn money to pay the fines for prostitution offenses by committing more prostitution.  Of course, while this system does not fulfill its stated purpose – to empower and “rescue” women from prostitution – it DOES fulfill its TRUE purpose which is to make money for the government while keeping voters happy that “something is being done about prostitution.”

Critiques of the current legal sanctions against prostitution in this country aside, let us examine the merits of asserting that prostitution is inherently “dehumanizing” or “degrading” or less than “dignified.”

The first tenet of human dignity is freedom of choice.  At least that is the value most often embraced in USA culture.  Taking choice away from a given population reduces their claim to dignity.  Second wave feminism committed a grave error when it decided to embrace the patriarchal value of patronizing women.  Although men and transgenders also work in prostitution, you will notice that public discussions about prostitution NEVER refer to this fact when attempting to arouse the voters’ outrage.  Quite the contrary, we are bombarded with emotional pleas to “rescue” and “save” full grown women who are cast as “victims” who don’t know any better and need “good people” to “re-educate” them to their own value and worth.

How can you create dignity for another person when you refuse to listen to them?  When prostitutes are asked what they want and need, most will tell you they want access to equal protection under the law.  They want to be able to prosecute their rapists and they want their murders to matter.  Some prostitutes want out of the profession and some wish to continue their work IN SAFETY.  As with all things prohibited, the laws create the danger. 

Decriminalization removes many if not most of the problems associated with prohibition and it allows people in crisis – regardless of their chosen profession to pursue legal recourse and other forms of assistance which are available to other citizens.  While Sweden is held up as a model country, you will NOT find the prostitutes of Sweden extolling the virtues of Sweden’s legislation.  However, New Zealand decriminalized prostitution several years ago and the sex workers of that country ARE much better off because of it.  That to me is what dignity is about.  A society which creates as much respect for diversity and freedom of choice as possible is a dignified and respectful society.