An Ex-Hooker’s Letter to her Younger Self

Dear twenty-year old Stella,

Work hard on learning to ask for help.  It’s the only way you’ll ever  break free.  No one ever does anything alone.  You don’t have to.

You’ll learn how to make the men happy.  The happier they are the nicer they treat you.  You’ll get very good at being a hooker.  But when the Johns say “baby you were born for this” that doesn’t mean its true.

Now when most men come near you  feel a stabbing at your eyes, your throat, and your gut that you know isn’t real.  You don’t want to admit it but you’re terrified.  You start, you tremble.  Your hands shake.  Think about it, you’re being stabbed a lot these days.  This is a quite reasonable reaction to being used by man after man, day after day, in this prison of a brothel.  It doesn’t mean you are so miserably flawed that you can’t do anything but be a hooker.

Being a hooker doesn’t make you subhuman.  It’s not OK for your (white) pimps to smack you and tell you they’ll kill you.

You have to work up the nerve to pay a cashier for a soda.  You’re too scared to ask that guy behind the deli counter to make you a sandwich.   This isn’t weakness, it’s biology.  Trauma changes your brain.    Your hippocampus, where you form narrative memory in the brain, shrinks.  This is a symptom of PTSD –  a neurophysiologic response to repetitive trauma –not evidence that you deserve to be in prostitution.

In the middle of the winter in the middle of the night when that guy in theDoubletree suite invites you to sit while he pours you a seltzer trust your gut and back out of there before the five guys you can’t see who are waiting in the bedroom have a chance to get between you and the door.

Being vulnerable means you’re alive.   There’s no shame in it.  It doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person.  You don’t have to apologize for doing what you must to survive.

When Samantha stops working for your pimp Johnny.  find her and make her get out of the city.  Otherwise two weeks later Nicole, the madam who works with Johnny,  will show you Samantha’s diamond initial ring and tell you Johnny murdered her.  Though you’ll always hope she was lying, you doubt it.

You’ve lost all sense of the linear — time  disappeared and you felt it leave.  Now you’re living in the immediate and eternity.  It’s scary and bewildering, but you need this — you need each moment to stretch infinitely so that you can be acutely aware of each man’s tiny movements and shifts in expression,  which can reveal a threat before it happens.  This hyperawareness will save your life.  One day you’ll see this being untethered from time as a kind of grace.

When that shiny classical pianist you meet at Au Bon Pain says he wants to know everything about you don’t believe him.

A lot of what’s happening doesn’t make sense now but it will later.  That habit you have of writing poems in your mind to the beloved you haven’t met yet as you’re riding in cabs to calls?  There’s something to it.

Your ability to perceive beauty is part of your resilience and survival.  When a man is on top of you watch the wind-swirled leaves out his window.  Seize the gusty joy you feel as you run three blocks to a bodega to buy condoms between calls at 3 AM.  When you think for a minute you see that friend,  who’s death you never got over,  standing in the brassy light under a weeping linden, be grateful.  All this has a purpose.

Being a hooker can seem to mean you’ve lost everything you hoped to be, but that’s not true.  You’ve splintered into a million pieces, but you’re still you. You’re alive.    It’s in the spaces between those pieces where you learn to feel how other people are feeling.  It hurts so much you’re sure it’ll kill you, but it won’t.  Later when you’re out of the life it’ll be so easy to be happy.  The mundane will buoy you.

When your madam sends you to the Parker Meridien at 3 AM and you meet a British professor who says he wants to help you, believe him.  He will set you up in a beautiful condominium across from Lincoln Center that he deeds in your name.  Of course you’ll have everything to do with this — you are so “good” at being a hooker, so “good” at fucking that you can make a guy want to buy you acondo.  Shame is a hollow stone in the throat.

During the two years that this voracious man ‘keeps’ you as his private prostitute the condo will come to feel like a platinum trap.  But it’s still your chance to get out and heal. Take it.

After you’ve sold the condominium and are living in a graduate dorm atColumbia University, a man with eyes like blue shattered glass will sit beside you in the cafeteria.  When he begins to speak you know he’s the unmet beloved you’ve been writing poems to all these years.  You’ll try to run away, but he won’t let you.  Fourteen years later the two of you will be hiking through pink granite outcroppings with your Labrador retriever.  You’ll  feel like the freest woman in the world.

One afternoon when you’re twenty-one you’ll be at the Museum of Metropolitan of Art with your best friend Gabriel, who’s a hustler, a male prostitute.  When he says you ‘remind him of his death’, don’t lash back.  Even though he told you the doctor said he didn’t have that rare new virus named AIDS, it would behoove you to realize he’s still coughing.

Stop thinking about your own hurt.  Don’t lash back with that vicious phrase your mother’s said to you so many times –” I hope you die a slow death.”  . Don’t tell Gabriel  you never want to see him again and storm out of the  sculpture gallery.   Or it will be the last time you see him.  Gabriel will die of AIDS five months later.  When he said you reminded him of ‘his own death’ he was trying to tell you he was dying.   You’ll regret what you said for the rest of your life.  But even more you’ll regret running away from his friendship.

Say forgive me.

Say I love you.

Stay connected.

Love,

Stella

This is a tribute to Cheryl Strayed‘s transcendent letter to her younger self.  Her letter’s form gave me a pitcher that I filled with my life.  A big shout out toDublin Call Girl who’s thank you letter to punters is already a classic.

Related articles

• The Sneaky Language of the Sex Industry Lobby(survivorsconnect.wordpress.com)
• Looking for Unicorns: The Happy Hooker and the Good Punter/John(stellamarrundercovercallgirl.wordpress.com)
• I’m Interviewed (stellamarrundercovercallgirl.wordpress.com)
• Looking for Unicorns: The Search for the Happy Hooker and the Good Punter/John (survivorsconnect.wordpress.com)

You might kill me

I pity you

though you might kill me

 

I am a piano and the keys

of my crotch are seaglass

Worn away by pound

by touch

 

Manhattan makes wraiths

of women like me

At 4 AM this January morning

 

Time lived between my legs

Till they ripped Time out,

leaving me

Only the Immediate

and Eternity

 

I’ve searched the interstellar dark

even though I’ve heard

like lost summer nights

Once torn away

Time won’t come back.

 

In August the wanting sex

from stoop-sitting boys

pulses rhythmic as traffic

Hyacinth kisses shiver in thick

shadows behind their knees

 

Now Ice rusts their throats

 

How many voices are impaled on the

razorwire strangling vacant lots?

 

How many murdered girls cry out

from the park’s dark clarinet?

 

These nights I walk through ice,

dragging sleep meant for men impaled

by the view out their window

Men drowned in constellations

shot dead as they fled the sky

 

Tongues wait in the

fire escape shadows

Torn out like Time

they’ll never speak

 

I am a piano and the

keys of my crotch

are sidewalks

jellyfished with brine

 

I knock hoping you won’t open

but if you do I hope you won’t

see the murdered clarinets

in the dark behind my teeth

 

You’re wearing the thick terry robe

barely tied.

 

Your room moisturized with the luxury

of a gardenia holding absence

 

You give me your fear and

your voice’s glass dust

in a box

You will make me  open carefully

 

I can tell by your eyes

you’ve seen the vacant buildings’

toothless mouths

 

I can tell by the tense of your lips

you’ve heard the murdered girls cry

As vacuumous cold

hides thick within your cheeks

 

The dullness at the windows

is all that remains

of the flypaper that once wrapped you,

That you can’t rinse away

from your sleep

 

I am a mirror that wants to incarnate

All  the tenderness

We’ve never found before it smashes

 

The closer you come the more

Space inside me explodes

against my throat, my skin

 

You live in my thighs and aching fingers

a violent skyscraper of  lack

I rub serpentines into your shoulders

 

Erasing me –

You rub your money

Into my hips

 

Pinning me to the mattress

Is how you refuse to use a condom

 

This darkness is not as light to us

though sometimes

I see light bubbling

from my breath

During my dives

in the Night underneath you

 

Fling me across the bed

in rips of shipwrecked sail

Till I cling in curling seaweed at your feet

 

I implore you

 

Throw me back into the Oceanic night

Which is my only Freedom from you

 

Where I wait for  the first

panted breaths between stars

And gulp cold-throated rain

 

This is a sketch of what it feels like to be prostituted in Manhattan.

Translator Extraordinaire Philippe Gastrein does me an enormous honor

He translated my “Ex-Hooker writes a Letter to her Younger Self” into French.  I am forever to him for this beautiful, empowering gift.

Lettre  d’une ex-pute à une de ses jeunes semblables; ou la plus libre des femmes.

Lettre d’une ex-pute à une de ses jeunes semblables; ou la plus libre des femmes.

 

Traduction depuis l’anglais.
Chère Stella, toi qui as vingt ans,
Travaille dur pour apprendre à demander de l’aide. C’est le seul moyen que tu n’auras jamais pour te libérer. Personne ne fait jamais rien seul. Tu n’as pas à essayer. Tu vas apprendre comment contenter les hommes. Plus ils seront contents, et plus ils te traiteront gentiment. Tu arriveras très bien à être une pute. Mais quand le client dit « ma petite, tu es née pour ça », cela ne veut pas dire que cela soit vrai. Maintenant, quand la plupart des hommes s’approchent de toi, tu te sens agressée, comme si une lame de couteau se trouvait sous tes yeux, contre ton cou, dans le creux de ton ventre, alors que tu sais que ce n’est pas réel. Tu ne veux pas l’admettre, mais tu es terrifiée. Tu sursaute, tu tremble, tes mains tremblent. Penses-y, tu as été souvent menacée ces derniers temps. C’est une réaction compréhensible après avoir été utilisée par une succession d’homme, durant une succession de jours, dans la prison du bordel. Cela ne veut pas dire que tu es tellement cassée et humiliée que tu ne peux rien faire d’autre qu’être pute. Être une pute ne fait pas de toi unë sous-humain. Cela n’est pas correct que tes proxénètes (blancs) te battent et te menacent de te tuer. Tu as de mal à contrôler ta nervosité seulement pour payer une boisson à la caisse. Tu es trop effrayée pour demander au mec derrière le comptoir de te préparer un sandwich. Ce ne sont pas des signes de faiblesse. Ce sont des symptômes biologiques. Les traumatismes ont modifié ton cerveau. Ton hippocampe, la région du cerveau où se forme ta mémoire narrative, s’est rapetissé. C’est un symptôme du PTSD, le syndrome de stress post-traumatique, une réponse neurophysiologique à des traumatismes psychologiques répétés. Ce n’est en rien une preuve que tu mérites d’être dans la prostitution. Au milieu de l’hiver, au milieu de la nuit, dans la suite d’hôtel luxueuse, quand ce mec t’invite à t’asseoir pendant qu’il te verse un verre d’eau, suis ton instinct et fuis avant que les cinq mecs cachés qui t’attendent dans la chambre n’aient le temps de se mettre entre toi et la porte. Être vulnérable, ça veut dire que tu es en vie. Il n’y a pas de honte à ça. Cela ne veut pas dire que tu sois une pauvre fille. Tu n’as pas à t’excuser pour faire ce que tu dois pour survivre. Quand Samantha arrête de travailler pour Johnny, ton proxo. Trouve-la et fais la sortir de la ville. Sinon deux semaine plus tard, Nicole, la “Madame” qui travaille avec Johnny te montrera l’anneau en or de Samantha et te dira que Johnny l’a étranglé. Même si tu penseras toujours qu’elle t’aura menti, tu auras un doute. Tu as perdu le compte des jours, le temps a disparu et tu as l’impression qu’il fuit. Tu vis maintenant dans l’immédiat et l’éternité. C’est effrayant et déconcertant, mais tu as en besoin, il t’est nécessaire que chaque instant s’étire infiniment de telle sorte que tu puisses être extrêmement attentive au moindre minuscule mouvement et à la moindre modification d’expression de chaque homme, car cela peut t’avertir d’une agression. Cette hypersensibilité va te sauver la vie. Un jour tu verras cette aptitude à être détaché du temps comme une sorte de grâce. Quand cet élégant pianiste de classique que tu rencontres au café te dit qu’il veut tout savoir sur toi, ne le crois pas. Beaucoup de ce qui t’arrive aujourd’hui, tu ne le comprends pas, mais tu le comprendras plus tard. Cette habitude que tu as prise de composer dans ta tête des poèmes que tu adresses à un amoureux que tu n’as pas encore rencontré alors que tu prends un taxi pour un rendez-vous ? Il y a quelque chose qui fait sens là-dedans. Ta capacité à percevoir la beauté fait partie de ta résilience et de ta survie. Quand un homme est sur toi, regarde par la fenêtre les feuilles agitées par le vent. Saisi la joie du grand air que tu ressens alors que tu es entrain de courir pour trouver à acheter des capotes entre deux rendez-vous à trois heures du matin. Quand tu penses pour un instant avoir vu une amie dont tu n’as jamais fait le deuil, se tenir dans la lumière du soleil couchant sous un saule pleureur, sois en reconnaissante. Tout cela a une raison. Être une pute peut sembler signifier que tu as tout perdu de ce que tu espérais être. Mais ce n’est pas vrai. Tu es brisée en mille morceaux, mais tu es toujours toi. Tu es en vie. C’est dans ces espaces entre ces milles morceaux que tu as appris à sentir comment les autres ressentent. Ca te bouleverse tellement que tu n’es pas sûre que cela ne te tuera pas. Mais non, cela ne te tuera pas. Plus tard, quand tu seras sortie de cette vie ce sera tellement simple d’être heureuse. Ton quotidien sera ta bouée de sauvetage. Quand ta “Madame” t’envoie dans un hôtel de luxe à trois heures du matin et que tu rencontres un professeur britannique qui te dit qu’il veut t’aider, crois-le. Il t’installera dans un magnifique appartement en face du Lincoln Center, qu’il te donnera. Bien sûr tu devras faire tout ce qu’il faut pour ça, tu es tellement « bonne » à faire la pute, tellement « bonne » pour la baise que tu peux faire faire ce que tu veux à un mec. La honte, c’est dur à avaler. (Shame is a hollow stone in the throat) Au cours de ces deux années pendant lesquelles cet homme prédateur t’a “gardé” comme sa prostituée privée, l’appartement sera devenu une prison dorée. Mais c’est toujours une chance pour sortir et te soigner. Prends-là. Après avoir vendu l’appartement et t’être installée dans une résidence étudiante à la Columbia University, tu te trouveras assise à la cafétéria en face d’un homme aux yeux comme du verre strié de bleu. Lorsqu’il commence à te parler, tu sais qu’il s’agit de l’être aimé inconnu auquel tu composais des poèmes toutes ces années durant. Tu essaieras de fuir en courant, mais il ne te laissera pas. Quatorze ans plus tard, alors que lui et toi êtes entrain de randonner sur un affleurement de granite rose avec votre labrador, tu te sentiras la plus libre des femmes. Un après-midi, à l’âge de 21 ans, tu seras au Musée Metropolitan avec ton meilleur ami Gabriel, qui est un gigolo, un prostitué masculin. Quand il te dit que tu lui « rappelles sa mort », ne le rejette pas. Même s’il te raconte que le médecin dit qu’il n’a pas cet étrange nouveau virus, SIDA, ce sera ton devoir de te rendre compte qu’il tousse encore. Cesse de penser à tes propres blessures. Ne te tourmente pas avec cette phrase perverse que t’a dite ta mère si souvent : « j’espère que tu auras une mort lente ». Ne lui dit pas que tu ne veux plus jamais le revoir, ne quitte pas la galerie des sculptures. Ce sera la dernière fois que tu le vois. Gabriel mourra du SIDA cinq mois plus tard. Lorsqu’il a dit que tu lui rappelais « sa propre mort », il essayait de te prévenir qu’il était entrain de mourir. Tu regretteras ce que tu lui as dit le reste de ta vie. Et encore plus, tu regretteras d’avoir fuit son amitié. S’il te plait, dit « pardonne-moi » Dit « Je t’aime ».
Reste en contact.
Amour,
Stella

The Sneaky Language of the Pro Sex Work Lobby

The already legendary Dublin Call Girl has written a great post where she takes apart the ways a man from the sex industry lobby attacks her blog. She reveals the darkness of the sex industry, as well as the many ways the sex industry lobby tries to silence and intimidate survivors who speak out.    This commenter tries to link to pimp organizations, but he claims he’s a ‘sex worker.’  Of course, he blames her for any abuse she’s received.  Let’s put this in perspective.  Dublin Call Girl just started her blog a few months ago.  It’s a blog.  She doesn’t have a lot of political power, she’s just sharing her experiences.  But already sex industry supporters are targeting her with a viciousness.  Here’s an excerpt from her blog:

I received this comment earlier and let it become public just to show people how persuasive his argument could be interpreted. This will be the only pro sex work lobby comment that I’ll let hang around, I just wanted to show you how they will use language that seems to be about caring and support and all the rest, but all that shite only applies to right kind of hooker, the Belle du jours of the world.The one that wants to be there. The pro sex work lobby doesn’t care about the majority of prostitutes (who are pimped, trafficked, abused, drug addicted,poverty stricken). They only care about the happy ones. And if you’re not happy, well it’s your own fault, you really should have joined an organisation or gotten pepper spray, so enjoy that PTSD you’re going through, cos it’s all of your own doing.

Check out his complete and utter lack of compassion (or any evidence that he even read anything that I had written). I also love how he tried to link to a load of pimp organisations.

Below is the comment, and further below is my reply.

‘You certainly may not have enjoyed the chance to join a sex work academy like (deleted) or whore movement like (deleted) in order to learn the trix of the trade and prevent against abusive people. I believe the more society is condemning us and politics is fighting prostitution and safe workplaces where younger workers can learn from older ones or the madam, the more it will be unlikely to have support in cases of emergency or be empowered. Then more and more girls, boys or transsexuals again may follow your sad trait.

First of all you did not follow the principle prostitute rule to ‘not work when you not want to’. So possibly you made yourself unconsciously a victim or even attracted attackers or ‘ugly mugs’ as we call them.

Click here to read more of this fabulous post.

Tags: Dublin Call Girl, feminism, human trafficking, prostitution, sex work

Related articles

• Looking for Unicorns: The Search for the “Happy Hooker” & the “Good Punter/John” (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
• Terrible Beauty: Prostitution & the Inadequacy of Language (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
• Terrible Beauty: Angel K on Prostitution & the Inadequacy of Language (survivorsconnect.wordpress.com)

Terrible Beauty: Prostitution & the Inadequacy of Language

My Hero

Survivor Angel K’s writing is searing and fearless.  In a recent post up at her blog Surviving Prostitution and Addiction she describes the after-effects of prostitution — the flashbacks, the startle response, the sleepless due to the terrible dreams.  Researchers have found the women in prostitution suffer from the same levels of trauma symptoms as the victims of state-sponsored torture.  Many people can’t  imagine what this means.   It’s something that forever changes how we face the world.  After going through something like state-sponsored torture or trafficking/prostitution everything you do is an act of will — you must continually summon the new being you’ve become from your fragments.And yet as the survivors of torture or trafficking/prostitution rebuild their selves, their voices, they can develop extraordinary abilities to connect with, inspire, and understand others.  Nelson Mandela exemplifies this type of rebirth.

Most everyone understands that Mandela’s experiences of being held 27 years in a prison infamous for torture make him unique.  When he was finally released few denied the vast injustice done to him.  No one expected him to act like everyone else.  Instead South Africa and the world stepped back, and waited to see how this extraordinary man would transform the terrible wrongs he’d been through — they gave him a chance to bring something new into being.

It’s my hope that the public will start seeing us trafficking and prostitution survivors as people society has wronged in a similar manner.  I hope they’ll understand we’ve been changed by the pain and harshness we’ve experienced.  Public denial of the violence we experience and prostitute-blaming forces many of us into hiding.  If this stopped, we survivors would be empowered to bring something new and beautiful into being.

With exquisite precision, Angel K writes of  how it feels to live inside this trauma and form a new self and voice from the fragments.  Here’s an excerpt:

 The images remain, technicolour, replaying when I sleep or sometimes anyway. Something triggers me and I’m gone, magically transported back there, no tardis required.

I sleep with the light on, and barely even then. Scared of dreaming, but scared of my thoughts lying awake hour after hour. The night looms, interminable, the fragile grip on sanity of the day stretched to a mere thread, at breaking point. The body, that is to say my body – the splitting I did to survive what they did to me continues – doesn’t help. Muscles tense and tire, old injuries ache, and now the exhaustion from night after night of broken sleep has taken it to the point of fainting, of collapse. Both body and mind work against me, telling me I am in danger now, making me re-experience what happened then now.

Words like ‘horrific’ or ‘nightmarish’ seem inadequate. Vocabulary offers only some approximation for what I am experiencing.

Read more

Related articles

• Rebecca Mott on the Terrifying Mundane (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
• Trapped Indoors: Survivor Interview in the Irish Examiner (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
• Important Survivor Interview (survivorsconnect.wordpress.com)
• Looking for Unicorns: The Search for the “Happy Hooker” & the “Good Punter/John” (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
• How a Holocaust Survivor Can Help Prostitution Survivors (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
• A Small Window: Survivor Rebecca Mott (survivorsconnect.wordpress.com)
• Prostitution & the Terrifying Mundane (survivorsconnect.wordpress.com)

How a Call Girl Feels When She’s “Reviewed” Online

 

My friend and colleague Dublin Call Girl has a blazingly honest new post up on her blog.  It’s about how she felt when Johns/punters reviewed her online.  This is a revolting practice where online “escort” sites encourage the men to post reviews of each  girl after they’ve used her.  It’s not new.  Even before the internet there used to be creepy “adult entertainment” news sheets (kind of like today’s backpage) where men wrote these sorts of reviews.  But the internet has increased the impact of this dehumanizing practice on prostitutedwomen’s lives.  Here’s an excerpt:

 

This is another review, from someone else, that worries me. This is hardly unique, it took me two seconds to find, there are hundreds of this type (and worse) of review. This is the really sinister side of reviews. Men will visit a girl who clearly, and the men admit this quite openly, doesn’t want to be there, is unhappy, is reluctant. And they review her anyway. They review her in such a way that completely and cleverly avoids any consideration for her, or why she is ‘lifeless’ or why she is ‘mechanical’ or whatever else. Instead of wondering why and how the girl is in this position of unwillingly having sex for money, they are pissed off, indignant about their wasted money. This is what paying does; it takes the responsibility out of the punter’s hands. It takes the human out of both sides.

 

DURATION:	45 Minutes
COST:	€180
REVIEW:	First I chose Vicky based on her pics and Favourites. I fancied a bit of (A).   Location was easy to find and excellent directions given.When the door opened there stood a pretty young lady but not in my opinion the girl in the Photo’s.Smaller not as slim but nice none the less.Then It started to go down hill. Paid the €180 (20) for A.Guess what she diden’t want to do A. “i don’t like” was what i got.Got down to biz anyway but there was no life in this girl at all.  I’m more French than she is. East European at a guess. Got a bit of OWO but she kept stopping to wipe yer man with a piece ofKitchen paper. Sex was like riding an ironing board. Kissing was OK but she kept turning away most times i tried to kiss her. This girl just was not into it no matter how hard i tried. Got more entertainment from the radio on in the backround. Half way through round 2 she announced that time was up. Paid for an hour and was in and out in 45mins. Waste of time and money which is a bummer when you save for ages for this and don’t get the chance to punt very often.

 

Read more

 

Related articles

 

• A Thankyou Letter to Punters.(secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
• Looking for Unicorns: The Happy Hooker and the Good Punter/John(stellamarrundercovercallgirl.wordpress.com)

 

 

How a Call Girl Feels When She’s “Reviewed” Online.

Related articles

• How a Call Girl Feels When She’s “Reviewed” Online (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
• Looking for Unicorns: The Happy Hooker and the Good Punter/John (stellamarrundercovercallgirl.wordpress.com)
• Trapped Indoors: Survivor Interview (stellamarrundercovercallgirl.wordpress.com)

To look into another’s eyes

“In the absolute meaning there are no whores. There are people in prostitution for a longer or shorter period of time. There are no ‘types’ of people, no characters. They are people who have ended up in a certain situation. … One puts themselves in another’s place and imagines themselves under different circumstances. It is to look into someone else’s eyes and see yourself. And with this insight comes also an insight into the cruelty of the system which has made her into a ‘type’.”

Kajsa Ekis Ekman

Choosing Love

The moment we choose to love, we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love, we begin to move toward freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.

–bell hooks

Trapped Indoors: Survivor Interview

There’s an extremely important interview with a trafficking/prostitution survivor in the Irish Examiner. So many of my experiences mirror what this eloquent, brave woman describes. Here’s an excerpt

“Under Irish law, the abusive nature of prostitution has been allowed to  flourish unhindered and it is a living hell for the women struggling to survive  within it. It is primarily for the sake of these women, but also for all of us  who want to live in a gender-equal society, that I am gladdened to see the Irish  Government finally pledge to tackle this issue.

“I only hope that they  go the right way about it, which is to criminalise the purchase of sex, because  nothing will change for prostituted women and girls until the commercialisation  of female bodies is dealt the hammer-blow it so richly deserves.

“To  those who would say legalisation would make prostitution safer: I think the same  thing any former prostitute I’ve ever spoken to thinks, which is that you may as  well legalise rape and battery to try to make them safer. You cannot legislate  away the dehumanising, degrading trauma of prostitution, and if you try to, you  are accepting a separate class of women should exist who have no access to the  human rights everyone else takes for granted.”

Read more.

Related articles

• A Small Window: Survivor Rebecca Mott (survivorsconnect.wordpress.com)
• How a Holocaust Survivor Can Help Prostitution Survivors (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
• The Invisible Man (stellamarrundercovercallgirl.wordpress.com)
• Who’s a Prostitution Expert? (stellamarrundercovercallgirl.wordpress.com)

The Invisible Man

Reblogged from Sex Trafficking Survivors United:

More breathtaking brilliance by survivor writer Angel K.  Here's an exceprt:

The missing part of all discourse centering around the sex industry is the men who drive it: the johns. The sex trade is all about supply and demand. Focussed purely on the 'rights' of women to prostitute themselves (or do 'sex work' - the word 'prostitute' is generally not used by the so-called 'sex-positive' feminists fighting so bravely for a woman's right to be…

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Reblogged from Sex Trafficking Survivors United: