This post is deeply personal, and being personal it is very political.
My politics of being an abolitionist of the sex trade come living through the pain, the terror, the blood and guts, and lack of any hope that was indoors prostitution for me.
The further I get away from my personal experiences, the more I come to know that they were not unique, not even that unusual. No, the reason I fight so hard, fight to the death - is because it is just common practice of the vast majority of indoors prostitution. Sadistic sexual violence and mind control is commonplace in most of indoors prostitution - it just kept well hidden from the public gaze.
But, I am in deep despair for there seems to be a world-wide push to put prostitution indoors.
It is claimed this is done for the safety of prostituted women, and to make it easier to control illegal practices in the sex trade. Well, I do not believe those motivations.
For it is the gospel of the pimps talking, be those pimps called managers or members of some government - the push to indoors prostitution is about getting hold of the stacks of money that the sex trade produces. It is to continue a constant flow of women and girls that any man can have easy access to make his personal porn-toy. It makes invisible that prostituted women and girls are raped, battered, sexually tortured and murdered on a industrial scale - for the sex trade just replaces them with more fuckable goods.
I can never understand how indoors prostitution can be safe - when so much about it would appear so dangerous.
What is safe about being an escort ? When the typical "business" for the escort is to be alone often in a hotel room or flat with strange men. Men who have paid to own her as long as his money last. Why would not that ownership make him believe he cannot rape her ? If he bashes her or does sadistic sex on her, it is just her job. Why would he see her as a full human being, who feels pain, who can be terrified or hates being an escort.
Sure, the sex trade will paint escorts as businesswomen in control of their lives. The sex trade will call them empowered women, whilst at the same time going on and on and on about security and safety of the escorts.
Now, if it such a wonderful career, how come there needs to be alarms, bodyguards, cameras in the room’ drivers to and fro, checks on every john, lists of bad johns and tons of other precautions.
If the johns that use escorts are so decent, why all these precautions ?
Could it be that what happened to me and my friends who did escorting was just commmonplace ?
How high-class escorts can be beaten, raped and so sexually tortured that they end up on life support. How men with enough money can keep you for days or weeks as their porn-toy. How escorts are just told it is bad luck if a john is sadistic to them - only to find they are sent out to that bad luck many times.
Escorting is terrifying - but you learn to paint on a happy face, coz no-one seems to give a damn about escorts.
I worked in what I now know were brothels - I was too fucked up to know my own reality at the time.
I worked in flats, where in each room girls were being fucked and paid, where managers and "staff" sat outside those rooms, where for the hours you were there, there was a continual flow of men wanting to fuck.
I would name that a brothel - but I am sure that the sex trade would call it anything but a brothel, and like to pretend it was just illegal - for in their propaganda everything is so clean, fun and well organised in brothels.
Well, we were gang-raped, there were many under-aged prostituted girls, men were often filmed sexually torturing and almost killing the prostituted women and girls (filmed by the managers), the prostituted women and girls were given tons of drink and drugs to get by - that was just part of our norm.
All that and much worse is commonplace in brothels in every country, every city - for brothels get their money by supplying men with women and girls who will be whatever his porn fantasy is. It is kept in-house how violent he is, he has paid good money for that right to privacy.
Brothels are prisons for the vast majority of prostituted women and girls in them - I don’t care if they are run by women and called co-ops, or if they are clean and have security and stacks of condoms.
Brothels are factories for men to sell and buy fuckable goods - the buyer and seller never see the prostituted women and girls as full humans. She is stripped of any right to say no, to have safety from rape or other sexual torturing ; she has no right to leave.
Brothels just keep all the violence well away from the public gaze - and then makes the pretence of being a great employer.
So, please fight the push to make prostitution go indoors.
If you truly want prostituted women and girls to be safe, make the buying and selling of the prostituted your target.
Men who buy prostituted women and girls rarely just buy one, and the more they use the sex trade, the more likely they are to be violent to prostituted women and girls.
So, is it such a leap to say they may be serial rapists, may be causing mental and physical harm on a mass scale - shouldn’t they go to jail for that – not just be fined ?
As for the profiteers of the sex trade - how come they are rarely thrown into jail for the murders, rapes, batteries and mental destruction of their "employees" ? I would love the jails to be full of all those profiteers.
Only then will prostituted women and girls be at the beginning of the road to safety.
Rebecca Mott writes : I am a women who left prostitution and a survivor of sexual agressions in childhood. From the age of 14, I was in and out of the sex industry until the age of 27. I am profoundly traumatized ; I still have a split up memory and a body marked by painful recollections. I am a writer and I write a blog where I investigate what it is to live with an extreme post-traumatic syndrome, besides writing to abolish the sex industry.
Rebecca Mott’s blog
On Sisyphe, October 2, 2010