A Woman Whose Calling Is Men: Her Visions and Advocacies
High Priestesses, Low Victims (Chapter One)
Clearly, there are two kinds of prostitute. The distinctions between them are enormous. The distinctions between them are so extreme that I feel I can use the term polarized.
There are whores who take great pride in the work, and there are whores who despise themselves in it. There are whores who understand that the work can be exalting, and there are whores who degrade both the work and themselves.
Whenever I consider that huge contradiction, I find myself picturing all sex workers as one woman. She’s naked. She’s floating in a warm, waist-deep pond. The world all around her is lush, lovely June. Gushes of color spread over the greenery in wildflower-burgeoning meadows. Big summertime branches are billowing.
Her face and her torso are above the surface, absorbing fresh air and sun, and her hands are free to splash herself there whenever she needs to be cooled. The rest of her, however, knows no such pleasure or balance of elements. The whore’s lower body is submerged and trapped in the murky pond-bottom muck.
That mental picture makes me face facts. It forces me to focus on the downside, the sex workers who have a bad time. It fills me with a pained understanding. I think to myself, every part of the woman in the pond should be able to rise from the bottom. In other words, every whore should be psychologically able to evolve from whores’ degradation.
Then I get a big sense of mission. I think to myself, the freeing of whores from the bottom of the pond should be crucially important to those who aren’t stuck. Those of us happily sunning ourselves must acknowledge one great truth: no whore will be truly emancipated until all whores, everywhere, are.
Until the disparity ends, in the profession, between those above the surface and those jammed down in the muck—that is, between the exuberantly lofty and the cynically defiled—whores will lack the unity needed to converge in large numbers and proudly “come out,” often and wherever we are, which is everywhere.
The victimized whores must become self-exalted. Only then will the likelihood grow for our work to become esteemed. For the time being, however, an amazing and ugly dichotomy prevails. Sidewalks in grungy areas teem with exploited, self-destructive streetwalkers. On the very same map, self-respecting, self-employed escorts discreetly make their livings in decent accommodations. That paradox always astounds me. Yet it’s just another human contradiction. Similar discrepancies are everywhere. There are chemicals in brains that cause sunny dispositions, while other brain chemicals cause natures of gloom. There are constantly screaming newborns, and there are mellow little cherubs. There are soul-wrecking marriages, and there are marriages that hum along smoothly. There are desolate slums, and there are gated communities. The divergence all around me seems endless.
But there’s something particularly troubling about the terrible inequity that prevails amongst whores. Social injustice is one cause, of course—the broken American promise. As it goes with any group that spans social classes—mothers being one—some whores are well-educated, middle class, and relatively confident, while other whores are undereducated, underclass, and much more at risk for low self-esteem. Yet the differences in their views of both the work and themselves can’t be completely explained away by common self-image determinants, such as upbringing, sophistication, or race. Socioeconomic variance is not the only factor that enables self-joy in some whores, abject self-loathing in others, and the debilitating brew of ambivalence that plagues the whores floundering between those extremes. I feel that here, in the much-maligned melting pot of dissimilar women who go about selling themselves, the universal struggle for all women is dramatically amplified….
….In America, no matter how vigorously we women break ties with patriarchal dominion, and no matter how thoroughly we subdue the religions from which it originally stabs, and no matter how many millennia have passed since the founding of our woe, our sense of loss subtly lingers within us. It’s a quiet but potent malignancy, the awareness of a shadowy brink, a nebulous rooting in sad dislocation. Our moody hormonal design is held responsible, but we know there’s more to it than that.
No matter how little of our herstory we know, most of us women sense, deep down, that somewhere, somehow, we got royally fucked over.
And so did Mother Earth.
Women take it out on each other. And women ferociously take it out on men. And whores get the worst of it, from everyone.
The women who were once the most exalted and loved are now the most feared and despised….
….Sex work is the eye of the gathering storm in which women most thoroughly defy the patriarchal ideologies….Sex work is not just the sleazy arena where victim-identified women feel shame. Sex work is the showground, radiating with power, where insightful whore-feminists rebelliously disrobe.
We don’t just gather in vulva-shaped caves and consecrate our feminine parts; we don’t just hold hands and chant earthy phrases and proclaim that our menstrual blood isn’t dirty. Such ceremonies are basic. Any mainstream feminist can attend them, with minimal disruption to her patriarch-molded life.
We, the true whores, go much further. We cross the line. We break the rules. We take back the temples.
We envision the ancient temples, and we enter them, spiritually. We proffer our sacred bodies to the Goddess-hungry world.
And everyone is scandalized. Even our most feministic peers are appalled.
When contemporary women become manfully successful, as in earning the status of CEO, surgeon, airline pilot, or sports star, everyone but the Taliban is likely to cheer them on. But when they professionally take off their clothes, reveal their clitorises and vulvas, and enable orgasms for money, there’s a universal gasp of consternation. The patriarchal religious regard us as damned to Hell. The majority of feminists think we’re violated, and desperately needful of their rescue. The non-feminist, powerless, “trafficked” among us most definitely do. But for those of us who are not trafficked, for those of us involved in sex work by our own autonomous choice, our sexual insurgence is hardly degradation. It’s a gorgeous reawakening, a deep-down liberation, the retrieval of our ancient, erotic sanctity.
And as if that exhilarating stuff weren’t enough, it’s a downright lucrative living, and it doesn’t steal much of our time.
“I long for the day when my nakedness no longer symbolizes my conquest,” states Carol Leigh, a.k.a. the Scarlot Harlot.8 Like all feministic whores, Leigh understands that her self-determined bareness is no emblem of male exploitation. On the contrary, her nudity is her obvious proof that she’s certainly NOT controlled.
I’ve stated this before, and now I’ll elaborate: we the exalted are aware of ourselves as descendants of the prepatriarchal temple priestess. We’re richly attuned to the Goddess, or erotic-matriarchal, memory of rite. We’re the best paid of whores, and no third party takes part of our earnings, unless that’s by our own choice. On the contrary, victimized whores seem aware of themselves as, well, just victimized. They tend to make less money per hour than we do, and even if they do collect an impressive amount of money in an hour’s worth of time, they don’t get to keep it all. Often, they keep almost none of it. Much or most of what they earn goes straight to their exploiters. Those down-in-the-muck whores are the most commonly acknowledged by just about anyone who pictures women whoring. Therefore, the view of the public toward whoring in general is full of contempt and pity.
The exalted. The degraded. The autonomous. The coerced. That painful split deeply gouges the ethos that all whoring women inhabit. Some astounding emotional variations abound in women’s experiences as whores. We the exalted understand who we are, and despite having to hide out like criminals, we prevail with much pride within ourselves, and we tend to enjoy our work. But the victimized among us are severely damaged women. Their feelings appear to be nothing like ours. I can sense theirs running the desolate gamut from agonized revulsion to bleak apathy. They are lost souls trampled by a lethal pack of forces that are easy to discern: abusive family backgrounds, socioeconomic handicaps, exploitive patriarchy, and condescending feminism. They suffer from self-hatreds wrought by obvious factors, and I must add to their repertoire the painful point that those women tend to be tragically unaware of their profession’s primordial, once-sacred esteem. In those whores, spontaneous epiphanies of priestessly power get shattered by stigmas that attack from all over. Confusion, ambivalence and shame prevail where a supreme sense of matriarchal confidence should be…
…Prohibition enables their exploitation by lawless, malicious controllers. Often the women who submit to such abusers are also involved in self-abuse. It naturally follows that they also abuse the work. In defiling themselves, they defile the profession. They strip prostitution of its innately sacred core. They dehumanize themselves, they dehumanize their “johns,” and they use the quick, “easy money” they make to support self-annihilating lifestyles. I’m referring to drug addiction, of course.
Such workers must be shown the means not only to leave the profession, but also, if they can be rehabilitated, the option to remain there beneficially….
Right Livelihood, Wrong Attitude, a Dumb Idea, and a Dream (Chapter Six)
….The feminists who oppose prostitution don’t get it. They assume that we whores are all in it because we don’t have alternatives. That may be true for some of us, but certainly not for us all. Whores like me don’t need alternatives. We really love being whores.
No, they don’t get it at all. According to their pretty much unspoken rule, feminists think that all women should be crashing the testosterone world. We’re supposed to seize the male occupations. We’re supposed to excel in male roles. Competitive sports star, software titan, surgeon, CEO—the feminists think we should all love and covet the traditionally masculine jobs.
Here’s what they really don’t get: autonomous whoring is right up there with presiding over men in corporate skyscrapers. The only difference is, we’re in beds.
Feminists will no doubt be quick to retort that in the whore/client transaction, it’s the men who possess the most monetary power. They hold the keys to the kingdom, and whores are just laborers. Feminists have a big problem with that. They imply that no woman is liberated until she’s grabbed a huge share of male-dominated assets. She’s nowhere until men are her subordinates. Feminists want to see women turning everything around; they want to see the females employing the males.
Well, that’s okay with me; point taken. If a woman wants to wheel and deal like a man in this cutthroat world, nothing should be out there to stop her. But what feminists need to consider is that female sexual power is mighty. It’s just as empowering as material assets. And whores prefer that natural clout to taking on male occupations. The lifestyle of garnering wealth with our sex is less stressful than the corporate ladder scramble. To many of us, it feels righter. To many of us, it feels healthier.
We don’t like being buttoned up in the trappings of male occupations. On the contrary, we’re the escape from those buttons. We enjoy working naked as nature itself. And we love our high monetary value…
…Whenever I’ve felt that instinctive compulsion to run away from certain job sites, it’s because every cell in my body is saying those places aren’t healthy for me. And whenever I’ve given pleasure for a living, with gentle men in comfortable environments who respond to me gratefully, every cell in my body has told me: This is right. This is healthy. This is the temple. This is good.
And when I walk out of that job site, my wallet is happy, too.
I suppose that we prostitutes aren’t very different from stay-at-home wives who embrace domesticity. We all feel that feminine joy. The difference is, we whores are financially independent. And that’s putting it very mildly….
…..Maybe the American Girl has grown up. Maybe she finally understands that Prince Charming is only a flawed human being. Maybe she finally understands that good step-fathering—and even good biological fathering—might require a hard-to-find man.
So let the Prince become plural. Disperse his responsibilities. (Isn’t he already there on his own, when he tries, with promiscuous fervor, to wildly disperse his seed?) Make him a resource that’s gainfully fleeting. In other words, let women be whores to the Prince if they want to. Let them relate to men that way, if that’s what they want to do. Let women get money that way if they want to. Let mothers make money that way if they want to. Let whoring be the empowering option that it is.
Stop pretending that the option isn’t there.
I’m not arguing that marriage should become obsolete, or be considered unrealistic or bad. I’ve mentioned before that I’m intensely monogamous. Even after all my disappointments, I continue to prioritize that one-on-one union. I’ll never stop yearning for that closeness with one beloved man.
But our culture should allow the other option. It’s always around, a reliable alternative, when ideal love doesn’t prevail. Stop forcing it underground. Stop punishing mothers for using that option that helps them be much better mothers.
Here’s an example of what that option can do, from right out of Yours Truly’s life. There was a short spell, in my early whoring years, when, just to please a boyfriend, for a while I stopped being a whore. I returned to legitimate, many-houred, lousy-paying employments. I did it all for him.
Well, in no time at all the financial nightmare of my pre-whoring years restarted. So did the work-induced neglect of my children. The boyfriend didn’t care. He stood by and lackadaisically watched while my kids and I floundered again.
He had got what he wanted. I was a “bad girl” turned “good girl” for him. He had won me all to himself. I remember how triumphant he acted.
Then it hit me. He saw my relinquishment of whoring as a conquest. The cessation of my whoring was his prize. To him, that prize was the only thing that mattered. My kids and I were up Shit’s Creek again, and he didn’t give a damn.
Fuck this! I concluded, and summarily returned to escorting. I placed an ad, checked my voicemail, and on the very first day that the ad came out, heard messages from nineteen new prospects.
I felt like a lottery winner.
I didn’t know any of the men in that voicemail, and it didn’t matter at all. Prince Charming is everywhere, waiting for invitations, and I’d just given him one. There he was, the same sweet guy as ever, thrilled to get my signal and eager to save me again.
Sometimes he goes by another name, Client.
I had dumped the Prince for the boyfriend. Now I was dumping the boyfriend to gladly go back to the Prince.
And the Prince and I got my life right back on track….
The Treacheries (Chapter Nine)
…..I take no issue with the abolitionary view that sexual exploitation is harmful. Of course it’s harmful. It’s the reason I’m a self-made lone wolf. I’d rather be working alone than controlled. Both situations totally suck, but I know which one is intrinsically evil, and I avoid it like the plague.
Abolitionists get generous funding, and use their allotments to travel the globe, specifically seeking and interviewing the whores who are cruelly coerced. “What is rape for others is normal for us,” one of their subjects declares.13 Abolitionists rally to define prostitution as strictly the plight of the slave.
I agree that the work must be heinous for prostitutes being controlled. I’m sure I’d be catastrophically marred by a life in which I was ordered to fuck. Dear God. Just thinking of it turns my blood cold. To be told who to fuck, and when, and where, and for how much, and having to keep on fucking and sucking until someone said I could stop…that’s a perfect vision from Hell. If I couldn’t escape that, I’m sure I’d have the ailments observed in abolitionists’ subjects: post-traumatic stress disorder, psychosomatic illness, drug abuse, and depression.
Actually, I think I’d kill myself.
And as if those horrors weren’t enough, I couldn’t keep the money I made? The people who sold me would get it? And they’d make me give up the protection of condoms, because the buyers don’t like them? And they wouldn’t protect me from buyers’ abuses, because they wouldn’t want to piss off the buyers?
Yes, my dear abolitionist peers, please do everything you can to wipe that whore nightmare from the face of this earth.
But when are you going to own up to the fact that the work isn’t bad for the independent whore? I’m talking about the whore I’ve been describing since page one. I’m talking about the whore who controls her own livelihood. She creates the rules, and they’re self-benefiting. She makes her clients obey them. And here I go with my mantra, the one you seem to not hear: She fucks only when she wants to. She fucks only where she wants to. She fucks only who she wants to. And she uses protection when she wants to, no matter how much her clients complain. And she keeps all the money.
I am that whore.
Look at me.
Look at the other whores like me.
Melissa Farley, a published abolitionist researcher, insists that there’s “violence intrinsic to prostitution.”14 Of course there’s intrinsic violation, and perhaps even routine violence, in the world of controlled prostitutes. But I’ve not known one moment of violence as an independent escort….
….Abolitionists need to understand that their mission should be twofold. First of all, and obviously, they should continue to stop the coercion of women into sexual slavery. I’d be more than eager to offer my help, if only they’d take it from me.
In my sharpest of Technicolor fantasies, I aid them as a murderous bitch. I stride into a place where rapacious men are forcing women to whore, and I haul off and kick some balls. Or I coyly smile, place my face between legs, and summarily bite some balls off.
How’s that for abolition?
Just who do you ladies think you are, dominating the rescue effort for severely exploited whores? Those are my sisters, for God’s sake. Why aren’t you sending ME in there?
Why won’t you work with autonomous whores?
Can’t you see we’re your allies? Don’t you know you’re supposed to be ours? Why aren’t you helping us fight our oppression? Your feministic passion makes you perfect for the job.
Our cause, the cause of ending our prohibition, should also be your cause. It should be your Mission Number Two.
But before you can do that, you’ve got to fix something. You’ve got to fix something inside. You’ve got to remove your injustice to us, your wrongful whore-oppressive presumption:
The dilemma for the person in prostitution is that in prostitution there is no avoiding sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, rape, and acts that are the equivalent of torture.18
No avoiding???…oh, please.
If feminism has enforced its protection in marriage, the most private institution on earth, and if feminism has made men accountable for those hard-to-prove violations, such as domestic abuse and marital rape—then how dare its constituents stubbornly contend that those very same protections can’t extend to prostitutes? Surely abuse to the prostitute is far more obvious for scrutiny than abuse to the reticent wife. Indeed, abolitionists have proven that point by observing and documenting so much. How can they record such maltreatment, and then dare to ignore their inherent obligation to stop those abuses to the women who choose to be in that work?….
What…Me a Panderer? NAH! (Chapter Eleven)
In a world where prostitution is decriminalized, the first thing I’d do to help a beginner would be to have her consider the clients from three specific perspectives. The first of those perspectives would have to do with how well she knows a guy. He’d be (a) a new client, or (b) a “regular.” The other two perspectives would have to do with (a) the clients’ marital status, and (b) the clients’ emotional neediness.
I’d want to make her acutely aware that the way she’d be likely to feel and respond, in any given encounter, would usually be much more affected by those circumstances than any other detail.
I’d talk with her the most about new clients. The new-client call is the toughest. By far, it takes the most guts. It’s about ten times more nerve-wracking than an everyday brush with an ordinary unknown.
I’d tell her there are times when I don’t have the courage to deal with the stress of all that. On those days, when I’m talking to a stranger on the phone, I’m likely to say I’m unavailable. I don’t want to see him until we’ve chatted more than once—until Fear has calmed down and relented. But on other days, I might feel the opposite. I might feel gung-ho, good and ready to face him. If my mood is like that, and the new guy sounds safe, then I’m off to make his acquaintance.
You see? It’s all up to me. I go with what I can handle. And what I can handle, each day, tends to differ. That’s what makes this work worth it. I size up my feelings, and I do what I want. I take on, or don’t take on, whatever feels right.
I believe that’s a freedom that supports my good health.
And now I’ll describe all the skills I’ve acquired with regard to the unknown client. I’ll start at the very beginning—that is, with the first true contact, which is, after any kind of emailing bullshit, a real conversation on the phone…
Every Other Issue I Can Think Of (Chapter Thirteen)
I’m afraid that after I publish this book, I’ll think of a zillion issues and points that I should have brought up, and didn’t. This chapter is my effort to avert that.
Actually, I feel that the following is crucial. A lot of what I convey here is info that any woman can use, whether she’s in the business, or not…
“Would I Make a Good ‘Escort?’”
I keep thinking that the reader might wonder how she herself would make out as a whore. I also keep thinking some pertinent questions might give her a little perspective. So I’ve come up with a questionnaire, and I’ve made it multiple-choice. It’s designed to help determine, by my standards of “true whore”, whether such a person is qualified.
I’ve arranged all the choices in an obvious way. If the “applicant” picks lots of “a” answers, that’s a strong indication that she’s fit for the profession. If she goes for a lot of the “d” answers, she should definitely stay away. If most of her choices are “b” or “c”, she’s revealing ambivalence. She’s also indicating that she’s not well prepared. As a whore she might turn out to be happy, but she needs psychological tweaking. She needs attitudinal uplifts. She needs to develop more self-discipline. She needs inspiration and guidance.
So it’s crucial for the person who takes this test to watch herself very closely. She should ensure that her answers are emotionally honest. I believe the best way she can do that is to disregard the choices that she thinks would impress anybody. That is unless she feels, really truly deep down, that those answers are her heartfelt response. She should go with the reactions that come from her gut…