• “Being an escort is the perfect employment for the struggling single mother or careerist.”
• “There is such a thing as a Holy Feminine Trinity. It’s the very essence of Goddess: nurturing, healing, erotic.”
• “The escort has discovered that Prince Charming can be plural.”

Press Coverage

You can read selected quotes from Are They Bad Girls or Brilliant?, formerly entitled “A Woman Whose Calling Is Men” in my piece entitled “Working Grrls” in the August 2007 issue. Please click here to be directed to the article on Harper’s web site.

PRESS RELEASE   

Trafficking? Sexual Slavery? What’s that?

Mother of three portrays “true” prostitution

Greater Boston, Massachusetts—According to proponents of prostitutes’ rights, the perception that sex workers are nearly all forced results from irresponsible research. Given her insider acumen, Aphrodite Phoenix possesses the clout to rip that research to shreds. In her book set, Are They Bad Girls or Brilliant?, she contends that most escorts are consenting adults, and that most of them privately choose the profession without ever being coerced.

     She indignantly informs us that in the land of the free, that state of affairs is the norm. She maintains that most reporters keep that truth under wraps by refusing to seek out the freelancers. They talk mostly to the women who are managed or coerced, or the crack whores out on the street. That bias, she scathes, makes their studies preposterous.

     Phoenix has considerable reasons for her belief in the autonomy of escorts. In the nineteen-nineties, this degreed yet extremely disadvantaged single mom became an independent callgirl. She found that most clients are nice guys, paid sex is distinctly therapeutic, the demand for the service is endless, the “mothers’ hours” help families, and the money is simply outstanding. What hurt her was the absence of four crucial keystones: legality, social acceptance, the support of most feminists, and a mandated set of high standards.

      She saw that those deficits, and not the work itself, are the reasons why sex workers suffer. She read the accounts of published escorts with remarkably positive feelings, and saw her own feelings reflected. Phoenix felt driven to articulate her experience, to contribute to the growing cache.

      She realized that the autobiographical genre would powerfully drive home her points, and so would her English degree. She felt that her voice would be compellingly unique, because she’s a single mother.

     By committing the all-time big female offense, Phoenix had rescued her family. In two books she reveals how her sex work-based self-renewal, enriched by compassion and humanism, are the qualities that render such a huge taboo unjust. Her story is also the missing link in most of the Goddess herstories. The primordial sacred temple priestesses, who sexually facilitated the worship of Great Mother, have rarely been deeply looked into. Feminism informs us they were healers and nurturers and exalted spiritual leaders, but blurs that in tandem, they were sex workers. In both tomes Goddess’ praises are ecstatically sung by an author who senses she’s a priestess reincarnated. Just as her ancient temple forebears once did, she has married her healthy, healing lifestyle to the lifestyle of Eros as service.

     She chastises feminists for failing to see that their ban shouldn’t be on prostitution, but on its tragic patriarchal defilement. Toward men she shows across-the-board empathy, laced with a distinctly intellectual approval of female sexual power. Phoenix feels that men who read her narratives will keep a perpetual smile on. She feels that the women who read them may come to understand that the greatest oppression of feminine strengths, as well as a true liberation, may be somewhere they never might have guessed.  

     When it comes to judiciousness toward escorts—especially the lack thereof—Phoenix is relentless and thorough. She confronts women’s backbiting—and its victimization of sex workers—with points that that are jolting but fair. For example: if women with sexual power aren’t allowed to profit from it, then neither should women with mathematical gifts be allowed in professions that require that strength. And: if women aren’t allowed to be prostitutes because men might harm them in it, then marriage should be even more strictly prohibited, because husbands do most of the harm.

    Book One, subtitled The Truths behind the Fight for American Prostitutes’ Rights, describes the author’s routines as an escort. Nine consecutive chapters portray, in profound and abundant detail, her encounters with clients and her emotional life. The next eight chapters disclose the dire straits that drove this single mom to try escorting. Here she reveals her personal growth from a depressed, overworked neglector of her children into a self-empowered, self-employed, well-paid sex worker with adequate time for her family.

     The last section of chapters is a dark recollection. This is a candid and torturous portrayal of the author’s two serious romantic mistakes endured while she’s been an escort.

     In the first of those relationships, a man initially loving turned out to be a classic abuser. Here Phoenix shows there are three harmful forces that drove her straight into his arms. She imbues them with the feminine gender, and she aptly calls them by name: they are Loneliness, Isolation, and Stigma. Her message is that an escort must contend with those “bitches” on a daily, exhausting basis, and it’s a losing, demoralizing battle. That’s how she can end up—so crushed and alone—falling for the wiles of someone pimpish.

     The second romantic entanglement made her near-suicidal and broke. She sacrificed all for a liar. The compelling and eye-opening point she makes here is that she healed by returning to sex work.

     Book Two, subtitled 18 Audacious Essays, is for readers who want to be better-informed about USA escorts, their clients, their venues, and the truth about what makes them suffer. The goal is to inspire an unbiased, perfectly balanced understanding. Phoenix divides sex workers into two basic groups: the empowered and the victims. Both groups are closely scrutinized, and the probable causes of their disparate experiences are emphatically emphasized.

      The people who head the abolition of prostitution are severely criticized. Their endeavor is shown to be both futile and oppressive. Feminism in general is both praised and attacked, and in the process, offered a new mission.     

     This sequel to the autobiographical first is also a resource for readers who would like to learn more about nuts and bolts—the physical realities of sex work, and how the autonomous escort maneuvers: her advertising, her avoidance of arrest, her avoidance of disease, and her qualification of clients. In a grand culmination of vision, a plan to prepare escorts for licensure makes up an entire chapter. Phoenix’s ideal of the future is a graduate who earns a Master’s level of merit that’s not just a license in sex work; she’ll be a recognized holistic health professional with sexual arts as her core. Phoenix beckons body work therapists, naturopathists, herbalists, anatomy instructors, psychologists, spiritual pagans, well-seasoned escorts and others to come aboard when it’s legal to do so, and flourish as teachers and mentors.

     Throughout, the reader is adroitly reminded that the “true whore”—that’s Phoenix’s coinage—is a joyful, compassionate, wise Daughter of Goddess.

     To contact Aphrodite Phoenix, visit her website: www.priestesswoman.com.

     An ebook is now available combining both books for the low introductory price of just $10.95.    

     The print version will be available shortly from Infinity Publishing, West Conshohocken, PA.