Monthly Archives: April 2011

Average Day

Posted on by rmott62

This week I was asked a question that I could not answer – not answer without hitting a wall of silence, a wall of pain, a wall of terror – the wall that is named PTSD.

“What was your average day in the middle of being prostituted?”

My first reaction to that question is to blocked it away, to act as if it no big deal.

Inside, my stomach has terror beyond words. Inside, my heart was beating so hard, I just hoped it would kill me.

Outside I was speaking words, not understanding them – just knowing I have let myself give up some of the control that had kept me alive, and in words from a place of hell, some of my truths are being spoken and believed.

This time I chose to face what “average day” meant to me, to face without detachment some of that chaos.

I do not know what average day was – all I know is many days folded into each other, all I know was some of the hate and violence stood out, all I know was day was night and night was day.

How can I know an average day when I refused sleep – making my whole existence surreal. I was moving in space, I was getting continually tortured, I was being raped out of existence – but with so little sleep, I could refuse to feel or know my own reality.

How can I know an average day, when I drink spirits and lager to end all memory – drink made nothing matter, drink made that I never mattered, drink made me act the good whore who praised men who hurt me, drink made me see I was being damaged and decided not to care.

Now, I want to know some of my average days – I need to know for they were part of my survival. Knowing an average day is one key to finding how I did not get destroyed.

I know there was a middle, a middle where my whole essence wanted to go dead.

There was a point where I had no safety in the small town I was living. A time when my reputation went before me – when just walking down the street, men would come to me offering money for sadistic sex, when entering any pub men follow me to the toilet or took me in the backyard to screw me.

There was the middle where I had lost all sense of Self, I had no Self to have self-esteem or self-respect – all I had was a shell covering a nothingness.

In that middle, I became like Pavlov’s dog – any man could offer money, a bed, even a pint, and get fucked as his porn-dreams wanted by me. I had lost everything that mattered to me, and went with him.

I survived by blaming myself, by placing all my hate and rage onto myself. I survived by being alive, but killing myself every day.

I survived by not knowing the bigger picture.

I would not compute that it was more than some coincidence that so many strange men would know I did sadistic sex. I would not compute that they did not hardly see or know me, that they give no names.

I refuse to know how many men would fuck me and throw me away – often with gifts or money, but no care of my injuries or mental welfare.

Now, I know it was organised whether through word of mouth, or from shadowy profiteers giving out the whereabouts of girls or women like me.

It was organised, but made to look all the fault of the prostituted.

That makes so furious for it such a brilliant way to keep punters and profiteers invisible.

I write to my trauma – but also for and with huge respect to all those living inside prostitution, or having exited prostitution, where it never named as prostitution.

Be that escorting or being girlfriend experience, with punters who appear decent until the woman or girl  move outside the role of the whore – than beatings and rapes are there to remind then, they are nothing but sexual goods.

Be that inside a sauna, when it is impossible not to do “extras” even when scared or disgusted.

Be that inside a club, where dancing is not enough, it is expected to please certain clients or friends of the manager to keep your job.

All this is named any and everything but prostitution – for if it  is called prostitution, the individual woman or girl is made to know she is nothing but goods to be trashed.

Named it sex work, called it sexual entertainment, say it her sexual choices – just never call it prostitution.

Never let the truth in, just in case it gives the woman and girl enough pieces of self-esteem to begin to exit.

Sorry, I am rambling – but anger crashes into me.

I will finish now.

Wow, This is Called Feminist

Posted on by rmott62

Recently, there has been a major backlash by women naming themselves as feminists while at the same time supporting the status quo of the sex trade.

Oh sorry, they may do some minor tinkering with the conditions that prostituted women work in – important point, they will discount anything uncomfortable, such as prostituted who are under-aged or prostituted women who they believe were forced into the sex trade.

In other words, these “feminists” can paint a pretty picture of prostitution, for they close down as much reality as possible.

In other words, these women can name themselves as feminists, and at the same time abandoned a whole class of women and girls named as the prostituted. Abandoned to the normal sadism that is the sex trade – be that rape on an industrialised scale, be that made into nothing but porn-toy that punters and profiteers will use and throw away, be that having the higher rate of murder of any class of women and girls.

Ignore that – and dare to call yourself a feminist – then don’t expect me to respect you or even bother to listen to your nonsense.

I know you like to make it clean and tidy by speaking of sex workers, and then go on to general chat about how everything will be fine and dandy if sex workers were inside some union.

It sounds wonderful, until you unpack who benefits from the prostituted being named as workers.

It is not the average prostituted women, and certainly not the prostituted who work on the streets who mainly come from abusive backgrounds, are overwhelmingly not white and middle-class, doing it out of economical need, and may have addictions. It is not for the prostituted trapped inside brothels, sex clubs or saunas – with managers who don’t give a shit about their rights or safety, only that they are disposable goods.

Talk of that being work, or something that will be unionised, is just a sick joke to those prostituted women and girls who major priority is just remembering that somehow they are still alive – when death and near-death is their norm.

Unions and workers inside the sex trade are always to the benefit of the profiteers and punters – and is used as smokescreen so outsiders stop looking deeply inside at the true conditions for the prostituted.

Punters love to pretend that all prostitutes are more than willing, they often invent a universe where he is manipulated by the prostitute.

Call her a sex worker, and then it is his porn fantasy that he is controlled. No matter – that he may rape the prostitute, no matter that he causes her terrible physical damage, no matter his language and manner would named as mental hate outside of prostitution – and certainly no matter if he “accidentally” kills the prostitute, that can be cleared away.

See her as a sex worker – and this hate and degradation can be framed as a business exchange. Call it a business exchange, and we can all pretend that the prostitute and punter are equal – not that she is goods that he is consuming. Then we can blame her if anything goes wrong – and make the punter’s violence invisible.

See her as an empowered and liberated sex worker in that fantasy – and then discount that the vast majority of prostituted women and girls have no power, and the concept of liberty is so far away it cannot even be dreamt of.

No, the liberated and empowered prostitute is little more than an invention of the sex trade profiteers – use inside most of porn, use to put a veneer that indoors prostitution is safer and of course nothing like street prostitution, use to recruit yet more vulnerable women and girls into the sex trade.

Of course, the sex trade will use the sex worker in all its publicity, use to distort all “research” to prove that prostitution can be made acceptable and very safe, prove that trafficking is rare, and even prove that under-aged prostituted girls freely chose their lifestyle.

How the hell can you imagine the term “sex worker” is a feminist term – and not a term to keep the prostituted oppressed, and give punters freedom to be as violent as they want without taking the consequences, and use to increase the disgusting profits of the sex trade.

There is nothing radical about saying sex workers – it is backing the most horrific form of capitalism that men have invented.

What else would you named making women and girls into nothing but sexual goods, that are sold for profits for punters to used as his porn-toy and to masturbate into.

For the vast majority of the prostituted women and girls – prostitution is nothing more but rape on demand.

How can any woman back that, and dare to call herself a feminist.

Be a real feminist – and fight to end prostitution.

Without Hope, What Are We

Posted on by rmott62

THIS POST IS WRITTEN WITH ALL MY AMAZING EXITED FRIENDS DEEP IN MY HEART

I have incredible sadness today, the sadness from the centre of lost hope.

The centre of what it really was to be trapped inside the sex trade, the place that hope appears a million miles away.

For the last 14 hours, I have touched that place.

I dig deep into that place, I find hope never left, it just was terrified to show too much life.

But hope can never truly leave – for then that would death.

I do not know how I can write that – with my logical mind I know that it is a fact; but my gut, my bleeding heart – there is the opposite.

Saying hope was a con, was a betrayal – hope was slowly killing me as I saw no exit from a living hell.

How can I speak of a fight for hope for the prostituted – when I lived a time where all hope was stolen from me?

I know the easy answer, that I and so many other wonderful exited women in the end discover hope was a real solid thing – not some trick to keep us trapped.

I know that – but I also cannot forget the middle of having no hope, the middle when all that hope was a con to make us forget for a short while, we were nothing but a sex object.

I know the time when hope had been destroyed so much, that we the prostituted lost who we were.

For what can a human be if they know no hope.

I know that middle where nothing can matter, nothing can have any impact.

Being alive is a matter of going through the motions – a time where being alive is just huge sick joke.

That is living without hope. That is the environment that far too many prostituted women and girls endured – as too much of the world turns a blind eye or imagine the prostituted must be happy.

How can any prostitute believe in hope, when her reality is to a machine for men to rape?

How can any prostitute believe in hope, when any time her manager/pimp can move away from all she knows and more than likely into increased violence?

How can any prostitute believe in hope, when she is surrounded by other prostitutes disappearing and everyone acting as if they never existed?

What is hope in that environment?

I suppose I write this scream of despair – to say if you are fighting and campaigning to end prostitution, than you are the hope for those who feel they have been abandoned.

Every time you believe the word of a prostituted woman, every time you sign a petition for real change in the sex trade, every time you refuse the term sex work, every time you speak up for the prostituted, every time you to change laws, every time you work with prostituted women living with trauma – you are a massive part of giving back hope to women and girls who had forgotten it existed.

In our despair – you can be a small guiding light.

A light to find our own inner spirit to find hope never really left – just the hate and terror was too strong for hope to raise it head up.

Show us the way to hope, and so fast many prostituted will know their own dignity and find their own paths to full exiting.

Things That Drive Me Insane

Posted on by rmott62

I need to write on the constant use of prostitution as a metaphor – and often how it is used in comparison with men having affairs.

It is not the same. It is not a metaphor for the women and girls enduring prostitution. I would more than grateful if others stop using the language of prostitution when it is nothing to do with that life.

All I ask is that others take more care with their language, and stop continually creating the prostituted as sub-humans.

POLITICIANS/BUSINESSMEN ARE NOT PROSTITUTES

I do how often I hear that men in power have prostituted themselves – by being corrupt.

That is not prostitution – that is not being oppressed, that is being in the position of the oppressed.

Sure, everyday and everywhere men in power are corrupted, and in that corruption they use and oppressed other to hang on to their power.

That could said to be the position of the pimp – never the prostitute.

Are these powerful men being made into sexual goods, being raped on a regular basis, being an object that will thrown away – like hell, they are.

They are not prostitutes.

They are pimping out their countries, pimping out the workers they have under them – they are not being pimped out.

Don’t make these men into victims – see them as power-mad, and fear how they use that power. But don’t be fooled that they are to be felt sorry for.

IT IS BETTER THAN HAVING AN AFFAIR

This is driving me mad at the moment – the concept that if a man goes with a prostitute rather than having an affair, there is no harm done.

Wow, that is only true if you view the prostitute as sub-human, as an object to be used and thrown away whenever a man cannot get all he wants at home.

No harm is done, when you view the prostitute as having no human emotions and having no life outside being a fuck-toy for punters to use.

Most punters who used prostitutes are in stable relationships, most want the prostitute to be there to be used to do sex acts that he thinks his wife/girlfriend may not accept or may be disgusted by.

This not because his partner is a prude, a puritan or hates sex – no in the vast cases, he may have a good and satisfying sex life with his partner, but may want to have his porn-fuelled fantasies fulfilled.

This means the prostitute is used for sadist sex, for sex that could push her body beyond its natural boundaries.

Sex that could injure or kill the prostitute, sex that breaks down her mental defences, sex that can only be survived by going dead inside – this is what those punters demand from prostitutes.

So that is better than having an affair.

Only to the completely selfish man and women in the marriage or partnership that are prepared to use the prostitute as a tool in their fucked-up relationship.

If you prepare to go with a man who uses prostitutes – are you completely sure he is not doing sadist sex to them, are you sure he is not paying to rape without consequences, are you sure he gives a damn if the prostitute has been beaten up, is trafficked or is under-aged.

Can you truly say he is careful of all that. If not, how dare you claim no harm is done.

Prostitutes are not tools to be used so other women can feel safe or better about themselves.

We are full human who deserve safety, dignity and respect.

Clear the road if you can’t give us that.

END WORD

This is very short, coz I am very ill today.

Just be bloody careful with your language.

Meaningful to Me

Posted on by rmott62

I decided this year to honest with myself, and came out as an atheist.

But the symbolism of Good Friday is deeply meaningful to me.

It is a day when all that really matters – whether that is named as god, named as a spirit, named as inner strength, or named as community togetherness – has abandoned those who need it the most.

The cry of Jesus –

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me.

Is the cry of all the oppressed who can see no hope and have forgotten there can be an exit.

And when I go to the middle of prostitution, it is the silent crying of the essence of every woman or girl trapped inside the sex trade.

To me it worse than a god abandoning them – some supernatural being that allows humans to take no responsibility, when they make the choice to oppress others.

No the abandonment of the prostituted class, is that the norms of many societies is not to give a damn about our mental and physical welfare.

Our tortures and mental suffering are not just made invisible, but there is the utter betrayal that most outsiders make it easily on themselves by inventing the myth that the prostituted choose their lifestyle.

The prostituted may be in pain and terror – but the abandonment comes as it is claimed we deserve everything that happens to us; or either we just bad women, or we are strong enough to cope with the reality of the sex trade.

The abandonment is so deep that most of the prostituted have no language to say why can’t you see me.

See that I am just a human who is lost. A human who has the same pain as you have. A human who is abused and oppressed for so long, and in so many ways that I have lost tears, lost reactions to pain and shock.

Why do you have to abandoned the prostituted.

Is it that you know that the prostituted are tortured, are industrially raped, are murdered so often it is non-news, are made into nothing but sexual goods. Is it that know all that , and make the choice to close your eyes and put fingers in your ears – in the hope that if do that, then you can pretend the sex trade is just entertainment for bored men.

Grow up –  see and feel what the prostituted have to endure.

Stop just believing in the small examples of rich and happy hookers, stop thinking porn make women stars, stop cutting away all the prostituted who not externally trafficked or under-aged as those who freely choose the life.

Stop being so naive or let’s be frank so callous, as to so abandoned the prostituted class.

See and know that the sex trade is all about making women and girls into objects – doing this by relentless sexual, mental and physical violence, until their oppression becomes so normal it all they know.

It is then that most of the prostituted will say they are happy, may say it the only role that fit their lives.

If all you see and hear is the small moment the prostituted woman said she is happy – without seeing the intense intimidation, mental brainwashing, and sexual and physical violence that programmes her way of being. Then you have abandoned her.

All you doing is seeing her as an individual – without viewing the bigger picture that sex trade is built on violence and making its goods into sub-humans.

You are not seeing that punters do not view women in porn as individual or as human, do not buy a prostitute to know she is human. Punters want holes or images to masturbates into or over.

Punter do not want some human with feelings, a human who is scared, a human who feel actual pain, a human who has a larger life outside of his gaze.

If you choose to imagine that punter see the prostituted as full humans – you are more than deluded, it is a total abandonment of the prostituted.

Why do you abandon us.

So Good Friday is very meaningful to me.

No Respect

Posted on by rmott62

I can hardly breathe as I try to write this post – but the message of this post has built up inside of me for many years.

It is I cannot bear any longer the cynical use of the murdered bodies of prostituted women and girls as an excuse to push for more indoors prostitution.

This has been background noise for centuries – why else was temple prostitution painted as safe, why else did more upper classes want brothels and courtesans, why else was it ignore that Jack the Ripper murdered indoors.

For centuries, the sex trade and it’s supporters have created the myth that there a huge difference between street prostitutes and the clean, safe indoors prostitution.

What shocks me to the depth of my core, is that this dangerous myth is believed by so many with power, and so many that normally fight for human rights.

Is it that in plain reality, that the prostituted are always to remain sub-human – remaining just as statistics to prove a point, pawns to show whether or not it safe or not – not giving the luxury of full humanity, for then they may speak for themselves.

This is at it most striking when there is a serial killer murdering prostituted women and girls. There is from almost every side, except abolitionists, the use the bodies of the prostituted as a bargaining tool.

I am always struck that it is always reported if a serial killer murdered street prostitutes – even when the vast majority are murdered in flats or hotels.

Often if the murdered prostitute does fit the neat stereotype of being on the street – but is an escort, was brought on the net, was followed after working in a sex club – then the media and pro-sex trade lobby will force her back into the street prostitute label.

In this stereotype, there is a massive undercurrent of blaming the prostitute for getting herself murdered.

She was so addicted to drugs, that she took no real care what punter she went with, she was so desperate for money and/or mentally ill that she give up caring how sadistic punters were with her, she was isolated – it is amazing how easy it to make sadistic punters invisible or say they just so damn rare.

If the punter is to blame, he will remain a victim or maverick. He is made out to be a savage who is of course too mentally ill to control his actions, he is made to so lonely and isolated that he has lost how to be in society.

Never said what most prostituted women know inside their guts and in every cell of their bodies – that most punters are capable of extreme sadism to get their kicks – just some make the choice to act the nice guys.

From the prostituted’s point of view, it not the sadism that is the rarity, it is being seen as full human who has the right to safety and dignity that is like finding a unicorn.

The fact that throughout all history there have been serial killers of the prostituted, only means that violence inside prostitution is so normal that is only reported or noticed when a punter and/or profiteers murdered more than three prostituted women or girls.

Not the reality that for more than 3000 years, prostituted women and girls have been murdered one at time by one punter at the time, by one brothel owner at the time, by one porn producer at the time, by one policeman at the time – all these murders are made invisible.

It is easy to write out genocide if no-one make any records or allow the voices of the prostituted to be heard.

And there has always been a genocide against prostituted women and girls, only as some thousands are murdered, the sex trade is replacing its goods with yet more vulnerable women and girls.

So it never happened – no-one speak of the atrocity, no bodies are left for others to say there’s the evidence – so it is written out of history.

But by Christ, I know and so do all prostituted women inside our minds and bodies.

We know the violence inside us was never a rarity, was never newly invented. We know that as long as there been a prostituted class, that punters and profiteers have had the right to place all their sadism and hate into us.

I know my pain was the pain of the prostituted locked inside temple-brothels in Athens, was the pain of the prostituted in the East End of London, was the pain of the prostituted that jazz romanised in New Orleans and so much more.

But, my pain goes into orbit when I see and read that the murdered of prostituted women is used to force the issue that all prostitution should legalise and placed indoors.

This is such dangerous nonsense.

Legalising prostitution will make no difference to whether punter and/profiteers make the choice to murder the prostituted – they do not give a damn what her status is, to them she just goods to be tossed away.

What makes me so furious is the constant making invisible the everyday sadism that is indoors prostitution – it does not count if inside a brothel, if inside a sex club, if the prostitute was brought on the net, and it does not count when sadism is done to a street prostitution in a flat or hotel.

Is it that if there wall and roof, that by magic it is no longer sadism, no it just a business exchange or just fun and games.

Does prostitution being indoors suddenly make everything fully consensual – being indoors suddenly means the prostitute has power and control, and the punter is a victim.

So indoors prostitution is never real violent, and if there is some violence, is some kind of accident or beyond the pale.

So punters know as they enter indoors prostitution all violence is hidden, they can do as they want without consequence – without any justice for the prostituted.

So don’t have the total lack of respect to use the bodies of murdered prostituted women and girls to push to make prostitution goes indoors, and make it normalised.

No, fight harder to end all demand of punters to have a prostituted class to pour all their sadism into. Fight harder to hear the voices of prostituted when they say violence is the norm, not some rare event. Fight harder for human rights to safety and dignity for all the prostituted, whatever label punters and profiteers put on them.

Don’t put it behind closed doors, hoping them all the violence will just go away coz you don’t see or hear it.

Know that indoors prostitution has a long and bloody history of women and girls disappearing – that is unacceptable.

Please fight or consider abolition – please place the dignity and safety of all the prostituted above some dream that the sex trade will ever be made safe.

Find Me the Good Punter

Posted on by rmott62

I know that those who want the sex trade to continue as normal, want to believe that punters can be divided into bad and good guys.

I say find me the good punter, not in your fantasy, but in the reality of the prostituted.

It is very easy to know the bad punter. The punter that beats up whores for a laugh, the punter who does sadistic porn fantasies on the prostituted living bodies, the punter who see the prostitute is terrified and doesn’t give a damn.

It so easy to find the bad punter. He is inside brothels doing sexual acts that he knows will remain unspeakable, he is buying women off the net so in private she will be his sexual slave, he is beating up and raping a street prostitute.

Bad punters are everywhere and nowhere – the only thing they are noticed is if they turn serial killers, or as proof that if prostitution is legalised and regulated their behaviour would be outlawed.

That is rubbish – but it nice to imagined that there only a few bad punters and otherwise prostitution is safe and great working conditions. Nice to believe, but the complete opposite to the truth.

I have never heard of truly good punter – just some are less violent than others, some are more reasonable than others – but none see the prostitute as a full human, the best they may see a pampered pet or a precious living sex-doll.

No punter wants a prostitute to have emotions or a mind outside of his stereotype of his whore. No punter wants his whore to have any life outside being holes for men to fill.

Sure there are many ways of punters acting the role of the good guy.

He can believe he the good guy, because he makes the choice not to beat her up like some other bastard punter does.

Many of these so-called good punters get off on knowing the whore he is fucking and owning, may be beaten up before and after he has left. Often he see the evidence on her body – bruises, hand prints round her neck, signs of many kickings.

Does this stop him getting his money worth, does it make him protest about the conditions of the prostitutes he buys, does he report it to the police – does it hell.

These so-called good guys still do their porn fantasies on the prostitute, still leave her in an environment where any punter can treat her as trash – but he can tell himself he the good guy.

There are the punters who go with a prostitute, claiming that peer pressure force them to do it.

This may the guys who join in with gang-raping, but act as they just obeying orders from some top man. They can’t help it their penis, fists, teeth and objects go into the whore – they were too scared not to do as the other men were doing.

I do not believe that – they can leave the room, they can just watch – they can if they were real men report the torturing of another human being. Instead they join in the fun – and then make out they had no control.

I know what it is to inside gang-raping inside prostitution. I can tell it is calculated, it is often slow and drawn out, it is down with great coldness.

I can tell you there is plenty of opportunity for any punter to walk away. If he joins in, he does because he loves the power of degrading the whore and making her dirt.

There are the good guys who claim that their friends forced them to go with a whore – you know to prove they are not gay, to lose their virginity, to learn sex techniques, to do stuff that their partner refuses to do, coz their friends think he is lonely and all other excuses.

These guys may say they don’t want to be with the whore, that they want to be will a real woman. But, it is amazing that even when alone with the prostitute, these guys never walk away, never just talk – no they always have sex, they usually not that bother about their violence or total disregard of the prostitute as a human.

They just act like any other punter.

I know that many outside the world of prostitution like to imagine the good punter may just be a talker, may treat the prostitute like a princess and create her as some strong woman.

If this does happen, it is always inside the rules of the punter. A prostitute is given the delusion of having some power – as long she is always available to be his sex-doll, as long as does whatever sex acts he wants without question.

Her so-called freedom is limited to how long he is entertained by her, when he bored or she acts as if she will do his will, she will thrown back into the trash-heap.

I do not believe in the good punter.

No, I believe in men who not only would never buy or sell the prostituted – but are fully behind the battle to get abolition of the sex trade.

Those are the real men – the men I am proud to have on my side.

Those men will know there is no such thing as a good punter. Any punter’s excuse must speak over by the men who know the truth, that if you choose to buy a prostitute, then you are paying to part of the rape industry.

There are no reason and no excuses left for being part of the sex trade.

I hate that good punters convince themselves they are not rapists – when each time a man decide to use a prostitute as his sex object that is rape.

There is no true consent, when the prostitute is just goods to be used.

Sorry good punters, exited prostituted women know you are rapists. We still carry your pollution in our bodies.

You not the good guys – just deluded.

I am an Exited Prostituted Woman

Posted on by rmott62

That statement is one of the hardest things to say. It is harder to believe, harder to feel inside my skin.

It is hard  – but it may be the most important thing that I can express on every level – be that personal, be that political, be that spiritual, or be that just the plain fact.

I am not and was never a sex worker.

I was not just someone who as an individual fall into the sex trade.

I was not inside a system that was independent of being an institution, and did not abuse on an organised and calculated scale.

That is why it must be defined as being prostituted, not the clever brainwashing of the term sex worker.

Sex worker places all the blame on the individual woman if there is violence and or degradation.

It her fault for not being organised enough and aware enough to make a union to protect herself.

In what universe, would unions be there for the dignity and utter protection of the women inside the sex trade.

Would the unions stop the brutality – or would it be framed as extras, as the role of her job.

Would rapes be named as rapes – or just the usual business exchange that is part and parcel of this liberating work.

Unions inside the sex trade are always to benefit of the managers/pimps and or punters – it is facade to say it about the physical and mental welfare of the women and girls inside the sex trade.

Sorry, I mention girls, of course an unionised sex trade would pretend there no under-aged prostituted girls. No matter that will a huge market for girls, no matter that the vast majority of the women inside the sex trade enter when they under 15 – if the sex trade said there little or no under-aged prostitution, then their word is gospel.

Like in this idealised world, trafficking is stopped because kind-hearted punters report all suspicious activities.

God, I love the naivety that imagined that the average punter gives a damned about the mental and physical welfare of the prostitute he is fucking; gives a damn if the woman in his porn is being mentally, sexually and physically tortured; whether the street prostitute he gets cheap is on the edge of death – they don’t care, as they masturbate alone or into a living object.

So what make anyone think the average punter would care if a woman or girl is trafficked or not. Personally, I think the only time a punter acts the “good guy” is to save his own skin when he thinks his “secret” activities may get exposed.

Christ – I was fucked when I had obvious marks from brutalised rapes, from bashing ups, from strangulation. It was seen, even with some so-called sympathy or made into a sick joke. But, I never remember it stops any punter from getting his money worth.

I was fucked when I so thin, I found breathing painful – nothing stops punters once they set their mind to their role.

There is no such thing as the decent punter – for a real man would not ever buy another human being just for his selfish sexual wants.

It is never a need – it always just an utter selfish want, and more often than not a feeble excuse to pour violence and hate into another human labelled the prostitute.

I so sick of the excuses.

Men used the prostituted coz they lonely –  poor little lambs.

Cannot make the effort and commitment to get to know others as full humans – just as holes and places that be paid to boost their egos.

Maybe their attitude that other humans are there to be used and conquered, means that they are “lonely” coz they are fundamentally nasty people. But, being egotistical bastards they blame everyone else, and make out they are some kind of victim.

These punter are going to pour all their rage into the prostituted – and usually walk back into the world outside the sex trade with the image of the decent fella.

There the common guilt-trip argument that some punters have to use the sex trade coz of some mental and or physical disability.

There is no searching for holistic ways to give back the disabled their sexuality, no acknowledgement that a great deal of the disabled find and discover their own ways to recapture their own sexuality.

No, the sex trade see a market and bulldozed it way in. It sees the disabled as a cash-cow, nothing more or less.

But playing on liberal guilt that the disabled as made other and often cut away, rather than seen as equals – the sex trade claims to a social service by providing willing whores to be open mouths and holes for the disabled who can pay.

It is using one oppressed group to oppressed another oppressed group – with the profiteers of the sex trade laughing all the way to the bank.

Wow, I been away from writing – I was afraid of this rage inside me.

But then as an exited prostituted woman – how can I not have rage, especially as it is drowning in grief, and a determination to end the sex trade before there is more genocide of the prostituted women and girls.

I hate that the tortures, murders and mental abuse to the women and girls inside the sex trade is so common, so part of the fabric of everyday life – that it only reported when it seen as a serial killer.

Every day, almost every second of every day – women and girls inside the sex trade are being gang-raped; being murdered; being brainwashed to think their only role to be holes for men to fuck or view; being made to forget that they have an essence, are made to do sexual acts that can kill and will disgust them but must smile; and endless other ways to mentally, sexually and physically torture the women and girls until they become the ideal whore.

This is made invisible by the sex trade – and by those on the left, who named it as sex work.

There is the pretense that if there is violence and or degradation – it always underground and obviously outside legitimate sex trade providers.

Utter crap.

All the sex trade is overground, for the market is the priority, so to getting as many punters and consumers as possible is the main purpose.

The sex trade will follow the money, and so will provide any and all porn fantasies possible. Sometimes it will hidden from the public gaze, but never from the punters and or consumers.

Most punters and consumers are lazy – so if they can find the dodgy, sadistic, under-aged, trafficked end of the sex trade – so can the law enforcers and those who claim to care about the welfare of the prostituted.

But, if you ignore it hard enough, it doesn’t exist – just pretend the torturing is just fiction.

This is exhausting – I shall watch 20/20 cricket, so important and not important. A great distraction from why I call myself an exited prostituted woman.

A Piece by Taylor Lee

Posted on by rmott62

From Not for Sale”.  This piece goes to places that so few survivors have the strength to be open about.

“IN AND OUT:  A SURVIVOR’S MEMOIR OF STRIPPING

SLOW SUICIDE

The silence is stifling; a slow suicide that can only be stopped by voice and truth. Each time I conquer my fear for a moment and let my thoughts take form in words, I fight death. Each time I expose my wounded soul, I sign a contract to live another day and encourage others to do the same.

I originally intended to write a chapter rich with psycho-social theory and analysis of stripping. Writing a research paper, analysing others’ experiences and theorising about them is easier than processing and explaining your own experiences. Yet facts, abstract and removed from immediacy and emotion, do not change the world. In addition, silence equals a slow suicide for those of us who have gotten out of the sex industry. So I have decided to base this chapter on my personal story. My story shows how a woman enters prostitution, why she stays in prostitution, and how she gets out, if she does. Although my experiences is not representative of all women in prostitution, many elements of it are common among the population that I have worked with, both in the sex industry and then in social service as an advocate for prostituted women.

Many of the poems and journal entries in this chapter were scribbled during the middle of the night, during my second and third years after leaving stripping, in a notebook that I kept at the head of my bed. Some entries seem foreign; I do not remember writing them. Apparently my thoughts and feelings demanded expression; in fact, journaling served as a conduit for emotional and psychic catharsis as it connected thought with affect and past with present. Without this form of release and the processing that followed, I believe that I would still be struck. I would have either returned to the life or lived miserably outside of it.

STRIPPING AS PROSTITUTION

This chapter is largely about stripping in adult entertainment clubs. However, I do not see stripping as a discrete entity, but as a component of the much larger system of prostitution. Accordingly, I use the term ‘prostitution’ to illuminate the true nature of strip clubs that is often concealed by euphemism, strategic presentation, and market positioning. Identifying stripping as a form of prostitution – and strippers as prostituted women – fights the glamorisation and mystification of stripping. Stripping is simply the sale of sexuality: sexual contact for money, shopping trips, expensive dinners, and/or drugs. The sale of sexuality through stripping also leads to the customer’s impression that he has brought the right to touch, grab, slap or otherwise violate, degrade, or devalue the woman stripping.

The connection between prostitution (including stripping) and money is often acknowledged, but the role of economics and power is often misunderstood or unexamined. Many believe that women profit from prostitution, when the largest portion of the profits goes to pimps, club owners, and other businessmen. Many also believe that the women possess the power in stripping. Actually the managers, owners, and investors are the ones in power, even though stripping may feel empowering to the individual woman. For example, club rules forbid dating customers, as the clubs consider such interaction prostitution – but the club’s management, investors, lawyers, and friends are different, of course. The clubs are clearly not concerned with abolishing prostitution, but rather with controlling it. Pleasing the higher-ups is good for business, but taking business out of the club with regular customers is bad for business. The terms ‘prostitution’ and ‘sex industry’ address this reality and highlight the true position of women in stripping as that of commodity.

THEN AND NOW

….

I found this writing months after it had been written and wondered who wrote it. Later I remembered dreaming it. This entry is powerful because it was written at a time when I was trying to walk away from my past but found that I was bound by it.

I spent six years in the sex industry. For most of that time, I was dancing in adult entertainment clubs and traveling throughout the country. The chronology is unclear and events are foggy.

Although the years I spent in the sex industry seem cut off from the rest of my life, a closer analysis reveals clear ties between that time and my earlier experiences. The connection is subtle but profound. My training began in childhood, when I lived in a neighbourhood with boys who spent many hours educating the girls on the block about sex. The boys demonstrated how our body parts could be used. Perhaps it was just child’s play, but I had been alive less than a half-dozen years (clearly long enough to know that this was inappropriate). In any case, I learned then exactly what girls are for.

Afterwards, I only had to turn on the television to learn more about women’s roles. I saw women serving men, existing in the shadow of men, being beautiful, being thin, and loving their lot in life…. I was becoming what I was supposed to be – thin but curved, cute and young but able to be sexy. The first time I had sex, I was raped by someone close enough to my family to call my mother ‘mom’. Now, I was sure what I was for. I knew that my greatest asset was my sexuality and knew how badly it was desired. I also realised that I had little control over my sexuality, that it could be taken at will. It was easy to give it for profit; at least then I was in control.

For most women I know, it is not hard for them to see where their work in prostitution began. I have heard more versions of my own story than I ever imagined I would. Nearly all the stories tell of abuse. Each story ends with entry into work where they profit from the sale of their bodies or sexuality, because they can, and in some cases they must, in order to attain some sense of control in their lives. Funny, I thought I was the only one. I felt isolated and crazy…. So I do – I tell others. Unfortunately, I must be cautious in both personal and professional domains, as many will still cast stones.

Because many women who have worked in the sex industry have difficult histories, they have developed elaborate defence mechanisms and coping strategies. Compartmentlisation is commonly used by prostituted women as a means of protection. By compartmentalising different experiences, a woman is able to have separate arenas of thought and action. In one arena she may be a caring, attentive mother who would do anything for her children, while in another compartment she may be a drug addict who will do anything with anyone for money or a high. Perhaps she is a successful student during the week and a sexy stripper each weekend. Regardless of the details, there is no distinct compartments that are conveniently separate…. Women in the sex industry frequently display selective memory or some type of mental block. The purpose of the denial is to protect oneself from painful experiences like rape or abuse and/or from looking at some of one’s behaviours, like having sex with strangers and pretending to enjoy it.

Both compartmentalisation and memory alteration are dissociative processes that illustrate the presence of trauma before and/or during sex work. As a woman leaves prostitution, she often tries to forget her past and deny any components of her life that are connected to prostitution. She actually needs to recognise that she is the sum total of all of her experiences. The guilt and shame o the past can trap a woman and make getting out of prostitution impossible. Re-framing the past, recognising one’s strengths and gains, is necessary to reduce the shame and guilt enough so that they are no longer stumbling blocks to exiting the life.

SELLING MY SELF

…. It is no longer my own. Virginity stolen. Body desecrated…. My body is not my Self.  Long ago the ties were severed, leaving my body as a vessel for, but disconnected from, my soul.

…. It is not difficult. Once a woman is abused, as a majority of women in the sex industry have been, she gains the powerful skill of dissociation. Once a woman’s ownership rights over her body are stolen, the body becomes foreign, separated from the Self. The body becomes a tool, a weapon, a burden to drag around. The body can then be used for profit or further abuse. Some victims feel betrayed by their bodies and turn to punishing them. The body can be abused with alcohol, food, starvation, self-mutilation, and even death. The victim of abuse is left to frantically seek ways to regain her control (by abusing herself) and ways to increase her power (by abusing others). Promiscuity and prostitution fit here, for if you give sex away it cannot be taken and if you profit economically you are gaining power in this society. It is not difficult at all.

Women often enter the sex industry in attempts to gain power in their lives and control over themselves. Unfortunately, by the time a woman heals and sees what is happening, she is often struck. Addiction to the lifestyle is the norm…. I was furious with him , but even more the fact that what he said is reality for so many women – as if through a revolving door, women leave and return to the sex industry time and again. Addictions bring them back. The addictions include fast money, power, drugs, alcohol, adrenaline, attention, love. Rarely is it a single addiction. Many women don’t even attempt to leave, as they are aware of what they must give up and know that they cannot.

GETTING OUT

…. For each woman it is different. I remember looking around me on my last night of work in a strip club, and I was afraid. Every way I turned I saw zombies, the living dead, pastel people. I realised I was one of them. The lights, the noise, the money, the drinks, the beauty were all distracting mirages. I could not hear my Self, yet I knew I was not the image that others saw. I realised why I had spent so many years in clubs. The commotion outside of me allowed me to exist without looking inside. I did not have to see the confusion or feel the pain within me. As I looked around me that night, I realised that time had healed old wounds. I did not need the distractions to avoid them. In fact, I wanted to hear my inner voice again. I needed to feel again before I disappeared, as I knew I would if I stayed.

Pastel people, you have attained serenity on the surface. Nothing truly excites or agitates. The surges and pulses of creation run deep and muffled. Slough off your social mask. Rejuvenate. Renew the spirit that is life. Soon vibrancy returns; the colours of gemstones and night and light emerge. And with that, passion, rage, true tranquility.

It is simple. As long as a woman has one reason why prostitution is not so bad, as long as she has one benefit to cling to, she is able to continue sex work. On my last day, I saw clearly: No, they are not just lonely guys looking for a friend. No, I do not love existing for their pleasure. No, the money is not making me happy. No, I will not talk to and dance for whoever pays me the most even if I want to spit in his face. I left because I knew I could. Although I could no longer afford the house I rented, I had friends to stay with. I could not pack and move my things by myself, but I had a family who helped me. I could not get financial aid and I could not afford school, but my family lent me money until I could sell my car. I was afraid of all the changes. I felt stigmatised and was certain others would know and judge me…. My mind was set. Nine years later i have a family, a master’s degree, a socially acceptable job, and a future.

As happy as I am on some levels, I am troubled on others…. Most of the women I worked with in the sex industry and in social service could not do the same. They did not have the support. They were not read bedtime stories every night while growing up. While I got out through privilege, many women in prostitution have no other options.

STAYING OUT

For too long my skin has been my passport, my body my resume. How easy for a woman to do. Sexuality disguised as power and liberation soon entraps and limits expression. The remedy: discontinuation of a hyper-sexual identity. Learn how to be in the world, how sexuality can be beautiful, and how to stop allowing sexuality to overshadow all components of identity. Becoming more than parts, or the sum of parts, heals the soul and promises new life. Transition is a difficult necessity.      

A woman is on shaky, new ground when she leaves prostitution. It is not difficult to understand why many women return to the sex industry soon after they try to ‘get out’ (funny that we use that term, as if they are imprisoned). In prostitution, one relies on sexuality as the core of one’s being. Emotions are polluted; relations are clouded; the self is sacrificed for a repertoire confined to the realm of sexuality. Through limited possibilities a limiting expectations, identity is lost. Once the focus shifts and these roles are cast away, the world is strange and unwelcoming. The path is rough and uncharted. Relations seem empty and drab.

I, like most women in the sex industry, had become a character. I had a stage name, a sexual persona, a second identity. Club managers are smart. They encourage this process and help each new recruit dissociate by insisting that she wear costumes and have a stage names and create a ‘bio’: she can become anyone she wants to be. After years, my real name was as foreign as my stage name was familiar. My sexuality had become my most important feature and most valuable trait after years earning a living by magnifying it. When I left the sex industry, I realised that I was out of balance. Like a child, I had to relearn how to have friends based on personality, how to think as an intelligent woman, how to love with my heart. Above all, I had to take time to discover who I am, what I like, what I want. It is hard. It is scary. It is worth it.

After becoming accustomed to daily life outside of prostitution, I realised that things are not so different. The discrimination and devaluing that I faced as a stripper were also present in academia and the rest of the ‘outside’ world. It became obvious that the problem is not only prostitution. The problem is the treatment of and expectations placed on women.  The environment and events may vary, but the story is the same for women everywhere. Women have limited options and face constricting gender role expectations. We are bombarded by images of what we should be. Some insist women have come a long way. I don’t think so. Oppression has become more subtle, more dangerous, since it is hidden.

FREE TO CHOOSE

….

Some proclaim that women are free to choose or resist work in the sex industry. Through my writing, research, and work on the issue I have a different understanding of prostitution. Choice is not so clear any more…. In cases where kidnapping, torture and/or mind control are used to force a woman into prostitution and to keep her there, clearly choice is not applicable. Certainly coercion and exploitation of economics, abuse, and naiveté also need to be taken into account.

My experiences don’t include forced sex work such as sex rings and sexual slavery. I did not get kidnapped or answer to an abusive pimp; there was choice on some level. This allowed me the delusion that I was in control of my destiny. I did not see the connection between my ‘choice’ to enter the sex industry and my past. I did not see that I was primed for this choice through earlier experiences resulting in my Self being severed from my body, in my awareness that my a sexuality/body was my most valued asset, and in my finding power only through sexuality. I was not conscious of the manipulation and coercion that occurred on a personal and societal level.

In retrospect, manipulation and coercion led to my entry into the sex industry and then to my remaining there. Manipulation was subtle…. Further, economics rewards and social acceptance (in that arena) were directly connected to my popularity and what I was willing to do. The terms ‘stripper’ and ‘prostitute’ were replayed with ‘adult entertainer’ and ‘escort’ to separate us hard-working, ethical professionals from the sleazy type (the difference being the wardrobe and environment, not the function or dynamics). The coercion I faced did not involve physical force. Instead the coercion was emotional and psychological in nature….

MOVING ON

…. The road out of prostitution has been long and tough. I have gone through stages of stabilising, normalising, forgetting the past, hiding the past, then processing, accepting, and finally integrating past, present and future into my Self. Simply regaining relative physical and mental health was a year-long process. Normalising – becoming a part of the day world, living day-to-day, becoming a human being rather than a facade – took additional time and required resisting the temptation to return to the life. At first, the daily grind was devoid of the excitement, the chaos, the adrenaline rush, and the drug or alcohol high of the night world.

For a time, I believed that forgetting the past would lead to happiness. Later, I realised that forgetting was impossible, and that in my attempts to do so I was fragmenting my Self and denying a portion of my Self – the effect being psychological imprisonment. Through my writing and through social service work with other women in the sex industry, I have been over time to accept my past experiences. Still, integrating these experiences into a complete Self is difficult because in retrospect the experiences seem so foreign.

I have been out of the sex industry long enough for it to feel like a lifetime ago. I am certain that we need to fight the system of prostitution and we need to do so without shaming the women used in the system. Chances are good that their lives have been difficult enough.

Silence Means Dissent – Andrea Dworkin RIP

Posted on by rmott62

This speech was given by Andrea Dworkin in Toronto in 1984, at a symposium on porn and media violence. The audience was mostly right-wing. It got a standing ovation.

SILENCE MEANS DISSENT

“As a feminist I have been organising against pornography for a long time. I am very grateful to the research community, which has taken feminist theory seriously enough to try to see if in fact pornography does harm to women. I say that because I am entirely outraged that someone has to study whether hanging a woman from a meat hook causes harm or not. We are grateful to the research community out of our despair and our devastation, because mostly we are silent, and because when we speak up, nobody listens. We know how to quantify, we know how to count, we can show you the dead; yet it doesn’t matter if it comes from us. Objectivity, as I understand it, means that it doesn’t happen to you.

There  are women researchers who are trying very hard to bring what they know as women into their research. There are male researchers who have paid attention to what we have said. I am not dismissing them, but I am saying that we are living in a society where you can maim and kill a woman, and there is a question as to whether or not there is a social harm. Somebody has to study it to find out.

We know that men like hurting us. We know it because they do it and we watch them doing it. We know that men like dominating us because they do it and we watch them doing it. We know men like using us because they do it, and they do it, and they do it, and they do it, and they do it. And men don’t do things that don’t like, generally speaking. They like doing it and they like watching it and they like watching other men do it and it is entertainment and pay money to see it and that one of the reasons that men make pornography. It’s fun.

Now, what we know is – the “we” being women – that there are people that it is fun for, and there are people that it is not fun for, and that women are the people it is not fun for.

Pornography is the sexualised subordination of women. It means being put down through sex, by sex, in sex, and around sex, so that somebody can use you as sex and have sex and have a good time. And subordination consists of a hierarchy that means one person is on the top and one person is on the bottom. And while hierarchy has been described in beautiful ideological terms over thousands and thousands of years, for us it is not an abstract idea because we know who is on top. We usually know his name and address. Often we do. So we understand hierarchy, and this hierarchy that has men on the top and women on the bottom.

Subordination also consists of objectification. Objectification is when a human being is turned into a thing, a commodity, an object – someone is no longer a human being. They’re used, because they’re not human like the other people around; and that frequently happens on the basis of their race or it happens on the basis of their sex. It happens to women on the basis of both.

And subordination also consists of violence, overt violence – and it’s not just violence against people. It’s violence against women. It’s violence against children who are very closely connected to women in powerlessness. It’s violence that isn’t such a mystery. Crazy maniacs don’t do it. People who have power over other people do it. Men do it to women.

Now, if you take hierarchy and if you take sex and if you understand that hierarchy is very sexy, that what you have is a situation in which people are exploited systematically; and they are exploited in such a way that everyone thinks it’s normal. The people who are doing it think it’s normal. The people to whom it’s done think it’s normal. the people who study it think it’s normal. And it is normal. That’s the thing about it – it’s actually normal. It doesn’t make a difference if it happens in private or if happens in public, because women are primarily hurt in private. Now that pornography is out in the world, where it is an officially established form of public terrorism against women, we think we are dealing with something that is qualitatively different from anything we have dealt with before. This is, in fact, not true, because pornography gets acted out on women whether women see the pornography or not. This is because men use the pornography when it’s criminal, when it’s illegal – they still have access to it, they still use it, and it still has all the consequences that you heard about today and those consequences are acted out on the bodies of women.

I want to talk about social subordination, because women are not equal in this society and one of the ways that you can tell is the quality of our silence…. Women are the population that dissects most, through silence. The so-called speech of women in pornography is silence. Splayed legs on a page are silence. Being beaver, pussy, cunt, bunnies, pets, whatever, that is silence. “Give it to me”, “do it to me”, “hurt me”, “I want it bad”, “do it more”: that is silence. And those who think that is speech have never heard a woman’s voice. I want to tell you that even the screams, even the screams of women tortured in pornography, are silence. Men pay money and watch, but no one hears a human scream. They hear silence. And that’s what it means to be born female. No one hears you scream as if you are a human being.

Catherine MacKinnon and I wrote a civil rights bill that makes pornography a form of discrimination based on sex and a violation of the civil rights of women.  We hallucinated those rights in a frenzy of hope, in a delirium of dreaming. We hallucinated that women could be recognised as human beings in this social system. Human enough even to have civil rights. Human enough to be able to assert those rights in the face of systematic sexual exploitation, brutality and malice.

So human, in fact, that one would not have to study it to see if any harm is done when a woman is tortured. So human that no one would have to study it to see if harm is done by long-term pervasive systematic exploitation, dehumanisation, objectification. So human that one could actually assume as a premise throughout life – not just today but seven days a week all year long, forever – that when a woman is being tortured, or even exploited or even only used and used up, that a human being is being tortured, exploited, used and used up, and that that constitutes harm to a human being. You don’t have to study it. It’s happening to a human being so it constitutes harm to a human being.

We dreamed that women might be taken to be so extremely human that one would know, even without laboratory evidence, that when a woman is diminished in her integrity, in her rights, humankind is diminished because of it. And we thought that it might even be possible that a woman could be so human that even the law, which is not big on recognising human beings, might recognise her as being human enough to deserve equal protection under the law. Just that human, not a smidgen more, just that.

That’s not even equality; that’s not as human as men, not really, not entirely…. So human that when the pimps, the parasites sell her and coerce her and rape her and destroy her and abuse her and insult her – so that men can be entertained by her exploitation and abuse – that those pimps and those users will have to face her in court for violating her human rights because she is a human being.

Pornography is at the heart of male supremacy and that is true whether the pornography is in the public or in private. When you see pornography, you see male supremacy; and if you look around you and you see male supremacy, you had better believe that you’re seeing pornography even if you don’t know where it is in the room. The goal of feminists who are fighting pornography is to end the hierarchy, the objectification, the exploitation: the domination of men over women and children.

And we are going to do it. I want to tell you this: if you love male supremacy but you abhor pornography, then you do not abhor pornography enough to do anything about it. Some people don’t want pornography to be seen in public because it shows some very true things about what men want from women; for instance: dominance, power over women, women’s inequality, the use of women as sexual objects. It also shows what men do not want women to have: integrity, self-determination and complete and total control over our own bodies. We need these so we are not used, so that we are not forced into sex, forced into pregnancy, forced into any sexual relationship that is not our choice.

It’s important to understand that the feminist movement against pornography is a grassroots movement against male supremacy. We  are going to settle for nothing less than full social and sexual equality of the sexes. We are going to get whatever institutional changes have to be made to accomplish that. We are going to get self-determination for women. We’re even going to get something that people call justice.

I am wondering, and I think it is worth thinking about, what justice would look like for the raped and the prostituted, and I know how afraid men really are of what that justice would look like…. Study that.

We are going to stop the pornography in the shops and in our lives, when it’s written down and when it’s acted out, and we going to do it one way or another…. The man had made hundreds of pictures of other women, he had a list of names of other women he was going to assault. She went to the police; they didn’t do anything. She went to some people who knew the man; they didn’t do anything. Nothing, nothing, nothing. That is typical. What he said to her when he tied her up, after having raped her and started photographing her was, “Smile or I’ll kill you, I can get lots of money for pictures of women who smile when they’re  tied up like you.”

I want you to think about the way women smile. I want you to think about it every minute of every day, and I want to suggest to the men in this audience, in particular, that you had better be afraid of women who learn to smile at you that way.”