Monthly Archives: September 2014

So If It Was Bad – How Come You’re Alive Then?

Posted on by rmott62

This is an unanswerable question which is always asked of those of us somehow survived the sex trade.

It is unanswerable for we do not know.

Do not know when so many strong and vibrant friends, and folks we did not know were destroyed by the sex trade.

Do not know how we survived many near-death experiences.

Do not know how we woke each morning after many hours of mental, sexual and physical torture.

Do not know how we survived our many suicide attempts.

All we know it against all that was thrown at us we lived.

That should be seen as heroic – there should parades, fireworks, a day of memorial and celebration for all the prostituted.

But our survival is greeted with silence, with embarrassment, with a conscious turning away from any message we bring with us.

For we should have never survived – never of lived, never of remember what it was to be prostituted, never been alive with a voice and the will to make others listen to learn.

The harsh fact of the silencing, ignorance and closing of those of us who have exited the sex trade is we cannot be allowed to be alive enough have a voice.

This is shown on so many levels – whether by the usual suspects of those who benefit in the continence of sex trade, but also by folks who say they are allies of us.

It is shown every time there are records of murders of females – where there is no mentions of the many murdered prostituted women and girls, no mention of those murdered in the porn industry.

These deaths are made invisible, made unimportant – if mentioned mostly as an afterthought to “normal” domestic violence murders.

But – the murders of the prostituted class is happening everywhere, every day, maybe every half hour of every day.

It is considered that women inside the sex trade are at the minimum 12 times more likely to die a violent death that women of similar age and background – it may as much as 20 times more likely.

If it considered that women may dies at least 2 a week from domestic violence – then try to imagine 12-20 times that number.

But this genocide goes on, for the prostituted are never alone to be human enough for their lives to matter.

That means to murder a prostitute is made into a non-event – it becomes just the throwing away of the trash.

The deaths of the prostituted are mostly unreported. If reported, all too often she is made nameless.

If the murdered prostitute is allowed to have a name, her life is narrow down to “just another dead whore”.

The message is clear – we should not mourn the murdered prostituted, that grief should be for “real” women.

Death was the norm when we were inside prostitution.

We learnt that our lives meant nothing – so most of the prostituted grow hardened to the idea of death.

Sometimes the only reminder that we were alive, was finding we could still feel pain or get moments of grief – or even some connection to what it was to be happy.

To have emotions was terrifying – but they were vital to send signals that there more to life than being buried in the sex trade.

Emotions needed to be controlled – for all too often, sex trade profiteers and punters used any sign that we were still human against us.

To show fear encourage more violence.

To cry was to be laughed at, was to made to cry by yet more violence.

To laugh at the ridiculousness of it all was to be punished.

To be quiet was not to put the punter at the centre of everything.

To show anger was placed yourself in grave danger.

To want to protect yourself would make a danger to the sex trade, so you will be thrown away.

I always laugh with bitter tears remembering that deadening all emotions became the way I survived how bad it was.

Often the real meaning of “if it was so bad, how come you’re alive then?” is – why did you do nothing to run away, or report the violence.

Again this very hard to answer, yes there is a surface of easy answers of not knowing how to report, being taught to trust no-one outside the sex trade, not knowing anywhere was safe to run to – but the real answers are deeper and far more tragic.

Most of us who were trapped inside the sex trade have no clear answers is why we did not run – for to be honest, many of us did run away only to find we landed straight back into the hell of the sex trade.

Running away is very hard if you don’t where or who you are running – sometimes going back to what you think you might understand seems the only solution.

It must be been seen that the vast majority of those inside the sex trade comes from backgrounds or experiences that have taught them that they are less than human – and the skill of the sex trade and its profiteers to keep them as sub-human.

Look at the prostituted class and what do you see.

You will see the majority have experienced childhood abuse.

You will see that indigenous and ethnic minorities women overwhelm who is made into the prostituted.

You will see all man-made disasters – wars, famine, poverty etc – are used to recruit the prostituted.

You will see that the sex trade market is about young flesh – under-aged prostitution is the norm not some perversion.

And you will see that the sex trade will prey on all women and girls – for there a market for everything from posh white schoolgirl to Asians in saunas, from high-class escort to street-based prostitute.

The sex trade never will get tired of exploiting and oppressing the prostituted – and by ignoring their violence, you become part of the problem.

 

Adapting to Hell

Posted on by rmott62

I am exhausted by the constant refrain that prostitution is not an issue because many of the prostituted may say they are happy in the world of the sex trade.

I find unsurprising that many women inside prostitution would say – but what saddened is how their word is taken on the surface.

It is almost like the only many want to hear is the voices of the Happy Hooker, or the prostitute who speak to a script that means outsiders do not have to be concern about conditions for the prostituted.

It is very hard for me not to be cynical, as see no analysis of why a prostitute may say she is fine, no interest in her past or if she has any future.

The words of the Happy Hooker is fossilised and kept under glass.

She is kept struck in a time – the time she under the control of a punter, the time when the sex trade can pour poison into her.

The time without hope, the time without contact with reality, the time where all thoughts have to vanish.

And you make the choice to take her at her word.

Do you purposely ignore that there is mental abuse in every aspect of the sex trade?

Do you purposely frame sexual violence inside the sex trade as non-events or play-acting?

Do you purposely decide in a random fashion that if a prostitute is paid – then that must be her full consent to being made into sexual goods?

Tell why you choose to believe beyond evidence, beyond common sense and ignoring the real – that a prostitute must be happy and independent just coz her word.

I worked in Women’s Aid, and expected battered women to say over and over that they loved their abuser, that with work they could stop the violence, that everything would be fine.

I know many women or girls raped by a man they knew well or lived with – heard many times how it was an accident, that it must have been something she did.

I have read accounts of kidnapped victims who adapt so much they think the kidnapper is the only person who can care for them.

I know many survivors of torture adapt by blocking out the bad and clinging hold tight to any good that comes their way.

It is normal to adapt to hell if there appears to no end, no hope, so thoughts that the outside cares if you are alive or dead.

If you can see and understand the battered, woman, the incested child, the soldier in the front-line, or those tortured for their beliefs will adapt by saying they are fine.

You know to question their words, and not see just the surface smile, but looks for embedded suffering.

Why then do you do the same for the prostituted?

I would say it is wilful ignorance that is being a bystander to the daily genocide of the prostituted class.

It is like you are a toddler, who thinks if you shut your eyes tight enough then nothing bad can ever happen.

You refuse to see the ordinary sexual violence that is prostitution – instead you name it sex work, say it must be ok for it chosen, say all the violence is just acting out.

You refuse to see the deaths and disappearances that destroy the concept that like any other job, maybe a wee bit more dangerous.

Refuse to know that it is common that the prostituted are killed or died before they 27. That the known murders of the prostituted is estimated to 12 to 20 times more than women or girls of similar age or background.

How many jobs do you know where murder is just considered to work risk.

I know many jobs where working conditions are life-threatening – but that is not murder, it is either accidental or manslaughter.

I do not know of many or any jobs where rape is the job, where all sexual violence or harassment is just what your role is.

I do not think miners, deep-sea fishermen, workers in fast-food expect on a regular basic to be anally raped, to forced to deep-throat, and to smile when in sexual agony.

All this sexual, mental and sexual abuse of the prostituted is hidden in plain view – and let’s be honest to not see that hell is a choice.

So wake and smell the coffee – learn to see below the image of the Happy Hooker.

Learn to open your heart to compassion, your mind to empathy.

Learn that the prostituted have to adapt to survive – so maybe the word of the Happy Hooker is just voice of the sex trade, leaving an empty shell.

It your job to go below those words, and find the human in every prostitute that is screaming –

 

There must be more – more than this Hell.

Object AGM

Posted on by rmott62

I am very pleased to be invited to speak at the Object AGM. As a survivor of indoors prostitution, I will to my personal views and opinions about attitudes to the prostituted.

I think it is vital that groups like Object are fully behind the Nordic Approach. That is to decriminalised the prostituted, whilst fighting for holistic, long-term exiting projects. This is done alongside making it criminal to buy and sell people as sexual goods.

If we only make the choice to view prostitution from the point of view of the individual prostitute. If all we talk about is the working conditions for the prostituted. Then we are avoiding seeing the simple act that it is male demand that is the root o all the violence done to the prostituted. To refuse to see that is to do nothing to protect the human rights of the prostituted.

For this is a human rights issue. It may be the most important human rights that we have to confront.

It is not an issue of individual choice. It is not an issue of attempting to make the workspace safer. It is not an issue about the empowerment of women.

To fully understand prostitution, we must see we are facing a genocide. An invisible genocide, where the sexual goods are constantly replaced. To fully understand prostitution, you must see the everyday stealing of basic human rights from the prostituted.

This includes no rights over the safety of their bodies. No rights to access to full consent. No rights to freedom of speech. No rights to freedom from torture – including mental, physical and sexual torture. No rights to control their own working conditions.

The Nordic Approach is a good start to giving back the prostituted their full human rights.

If we are to fully tackle the male demand – we must fight to show that no human has the right to buy another human just for his sexual greed. To do this, is to show the prostituted that they can live in a society that can view them as fully human with rights and dignity. To tackle demand, we must tell all men that having sex is not a right, it is a want – tell men it is not even a need. Be clear that no man will or has died from lack of having sex – but millions of the prostituted will and have died to keep the supply of sex for punters.

I want a world with no prostitution. I want a world where there is no form of a sex trade of any kind. I believe that this is possible – but only if we recognise that the road to abolition is hard and slow.

The sex trade profiteers are determined to kill the abolition movement by any means. Know how huge the sex trade is – that it is extremely wealthy, and money creates control and power. Never underestimate how controlling the sex trade is. Always be aware that the sex trade is highly skilled at gas lighting in order to keep their control.

The sex trade is not a natural part of what it is to be human. It was invented by men in order to keep a class of mainly women and children as accessible sexual goods – to be used and thrown away. I believe that anything invented by man can be disinvented and destroyed.

I want to build a world where we can never imagine how we could ever thought that the buying and selling of human for sexual wants was such a good idea.

That would be a world where all the prostituted can walk free and regain their pride.

Pain in My Heart

Posted on by rmott62

I am writing listening to 5 CDs of the King of Soul – Otis Redding – and Pain in My Heart digs deep into me.

I have reaching into my heart, trying to see beyond its coldness, desire to be dead. I reach for my heart, and pain is always the cover I have to break down.

I play Otis as his voice breaks into joyful pain, and I learn what life can be.

He reaches beyond my solid wall of ice, and reaches to the many years his voice give me the freedom to cry, scream and kind of sing along with his simple words.

Soul music has given a reason to live – be it Northern Soul, Motown, Atlantic Soul, Stax Records, Gospel or just soul coming down the radio from somewhere I don’t know yet.

My heart is nourish by soul whether sung out of Georgia, Chicago, London, Tokyo, New Orleans, or so many places where music is the voice when all words are lost.

Soul music evolves but keep a solid centre.

Soul music belongs to all who seen, known and survive pain – soul is part of our skin.

Each day soul music reminds pain can be grieve over, each day soul music nourishes hope that pain cannot be forever – and each day soul music give us laughter, desire to dance and sense of freedom even as our oppressors think they have won.

The passion, the simple words, the reaching into all human emotions, the voices of many oppressed makes soul music unconquerable.

I learn in my moments of deepest pain and confusion, that soul music could reach me like no other music could – except Mozart.

Soul music was and is my desire for a future in freedom and justice, soul music was and is my route to know hope can be solid.

Soul music taught me I could still dance even as I thought my body and spirit had been destroyed by punters and the sex trade.

Soul music is the sound of defiance, of staring down those who oppressed us and saying there is deep part of my essence you can never owned or ripped apart.

Soul music was the gift of privacy when I had little or no space to call my own.

I had soul music before and after punters had though they had total control over me.

I scream to Wo-man with Etta, play Do-Right Woman with Aretha, had Dusty make cry with You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me.

It was my medicine, my therapy – it was my door to knowing a world beyond being raped, owned, tortured and being on the edge of death.

There was nothing simple in love of soul music – there is nothing simple in the oppressed discovering freedom.

It was music that connected to other music that had raw edges and give me another American culture to belong.

I grow to love country – especially honky-tonk, bluegrass, Cajun and outlaw country.

I grow to love city Blues.

I grow to love jazz, especially be-bop, swing, jazz/blues singers, New Orleans sound.

I grow to rock ‘n’ roll, especially rockabilly.

I grow to love disco.

Music became my saviour, and music was making my oppression more painful for I became aware that wasnot what I wanted.

I was becoming aware of every rape, aware of all words that made me into dirt, aware that I was nothing.

I begun to sing along with the music played as punters owned me – singing without paying attention, singing to disappear, singing to find a part of me had some defiance.

I placed myself in grave danger by singing or even mouthing the words.

Punters hated that I was human enough to sing, human enough to do two things at once.

I know my singing was my way to say – you don’t own my heart.

You will and can rape close to death; you can and will torture me with words, torture me with ripping at my sexual being, torture me by pretending to kill.

You will and can force me to stay awake, deprived me of food. You can and will smash my body into pieces while you are laughing.

But you – the punter, the sex trade profiteer, the justifier of the continance of the sex trade, the academics who say only Happy Hookers exist, the by-standers who ignore the pain of all the prostituted – you can never take away my music.

And I know you must hate that.

I know that the prostituted were never meant to be human enough to have a space to have the true freedom to love music.

I know that the prostituted were invented to be sub-human sexual goods that have only one purpose – to be living porn-dolls for punters to mastubate into.

We are not meant to hear music, to read books, to even be in shops.

We have no life or purpose beyond being holes and a comforter so punters are never violent to real women and children.

We have no past, no existence outside those punters and the sex trade.

To show even a hint that we are human, is for any prostitute to place herself in deep danger.

Much of the violence done to the prostituted is done when the punter see the prostitute is a person.

I was beaten up for reading, I was raped sadistically when I laugh at the TV, and singing to music was a route to hell.

For the prostituted are meant have no voice, no sense that they could matter, no real intelligence – the prostituted cannot be human.

No, the prostituted are meant to be whatever the sex trade and punters say they are.

A prostitute can be allowed to read or talk clever – as long she knows never to speak as she is raped, and never think her words matter.

The reality of prostitution is that it is assumed that most of the prostituted will be voiceless and nameless.

It is a world where the punters and sex trade profiteers see all the prostituted as interchangeable – as sexual that will be used over and over and over, and then thrown away.

The prostituted are never meant to discover that they are human, and to regain the fight to live, to exit and with great fortune to speak out for abolition.

We are meant to be dead or too damaged to become fully human.

I discover soul music was route to knowing there more to life than the sex trade.

 

 

 

 

Sickness Eats My Soul

Posted on by rmott62

I have very ill for many reasons, and have unable to write.

Now with great force, I will try to get to the centre of what is blocking me, what is sending sickness into my soul.

My soul is being slowly eaten alive.

It is mainly coming at me from two place.

The careless and callous use of language when so-called supporters speak about the sex trade.

And the lack of understanding of the depth and commonness of internal trafficking.

Both these are hurting me beyond pain, making me speechless, making me wanting to scream, making me apathetic as too much triggers me, making me thinking of ripping heads off of the so-called supporters.

My soul is a howling wolf, my soul is a silent stone statue of an unknown warrior, my soul is the wind in the moors, my soul is that pain which has forgotten where is came from and that it can be named.

How can we speak to the reality of prostitution, speak to the centre of being prostituted – if we turn away from language that is clear and stares deep into the darkness that is the sex trade.

Instead we have the language of detachment, the language of not connecting prostitution with human rights – the language without pain, horror or the visceral reality of what is to be prostituted.

A clean safe language that pushes away the multiple voices of those who have survived the sex trade.

A language given to the Left and even some feminists to hide blood, dead bodies and tears away.

If I hear sex worker again, I may buy an AKA, and kill some so-called supporters.

Your safe clean language is the language that colluded with the sex trade profiteers in the endless genocide of the prostituted.

Called our tortures, multiple rapes and deaths sex work – and you are an onlooker who will refuse any sense of guilt or responsibility for genocide of the prostituted class.

Prostitution cannot be made clean and safe – no matter how much you use the language of the Left, the language of labour, the language of freedom of choice.

Your words do nothing to stop the buying and selling of the prostituted, does nothing to stop all punters feeling entitle to own and torture the prostituted, does nothing for the safety of any prostitute alone with any punter or profiteer.

All your words do is make detached, make you turn away, make speak over the prostituted or those who have exited.

Your words make you imagine you understand the world of prostitution – when all you truly understand is the language of sex trade profiteers.

I have very triggered by the news in England about Rotherham, where at least 14,000 mainly girls have been internally trafficked into prostitution.

Internal trafficking is rarely reported – even though it is one of the most common ways that girls and women are drawn into prostitution.

It is only noticed if we can make the traffickers into the Other, only noticed if we can detached ourselves away from those who are being trafficked.

No-one can be detached from internal trafficking.

Traffickers, who are mostly men – come from all ethnic backgrounds, all cultural backgrounds, all ages, all classes.

Those who are trafficked are mostly females – come from all ethnic backgrounds, all cultural backgrounds, all ages, all classes.

Once you think there only a certain type of trafficker, or a certain type of female who is trafficked – then the sex trade profiteers are laughing at you.

The true terror that is internal trafficking is that it very ordinary men trafficking very ordinary girls in your home area.

I was internally trafficked – and it was made invisible.

That is normal – the sex trade is full of girls and women who were internally and no-one cared or even noticed.

The reason it is kept invisible – is because you do not want to lose your access to a wide range in prostitution.

You by ignoring internal trafficking are colluding with the sex trade profiteers.

Internal and external trafficking go hand-in-hand in providing the variety that punters demand in prostitution – providing prostitutes of many ethnicity, prostitutes who are very young, prostitutes who have no access to safety or being able to know consent.

Rotherham is just one example of the norm of the sex trade.

I think I can breathe a bit now – and hopefully sleep more than five hours.