Do you ever wonder why some women wind up working as prostitutes on the street while others become strippers, or why some live the destitute life while others manage a very profitable existence? It’s a subject that has always fascinated me. There are literally hundreds of ways to participate in the sex industry, from the ground up to where damn near the sky is the limit. People from all walks of life join the ranks: teenage runaways, divorcees with children, middle-class housewives seeking a “naughty” form of escapism, college student “weekend warriors” traveling to major cities during their breaks, retired grandmas, sisters and daughters of all kinds. The positions within the sex industry are just as numerous: porn actresses and actors, call girls, exotic dancers in seedy joints, exotic dancers in top-of-the-line joints (see: Rachel’s in Orlando, FL), phone sex operators, escorts, adult companions, courtesans, and street-walkers. We hear about street-walkers the most because they 1.) are most often targeted by law enforcement as “public nuisances,” 2.) are more likely to be arrested in conjunction with drug use, and 3.) because our society has a special, perverse obsession with their way of life. If you mention to someone that you work as a prostitute, this is automatically what springs to mind for most folks.
We have a tendency to romanticize female prostitution in our society, marking the women as “victims” without ever inconveniencing ourselves to acknowledge our role(s) in victimizing them. We display images of them in our movies, sing about them in songs, and create caricatures of them in our art. We speak about how “sorry” we feel for prostitutes and yet we do so little to try to understand why they exist and how it relates back to ourselves or how we continue to perpetuate the myths and ill-treatment that effectively “enslave” those we claim to feel the most sympathy for. And we oftentimes hold equally ill-formed and disillusioned ideas on what types of men see prostitutes, assuming they must be hard-up losers, junkies, or perverts when really they are your typical everyday husbands, fathers and friends. Our husbands, fathers, brothers and sons. We keep ourselves ignorant by choice, preferring the comforts of our own imaginations to the raw reality that threatens to undermine our understanding of human nature.
The women must be tramps, the men must be losers. What more is there to understand?
If it were only that simple. It may be convenient to generalize and assign people to neat little categories of “us” and “them,” never giving another thought as to why or who, taking some small comfort in the idea that we could never live as THEY do. We view them as “fallen” as if our own position in society can be taken for granted as being “above all of that” because we don’t directly and openly accept cash for sex. Oh, but I would argue that you do. Just because the money isn’t presented to you in an unsealed envelope on a nightstand doesn’t mean that you too haven’t been involved in the game of tit-for-tat. It’s a part of life, especially for women, and most especially for those lacking the necessary resources to choose another direction.
What is marriage? What is dating? What is hustling? Show me one woman out there who does not barter sexual access to achieve what she wants within her relationship. Does it really matter if it’s one partner or a hundred? It very well may affect the psyche differently, but that’s beside the point. The point here is to define why prostitution differs from all other forms of bartering women and men engage in society. When a woman stays in an abusive relationship with a belligerent jerk because she lacks the resources to leave him, who is she? When a woman “marries well” in order to provide a more luxurious life to herself and her children, who is she? When an older man spends his fortune pursuing a beautiful young woman half his age with the dream of claiming her as his own, who is he? When a prostitute falls in love with a man formerly considered nothing more than a client, have they transcended the boundaries of prostitution and morphed into something more “respectable”? If no sex is exchanged and yet she continues to be compensated for her time and companionship, what do we call that? Does it really make a difference if it’s a matter of survival or just a weekend exploration for the curious college student on leave?
Where do swingers fall into all of this? If you trade your wife to another man in exchange for access to his wife, what are you? If the wives find this exchange titillating and exciting, what are they?
Does she need to be sufficiently broken down by life in order to garner our sympathy and concern? Do we despise her that much more when we discover that she genuinely enjoys her job?
If you knew and loved her beforehand, would your judgment and feelings change as a result of learning of her profession? What if we were related to her? What if she was our mother or sister or daughter?
How ought we handle prostitution? Should we condemn it and remain as willfully ignorant as possible? Should we embrace it and celebrate a person’s right to choose to live her life as she sees fit? Should we continue ignoring the role of client and greater society and the demand that fuels prostitution’s popularity throughout the ages? Should we continue to look down upon THOSE people and express disdain for their “immoral” lifestyles? Should we as a society seek out new ways to exploit prostitution via increased taxation and governmental controls?
Some women make the conscious choice to join the ranks on their own volition. Others are trafficked in as sex slaves against their will. Some were minors when they began; others were adults. Some are natural beauties while some are not. Some are well-educated while others may not have finished high school. We come in all colors, races, ethnicities, nationalities, body sizes and ages, covering the entire political spectrum as well. Some are married, many are divorced, and some are single or widowed. I’ve known school teachers, nurses and farmers (to name a few) who’ve taken up sex work as a moonlighting venture. Some even, simultaneously, belong within our military ranks.
Men can and do work as prostitutes as well, generally catering to a male clientèle just as the women do regardless of their sexual preferences, though for whatever reason we tend to overlook them. Perhaps because they are the minority, making up approximately 10% of the prostitute population (so far as we’re able to gauge anyway).
What do we really know about the profession of prostitution?
One thing I have come to know is that how a society views and treats its prostitutes is closely linked with its opinion and treatment of women in general.
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