Trafficking/Prostitution

Archive for February, 2012|Monthly archive page

, , , ,

What Men does a Call Girl Remember?

In Dublin Call Girl, trauma on 2012/02/29 at 6:17 am

dublin call girl, problem with punters, feminism, sexual abuse, prostitution, sex work, sex workers, sex industry, human trafficking

Dublin Call Girl  has a new brilliant post about the punters/Johns that haunt her in memory.  She’s got me thinking a lot about who still can fill my mind.  Here’s an excerpt:

Other men are the kind that you might know in real life, that could easily be your boss or your brother’s friend. Some could be my friends. The secrets people keep. The secrets I thought were normal to keep, and I didn’t have a wife and kids. And then we have to ask, how can we justify what we’re doing if it’s so ‘okay’? And don’t blame it on the stigma associated with using escorts; be the change you want to see then, be a pioneer for ‘punters rights’ or whatever, if you’re so passionate about it…. no? Didn’t think so.

Punters either knowingly or unknowingly hurt me, and hurt themselves. They had a big hand to play in what I am going through now, and I firmly don’t believe that most punters are happy people. I think that that the easy availability of sex and the normalising effect that escort websites have, distorts the truth, massively, for many, many people involved, and I was one of those people. You’re seeking ways to subconsciously hurt yourself and these websites hand it to you on a plate. And people wonder why prostitution is filled with vulnerable women.

Keep reading this brilliant post

Related articles

, , , ,

The Sneaky Language of the Sex Industry Lobby

In Dublin Call Girl, sex work on 2012/02/26 at 4:21 am

dublin call girl, secret diary of a dublin call girl, language, sex industry lobby, pimps, sex work, sex worker, prostitution, feminism, sex positive feminism, human trafficking

The already legendary Dublin Call Girl has written a great post where she takes apart the ways a man from the sex industry lobby attacks her blog. She reveals the darkness of the sex industry, as well as the many ways the sex industry lobby tries to silence and intimidate survivors who speak out.    This commenter tries to link to pimp organizations, but he claims he’s a ‘sex worker.’  Of course, he blames her for any abuse she’s received.  Let’s put this in perspective.  Dublin Call Girl just started her blog a few months ago.  It’s a blog.  She doesn’t have a lot of political power, she’s just sharing her experiences.  But already sex industry supporters are targeted her with a viciousness.   Here’s an excerpt from her blog:

I received this comment earlier and let it become public just to show people how persuasive his argument could be interpreted. This will be the only pro sex work lobby comment that I’ll let hang around, I just wanted to show you how they will use language that seems to be about caring and support and all the rest, but all that shite only applies to right kind of hooker, the Belle du jours of the world. The one that wants to be there. The pro sex work lobby doesn’t care about the majority of prostitutes (who are pimped, trafficked, abused, drug addicted, poverty stricken). They only care about the happy ones. And if you’re not happy, well it’s your own fault, you really should have joined an organisation or gotten pepper spray, so enjoy that PTSD you’re going through, cos it’s all of your own doing.

Check out his complete and utter lack of compassion (or any evidence that he even read anything that I had written). I also love how he tried to link to a load of pimp organisations.

Below is the comment, and further below is my reply.

‘You certainly may not have enjoyed the chance to join a sex work academy like (deleted) or whore movement like (deleted) in order to learn the trix of the trade and prevent against abusive people. I believe the more society is condemning us and politics is fighting prostitution and safe workplaces where younger workers can learn from older ones or the madam, the more it will be unlikely to have support in cases of emergency or be empowered. Then more and more girls, boys or transsexuals again may follow your sad trait.

First of all you did not follow the principle prostitute rule to ‘not work when you not want to’. So possibly you made yourself unconsciously a victim or even attracted attackers or ‘ugly mugs’ as we call them.

Click here to read more of this fabulous post.

Related articles

, , , ,

Is Being a Call Girl the Same as a One Night Stand?

In Dublin Call Girl, Johns/Punters/Purchasers, sex work on 2012/02/25 at 7:42 am

dublin call girl, one night stand, human trafficking, prostitution, hooker, prostitute, call girl, sex work, sex industry lobby, one night stand, punter, John

Prostitution is not sex, nothing like what sex is to everyone else.  No one has sex with 4, 7, 10 or 12 people a day,.   All the same, people outside of prostitution equate it with their experiences of sex.  People begin to turn it into a sexual fantasy which has nothing to do with the reality.  For example, many of my Johns/punters would say to me “you couldn’t be anything else but a hooker.  You were born to do this.  Look at your ______ (fill in the blank, butt, boobs, ass, legs, etc.)  Well meaning people think that the worst thing about prostitution is  unattractive punters.  This is a bit like saying the Soviet gulag must have been a nightmare because there were no designer shoes.  And many people think it must be like a one night stand.  Not.

The fabulous Dublin Call Girl has a incisive new post on her blog entitled “The Difference Between a One Night Stand and an Escort.  Here’s an excerpt:

You fancy an orgasm. You cruise through the ads online, you pick one and you ring her. There is no answer. You go through five girls until one answers. You clear your browsing history. You generally say ‘Are you working?’ when she answers. You might ask her to wear the pink outfit she has on in her ad photos. You might make sure that there are no ‘extras’ (such as an extra 50 for anal, and that everything is included). You might ask her just to remind you what her ‘favourites’ are once more so you can quote them back to her if she ‘changes her mind’ when you arrive. You’re an experienced punter.

She’s free in an hour. You’re excited. You give your wife an excuse to leave the house.  You go to the ATM and take out about €200 (you booked for 30 minutes but upon seeing her you might go for the hour option instead). You arrive at her door in her apartment complex.

She is not the girl in the photos, but pretty enough and has made some attempt to wear the correct outfit. You can hear other noises and voices coming from another room but you ignore it. There is no conversation as either her English is so bad or she is pretending that it is. You hand her the cash and she gets down to work. You try to instruct her as best you can what to do/not to do. You finish up by coming on her stomach and leave.

Now can someone tell me what the similarities are between a one night stand and using a prostitute?

Read more

Related articles

, , , ,

Methods of the Pimp-Mind

In prostitution, Rebecca Mott on 2012/02/25 at 7:23 am

prostitution, sex work, sex trade, human trafficking, pimps, feminism, apologists, hypocrisy, slavery, gaslighting, cruelty, exploitation

If the sex trade supporters were so sure that prostitution is non-violent and women-friendly – then their tactics would not be so personal and vicious.     — Rebecca Mott

Since we began this group blog of Survivors Connect writers two weeks ago, many of us have been barraged with abusive comments, emails, facebook posts, instant messaging and Skype calls.  The attacks are vicious and designed to scare us.  The creeps make it clear that they are from the sex industry lobby or that they are pimps or Johns.   It’s a potent reminder of how dark the sex industry, how willing it is to brutalize anyone who goes against its interests.

Rebecca Mott writes brilliantly of this in a new post on her blog titled Methods of a Pimp-Mind.  Here’s an excerpt:

Many of the ongoing attacks on our works are done from the mind-set of the pimp.

That mind-set is often voiced by women, or at least those who claimed to be women, obviously on the net I have no idea if they are or to be honest really give a damn.

A common and regular approach is to feigned concern for our mental welfare.

This is not because it is considered that the sex trade as an institution is built on destroying the mental welfare of the prostituted class, not because these attackers thinks living inside torture may affect the prostituted class.

No, instead they keep on the personal level, saying we must have major mental health issues or be too delicate/fragile to cope with prostitution, or now being in the outside world.

This is laughable – for I have never meet or know of an exited woman or the vast majority of prostituted women and girls who do not have a huge amount of inner strength and force of will.

It is not weakness or even the individual woman’s mental welfare that cause the violence that is the norm in all aspects of prostitution – it is the punters who makes the choice to be sadistic to the prostitute, it is the sex trade profiteers who makes the prostituted class so sub-human that all violence is acceptable, and it all those who turn a blind eye to destruction of the prostituted class.

To focus on the individual prostitute’s mental welfare is a distraction and used to say it is her fault, and make the male violence invisible.

But with the attackers it is always more vicious than that.

The reason they focus on an exited woman’s mental state – is to prove she is deluded, she cannot really know the truth.

It is to get evidence to show she must be a liar.

Now if the sex trade supporters were so sure that prostitution is non-violent and women-friendly – then their tactics would not be so personal and vicious.

Read more

Related articles

, , , ,

When Survivors Speak Out, Johns/Punters and Pimps Strike Back Online

In Angel K, Johns/Punters/Purchasers on 2012/02/25 at 4:14 am

survivors connect, angel k, sex work, prostitution, human trafficking, rants, trauma, sex industry, ptsd

The brilliant Angel K has a new post up about the abusive comments she gets on her blog.   It happens because she’s a survivor speaking out.  I love how she’s titled this piece:  Anonymous Women Haters and Other Animals.  Here’s an excerpt:

I had another abusive comment left for me delightfully on my blog today. It’s great to see that the opposition remain as unintelligent and inarticulate in their response to criticism of their ‘right’ to buy women’s bodies and to vent their hatred as ever.

It’s good to know that I’m touching some nerves out there. This protector of free speech, this defender of men called me a ‘stupid fucking whore’ and a ‘man hater’. Again. Please see previous post for my response to his earlier abusive comments. I don’t think that the many men out there who believe in equality, who don’t treat women like a set of orifices, would thank him for his vitriolic defence of grand scale misogyny in their name.
Related articles

, , , ,

Terrible Beauty: Angel K on Prostitution & the Inadequacy of Language

In Angel K, sex work, trauma on 2012/02/23 at 3:17 am
angel k prostitution trauma ptsd startle response splitting sex work sex industry pimps human trafficking

My Hero

Survivor Angel K’s writing is searing and fearless.  In a recent post up at her blog Surviving Prostitution and Addiction she describes the after-effects of prostitution — the flashbacks, the startle response, the sleepless due to the terrible dreams.  Researchers have found the women in prostitution suffer from the same levels of trauma symptoms as the victims of state-sponsored torture.  Many can’t  imagine what this means.   It forever changes how we face the world.  After going through something like state-sponsored torture or trafficking/prostitution everything you do is an act of will — you must continually summon and form a new self from your fragments.  And yet as the survivors of torture or trafficking/prostitution rebuild our selves and find our voice, we  can develop extraordinary abilities to connect with, inspire, and understand others.  Nelson Mandela exemplifies this type of rebirth.

Most everyone understands that Mandela’s experiences of being held 27 years in a prison infamous for torture make him unique.  When he was finally released few denied the vast injustice done to him.  No one expected him to act like everyone else.  Instead South Africa and the world stepped back, and waited to see how this extraordinary man would transform the terrible wrongs he’d been through — they gave him a chance to bring something new into being.

It’s my hope that the public will start seeing us trafficking and prostitution survivors as people society has wronged .  I hope they’ll understand we’ve been changed by the pain and harshness we’ve experienced.  Public denial of the violence we experience and prostitute-blaming forces many of us into hiding.  If this stopped, we survivors would be empowered to bring something new and beautiful into being.

With exquisite precision, Angel K writes of  how it feels to live inside this trauma and form a new self and voice from the fragments.  Here’s an excerpt:

 The images remain, technicolour, replaying when I sleep or sometimes anyway. Something triggers me and I’m gone, magically transported back there, no tardis required.
I sleep with the light on, and barely even then. Scared of dreaming, but scared of my thoughts lying awake hour after hour. The night looms, interminable, the fragile grip on sanity of the day stretched to a mere thread, at breaking point. The body, that is to say my body – the splitting I did to survive what they did to me continues – doesn’t help. Muscles tense and tire, old injuries ache, and now the exhaustion from night after night of broken sleep has taken it to the point of fainting, of collapse. Both body and mind work against me, telling me I am in danger now, making me re-experience what happened then now.
Many thanks to Rebecca Mott  for our conversations on Mandela which inspired this post.

Related articles

, , , ,

Prostitution & the Terrifying Mundane

In Rebecca Mott on 2012/02/17 at 10:39 pm
sex work rebecca mott prostitution human trafficking terrible beauty

The Terrifying Mundane

Rebecca Mott has a bold and mesmerizing new post up.  She writes of the deadness so necessary to survival when one is prostituted — how violence and brutality feels so ordinary that, as she puts it, even hell is boring.  Here’s an excerpt:

The years that others framed as adult prostitution – in that framing it all become my own good or bad choices, it is framed that an adult prostitute must want it if she does not walk out, and of course it always framed that all prostitutes are just dirty whores who are addicted to nasty sex.

In that frame – all violence is made into glamour, all degradation is chosen, and all fear is said to be fake.

In that frame, truth is abandoned in case it drives the prostitutes into self-harm or suicide.

I want to attempt to reach into the middle of that time – as it was, not how others wanted it be, not with my own safe hindsight – but inside that middle.

My middle like the millions of the tortured was mainly full of deep boredom, endless repetitive ways of being sexually tortured, and long times of forcing my mind to block my reality.

My middle is full of short moments of finding I has some humanity left – moments connecting to as song in the background, moments walking back at night and enjoying the silence of a city, moments when my mind was saying “enough already” but still my body was being tortured.

They were the moments that were the force that made the person who now writes this blog. I could do nothing to save my young adult – but now in this writing all I can do is repay her intense courage and strength of will by writing as close to her truths as I can.

I do not write just for my self and my past – I write for the millions of adult prostituted women who are abandoned because it is decided they must have chosen their lifestyle. I write for those abandoned prostituted women closed behind wall in indoors prostitution.

I write to make the invisible visible – and to say just stop turning your heads and consciences away from these women. As you decide they must be alright – they are being routinely raped, they are made into living hard-core porn, they are mentally abused till their sense of self is destroyed, and they murdered on a scale that you choose not to imagined.

Read more

Related articles

, , , ,

How a Call Girl Feels When She’s “Reviewed” Online

In Dublin Call Girl, rants, sex work, trauma on 2012/02/17 at 9:40 pm

dublin call girl prostitution sex work human trafficking slavery feminism

Dublin Call Girl has a blazingly honest new post up on her blog.  It’s about how she felt when Johns/punters reviewed her online.  This is a revolting practice where online “escort” sites encourage the men to review each girl after they’ve used her.  It’s not new.  Even before the internet there used to be creepy “adult entertainment” news sheets (kind of like today’s backpage) where men wrote these sorts of reviews.  But the internet has increased the impact of this dehumanizing practice on prostituted women’s lives.  Here’s an excerpt:

This is another review, from someone else, that worries me. This is hardly unique, it took me two seconds to find, there are hundreds of this type (and worse) of review. This is the really sinister side of reviews. Men will visit a girl who clearly, and the men admit this quite openly, doesn’t want to be there, is unhappy, is reluctant. And they review her anyway. They review her in such a way that completely and cleverly avoids any consideration for her, or why she is ‘lifeless’ or why she is ‘mechanical’ or whatever else. Instead of wondering why and how the girl is in this position of unwillingly having sex for money, they are pissed off, indignant about their wasted money. This is what paying does; it takes the responsibility out of the punter’s hands. It takes the human out of both sides.

DURATION:

45 Minutes

COST:

€180

REVIEW:

First I chose Vicky based on her pics and Favourites. I fancied a bit of (A).   Location was easy to find and excellent directions given.When the door opened there stood a pretty young lady but not in my opinion the girl in the Photo’s.Smaller not as slim but nice none the less.Then It started to go down hill. Paid the €180 (20) for A.Guess what she diden’t want to do A. “i don’t like” was what i got.Got down to biz anyway but there was no life in this girl at all.  I’m more French than she is. East European at a guess.

Got a bit of OWO but she kept stopping to wipe yer man with a piece of Kitchen paper. Sex was like riding an ironing board.

Kissing was OK but she kept turning away most times i tried to kiss her.

This girl just was not into it no matter how hard i tried. Got more entertainment from the radio on in the backround.

Half way through round 2 she announced that time was up. Paid for an hour and was in and out in 45mins.

Waste of time and money which is a bummer when you save for ages for this and don’t get the chance to punt very often.
Read more
Related articles

, , , ,

Tears of a Clown: Stay in Control

In Chong Kim, rants, trauma on 2012/02/16 at 12:08 am

Chong Kim trafficking survivor prostitution sex work feminism women's rights media exploitation

Survivor artist, poet, and activist Chong Kim has some important advice for her fellow survivors regarding dealing with the media and nonprofit organizations.  Her words matter a great deal, because many survivors have felt exploited by how we and our stories are used when we are interviewed or when we work with advocacy organizations.  .Chong says that first and foremost we should focus on our healing.  When we do choose to speak out, it’s important to make sure we feel in control.  Here’s an excerpt from Chong’s classic post on the subject Tears of a Clown:

I’m writing this blog specifically for my fellow survivors, because I do understand.  We’ve heard it all before, “If you tell your story, you will save many lives.”  “They want to see your face, because it’s REAL to them.”  And my FAVORITE!  “We are looking for “new” victims, someone who’s just been rescued.”

Now this is what I will share with you what all of those comments sound to US (Survivors).  “Tell your story and you will get 15 minutes of fame and after that you won’t matter because our ratings will get to rise.”  “We don’t believe you until we see the tears in your eyes.”  And last:  “Well . . . you’re getting old and we are tired of hearing your story and we’ve heard it all before, so we need a fresh meat to exploit.”

Let me give you a little hint:

This is not just based off of my own personal experience with media, journalist, and TV Hosts; but I’ve heard the outcries and hurts from my fellow brothers and sisters.  I have however heard on the otherside of the spectrum of journalist, media and TV Host the most common question.  “We CAN’T find survivors that are willing to speak.”  Want to know why???  READ ABOVE!!!

and

There is NOTHING wrong in sharing your story, to empower and enrich the lives of others just as long as you know full and well this is what YOU want and not the obligation of the church/religion, counseling or even peers if you feel you need more time to heal please follow your heart, others can wait. 

(Copyright © 2012 Chong Kim, All Rights Reserved)

Read more at Chong’s great blog Face of Tears

Read about Eden, a feature film co-written by Chong and based on her experiences which is premiering at the prestigious South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, TX!

, , , ,

Important Survivor Interview

In Johns/Punters/Purchasers, sex work, trauma on 2012/02/15 at 11:05 pm

trafficking prostitution survivor interview sex work feminism feminist feministe

There’s an extremely important interview with a trafficking/prostitution survivor in the Irish Examiner. So many fellow survivors’ experiences mirror what this eloquent woman describes. Here’s an excerpt

“Irish prostitution has been mainly conducted indoors since then, and nothing  about this ugliness has abated because it’s been concealed from the public view.  In fact the opposite has been true. We were abused more thoroughly, not less,  with the only difference being that now there was the secrecy of closed doors to  conceal it.”

and

“Under Irish law, the abusive nature of prostitution has been allowed to  flourish unhindered and it is a living hell for the women struggling to survive  within it. It is primarily for the sake of these women, but also for all of us  who want to live in a gender-equal society, that I am gladdened to see the Irish  Government finally pledge to tackle this issue.

“I only hope that they  go the right way about it, which is to criminalise the purchase of sex, because  nothing will change for prostituted women and girls until the commercialisation  of female bodies is dealt the hammer-blow it so richly deserves.

“To  those who would say legalisation would make prostitution safer: I think the same  thing any former prostitute I’ve ever spoken to thinks, which is that you may as  well legalise rape and battery to try to make them safer. You cannot legislate  away the dehumanising, degrading trauma of prostitution, and if you try to, you  are accepting a separate class of women should exist who have no access to the  human rights everyone else takes for granted.”

Read more.

Related articles
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 208 other followers