When Survivors Speak Out, Online Pimps and Johns/Punters Attack

Dublin Call Girl writes  about the toll of online stalking and hate.  Sex industry pimps’ and buyers’ viciousness online makes it tough for prostitution/trafficking survivors to speak out.  Here’s an excerpt:

I’m not stopping this because of the ridiculous amount of anonymous internet punter abuse I have received. I’m not stopping it because they hurt me, or scared me (like the threats to ‘out me’, heh), or anything else. They did do those things, but I’m perfectly capable of not letting some dick or dick-ess control my actions or how I feel about myself. I’m becoming okay with myself. I kind of like myself. So there.

But you know what, it is shit. It’s horrible to read such vile and personalised things. You practically spill your entire heart out and you get some dickhead punter getting off on hurting me, or scaring me, or upsetting me. I have to read them before I delete them you see. If someone is particularly unpleasant repeatedly I can ban them and they just end up in spam and then self delete, but I’d really prefer to just have let it all out so you could see all of it. Punters and others that used to be in my life are not going to be fully out of my life while I’m still online as this person that I was. I know it’s ‘me’ but it’s a certain part of ‘me’ that I’m supposed to be getting away from. The internet is the problem here, the anonymity, the speed of it, the paranoia and the interactivity.

I’m stopping writing this because it’s just too interactive. My heart would break to stop people from sharing whatever they want to say to me about their own experiences, so I didn’t want to just take off commenting entirely, but then it’s still too interactive. The interactivity of it is creating another weird secret world again, and I’m trying not to have a secret world. I am communicating with people here all the time, but it’s secret communication to the rest of my world.  I am talking about issues about prostitution constantly. It’s in my head constantly. People who have been involved or are involved in the industry are also leaving messages. I always respond to them, I have time for everyone. My therapist says that it and the stuff I went through previous to it, is all consuming. And it is. Because I’m finally dealing with it. Writing this definitely helped get things out and get them out exactly how I wanted them to be out, but I think it’s over now. I’m always thinking about if a punter has left a stupid comment, or if any of my escort names have been discovered, or what I’ll write about next, and if I should delete that last one because it was too much emotional exposure etc. I did not realise at all how popular it would get. I had no idea. I was completely shocked by it. For nearly the whole month of February it got 1000 views a day. It freaked me out and amazed me at the same time. What is also amazing about it is how far it has travelled around the world. My favourite feminist blogger, Nine Deuce, likes it . Discovering that was a very proud moment.

Read more at Dublin Call Girl’s blog

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Dublin Call Girl: Sometimes I Want to Go Back to Escorting Again

Sister Survivor Dublin Call Girl has written a brilliant new post about what she calls the pullback – a compelling drive to return to prostitution some of us survivors get after we’ve exited.  Prostitution is another country with its own  brutal rules.  That’s where we’ve been living.  We’ve been treated as if  prostitution’s the only thing we’re good for.  PTSD makes ordinary life painfully hard.   Each  difficulty we meet in the non-prostitution world reinforces that “being a whore is the only thing you’re good for” message.   Speaking frankly, we’re not used to people who are calm, caring or friendly.  We don’t know how to trust that.  We keep waiting for the meanness and brutality to kick in.

This drive to return reminds me of an evil enchantment from a fairy tale, where the girl is allowed to be human for a few hours, but then she’s turned back into a raven or a swan. In her great memoir Girls Like Us, Rachel Lloyd notes that the conditions of prostitution meet every criteria on the Biderman scale, a tool created by Amnesty International to explain the torture and brainwashing of political prisoners.   The four factors that cause Stockholm Syndrome are almost always present in trafficking/prostitution.  These factors:

• Belief the captors (pimps, madams, Johns)  can and will kill you
• Isolation from anyone except captors
• Belief that escape is impossible
• Imagining the captor’s smallest acts of kindness mean they really care about you — a coping mechanism that helps you survive

Here’s an excerpt from Dublin Call Girl’s great post:

I’m sure it’s hard to understand this pull back. It’s so strong. It feels like an anchor and I can go only go so far away before it reminds me of its existence. I’ll never escape, it’s not like an illness or something.  I’m feeling this quite a bit lately, a lot tonight. It happens when I’m lonely, or stressed out, or thinking about my friend who died a year ago. I think things like, ‘fuck it, I’ll just run away and hide out in some flat somewhere and work as an escort, and live that fake life for as long as I’m sellable for’. In my current financial situation, it would be so so so easy to use that as an excuse, but an excuse is all that it would be.

Believe me, I don’t want punters dicks shoved up me anymore, I don’t want to hear their whispers in my ear, their hands in my hair, their horrible sex noises. But I wouldn’t be able to get it wrong. I couldn’t screw it up because I know exactly how to be a good escort. In the rest of the world, it’s so much more difficult. You could fuck up at any moment, and then you have only yourself to blame, all your baggage or not. Mostly it’s difficult because I have to scrabble about for belief in myself; In my current job I have to really believe in myself, and in the qualities and experience I bring to it. That can be a difficult task after using your sexuality as an excuse for self worth for so long.

Read more

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I’m Not the Only One Who was Mistreated in Prostitution

Sister survivor Dublin Call Girl has a moving new post up on her blog where she shares the feedback she’s gotten from trafficking and prostitution survivors. It’s called  I am not Alone.   The title has deep meaning because when we trafficking/prostitution survivors speak out the sex industry lobby swoops in to silence us.  We’re dismissed with the excuse that the violence and abuse we experienced is a lone incident caused by a flaw in our character.  It seems the sex industry is so great  – Valentine’s Day all year-long — that no one else has a story like ours.   A lot of  this blowback comes from online pimps, usually white and sometimes female, who pose as ‘sex worker’ activists.  Sometimes it comes from Johns and Punters who feel the truth might threaten their little hobby.  Survivors Connect network members aren’t the only women getting this treatment.  Jillian Lauren, who wrote a best-selling memoir of her life as a stripper and in a harem in Brunei, was recently vilified in the comments section of an interview because she mentioned childhood sexual abuse.  It’s implied that since she was sexually abused her story doesn’t count.

Dublin Call Girl responds brilliantly to this denial by sharing the moving comments she’s received from women who’ve survived the sex industry.  She’s not alone.  Of course she’s not.   Here’s an excerpt:

I’m not the only one who has been mistreated in prostitution, or even just left damaged after being in it. I am not just some unique case, handy to write off because of my past, that you can handily say ‘well you weren’t forced, were you’ to. No I wasn’t forced. The facts remain, regardless of how I got there. If I had been forced I’d be a lot fucking louder than I’m being right now.

Here are some quotes that have been left here, from nine individual women who came across my blog. I never thought that the internet could be such a warm place, full of kindred spirits and support. Love to you ALL.

‘It’s so fucking tough trying to stay so fucking tough”
You’re a brilliant writer.
I too am a retired prostitute and I cry when I read your stuff.

I am a formerly prostituted Irish woman myself and the words you’ve written on here couldn’t be any more my own if you’d lifted them from my own mind.

Oh, the major problems with us exited women is we only have trauma, is because we were stupid enough to “allow” men to rape, batter, torture and murder us. We did not prevent it – so it all the fault of the prostitute, nothing to do with men owning us and having full permission to do any sexual violence they can imagine, or that the sex trade is built on making the prostituted in goods and therefore sub-humans.

Read more here.

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Why Am I So Threatening?

The already legendary Dublin Call Girl has another fierce post up at her blog Secret Diary of a Dublin Call Girl. It’s a sad phenomenon all of us survivor activists experience.  Try to write one little ol’ blog, and organized troops of mean-spirited pimps, madams and Johns/punters attack, insult and try to undermine you.   Here’s an excerpt:

I have been getting …  hate mail from punters. They have left messages calling me a whore, a man hating slut, that the only job I could ever do is to fuck for money, that I’m a ‘fucking retard’… you get the picture. Poor men with their obvious crappy lives. I read the first line (or word, in some cases) and just delete and move on. It is saying something though, that punters are getting so defensive about what I say about my experience, that they resort to anonymous bullying tactics to hurt a girl that they don’t know, and who has been through more than they could ever imagine, and came out the other end. Usually when challenged punters just reassure themselves that the girls they were with seemed happy and continue. But this is vitriolic.

Why am I so threatening? If I was talking about any other job would I receive this amount of pure hatred? hardly. If prostitution is just ‘like any other job’ then surely I should be left in peace? People who don’t have a fucking notion what they are talking about often say that prostitution is better than working in Mc Donalds (I know, fucking rich kid privilege is sickening sometimes), yet if someone was writing about the terrible experiences they went through due to customers, employers, through exploitation etc, would they receive hate mail from the other employees stating how happy they are in their job in their branch of Mc Donalds and that I should stop spreading ‘lies’ about what it’s like to work for Mc Donalds?  Would they receive emails from customers calling them fucking retarded for working in the job in the first place? Chances are not. So stop calling it just a normal job just like any other thankyou very fucking much. I wouldn’t accept that description from another escort, (they wouldn’t even say that anyway) let alone some random dickhead punter sitting alone in his sitting room with his dick in his hand getting off on calling me a stupid whore.

I just want to clear a few things up.

I’m a girl who was involved in indoor prostitution over a period of four and a half years. Now I am recounting my story and experiences, and how I feel about those experiences. It has been a very cathartic and powerful thing to do, to know that people are reading my words, and 98% being fully supportive (strangers, as well, it’s pretty amazing that people actually care).

That is all I am. That Is all I am doing. I don’t apologise that I cannot be ‘objective’. Sexual abuse and what it leads to is unfortunately a very difficult subject to be objective about. I would challenge anyone who has been through what I have been through, to blame themselves, as some would like me to. It’s also extremely common in the sex industry. Accept it.

Read more at www.secretdiaryofadublincallgirl.wordpress.com 

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What Men does a Call Girl Remember?

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

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The Sneaky Language of the Sex Industry Lobby

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.

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

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

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