sexwork

In campaigns protesting raids and other drastic actions against prostitutes and sex workers, Christianity is often slagged off. That’s not fair; it’s how people interpret their duty as Christians that can lead to abuse. Here’s an example of Christian outreach, carried out in the same sort of way that civilian harm-reduction projects are done. Note that this helper ‘won’t apply for federal funds because she doesn’t want anything to interfere with “preaching the Word,”’and doesn’t see her role as trying to get women out of the industry  Excerpts only - click on the title for the complete story.

Jesus & strippers

Emily Belz, WorldMag.com

Los Angeles. Near midnight. Industrial buildings. Empty streets. Full parking lot. Men wander into a nondescript building, “Fantasy Castle.” Bouncers stand at the door. Inside, on stage. women dance to earn their rent. Men watch in the dark. Booze, perfume, and loneliness.

A group of young women with fistfuls of flamingo pink gift bags approach the bouncer and offer him cookies—yes, cookies. This is the second strip club they have visited, pulling up in a church minibus: They have five more on their list as they canvass neighborhoods north of Long Beach, south of Compton. The bouncer takes the cookies and lets them inside to the bar, the customers, and the dancers, who are all lined up on the stage.

“I hated lining up—like a cattle call,” remarks Harmony Dust outside the club. Dust, a former stripper, started slipping notes on the windshields of dancers six years ago telling them “you are loved”—and her ministry, I Am a Treasure, was born. Along with other women including former strippers, she lavishes love on women in the sex industry and teaches that Jesus loves them too. On this night, several of the dancers turn away from customers to give the gift-baggers bear hugs and tell them their real names.

Treasures—that’s what most people call the ministry—has a simple recipe: Bring gifts of lip gloss, jewelry, and handwritten cards into dressing rooms in strip clubs. Wait for phone calls, texts, or emails from the women that often come in just hours after the visit. “This is largely a seed-sowing ministry,” said Dust—and when sprouts appear, volunteers help with childcare and rides to church. They listen, talk, mentor, wait, and hope.

. . .  70 percent of Christians admitted to struggling with porn in their daily lives. Another poll by Rick Warren’s pastors.com in 2002 showed 54 percent of pastors had viewed pornography within the last year. . . . Dust started stripping under the name Monique at a club by the airport and managed to complete her undergraduate degree even while she was working in the sex industry at night. . . .

In 2003, while driving to the airport to pick John up, she drove by the same club where she used to strip—but she couldn’t pass it by. Filled with emotion and conviction, she pulled into the parking lot, and the security guard let her put notes on the women’s windshields telling them that they are loved. Then she couldn’t pass by clubs anymore, and she and others who joined her work began building relationships with dancers. She saw women eagerly reach for that same love she found in Jesus.

Dust doesn’t see her role as trying to get women out of the industry or tell them that their jobs are sinful. No one needs to tell them, she said—anyone in the industry feels a certain sickness in her soul. What they need is someone to extend the gospel through love. But she’s quick to say that Treasures volunteers don’t see themselves as strippers’ “saviors.” “I have nothing—I have lip gloss,” Dust said, laughing. “And I probably only have that because of Jesus.” The organization functions off a skeleton of a budget—under $100,000 a year—and Dust won’t apply for federal funds because she doesn’t want anything to interfere with “preaching the Word.”

This report comes in China Labour Bulletin, a publication interested in work: jobs. The tone supposes that selling sex is not desirable but does not make a big thing of it. Instead, the unprotected status of workers as workers is highlighted. Abuses are committed by clients, police and employers, but there is no rhetoric about sex work as violence per se or about trafficking. The women discussed are migrants; the best job they could find upon arriving in the city was selling sex. But the research shows that after three years, all but a few had moved on to another job. That means that sex work was a stepping-stone to other things they had no access to immediately on arrival., which is the normal situation for migrants of all kinds. The report says they worked ‘irregular hours’, which is often interpreted to mean something negative, but which many people prefer. Note: 1000 yuan = 100 euros

Sex workers in Wuhan vulnerable and exploited

China Labour Bulletin, 23 September 2009

Young, poorly educated sex workers in the central Chinese city of Wuhan are routinely abused by clients but have little or no recourse to justice. Most do not trust the police and the vast majority (about 80 percent) have no knowledge of their legal or civil rights, according to a recently published survey

Researchers from Wuhan University interviewed 300 low-end sex workers, mainly employed in small-scale hair salons and saunas in the city’s red light district, and found that around half had been the victims of crime, with clients usually stealing money or mobile phones. Most “leisure” (休闲) establishments in Wuhan had a “pay first” policy but, nevertheless, 37 percent of the interviewees said they had been cheated by their clients. Over half the respondents said they had been verbally abused by clients, while 20 percent had been beaten or physically abused, and small number were even raped or abducted while working.

For the majority of sex workers, their only recourse in these situations was to go to their boss or their boyfriend for help, but in the majority of cases there was little the boss could do. Only 26 percent of respondents said they would definitely report an abusive client to the police, 37 percent said they would not go to the police, while the remaining 37 percent were ambivalent. Two thirds (64 percent) of the respondents said they’d never had any dealings with the police, and over half thought the police were of no help, while 16 percent considered the police to be a hindrance. Only one third (31 percent) thought the police could provide any help.

The majority (56 percent) of the 300 interviewees were aged between 18 and 25 years, 12 percent were younger than 18-years-old, while 15 percent were over 30 years of age. Most (62 percent) only had a middle school education at best, 21 percent had been to high school, and 16 percent had attended technical high school, while only one interviewee had been to university.

The survey indicated that many sex workers were driven by poverty in rural areas in Hubei and neighbouring provinces to come to Wuhan in search of work. However, their lack of education meant they could not find any better jobs in the city. About half (51.8 percent) had been working the sex industry for less than a year, and the vast majority regularly moved from salon to salon in search of better conditions. Only three percent of those interviewed had been in the industry for more than three years.

The vast majority worked irregular hours, between eight and ten hours a day, and earned up to 3,000 yuan a month. Nearly half (44 percent) earned less than 1,000 yuan a month, while only 16 percent could earn more than 3,000 yuan. The plight of Wuhan’s sex workers is largely representative of China as a whole, and is indicative of the many dangers that young women from the countryside face when they travel to the city in search of work.

Tanta bulla sobre el uso de la calle. Durante los 15 años que he seguido el conflicto sobre la industria del sexo en España, el tema se ha debatido una y otra vez en el congreso nacional, con múltiples invitaciones a una gama de ‘expertos’ para hablar del significativo de la prostitución. Nunca se llega a ninguna conclusión, pero siempre se dice que hay que hacer algo. Los periodistas también vuelven repetidamente al mismo tema. Esta vez sale en El Mundo un nuevo intento de darles voz a algunas de las prostitutas-trabajadoras del sexo en Madrid (siempre dejan fuera a los hombres trabajadores). Siguen extractos de un artículo escogidos por que proporcionan información sobre el trabajo de calle, no solo opiniones. Como verán, existen motivos razonables que gente de fuera parecen incapaz de entender.

Después viene el testimonio de una latina que conocí por primera vez hace muchos años. Se trata de un video cuyo título lo dice todo: ‘Trabajo en la prostitución porque yo lo he elegido’

Y las prostitutas, ¿qué opinan sobre la polémica?

Raquel Quílez, El Mundo. 10 septiembre 2009

[extractos]

. . . Ana -nombre ficticio- mira tímida con unos enormes ojos verdes mientras permanece sentada en el bordillo de un portal próximo a la Gran Vía. . . . Ana esboza a continuación una teoría que sostendrán después la mayoría de las mujeres a las que se pregunta en la zona Centro de Madrid: prefieren trabajar en la calle. ¿Sus motivos? “Si estás en un club tienes que dar parte del dinero al dueño y además tienes que trabajar las horas que te diga y coger los servicios porque si no, no puedes volver al día siguiente. En la calle, sin embargo, nosotras decidimos las horas que estamos y con quién nos vamos. Nos sentimos más libres”. Y eso a pesar de que el precio de sus servicios cae cuando se ofrece al aire libre.

. . . Las prostitutas han saltado al centro del debate público después de las denuncias por las prácticas en plena calle en Barcelona. La mayoría de las preguntadas en Madrid ni siquiera conoce la polémica. “Pero, ¿cómo en la calle? ¿En mitad de la gente, con todos pasando?”, pregunta sorprendida Laura -nombre ficticio-. Ronda los 50, es española y viste un llamativo mono de leopardo. Está sentada en un taburete en una esquina de la calle Ballesta, el sitio que ocupa desde hace ya varios años. “Eso aquí no pasa. Contactamos con los clientes en la calle pero luego nos vamos a pisos alquilados o a los hostales, donde pagamos cinco euros por la habitación”. También ella reivindica el trabajo en la calle. “Yo prefiero estar aquí, me siento más segura”, repite, como sus compañeras. Pero irte con un desconocido a un hostal no es muy seguro… “Ya, pero en los hostales hay personas que trabajan para protegernos”, contesta. ¿Quién contrata a esas personas? Silencio. Laura tiene cuatro hijos y un nieto a los que mantener porque nadie más trabaja en su familia.

. . . A dos calles de Laura trabaja María -una vez más el nombre es ficticio. . . . Tiene 28 años, habla un inglés perfecto y cursó hasta 3º de Comercio Exterior en su país natal, Rumanía, del que llegó hace tres años. Ha probado todo lo que tenía a su alcance para salir adelante. Ha sido empleada del hogar y camarera, con la mala suerte de caer en casas y locales en los que después se negaron a pagarle. También se ha prostituido en clubs y al final ha optado por echarse a la calle. “Es en el único sitio en el que sólo dependo de mí”, dice. María está sobradamente cualificada, pero se ve obligada a trabajar con su cuerpo. Ella sí reclama que se regularice la situación. “Por lo menos podría tener seguridad social y no ahora que llevo tres años trabajando y no ha servido para nada”, dice. En el último mes, María vuelve a casa con entre 60 y 100 euros en el bolso. “Se nota la crisis -cuenta- antes podía ganar hasta 400 al día. Los mejores son los turistas ingleses”.

. . . “Lo ideal sería que se regulase y que tengamos los mismo derechos que cualquier otro trabajador. Creo que la calle no es un lugar seguro para nadie, ni para un vendedor de cupones”. . . .

‘Trabajo en la prostitución porque yo lo he elegido’: Video

Viajó desde Ecuador a Europa en vacaciones y terminó trabajando como prostituta en Madrid. Un hombre se le acercó en un bar, le ofreció dinero a cambio de sexo y le abrió las puertas a un mundo que a ella se le antojó el mejor salvoconducto económico para su vida. Y lleva ya 12 años en ello

Carolina Hernández trabaja en la calle por decisión propia y comparte sus problemas con su familia, sus amigos y su pareja. En esta entrevista ofrece una visión de la profesión alejada del mito y los lugares comunes. Cuenta que quiere tener un hijo, colabora con la organización Hetaria, desde la que pide la regulación de la prostitución, y asegura que es feliz.

Mientras los políticos debaten su profesión en el Congreso, ella pide que se termine con la hipocresía: “No vivamos en una sociedad retrógrada y machista”, reclama como principal anhelo.

I just gave a talk about irregular migration and informal-sector jobs, including in the sex industry, at a conference in Copenhagen. The talk was well-received, but as always most people say they have not heard my point of view before. So to make sure everyone realises that my ideas are not the result of an ideology about prostitution, I run this photo again of a poster prepared by migrant sex workers (self-identified so) in Chiang Mai, Thailand, at the EMPOWER centre.

See for yourself the list of reasons migrant sex workers at Barn Su Funn Brothel gave for opposing raids and rescue operations intended to liberate them, whether rescuers are police officers, ngo employees or charity workers:

• We lose our savings and our belongings.
• We are locked up.
• We are interrogated by many people.
• They force us to be witnesses.
• We are held until the court case.
• We are held till deportation.
• We are forced re-training.
• We are not given compensation by anybody.
• Our family must borrow money to survive while we wait.
• Our family is in a panic.
• We are anxious for our family.
• Strangers visit our village telling people about us.
• The village and the soldiers cause our family problems.
• Our family has to pay ‘fines’ or bribes to the soldiers.
• We are sent home.
• Military abuses and no work continues at home.
• My family has a debt.
• We must find a way back to Thailand to start again.

The poster brings us close to a situation many people doubt: that poorer migrants selling sex often prefer to continue what they’re doing to being forcibly rescued by people on anti-trafficking crusades. This is not to cast doubt on all rescuers’ good intentions, but it shows how they obviously haven’t consulted the prostitutes they want to save first, to find out whether they want to be helped and, if they do, what kind of help would actually be helpful!  The poster makes it clear that cutting migrant women off from their source of income has terrible consequences both for themselves and their families.

This does not mean that they or I deny the existence of abusive practices inflicted during smuggling and trafficking operations. It means that an ideological stance that claims all migrants doing sex work have been victims of such practices is wrong.

During my 15 years of researching this subject, I have met migrants of all nationalities, in many countries, in bars, brothels, shelters, ngo offices, streets and houses. Some had had bad experiences, some had not recovered from them, some were getting on with the next stage of their lives, some enjoyed doing sex work, many had adapted to it as the best option of the moment. For those who want to read more about it, my book Sex at the Margins has extensive interesting information!

Thanks once more to the Asia-Pacific Network of Sex Workers for sending this photo.

Japan standbar

Recently I appreciated a comment made on a post about hostesses at the Harlot’s Parlour. I wrote to the commenter and asked if he’d like to see his words in a post here, and Richard Jeffrey Newman said yes. The sex industry brims with stories like these, but they rarely reach the public’s eyes or ears. The sex industry’s confusions and ambiguities are well represented here: a commercial sex site where real people have real feelings for each other, both kindly and cruel, despite apparent roles of sex worker and client.

        Your post brings back memories of the 15 months or so that I spent as an English teacher in South Korea between 1988 and 1989, especially Ms. Park, the hostess in the standbar (karaoke) near where I lived that I and some of my fellow teachers went to regularly. We always sat at Ms. Park’s station and then, after I started going sometimes by myself, partly because I enjoyed spending time with her and partly because they let me jam with the band and making music made me happy, she and I became friends to the degree that we were able, given the language barrier and the fact that we only saw each other at her place of work for a few hours once or twice a week.

Once, she asked if she could come to my apartment when she was finished working, and I was happy to say yes. It meant a lot to me that she had asked, because it meant that she wanted whatever would happen between us when she got to my place to be something other than the commercial exchange that took place when I paid for the beer and plate of food she brought me a price that was set to include the slow dancing and flirting and surreptitious and not-so-surreptitious touching that was part of her job as a hostess. I knew that part of her job was also to have sex with men who paid her for it, but as the rules had been explained to me (and I suppose that if this explanation was wrong, then my whole comment is sort of meaningless) if a customer proposed sex to a hostess and she agreed, he had to pay for it; if she proposed sex to him, however, he did not.

I didn’t then, and I do not now, object to the buying and selling of sex per se, though I have never felt the desire to do either myself. Still, I have often wondered whether or not I would have paid if that had been the only way that Ms. Park and I could have been together. Because I wanted her as well. The fact that she asked me meant I didn’t have to find out, though as it happened she never came to my apartment either. And here, as far as I can tell is why: Ms. Park smiled at me when I said yes in a way that I will never forget; it was such a simple, happy smile. A few minutes later, however, an older Korean man walked over to us and struck up a conversation with me. He asked what I was doing in Korea, where I was teaching and made other small talk for a few minutes before he nodded in Ms. Park’s direction and asked if me if I liked her. I said yes. “She has beautiful labia, you know,” he continued, looking directly at her before turning his eyes again on me. I said something that politely let him know I was not interested in his company and turned back to Ms. Park who suddenly refused to look me in the eye. For the rest of the night, she refused to look me in the eye. I don’t know what the relationship was between Ms. Park and that man, other than the obvious, but what he said shamed her that night in a way that she was unable to recover from.

When I went back the next week, and the week after that, and after that, she was her usual self. Almost. She never brought up the question of her coming to my place again, and something told me not to ask, that if I did ask she would say yes, but that she would be saying yes not as the woman who stepped outside of the buying and selling of sex to tell me that she wanted me. Rather, she’d be saying yes as a sex worker for whom sex with me would be work, and that was something I had no desire to pay for.

I have, of course, no way of knowing if my sense of things was accurate, and perhaps I was/am romanticizing and/or rationalizing, but it was what I felt and your post made me think about it for the first time in a long time, and so I thought I’d share it here.

Richard Jeffrey Newman, September 2009

The terms massage parlour and sauna cover many sorts of businesses, some of which are brothels where the massage is probably not skilled or healthful, others of which employ people skilled in massage who also offer services variously known as full-body massage, body rubs and happy endings and some of which offer nothing sexual at all. Non-sexual massage businesses are granted licences in many cities. Inspections to make sure all these places are always sex-free would be an overwhelmingly expensive task for city councils, with the result that even some licenced places become known for providing sex for money. Many such businessplaces are located in ordinary commercial strips but appear rather blank, since no goods are displayed in the windows. There is a lot of variation if you look closely, however, so here are some more photos of the sex industry as part of everyday life. A growing collection can be viewed here, without being a member of facebook.

Daye Town (Huangshi CIty, Hubei, China

Vancouver, Canada 

Hamburg, Germany (Photo Claus Petersen)

Shrine inside Hamburg parlour (Photo Claus Petersen)

Could be anywhere

New Zealand

Ireland, a residential-looking building

Incidentally, how they came to enjoy the name parlour is a mystery to me.

How is it feminist, if the goal is improving society and achieving more equality amongst human beings, to focus on crime and punishment? Published in 2001, this article provoked horror in some sectors. Although I wouldn’t write it exactly the same way now, I stand by its ideas. If Gender Equality is one of feminism’s goals, how can we imagine it without reducing everything to black and white, perpetrator and victim, crime, crime, crime?

Sex workers and Violence Against Women: Utopic Visions or Battle of the Sexes?

Laura Mª Agustín

Development, 44.3, 107-110 (2001)

Sexual exploitation and prostitution

In the movement to construct a discourse of ‘violence against women’, and thus to raise consciousness about kinds of mistreatment which before were invisible, the stage has been reached where defining crime and achieving punishment appears to be the goal. While it is progressive to raise consciousness about violence and exploitation in an attempt to deter the commitment of crimes, I hope to show that the present emphasis on discipline is very far from a utopic vision and that we should now begin to move toward other suggestions for solutions.

The following argument uses the example of prostitution or ‘sexual exploitation’ as an instance of ‘violence against women’, but the approach can apply to any attempt to deal with not only definitions of gender and sexual violence but with proposals to deal with them. When applied to adult prostitution, the term ‘sexual exploitation’ attempts to change language to make ‘voluntary’ prostitution impossible. For those who wish to ‘abolish’ prostitution, therefore, this change in terms represents progress, for now language itself will not be complicit with the violence involved. For those who may or may not want to ‘abolish’ prostitution but who in the present put the priority on improving the everyday lot of prostitutes, this language change totalizes a variety of situations involving different levels of personal will and makes it more difficult to propose practical solutions. When applied to the prostitution of children, the term ‘sexual exploitation’ represents a project to change perceptions about childhood. For those who believe that the current western model of childhood as a time of innocence should become the ‘right’ of all children in the world, this term is very important.

Criminalization of clients

Efforts to change sexist, racist and other discriminatory forms of language have long been a focus of projects of social justice in western societies, and the push to define ‘violence against women’ clearly forms part of this movement. Along with this, we see a strong move to have actions that fall within these new definitions proclaimed as crimes and their perpetrators punished. If prostitution is globally redefined as sexual exploitation (by ‘globally’ I mean that no distinctions are made according to whether prostitutes say they ‘chose’ sex work to any extent), therefore, all those who purchase sexual services, called usually ‘clients’, become ‘exploiters’. Read the rest of this entry »

Anti-sex-industry campaigning promotes the idea that society is sexually out of control and we are in imminent danger of being devoured by raging commercial sex. The introduction to Three Naked Ladies says different: For as a long as there’s been music, women have danced for the entertainment and titillation of men: Dancers Rachel Aimee, Lauri Shaw and Jodi Sh Doff discuss whether dancing is ‘going downhill,’ whether dancers have to offer more than before and how regulation works and doesn’t work inside dance venues in New York from the 1970s to today. Look for the Three Naked Ladies and a new topic every Wednesday on laurishaw.com, thedirtygirldiaries.com, and hoshookerscallgirlsandrentboys.com. Here it is revealed that dancers were once referred to as hot lunches.

Rachel Aimee: I think there’s this myth among dancers that the industry is “going downhill” and that dancers across the board are expected to do more than they used to do. I know women who have been working since the 90s and refer to that decade as the “golden age of stripping,” when dancers got paid tons of money just to dance on stage and didn’t even have to touch the customers, but it seems . . .  that dancers have been doing more than just dancing for a long time.

Lauri Shaw: Yes, and in the 90s there were girls who said the same thing about the 80s.  . .

Jodi Sh Doff: In the late 70s there was a lot less regulation. It was years before AIDS reared its ugly head. Tourists, particularly Japanese men, could come off the plane at Kennedy airport, hand a cabbie a slip of paper with just the word “Cookie” on it. Places like the Cookie Jar and Winks were standing room only, bottomless, with stages no higher than, well, than your dinner table. Girls were there for your dining and dancing pleasure, hot lunches they used to be called. The money was insane and there was no hustle. You couldn’t sit and drink with a customer — there was no room. . . By the early 80s the Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) code called the shots, and if a club served booze, the girls had to be a minimum of six feet away from the customers and they had to have g-strings. No pulling aside the g-string (although girls did), no touching yourself or them (of course we did that too). That’s when a lot of stages moved behind the actual bar. Diamond Lils was a renegade bar, hence the lack of register tape or financial records of any kind.

RA: Yes, you couldn’t get away with anything like that at clubs I’ve worked at, but I think it’s the norm for lapdances to be pretty heavy contact and sometimes include “extras” (hand jobs, etc.), especially in private rooms. Then of course there are plenty of dancers who just dance and don’t do anything illegal.

LS: All of that’s true, in fact last year Scores lost its liquor license after getting busted for prostitution in 2007. But in the 90s, blatant tricks didn’t happen out in the open like that, out on stage for everyone to see. The rule was generally “no touching the girls onstage.”

RA: I’ve also heard cops arresting dancers just for allegedly agreeing to perform an illegal act. In cases where dancers get busted, of course the clubs never take any responsibility, even if they knew perfectly well what was going on and may have been making money off it.

LS: I do remember one place where a scenario like at Diamond Lils might have flown — the Harmony Theatre. I was only there once. They kept it really dark and made no pretence of being “entertainers.” I don’t think they even bothered serving drinks. I do not remember there being a bar at all. Men sat in those theatre seats and haggled with the girls over the price of a lapdance, which was often a euphemism for a hand job or more.

JshD:The original Harmony was uptown, on 48th Street, right by the Gaiety Burlesque. The Gaiety was an all male dance house with live sex shows and a lot of action going on back stage between sets. Working girls used to hang out in the back rows just to get off their feet for a while. It was a blast, I had a few guy friends who worked the Gaiety. But the Harmony used to be specialty acts, old school star strippers and girls that could pick a dollar up off the table with their cooch. Very impressive if you ask me. I believe the name was changed to the Melody Burlesque and then the Harmony re-opened downtown and it was that free-for-all you’re talking about. All lap dancing, no pretense of being “entertainment” at all.

LS: Exactly, it was a free-for-all. Men could buy anything they wanted at the Harmony, and working girls could buy the freedom to give the men whatever they wanted. There wasn’t a bouncer in sight. The shift manager sat in the coat room, away from all the action.

RA: I’ve never worked at a place that was that free and easy, but I’ve definitely preferred working at clubs where management was more hands-off. At some of the big corporate “gentlemen’s clubs” that have taken over modern-day Manhattan, management are constantly micro-managing everything the dancers do, policing lapdances and pressuring dancers to take customers to private rooms (because they make a huge cut). I think most dancers prefer the freedom to decide for themselves what they’re comfortable with. But in general I find it’s very difficult to have open conversations about who does what in strip clubs because it’s so easy to offend people. There’s so much stigma attached to sex work that it’s easy to unintentionally make someone feel bad if you’re not willing to do something that they are willing to do. Everyone has different boundaries, so I think that tension is always going to exist in the industry.

Some people think swinging and polyamory have nothing to do with the sex industry and are offended to be associated with it. In my conception, swinging parties and sex clubs do form part of the industry, because money is exchanged for opportunities to have, watch, smell and listen to sex - one’s own and others. The managers of venues often provide possible partners for your pleasure - sex workers. And, on the other hand, many customers in sex-industry bars and clubs spend time and money without ever buying ’sex’ itself. The lines supposedly dividing these different entertainment enterprises are very blurred.

When people are offended by this inclusion, it means they think the sex industry is something negative. Since I don’t see it as negative, I’m not insulting anyone who’s associated with it. Rather, I’m engaged in figuring out how and why people think they can differentiate between commercial and non-commercial sex. As far as I can see, after studying it for many years, there’s no way to clearly separate them. Which is a result! It’s a result to find out that the separate categories they teach us about aren’t true, or are, at least, questionable. If you’re more interested in this, consider the cultural study of commercial sex, in its original conception and then later.

Morrissey’s original article moves from Ireland to Berlin and includes many entertaining details. Here I’ve excerpted only the bits most relevant to the sex industry.

More sex with strangers, The Independent (Ireland)

By Deirdre Morrissey, 30 August 2009

. . .  I asked Dominique how she came to open a sex club that hosts parties with titles such as Angel in Bondage, Saturday Night Fuck and Circus Bizarre. “Sex is one of the most interesting aspects of my life. I study it, I talk about it, I do it and I teach it,” said Dominique, in a very matter-of-fact tone. “In 1984, when I was 17,” she continued,

“I started working as a table dancer. Then later I began working as a dominatrix, and shortly afterwards I found out that my mother also worked as a dominatrix. So, the sex industry is in my blood. When I was 20, my mother wanted to retire. . . But she reluctantly agreed to manage my S&M studio and leave punishing the slaves up to me. It was hugely successful: 10 years later we had a thriving family business with 20 girls working full-time.

“Then, four years ago,” she says, “myself and my partner were . . .  at the most notorious sex resort in the world, Hedonism, in Jamaica. While lying in a hammock one day, we looked at each other and decided to open our own fantastic sex club back home in Berlin. . . where the primary focus would be on creating an environment where visitors, all driven by the same longings and desires, could meet to enact erotic fantasies and sexual dreams.”

. . . From the exterior, the club could be mistaken for somebody’s home except for the name Insomnia over the door. . . . Rory paid a cute brunette kitted out in provocative lingerie and high heels a cover charge of €20 for the two of us — very reasonable, given the nature of the club. . . . We went up a few steps and into this huge, red-lit ballroom with a ceiling that reached for the sky. A huge dance floor, with a bar down one side, was littered with deviants. Hardcore porn was being projected onto a massive, 40ft cinema screen overlooking the dance floor. Topless bartenders were shaking cocktails and above the bar was a mural of a giant, cartoonised, glammed-up orgy. . . .

The dance floor is where the foreplay takes place, but little adjoining rooms are where the real action is. A couple of scary girls had a big henchman stripped down to a red thong. The muscles on his arm bulged out either side of a thick metal armband and he wore a studded metal collar around his neck. He was bound in chains and while one of the girls was whipping him, the other tightened his leash each time he howled. . . . In the jacuzzi a couple were having fun while their respective partners watched.

A crowd was gathered around some action in a little side room. . . Some kind of operation was being performed on a girl who lay completely exposed and bound to a medical contraption of some sort. . . . a mezzanine level overlooking the dance floor. The entire area was taken up by several enormous tented beds occupied by couples, threesomes, foursomes and, in some cases, whole teams. . . .

Joylynn Chong’s Collection

Another handling of sex tourism, this time from a travel-promotion site that celebrates ‘mixed marriages’ and multiculturalism in Phuket, Thailand. Most of what we get to read on the subject are condemnations of the men without any attempt to understand the different stories and social contexts involved, so this typology of western men who marry Thai women is interesting, if biased. This is a man’s account; I’ve highlighted some suggestive bits. Note how sex-industry and non-sex-industry interactions are treated with the same even tone.

Thai Wives in Phuket

Phuket News, 28 August 2009

Here on the beautiful island of Phuket in Thailand, there are a great number of mixed Thai-Western marriages. It is turning into quite a phenomenon. Around Phuket’s schools and playgrounds it is common to see mixed-race children happily playing with the 100% Thai kids. They are usually easy to spot with fairer skin, western features and non-black hair. A whole generation of culturally diverse, multi-lingual children is growing up and will soon be quite an asset to Phuket’s tourist industry.

This phenomenon of mixed marriages in Phuket has really exploded over the last decade. Of course, the major reason is the expansion of Phuket’s tourist trade. When you have more than a million western visitors a year, it is natural that some of them will meet and fall in love with local people. Especially when the local people are so appealing. But there must be more to it than that. The tourist resorts around the Mediterranean, Caribbean and US also receive millions of foreign visitors a year. There are mixed-nationality marriages at these resorts but not thousands in a small area like there are in Phuket.

One thing stands out when you look at Phuket’s ex-pat population -the vast majority of us are men. Probably around 90% of the ex-pat population is male. That is not the case when you look at the breakdown of tourist visitors where the split is only 60-40 in favour of males. So while there are many women visiting Thailand, only a small percentage of them decide to settle here. It is probably a similar percentage to those that settle at other holiday resorts. But the men are marrying Thai women and settling here in great numbers. There is an obvious conclusion to draw. There are a lot of men coming to Phuket to actively seek wives. They are not just falling in love while on holiday - they are coming with the pre-planned intent of finding a doe-eyed Thai beauty to be their spouse.

Many men seem to be dissatisfied with their experiences of women in their home country. Society has changed rapidly in the west over the last few decades. Women have become more confident and assertive. They can be intimidating to approach and fast with a withering put-down. They are much more demanding in their relationships and expect a lot of concessions from their partners. Many men do not like it. They still want the fifties ideal of a feminine, doting wife. So they come to Thailand in search of the answer to their problem. Here, they believe they can still find women who are beautiful, feminine and attentive to their husband’s needs.

It is dangerous to generalise too much about the men who marry Thai girls and settle in Phuket. They all have their own story. Just the same, there are common patterns. You can place a lot of these men into three broad groups:

Group 1. There are those that come to Phuket for ‘normal’ reasons such as work or a break from work. It is natural that some of these people will meet and fall in love with locals. This happens all over the world. There is no doubt that Thai women are very charming so perhaps it is more common here than elsewhere.

Group 2. Then there are those who fall in love with their bargirl. The girls who work in the sex industry are good at selling themselves; it is their job. It is amazing how many men fall for a Thai girl who they only planned to take back to their hotel for the night. It is not usually the hardened sex-tourists who fall. They tend to pick up a new girl every night with no emotional attachment. It is the new guys. The men who come to Phuket for the first time, not quite knowing what to expect. They probably have an idea that they are going to pick up a prostitute but they don’t know how it works. They end up doing the GFE (girl friend experience - see Phuket Naughty Nightlife). That is picking up a bar girl and then keeping her for the entire length of the holiday. They act as if they are boyfriend-girlfriend. The girl gets plenty of time to weave her magic. She tugs the guy’s heartstrings with her life story until he is brimming with sympathy. She gives him lots of affection and by the end of his holiday, he is in love.

Group 3. Then there are those who come with the pre-planned intent of finding a wife. They have thought about it and come to the reasoned conclusion that a Thai wife would make their life better. Some of these guys will look for their new wife around the sex venues of Patong. Others want to stay away from the sex industry girls. They may try dating agencies or internet matching services. Some of them will try to meet ‘good’ Thai women away from the tourist resorts. Their approaches may vary but the conclusion is the same - they think a life in Phuket with a Thai wife would be better than their current life back home.

Whatever the reasons, the mixed Thai-Western marriage is now an established part of Phuket’s scenery. Not all of these Western men find their dream wife. Many of these marriages run into problems but that is true of marriages the world over. There can be extra problems related to marriages between people from different cultures. Still a lot of western men are very happy with their choice.