Prostitution: A Hot & Cold Retrospective
©2006 by Christine Beatty


FORWARD
Sexwork is a term that covers the gamut of the sex/adult industry. It includes prostitution, pornography, professional domination and phonesex. Given the cultural ambivalence toward sex — especially in the United States where often puritanical and/or timid attitudes create a fascination with sex that is tempered by discomfort — it is difficult to have a mature or rational conversation on the topic. Nonetheless I will attempt to do so here.

As someone who's worked as a prostitute, from a short stint of streetwalking and barroom tricking to incall/outcall escortry, I have firsthand experience and thus empathy for my for sisters still doing it. Furthermore as a progressive, social libertarian, I find the marginalization of sexworkers, especially prostitutes, and the illegality of sexwork to create far more detriment than any social good.


RETROSPECTIVE AND PERSPECTIVE
Most people look down on prostitutes, even the guys who frequent them. It is a very stigmatizing profession, and I am sometimes amazed at how easily I slipped into it. On one hand it made perfect sense, considering I was already stigmatized just by being transsexual. Many transsexual people face a plenitude of discrimination and hateful treatment on a daily basis and, as relatively obvious as I was in 1986, I was a sitting duck for abuse. On the other hand I'm amazed I had the guts to be a hooker, considering how shy I was back then (and still can be).

I can honestly say I have no regrets about my time spent in the "Sisterhood of the Towel" (a delightful euphemism). It expanded my horizons, paid my bills, brought me excitement and occasional friendship, and it even helped my self-image. Furthermore those days gave me a background of experience for contributing to (and benefitting from) sexworker support groups and my ongoing sexworker advocacy activism. However, I'd be lying to assert that I didn't have some baggage from my prostitution days, though it's debatable if the emotional hangover might not be attributable to some other cause.

Being typically shy I was forced to overcome my self-consciousness or I would have starved turning tricks. Being compelled to encounter many strangers, I learned a lot about people. Though it was largely a single-dimensional education, most of the people I met were horny, lonely guys, it did give me insight into some of the complexities of human nature, and a compassion for some of the most primitive and misunderstood human instincts. With some notable exceptions, I liked most of my customers — or at least I did not dislike them. I did not always understand their sexual needs, but I did my best to accommodate them without judgment. As a result I became a more tolerant and accepting and mature person.

Financially, prostitution saved my ass in 1986. The discrimination I experienced as a transsexual woman had me on the fast track to either starvation or reverting back to living as a guy, both of which were unacceptable alternatives. Sometimes the income was so good I was able not only to afford my basic living expenses, female hormones and new additions to my wardrobe, I also had extra money for music gear, a new television and other toys. However, the elation of my newfound independence was soon subducted under the depression caused by being ostracized as a TS woman, compounded by the isolation of sexwork. Like many sexworkers, I felt like an outsider.

The lion's share of my emotional distress was caused by transphobic bigotry, and the daily putdowns and invective hurled at me by total strangers. More often than not the praise of my clients — "you're so beautiful, so sexy" — was a welcome counterpoint to some lowlife on the street hollering that I was a freak or a faggot. At times hooking was partly an ego trip: the relatively easy money and an indescribable sense of power as I saw how desired I was, at least in those moments in the session. The flipside of that was that, after they got their nut, some of them seemed to feel guilty or even disgusted, and at times I took on their baggage, transferring their negative feelings to myself.

Our cultural ambivalence about sex, heavily compounded by the stigma of sexwork, contributes significantly to the misgivings both customers and sexworkers feel about their exchange. Even if both parties feel the exchange is a fair one — they both get what they realistically expect — the taboo can create guilt and low self-esteem. Aside from a partner he might be cheating on, though "cheating" may be a misnomer, a customer has no reason to feel guilty for satisfying his sexual urges unless they involve harming another. A sexworker has even less reason to feel bad; if anything she could take pride in her work for the different levels on which she does good.

People, men specifically, are always going to have sexual needs, and it is unrealistic to expect they can always suppress them on satisfy them with masturbation. This leaves a man with a limited number of options when it comes to expedient sexual gratification: rape, deceit, finding a partner with similar inclinations or buying the services of a prostitute. Rape is clearly unacceptable, and while leading on a partner with lies is not as bad as forcible sex, it leaves its own kind of scars. Given that women are typically not as sexually driven as men, only gay men are easily able to locate others interested in sex without commitment, so this leaves prostitutes as a mean by which a man can most easily scratch his sexual itch and with the least harm to others.

A good prostitute not only gives her clients a convenient and honest means of having sex, she can also teach him safer sex techniques — mostly by insisting on them in her work — and how to please other women partners. As a prostitute I was also a sympathetic ear, sometimes even functioning an a quasi-therapist, providing companionship along with sex and even a level of intimacy. Because I did like many of my clients, I was not falsely showing concern or kindness, and they knew it. I provided a valuable service that made my clients happy and helped prevent others from being hurt.

Social conservatives, self-righteous moralists and other busybodies often argue that prostitution breeds crime, however that is like asserting that smog creates automobiles. It is the very illegality of prostitution that gives greedy, fearful and sociopathic people an opportunity to commit real crimes in conjunction with sexwork, because they know that the victim is less likely to report it. This is true of both a john ripped off by a dishonest whore — especially if he is married or somehow otherwise vulnerable — and also true of the prostitute robbed, beaten or raped by a trick or a pimp, because of their realistic belief that the police will not take them seriously.

If anything, the criminalization of prostitution makes us more unsafe. Aside from crimes exploiting the black market, underworld nature of the prostitution, it squanders police resources at a time when government budgets are strained to capacity. In addition, the furtive nature of prostitution makes health monitoring next to impossible. Only when a prostitute is arrested and convicted may she be tested for sexually transmitted disease, and even then only for HIV. Given this setting, a client buys a hooker's services at his own risk.

Were prostitution legalized and regulated, health regulations and standard protocols would be among the more important benefits, which would lessen the health risk for both sexworkers and their clients. Furthermore, police activity could be greatly scaled back to concentrate on real crime, making our society safer. We would not only also be able to divert our tax dollars toward true crimefighting, the licensing of prostitutes would also generate revenues for government. In addition it would be easier to collect income tax from prostitutes. Finally, with regulation hooking could be kept out of neighborhoods where it is either dangerous for both buyer and seller, and also away from residential neighborhoods.

I believe that those with the emotional strength for sexwork should be allowed to do so, as long as it's in a safe and responsible manner. So long as men desire sexual release without the responsibility for a relationship, there will need to be prostitutes. While I can't exactly claim to look back on my work as a prostitute with only fond memories, I can definitely assert I do so without regret or shame. I have some fascinating and funny stories to tell (of course, never divulging my clients' identities), and I believe I have better appreciation for what I have today, because of my past. I am truly grateful for whom I am now compared with who I was.