The Naked Anthropologist

Tag Archives: demand

English teacher meets hostess, South Korea standbar

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

Phuket’s Sex Tourism, Wife Seeking, Thai/tourist Marriages and a husband’s voice?

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.

– Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Beirut’s sex tourism, sex industry, sex work – and a pimp’s voice

I notice that more of these reports from around the world are asking pimps for information, particularly about money issues. The voice of the pimp usually brags, claims terrific success, high earnings. Sex workers sound like passive objects indeed. Take, for example, the report from Malaysia. But rather than discount everything these businessmen say, I listen to the logistical information they provide. Note in this story about Beirut how arrangements are made between tourists and sex workers – not so different from those mentioned in a recent post about seamen, ships in port and party girls. Note, too, that the first sex tourist mentioned is a young Saudi woman who enjoys freedom and night life in Beirut: no mention of paying for sex in her case.

The concept of sex tourism is another that gets thrown around without much investigation about what it means in specific circumstances. Many people on holiday feel like experimenting, want to go wild, enjoy breaking their hometown’s sexual norms. Paying may be involved, but payments may be made to guides, translators and natives who present as pick-ups. To say sex tourist is to imply that someone conspired to travel abroad for the express purpose of having sex; more often tourists buy all sorts of services, sometimes including sex, and sometimes not getting what they bargained for.

I talked not long ago about different prices for sex workers from different ethnic groups, in relation to a sign in Hong Kong. This issue arises here, too.

Beirut’s seamy side offers sex and fun for Arab tourists

Weedah Hamzah, 22 August 2009, m&c

Beirut: On the surface, the Mediterranean coastal city of Beirut is an upmarket tourist destination, offering Arab tourists good weather, good food, and good times. But beyond the tables heavy with food and the shining lights, Beirut’s greatest attraction is sex. Arab tourists flock in the thousands to Lebanon from Gulf countries every summer. More and more, Arab men seem to be attracted by the growing opportunities to engage in sex tourism.

Lebanon has long been known to cater to all desires: a place where Arab tourists can break taboos they must contend with in their home countries. Some just want some freedom. Hind, an 18-year-old Saudi girl, is spending her summer in Lebanon, enjoying the chance to show off her striking red lipstick, large black eyes and black veil. She cruises in her three-wheel all-terrain vehicle at midnight in the overcrowded main streets of Aley, a town 30 kilometres from Beirut, where most of the cafes and restaurants are packed with Gulf tourists and Lebanese expatriates. “For me this is total freedom, I can meet people and enjoy the night life as well,” Hind told the German Press Agency dpa.

But much of the growing tourism industry is still focused on men interested in sex. One man from Saudi Arabia, who requested not to be identified told dpa, “in Beirut there is good life, good weather, good service and most of all beautiful girls.” Lebanese women – with their outgoing characters, love of life and, most of all, their trendy European looks – have in recent years become central to attracting more Arab tourists into the country.

One of the hottest spots for such tourism is Maameltein, the red- light district of Lebanon, 20 kilometres north of Beirut. It’s a place where Arab tourists can watch beautiful women from Belarus, Ukraine, and Romania performing naked on stage. A night out with one of the dancers can cost 1,000 dollars.

One pimp in Maameltein, who asked to be identified as Carlos, told dpa that there’s no shortage of women, either local or from Europe, in Maameltein. ‘The rates vary, the Eastern European girls are the most highly paid, Lebanese come next, and then Iraqis,’ Carlos said. ‘During the summer our main clients are men from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf states, while in winter we have many Lebanese clients,’ he said. In his late 40s, Carlos is often described as the best pimp in the district, catering to a clientele of mostly rich Saudi men.

Touring Maameltein with Carlos, one can see dozens of cars packed with young and middle-aged Gulf tourists cruising the area to get what Carlos describes as a ‘good catch.’ During the drive, Carlos receives calls from his clients. ‘My friend, I need three Ukrainian and one Lebanese for tonight to come to a party at my residence,’ Carlos quoted the caller, whom he said was from Saudi Arabia. This would cost ‘between 5,000 and 6,000 dollars per night because this is delivery to the residence,’ he said, puffing a large cigar.

Elsewhere, many of the women are Iraqis who have fled their wartorn country and discovered prostitution as an easy way to earn money. ‘I fled to Lebanon after the war in Iraq, with my mother and sister after my father and two brothers were killed,’ said one woman who wanted to be identified as Noura. ‘We were without money, so we started working here.’ Noura, her mother and sister work in three different bars. I know this is not a good job but we want to live and this is the easiest way to earn a living,’ she said, waving goodbye as her client arrived.

Noura’s pimp, who asked to be identified as Kamal, said Iraqi women find that ‘this is their only means of survival, especially if they have no other training or skills in which to support themselves.’ Asked the rate for an Iraqi woman, Kamal says: ‘If they are virgins and it is their first time, I can get a good price: between 1,000 and 1,500 dollars. If they are experienced, then it’s between 400 and 500 dollars.’ As for Lebanese women, ‘we sell them only to foreign men for fear that one day their families would know about their secret job,’ added Kamal. ‘I can tell you this has been a good season this year for us here,’ Kamal said as he drove away.

Prostitution in Lebanon is practised undercover after a 1998 law forbidding brothels. Legal licenses are limited to places offering sex shows. Continue reading →

Ships, shipping, seamen and sex work

The tradition of inviting prostitutes onto ships at anchor is old. Nowadays, many of these invitations apply to ships anchored some distance from actual ports. Migration regulations being what they are, many seamen cannot go ashore – visas might never be granted or be too much trouble to try to apply for. Therefore, it’s common for recreation to be brought on board. A few years back I visited the Caribbean coasts of Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Colombia, where I met people who try to make money when ships arrive and seamen want to party. Someone on the ship rings up a contact on shore who puts out the call to meet at a certain small boat that will sail out to the side of the freighter. A lot of these are young women, some are young men, some are older and a lot of them are poor. Climbing up the precarious rope ladder above the sea onto the deck is a necessary requirement.

Parties last days, fun is had by some, money is paid to some, and sometimes these groups overlap. A lot of it is about drink, drugs, food and music. Most people who board ships to share leave with sailors do not call themselves prostitutes or sex workers. They are party girls who like long hedonistic sieges and who accept gifts when it’s time to go home, and they are known the world over.

To meet seafarers who do have permission to disembark, sex workers and folks with no such identity make their way to port bars when ships come in, sometimes migrating from the interior.

Ghana Sex Workers Hold Elections

This story is an odd mix that I’m posting because we rarely see anything like it from West Africa. The demand for sex workers’ rights is encouraging, but what about those chairpersons? If anyone has corroborating information, please share it.

Sex workers hold elections

Spectator, 8 August 2009

Accra: Spectator investigations have revealed that a well organised sex trade is currently in place in some parts of the capital, an indication that sex workers are gunning to legitimise the flesh trade to demand their rights.

Indeed, the infamous ladies of the night have been observed to be organising their vocation in a more closely knit fashion and some of the emerging groups have held elections to select executive officers to run and co-ordinate affairs of members.

Talking to The Spectator, one of the sex workers (with a fixed address), on condition of anonymity, said the elected officers of the group she belongs to include a chairperson, a secretary and a treasurer, supported by a disciplinary committee. “The executives have been constituted as a result of challenges we face in this business,” she said. According to her, if she was seen talking to the press she would be slapped with a fine of GH¢50 and two bottles of schnapps for divulging information to an outsider.

In an answer as to the type of customers they serviced, she said most of the customers belong to the lower income group who are faced with accommodation problems.”People who sleep in groups or in the open and therefore cannot host women, find solace in our rooms,” she said.

She, however, admitted that apart from such groups, other people like married men who are fed up with their wives visit their abode and never regret it. Some of the customers, she said, preferred to bond with the women they liked most and visited them as friends, but such customers are bad business and cannot be entertained.” According to her, when such a customer wanted a different woman for a change and matters were not handled carefully “it often erupted into full-scale-verbal exchanges and even degenerated into blows”.

The sex worker said sometimes the low patronage of their services was an indication that a customer has become fed up with his regular woman. Under such circumstances the magajia‘s (chairperson’s) duty is to liaise with other clients facing the same form of disinterest for a swap of partners. “This strategy makes us look fresh to the new man and business picks up again,” she said, adding that “the trade is such that when a fresh young lady also appears on the scene and all the attention of customers is on her, she is given a directive by the magajia to close ‘business’ early so that other people will get their fair share of the cake. “Failure to comply with the directive means an automatic transfer from the base to another place so that other people’s businesses will not suffer,” she added, implying that there are some forms of stringent business edicts that cannot be defied.

Another revelation was that all the sex workers who happen to have either husbands or serious boyfriends must make them stay away during business hours and admit them only after mid-night to warm the bed of their partners. “There is no room for maternity leave as our rooms are hot cakes for other potential sex workers,” said the woman. “Both pregnant and lactating mothers are made to find elsewhere because when children are brought into the picture it brings about many difficulties.” According to her, “Children beyond a certain age are encouraged to excuse their mothers by hanging around with neighbours when a session is in progress or taking a stroll until business is over”. She said if they are young and fast asleep in the room, they are not bothered and business could still go on with out any fuss.

When asked whether she knew her HIV status, the lady answered in the negative, contending that “having stayed in the business for long, I am too much afraid to go for voluntary counseling and testing (VCT)”. She said in the past, they charged special rates for ‘raw’ sex, but ever since the menace of HIV/AIDS dawned on them, no matter the money or the status of the person, “we fit you with a condom before any sex act takes place.”

Some of the flash points for the commercial sex workers who parade the streets in Accra are the Cantonment area especially near the Akufo-Addo Circle, Danquah Circle and surrounding areas and the Kwame Nkrumah Circle and its immediate environs. The sex workers hide in the dark and show themselves when they see men coming, with some boldly calling up saying, “Do you want to know the colour of my underwear?”

When a sex worker hooks a customer who doesn’t want to follow her home, she takes him to a cheap hotel where the customer pays a fee of between GH¢5 and GH¢10 for short time of about 30 minutes, so says this lady of the night. For those men who cannot afford that ‘luxury’ they are bundled into nearby kiosks, urinals or makeshift brothels operated by small drinking spots for quick service.

King Trinity Akpalie, executive director of Great Vision Africa, a non-governmental organisation based in Accra which is committed to promoting abstinence and faithfulness against the spread of HIV in Ghana has this to say: “Such people are living in a fool’s paradise with their reliance on condoms as a preventive measure against the HIV/AIDS virus”.

According to him, the American Foundation for AIDS Research had stated that 20 per cent of American condom users were infected with HIV due to misuse and manufacturers’ deficiency. Mr Akpalie said research indicated that the level of education of users influenced their ability to use condom correctly. “This puts the developing world; especially the low come groups, who are, predominantly illiterates and patronise the services of sex workers, at a higher risk of contracting the HIV virus while using condom,” he said.

Ghana’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) released in 2006, which monitored the situation of children, women and men in the assessment of condom use in Ghana came out with the finding that the likelihood of engaging in higher risk sex and using a condom increased with the people’s level of education. The survey said 25 per cent of women and 33 per cent of men aged between 15-49 with primary education used a condom during their last high-risk sex encounters in the year before the MICS, while 48 per cent of women and 60 per cent of men with secondary and higher levels of education used a condom.

Bank of Japan counts brothels to gauge demand for sex entertainment

Susukino by Daisuke Morita

The keyword here is demand, as in how much money are customers prepared to pay to have sex? Which businesses thrive because they are popular?

The Bank of Japan commissioned a report entitled Susukino, Recent Trends and Changes to a Pleasure District, hoping that, by counting brothels, it would be able to gauge the demand for services, a sector of the economy becoming more important as exports fail. The Pleasure District investigated is Susukino, in Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido, Japan’s second largest island.

The report says Susukino is currently home to 264 sex businesses (soaplands and others), along with normal hotels, love hotels, restaurants, cafes, fast-food shops, discos, nightclubs, karaoke, cinemas and many kinds of bars. The creative and practical aspect of the bank’s report was its focus on services in general, in the form of entertainment, whether sex, food, drink or music.

Bloomberg.com , 6 August 2009

The number of sex parlors in the Susukino red-light district in Sapporo more than quadrupled in the past 20 years.

“Any study into services is most welcome,” said Martin Schulz, senior economist at Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo. “We’ve got hundreds of studies on exports and manufacturing. What’s needed is creative thinking on services and if that includes brothels, so be it.”

How to move street prostitution indoors and across borders: Italy and Switzerland

This story from last year illustrates how policies intended to repress prostitution result in prostitution moving and changing shape – not disappearing. Repression stops the particular and usually visible, which may be all that was desired but is rarely what campaigners say they want. Here, punters drive from northern Italy into southern Switzerland, where brothels are legal.

See a recent story about Goa, for example, where an entire red-light district was torn down, with the result that Goans now see commercial sex everywhere. Entrepreneurs in the sex industry adapt easily to changing conditions. See recent stories on Sonagachi in India and on Malaysia and Korea. I published an academic article on the irrationality of legal prostitution regimes last year.

Then there is the ever-present story showing that even when European sex businesses are legal, many or most workers are migrants. A report on prostitution in Ticino (in Italian) explains why undocumented migrants may not bother to register and become legal (when they are eligible),

Here’s the Swiss news story.

Ticino’s brothels profit from Italy clampdown

15 September 2008, swissinfo, based on an article by Nicole della Pietra

Tough new measures introduced in Italy have sent many customers across the border to brothels in Switzerland. Prostitution is currently booming in Ticino, Switzerland’s Italian speaking canton. But many of the girls involved are illegal. The authorities say they are keeping a close eye on the situation. Half a dozen brothels line the road that links the north and south of the canton at Monte Ceneri. The establishments are doing brisk business, to which the stream of visitors attests. “There are more brothels here than houses,” remarks a young army recruit who has been posted to the Ceneri barracks.

Apart from a few Swiss soldiers and the odd local, most of the clients here and at other Ticino brothels are Italian – as can be seen by the huge number of cars with Italian number plates. Some places in the Lugano and Chiasso region, further south, have an even greater density of brothels. The small village of Melano (population 1,000) alone has four. Cross-border sex commuters are attracted by the closeness to the A2 motorway through the canton, the standards of comfort, security and hygiene and the competitive prices.

The Italian media have long been talking about the “Ticino phenomenon”. The prestigious La Stampa newspaper went so far as to describe the canton in an August article as “a brothel paradise” and “Mecca of luxury”, while highlighting establishments’ “discreet charm”.

Clients may enjoy a certain freedom in Ticino but the same cannot be said for Italy. Brothels have been illegal there for 50 years, which has led to a rise in street prostitution. The government, anxious to change the situation, issued a clampdown decree at the beginning of this year. In Lombardy, which borders Ticino, the authorities have decided to issue a €500 (SFr796) fine to kerb crawlers. And in Milan police have stepped up patrols of red light districts. Video surveillance and the internet are also being employed.

Swiss police believe that the Lombardy situation could have consequences for Ticino. “We don’t have any precise data yet but border regions are certainly going to have an influx of visitors from Italy,” said Alex Serfilippi, an inspector with a special unit which fights the proliferation of prostitution in the canton.

In the week in which swissinfo visited Ticino, two new establishments announced that they were opening for business – adding to the 37 places already in operation in the canton. The sex business adapts quickly to the needs of its clients and to offer and demand, say experts. “We only need to be absorbed by a big enquiry for a few days to see an immediate upsurge in the number of girls in the area,” explained Serfilippi. “We keep applying pressure every day as it’s the only way of stopping the phenomenon from growing even further,” he added.

The prostitution boom is a godsend for some of the area’s hotel and restaurant owners who have seen better days. Some have converted their businesses into brothels, complete with champagne bar and rooms for hire.

On average between five and 20 girls work in these types of establishments. Most come from eastern Europe, with a third coming from Latin America. “We have recently seen a massive increase in the number of Romanians,” added Serfilippi. The police officer estimates that there is a maximum of 600 prostitutes in the canton, of whom between 60 per cent and 80 per cent are illegal. Added to this are the dozens of saunas and massage parlours which each employ one or two young women. Since 2002 a total of 490 people have signed up to the cantonal prostitution register.

“It’s unfortunately extremely difficult, if not impossible, to provide precise figures for this very fluid milieu,” said Serfilippo. The crime expert and journalist Michel Venturelli believes that south of the Alps the number of prostitutes could be as high as 1,200. . .

Brothel discounts in Germany for green and unemployed customers

There are all kinds of brothels appealing to different types of customers, as there are all kinds of bars and restaurants. This article highlights German businesses whose customers might appreciate ‘green’ initiatives or be unemployed. Like the other day’s photos of ordinary brothel buildings in the daylight, these ideas show how the sex industry can be part of everyday life.

German Sex Industry’s Bid To Bounce Back

Christel Kucharz, Passau, Germany, 14 July 2009

The sex industry in Germany has been hit hard by the global financial crisis, inspiring brothel owners to offer all kinds of perks to help boost business. Maison d’envie, a small brothel in Berlin, has come up with a rather unusual promotion for its clients: It has gone green. Customers who arrive on foot or by bicycle, or who can show their public transportation tickets are offered a $4.50 dollar discount off the usual $55 fee for 30 minutes.

The discounts are offered on the brothel’s Web site, which is for adults only, as Öko-Preis (eco price). Regina Goetz, the manager of Maison d’envie, told ABC News the environmentally friendly offer, which was established two weeks ago, is working fine, “On average, about 10 percent of our customers a day ask for the eco-price service.”

Asked what gave her the idea, she said, “I like the idea because it’s good for business, it’s good for the environment and it saves the customers the hassle to find parking, which is always difficult here. I hope the discount will help boost business, which is really bad these days.” . .

Villa Bijou Bar, a small brothel in Dresden, saw its average number of guests sinking from about 150 per week to about 80 so it came up with the idea to offer unemployed customers a 20 percent discount. Brothel manager, Silvia Rau, told local TV station MDR she hopes the new policy will bring customers back and also provide them with some comfort “in difficult times.”

The initiative, according to Rau, came from the prostitutes’ union, who proposed a discount measure as a way of helping the long-term jobless out of depression.

Prostitution in Germany is legal and the industry employs an estimated 400,000 to 450,000 people.

Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures

Migrant clients, table and taxi dances and sex work in New York

I have excerpted here some of the ethnographic material from a research article that has much more in it, on how Mexican migrant men’s loneliness affects their sexual behaviour. The article illustrates how ethnography can illuminate our understanding of the sex industry. It’s a description of one particular place in New York City and the activities of one specific group of young men from Puebla, Mexico. I’ve chosen to excerpt two kinds of material: 1) description of the site and dancing and 2) how male socialising may depend more on watching and talking than directly on sex.

Miguel Muñoz-Laboy, Jennifer S. Hirsch and Arturo Quispe-Lazaro. ‘Loneliness as a Sexual Risk Factor for Male Mexican Migrant Workers.’ American Journal of Public Health 2009, Vol 99, No. 5, 806-7.

‘. . . The signs on the outside of the La Garza club provided an accurate depiction of the differences between strip clubs or brothels and this type of social space. These signs said in both English and Spanish:

Every day beautiful dancers; Monday – Mexican nights tequilazo; Tuesday – all dancers in sexy babydolls; Wednesday – bikini nights; Thursday – sexy dancer nurses; Saturday – all dancers in micro-miniskirts; Sunday – school girls night; Happy Hour from 4 to 10pm, $3 beers and house drinks; no caps or hats, no sneakers, no jeans; decent place to dance; we are looking for dancers.

. . . La Garza was a 1-floor [table-dance] club with bathrooms in the basement, a 20-foot-long bar, 1 large-screen TV, 1 pool table that can only be used by VIPs, a dance floor in the center of the club, and 3 small seating sections around the dance floor. There is no entrance fee. Each dance costs $4 but clients can get a private dancer for $40 per hour.

. . . some couples danced physically close whereas others did not; some danced fast, others slow. However, reggaeton songs were danced almost the same across patrons; men were pressed against the columns or standing by the walls by the women dancers who would thrust their backs and buttocks against the men’s penis area (this is also known as grinding). Reggaeton was probably the most erotic dance in the club, and, yet, the most common behavior among men in the club was drinking and watching women dance, with other men, by themselves, or with other women.

. . . The men who attended La Garza can be divided into 3 main groups: (1) those that went mostly to dance with women, (2) those that mostly spoke and flirted with women and rarely danced and; (3) those that went to drink and watch, but rarely danced or spoke with the female dancers.

. . . [In] the second group . . . men paid women to speak with them for the duration of a single song (approximately 3 minutes) but most often they started their conversation in the middle of the previous song). They expressed that they had a better chance of getting together with any of the women by talking with them rather than by dancing and grinding. . . . Men . . .talked about their experiences in places like La Garza as a way of being able to talk to women without the ‘complications’ of doing it at work or in the neighborhood. As expressed by research participants, these complications induded the difficulty of initiating a conversation with a strange woman, the need to avoid sexual harassment in the workplace, and prohibitions on men being able to talk to clients in many of the restaurant establishments in which they worked. . . .’

Exotic sex: diversity, ethnicity, whiteness and local prices

Chinese Girl 250
Hong Kong Girl 250
Malay Girl 200
Philippine Girl 200
Russian Girl 590

Following up on whiteness and diversity in New Zealand’s sex industry, here’s a reminder of the variability of the ‘exotic’ and its consequent pricing. In another post, I reproduced a punter’s report on how much various sorts of karaoke services run. On the Hong Kong brothel sign to the left, the bits in English show that prices differ by nationality or geography. Now thanks to Leon Rocha, here’s a translation of the Chinese showing others advertised traits.

Many researchers and rights advocates would like to ignore the way colour and phenotype influence business practices, preferences and stigma, but I think it’s better to look them squarely in the face. Perceptions of more and less attractive are central to the sex industry.

Yellow panel, from left to right, top to bottom
1st row: Pageants from many countries
2nd: Many beauties like clouds [i.e. countless numbers]
3rd: The best service
4th: Pick/choose anything you like
5th: Welcome
Red panel
1st: Gentle Girls from Up North
2nd: Incredibly Hot Local Girl
3rd: White and Clean Malay
4th: Passionate Filipinos
5th: Blonde Foreign Girl
Orange panel
1st: Innocent virgins
2nd: Office Ladies [OL] with long legs
3rd: Beer Babes
4th: [snippet] probably something to do with Karaoke

So we see how the marketing manager for the brothel not only highlights country-names but also innocence, passion, cleanliness, long legs, a liking for beer and associations with offices. Note that the presumably less exotic local girl makes up for it through hotness, and the white person is Malaysian. Chinese girls from the north are advertised as gentle. And although the blonde Russian commands the highest price in this place at this time, she won’t be perceived as more than twice as desirable everywhere she goes.

– Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Sex Work: A Review of Recent Literature

Sex Work: A Review of Recent Literature

Qualitative Sociology 32, 1, pp 213–220 (March 2009)

Tijuana, México. Photo: Tomas Castelazo

by AnneMarie Cesario and Lynn Chancer

This sex-positive review essay should be very useful to students.

Political economy and bounded authenticity, agency and risk, globalization and migrant
service work, the relationship of men to ‘prostitution’ and its stereotyped image as just “women’s work”: the four books surveyed take research on sex work farther than it has been, sociologically, in years. Surely, more yet needs to be done to fill in other parts of the enormous social scientific canvas with which we began. But . . . at least the study of sex work seems well on its way to establishing its own deserved legitimacy.

Books reviewed:

Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry. Laura María Agustín. London: Zed Books, 2007.

Temporarily Yours. Elizabeth Bernstein. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Male Sex Work: A Business Doing Pleasure. Todd G. Morrison and Bruce W. Whitehead (Eds.). Binghamton: Haworth Press, 2007.

Sex Work: A Risky Business. Teela Sanders. Portland: Willan Publishing, 2005.

Street walkers and vigilantes in a New Zealand community

My main interest in bringing up New Zealand’s Prostitution Reform Act is to point out its anti-migration side, disguised as anti-trafficking. I will come back to that, but, since most responses to the post revolve around the question of whether street sex workers are protected by and benefit from the Act, I am following up on the street question today. Please read the interesting comments on the previous post if you haven’t already.

Street prostitution gets most of the attention worldwide: from the media, from lawmakers, from moral entrepreneurs, from street gangs, from sociologists and from all manner of other people. Street sex workers in New Zealand are unquestionably covered by the legislation and that is an improvement over the situation in most places. But just the same as in other places, and despite the law, some communities are highly offended and annoyed by street prostitution in their neighbourhoods. In NZ, both the street sex workers and their clients are permitted to exchange money for sex.

The greenish picture above shows a scene from a link sent to me by Jo Richdale to a video made by annoyed citizens in one community. The sex workers in the video object to vigilante actions intended to discourage clients. The vigilantes command clients to leave and threaten to tell their families if they come back (a classic anti-demand tactic). The video was edited and shown on television. A second video depicts the discussion a presenter then held with one sex worker, one policeman and two vigilantes.

Laws can only achieve so much, and negative incidents don’t prove that laws are bad. In this case, the law has not changed some people’s minds about street hooking and kerb crawling. But, as the sex worker in the discussion points out, much more could be done to reduce the problems communities perceive. So people interested in how to draft prostitution law should be interested in New Zealand’s experiences and what else might be done. The fact that a legislative model is better than others doesn’t mean it can’t be discussed or that we should be afraid to find any weaknesses in it.

Sex industry adapts to anti-trafficking laws, Korea

This story shows how laws aimed at suppressing the sex industry are met with creative resistance. Businesspeople invent new ways to put workers and clients together without drawing so much police attention. The police know this will happen but are anyway under-funded to make more than a minimum effort. The report provides some historical background that links present-day commercial-sex forms to earlier colonisation of Korea by Japan and the USA. I’ve drawn attention to interesting details in bold. Note the presence of a Minister of Gender Equality and the photo of thousands of sex workers protesting the anti-sex trafficking law.

Joong Ang Daily, Seoul

Commercial sex survives despite crackdown

A man walks down an alley in Mia-ri Texas, Seoul, where sex workers still operate.

By Brian Lee, 16 March 2009

“Oppa, wanna have some fun?” A middle-aged woman throws a questioning look at a male passerby who shakes his head and goes about his business. She’s standing at an intersection in Yeongdeungpo, western Seoul, which used to be one of the better known red-light districts in the capital. Most of the storefronts are shuttered during the daytime and come alive at sundown.

But business is slower than usual, partly because of the bad economy but also, according to government officials, due to the success of the Anti-Sex Trafficking Law, which was enacted five years ago amid great fanfare to beef up existing anti-prostitution laws. However, except for cosmetic changes, the lucrative sex trade is still very much around, experts say. The only difference is that since the law was enforced, the sex trade has evolved.

More visible outlets such as the one in Yeongdeungpo have taken the brunt of the law as have the once notorious neighborhoods of northern Seoul’s Cheongnyangni and Mia-ri Texas, which are both scheduled for urban redevelopment. But it is still possible to buy sex in these areas, like Cheongnyangni, for as little as 70,000 won ($47.50).

Business as usual

A tell-tale sign that business was, if not booming, reasonably healthy came earlier this month when the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency announced it would transfer hundreds of police officers in the southern Seoul districts of Gangnam, Seocho and Suseo. The move has been widely interpreted as an effort to sever ties between the police and entertainment establishments offering sex services. The decision to transfer the officers, all from a range of departments, came after it was discovered that police officers had inappropriate relationships with massage parlors in those areas. The current going rate for massage parlors is 170,000 won in cash and 190,000 with a credit card. As credit card records are easy to trace, customers and owners tend to prefer cash.

3000 Seoul sex workers protest Anti-Sex Trafficking Law, 2007

Nowadays, adding to the sex-for-cash businesses, hyugae-tel (resting rooms), where customers can call up sex workers and then later join them at another venue, are expanding rapidly, while commercial sex offered online, which is harder to track, is also growing. Still, government officials say the implementation of the law from five years ago has helped significantly reduce the scale of the sex industry. Continue reading →

Sex worker rally in London against Policing and Crime Bill

Thanks to several readers who sent me versions of this news.

Morning Star online.co.uk

Sex workers rally against new Crime Bill

Tuesday 31 March 2009 – Paul Haste

Sex workers smothered London’s Piccadilly Circus in red umbrellas on Tuesday to protest against the criminalisation of their profession.

Scores of workers from the nearby Soho district gathered at the Eros statue in the heart of the capital, stopping traffic to highlight their opposition to the government’s Policing and Crime Bill.

Carrying the red umbrellas as a symbol of their resistance to the new law, sex workers’ rights activists declared that it would “push prostitution further underground and push us into more danger.”

English Collective of Prostitutes organiser Cari Mitchell explained that the Bill, championed by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, would “make it easier to for the police to arrest sex workers on the street and give them powers to seize our earnings and property regardless of whether there is a conviction.”

Referring to reports that Ms Smith’s ministerial expenses included pornographic DVDs, Ms Mitchell said: “It is ironic that the minister makes expense claims for products from the sex industry while waging this fundamentalist moral crusade against us.”

Ms Mitchell pointed out that “many sex workers are single mothers and prostitution is a survival strategy to deal with debt, low wages and unemployment.

“As the recession hits harder, more women are likely to resort to prostitution and the government should be providing resources and support for them, rather than stigmatising and criminalising them.”

Sex worker activist Ava Caradonna, who organises English classes for migrant workers in Soho, insisted that the women and men who sell sexual services “don’t need and don’t want other people making choices for us.

“Ministers want to criminalise our work, but we want to do what we do – and we want to organise and take charge of our own lives to make conditions better,” she added.

Danish activist Zanne agreed, pointing out that “sex workers all over the world are organising,” while Italian Andrea added that the government should “legalise the industry instead of attacking us.”

Ms Caradonna added that “those who want more oppressive laws need to listen to the workers and their union.”

“Abolition is not the answer because prostitution will never end. Instead we need some respect,” she stated.

Bad reporting: prostitution law, nationalism and the BBC

This week I got wound up for the silliest of reasons: media reporting on prostitution. The prompting event was a two-part series (Selling sex legally in New Zealand and Europe and NZ poles apart on sex trade) from the stodgiest of sources, the BBC, supposedly revealing a huge contrast between New Zealand and European prostitution policy. The second story’s headline isn’t even supported by the report itself: Well, what else is new? The mainstream media regularly deal with sex-industry topics in an ignorant, reductionist way. I got irritated because I was sent this junk eight times: too many! In my opinion, the BBC reports fall into a category we all know well: Delete Upon Reading Subject Line.

The first article describes advantages for sex workers in New Zealand. Those are pretty clear for people who work in the kind of establishments described. But the BBC reporter did little more than interview the usual two or three workers and includes ridiculous, titillating details such as the towel one woman wears. This is traditional, uninformative, anecdotal reporting on prostitution.

The second article attempts to develop the argument that there’s a gigantic contrast between New Zealand and Europe – and has the nerve to reproduce factoids and misrepresentations already outed in the Guardian:

‘Something like 80% of women in prostitution are controlled by their drug dealer, their pimp, or their trafficker,’ MP Fiona Mactaggart told the BBC in November.

No. Fiona doesn’t have evidence to back this up. The figure 80% was given by the Poppy Project, a government-funded abolitionist shelter, to refer to the number of foreign women working in places in London. They came to this conclusion by hiring men to ring telephone numbers found in contact adverts. The callers elicited statements on women workers who might come from other countries. No follow-up research was done, no visits were made to the sites. The research results are suggestive but nothing more; methodogically there are serious questions about them, which were asked publicly last October. However the mistake resurfaced shortly afterwards and the Guardian had to debunk it again, publicly. Foreign does not equal trafficked.

Apart from the BBC’s apparent ignorance about these well-known events, there are other questions to ask about this pair of articles. Is the contrast really so great between New Zealand (decriminalising sex work) and Europe (growing movement towards criminalising punters as a way to preventt trafficking)? Some observers wrote to question the insistence always on national policies, as though each country enjoyed a hermetically sealed set of cultural characteristics that lead them to instate specific – and the implication is original and justified – policies.

The truth is that both policy trends – decriminalisation and abolition/prohibition – exist in all countries. If one trend wins in a particular parliamentary vote, it is because the politicians of the moment swayed one way or the other. It is never a permanent state, and ‘progress’ is pretty hard to find. European countries have wobbled back and forth between loosening and tightening laws, according to the zeitgeist. Moreover, in countries like Germany and the Netherlands, which presently have more tolerant and regulated systems, there are those who fight to clamp down. No society simply is one way or the other, and all could change fairly easily.

At the moment, a few UK politicians are trying to impose a law criminalising buyers of sex (the same law found in Finland), but there is also a movement against this imposition in Britain, and not only from sex workers and their allies. A strong libertarian argument is made that boils down to Government out of our sex lives. Last week an event was held at London’s ICA in which no anti-prostitution people were speakers (which sparked silly protests). At a recent event in Copenhagen a former New Zealand politican praised as progressive the country’s prostitution legislation but nonetheless argued against allowing migrants to work in the country – as a way to prevent trafficking. This came across as both conservative and illogical: If you have faith in decriminalisation, why not allow anyone to do the work? Any meaningful engagement with sex-industry law nowadays really must address the issue of mobile workers, and rights activists argue that decriminalisation could help prevent trafficking.

The insistence on national separateness is particularly ludicrous when dealing with the sex industry, which is characterised by movement: workers, investors, facilitators, businesspeople, all are wont to travel, whether to the next town or another country. Before ‘migrant sex workers’ or ‘trafficking’ were big topics, everyone was moving every which way and selling sex along the way. Neighbouring countries have always seen prostitutes cross borders to distance themselves from home and become more exotic to customers. Travellers stop a while and sell sex in order to keep travelling. This mobility applies not only to conscious sex workers but also to migrants who expected to be able to make money legally and find out that they can’t, or who are supposed to accept very low-paying jobs and instead switch to selling sex.

I also dispute the usual assumption that these laws make reality on-the-ground very very very different. On the contrary, if someone were to come to Earth from Mars, they would look at commercial sex in the USA, which mostly has mean criminalising laws, and look at it in New Zealand or the UK or Germany, and not see much difference at all. The endless debating about legal systems to control prostitution is bizarrely irrelevant, except for its symbolic value. I wrote about this in Sex and the Limits of Enlightenment: The Irrationality of Legal Regimes to Control Prostitution, a dense academic article but with some interesting ideas in it.

I know. Sex-worker rights activism pushes for New Zealand-type legislation. And yes, laws make a difference to individual sex workers’ rights when being harassed or arrested. But the vast majority of activity carries on similarly, if not identically, no matter which law is in place, and that’s because prostitution law is often vague and unenforceable, in the end having less impact than people assume.

The Lautrec picture at the top portrays women in a brothel dining room. It helped me think.

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Paying to watch brothel sex: voyeurs, exhibitionists and reality sex tv

Here’s a sex business with one traditional feature and one I hadn’t run into before. The company, Big Sister, provides you the opportunity to watch other people having sex, either live or filmed. Nothing new about that. What’s different is the sex scenes are filmed at a brothel where

none of the attending guests (males or couples) to the club have to pay to have their desires fulfilled. Instead, they have to agree to consent to be televised and grant all the marketing rights to Big Sister Media for distribution across all media channels. . . Our current library consists of over 18.000 exclusive scenes to date.

The shows have been called reality sex tv. Those who want to watch pay monthly subscription fees (said to be 29.95 euros a year ago). The website claims to get 10,000 to 15,000 hits a day.

As with other kinds of reality television, traditional entertainment models – professional performers on one side, audience on the other – are blurred. The customer (or exhibitionist) becomes the performer for other customers (voyeurs). At the same time, professional sex workers are employed in a traditional sense. Here are some excerpts from coverage by Bloomberg.com about the brothel itself:

Free Sex at Prague Brothel Tests Taboo as Reality Romps Hit Web

By Douglas Lytle and Yon Pulkrabek, 10 Jan 2008

The 36-year-old bank-security technician drove eight hours from his home in Metz, France, to Big Sister, a Prague brothel where customers peruse a touch-screen menu of blondes, brunettes and redheads available for free. The catch is clients have to let their exploits be filmed and posted on the Internet. . .

Visitors to Big Sister start at the electronic menu, which provides each woman’s age, height, working name and the languages she speaks. After a customer makes his selection, a manager makes sure the client signs broadcast release forms, and then the intimate details are arranged with the partner for the evening. . .

Big Sister is based in a renovated apartment building just outside the narrow, winding streets of Prague’s Old Town. . .

At the brothel, the Alpine Room is decorated like the backdrop to The Sound of Music with fake Styrofoam rocks and a forest. Other rooms include Heaven, decked out in white, and Hell, which resembles a dungeon. A giant stuffed polar bear watches over proceedings in the Igloo Room. . .

Big Sister has a staff of 25 to 45 women, depending on the season, and 45 workers behind the scenes. Three-quarters of the prostitutes come from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and they make 3,000 to 5,000 euros a month . . . Average wages in the Czech Republic are about 800 euros a month. .

Brothel photos from World War II France

These photos document brothel activity for soldiers in German-occupied France during World War II. The Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive) has classified them under Frankreich, Brest, Soldatenbordell. I’m interested in what commercial sex looks like, not in its reductionist meaning of money exchanged for ‘sex acts’ but the whole social context. That means the male bonding, the drinking and laughing and flirting and showing off, and the activities of those employed as providers and enhancers of this male sociality.

Source Deutsches Bundesarchiv. Individual photo captions here, with the following caveat:

For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Factual corrections and alternative descriptions are encouraged separately from the original description. Additionally errors can be reported at this page to inform the Bundesarchiv.

Can national sexual conversations change? sex and money in the USA

Sex in America: Can the Conversation Change was published 13 Feburary in the Huffington Post by Cory Silverberg. The framing of the topic, the idea that a national mindset might change, suggests that we don’t have to be stuck forever in the same rut. One of the sub-topics he would like to see change concerns Sex and Money:

We desperately need more critical, and less politically charged, conversations about the intersection of sex and money in America. Ironically (I think it’s irony) individuals who have the most grassroots experience of this, those who pay for sex and those who get paid for sex, tend to have the least amount of influence on public discourse about sex and money. That’s changing, thanks in part to sex worker run projects like Bound, Not Gagged, writers like Audacia Ray and academics like Laura Agustin. But there’s still a ways to go.

They are holding an event you might want to participate in if you’re in New York:

Cory Silverberg will join Esther Perel, Amy Sohn, Leonore Tiefer and Ian Kerner for a conversation called “Sex in America: Can The Conversation Change?” The symposium is co-sponsored by the Huffington Post and Open Center and will take place in New York City on Friday, February 20th. Click here to register.

I’m not an academic, by the way, in the sense of being employed by any academic institution. I just do and write academic things amongst others. But one of those has been to question the assumption that the presence of money ruins sexual relationships, rendering them always exploitative and bad quality – which leads to the mindless conclusion that all those who sell sex are victims. The nexus of sex and money as evil is the sexual and cultural conversation that one hopes to change – and not only in the USA. I call this the Cultural Study of Commercial Sex, and include everyone involved in sex-oriented businesses, the whole sex industry, not just those who buy and those who sell sex. To change the conversation, whether on a personal or national level, we have to be able to tell what we feel and do, without worrying that some outside authority will condemn us as immoral or amoral. There are many moralities, as there are many sexualities.

How does the sex industry look? a facebook album

With all uproar focused on the morality of buying and selling sex, most people have little idea what much of the sex industry actually looks like. Or rather, the media repeatedly show the same images of women in short skirts and high boots leaning into car windows, giving the impression that street hooking is the dominant situation, which is far from the truth. And, of course, we are constantly shown horrifying images of the worst sites and victims of trafficking and exploitation (you can provide those yourselves, so no link).

At the same time, millions of people the world over work in the sex industry, in jobs other than providing sexual services. And more millions visit, drive or walk past sites without even thinking about it because they look ordinary. I’ve created a theoretical framework for doing research about the sex industry in all its detail, called the Cultural Study of Commercial Sex, and other researchers are doing this ethnographic and evidence-based work. So I think it’s interesting to show some ordinary pictures, and I’ve made an album on Facebook that’s accessible to everyone (even people who would rather die than join social networking sites themselves – you know who you are). You can click on each photo to see it larger, with its caption, and comment on it if you like.

Photos include strippers, a Soho walk-up, brothels in the Czech Republic, Austria, Cambodia, Mexico, Australia, the USA and Germany, Soi Cowboy and Pattaya in Thailand, sex shops in Finland and Taiwan, hostess and karaoke clubs in Japan and China, brothel paintings by Toulouse Lautrec and Vincent Van Gogh and historical pictures. See the album here. It’s a work in progress, so if anyone has pictures to contribute, let me know, as long as you have permission to send them.

I’m a girlfriend, they’re my friends: GFE is nothing new

Lawrence Block is a successful mainstream writer whose plotlines often include call girls and prostitution, in a normalising way. Matthew Scudder, the detective protagonist in one of Block’s series, has a long-term, friendly, sex-for-favours relationship with a New York call girl that eventually turns into marriage. Block doesn’t avoid portraying the dangers and problems inherent in the lives of women who sell sex, but he gives us other sides of the picture, too, particularly refreshing given the usual police view of vice and prostitutes.

In Eight Million Ways to Die (1982) one woman explains her lifestyle.

This is something different, she said. The johns who come here, they don’t think they’re johns. They think they’re friends of mine. They think I’m this spacey Village chick, which I am, and that they’re my friends, which they are. I mean, they come here to get laid, let’s face it, but they could get laid quicker and easier in a massage parlor, no muss no fuss no bother – dig? But they can come up here and take off their shoes and smoke a joint, and it’s a sort of a raunchy Village pad, I mean you have to climb three flights of stairs and then you roll around in a waterbed. I mean, I’m not a hooker. I’m a girlfriend. I don’t get paid. They give me money because I’ve got rent to pay and, you know, I’m a poor little Village chick who wants to make it as an actress and she’s never going to. Which I’m not, and I don’t care much, but I still take dancing lessons a couple mornings a week and I have an acting class every Thursday night, and I was in a showcase last May for three weekends. We did Ibsen, and do you believe that three of my johns came? (p 145)

I was living in New York the year this was published, and my friend Mona was just like this character. Mona didn’t call herself a prostitute or any other name. Using a casual feminist analysis, we thought she was doing what a lot of wives do, in a careful, choosy way and without ceremony. In a context in which rents are sky-high and lots of people are trying to make it in demanding professions, Mona’s choice was sensible. She got to take her lessons and audition for parts, and, in the rare case that she got one, she was free to accept it. I don’t know whether she would have advertised GFE as a service had the Internet been available, but that’s what she was offering.

Mona’s lifestyle illustrates how sex-for-money occurs in casual ways that are part of normal life (and informal economies). If you recall the obsessive quality of hustling culture that John Rechy conveyed so well, this Village chick sounds serene – or spacey. But her way of looking at things is also common. In order to bring out more of these situations, I proposed a field called the cultural study of commercial sex. Scholarship without moralising. In my view, in fact, if you are moralising you are not a scholar.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

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