Archive for February 25th, 2009
Sex work and the public opinion
by Missy on Feb.25, 2009, under Entries
I recently was gifted with this book which is supposed to be about the rise and fall of Natalia, an escort that once commanded $2,000 an hour but due to drugs and a shopping addiction she fell from grace.
The book was a huge disappointment and actually really pissed me off. As one of the reviews say, all it did was reinforce the stereotype that sex workers are shopoholic drug addicts. And as we all know, that’s not true. But from what you read in this book it just seems like anyone worth a damn in the industry is living this lifestyle full of careless spending and drug binges. They act like it’s just standard to be a coke addict. Well it’s NOT. Yes, a lot of street workers are addicts…but most streetworkers were addicts who went into working to fund their habit. I’m talking about women who go into sex work voluntarily without an addiction fueling the decision.
Natalia, for example, made well over $10,000 a week. She was a Canadian immigrant to the US. She had no health insurance, no savings, she spent all of the money on clothes and drugs. Literally. And that annoys me, because THESE are the stories you hear about escorts – and strippers as well.
You don’t hear about the ones that fund their masters or even doctorate degrees with the money, or the ones who save wisely and end up with a paid off house and car before age 30. You never hear about the ones that are happy being escorts and do it long term, or the ones who are successful at it. You hear about the ones that have some kind of tragic failure or succumb to addiction or depression. Why? Because if we talked about the people who are HAPPY with sex work, who are in it voluntarily then it would become less taboo. The people against sex work don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to believe, or even face the fact that there are some people who are not mentally ill, who don’t have daddy issues, who aren’t on drugs that actually ENJOY sex work. They especially don’t want to admit that these women could have healthy relationships outside of work, raise normal children. That these women could be their friend or neighbour.
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