Okay, so a response to a response is a little weird, but yeah, why not. Also, I don’t know how welcome I am on either blog in question, so I’ll make it here.Joan Kelly, whom is a former, maybe current (I don’t know), sex worker ponders why some of us feel it is important to state “no, see, that’s not how it is, not for me anyway”, and I will say why I think it is important…and discuss a few other things she mentions.
I do it because I do think it is important, and I don’t think it’s important because I think I am better than anyone else in my business, but because I think it is important in the cases of all marginalized people to recognize we are not all the same, thus seeing our different experiences, needs, desires and reasons makes each of us easier to see as a full human being and not some damn stereotype, be it the privileged college kid earning extra cash or the down and out beat up by life person with no other options. Stereotypes are dehumanizing and simplistic and I hate them. They are damaging, and they make a lot of the activism I actually do very, very difficult. I find it very important to recognize differences in the situations of people involved in sex work when it comes to outreach. Why? Because face it, point blank, end of story, the needs of a person in the sex industry who is there by choice, or who is an adult, or who does have an education, or who is not addicted to drugs, or who hasn’t been or is not currently being abused are going to be vastly different than the needs of someone who has any or many of those things going on in their lives. Those needs have to be assessed and dealt with on a person-by-person basis; so recognizing the differences between people is vital. Sex workers A, B, & C may not need or want anything in the way of transition strategy, job training, or drug rehabilitation…they may merely want legal advice, tips for protecting their identities, or a sense of community. Meanwhile, sex workers D, E & F might not give a shit about those things and they might want or need job training, transitioning strategies, and drug rehabilitation…so why waste any of their time by assuming they are the same kinds of people in the same kinds of conditions who want and need the same kinds of things? I don’t see how it gets any more basic than that.
I also think that the stereotypes of and assumptions made about people in the sex industry are actually very damaging, and emotionally hurtful to all kinds of people involved in the sex industry. I am not, as I saw once again in Chicago, the only one who thinks this, either. There is an idea out there that all sex workers/prostituted people are women. Not true. Such thinking leaves male sex workers out in the cold and lacking in resources and community, and further more, it hurts and offends them. There is an idea out there that all sex workers/ prostituted people are there by choice, that if they didn’t like it, they would do something else…how many times have your heard “well, you could get another job, flip burgers, something, if you really hated it?” Truth of the matter, that is simply not true at all. There are people, whom for various reasons, cannot do something else, at least not something else that would earn them enough money to live, perhaps support people they need to support. And yeah, that stereotype and those assumptions are hurtful and do cause harm. There is a stereotype and assumptions out there that all sex workers are abuse survivors/addicts/uneducated/unintelligent, and to a lot of people, that is hurtful and harmful because it’s incredibly insulting, not because anyone is better than anyone else, but because to have such things assumed about you is damaging. If it is assumed that your parents, partner, whomever was/is an abusive person/molester/rapist is fucking insulting, not only to you, but also to them. And yes, if that rumor is propagated, untrue or not, it can affect their lives as well as yours, in areas such as getting jobs, being exiled in a social communities, and parenting. Would you like it if, because you were a sex worker, someone came a long and pulled your children out of your or your ex’s home, or your younger siblings out of your parents home, or some such thing because someone assumed that you were abused by those people because of the job you were in when that was totally untrue? Well, that shit happens. And it is damaging.
Also, with regards to the drug addict/uneducated/unintelligent stereotypes, fair or not, right or not, those things are heavily stigmatized in our society, and really; do sex workers/ prostituted people need any more stigmas when such things do not apply to them? I mean, some of them are already considered criminals, morally contemptible, lesser and subhuman, so why add to that if, in their cases, those things are untrue? No one, regardless of their job, generally relishes being called a junkie or an idiot now, do they? Why would sex workers/prostituted people be any different? Or are we not allowed or supposed to have any issues like, oh, an accountant who was constantly dehumanized might?
If anything, in Chicago I learned that all of us, no matter what issues we had going on, no matter what part of the business we were in, where we worked, what we did, what we needed or did not need, well, we all had some pride…from the seasoned 500$ an hour dominatrix to new to the street hustler, we all had some pride, we were all different people, and for all that is holy, we deserve to be treated as such and recognized as such. We all, like everyone else out there, have the fucking right to identify as we do, say what we need and do not need, what we want and do not want, what we are and what we are not, and that our differences are as important and necessary as our similarities. Hell, most of the people there were “sex workers”, but in many cases, that was all we had in common. Because of that one designation, “sex worker”, do we all deserve to be characterized and treated the same? Oh, I think not. In fact, doing so can be deadly.
So yeah, that is why. That is why it is important for me, and for every other individual person out there involved in the sex industry…because none of us are stereotypes, and we do not deserve to be treated as such, and doing so does nothing to fix, change, solve, help or facilitate anything. At all. Ever.
As for men and access…well, I don’t have the answer to that question. I simply don’t, and I’ve never claimed to. I would argue that sometimes it’s not even just the men who feel that way. I would absolutely say there are issues of class entitlement involved in the sex industry, in that people (not just men) with money feel they can, literally, buy anything and anyone they want. There are absolutely issues of race involved. And yep, there are people who also feel entitled to sell. There are different views on morality and intimacy involved, all kinds of things, which make me think the sex industry is far more complicated than “men feel entitled to purchase access to women’s bodies”. I, as a woman, have been hired by women more than a few times…so well, yes, just from what I have seen (and this is me personally speaking for me) and experienced, I do think it all goes far beyond “men and access.”
Things, I think, are never as simple as they seem, or as simple as people want to make them.
19 comments:
Ren – this response hits the spot. The facile “men’s requirement to access women’s bodies” is an oversimplification.
And the discussion of “the centering of the privileged” being “irritating” in sex work to be a misplaced accusation to the extent it appears to allude to discussions among feminists and not the mass media. Sure, most movies glorifying stripping or other sex work are indeed irritating. But when individual woman talk about their experiences without generalizing, it’s valuable to understand what those experiences are. If someone doesn’t fit the most tragic picture, does she need to shut up? Even if she acknowledges the tragedy and has contributed to working to activism in that area?
It’s a similar phenomenon to how women who don’t fit the victim model are called “male identified” in other areas of endeavor. If we write those women out of the movement, it’s cutting off our noses to spite our faces, IMO.
octo, and you know, I don't even GET the whole "pretty picture in mass media" trope either, really...what a couple of movies & shows, pretty woman, strip tease, cathouse,whatever, vs. almost EVERY episode of law and order SUV, the sopranos, every other single show or movie where the stripper/hooker/porn star gets raped, cut up, murdered, ignored? Please, I watch enough movies and TV to know if the ugly side or the happy side gets played up more, and it is not the happy side. And the news media is so skewed towards the ugly side its amazing. i think I've seen maybe two or three shows dealing with happy sex workers, and they were things like "Maury" and "Operah", not dateline or the news...and when dateline or whomever did their story on belladonna, she was PISSED at how badly they took her story out of context and such to show ONLY the bad stuff...so yeah, that's a line of crap I do not want to hear...for real.
same goes for representation at colleges and other such stuff.
I really don't see how me, or jessica l, or dacia speaking up and out erases anything, really, or how recognizing and DEALING with differences does anything but help.
Speaking as someone who's never been a sex worker, I can only say that the way you talk about your experiences has absolutely helped *me*, for exactly the reasons that you describe. It's humanizing. I've said it before and I'll say it a million times again, pity is never humanizing, it is dehumanizing, and it is coming from a place of superiority. Listening to someone talk about agency in being the privileged sex-worker-by-choice has helped me to look at that in this context more clearly, and I appreciate that.
I'm seriously troubled by this quote from the linked post:
Those people just do not happen to be the men who require access to some woman’s body at all times. That requirement to access? It stays static whether I just had an orgasm for $300 an hour or got punched in the face and raped and got a twenty thrown on my unconscious and battered self.
And I know she expands on that point later, to say that no one is going to beat/rape anyone in order to give her a $300/hr orgasm, they're going to beat/rape someone because of entitlement and assumption of ownership of her body, but...I really feel like we're missing the links in the causality-chain again, and we're equating a whole bunch of stuff in a way that isn't talking about the problem at all.
Yep, pretty damn basis... or at least it should be, anyway.
I think the last sentence was absolutely dead on. People outside a given situation want to *make* things simple. I have certainly seen a lot of that as a bisexual woman and a woman who's same-sex-married. It amazes me how many people don't let the fact that they don't know jack shit about something or someone stop them from making pronouncements about them. That's one really valuable thing I get from your blog--an opportunity to sit back and learn something.
I feel like I understand why my irritation with people talking about how the sex industry is good for them could feel like I'm telling such folks to fuck off and shut up. Or that they don't have a right to simply talk about their own lives and what they're like. I don't want you to fuck off or shut up. I struggle with how to talk about what I do want without coming across that way.
Ren, I don't disagree with you that stereotypes can be hurtful, or that people in different situations have different needs, or that assuming one giant borg of suicidal heroin addict = everyone in the sex industry, can and does lead to problems for everybody, including suicidal heroin addicts.
I think that I am not as successful yet at expressing what I want to express about this.
"There are different views on morality and intimacy involved, all kinds of things, which make me think the sex industry is far more complicated than “men feel entitled to purchase access to women’s bodies”."
It's not that I think there are no other dynamics that go on, in the sex industry, besides men feeling entitled to access women's bodies. All of the things you mention, absolutely I agree they are true, they also go on.
It's the scope, and so far permanence, of men requiring access to some woman's body at all times that bothers me, because it is that requirement that is present in all exchanges in the sex industry that are not the kinds you and I get to mostly enjoy. (I am in the sex industry part time now, since a few months ago.)
What I mean is that those many men who feel entitled to that access, they are why some women's bodies, at all times, must be available. Of everything else that does go on, all the complexities and different experiences and women customers and male sex workers and all of it, that piece is still true, and still troublesome, and still often unidentified as the wind beneath forced prostitution's wings.
I personally do not think it is showing the actual complexity of what the sex industry is and does, and who is in it, to either hardly talk about or never talk about that requirement to access. And I don't think that talking about the requirement has to be or by definition is antagonistic to talking about ALL of our realities, including everything you talk about in your experiences, and your activism, and everything I talk about in my positive experiences.
I don't understand why it rarely gets talked about, when negatives about the sex industry are the topic, basically. People will talk about safer working conditions, and stigmatization, and discrimination, and applicable laborer type rights, without ever saying "and you know, it would go a great deal towards furthering all these ends if the many men who create and sustain the nonconsensual market for sex workers would just motherfucking stop already. Just let those of us who want to do this, do it, and stop demanding that there be a huge and never-ending supply of us rather than whatever amount of us would exist of our own accord."
I do not believe that this requirement to access will diminish or go away without constant confrontation about it. It doesn't seem to me like all of us who are against it are making a dent in it by just having it as, like, a "duh, of COURSE none of us wants any of the rest of us forced into it by people who feel entitled!" sidebar.
Why it's important to me to not leave that out is because I feel like, as someone inside the sex industry, I do, just as you do, get granted more authority (rightly or wrongly) on the topic of all of this stuff. It is pretty easy for people who disagree with each other - on either side of the sex work arguments - to say "well you're not a whore anyway so you're just being judgmental" or "you're just sucking up to The Man!"
I will say that I see media representations differently than what I'm reading from your take on it. Pretty Woman, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, countless books from middle class white women who went into the sex industry because they felt like it... they are not the *only* narratives about people in the sex industry, but it is conspicuous to me that both ends of the spectrum leave out that piece of male entitlement.
There seem to be two allowable stories, basically - either you're in the sex industry because you like it (in which case, the accompanying sentiment is often yay-rebellious-you in pop culture) or you are in it because you are super damaged and in need of rescuing. Neither stereotype includes *men's* choices and motivations as consumers, and that is a problematic thing to me.
Thank you for your post, and for visiting my blog.
I know when I've found a good blogger because they inspire me to write something in response to the idea they've put in my head. This particular blog did it for me.
If you want to talk a look that would be great as I would value your input, but if you don't have time that's perfectly understandable. I have linked to your blog from mine and I hope I described you and your work correctly, if not please let me know and I'll ammend it.
Take care :).
basis=basic in my comment. Oops!
Full disclosure: I do not *like* Joan Kelly's posts and comments much. Therefore, my irritation may be coloring my ability to see an important point she is making. I freely acknowledge this, and will probably try to read it again later.
But my initial reaction?
Was that being able both to say "Yeah, I get paid $300 a pop and actually orgasm, but the sex industry needs to go" IS privileged.
You can rant all you want about how you'd prefer not to be a dominatrix and how awful it is that you have to be one. And I don't mean that flippantly. I know many people hate it; I've been friends with people who did. Hell, part of the reason I don't want to DO it is I don't want topping to become something that's regularly not fun (and something that involves me not being in control, because hello? the point? yeah.) So, yeah, I get it.
BUT STILL: if you're the sort of person who can even contemplate "Yeah, this is my job, but I wish no one were ever paid for this kind of thing again ever" ... you're someone who has the luxury of not thinking much at all about where those women you're saying you aren't are going to end up when their jobs are gone.
I mean, yeah, maybe she's just saying "yeah, in Utopia no one would have to do this and all those women who are in this because of poverty would be doing something else and I mean something that isn't awful and degrading because I'm talking about Utopia."
But if she's saying THAT... then what does she actually want to do? Is she just saying "I wish there were no market for this?" Because if that's all she means, that and four bucks will buy her a foofy latte...
Considering the size of the sex industry, it's amazing how little the media really covers it. I mean something more nuanced than most news coverage, and definitely not the use of sex worker characters purely as sex objects, or as pitiful victims in cop shows.
Even the documentaries on sex work or the porn industry generally seem like a very shallow take on a complex subject. More about ratings winning salaciousness, or pushing a point of view, than presenting a human story.
I think POPWHORE – A New American Dream is probably the most interesting I've seen. Mainly because it concentrates on a year in the life of one woman (Tatum Reed) escorting and entering the porn industry. Much of it in her own words, presenting her story without dehumanising her, or really glamourising what she does.
The sweeping generalisations made by some of the talking heads aside, it seemed quite balanced and thought provoking. Perhaps worth watching if you see it on TV.
And also, about "access", I'd really like to know exactly what that word means. Because I think there's a lot of stereotyping around that, too, depending what concept of access is meant.
I remember years and years ago reading and being totally perplexed by this article, long before I ever had sex at all. I remember reading her "epiphany" about men wanting access, here:
"Regardless of who's initiating, who's on top, or who holds what emotional reins, I realized, surrender is at the center of my sexual experience; invasion at my male partner's.
...The world looks different since then. I was riding up a steep escalator a few weeks after I took Adam's cherry, idly watching the butts up ahead of me as I usually do -- as a pleasing shape. And suddenly a slide clicked over the round female bottom perched above me: Access. Men aren't just admiring the curve of a butt the way women do; they're negotiating access. It's a hill to be taken.
And men do love access. Clubs, fraternities, committees, old-boy networks -- they've built a world where access is power. They like slit skirts, open-toed shoes, crotchless panties. They like finding a way in. I think the name of the highest-profile condom brand is no accident -- the Trojan Horse was the original tool of access!
Adam and I never took the Boss out on that particular ride again; we both discovered our loyalty to the home teams. That night shook my heterosexuality much less than it shook my feminism, my wishful thinking about natural similarity. The fuckers are different. Getting in looks male now, and giving in seems female, something I never wanted to believe. Perhaps fucking, or the man's-eye view of it, is the template for much more of the world than I ever realized."
I remember this and just being stunned, because what she described as unavoidably male, as the center of sexual experience for men, was exactly what sexual fantasy, and later, actual sex, was *always* about for me.
I remember feeling weird about it, oddly attacked... because, well, while I've always grown up knowing I was expected to be the surrenderer and like it, too, I'd never really had this feeling that what I was was just unavoidably...
...what's the word here?
Conniving, I guess. Expecting things from people.
I mean, yeah, I worried that being a top meant being "unfair" (or being "mean" -- I like pain play, and that was the big thing), but I never connected it to social power, to being a part of any Old ...Genderqueer? Butch?... Network, at all.
I mean, okay, wild SM *fantasies* of some kind of brother/sisterhood of evil mirrorshaded looming tops of doom, sure. Often. But uh, this whole *system* thing? That really ties into the fact that I see skirts and sometimes think about lifting them up? REALLY?
So whenever I see "access"... I wonder about how literal access and entitlement get conflated. I mean, yeah, I do think it's fair to say they do under patriarchy, but I often find myself feeling a little... entangled when I read those words.
Because (and the simplistic analysis might say this is precisely because I'm female under patriarchy, rather than male) I don't assume that anyone's body IS open because I'd like to think it is.
And... yeah, I'm sure sex workers' customers tend to, and that's bad and a serious problem. But at the same time, what if someone is buying precisely because "nothing is open" -- because what sex workers are SELLING is easy access, to people who actually DON'T think they can get it when they'd like?
I mean, yeah, not a monolith, customers or workers or... anyone. But I really do wonder what percentage of customers are doing a "I need a cunt now, the world must instantly provide" and what percentage are "Shit, I've no idea how to do this..."
I know when I was a little domlet virgin I felt terrified, and during long dry spells had a few fantasies of hiring a pro sub. Entitlement? Well, maybe a little -- I did sort of feel that I was "entitled" to some actual sexual experiences with a real person.
But I don't think that "entitlement" had to do with making myself special, or feeling I had a right to mistreat someone. It was more, kind of, well, shouldn't everyone experience sexual pleasure? And I'm part of everyone? And kind of desperate? Shit, could I ever DO something like that? ...No, no I don't think so. But maybe it's an option, someday, if I can't figure this out on my own...
We all, like everyone else out there, have the fucking right to identify as we do, say what we need and do not need, what we want and do not want, what we are and what we are not, and that our differences are as important and necessary as our similarities.
That right there is truth telling of the best kind. It is applicable to so many different things, whether we look at race, sex trade, age, class there is no monolithic experience. It would be easier for those make a living theorizing to be able to classify people into small easily digestible groups but that is not the human experience. It is a point of unowned privilege to desire that people minimize themselves to identify with a movement or a group of people that is not reflective on an individuals experience...keep telling it Ren...so many need to hear it.
"It's the scope, and so far permanence, of men requiring access to some woman's body at all times that bothers me, because it is that requirement that is present in all exchanges in the sex industry that are not the kinds you and I get to mostly enjoy. (I am in the sex industry part time now, since a few months ago.)
What I mean is that those many men who feel entitled to that access, they are why some women's bodies, at all times, must be available. Of everything else that does go on, all the complexities and different experiences and women customers and male sex workers and all of it, that piece is still true, and still troublesome, and still often unidentified as the wind beneath forced prostitution's wings."
JK -- can you talk more about what you mean by access, and who you mean assumes he has it? Because, well... see my earlier comment. It may be that many men under patriarchy don't give it much thought at all and so what I say doesn't apply. I've never actually, for example, been to a strip show of women with men. (I've suggested going with my current partner; I'm a little disappointed he was as grossed out as he was, actually. Maybe he's sparing me something awful, though. *shrug* Never seemed all that bad watching MEN... but maybe that's a whole other ballgame?)
So uh, yeah. What exactly does assuming access mean? Does it mean not caring how the woman feels about the job, or is it something more loosey-goosey than that, something like paying at all, rather than finding someone who consents?
Because I don't know that those feelings I had of wondering if I ought to hire someone makes me *bad*. And I say that with personal pronouns not to whine that I feel attacked -- I don't -- but rather to suggest that, hey, if I had those feelings and sorely doubt they included thinking pro subs are not human, or thinking I could do whatever I wanted, then there's got to be other people who feel like I did
and well, yeah, i'm female, less conditioning, okay, buT SOME of them have to be men, right?
In which case, who are we talking about? And what does that mean for what we should DO about it, if anything?
If we really want to talk about men, about johns, about clients of pro dommes (and yes, I have noticed differences between men who often frequented pros before finding the scene, and men who never had), can we talk as complexly about THEM as we do about individual sex workers' stories here?
Can we talk about whether the access thing manifests itself differently for different men (and maybe for women, like me), and if so how it does?
Question: this business about mens' entitlement: why is it limited to the sex industry? And how exactly does one go about both working in the industry and telling the clientele...what, exactly? I mean, if you're arguing against abuse, then that's something; if you're arguing about how the market works or--
Yeah, not really saying "what about the mens," I'm not getting exactly how this is supposed to work, I guess. So: it's okay if men visit sex workers as long as they understand they can't do it too often, or feel bad about it?
I mean, if you want to talk about male entitlement, sure, go to town, but it sure as shit doesn't stop -or- start with paying for sex, I shouldn't think. Anyway it seems to me that at least some of the most -really- entitled/abusive men I've encountered are the same ones who are insulted beyond measure at the idea of paying for something they -should- be getting for free. Not saying there aren't tons of entitled/abusive men who -do- pay for it or otherwise abet prostitution, obviously, just...yeah, I don't get it.
Also, this bit:
I haven't met anybody in the sex industry who had no fucked-up in them, and/or who the fucked-up stuff wasn't a factor in how they ended up in the sex industry. Or into BDSM, for that matter. I don't know why saying that out loud is considered an indictment of people who got fucked up because of other people's actions. It's an indictment of people who fuck other people up - kids, let's be honest, mostly it's people fucking up kids, and then those kids grow up and have fucked-up-ed-ness in them.
Well, here's why it's used as an "Aha!" moment, whether you condone it or no: because, ime at least? what you're missing here is that there's no one in the WORLD who "has -no- fucked up in them."
As someone who isn't a sex worker but -is- into BDSM and doesn't consider herself any more fucked up than average, and in fact a good deal less than some, mostly, I find it irritating because it's a sort of armchair diagnosis en masse, and I didn't ask for it. "Speak for yourself" applies.
Trinity said:
"And also, about "access", I'd really like to know exactly what that word means. Because I think there's a lot of stereotyping around that, too, depending what concept of access is meant."
Wow, took almost the exact words out of my mouth, Trinity. I too find the often repeated phrase "access to women's bodies" to be seriously vague and prone to a lot of different meanings. One could read it as meaning that nobody is entitled to have sex with a woman unless she consents to it. (Which I don't think any reasonable person disagrees with.) It could also be read as "no man (or woman?) should have "access" to a woman's body under any circumstances". (Which I think only the most hard-line separatists are going to agree with.)
That level of ambiguity is not very helpful in making a case for anything.
@ belledame: "Anyway it seems to me that at least some of the most -really- entitled/abusive men I've encountered are the same ones who are insulted beyond measure at the idea of paying for something they -should- be getting for free."
YES! Frakin' ditto! That's what I never understood about the argument because it always seemed to me that true entitlement does not require payment or even using any semblance of a question at all. There's a huge difference between, "Can I come in?" and "I'm coming in."
Also, ditto to Trin and IACB, which goes along with my response anyway. I am increasingly seeing that "access to women's bodies" whenever that is brought up in context of sex work somehow gets interpreted as that hardline that IACB brought up. I've always viewed an exchange of money as asking for limited permission to ANYTHING, be it sex with a female prostitute or to a museum. Just because I pay the Art Institute $10 for admission does not mean I can take a piece of art work with me and trash the other pieces I don't like. Simply because I'm inside. No less with the prostitute or any other sex worker. Paying (asking) for her time or to have sex with her or asking if she can dominate doesn't mean one can rape, assault, demean, etc. Payment is almost always limited permission in any circumstance and only the mentally unhinged believe otherwise.
No doubt, of course I have to put this caveat in here, some people honestly think that behavior is okay. But it's not. Now, entitlement...that is, "I am King Such and Such the 23rd. This is MY throne!"
And ditto Ren's response wrt depiction of sex work in popular media. I see these claims of 'glorifying' from some people and I think, "they must mean glorifying is because they show it at all!" The American-released movies that give an overall positive view of sex work can be counted on one hand. But there are tons of others that show the down and out and horrible. Fine, that's valid, however since sex work is so clandestine most people have no exposure to it and so they get a very biased view. And this holds true for ANYTHING that is not mainstream. You get told one side of the story, so, valid though it may be in some cases, it is nonetheless a bias. Those are never good.
"I've always viewed an exchange of money as asking for limited permission to ANYTHING, be it sex with a female prostitute or to a museum. Just because I pay the Art Institute $10 for admission does not mean I can take a piece of art work with me and trash the other pieces I don't like. Simply because I'm inside. No less with the prostitute or any other sex worker. Paying (asking) for her time or to have sex with her or asking if she can dominate doesn't mean one can rape, assault, demean, etc. Payment is almost always limited permission in any circumstance and only the mentally unhinged believe otherwise."
I think even most johns get that even more than they're given credit for. I take as evidence provider review sites written by johns. They discuss services prostitutes do and don't provide. And one of the things that gets posted about are rip-off warnings – situations where the "provider" in question takes the money and splits. What I don't see in those reports is johns forcibly taking what they think they paid for, though admittedly that's something they wouldn't be likely to report. But it seems to me that if johns were buying a woman's total submission, there would be no question about what a particular provider does or does not do, or whether she might leave without doing anything. So I think that a contractual relationship of some kind is understood in those situations.
I'm not saying that prostitutes limitations aren't ever violated by bad customers, but simply that total domination isn't as normative as its made out to be.
"It could also be read as "no man (or woman?) should have "access" to a woman's body under any circumstances". "
call me a hard-line- separatist if you want, but honestly, I don't think anyone has the right to touch anyone - male or female- with out their consent. I don't care who's doing it, if it's a child touching an adult with out permission, or an adult touching a child or an adult touching an adult...people have the absolute right to determine who has the right to touch, to hug, to kiss, to have sex, to nameyourcontacthere, and who doesn't. There should be absolutely no assumption of "right". There are folks ( both male and female) out here who don't want ever to be touched - and touching is the first bastion of "access" it only goes up from there. And there are those (again, both male and female) who get very upset if their "right" to that touch is denied.
No one should have to provide any level of "access" to anyone and no one should be taking that access with out express permission from anyone, sex worker or not.
Andi – I think what you said falls more or less under the first definition I described:
"One could read it as meaning that nobody is entitled to have sex with a woman unless she consents to it. (Which I don't think any reasonable person disagrees with.)"
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