Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution (25 page)

I have begun to make peace with my past, though I do wonder how much of who I would have been is eroded beyond restoration. I cannot measure that, and I am partially glad that I can't. I'm also thankful I'm left with enough to mourn what's missing. There is a feeling that I can never move on; that I'll always be in phase one; that I am a neophyte in life and that I am condemned to stay that way, however long I happen to live it. And then another voice rises up in me, a blessed voice, which doesn't talk softly, but instead rebukes in scolding tones and cautions strongly against self-pity. Get up, it says. Get on with things. It's a lovely day. Take your dog for a walk.

EPILOGUE

My sisters, my daughters, my friends-find your voice. LIBERIAN PRESIDENT ELLEN JOHNSON SIRLEAF.AFRICAS FIRST DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED FEMALE PRESIDENT-oN COLLECTING HER NOBEL DIPLOMA AND MEDAL AT A CEREMONY IN OSLO, DECEMBER 2011 S o much of what I've written here describes the prostitution experience as an experience which is lived, which is made up of the different things that happen to you and the ways you respond bodily, soulfully and psychically to them. All of this is true, but there is something else I must not leave out because it is important: it is that the prostitution life is shaped very much also by what does not happen as well as what does. In my adulthood, these thi~gs began to hit me. They arrived as aftershocks, particularly poignant ones. I remember several years back while in the home of newly made friends, watching a group of teenage girls, the daughters of the house, getting ready to go out bowling. A year or two after that, in the same house, I watched the eldest daughter get ready for her Debs while her younger sisters crowded round her. Those images-teenage girls laughing, messing, heading out to have fun-stirred feelings buried very deep in me. They were good images, and I smiled for the girls. in them, but there was an inner eye watching another scene, and ofcourse, there was no smiling to be done for the girls in that one. The eye cannot appreciate a picture without considering what is left out. The lace on a woman's dress, for example, would not be lace but for the little gaps between the cloth. Those little empty spaces are as necessary as the material to the pattern ofthe lace. All the things we did notget to do, those too made up a part ofour picture, they were the gaps in our lace. And that is how it was: all the teenage things we never got to do also defined our experience and shaped, by their absence, how we existed in the world. And because they were the things that 'normal' young women our age did, that caused to further separate us from a particular type of meaningful connection with the world. It was psychically a very strong sense ofdisconnection. It caused the feeling ofbeing thoroughly removed. This has left from its soul-level injury the mark ofa lingering scar that presents as the need to remind yourself of your own place in the world and, crucially, ofyour having any right to it. There may always be days I'll have to consciously haul myself back from that feeling ofbeing removed. I am glad I am learning how to do that, but I will not stop hoping, and working, for the day this lesson no longer needs to be learned. This book was written over the span of more than a decade, between the years 2002 and 2012, and the ages of twenty-six to thirty-six. It was a long, slow and painful process. It has been very different to writing creatively. I enjoy that; I find it's like trying to unfold the feelings inside ofme. But writing creatively is so different from the process ofwriting a memoir. With creative writing you have no template, no factual truisms you must stick to. It is freer. It makes me think of dancing in the air. There is no 'you must do this' driving you, though I believe the urge to write fills some secret need that drives every book. I have already explained most ofthe reasons I wrote this book. There is one more. It is probably the most important one. I see in my mind the metaphor of a burning building, and I know that if you are lucky enough to escape a burning building, it is only right to alert others that there is a fire in that house. That way, there is some hope for those still trapped inside. This is far from the only book that needs to be written about prostitution. I want to see many other women wrench the truth from their guts about what prostitution has done to them, and what it will continue to do to other women and girls until the world wakes up to the simple wrongness of it. This is not the only type of book that needs to be written about prostitution either. The book has not yet been written, in my awareness, that deals with the type of sexual healing specific to survivors of prostitution abuse. I am certainly not qualified to write it, but I do hope that someday it will be written, by someone with the necessary balance of training and experience in psychoanalysis or a related discipline, and, preferably, personal experience of the text material. In the absence of that, the author would need in-depth experience of working with prostituted women. We women frankly need a book like that to be written, but we need the right person to write it. There has been so much damage done, and I am proud to add my voice to the voices of those who have been a long time trying to fix it. The comforting truth is that women are not alone in this. One of the most heartening sights I've ever seen was a group ofmen sitting together in a row, fronting a campaign for the criminalisation of the demand for prostitution in Ireland. They were recognisable men: artists, writers and heads of trades unions. They were part of the Turn Off The Red Light coalition, which calls for the eradication ofprostitution in Ireland,30 and I would take it as a personal favour ifanybody reading this who wants to be supportive contacted their TDS and pressed for their support of the Turn Off The Red Light campaign. As a former prostitute, watching that small group of men, seven of them, I was drawn back by instinct and memory to the comforting presence of men I could trust. Men my like my father, my brothers, my closest male friends. Those men standing up that day, in the full glare of the Irish media, brought a healing to me that I could never expect them to understand. What they did that day was more precious than they can know, and so of course I don't have the words to thank them for it. As well as being healing, it was enlightening. It reminded me of something important. Itreminded me that women, all women, including 30 www.turnofftheredlight.ie those with histories like mine, should never consider men the enemy. We are all humans on this earth and we need to work together to make it a better place to live. I don't know what else to say of where I am today, except that I am almost happy. Before I can be, there is something else I need to see begin to happen. There are many factors which support prostitution in our world, but there is one above all others that has assured its continuance throughout the ages. It is the driving force ofdemand. As Simone de Beauvoir wrote in the last century, 'Prostitution will be suppressed only when the needs to which it responds are suppressed.' Janice G Raymond commented in these modern times: 'A prostitution market without male consumers would go broke.' These facts have not changed. They are as true and as relevant today as they were a hundred years ago, and they were as relevant a hundred years ago as they were since time immemorial before that. If we do not �ant them to be relevant any more, we need do only one thing, but do it seriously: we need to address demand. Prostitution first fell sharply in one place and one place only. That is in the nation which suppressed demand. A global implementation of Sweden's laws, which criminalise demand, is the one thing I'd most like to see before I die. It will be ridiculed, of course, by prostitution promoters as �realistic. It is not unrealistic. If it was unrealistic it wouldn't have happened in Sweden and it wouldn't have gone on to happen in Norway and Iceland and if it can happen in those nations, it can happen elsewhere. The qualities of wisdom, equality and human integrity are expressed in the legislation enacted in these countries, and that is why I would like to see it spreading. It may well be rejected, however, and if it is I believe that would be a disaster for humans as a race and for females in particular, because it is also the only hope this world has ofmaking very serious inroads towards ridding itself of prostitution. This will almost certainly not happen in the short term and may not even have happened a hundred years from now, but Idream that someday it will happen, whether or not I am here to see it, because it ought to happen and because on the day that it does humanity will have moved closer to the purest expression of its essence. It will not be helped to happen by anyone sitting back and hoping that it does, myself or anyone else. That is another of the reasons I wrote this book. I wanted to do my part by drawing attention to the true nature of prostitution, to give a face and a shape to the hideous nature of being molested for money. This has not been an easy understanding to carry, or an easy message to convey. I have felt for the longest time like a woman screaming in a glass box where nobody can hear me. This book has been about shattering that box; it has been about giving voice to that scream. Yes, it has been a painful process; but it is done now, and now that it is, I hope some people will have heard me. I hope they will have lent their ear to that scream. I have some more things to hope for, as stepping stones on the way to fully implemented criminalisation of demand. One is that people, no matter in what nation they reside, will begin to lobby their politicians for the implementation of Swedish-style prostitution laws. Rejecting the commercialisation of sexual abuse needs to be a global effort. Another. is that people will remember to support financially, in any small way "1 they can, charities and agencies set up to support the prostituted and ' 1 the homeless. These are crucial services. Many more women would enter prostitution if not for services which help the homeless and many prostituted women would never get to fight their way out but for the agencies set up to support them. It is important to note, though, the nature of the help that is offered by an agency and to make sure it is of the necessary sort. Some offer this sort of support and some don't. I was given plenty of help in prostitution, if help consists offree condoms and STI testing. I was given J plenty of assistance that recognised, and by doing so unintentionally reinforced, my position in prostitution; but I was given zero assistance in l getting out of it. An agency offering just health care as a form of support can only, by its nature, fail to challenge the status quo. That is another important thing I'd like to see changed. Agencies need to offer education and training and help with housing and childcare; they need to offer a route out if they seriously intend to support prostituted women. And that brings me on to my last hope: I hope I live to see government-�unded prostitution alternatives programmes every bit as accessible to women as prostitution is, because only in a world like that would women and girls like my teenage self experience some ofthe 'choice' the world keeps telling us about.

SPACE

(SURVIVORS OF PROSTITUTION ABUSE CALLING FOR ENLIGHTENMENT) INTERNATIONAL � Have you ever been involved in prostitution?

� If so, did you experience prostitution as degrading, humiliating and abusive?

� Would you be willing to add your voice, anonymously and confidentially, to the effort to stamp out prostitution?

SPACE is a new international organisation, first formed by five Irish women, to give voice to women who have survived the abusive reality of prostitution. SPACE now includes members from Ireland, the UK, usA and Canada. It is an independent organisation and its founding member is the author of this book. SPACE is committed both to raising the public's consciousness of the harm of prostitution and to lobbying governments to do something about it. We press for political recognition of prostitution as sexually abusive exploitation, and, as a response, for criminalisation of the demand for prostitution. Membership of SPACE is restricted to formerly prostituted women, from any country, who believe in the right of all people to live free from the oppression of paid sexual abuse. We call for enlightenment because before we can expect social change, prostitution must be recognised for the abuse that it is. You can contact SPACE in the utmost confidentiality at info@ spaceinternational.ie or visit our website at www.spaceinternational.ie