Book Launch- Call Girls: Private Sex Workers in Australia

Wednesday, April 18, 2007 / 6.00 for 6.30pm

Roberta Perkins, Frances Lovejoy
Call Girls: Private Sex Workers in Australia
Published by: UWA Press
To be launched by Janelle Fawkes

Venue: gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe
Cost: Free
RSVP: gleebooks - 9660 2333

A comprehensive study of women working in the Australian sex industry - usually outside of brothels and often via telephone from home (thus their name). Call Girls provides fascinating and frank accounts from women working in this shadowy, clandestine world: how they became sex workers and run their businesses; what frustrates and frightens them; how they maintain their health; who their customers are; and how their work affects their relationships with partners, lovers and/or families. Call Girls makes for surprising and challenging reading and, most importantly, places the world of the sex worker within political and legal contexts which will surprise and change the preconceived notions of many readers.

About the authors: Roberta Perkins is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at The University of New South Wales. Her books include Being a Prostitute (with Garry Bennett, 1985) and Sex Work and Sex Workers in Australia (1994).
Frances Lovejoy is also a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at The University of New South Wales and is a co-editor of Sex Work and Sex Workers.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.................misuse of the whore word

Gurlesque last night was wonderful in so many ways as usual. Glita's nun piece once again left me both squeally and speechless. Minx Contortionista doing Dietrich. Strawberry Pop being too cute for words. Sex in shower cap (well, it worked for me). Handyboi and Lillian Starr doing Bond. Wife and Domino - the joy of gorgeous activist women. Miss Sindy Ray bunnying. Madam Phantasm bunnying. Zoo bunnying.

However, despite all round fabbiness of the night.... two whole acts felt the need to use the word whore in a derogatory sense. What was even more disappointing, in this community which usually feels quite a whore positive and accepting space for me, is that all three performers involved with those two acts have attended Debby Doesn't Do It For Free performances, and have spoken to us about how much they like what we do. Also,considering the politics of the performers, I doubt they would ever consider using racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic or ablist language, so why the hell would they use whore in a insulting, negative way?

Considering that I - and many of my fellow Debbys - will use the word whore, both in performance and general conversation, I feel I should probably clarify my position on this issue. When a group of gay men will affectionately refer to themselves as a bunch of fags, this has very different meaning or intention than a homophobic str8 man passing by, hurling the same words out in derision. Sex workers are reclaiming language, just as other queers are. However, non-sex workers should be careful about how those words are used. When in doubt, refer to sex work and sex workers. If you are looking for insulting language to describe women's - or anyone's sexuality - may I ask why you want to perpetuate sex negativity? And please stop any euphemisms for sex workers as metaphors for selling out a value system. We don't actually. We provide consensual, negotiated services for a fee. It is only the pervasive sex negativity present in our culture that considers these acts as immoral.

For more, including a snippet on the history of the word whore, see:

http://www.scarletalliance.org.au/issues/terminology/

Magdalene-esque

After Oestrus bunnying at Sly with Zoo and others - with the Sydney debut of my fabby chocolate vulvas, and wonderful performances by Wife - who managed to incorporate cats and aproning..... dribble........ and the lurverly Lillian Starr..... I will be hocking my ass on Good Friday for the first time in years. We'll see if guilt over the death of the consort keeps the men away.

I really should be spending tomorrow weeping at the foot of a cross, for he whom I have anointed for burial, and performing menstruation/ fertility rituals with blood red eggs, however, for the sake of my purse, I'll stick to the activities of the profane harlot, this year. After all it's not the right time for this festival in the Southern Hemisphere.

For the non-sacred whore/ pagan types who want to know what I'm on about, leave a comment. And have a nice time over the long weekend, everyone.

It's no use getting into heavy petting. It only leads to trouble and seat wetting

Someone told me this week that I am a huge flirt. I wasn't exactly surprised, However, sometimes when I am bouncing around, crawling all over random people, I am not even seeing it in those kind of terms. I am often crawling over one or more people with definite intent, but sometimes - and this is why I usually give bioguys a wide berth - my exuberant behaviour is directed at the universe in general, and no one in particular - and is open to misinterpretation.

The last time I was living in a huge share house, comprising 5 boys and 2 grrls, the sexual energy in the house was intense. Every person in the house was fucking at least one other person in the house, except one of the guys. The other grrl and I were fucking 3 housemates each (including each other) [hey, I was all of 19 - I have much less energy now]. The guy who wasn't getting any was a good friend of my primary partner, and was on really good terms with me - we'd sit around the kitchen table over coffee for hours and talk about religion and politics.

Then one night, when two of my partners were out on other dates, and the other one was shagging another partner, I was bouncing around the kitchen, a whirlwind of kittenish sexual energy and playfulness, when I realised that my energy was affecting this guy dramatically.... "Look at what you're doing to me!!"He pursued me down the hall. I ran out of the house before things got ugly. This wasn't the first time I was aware of that idea that a woman expressing sexuality is perceived as asking for it, or causing uncontrollable desire in men, but it was certainly one of the most scary incidents of recognition.

The fallout from this - in which most of my housemates agreed that I had callously lead the guy on was almost as scary - this is from a crew of queer or queer friendly punker kids who would be familiar with basic feminist thought. I felt punished by a small, judgemental community. The fact that I was polyamorous and a sex worker seemed to add fuel to the judgements. This, and various other incidents have probably added to my seclusion from the world of str8 non-trans men.

I sometimes wonder if people may think that my lack of contact with men extends from my sex work experience. In fact, my sex work is one of the few places that I feel is safe for me to have contact with guys. My sex work is so heavily negotiated, and so choreographed, that it is probably the most consensual contact I have with anyone, ever. My clients know that anything other than massage, oral sex with a condom and vaginal sex with a condom is all the activities on the menu that is actually a given. Anything else, kissing, cunnilingus, fantasies of any kind, have to be negotiated before we even go in to the bedroom. Some clients will ask me if I would be okay with them choosing me before they make their finally choice. I am not suggesting that all men are rapists, or can't be trusted to respect physical boundaries, or comply with basic standards of negotiated consent, however when I walk down the street to cars full of hooting and hollering men - a regular occurrence for the last 20 years - and when I don't respond, they start yelling abuse instead, I am reminded of popular culture constructions of clients as crazed psychos - who will emulate Jack the Ripper at any chance - and feel like we do clients a real disservice.

I feel like decisions around safety shift all the time for me, and my sense of appropriate behaviour and personal space boundaries are affected by mood, exhaustion and mental health. I certainly don't get it right all the time, and sometimes I'm still the bouncy, oblivious 19 year old who is oblivious to the impact of my behaviour on others, and struggles with self control and propriety. When I am sharp and clear, my sense of these things is really honed, when I'm not, I need a straight jacket, chastity belt and an isolation cell.

On Cats and Femmes

Cinnamon, one of my beautiful furry beasts, was entertaining the household this morning by doing delightful full body roll and slide maneuvers on the lounge room rug. Zoo commented on the similarities between Cinnamon's and my approach to getting attention. It reminded me of how I used to see a client when I was fairly new to sex work, who asked me to act sexy. It's a difficult thing to summon up on command, so I just started moving around the room like a cat, slow and slinky. He was quite happy, and it's worked for me ever since.

I decided at one point that all cats are in fact femmes - including the toms (whereas there is something rather butch about dogs - except maybe poodles). After all, cats all walk around on heels. And female cats are called queens. I know I feel most sexy when in cat drag. My Lawrence has a hesitant pitter patter, rather like Audrey Hepburn in her ingenue roles, and Cinnamon walks like a drunken Elizabeth Taylor, with the shoulder straps of her slip about to fall off.

The Notorious Whore Stigma

I went to see The Notorious Bettie Page on Monday night. I know it has gotten some pretty mixed reviews, but I really liked it (and not just for the shoes – although they were pretty good). A lot of reviews I have read seem to see the film as an amiable bit of fluff – and probably not delving deeply into the motivations of Ms Page….

I felt it was a pretty accurate reflection of everything I had read about Bettie’s life, and she has – since being told by God not to pose anymore – been pretty reclusive and very unwilling, it seems, to give detailed analysis of her motivations or actions. I really liked the fact that the film reflected the fact that she was so body positive and to a remarkable extent, didn’t take on much of the shame and stigma associated with nudity, porn or BDSM. Her sense of ‘lets have fun with this’ that is so present in every image taken of her is very explicit in the film also. So joyful. However, the aspect of the film which spoke to me most profoundly was the way she was perceived by others – the fact that she had done things that put her in the category of sexual/ abandoned/ slut, and the limits that this put on Bettie occupying other territories. While she seemed rather stilted as an actor, there is one scene where she is at an audition – probably wasn’t brilliant, but one of the men involved with casting said to her something like, “such a pleasure to meet the notorious Bettie Page” (obviously, giving the film it’s title), this line gave me a horrible sinking feeling, as I imagine it would for other sex workers and those working in other adult industries, as it was a clear indicator, that with her history of nude/ pin up/ fetish modelling, she would be kept out of ‘respectable’ entertainment due to her notoriety.

I was 19 when I first started working in brothels in Adelaide, and within a few months, I was in court to get a number of charges of ‘being on premises’ dealt with together and avoid a conviction…. Getting up in the Magistrates Court, in front of all those people, being identified as a sex worker in such a public way, against my will – as opposed to all those times I’ve chosen outness as a political tool – that feeling still stays with me. The shaming involved in these practices are designed to make you feel like a bad, bad grrrl. However, the irony is that we live in a society that wants to stop sex work, yet sex work convictions, and the naming and shaming of much of our cultural practices – whether it’s the NSW practice of forcing home based sex workers to post DAs on their front gates alerting the neighbours of the nature of their businesses in order to obtain planning approval, the ACT and NT practice of a registration system for individual sex workers, or the criminalisation of WA and SA sex work, reduces sex workers options outside of sex work. While many sex workers may not wish to leave the sex industry (myself included), liberation is about multiple choices, and in order to eradicate the whore stigma, we need to break down the categories of madonna and whore, and stop making sex workers into a special class of people.

Moving and down time

Well, I've finally moved in to the queer grrrl frat house. The move was making me crazy and I was acting like a total cranky frock with working days at my various jobs, then heading over to the old place to pack more boxes, then on to the frat house to sleep for about 5 hours before starting all over again. There was a couple of weeks when I was trudging about in jeans with my hair scraped into a bun.... I saw a few friends who hadn't seen me in anything but skirts and frocks... after a while of this, I started to feel so disorientated.

One of my favourite books Jitterbug Perfume speaks about a time when Pan has become so weak from the prevailence of Christianity that he has become completely invisible, leaving only his voice and his musky, goaty odour. When two of his companions want to smuggle him to the new world (America) they work at devising a perfume to mask his scent in order to take him on a boat. Half way along the journey, he starts going mad, not knowing who he is anymore without his scent. I was starting to feel similar, wearing jeans day after day, until I decided against practicality and put a skirt and cleavage maximising top on to go and do packing (of clothes), one night. Much better.

Then last weekend, which was to be the last of packing, I had a melt down and instead of going to work at my parlour on Sunday, I ended up going to a photoshoot with Zoo and other lurvely queer grrrls. I had previously pulled out of this, being too busy. With most of my frou frou still in boxes, I made do with what was immediately available, which was the contents of my workbag. Even though all of us there were tired, stressed, floppy, or menstrually affected, we still looked damn cute, and with some forced feminisation and some cock sucking Zoo, I was made quite happy. I did get a mite carried away and stomped on Zoo's poor head with a stiletto. . . It was a fun way to spend the afternoon, and a much welcome respite from the move that seemed to never end.

I've been attempting to pull back from activities a bit, to better manage my stress levels. Sydney is such a busy place, and it is so damned easy to get sucked into the void of always going out because there is always something going on. I have been spending down time on You Tube way too much, reigniting my lifelong love of Boy George. I was even considering going to the MG party this year, as he was DJing. I had to remind myself how much I hate big parties, and that it was highly unlikely that he was going to ask me to marry him (one of my childhood dreams). Instead, I get to watch much old videos on You Tube, and even found this gem, of a live performance of Culture Club with Dolly Parton, doing Your Kisses are Charity. Dolly Parton and Boy George - together! Does life get any finer?

The next thing I'm focusing on - having just started to sleep better, is to have some hassle free fun in order to decrease stress. The Easter Show, Gurlesque (attending -not performing) and watching the Bettie Page film over the next week or so.... before things start in earnest with organising International Whores Day, and saving more money and reducing debt - which is a big aim for this year. I have yet to reduce my activist involvement to managable levels. Partly because I don't want to. As much as I need more time to relax and unwind, there is still much to be done, and my community isn't big enough to pull back entirely and leave it to others, yet. Balance always seems to be the biggest challenge of all.