Every harlot was a virgin once. – William Blake
On many occasions I’ve written about the fact that whores aren’t all that different from everyone else; that is to say we’re different from each other just like everyone else is different, and we no more share a certain “whore personality type” than all amateurs share a “non-whore personality type”. We’re not all addicts, nor are we all emotionally damaged, nor have we all been molested as children. We’re not all nymphomaniacs or criminals (except insofar as our societies choose to brand us as criminals), or pimped “sex slaves”, and we don’t all have low-self esteem; in fact a disproportionate number of us have high self-esteem, which anyone who actually bothered to talk to real whores instead of just chanting dogma would realize is almost inevitable. We have families, children and friends, outside interests, hopes, dreams, fears and needs just like everyone else. But some people insist on portraying us as somehow inhuman, with dangerous or even fatal results.
A new advertising campaign in Nova Scotia hopes to spread the message that we are real people and therefore deserve the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as everyone else does; here’s a paraphrased version of a story about that campaign which appeared in the Chronicle Herald on Wednesday, January 26th:
At first glance, you might expect the wholesome-looking woman staring from posters in Metro Transit bus shelters to be selling something like milk or granola. “I’m glad my prostitute made me finish school,” says the jarring copy that accompanies the ads for Stepping Stone, a Halifax group that advocates for and offers outreach to street-level sex workers. And then in much smaller type: “Sex workers are mothers too.”
The controversial campaign was designed by Halifax-based Extreme Advertising and aims to humanize the stereotypes of those practicing the world’s oldest profession. Violent attacks against prostitutes were Stepping Stone’s motivation for the campaign, according to Anthony Taaffe, the creative director at Extreme. “People have a bad habit of pigeonholing sex workers as not being people,” he said. “It’s easy for people to kind of go, ‘Oh, that woman’s just a whore.’ Well, no, that person is also somebody’s mother or somebody’s daughter or somebody’s sister or something like that. So it helps humanize them a little bit. And I think that’s what we want people to really understand is you might not necessarily agree with what they do for a job, but don’t forget that they’re humans and they deserve the same respect that you give to your brother or your father or your mother.”
“We did want to get people’s attention,” said Rene Ross, the executive director of Stepping Stone. “And we really wanted folks to see sex workers for what they are, and that is people, and to get people talking about the issue, because the reality is sex workers are criminalized in Canada and they face a great amount of stigma, marginalization and violence.”
Sadly, it would be nearly impossible to launch such a campaign in the United States; nobody would dare to contradict the politically correct view of hookers as infantilized victims to be “rescued” from “pimps”, our customers, or even ourselves. And in recent years trafficking fetishists have dehumanized us even more, into mere numbers: The larger a crowd any person vanishes into, the less her individuality can be perceived. I don’t think it’s done on purpose, but it couldn’t be more effective if it were; by reducing individual women – daughters, sisters, mothers, lovers, friends, wives, professionals, entrepreneurs, priestesses, therapists and any number of others – into mere digits in a huge number like “10,000 prostitutes coming to the Super Bowl” or “300,000 trafficked victims”, the fetishists erase these women’s individuality. They become mere ants in a mound, grains of rice in a sack, drops of water in a bucket…identical, interchangeable particles who don’t have to be cared about as individual human beings, just treated collectively as part of a “problem” to be “solved”. Remember the song “Easy To Be Hard” from Hair?
And especially people
Who care about strangers
Who care about evil
And social injustice
Do you only
Care about the bleeding crowd?
How about a needing friend?
Unfortunately, there are a very large number of people who do indeed only care about the “bleeding crowd” while turning their backs on the needs of real human beings. It’s very easy to claim to be oh-so-concerned about the tens of thousands of “teenage sex slaves” who don’t actually exist, because they don’t have faces and idiosyncrasies and opinions which the “rescuers” might find offensive. Imaginary sex slaves who can never really be rescued don’t make inconvenient demands like “OK, if you don’t want me to be a whore give me a job which makes just as much money and still allows me to be my own boss and have the flexibility to go to school/be with my kids/write my book/work my other job.” Real women do, and thus it’s much better for the fanatics not to think about us in that way; numbers can be manipulated, modified and made to do what a skillful manipulator wishes, but real women can’t. Real women may not wish to repent, to waste their lives enriching others by drudge work, or to parrot whatever lies their “rescuers” wish to put in their mouths, and there’s nothing the prohibitionists hate more than whores who refuse to allow themselves to be pimped to the prohibitionist cause.
That first ad is really quite awesome.
And yes, it would be difficult to carry an ad like that in the States. But it wouldn’t hurt to try, especially in San Francisco or New York.
I suppose there are certain personality types that do better in the prostitution business than elsewhere (so in a sense there should be statistical differences between prostitutes and other more inclusive human groups). But then again similar differences could be found among the members of any occupationally defined group, at least in a society free enough to let people make their own choices and select the occupations that best suit their personalities and desires.
So indeed, there is no reason to expect whores to differ from the general population any more wildly than nurses, schoolteachers or bakers do.
As long as people think that whores have to be either evil manipulators or innocent victims, they will be blind to the actual diversity and reality of what is going on — thereby actually harming them, including those among them whom they would want to help. The “paradox of the do-gooder” comes from the fact that a desire to help often does not go paired with the knowledge of what help is actually necessary and/or useful (or even the desire to acquire said knowledge).
Hopefully this ad campaign will not be the last, and hopefully such campaigns will inspire people to stop and think a bit more about the profound implications of the curious fact that whores are also people.
One reason I don’t think it would work in the US (because of our societies attitudes towards this subject) is the possessiveness and derogatory nature of these ads. Using the term “my” in these posters will surely get some people all up in arms. Another poster they have starts with “My Tramp did…something (I can’t remember exactly what)” and shows a grandma with cookies. The term tramp conjures up an image that doesn’t have anything to do with prostitution but that is just my opinion.
I think something that might work at least better in our section of the world would be posters and campaigns such as a picture of a nurse with the words “A prostitute helped save my life” or a picture of a teacher “A prostitute helped my kids get into college”. Only on my second cup of coffee so I can’t at the moment think of a poster to signify a mother (yet) but do you see where I am going with this? Maybe I’ll throw together some pictures and put them on SWATCH and see how it works 🙂
That’s very good Brandy! I like it. I think that the term that comes to mind for me is “skill set”. I have a very unique skill set, that not every one has. If I took a job placement assessment, you would see many other jobs that require similar skills, nursing, social work, teaching. You would never however see prostitute show up. Though, in my opinion it is the perfect job for me, and like the teacher that has students that were lucky to have studied under her, and were able to take something positive away from the experience, I feel that some of my clients have had the same experience with me. Enriching one small private corner of a man or womans life, (let’s not forget our lady clients, rare as they may be) can have such a positive impact on their family, and work.
I was once at a restaurant in the high country of Colorado, and the waitress was explaining an argument she just had with a lady. My mother was there who knows and accepts my chosen career. At any rate, the waitress made the comment about the lady she was arguing with “She’s probably a whore, no wonder she has more money than me! It’s real easy to just lay down and spread your legs!”
I could feel that my mom wanted to smack her, but I didn’t. I just said “Really? You think it would be that easy?” She looked a little puzzled and walked away.
Many do not recognize that there is a skill set required to be a prostitute. Especially at the higher levels. We are intelligent, skilled, professional, talented and successful women. I think it is about time that Society dispels with all of the fetishists hype, and realizes that we are business owners, and our clients, as well as our clients employers and families are lucky that we are here.
I’ve often pointed out that prostitution is the job I’m most suited for; I was happiest at it, made the most money at it, won the most respect for it and did it longer than I ever did any other job in my life. 🙂
I like that first ad as well. It’s lack of political correctness won’t stop me from plastering it all over the ‘net LOL.
How about a picture of a doctor with “I’m glad my prostitute mom helped me finish school”?
Anybody who thinks that all a successful prostitute has to do is “just lay down and spread your legs” should avoid that line of work. She won’t be very popular.
Well, she wouldn’t be very popular with me. I shouldn’t extrapolate from myself maybe.
She definitely wouldn’t be very popular, except maybe with the $50-to-spend set. 🙁
I borrowed your poster Maggie LOL
That’s fine, I borrowed it from Extreme Advertising. I also like this one, though Brandy didn’t:
Yup that’s the one! You know how words will bring up certain images (unbidden and due to ways and areas you grew up in). Tramp brings to mind a ‘trailer trash barbie’ stereotype and yes I’m ashamed to admit that because it’s what I’m fighting against in the prostitution world.
I just fail to see the correlation between prostitutes and ‘tramps’ as to me they are two different identity types. I don’t identify tramps as sex workers, I see them as the free drunk stuff you may pick up in a bar.
Dam, here I am trying to be the Mother Theresa of hookers and associates and I’m failing LOL
I suspect they really wanted to use “whore” but the transit authority wouldn’t approve it.
You’re probably right that they weren’t allowed to use “whore,” but I tend to think of “tramp” as, I don’t know, a close cousin to “bum.”
They should probably stick to “prostitute” and “hooker,” maybe an occasional “call girl” or “escort” but we don’t want to split in this. It’ll be interesting to see how far this goes.
Stepping Stone is an outreach for streetwalkers, so it’s unlikely that they’ll use “call girl” or “escort”. I think the general terms are better for something like this (and BTB I agree that “tramp” sounds a bit off, but I like the message so I’m willing to overlook it).
“Prostitute” and “Hooker” it is, then. They might get away with “Harlot.”
I’m currently reading about the way teens are slandered in the press, giving the public an impression which is in direct contradiction to reality. They ways this is done are ex-figgin’-actly the ways that the public are given the wrong ideas about prostitutes. Rare horror stories being trotted out as representative, shifting definitions, the works.
GF and I are watching the movie Born Into Brothels. Awful situation, but again, NOT the way things are for every working girl on the planet.