Something New

We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.

“MY BODY, MY BUSINESS”, recorded, edited and introduced by Caren Wilton (Otago University Press, $NZ45)

[I must preface this review with an apology. My Body, My Business was published in November 2018, and only six months later am I getting around to reviewing it. Why should this be so? Because I put this blog on hold for three months, when I was holidaying in Europe, and I am therefore only now catching up with books which publishers, in my long absence, were good enough send me for review. Sorry.]

I am sometimes acccused of having a dry, descriptive approach to reviewing, whereby I catalogue in detail what a book contains. But there is a good reason to follow this approach when I consider My Body, My Business. I want to be as objective as possible. This book is about prostitution in New Zealand, upon which many people have definite views, ranging from acceptance to indifference to repugnance. I have my own views on prostitution, but I will save such views until I have finished this review proper.

Oral historian Caren Wilton began her research in 2009 and did not produce this book until nine years later. She interviewed in depth and detail seventeen New Zealand “sex workers” (she notes that the term was first coined in America). Six of these interviews remain in archives for future researchers to find, and only eleven are reproduced in My Body, My Business. All but three interviewees included here chose to be known by pseudonyms.

These eleven personal memoirs present a variety of views. Four of the eleven interviewees are transgender (male-to-female) prostitutes. Is this representative of prostitution in New Zealand? Do transgender people make up over a third of New Zealand’s prostitutes? I simply do not know. I note too that most of the interviewees are middle-aged, being born in the 1940s or 1950s or 1960s. All were interviewed six or seven years back, so they would range in age from those in their seventies to those in their forties. There is only one comparative youngster, “Stevie”, born in the 1980s. Does this suggest that younger prostitutes preferred not to be interviewed or were considered too young to tell life stories? Again, I do not know. It’s also worth noting that, while we hear some prostitutes express discontent with their way of life, this collection does not include those who never wanted to be prostitutes in the first place, or who felt their lives had been wrecked by the trade. Could it be that such people did not volunteer to be interviewed? No migrant (non-New Zealand-citizen) prostitutes are interviewed in this book, and most have some sort of connection with the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective (NZPC), a sort of trade union and advocacy group for prostitutes.

Most of the prostitutes represented in this book came from families in straitened circumstances – not necessarily dirt-poor, but not comfortably affluent either. Only two seem to be more middle-class – the dominatrix who calls herself Mistress Margaret and Dame Catherine Healy, founder of the NZPC. Mistress Margaret is a university-educated Englishwoman. Catherine Healy, also university-educated, spent nine years as a school teacher and, she says, moved into prostitution only after working as a receptionist in a massage parlour which she at first did not realise was a brothel. (As an irrelevant sidelight, I should add that the supervisor of my doctoral thesis in History, the late Professor Hugh Laracy, told me with a mixture of pride and amusement that Catherine Healy was his cousin.)

The most strident (dare I say shrill?) voice in this collection belongs to the prostitute who calls herself Misty and who says many negative things about her clients, not in terms of their violence or mistreatment of her, but in terms of their values. I found the most nuanced and, from my perspective, the most sympatheric contribution came from the lesbian Jeanie, who admits that servicing men was very draining for her and who comes close to saying that for her sex is better when it's part of a real commitment.

Caren Wilton’s preface and introduction emphasise that the stories in this book are invdividual stories, personal and unique testimonies. I accept in good faith that what the eleven interviewees say are their stories as they remember them, while also noting that we all have a tendency to elaborate things a little and memory is not always a reliable recorder of events. Twice I met things that I found hard to believe, but I’ll have to pass them over in silence as I am, of course, in no position to contradict them.

The introduction gives a very handy brief history of prostitution in New Zealand, from the first Maori women who sold themselves to Pakeha whalers and sailors to the decriminalisation of prostitution in 2003, which is seen as a watershed and a moment when the law began to give some real protection (from harrassment or blackmail) to sex workers. Wilton sees alternative recent initiatives to deal with prostitution as retrogressive. She characterises (p.28) as “neo-abolitionism”, and as an unlikely alliance between feminists and fundamentalist Christians, the push to criminalise prostitutes’ customers rather than prostitutes themselves. This is the  model which has been adopted in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Canada, Ireland and France. I admit that I have always considered this model as questionable. Such an approach says, in effect, that a product is not illegal, but you are a criminal if you attempt to buy it. I would also add that such an approach does, in effect, punish prostitutes because it deprives them of their income – as well as being almost impossible to police.

Now I come to the more questionable part of Wilton’s Preface. It is very much pushing the idea that prostitution is simply a job like any other – in other words, normalising it. Wilton quotes with approval (p.14) a psychology lecturer’s view that there are “parallels between sex work and traditional marriage, another area in which women’s sexual, emotional and domestic labour is exchanged for financial support from men.” This old canard goes back at least to the 19^th century anarchists’ slogan that “prostitution is short term marriage; marriage is long term prostitution” – and while this view may be true of some marriages (“gold diggers” marrying millionaires, for example), it is woefully inadequate as a description of marriage per se. Committed, mutally respectful and loving marriage is not prostitution. It is a partnership.

Wilton rejects the idea that prostitutes are victims, or that they are all the products of childhood sexual abuse.  She claims that the overwhelming majority of customers are not desperate or violent, but very nice, ordinary men. Setting aside the males in this story, she wants to characterise prostitutes as strong, independent women, autonomous and making their own decisions. She also says that prostitution is an area where women can earn more money than men and become financially independent.  Certainly this last assertion has some truth. Many of the interviewees say at some point that making easy and plentiful money was a main inducement to become a prostitute.

But reading my way through the eleven interviews, I find much that implicitly contradicts Wilton’s view of prostitution as a career like any other. “I didn’t really enjoy selling myself. It’s business…” says the transgendered Shareda. “I didn’t want to be a hooker”, says transgendered Dana de Milo, who claims that prostitution was the only way he/she could make money to afford a sex change.

Despite the preface’s assertion that not all prostitutes come from desperate or abusive backgrounds, it is clear that these things lurk in the backgrounds of at least a considerable number of prostitutes. Shareda speaks of lots of drinking and physical [not sexual] abuse from his stepfather. He says he started prostituting himself to men in Myers Park at the age of 14. Dana de Milo says he serviced schoolboys sexually at a very young age, and was servicing sailors on the streets of Auckland at the age of 13. Poppy, also transsexual, was sexually abused at the age of eleven and underwent shock treatment and other brutal procedures in a psychiatric hospital to be “cured” of his gender dysphoria. Allan, at the age of 12, was pretending to be older, going to nightclubs and getting money for sex with men in public lavatories. It can be noted that these four sex workers are either gay or transgender, and it is possible that their lives are radically different from those of women prostitutes. But it still belies the image of confident prostitutes rationally entering the game as a career choice. One of the women, Misty, never knew her father, got messed about in foster homes, was bad at school, had a factory job for a short time but was quickly on the skids and finally took to prostitution as a desperate means of getting an income.

As well as revealing more desperation  than the preface suggests, many of the interviews betray great defensiveness.

Mistress Margaret the dominatrix says “a very refined, honourable man” taught her about domination and she claims loftily “I’m an escape valve to the men who have got things they’d find hard to raise with their wife – not sex, just domination.” Kelly says “I don’t believe that children get tainted from the sex industry. It’s a job. I’ve not associated with the drug scene, and not everybody is a drug addict in the sex industry” (p.112) – which, of course, suggests that some are. Similarly Kelly says “Women who have been abused – sure, they’re there; they’re also in offices, they’re in every kind of job in the world.” (p.116) Jeanie – as I said earlier, probably the most nuanced and sympathetic voice in the book – claims “you’re not choosing to be degraded. From a feminist perspctive you’re choosing to be empowered, because you’re saying, I can do this, it doesn’t water down any of my other strong passionate feelings about women or anything.” (p.222) This statement seems very much in line witth Caren Wilton’s assertions in her preface. But then in the very next paragraph, we find Jeanie talking about her alcohol problems and about how she was immature when she began doing tricks, and she later says “I felt it was sad that men needed to buy sex, and that… there wasn’t work I could do that involved a better use of my talents and skills.” (p.231)

Indeed, going through the whole book, the only interviewee I can find who says she had enjoyed unequivocally being a prostitute is (66-year-old and retired) Anna Reed, who says such things as “I’ve always been addicted to love in whatever form it takes.” (p.45) and “I always get bored with predictability” (p.46) and “I love great sex, no commitment. Brilliant. Great combination. I always had a really good body.” (p.59)

Despite the (sometimes inadvertent) defensiveness, I don’t doubt the sincerity of (most of) the participants. But in the end, I did not find these personal stories inspiring or particularly stimulating as reading. In fact most are drab and dreary – like much of everyday life for all of us, of course.

However, I’m sure My Body, My Business has its sociological value and will be mined by future historians and sociologists when they produce more statistical, representative and inclusive books about prostitution. And as I read my way through this volume, I admit to finding some factual details very interesting. For example, I was not aware that, until very recently, the antique charge of being a “rogue and vagabond” was still being used by New Zealand police when they hauled prostitutes before the courts. And I was interested to read about the disappearance of “boat girls” – prostitutes who would walk the wharves and go on visiting ships to service the sailors. Apparently the appearance of container ships means that now there is a quicker turnaround and cargo ships are in port for much shorter times, meaning the girls (and boys) no longer get a chance to ply their wares.

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There now, the above is the “review proper” of My Body, My Business. Of course in parts of it I’ve expressed my own opinions (it’s a review, remember?) but these are opinions about the book. They are not opinions about prostitution itself.

So here are my own opinions on the subject.

First, I admit my ignorance. Having never sought the services of a prostitute, I obviously don’t know their world close up.

Only four or five times in my life have I been aware of being in the presence of prostitutes. About twenty years ago, my wife and I took a night-time walk through Sydney’s King’s Cross, and were once or twice addressed, unaggressively, by (quite obviously transgender) prostitutes lurking in doorways. We walked on.

Once, in Shanghai, we passed a very tired, jaded and probably much worked-over woman standing, smoking a cigarette outside a massage parlour which clearly had a euphemistic designation.

Once, my brother, his wife and I were coming home from a movie on Queen Street. For some reason my brother, puffing on a pipe, was walking ahead while his wife and I dawdled some steps behind chatting. A young man in drag obviously thought my brother was a single guy on his own, and addressed him with the time-honoured come-on “Have you got a light?”, to which my brother replied heartily  “Sure mate” and lit the profferred cigarette with his big cigarette-lighter before the three of us walked on, with my brother remarking “That’ll give him a surprise.”

On my own in Rome about fifteen years ago, I was walking, in a bustling crowd, back from Stazione Termini to my stay. I glanced up and saw an ageing woman, in a fur coat, standing at the top of some steps. “Ciao, baby”, she called to me, in what is apparently the traditional mating cry of Roman prostitutes. I hurried on with the crowd, thinking “She looks like somebody’s grandmother.” Then I reflected that, at that time, I was already somebody’s grandfather myself.

And finally the very interesting one. Three months ago, my wife and I were making another trip to Paris. We decided to spend a morning taking a walk through the Bois de Boulogne, which we had never done before. So along the Rue de la Madeleine, up the Champs Elysees, under the Arc de Triomphe and down the Avenue Foch we walked to get to the huge forested park. On a clear winter day, it was fun rambling along deserted paths, mainly under bare deciduous trees. As we approached a T-junction where our path joined a main road, the Allee de la Reine Marguerite, we saw a fleshy woman with pancake makeup, wearing black boots and a short black skirt and exposing much bosom, standing on the other side of the road. “She looks like a hooker waiting for customers”, I said. “Surely not,” said my wife, who thought nobody would be doing such business so blatantly in broad daylight. But when we reached the Allee de la Reine Marguerite and turned left, we discovered that every fifty yards or so, there was parked a white van, with windows only in the cab, in each of which sat a woman with low-cut dress, ample flesh on display and a crafty come-hither look. Some of the parked vans had nobody in the cab, but in those cases there was a bright scarf tied to the outer wing-mirror, as plain signal to passers-by that business was currently being transacted in the windowless rear of the van. And there were indeed passers-by – namely single men in cars, moving along the road at slow-cruise speed through this mobile brothel to find which goods were available. We counted twelve vans and, given that they were all of the same make and design, we could only conclude that the working girls belonged to a syndicate.

A major thought occurred to me. In France, it is the customer who is criminalised, not the prostitute; but there was no sign of any police observing the cruising cars. Given its organization, the mobile brothel must, surely, have been a regular feature of this part of the Bois and its location would presumably have been common knowledge. From this, I adduce that, as in so many jurisdictions, police can’t really be bothered pursuing prostitutes and their clients, unless they don’t have more important things to do.

And there you have my complete first-hand knowledge of prostitutes.

Now what are the reasons why I would never seek the services of a prostitute? First, there is the important matter of infidelity. Regardless of much of the chatter in My Body, My Business, a married man who resorts to prostitutes will be aware that he is cheating on his wife, and this can only weaken a marriage and create a pattern of deceit. Second, prostitution reduces sexual intercourse to a loveless monetary transaction. I cannot imagine real love being a part of sexual intercourse outside a committed, loving relationship. Sex as monetary transaction is a species of masturbation, making use of somebody else’s body. Those are my main objections to prostitution – the infidelity that it involves and the lovelessness. There is a third consideration, which is more a matter of safety and prudence. Despite talk of the “professionalism” of prostitutes, their health-awareness and their use of condoms, I think one would be more likely to contract an STD from a prostitute who routinely sleeps with many men each week than from one’s spouse or partner.

As you will note, I have not said prostitution as bad or immoral, but I have given three reasons why I shun it.

Despite this, I think the decriminalisation of prostitution has been an intelligent step. It has made life safer for many sex workers, freed them from much harrassment (from police, among others), made it easier for them to seek medical attention when it is needed and allowed them to be heard when they complain of unreasonable or unfair practices by their employers.  Do I think prostitution is a positive good for socety? No. But my bottom line is that prostitution is inevitable, having been practised in some form in all times and all known societies.  There’s a good reason that it is called “the world’s oldest profession.” As no laws will expunge it, it’s better that it is out in the open, known, and that its practioners have legal protection.