Sex Work Held In Contempt Of Court

Charlotte: My first reaction to this was really too outraged to think straight. When something is so wrong, it leaves me speechless.

S: Why don’t you break down the outrage. Bullet points or something.

C: Well, I’ve never been able to articulate this in a concise way, but I think a lot of people object to sex work in a way that is really more about their issues with capitalism. By which I mean, they complain that sex work is exploitative because some sex workers need to work to pay bills and survive. But most people work jobs they don’t like to pay bills and survive! They get angry at excess even if that excess is what the markets will bear—so when an escort is charging $1,000 an hour, there’s a sort of “burn the witch” reaction, though it makes no sense to be angry with this woman for naming what her time and sexual labor are worth. The media’s always fascinated with expensive prostitutes and drawn to the idea of glamorous lifestyles and purchases, but simultaneously angry that a woman thinks she’s worth that much.

S: Right, it’s like sex workers are held to a different standard about how we should enjoy our work or charge for our work or even think about our work. I think the “whore with the heart of a gold” archetype is really strong in civilian minds.

C: Absolutely. How does anyone who provides a service arrive at their rate? They figure out what the market can bear. They assess what they’ve invested in acquiring their skills and what those skills are worth (i.e. the demand). In this specific situation, the judge actually said to the woman, “How do you manage to evaluate your services—sex—at £20,000 a week? How do you justify that?” It’s like well, jackass, she found someone to pay it—that’s how! That’s how our economy works. Just because he personally wouldn’t spend that much on that woman doesn’t mean her services aren’t worth that much.

It’s like baseball cards or old coins or stamps. Intrinsically those items are worthless. They’re only worth something because some people are willing to pay something. It reminds me of something Catherine said about Ashley Dupre, and how she was excoriated for charging too much; well, what would you have wanted for four hours of sex with Eliot Spitzer? What price is fair for your sexual labor?

S: We’re starting very macro. Demand and supply and capitalism in sex work.

C: What would this judge want in exchange for providing seven days of sex to someone? If they offered him $20,000, would he be like, “Oh no way, that’s far too much? I’m definitely not worth that!”

S: Ha! That’s what Miss Dunbar’s defense should have been. I think it’s interesting that the judge used the word “gift” to justify why she couldn’t keep the money. He suggested that she was not compensated, she was gifted the money.

C: Right. And because of the illicit and often illegal nature of prostitution, escorts may try to talk about gifts and donations instead of fees or rates to elide the directness of the exchange.

S: Exactly what was written about in the post, Language of Selling Yourself.

C: It’s interesting that for once an escort was telling the court, no, this was a direct exchange. She said, “Everything I received was a payment for my escort services and for him to see me exclusively.” I’m wondering if the exclusivity of the arrangement, which was something he would have paid more for (and should have paid more for) is what allowed the judge to claim that she was more of a mistress than an employee?

S: And sometimes I do receive what might appear to novices as gifts (i.e. gift boxes of jewelry) but for me that is not a gift, that’s payment for the hours of time I sat with my annoying customer not getting paid at all, because I only get paid for lap dances. Don’t your clients give you “extra” gifts/tips also? Which reminds me that when a waitress gets a tip, which is “given” to her, she still earned it, but according to the judge when a sex worker gets a tip, it’s unearned.

C: I think it keeps the nature of being a gift sometimes (not a tip) but that the gift is given within the context of a transactional relationship, which may make it different. I’m thinking now about “gift exchanges” where two people are basically required to spend money on each other because they work in the same office or something. It’s an interesting idea, is something still a gift if it’s part of an exchange? I guess to me, that’s not the nature of a true gift but either way, giving an item (or money) to someone makes it theirs.

S: Here’s the exact quote: “Most of the money was given to Miss Dunbar and not earned by her, and could therefore be confiscated.” I found it pretty interesting to see how the journalists who covered this story were especially dismayed that he didn’t give the stolen money to his wife, as if that would have made it all better.

C: I think the judge’s true stance is that sexual labor is not “real” labor, as you pointed out above.

S: I wonder about the employees who got all their money jacked by the Toys R Us ass hat. I’m feeling kind of sorry for all the money that someone got screwed out of somewhere, probably, and I think maybe Miss Dunbar does have a human responsibility to give some of it back. Am I doing the “whore with the heart of gold” projection, here? I mean if Toys R Us Ass Hat had given great quantities of money to anyone (waitress, hairdresser, etc.) I’d be like, oh shit, can we get that money back to the people he stole it from?

C: Well, with property it’s easy, they can repossess stuff and sell it, but even then not for the original value. You wouldn’t go to a car dealership and say, this criminal bought a new car from you and now it’s got 100k miles on it but we want a full refund. I’m trying to think of a non sex worker equivalent where he could have spent a lot of money on a service….

OK, so if he loved puppet shows…

S: At the same time, though, I can sort of see the argument that if I did a bunch of work and got paid with stolen money, it’s still my work and I want that fucking money. I shouldn’t just give it back because it was stolen.

C: If he’d hired a live-in personal chef, it wouldn’t be right to say, “Sorry, all that labor was free because the money was stolen.” With Bernie Madoff, authorities confiscated all of his assets but they didn’t retrace his steps to every massage or expensive dinner, or personal car service, and demand back money from anyone he tipped or paid directly for their work.

S: Right. Oh damn, you left the puppet metaphor. I was so excited for that. Maybe we’ll find a way to return to that later.

C: It’s my personal daydream, this guy sitting in his living room and clapping his hands in joy at the puppet show. Shouting “again, again!” Poor puppeteer, no way the judge is going to agree his services are worth 20k either.

Either way, taking the money back or leaving it with who he paid, someone is getting screwed. Taking the money back creates another theft.

S: Right. That’s why stealing sucks.

C: We’ve made a lot of progress here today!

S: Which is sort of what this whole article missed…

C: Yes. This man was the one who did something wrong, not the woman he hired.

S: That’s what has been pissing me off lately, all these articles focused on the sex work rather than on the ass hat customers who are going to be ass hats either way. They’re not getting wasted drunk because of the strippers in the club and they’re not embezzling millions of dollars because of the brothel they visit.

C: They’re doing it because they have issues with self control and ethics. These women aren’t pickpockets, they’re trying to work. So when someone comes in and wants to pay them, that’s not a red flag. That’s what’s supposed to happen.

S: Exactly. And not all customers are that way, obviously, so it’s not like we as sex workers only attract the ass hats either. In a way, these articles both damn sex workers and give sex workers super human powers. We drive men to such lengths of insanity that they’ll embezzle millions of dollars of children’s toys. Um, sorry, no, they showed up at the door this way.

C: There’s a lot of misogyny in it. You can tell that part of the reaction is “these money hungry vultures.”

S: So true. The age old finger-pointing accusation that we do it for the money. To which, we calmly reply…. Duh. Of course.

C: It’s so funny to me when radical feminists complain about sex workers making men think that women are always sexually available to them. Um, not when there’s a price on it we aren’t! Because if you’re broke, it’s not happening. In what universe does every man always have expendable income?

S: And, of course, when we demand money we sacrifice our heart of gold, which seems to be the only way mainstream society can swallow our behavior.

C: Yes, there was definitely some of that in the way the judge reprimanded the woman, an implication that she should feel guilty for accepting so much money for her sex and time and attention and exclusivity. Which presumably, to the judge, is not worth much.

S: So here’s another heart of gold question, I’ve been having: At what point do sex workers as sexual providers have to deal with sex addiction? For instance, if we have a customer who is displaying all the signs of addiction to what we provide, are we obligated to cut the supply? I know that bartenders will kick out alcoholics after too many drinks but mostly, because they don’t want them to pass out on the floor and obstruct business.

C: Yeah, or implicate the bar when they drive drunk and get into an accident.

S: Right. Well there’s a sex and love addicts anonymous group. My understanding is that addiction to anything is when it fucks up the rest of your life.

C: If there’s such a thing as sex addiction, there must be such a thing as food addiction, right? And would restaurants be denying or turning away people who visited regularly or ordered big meals?

S: “No, you cannot have the Big Mac, I’m only serving you french fries today, fatty. That’ll be a dollar at the window.”

C: I mean say a bulimic wanted to sue a Ben and Jerry’s because she would pig out there and then throw up. We’d be like, “That’s crazy.” Or say a puppeteer…

S: If you start a puppet anonymous group, I’ll be your first member. Those double jointed superstars really do me in.

C: My general attitude is that there are some people in the world who have no moral compass, no sense of responsibility, and will exploit everyone they can. Some of those people are sex workers but way more of them are bankers and CEOs and so on. But I think most people want to do the right thing and if it seems like a guy is ruining his life trying to see you, you’ll try to talk to him about it and get him to stop. I’m trying to think if I’ve ever been in that position.

S: Yeah, have you?

C: A few times. When I worked on webcam, there were a lot of guys who were seriously broke and kept scraping together money for shows or racking up credit card debt. But in person, no one’s ever been so forthcoming about their finances. Although I have been told sometimes that they’ve been laid off.

S: I’ve been semi-close, I think, but the guy’s life was miserable to begin with so it was hard to tell.

C: Yes! It’s really hard to be the one taking their biggest joy away from them. Everyone deserves some release (I don’t mean that in a purely sexual way). If you’re living in your parent’s basement, which several of my webcam customers were, and you’re too shy to talk to any women in person and your happiest moment of the day is talking to this pretty girl online… I don’t know. I feel like it’s not for me to tell them, “pull yourself together! Start exercising more and save money so you can get your own place.”

S: I guess, you’re right, we want all people to have a moral compass of some sort (sex workers included) but we can’t really be prescriptive about it. If the bartender keeps serving beer to an alcoholic and the sex worker keeps sleeping with a client who seems to be a sex addict, it’s sad, but it’s not illegal. And it doesn’t mean that the bartender or the sex worker hasn’t earned the money, fair and square.

C: It’s like—have you ever had a client who seemed to be kind of a pedophile?

S: I actually haven’t (thankfully).

C: When I was on webcam this guy would talk to me about how I reminded him of his daughter who was like, pre-pubescent. I could never tell if he was just trying to upset me or if he was being serious, and if he was being serious if I was feeding into something evil or if I was giving him an outlet to not do something evil. I think most sex workers, when faced with stuff like that, want to do the right thing. We’re not like, fuck everyone else in the world, if I’m getting paid I don’t care!

S: Yeah, that’s tough.

C: But life is messy, sex is really messy. The idea that we can work under only the most perfect conditions is insane, no one can.

S: So true. I’ve been reluctant to try on phone sex operating because of just that. Strip club guys are mostly vanilla.

C: Think about how much debt people wrack up from impulse shopping. What can a department store do? Make them present a record of their finances before they’re allowed to make purchases? There’s a point where personal responsibility has to kick in.

S: I do agree with your shopping department analogy. Sex workers shouldn’t be charged with healing the world. And before, all the strippers tell me I’m crazy, I’ll just say, my strip club guys are vanilla.

Anyways, we can probably conclude…

C: Stealing is bad, sex workers are good? I think that was the take away.

S The judge is a jerk and at the same time accurately symbolic of civilian thinking about sexwork. Some people have hearts of gold, some of them are sex workers and some are not and some are CEO’s while most are not.

C: Haha!

S: Sex is messy. Puppets are addicting.

C: Some people got their hearts of gold when a corrupt company president bought it for them…and now it must be returned

S: Oh snap.

 

Post script: Another hearing for Hopes’ second favorite prostitute, Tanya Wieck, is upcoming.