Part III The business of selling sex

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Chapter 5 Conspicuous and inconspious sex work

INTRODUCTION Popular images and stereotypes of the sex worker or prostitute are concentrated largely, if by no means exclusively, on the street worker, who is typically held to be amoral, conspicuously vulgar and indiscriminate and a lost and hopeless victim of abusers and manipulators. When people picture a hooker, they picture a woman with a wig, a lot of make up, high heels, short skirt, and fishnet pantyhose. (Jasmin 1933:34) It makes me furious when women are portrayed as walking, downtrodden victims. Why are girls always portrayed the way they are in the media? We are portrayed as women who stand on street corners, who wear microscopic miniskirts, who are foulmouthed junkies, who are violent, with severe psychiatric disorders, and who were abused as kids. (Barbara 1993:13) It is the street worker too who attracts the attention of politicians, the police and other agencies of moral regulation and surveillance. This is not surprising when such a high proportion of off-street or indoor workers are inconspicuous to the point of invisibility. Boyle (1994:11) may be exaggerating the statistics, but her statement that the prostitution trade is akin to an icebergnine-tenths of it are hidden with street girls being the visible tip, is well taken. In this chapter some of the more salient and misleading myths about sex workers are

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debunked, and both the normality claimed by women like Jasmin and Barbara and the mundane everyday aspects of the sex business brought into clearer focus. In the opening section it is suggested that popular stereotypes of the sex worker, like all social stereotypes embody predictable types of error, and these are then discussed in terms of the whore stigma. The second section draws on published and other material to comment on the day-to-day form and content of the lives of women committed to the sex industry. In the concluding section some of the ramifications of the results of the process of demythologization and demystification practised here and in other chapters in this volume are addressed. STEREOTYPES, SEXUALITY AND SOCIETY Since we all inevitably rely on stereotyping, mere condemnations of stereotyped thinking are less than helpful. In the words of McCall and Simmons (1966:114): all living creaturesmust employ stereotypes to categorize and deal with the kaleidoscopic flow of events around them. Nor can they wait contemplatively until all the facts are in; they must prejudge the meaning of the whole on the basis of a few signs and must act upon this jot of knowledge. There is no logical reason why such stereotypes should be erroneous, although they can of course only partially fit individuals. However, insofar a they do err, they err in predictable ways. McCall and Simmons usefully list four such types of error: (1) the inclusion of characteristics that are missing in the majority of cases (errors of commission); (2) the exclusion of characteristics that are present in the majority of cases (errors of omission); (3) the exaggeration of those characteristics that are most pertinent to the projects of those who stereotype; and (4) the imputation of fixed characteristics when in reality these wax and wane. If the existence of popular stereotypes of the sex worker seems inevitable then, the nature of contemporary stereotypes, their mixture of truth and error, and the types of error they contain, are contingent and of interest and concern. Phetersons (1993) analysis of the whore stigma is instructive here. She begins with a commentary on dictionary definitions of whore/prostitute worth quoting in full:

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Whore means prostitute. And a prostitute is a woman who offers to hire her body for indiscriminate sexual intercourse, or so says The Concise Oxford Dictionary. Prostitute is further defined as a verb: to prostitute oneself is to sell ones honour for base gain or to put ones abilities to infamous use. Other dictionaries include men secondarily in the noun definition and specify in the verb definition the shame attached to dishonour and the unworthiness and wrongdoing attached to infamous use. The noun clearly denotes a person, especially a woman, offering heterosexual sex, in particular intercourse, for money; the verb denotes any persons activity, which need not be sexual, put to uncommendable use. Those meanings are likely to conform to popular opinion except that many people collapse the second definition into the first. A prostitute then becomes one who sells her honour by offering to hire her body for base gain or for an unworthy doing, specifically sexual intercourse. (1993:39) As Pheterson points out, many women sex workers would baulk at the reference here to indiscriminate sexual intercourse, regarding the selection of both clients and sexual practices as fundamental rights within the trade, if not ones they are always able to assert. Quite frequently sex work does not involve intercourse: in fact some women engage in regular sex work without ever offering or consenting to either vaginal or anal intercourse. The variety of sexual practices sought and satisfied within the industry, often but not always on womens terms, from quick hand jobs and oral sex to the protracted fulfilment of elaborate fetishes calling for acting rather than explicitly sexual skills, defies easy summary. Pheterson goes on to provide a useful analysis of the dishonour associated with sex work, considering the ramifications of its legal, social, psychological and ideological aspects for sex workers, clients and pimps. The following discussion draws heavily on her work. In relation to legal dishonour, she aptly and ironically observes (1993:43) that women are allowed to give free sex but not to negotiate with a view to payment without defying a host of laws: A woman who earns money through sex is defined as selling her honour. Even in countries like Britain, where prostitution itself is not illegal, many women sex workers, and especially street workers offending against the Street Offences Act of 1959, find it all but impossible in practice to avoid law-

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breaking and often also find their civil liberties and rights at risk. As Julie angrily explained to McLeod (1982:116): The law gets me down. It says being a prostitute isnt illegal. They can even make you pay tax on it. God forbid! But having said that, Okay you can be a prostitute, they then proceed to make it as difficult as possible for you. You cant advertise, no one can let you premises. If you live with someone they can be done for living off immoral earnings. If two of you share a house or flat its a brothel if youre working from there. If youve got convictions as a common prostitute you can be walking along, say even for a bag of chips, and they can get you. Families, friends and clients, as well as pimps, are vulnerable too. Unsurprisingly, Britains prostitution laws are not applied equally to sex worker and client. No less predictably, attempts to reduce this inequality by penalizing clientswitness the Sexual Offences Act of 1985 which outlawed kerb-crawlingare opposed by sex workers. Pheterson (1993:44) quotes one sex worker as follows: First of all, arresting johns is bad for business. Secondly, it pushes us further underground where were more vulnerable. And thirdly, it misses the point:we want as much right to sell sex as men have to buy it; we dont want punishment for themwe want rights for us. Nor has such legislation aimed at clients proved effective in Britain or elsewhere. More assiduous attempts have been made in the past and the present to legislate against third parties like pimps, defined in the Sexual Offences Act of 1956 as persons who profit from the earnings of a prostitute. But this legislation too has had only limited success. Pheterson lists the range of third parties who can be caught up in antipimping laws: (1) managers hired by sex workers to oversee appointments; (2) boyfriend, girlfriends or husbands with whom sex workers share income and accommodation; (3) hotel managers who rent rooms to sex workers; (4) parents of sex workers who receive money from them; (5) men who force women to do sex work for money; and (6) men who entice women with promises of marriage or non-sex work and then coerce them into the sex industry. She adds:

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The last two examples are clear cases of abuse. However, antipimping laws mingle abusive acts with commercial acts with private choices. Most prostitutes are dependent upon commercial agreements with third parties and many prostitutes have families who rely upon their income. (1993:45) While the manifest function of such law may be to punish exploiting third parties, most notably brutal pimps, the latent function is to further harass women sex workers and theirfrequently benignassociates. Laws at once reflect, legitimate and reproduce social norms; and women sex workers can be said to infringe a number of deepseated social norms associated with honour/dishonour. Pheterson (1993:46) cites the following sources of social dishonour: (1) having sex with strangers; (2) having sex with multiple partners; (3) taking sexual initiative and control and possessing expertise; (4) asking for money for sex; (5) being committed to satisfying impersonal male lust and fantasies; (6) being out alone on the streets at night dressed to attract male desire; and (7) being in the company of supposedly drunk or abusive men whom they either can handle (common or vulgar women) or cannot handle (victimized women). For many women sex workers being a prostitute is not in itself shameful. They do not accept, even if they are not impervious to, societys ubiquitous cultural norms around (hetero-)sexual relations. Often they have their own sub-cultural, or counter-cultural, notions of honour/dishonour. These may be related to distinctions between good whores and bad whores. Good whores are variously defined as women who maintain a code of fair work, ask for money in advance, leave their clients feeling satisfied, use healthy practices like washing clients and insisting on condoms, remain emotionally (and sexually) detached, never provide services not negotiated beforehand, keep off alcohol and other drugs when working, and warn other women about dangerous or unreliable clients. Thus dishonour for many sex workers is not associated with sex work per se, but with a lack of competence and integrity in the conduct of work. Social norms in relation to clients are much more ambiguous than are those in relation to sex workers. Whereas a whore is deemed dishonourable as a woman, the very criteria of unworthiness for the trick are also criteria of manlinessfor example, seeing a woman as a sex object, pursuing self-satisfaction without regard for her feelings, and paying for her body as for any (other) commodity (Pheterson 1993:47).

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Often it is as if clients are culpable in public perception primarily, or only, for getting caught or being found out. Certainly, unlike sex workers, their identities are rarely spoiled on exposure (Goffman 1968). Sex worker criticisms of clients tend to hinge on their hypocrisy: too often clients do business with sex workers in private and censure them in public. The public stereotype of the pimp, the prototypical villain, is far more negative: a pimp is presumed to exploit women, in particular white teenage women, to deceive them, addict them to drugs, batter them, rape them, and abandon them (Pheterson 1993: 48). Women sex workers object to presumptions that all women have pimps, that all pimps are mean and violent, and that all women are invariably helpless. Many do not have pimps. It is in fact not known what proportion of sex workers do, although various estimates have been made. For example, McLeod (1982) estimates that about 75 per cent of women sex workers in Birmingham had pimps, with heavy pimpsthat is, men prone to violence and intimidationmore prevalent among street workers. She adds that having pimps is not so much indicative of womens helplessness as of their position as womenexacerbated by their criminal status (1982:44). Psychological dishonour is often articulated in terms of either psychological or psycho-social profiles of women sex workers. Classically, the former describe a woman with a childhood of deprivation and abuse who is sexually frigid, hostile toward men, and latently or openly lesbian (Pheterson 1993:51). The latter typically maintain that women become sex workers either for the income prostitution provides or out of coercion. Both understate the heterogeneity of sex workers, which may be partly because most studies have been of street workers or of those in prison, where teenage and drug-using sex workers are over-represented. Rates of parental neglect and abuse are higher among teenage sex workers than among teenage non-sex workers. This difference is found too in adulthood, but it is less striking. As Pheterson (1993: 54) adds however: This is by no means to say that child sex abuse is not uncommon also among nonwhores or that there are not many whores who were not abused. There is no evidence to support the view that sex workers are prone to frigidity; nor that they are more likely than non-sex workers to be lesbians or to be hostile to men. The separation of love and sex which is considered deviant, or at least neurotic, in sex workers is recognized as normal in male clients. And since clients are not regarded as a deviant group, stereotypical

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perceptions of them are much more diffuse than are those of sex workers. After all, as Boyle (1994:41) attests: There is no such thing as a typical punter. That is one of the few issues prostitutes and police agree on. Another fairly safe but maybe distressing bet is that a male member of your family, circle of friends or work colleagues has paid a prostitute for sex. Statistics from surveys carried out over the past few years suggest that up to one in five men have paid for some kind of sexual service at some time in their lives. In the British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, 6.8 per cent of men reported having paid for sex with a woman at some time, and 1.8 per cent had done so within the last five years; but the authors argue that stigmatization might well have led to under-reporting (Wellings et al. 1994:121). Public perceptions of pimps are more graphic. Pheterson (1993:56) points out that the profile of the pimp as a revengeful, impotent, violent latent homosexual man may describe some pimps just as it describes some husbands. Certainly many pimps are abusive. However recent research has revealed rather more male abuse in marriages than expected, and rather less male abuse in the sex industry by pimps than expected. Reports from women sex workers suggest that more abuse may be suffered from police officers and clients, especially on the streets, than from pimps. The English Collective of Prostitutes estimates that more than half sex workers have been raped by clients, although only one in twelve reports the attacks (Boyle 1994:58). Sex workers are often protective of their pimps. Ideological dishonour arises in relation to feminist critiques of prostitution. For manybut not allfeminists, prostitution represents: the ultimate objectification of women and the ultimate alienation of labour. Whores are thereby considered the prototype victims of patriarchy and capitalism. Empowerment within prostitution is, according to this analysis, an ideological contradiction in terms Women who claim self-determination as prostitutes lose victim status and ideological sympathy. (Pheterson 1993:578)

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Not surprisingly the tensions between sex workers and feminists can be marked, with the subtlety of the feminist slogan Against prostitution. For prostitutes lost on the former (Scambler et al. 1990:269; see also Bell 1985). If this commentary on Phetersons dissection of the whore stigma has corrected some stereotypical misperceptions of women sex workers, then it has served its purpose. Some of what McCall and Simmons refer to as errors of commission, omission and of the attribution of fixed characteristics have been exposed; and, perhaps most significantly, the nature of the association between stereotypical error and the projects of key stereotypers in societies like Britain, namely, male norm- and lawmakers and enforcers, has been registered. THE MUNDANE NATURE OF SEX WORK Reference might be made at this juncture to what might be termed the paradox of attention. This asserts that much of the notoriety and excitement generated around prostitution is a function less of what sex workers do than of the attention paid to it. It is evident, for example, that many of the objections to sex work, feminist and non-feminist alike, apply equally well to other forms of work to which far less attention and indignation is directed. In fact, women sex workers and the lives they lead are far more mundane than is implied in the excesses of attention and stereotype. They are for the most part ordinary women systematically and ideologically misrepresentedin line with the projects of those who do soas extraordinary. It is to the mundanity of sex workers lives that we now turn. For convenience, the necessarily attenuated discussion is subsumed under the following headings: recruitment, patterns of work, lifestyle and projects. There are many factors predisposing to recruitment to the sex industry, but relative poverty has generally been regarded as the most salient. McLeod (1982:26) argues persuasively that womens entry into prostitution is characterized by an act of resistance to the experience of relative poverty or the threat of it. In an Australian survey as many as 97 per cent of women questioned gave money as their reason for becoming sex workers, and 85 per cent of these spoke of economic survival (Perkins and Bennett 1985). Several studies have suggested that a high proportion, perhaps 70 per cent, may support homes and children (in which case control over hours is another attraction). Certainly the income the industry can generate is a key motivation.

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In introducing their study of sex workers in Oslo, Hoigard and Finstad (1992:15) claim that it is established knowledge in international research on prostitution that women sex workers are recruited from the working class and the lumenproletariat, adding that their backgrounds are also marked by irregular home lives and adjustment difficulties in school and in their working lives. Their own 26 interviewees fitted this pattern, and no fewer than 23 of them had experience of institutional care or detention: 15 of the 23 had one or more stays in institutions before engaging in sex work. Hoigard and Finstad (1992:16) cite in detail the case of Anita, who had been institutionalized 12 times by the age of 20. They emphasize both that many of the young women they interviewed had already been rejected by normal society before becoming sex workers, and that institutions can be important training grounds for sex workers. In institutions many young people in trouble are stowed together like surplus wreckage. They often run away together, without money. What could be more natural than that they exchange knowledge about ways to survive? (Hoigard and Finstad 1992:16.) The small Oslo sample may not be representative, but personal biography is certainly relevant to recruitment. While writers like Pheterson have properly sought to debunk male myths about the psychopathology of the prostitute, it remains the case that women sex workers are more likely than non-sex workers to have had poor relationships with their fathers, and, to a lesser extent, to have been abused by them; to have become emotionally distanced from their families of origin, and therefore from family influence and disapproval; and to have developed strong independent personalities. What needs to be stressed, however, is that insofar as personal biography does predispose to sex work, it does so only in connection with local conditions, such as the existence of a number of women working. in prostitution and more structural forces such as employment opportunities (McLeod 1982:30). Peer contact can be an important feature of a drift into sex work, bringing both opportunity and training. There is a neglected group of women too, proportionately more of them off-street workers from middle-class backgrounds, who exercise conscious choice in turning to sex work. The appropriateness of referring to conscious choice here might be disputed, but there can be no question that even women confronted with relative poverty, primed by their personal biographies and with peers in sex work can take conscious decisions to enter or not to enter the sex industry; and some

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women decide to engage in sex work outside the sway of all such predisposing circumstances. Indeed, the benefits as opposed to the costs of sex work for women are frequently understated. Of those in Perkins and Bennetts (1985) survey, 24 per cent said they liked the work, variously citing its financial rewards, the freedom and autonomy it affords, and the satisfaction of providing a service, all of which sentiments have been echoed in the bestselling autobiography of the American sex worker, Dolores French (1988). The same attitudes are reflected in comments made to the author by Gillian and Sarah respectively: It suits me down to the ground to do two hours work and get the same money that most people get for doing 40 hoursits easy money. I wouldnt go back to scrabbling around on 50 a week again. I choose when I work. I choose my clients. I say No if Im busy. I dont feel as though Im trapped in any sort of vicious circle of work, or being pressurized by any men at all. Prostitution is giving yourself and your attention to someone for a period of time. Youre offering more than just a body: youre offering an experience which usually they remember quite well. At the time of interview Sarah, who like Gillian worked through a London escort agency, was in fact seeing one client per week to fund her way through a postgraduate degree in Fine Arts (Scambler et al. 1990: 23). Patterns of work vary in the sex industry. In part this occurs by type and location of work: thus the routines of street workers, hotel or bar workers, workers in saunas or massage parlours, workers with escort agencies and workers in flats and brothels all differ considerably and with some degree of consistency. It is often dramatic and exceptional breaks with these routines, especially if they involve clients who are violent or display bizarre fetishes, that make journalistic headlines or sell books (McCrae 1992); but for many women in the sex industry work tends towards a rather dull, tense and sometimes inebriated monotony characterized by a great deal of waiting around (see Jaget 1980). As Connie puts it, whoring is boring, but lucrative (Taylor 1991:17). If sex workers are not unique in finding much of their work monotonous, no more are they in developing instrumental attitudes to

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both work and clients. Many just want to get their work task, the sexual (or other) act, over in minimum time (A good customer is a fast customer); many cut themselves off mentally for the duration of contact (I try to think of something else. Plan what I am going to do with the money); and many, too, forbid the intimacy of kissing and see the condom as a barrier, real and symbolic (He will never be able to reach me, I think to myself. It is like the condom guarantees that he will never touch me) (Jarvinen 1993:144). Stereotyping remains hazardous however. Caring relationships with regulars are not unknown, and women occasionally have orgasms with clients (French 1988). Jarvinen (1993:143), who found that as many as half the sex workers interviewed had been sexually interested in some of their customers, cites the following account: Fond of, wellit can be a type of person that makes me feel a certain waylike that man I told you about. He came to me a few times and something happened between us. We have a stronger relationshipa sexual relationship. It is not only for the money. We make love fully and completely, holding nothing back. But such accounts tend to be rare and are normally regarded within the industry as unprofessional. The requests for sexual (and other) acts made by clients reveal a staggering variety of tastes and needs. The more exotic, kinky, dangerous orto use Perkins and Bennetts termgut-turning seem to have been laid endlessly before us and will not be detailed here. Faced with such requests, the attitudes of some women remain instrumental: If a person is crazy enough to want to pay me to piss on him, then he is welcome to do so; If he wants to be whipped, the disgusting old coot, then I might as well be the one holding the whip (Jarvinen 1993:145). But for others, their own code of practice, which typically extends well beyond an insistence on hygiene and condom-use, proscribes sexual (and other) acts outside a pre-defined set of categories. Thus Gillian, quoted earlier, explained that she would not permit clients to revert to babyhood and don nappies because she judged them to be in need of therapy not reinforcement. Many women in fact will not sanction acts which they see as deeply degrading. As Helen told Silver (1993:87):

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As a prostitute youve got to be comfortable with what you take on, otherwise it becomes too stressful. If you keep on pushing yourself into situations which you dread or find repulsive then you do suffer psychological damage. In the early 1980s McLeod (1982:6972) estimated that about half to three-quarters of sex workers clients wanted straightforward sexual intercourse, whatever else they wanted; about a fifth sought the passive experience of domination, a finding even more marked in earlier American studies by Winick (1962) and Stein (1974); and about a quarter wanted to dress up as a woman. It may be that after a decade of public awareness of AIDS as a heterosexual threat, the proportion of women willing to provide, or clients intent on procuring, sexual intercourse has declined, although decisive data are unavailable. Certainly some women have redefined the categories of service they are prepared to offer, some entirely eliminating genital sex work (Morgan 1988). Like patterns of work, the graded fees women charge for sexual services vary. At what many commentators and women themselves define as the lower end of the market, for example on the streets or working the windows, Samanthas rates are probably typical: 10 for hand relief, 1520 for straight sex, 20 for oral, 25 for oral and sex or strip and sex, 30 for strip, oral and sex, and those wanting to spend 30 minutes of their time with her will have to fork out 40. (Boyle 1994:145) These rates may be contrasted with those charged by women at the upper end of the market, for example with exclusive escort agencies or madames or independently. Boyle contends that it is women who work independently, inconspicuous and grossly under-represented in research studies, who tend to enjoy the highest incomes. One of Boyles (1994: 1218) interviewees, Diana, is 30 years old and occupies a mews cottage close to Regents Park in London. She estimates that 95 per cent of her work is specialized: a dominatrix, her work revolves around fantasy and S&M (sado-masochism). For clients unsure what they want she offers a taste of everything during a 90-minute session for 500. Despite massive overheads (rent, equipment, maid, card boys, etc.), she makes up to 1,500 profit a week.

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Another commonsense assumption is that women sex workers lifestyles are determined or decisively marked by their livelihoods. While this may be emphatically true for some women, it is doubtless true for no higher proportion of sex workers than for other workers. And nor should circumstances and behaviours sometimes associated with the sex industry, such as drug habits, be confounded with sex work itself. Again, the paradox of attention misses the ordinary and the commonplace. In fact, unexceptionally, most women sex workers spend much of their time preoccupied with the day-to-day business of living and supporting and maintaining households. This aspect of their biographies and projects for the future remains largely uninvestigated and unreported. Ward, Day and colleagues (1993) took some pains to recruit women from all sectors of the sex industry in London for their study of health issues. They are careful not to claim representativeness for their sample of 280 women, but aspects of the profile of sex workers it affords are interesting, not least because two-thirds of them worked in off-street locations. Of the sample, 39 per cent had experience of schooling beyond the statutory leaving age of 16; 8 per cent of the women were current or past injecting drug users; rather more, 19 per cent, reported the use of injected drugs either by themselves or by their sexual partners. As far as drug use is concerned, this profile might usefully be compared with that found in the profusion of studies of the sex industry focusing exclusively on street workers. Consider, for example, a study in Glasgow by Green and his colleagues (1993). Of the 63 women in their sample, no fewer than 81 per cent were injecting drug users, the most commonly used drugs being heroin and temazepam. Predictably, most studies report higher rates of injecting drug use on the streets than in off-street locations (Scambler and Scambler 1995); and it is of course conspicuous street workers who are the most frequent objects of interest and investigation. Stereotypically, the principal project of the sex worker, namely, the rapid accumulation of money to support a subsequent decent and respectable lifestyle outside the sex industry, is doomed to fail: women, it is said, neither save nor emerge psychologically unscathed from the sex industry. This stereotype receives some reinforcement from research on the experiences of ageing, drug-using or otherwise trapped sex workers. But how much research has been done with womenbe they full-time, part-time or occasional casual workerswho have made good

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money from the industry and departed from it unscathed to return incognito to the community? A search has revealed none. SOME THESES ABOUT SEX WORKERS The object of this chapter has been to identify and comment on errors embodied in pivotal myths and stereotypes surrounding the sex industry and sex workers. Key themes have been the understandable but misleading propensity to extrapolate from often impressionistic or anecdotal observations about small numbers of conspicuous street workers to all sex workers; and, more broadly, the paradox of attention. In this final section five specific qualifications to common misconceptions of women in the sex industry are offered by way of summary. The first point to reiterate is that women sex workers are a heterogeneous body of workers, most of whom diverge markedly from the popular stereotype of the sex worker as a street worker who is vulgar, without morality, and situated in a milieu characterized by drug use, violence, anomie and hopelessness. As one university-educated escort worker stressed to the author, most women sex workers are invisible off-street workers, many of them autonomous and successful enough to evade public and (even) self-labelling as outsiders or outcasts. Second, it is inappropriate to characterize sex workers as passive victims of psycho-pathological or socio-pathological circumstance. To do so is to provide yet another instance of the gender-prescribed passivity over which many feminists have taken umbrage (see Naffine 1987). Adler (1975:83) may be overstating her case, but her insistence that sex workers are no longer passive objects of male needs is apt: like other modern women, todays prostitute is better educated, better accepted, and more independent of men. Certainly the respectful premise that women are active, autonomous agents is no less justified in relation to sex workers than in relation to other female workers. There is evidence, too, that women sex workers, unlike many rent-boys, exercise considerable control over their encounters with clients (Perkins and Bennett 1985). Third, it is erroneous to judge sex workers to be lacking in moral sensibilities or commitment. The author was told by one off-street worker: We have our ethical code, just like doctors; its no different. In fact, most sex workers have what amounts to a code of practice, governing everything from condom-use to the delineation of services for hire. Nor, it can be assumed, are sex workers any more predisposed

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to flout social norms or laws than other people, that is, with the exception of those which embody the double-standard of patriarchy to limit their own capacity to provide professionalas opposed to amateur sexual services. A fourth qualification to the familiar characterization of sex workers concerns their reflexivity. Rather than being conditioned dupes, sex workers require resourcefulness and expertise to cope day to day and to sustain their livelihoods. In acquiring these attributes there is little they do not learn also of the hypocrisy, fallibility and deviance of respectable men and, circuitously, of the institutions in which they serve. One brothel-owner listed to the author numerous peers, MPs, judges and men of business and the City among her clientele; and an escort worker similarly detailed the regular visits of one member of each House at Westminster and of their purchases. Neither was censorious, but each was able to articulate an attenuated but clear and compelling account of the continuing exercise of male influence in essentially patriarchal social institutions. Finally, there needs to be recognition of an innovative or pioneering dimension to women sex workers norm-breaking. This idea might be developed in relation to a recent thesis of Giddens (1992). He argues that the potential exists in high modernity for a sustained challenge to patriarchal structures and cultures, a potential nourished by such factors as a female life expectancy well beyond the year, of child-rearing; the deskilling of housework; access to education and the higher echelons of the labour market; the availability of contraception and divorce; and most relevant herewhat he terms plastic sexuality, that is, sexuality freed from its intrinsic relation to reproduction. The creation of plastic sexuality, he contends, was a precondition of the sexual revolution of recent decades. This revolution has two main components: first, there have been new gains, built on a century of struggle, in female sexual autonomy; and second, there has been a flourishing of homosexuality, male and female. The sexual revolution, in short, constitutes a challenge to what Brittan (1989) calls hierarchic heterosexuality. Not only have women sex workers figured in the century of struggle, but some might be said to be contributing to sexual emancipation by integrating plastic sexuality with the reflexive project of self. Thus the prostitute activist Helen Buckingham told Silver (1993: 78): I challenged the current supposition that men could have women when they felt like it, with no obligation, and that women enjoyed

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the sex, enjoyed giving themselves, enjoyed being walked over, enjoyed being used, enjoyed being disposed of. They thought that this is all part of the feminine personality: women are masochistic by nature and they like this. And to meet a woman who said, No, Im not like that and I dont like it, but this is a bloody good way to earn a living was terribly, terribly threatening. It is autonomy and reciprocity that are crucial here. There are women who choose the rewards than can attend sex work, such as higher pay than most women and many men in more orthodox employment, foreign travel and unusual freedom; and some of these women enjoy their work. And if much female sex work yet remains deeply symptomatic of patriarchy, this does not prevent many women from dominating most of their encounters with most of their clients. There is assertion and resistance to patriarchy even here. The contention here that any consideration of the sex industry and sex workers should start with the presumption that women are individualistic, active and wilful, moral, reflexive and insightful, as well as potential innovators with respect to patriarchal norms, should not of course be read as a denial that any of their number conform to the popular stereotype of the sex worker. As anybody who has researched or worked with women sex workers is only too painfully aware, the sex industry can exact a terrible price, including life itself. The extent to which the unacceptable price some sex workers pay is a function of the stigma, marginality and harassment which is their routine, but contingent, lot is a theme tackled more directly in other contributions to this volume.