Thoughts of a Male Sex Worker
Note : There is no spokesperson for International Union of Sex Workers. As a feminist, non-hierarchical organisation, the IUSW wishes to present a diversity of sex worker voices, so a number of IUSW activists speak to the press and to the public on issues relating to the sex industry and adult entertainment. They speak from their own experience and their knowledge of the industry. Unless otherwise stated, articles by IUSW activists represent their view as individuals, not those of the organisation.
Each individual decides for themselves the work they undertake and their degree of self-disclosure: most IUSW activists have experienced direct or indirect slander, libel, misrepresentation and threats as a result of their activism. As a result, we advise activists to record interviews, speaking engagements etc. to prevent misrepresentation, whether purposeful or accidental.
Thierry Schaffauser
My name is Thierry Schaffauser and I have been a sex worker for 7 years. I have started to work on the streets in Paris and I work now in this country advertising on line and I also work in the gay porn industry.
In my life I have always had problems with authority and it has always been difficult for me to accept it. I think one of the reasons why I am a sex worker is for the freedom it provides me and because I couldn't work any longer for someone else. I couldn't hear any more sexists and homophobic jokes from my co-workers and feel exploited and humiliated, like a consenting slave. I did many jobs before doing sex work and so far sex work has been the least exploitative work I have done. In the sex industry you can have employers but it is also easy to work independently and keep control on your work. You can choose when you want to work, not to wake up early at mornings, and have better incomes than in doing other jobs generally available for working class people and minorities.
And I think it is precisely because sex work is an economic strategy for working class women and minorities that it is criminalised. Husbands needing their wives to stay to do the housework and all kind of services. Bosses needing an exploitable labour force. But sex workers tell them all to fuck off!
Sex work is repressed and stigmatised because it is a strategy for women and minorities to be economically independent from a father or from a husband, to flee their country and always find clients and money wherever they migrate. Without sex work I wouldn't certainly have been able to live my own life, to study, to travel and move to London when Sarkozy became the “Furher” of France, to learn a new language, to militate, to write a book, to have time to sleep in mornings, to enjoy myself, to be me.
But even with the best working conditions is sex work still inherently the result of an economic power from one person to another?
Personally I don't feel like my clients have any power on me. I feel quite the opposite but I suppose it depends also on how workers feel and on the way they work. When I have to advise friends who start sex work I always try to give them tips so they can keep control on what they do and avoid bad clients. In all circumstances we must always have the right to say no. I have always been able to refuse a client or to refuse to do something I didn't want because I know there will always be other new clients who want to meet me. That's the reason why I don't think we can compare a client with an employer.
I don't think that the one who pays is necessary the one who dominates. When a patient gives money to his or her doctor for the medical services he or she provides, we don't tell them they are exploiting the doctor. My views are more that a client who pays shows that he is accepting my conditions and that he's ready to respect the contract. A bad client however will often be the one who doesn't like the idea to pay and really wants it for his money. Most men think that it is humiliating to pay and that we should provide them sex for free. Being a client is stigmatised as someone who cant pick up without having to pay and many men are boasting that they don't need to pay to have sex.
The comparison we hear sometimes between sex work and rape and the call to criminalise clients is really shocking for me because if they want to arrest our clients, those who respect the contract, no-one seems to give a shit about the men who rape us, who refuse to pay, and the fact that our reports for rape are not registered by the police. So if it was about protecting us, what do they wait for to arrest men who REALLY rape sex workers ? Criminalisation is not about protecting us as it has never protected a sex worker to be sent to jail as well as our clients. Criminalisation is about preventing us to work and to punish us for disobeying and because some people have an ideological problem with the fact that working class people dare using their sex to earn a better living when it should remain sacralised.
If we refuse to be rescued and refuse their rehabilitation, then they accuse us of complicity with patriarchy, sexual exploitation of children, slavery, trafficking and rape. Yes, all that just because we want our work recognised as a work.
For instance, our union is criticised for allowing in its membership policy everyone who's ready to support sex workers rights.
On this membership issue I may have the same opinion and would prefer a workers only group, however, the fact that they use that to conclude that the union is run by pimps and punters is not only false but it is a way to disqualify our voice.
What I have to say comes from my own mind and no-one else. They can pretend that we are manipulated by pimps to delegitimate our say but they should also know as feminists that this technic is the same old technic used to silence minorities. Women had themselves to suffer from it when they were told that they couldn't obtain the right to vote because they were manipulated by the church and would vote like their husbands.
Each time a sex worker stood up and spoke for herself or himself there has always been thrown suspicion. We don't accuse the “ex sex workers” to be manipulated by the abolitionist business and the rescue industry because we respect their voice even if we believe they are the minority.
We know that the abolitionist system comes from the nineteenth century Victorian ideology. At this time, sex out of marriage was not acceptable for women. Nowadays they don't speak anymore about fallen women, they call sex workers “prostituted women” but does it change much? These Victorian feminists were defending Christian values. Nowadays they still ally themselves with fundamentalist Christians and use their same techniques. As a result, there are ex-sex workers who campaign against sex workers' rights like there are ex-gays who campaign against LGBT rights. But we know that a LGBT person who commits suicide is rather due to the stigma than the sexuality he or she has.
Also I want to ask you: Do you really think that the absence of money makes sex free of exploitation and domination ? What about sex in our relationships when we feel we have to?
What about having sex with our partner to get rid of him, to end an argument, because it's valentine day and he offered the restaurant, because we don't have anywhere else to go and we depend on his incomes, when we are new in this country and don't know other people who can accommodate us, when he says he hasn't come yet and that you have to wait for him to finish.
Does the fact to blame sex work is not an excuse not to look at our own sexualities?
Or is that because we cant accept that sex workers are not these inferior beings and that they can teach us a lot about how to fight against domination in our sexualities.
To conclude, I don't know if in a perfect anarchist society without any kind of power, sex work will still exist. For sure it won't exist in the same way it does in a capitalist and patriarchal system. I like to think that the future sex workers will provide sex and affection to their comrades whatever their gender, sexual orientation, etc. It will not be anymore about male clients who have the economic power to pay but about making the people, everyone, happy.
IUSW – www.iusw.org
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