Sex Work Quotes

“Most nights, her body was commerce. She traded vacuous affection for survival. Her wounded soul, bandaged by the deceptive nature of the
Zone had served no purpose in aiding her.”
― Rohith S. Katbamna, Down and Rising

“Why do prostitutes when they get straight always try and get so prim? It's like long-repressed librarian-ambitions come flooding out.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Feminists have accepted that choice is possible when it comes to a different, difficult subject: abortion. The feminist position (and I agree with it) is that women own their bodies and therefore each woman has the right to choose to get an abortion if she gets pregnant. This is called being "pro-choice". Feminists should be consistent on the subject of choice. If a woman has the right to choose to have an abortion, she should also have the right to choose to have sex for money. It's her body; it's her right.”
― Chester Brown, Paying for It

“Gay rights aren't predicated on being born gay or having the right gene. Gay rights are predicated on having choice and consent. If you're a man and you can find another man that consents to have sex with you, it's the consent that gives you the right to have sex with him. Genetics are irrelevant when it comes to sexual rights. Just as gay rights are based on choice and consent, so are prostitution rights. All sexual rights are based on choice and consent.”
― Chester Brown, Paying for It

“Can you go back to America and tell all your friends that I do NOT want to be rescued? All these Americans and Viet Kieus who come here thinking that they need to save us are so stupid. If you had to choose between working in a factory for twelve hours a day with bosses who don't let you rest and [who] look at you like they are raping you with their eyes, or working in a bar where you have a few drinks and sometimes spread you legs for a man, which would you choose? Why don't people go rescue factory workers? We are the ones who were not scared to leave factory work for sex work. We are smart hustlers [*nguoi chen lan*], not dumb, scared factory workers!
—Trinh, twenty-four-year-old hostess in Lavender”
― Kimberly Kay Hoang, Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work

“Prostitution arrests are racist. They have always been racist. In 1866, San Francisco police arrested 137 women, 'virtually all Chinese'; the police boasted that they had 'expelled three hundred Chinese women.' In the 1970s, the American Civil Liberties Union found that black women were seven times more likely to be arrested for prostitution-related offenses than white women. This disparity is no relic of the past: between 2012 and 2015, 85 percent of people charged with 'loitering for the purpose of prostitution' in New York City were Black or Latinx- groups that only make up 54 percent of the city's population. Increases in prostitution enforcement mean increases in the arrests of women of color. Between 2012 and 2016, the New York Police Department stepped up enforcement mean increases in the arrest of women of color. Between 2012 and 2016, the New York Police Department stepped up enforcement targeting massage parlors. As journalist Melissa Gira Grant details, during this period the arrests of Asian people in New York charged either with 'unlicensed massage' or prostitution went up by 2,700 percent. Arrests on the street target Black and Latina women - who may not even be selling sex - simply for wearing 'tight jeans' or a crop top. The NYPD do not arrest white women in affluent areas of the city for wearing jeans.”
― Juno Mac & Molly Smith

“I want to bring us back to basics. Prostitution: what is it? It is the use of a woman's body for sex by men, he pays money, he does what he wants. The minute you move away from what it really is, you move away from prostitution into the world of ideas. You will feel better; you will have a better time; it is more fun; there is plenty to discuss, but you will be discussing ideas, not prostitution. Prostitution is not an idea. It is the mouth, the vagina, the rectum, penetrated usually by a penis, sometimes hands, sometimes objects, by one man and then another and then another and then another and then another. That's what it is.”
― Andrea Dworkin, Life and Death

“Giudicare e trattare le donne che fanno sex work come oggetti senza capacità di scegliere e di parlare non significa forse ripetere lo schema patriarcale?”
― Giulia Zollino, Sex work is work

“Trying to frame prostitution as legitimate and normal work opposes logic on innumerable levels, one of the most obvious (and almost laughable) being that European Union health and safety legislation prohibits sexual harassment, violence, and work that causes work-related stress!”
― Rachel Moran, Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution

“They want the woman to be a sexual machine and do everything asked of her without refusal or complaint, but they also want her to fake that she’s not a sexual machine. She must look happy doing it. She can express feelings, but only the male-pleasing ones.”
― Mia Döring, Any Girl: A Memoir of Sexual Exploitation and Recovery

“Re-enacting trauma means putting yourself in similar situations or places to the original trauma, or finding similar people, and to create a new narrative in an attempt, this time, to be in control, to write a new ending, one in which you are in charge, not victimised. The sex trade is the perfect place for the sexually traumatised to try unconsciously to resolve former hurt because an unending number of men want to use your body. This is one of the reasons those who have suffered sexual abuse are so prevalent in the sex trade.”
― Mia Döring, Any Girl: A Memoir of Sexual Exploitation and Recovery

“Somewhere, I heard the phrase, ‘When money talks, no one checks the grammar.’ That’s what all this was about—money, money, and more money.

For money, girls sacrificed their own lives; for money, they risked sexually transmitted diseases; for money, they were willing to step beyond their convictions. For money, the agency treated us like trash thrown on the street; for money, they were willing to risk our health, safety, and everything else, and for money, they had a few select girls they treated decently.

It was never about people, morals, or decency.”
― Anna Rajmon, ELIS: Irish call girl

“From my understanding, this is a matter of value?” asked Andrei. “Like other men have had her leg, so her leg doesn’t mean anything to you anymore?”

“No... no, that’s not even it. It’s that you can’t pretend to give someone your leg. Even if it’s just a photo. Legs can’t pretend. You can, but legs can’t. And when someone gets your leg, it’s given. And you multiply that by a hundred, but she has only two. Two little legs. And it’s as if her legs know. The body is not meant to be mass distributed, Andrei. We’re not large gods in Olympus—we need assistance climbing up the stairs and eventually porcelain teeth to chew our food. Thousands of strangers have every part of my girlfriend’s body, down to the ears. But the one thing they don’t have is a woman in the other room sending herself away. They don’t have that,” cried Raphael. “I have that.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, A Happy Ghost

“Herein lies the material basis of trans femininity: a cis woman might be a sex worker and both proletarian and bourgeois standards for female respectability have long been defined in contrast to the figure of the sex worker, but trans femininity has been positioned by police and cultural producers in a categorical relation to sex work since the late nineteenth century. This is a feminist theoretical conclusion that trans feminine lives reveal and trans women politicize.”
― Emma Heaney, The New Woman: Literary Modernism, Queer Theory, and the Trans Feminine Allegory (Volume 27)

“While anti-sex work feminists see trading sex as the ultimate concession to patriarchy, I see it as a refusal. A refusal to accept the terms we've been given, to accept the violence of poverty, exhaustion, and overwork, to accept the limited options and future we're meant to be content with. In that refusal is an affirmation of our right to exist, of our right to survive, and the possibility of a reality without white supremacism or capitalism.”
― Matilda Bickers, Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex

“The question regularly resurfaces in leftist circles: "Will sex work exist after the revolution?" Maybe, and maybe not. Regardless of the answer to that question, two things remain true: people who trade sex for resources deserve to live free from state violence right now, and people trading sex by choice, circumstances, or coercion know best about what they need to be safe.”
― Matilda Bickers, Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex

“Of course when the history books tell of the groups murdered by the Nazis, they never list the prostitutes, because I'm sure the mention of their deaths is considered a stain on the other victims. The attitude is that the lives of prostitutes are worthless. I think it is self-hate. Our world hates anyone who would accept us and our bodies, and our secret desires without reservation. But that is what the ladies taught me... to welcome disdained things.”
― Emil Ferris, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1

“Anyone can sell their body, but it takes much more determination and skill to learn a trade and excel in that specific field. It is unfeminine to willingly participate in sex work.”
― Jessica Marie Baumgartner, Reclaiming Femininity: Saving Women's Traditions & Our Future

“While the churches, bringing the sweet smell of piety for the soul, came in prancing and farting like brewery horses in bock-beer time, the sister evangelism, with release and joy for the body, crept in silently and gravely, with its head bowed and its face covered.

You may have seen the spangled palaces of sin and fancy dancing in the false West of the movies, and maybe some of them existed—but not in the Salinas Valley. The brothels were quiet, orderly, and circumspect. Indeed, if after hearing the ecstatic shrieks of climactic conversion against the thumping beat of the melodeon you had stood under the window of a whorehouse and listened to the low decorous voices, you would have been likely to confuse the identities of the two ministries. The brothel was accepted while it was not admitted.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“He’s still in shock, but sooner or later, his trauma will catch up to him, and the anger will surface. Better we allow him to purge it in a way that brings him closure, than let it simmer beneath the surface and poison him.”
― Marie Mistry, Across an Endless Sea

“Prostitution, to me, is like slavery with a mask on, just as it is like rape with a mask on, and we were no more recompensed for the abuse of our bodies by our punters’ cash than slaves were recompensed by the food and lodgings provided by their slave masters.”
― Rachel Moran, Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution

“Agreeing to something does not make that thing any less harmful for our bodies or minds. It is psychologically exhausting, damaging and toxic to fake a connection to someone, especially a sexual connection. Not being free to be yourself in such a vulnerable and intimate situation is physically and psychologically exhausting. Being paid to have sex on someone else’s terms is the farthest thing from sexual autonomy that exists.”
― Mia Döring, Any Girl: A Memoir of Sexual Exploitation and Recovery

“It comes down to this: if men believed that sex was a mutual activity between two human beings based on equal respect and power, the sex trade would not exist.”
― Mia Döring, Any Girl: A Memoir of Sexual Exploitation and Recovery

“If the men who paid me weren’t rapists, if this was all consensual sex, why am I traumatised by it? Why do I experience flashbacks with the same tone and texture as flashbacks I have had from being raped? I have had a lot of sex I regret having which I am not traumatised by. There is sometimes sadness, but not trauma. I experience trauma and flashbacks only in relation to sexual exploitation. Sex that didn’t involve money, in which I’ve felt dissociated, or didn’t feel like it, or when I didn’t stop something I wasn’t comfortable with has not traumatised me in the way sex-trade sex has – sex to which I ‘consented’.”
― Mia Döring, Any Girl: A Memoir of Sexual Exploitation and Recovery

“Und eins sollte keine und keiner von denen, die immer wieder predigen, Prostitution sei „Sexarbeit“ und ein Beruf wie jeder andere, eine ganz normale Dienstleistung, je vergessen: Wenn wir uns als Gesellschaft dafür entscheiden, dass Sex Arbeit ist, müsste man Prostitution auch dir auf dem Arbeitsamt als Jobangebot unterbreiten dürfen, und außerdem wird jeder Typ, der dir nachts auf der Straße hinterherpfeift und ruft: „Ey, Süße, willste ficken?“, keine sexuelle Belästigung begangen, sondern dir einfach nur ein Jobangebot gemacht haben.”
― Huschke Mau, Entmenschlicht - Warum wir Prostitution abschaffen müssen

“Prostitution ist Sexualität, die den Bedingungen des Marktes und damit der Nachfrage und den Kundenwünschen unterliegt. Ja, vielleicht gibt es Frauen, die einzelne Kunden oder Praktiken nicht machen müssen. Aber dann verdienen sie auch kein Geld. Der Markt bestimmt, was angeboten wird. Die Frau kann sich dem anpassen oder leer ausgehen: Bietet sie französisch ohne Gummi an oder nicht? Zungenküsse ja oder nein? Anal ja oder eher nicht? Je nachdem wie sie sich entscheidet, verdient sie mehr oder weniger. Irgendeinen Freier wird sie machen müssen und irgendeine Anpassung an die Kundenwünsche hinsichtlich der Praktiken wird stattfinden müssen. Freie Sexualität findet in der Prostitution nicht statt.”
― Huschke Mau, Entmenschlicht - Warum wir Prostitution abschaffen müssen

“Wenn Freier Frauen kaufen, begehen sie damit nicht nur einen Gewaltakt an der individuellen Frau, sondern sie schaden damit auch Frauen, die sie selbst nie zu Gesicht bekommen werden: Sie finanzieren ein System, das auf Ausbeutung, Menschenverachtung und sexueller Gewalt basiert. Sie halten ein System aufrecht, das ohne Menschenhandel und Zuhälterei nicht existieren kann. Selbst Freier, die von sich sagen, keine Zwangsprostituierten zu besuchen, sorgen allein mit ihrem Freiersein dafür, dass eine Nachfrage bestehen bleibt und anderswo Frauen mit direkter Gewalt in die Prostitution verbracht werden. Freier finanzieren ein kriminelles Milieu, denn es gibt keine saubere Prostitution.”
― Huschke Mau, Entmenschlicht - Warum wir Prostitution abschaffen müssen

“Einige wenige Freier geben an, nicht zu Zwangsprostituierten zu gehen. Das ist nichts anderes als Augenwischerei und der Versuch, das eigene Gewissen zu beruhigen. Denn wie möchte ein Freier sich darüber im Klaren werden, ob Zwangsprostitution vorliegt? Auch eine Zwangsprostituierte kann nett und umgänglich sein und lächeln – sie muss sogar, eben weil sie dazu gezwungen ist. Und er bezahlt die Frau dafür, dass sie Ja sagt und so tut, als gefiele es ihr – die volle Wahrheit kennt er nicht und will er nicht kennen, sonst würde er sich eine Frau suchen, die nicht finanziell von ihm abhängig ist. Und das bedeutet: Kein Freier kann ausschließen, dass er gerade eine Zwangsprostituierte vor sich hat. Was wiederum heißt: Er kann nicht ausschließen, dass er gerade eine Frau zum Sex zwingt, also vergewaltigt. Freier sind Männer, denen ihre eigene sexuelle Befriedigung wichtiger ist als Konsens. Sie sind Männer, die in Kauf nehmen, dass sie beim Besuch von Prostituierten eine Vergewaltigung begehen, und denen das egal ist. Ist das in der heutigen Zeit, in der wir so heftig darum ringen, dass sexueller Konsens den Stellenwert in unserer Gesellschaft erreicht, der ihm zusteht, wirklich die Art von Sex, die wir noch dulden möchten – eine Art von Sex, bei dem der Mann danach nicht sagen kann, ob er gerade eine Vergewaltigung begangen hat oder nicht?

Stell dir mal vor, ein Bekannter von dir sitzt mit dir zusammen und erzählt: „Letzten Samstag hatte ich richtig guten Sex. Aber eigentlich weiß ich bis heute nicht, ob die Frau den überhaupt wollte.“ Wie sähe deine Reaktion aus? Du wärst entsetzt, oder? Im privaten Gespräch würde überdeutlich, dass das falsch ist. In der Prostitution aber ist das der Standard, und es passiert nicht ab und zu, sondern immer, jedes Mal. Kein einziger Freier kann nach auch nur einem einzigen seiner Bordellbesuche sagen, ob die Frau den Sex überhaupt wollte. Sexueller Konsens kann in der Prostitution naturgemäß niemals her- oder sichergestellt werden. Prostitution ist Sex ohne Konsens!”
― Huschke Mau, Entmenschlicht - Warum wir Prostitution abschaffen müssen

“That's when I joined the circus. I started as a stablehand and eventually became one of the riders." She sighed nostalgically. "I liked the circus. The people are warm."

"Too warm, I gather."

Maisie nodded. "I never really got on with the ringmaster, and when he told me to gam him it was time to leave. I decided that if I'm going to suck cocks for a living I want a better wage. And here I am." She always picked up speech mannerisms and she had adopted April's unrestrained vocabulary.

April gave her a shrewd look. "Just how many cocks have you sucked since then?"

"None, to tell the truth." Maisie felt embarrassed. "I can't lie to you, April-I'm not sure I'm cut out for this trade."

"You're perfect for it!" April protested. "You've got that twinkle in your eye that men can't resist. Listen. Persist with Solly Greenbourne. Give him a bit more each time. Let him feel your pussy one day, let him see you naked the next. In about three weeks he'll be panting for it. One night when you've got his trousers down and his tool in your mouth, say: 'If you bought me a little house in Chelsea, we could do this any time you wanted to.' I swear to you, Maisie, if Solly says no to that, I'll become a nun."

Maisie knew she was right, but her soul revolted against it. She was not sure why. It was partly because she was not attracted to Solly. Paradoxically, another reason was that he was so nice. She could not bring herself to manipulate him heartlessly. But worst of all, she felt she would be giving up all hope of real love-a real marriage with a man she really burned for. On the other hand, she had to live somehow, and she was determined not to live like her parents, waiting all week for a pittance on payday and forever at risk of unemployment because of some financial crisis hundreds of miles away.”
― Ken Follett, A Dangerous Fortune

“Sometimes now, almost two decades later, when I'm walking around New York, I'll pass a building that floods me with memories of a john or a trick that I turned in whatever apartment window I find myself staring up at. I'll stand on the sidewalk, looking into a window where "Jeff" once stood and made his ever-coveted hundred bucks. I can see him straining to carry his suitcases of worry up to another apartment to make another coin to put in his piggy bank of shame. And I can see him leaving again a half hour later, with a pep in his step from being a little bit richer, but with the glassy-eyed worry that he's ruining himself in the process. And I want to rush across traffic to this young version of myself, grab him, and look him directly in the eyes. First, he'll probably be terrified of this older, puffier, thicker walking portrait of Dorian Gray before him, but once he stops screaming at the ghoulish glimpse into his future, I want to hold him and tell him, "This will all be worth it.”
― Jeffery Self, Self-Sabotage: And Other Ways I’ve Spent My Time