How Come You Ain’t Dead?

My past is fragmented, my past is made of holes.

I touch the many years of being prostituted, and find only an open-mouthed silent grief.

I know prostitution has rip away my adolescent, made my twenties into a grave.

I am now into my 50’s, and have finally learnt to accept their will always large parts of my own existence I can never know or understand.

What hurts is that the good parts of my past have been wiped out too, I can pretend that I remember when surround by folks who were there.

But remembering is a performance, and all too often I trip up on the familiar details.

I want to design a brain that makes the hell of prostitution small, leaving enough to know it was bad, but not interfering with the day-to-day – leaving space for the good memories.

But that is not reality, that is a dream.

Instead, my brain hold onto the horror, the sense of being empty and lost, the physical pain that was the world of prostitution.

It is not in clear memories – not logical stories to hold and speak out, not in logical time and space.

I remember many rapes as a single rape.

I see no faces on the punters only a void as endless rapes, endless smashing up my body and mind.

I remember as my body has no escape – no part of body was not polluted by punters.

My ears had sperm planted into them, were hit when I did undress quite enough.

My head was always in pain as it tried to block all reality.

My mouth and throat forgot to eat as the taste of hate drown me.

My eyes refuse to make contact with any punters. To be seen, would be like killing myself.

My arm and hands perform whatever the punter demanded, as my robot heart played lies that I would be fine.

My stomach was sick, but learn to hold it in – knowing it would just make the punter laugh or go harder.

My legs and feet were useless – I could not run, I could kick him in the balls – I just perform when waiting to be gone.

My cunt carries all his hate, his violence – it was the place were my right to be fully human was buried.

That is a short version of what it was to be prostituted. Short version of body memories, short version of living inside complex trauma.

I write this blog, inside that pain, grief and confusion.

That is why I so pleased that some of you have sent me donations, it shows deep respect. Please continue to do so and ask around or others to donate.

Now to explain the title of the blog – it is a constant refrain said to many exited folks, especially exited women with fragmented memories who now are strong abolitionists.

If it was as bad as you claim – how come you ain’t dead.

This is a refrain that is used to silenced us, implying we are exaggerating or just plain old liars.

This refrain can on occasions come a place of deep ignorance, then with care it can spoken to and if heard, education can bring change.

An education to say the prostituted are tortured, are raped on industrial scale, are made sub-humans – but somehow, not all of the prostituted died.

Those of us who have exited are living proof of this – and our testimonies must be heard, and not lessen or see as rarities.

But many who say – why ain’t you dead yet? – do not do it from a place of ignorance, but from a place of wanting to control us and silenced the multiple voices of the exited.

It said by the sex trade lobby – which is mainly sex trade profiteers, punters, and their allies in the media and academia.

It is not an innocent or naive question when by said by the sex trade – it is a statement of fury that we dare to be alive and to remember.

For to keep the sex trade going, it is vital that the prostituted have no authentic voices just the voices of being controlled and owned.

To keep the sex trade going, it is vital that the prostituted are made to forget their own realities.

To keep the sex trade going, it is vital to allow the majority of the prostituted to disappeared, to fall into silence or to be dead – so there is a constant of fresh goods to control and owned.

The exited are not meant to exist, especially if they speak their own minds, especially if they speak to torture, rape and constant fear of death.

We are meant to be dead – so there be a complete silence about the conditions for the prostituted.

Our existence is a constant threat to status quo of the sex trade – for by remembering, we are carries of deep truths.

We speak out truth to power, and shake the roots of all the sex trade

Our voices once finding their authentic truths cannot ever forget – even as our memories are fragmented.

In remembering, we must fight for justice, for freedom and full humanity for all the prostituted – for all prostituted are connected by oppression and hate.

In remembering, we lose our individual stories and find connections with other exited folks – whether from the street, strippers, from brothels, escorts etc – we all have endless violence inside our minds and bodies.

No wonder the sex trade lobby hates us, and wishes we were dead – for we never one voice, we are the multiple voices from every continent and we connect to the oppressed prostituted in the past.

This blog is very personal, but it also calling for the revolution of the exited to be made real.

We are not dead – we are alive, wanting freedom and justice.

25 Years

I usually only notice anniversaries that I would like to celebrate or remember for personal reason.

I use my Facebook page as a playground for noting birthdays, death days, events in history and other ways to note high and low culture.

I note the anniversaries of film stars, architecture, visual arts, TV programmes and actors, times of revolution and wars, great events in abolitionist history, pop and classical music and so much more.

I enjoy having a magpie attitude to culture, to history, to social events. I hate for my taste to be too predictable.

Anniversaries should fun trivial.

But this year, is an anniversary I cannot be light-heartened about, I cannot celebrate – just wait till the noise dies down.

This year it is 25 since the film of “Pretty Woman” was made.

I enjoy Cinderella, I am a sucker for a fairy tale.

I am not that keen on rom-coms, unless they mainly comedies, especially the older films with their fast-talking banter.

I see as film-buff that “Pretty Woman” is attempting to be a rom-com Cinderella story, that it is pure fantasy.

But as an exited woman, who did mostly escorting and girlfriend experience – I hate the film, and cannot forgive those who made.

The fantasy of “Pretty Woman” is on too many lies and stereotypes about the world of indoors prostitution.

Too many lies and stereotypes who the punters really are.

Punters are not Richard Gere. Escorts are not Julia Roberts.

This should not need to be said, if the film was just escapism fantasy – there would be no need to say.

But too many promoters of the sex trade want the Richard Gere punter to be the norm – at least when speaking or writing in the public arena.

The promoters of the sex trade used the image of the Julia Roberts escort to recruit – as in they have the image of whore-goddess, the image of the courtesan, the image of the high-class hooker to pull the vulnerable in.

These promoters know it all a lie, know it just used to hide the violence and degradation.

The sex trade love “Pretty Woman”, and have used it place prostitution in the centre of pop culture, and even getting acclaimed as art.

But to watch “Pretty Woman”, is to be place back into a world of pain, a world without hope – a world that planted complex trauma into me.

“Pretty Woman” has the evil lie, the lie that destroys the prostituted everyday – the lie that there is such a thing as a punter who will rescue the prostituted.

First, there is no such thing as a nice punter.

I do not care if he does choose not to rape.

I do not care if he does not beat up the prostitute.

I do not care if is just a talker.

I do not care if he has respect.

No man has the right to buy another human for his sexual greed and entitlement.

So it is impossible for a punter to rescue the prostituted, with the punter still having control and power over the prostituted.

The nice punter is just bullshit.

But the message of “Pretty Woman” plants poison into many who are embedded inside the sex trade.

It gives hope that a punter will somehow get a conscious, and see that his prostitute is a full human being – then he will become the white knight.

This never happens – but many of the prostituted cling hold to the illusion.

It is part of the trap keeping the prostituted unable to exit, unable to reach for real help, and unable to know their own inner strength.

It allows the ordinary male violence that is prostitution to continue, as the prostitute hopes beyond hope that the next punter is Richard Gere.

It allows the sex trade profiteers to say that indoors prostitution is safe – for after punters who consume escorts or girlfriend are gentlemen like Richard Gere.

This lie is driving the prostituted to suicide, this lie is allowing punters to be sadists, this lie is hiding the murders that is common in indoors prostitution, this lie is allowing the sex trade to become normal.

It is a giant lie that carries the screams, the blood, the bones and the tears of all the prostituted who thought that a punter could be made to give a damn about their welfare.

 

 

Something is Broken

I have decided to write, that I cannot do this in such isolation.

Yes, of course I know and fully appreciate that there is a community of abolitionists out there, but I reach it mainly through the net.

That is not enough – that will never be enough.

I have been writing this blog for over 5 years, I have written around 1015 blog posts, I have supported several exited women, I have given some rallying talks and much more that I do anonymously.

I am very proud of all I have given – but now I want to ask for my readers and supporters to give back.

I write this to break my isolation, I write this be reminder there is hope, I write to silence the voices of hate who love to communicate with me.

These voices are close to breaking me, they will not break me working – but they know what breaks my heart.

I need a more solid community around me – in that, I speak for all of us who managed to exit the sex trade.

I/we need a community round that tells us of their abolitionist actions, not assume we know by reading your minds.

We need to know what is being done in practical terms to bring about real change for the prostituted – count us in all your actions, even it is just to email us.

To know that you care enough to do practical actions for the lives and dignity of the prostituted class means so much to all the exited – it gives us hope, it make us see progress, and most important it breaks our isolation.

If you care enough to do practical action, however small or big, is a wonderful gift – you are giving back to us our humanity.

Another thing that is needed by me/us is to have real human contact outside the computer.

Many of the most powerful campaigners who happened to also of exited the sex trade, lived in isolation.

We may communicate over the net, but often outside the community of other exited folks, there is little interest in meeting in person.

This keeps us as the Other, keeps us doubting our full humanity.

It strips us of the basic human right of being part of society.

This is sad, well tragic – for this is excluding folks who have given so much and all you do is take.

You will read and use our words, you will have us as token speakers, you will put us in your news article/documentary – but would you invite us to have coffee with you.

I know many have read this blog for years, many of my readers are very supportive over the net – that is wonderful, but there can be more.

I think the human voice or contact is more powerful than Facebook/Twitter/email/blog comments can even touch.

A phone call or Skype means more than you imagine.

A trip to the pub or coffee shop is a gift from heaven.

Anything to break this deadly and dangerous silence.

I hate writing this, I hate to ask for such simple things – things that should be given without having to ask.

But I am drowning in this silence.

The thing I may look like I am just waving not drowning – for I keep working, I keep placing music and film stars on Facebook, I stay inside the computer.

But my work is painful, my work is under constant attack, my work comes from a place of deep grief.

My work is isolating – I need human contact to do it.

No-one is an island, so don’t make exited folks into one.

 

The Vanishing

Today the report of femicide in Britain is being published. It is written by the brilliant Karen Ingala Smith, with the help of Women’s Aid.

This report is about the murders that have reported, so it is mainly focused on domestic violence murders, there are a few reported murders of the prostituted, but in reality it nowhere near the actual numbers – not even skimming the surface of the genocide of the prostituted.

In this post, I will try to explain why and how these deaths are made to vanish.

To be clear, the sex trade has become skilled at making outsiders look the other way as it does the longest and largest genocide known to history.

The prostituted have just disappeared for the minimum of 3000 years, in all continents and in most cultures.

The trick of the sex trade is to replaced the goods, and to make the prostituted so sub-human, that the disappearance of one prostitute to be replaced by another goes unnoticed.

The disappearances are not questioned if business goes on as normal.

The disappearances are not questioned if the prostitute is isolated from friends or family.

The disappearances are not questioned when most are done in indoors prostitution or other private spaces.

And the disappearances are not questioned when it is decided the prostituted are too sub-human to be murdered, it is decided it just rough sex.

But the prostituted women and girls are the most likely to be violently killed than any other groups of females – including domestic violence, deaths at work or through natural disasters.

It is thought that the prostituted females will die from male violence at least 20 times more than females of similar age or background.

20 times minimum – hold that in your mind, hold it tight – and wonder where all those lives, those bodies, those memories have gone.

Don’t let their lives still be owned by the sex trade, by making their deaths nothing.

I know that to reach the age of 27 is rare for all the prostituted.

I know that the exited women, including myself, were the exception not the rule.

We lived, but that was just a toss of a coin – as most the prostituted could never exit whether through being trapped in prostitution, too ill to be truly free or just killed or one of the disappeared.

Every time, an exited woman speak out she does with the ghosts of the disappeared on her shoulder pushing her forward.

The sex trade has made almost impossible to record these disappearances, as it has been skilled at making the majority of the male violence invisible.

The sex trade has made the prostituted nameless, with no authentic voice/s, with no access to the outside world – so if the just disappear, it is a non-event.

Murder is so normal in prostitution, that when in that world you learn to block it away.

When I did indoors prostitution, women just disappear on a regular basic, I heard noises of extreme violence all the time, I saw the fear or dead eyes of the prostituted till I could not hold it any more.

My norm was to not to get to know my fellow prostituted too well, coz to have a friend torn away was too unbearable.

I lived in an environment with threats of murder were my norm.

I was told the truth – that I could be thrown away, coz no-one gives a damn about yet another dead whore.

Think – how much does society really even noticed when a prostitute dies, especially when she was doing indoors prostitution.

Even with street-based prostituted, their violent deaths are only recorded if there is some juicy connection to made.

Our deaths only matter if a serial killer is being considered – and then only if he seen as a threat to non-prostituted women, or if some tedious study of his actions can be made.

Our deaths may be reported if connected with a famous punter.

But most deaths of the prostituted just vanish from the records, go unreported and are hidden from history.

I know that the majority of murders in brothels, escorting, in sex clubs, or in the punter’s home are made to vanish.

The dead of my prostituted sisters is thrown onto a trash-heap that should be stinking the world out – should be seen to give us all some conscious.

I cannot count my dead sisters, for they have stripped of their real names, stripped of their lives beyond the sex trade, stripped of being human.

I cannot count my dead sister for the numbers is too great for my brain to hold, too large to not break my heart.

But I can grieve, I can have deep fury, I can want to have endless memorials for those who have gone before me.

They may be nameless – but they must never be forgotten.

Abolition is Long-Term

I want to thank all who have supported my recent SOS, but I do not want it to be a five-minute wonder.

I will write some personal views of what I think abolition means to exited folks, to me on an individual level and why it not easy or short-term.

It is vital to know who and what the sex trade lobby is and what they are not.

The sex trade lobby is not a bunch of individual trolls hiding behind their computers.

The sex trade is a highly organised, with almost endless funds, and recruit many punters and abused prostituted to write or make their protest.

The sex trade lobby is organised by those who profiteer from the dehumanising of all the prostituted – the sex trade lobby is pimp’s lobby, the sex trade lobby does only care about profit so is also the punter’s lobby.

So, these are the things that the sex trade is not –

It has no concern for the mental, physical or sexual welfare of the prostituted.

It not about empowering the prostituted.

It does nothing to improve the human rights of the prostituted.

It ignores all health and safety for the prostituted.

And it willfully makes all the prostituted class into sub-human.

So if you even have a small feeling that abolition is an answer – than stop believing the sex trade lobby and its propaganda.

Do not believe prostitution can be made safe – or at the minimum safe enough to ignore again.

Do not fall for the myths that indoors prostitution can be made safe, can be made empowering and is somehow prostitute-friendly.

Think clearer, and think of how the vast majority of male violence done to the non-prostituted is done indoors and by men that are known to the victim.

Why, would prostituted females be the only females who are safe alone with men indoors – it makes no sense, maybe because it is pure rubbish or simple lying by those who profiteer from indoors prostitution.

Be real – punters who buy women are likely to see her as goods, these men are highly likely to be violent whilst thinking it is a non-event.

These punters, whether or not they use street-based prostitution or the multiple forms of indoors prostitution, will usually be sadistic indoors.

Look at the common murders of the prostituted – the Ipswich murderer brought the prostituted women off the street, but killed in the privacy of his flat, the same as the murders in Bradford.

In Canada, the horrific murders of mainly indigenous prostituted women by a recent serial killer, was done in the privacy of his work-space.

And, speak and truly hear exited women who did mainly indoors prostitution, and know our knowledge that it is easy to make the prostituted just disappeared from brothels, disappeared from hotel rooms, disappeared from visit to the homes of punters, disappeared from sex clubs.

It is normal for the prostituted to just disappear from the “safety” of indoors prostitution – but this not important enough to be reported, not important to be crime or research statistics.

No, put prostitution behind closed doors and like magic it is made invisible.

I am finding it hard to focus on this post, mostly because when I think of supporting those of us who have exited the sex trade, I get a deep hole of despair and pessimism inside my soul.

I am terrified that as in the majority of the history of the prostituted fighting for freedom, we will be abandoned by allies and left to face the sex trade lobby alone.

This must not happened, for the sex trade lobby will refuse to see any humanity in the prostituted class, and hope by isolating us it can make our destruction invisible.

For the sex trade lobby is creating and has created genocide of the prostituted.

It is a clever genocide for it made invisible, by having a constant supply of desperate people who will replaced the prostituted who have been killed or just made to disappear.

It is a genocide that feeds off all the miseries done to human – it recruits through poverty, recruits in times of wars or natural disasters, recruit from child abuse, recruits from racism, recruits from women being made second-class citizens, recruits from allowing people to have no self-esteem, and on and on and on.

The sex trade recruits and then will form a highly profitable market.

It should be seen for its cynicism and that it desire to silence any protest by our deaths being non-news.

So when I try to write what I personally would like to do to support and fight for the prostituted – remember my heart is broken.

I want anger – not the passive reaction of liking the efforts of the exited to break that enforced silence.

We do not need or want your pity, your tears hiding apathy, your placing our lives into boxes that you can control.

Most of the exited want freedom, want justice, want soldiers who fight for that – not signing petitions, endless talk or re-telling of token stories.

It is not a time of negotiation – how do negotiate with the sex trade lobby who see no humanity in the prostituted?

It is a time to fight on every level.

I would love to the old anger back of burning down sex shop; of photographing men entering sex clubs/shops, men going to brothels; the boycotting of porn companies; the demonstrations in red-light district.

I would love all action led and guided by exited folks.

I would love that we listen to exited on a deeper level than just politics or short-term issues – no hear what our trauma means, hear our understanding of male violence, hear our ways of living through that violence.

I would love grief, pain and trauma to be in every discussion about why we must have abolition.

I would love there to be at least annual marches to commemorate the destruction of the prostituted class – not to place as after-thought or footnote to male violence.

I would love every city or town to have a permanent memorial to that lose.

Just simple ways of showing society sees the prostituted as fully human.

I want each and every reader of this blog to question men on their use of the prostituted.

I want men who say they are abolitionists to confront other men they know who consume the sex trade.

I want there to be an environment of shame place on the punters and consumers of the sex trade.

I want serious punishment for punters – for serial rape, for GBH/ABH, and for torture.

I want serious punishment of sex trade profiteers – for physical/mental/sexual violence, for forced imprisonment, for use of slaves, and so much more extreme crimes.

Why is seen as good enough to just fine punters who are mostly serial rapists, capable of physical/mental/sexual torture – could be another reminder that the prostituted are not human enough to deserve justice?

I know there is tons more to say – but do whatever you can to stop this genocide – don’t look away.

The Clouds are Clearing

I am proud to say that by facing my trauma, it has cleared for the while.

I have always found that confronting my past works for me – though that is personal, and I would not suggest it for anyone else.

But I have the soul of a stubborn warrior who need to understand and confront pain.

I see my hidden essence like the Samurai in classic Japanese films, only willing to fight when pushed to their limit and only fight against forces of hate and sadism.

To be a true warrior, is to mainly walk away from violence especially violence that from a place of deep fear or inability to find justice.

To be a true warrior, is know what battles to fight – know many battles may be lost or bring about deep despair, but always to keep your eyes on the prize.

To be an abolitionist against the sex trade, that warrior is needed.

For to bring about abolition, great patience is needed whilst at the same time being willing to be ready for sudden action.

Another part of being a warrior is learning to able to be still enough to know deep grief, and see the reasons you have no choice but to fight.

A true warrior comes to the battle after the reality of pain, seeing unspeakable actions, knowing a sorrow that may not be repairable.

Part of the warrior spirit is to sat in stunned silence knowing how evil humans can be to other humans.

A true warrior is able to be racked with grief.

A true warrior can feel no hope, but somehow has the strength to keep going forward.

To be a true warrior is choose the hard path over the easy road.

To be a true is know how isolated you have been and will be – but also have the courage to seek out other warriors.

For no end of the sex trade, can be done by one woman – we must build an army of warriors who know grief and pain, but never let that stop the fight.

Each and every warrior in this war, carries the lives of those still embedded in the sex trade, we carry the many deaths and disappearances of the prostituted class.

We hold each and every person inside the sex trade as heroes, we remembered those we have lost with honour and deep respect.

Each warrior in the movement fight to end the hate, sadism and destruction of the prostituted’s humanity that are the foundations of every aspect of the sex trade.

We will never leave any prostitute to suffer – even one prostitute being raped or torture is one too many.

This is a war where our enemy see the prostituted as sub-humans.

How is possible to have respect for an enemy that viewed the prostituted class as throwaway sexual goods, has made it out that prostituted deserve no human rights – an enemy that create an invisible genocide by replacing the goods.

The sex trade, punters and supporters of the existence of the sex trade have created a world where millions of the prostituted are living in conditions of torture, living under the constant threat of violent death – and frame this as adult (male) entertainment.

Our suffering is just one huge joke to our enemy

So we must fight even if only to silence that laughter.

Crashing Back to Life

I have going through, crashing through trauma for quite some time now.

Each day I wake with my body shaking, my mind full of despair – but all the time there is a deep desire to force my way forward.

This is not depression, I have no wish to fall away – this is deep trauma, and is just a natural reaction to the poison put into me by punters, people’s ignorance of what it is and was to be prostituted, the sex trade profiteers and the utter lack of any justice for the prostituted.

Trauma is not a mental illness, it is a healthy reaction to extreme abuse/torture and having no justice.

No-one is born into trauma, trauma is forced into us by terrible events that can be natural, by man-made disasters, by man-made wars, and by man-made violence.

It is thought that the prostituted have some the higher rates of trauma, higher than soldiers in the front-line, higher than domestic violence, and higher than most rape survivors.

I always wonder why that is news, or even a surprise – could it be by not looking at the conditions of the prostituted, then it become easier to ignore our trauma?

For I see understanding and empathy for many women and girls on the receiving end of male violence – but a constant turning away from the prostituted.

I see understanding and political action for men and women who are tortured by a State – but a refusal to acknowledge that prostitution is a form of torture.

Could it be that the prostituted are still considered to non-humans, so cannot have real trauma? – if not, I cannot see another logical reason that our trauma is made invisible.

I need to know why rape is considered to worse than death when done to the non-prostituted, but rape to the prostituted is made into a non-crime?

I need to why torture is horrific when done to a political prisoner, but the exact same torture plus rape is just leisure or entertainment when done to women inside the sex trade?

I need to know why chicken in battery farms get more sympathy and passionate anger than women in crowded brothels or the horrific conditions of the porn industry?

I do not expect answers, maybe just the endless cliché reasons or turning away, the usual justifications that do nothing to end the pain of no justice or even being considered fully human.

That is the surface reason that all the prostituted live with trauma – knowing our right to be human is still a long way off.

I know and understand what it is to be raped outside of prostitution.

I know and understand it can and will feel as if you have been stripped of your humanity – but most victims of rape regain their right to be considered to be human, many never truly lose it.

This is because many rape victims are believed by friends and those who campaign to end rape.

Rape is seen as a crime – it is rarely punished – but it is considered a terrible event.

Strangely, the more a woman or girl is raped the less she is believed, and the less human she is seen.

Maybe that is some answer to why raping the prostituted is made to be nothing.

For most of the prostituted are raped by hundreds if not thousands of punters – we are raped beyond statistics, beyond remembering the men’s faces, beyond the body ability to hold pain.

But our rapes are non-existent, it becomes just who we are.

We cannot be raped for we are sex-crazed, we force men to use us as sex-dolls.

We cannot know rape for we do not feel pain like real women, we have no sense of shame that real rape victims have.

It cannot be rape if we took the money or gifts, it is not rape if we go on to another punter after.

These are a few of the millions of reasons given for ignoring the constant raping of the prostituted – reasons used as a silencing tool.

No wonder the prostituted are drowning in trauma.

Please be more radical about listening to the prostituted.

Hear their trauma and stop turning away.

Speak to That Pain

It is the middle of the night, and I am listening to Northern Soul, and trying to ignore trauma.

I could say I feel low, depressed, restless, unable to sleep – but that is just the surface.

No, trauma is a rat gnawing at my will to go forward.

Trauma is the laying in bed and sleeping, only to wake physically wrecked.

Trauma is running on a hamster wheel on and on and on.

I thought maybe writing may help.

May help my body to know satisfying rest.

May make the rat saying I just a failed experiment, what is the point of my work, my wanting to have a future, my reaching for some friends or community.

I thought if I wrote, with Northern Soul hitting my heart, I would speak to this pain and not run away.

So, this post is an experiment, a flow of consciousness.

A reaching into what trauma means to me as an exited woman.

I write to that pain, to get you readers to know why you must keep fighting to free the prostituted.

Know a small part of our pain, and that may armed you for the long fight for abolition.

I write to my trauma, for I want my readers to know why there can be no half-measures about our freedom.

Harm reduction is not good enough – for that is just to patch up the prostituted then send them back to torture.

Reform is only worth if it, if the long-term goal is full abolition of the sex trade.

Each and every moment, the prostituted class are being murdered, being raped on an industrial scale, being torture in all known methods – so it is too late for half-measure.

I speak from a place of multiple rapes, gang-rapes, mental/physical/sexual torture, and knowing it is to be made nothing.

That is the place of trauma that I have to hold each and every day.

I have learned to close all visual memory – the sights I have known and lived through, I have no interest in replaying as pictures again.

But I may see nothing – but every cell in my body carries the sickness and hate that put into by punters.

I had no ownership of my body.

How can I own the holes in my body as fists, penises, objects rammed each and every one?

How can I own my own voice when it stuffed with penises till it lost all hope?

How do I own my own sexuality when so hate, so much pain and so much death was associated with forced orgasms?

Trauma for the prostituted is full of gaps and silences.

The gaps of stolen memory, lost time, lack of hold of what happened.

How can I remember how many punters raped me – when numbers only become a blur?

I know I counted to 300, but that was a very small number of what destroyed me. I know I can never how many men raped me, only that rape was so normal that I could know it was rape.

How can I record the locations I was tortured in?

Only know many rooms become the same, that being fucked against walls and in subways was not strange, that I still do not like posh hotel rooms.

I have learnt to accept that I will many holes in my memory – I can grieve that lost, feel fury at the hate and violence that made my mind erase so much of my life.

These holes are a major spur for me to be an abolitionist. For I no more of the prostituted to have to live with having to block out their realities.

This post is relatively short, but I hope it a rallying cry.

Remember to place the voices of the prostituted to the front – and hear their trauma, don’t run from it.

 

 

Wish I Did Not Know

Surviving prostitution is horrible.

I know we are strong, we have empathy, we can be the bravest people I know – but to all my fellow exited friends and colleagues, we live with knowing what we would rather not know.

We know and understand male sexual violence.

We know and understand what it is to be made sub-human.

We know and understand what torture is and how the human being somehow survives torture beyond knowledge.

We are carriers of deep knowledge – heck, we are a resource.

But I and most of my survivors friends would love to turn back time, and to be ignorant.

You live five minutes with even a small part of our knowledge, and tell me you would not turn back time.

I would imagine I never went down the path I did – I imagine the normal upper-middle class background I was born into.

I imagine a world where I had a mother who loved me, or at least put my safety and welfare as a major purpose.

Not the world of knowing I was nothing to my mum – knowing she saw me as an inconvenient, as born evil, as a blockade to her progress.

I imagine a world where my stepdad never meet my mother, a world where he was not even a thought in our family.

Not the world where his wants and needs were more important than my safety.

Not the world where he could randomly abuse me when his whim took him – and always my mother told me how I provoke him.

I had pushed him too far.

I would eat down my hate, my sense of no justice, my fury that wanted burn down my home.

I would imagine a world where I had no knowledge of prostitution, no idea that sex could be nothing, no connection of pain with that sex.

Not the world that I knew from too young.

The world of my six-year-old who run away from school into King’s Cross and Soho, surrounded by noises of women and girl’s desperation, by noises of men wanting to buy me – the child is cheap and ignorant.

The child can be molded into being a sub-human, and it will be no big deal.

The world of my seven-year-old – where she is stood still in Soho, acting tough, acting beyond her age.

She is street-wise, but knows nothing.

She is walking prey.

The world of my nine-year-old – who begun to make death her best friend, and knew suicide was some answer.

I don’t want to know how much my childhood was stolen even before I was 14 and enter the sex trade.

Now, I see the age 14, and see how bloody young that is – but then I thought I was all grown, that I could be hurt or know pain more than I did then.

I like so many survivors of prostitution, was used to abuse but still a child who naive of what torture was and how bad it could get.

Thank god, we were naive for how would still be alive if we had known what we were entering.

For we were entering hell, but like all hells on earth, it was hidden in plain sight.

I cannot write to prostitution without stating that all that I speak to is just common practice in all aspects of prostitution.

I must state that the vast majority of violence done to the prostituted is done in legal, semi-legal setting.

There is no such thing as underground prostitution, for all prostitution is easy for punters to find and consume.

Prostitution is never about sex and relationship – it always about money, power and male entitlement.

So it never hidden to men – those who do not see the violence and hate that is prostitution, have made a conscious decision to turn away

I will see my prostitution, knowing I connect to all the prostituted class. Now I can rise up and find I was never alone, only completely isolated.

So I speak to my prostituted self – speak words of comfort, words of revolution, words letting her know at last she is someone who can be respected.

Speaking to my prostituted self – I hope is part of building a world where all prostitution has vanished.

A world where all the prostituted class can stand tall.

But to build a future, we must grieve and know our pasts.

I will speak to the heart of my prostituted self – to my silent screaming, to that place where body memories come from,

I try by writing over and over and over, to ease my prostituted self – but without full justice, and a sense that the prostituted are respected – her pain seems endless.

I write to my reality of indoors prostitution, a world with no Julia Roberts, no Richard Geres – just desperation, pain and wanting to forget.

I write to each room with a bed where I was raped, tortured and put myself on the ceiling.

I write to not knowing pain – but seeing blood, seeing bruises, and being unable to walk or eat.

I write to not knowing the men – not looking at their faces, not hearing when they spoke, not breathing in their clothes or alcohol breathe.

I write to being in the of being gang-raped – with that sense of having skin, of my guts being pulled out, of hounds of men panting all over me – but finding not only was I still alive, but being gang-raped was quite common.

No wonder I don’t want to know my own truths.

But to understand and to end prostitution, we must know what is done to the prostituted, and name it as torture, as a human rights emergency.

We must allow all those exited folks strong enough to speak to that reality to be published, to be leaders at all speaking events about abolition, and to listen to your exited friends without asking them to censor their truths.

Abolition is a revolution – so don’t dilute it by censoring the truths of survivors of the sex trade.

 

Fractured Memory

I have many gaps in my memory.

This hurts and wounds me in many ways – I feel I am missing too much of my life. I have lost the years between 6 to 27.

It is not fully lost, just in so many fragments I cannot find how to fit them together.

I am a neglected jigsaw with pieces gone.

I want to cry, but I have forgotten how.

I want to scream – but that voice is lost in a past that is shattered.

I want to know my truths – but only touch small edges.

I understand with logic, why my memory is so damaged.

I understand the mind can only take in so much reality of torture, then it cannot hold any more.

I understand that most of prostitution is repeated violence – repeated ways of raping, repeated ways of mentally/physically/sexually torturing, repeated ways of breaking down the prostitute.

I understand that repetition cannot be remembered fully – only remembered until it is discovered that all the prostituted are not to blame, and the violence done to them was pre-planned.

I understand that to survive the hell that is prostitution, it is vital to close it down or to replace the violence with inventions of empowerment and having a good time.

All this and more, I understand with a clear logical mind – but it does nothing to end the grief of lost memory.

In this post, I will try an explore memory – maybe speaking to moments/hours/weeks/years.

May I say that I was prostituted between 14 to 27, and previously sexually and mentally abused at home from aged 6.

Those years are just moments to me – for my fractured memory has made the good times disappear as well as the abuse and violence.

I remember standout moments – but with the years of prostitution I cannot see my age, cannot see the exact location, and usually cannot fully the men abusing me.

I remember through pain throughout my body, I remember through sudden terror, I remember and try not to doubt myself.

I remember as I choking without cause, I remember as I try to sleep but feel bodies raping me again, I remember when I try to love my partner and my mind wants violence.

I know memory is trapped inside my body, it trying with desperation to connect to the mind.

My instinct is to disconnect from my body as much as possible – I fall into music, reading, eating, TV and so forth to be away from my body.

Heck, now I have Twitter and Facebook, I can run away even more.

But my body pushing memory into me, even as I choose to run away.

The more I run, the worse the pain and grief gets – so I know I must turn round and confront a past that refuses to be silent.

It is a past made up of rooms.

Rooms in hotels, rooms in flats, rooms above clubs, rooms behind pubs.

Rooms where all I remember seemed the same, though it was different times and many locations.

Rooms where all I saw was the bed, maybe a place for money, maybe see a way to a bathroom.

I cannot remember how many rooms, only know I was a robot just seeing any bed – I knew what I was, and could not imagine a world where I was not a whore.

It was a past made up of punters.

A past where I did not know sex could be done with care, done with love, done without pain.

A past where men enter every part of my body – wearing down all memory that I had ever been human.

A past where consent meant nothing – as I was brought and sold, where could my no have any meaning.

A past where one could keep me as his sexual slave for weeks, a past where gang-rape was normal, a past where torture was rehearsed on my body.

For torture is always rehearsed on the prostituted – we are just living porn to punters.

So it is impossible to fully remember the past.

But I remember enough to know I did nothing to be in the line of such hate and violence.

I remember enough to know all punters will torture the prostituted – even if just mentally or by refusing to see the prostituted as fully human.

I remember enough to know violence is the norm of all aspects of the sex trade.

I remember to know I am only alive by luck.

I remember to be an abolitionist.