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.

 

 

Do Not Go Quiet

The sex trade lobby is constantly inventing to new words to silence exited women (and some exited men).

The latest one is SWERF – which something like sex workers excluded by radical feminists – or such-like nonsense.

This made-up word is used to stop all discussion, all interchange of ideas or attempts to forge bridges.

This made-up is used word is used to stop any mention of the Nordic Approach, to say abolitionists all know nothing about being prostituted and just are in ivory towers.

And this made-up word is liberally used to shut down and shut up all exited women who speak to human rights, who speak for abolition, and speak to and with awareness that all the prostituted are interconnected.

We are called haters of the prostituted, we are told we are responsible for the violence done to the prostituted by just wanting human rights.

We are told, usually outside the public gaze, that we are traitors, that we have become murderers of the prostituted.

We are SWERFs, so must be silenced.

For it made clear, our words are meaningless, for it said we speak of a place of self-hate, a place of fragmented memory, a place where the sex trade demands facts ignoring our trauma.

Facts become a huge silencing weapon.

For to be part of the sex trade lobby, you must decide there can be no trauma after exiting the sex trade.

This is partly because to back the sex trade, you must think exiting is no big deal, especially as most of the prostituted choose to stay inside the industry.

Those who choose to exit must be to mentally weak to cope, so their word can be dismissed.

To prove their mental weakness – the sex trade lobby bombard the exited with endless questions on “facts”.

These so-called facts are never about the everyday violence of punters, or the structure of the sex trade that makes all the prostituted sub-human.

Facts to the sex trade lobby are just another to trip up the exited, and to make look like liars or too ill to remember/know their reality.

“Where actually did the so-called violence happened?

How old were you?

Was it in a legal establishment?

If it was so bad, how come you stayed/are still alive?

Why did you not buy your way out?

Where is the injuries, there no outward signs you were hurt.

You should have done self-defence.

Why did you not report it/tell someone?

Why did you take the money?

Aren’t you pass that now?”

The sex trade lobby has no interest in answers or debate – just to grind the exited until they become sub-human again.

For we are considered to be the property of the sex trade, and we have broken out. We must be broken down so we can be their property again.

It is that evil, that cruel – it is no simple name-calling or game-playing. It is part of the  genocide of the prostituted.

For genocide is fueled by the silencing of the oppressed, making their truths only be spoken or written down by their oppressors.

The prostituted have never had an authentic voice – slowly at the end of the twentieth century to now, there is a growth in exited prostituted women and a few men reaching out to discover their authentic voices.

We cannot have the history of the prostituted class written and spoken only by the sex trade lobby.

That is never the multiple voices of the prostituted, it is always the voices of the static quo, the voices of profiteers and punters.

To be called SWERF by the sex trade lobby is a back-handed compliment – for that ridiculous word shows a fear of the power of the exited to speak truth to power, and to force real revolution and gain full human rights for all the prostituted.

 

Back Now

I want to thank each and everyone who has made donations to my blog, it is vital for I cannot write without stability.

I cannot write to the heart of why I am abolitionist when I am too triggered or hungry.

Now, with your support, I can see into the future and have the strength to know how my past is part of forming it.

So now, as I listen to special Spotify mixture of jazz, blues, Cajun, oldies soul, Blondie, JJ Cale, Bluegrass and rock ‘n’ roll – I will try to do my blog.

It is hard, for I feel like I have been detached when I was worried about my money situation.

I was detached to force my mind not to think about prostitution – the so-called easy way to make money.

Money is like poison – but without money the will to live fades away.

That is the trap that many exited folks have to live with.

When I was prostituted, I hated money.

I would only spend it on trash food and drink – forgetting that money can be used for fun, for education, for climbing away from hell.

I would throw my “earnings” away on one-arm bandits, on drowning in alcohol, giving it away to people who were using me, throwing into the river.

The money of punters was acid – I had to get rid of it.

I became used to living with little money – but knowing men may buy me anything – as long as I could care if I was alive or dead.

It was a world where detachment was survival, where not thinking further than half an hour at the time was essential.

A world where forgetting was the only way to somehow place one foot in front of another.

The world of being prostituted has no good sides – only to survive almost all the prostituted will say or shout they are fine.

The noise of the prostituted saying that it must be empowering, that it was always their choice, that they know they can deal with the “rare” male violence is loud because that is what outsiders want to hear.

That noise is also loud because it shut out for the prostituted their own reality.

A reality where there is no place or type of prostitution that can be made safe or be empowering.

Not when the purpose of prostitution is to make each and every member of the prostituted class is sub-human disposable sexual goods.

Not when each and every punter has the entitlement to do as whatever he wants to the prostituted without interference, without any sanctions, and with the knowledge his mess will be clean up until it becomes invisible.

Not when each and every one of the prostituted know in their hearts, that torture, rape and murder is normal – so no wonder they proclaim they are fine, as their lives are slowly being made nothing.

The concept of the contented prostitute is the one that the mainstream desire.

If the prostitute is happy or at the least able to deal with the life – then we don’t have to worry that our male relations, our male work colleagues, our male partners are raping, torturing or killing the prostituted class.

If we just focus on the individual prostitute and her choices, her empowerment, her conditions – we are consciously ignoring the elephant in the room.

That the violence, the fear and dehumanising are all the foundations of all aspects of prostitution.

That it is male entitlement that forms the prostituted class.

That male entitlement will leave no place or aspect of prostitution safe or empowering to what they have invented as sexual goods.

There is nothing personal when punters are violent to the prostituted, it is just the normal exchange of goods.

So it normal for the prostituted to block out that reality – and speak the language of the sex trade that they are doing well.

I am drained now.

Listening to Blondie

Blondie, my lust object, my dreams that crashes through many years of nightmares.

I would imagine Debbie Harry smashing down punters, blowing up the flats where torture was my norm, killing those who made money out of my hell.

I imagine hard in order not to see/know/feel my reality.

I needed Debbie Harry to rescue me.

Instead I carry her fierceness inside, hidden from punters, hidden from sex trade profiteers.

I played Blondie loudly as I was raped, played Blondie over crashed over words of hate, words making me dead.

I played Blondie loudly as I was moved from flat to sex club to hotel rooms to toilets to back-alley to my own room to under a subway.

I played Blondie loudly as students, politicians, artists, businessmen raped me.

I played Blondie as a United Nations of men raped and tortured.

I played Blondie as I was gang-raped, as I was almost drown, as I was being strangled, as all my skin was polluted.

Only I played in silence, for there no way I would let punters have that much of myself.

Blondie was my privacy, Blondie was my small moments of happiness – Blondie was the warrior no punter could destroy.

Blondie stood for a sexuality that could be free, could be joyful.

A sexuality with laughter, with exchange of power with a good heart – a sexuality that was a gift to others, but also wild enough to be liberated.

For my prostituted Self, Blondie was my dream of sex with freedom, sex without fear, control and pain.

I held Debbie Harry in my heart as an example of a world outside the sex trade.

I had to hold on tight to her to believe I was more than a whore, more than holes for endless men to fuck, more than a sex doll.

I put up posters of Blondie above my bed, making a small space private.

In times when I could rest enough to have peace – I prayed to Debbie Harry to rescue me, I prayed for her strength.

I was more than in lust with Debbie Harry, I put all I had left of knowing love into her.

I knew there was no god/goddesses/spiritual beings to save me – so I put all my desperation into Debbie Harry.

But in reality, it was never Debbie Harry I was praying to – it was always just speaking to myself, reminding my Self of my own inner strength, pushing myself to know there was a world outside of prostitution.

I will always celebrate my love of Blondie – for it give me the will never to be made sub-human.

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.

 

Name-Calling

You would think as an exited prostituted woman, well as a woman, I would be used to name-calling. But there a new invented word that sends out poison.

Whorephobic

It is has a word that has no meaning, but is used to shame and degrade abolitionists.

It is wrong to use that kind of language against anyone who bravely fights for the human rights of prostituted – but to used against those us who have exited the sex trade is insulting and deeply ignorant.

I cannot understand how it possible to accuse anyone who has somehow manage to exit the sex trade of being afraid or hate others inside that world.

But it not about any type of phobia – no it plain and simple speech use to shame and silence us.

We are speaking truth to power – and that power wants more than silence, it wants us wiped from existence.

Whorephobia is linked to another made up word – transphobia, fear and hate of transsexual.

Both are words not used by the vast majority of the communities they claim to represent – I have never any prostituted person say whore or whorephobia as some kind of rallying cry, the same with vast majority of the transsexual community.

No these words of hate are used by an elite minority, of mainly white men, academics, and sex trade profiteers.

These are groups with hands on power, which they have no intention of letting go or even having the dignity to share.

These are groups that are used to being in control, and hold that control through brainwashing, emotional blackmail, real or threatened physical violence, humiliation, shaming, sexual violence, and murder.

These are highly entitled groups, who have no or very little understanding of oppression.

The use of whorephobic to shut up exited women, especially, comes from this position of power.

There is no empathy for the conditions that the prostituted have to live in.

There is little or no concern for the mental/sexual/physical welfare of the prostituted, hell, though who call us whorephobic never care or even notice that the prostituted are thrown all the time everywhere.

Ironically, those who accuse us – the exited – of being whorephobic of murdering the prostituted or at the least allowing to die, by our support of the Nordic Approach.

This is a sick way of silencing us – for it the sex trade lobby that promotes a system that is killing the prostituted every single day.

It is the sex trade lobby that would push prostitution indoors, and hides the vast of violence that occurs to the prostituted.

It is the sex trade lobby that refuses to acknowledge the daily murders or disappearances of the prostituted – usually blaming any and everything except the violence of punters and sex trade profiteers.

They will call us murderers – just because we stare down what it is and was to be prostituted, how death stalk our every moment, and murder became a non-event coz it was too common.

We are called murderers for seeing beyond their lies – and placing the blame on the punters and sex trade profiteers.

We see the truth, so they accuse of being murderers.

I need to say I have never met anyone who exited the sex trade who hate or fears those who are still inside the sex trade.

They are us, and we are them – so it would self-hate and self-destruction to be what they say is whorephobia.

When we speak out, we speak for all those still inside prostitution, we speak with empathy, we speak from a place of deep love, we are holding their hands in times of fear and confusion.

All of us know our pasts are never over whilst the sex trade exists.

We know in our hearts, that our pasts rapes/tortures/death-threats are everyday for the prostituted now.

We can never hate or fear our prostituted folks who can see no exit, and have to survive by blocking out emotions and thoughts of the outside world.

For that was us, we remembered all too well that deadness, that refusal to be any more than a robot.

Their present was our past.

We can never forget, we do not want to forget whilst we know their suffering is still happening.

So how dare you say that we are whorephobic – you have never walked in our shoes.

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.