Alice Blogs Gender & Sexuality

An SMH article titled The other kind of country women’s club caught my attention today. It tells the story of a 36 year old sex-worker from rural NSW. She is a wife and mother, and her husband is supportive of her occupation - particularly because she makes good money (usually about $100 for half an hour’s work). She enjoys her job, not only because of the money, but because of the flexible work hours, because she likes meeting people, and she enjoys being able to provide a service that gives pleasure to other people.

This woman took place in a study of rural sex workers, conducted by Dr John Scott, from the University of New England’s School of Social Science.

An interest finding of the study was that most of the women identified with a religion and several practised, and that some had university degrees.

This article presented the issue of prositution in quite a positive way, in comparison to the negative way it’s usually conveyed in newspaper reports.

I found another article regarding prostitution in the UK publication, The Guardian, titled It’s all about what you want and when you want it. It’s sell line reads:

“A new [British] study shows the number of men visiting prostitutes has doubled [over a 10-year period]. But should we be surprised when attitudes to sex have shifted so dramatically?”

The study found that more men now feel comfortable with the idea of paying for sex and that there has been a change in the nature of the sex industry overall - it’s bigger and better organised than ever.

Dr Helen Ward who co-authored the study believes that sex has become a commodity, with products such as men’s mags, internet porn, raunchy films, television and song lyrics (which relates back to my blog on 1st blog on pornography). She states that most products, sex has become more about what you want, when you want it.

She states: “Strip clubs have became a common sight on our high streets; women learn to pole-dance…Celebrities are also far more candid about their sex lives”.

Susie Swallows, a prostitute who joined the profession 7 years ago, is keen to stress the normality and respectability of paying for sex: “We’re not streetwalkers…we’re not those alcoholic druggies, we don’t have pimps, we do it ourselves and the guys we see wine and dine us, and take us to the theatre and that sort of thing. It’s not seedy. The guys are gentlemen. And we pay our taxes like everybody else.”

The article also argued that men are now keener to pay for sex because in a society that edges closer to gender equality, paying a woman for sex affords men a degree of the power they feel is diminishing.

Although the article applauds an increasingly open attitude towards sex, it also states that the sex-industry is still largely dictated by men for men.

Both these articles have supported the idea that perceptions of prostitution aren’t necessarily as taboo as they’ve been in the past, but also that issues related to prostitution, and sex in general, are more open for public debate. I think it’s positive that prostitutes have been given a voice in both these articles, to comment on their profession from their insider’s perspective.