XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography (29 page)

(A sample, blank survey appears on pages 226-228.) One thing I wanted to see was whether surveys from women who worked in pornography differed substantially from those returned by women who were, for example, prostitutes.

About two hundred four-page questionnaires were distributed by various COYOTE chapters to their memberships across North America; I received forty-one responses back in the mail. (Note: Since answering any specific question was optional, not all questions received forty-one answers.) The surveys contained invaluable information from generous women who took the time not only to answer my questions carefully, but also to enclose extra sheets of paper describing everything from one prostitute's brutal run-in with the police to another woman's battle to have her daughter play on a Little League baseball team which discriminated against girls.

The most surprising thing to me was that not a single woman who responded worked in pornography. Not one of the women indicated having
ever
worked in porn in answering the questions: How did you enter sex work? or What jobs have you held? The breakdown of respondents was: 30 prostitutes, 6 masseuses, 5 strippers, 4 dominatrixes, 3 madams, 2 phone sex workers, 1 mud wrestler, and 1 ambiguous survey where the woman defined her job as "providing a sex-positive environment." (Answers total more than forty-one due to multiple responses.)

I can only speculate as to why COYOTE, as an organization for sex workers' rights, does not attract women in porn. After all, the head of COYOTE in California, Norma Jean Almodovar, is well known and well liked in the industry, although she has never worked in porn. A primary reason may be that, since pornography is legal, women in the industry do not feel the same urgent need to assert their rights as prostitutes do. Yet this does not explain why women who strip and do phone sex-also legal activities-join COYOTE.

Perhaps alternative organizations within pornography, such as the Free Speech Association, absorb the women who are politically inclined. Perhaps the industry's drift toward respectability has made it reluctant to align with less socially accepted forms of sex work. Or COYOTE may have done little outreach among porn actresses, who are well treated compared to many other sex workers.

Even without the presence of women in porn, I decided to include a brief overview of the COYOTE survey for three reasons:

1. The accusations hurled at porn actresses are basically the same charges brought against all female sex workers-e.g. they are coerced, they are psychologically damaged, they are pathetic drug-abusing victims. If these accusations are proven false about sex workers in general, then there is reason to doubt their validity about women in pornography in particular.

2. If female sex workers were victims, you would expect this to be particularly true of women who are involved in illegal sex work (e.g., prostitutes). After all, those involved in legal sex work (porn actresses) have far greater protection from the law and from the greater acceptance of 116

society. If prostitutes are shown to be independent women, rather than victims, this should hold true to an even greater degree for women in porn.

3. There is no hard-and-fast distinction between prostitution and pornography, which has been called "prostitution in front of a camera." Numerous district attorneys have redefined the two "crimes" in order to fold them into one. In the recent attack on the industry, former porn actress Holly Ryder and her Los Angeles-based political action committee wanted to redefine women in pornography as prostitutes under the California state constitution. Ms. Ryder's initiative read: "Prostitution includes acts of sexual intercourse or sodomy for money or other consideration, for ... the purpose of observation by persons present during the act or persons absent during the act observing by means of visual recording or broadcast; and the right to perform acts of prostitution shall be denied . . ."

Prostitution and pornography share characteristics: They both involve sex for money; society shuns them both; laws that repress one have historically rebounded on the other; and, the attitudes of the women within the two professions sometimes seem remarkably similar. For this reason, a survey involving prostitutes gives perspective on women in pornography.

I want to begin by stating the survey's limitations.

It is an informal survey, not a controlled study. Such a survey, especially one limited to forty-one respondents, proves nothing. But it can disprove a great deal. This harkens back to first-year logic class. There, students learn to disprove the statement "All swans are white" by finding just one black swan. Accordingly, to disprove the antisex worker claim that "Prostitutes are drug abusers or victims of incest," all you need to do is find one prostitute who does not fall into those categories. This invalidates those claims.

Moreover, although the data in this survey may
prove
nothing, it does indicate possible directions for promising research. For example, in answer to the question "At what age did you enter sex work?", both the mean and the median answer was "At twenty-seven years old." Four women (10%) began sex work in their teens; twenty-one women (51%) entered in their twenties; thirteen women (32%) began in their thirties; three women (7%) in their forties. The most common answer was "At twenty years old." This may well indicate that most women who enter sex work are adults, well past the age of consent and self-determination. The two women who began sex work at forty-two are particularly intriguing, because they break several cultural stereotypes.

Another caveat about the survey: All the women surveyed belong to COYOTE, an outspoken political rights organization. This means that the sampling is not random. These are socially aware women, who are successful enough at their chosen careers to have time for political agitation. This places them well above the level of streetwalkers-women, who are often preoccupied with sheer survival, women for whom there is no effective advocacy organization.

The respondents are also willing to be visible, as evidenced by how many of them provided me with their phone numbers and/ or addresses. Visibility brings vulnerability. This may account for how few of the women (only 20%) reported having children. Authorities often intimidate sex workers by threatening to take away their children. Thus, the survey is skewed in favor of sex workers who feel less vulnerable-that is, who do not have children. There may well be other hidden biases.

Nevertheless, the survey represents an empirical and pioneering examination of whether or not women sex workers consent to their professions.

Accordingly, one of the first questions asked was, "Were you coerced into the industry?" Thirty-nine of the women (95%) said no; three of them were emphatic about the answer, including 117

exclamation points. One woman did not give a yes or no response, but wrote instead "monetary problems." Another responded yes and explained: "A friend (female) persuaded me. She was working for a service. She introduced me. I could kill her now."

The survey followed up immediately with the question, "Do you know of women who were coerced?" Thirty-six women (88%) said no. Four women (10%) said yes. In describing the circumstances of the coercion they had heard of, three of the women reported: (1) "I am an outreach worker for streetwalkers"; (2) "She had a pimp and he threatened her into it"; and, (3) "I have known many women in this field, but only one that was coerced. When she was twelve years old, her father put her on the street to supply his drug use."

In a separate interview with Norma Jean Almodovar, Executive Director of COYOTE, I asked her the same two questions. The lady adamantly replied no, then added how proud she was of having been a whore (her own word). Regarding other women who may have been coerced, Norma Jean-who personally knows hundreds of female sex workers-replied: "I don't know of any women who have been coerced into the industry. Nor do I hear stories about coercion into prostitution or sex work. I only hear about coercion afterward by the police or by clients. I know it must exist. I know on the street level, it must exist."

Next, I asked the women surveyed to check off (from a prepared list) what they considered to be the main attractions of sex work. 95% cited money; 68%, sense of control; 54%, curiosity; 37%, rebellion; 15% acceptance. (Answers total more than 100% due to multiple responses.) Among the expanded answers written into the blank provided were: · -leisure

· -meeting people and having nice things

· -I can lay down, have fun, be looked at, have more fun, and be paid money · -learned to love the person in front of me; got over inhibitions, wanted to grow as a woman

· -nonphysical work

· -men treat me better when they pay me and the women I met could be trusted (a little) better

· -for an attractive young woman with only a high school education, the opportunity for high financial gain and the chance to see the world first class on other people's money was extremely appealing. A woman in this business has to learn to negotiate for what she wants out of the encounter. She also has to ensure that she is treated with respect.

Anything less is unacceptable.

· -it became comfortable to me because of temporary relationships. Less complicated.

I asked what the main disadvantages of sex work were. 49% of the women cited social stigma; 41%, the police; 17%, the risk of physical harm; 15%, poor hours; 10%, unpleasant customers; 7%, no security; 7%, low self-esteem; 7%, can't have romantic relationship. (Answers total more than 100% due to multiple responses.) Among other answers written in were: · -It's a trap, Wendy, and I'm a smart woman so I know this.

· -The money is the primary issue, because it is about addiction (to money). Your perception about things changes.

· -I objectify men. They're only a means to an end.

· -having sex with revolting men

· -having sex with men you aren't attracted to can be boring, like any other job.

· -no job future due to the aging factor

118

· -it's often alienating and when I started the business, many of the people I had to work with were addicted to drugs.

A key question was, "Do you want to quit?" Eighteen women (44%) said no; ten (24%) were not sure; seven (17%) said yes. How long did they intend to remain in sex work? Ten women (24%) said "as long as possible"; ten women didn't know. Of the eight women (20%) who stated a definite time, both the median and most common reply was two years; the range was a few months to ten years.

The next major category of questions had to do with whether the women had ever experienced violence as a result of sex work. Twenty-nine women (71%) said no; twelve women (29%) said yes. Norma Jean spoke to me of her own career as a call girl: "I have never been a victim of violence since I have been a sex worker. I do not consider myself unusual. If you are on the street and you are dealing with someone who can remain anonymous, it is more likely that people you will encounter will be violent. Whereas women off the street are better able to get information about their client and verify who he really is. This puts him in a position of being identified and he is less likely to be violent. On the street, there is a tremendous amount of violence toward the women."

Of the twelve women who had experienced violence, nine of them had been abused by a client, two of them by a boyfriend, and one by a policeman.

As to how many of the women had dealt with the police, the sampling split down the middle.

Twenty had; twenty hadn't; one was unclear. One prostitute was kind enough to answer my question at length:

"The other cost has been the police harassment. They can't bust me on prostitution so they try to on ... felony fraud for baiting and misrepresenting my intentions." When a client pursued her and pulled out a gun, she ran to the police for protection. "The police asked my name and I was afraid the client would access my name and address from the police report. I begged the officer not to ask me because I was afraid of retaliation and he would not accept it, so I gave him a fake name. When he discovered it would not verify, he arrested me and I became hysterical. He then went on to charge me with disorderly conduct."

In expanding on their answers, the twenty women who had dealt with the police sometimes described them as "friends" or "clients." When I asked Norma Jean about this, she replied that vice cops are supposed to make arrests, but a lot of them "know that the women are not coerced into this business. They are not causing trouble ... so they see an opportunity to use the woman's services-for free sometimes, sometimes more honestly."

The services the police use are not always sexual, as Norma Jean informed me: "Prostitutes make perfect stool pigeons because they are vulnerable and have always been a source of information for the police."

In approaching the issue of "economic coercion"-the common feminist claim that a need for money "forces" women into sex work-I asked a series of questions aimed at establishing what economic alternatives were available to the women and what rewards they received from sex work.

The "other" jobs that the women had held ranged from waitress, receptionist, and secretary to nurse, archaeologist, and TV news editor. In terms of education-often a good indicator of economic alternatives-thirty-seven (90%) of the women had finished high school. Twenty-one women (51 %) had a college degree, while an additional seven (17%) had "some" college.

Nineteen women (46%) were currently pursuing further education.

119

I asked the women to estimate how much they earned per week at previously held non-sex work jobs, and how much they earned per week as sex workers. Only twenty-nine women provided statistically useful information. Based on this data, the mean weekly income for previous non-sex work was $490; the mean weekly income for sex work was $2,360. The lowest paid form of sex work reported was "phone sex" ($40/hr.); the highest paid form of sex work reported was "call girl" ($100-$800/hr.).

I asked the women to estimate how many hours per week they had previously worked, and how many hours they worked now. Thirty-two women responded in a statistically useful manner. The mean number of hours per week for non-sex work came to forty-one. The mean number of hours per week for sex work came to nineteen.