Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry (26 page)

44. Wayne Hoffman, “Skipping the Life Fantastic: Coming of Age in the Sexual Devolution,” in Dangerous Bedfellows, eds.,
Policing Public Sex:
Queer Politics and the Future of AIDS Activism
, Boston: South End Press, 1986, p. 339.

45. See Kendall Thomas, “Going Public: A Conversation with Lidell Jackson and Jocelyn Taylor,” in Dangerous Bedfellows, eds.,
Policing Public Sex:
Queer Politics and the Future of AIDS Activism
, Boston: South End Press, 1996, p. 66.

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COMMERCIAL TELEPHONE SEX:

FANTASY AND REALITY

Kathleen Guidroz and Grant J. Rich

It has been more than 25 years since the first commercial telephone sex service—commonly known as “phone sex”—was introduced in the United States. Phone sex is ubiquitous—virtually all men’s magazines, numerous newspapers, and the Internet1 contain ads for this lucrative industry;2 however, very little research has been done on the topic relative to other forms of sex work.3 This chapter focuses on how phone sex operators view their work, how they manage sex calls, and how they attempt to create and maintain a positive identity while employed in a socially stigmatized occupation considered by many to be deviant and sexist.4

G E N D E R I N G TH E TE L E P H O N E

When the telephone was invented, men staffed the first telephone systems; but by the end of the 1880s, almost all telephone operators were women. Since then, the telephone has remained a “gendered technology”; that is, it is “a site at which the meanings of gender are expressed and practiced.”5 Due to technological advances, the telephone is now a more private medium of communication,6 which makes commercial phone sex possible.

The first commercial telephone sex became available in the early 1980s, when callers could have their credit cards billed through a company. There are now numerous ways for callers of telephone sex lines to pay for their phone
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sex, including 900 or 976 lines that allow per-minute billing, flat rate billing for a certain amount of calling time with an operator, and international call billing.7 A growing number of phone sex services are now available throughout the world, some of which charge callers costly international phone rates.8

Telephone sex work can be conducted through companies in an office or by agency- or self-employed individuals working in their own homes. Some telephone sex companies have office space in which many women, and sometimes men impersonating women,9 are sitting at desks with telephones or headsets in either one large room or in smaller closet sized rooms. Like most sex workers, phone sex operators have a work persona—a fake name and physical description—to protect their personal identity.

The majority of the calls requested by callers of phone sex lines include discussions of straight sex, lesbianism, rape, anal sex, adult baby/diaper lover (ABDL) or incest (including the operator playing the role of a mommy or

“mother I love to fuck” (MILF) or “sister”), young girls and “barely legal,”

sadomasochism (S&M or BDSM), bestiality (e.g., animals), mutilation or dismemberment, transgenderism (e.g. “shemale”), and fetishism (such as cross-dressing or “force feminization”).10 Male callers can also make specific requests for a BBW (“big beautiful woman”), a “dominatrix” for S&M, or a GFE (“girlfriend experience” with some romance). A small number of calls are nonsexual. The telephone sex industry involves primarily heterosexual encounters and female operators; very few calls come from couples and even fewer are from women;11 however, more recent phone sex lines advertised on the Internet are being marketed as lesbian or bisexual phone sex “
by
women
for
women.”12

R E S E A R C H M E TH O D S

The study is based on interviews with 12 female phone sex operators13

employed by a company in an urban area of the United States, observations at the work site, and interviews with an additional six phone sex operators in other cities.14 Interviews were conducted in both the respondent’s home and at the work site.15 Our questions focused on why and how respondents entered phone sex work, their experiences on the job, what they liked and disliked about the work, their views of the callers, and whether phone sex work had affected their personal lives. Most of the interviews were tape-recorded. Some respondents were interviewed more than once and some interviews were conducted over the phone, although the researchers had face-to-face contact with all respondents at least once. Our initial contacts were made through
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personal acquaintances, and snowball sampling provided referrals for interviews, which were conducted between 1996 and 1998.

The study uses qualitative methods for a number of reasons. First, since access to sex workers is limited (due to the stigmatized nature of the profession), a large sample of workers is not available. A large sample would have been necessary for quantitative analysis of the data. Second, little research has been done on phone sex work; thus there is a need for exploratory, qualitative investigation. Our study aims to give the workers a voice through in-depth interviews. Despite our modest sample of workers, the sparse existing literature on phone sex workers lends support to our basic findings.16

The main purpose of our study was to demystify the work of phone sex (which is often sensationalized by commentators) by viewing it through the lenses of the phone sex operators themselves.17

TH E A G E N C Y: S E XY S M A RT G I R L S

The Sexy Smart Girls agency serves primarily male callers located throughout the country.18 The agency advertises its services through men’s sex magazines, and provides services via 800 and 900 numbers (for $3.99 a minute), and credit card, direct, and prepaid calls (for $1.99 a minute). An advertisement for the agency appearing in one of numerous pornography magazines features a young white woman holding a telephone in one hand and a book in the other. She is bare breasted and wearing a plaid skirt that is hiked up to reveal white lace panties. To fully communicate the phone sex operators’ youth, sexiness, and intelligence, she is wearing lace socks, high heels, and glasses.

Approximately 40 workers are employed by Sexy Smart Girls. Most of the operators work part time, but several work up to 40 hours a week. Since most of the requests for phone sex calls come in at night, work shifts are typically between 11 P.M. and 5 A.M., when seven operators at a time work in the office, and one or two may work on a scheduled or on-call basis from their homes.

The agency rents a small suite in an otherwise drab office building near a part-residential and part-warehouse section of the city. Visits to the agency revealed a typical office space, with a main reception desk containing the

“caller list” (a binder with an estimated 13,000 names), file cabinets, a water cooler, microwave, and the agency’s policies and procedures for receiving and verifying callers’ credit card numbers. The office contained none of the pornographic fliers and posters seen by Amy Flowers during her phone sex research.19 The operators sit in small rooms with doors that may be closed but do not eliminate sound. One of the authors, for instance, heard Debbi speaking
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KATHLEEN GUIDROZ AND GRANT J. RICH

in a loud yet recognizable girlish voice, “Oh Daddy, I want your big cock inside my little pussy!” From the hallway outside the office, one could hear an operator screaming loudly while simulating an orgasm.

Similar to the phone sex company Flowers worked for,20 security measures are stringent. The doors to the building and to the agency’s office are kept locked at all times. Only employees are allowed into the office. Although the agency presents itself as a telemarketing company, most of the other occupants of the building know or suspect it is a phone sex company. Chrissy said: Regardless of how quiet we try to be, they do know what we do. They are disrespectful to us. They leer; they jeer; they make comments. I don’t even like going out of this office to go get something to drink.

Other workers had varying opinions about the office. Debbi liked the anonymity of the office location in addition to the structure of the office phone sex rooms:

I like the way the office is set up. I don’t have to do my calls in front of anybody.

I’m over by myself. Guys say, “I bet you’re at a table with a bunch of girls with phones.” And I reply, “You’d be able to hear them, for one.” I also like the security of it. I talk to people in other services, and they’re not like that. To me, that would be very scary. To have some guy show up who thinks I’m into being beaten into a bloody pulp and being raped by 20 different guys. It would scare me for someone like that to find me.

Like most office workers, the operators gave their office homey touches.

They put up slogans and poems, recipes, and even humorous artwork depicting their least favorite caller at the time (e.g., a little voodoo doll in a suit with a huge phallus). These personal touches indicate that, to some extent, the workers attempted to humanize the office.

The Operators at Sexy Smart Girls

Our sample ranged in age from 21 to 45, although they presented themselves on the phone as being 20 to 23. Phone sex operators can be any race or ethnicity, age, gender, and have varying levels of education,21 but all our interviewees were white. Our respondents’ educations ranged from high school graduates to college graduates, but none thought she got her job due to her education.

Phone sex companies have difficulty recruiting and retaining employees.

The women Flowers interviewed had worked at an average of three companies
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each.22 Although our respondents reported fewer phone sex jobs, they had been employed in a fairly short-term capacity. In our sample, no operator had been working for the agency longer than 18 months.

Most of the workers had unconventional relationships outside work—not one was married, and several were divorced. Many had lovers who were either married or seeing multiple partners, and only one was engaged. Some were lesbian or bisexual. Given our data, it is difficult to determine whether the nature of the job precludes long-term monogamy or marriage or whether the job self-selects for candidates who preferred nonstandard romantic lives. As Mint put it:

What’s the guy gonna say, “Mom, Dad, let me introduce you to Mint. She’s a phone sex worker, and we are going to get married”? My lover is a lawyer. What’s he going to do, say to the [law firm] partners, “This is Mint. She’s a phone sex worker, and we like to have phone sex from my office”? It’s screwed up.

Since our sample was not random, it may not be typical of all phone sex operators. Additionally, the callers may not be typical. While data are scarce about the clients of prostitutes and other sex workers,23 even less is known about phone sex callers—including their demographic characteristics and why they call phone sex services. Operators’ descriptions of their callers’ backgrounds may be inaccurate because the callers might lie about their occupations and marital status.

W O R KI N G I N P H O N E S E X

The women found the job via an advertisement in the newspaper or through a referral by a friend or acquaintance who already worked for the agency. Our data suggest that women seeking phone sex work share the following: (1) they need money, (2) they see phone sex as their most lucrative option, and (3) they feel reasonably sure they would be comfortable discussing sex over the telephone.24

Several telephone sex operators described their motivation for entering the phone sex business because they thought it would be “fun” or “easy.”

Elle had been working for over a year at the agency, and had no previous experience in the sex industry. She explained why she chose to work as a phone sex operator:

I have a degree in social work. . . . I definitely wanted out of mental health.

Surprisingly this isn’t that far off from mental health, believe it or not. I thought,
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KATHLEEN GUIDROZ AND GRANT J. RICH

“Wow, that’s a lot of money.” And I thought, “Who couldn’t have sex on the phone?” I’d have to say initially it was the money that brought me in.

Similarly, Chrissy said:

I was going through a divorce. I had a real job because I do have a bachelor’s degree, and I was burned out. So I quit that job . . . and I saw this ad in the paper.

I thought, “Phone sex, ha ha. Oh my God, how funny. That would be really fun to do at night while I was looking for a better job.”

Annette also indicated that a sense of the agency’s normalcy and integrity was important to her. She added that the setting or environment was as important as the type of work when considering an agency: I always thought that it would be such a hoot, so much fun to do; and I’ll do domination calls. Then I saw it in the newspaper. . . . Here, all the women look like normal, wholesome-looking women. This boss weeds for this. I don’t think many places weed out to try to get smarter, more wholesome, and normal women.

As a potential phone sex operator, each worker had to ask herself whether she would she be able to have phone sex with male callers, where the goal is the caller’s orgasm. Heart remarked:

You have to be comfortable talking about sex. Obviously anyone with serious hang-ups wouldn’t call for an interview—or they’d quit after the first weird call—which happens a lot. Some people just can’t deal.

Job Socialization and Identity Construction

Conventional careers and phone sex work differ in the amount of formal training provided. Most phone sex operators receive very little training.25

Why? There is an understanding that phone sex work self-selects operators who are comfortable discussing sexual topics and therefore will have a shorter learning curve; several operators were told during their initial interview that the work is “very easy.”