Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry (29 page)

3. Amy Flowers,
The Fantasy Factory: An Insider’s View of the Phone Sex
Industry
, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998; Kathleen Guidroz, “Gender, Labor, and Sexuality in Escort and Telephone Sex Work,” Ph.D. dissertation, George Washington University, Washington, DC, 2001; Grant Rich, “Phone Jams: Improvisation and Peak Experience in Phone Sex Workers,”
Anthropology of Consciousness
9 (1998): 82–83; Hall, “Lip Service.” Mattley has written about her year-long covert participant observation as a “phone fantasy” operator: Christine Mattley,

“Aural Sex: The Politics and Moral Dilemmas of Studying the Social Construction of Fantasy,” in Dick Hobbs and Richard Wright, eds.,
The
Sage Handbook of Fieldwork
, London: Sage, 2006.

4. Erving Goffman,
Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity
, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1963; Edwin M. Schur,
Labeling Women Deviant:
Gender, Stigma, and Social Control
, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983.

5. Lana F. Rakow,
Gender on the Line: Women, the Telephone, and Community Life
, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992, pp. 1, 33. Rakow (p. 33) points out that the telephone is not exempt from gendered characteristics. She writes, “Use of the telephone by women is both gendered work—work delegated to women—and gender work—work that confirms the community’s belief about what are women’s natural tendencies and abilities.” For an interesting history of the telephone, see also Claude Fischer, “Gender and the Residential Telephone, 1890–1940: Technologies of Sociability,” in Robert Thompson, ed.,
The Essential
156

COMMERCIAL TELEPHONE SEX: FANTASY AND REALITY

Sociology Reader
, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998; Michéle Martin,
Hello,
Central?: Gender, Technology, and Culture in the Formation of Telephone Systems
, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991; Carolyn Marvin,
When
Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about Electric Communication in the Late
Nineteenth Century
, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

6. Hall, “Lip Service,” p. 189.

7. Flowers,
Fantasy Factory
, p. 4. See also Amanda Covington, “Confessions of a Phone Sex Operator,” http://lumpen.com; Jack Glascock and Robert LaRose, “Dial-A-Porn Recordings: The Role of the Female Participant in Male Sexual Fantasies,”
Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media
37

(1993): 313–324; Hall, “Lip Service”; Lane,
Obscene Profits
.

8. The Economist, “Heavy Breathing”; Cheryl Radeloff, “‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’: The Rise and Development of Phone Sex as an International Industry,” unpublished paper, 1997.

9. Flowers,
Fantasy Factory
; Rachel James, “Heart to Heart with a Phone Sex Fantasy Girl,”
Gray Areas
2 (1993): 46–51; Frederick L. Whitam,

“Culturally Universal Aspects of Male Homosexual Transvestites and Transsexuals,” in Bonnie Bullough, Vern L. Bulloush, and James Elias, eds.,
Gender Blending
, Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1997. Hall, for example, examined five fantasy-line companies, all in San Francisco, and of her 12 respondents, one was a man who engages in “cross-expressing,”

Hall, “Lip Service,” p. 202.

10. Guidroz, “Gender, Labor, and Sexuality.”

11. Flowers,
Fantasy Factory
; Guidroz, “Gender, Labor, and Sexuality.”

Mattley, “Aural Sex,” for example, describes only male callers.

12. GirlsLovePussyToo.com, accessed September 14, 2008. According to Miller, there is also a growing market for gay and transgender phone sex lines: Edward David Miller, “Inside the Switchboards of Desire: Storytelling on Phone Sex Lines,” in William L. Leap, ed.,
Beyond the
Lavender Lexicon: Authenticity, Imagination, and Appropriation in Lesbian and
Gay Language
, New York: Routledge, 1996.

13. Respondents’ names are pseudonyms.

14. Guidroz, “Gender, Labor, and Sexuality.”

15. Interviews with those working for the agency were done at the work site with the consent of the agency owner, a former phone sex operator.

16. Gary Anthony, Rocky Bennett, and John Money,
Dirty Talk: Diary of a
Phone Sex Mistress
, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1998; Miranda Austin,
Phone Sex: Aural Thrills and Oral Skills
, Oakland: Greenery Press, 2002; Flowers,
Fantasy Factory
; Damiana Cate Stone,
My Life in Phone Sex
, Bloomington: iUniverse, 2002.

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KATHLEEN GUIDROZ AND GRANT J. RICH

17. See also Hall, “Lip Service.”

18. The agency name is a pseudonym.

19. Flowers,
Fantasy Factory
.

20. Flowers,
Fantasy Factory
, p. 122.

21. Areena, “Aphrodite Electric: A Phone Sex Perspective,”
Anything That
Moves
12 (1996): 24–25; Kate Bornstein,
Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women,
and the Rest of Us
, New York: Routledge, 1994; Covington,

“Confessions”; Flowers,
Fantasy Factory
.

22. Flowers,
Fantasy Factory
, p. 29.

23. See Martin Monto’s chapter in this volume.

24. See also Flowers,
Fantasy Factory
.

25. Flowers,
Fantasy Factory
. Although Hall did not mention her respondents’ own training, see “Lip Service” for an excerpt from a training manual. One exception is a support group, People Exchanging Power (PEP), which began a professional phone sex service for dominant/

submissive callers. PEP’s founder, Nancy Eva Miller, asks her operators to read
How to Win Friends and Influence People
and provides annual training via seminars and workshops; see Lane,
Obscene Profits
, p. 166.

26. Flowers,
Fantasy Factory
.

27. It might be tempting to view phone sex work as a route into the world of exotic dancing and prostitution, but our data and the available literature suggest that this is rare; see also Flowers,
Fantasy Factory
. Only one worker in our sample reported being involved in other kinds of sex work.

28. Anne Statham, Eleanor Miller, and Hans Mauksh, eds.,
The Worth of
Women’s Work: A Qualitative Synthesis
, New York: State University of New York Press, 1988.

29. Howard Becker,
Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance
, New York: Free Press, 1963.

30. Goffman,
Stigma
.

31. Christena Nippert-Eng,
Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries through
Everyday Life
, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

32. See Guidroz, “Gender, Labor, and Sexuality” for a comparison of two groups of sex workers.

33. Contemporary online advertisements for phone sex operators, or PSOs, promise salaries of up to $30 per hour or between $100 and $1500 per week. Several of the ads referred to PSOs as phone actresses and voice artists, and some require trolling, chatroom networking, and IMing. A few were looking for dispatchers and “webcam girls.”

34. Flowers,
Fantasy Factory,
p. 122.

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COMMERCIAL TELEPHONE SEX: FANTASY AND REALITY

35. In
Fantasy Factory
, Flowers reports that phone sex agencies have ways for callers to mail the operators gifts, letters, and photographs. Workers have received flowers, candy, and cash ($100 is common). Spice showed an engagement ring a caller had sent her (his real-life engagement did not work out) along with the appraisal form; the ring was valued at about $4000. Another worker received a new stereo system. The manager documents and photocopies or photographs gifts and letters for security purposes.

36. Pepper noted that prison inmates try to make collect calls all the time.

37. This term was used during an interview with a longtime phone sex operator based in New York City and who works from her home; Guidroz, “Gender, Labor, and Sexuality.”

38. Some operators use the legal definition of “consent” when determining which calls they will accept; Lindsay Moore,
“Oh Baby . . . Talk Nasty to
Me”: The Practical Guide to Succeeding as a Phone Sex Operator
, Sorceress Enterprises, 1995.

39. Skipper and McCaghy identified this notion in their study of strippers: James Skipper and Charles McCaghy, “Stripteasing: A Sex-Oriented Occupation,” in James Henslin, ed.,
Studies in the Sociology of Sex
, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971.

40. See Guidroz, “Gender, Labor, and Sexuality” for claims by escort workers.

41. Or, for example, men who call excessively, such as the basketball coach whose wife divorced him over a $10,000 phone sex habit.

159

3

PROSTITUTION

H A P T E

C

R

7

THE ECOLOGY OF STREET PROSTITUTION

Judith Porter and Louis Bonilla

Women who engage in sex work have a wide range of lifestyles and can work in vastly different settings. An understanding of the social context in which prostitution occurs is important in order to promote AIDS prevention and service delivery in this population.1 Unfortunately, epidemiological models of AIDS risk behavior tend to address prostitution as individual sexual behavior but often ignore its social context. Although patterns of prostitution may differ across cities or regions of the country, much of the research assumes that patterns of street-level sex work are similar.2 This chapter demonstrates that street prostitution varies considerably by race, drug use, and locale within one city, and on the basis of these differences we suggest targeted strategies to prevent the spread of HIV and to provide needed services to this population.

In other words, the social ecology of street prostitution is an important variable in both the manifestation of prostitution and in the kinds of harm-reduction practices that need to be tailored to workers in particular locales.

STR E E T P R O STITUTI O N: C H A R A C TE R I STI C S A N D R I S KS

Although it is difficult to provide precise data, some researchers have estimated that about one-fifth of prostitution in the United States is street prostitution and the remainder is spread among massage parlors, bar prostitution, outcall services, and brothels.3 Street prostitution is the form of
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JUDITH PORTER AND LOUIS BONILLA

prostitution most closely related to HIV/AIDS in the United States because of the connection with drug use, and sex workers have many service needs as well. Injection drug use is most common at the street level, with one-third to one-half of street prostitutes in the United States injecting drugs. Most street prostitutes who are injection drug users used drugs before beginning sex work.4 They often continue or increase their usage after they start sex work, because they are making more money for drugs and some need to be high to do this work, leading to a cycle of increasing addiction.5 Some prostitutes work on the street because they have no access to private space for sex work or because there is a reluctance by escort services or massage parlors to employ women with substance dependency.6 Street workers also are most likely to be poor, are disproportionately members of racial minorities, and are the most likely of any group of sex workers to be arrested.7 Many are not full-time prostitutes but exchange sex for money or drugs only occasionally and in certain contexts, such as the exchange of sex for crack cocaine.8

These women have often worked at low-wage jobs before beginning sex work, but these jobs do not meet their economic needs or they lack employment opportunities. Unstable housing is common, including living in cheap hotels, sharing rooms, and in crack houses or with friends, partners, or intermittently with families. Many have children, living either with family members or in foster care.9

Violence is endemic in street prostitution. Street prostitutes experience more incidents of severe violence than other sex workers. In some studies, high percentages of street prostitutes report being raped, assaulted, or robbed.10

Customers are the most frequent perpetrators of violence, but pimps, police officers, and other sex workers also perpetrate violence.

Women with a history of commercial sex work are at high risk for premature death. Especially pertinent to our Philadelphia study, the Women’s Death Review Team, a collaborative effort among the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, the District Attorney’s office, and other agencies, tracks the incidence and prevalence of violence-related deaths of women from ages 15–60

in Philadelphia. Ten percent (275) of decedents reviewed between 1997 and 2003 were identified by arrest records and agencies as having a history of commercial sex work. Sixteen per cent (45) of these died by homicide, half of which were unsolved.11 The characteristics of these women suggest that many of them were street workers.

Prostitutes are popularly viewed as vectors of HIV infection. Of decedents with a history of sex work between 1997 and 2003 in the Philadelphia study, 38% (N = 105) had HIV or AIDS.12 However, prostitution is not a major vector for the transmission of HIV infection in the United States, in part
164

THE ECOLOGY OF STREET PROSTITUTION

because street prostitutes are more likely to perform oral sex (a lower risk practice for HIV infection than vaginal sex) with their clients and also because they frequently use condoms with them.13 Among prostitutes in the U.S. and elsewhere,14 HIV infection is related to long-term injection drug use or to large numbers of nonpaying sex partners more than to prostitution per se.

Studies have found significant differences in HIV seropositivity between sex workers who inject drugs or engage in sex with drug injectors and those who do not.15 Not only are prostitutes who inject drugs at higher risk generally, but they may not identify their steady, nonpaying partners as being at risk and will thus often share drug injecting equipment or not use condoms with them.16 In a study of New York street prostitutes, almost half had a history of injection drug use and more than one-third of this sample was HIV positive.17