Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry (31 page)

One white woman was battered, beaten with fresh bruises on her face. She said she was 3 months pregnant and showed us her stomach. She said she didn’t have any family in Philadelphia. She came from a southern state 2 years ago. She does not have a medical card, she’s homeless, and when I asked her what services she wanted, she implied she needed prenatal care (she pointed to her stomach and
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said “for the baby”). She didn’t know where to get prenatal services because she didn’t have a medical card or relatives to provide any kind of support structure.

These prostitutes were also at very high risk of HIV infection. Although other research has indicated that injection drug use is common among minority prostitutes, in North Philadelphia the white street prostitutes were more likely to be injection drug users than the African-American street prostitutes, thus putting them at risk of HIV infection through injection drug use. Since at least 20% of injection drug users in Philadelphia who were not in treatment tested HIV positive at the time of our study,29 the chance that these women were already HIV infected was high, a suspicion confirmed by the staff of the local drug detox program. Although they preferred to use clean needles, they sometimes shared needles either because they were “sick” (in withdrawal) and didn’t have clean needles available or because their living conditions caused inadvertent sharing. A common problem, for instance, arose from several injection drug users living in the same place: “A white prostitute told us . . . the people in her house all injected drugs and they take her needles when she isn’t there. She came back to her room and found the needle obviously used in her absence and the cooker [where drug is melted] full of blood.”

These women told us that they often shared needles with regular sex partners or did not use condoms with them, even though they used condoms on a more frequent basis with their johns. Condom use with johns, however, appeared to be inconsistent:

A white prostitute said a lot of the girls didn’t use condoms consistently. She was the only one, she said, who used them regularly. She wouldn’t service a date if they didn’t use condoms; she didn’t care if she lost the money, but she already had endocarditis (inflammation of the heart valve, a common illness among injection drug users) and she was afraid for her health. She said that a lot of the girls were HIV positive or had sexually transmitted diseases and they still didn’t consistently use condoms.

These observations on inconsistent condom use were confirmed by other white women we interviewed.

African-American Prostitutes

Our data on African-American street prostitutes were gathered primarily from the two African-American stroll areas: a small area that contained several
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hotels and row houses, which the women used for their work; and a park area, where business usually occurred inside parked cars. Although there were behavioral differences between the two locales dictated by social context, there were also some similarities in behavior that transcended location and which may stem from race. Although both groups of black prostitutes reported that their clientele came from various racial groups, many of the johns we observed were black men.

Most of the African-American prostitutes we saw in these two stroll areas were addicted to crack and did not inject drugs. They were open about telling us that they were “on the pipe.” Many did not know why we were offering them bleach. When we explained that it is used to sterilize needles, we were often told “I don’t do that shit.” The women frequently displayed blistered or injured lips, visible signs of heavy crack use, but we did not see the needle tracks that we did on the white sex workers. This finding is consistent with a New York City study that similarly found African-American sex workers to be more likely to smoke crack than whites, and white women more apt to use injectable heroin than African-Americans.30

Crack seems to have driven down the price of sex for these women, in part because of competition among the women and in part because of informal competition with the women who exchange sex for drugs in crack houses. We were repeatedly told by prostitutes how the influence of crack-addicted women had driven down the price of sex. These field notes reflect a conversation with one African-American prostitute in the park: The going rate for a blow job was $20, which is what she charged. Some girls out here give men a blow job for $1.50. They’re “real ho’s.” They drive the price down for the other girls. She could understand it if they were doing it for food or kids, but one girl gave a blow job for $1.50 and bought crack with it and smoked it.

She strongly disapproved of this; this was disgusting and she should be driven out. She was giving the girls a bad name because the price was too low. If she knew someone who was giving $1.00 blow jobs, she’d “beat the shit” out of them.

Although women were working for money to purchase drugs, some reported they were also working for money for food or child support: The African-American prostitute in the park told us that she was cut off General Assistance which [at the time of the research] only lasted 3 months in Pennsylvania. As a result she has no money to pay her rent. She said she has a drug problem and prostitutes for drugs, but now she also has to prostitute for money for food and rent, which is why she’s out early today.

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Many of the African-American prostitutes we interviewed, both in the park and in the hotel area, were born in Philadelphia and had networks of relatives in the city with whom they were in contact. Some lived intermittently with different relatives (especially mothers, sisters, and grandmothers). Others lived in abandoned buildings or rented cheap hotel rooms, and still others lived in the row houses out of which they worked. Even in the latter case, however, they often returned to relatives to stay for short periods of time. Many of the African-American prostitutes had regular or semi-regular contact with female family members, usually their mothers.

Rita, for example, saw her mother regularly. Her mother did not approve of Rita’s prostitution but accepted it, and Rita lived with her mother and two of her children during the week in another part of North Philadelphia. At the time of the study, 19-year-old Danielle had been working for 2 years in the hotel area and alternated between living with her sister and mother every several weeks. Shakwana said she became pregnant by one of the male hangers-on around the hotel but was still able to return to her mother’s to have her baby.

At least some of the women had families of their own in other parts of Philadelphia and worked only on the weekends to supplement their incomes or maintain their addictions:

Denise lives in West Philadelphia with her two children and her mother. She said she never stayed overnight at the hotel. She goes home when she’s done. She said the scene is different in West Philadelphia, a lot slower. In North Philadelphia, it’s busier and you make more money. She takes the El every day to work here and takes it home after work.

Most of these women had children. When they discussed their children with us, one common theme was guilt about being “bad mothers,” a finding also reported by other researchers.31 Although the women maintained contact with their families, it was often intermittent, and though some of their children were with female relatives, some were often in foster care: LaVerne had a court appointment. The Department of Human Services wanted to put her daughter in a mental hospital because her behavior was bizarre. She was currently in foster care. LaVerne said she didn’t feel the child needed to be in a mental hospital; she wanted the child with her mother. LaVerne felt that if she were with her family and got the attention her grandmother would give her, she’d be better. She said the social worker “just wants to take my child away permanently.” She lives with her sister and goes home occasionally to see her
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mother. She says her mother will always accept her. She always brings her mother a little money, because she’s taking care of two of the children. Her mother deserves to get her welfare, LaVerne said, “because I’m not in any condition to take care of the kids. The family is the most important thing. I feel really sad when I think of my kids.”

Many of the African-American prostitutes were on welfare because they had children, and many had medical cards. A number of African-American women told us that they had been in drug treatment programs or received medical examinations for sexually transmitted diseases on a regular basis, and many reported having been HIV tested. Most of these women were also aware of free health services provided at local district health centers, which were available to them even if they did not have medical cards. The majority of African-American prostitutes were aware of access to some healthcare services, however minimal.

African-American Prostitutes in the Park

Although there were similarities in crack use, family networks, and awareness of services among the African-American prostitutes in the two different social settings (the park and the hotel area), there were also differences by locale. The prostitutes who worked primarily in the park and those who worked in the hotel area differed in type of sex practiced, the type of client they saw, their relationship to male pimps or lookouts, the type of violence to which they were exposed, and to some extent, their ability to network with services.

The prostitutes in the park worked primarily out of cars. They tended to perform oral sex, which is quick, and the park provided the privacy for them to do so in a car. The women in the park were more likely to be in a formal relationship with a pimp; in fact, many of the women had pimps watching them as we talked, which made it difficult for us to interact with them and to learn as much about them as we could with the other groups. Although some of the women in the park appeared to be working on their own, more typical was the presence of men who were managing several women in a formal business relationship. For instance, as an example of a behavior frequently encountered, one man came up to us to get condoms for “his girls.” When we asked how many he had, he said “three.” The men often sat in cars with several women, and the women stood outside the cars and solicited clients. Prostitutes in the park area needed to work out of cars because there were no buildings or wooded areas in the park to conceal their activities. Thus, women were more reliant on working in pimps’ cars. Also, because of the transient and
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unprotected nature of the locale, they told us they needed a pimp for occasional protection from customers, muggers, or other prostitutes. Women also frequently worked in the cars of men who picked them up, and they needed someone to note the license plate numbers of the cars in case they failed to return.

The park prostitutes appeared physically battered, although we were unable to determine who battered them. And because they were controlled by pimps, they were restricted in their ability to informally network with other women about social services. Although our interviews indicated they knew about some social or medical services and used them, they were not aware of as wide a range of service options as were the African-American hotel prostitutes.

African-American Prostitutes in the Hotel Area
The prostitutes who worked in the hotel area occasionally worked out of cars, but since this area is adjacent to a major thoroughfare and is in a heavily traveled residential/commercial area, privacy in a car was extremely difficult unless they left the area. Thus, many brought the clients they solicited on the street to rooms in hotels that rented by the hour or half-hour, or brought the clients to row houses in which some of them lived either regularly or intermittently. We were told by the women that most of the women in the hotel area had regular customers, a practice that was somewhat less frequent in the park, which had a more transient population. Also, they reported more vaginal sex than the park prostitutes, in part because of the privacy granted by the hotel room.

Whereas previous literature indicates that most of the men involved with female street prostitution were pimps or proprietors of business establishments, in the hotel area male roles were more fluid, and many women worked on their own. The presence of so many women working independently had increased because of the widespread use of crack. The women binged on crack, often hitting on the pipe a number of times a day.

Because of this bingeing, many women wanted to spend their money on drugs rather than on male protection. This observation was confirmed both by the women themselves and by men who worked as bouncers in the hotels. As one bouncer told us:

The girls (in the hotel area) work for themselves. There’s no pimps around here.

They watch out for each other. They’re independent here. They use the money they get for themselves for drugs. They take whatever they can get. The rates
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went down around here; whatever they can get, it’s enough. If they were using once in a while, they would charge a little higher. But they’re using [crack] so much now, they take what [money] they can get.

The bouncer’s observations are verified by entries in our field notes: Tamika looked exhausted and said she had been out continuously from the previous night through the entire following day (we saw her at 4.30 on Friday), yet she did not have enough cash on hand to buy a hoagie for dinner. She implied that she had smoked most of what she had earned.

A group of African-American men in the hotel area fulfilled a variety of roles. Some of the men rented rooms in the hotels and worked there informally as bouncers, were boyfriends whom the women might “help out” with small amounts of cash, were proprietors of small prostitution hotels or sellers of condoms, or were suppliers of drugs. Often, the men fulfilled multiple roles at once, especially at the prostitution hotels. One man, for example, lived at one of the hotels, where he also worked as a bouncer, and had been the boyfriend of at least two prostitutes. Another man who owned the house out of which several of the women work received small, sporadic amounts of cash from the women who slept or worked there as general payment for rent and other services such as drugs. However, the women were not forced to relinquish their earnings to the men without receiving something in exchange; the money clearly belonged to the women who earn it. For instance, some of the women lived in a row house owned by one of the men: Kim told us that Mike and his brother Tyrone own the house. Tyrone is inside selling drugs. The house is nasty; there’s no running water or plumbing. Mike gets the water in a bucket. The girls get paid directly by their dates and don’t pay regular rent but pay what they can and give the guys some of their drugs occasionally. “We give Tyrone some drugs or money but that’s from our heart.”