2017 – Huschke Mau

Francine Sporenda interviews Huschke Mau for Nordic Model Now

translation: Inge Kleine

Interview first published here

Huschke Mau is a survivor of Germany’s legalized prostitution system. In this article, Francine Sporenda interviews her, focusing on the recent changes in the prostitution law in Germany.

F: How do you explain that Germany (according to a popular quote) has become the “brothel of Europe”? What led to this situation?

HM: In my view, the reasons lie in the EU enlargement with the accession of Eastern European countries and the very high demand for prostitution in Germany. Every day about 1.2 million men visit a brothel here. Added to this are our laws. Fostering prostitution was legalized in 2002, and so it is no longer against the law to be a pimp or brothel keeper. Pimping is only criminalized if it is “exploitative,” which means if more than 50% of a prostitute’s earnings are taken from her. This does not, however, apply to rents for the rooms in brothels – these are very high. Rents of €100 to €180 per day are common.

Those on the political Right often disapprove of prostitution while simultaneously retaining the clandestine male right [to buy those in prostitution] and despising the women for it – whereas the political Left and the Greens present us with a kind of trick package: idolizing prostitution as work, sometimes even as feminist or empowering. Instead of offering women alternatives or exit support, efforts go into making prostitution as cuddly as possible. That 89% of all women want to leave prostitution is completely disregarded.

F: Can you tell us about the recently passed “Law for the protection of prostitution”? What does it entail? What are its negative and positive sides for prostituted women (if any)?

HM: This law – “Prostituiertenschutzgesetz” i.e. “Prostitutes’ Protection Law” – lays down regulations for brothel operators and prostitutes. It came into effect this summer [2017]. Brothel keepers now need a permit or license and those with prior convictions for trafficking are banned from running brothels. Prostitutes have to register, and they have to attend individual health counselling. Moreover, condoms are now mandatory for the punters, which is the only good point about the law. Punters who insist on intercourse without condoms can now face high fines.

These points aside, the political strategy as evidenced in this law is only about ironing out the very worst outcomes of prostitution in Germany, such as flat rate or gang bang offers, which have now been banned. The situation as such is not addressed at all. Except for mandatory condoms, there is no regulation that places responsibility on the johns, and there is still a huge lack of exiting support and no help for the women in finding alternatives.

The law does not even stipulate a minimum age of 21 – because it was argued this would amount to the “prohibition of a profession.” As a result, very young girls from Europe’s poorest areas can still be exploited here in Germany. Forced prostitution is very hard to prove, although police estimates are that nine out of ten women are working for a man in the background.

F: You say that municipal authorities are in charge of applying this law, and that this guarantees it won’t be fully implemented. Can you explain why?

HM: Municipal authorities are supposed to implement the law, but hardly any funds have been allocated to the municipalities for this. Cities now have to create new jobs, for example in the offices where prostitutes are to register. We need interpreters. We need doctors to carry out the health counselling. But the state seems to be concerned only with finding out how it can profit as much as possible from prostitution, and it certainly doesn’t invest in real help for the women. There are not enough counselling centers, there is not enough exiting support, and there aren’t enough alternatives that women in prostitution can use or access.

F: Can you explain how the legalization of prostitution automatically causes major corruption in the police, local authorities, and politics?

HM: It is above all pimps, brothel keepers and johns who profit from legalization. Legal prostitution signals to punters that it is okay to buy a woman. Being a punter is not shameful in Germany. On the contrary, a man was recently in court for having choked a woman. The judge, a woman, suggested that if he enjoyed choking women he could simply have gone to a prostitute. Violence against a specific class of women is being normalized in this way. That is not solidarity.

Many men in Germany are johns. Some studies suggest that as many as three out of four men have used prostitution at least once. When it is legitimised, they go ahead and just do it, just like that.

At the same time, the prostitutes are not decriminalized. If they are found in violation of zoning regulations, they are punished. Or if they fail to pay taxes. This makes it possible for brothel keepers or johns to blackmail the women. Many politicians and policemen are johns, too.

My first pimp was a policeman, and I had many policemen as johns. Even some who were investigating trafficking cases. They didn’t see any problem with that. And as johns, these policemen and these politicians make decisions that serve them as johns. And then brothels increase tax revenue, for example, big brothels like the Pascha in Cologne. No politician wants to spoil that for himself.

F: Can you tell us about the mega brothels/brothel chains in Germany? How the abuses of prostituted women in these brothels are probably worse than in any other kind of prostitution (“all you can fuck” rates, gang bangs, surveillance systems etc.) Who owns these brothel chains?

HM: We have big brothels here – two types. Those where punters and women meet and decide to go up to a room, and those where johns walk through the corridors and pick a woman sitting outside her room. The “Prostitutes Protection Law” from 2017 bans flat-rate offers or other fixed prices set by the brothels, and gang bangs. But what we are seeing already is big brothels remaining and smaller ones, or apartment brothels closing down.

F: Legalization has turned pimps and traffickers into respectable businessmen. You mentioned before the case of the “prince” von Sachsen Anhalt, who has invested in brothels. These “businessmen” can now openly publish ads to recruit new prostitutes, advertisements for brothels can be seen everywhere. Can you tell us about this “normalization” of pimping and prostitution and the effect it has on German society and the situation of women?

HM: Having brothel keepers sit on TV shows or running their own television series places the acceptance of purchasing women on a new level in our society. Running brothels, managing them or being a punter are no longer seen as indecent in Germany. This does not, however, lead to any widespread acceptance of prostituted women, they are still counted as scum. To offer sex is still seen as morally dubious while buying sex has become perfectly normal.

Sympathies are clearly with the johns and brothel keepers and that is what legalization has brought us. And consequently, violence against women is being normalized. I have had to let myself be lectured by acquaintances who do not know that I was a prostituted woman that this is “a perfectly normal service.”

At the same time the normalization of prostitution has far reaching effects on how society understands (or rather doesn’t understand) other forms of sexual violence against women. We now have a situation where women who want to report rape are being hounded with a charge for defamation if the perpetrator cannot be sentenced due to a lack of evidence. I do not see this as accidental.

F: Can you tell us about the “sex worker unions” and the pro-prostitution lobby in Germany? Who are these people? How many real prostitutes are in these groups? Who finances them?

HM: Here it’s the BSD, Berufsverband Sexueller Dienstleistungen, the “Professional Association of Sexual Services,” which is an association of brothel operators only and which is consulted by politicians on all prostitution matters in spite of being operators only.

Then there is the BESD, the “Berufsverband erotische und sexuelle Dienstleistungen,” the “Professional Association of Erotic and Sexual Services,” which promotes itself as a kind of trade union for “sex workers,” but those who speak publicly tend to be dominatrixes or run studios for them, or they rent out rooms and thus they are among the operators, really. The association does not reveal how many members have joined it.

Hydra, a counselling and advocacy center in Berlin, openly engages in facilitating and counselling for the entry into prostitution.

F: You say that pro-“sex work” associations are not only totally useless for helping women exit, in fact they are trying to keep them in prostitution or even attract new recruits. Can you tell us about these associations?

HM: Due to political pressure, these organizations have begun to say that they support exit services, because according to them not every woman is suited to this “job.” But they do not offer any. Instead of exit support, we have advocacy and counselling centers, but they are few and far between – there are entire Länder, or states, within Germany that do not have any at all – and most of these are pro-“sex work.” They advocate for prostituted women not being seen as an at-risk group in spite of the murders perpetrated against them, because considering them to at risk is said to be stigmatizing. Besides, I have heard of cases where prostituted women who wanted to exit were told that they could simply adjust their careers and work as a dominatrix instead of escort. That is no great help, of course.

F: How can it be said that the German State is the biggest pimp (taxes etc.)?

HM: Many of these advocacy centers receive public, or state, funding. If women are not supported in exiting, but rather in “getting along better in sex work,” many remain in prostitution even though this is not what they want.

The state profits from this, because these women continue to pay their taxes. Some women pay up to €30 in taxes a day, the so called “Vergnuegungssteuer,” or “enjoyment tax,” which is cynical, because no woman I know personally has any pleasure in this job. The costs the women in prostitution face these days are huge: €100 to €180 per day for the room in the brothel (to be paid to the brothel owner), taxes (to be paid to the state), and more to the pimps.

F: I saw that German brothels are rated like hotels now. Is that correct?

HM: The BSD, a brothel keeper association, has introduced a “quality seal” which is awarded to brothels. In these brothels, all women are said to be working voluntarily and independently, and there is allegedly no crime there. The seal is of course completely useless. The brothel keepers’ club awards the quality seals to brothels. How is that is supposed to be unbiased or objective?

The association has even admitted that this is a new marketing strategy to reach johns who no longer need to worry about coming across women who are forced into being there. In fact, most johns really don’t care about that at all. They may even enjoy forced prostitution, because they can more easily abuse the women, who are allowed fewer boundaries and may not refuse many sexual practices or demands on them etc. The seal is geared towards a specific group of johns, the “ethically correct” ones, who are now to be enabled to visit a brothel without qualms.

A brothel tour during Frankfurt’s “Bahnhofsviertelnacht“ – the annual celebration of Frankfurt’s red light district – What counts as “information” on prostitution in Frankfurt.

translation: Inge Kleine

Merely walking through the area around Frankfurt’s Central Station where brothels stand wall to wall gives me the strange feeling of being in the wrong place here, as an onlooker. Looking up along the “Laufhäuser” (1) (operational room window to operational room window to operational room window (2) …) I experience the infallible need to want to go “to the room” rather: There at least I’d know how to act, there I know the procedure, the programme, that which I have to say, but here, like this, as a spectator in the “demi-monde”? Weird. To be here is like returning to your ex who hits you: It is like arriving home, everything is familiar and still feels all wrong. And this is how it feels when I tag along on the brothel tour organised by Doña Carmen e.V. and find myself standing in a room of the Laufhaus at Taunusstraße 26: Memories of my time in prostitution assail me.

The small rooms.

The coloured walls.

The dim light.

The blocked windows.

It is cramped. It is hot. It is bleak.

(And I know exactly how shabby this would look if somebody actually switched on the lights.)

Breathe in. Breathe out. Today I am here as an onlooker. Above all: a listener.

I’m in this operational room with several women, it’s getting cramped. The woman guiding the tour, Juanita Henning, introduces the woman to us (us? I just wonder, could I be confused with the other participants, most if not all of whom are unlikely to have anything to do with prostitution and who therefore have hardly any idea of it?) – introduces the woman to us, who will answer some questions. Since I do not know if this is her real name or her “working” name I’m not writing it here, but abbreviate it, she is called “D.” here.

D. is standing at the room’s only window that she has opened an inch. (Thank God. If I now had to smell this brothel mix – cigarette smoke, sweat, sperm, rubber – I think I would lose it.) She looks tired and wearied, and this is visible even in spite of the lack of light in this room. D. appears to be older than 45, she is wearing leisure wear and a baseball cap, maybe this is the end of her shift? “A woman to woman talk about prostitution” is what we were promised, and while we do that, a Doña Carmen member runs off and gets the money Doña Carmen pays for D. to answer our questions and to talk to us.

D. is a dominatrix, before that she was a beautician. She started 10 years ago. Why? “I got in through a woman friend.” “Women get into prostitution through women”, Juanita Henning says. (This, while the data provided by the police etc. show that between 80% and 90% of the women do not work on their own account, but with a man in the background.) I ask D. how much she pays for the room per day: € 100. And at what price her service starts: € 50. I look around the room, a trestle, corsages on the walls (“dressing up all costs extra”) and strangling collars etc. I remember that I always experienced being a dominatrix more exhausting than other things, I hated it, being booked for this. Doing standard service means that you can at least step away from the active part, check your fingernails in an unobserved moment or pull a face, but being a dominatrix means to focus 100% on the client, to get into his mind, having to do actively what you do not really want to do, i.e. giving satisfaction to such a man’s phantasies which you find disgusting. But I do not say this.

D. speaks in short sentences and not much. Now and then she is interrupted by Juanita Henning who finishes her sentences for her or who “straightens out” something. But it isn’t easy to straighten anything out with so many contradictions as are generated within the next quarter of an hour.

“You’ve got to be the type for becoming a dominatrix”, D. says, correcting this a few minutes later: “I am not a dominatrix by passion. I don’t really care what I do in here. It doesn’t affect me.” What does she offer? “Nothing really happens here. I don’t have to get undressed, I’m not touched. There are no sexual acts here. Very rarely a guy satisfies himself.”

What she does then?

“Oh, nothing really, I tie them up a bit, degrade them verbally a bit. That is nothing really. Now and then I slap them a little, very lightly. This here is only phantasy really, nothing more, no sex or anything. Nothing real.” It sounds a bit as if the punters just hover in here, give her 50 Euros and then disappear again, while she possibly shouts “filthy pig“ after them. A woman asks if she ever feels disgust. “No, why should I, nothing really happens in here. And it’s got nothing to do with me, nothing at all.”

Nothing happens. It’s got nothing to do with me. I wonder what the connection is between this obsessive minimisation, this diminution and denial and disassociation. I am sorry for D. D. is paid by Doña Carmen to talk and answer to us today. And I would have done the same, I would also rather have been paid by Doña Carmen to say something: after all that’s one punter less. And to be honest, what else could she have said faced with more than 15 bourgeois, settled women? “No, it makes me puke, I find the men repulsive?” I wouldn’t have said that in such a situation either.

And Juanita Henning is fast and diligent: “About being disgusted, what kind of a question is that, it’s only ever directed at sex workers.” D.: “Imagine you are a nurse, that is the same.” A woman: “But they sometimes feel disgust.” Juanita: “You can’t compare that now, can you!” The woman: “So you’re not disgusted?” D.: “No, never.” Juanita: “Disgust is also some form of attraction in some ways. To feel disgust means to find someone attractive.”

I feel very dizzy by now. Is that because the place is so hot or because the situation is so absurd? The entire room is full of bourgeois women, and D. says there is nothing happening here, but what do the men pay for then? And how can this be, that this has nothing to do with her while she is in here, after all, when it happens. And then disgust is attraction. My head spins. This here is so grotesque that I’m doubting my senses for a moment.

A woman asks if there were transgressions sometimes. No, says D., she is always in control of the situation. No violence, ever. “I do not want this discussion of violence here”, Juanita Henning emphasises. “Violence is not prostitution. That is not prostitution!” “True, I decide what happens here”, D. says. But that is not really true – she only fulfils the johns’ wishes. And that these wishes come down to “nothing really happens here” – who is to believe that?

How many punters does she see a day? “That differs”, D. says, “One, two sometimes.” “But how can you then pay for the rent?” a woman asks. “Well, it’s three or four sometimes” D. says.

What happens then, one woman wants to know. “Well, first I’ve got to get the john into my room. Then I sit him down on the bed, and if he says “no” I say “yes”, D. laughs, and then the money transaction is done and then the best thing is for him to get a ball in his mouth so he cannot talk me to bits.” Her laughter sounds quite bitter. The longer we stay the more I feel sorry for D. Not only that she can’t talk about what happens here and that she is desperately trying to minimise everything although her revulsion comes through, she also does not seem to make much money. She doesn’t have regulars, she says.

Whether she talks about this to her acquaintances, a woman asks. “Not really”, D. says. “Only very few friends know what I do. I tell the others that I work in a fitness studio, they never ask about my work anyway. And when I have a partner I tell him what I do, but we never talk about it either.” Whether she talked to the other girls in the house? “Nope” she says, it’s only “hi and bye”. I immediately think that my friends and acquaintances always ask me what I’m doing. But prostitution makes for loneliness.

“What about the other girls here”, one asks, “you are a special case, aren’t you?” D. waves that off, “Yes, them, they have to do more, more performance and more clients, like 6 or 7 a day, but I don’t.” But why, I wonder, do they have to do more? If you’re supposed to be able to live comfortably by this, and that, although D. has only very punters? Because the others, unlike D., have a pimp? And then of course this defining herself against the others, and I cannot even blame her for this. In such a situation, it is a natural reaction to say, “I’m not doing too badly, look over there, they really have it bad, they really have to go at it.” Prostitution hierarchies. The escort lady looking down on those in the small brothels. And those in the small brothels looking down on those in the Laufhaus who have to let themselves be ogled, on their stools in the corridors, because this has long since become a popular sport among men, “whore-ogling”. And those in the Laufhaus look down on those in street prostitution. Defining yourself against those below at least conveys a feeling of not having ended up at the bottom yet.

“Don’t let anyone trick you into believing this is all so bad!”, D. shouts after us, as we leave the room after having thanked her.

After this there is a discussion in Doña Carmen’s rooms. Juanita Henning answers questions. It is a bit like a curiosities cabinet, just with more brain washing.

Asked if there was a problem with pimps here, Juanita responds by saying: “Pimps, they don’t exist, that is an invented term to stigmatise the prostitutes’ environment.” And Doña Carmen’s board member and co-founder Gerhard Walentowitz adds: “It is only two pimps a year who get sentenced. In all the country!” Then she compares homosexuality to prostitution in order to point to the discrimination. I sit here and wonder since when prostitution is a sexual orientation or preference. But Juanita goes for it now in full force. Prostitution is prohibited in order to control all women’s sexuality, also that of those who aren’t sex workers, she explains. Women are only permitted to have intercourse with men they feel connected to emotionally or socially. And it sounds a bit as if prostitution was liberating and very very feminist. “Men have a monopoly on buying sex. I don’t see anything reprehensible about this. But we women should learn to do the same. We need more call boys and such.” The aim, it seems, is that ALL of us should have sex in the future without caring about the other person, their sexuality etc. It’s just that easy, it seems.

“But the woman is selling her sexuality”, a woman remarks. “She doesn’t, that has nothing to do with her sexuality at all”, Juanita Henning says, who just a minute ago told us prostitution was about the liberation of women’s sexuality, “this isn’t about her sexuality. This is only about the man’s sexuality, this is only focussed on his needs.” Aha, I think, a moment of clarity, but that is over now: “That is why women do not become sick in prostitution, sick in their minds, disturbed, they don’t have any of that, because, this has nothing to do with them and their sexuality. They just briefly place their bodies at the man’s disposal.”

A woman asks about the Hell’s Angels. They’re no problem, Henning says. “None at all. There is no violence in prostitution here. They collect the taxes for the tax office.” Incredulous second question: “They collect the taxes for the tax office?” “Yes,” Henning says, “the city has commissioned them to do that and then practically collects them from them.” “So there’s no problem?” – “No, no problem.” “And forced prostitution? And the women from abroad? Who are beaten or who have taken their passports off them?” – “That’s mere clichés.” “Mere clichés?” – “Yes, mere clichés, all of that.” My head spins. Alarmingly, there are women here who believe all that. “I have never thought about it this way”, one says, “but yes, it’s true, it is like that, with women’s sexuality, and it is unfair, that there are no brothels for women.”

Why women come to Doña Carmen, one asks. A justified question, I think, since there are apparently no problems. “They come because of the taxes,” Henning explains, who a minute ago enthused about the Bulgarians and Romanians in prostitution here being able to finance themselves a nice little house of their own and above all being able to feed their families. “When they exit, they get problems with the tax office that estimates their earnings, and then they’re through. That is why they come here. When they exit, they are all broke and with debts. Totally poor.”

What else besides tax advice could prostitutes want from an association that says there is no forced prostitution, no trafficking, no pimps, no violence in prostitution? “But do the women really do this voluntarily?” one asks? Juanita Henning snaps: “The question alone is already so discriminatory.”

Once outside, I ask some women whether they believed what they heard inside. “Partly”, they say. Some thought it quite exaggerated. But others fell completely for what they had been told in there.

I return to the action “No place of pleasure”, an action that unlike Doña Carmen, is not mentioned anywhere in the city’s Bahnhofsviertelnacht programme. Abolitionist activists, women from several organisations, have placed coloured posters on the ground to commemorate the women murdered in prostitution. Although it is only the confirmed cases, and only of women who were “working” in Frankfurt, they are frighteningly many. People come closer, place roses and light candles. It is a saddening view, and it is in fierce contrast to what I have just heard, and also in immense contrast to the surroundings: By now the streets are overcrowded, noisy, drinking, celebrating people among punters who are coming out of the brothels as if they’d just bought some cigarettes at a late night shop. Activists hand leaflets to people, engage in discussions. Most are affected by this. Some wipe away some tears, others recount that they have such a case in their families, and others tell us about prostituted women murdered in Frankfurt who have not as yet rated a mention in any report.

In a side street, strippers dance on a float. In another street, completely stoned people wander around in front of a drug room (3). A transsexual prostitute walks the streets, looking for takers. And I wonder: Does anybody have anything to celebrate here? Is this not inappropriate, to scatter glitter onto this misery, this violence here and to turn it into a circus? What is going on within these people who come here to have a party? Do they realise that their bout in adrenaline that comes from being in such a “demi-monde” area, is deeply bourgeois? That what is a one-off occasion to them is everyday life and practice to others?

And I wonder if this is what the City of Frankfurt takes to be proper information on prostitution? The brothel tours are no longer part of the official programme, that is true, Doña Carmen however is, it is to “inform” about prostitution with a presentation later, and a discussion following this. Along with all the churning out of hollow phrases, the distortions and minimisation that float around in my mind, I also wonder what is going on here, with the Hell’s Angles and the taxes. Dear City of Frankfurt – is this true? Are you collaborating with organised crime to get the dough for the tax office? And if you aren’t, why don’t you object to being presented like this? Is that good for this “demi-monde-ohhhhhownaughtyexciting” image? I’m surprised. An organisation that relentlessly speaks of “so-called forced prostitution” and “so-called trafficking” is supposed to enlighten us on prostitution according to the official brochure published by Frankfurt City, but people only learn about all the murders for example, all the violence by punters, all the data we have on prostitution, through a few tireless women activists who are not even part of the official programme. It seems as if Frankfurt doesn’t care about its prostitutes at all. At least when these can no longer pay any taxes due to their premature demise.

At home, I find reports in a punters’ fore on the internet, about women in the Laufhaus where D. has rented a room. It is quotes that make me shudder.

“Soo hot! Then we can ride this hot mare when she’s pregnant AO” (AO: without a condom.)

“Yes, this gal is “unfortunately” not all there! Well you go and be nailed and enspermed by around 30 guys a day. And Crystal does the rest with her.”

“Great photos! She really must have had it given to her last night, red as her pussy is!”

“S. is a very devout whore, sometimes she does AVO (4). She’s drugged, totally spineless. You can do what you like inside her, put anything up her from down there. Bottles, candles etc. She only does AO. She’s got a little sponge in there for contraception, lol. I regularly fuck her hard and jerk off deep in front of her uterus.”

“Hi guys, I too was with the (not meant badly at all) pregnant garbage can “S” and I have enspermed her (as much as was possibly) beautifully and deeply. The girl is only as already mentioned highly pregnant (the child comes out and away in February she says) and unfortunately she is really badly unhinged and so crass beyond anything, that you can hardly really concentrate on the fucking. (and it’s really hard to talk with her) She is still very nice in spite of that and I laughed a lot with her, we both had our fun, but I somehow feel sorry for her too. I’ll definitely go and visit her again these days… “

“Was there yesterday, too, and looked around for her, but in the room where she was and which you can see on the photos there’s a more plump Turkish woman now with 3-6 moles in her face … she then let herself be fucked and enspermed AO for € 25. Sex toys are no problem. In another forum there’s a description that she inserted a dildo she had found somewhere.”

“I’ll eat my hat if she isn’t pregnant …. She’s totally through: Fat ball belly, greasy hair, her feet displayed in flip-flops totally damaged, totally ruffled greasy bleached hair … When I think back to how she started … But she is clearly directed from elsewhere too much pressure on her or money pressed from her…” (source)

“Early evening S. was already rather stoned, be that due to her medication or other psychoactive substances. She was sitting on the bad in one of her curious whore-rags and meowed when I came in. She let my manful mouth kiss and my greedy grabbing fingers on her tits and pussy happen just like that. Without gabbing I first undressed myself, then her. A three finger probe in her bulging pussy, furrowed by the birth, evinced a solid sperm level in the whore” (source)

L. is known to be one of the largest sperm repositories in BHV (Bahnhofsviertel). There is nothing to add to the description above, I find her typically gypsy-whore-pretty. As soon as you approach her room she begins a show with showing her tits, massaging her cunt (in my case she was wearing a bra only, no panties) and she immediately grabs you at your pants. “Come, sweetie, squirt sperm in my pussy”. What is a man to do? The price at € 30 was okay too. (source)

But none of that is a problem, right? Because disgust means finding somebody attractive. And is never felt in prostitution ever, at all. That’s what I learned today.

And a beer to that, a cigarette, some loud music, and partying with the colleagues – Bahnhofsviertelnacht Frankfurt olé! If this here isn’t a reason to celebrate, what is?

twitter.com/huschkemau

facebook.com/huschkemau

www.huschkemau.de

(1) Laufhaus (running house): a very frequent type of brothel where the women sit on bar stools in corridors or on their beds and the johns walk through the corridors and pick a woman.

(2) “operational room” – I can’t find any term for this: “Verrichtungszimmer” – the term was also used for these drive in “sex boxes” favoured and then abolished by some German cities. “Verrichten” or “etwas verrichten” = getting something done, going through some routine to have it done with.

(3) Frankfurt (like many German cities) has rooms/ facilities where those with a drug addiction can be supplied with medication in a controlled and safe environment.

(4) Anal without a condom

What makes exiting prostitution so hard?

translation: Inge Kleine

Occasionally I am asked what makes it so hard to exit prostitution. It took me years to leave prostitution, I kept returning to it – and this is not only true of myself. What makes it so hard is the complexity of the situation. When I went to a counselling service for prostitutes in order to ask for help in exiting, I was told: “If you don’t want to do this any longer, just don’t go back to the brothel!” But it just isn’t that simple.

Most prostitutes have had very bad experiences with any kind of authorities or official institutions. In fact, these institutions may very well be the reason the women are in prostitution in the first place. Those who like me have learned how easy it is to slip through the gaps in Germany’s “social net”, in our social security system, know where not to go in need of help. In my case, youth services alleged I had run away from home not because of the violence, but simply because I hadn’t gotten “enough pocket money”. The help I only received due to the efforts of committed social workers at a girls’ refuge centre ended far too early: Come 18 years of age this help is over. Nobody took into account that this is a serious situation for a very traumatised adult who has no contact to her parents, no support at all and who is penniless. At the girls’ centre there was a girl who joined us because her father repeatedly raped her. Youth services got them to sit down together in a joined discussion, a “joined confrontation” to “talk it out”. The father admitted everything, apologised and Youth Services decided: “There you are, he apologised, he won’t do it again, you can go back home now.” I am fairly sure that this girl will never again turn to an official institution when she needs help. All these various offices, social security, students’ loan offices (1), job centre/unemployment offices, housing offices – same story. “Not within the scope of our responsibilities”, endless protraction in dealing with applications, stupid remarks. Students’ office: “If your parents do not want to sign the application form (2), you must have done something wrong. It’s usually the children’s fault. Have you ever thought of apologising to the authorities?” Housing office: “We have been processing your application for almost a year now, we’ll let you know. What’s this, you cannot pay your rent anymore? Well, if you don’t have an apartment anymore you aren’t entitled to rent support, so we can stop processing your application.” I know prostitutes who want to exit, but the unemployment office refuses to grant financial support and threatens them with a three months’ ban on any payment, if they terminate their “contracts” with the brothel, as they aren’t jobless, after all. Others try to exit but aren’t provided with the full payments they are due because the office presumes them to be secretly further engaged in prostitution and thus to have an income – a completely imaginary sum based on fantasy alone, which is then being calculated into the payments to reduce them. Those who end up in prostitution or remain there because of such things are not there due to “free choice”, but due to a choice between two unwanted alternatives (starve / become homeless or prostitution), and thus a dilemma.

Advocacy and counselling centres that offer exit support in Germany are usually not on the side of the prostituted. Mimikry in Munich celebrate their anniversary with the owner of an escort agency, Stephanie Klee, so they are supportive of the operators in this trade. The head of the public health office in Dresden that also runs the advocacy centre there appears as a speaker at pro-prostitution events and glorifies prostitution as a great offer for punters with or without disabilities. Kassandra in Nuremberg maintain that violence in prostitution is rare and prostitutes may not be called an “at risk group” as this is stigmatising prostitutes and exposing them to violence. This, although in Germany alone more than 70 prostitutes have been murdered since the Prostitution Act in 2002. Most advocacy centres speak of Sexwork, engage in entry instead of exit help (like Hydra in Berlin) and claim that the greatest problem prostitutes face is “stigma”, not the “work”. I know of women who have turned to such counselling centres and who were told that the problem wasn’t the job, but they were, and why didn’t they just re-orientate themselves within prostitution? Could “escort” be an alternative or SM? Turn to such centres and you’re not only denied help, you are even shamed.

Another problem is the lack of alternatives. The job situation in Germany is not all that rosy. Things are difficult for those with a criminal record due to offences in the context of prostitution (like e.g. disregarding zoning regulations while “working”, or drugs ….) or gaps in the CV that cannot be camouflaged by the best of fabulation. In addition, women who spent years in prostitution cannot show any or only very little job experience, and sometimes never had any professional training. Jobs on offer then: those with a maximum of hours and minimal pay. Someone who has barely left prostitution usually has to contend with the disorders following trauma, that is: permanent stress. And that means they may not be able to endure these jobs for long. And if money is so short again and again and again, you do what you know to do and can do, and go back to “working”. No single prostitute I know has the self-confidence left to apply for appropriate or reasonable jobs.

And then: trauma. Most prostitutes suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder of the type shown by victims of torture. They suffer from anxiety disorders, lack of self-confidence, from obsessive behaviour – e.g. compulsive washing or a compulsive repetition of pointless rituals that supposedly convey safety. (I have to knock on wood when I have fearful thoughts. And I often have those. When I can’t do that, a panic attack follows. I know how crazy this looks to bystanders and that it is pointless in the end, but I can’t help it.) When I switched from brothel to escort, I wasn’t used /anymore to leaving the house during the day. I couldn’t abide daylight. Nor the many people. Someone whose boundaries are being violated daily and hourly may not be able to stay among others, because their inner alarm system will keep on going on alert: “This is a man, danger!” I do not even want to begin to talk here about what it means to be outside and being triggered, having flashbacks. Nightmares and sleep disorders are exhausting. It is almost impossible to keep up appearances and to move over into a “normal life”. And you feel “different” from the others, inferior, more hurt. Broken. People seem creepy, the “normal ones” more than anybody, because they make you see what you yourself aren’t any longer: without cares, without injuries, without fears. Whole. Nice. In a good mood. – In order to endure prostitution, you have to split your awareness away from your body, to dissociate. The problem is that you cannot just slip back into it later. The body remains without contact to your soul, your psyche. You just do not feel yourself any more. It took me several years to learn that that which I sometimes feel is hunger. And that this means you should eat something. Or that that which I experience means that I am cold. And that you then put on something warm. It is exhausting to learn or to relearn that one’s body has its needs, to feel it, and it is even more exhausting to practice “selfcare”. Not to treat yourself like shit any longer. To sleep, when you are tired – because you’re not sitting in a 24-hour brothel and have to take the next punter. That you don’t have to feel cold any longer because you’re in street prostitution when it’s below freezing. That you can change situations that cause pain instead of eliminating the pain – through dissociation, drugs or alcohol. – But trauma won’t let go of you so easily: You get used to it. This phenomenon is called “trauma bonding”, and it is the reason why women who are battered by their husbands keep going back. Traumatic situations can be addictive because they cause a massive release of adrenaline – and that is addictive. Additionally, a violent situation is something well-known to people who have experienced as much violence as that in prostitution. I learned from early childhood on: The place where I am afraid, where I am hurt, where I am degraded, is the place where I belong. That is home. This is why even today I still have to struggle in situations that endanger me and to decide against the danger and to walk away. The situations are shite, but familiar; I know them. Situations in which people are nice to me, do not shout, do not batter, do not abuse me, feel creepy. I promptly feel inferior. My soul signals: “Something is wrong here. This is alien.” Prostitution is like self-harm. No, prostitution IS self-harm.

Addictions are another barrier to exiting. Many prostitutes numb themselves, with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, because that is the only way they can function. This develops its own dynamics and you promptly have an additional problem to deal with.

It is difficult to find therapy for former prostitutes. It takes a lot of time and nerves to secure a place in therapy, moreover, many therapists, both male and female, will not accept that prostitution is violence. (I will write a separate text about therapy one day.)

Like therapists, the entire society has a problem with recognising prostitution as something damaging, not only to society, but to the individual prostitute. Exiting prostitution when the dominant view “out there” is that prostitution is something entirely normal, something that can be advertised on huge billboards along the main streets, whose advertising can be plastered all over taxis, when articles repeatedly make you read terms like “sex worker”, “people who offer sex services”, when you keep being confronted with texts that minimise or even hype prostitution; that does something to you. Not even to speak of the people who feel the need to take it upon themselves to designate former prostitutes who dare speak up in public as “filthy whores”, “gold diggers”, “greedy for money” or “low life” – right below the articles these women have written or right below the interviews in which they have spoken. Exiting and then being told that this is your “own fault”, that you have “made poor choices” or that you are lying means you can just stay in prostitution, because being degraded happens there, too.

Disordered self-perception and extremely low self-esteem isolate most prostitutes from their non-prostituted surroundings. After years spent in this environment, most women simply only know others from this life. It is like a parallel world. And sometimes, it just feels like “the true world” to you. Because you don’t feel any trust in your fellow human beings, and above all none in men. You now know and have experienced what they are capable of on your own body, and therefore you know what to think of the bourgeois façade “out there”. For punters do not only parade around in the “underworld”, but also “out there”, in the “normal world”. Only there what happens is that you are being shamed as the (former) prostitute not merely by them, but by others, while the punters are indeed not shamed or held accountable. So you can just as well remain in prostitution: by comparison this place appears sort of honest at least, violence against money, everybody knows what you’re doing, does the same, the rules are known, as are the mechanisms.

No prostitute, German women included, would NOT be put under pressure at any attempt to change her “club” or to leave the brothel. The usual custom is having to buy yourself out, some transfer money to be paid. A German colleague who wanted to disappear from a brothel had the brothel keeper who had repeatedly raped her stuck to her heels for an entire year. He slashed her tires, appeared inside her apartment, threatened her boyfriend, enlightened her parents on how she had made her money. He only left her in peace after he had gotten the pay-off of € 3,000. (This sum is often euphemised as “debts incurred by the prostitute”. What is meant is: Punishment for being late, for not tidying the room, for turning down punters, “non-attendance” fees; rent for the room she had rented and that she had to pay for although she hadn’t had any punters or was sick etc.) I’m not even going to begin now on the prostituted women’s “partners” who also profit from their “working”.

And in all of this I still haven’t taken the foreign prostitutes into consideration, who do not speak German, who only know a corrupted police force in their home countries (and here in my own country I do not entirely acquit the police force from this… ), who are not even theoretically entitled to welfare or social security payments here, who have no health insurance, or who are being transferred to a different city or a different brothel by the week and who do not even know where they are.

And even if they did know: Who are they supposed to turn to?

The German state does not provide any help. It leaves the complete financing of the (new) “Prostitutes’ Protection Law” entirely to the municipalities and thus ensures that these municipalities will ensure the punters’ ongoing opportunities of smoothly engaging in their more or less droll endeavours. The state takes its taxes from these droll endeavours, and gorges on the revenue.

And this does in fact give rise to the question whether the state has any interest even in preventing women and young girls from ending up in prostitution or in helping prostitutes exit. It CANNOT even aim for this!

(1) In Germany, destitute students or students from very low income households are entitled to a state sponsored students’ loan in order to cover their costs of living. The loan has to be paid back once the students start their professional careers, but it is at a reduced interest rate and there are some provisions if the student remains destitute, or has children or close relatives to look after or care for. At the same time, bureaucracy puts up barriers, and delays also put students at risk.

(2)Parents need to sign the application as a statement of income for the students to receive this loan. Parents can be compelled to do so by the authorities, but students need to know which authorities to apply to and authorities or staff at authorities need to be willing to pursue this.

Against prostitution or against prostitutes? Opposition to prostitution, or abolitionism?

translation: Inge Kleine

Background:

A pro sex industry lobbyist, a woman who was very visible when the German Prostitution Act finally legalizing all sorts of brothels etc. was passed in 2001 (and came into effect in 2002) wrote a very personal statement on Facebook detailing her situation.

She had started out as a woman, a teenager, in prostitution, allegedly “voluntarily”, and proceeded to small time brothel keeper. Her own “café” cum brothel went bust some time ago, when the bottom dropped out of the market following Berlin’s decriminalization approach, and the woman in question is now where the entire system of prostitution leads women, and needs to have them, to keep them and to lead them, to function: destitute, desperate and with very few if any options left.

In the comments that followed, the usual load of woman hating trolls and people aside, some commenters who oppose prostitution failed to make a distinction between this woman’s political views and her role as a brothel keeper, both of which we all criticise, and her situation as a woman in prostitution, and now as a destitute woman thrown at the mercy of welfare officials.

Hello.

Today I want to say something regarding my own situation.

The last days have been, to put it mildly, not good. I haven’t slept in three nights now, and wept a lot.

The last days have seen the rise of strange discussions and the dropping off of strange phrases. Things like:

Prostitutes don’t know what is good for them, “normally thinking people” know that
Prostitutes don’t know what is good for them, “psychologically healthy people” can tell them
Prostitutes have not defended their “dignity” enough, instead of, like “normal people” be decently poor (and heroically starve)
Prostitutes do not prostitute themselves, because they are in an economic, emotional or other crisis, but because they have a “leaning towards prostitution”

This from women who call themselves “allies”. Some of these women also think it is legitimate to designate prostituted women who are part of the pro prostitution lobby “Nutten” – the most offensive term for “prostitute” in German, and do not realise that when they shame one woman for her prostitution, they shame ALL prostitutes for their prostitution, and that it makes a difference if I disapprove of somebody because of her thoughts, because I think them to be wrong, or because of her prostitution.

Some women let themselves be entangled in discussions with women from the pro lobby. But instead of discussing the concept of prostitution they shamed prostituted women, made them responsible for the misery of the other women and arrogantly set themselves up as speakers for women in forced or in poverty prostitution, without seeing that they were actually talking to women in poverty prostitution. No, not everything that comes from this lobby is garbage just because it comes from this lobby. Yes, when prostituted women tell us about the exit barriers confronting them, we should be all ear. No, to begrudge or deny a prostitute and brothel keeper like Felicitas Schirow her exit via welfare or social security is not okay. No, it is not her fault if she now, as she says, has to prostitute herself without wanting to do this, because she is being denied payment from ALG2, i.e. the social security that is her due.

Yesterday evening then saw a further discussion about which women we are to meet with understanding for their entry into prostitution, and which do not belong to this group. I have often heard something like “I don’t have any understanding for German women here, there are other ways.” It does not become true by incessant repetition. I am amazed at how often women turn into experts on other women’s lives and then pass judgements. She didn’t have to prostitute herself, she had other options. She prostituted herself voluntarily and thus has made herself guilty of contributing to the general view of prostitution in society, and towards other women. She hasn’t merited anything better now, it’s her own fault she can’t exit because she is being denied welfare, after all she helped get the 2002 Prost Act done. Where do you get this knowledge of other women’s lives? The readiness to judge them so fast? The ability to be blind to all the cracks in our welfare system that you can so easily fall through? The belief that poverty is the only reason for entry? And they even rub our noses into our poverty. There are other people, after all, who are poor too, and they don’t prostitute themselves. So there!

I am so tired and so sad right now.

I had thought, up until now, that we were FOR prostitutes and AGAINST prostitution. I thought our solidarity was for all women in prostitution. I didn’t know it was dependent on these women bearing their victim status in front of them like a shield. I did not know that as prostituted women we owed an explanation to anybody about why exactly we prostitute ourselves, why we entered prostitution, and I didn’t know that we may be condemned, shamed and found guilty if we don’t justify ourselves. I did not know that this solidarity was reserved to those showing proper behaviour.

Up until now I thought we all wanted the same.

Up until now I thought there was a consensus among us to show understanding towards women who are in prostitution and who, for whatever reasons, do not exit (because they don’t want to, because they can’t, because they don’t have any other options, because they have been in prostitution all their lives, because whatever), when they try to make prostitution as good as possible for themselves at least.

That women who explain that at age 60+ they are being harassed by the job centre, can’t find a job and then have gone into prostitution, are being shouted at it was their fault that all the women in “forced and poverty prostitution” are being exploited here, has hit, and hurt me. That women who have had it with prostitution at 60+ and who demand what is their due, i.e. welfare payments that guarantee their existence, are being mocked for not getting them, deeply shocks me. That they are told that this is their own fault is beyond good taste. That women who want to abolish prostitution do not somehow understand that prohibition takes away the possibility for these women to finance themselves without giving them any alternatives, bothers me deeply. A woman who prostitutes herself although she wants to exit does not need any lectures on awful punters. She will know this better. They are HER punters. And neither does this lecture help her. Because she can’t use it to buy herself food. And to charge her with minimising the dangers of “sex work” only because she wants to survive, isn’t fair.

It just isn’t fair.

So much coldness, so little empathy, so few analytical skills as in the last few days, so much readiness to condemn, to shame – to see this has really hurt me.

I am not talking here of all women. But of some, and there were some among them I would never have thought this of. That is paining me very deeply. But even when I said I was being hurt here, they just went on. My explanations were good for nothing. I really have to deal with that one now. For I am only a prostitute. And apparently these are not what this is about.

I want to be perfectly clear about this.

No, abolitionism does not mean to attack prostitutes. It does not mean sorting prostitutes into good and bad women. Into women who conform to our ideas of victims and who say what we want to hear and who get our support and our solidarity, and on the other hand women who do not think as we wish or who do not explain to us why they entered, or who appear too “privileged” for having to do this (because they are entitled to student support – i.e. a public student loan – or welfare, in theory, or whatever) and who we can condemn, shame for their prostitution. To disapprove of people because of what they say or think, is legitimate, if we don’t agree. To deny solidarity to someone because she or he is prostituting, is NOT ABOLITIONIST. Damn it! It is NOT ABOLITIONIST to attack women for their prostitution! It is NOT ABOLITIONIST to shame women for their prostitution. It is NOT ABOLITIONIST to think it’s okay to impose further prostitution on women, to deny them their exit, just because they think differently from us! It is NOT ABOLITIONIST, to blame women who prostitute so that they can eat, to make these women responsible for other women being forced into prostitution!

I am so aghast that I can’t sleep any more. Some of these things apply to me, too. I, too, was (theoretically) entitled to student support. I, too, am German. I am educated. I studied. Why am I not shamed? But other women in my situation? And why is it not obvious that this means me, too? And where exactly is the difference between these women and me, why are they guilty and I am not? What is this supposed to be?

I am not allowing myself to be separated from other prostitutes. I am not allowing a splitting of the good victims from women who are not deserving of our solidarity. I am not allowing women who were never poor to condemn other women for wanting to survive and to use the possibilities that patriarchy offers them. Often, because they don’t see other possibilities. Often because there just really aren’t any.

I have the feeling that parts of this movement aren’t abolitionist, but merely against prostitution. There is a difference here. Being against prostitution, that is something that can be due to a contempt of the prostituted. Because they are deemed rotten. Stupid. Too traumatised to think straight. Fucked up and without any idea of what dignity is and self-esteem.

And I want to ask all of you to think about that. I do not say that any of you has bad intentions here.

But if you want to help, listen to us.

Do not condemn us.

Don’t play at being experts on our lives.

An analytical analysis of the structures is necessary.

To personally attack prostitutes for prostituting themselves is not it.

If you never had to prostitute yourself because you were never in the situation of entering: good for you. Enjoy that. But do not think it makes you a better person.

It is not abolitionist to use our statements in order to make things more difficult for us.

I can understand any woman in prostitution who tries to make things work for herself there (because she doesn’t want to exit or can’t). Please do not take that which we tell you about our prostitution and use it against other prostitutes or in order to make things difficult for us by pushing regulation forward.

Women who want to exit (and we know they are many) need ALTERNATIVES. The Nordic Model for example offers support in finding alternatives. And financial help and help with officials and authorities. It is a package of measures that is not made up exclusively of penalizing the punter, but that has many other component parts. It does not, above all, place the entire burden on the prostitutes.

A regulatory approach does none of that.

Fines, jail (for failing to pay the fines), registration with the police while that police isn’t trained, raises in taxes do NOT help women in prostitution. Women are usually in prostitution because they see no other option. To make prostitution harder for them, does not magically cause these necessary options to appear!

We need rules and regulations (and punishment!) for punters. For brothel keepers. Yes, the female ones, too. But it would be great to see, occasionally, that many brothel keepers once were prostitutes, and that going from prostitute to pimp was (made) easier than exiting prostitution.

And that is what we want, after all. An easier exit from prostitution. And that women who do not want to, and as we know those are the most, do not have to enter prostitution. Don’t we?

I’ll let you in on something.

My own personal situation is not that good, either.

And I have thought about going back into it for quite some time.

Because I just can’t take this permanent fear in safeguarding my existence and to live in such extreme circumstances any longer. Because right now I don’t see any future, any hope. An activist told me today – yes, you have the choice of shite without money and shite with money. And that is precisely what it is. And I am being despised anyway, from the rest of society, and as it turns out, from some of my allies, too. Because if you despise one prostitute for her prostitution you despise us all.

And I want to make sure my fridge is full. I want to live. I want to eat. I want to pay my kitty-cat’s medical bills. If that makes me egoistical and a perpetrator, as has been stated about other women in my situation, then so be it.

I do not feel not ashamed of this.

What I feel ashamed of is to have women use my statements to make life difficult for other women in prostitution and to scorn them for not managing to exit. I feel ashamed of some women using my engagement to make it so hard for other women, to condemn, to degrade and to devalue them, and when they say what they don’t want, for them to be told to leave thinking to the “healthy” and healthy means: able to think and not “bent” in their moral compass.

That is what I feel ashamed of.

And nothing else.

And I thank all women who have shown me in the last days that their solidarity is for ALL women. ALL prostitutes, including those whose world view they oppose.

Thank you for that.

Huschke

Paper on “Sex Work“ by the German group “Feminismus im Pott“.

translation: Inge Kleine

Feminismus im Pott (1) have published their position on “Sex Work” in a paper I very much want to comment on:

Late to the show, but as a woman personally concerned I want to add my two cents to this, too. First of all, it’s nice of you to you address the topic and there is one thing on which I agree with you: Stigmatisation is vile. However, and this needs to be spelled out very clearly, it is not our biggest problem. Our biggest problem is in fact what punter do – to us. You are labouring under some deep lack of logic if you think you are helping prostitutes by finding a nicer term for what they (have to) do. A friend took the trouble to post an entry from a punters’ site in which he reports on what is happening in the “Freudenhaus Hase” – “The Hare House of Pleasures” (2) which you have joined forces with in order to battle the stigmatisation of prostitutes.

The report very clearly describes a “hatefuck”, a rape. Things like that are simply written off as “shock postings” by you, something you needn’t tackle. Why ever not? This is precisely what happens in prostitution. To be very blunt here: The prostitute will not even be able to report this to the police, after all sex for money was agreed on, and so the sex was a bit rougher than agreed to, so what? This is how police and other institutions will react. Why? Because they do not define prostitution as violence. Most prostitutes do, however. The majority of prostitutes suffer from disorders related to trauma. You simply deny this by calling prostitution “sex work”. What was posted there was not an isolated incident, it is a daily occurrence for us prostitutes. How can you say in one breath that you are in solidarity with us while you do not on the other hand want to look at what prostitution actually is? Do some reading in the punters’ fores on what “sex for money” really means. And then ask yourselves if “paid abuse” is not a much better term.

According to your definition of sex work – and you were nice enough to call prostitution from financial hardship or because of a drug-addiction a grey area – there are maybe about one hundred sex workers in Germany. All of them independent, self-determined, well-adjusted to their job. But what about us, the other prostitutes? We are several hundred thousands in Germany alone. Seriously, what about us? Are you not in solidarity with us? Don’t you like what we tell you about prostitution? Is it too much of a “shock posting” for you? For us it is everyday life, or was.

The stigma cannot be combatted without an abolishment of prostitution. Prostitution and the punters need the stigma of the women concerned to degrade them, hide them, enact violence on them. The Madonna and the Whore as a principle. There is no prostitution without stigmatisation.

What is also sadly lacking in your position is any context in society. Merely saying “prostitution is gendered under the current relations of power” doesn’t do it. With other relations of power there wouldn’t be any prostitution. Defining sex as a “service rendered to a man” would be offensive, it would be offensive for men to be able to say that they have a right to sex, it would be offensive to operate from a mindset that accepts the buying of women for utilisation, one which does not question or which accepts that this often does happen against the woman’s will. How do you think punters think? The way punters think is to say, I paid, she said yes, and so I needn’t bother whether she does this voluntarily or not, whether she likes this or not. The way punters think is to say I feel like sex, I’ll buy someone to do it with and then I’ll live it up like a board game on which I play a little chess and push my pieces around for a bit. Is that a kind of thinking we want to see more of? I don’t think so.

And then your paper completely lacks any analysis of the effects of prostitution. There will never be enough women to do this voluntarily. The larger group will always have to be coerced. By saying that prostitution should be recognized as sex work you are enabling an mindset that renders it acceptable in a society to – as you call it – buy “sex services” (only that tied to these “sex services” there is some sort of woman who somehow has to dissociate from all of this stuff). This means an increased demand. How often have punters said to me: “I’m doing this, it’s not illegal after all”? How many punters would NOT go to prostitutes if it were illegal?

It is nice that you keep showing a few examples of häppy sexwörkers again and again. But what about the legion of women who remain in the shadows behind them? Who have to bear the consequences of what publicly accepting punters’ actions has effected? There is an incredible number of johns in Germany. 1,2 million men visit prostitutes each day here. And their numbers are increasing. Are they all to visit your one hundred häppy sexwörkers? I wish, but with a rise in demand yields a rise in supply. Voluntarily or not. The “sex work is work” attitude increases: demand, supply, and thus also forced prostitution and trafficking. That can’t be what you aim for.

I’m not even going to spend more time on the organisations you are fraternising with. Brothel keepers, both male and female, people who say human trafficking doesn’t even exist, people who rejoice at a tightening of welfare regulations because this means more women entering prostitution. Neither am I going to say anything this time about your complete blindness to punters, you apparently don’t want to know that punters are perpetrators. Prostitution cannot be freed from sexism, classism and racism, because it is a system that is based precisely on these structures, needs them and reproduces them.

Punters are perpetrators. And they provide the demand. The solution lies in decreasing the demand. By spelling out what punters do and by making them take responsibility. Punishing the punters decreases trafficking, as we know from Sweden. It decreases violence against women, not only in prostitution. For me this is the more important battlefield in my battle and I do not wish to have my abuse defined as work.

(1) Feminismus im Pott: A group writing on feminist issues based in the “Ruhrpott“ area in Germany, a formerly highly industrialized area.

(2) Hase = hare. Hase is a fairly common German surname, in the plural (Hasen) it is also a (sexualized) term referring to women or girls, like “bunny”.

Thursday afternoon at the brothel

Translation by Inge Kleine

This text is a diary entry from the year 2005, when Huschke wasn’t yet called Huschke, but was sitting around in the brothel as SvenjaorCharlotteorWhosomever.

Why this total break down yesterday, this total sinking and giving up?

Maybe I can’t do this job any more, maybe I even can’t deal with it any more even now already, that this lying system exists in which old randy men fuck young girls, in fact basically break them any which way they want them – because just as in earlier times “defiled” or “fallen” girls were consigned to prostitution (everyday practice in medieval times – and later, once “corrupted” what’s it matter?) – so nowadays daughters are abused by their fathers, brothers, grandfathers and uncles and then logically enter this business branch and are again treated like dirt, criminalised, discriminated against, and abused.

It is from my miserable condition, for which I also hold the German state as partly accountable, which does not deem it necessary to give a chance, a second chance at least, to abused, mistreated, “a-social” children who start out in life in dismal circumstances and circumstances which these children cannot do anything about, it is from this miserable condition that several men and patriarchal systems profit: my punters, my pimp and the German state. I have been used and discarded from society, as if it were my fault that I was mistreated, and now I’m placed offside – anybody can do to me as he pleases, apparently everybody can fuck me just for wanting to, well not quite anybody any more, now only those who pay, and they would love for me to at last and finally place all my holes at their disposal, and then the gentlemen from the IRS (tax offices) also want their cut, don’t they, quite aside from my pimp, whose house, Jeep, S-class Mercedes I’m fucking into existence, while of course he can fuck me whenever he wants to, goes without saying he can, view his treatment of my colleague who mustn’t say no to him, or else.

And the punter too profits richly, and he still takes more than his supposed due, but God what on earth are you not supposed to be allowed towards one who sucks so many cocks, to one who according to punter’s logic must therefore be hot all day long and for that too she should be punished, really, all she probably needs is a real good seeing-to, a real good fuck.

For it is just that which we enact for them, every day, for they daily complain to us about whores who won’t play along with anything, either we are one of the bad ones (and earn nothing) or they tell us about their Odyssey through the bordellos and all the horrible girls there you really can’t fuck at all, and we always get our share of “praise”. That hurts so much you can’t imagine.

First, we don’t do enough. And then they’re outraged: “What, no French pure, that’s standard, like that I won’t feel anything at all, and it’s no fun for you either really with that rubber” (and what fun, I think, am I supposed to have, do they really think I’d rather have sperm in my mouth and an unwashed prick? A rubber, any day.) and: “you like swallowing it, don’t you, that’s part of it, isn’t it, and what? no anal included, why not, that can be so nice, and you’ve surely just never tried it before” (yes, maybe it is nice for YOU, and no, I don’t wanna try it, this may cause me pain at size 34, ever thought of that?), but no No is a No: “well if really no anal I at least get to play around with you there for a bit, right?” and then they just do it and still try to shove their finger up your arse. And discussions continue: “What do you mean, kissing isn’t done in this job, what’s that about, I didn’t even know that, why ever not, I don’t get it” – exactly, why shouldn’t you demand entitlement to every last ounce of us, since you have most of us already anyway? “Kissing is what you do while fucking and can I squirt on your belly, on your tits, in your face, on your cunt – no, why not, that won’t make you pregnant and I’m healthy as you can see” – (Yes that one does get said again and again, that phrase) and anyway, “come on, I can rub my naked prick in your fanny for just a bit, can’t I, nothing will happen, it’s so impersonal otherwise, so without any feelings”.

And so they gleefully step-dance on our boundaries all day long, and if there’s one thing I learned when I had to “expand” my “services” so that I’ll make any money at all and won’t starve: It’s never enough. Never enough “service”. Blow it naked and swallow, offer kissing, then they demand fisting, squirting off in your face after a hard anal and choking. Offer that, and they want to piss in your mouth, have you lick their anus, and drive you to the brink of choking or vomiting with deep throat.

That aside you can, as you please, shove dildos or pricks inside me just as you fancy, and lubricating gel or wetting it or even just asking beforehand isn’t necessary, for I am hot all day long anyway. The best for me is to have a go at them and to pretend I’ve only been waiting for one like him. I wanted it this way is what they then say, I acted like an animal – partly through pain, actually, physical and emotional.

And how they whine! God, they’ve got it rough. First, they have to try forever until they find a girl they can live it up with and her not getting “stubborn” (= i.e. dares decline certain sexual practices or set up boundaries). Best for her to be horny all the time like a bitch in heat, tight, please and of course good looking, otherwise they won’t condescend to abusing her, otherwise she isn’t acceptable, and while outside none of these punters deserve a second glance in here sometimes my tits are too small for them, or my French with rubber isn’t right or the colour of my hair is wrong or whatever. Sometimes I don’t look “German” enough for them.

But when they finally “condescend” – yes, that’s how they feel about it – to fucking me, they want the whole job and bells and whistles, the King’s name is client, and do I ever get to see one like HIM, who truly does it right, “services” me right, but really right? And then I listen to stuff like “I’m really good in bed, right? I should be getting the money here” or “Come on, I don’t look half bad, we can do it for 80 too, right?”

But the most degrading thing remains to have to fake an orgasm for them. Filthy whores, that’s what we are, and we don’t deserve any better, but everybody needs us to shove his damn dick into, and everybody makes money out of us. That’s the peak of capitalism, I think.

And then they want to leave fast, for now they have jerked off, there’s a short whine still “it’s not all easy for us either, to bear this conflict, but what can I do, my wife isn’t really open to this!”, a short wallowing in self-pity, short pretense at remorse, short pat on the bum and “see you soon”. A great spectacle and epic movie. That is the price they pay for their entitlement to the institution of prostitution, and – this needs to be said loudly and clearly: they enjoy paying it, for it is paltry, the only thing more paltry than that is us, the whores.

Enough of this. I could not do another client today, it would hurt too much. To own up to this, to open myself to this, feels lethal. It does free me somehow, but the fear of Monday is back, where I mustn’t be this vulnerable any more, where I must push aside my knowledge that this is abuse, if I don’t want another murder to be perpetrated against my soul.

13 January 2005