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THE OVERRIDING FEELING when reflecting on the experience of prostitution is simply this: loss. Loss of innocence, loss of time, of opportunity, credibility, respectability, and the spiritually ruinous loss of connectedness to the self. I could go on and on, but the primary element is always loss.
The battle continues forever against the loss of self-worth. There is no magical shift back to your former self on the day you leave prostitution. You do begin the task of reclaiming what is left of your former self, as I have said; but how much is really left? And how qualified are you now, permanently altered as you are, to identify it?
I cannot identify all that is left of me after the mental and emotional carnage of prostitution, but I do know that this book, this dissection of the prostitution experience, comes from a place inside me that rejects prostitution on a very deep level, both for myself and for other women; and so I know that whatever it was that drove me to write it is something that prostitution did not manage to destroy. How much is really left I do not know, but this much is left, enough to make this effort, and I am glad of that.
The general assessment is that prostitution involves a very private loss, which of course it does, but I do not know how well people consider the numerous other losses it disseminates. This is understandable to me as I doubt I would ever have had cause to consider them much had I not been prostituted myself.
Because the business of prostitution creates and is then carried out in a highly depersonalised environment, the focus of the commodification has no option but to begin to accept the depersonalisation of her own self. Loss connects all the negativities in prostitution. It is both the dominant ingredient and the binding agent; it makes up the basic flavour and brings together all the other components of this recipe.
The losses to the prostituted individual are limitless. They are limitless not only because they are innumerable but also because there is no cap, no ceiling, no time-frame limit on when they will cease intruding into a woman’s life. There also are no socially accepted boundaries which a woman can erect between prostitution and herself. The common saying: ‘Once a whore always a whore’ makes reference to this. A woman may be a former prostitute of several years, like myself, who worries about the impact of her history on her child, or she may be a former prostitute decades older than me who worries about the teasing and bullying of her grandchildren.
The losses here are of safety and security, dignity, reputation and social status. They are old losses and hold no surprises, but they are horrible losses to see projected onto our loved ones. It is both heart-wrenching and nauseating to see those we love tarred with shame by association here.
There is another loss I hesitated to include here; it is the loss of humanity. I hesitated to include it because I do not believe I was ever less than human in my life, but I certainly know I was treated as if I were. In prostitution, men dehumanise women and women dehumanise themselves in order to be able to perform the acts men require of them. This does not mean that women are made less than human; it means that they are treated as such and operate in an environment in which they must not only accept such treatment from others, but actively seek it and learn to deliver it to themselves.
And yes, there is loss here: it is the loss of the belief in and the experience of your own humanity. And what is the loss of anything if not the loss of connectedness to it? In that sense, I lost my humanity. I lost my humanity in that I lost touch with it. While I never quite forgot about it, I pretended, because I was paid to pretend, that it was of no consequence. There are areas of life where it is necessary to buy into certain untruths.
My environment told me my humanity didn’t matter, and I needed to believe that. Why? —Because it is easier to detach from an irrelevance. There is also the loss I’ve mentioned to prostituted women as a group. Sadly, and in a sense paradoxically, one of the biggest losses to prostituted women as a group is derived from the fact that they are a group. It is in the fact that they must acknowledge and accept that they are collectively removed from the rest of society, and behave as such, and comfort each other in the knowing of it.
For my own sake, I believe I was lucky to have the company of other prostituted women. They understood me. They didn’t judge me. We couldn’t judge each other; but our very connection as a group solidified our separation from the rest of society. Yes, certainly we would have been worse off had we been removed from society individually, but, in a physical sense at least, we were not, and our coming together as a group was a natural convergence.
There were positives and negatives in this, and of the negatives, the principal ones were defined by loss. We shared a collective lack of social standing and a dearth of respect from the world. We understood this, intensely, painfully. This was particularly obvious to me during my street-walking years. Besides the men who’d come there to seek us out, I don’t think any member of the public ever walked by us without a wary glance and a quickening of the step. Had any of them any idea what a normal casual ‘Good evening girls’, would have meant, I wonder?
To be excluded as part of a group may not sound as horrendous as being excluded as an individual, and if those two methods of exclusion worked independently of each other it would be true that it is not, but the truth for all those who are excluded as part of a group is that they are excluded as individuals also. They are debarred and expelled on both counts. This is not only true of prostitutes; it is true of the members of all socially excluded groups.
Prostitution clearly promotes the depersonalisation of sex, which can never be good news for women – any women. Prostitution has a ripple effect. It creates the illusory view in the minds of men that women are not human beings as men are, but simply the walking carrier of a product, and that they serve one principal function, whether or not they are paid for it, which is to be used as vessels for the sexual release of men.
They are effortlessly and imperceptibly relegated from the realms of the human. They are not people on a par with their male counterparts. Prostitution obscures women’s humanity from society generally, but it also causes women specifically to lose sensitivity to their own humanity by way of tolerating the prostitution of others of their gender. When women tolerate prostitution they are actually tolerating the dehumanisation of their own gender in a broader and more encompassing sense. Countries with male-majority governments are implementing the legalisation of prostitution with frightening rapidity throughout the western world. Where is the female revolt towards all this?
There is no widespread female revolt because female sexuality has so long been viewed as a commodity that woman have begun to believe in the necessity of a separate class of women to provide it. If a woman tolerates this treatment of her fellow women, if she accepts it under the banner of ‘liberalism’ or anything else, then she must also accept that she herself is only removed from prostitution by lack of the circumstances necessary to place her there.
The acceptance of prostitution makes all women potential prostitutes in the public view since there are only two requirements for a woman to work in a brothel: one is that circumstance has placed her so (and who knows when that can happen, to any of us?) and the other is that she has a vagina, and all women are born meeting at least one of these requirements.
It bears repeating: if the commodification of women is to be accepted then all women fall under that potential remit. If a woman accepts prostitution in society, then she accepts this personal indenture, whether she knows it or not; and yes, that is a loss.`
Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution by Rachel Moran is published by Gill & Macmillan and is out now, priced at €16.99.
Oh FFS, non binary my hoop.
Today I am identifying as a male, just to be different. Bring on the oppression!
@A -AFC: Im identifying as a 68 years old. Going to have a lie in because I’m retired.
@A -AFC: good girl.
@A -AFC: i identify as dog and going to my local vet to get microchipped. Hope a family takes me in!
@Eugene Tyson: good boy.
@Brian Farrell: but i am a non-binary dog, so it is good they, thanks.
@Eugene Tyson: good litter fragment.
@A -AFC: load of nonsense. I doubt the men who stormed the beaches for freedom envisioned this would be the result!
@eoin carroll: triggered to bits you gammons
@Alan: the whole non binary thing is baloney. But the “men who stormed the beaches” thing, please? Mate the vast, vast majority were conscripts and had zero choice. The fighting for “freedoms/democracy” was politician/executive branch of military speak, not your average soldier. They were simply fighting to stay alive, and then it became “they killed one of my buddies, so I’m going to kill them”…
@Mike Murphy: the people of the Easter Rising and other incidents fought for our freedom. The Brits and Yanks that ran onto a beach were ordered to their deaths for a victory that didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. One thing they definitely did not do was fight for ‘our freedom’.
Change our planets name from earth to snowflake land.
There are only two types of sexes male or female,
@Paul Maguire: if you want to get biological, there’s also intersex
@Paul Maguire: think
@Paul Maguire: I got 8 honours and 2 passes in my intersex.
@Paul Maguire: And that is where the confusion lies. You are speaking of sex as in what genitalia a person is born with, whereas they are speaking of gender. Two entirely different things, apparently!
@Paul Maguire: sex is determined at birth…. gender is a social construct.
@Keith Michael Gregg: intersex isn’t a third sex though.
@Sean Ryan: You’re right it is not but maybe it should be. Most people who are born intersex have characteristics of both male and female. Also, If it’s recognised that a person born intersex has basically a birth defect, then why is it so hard to understand that a female can be born with male genitalia as a birth defect?
@Cheryl Mellett: Surely sex is determined at conception, either xx or xy
@Cheryl Mellett: no it’s not XX or XY determine gender #science
@Michael Evans: not sure of your point regarding my comment. Intersex is a disorder of sexual development. DSDs aren’t uncommon but it’s very rare to have a noted sex ambiguity. DSDs also have nothing to do with non binary or other identities as such, though of course aren’t mutually exclusive.
@MaeVic: that would be great if everyone was born either XX or XY. But, the reality is many are not. Biologically speaking, females are usually XX and males XY. However, many people have been born with XX chromosomes but male genitalia and vice versa. Then there are those born with XXY, XXX, XO, etc.
As for the addition of “they” to refer to a person regardless of gender, well they’re a bit late to the party. This has been done since English arose as a language. Singular “they” is also present in other Germanic languages (compare the formal German sie, for example). English borrowed “they” from Norse “sá” and comes ultimately from Proto-Germanic “sa” meaning that or those.
FFS!
Grammatically incorrect. “They” refers to more than one entity/individual. More appropriate would be “it”. A single entity/individual which may have multiple internal components (in this case sexual identity) Each to their own and all of that, I just can’t abide bad grammar.
@SquideyeMagpie: What about It’s a They.
@SquideyeMagpie: Though if you were referring to one person and didn’t know their gender you’d say ‘Yeah her friend is coming to visit next month, they’re coming for the weekend’. So it is used for one person quite frequently.
@SquideyeMagpie: but that’s not objectively true, because language evolves, and the dictionary is descriptive, not prescriptive, so the dictionary now reflects that the word “they” is being used to refer to a single person. So you can clutch onto your grammar rule book, and the rest of us will just get on with it and change the way we speak together.
@Megan Ní Fhionnagáin An Bháird: so instead of saying “give him a medal” we say “give they a medal”? Thats just bad english
@SquideyeMagpie: “It” would imply an object. People who identify as non-binary are still people, so please do not dehumanise them by calling them an “it”.
“They” has been used to refer to a single person, who’s gender you do not know, for a very long time. It is not grammatically wrong.
@Karl Charlie: No, you would say “give them a medal”.
@Karl Charlie: Yeah, what you just said IS bad English (and is the equivalent of saying give he a medal, not give him a medal). It would be ‘give them a medal’ – something that has already been said many times. Did you just miss the whole point of what I said? We frequently refer to individuals as ‘they’ or ‘them’ or use ‘their’ as the possessive when we don’t know their gender anyway, which is grammatically correct. Regardless of what you think of the whole non-binary thing, there’s no disputing that we use they for individuals anyway.
@SquideyeMagpie: No, they isn’t always plural.
Example: “if someone wants to make it to work on time, then they just need to get up earlier”
Please, if you’re going to be a grammar nazi at least make sure you’re bulletproof
@Karl Charlie: No you’d say ”them”
@Vin: Exactly. ‘There’s someone at the door’ ‘Ask them what they want!’. Etc etc. Having a bit of a giggle at ‘Oh so we’d say “give they a medal?? That’s bad English’
@SquideyeMagpie: singular “they” has been a steady and solid part of the English language since long before your great-great-great-great-grandparents were toddlers. In fact, singular “they” has been used since English formed as a language and it exists in other sister Germanic languages. It comes from Proto-Germanic *sa and means this, that or those. So, I’m afraid you’re wrong here.
I’m a penguin….
@Anthony David: are you binary or non binary. If speaking about you then and other penguins can i say they?
@Dave Barrett: I’m feather fluid…we communicate through interpretive dance and prefer to be addressed as we.
That would be an ecumenical matter.
I can’t anymore.
It seems every non PC comment gets deleted, what a sterile safe space environment the Journal has become.
They whole world is gone mad so it is!
It’s all fun and games until someone decides they want to change their age because they no longer identify as their physical age.. It was attempted previously but failed but it will be pursued again. It cant succeed because theres huge financial as well as social impact. In the real world you dont get to identify as what you want only in these made up nothing else to worry about fantasies!
Give me strength will be phrase of the year.
Why is it that every time an Archaeologist finds human bones they always turn out to be male or female?
I give up!
Very disappointed in level of ignorance in the comments. Non-binary people shouldn’t be made to feel inferior by being titled something they’re not (male/female), and their existence mocked by bigots like yous. Let them live being addressed the way they want to, just like how you wouldn’t want to be misgendered 24/7 by everyone you know, and strangers on the internet. Does it hurt you? No. Does it affect your life? No. So why do you care so much? Live and let live
@Amy Quinn: but they are male or female. Sam Smith’s ‘war’ with his gender was easily won….he is male. He can identify as whatever he wants but it won’t change.
@Amy Quinn:
Calling people bigots for mocking something is silly in itself.Everything is funny until it affects you.
And this subject does affect people when compelled speech or pseudo science to support these “new” genders are pushed onto people.
You can be whatever you want to be, however the world isn’t compelled to agree with you just because you want it to.
And just to correct one of your points, yes they are either male or female, they can pretend to be what they want just don’t expect everyone else to play make believe too.
@Karl Charlie: The irony would be amazing if the child on your lap some day asks you to refer to them as a non gender specific pronoun.
@Amy Quinn: my issue would be use of the term binary. It’s an established word used in mathematics especially computer science. If another word was used and approved by dictionary people to define this status I would suggest non gender.
@Alan McArdle: what I don’t understand is why the journal is using this random Sam Smith guy for their article. Was it because there are no famous people that fit the narrative they are describing?
@Amy Quinn: I dont give a fig how Sam Smith wants to define himself but for a group of people who say they want to get on with their lives and be treated like everbody else they sure spend a lot of time in the public eye making themselves stand out. And also whats bigoted about pointing out that Sam Smith is actually a man he is a man he was born male end of story what his state of mind then after that is his own business.
@Amy Quinn: there lies the problem.
Live and let live, if one wants their opinion respected, they should start with respecting other peoples opinions. It’s not live and let live because a certain faction want to impose their world view on others.
@Mirabelle Stonegate: Uhhh… He’s not random, he’s a fairly famous singer who identifies as non-binary.
@Amy Quinn: I genuinely respect everyone’s chosen pronouns but humans are either male or female. People might not feel like they are male/female but that doesn’t change the reality that they are.
@Mairtin Antaine O Conaill: or someone who is looking after their mental health by being happy?
Don’t be afraid to educate yourself and drop a bigoted opinion or two. You will become a much more palatable and rounded person.
How is it bigoted of him.. its biology, your a male or female, if you want to call yourself a unicorn or wheel bin go ahead but that doesn’t change science.
@odette: As said people can refer to themselves as anything “they” want but if someone has mental health issues maybe they should get some help with that rather than everyone feeding into it. I am. It am not saying mental Heath issues are connected with someone wanting themselves referred to as “they” just replying to the comment.
@DublinTim: ok boomer
@odette: If you choose to identify as ‘they’, then crack on and have a happy life. The problem is legislating that others are required by law to use the same language. The new hate speech law is proposing that I will be guilty of hate speech if you or someone else is offended by my language. If you identify as ‘they’ and I refer to you as he or she, and then you or someone else feels offended then I can be prosecuted for hate speech. I’m not at all bothered about how you choose to live your life, but nor should I be held responsible for your feelings. See how this proposed new legislation is unfair?
@Keith Michael Gregg: no bother snowy
@Hans Flouride: the problems go way beyond legislating others to use the same language. Right now in the US Supreme Court a case is being fought on trans athletes – they’ve been winning women’s sports & track and field events. They’ve also been winning girls school sports events, college races, and cycling races. If the trans athletes win, that’s the end of women’s sports.
Personally, I think it’s appalling but any idiot could have seen it coming.
A few months ago trans guardian journalist failed in his bid to have himself declared mother of the child he fathered, but he’s appealing.
@Hans Flouride: as a legless 2 brained dinosaur im very offended… There is only he or she “they” is plural in my eyes
@Hans Flouride: The heads of bill aren’t even published yet. At the moment there isn’t even a proposed crime for referring to someone by the wrong pronoun.
If you’re not bothered by how someone lives their life you won’t be bothered by referring to them with their chosen pronoun.
@Karl Charlie:
@odette: You’re right – if they were family or friend I would go out of my way so as not to offend them and would be quite happy to use their preferred pronoun. I also have no real issue with legislation against my using certain language (holocaust denial, for example). However, I do have an issue with being told what language I *must* use, and what opinions I *must* have. For example, is it hate speech for me to say that I don’t want my 9 year old daughter to have to share a toilet or shower space with adult trans women? I’m aware that that opinion could mean that I don’t fully recognise that said trans woman is actually a woman, but is it fair that I could be prosecuted for trying to protect my child by publically expressing such an opinion?
@odette: I don’t know why my comment was deleted. I stand by my comment, poor Sam is suffering with mental health issues. You’re male or female, ther are no other options.
@odette: if I’m speaking to some1 and they are biologically a boy n want to be referenced as a she, fine by me, or the opposite, but I am not learning 72 new pronouns to make u feel better as this will be next, ze, Zir etc etc
They is plural how can a singular person be more than 1 , I don’t get it !
In 10 years time referring to someone as ‘they’ will be offensive.
Could someone please enlighten me as to why the comment section on the article about alleged harassment / bullying within the Gardaí is closed ?
@Graeme Salter: we’re are a bit busy here Graeme
The real snowflakes here are the people who are whinging about this. Just for a minute, imagine that someone you love told you that honestly they don’t feel like a typical man or woman. They are crying as you hold their hand trying to soothe them. Would you be as blunt to their face as you are here on your keyboard?
Someone you love might feel like that. They may be reading this.
Historically, people that are different were shamed. By their church, by their village. You know what that leads to. Don’t be like that.
@Eoin Ryan: this is the only sensible comment on this entire thread. Well said.
@Eoin Ryan: if it was someone I loved I’d get them help. Because they’d need it, there would obviously be some mental health issues that need addressing. Ignoring the issue won’t help anyone.
@Eoin Ryan: pack it in jaysus what’s wrong with you
I want to be known as a apple from here on, sure anything goes in this day and age
Explanation of they is an it ,or a that ,I could understand if he had a medical condition but this is just mental absolutely ridiculous.
Singular they has been in use in the English language since the early 14th Century. It’s nothing new, just coming back into common parlance. It’s used by people in their lives everyday without any thought to it at all.
It really takes no extra effort to use they rather than him or her if somebody wishes to be referred to in that way. No harder than learning a nickname someone prefers to be called or learning someones new surname after a marriage or divorce.
I know some people commenting here will never extend such a courtesy to trans or non-binary people in using preferred pronouns but that’s fine, we will just place you in the same category in our minds for the other bigots we come across in this world. Just remember manners cost nothing and if you’ve nothing good to say then just say nothing.
Ah lads! Seriously can we knock all this crap on the head
Emmm! Emmmm!
Explanation of they is an it ,or a that ,I could understand if he had a medical condition but this is just mental absolutely ridiculous.
Guff
The lack of tolerance here is just devastating. I don’t understand this issue, but I’m not stupid enough to assume I know better. A little bit of tolerance can go a long way for someone who is different and struggling to feel accepted. Live and let live, what does it matter to anyone else how someone chooses to define themselves? Imagine your child, your family member expressed this to you and think before you speak.
@Ciara Forrester: pack it in jaysus your either a man or a woman you can’t be in between Jesus what’s wrong with people thesedays
Explanation of they is an it ,or a that ,I could understand if he had a medical condition but this is just mental absolutely ridiculous.
Will they have to rename “Horton hears a who”
Sam and Jeffrey Dahlmer shared an apartment they murdered and cannibalised people.oops “Who’s on first”
Absolute rubbish.
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