This is from Mistress Matisse’s May 18th Stranger column…there’s a lot that’s valuable here for both the new and seasoned escort. 1. Yes, there are ready-made jobs in sex work, like massage studios and escort services, where all you have to do is show up. But the people who run them take a cut of your money, so you wind up paying just as much for convenience as you would to have your own business, and you sacrifice some control. 2. Greed and not thinking clearly is how most women get into trouble. Don’t work stoned or drunk, and don’t get so hungry for money that you ignore warning signals. 3. Not many people do sex work for a short while and then quit. It is very hard to give up the money and the free time. 4. Most clients are just regular guys like you’d meet anywhere. You probably aren’t going to get a call from Charlie Sheen, but you’re also statistically unlikely to meet the next Green River Killer. 5. You will not get a pension, and if you don’t pay your taxes, you won’t even be eligible for social security. You are going to get old, so either provide for yourself or plan on having a shopping cart as your retirement home. 6. Don’t trash other girls to your clients. Those tactics were unbecoming even in junior high school and they’re contemptible now. 7. If your doctor or your dentist or your cleaning lady or your auto mechanic gives you any shit about how you earned the cash you’re paying them, take your oh-so-dirty money somewhere else. 8. If either a potential client or an employer offers you a deal that sounds too good to be true, assume that it is, and ask yourself why he might be lying and what you’ll do if he is. If you’re okay with all possible outcomes, then try it, but if any of them are unacceptable, walk away. 9. You’re likely to be making more money than your lover or your friends, so it’s nice to buy dinner or a round of drinks sometimes. But if you spent more on your Fendi sunglasses than your best friend spends on her rent, keep quiet about it. 10. It’s less work to keep a good regular client happy and calling back than to short them on service and have to keep attracting and processing new guys. 11. Pissing off the neighbors or landlord of your workspace always leads to trouble. Pay the rent on time and strive to be as pleasantly invisible (and inaudible) as you can. 12. E-mail is a boon to unhappy losers who bolster their egos by sending snarky anonymous notes. Amusingly, they often make their place on the evolutionary scale quite clear in doing so. “Yuor a whoore and yu’ll birn in hell for all eternitee!” However tempting it is to deliver an electronic riposte, such people are unworthy of your attention. Don’t respond, just delete. 13. On the subject of photographs: It is accepted practice to remove a few lines or a few pounds through the magic of photo editing. But those fuzzy, extreme-angle photos on your website are unworthy of you. If you’re a voluptuous woman, or a mature woman, show it clearly, and get clients who want that. It’s better for your self-esteem than having guys show up and be obviously disappointed. 14. Clients often prefer someone who is warm and friendly to a chilly bitch who can get that extra inch down her throat. 15. You’re likely to get stiffed for a fee at some point during your career. Vent, be pissed about it for an hour, and then let it go. Don’t seethe about it for days, and don’t take it out on your good clients. 16. Yes, buying your own health insurance is expensive. But unless you’re disciplined enough to put money away every month in case you get sick, you better get it. 17. If a client offends you so deeply that you have to fire him, do not take him back, no matter how much money he offers you. The fantasy is unrecoverable. 18. It’s possible to sustain a long-term lie to friends or family about your job, provided they aren’t too inquisitive. But try to have at least one friend in whom you can confide all the charming, the annoying, and the absurd encounters that you will definitely have.
9 March 2011
A significant police backlash is being felt by sex workers around the country following human rights events for the International Sex Worker Rights Day on March 3rd.
In Johannesburg, Sisonke Sex Worker Movement national co-ordinator Kholi Buthelezi had her hands full with sex workers calling her for help “the day after the march in Johannesburg I went from Germiston back to the city taking statements from sex workers who were harassed or arrested”. 27 Sex workers were arrested and released with a R300 fine in Germiston while in the City sex workers were harassed and one was assaulted.
Ms Buthelezi witnessed a police reservist soliciting a bribe from a sex worker – and took a picture of the culprit with her phone “I sent an MMS of the picture to an officer at the Johannesburg Central Police Station and they have promised to investigate.” The police reservist was carrying his police jacket in a plastic bag and demanded money from the sex worker, taking R10 after she said it was all she had. (Picture right)
In Limpopo provincial co-ordinator of the Sisonke Sex Worker Movement and partner organisation, Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme (TVEP) assisted a sex worker who was whipped on the stomach by police officers there. Prince Nare of TVEP said “she is a migrant sex worker and even though we encouraged her, she would not go to the hospital or clinic to have her injuries treated because she was afraid of being deported”.
The march in Limpopo had to be cancelled because the Musina Local Municipality took away permission for sex workers to march less than 24 hours before the March was expected to start. No reasons provided in writing and the Station Commander at Musina Police Station threatened sex workers and the convener of the march with arrest and detention should they deliver the memorandum that sex workers had prepared. Sex workers had proposed that the group to deliver the Memorandum would be made of up only 5 people, but the Station Commander still refused. “I was not surprised that the police would do such a thing,” said Mickey Meji of the African Sex Worker Alliance, “sex workers are sent away from police stations all the time when they want to report crimes. In fact our Memorandum demanded that they stop this practice and take complaints from sex workers seriously.”
Kyomya Macklean the regional coordinator for the African Sex Worker Alliance who organized this march stated: “People who brutalize sex workers do so with the hope that sex workers will feel too afraid to come out and report these events. Can these police officers not see that these women have feelings and that they were really scared or do they simply see sex workers as an object? When you kicked her do you not have any sense of remorse and concern for the victim or is this something that brings you enjoyment, a malicious and tic violence that comes from acting as a law unto yourself and feeling power, control and pleasure in hurting the other and reducing them to feeling helpless? But I want you to know, we will not be turned into objects and we will have the courage to be powerful and seek justice and demand we are treat with respect. You will not take taking away and undermine our capacity to experience ourselves in powerful and independent women.”
The Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) will be following up all cases and working with our legal advice partners in Johannesburg and Limpopo to ensure that the police officers responsible for the incidences will be harshly disciplined. But, says Mickey Meji “until sex work is decriminalized, we will be dealing with the impunity of the police. The law with regard to sex work must be changed so that sex workers are safe and no aspect of their work should be criminalized.”
Contact: Sally-Jean Shackleton 082 330 4113
