I’ve talked to a lot of men who buy women; a lot of times they say that sex work is honest work. They tell me things like:
“She likes it.”
“I’m helping her make a living.”
“How else would she support her kids?”
“She chose this life.”
To further this narrative I just read an article on Upworthy, of all places, arguing that sex work is “honest.” Margaret Cho, a comedian who did pre-recorded phone sex when she was younger, claims that “Sex work is not degrading – it didn’t degrade me. Rape was degrading. Not sex work. Sex work is honest work.”
Her statement broke my heart, I immediately thought of all the girls and women I knew that had been trapped in the sex trade: the desperation that sent them there, the daily struggle it was to survive, and the immense healing it takes to recover.
In Angeles City, a city with over 500,000 girls and women working in the bars, the process of selling women is relatively simple: dozens of half-naked girls “dance” on a stage, sometimes with numbers attached to their underwear.
Men come in to get a drink and “watch” the girls on stage, and when they see one that suits their fancy, they flag over a waitress and point to the girl they want. The waitress shines a laser on the girl and that signals her to come off stage and have a drink with this man.
While she drinks with him, he is free to grope her wherever he pleases, kiss her, play games with her, but he is not allowed to do more with her until he pays a “bar fine,” which will allow him to take the girl back to his hotel room and have sex with her (I call it rape). Technically, the bar fine (usually around $60 in Angeles City, and far less in other areas) is paying for the girl to leave work early, but that’s just a way to skirt around the Philippine’s anti-prostitution law.
Every single woman I have talked to in the bars does not want to be there. They have been forced, coerced, or left with no other options but to sell their bodies, often times they don’t even know what working in the bars means when they first arrive.
Most of the women I talk to are single moms trying to support their children and left with no other options to make enough to feed them. An increasing number are coming from the provinces as climate change wipes out their family farms, forcing parents to send their daughters to the city to keep her family alive, often supporting parents and up to eight siblings.
Some families have more evil intentions, sending their daughters, nieces, or wives into the bars to make a profit off of them. One woman I know was raped continually by her former employer, so she moved to the city where she would at least get paid for it.
But not one woman I know has gone there because she wants to be there, or she thinks it is desirable way to survive. She is trapped by dire circumstances in life and is left with a choice; sell your body to keep you and/or those you love alive, or, give up and watch you and/or your family slowly waste away.
This might seem like a harsh way to describe their situation—the men who frequent the bars would call me a liar. They tell me, “They love working here. What a fun way to make a living.” I wonder how they can possibly convince themselves of this watching the majority of girls stare at the ground as they sway on stage, using their arms to cover what parts of the body they can.
It feels like a cattle auction to me, just men, sizing up the piece of meat they want to purchase. The girls pretend to have a good time, no one earns a tip with a sombre attitude.
My response to the men who buy women and to Margaret Cho is that a woman forced into prostitution by desperate circumstances is NOT free.