Hope is Dead

I cannot express my prostituted Self without speaking to the death of hope.

I found hope made prostitution unbearable. To know and allow hope to be too real, when prostitution appeared to be endless, was the main way to lose sanity.

But to life without hope was in itself a living death.

So welcome to Catch-22, welcome to madness of what it is to be prostituted.

To be prostituted is live with every route back to hope being blown up as you reach out for it.

To survive, it becomes essential to say to yourself – I don’t need or want hope.

Instead you put on the armour of the Happy Whore.

You paint on a smile for each and every punter as all that matters is to boost his ego. In the lost hope, he will torture, rape or play at killing you.

You learn not to show pain or fear – that was in a past where hope of a future existed.

You forget that there is a world outside the sex trade. You forget your past with friends and family who knew you were never meant to be prostituted. That is too close to hope to be remembered.

Hope gives life and a drive to a better future. That is impossible to let in when the sex trade has made for that you are a full human with the right to not be tortured and raped.

Hope is the silent voice saying – you never belong in this hell. You should have dreams for brighter future.

You should not be made into a sex toy for each and every punter to used and discard.

You should never be just holes to be fucked, never just a body to bashed up, never be just an object that any man can kill with no consequences.

Hope is crying out – get out, get out, please get out.

So now I exited completely, I can listen to hope, and know its silent voice helped to save my life.

AWAY, BUT BACK NOW

I have been away from writing. This is for many reasons, but mainly trauma and moving .

It was not helped by Corvid, making me hide away. That is an excuse not the cause.

Rather I have found hard to concentrate on my abolitionist work, for my mind has empty or wanting to block that part of my life.

Now, I am slowly getting awake to my abolitionist heart, and so with caution I am returning to blogging.

I hope to carry my my readers with me and maybe gain some others.

I want this new blog to focus on exploring trauma and the long-lasting impact on the majority of exited prostituted people. Our trauma is life-long and usually complex.

Most exited women have extreme long-term complex trauma, usually on the same scale or worse than frontline soldiers or people who have been tortured.

I want this blog to begin a serious discussion on how we can build holistic and long-term exiting programmes for every prostituted person who wants to leave the sex trade.

For this to exist we must been lead by the knowledge and experiences of exited people.

No country, including those who have the Nordic Model, have comprehensive exiting programmes that cover every area where the prostituted may need that service.

There are some excellent excellent exiting programmes run by exited women.

But these women work with little or no funds. These women work with trauma. These amazing women do their work with little or no support or acknowledge of their great work.

That is not good enough.

Governments need to fund exiting programmes on a national and international level.

We need all exiting programmes to have specialise trauma training, which should seen as long-term not a short-term plaster to hide the wounds left from prostitution.

All this is to taught through the words of exited people who understand their own cultures, what it was to be prostituted, and can make deep connections with all forms of male violence and entitlement.

This a short beginning – please add your thoughts.

To end, this blog is for those in prostitution and exited people. I am honoured if others read me, but my passion is always with the prostituted.

Language is Unwritten

I want to write about language round trauma, exiting and the abolition of the sex trade.

I find language does fit the reality of being in or exited from prostitution. It is too detached to speak our truths.

It does not speak for or to our trauma, our long history of pain, our ability to survive by emptying our minds.

Spoken language based purely on facts is not adequate.

Words are just a surface, to speak to our truths we need to speak outside the boxes of just facts.

To understand some of the realities of prostitution, I tend to turn to fiction. I turn to the language of visual arts. I turn multiple ways of viewing each event.

I speak from a place of broken and fragmented memory.

Therefore fiction makes more sense than facts. Facts state there some kind of truth that can only exist when proven it is considered to be true.

But fiction said truth is seen from the angle you can know, experience and even change.

In the the worlds of fiction, truth is never singular by multi-faceted and constantly changing with culture and points of view.

This is clear shown in the use of language around prostitution.

This language is mainly the language of punters and sex trade profiteers.

It is a language that encourages us to see the buying and selling of the prostituted for male sexual greed as normal. Even as a basic human right.

It is a language that has no interest in the welfare of the prostituted.

Instead it is a language that dehumanises the prostituted.

This is the language that equates the prostituted with being goddesses. This is the language of novels romanticising prostitution. This is the language of sex work.

This language make the punters disappear, makes the sex trade profiteers unimportant – this language works by stating the lie that all that happens to an individual prostitution is her free choices.

The poison of this language is the lack of connection to the pushes that lead women and girls into prostitution.

There is little or no connection to poverty, to previous male violence.

There no connection to racism, no connection to women being second-class citizens.

This is the language language of the oppressor pretending it is being oppressed.

It is why I seeking and fighting for some other ways of exploring language – especially as ways to express the complex trauma that exited women have to live with.

I personally find inspirations from an eclectic use of language and expressions.

I reach the language of visual arts from the West and indigenous ways of seeing.

I find language from fiction with unreliable narrators. I seek inspiration from fairytales and classic horror short stories.

I listen to language in the street, listen to children.

I have always read fiction, listen to radio, watch TV, and been surrounded with the language of popular music.

Language is everywhere and nowhere.

Language is made by everyone every moment of the days.

I choose not invent new words, but used the old words to new ways of understanding.

I want simple words that read into highly complex and changing realities.

Simple words create a path for all – the issue of prostitution is too important for the elitist language of academia.

Language need to be understood by the many – when so many of the prostituted are being tortured, brainwashed, raped and murdered.

We need a language that speak clearly and head-on to the male entitlement and sadism that is the founding stones of all of prostitution.

I used the language of human rights, the language of those who have survived genocide and torture.

I see the language of survivors of wars and other man-made traumas.

My language is connected to the civil rights movements and other abolitionist movements.

This a start. Please join me on this journey.

Reader to Testifying

I have always been a reader.

Leaves me with a phone book and I will find ways to explore it.

My reading feeds my writing in multiple ways, usually in very unlikely ways.

I write to understand the holes in my brain that is the after-effects of being inside the sex trade.

I write to testify, I write in poetical prose, I write to the empty spaces that is left after being tortured.

In this world, dark fairy tales, magical realism, ghost/old-fashioned horror stories and psychological thrillers make sense of the unspeakable.

Fiction has gives ways to understand the silences, fear, frozen body and mind that is trauma.

I get little or nothing from reading non-fiction, unless it written in fictional style. The only feminist I can read with enjoyment is Andrea Dworkin, for she write poetical prose.

Anyhow, to understand the nuances and complexities of human nature, fiction is more truthful than factual writings.

For instance, I love the space to think for yourself when fiction has open endings and/or unreliable narrators.

To fills my holes of fragmented memory, holes that holds terror that losing language, holes that holds the crying child who could of had a different life – I turn to dark side of fiction.

Classic ghost/horrors stories, that from early Gothic to before WW2, give a pathway to understand trauma.

Read MR James or Edgar Allen Poe, read The Monkey’s Paw or Turn of the Screw, read Pan Book of Classic Horror Stories or Dracula – then enter a map to trauma.

MR James is the master of exploring the terror, confusion and sense of despair that is connected to trauma.

He frames it as horror, but when I read his ghost stories I see and feel a route into the wordless world that endless torturing that is to be buried inside the sex trade.

MR James and Edgar Allen Poe are inside every line of my writings. They shadowed my words, as they give a route to see the unsayable with focus and clarity.

To dig deep into trauma, is know what courage is.

When I read the dark side of fiction, whether written by Patricia Highsmith, Audley Huxley, Dickens, the Grimm brothers, Angela Carter.

In reading I discover we can express multiples ways of exploring trauma beyond the one-dimensional cage of factual writings.

I also am deeply influences by the writings of indigenous peoples, mainly from America, Canada and Australia.

These have a more flexible and deeper understanding of impacted trauma.

These cultures have been forced to live with generational trauma and no justice or even recognition of their humanity.

They know without justice, trauma will be endless.

They know without being viewed as full humans, there is no route to justice.

To understand the depth of trauma for the prostituted, we must see this stripping of our humanity is founding stone to all our trauma.

If you not considered to be human, then any torturing is of no importance, than our voices are silenced, than access to even basic human rights is made unthinkable.

This I learnt as I read ingenious writings. To understand the depth of trauma, we must learn to connect outside our experiences and backgrounds.

I can understand trauma when I read letters from soldiers in the trenches in WW1.

I understand trauma when I read Primo Levy speak to being inside a concentration camp.

I understand trauma as I read Aboriginal poetry.

And I understand trauma when I re-read King Lear.

So this a brief insight to my words.

Love Will Tear Us Apart Again

The voice of too many punters is of love.

Love that strangles, love that tortures, love that poisons.

Love that tear every prostitute apart again.

To know that voice of that punter is reach into the roots of hate and violence that is prostitution.

To be prostituted, is to know word of love is a death blow.

To survive prostitution, is to hear these lies and switch off into nothingness.

Love to a punter is a tool to silence the prostitute, love to a punter is a weapon of hate.

To know the power of saying love to the prostituted, we must enter tiny moments of this mental torturing.

Imagine being called girlfriend experience, a companion, a courtesan, a geisha.

See those labels for the lies they are. See how these labels are creating a love relationship that never exists.

For most indoors prostitutions is the relationship of a house slave to her master. Nothing more and nothing less.

Yes the punter hides behind the language of girlfriend experience, having a companion, keeping a courtesan.

The more money he spends, the less he speaks to buying sex or owning a prostitute.

Instead he speak the language of love, so no-one see he is owning another humans for his sense of entitlement and desire to damage the prostitute for her existence.

Most punters hate the prostituted for making him rape, torture and often kill her.

For no punter accept responsibility for his own sadism.

To pretend he is in love, to pretend that a prostitute loves pain, fear and being degraded – all this make his actions and entitlement invisible.

It turns everything inside out – creating the illusion that it the prostitute who has the control and has power over the punter.

This hideous lie is covering the everyday genocide of the prostituted.

All the punters use of sadism, all his racism, all his deep hatred of women, and all his power hat hold the prostitute’s life in his hands – all that is covered in the lie of saying it is a love thing.

To end prostitution, we must stop believing this lie.

Instead of pretending it is done for love – see the tortures, see the deaths, see the destruction of hope that is prostitution.

That is a start to listening to the prostituted.

Welcome

I am starting a new blog space. I hope my reader can find it.

I needed to start again coz I could work out how to open my old blog to write on. It is still available, and I need to work how archive all that work.

I am hoping to write deeper about trauma here. I may be even more poetical in my tone, coz so much is “unspeakable” for the prostituted.

I used this space as an Abolitionist voice, therefore I view the Nordic Model as a good start but not the full answer.

Now I will see is this works.