\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
[Tracy Quan is a writer and prostitute rights activist who is also a member and sometime coordinator of Prostitutes of New York (PONY) — the main prostitute rights organization in New York City.\u00a0 Her writing has appeared in Salon, Lingua Franca, the Village Voice, Urban Desires, Puritan<\/em>, and numerous other publications.]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n DAVID STEINBERG:\u00a0 To begin with, could you say something in general about PONY and why you think it\u2019s important.<\/p>\n TRACY QUAN:\u00a0 Ok.\u00a0 I should say first, since it comes up all the time, that we don\u2019t have a president or a chairperson.\u00a0 PONY is run by a coordinating committee with changing membership.\u00a0 Some coordinators are fairly new, people who came in during the last two years.\u00a0 Others have been around for a while.\u00a0 It gives people a chance to take turns expending all their energy.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 How many people are involved on the coordinating committee?\u00a0 How many people are actively involved in the organization?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 It changes from month to month and from year to year, but typically we\u2019ll have about five hard-working coordinators and five part-time coordinators.\u00a0 There are about 50 PONY members.\u00a0 We\u2019ve had meetings that have been as small as two people and meetings that have been as large as 40.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Do you meet regularly, or just when there\u2019s a reason?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 When we\u2019re functioning at our optimal level we meet once a month.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 What kinds of sex workers are involved?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 PONY is open to all kinds of sex workers.\u00a0 We are open to anyone in the sex industry.\u00a0 We have members who are professional dommes, a lot of strippers, quite a lot of call girls.\u00a0 We\u2019re also open to madams, people who run sex shops — people who are not necessarily selling their bodies but who are involved with pornography or with selling sex toys.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Selling sex toys is considered sex work?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 We haven\u2019t had a big influx of shop clerks from sex boutiques, but we do have members who own and run sex shops and, yes, we do think of it as being in the sex industry.\u00a0 You don\u2019t necessarily have to be engaged in the physical aspects of sex work.\u00a0 We have phone sex people, for example.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Do you have people working on the streets?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 We\u2019ve had a lot of interest and input from male and transgender hustlers who work the streets.\u00a0 But we have always wanted to see more people who have experienced the streets at our meetings.\u00a0 Some PONY members who have worked on the street are now doing outreach to sex workers in the Bronx and on the West Side of Manhattan.\u00a0 Looking at our female membership, I would say that we tend to attract former streetwalkers, rather than women who are currently working on the street.<\/p>\n We\u2019re all volunteers; we don\u2019t get any grant money or any funding from foundations at this point.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Do you do outreach to bring in new people, or do you wait for people to come to you?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 We do some outreach, mostly word of mouth.\u00a0 Mostly people hear about PONY from talking to their friends in the business.\u00a0 For that reason, we grow rather slowly, but it\u2019s also a more comfortable way for the group to grow.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure we could reach a lot of people by placing a huge ad somewhere, but we\u2019re somewhat nervous about that.\u00a0 People do read about us on the internet.\u00a0 We do a lot of outreach through websites.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 You have a website?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 No, but we piggyback off of other people\u2019s websites.\u00a0 We\u2019re on Carol Leigh\u2019s site from San Francisco.\u00a0 PONY is a member of the Network of Sex Work Projects.\u00a0 We\u2019re affiliated with all kinds of other groups, and sometimes people hear about us through those groups.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 What do you think drives people to connect up with PONY?\u00a0 What are they looking for?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 PONY has been around since the late 70\u2019s.\u00a0 It started out as an organization to push for the decriminalization of prostitution, in that 70\u2019s style of activism, to \u201cdemand\u201d legal change.\u00a0 The organization was named PONY — Prostitutes of New York — because there was this custom, that Margo St. James started, of having animal names for prostitute rights organizations.\u00a0 [Margo St. James founded COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) in San Francisco in 1973.]\u00a0 In reality, although we stand for decriminalization, you have to say that what we\u2019ve really been about is getting people to think<\/em> about decriminalization.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Getting non-sex workers to think about decriminalization?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Getting anybody to.\u00a0 PONY came back into existence in the summer of 1989 when a bunch of us started meeting again, and formed a coordinating committee.\u00a0 Some of us had been involved with the movement in the 70\u2019s, and some were newer to it.\u00a0 It was quite a hodgepodge of people — and different age groups.\u00a0 Some of the coordinators were younger, so the orientation of the group changed.<\/p>\n We are still concerned about changing the laws and all that, but we also feel that it is important to make PONY relevant to people who are not idealistic.\u00a0 We want to attract people who work in the industry who are pragmatic, who are more concerned with their day-to-day lives, who are inclined to reject certain kinds of utopian idealism, and who don\u2019t necessarily want the agenda of a prostitutes group to be harnessed to a larger agenda, like feminism, or socialism, or whatever.\u00a0 We want to attract them and offer them something.<\/p>\n So I would say that the current PONY is very different from the original PONY.\u00a0 Of course it wouldn\u2019t exist if it had not been for the original PONY, and it wouldn\u2019t exist the way it is if the original people had not had this idealistic, protest-oriented vision.\u00a0 But PONY is no longer just a protest group.\u00a0 We\u2019re very practical.<\/p>\n When somebody\u2019s new to the business, for example, we want to make sure they know what the laws are.\u00a0 Some people don\u2019t know what their legal rights are.\u00a0 There\u2019s the equivalent of old wives\u2019 tales in the sex industry.\u00a0 It\u2019s like people who believe you can\u2019t get pregnant standing up.\u00a0 There\u2019s an equivalent of that in the sex industry, unfortunately, among people who are new, who\u2019ve never bothered to read the laws.<\/p>\n We discovered, for example, that a lot of sex workers in New York (people who should have known better) thought they were not breaking the law if they only performed manual sex for money.\u00a0 They thought they were operating outside of the definition of prostitution, but they weren\u2019t.\u00a0 If you read the prostitution law, it\u2019s very specific.\u00a0 Giving hand jobs for money is a crime.\u00a0 So we want to make sure people know about things like that.\u00a0 There\u2019s also a need for clear information about STD\u2019s and safe sex.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 So what people get from PONY is basically information and orientation around sex work?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Yes, especially around the legal issues.\u00a0 It\u2019s also nice to bring together people doing a wide variety of different kinds of sex work.<\/p>\n The sex industry has changed.\u00a0 There are a lot of areas where sex work is legal now.\u00a0 Phone sex, lap dancing, and S&M can all take place in a legal context, as long as you don\u2019t touch.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Touch at all?\u00a0 You mean sexually touch, genitally touch.<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Well, it\u2019s best if you don\u2019t touch at all, from a legal point of view.\u00a0 I don\u2019t give legal advice about that, but there have been some rulings protecting S&M.<\/p>\n There are other practical things we do, too.\u00a0 If somebody has an abusive experience, they can report it to PONY and we do our best to make sure the word will get out.\u00a0 We do our best to spread the word if there\u2019s an abusive guy out there.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like to say \u201cabusive john\u201d because abusers are often sociopaths pretending to be johns.\u00a0 But if somebody is behaving badly PONY members will spread the word.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 How long have you been involved with PONY?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 I\u2019ve been in the movement since the 70\u2019s.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 The prostitute rights movement?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 I took a break from activism during the 80\u2019s, and I\u2019m glad I did that.\u00a0 If you are a full-time activist, you get a warped view of the world.\u00a0 Working in the business full-time, without being politically active, made me realize that it was important for PONY to appeal to prostitutes who are not activists.\u00a0 For one thing, working girls who are not political are much more fun to be around.\u00a0 They\u2019re usually much more together, much more down to earth, much more in touch with reality.\u00a0 Also I\u2019ve noticed that people who are full-time activists tend to be pretty bad at the actual sex work.<\/p>\n You can\u2019t just constantly be around political activists.\u00a0 In a group of hard-core activists, there will very often be a rather negative perspective on the work or the lifestyle itself.\u00a0 In the U.S., many activist prostitutes are hard-core feminists with a somewhat anti-male perspective, which turns a lot of people off.\u00a0 It\u2019s important to appeal to a more regular type of person, and I think we\u2019ve been able to do this.\u00a0 Consequently PONY has an attractive reputation, although others may disagree.\u00a0 PONY is surprisingly well known in New York.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 By the average person on the street?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 No, but I\u2019m surprised sometimes at the number of people who are not really politically active, or in the business, who are aware of PONY.\u00a0 And we are fairly well known throughout the local sex industry.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Do media people call you for comments on the related issue of the day?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 We get a fair amount of media attention.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 So you end up speaking for prostitutes, or sex workers.<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 We try not to claim that we\u2019re speaking on behalf of everybody in the industry because that\u2019s so hard to do.\u00a0 I think we\u2019ve reached the point in the movement where there are enough of us — and over the last 20 years I think public awareness of sex work issues has been raised — so there isn\u2019t this need to make these global statements about the whole industry.\u00a0 You can just say \u201cwe\u2019re a group of 20 or 30 or 50 people and this is what some of us think.\u201d<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 What are issues you focus on at meetings?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Sometimes we have guest speakers.\u00a0 Our most successful guest speaker was a lawyer, a member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, who gave a free legal workshop.\u00a0 It was like offering free sex or something.\u00a0 People came in droves because the way the law affects you if you\u2019re a sex worker is not a simple thing.\u00a0 Different types of sex workers are affected by different laws.\u00a0 If you work in a body rub establishment and you phrase your advertisement incorrectly or say the wrong things in conversation, you could be construed as offering massage without a license.\u00a0 If you work on the phones for a brothel or an outcall service, you can be charged with promoting, which is a felony in New York State.\u00a0 There are many different laws which affect sex workers.<\/p>\n People also like to discuss health issues.\u00a0 Not just AIDS, but also things like viral warts and so on.\u00a0 Recently members were talking about whether it was possible to do things that are safe from an HIV perspective but unsafe from the perspective of viral warts.\u00a0 There was a question about manual or dry sex acts that can spread viral warts.\u00a0 We also give out free condoms at meetings.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Is part of the function of meetings to help people feel less isolated?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard people say, \u201cI\u2019m here because I want to meet some other people like me.\u201d\u00a0 Obviously you can meet people on the job, but people also want to meet other sex workers in a social context, when they\u2019re not working.<\/p>\n One thing I\u2019ve noticed about the sex industry, or at least prostitution, as distinct from other professions, is that we have almost no fake socializing.\u00a0 If you\u2019re a lawyer, if you\u2019re on Wall Street, there are social functions that you just have to go to.\u00a0 In the sex industry — in prostitution, and certainly with call girls — there\u2019s very little of that.\u00a0 People don\u2019t socialize unless they really want to, unless they really like somebody.\u00a0 If people want to do business, it\u2019s not necessary to meet for drinks or lunch.<\/p>\n This is what a lot of people like about the business.\u00a0 There isn\u2019t a lot of faking you need to do with your co-workers.\u00a0 You don\u2019t feel that you have to send presents to a madam, or go out socially with your boss.\u00a0 But that also means that there just isn\u2019t a lot of socializing.\u00a0 You don\u2019t meet other sex workers outside the workplace, so that\u2019s one reason people come to the group.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Why do you think there isn\u2019t more false socializing with this particular work?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 That\u2019s a really interesting question.\u00a0 I know that people who leave the sex business, if they\u2019ve been in it a long time, have trouble adjusting to other subcultures because they\u2019re not used to that \u00a0 way of being artificial.\u00a0 That may sound strange because there\u2019s a lot of fantasy involved in the work itself.\u00a0 People fake orgasms and stuff like that all the time.\u00a0 But there\u2019s another layer of social fantasy that people are not accustomed to dealing with.<\/p>\n That\u2019s another thing that we get into in the group.\u00a0 If you\u2019re making the transition to a straight job, it\u2019s nice to talk to other sex workers who are making or have made the same transition.\u00a0 So there\u2019s a therapeutic aspect to what we do.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 But in terms of just the basic employer-employee relationship, why are the relationships more honest than in other work situations?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re more honest.\u00a0 There\u2019s plenty of other stuff that goes on.\u00a0 For example, when I worked in a brothel, if I was late because I was up until three in the morning hanging out with my boyfriend and partying, I wouldn\u2019t tell that to the madam.\u00a0 I\u2019d make up an excuse just like anybody else because I wouldn\u2019t want her to think I was some kind of flake.<\/p>\n The funny thing is that because it\u2019s the sex business, if people are too honest, they might be categorized by the madam as a flake, someone she can\u2019t trust.\u00a0 Even if the madam suspects that someone was probably sleeping in because she was out with her boyfriend, she\u2019ll respect the girl who has the sense to lie about it.\u00a0 It means that she\u2019s professional, that she won\u2019t say something crazy to a client.\u00a0 There\u2019s a necessary amount of faking or storytelling in the business.\u00a0 So just showing that you know the rules and how to play the role can put a co-worker at ease.\u00a0 They know you won\u2019t betray them or do something inappropriate.<\/p>\n I guess I don\u2019t really know why this industry is different.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s because in prostitution it\u2019s understood that if you want to buy intimacy you\u2019ll buy intimacy, but you don\u2019t browbeat people into pretending to be your friend.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s not a lot of false flattery either.\u00a0 If you work for a law firm and go to the boss\u2019s barbecue, you\u2019re going to tell him how fabulous his decorator is, how great his place looks.\u00a0 Maybe it looks great and maybe you hate it.\u00a0 There\u2019s really very little of this in the sex business, in my experience.\u00a0 I hear the same thing from other people in the business, so I think there\u2019s some truth to it.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Let\u2019s focus back on PONY.<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Ok.\u00a0 One thing we do is encourage and help people who are leaving the sex industry.\u00a0 A number of PONY members have art school backgrounds, so when they hear about festivals or grants, we encourage them to tell other members about opportunities outside of sex work.\u00a0 We function a little bit the way an alumni association would.\u00a0 Many people don\u2019t stay in the business forever, but they still have an affection for it, a feeling that this is where they\u2019re from.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 You were saying a little bit about the political stances of people in PONY, as compared to prostitute rights groups elsewhere.\u00a0 Do you want to say more about that?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 I think we are less anti-male than some groups.\u00a0 I think we have less of a feminist orientation than some prostitutes groups.\u00a0 There are feminists in the group, but we try to separate those issues.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 How is PONY less feminist-oriented?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 I think other organizations have relied more on the ideological input of feminists.\u00a0 A lot of the rhetoric that came out of COYOTE was very feminist-oriented.\u00a0 There was a tendency to polarize things, to turn things into male versus female.<\/p>\n There was a big focus on the fact that johns were not getting arrested.\u00a0 Johns were seen as getting away with something because they happen to be men.\u00a0 \u201cThe women are arrested; the men are not.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s exactly how it\u2019s said.\u00a0 But that doesn\u2019t take into account the large number of prostitutes who are men or boys.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t take into account the transsexual community.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Isn\u2019t the argument that the workers are being arrested but the customers are not, aside from gender?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 But customers are increasingly being targeted.\u00a0 Sometimes there\u2019s a sweep where they arrest more customers than providers.\u00a0 In Vancouver, the vice squad announced recently that they were going to arrest customers and not street prostitutes because they had decided the prostitutes were victims and the customers were predators.\u00a0 That could happen in any city where you have a law against prostitution.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 But it\u2019s still more dangerous legally to be a prostitute than to be the customer of a prostitute.<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Yes and no.\u00a0 It\u2019s more dangerous to be a customer on the street than it is to be a private call girl.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Well, ok, but it\u2019s more dangerous to be a prostitute on the street than a customer on the street, and more dangerous to be a call girl than the customer of a call girl.<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Well there have been cases where customers of call girls have been harassed by the IRS.\u00a0 You could argue that it was more dangerous for them because they had a lot to lose.\u00a0 But certainly more sex workers are arrested than customers.<\/p>\n What I\u2019m saying is that people who use the rhetoric that women are arrested and men are not have actually absorbed and digested the idea that there is this sexist, anti-female conspiracy going on.\u00a0 The word prostitute means female to them.<\/p>\n The prostitute experience is constantly being conflated with other female experiences.\u00a0 Feminists make sweeping statements that are supposedly analytical, but they\u2019re just false because they don\u2019t acknowledge that there are all these guys working too.\u00a0 It was inevitable that we would have to deal with this issue because one important way the movement got visibility and acquired supporters during the 70\u2019s was to work through the feminists.\u00a0 And, of course, a lot of prostitutes are women; you can\u2019t pretend that that isn\u2019t part of the reality.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 So with this new generation of prostitute rights activists, people who don\u2019t come from such a strong feminist perspective, what is their idea of what the movement is about?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Some of our younger members, people in their 20\u2019s, have always known there was a fairly well-developed movement around them.\u00a0 They have access to it.\u00a0 They take certain ideas for granted, even the idea that there is this movement.\u00a0 That did not exist in the 70\u2019s in the same way.\u00a0 The movement was much more ragtag then.<\/p>\n There was a time when I would have been embarrassed to tell people in the business that I was part of a political movement because they would think I was crazy.\u00a0 They would think, \u201cWhat, are you nuts?\u00a0 Why are you wasting your time on this?\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s changed.\u00a0 People come into the business now with more of a sense of entitlement.\u00a0 There are people in the business who think the movement is ridiculous, or who don\u2019t agree with it, but they\u2019ll just say they\u2019re against decriminalization, or I\u2019m for decriminalization but I don\u2019t have time for this movement.\u00a0 They don\u2019t say, what a crazy idea. People take the movement more seriously.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 So is it a movement or is it a self-help group of women doing sex work?\u00a0 If the movement is not specifically about decriminalization, and if it\u2019s not about feminism, what is it about?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Well, we are for decriminalization, even though we haven\u2019t been sitting around drawing up a game plan for it.\u00a0 In Australia, prostitutes groups sit down with their government representatives and talk about how the law doesn\u2019t work properly, how to change the way it works.\u00a0 We\u2019re nowhere near that here.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s a long-range sense that PONY is about increasing the general social and political power of sex workers.\u00a0 Because there\u2019s so much media and publishing in this town, we have an effect that is more than local.\u00a0 The way prostitution is talked about in the press has changed in the last ten years.\u00a0 There\u2019s more active support for prostitution.<\/p>\n When Heidi Fleiss was arrested, Interview<\/em> magazine was completely in support of her and of prostitution.\u00a0 They basically said it\u2019s too bad this is a crime.\u00a0 She was treated sympathetically by Vanity Fair<\/em>.\u00a0 There\u2019s a mood among the chattering classes that is questioning why this is illegal.\u00a0 Now, that doesn\u2019t change the fact that there are street sweeps and john sweeps — and indoor sweeps too sometimes, for people who advertise.\u00a0 But the social attitudes have changed.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 So you could say that PONY is promoting changes in social attitudes about sex work.<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 That\u2019s one thing we can realistically accomplish.\u00a0 We cannot change the laws overnight.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 To define your political purpose as bringing about\u00a0 decriminalization would be naive.\u00a0 After five years, you\u2019d be pretty discouraged.\u00a0 But in terms of changing the kinds of social attitudes you\u2019re talking about, organizations like PONY really can make a difference.<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 I think we have.\u00a0 I\u2019m very self-critical in terms of the movement, but I think the movement can take credit for the fact that over the past 20 years a lot of really valuable work has been done.\u00a0 In other countries a lot of work has been done through the UN, through the World Health Organization.\u00a0 If it weren\u2019t for people like Arlene Carmen and Margo St. James and Iris de la Cruz who was running PONY in the early 80\u2019s, things would be very different.\u00a0 There are judges now who are for decriminalization of prostitution.\u00a0 The issue is more on the social agenda.\u00a0 The ACLU is concerned with prostitution issues now.<\/p>\n Another ongoing goal of PONY is to keep promoting and developing this idea of community.\u00a0 People in the business have a tendency to get very ghettoized, especially prostitutes.\u00a0 Many prostitutes never meet a porn star or a topless dancer.\u00a0 So it\u2019s important that we\u2019ve got people meeting every month that are from all these different areas of the business, coming together and bonding and learning about each other.<\/p>\n We want people to understand that they\u2019re part of a tradition that\u2019s really very old, but at the same time we want people to realize that they\u2019re part of an industry that keeps changing.\u00a0 We should certainly respect tradition and know about our history, but we shouldn\u2019t get hung up on the idea that there\u2019s only one way to do sex work.\u00a0 The industry is changing and expanding and getting more high-tech.\u00a0 There are new ways of marketing sex that seem alien to older people, like phone sex.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 One thing that I see people doing, in PONY and other prostitutes rights groups, is articulating a point of view about who sex workers are that contradicts popular stereotypes and results in more social acceptance of sex work in general.\u00a0 As long as people stereotype sex workers and don\u2019t have to relate to them as regular human beings, it\u2019s easier to stigmatize the whole business.\u00a0 As people stand up to be counted, and talk about themselves in human terms, it affects the public\u2019s attitude about sex work.\u00a0 Do you think that\u2019s true?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Well, it\u2019s really hard for me to relate to the whole concept of stigmatization because I\u2019ve never really felt particularly stigmatized as a sex worker.\u00a0 But I do meet people who feel stigmatized, who are really uncomfortable with the work.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 When you socialize with people who are not sex workers and you mention that you do sex work, you don\u2019t feel that people have a negative reaction?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 I\u2019ve always had a lot of very cool friends.\u00a0 I know some people who are narrow-minded and I don\u2019t tell them anything about it, but I don\u2019t consider them to be my close friends.\u00a0 But I know there are people in the sex business who are more tortured about the whole issue than I am.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 When you said that social attitudes are changing about sex work, I thought you meant that people were becoming more accepting of the fact of sex work and of the people who do it, that the traditional stigmatization was breaking down.<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Well, do I think there\u2019s a lot of new support for decriminalization among a certain stratum of people.\u00a0 I could be wrong here, but I think that if you were to ask a majority of a certain kind of people, here in New York — people in the media, people in advertising — I would be awfully surprised if they said they were against decriminalization, the same way I would be surprised if they thought it was ok to arrest someone for having gay sex.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 So you think there\u2019s been a shift in attitudes about decriminalization in particular.<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Because of high-profile prostitution cases — like Heidi Fleiss, the Mayflower Madam, and so on — you\u2019ve got people thinking about the fact that this is just another away for people to make money.<\/p>\n The other thing that has changed attitudes, which the prostitutes rights movement may or may not be responsible for, is that because a lot of johns are being arrested, people are starting to think about prostitution differently.\u00a0 Johns are the conduit to mainstream life, so now people realize that laws against prostitution can come into their lives and mess things up, that these laws disrupt family life as well as people who are working.\u00a0 Sometimes the police will go to a john\u2019s workplace and make trouble for them.\u00a0 A john who\u2019s arrested can lose his livelihood.<\/p>\n For so many years, the prostitutes movement went around saying that it wasn\u2019t fair to only arrest prostitutes, and so did the feminists.\u00a0 The one thing that a certain kind of feminist liked about the prostitutes rights movement was that it was saying that johns should be arrested too.\u00a0 So this is an idea whose time has come.\u00a0 It\u2019s very egalitarian, a very North American thing to do — to arrest the customers as well as the workers.\u00a0 You don\u2019t see customers being arrested in countries like Japan, where they\u2019ve had a very hierarchical society for a very long time.\u00a0 You see it happening here where there\u2019s an idea that the law and society should be egalitarian.\u00a0 Consequently there are all these johns being arrested and I think that that\u2019s affecting people\u2019s attitudes in an important way.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Can you say something about some of the problems you\u2019ve had within PONY?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Well, we\u2019ve been criticized by other people in the prostitutes rights movement for welcoming business owners into the group.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 People think that PONY should basically be a workers\u2019 organization?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 I think it was more that some people in other organizations were just not accustomed to working with business owners.<\/p>\n I had a discussion about this with a member of the Toronto sex workers\u2019 group. He was sort of an independent escort type.\u00a0 At first, when I told him I thought it was important to have madams and management involved in the movement, he was very uncomfortable with the idea.\u00a0 He said he just wasn\u2019t used to dealing with managers.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t get his mind wrapped around the idea, even though as an independent person, he was himself a business owner.<\/p>\n I think there\u2019s been a tendency in the movement to trash owners in order to get sympathy from feminists and social workers.\u00a0 To trash owners and play on the idea that anyone who makes money from this business without using their own body is somehow a terrible exploiter.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Who are the owners you\u2019re talking about?\u00a0 People who run escort agencies?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 That and people who run brothels, who own brothels or outcall services.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Has PONY been able to build a sense of commonality with those people?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 I think so.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 So the sense of being in the sex work business together as owners and workers is stronger than the difference between being a boss and being a worker?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 I think it is.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think everybody would agree.\u00a0 Sometimes PONY members have support group meetings for sex workers only, where they can discuss problems management-related problems among themselves.\u00a0 So that need is still there.\u00a0 But there\u2019s also a lot to be gained from having business owners in the movement because a lot of these owners have worked themselves and have a perspective that comes from having had a whole life in the business.\u00a0 They know what it\u2019s like to be a young person in the business, to be older, to have done all these different things, to have played different roles.\u00a0 Very often people who are young see themselves as being exploited because they haven\u2019t had that whole range of experience.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 How have you dealt with the sort of class issues that exist within sex work?\u00a0 I know that there are lap dancers who say, \u201cWell at least I\u2019m not a whore,\u201d and call girls who feel that they\u2019re one step above the people who work the streets.\u00a0 It seems that there\u2019s this whole hierarchy about who\u2019s doing what kind of sex work.\u00a0 Has that been a conflict within the organization?\u00a0 How do you deal with those kinds of divisions?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 I think the sensible way to deal with it is to have a group that welcomes as many different kinds of people as possible.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 But don\u2019t you get resentments and conflicts around who\u2019s better than whom?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Well, we\u2019re actually pretty civilized, but the idea of some big happy family of sex workers is unrealistic.\u00a0 There\u2019s always attitude among prostitutes.\u00a0 One person kisses, the other doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m using condoms, but she isn\u2019t.\u00a0 That girl works too hard, she spoils the guys.\u00a0 This other girl is too cold, she\u2019s not nice enough to the guys.\u201d\u00a0 People are always filled with opinion about how to do the work.<\/p>\n In that way, it\u2019s like any other business.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve listened to lawyers talking about each other, they\u2019re very competitive.\u00a0 Occasionally there will be some cold praise for some guy or girl they have a good working relationship with, but lawyers are basically extremely competitive.<\/p>\n People in the business who think they\u2019re any good, who care about whether they\u2019re any good, are always very opinionated about everybody else\u2019s work, how nobody else does it right.\u00a0 That\u2019s my take on it.\u00a0 Imbuing it with all sort of political significance is just silly.\u00a0 I think they\u2019re just behaving like a bunch of competitive, bitchy sex workers — like what they are.\u00a0 It\u2019s a competitive market, so of course people are going to be like that.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Do you think the demographics are changing of who gets involved in sex work?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 In the past, what, 20 years?<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Well, 10 or 20.\u00a0 You\u2019ve been involved for how long?\u00a0 Twenty years?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Since the 70\u2019s.\u00a0 Sometimes I think it is changing, but then I think it probably isn\u2019t.\u00a0 How would you know?\u00a0 People say it\u2019s changing.\u00a0 I\u2019m under the impression that more college students are doing sex work, but that\u2019s also because more people go to college now.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Do you think more people from middle-class backgrounds are doing sex work these days?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 I don\u2019t know that that\u2019s true.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to measure because the middle class expanded so rapidly in this century.\u00a0 The middle class got so big that a large number of middle-class prostitutes was inevitable.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 I guess I\u2019m phrasing it wrong.\u00a0 I suspect that people now are getting involved in sex work from somewhat different motivations than used to be the case.\u00a0 I think the old motivations are still there, but in addition, more people who have other job opportunities are choosing to be sex workers than used to.<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 I don\u2019t know the answer to that.\u00a0 I\u2019m not being evasive; I honestly don\u2019t know.\u00a0 I think if you took the whole prostitute population, you would find that things haven\u2019t changed.\u00a0 In the U.S., there are immigrants entering the sex trade, working in a very ethnic environment, who aren\u2019t in college.\u00a0 Many are career hookers.\u00a0 And then there are people who do it for a few years on their way to another profession.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Aren\u2019t there more people of those people than there used to be?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 There are a lot of part-timers.\u00a0 But if you read about the history of New York prostitution in the 1800\u2019s, there was a lot of part-time prostitution then too.\u00a0 Girls from \u201cgood homes\u201d would run away to the cities and get into all kinds of stuff.\u00a0 Maybe things changed during the 1960\u2019s, but if you look at this century versus the last century things have changed and yet they haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 I think that if you look at lap dancing, that population really has changed a lot.<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Oh, lap dancing.\u00a0 Well, the lap dancing boom is a recent change, but it doesn\u2019t necessarily reflect a change in the population.\u00a0 It\u2019s just a new way to work.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Well before lap dancing there was stripping.\u00a0 It seems to me that more people who have other economic opportunities want to do different kinds of sex work.\u00a0 People want to do it because it\u2019s fun, or because they\u2019re sexually explorative.\u00a0 And I also think it has become more acceptable for women to embrace their sexuality, to acknowledge it and play it out however they want to in the world.<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Yes, but even before the special changes that took place around sex in the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s women who were sexually exploratory tended to be prostitutes.\u00a0 Perhaps in the 50\u2019s they would hook because it wasn\u2019t acceptable to sleep with a lot of men socially.<\/p>\n We think things have changed because we\u2019re living now and it\u2019s so hard to have historical perspective.\u00a0 Yes, more women go to college and have these other types of careers available to them, but if that hadn\u2019t changed, those women might have ended up being prostitutes anyway.<\/p>\n I have noticed that a huge number of sex workers are college students working, but you have to remember that a huge number of people go to college these days who never would have gone to college 50 or 75 years ago.<\/p>\n I do think we have a situation where there aren\u2019t as many career prostitutes, which sort of worries me.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Why is that a bad thing?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Because if you\u2019re just passing through on your way to some other career you don\u2019t necessarily have any commitment to the people you meet in the sex industry.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have any reason to \u201cleave the room neater than you found it.\u201d\u00a0 You don\u2019t have any reason to maintain certain standards, to make sure your clients are well-treated, for example.\u00a0 You get a very exploitive attitude on the part of the sex worker who sees this as just a temporary thing she\u2019s doing.\u00a0 She\u2019s going to exploit the work and the industry for her immediate needs.\u00a0 She isn\u2019t really thinking about building something.\u00a0 People who think in terms of a career in the business, in my experience, are building all these relationships — with their clients and also with other sex workers.<\/p>\n David:\u00a0 Do you think of yourself as a person with a career in the business?<\/p>\n Tracy:\u00a0 Yes I have been, and that was an important period in my life.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I\u2019m saying this.\u00a0 When you have a permanent stake in the sex business you have a greater sense of responsibility for how you deal with your clients.\u00a0 You\u2019re more conscious of the pool.\u00a0 You belong to a pool of people; the way you behave affects the way a client treats somebody else.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t behave professionally, if you let him get away with something, it\u2019s going to affect other prostitutes.\u00a0 That means you are part of a community.\u00a0 People who are passing through prostitution or sex work have an artificial, political sense of community — they may use the jargon of community, but they don\u2019t necessarily have a personal or a professional sense of community.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why we sometimes run into anti-john sentiment in the sex worker movement.\u00a0 Anybody who\u2019s planning on having a serious career in the business is going to have a positive attitude toward the customers.\u00a0 But the sex worker who thinks, \u201cI\u2019m just doing this for as long as I have to\u201d can be quite heartless toward her customers.\u00a0 And this can be a problem.\u00a0 If a sex worker doesn\u2019t see johns as part of the fabric, it will be reflected in her politics and in the way she wants to organize.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Spectator<\/em>, December 19-26, 1997<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 1997 David Steinberg<\/p>\n [Tracy Quan is a writer and prostitute rights activist who is also a member and sometime coordinator of Prostitutes of New York (PONY) — the main prostitute rights organization in New York City. Her writing has appeared in Salon, Lingua Franca, the Village Voice, Urban Desires, Puritan, and numerous other publications.]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n DAVID […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-essays","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}