Beyond the Parisian Allure: Sex Work and Double Standards
-This article was a source of inspiration for the piece The Banshee, by the British artist India Leire, who molded it from my body, You can find the original text and pictures in my fanzine-
For some time now I’ve felt freer, more authentic, and stronger. I think and act in accordance with what I feel; I’m more connected to myself, and I know what I want. It’s nothing extraordinary, no, it’s a matter of acceptance, integration, and age.
Every morning when I walk out into the street, I tell to myself that I am strong and powerful, and I walk with determination to my workplace. No one can undermine that sense of stability. They may harm my physical body, but not my ideas.
I live in Paris, a city where, beyond the fantasies sold to us by cinema and magazines, the reality we breathe is quite different. Going home alone, walking at night, is not so safe. I’m neither the first nor the last woman to have had problems. They have followed me, grabbed me by the arm, offered me money. I may be a whore, but not your whore.
I have nothing to hide and no reason to demean myself. I am journalist, erotic masseuse and dominatrix. You can call me a whore if you want, I provide sexual services for money. But above all, I am a woman fighting for equality and to break down prejudice.
(I would like you, from this moment on, to start thinking about what the word “whore” means to you.)
The Banshee, Galerie Isabelle Gounod
As long as the gap between rich and poor, in such fundamental areas as education and healthcare, remains in this city unbridged, how can gender equality be imagined as anything other than a distant and ambitious goal?
Over the past few years, the streets of certain Parisian neighborhoods have woken up covered in anti-femicide slogans that the media neglect, preferring instead the sugar-coated tourism that fills the coffers of the fashion capital, at least before the sweeping wave of the pandemic took over.
Social integration and education are still lacking here, at the very center of European culture, in a country that, because of its colonial past, receives nearly 300,000 immigrants every year, mainly from Algeria and Morocco, within an urban landscape marked by numerous ghettos. One example of the obvious social divide is the existence of specialized schools where “difficult” teenagers from broken families are sent so they won’t mix with ‘your’ children. So yes, as long as the gap between rich and poor in such fundamental areas as education or healthcare remains unbridged, how can gender equality be imagined as anything other than a distant and ambitious goal?
On my way to work I read: liberté, equalité, fraternité. The dreams of a future already past. Mottos carved into the stone facades of schools. I laugh to myself. I cross the street, walk through the door, change my clothes, put on makeup. Now I am Deborah.
I received a catholic education, and that schooling made me realize how little religion actually occupied my everyday life. My story is that of so many middle-class families in which parents, completely absorbed by work, could not take care of their children full-time. I grew up in a matriarchy, raised by my grandmother and great-grandmother. A tenacious and resilient woman who watched three generations grow up while working as a housekeeper for a family of nine kids. I lived intermittently with my parents. As I grew older, I understood, like many others, the fundamental difference between being a boy and being a girl, embodying the “inferior sex.” The double edge of paternal overprotection. The same man who forcefully comes to pick up his daughter when she starts going out at night, because you are a woman and therefore more likely to become the victim of sexual assault, will naturally pat my brother or cousin on the back when they flirt with more than two girls in the same evening. If they do it, they are real men; if I do it, I’m a whore. A mechanism that unconsciously yet sharply reinforces male superiority over women. No father wants his daughter followed on her way home, and no father wants a daughter who is a whore. It’s frowned upon.
People still look at prostitutes with pity, but being a whore without coercion is not an obligation, you know, it’s a desire. My colleagues into the parlours are not thinking about “changing careers”; they like what they do, some more than others. And for those whose work has become routine, as in many professions, counting hundred-euro bills at the end of the day before leaving behind their fictional identity and returning to everyday life is a very real reward. We are the ones who hold power over the client, and if one of them does not respect the rules, the service ends and he won’t get what he paid for. We have the final word. Being a whore does not mean being submissive.
But it is difficult to accept publicly, especially in Paris, where every word and every action has always carried social weight, pushing pretty girls to spend money on surgery in the hope of finding a wealthy man. Some girls like to erase and reinvent their past just as they erase and reshape their bodies.
Since starting my second profession, I have felt an ever-growing impulse to give it visibility. My values and priorities have not changed, and it is precisely this feeling of coherence, acceptance, and integrity that pushes me to get up enthusiastically every day and to make my work public among the people around me. I do it because I need to be honest: with myself and with others. And because, as a woman, I feel a social and moral responsibility to do so. Sometimes it is difficult to know where to begin, but I accept this duty and try every day to do my utmost to create a freer world. In the same way, I have traveled alone through Muslim countries, because the more women do so, the more normalized it becomes.
It should also be normalized that we women express our sexual desires clearly. I’m sure that if we did, we would fake orgasms less often, and that act of condescension would be replaced by a more honest reality. Among friends, we talk about dick, and if we want to fuck, we can say it clearly, but it is still somewhat frowned upon. Often, I feel like the disenchanted spectator of the film of one double life and its hypocrisy. Beneath everything lies the same question: who is lying to whom? I know countless women who still wait for the man to make the first move. They talk about equality while placing their fate in someone else’s hands.
It is our responsibility. I am tired of the immobility and victim posture behind which some people hide.
My Lilith in Piscis in the 6th astral house
Because society keeps you underwater, giving you just enough air not to suffocate, it is up to you to cross to the other side and reclaim our power. You are part of what disgusts you and that you look down upon when it fails you; you see yourself reflected in it. You complain to avoid taking responsibility.
I admire courageous people, those who push beyond themselves through effort. Every day I still see so many people allowing others to determine their worth and accomplishments, without trying to look beyond a handful of “likes.” Fear of what others think still weighs far more heavily than we imagine, which brings me back to the same equation: being a whore is not cool.
I discovered in childhood that anything that did not stimulate me intellectually exhausted me, it was a matter of survival. I spent time wondering what made me unique; I suppose that is why I do not care much about what others think of me. I have good friends, and their opinions matter deeply to me because, like me, they are full of respect, tenderness, and understanding. Constructive criticism feels like a caress to me.
People who pass impulsive judgment, as though their judgment permanently outranks everyone else’s, seem to me to waste their energy, although I think many among them believe no more in energies than in their tailor-made gods and religions. But why does religion exist, if not first to judge and then to save?
Those who judge reveal their own insecurities. Judges and prejudices.
That eternal dichotomy: those who throw stones at prostitutes only to realize they too have sins, rather than questioning from the beginning what drives them to do that to another human being. People trapped in that ambivalent and superficial vicious circle do not interest me. They are two sides of the same coin, and if they had never existed, perhaps wars would not exist either, only intimate struggles.
In my own struggle, I would have loved to hear the testimony of another woman, another sex worker of any kind, defending what it means to be a whore here in Paris, because for me, being a sex worker does not change me, does not diminish my worth. I have met girls for whom this was not the case. They live double lives, they fear rejection, but they do nothing to change their situation.
I understand, our profession is a sensitive subject for our families, and no one chooses theirs. We can, however, choose our circle. But in reality, their husbands, friends, partners sometimes know nothing. They invent lives as dental secretaries, conference assistants for lawyers, hotel receptionists. To truly know someone is to free oneself from the limits of imagination, but men, although they enjoy our services, would mostly be far less proud to have a prostitute as a girlfriend.
Lies are the order of the day in France, where a quarter of the population has a lover behind their partner’s back. Infidelity is as easy as eating a croissant for breakfast, and the “five-to-seven” affair comes before dinner. Double standards. Any non-consensual act of betrayal is deceit, although I imagine few people truly question themselves every time they are unfaithful, and even fewer consider that being unfaithful to one’s partner is also being unfaithful to oneself. Perhaps they prefer not to think about it, and to live in the blissful world of escape, tinged with clouds of regret.
Reality, according to Albert Einstein, is a persistent illusion. For my colleagues, there are different categories and grades of prostitutes: there are us, erotic masseuses, those who offer full service, street prostitutes, and luxury escorts. We are “less” prostitutes. And you, how much of a whore are you? Repeat something often enough and you eventually believe it: I’m barely a whore, I’m barely a whore.
At university I had a class in an incomprehensible subject: semiotics, the study of the relationship between signifier and signified. “That is a table.” Very good, fascinating, I thought sarcastically at the time. Neurolinguistics studies how the language we use interferes with our feelings, and how neural pathways can be created simply through speech. We are what we say. We can nevertheless change our habits, change our reality, but it requires willpower.
If you have read me this far, I ask you, please, to help me restore dignity to my profession, to restore dignity to the word “whore”, a word that is more than vilified, you can see that for yourself. I want you to think twice before calling a girl you dislike a “whore,” perhaps your ex’s new girlfriend.
I ask you to raise your sons with equality and respect, to support policies that advocate for a fairer and more inclusive society for everyone, not just the wealthy. As a woman, I ask that you feel free to express yourself, that you take to the streets to defend equality for all women, as others did before you so that you could have the right to work and vote. Do not be a feminist only in words: prove it every day, and see every small attack on equality as an offense and a danger.
I ask you, as a human being, to help and intervene when you witness an assault. As a man, I ask that you respect a simple “no,” and that you consider each one of us as your mother, your daughter, your sister. I do not need you to open the taxi door for me; I need you to let me close my house door in peace.
As a sex worker, I beg you to be honest with yourself and to fight to tear down the walls that still keep you —keep us— socially confined and treated as pariahs. Give visibility to what you do and who you are, feel proud every day, and help restore dignity to a profession that has always existed and has always been stigmatized.
For you, for me, and for all our sisters.
*A banshee is a legendary female creature from Irish Celtic mythology, widespread throughout the folklore of the British Isles. This fairy-like spirit, believed to possess protective powers, is also a harbinger of death.
