Photo by Andy Ciordia
My friend used to work as a madam in a place that had “high class” call girls offering sex at a premium price. I know all kinds of people!
It operated out of a gleaming high rise glass building in an area of London called the Docklands, where many rich city workers live.
She used to tell me stories about the pop stars and sporting personalities who used to turn up, the champagne they offered at the door and the money being made by the beautiful women who worked there.
A luxury suite in a New Zealand brothel
It’s a similar picture to what New Zealand women are saying has happened to prostitution over there. That it’s attracting a better class of clientele now, which they put down to the fact that their profession has been decriminalised.
But that’s hardly the norm is it?
The reality for most prostitutes is not a luxury suite but the cold hard streets. As this report from South Africa details - women working in the sex trade suffer drug problems, and fear violence and disease. This, for me, is where the real story is and I’m looking for a citizen journo who has personal experience of this life, to report it.
I had a quick look around myself and found Debbie Toughey in Durban, Kathleen Mitchell in Ohio, Anju Pawar who is a social worker with the ASHA project in Mumbai and Somaly Mam in Cambodia.
If you want to suggest someone, you can contact me by adding your comment to this post.
4 comments
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March 23, 2009 at 3:21 am
Pinkhito
This would be wonderful subject to investigate more into, for many reasons. I’ve read a number of books regarding prostitution from 1700′s onto the mid 1900, and on a global scale it’s easy to see that woman who lived in countries where prostitution was legal and had a prominent role in society had a far better life style than women who were left alone, and operated in the streets.
There is a wonderful book about powerful American madams of the Colorado frontier during the late 1800 and the stories about their establishments in the mining towns of western America. They talk of women in charge of girls, and the difference between crib girls and Parlor girls. It’s fascinating because the girls were given shelter, prestige, and safe boarding. Many worked and then remarried and lived their lives as respected women once they made their money or lost their looks.
The pictures of the girls and these 6 Madams is truly remarkable. However, once the rules begin to change and once respected parlors begin to close more girls are found in the streets and without protection, which is another book onto itself. In all I think sex will always be for sell, and the idea of woman running the business of sex is far more appealing and it’s legalization a better alternative. History has proven it so, and it will always be around as long as man kind exists.
March 23, 2009 at 10:22 am
nina robinson
Pinkhito – you’re right – there seems to be two clear sides of the coin here and the historical perspective sheds light on how governments might find solutions to current problems. This is a point I will put to the citizen journalist who works on this. thanks
April 2, 2009 at 9:06 am
farzanamithila
hello,
I have a blog about Drug abuse, here is the link: http://farzanamithila.wordpress.com/
I saw, in your post you wrote something about the relation about prostitution and drug abuse. Can you give me some more information about that? If you have any more information about the relation between prostitution and drug abuse or anything anout drug abuse, please let me know.
Thanks,
Farzana
April 2, 2009 at 1:10 pm
nina robinson
Hi Farzana – I had a look at your blog – very interesting posts. There is a link in the post to the South African study. There are other studies in the UK with case studies of prostitutes and their addiction. Have a look at a couple of BBC articles here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6175759.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/suffolk/6175411.stm
hope this helps. Nina