http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/200 ... get_an_a_1
Their reaction to the reporter when she says she has been prostituted is revealing:
When you say they want it to be considered a real job, who do you speak for? Are you speaking for everyone?
“The majority want that, yes. Whores are not stupid, even if lots of people would like to believe that - she pauses to look at me - they know what they’re doing, what’s invested in it.”
I’m not so sure. I’ve prostituted myself at times and I didn’t think it was any old job.
Marcela immediately puts aside the notebook she’s been writing in all along. Both she and the volunteer look at me over an intense silence. The roles had already been dealt: I was the unwitting journalist while they were the spokespeople for ‘the other side’ - a large, oppressed group that had handed over their right to speech to this organisation. Now they don’t know what to think. Apparently they don’t regard prostitution as any other work no matter what they say. If I’d visited the headquarters of the maintenance union and informed them I’d worked as a cleaner for extra cash while studying, I don’t think they would have reacted in the same way. Marcela hastily adds that she’s very glad I’m not in it anymore and that neither of them had claimed that prostitution was a dance on roses, quite the contrary. “If you see the girls who come here and who’ve been working with this for a long time, the pros as we say, they’re completely run down and torn apart, and they earn next to nothing, it’s shameful. They have no defence. It’s far from ideal, that’s true.”
......
The founder of Àmbit Dona, Merce Merono, enters and we’re introduced to one another. “She’s also been sex,” Marcela says to Merce, referring to me. Apparently ‘sex’ is the new abbreviation of sex worker. Merce tells me about the beginning, when they didn’t have the premises, no computers, nothing, they just walked the streets with leaflets. Merce thinks it’s very strange that I’m against introducing prostitution on the labour market and repeats the argument that “everyone has the right to do what they want”. It’s beginning to sound like a mantra in these circles.