40+ interviews with sex workers

I’ve now been in Ecuador for over a week! A great deal has happened for my research since my last post, so I’m gonna split it into a couple posts.

In Buenos Aires, I successfully managed to interview 42 sex workers on their personal experiences in prostitution. Most of my interviewees were cisgender women, but 4 were cisgender men and 3 were transgender women. The majority I found in the microcentro, the area where I was living, either by the original restaurant that my AirBnB host showed me, in another restaurant that allows them to sit inside, or on the street. However, 5 of my participants I found in Recoleta, Buenos Aires’ most upscale neighborhood, and 10 in Once, a more economically disadvantaged neighborhood known for having many migrants. 4 participants were Paraguayan, 2 Uruguayan, 2 Brazilian, 2 Dominican, 1 was of Peruvian origin but grew up in Buenos Aires, and the rest were Argentine. They ranged between 20 and 60 years old, with the average age being 33.2 (excluding 3 participants whose age I didn’t get).

Areas of prostitution in Buenos Aires (locations approximate).

My sample, though diverse, is not representative of all sex workers in Buenos Aires. My participants identified multiple areas of the city known for prostitution. The microcentro and Recoleta are of the highest economic level. Once (a.k.a. Balvanera) and Flores are of a lower economic level, followed by Constitución. The parks of Palermo have been recognized as a zone of tolerance for transgender sex workers, and many male sex workers, called taxiboys, concentrate at the intersection of Santa Fe and Pueyrredón. The relative safety of these areas limited my ability to interview the most economically disadvantaged workers; I could easily walk around in the center and Recoleta on my own, but I was warned not to go to Constitución even during the day. I was able to conduct interviews in Once because an organization I interviewed, the Argentine Women’s Association for Human Rights (Asociación de Mujeres Argentinas por los Derechos Humanos, AMADH), introduced me to a sex worker there, who then introduced me to others. The experiences of sex workers in the wealthier neighborhoods are likely much more positive than those in poorer areas. Furthermore, I didn’t speak with any sex workers working in privados – private apartments that typically have an owner or madam who takes 50% of workers’ earnings – though several of my participants had worked in privados in the past, nor did I interview anyone working through online advertising.

 

El obelisco, at the center of Buenos Aires.

However, I do feel like I got a very good idea through my interviews of the conditions of sex work in the city of Buenos Aires, and to a limited extent of the rest of the country. With the exception of one woman, all my participants did sex work for economic necessity, and most were mothers trying to support their children. Most had only one or no bad experiences with clients in terms of violence or coercion. Nevertheless, all but two of them wanted to leave sex work and find another job. They emphasized to me that while they didn’t want to be in sex work, they couldn’t find other jobs that paid them enough to live off of. Doing sex work allowed many of them to survive, to buy a house or a car, and to put their children through school. Most, though not all, wanted the government to legalize sex work and recognize it as a job so they could pay taxes and receive retirement and other benefits just like any other worker.

One woman, whom I’ll refer to as Marina, told me a story that particularly touched me. She works to support three children and several family members. Her children know that she does sex work, she said, but “they don’t say anything because they know that with this they go to high school, they have clothes, they eat.” Once, her daughter really wanted a cell phone for her birthday, and she didn’t have enough money to get it for her, so the night before, she went out to work. She was lucky to get a client who hired her for the night, and when he paid her, he gave her 7000 or 8000 pesos (between $500 and $600, though with the exchange rate it was likely more at the time), much more than she had expected. When she left with the money, she told me, she started crying. She went out and bought her daughter the phone, and when she came home and her daughter saw her crying and asked what happened, Marina told her she was so sorry but she had been robbed and didn’t have any money to give her something for her birthday. Her daughter told her that it was ok, sat her down and made her a mate to drink. When her daughter went to hug her, Marina held the cell phone behind her back and pushed it into her daughter’s hand.

I have collected so many stories now that I don’t know what to do with them. Some of my participants gave me short answers and I had to probe them with many questions, while others I barely asked a single question and they told me their life stories. There are too many experiences for me to share them all here.

An ad campaign by AMMAR, the Argentine sex workers’ union, that reads, “86% of female sex workers are mothers.” Photo taken from AMMAR’s Twitter page.

When I asked them what they thought would improve their conditions, many of my participants told me they wanted a space to work. Since revising the anti-trafficking law in 2012, the Argentine government has begun shutting down many indoor places where prostitution is exercised. In Buenos Aires, they’ve closed many boliches (clubs or bars) where sex workers used to operate, some of which charged the sex workers a percentage of their earnings but others which only required them to purchase a drink or pay an entrance fee. Only those that pay bribes, explained multiple participants, remain open. While the closing of these places may be intended to stop exploitation, my interviewees said that the boliches that were closed in the center of Buenos Aires and in Recoleta did not have trafficking, and that the locations’ closing left them out on the street, where they face more danger. The restaurant that I visited my first night, where I conducted many of my interviews, used to let the women sit inside to wait for clients. However, a few months ago, one woman told me, a girl came with a hidden camera to expose that there was prostitution happening at the bar. Since then, the bar has not allowed the women to sit inside; according to another woman, the owner said they would otherwise have problems with the police. Many of the women there told me the restaurant’s decision to no longer let them sit inside was really damaging to them, because they now had to stand outside in the cold for many hours to wait for clients. Additionally, some women said they could not charge as much money working in the street, because clients viewed them as more desperate.

This seems to me like a clear example of anti-trafficking efforts gone wrong. While those who’ve gone in to shut down the bars likely have good intentions, they’ve in fact caused more harm to the women they’re trying to help. They certainly should be working to address trafficking, which is a real problem. Most of my participants said they had never seen a case of trafficking, and that they believed the trafficking that existed happened in the provinces and not in the city of Buenos Aires. However, a couple had seen trafficking cases. One Uruguayan woman, whom I’ll call Sandra, told me when she first came to Buenos Aires, she worked in a privado. “I had to leave in a hurry,” she said, “because I saw las chicas secuestradas [the kidnapped girls].” There were girls there, from Peru, Chile, and other countries, who had been told they would be given jobs as maids in Argentina, but when they arrived they weren’t allowed to leave the apartment. They were brought all their food inside, and they couldn’t have cell phones or anything. She left, and reported the place to the police.

How, then, can the government work to address trafficking without harming those who have not been coerced and rely on sex work to support themselves? That’s to me the most difficult question. Some of my participants suggested that the government do more surveys of sex workers to see who is in it voluntarily and who is being forced. Others wanted the government to regulate sex work and have each sex worker be registered and submitted to regular health checks. That model seems promising to me, but there are flaws; for instance, some sex workers may not want to register for fear of their families finding out. As I hear many different perspectives, I will continue to grapple with what policies might best address this issue.

In my next post I’ll discuss visiting with two sex workers’ organizations that started as the same organization but then split apart due to different ideological positions on prostitution, AMMAR and AMADH.

Two interviews with NGOs

I’ve been in Buenos Aires nearly a week now, and I’ve done two interviews with NGOs. The first with the Fundación María de Los Ángeles, an anti-trafficking organization founded by Susana Trimarco, the mother of a young woman named Marita Verón who was abducted in Tucumán and forced into prostitution in the city of La Rioja in 2002. Since then, Trimarco has been searching for her daughter, and her foundation works to rescue and provide assistance to victims of trafficking. In 2012, Marita’s alleged traffickers were acquitted because the judge said there was no evidence that she had been forced into prostitution. The acquittal led to public outrage and the revision of Argentina’s anti-trafficking law. The original law, passed in 2008, required trafficking victims over the age of 18 to prove they had not consented to their trafficking, while the 2012 revision made consent irrelevant regardless of age.

Susana Trimarco with a photo of her daughter Marita. Photo taken from http://www.fundacionmariadelosangeles.org

I spoke with the Foundation’s Director of Press and Communication, Luján Araujo, who recounted to me some of the conditions of prostitutes in Argentina. When I used the term “sex worker” in my correspondence with her, Luján was quick to correct me. The foundation takes an abolitionist stance towards prostitution, meaning they believe prostitution is inherently exploitative and ought to be abolished entirely. Like most abolitionists, they do not believe prostitution constitutes work and use the term “mujer en situación de prostitución,” “woman in situation of prostitution,” to refer to prostitutes. I anticipated terminology would be a point of complication in my research, because it is closely tied with ideology, so it has been difficult to figure out what terms to use in my research. In the survey I sent out to organizations, I used the term “sex worker,” because that is the term many prostitute collectives use to describe themselves. I tried including a blurb at the beginning of the survey saying that when using this term, it is not my intention to take a stance in the debate over whether prostitution should be considered legitimate work. However, it’s possible that I may need to create a separate survey for abolitionist organizations that uses the term “person in situation of prostitution” instead.

Luján explained to me that the foundation works in Tucumán to take women out of brothels, providing counseling and helping them to find alternative work, such as working in hair or nail salons. Many of them, regardless of whether they are victims of trafficking or not, are exploited by a pimp and have been exposed to violence from clients and from police. They often have psychiatric problems, and many have AIDS or other STDs and little history of medical care. Most of them are single mothers who engage in prostitution to provide for their children. A significant number of them are transgender, and thus face even more discrimination, often believing prostitution is the only option available to them.

A sex store in Recoleta, which I passed daily when I was living in this upscale neighborhood last year during my study abroad program.

She wasn’t sure whether conditions were better in brothels or on the street; while those working on the street may have more autonomy, they also face more controls from pimps. “Rescuing” women working on the street is more difficult, she said, because the women are less likely to view themselves as victims, referring to their pimps not as proxenetas (the Spanish word for pimp), but rather as men they pay for security. According to Luján, however, these men in fact control them.

In brothels, those women who did not view themselves as victims said they viewed the brothel as a place of work that provided more security than working on the street. The laws against brothels are practically not enforced at all, such that many people in Argentina do not even know they are illegal. Rather, the police accept bribes to allow the brothels to continue operating. When the law is enforced, the police shut the brothel down but provide no services to the women, who continue to be exploited elsewhere.

The second NGO I interviewed, Red Alto al Tráfico y la Trata (RATT), is also an abolitionist anti-trafficking organization, and recounted similar conditions.  After having communicated with their president, Viviana Caminos, I arrived at their office to a meeting of multiple of their members, who all contributed to the discussion. While they said almost all of the women they worked with had access to healthcare and got tested for STDs, many of them had psychological problems, and RATT provided them with counseling. One person said that many of the women they worked with experienced such trauma that they forgot skills they had before they entered prostitution, such as doing manicures or translating English, which they later recovered during therapy. While most say they are engaging in prostitution temporarily to make money, most remain poor, with many falling victim to addiction or dying from violence.

RATT told me that the conditions of violence for those in brothels or on the street are the same; those on the street often have to pay a pimp or the police, and those in a brothel often have to have a certain number of clients per day. While some women choose to work in a brothel to avoid the dangers of working on the street, RATT believed these women still face similar levels of exploitation. They confirmed that the law against brothels is not well enforced, as both the police and politicians often receive benefits from the brothels. Nevertheless, they felt strongly that brothels should remain illegal, because without a law against brothels, it would be difficult for them to rescue the women.

Flyers advertising prostitutes, which cover polls all across the city.

Tomorrow evening, I will attend an event by AMMAR, the Argentine sex workers’ union. I expect they will provide a very different perspective, as they believe prostitution is legitimate work and are fighting for the government to recognize it as such. Through them, I hope to find sex workers willing to talk with me about their experiences.

I am also awaiting IRB approval so I can attempt to approach some of the sex workers I’ve observed at the restaurant I described in my last post and offer to provide them compensation if they’ll do an interview with me. I’ve only got a week left here, so I hope that will pan out.

 

 

Arrived in Buenos Aires, met a john

Hello everyone! This summer I am conducting research for my honors thesis on how the legality of brothels influences sex work conditions in different Latin American countries, kindly funded by the Duke Human Rights Center and the Sanford School of Public Policy. For this research, I’m traveling to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Quito, Ecuador, and I’ll be documenting my experience on this blog.

I just arrived in Buenos Aires tonight after a long flight. I expected to go to bed pretty early tonight, but when I arrived at my AirBnB and told my host (who is also American) about my research project, to my surprise she responded that the street over from us is in fact known for having many sex workers and that she would happily show me where they hung out.

A sex shop near where I’m living

So, my two-week stay here has started off with a bang. Around 11pm, we headed to a pretty nice looking restaurant on a street corner, where, indeed, there were multiple women standing around outside. We went into the restaurant and sat by the window where we could observe them. They were not dressed incredibly noticeably; many wore tight jeans and a jacket but I would not have known they were sex workers had they not been just loitering outside waiting for a client. They chitchatted and laughed among themselves, and we noticed more arrive as time passed. A few times we saw a man approach them and talk to them for a bit; one of the men seemed friendly with them and kissed them each in the normal Argentine greeting. My host wondered why they were all outside and not sitting indoors; apparently, when she has come in the past, the women sit at tables indoors and find clients within the restaurant. Perhaps the restaurant is no longer letting them do so, though we saw multiple come in to use the restroom.

Street art in Buenos Aires

As we were sitting, we saw one elderly man come inside the restaurant alone and sit down at a table and order a glass of wine. He looked over at us several times, and we presumed he was unsure of whether we were working. When I looked over at him, he extended his hand toward me, and I looked away and started laughing. He heard my host and I speaking English and then began speaking to us in English as well, and he turned out to also be American. He asked if he could come sit at our table, and we agreed. He told us he was a professor from a well known American university (whose name I’ll omit for now, but I looked up his name and he is who he says he is), and he told us he enjoyed coming to the restaurant and observing the exchanges between the sex workers and the men, and disclosed that he had purchased sex from workers there before. When I told him about my research and asked if he’d be willing to be interviewed, he agreed, and said he would do so on the record.

By the time we left, many of the women were gone as well, which apparently isn’t usual. Perhaps they went to find a better spot since they weren’t getting many customers.

 

 

So there we go. I was expecting I would only be able to get interviews with NGOs, and I’ve already set up a couple, but first night and I’ve got an interview with a john. Now I’m trying to figure out how I might approach some of the women in the coming days to see if they would be willing to speak with me. I’ll be attending an event of the sex workers’ syndicate here, AMMAR, for the International Day of Sex Workers on June 2nd, and I hope to find some good contacts through that.

“Tu devrais aller voir une psychologue” – Being mansplained by a Frenchman in Argentina

Here is a story about something that happened to me while I was in Buenos Aires. I submitted it to the Tumblr “Academic Men Explain Things to Me,” but it looks like the Tumblr isn’t being monitored anymore because the last post was in 2013. So here it is for your enjoyment, anger, amusement, frustration, whatever emotion it evokes in you 🙂 :

I’m currently studying abroad in Buenos Aires, and last night my host mother took me to dinner at her friend’s house. There was a French man also there, and over dinner, I brought up that I was happy the US had just legalized gay marriage. When they asked me about what dorms are like at American colleges, I mentioned that some colleges are trying to become more progressive by having gender neutral housing options. He then proceeded to talk about how much it annoys him that governments try to seem progressive by doing things for gay rights but not actually addressing what he thinks is the most important social justice issue, the discrepancy between the rich and the poor, and how gay rights affects a much smaller portion of the population so isn’t as important as combatting poverty. The other women and I jumped in to say that certainly poverty is an important issue, but gay rights are also very important and there’s no reason we can’t fight for both.

He then brought up the example of women’s rights, basically saying that in today’s day and age we’ve already achieved equal rights so women’s rights are getting too much attention. I tried to list many examples of sexism that still exist in the world, mentioning the large number of femicides that had occurred in Argentina recently. He repeatedly asked me if I could give him the statistics (which obviously, as I was not writing a research paper on this, I did not know off the top of my head), and then told me that the majority of suicides and homicides are of men and therefore men’s issues were much more important (while it’s possible that the number of suicides and homicides among men are higher than among women, I don’t believe that makes femicide any less important of an issue; rather it indicates we need to address what is causing this violence in the first place). He also said that just that day he had seen two women sitting comfortably in a café talking freely, and extrapolated from this example that therefore women are free and have equal rights to men. I mentioned that although I am privileged in many ways because of my race, nationality, and socioeconomic status, I do not feel that I am as free as men, because I cannot walk alone at night without fear of getting raped. To this, he said if you’re afraid of getting raped, you can go see a psychologist, basically insinuating that I was a crazy feminist and that rape does not in fact continue to be a very real danger for many women.

At this point, the other people at the table told him enough, and I also told him he had crossed a line. I like debating with people who have different views than me, but for a white, cis-gender, heterosexual man to patronize me in such a way and dismiss my personal experience was very upsetting and made me pretty angry. I didn’t talk to him the rest of the night.

New blog!

So, I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for a while. Perhaps starting with the lovely Kimberly McCrae at the Duke Women’s Center encouraging me to start one, to which I kind of said “yeah, that’s a good idea…” without thinking that I’d ever actually get around to doing it. Then, my good friend Monica started an awesome feminist blog that I love and you should all follow (https://chronicallymonica.wordpress.com/). Throughout this time, I started noticing more how many Third Wave feminists and womanists have utilized social media as a medium for discussion, for venting, and for education about issues they notice in society. Then, this summer, I read Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (which you should all read), in which the main character writes a successful blog about her experiences with race as a non-American black person in the U.S. That got me thinking more about blogging as a means of personal expression and way of sharing one’s examinations of and observations about the world.

Meanwhile, I was studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and struck by various aspects I observed about Argentine culture – specifically racial dynamics there – and the similarities and differences from the U.S. I felt a sudden strong urge, as I connected things I learned about Argentine history in class with cultural phenomena I noticed around me, to write a blog post about it. I promised myself I would, but, alas, I kept myself so busy there that I kept putting it off until I found myself back in the U.S, still blogless. Perhaps I’ll finally get around to writing that post as a past reflection.

Now I’m in Paris, France, and I’ve decided to be proactive: I’m creating this site so that when I have some sudden inspiration, I’ll have somewhere to put it. I’m calling it observations because it will consist of my observations – of French culture, Argentine culture, and my own culture. Oh, and I also might tie in some comparisons with my experience in Nairobi, Kenya last summer (see my previous blog). It will probably mostly surround topics of gender, race, sexuality, class, inequality, and social justice, though I’ll also write about anything else I’m feeling like. How often I’ll actually get around to writing something is another question, but hey, here it is!

Rules for my blog:

1. Please comment! I would love to spark discussions and hear others’ opinions and experiences.
2. I am trying to become a better intersectional feminist and ally on race and sexual orientation/gender identity issues, but I will definitely make mistakes. While I’m writing about my own experiences, I will also probably at times misjudge things about cultures that aren’t mine. Please kindly call me out when I do.
3. That said, while I welcome differing opinions and people challenging my views, my time is limited and I will not always respond to every comment. I will also promptly delete any comment that is aggressive, insulting, or otherwise unkind. This blog is meant to be a positive experience for me and anyone else who chooses to engage with it, so please be respectful and remember we are all here to learn from each other.

Thanks!