In How Much Money Do Prostitutes Make Part II, I wrote about one 12 year old whom a client of ours found prostituting out on Wilkens Avenue. My point was that since the majority of prostituting women seem to begin at that age, it's unreasonable to imagine that they're able to hold out for the kind of money that they "should" be able to get. Even if she's on Wilkens Avenue, a 12 year old having sex with a middle aged man is just a rape victim. How well would you expect a child rape victim to negotiate with her rapist? How well can she do it six year later, after she's been degraded thousands of times and she's strung out on drugs in order to endure it? The free market analysis, in other words, is more than a bit flawed.
After I read jg's comment to Part II last night, I realized that a lot of people might be curious about what happened to that particular little girl, so here is what I know. The client, Linda, who was out prostituting with her own adult daughters, was appalled to find a child on the street openly doing the same thing. Linda confronted her, didn't know what to answer to the inevitable "Well, what are you doing here yourself?" reply, but refused to leave her side. Linda and the little girl spent most of the day together, with Linda warning her away from an unmarked police car, giving her bus money, taking her home, listening with grief stricken empathy to the child's story, feeding her with bag lunches she got from YANA, and telling her, over and over again, that there was such a place as YANA where people cared about a girl like her.
The little girl stoutly maintained that she wouldn't trust a place like YANA, and she wouldn't go to a place like that either. Then she went back home with Linda still at her side. They both met the mother on the street, and the girl told her mom that she hadn't made any money. The mother responded by hitting her in the face. The 12 year old asked for Linda's cell phone and then, to Linda's astonishment, called the police. Linda was frightened, but she didn't leave. The police showed up to find a pair of middle aged addicts screaming at each other and a little girl who identified herself as a prostitute. First thing they did (good old Southwest Baltimore!) was slap handcuffs on the child.
Then they called back the mother who was rapidly sidling away. She ignored them at first, but was persuaded to return when they shouted out a threat to shoot her. Linda, meanwhile, was vigorously explaining that it was the mother who should be locked up, but probably mom herself was much more helpful in that regard. She came back shouting profanities and threats at her daughter. The girl was released from her handcuffs, and she raised her shirt, showing the officers the marks on her belly and back from being whipped for not bringing home enough money. The mother was cuffed and taken away. The daughter was taken away as well, but the police committed a final amazing act on that remarkable day. They took the time to explain to the still-argumentative and grieving old prostitute that she didn't need to worry anymore. The little girl wasn't being arrested. She was being taken to social services where she would be protected, where she would never have to see her mother again.
One year of being prostituted, beaten, and betrayed by her own family balanced against one day of being listened to and cared about by a stranger. It was enough. The girl decided she deserved something better out of life, and she had spirit enough to go get it.
One day transformations are rare, but transformations over time are pretty much the norm. Given enough listening and support, women do decide that they can do better, and they do start to take that difficult journey away from not just one year, but 20 or 30 years of savage abuse. The story of prostituted women is the story of resilience.
Showing posts with label How much money do prostitutes make?. Show all posts
Showing posts with label How much money do prostitutes make?. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
How Much Money Do Prostitutes Make? Part II
O.K., some prostitutes may be poor, but at least, people argue, sometimes they get paid a lot of money. They have to be paid well for doing the things you can't get most women to do for free. You know, the freaky stuff. At least that has to cost real money. Limited supply, serious demand, risk in even asking other women for some things -- it makes sense that certain acts have to be expensive.
Well, let's see. There's having unprotected sex w/ a man who's pretty obviously sick. The risk of getting Hep. C or the AIDS virus ought to be worth some serious cash. Our women try to use condoms for intercourse, and they really try to avoid actual intercourse altogether, but unprotected sex definitely happens. Prostituted women seem to have a long list of serious physical ailments, but I don't see any of them getting rich from it, and I've never heard, not once, about the big bucks any of them scored by sleeping with a sick man.
Then there's rough sex. We had a client who agreed to take her pants down and let a man spank her for money. Once he got her over his lap, he pulled out the paddle and hit her full force while she screamed in panic. Sid took pictures the next day of the purple bruises that covered the woman's rear end. The price? A dollar a whack. Even the client's mother thought a dollar was a little low. Unfortunately, however, the price seemed to be mom's only objection.
Still, risky sex and sadistic sex are available outside of prostitution. How about sex that could put you in prison for life if you tried it with anyone other than a prostitute? How about sex with a really young girl -- 12 years old, for example. There's certainly demand for that. If a man gets convicted for having intercourse with a young child even once (and who wants to have sex just once?) his life is pretty much ruined. I would have thought that a man who can find a family willing to let him have sex with their little girl would pay thousands of dollars for the opportunity. I really am with the economists and everyone else on the net -- people who can get something as dangerous and taboo as that have to be willing to pay a fortune.
Except that they aren't. People who've studied the issue claim that the average age of entry into prostitution is from 11 to 13 years old. I don't know how those studies were conducted, but I do know that a large majority of our clients who actively prostitute come from backgrounds of severe sexual abuse. Sometimes their families rape them. Sometimes their families sell them. Sometimes they seem to drift into horrible situations. I doubt that many of the women who have taken their daughters out prostituting with them waited until the girls were 18 first.
We had a client who met a 12-year-old out prostituting on Wilkens Avenue. The girl said she "had been doing this" since she was 11. She was out by herself with no money, no protection, nothing to eat on a cold December day. She would be beaten by her mother if she came home with less than $20.00 (the cost of two hits of heroin). I'm guessing that mom and boyfriend shot up more than once a day and, of course, had other expenses too. Not that they weren't willing to help the child earn more money -- in fact sometimes the girl woke up to find her mother ushering another trick into her room -- but the girl wasn't able to support the family by herself. How could she? You have to be able to name your price to get it. She was a little girl sent out of her home by her mother, standing on the side of the road waiting for the next rapist. What kind of value could she put on herself? How much fight could she muster when the middle aged man who picked her up told her what he thought she was worth?
And if she continued prostituting, if by the time she was 18 or 20 she had been sexually degraded thousands of times at her family's insistence, what kind of change would you expect her to make? Does she suddenly go out, saying to herself, "Now I'm worth something! Now I can really put a value on my services!" I've been at YANA four years now. I've heard a lot of women say that they were blessed, that they were fortunate, that they came from wonderful homes. I've never heard any of them say they were worth much money. That's what's wrong with assuming that because the women are worth a lot of money they'll know how to get it. They've been taught since they were little girls that they aren't worth anything.
Well, let's see. There's having unprotected sex w/ a man who's pretty obviously sick. The risk of getting Hep. C or the AIDS virus ought to be worth some serious cash. Our women try to use condoms for intercourse, and they really try to avoid actual intercourse altogether, but unprotected sex definitely happens. Prostituted women seem to have a long list of serious physical ailments, but I don't see any of them getting rich from it, and I've never heard, not once, about the big bucks any of them scored by sleeping with a sick man.
Then there's rough sex. We had a client who agreed to take her pants down and let a man spank her for money. Once he got her over his lap, he pulled out the paddle and hit her full force while she screamed in panic. Sid took pictures the next day of the purple bruises that covered the woman's rear end. The price? A dollar a whack. Even the client's mother thought a dollar was a little low. Unfortunately, however, the price seemed to be mom's only objection.
Still, risky sex and sadistic sex are available outside of prostitution. How about sex that could put you in prison for life if you tried it with anyone other than a prostitute? How about sex with a really young girl -- 12 years old, for example. There's certainly demand for that. If a man gets convicted for having intercourse with a young child even once (and who wants to have sex just once?) his life is pretty much ruined. I would have thought that a man who can find a family willing to let him have sex with their little girl would pay thousands of dollars for the opportunity. I really am with the economists and everyone else on the net -- people who can get something as dangerous and taboo as that have to be willing to pay a fortune.
Except that they aren't. People who've studied the issue claim that the average age of entry into prostitution is from 11 to 13 years old. I don't know how those studies were conducted, but I do know that a large majority of our clients who actively prostitute come from backgrounds of severe sexual abuse. Sometimes their families rape them. Sometimes their families sell them. Sometimes they seem to drift into horrible situations. I doubt that many of the women who have taken their daughters out prostituting with them waited until the girls were 18 first.
We had a client who met a 12-year-old out prostituting on Wilkens Avenue. The girl said she "had been doing this" since she was 11. She was out by herself with no money, no protection, nothing to eat on a cold December day. She would be beaten by her mother if she came home with less than $20.00 (the cost of two hits of heroin). I'm guessing that mom and boyfriend shot up more than once a day and, of course, had other expenses too. Not that they weren't willing to help the child earn more money -- in fact sometimes the girl woke up to find her mother ushering another trick into her room -- but the girl wasn't able to support the family by herself. How could she? You have to be able to name your price to get it. She was a little girl sent out of her home by her mother, standing on the side of the road waiting for the next rapist. What kind of value could she put on herself? How much fight could she muster when the middle aged man who picked her up told her what he thought she was worth?
And if she continued prostituting, if by the time she was 18 or 20 she had been sexually degraded thousands of times at her family's insistence, what kind of change would you expect her to make? Does she suddenly go out, saying to herself, "Now I'm worth something! Now I can really put a value on my services!" I've been at YANA four years now. I've heard a lot of women say that they were blessed, that they were fortunate, that they came from wonderful homes. I've never heard any of them say they were worth much money. That's what's wrong with assuming that because the women are worth a lot of money they'll know how to get it. They've been taught since they were little girls that they aren't worth anything.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
How Much Money Do Prostitutes Make? Part I
Lena Edlund and Evelyn Korn seem to know. They're a pair of economists who've written "A Theory of Prostitution," which was published a few years back in the University of Chicago's Journal of Political Economy. The theory was that prostitutes make "so much" because they are required to forgo the economic opportunity of becoming wives. As support for the "so much" money prostitutes make, Edlund and Korn cite to some newspaper articles claiming that prostituted women "can make as much as" various large amounts, and they cite to a study purporting to show that street prostitutes in Las Vegas make a few thousand dollars a year more than unskilled laborers. This study was based on asking women how much they were paid -- and then assuming that they wouldn't hesitate to tell a stranger just how little they would take to have sex.
It doesn't seem like much support for a very long paper -- filled with impressive-looking charts and equations and reaching some rather grandiose conclusions as to why all women aren't out hooking -- but I'm guessing that the authors didn't think they really needed any support. Doesn't everyone already know that prostitutes make the big bucks? "Why do prostitutes make so much money?" is a question that's all over the internet, and not many people dispute the premise. Here's what I know about actively prostituting women in Baltimore:
A lot of the time our women can't scrape together enough money for a pack of cigarettes. They buy singles. They bum them. They split a cigarette with a friend. Sometimes they pry butts out of the cracks in the sidewalks.
They line up to get the little hotel soaps and mini bottles of shampoo our donors give us. If they can get a pair of nice socks, they're thrilled. Getting a sanitary napkin or a new pair of underpants is even better.
The older women go without blood pressure medication because they can't afford the few-dollar co-pay. They don't get enough to eat. A slice of pizza can be a pretty big treat.
Often, they've never gone on a vacation. Nobody has ever taught them to drive. They beg for something to give their grandchildren for Christmas.
They are homeless. Whether they're in a shelter, or under a bridge, or at the mercy of somebody who's given them a temporary room, they almost never have a place of their own.
And yet they're selling sex. And not just any sex, but, sometimes at least, the freaky stuff that's hard to get anywhere else. You'd think that would be worth a lot of money. I'll bet our friends Edlund and Korn could prove that they make a lot of money with their opportunity cost graphs. I have my own theory -- not likely to be published by U. of Chicago -- as to why anyone selling something that desirable might not be getting rich. I'll tell you about in Part II.
It doesn't seem like much support for a very long paper -- filled with impressive-looking charts and equations and reaching some rather grandiose conclusions as to why all women aren't out hooking -- but I'm guessing that the authors didn't think they really needed any support. Doesn't everyone already know that prostitutes make the big bucks? "Why do prostitutes make so much money?" is a question that's all over the internet, and not many people dispute the premise. Here's what I know about actively prostituting women in Baltimore:
A lot of the time our women can't scrape together enough money for a pack of cigarettes. They buy singles. They bum them. They split a cigarette with a friend. Sometimes they pry butts out of the cracks in the sidewalks.
They line up to get the little hotel soaps and mini bottles of shampoo our donors give us. If they can get a pair of nice socks, they're thrilled. Getting a sanitary napkin or a new pair of underpants is even better.
The older women go without blood pressure medication because they can't afford the few-dollar co-pay. They don't get enough to eat. A slice of pizza can be a pretty big treat.
Often, they've never gone on a vacation. Nobody has ever taught them to drive. They beg for something to give their grandchildren for Christmas.
They are homeless. Whether they're in a shelter, or under a bridge, or at the mercy of somebody who's given them a temporary room, they almost never have a place of their own.
And yet they're selling sex. And not just any sex, but, sometimes at least, the freaky stuff that's hard to get anywhere else. You'd think that would be worth a lot of money. I'll bet our friends Edlund and Korn could prove that they make a lot of money with their opportunity cost graphs. I have my own theory -- not likely to be published by U. of Chicago -- as to why anyone selling something that desirable might not be getting rich. I'll tell you about in Part II.
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