Scarlet Exodus a Study of Sex Work in Finland
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Scarlet Exodus A study of sex work in Finland Anna Kontula Translated by Mark Waller Contents Contents Tables and figures Acknowledgements 1. Introduction The early history of prostitution research Prostitution and the great sex wars Sex and social control Sex work research 2. Prostitution in Finland [21] Sex workers Kinds of sex work Client contact The risks of sex work Pimping Legislation 3. Stigma Whore myths Everyday stigmatization A double life Multiple peripheries Demarcations Copyright Anna Kontula 2008 English translation Mark Waller 2011 4. Work Emotional work Setting limits Published as electronic book in 2011 by Professional ethics Cost efficiency Precarity? 5. Sex Into Kustannus To climax or not to climax? Hämeentie 48, 00500 Helsinki, Finland Care giving www.intokustannus.fi The route to sexual independence www.into-ebooks.com Tolerance Explicit rules The whoring urge First published in Finnish as Punainen eksodus – Tutkimus seksityöstä Suomessa in 2008 by 6. Control Force and free choice Client relations Birth of a sex worker Carnivalism Rebellion Like Kustannus Uudenmaankatu 10, 00120 Helsinki, Finland 7. Summary www.like.fi Appendix Empirical material References Cover: Ville Sutinen Bibliography: Unpublished sources and internet sites Published sources ISBN 978-952-264-066-6 (EPUB) Tables and figures Table 1: Radical feminism’s attitude to prostitution Table 2: Estimates of the numbers of prostitutes operating in Finland Table 3: How client contacts are established Table 4: Interviewees’ experience of otherness before starting and during sex work To all sex worker activists throughout the world who dare to believe in universal human rights – Table 5: Constructing a theory within critical realism though there’s still a long way to go. Figure 1: The sex hierarchy: the magic circle and its perimeters Figure 2: The sex hierarchy: the struggle over the boundaries between acceptable and reprehensible sex Figure 3: Finnish prostitution in 2005 by duration of stay and degree of professionalism Figure 4: The age distribution of prostitutes in Finland Figure 5: Position in the sexual order and access to resources, according to Gail Pheterson 1. Introduction Acknowledgements Good research is never just one person’s input. This study received comments and suggestions from a whole array of colleagues, most importantly my supervisors Ilkka Arminen and Matti Kortteinen. All in That night the people of Israel left Rameses and started for Succoth. There were about 600,000 all, the journey was a smooth one. I would like to thank my examiners Osmo Kontula and Riitta Jalli- men, plus all the women and children. Many people who were not Israelites went with them, along noja for their invaluable contribution. Thanks also to the Rebel Base researchers’ collective for the res- with the many flocks and herds. (Exodus 12, 37-38) torative coffee breaks at two in the morning and to the Megaphone gang for their unprejudiced stance. My special thanks are due to the sex workers who shared their thoughts with me about their work and lives. My thanks also to those experts on commercial sex who provided interviews, help and advice, and who also acted as gatekeepers: Johanna Sirkiä, Jaana Kauppinen and Sami Kivelä. Why is it that in Finland sex is for sale? In trying to find an answer to this question I have met hun- For the financial support I received to enable me to gather my research material, my thanks go to dreds of sex workers and interviewed dozens of them. Though they include people who are brutally for- the Workers’ Educational Fund, Kone Foundation, the Finnish Educational Fund, the Research Foun- ced into sex work and, by contrast, others who are career sex workers, the metaphor that best describes dation of the University of Tampere, the Emil Aaltonen Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation the experience of most of them is that of an ‘exodus’. The Scarlet Exodus thus encapsulates a problem: and the Department of Sociology and Social Psychology. why do some women decide to sell sex by choice, or at least without being subject to any obvious coer- Finally, I would like to thank my family for their forbearance and support. At times our home re- cion. sembled a railway station at rush hour rather than a nuclear family. In particular my gratitude goes to Exodus usually refers to the story in the Bible where the Israelites leave Egypt for the Promised my partner for his wisdom and patience. In addition to giving much moral support, he commented on, Land. Though they had been subjects of the Pharaoh, their situation in Egypt had not been totally corrected, edited and checked most of my manuscript. bleak. They had not been slaves, but had worked for overseers chosen from among their own people. Anna Kontula They had owned a considerable amount of property and mingled successfully with the mainstream Tampere, 30 June 2010 population. Later, in a moment of misgiving when they were in the desert, they longed for the fleshpots of Egypt. Thus, the reason for their exodus was not directly to do with survival, but rather the desire to live in complete freedom. This is the first thread in the sex worker’s story: the desire and opportunity to exchange a restricted and predictable life for one of personal autonomy. People in Finland do not end up selling sex due to dire poverty. International studies show that because of the risks entailed by sex work, those who take it up require fairly good baseline resources (Ruenkaew 2003, 114). The decision to take up sex work lies more in the realm of power than economics. This is not to suggest, of course, that sex work is problem-free. The second thread concerns an understanding of sex work as a journey that has a beginning and an end, with setbacks or then days when even the sea itself seems to part for you. Like the Israelites of old, sex workers enjoy the protecti- on of neither the state nor the authorities. Amidst the dangers of the wilderness, they have only divine protection (compare Kintula & Laakso, 2007) and their own resourcefulness to keep them from harm. The metaphor of a journey serves to underline the fact that in Finland sex work is more often than not undertaken only as a short-term career [1] and is located temporally, situationally, socially and symbo- lically somewhere else, far off from everyday life. The third cohesive thread in this study concerns the agency of those making the journey. They may have had a domineering God, but the Israelites also followed a will of their own. Much of the research literature depicts prostitutes as passive victims, but after spending time with them I soon realized that sex workers are protagonists, just as the Israelites were: to the extent permitted by their circumstan- ces, they actively strive for what is best. As interviewees, too, sex workers came across as anything but objects. They were prepared to commit themselves to lengthy interviews, and some were even prepared to comment on the initial draft of this study. It is for this reason that this book resonates with a spirit of emancipation and the viewpoints of sex workers themselves. What, then, of the scarlet colour of this exodus? Clearly, it refers to the main protagonists of this book, because scarlet is the colour traditionally associated with selling sex, with the harlot. Roman Catholic paintings depict the Bible’s best-known prostitute, Mary Magdalene, dressed in scarlet [2]. In the Middle Ages all sex workers were obliged to wear a scarlet bracelet so as not to be confused with respectable women (Niiranen 1986, 486). We hear of ‘red collar workers’ and in cities there are red light areas. Even as recently as the 1960s, Finnish prostitutes would wear red clothes to attract poten- tial customers. Scarlet is the colour of whoredom. Scarlet has another significance. In Christian art red clothing worn by a woman referred to sin, but respects. Poverty was long regarded as a purely symbolic motive for selling sex. (Ryan 1997, 21-29; on a man it symbolized high authority (Gardner 2006, 263). Why was it that the sexes were coded Sloan & Wahab 2000, 460; Bell 1994, 66-70.) As with fear of sexually transmitted diseases, assump- in such diametrically opposed ways? It was a woman’s duty to obey, so was it intrinsically sinful and tions concerning dysfunctional behaviour pervaded research (e.g. Silbert & Pines 1981; Weisberg 1985; wrong for women to wear the insignia of power? Or did prostitution signify something that undermin- Farley etc. 2003, 34, 58). ed the power structure of the Christian patriarchy? Alongside the medicalization tradition, another typical feature of prostitution research has been the The exodus is also scarlet because red is both the colour of power and resistance. It does not “refer ‘victim perspective’, which is no longer rooted in biological factors but in those of personal history and merely to movement or to some expected promised land, but rather to a particular movement that environment. Lurking behind the victim perspective is the assumption that no one (no woman at least) transforms the field of power” (Termonen 2006, 329). One theme running throughout this book con- would freely opt to do sex work, because selling sex is itself proof (in normal women) of dysfunction. cerns the relationship between sex and power, with commercial sex marking the point where the two According to this perspective, the only possible motive for prostitution is the desire to escape extreme intersect. poverty or the threat of physical violence. The victim perspective stresses ‘having to do’ sex work or We will begin by looking at the main concepts used in research on commercial sex and the current ‘being driven’ into the sex trade, and so the choices that sex workers make are of no consequence, hen- status of prostitution in Finland.