I was a whore. An entirely awesome prostitute. Working alone through an independent agency. The sex I had was legal.
No, I do not feel shame. During this time, I was raped, beaten up, threatened, bullied, coerced and brought into the world of drugs. I was a maverick, working alone, and the UK law is ok with lone prostitutes and their clients.
If I had tried to increase my margin of safety and emotional support by sharing my flat with a couple of other girls, we would all have ended up in jail on your tax pennies for being a brothel.
France has recently just made paying for sex illegal , and many people here in the UK are advocating we do the same. Let me convince you otherwise. People prostitute for lots of reasons, but usually the root cause is our social system has failed them. Many of my friends were also sex workers.
We'd hook up for drinks, chat, gossip. Like most, I hadn't chosen to be a prostitute. If you insist there was choice, then these choices were direly constrained. I was unemployed, alone, unentitled to benefits, and all the 'institutional social nets' really couldn't care less.
