There’s a joke I remember hearing for the first time as a teenager – however much it can be called a joke.
‘If you f**k a prostitute and don’t pay her, is it rape or shoplifting?’
I never felt comfortable with it at the time. I had no real understanding of the sex industry but I didn’t really get why it was supposed to be funny. I could never quite put my finger on why.
Content warning: This article includes descriptions of sexual assault
Then, a couple of years ago, I was sexually assaulted by a porn producer while working. It was captured on camera.
I was bare, blindfolded, bound and gagged in his studio. It was at this point that he leaned in to me and said, ‘I can do whatever I want to you, and you cannot stop me.’
It was at this point that I froze.
I’d worked with this producer twice before, and had been happy each time. We’d filmed a scene earlier that day, and it had gone well. I had no reason to expect that the boundaries I’d set with him previously wouldn’t be respected, and yet, with the cameras rolling, they seemed to have vanished.
There was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t even say no.
Sadly, due to common misconceptions of the porn industry – that it’s violent, exploitative, that I’m willingly putting myself in danger – some people might even say that I deserved it.
Some people who’ve experienced sexual violence talk about going into a survival mode, and that’s exactly what I did.
After he had finished and untied me, I compartmentalised what had happened. I pushed it to the back of my mind and tried to do what I could to get on with my day. I even filmed the last scene we had planned together.
At the end of the shoot, I took my money, left his house, sent him a message saying that I’d no longer feel comfortable working with him again, and blocked him.
I never went to the police. It was only a few days later when what happened began to truly sink in. Even if I had decided to go at that point, what would I have said?
Going to the police as a sex worker is like a game of roulette. I could have met an officer who took what I had to say seriously. Or I could have had someone who dismissed me entirely. I wasn’t willing to take that risk.
As far as I know, the scene is still for sale on his website, and at this point, I don’t care enough to have strong feelings about that. The idea of even attempting to get it taken down feels like more trouble than it would be worth.
The assault shook me. I had always taken safety precautions whenever I went to set – trying to vet producers and fellow performers, checking in with friends, doing my research – but none of this would have stopped me being assaulted. I’d relied on experience, my community and my own intuition – where did I go wrong? Where had I made myself vulnerable?
The next time I went back to set, it was for a producer I had worked for before, but now I couldn’t even trust the knowledge of my previous experiences to keep me safe.
Violence against us becomes minimised, dismissed, and reduced to the butt of a joke
This story might be shocking, but thankfully, it’s also rare. I’ve worked in porn for six years, and this is the only negative experience I’ve had.
Despite the constant narrative that the porn industry is rife with abuse, this has been far from my own experience, and many of my colleagues would say the same. We rely on sharing information between us to keep ourselves safe, because no one else will.
The truth is, I’m not your ‘ideal’ victim – but I want my victimhood to be taken seriously, regardless of the circumstances under which the assault happened. And by everyone – the police, the criminal justice system, the media, and the public.
As a sex worker, taking our victimhood seriously means believing us when we say we have been harmed on our terms, and not trying to force us into boxes of victimhood and exploitation without our consent.
When you tell us that our work is inherently full of violence, that we should expect rape and assault each time we go to work, then we have no ability to distinguish between interactions that harm us, and those where we have fully consented.
Understanding consent means understanding our right to say ‘yes’ as well as our right to say ‘no’ to what happens to us, and under what circumstances that consent happens.
When you perpetuate the idea that sex work – whether that’s porn, escorting or street work – is just naturally full of violence, you make those of us who work in it complicit in our own victimisation.
It leads to the idea that we should expect – or even that we deserve – to be assaulted, raped, and worse. That our decisions, however free or encumbered by economic and social circumstances they are, mean that we have knowingly placed ourselves in danger – and so only have ourselves to blame.
It means that violence against us becomes minimised, dismissed, and reduced to the butt of a joke. Like the raped prostitute.
How could I have gone to the police when a friend had previously done the same, and was turned away, told she should have expected it in her line of work?
This isn’t an isolated experience either, as 69% of sex workers wouldn’t report harm against them to the police because they fear – or have previously experienced – stigmatisation. Simply, they feel alienated by both the police and the courts – with a shocking 72% of sex workers also not reporting sexual violence and assault due to fear of being labelled as criminals themselves.
Institutions that are supposed to protect us just don’t take us seriously. This is why I never got justice for what happened to me, and why sex workers across the UK are continually let down when we face harm and violence.
I don’t need any new laws to protect us – all I ask is that we are taken seriously when we talk about harm against us, that our voices are valued, and that our stories aren’t taken from our hands in an attempt to justify laws and policies that make our working conditions even less safe.
Eliminating porn and the porn industry won’t help – removing our means of earning money without providing viable alternatives only pushes us into poverty.
Instead, we need to move away from the idea that sex work is inherently violent, or that we should expect to be hurt in our work, or that we’re too damaged to consent to whatever happens to us.
It means having a justice system that takes sex workers seriously – and a transformation of how we deal with sexual violence more broadly.
It means changing laws that keep sex workers from having autonomy over their lives and working conditions, and it means listening to them – truly listening to them – believing them as experts, and uplifting their voices to create the changes they need to see in law, policy and society.
We need to allow sex workers the same validation when they are harmed as any other survivor. We need to give them power.
People’s attitudes need to change, too. And you can start by not telling that joke any more.
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