On Walpurgis Night

Many years ago in the late afternoon of a cold spring day, my best friend and I sat in her bedroom facing one another. Sitting on two straight-backed chairs, our cold-chapped knees barely touched. With our identical woolen skirts and white blouses,the uniform of our Catholic high school, we may have looked like bookends turned to face one another. We were not looking at each other, but the ouija board balanced on our laps.

We played that board so many times we knew when "it" was "cranky" or "talking nonsense." That afternoon, "it" was as eager to please as the two 15 year-olds who asked it questions, about the future and the past.

It was my turn. "Who was I?"
Skating across the lacquered board, the three-legged pointer spelled a name: "R-O-S-E."
"When?" I asked.
"1-9-0-1," was the reply, but before I could ask another question, it spelled out this word: "P-R-O-S-T-I-T-U-T-E."

"That figures," snorted my friend, who considered my marathon petting sessions too risque for a nominal virgin. She was definitely of the mind that sex before marriage ruined the merchandise, while I thought sex was the best investion since the proverbial sliced bread and certainly not as boring. So the news that I may have been a prostitute in a former life did not upset me; in fact, it made perfect sense.

Of course I had little knowledge of what life may have been like for a prostitute around 1900, as I had no inkling that my joy in discovering sex would be tainted by hearing what other girls considered normal or complaints of boyfriends who said I asked for it too often, and the convoluted logic that made me think that if I was really desirable, then I shouldn't have to ask for it. All the whispers and self-doubt that separate us from what should be a life-long delight.

So it is appropriate on Walpurgis Night, the night of women's magic -- a night of pursuit, love, loss and death -- that I speak of the prostitutes of whom I knew so little on that spring afternoon almost 40 years ago.

Over the past month I have read a stack of reports, articles, and interviews to determine if decriminalization or legalization have made any difference in the lives of women employed as prostitutes, both those who work in brothels as well as street walkers. What I found is that for prostitutes in Sweden, New Zealand, Netherlands, or Australia, decriminalization and legalization of their trade has not removed the stigma of engaging in sex work. Even where sex work is legal within certain zoned areas of a city, prostitutes are reluctant to press charges against an abusive client because of the lack of support from local law enforcement. Complaints of police harassment were cited in most reports I read. Some prostitutes did not want to even register as members of the sex trade, because they felt that, once registered, the stigma could never be erased. Based on the reports that I read, and I sought a balance of both pro and con, legalization or decriminalization do not bring the expected benefits to sex workers, except for an elite few.

By no means am I suggesting that we should not continue to advocate for harm reduction for sex workers, whether through decriminilization, legalization or special laws against trafficking. But it is important to recognize that the problems afflicting sex workers run deeper. That the stigma attached to the work they do is also attached to what is the greatest source of power for a man or woman. When we are cut off from our sexuality, we are crippled in both mind and body. Society's rigid view of what is normal is a distorted mirror in which we can never see ourselves as desirable sexual beings.

Professor Elizabeth Wood of Sex in the Public Square , tells us to put down the distorted mirror and see that none are exempt from the problems afflicting sex workers:

1. No women are safe until sex workers are safe. As long as being a prostitute makes one a target for violence, and as long as that violence can be perpetrated with much less risk of sanction, and as long as all women are potentially identifiable as prostitutes, no women are safe until sex workers are safe.

2. An injury to one is an injury to all. When we don’t speak up to protect the safety of other groups, we cannot expect much support when we ourselves are targeted. Solidarity is important across groups of workers. Stigma and bias only serve to divide us.

From : Remembering Sex Workers on Workers Memorial Day .

In her post, Prof. Wood recalls how at a vigil held this past December, the names of 60 sex workers murdered in 2006 were read during the ceremony. I think of those that have been murdered and assaulted each year, going back in time, back to the beginning of the last century, these women whose deaths were anything but natural. For them, and especially for one who may have been named Rose, the candles are burning on this Walpurgis Night.