“I sell my sex, when people have sex with me, and I want to have sex with them for money.”
“And I don’t think it’s improper, I don’t feel bad about it,” Debbie, the window-brothel sex worker we spoke to in Amsterdam, continued. “I still respect myself because sex is a thing. Sex is to me like shaking somebody’s hand. The question is, ‘Do you mean it, or is it for the money?'”
Previously, we addressed prostitution as a capitalistic endeavor, the necessary outgrowth of the world’s oldest profession. The most important aspect of capitalism is supply and demand. If someone has a demand, another someone will supply the product to fill it.
Everything can be bought if people are willing to buy it, and, therefore, everything has a price. Sex is no different.
But sex isn’t just a commodity in prostitution. Sex always involves a bartering system, a give and take. Everyone who decides to have sex – with a significant other, someone they’ve just met, or a prostitute – has to pay for that desire, that demand for the supply.
People who have sex “for free” pay emotionally in the form of breakups, divorces, facing their one-night stand in the light of the next day and hiding their activities from people who don’t need to know. These same people who have sex “for free” pay physically if they contract STDs, get pregnant, have an abortion or just experience side effects from birth control pills. And these people who get it on “for free” pay out of their wallets when they buy contraceptives, lube and sex toys, or when they pay child support, buy their potential partner drinks before they take them home or rent a hotel room for a private night out.
When you think about all sex in terms of cost, prostitution almost seems cheap. People who have sex for money deal with the same emotional and physical baggage as those who have “free” sex, and their fiscal payments are similar or even smaller.What is the difference? Prostitution puts a visible monetary price tag on sex in the place of the invisible price tags we check every day before we engage “freely.”
What do these price tags look like? What do you get for the price you pay?
In Amsterdam, 50 Euro buys you, on average, 15 minutes of a standard sex act: oral or vaginal intercourse. In Dallas, the average escort service charges by the hour, at a rate of $200 and up for the same services. In both Amsterdam and Dallas, prices vary depending upon location, the prostitute’s venue, including street walking, window brothels or private clubs, the service requested, prostitutes’ personal preferences and comfort zones and the time required for the acts.
The top of the ladder in Amsterdam is a private club called Yab Yum, where three hours costs as much as 7,000 Euro, for all the amenities of a five-star hotel, as well as “beautiful and friendly girls.” These women’s job – to converse with and entertain their johns, as well as sleep with them – harks back to the tradition of the courtesan, which dates to the fourth century B.C.E. or before. The courtesan is romanticized in popular culture in characters like Nicole Kidman’s Satine in the 2001 movie “Moulin Rouge.”
No matter what the situation costs or how we try to understand it, prostitution is essentially a verbal contract between two people, and money seals the deal.
The first step in obtaining a prostitute on the streets of the Red Light District is to approach her window and indicate the desire to buy her services. Before the client steps inside the brothel, he or she negotiates prices, sex acts and length of time.
At this point and at any time during the encounter, the prostitute has the right to reject or accept anyone and any act she pleases. As Debbie told us, “My pussy is my pussy.”
The client pays as he steps in the door, and the woman checks the money for counterfeiting. She also inspects the client’s genitalia for signs of disease before washing them herself over a sink in her room. She allows the client to stay if he or she seems clean, though the prostitute is also sure to use a condom or dental dam, no matter what.
Only after all of this does the sex act take place. The condom or dam is placed onto the client’s penis or vagina, and the two perform the deed agreed upon in the first negotiations. The prostitute then removes the contraceptive with a paper towel and disposes of it. The client can wash up and leave, and the prostitute will also wash to prepare for the next client. As quickly and easily as that, the service is negotiated, paid for, set up, enacted, and completed.
Then the red light comes back on, and the prostitute starts again to capitalize on the service she can provide.
Mallory Harwood and Heather Neale studied and researched prostitution in Amsterdam for five weeks under the Richter International Fellowship, sponsored by the University Honors Program.This series will run every Tuesday and Wednesday.
