I think it’s natural that when presented with talk about sexual abuse and coercion that we automatically picture something brutal and clear-cut. Most of us are exposed to media which depicts rape as involving violent physical force fairly frequently, and when we hear about it related to sex work it’s often with stories of pimps beating sex workers and taking them to clients whilst they have no say in it.
There are many ways a sex worker can be trapped in a situation by a client without physical force, in which they could technically leave… but are discouraged from doing so by an implicit threat and/or by social convention.
One type of social date I’ve been invited on many times, particularly as a trans guy now whose clients are mostly gay and bisexual men, is an outing to a nude sauna. They’re set up so that you arrive together, pay at a desk and are given towels and a locker key and such, and then you go to a changing room together and place all of your clothes and personal effects into a locker. You’re naked with nothing but a towel once inside and it’s impossible for you to carry your phone with you – you’re in very hot sauna rooms and swimming pools which would destroy any kind of device you took with you. Even bringing some money or condoms in a small bag, there’s nowhere dry to place it and anyone could easily steal it. This situation means you need to leave with the other person or have them open the locker to retrieve your items when you leave.
On a social date out at dinner, there are all sorts of pressures like the awkwardness of walking out on someone or telling them off for touching you when you’re in public, but assuming you can overcome that you can leave without issue. When your clothes and phone and house keys are all in a locker your client has a key to, suddenly it’s not so easy. The scene you theoretically cause if you want to leave becomes much more significant if you have to argue about whether or not you can access your belongings in front of others, especially in a place where they can mention your profession and out you as a whore to everyone in the vicinity.
If you’re meeting a client for an overnight booking, especially if you’ll be staying in a hotel, it’s highly likely that after arriving the client will expect you to leave your belongings in the hotel room or their home. They can claim this is for the convenience of not having to carry around a bag or unneeded coat whilst you go to dinner, and they might even believe that and think nothing else of it. However, this has the effect of meaning you cannot leave the date without ultimately going back to the hotel or their home to retrieve your things even if the date goes poorly. It puts you in a position of not wanting to upset them and risk losing access to your belongings. You are more likely to put up with things that you otherwise wouldn’t, to avoid that sort of problem.
I have found that even if we assume clients aren’t thinking about how holding your belongings hostage in a hotel room or a locker, they react very poorly if you try to avoid it because they’re confronted with that reality. On one overnight, when we went to leave the hotel room I picked up my bag. The client paused at the door and told me to leave it. When I said I wanted it with me, to put my phone in and to carry a jacket in case it got cold, alongside my wallet and umbrella, he became uncomfortable. He insisted he could carry my jacket ad that I’d have no need of the other things and could put my phone in my pocket. I didn’t give in, and ultimately he seemed to realize how predatory it came across that he was trying to force me to leave my belongings behind so I would be unable to leave early if I desired. It unsettled him.
I’ve had many clients do this. It’s hard to say how many are intentionally creating a scenario where they can get away with worse behaviour by setting up circumstances where it’s not worth the awkwardness and inconvenience of trying to leave. Sometimes a client might get aggressive and you’re forced to weigh up the risk they’ll harm you with the need to get your belongings back. Being in a sauna is a uniquely frustrating one, because it’s not like I could give up all my belongings and walk out naked!
There’s a popular segment from Always Sunny in Philadelphia (which people have made endless memes of) where Dennis details how he gets women to have sex with him on cruises or in similar settings. He details how he respects if they say no, but that he creates a situation where they wouldn’t say no because of the “implication” of what he would do to them if they did.
With a strong will, a person can mitigate the strength of the effect of these kinds of coercive situations. If you’re someone who struggles to say no or to upset people, or who freezes up during conflict, you’re going to find it more difficult. Unfortunately, the fact that a person can technically leave is often used to argue that they weren’t really coerced or trapped or abused.
So, what do we do? I don’t like to raise issues without even attempting a solution, so I’m going to offer some of the things I personally try:
- Pre-empt ways you might have your belongings held from you and either avoid it happening or make a plan for what you would do to get them back and under what circumstances you’d need to do that. For example, if bringing an overnight bag or a bag for a longer trip, only bring things you could stand to lose and do not leave behind your keys or wallet or phone. If possible, keep your bag with you. If you’re going to a sauna, insist on getting your own locker – and if you need an excuse to do that, bring a large coat or an excessively large bag so that you need the extra locker space and keep your own locker key!
- Refuse clients who ask you to go on trips with them unless you trust them enough that you feel the risk is low. This can obviously only be done if you can afford to turn down clients. An alternative, if you are desperate for money, is to suggest different types of dates that you will feel less trapped in.
- Be the one in control of accommodation, like having a client send you money and booking a hotel in your own name whilst you keep the key, when reasonable.
- Make your own “implications” to counter theirs. Off-handedly mention having told friends where you are, tell them you have someone you need to call and check in with once you get back to the hotel room that night, talk about housemates or a partner or another sex worker you know who you’re going to meet in the morning. All of these things are a deterrent for a client who is thinking about doing you harm, because they demonstrate someone cares and will notice if you’re harmed.
- Have a prepared excuse, or a friend who is going to call you at a certain time, so that if necessary you can take the call/make the excuse and grab your belongings and leave, without panicking in the moment about how you’ll get out of it.
I’ve definitely not always made good plans. Once I was on an overnight booking with a client and started to get a bad feeling as we were headed into a bar, so I let him step in ahead of me and then ran down an alley nearby and all the way from there to the nearest train station at the end of the road before he could work out what happened. Not my finest moment. I also then threw up all over the train carriage because I’d had too much to drink during dinner with the client before (his pushiness for me to keep drinking wine being what gave me the bad feeling).
That being said, any way you can find to get yourself out of a dangerous situation is good enough, and you can always learn from it and do better the next time. You can’t learn from a situation if you end up dead, and significant trauma is going to impede you much more than some embarrassment about running down a road and throwing up in a train carriage will, trust me.
Jack Talks About Sex Work 