Australian studies in law, crime and justice

Pimps and patrons : the "boys" in the business

Published in:
Working girls : prostitutes, their life and social control / Roberta Perkins
ISBN 0 642 15877 0
Canberra : Australian Institute of Criminology, 1991
(Australian studies in law, crime and justice series)

By now the reader should be used to the fact that prostitution consists of many facets. For instance, the workplace or workspace, the price structure, equipment (such as B & D items, condoms, or clothing), working conditions, are all examples of inanimate components. The owner of premises, the brothel manager, parlour receptionist, the prostitute, the client, the pimp, are examples of the human components. To date we have spent most of the time investigating one component, the prostitute. We will now deal briefly with two male figures, the pimp and the customer. All the human components relate to one another in different ways. The prostitute, for example, treats the client as a business contact. In spite of the physical intimacy of this contact, she offers superficial affection and will restrict the kinds of activities she will do with him. With her pimp, on the other hand, she offers loving affection, and will be prepared to maximise their sexual activities in an emotional union of mutual pleasure.

Let us begin with the pimp. "Pimp" is a term often interchangeable with "panderer" or "procurer", and possibly derived from the French "pimpant", meaning seductive (Oxford Dictionary etymology). In universal legal terms it refers to a person, usually a male, who "lives on the earnings of a prostitute", even if the prostitute is happy with the arrangement. Popular culture has created an image of the pimp as a brutal standover man who uses intimidation tactics to take most of the prostitute's earnings for his own keep. It is this image along with a common notion that the man should be the breadwinner not the woman that underscores the law on "pimping". For most prostitutes, however, men usually described as "pimps" are their lovers or husbands, whom they choose to support. Often these men act as protector or "sitter", driver, or have some other task established for them by their prostitute girlfriends or wives. There are many varying points of view on the role of the pimp. In one American study (Collier 1965, p. 120) it was claimed that most prostitutes have pimps and in England one writer (Mancini 1963, p. 73) thought that 80 per cent of prostitutes had them in the 1960s. Silbert and Pines' (1982b, p. 395ff) study of San Francisco street and juvenile prostitutes in the 1980s indicates that two-thirds of the women supported men. In West Germany the New South Wales Select Committee (1986, p. 96) found that "the practice of male 'pimping' has been almost institutionalised throughout the large cities." In Sydney in the 1960s and 1970s brothel worker Lisa informs us that "nearly all the girls had blokes (pimps)". Street prostitute Lee at the same time points out:

There were plenty of pimps around 20 years ago. Most of these hoons [pimps] only had one lady, but there were the few clever ones who managed to have two - one at one end of Kings Cross and another at the other end - and spend their whole night running backwards and forwards between them.

In Sydney it is mostly an arrangement not unlike ordinary heterosexual coupling, but in America it seems closer to the popular stereotype:

A player [pimp] may have anywhere from one to twenty ladies, although two or three is most common. While the woman is walking the streets, hanging out in bars, or patrolling hotel lobbies, the player is out "on the set", moving through the "scene" of the city's night life (Milner 1972, p. 9).

Gail Sheehy describes the behaviour of pimps in New York:

The street pimp demands his girls bring in from $200 to $250 a night. The girls rarely see more than 5 per cent. The pimp pockets all and doles out "walking around money", $5 at a time. Because of his neurotic need to prove total control, the pimp makes no allowance for a girl who can't meet her quota (Sheehy 1973, p. 5).

Karen, a Sydney prostitute of the 1950s, describes a ploy used by her pimp to get her involved withz him and sex work initially:

This guy used to live off girls and he was the one who got me started off on the game. He introduced me to other girls whom I thought were terribly glamorous, not the type I thought prostitutes should look like. This hoon kept telling me how much money I could make. I was mad for the guy at the time and would have done anything for him. He told me he owed a couple of guys money and couldn't I do it for him a couple of times to help him out. I must have been a real dope, but he was so persuasive and, as I said, I was mad over him.

We have already seen how Jeanette was first put on the street by her husband (pp. 215-16) and how Kelly agreed to work for a lover in order to have him for herself (p. 261). Margaret first went on the street to work for a female pimp:

I was 13 and had run away from Ashfield [girl's reformatory] and it was my first time up the Cross. I met this lady of 30 something. She was really a mother figure and all these models were after her, but I got her. It was for her that I worked. She had other girls working for her on the street but I felt really secure with her. I remember the first time I went out and she was saying: "Go on, you can do it." I was standing in Victoria Street still in my school uniform with her saying: "It's OK, just ask them if they want a girl." She used to bash me around, but I never got it off the ground at that stage. I did a few hand jobs, but no sex.

Obviously love is a major medium by which pimps get women involved in prostitution just to support them. But, in case the reader might be persuaded to think that this is a common method of entry into the sex industry a glance back to Figure 4.5 shows that only 5.5 per cent of the sample of 128 prostitutes entered prostitution to support a man.

Pimps are often drug dealers, petty criminals with one foot outside the law, or men seeking petty power. Margaret:

I had this guy, a pimp. Really tall and skinny he was, and he slept with a shotgun under his bed. He had four girls working for him. He was really mean, but in a strange sort of way I really felt safe with him around. I thought he was good because he supplied me with as much dope as I wanted. But I found I wasn't making any money. He was taking it all and just giving me dope.

Pimps in Munich, according to Barbara Yondorf, are responsible for 90 per cent of crimes associated with prostitution, while prostitutes only cause 10 per cent (Yondorf 1979, p. 423). But a number of crimes go undetected; assault of a pimp against a prostitute, for example. Silbert and Pines (1982b) found that over half their sample of 200 street and juvenile prostitutes were regularly beaten by their pimps:

In 50 per cent of these cases the women accepted it as a way of life, felt they deserved it, or were flattered by it as a sign of caring: [a prostitute told them] "It made him feel like more of a man and I felt it was my duty." (Silbert & Pines 1982b, p. 398).

There is a strong sense of masochism in this kind of attitude. Margaret also seemed to be constantly on the receiving end of some pimp's exploitation or brutalisation. She mentions another pimp who "upended me out of a top story window and held onto me by my heels". The sadomasochism apparent in these kinds of relationships might be an outcome of the pimp's own insecurity as a man having to depend on women for an income, or, as a lesson in fear (that is "leave me and you'll get worse treatment"). Karen discovered the extent of violence in her pimp when she attempted to leave him:

When I broke away from him eventually he gave me a bit of a hard time and one night he followed a girlfriend and I to a club, where he threw a bottle of beer at us. In the end I got some heavies to have a word with him and he stopped pestering me.

The role of the pimp in prostitution is very much overrated. Rather than simply brutalising there is another side to the relationship between pimp and prostitute. One German study, in fact, found that a quarter of the pimps end up marrying the women they had depended upon (Niss 1971, p. 13). This study also found that half of the pimps had emerged from broken homes, which might be responsible for the anger and aggression they unleash on the unfortunate prostitutes under their control. But there appears to be room for loyalties, alliances and even love in a world of broken dreams, shattered egos, lonely people and a subculture of violence. Benjamin and Masters found a side to the relationship rarely found in popular imagery:

[The pimp] is the only man a girl can talk to. When she comes home in the wee hours of the morning after drawing three freaks in a row, after being "burned" (robbed) and in general having a bad night, it's her pimp who understands. If she feels like sex (as opposed to work) the pimp is ready to oblige. If she is arrested, he is there with bail and lawyer and sympathy. Her pimp is her own private boyfriend who provides her with what little emotional warmth he is capable of (Benjamin & Masters 1964, p. 226).

But as has been said a number of times so far throughout this book, the pimp is a figure that has almost disappeared in Australian prostitution, unless you wish to take the literal meaning of the law and include every man (or woman) who falls in love with, lives with, marries, and is gladly supported in whole or in part by a prostitute.

The customer is very different to the pimp. Whereas the pimp is an irregular, often peripheral figure in prostitution, the man who seeks the services of a prostitute is a quintessential component in commercial sex. Quite simply, without him the business would not exist in the first place. As one prostitute put it: "I see all my customers as $20 bills with arms and legs." Thus, sexual relations in commercial sex is biproductive, with an economic gain for the woman involved and an erotic satisfaction for the male customers. Just as the client views the prostitute as nothing more than a sexual object, so the sex worker feels no obligation to humanise her relations with her customer. Most prostitutes are contemptuous of their clients as men who are cheating on a woman, viz. their wives, fiances, girlfriends. This, coupled with the blatant objectification of prostitutes as women, the base unimaginative lust in most clients, and their folly in paying for sex, are the main reasons for a disdain felt by many prostitutes towards their customers, and is the source for the various terms for them in the prostitutes' argot. "Mug", for instance, among Australian prostitutes has roughly the same meaning as "sucker" in American slang. American prostitutes use the term "trick", alluding to clients' attempts at manipulating for free sex, and also "john" in reference to the clients attempts to conceal their true identity beneath a common pseudonym. English prostitutes call their clients "punters", with the same essential meaning as on the racetrack: that is, they gamble their money away. But these conceptual attempts at providing the prostitutes with a sense of superiority over their clients have an ironic ring. Society, with its male and morality dominated values, perceives the client's interaction with the prostitute as a sex object, his polygynous nature, and his open sexuality as "normal" behaviour, while the prostitutes' promiscuity, economic drive and control over sexual interactions is considered "abnormal". Thus, the client-prostitute relation is complex and contradictory.

Very few studies have been made of clients of prostitutes (in Table 1.1 studies of mates generally in prostitution are less than I per cent of all prostitution studies). Charles Winick (1962, p. 289) was one of the first psychologists to focus on clients. In his study of 732 men who frequented prostitutes he argued that men who seek sex from prostitutes are disturbed in some way, evidence which has received much the same scepticism from later researchers as the earlier claims about prostitutes by psychoanalysts. More substantial was Martha Stein's (I 974) study of 1,230 clients of 64 American call girls. Hers was a remarkable piece of research involving observation and some psychoanalysis, by which she devised nine "types" of clients. Since many of the clients discussed by prostitutes in the present study seemed to fall into one or more of these "types", Stein's typology serves as good basic categorisation of a general client population.

The Opportunists: treat prostitutes purely as sexual repositories, establish no relationship with any of the women, and have minimal contact with them.

The Fraternisers: visit prostitutes in pairs or groups. Their visits are mainly male social affairs involving women only as peripheral companions.

The Promoters: seek personal satisfaction and peer prestige by encouraging other men to visit prostitutes they know. In return they expect emotional support from the women and a kind of non-sexual relationship with them.

The Adventurers: are mostly young men seeking sexual experimentation. They require a kind of therapeutic relationship with the women during their sexual explorations.

The Lovers: seek romantic attachments with prostitutes. They are usually older men who wish to rescue the women from a life of crime and corruption.

The Friends: are usually married, middle-aged and seek to have prostitutes as companions or second wives supplying sex on demand.

The Guardians: are usually the oldest "type". They see themselves as protectors of young prostitutes, perceived as "child-women".

The Juveniles: can be of any age but usually single. They prefer older prostitutes for the opposite reason to the "Guardians" seeking the younger ones. They want mother-figures.

The Slaves: wish to be dominated by prostitutes and seek humiliation in order to express homosexual, infantile, transvestite or exhibitionist fantasies.

Unlike Winick, who sought a universal character in clients, Stein found in them a sexual diversity that reflects the complex nature of the human male mind. The ratio of clients to each of these "types" varies considerably from one category to the next, from 4 per cent for the "Juveniles" to 17 per cent for the "Adventurers".

The numbers of clients seen by prostitutes in a given period of time vary according to the individual's personality, looks and number of services she is prepared to offer. It also varies according to the kind of prostitution, so that generally street prostitutes see a larger number of clients than brothel workers, who have more clients than private prostitutes. Figures 4.14 and 4.15 show the number of clients and percentage of regulars in the sample of 128 prostitutes.

According to Figure 4.14 the sample's average weekly number of clients is about 30 per woman. The women with above 60 clients are streetwalkers, while those below 20 are "call girls", escorts and part-time brothel workers. This average corresponds with some other studies. Stein ( 1974, p. 24), for instance, put the ratio of clients to prostitutes at 30: 1, and an earlier estimate for Sydney was 40 clients per prostitute a week (Wilson1971, p. 67). McLeod(1982, p. 12), however, estimated only 17 clients a week for her sample of Birmingham women. The latter probably reflects the high number of part-time workers in England.

Figure 4.14 : Number of clients per week (n=128)

Figure 4.15 : Percentage of clients of prostitutes (n=128) who are regulars

Taking the estimate for "professional" prostitutes in Sydney in a given week (p. 17) and the average number of clients per woman also in a week, we find that approximately 30,000 men visit these women each week. Of course, some prostitutes may see the same man, if he is in the habit of moving about among prostitutes quite frequently, while, on the other hand, a number of men visit prostitutes as little as only once in their lifetime. Also, a number of tourists see prostitutes when they visit Sydney. But, to simplify for the purpose of a statistical guide, if we take the 30,000 men as visiting prostitutes only once a week and all of the men are Sydney residents, we can estimate that about I in 40 Sydney men, or 2.5 per cent of the male population aged 15-64 years, visit prostitutes a week. (The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated population for Sydney at 30 June 1988 was 3,594,400. Approximately half of this number were males. The percentage of males between the ages of 15 and 64 years in the Australian male population was 65.8 per cent, or approximately two-thirds of all males. Thus, 30,000 clients of prostitutes a week in a Sydney population of 1,196,133 males aged 15-64 years is about I in 40 men). Four decades earlier Kinsey and his colleagues (1948, pp. 249-59) found that about two-thirds of all American men had visited a prostitute at least once in their lifetime, and 15 per cent to 20 per cent were regular visitors. Gagnon and Simon (1972, pp. 222-3) claim that there were drastic declines in clientele in the 1960s and 1970s due to the growth of permissiveness in the so-called "sexual revolution". But rather than a sudden "revolution", Kinsey and his co-workers visualised an "evolution" of sexual permissiveness throughout this century. In their study of American females 14 per cent of women born prior to 1900 had experienced pre-marital coitus, compared to 39 per cent of those born after 1900 (Kinsey et al. 1953, pp. 298-302). AIDS too has been held to blame for "killing" the sex business, and indeed there was a rapid decline of up to 50 per cent of client turnover in the few years following the public hysteria on AIDS. But this appeared much more catastrophic than it actually was, because all it did was speed up a process of decline that has been evident for at least a quarter of a century but probably began in the 1920s.

Figure 4.15 on percentage of regulars is a reflection of this position, with well over half the prostitutes having less than a fifth of their clients as regulars. In a commercially buoyant situation, not only would more men be visiting prostitutes more often but we could expect a regular clientele for individual prostitutes much higher than this ratio. The older prostitutes recall the 1960s when they turned over between 80 to I 00 clients in brothels per week each and at least half of these were men who saw them on a regular weekly to monthly basis. Prostitutes today complain that clients circulate among brothels much more than they use to, perhaps in search of women or premises still willing to see them without using condoms. The pattern of client regularity, though, varies between types of prostitution. Thus, while streetwalkers see the most clients, their rate of regulars is lowest, and among "call girls" they have the lowest number of clients but the highest ratio of regulars. Among brothel workers the ratio of regular clients tends to be intermediate between the two. Street and brothel prostitution tend to depend on passing trade, while "call girls" are more dependent on regular clientele.

Where do the clients come from? This can vary from woman to woman, depending on their age, appearance and type of prostitution. Cassandra, 38 years old and an East Sydney brothel worker says: "most of them are married, working-class guys, between 40 and 60." June, 29 years old, North Shore parlour worker: " 18 to under 30 years most of them, a mixture of married and single men, and I suppose 60/40, middle to working class." Kelly, 31 years old, street worker: "Majority are middle-aged, half would be married, a lot of Italians, Greeks, Lebanese." Martine, 26 years old, bondage mistress: "Very poor men cannot come to see us very often because our sessions are very expensive. We don't get Asians, Australian Aboriginal men, nor black men from different countries. Basically we get mostly Anglo men." Laura, 32 years old, "call girl": "About half are married, a lot have just gotten a divorce, and a lot of old men who can't see anybody anymore. I do have a fair share of lawyers and doctors, and those in the upper echelon with their Rolls and Bentleys. But there are also those who work on the railways and are labourers. I find it interesting because I get to meet men I wouldn't normally meet otherwise." The impressions of the prostitute sample are illustrated in Figures 4.16 and 4.17.

Figure 4.16 : Estimates of ratio of married men in clientele of prostitutes (n=128)

Figure 4.17 : Estimated class backgrounds of clients of prostitutes (n=128)

The consensus among the prostitute sample is that almost three-quarters of the women estimate their married clients to represent from a half to three-quarters of their clientele, while over two-thirds of the women felt that their clientele was either equally mixed working and middle-class men or of an indeterminate mixture of classes. It would seem that clients' class depends more on the location of the brothel or "call girl" than on the type of prostitution. Thus, in street and inner city brothels there is likely to be an indeterminate mixture of classes among clients, while clients visiting northern and eastern suburb brothels and "call girls" are likely to be predominantly middle class, and those visiting western and southern brothels to be predominantly working class. Combining data from both the sample and the women interviewed, the following client profile presents itself. The men are mostly middle-aged and married, with all social classes more or less equally represented, and a variety of ethnic backgrounds, except in B & D, where Anglo-Australian men, who are generally middle class, predominate.

Among other studies, Stein (1974) found that most of her call girl's clients were middle class and married; Velarde (1975, p. 113) found that most men visiting legal brothels and call girls in Nevada were married while those going to streetwalkers were single; and Burnstin and James (1971, p. 5ff) found that clients of Seattle prostitutes generally were mostly married, over 30 and half were professionals and businessmen. Decker's (1979, p. 169) midwest American streetwalkers' clients tended to be over 30, married and middle class. Thus, there seems to be a general agreement between these American studies and the present one.

Popular culture sometimes imagines love relationships occurring between prostitutes and clients. Movies have not failed to capitalise on this notion with male characters saving female prostitute characters from a continued life of "degradation" by falling in love with them (for example, Crimes of passion, USA 1984 & Candv Ragentag, Australia 1989) and "taking them away from all of that" (for example, Vice Squad, USA 1982). Once again, the reality is very different. Figures 4.18 and 4.19 show the sample's response to attraction to and relationships with clients.

Figure 4.18 : Frequency of attraction to clients by prostitutes (n=128)

Figure 4.19 : Relationships between clients and prostitutes (n=128)

As the figures illustrate, very few prostitutes are physically attracted to many of their clients, and even fewer develop relationships with them. The fact that a single prostitute in the sample never married a client is not to suggest that it is an impossible event (I know of at least two who have). The reason for the low frequency of attraction to clients is not that they are mostly repulsive men, since that is not true; clients are a broad representation of males in general, with some repulsive, some attractive and most average. There is a psychological resistance to the men by the women. They fall into a perceived category of men once they become clients. Just as clients, like the rest of the population, have preconceived notions about prostitutes which cloud reality, so the prostitutes have developed notions about clients as a particular male stereotype which keeps them from having a serious relationship with them. Just as most clients would not marry a "whore" (the antithesis of "chaste" women sought for marriage), so most prostitutes avoid relationships with clients. There is a sort of unwritten taboo on clients as lovers among prostitutes, and the women who do fall in love with and marry clients are generally pitied by the others. The taboo does not exclude expressing opinions about an attractive client, or even going on a date (that could be good for business), but most women avoid beginning a relationship because it could lead to love and marriage. The rationale of the taboo is self-preservation, because clients are men who cheat on other women and therefore cannot be trusted.

Earlier I discussed the limitations prostitutes put on services they will offer. Now it is time to see what men want from prostitutes in the first place. Figure 4.20 is a list of sexual acts most often requested of the prostitute sample by their clients.

There is an extraordinary almost endless repertoire of sexual requests from men, particularly in fantasy jobs. This demonstrates the remarkable sexual imagination of the human psyche. The mutual meeting ground for these limitless fantasies of the men and the limitations of the sex workers is the central dynamic of commercial sex transactions. Still, it would seem that prostitutes offer a broader range of sexual activities than the men's usual source of sex. The low ratio of coital only requests compared to "full French" and "part French and sex" could indicate that fellatio is refused by the men's wives and lovers. This would be particularly more so with older men. Stein (1974, p. 312) found that "the most common complaint about wives was that they would not stimulate their husbands orally". In Winick's (1962) study of clients 73 per cent sought out prostitutes for a sexual satisfaction their wives would not do. Even in the mid19th century Sanger's (1858-1937, p. 206) prostitutes told him the same thing. It is also true of the findings in the present study: men go to prostitutes not so much just to have sex, but to have something they can't get elsewhere. Of course, there are also many men who seek out prostitutes because they are young women, and others who respond to an unwritten male code of sexually "possessing" every woman in sight.

Figure 4.20 : Requests most often made to prostitutes (n=128) by clients

But sex is not all clients want. Streetwalker Kelly:

I usually get them mainly for company. I get a few who want to try kinky things, but most just want straight sex. I find they mainly just want to be with somebody, although they do have their sex as well. I suppose they think: "Oh well I better have sex since I'm paying for it." But their main interest is in talking to me.

Caroline says that many men are not particular:

I will say to them: "is there anything particular you would like?" and most of them say "No". I will give them a choice between full French and intercourse. I would rather give them French, so I try to talk them into that.

"Call girl" Laura feels that she is a refuge for weary workers:

Their requests are very unkinky, very straight-forward, very simple. Unlike a lot of American and European men, I find Australian men wanting nothing unusual. A lot of them really come to me for a little bit of affection. They don't ask for affection, but they appreciate what little affection you might show them. A good part of it is conversation. Not necessarily loneliness, but overwork. A lot are overworked guys who just want a little bit of relief.

Bondage mistress Martine speaks about her speciality clientele: "They most often want to be dominated physically, mentally and with some kind of torture or humiliation, or both."

Bondage and discipline, according to many prostitutes, is the fastest growing side of the sex industry. In ordinary brothels the women say that fantasy jobs are on the increase. It may be triggered by an item of clothing. June: "Fantasy requests increase dramatically when I'm wearing my rubber dress to about 10 per cent." Katherine: "About 25 per cent or 30 per cent of phone calls want kinky things, such as wanting me to wear nice underwear." Fetishism plays a large part. Kelly: "I have this one guy who just wants to fondle and kiss my feet." Bonnie: "I had boots on this particular night and he wanted me to kick him in the balls, harder and harder until he came." Katherine:

There's this bloke who wanted me not to wash my fanny for 24 hours. He simply liked crusty fannies. He was an old boy in his 70s who had a nanny when he was a child and she had a smelly fanny.

A comparison of clients' requests in Figure 4.20 with Table 4.7 showing requests rejected by prostitutes is instructive. Over 7 per cent of the most requested sexual acts are of the fantasy and bondage kind, and as many as 40 per cent of the prostitute sample will oblige with fantasy jobs or I I per cent who will perform heavy bondage. Thus, the most bizarre request will be complied with by some woman somewhere. As Caroline put it:

If a telephone caller is into heavy bondage we put him in touch with a bondage house. We tell him we can only cope with something light and simple. If he wants equipment and all the rest we send him elsewhere.

Figure 4.21 (overleaf) indicates the percentage of bondage and fantasy services requested by clients.

Quite obviously the 8 per cent of women who receive over 75 per cent of requests for bondage and fantasy services work in a bondage house, while the rest are women in ordinary brothels, "call girls" and streetwalkers who are sought for bizarre sexual services. Some, as we have seen, will agree to do fantasy jobs, light and medium bondage. But most find it too repugnant, particularly heavy bondage. The kind of job described by Martine below would repel most prostitutes, while the mistresses obviously got into the fun of it:

I made him jog on the spot naked with his knees up high, blindfolded, masturbating with one hand and a finger from his other hand up his anus, and rotating in a circle on the spot, with me belting him at the same time. It looked so fantastic that all the other mistresses in the staff room came and had a look.

Figure 4.21 : Percentage of bondage and discipline / fantasy requests made to prostitutes (n=128)

The fantasy below described by Fatale would be more palatable for most prostitutes, at least up to drawing and sucking blood:

I have one regular who's into a vampire fantasy, in which I am the vampire. He brings along the costume, black nightgowns and other things, and we re-enact a scene which involves both fantasy and B & D. You've got to be a good actress in this job, and it's good experience for an actress.

Sado-masochism is the sexual theme for most fantasies. Laura tell us of an experience of a girlfriend of hers:

This guy wanted her to dress in a Gestapo uniform and go out in the hallway of his hotel, knock on the door of his room, yelling: "Open up you dirty Jew", and hold a gun to his head.

The motivations for such bizarre performances obviously have a deep-seated psychosexual propulsion. It may not be as simple as Katherine suggests with her old man's passion for unwashed vaginas based on the odour of his nanny, and it is obviously more complex than the automatic response to conventional sex based on cultural socialisation. The limitless variety of requests would suggest an idiosyncratic and highly individualistic libido probably dependent on a life history of situations and events leading to the specific nature of the desire. How else would you explain one man's wish to be anally penetrated by any object, while another demands that the penetrating instrument be nothing else but a cucumber? There is a powerful urge to see bondage and fantasy enactments in terms of role reversal. If, for example, ordinary sex relations have sublimated sadomasochism, as the Freudians have been telling us for years, with males dominating females, then the transvestite fantasy of a male client represents a reversal of the situation. Many cultures in the past, including European medieval societies, have had rites of reversal, in which the sexes swap clothing or the king becomes a beggar and a beggar the king for a day. Perhaps bondage and fantasy in the sex industry is a human social need to relieve the burden of responsibility and power temporarily that is no longer socially recognised in the wider community. Mistress Kellie may have a point when she said: "Too much power and authority in their own life; I guess they want to feel what it's like on the other end." But many mistresses tell me that men of all classes visit them, except, as Martine noted, poor men do so less often because bondage sessions are expensive.

Other studies have attempted to explain the presence of explicit sadomasochism in modem society. Kinsey and his colleagues (1953, p. 677) found that only 3 per cent of females frequently responded erotically to sado-masochistic stimuli, compared to IO per cent of males, although 9 per cent of females did so infrequently compared to 12 per cent of males. Obviously men either need to express it more or they have more opportunities for doing so. Janus, Bess and Saitus (1977, p. 677), in their probe into the sexual lives of America's most powerful men, found that sado-masochism was preferred to coitus among the nation's top men- once again, the association of sadomasochism with socially ascribed power. Stein (1974) found 13 per cent of her call girls' clients falling into the "slave" category, a situation with a much higher ratio than appears among the clients of my prostitute sample.

Whatever the true nature of the client's desire for humiliation there is often a fine line between reality and madness in the bondage session, which is juggled by the mistress in control. Martine:

People go crazy in sessions sometimes, but, because we're usually dominant in the arrangement we can control the situation. I've had a couple of guys freak out; not on me, but get so scared. One tried to jump out of a top storey window once, but his dick was tied to the ceiling. Had his dick not been tethered he would have killed himself. We had to jump on him and hold him down, and he cried for about 15 minutes. They get pretty close to breaking down at times, but as a mistress you have to learn people's breaking point and you have to make up your mind whether you can take him to breaking point or not. If you decide to, you are then in a position of having to bring him back to reality.

For some men bondage is not a reversal of the power structure, but a role reversal situation enabling them to release emotions normally restrained. Bondage and fantasy in prostitution acts as a safety valve for a number of social tensions in men's daily lives.

Whilst most men may not decline telling other men that they visit prostitutes for "straight" sex, very few will ever disclose visits to a mistress. Although a temporary relief of male responsibility, it is still perceived as a de-masculating experience by most men, and whoever undertakes it has a suspect masculinity. Prostitutes understand this, which is why they keep customers secluded from one another in the bondage house. But what emerges from this apparent consideration for the sensitive nature of male peer approval is that the prostitutes become collaborators in an elaborate disguise of the truth about male sexuality, for which they are well paid. That is why the more bizarre and unmasculine the man's behaviour is in a session, the more he is willing to pay. It is the price of silence written into the so-called prostitutes' code of confidentiality. Prominent men are no different to other men and will also visit prostitutes from time to time. But the cover-up is more elaborate and the fee higher. Thus, the mystique of the prostitution industry is maintained. Wives and other women are convinced that only the most desperately lonely of men and men who habitually seek sexual partners as part of their unquenchable sex drive visit prostitutes. Men know about other men's visits to a brothel; that's part of the "boys club" syndrome. But they too are convinced that only "sick" men go to mistresses. This could not be further from the truth.

Bondage is sometimes assumed to channel potentially violent men into a harmless charade of violence. Bondage mistresses will reject this notion and point out that their clients are among the most sensitive and non-aggressive of men. Prostitution generally is also sometimes argued to be a sexual diversion that keeps the rape of women to a minimum. That too is untrue, as rape analysts like Susan Brownmiller (1975) will point out with their power thesis of rape. If others think that prostitutes are able to deal with male violence better than other women because they are somehow more "hardened", then they too are totally wrong. It is a concept carried to the highest authorities, as is clearly seen in the comment of the chief prosecutor in the famous English Yorkshire Ripper trial: "Some of the victims were prostitutes, but perhaps the saddest part of the case is that some were not." (The Times, London 28 July 1982)

Violence is an important issue in prostitution which has the widest implications for women in general because prostitutes are not beaten, raped, or murdered simply because they are prostitutes, but are so badly mistreated because they are the most vulnerable of women. It is not that they are mainly victims of brutal pimps either. That misconception perpetuates the myth that prostitutes are victims because of prostitution and gives other women false security. Neither are they mostly murdered by psychopathic serial killers, such as "Jack the Ripper" (whose five victims were all prostitutes), Peter Sutcliffe (the so-called "Yorkshire Ripper", most of whose 13 victims were prostitutes), the "Green River" murderer who slew more than 20 street prostitutes of Seattle and dumped their bodies on the banks of the river, or the so-called "Los Angeles Ripper", a maniac responsible for the agonising deaths of I I prostitutes. Most danger done to prostitutes is by their clients; men, who as we have seen come from ordinary social and family backgrounds. The grisly toll of prostitute's deaths in Sydney, such as Marion Rooney, who was strangled to death in Kings Cross on New Years Eve 197 1, Francine Godwin, stabbed to death in her car on 20th February 197 1, and Julie Plater, bashed to death in a brothel on Christmas Eve 1985, were the result of client violence.

Studies of prostitutes in other countries show an appalling record of violence committed against the women, mostly by clients. Jennifer James (1972, p. 102ff) found two-thirds of her sample of Seattle street prostitutes were victims of assault by clients. Silbert and Pines (1982) found that 70 per cent of their sample of 200 San Franscisco street prostitutes had been raped by clients on average 31.3 times, 78 per cent had been forced into an act of perversion by clients on average 16.6 times, 65 per cent had been assaulted by clients on average 4.3 times, 45 per cent had been robbed on average 3.6 times and 65 per cent had been physically attacked by other males on average 9.2 times. Joseph Scharbert (I 974, p. 339ff) wrote that 20 prostitutes in Munich had been brutally slain between 1962 and 1972, and 30 prostitutes had been victims of armed robbery and 801 had been robbed in other ways throughout 1973. The prostitute sample in the present study were victims of rape and other violence at work to the extent shown in Figure 4.22.

Figure 4.22 : Frequency of rape and other violence committed against prostitutes (n=128) at work

From this we see that prostitutes are more vulnerable to assaults other than rape, than to rape itself. These assaults include bashing the victim with a fist or weapon, knife or razor attacks and the occasional deliberate running into a streetwalker with a car. Because violence is often spontaneous, bashing with fists is most common and usually motivated by misogyny, particularly after the client has climaxed, or a notion by the client that he has been "cheated" (he feels he didn't get his money's worth). "Car jobs" (working in a client's car) and being on premises alone are especially dangerous, leaving the woman in a most vulnerable position. But escorts and servicing house calls (going to a client's home) appear to be even more dangerous, according to the number of complaints the author has received from women involved in various kinds of sex work. Assaults or threatened violence with a weapon are usually premeditated with robbery in mind, and are less the actions of clients and more that of professional crooks. Menaces at gunpoint are not an uncommon experience in suburban brothels held up by a gang of robbers. But there have been incidences of knife and razor attacks by clients with a psychopathic hatred of women.

There are a number of reasons why rape at work is less prevalent than non-sexual assault. For one thing, the latter is quicker and less likely to cause the attacker injury. Prostitutes offer less of a challenge to rapists exerting power through sexual violence over women. Also, prostitutes are probably often technically raped without them realising it. For example, the client who goes over time in spite of protests from the woman is technically raping her, but she probably would not perceive it as a form of rape. Comparing Figure 4.22 with Table 3.38 we find that Prostitutes have been raped more often outside work. One reason for this variance could be that outside of work sexual assault is more easily identified as rape and rape by a trusted man has a much greater impact on the woman's emotions. But rape does occur in prostitution with alarming frequency. The most commonly identified forms of rape are where a client has sex with a woman and then refuses to pay her, and where women are kidnapped from the streets by a gang of youths.

Youths in vehicles are a particular menace for streetwalkers. Most often these "westies" (as they are dubbed by the women in the belief that they are young working-class men from the western suburbs) are simply an annoyance with their foul-mouthed yelling and flinging rubbish out of car windows. But sometimes a youth gang might go further, ending in a rape of a prostitute dragged into a car from the street. In a twelve-month period between December 1984 and December 1985, 46 prostitutes on William Street had been Victims Of Some Outrage and 23 of them provided the author with details of 26 episodes of violence. This included such sadistic acts as burning a woman's breasts with a cigarette, dragging another along the footpath by her nipples, and lassoing a woman and dragging her half a block behind a speeding car (reported by the author to the Sydney Morning Herald, 27 January 1986, in an appeal for police protection of street prostitutes). Wolfgang and Ferracuti (1967) tried to explain youth gang violence as attempts by working class youth - frustrated by poverty, a political and legal system they cannot deal with, and the dominance of the middle classes - at redressing the balance. Unfortunately, their targets are usually people in more vulnerable positions than themselves, who are even more victimised by the system, and are in the same social class. Thus, street prostitutes become one of their favourite victims.

Figure 4.23 lists precautions taken by prostitutes as protection.

Figure 4.23 : Precautions taken by prostitutes (n=128) as protection against violence.

Note: Most of the sample took two or three precautions

The list shows a number of measures a prostitute might take to avoid becoming a victim of violence. The most important seems to be to avoid being alone with a client in a house (flat or brother) or in his car. The presence of other prostitutes and/or staff is most desirable for deterring client aggression and for calling out if in trouble. The "Ugly Mug" list was a list describing clients who had caused trouble based on reports from prostitutes. It was operative in the prostitute community in 1986 and 1987, published by the now defunct Australian Prostitutes Collective. It was particularly useful for street prostitutes spotting number plates of dangerous men's cars and for escorts scanning the list of troublesome men before visiting a hotel or private house. The above list of precautions indicates the awareness among prostitutes of the potential danger in their occupation, and without these precautions undoubtedly the incidence of injury or death would be much higher.

Jeanette survived a particularly savage attack on her by a deranged client. In her description of the incident she blames herself, as many female victims of male violence are prone to do:

I had broken all the rules of the working girl. I went to work late, walked into a house after everyone had left and broke the rule that you do not work alone, and I picked him up in a back lane. Therefore, it was my own fault. He undressed and sat there holding his silly little thing and said: "Suck it!" In those days (early 1970s), French, Oh! my God, what would the other girls say, and could you ever live with yourself again? So, I glared at him and said: "You filthy mongrel!" Had I put my head down he would have slipped a noose of wire, such as they train you with in the army, around my neck. When I refused he whipped out a cutthroat razor. I ended up with 27 stitches in my hand, four in my nose and five in my throat. I wasn't raped. Had I been I think I would have died. But I was able to fight my way out of it and really stand up to him, even with every thing I owned practically hanging loose. And that gave me a great deal of satisfaction.

What have we learned about men in female prostitution? Firstly, while professional pimps exist, they are highly over-rated and hardly exist in Australia any more. The image of the brutal standover man is largely a figment of the popular imagination. Most of the men defined as "pimps" by law are in fact lovers and husbands freely chosen and supported by prostitutes. Clients are also the subject of popular imagery. They are not, however, lonely, perverted or in possession of powerful sex drives, but most often middle-aged married men of any social class. Violence in prostitution, often attributed to hoodlums, brutal pimps and psychopathic serial killers, in fact is most often committed against prostitutes by the clients and is probably not very different in dynamic to the domestic and other violence endured by women in everyday sex relations. So, what do we end up with? Ordinary men paying to have sex with ordinary women, who choose to support other ordinary men as lovers or husbands.

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