Sex work is referred to as the world's oldest profession, yet it remains a curiously hidden world. A new book nearly a decade in the making aims to tear down some of the mystery surrounding the subject, and reveal the industry's biggest secret: that sex workers are normal people.
A celebrated oral historian, talking to people is how she makes sense of the world - particularly "people with extraordinary lives". The process was "fantastic", but lengthy: she conducted her first interview in , unsure what she'd end up doing with the material. At first she thought of giving the stories to the archives so they could be preserved in history. One of the benefits of oral history is that she was able to delve into her interviewees' backgrounds in detail - one interview stretched out over a whopping 18 hours, albeit with breaks.
The book is an illuminating look into a world many will never see. It's not all love and positivity. She heard plenty of horrific stories of sex workers being abused in the street, or having bottles and rotten eggs thrown at them. Anna, who worked in the sex industry throughout the s and '80s, describes a horrific moment when a client tied her to a motel bed and turned the lights off. She only managed to escape by telling him her driver would be there soon. Others were raped off the job, with men assuming - rightly in most cases - that they could get away with it because of the victim's line of work.
One woman was assaulted by her doctor. Misty, a Christchurch sex worker who worked in Auckland, was roughed up by clients after they took P.
But things have improved for sex workers in this country, thanks in large part to the work of "canny political operative" Catherine Healy, whose own story is included in My Body, My Business. The book details how before the Prostitution Reform Act of , sex workers had to pose as "masseuses" in parlours - and were always on the lookout for cops posing, in turn, as clients.
