WRITING THE SEX: THE POLITICAL BODY
By John Kinsella and Coral Hull
[Above] Untitled #3 by Michelle Seelig (charcoal on paper 2000 720mm x 560mm)
I am working on a new collection of deconstructive erotica entitled The Cave, which looks at conflations of landscape and body. Coral, your new novel Work The Sex has just been published. What is 'the sex industry'?
CORAL: The sex industry is essentially a service industry where a person sells their services for money, whether that be in the form of entertainment, lap-dancing, stripping, massage, personal escort, hostess (or host) relating to physical interaction between two or more human beings. When I refer to the sex industry during this discussion, I will only be talking briefly about what is a very complex industry as occurs in a controlled environment such as in a brothel, parlour or to a lesser extent an escort agency and only within a legal context such as occurs in operations within Australia. The sex industry is legal in Australia. I will also be talking about a sex worker as a female and as relating to my own experiences regarding working with these women.
In this context the sex industry involves an exchange of cash for time and not just for penetrative sex as is the common misconception of the sex-fearing and body-hating public. While there is a minimum service of massage, oral sex with a condom and safe sex at all times, time spent with a sex worker can simply involve talking, pampering, stroking, hugging and all the interactions that make both a client and a sex worker human beings and not merely the exploiters of each other's vulnerabilities. You will often hear a sex worker say that she can't even get laid in a brothel. This is often the case and it's not just because business might be slack.
There is no one person who becomes a paid sex worker and no one person who becomes a client. It is a complex industry involving numerous types of individuals. The sex worker is a provider of service in the form of fantasy whether this is real intimacy or fake intimacy, real sex or fake sex - who can say? It can all happen in the course of one shift. The sex worker is essentially a paid actor. She is a therapist, the girl next door, comedienne, teacher, wife-substitute, vamp and perhaps even an angel. She may fake orgasm, pretend to love him, or simply tolerate the situation, taking the money just like a bored housewife servicing her husband on payday. But she doesn't have to wake up beside him the next morning when the fun is over and the money is gone.
The sex worker looks like a real woman but she is in disguise both physically and psychologically. At its best the industry is strictly professional while feigning the personal. The dating scene also has its disguises as can be seen when people put their best foot forward. It's all in the name of getting people getting what they want, which is about self preservation. The sexual relationship game is played throughout society in general. It's just that we attempt to denigrate the sex industry because, in our ignorance, we think that it's all about penetrative sex only and we don't like 'penetration' because we fear it. We fear sex, because we fear our own bodies, the mortality of our bodies and our loss of control during sex and especially during death. We compare sex to death and so in order to conquer death, we must also conquer sex and women. But despite being outlawed, assaulted, persecuted and even murdered, throughout history the sex worker remains the unconquered woman.
John, what is your personal background involving the sex industry and how do you intend to resolve this with your personal ethics and in your writing?
JOHN: I first came in contact with the sex industry through an early girlfriend. She was a sex-worker, though I never had any direct contact with her working world. It wasn't an issue to me - she was in control of her choices (didn't have a major drug problem etc), so I felt it was none of my business. My concerns were more about personal health, etc. Just common sense. The various men, women and hermaphrodites I have known over the years who have worked in the sex industry have been incredibly different people. Some were cruel, some were gentle, some were generous, some were money-hungry - the full range really. I certainly preferred their company to that of those working in the armaments industry. Not that some of them wouldn't do that too if the money was better, but there were also some sex-workers I met as part of the anti-nuclear protest movement. As an anarchist, I hope that a world without profit-motives is possible - so on that level I reject any industry as currently understood. But pragmatically, it's no worse than most others - possibly more open to corruption and victimisation, but this is as much to do with the hypocritical laws that govern it, and false societal values, as the act/process itself.
As a feminist do you think it is possible to write positively about the sex industry? Are there problems of equality and profit in this?
CORAL: The sex industry and feminism may be more compatable than you think. Working the sex is considered the oldest illegal profession in the world and women are the oldest criminals. This is only from a patriarchal perspective. For many women the sex industry can provide a form of personal growth and empowerment in what is often a disempowering society for women in general. The woman earns her tax-free income, makes decisions on how she will do exactly that and acts upon those decisions to the best of her ability. She is more empowered than a factory worker or an office secretary because she earns more and she works for an agent who shares in profits and not a boss. The argument against the sex industry has little to do with helping the poor victims and a lot to do with stopping women from making big money outside a male-dominated system. Remember, it is not about whether she had sex or not. It is about whether she was paid to have that sex.
While I worked in the sex industry I wrote my first novel Work The Sex. The book is about five sex workers in Darwin who discuss the industry and their various experiences with paying clients. The sex workers in Darwin loved the book and, not surprisingly, the Australian publishers didn't. I've never had a manuscript rejected so dramatically or quickly. It was like a game of netball where all the pages were bounced once on the floor and thrown back at me! The fiction editor at Picador summed the Australian publishing scene up when she refused to read the entire book saying, 'I'm well over the sex thing Coral, well over it.' When I mentioned that reaction to one of the sex workers in Darwin, well, one guess as to what they thought the solution to the editor's problem might be! I doubt whether literary types and sex workers would mix together very well at a wine and cheese (bovine mammary secretions) night. I had only sent the manuscript in because I was of the attitude that Picador was a progressive publisher prepared to take risks with both style and content. I then asked this editor what kind of things she wanted and her reply was 'historical romance', which is, of course, women's pornography! My prediction is that the Australian literary scene will either completely ignore the book or just dismiss it as bad literature. But as long as the working girls in Darwin relate to the content, that is what matters to me.
[Above] Stiletto #1, The Capricornia Motel, Fannie Bay, Northern Territory, Australia (Artwork by Coral Hull, 2001)
The are, of course, problems of equality, but are not inherent within the sex industry alone. They exist in every part of society as long as women are denied an equal wage. If we are going to assume that the sex industry is exploitative of women then we must assume that every other industry is exploitative as well. As soon as we have employer and employee relationship we have the 'haves' and 'have-nots' or a dominant and submissive relationship. An employee must be passive in responding to the demands of their employer. The role of the woman and who is paid either more or less, becomes that of the woman and who is essentially responsive rather than assertive. The sex worker turns this scenario on its head and even though she is employed by a manager or an agent she will often take the initiative. As a general rule there is a 50/50 cut so, particularly in the case of the agency, the agent is simply a representative of the worker and not a boss. These places don't want their workers to walk, so for a majority of the time it makes sense to treat them right. If a sex worker has a problem she has the option of contacting organisations such as SWOP (Sex Workers Outreach Project) with their own solicitors, counsellors, and advisors who provide a much needed general support network.
This cannot happen when the industry is outlawed. In which case the only place for a sex worker to go, is into a gaol cell or the many places where she can give sex away for free. Of course there's no law against that! The law only comes into play when it is perceived that women are making money from selling sex. You could very well say that a factory worker is exploited more than a sex worker because she receives lower wages for her time. In which case we do not outlaw industry in general in order to keep these women from becoming victims of dangerous environments, sexual harassment and low income. Why? Because the underpaid factory worker is perceived as powerless, whereas the highly paid sex worker is perceived as powerful. One worker is controlled by the system and the other works outside the system. If men dominate the sex industry it is only because they are allowed to dominate the society. The exploited woman is a product of a mysogynist and patriarchal society and not solely of the sex industry. The outlawing of the sex industry has little to do with protecting the rights of women and everything to do with upholding patriarchy - male domination over women. The dating scene is more fraught with problems than the sex industry, but it is legal. There are more problems occurring between unhappy couples in your average household bedroom than I've seen in a brothel, but marriage is still legal.
In countries where this work is illegal, the sex workers have nowhere to turn but to a pimp or into a gaol cell. The power is restored to the male client, the police, the government - all male pimps with the intention to bring down the sex worker or, more to the point, to take a woman's right to have control over her own body away, whether it's having an abortion, saying no to her husband or making a decent income from sex work. When we outlaw the industry the woman becomes the passive sex object, completely disempowered through poverty. She becomes under male control, male property - to be sexually and emotionally exploited by men - at his whim and with no income aside from what he gives her, either as a boss or a husband, both laying claim to her body and where she choses to assert her sexuality. The sex industry provides income, more than it provides exploitation.
If the sex industry was just about exploitation it would be legal, in the same way that all the other industries that exploit women are legal. Overseas there is nowhere for the sex worker to turn, because the solution is worse than the industry. The sex worker knows this, so she takes the risk whether the work is legal or not. To the sex worker the sex industry will always be a paying job. Despite what the paying male clientele like to think, she is not there for the companionship. She is there for the money. The sex worker is smart, not stupid. If she thought that there was a better alternative available to her, she would not be in the industry to begin with.
What have been some of your experiences in regards to the sex industry and/or pornography?
JOHN: There was no pornography that I am aware of in my home as a child - maybe because of the absence of a father. I bribed a friend to buy my first "dirty magazine" when we were staying up north (in a mining town) with my father - my friend was about ten and I was twelve. They sold it across the counter to him without a problem. It annoys him to this day, as he's always found pornography demeaning to all parties concerned. I sometimes found it interesting but mostly pretty boring, and I feel much the same way about it now. Really degrading material has always repelled me - stuff like that circulated at school but I avoided it. I avoid it now. I saw my first pornographic movie when I was about ten, at a friend's house. A classic 8mm "blue movie". It was at a kid's birthday party - the father had shown a reel of Thunderbirds for the kids (a Freudian take on this would be wonderful), and then we'd gone to play outside.
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The father must have put the 'blue' on for some of his mates, because I remember poking my head around the corner to ask for something and seeing a brief glimpse of something - I wasn't really sure what. The room smelt of smoke and beer. I was ushered out quick-smart. In my final year of high school, a close friend who was trying to let me know he was gay took me round to his home and showed me a pornographic video of straight sex and said: "I just don't find this interesting, John".
What amazed me was that he felt the need to communicate his emotional need to connect with me through negating constructed portrayals of "conventional" sex, which, of course, were not real anyway. Sex and identity were quite confused for him - he was afraid of being beaten up at school, of losing his friends. We developed a queer language of exchange that became a way of sexually decoding straight situations. Neither of us fitted the categories neatly - but that was about identity on all sorts of levels, sexuality being just one part of it. I have always been far more interested in reading about sex than in "seeing" it. Words stimulate me in themselves, even more than what they are saying. |
[Above] Untitled #2 by Michelle Seelig. (charcoal on paper 1999 720mm x 560mm)
The visual representation is so reductive - it's harder to avoid an immediate emotional response. And the photograph relies on manipulation between the photographer/s and the subjects - there is much room for exploitation here. Words shift constantly.
As a writer, do you find yourself 'observing' in an intrusive way? Does it mediate your 'participation'? Did writing take you to the industry, or did it come out of your interaction. How did you engage with it in the first place?
CORAL: When I am working either as a writer or in the sex industry, I am doing my job. I am there to make a living. My life sustains my art, not the other way around. It is also important to me, as a creative artist, that I do not approach any of my subject matter from a position of ignorance. If I write about the desert it usually means I was out there, often not even as a writer or a photographer, but because I needed to be there for my own personal and spiritual growth. As a creative artist I am simply documenting what happens to me in my life and my ideas about that. I would never create a life to sustain my art. After twenty year's work for charity and not receiving government grants for my creative work, I took off to Darwin. I had always thought about working in the sex industry - what woman hasn't entertained that idea at sometime in her life?! I thought I might have made a good B & D mistress when I was younger and still angry at the world. I met a real-life madam (whom my I based my Sharlena character on in Work The Sex) by accident at Sweethearts which is the nightclub at the Darwin casino. I was then was introduced to a few working women who gave me a complete K-Mart makeover.
I wound up working the city of Darwin at all hours of the morning out of various private rooms. Sometimes the nights were long and tedious. I was sitting around in cars, bars or outside motels with mobile phones and a few shots of whisky for company. Occasionally I had to deal with difficult clients. But it was better than the factory, cleaning and shop assistant work that I was used to and it paid more. It was through my shift to Darwin and my association with these women that my life was transformed. I was finally able to earn decent money for the first time in my life. The women I worked with all had their own stories about how this kind of work had saved them from poverty. They would be working the sex whether it was legal or not. While Darwin is riddled with drugs, if there were any kind of hard drugs involved here and with the lives of these women, I didn't see any. It seemed to be a positive introduction to the sex industry. The hardest part about the work, at least for me, was that I am a daytime person and this is night work. The night is different. It's a different scene out there after dark.
I read Grappling Eros during 1999 when I was involved with sex workers in Darwin. There was this one story in particular, involving an odd couple out in the bush that made me edgy. Would you talk about this story and the inspiration behind it?
JOHN: I read some ads in the "requests" section of Sex News asking for bottles of urine from pregnant women. I assumed for aphrodisiacs or possibly something more sinister. The "controls" are gone once swingers start working their fantasies through community (anonymous, shady). When I was in my early twenties I was living on a property in the southwest of Australia, on the edge of the forest - my neighbours were bikies, and in addition to the odd rifle shot hitting our shack, there were some pretty unusual happenings up at their place. One particular incident coincided with my hearing a fox barking, or screaming, down the bottom of the paddock. I conflated the three things, and came up with that story much later in the piece. It has always unsettled me to think of the connection between fertility, empowerment, subjection, sex, and the occult. The bikies were deeply into the heavy-metal variety of witchcraft. They didn't take to us - vegan "hippy" dropouts - but pretty well left us alone. We weren't straight, and were outlaws in our own way, even if they didn't trust us. We avoided them pretty much, though we did end up at a couple of their parties - best forgotten. The use of the "Bush" is in the Baynton, even Lawson-like way ("Drover's Wife"), with the melancholy weirdness of the depressive Gordon-via-Marcus-Clarke thrown in. But it ironises this as well - as another process of subjection, and way of controlling through fear of the grotesque, unknown.
Is your work pornographic?
CORAL: Pornography is strictly genital. It is not about sex or sexuality the way I see it. If I can quote one of the women in Darwin for a moment who refered to the porn industry by saying, 'even a ferret wouldn't fuck like that'. My writing on the sex industry has elements of pornography, especially when it comes to some of the ways in which the women describe their sexual encounters with paying clients. But it is generally more complex, positive and feminist than pornography, because it seeks to highlight and expose violence and negativity rather than to perpetuate it. These people with the pornographic minds, whether they condemn the industry or not, are the true pornographers. And it all has to do with the way they feel about their own bodies and sex. Sexual predators are basically everywhere both inside and outside the industry. They are like meat-eaters in that they put their appetites' over their ethics, whether it be the stomach or the genitals, it's all the same mindset.
While some overlap may take place between the two worlds, the sex industry differs from the pornographic industry on many levels. For example, in the pornographic movie there is male dominance over the bodies of women and overt negativity towards the sexual act as can be seen through much of the dialogue which is often violent. Whereas in the sex industry there is an artificially controlled environment such as in the brothel, the massage parlour or the strip joint where women take control and offer a service that incorporates sex with sensuality and pampering. In the porn industry there is unsafe sex whereas in the sex industry sex workers may be dismissed from a parlour for practicing unsafe sex and may also be chastised by other workers. It is also industry practice for sex workers to have three weekly medical check ups and to provide this to the agency or establishment whom they are working for. While the clients are not required to have a medical certificate, they are checked beneath a spot light and showered and this is left up to the discretion of the individual worker(s).
Lipstick #1, The Capricornia Motel, Fannie Bay, Northern Territory, Australia. (Artwork by Coral Hull, 2001)
In both the pornographic industry and the gay-male dominated fashion industry, women's bodies are brutally standardised into playboy-type models or anorexic waifs (coathangers for male art) - women's heads on men's bodies with silicon tits. Whereas in the sex industry the variety of women available is the main drawcard. There are all shapes, sizes, nationalities and personalities to cater for all types of paying clientele. Despite what the media, pornography and fashion industry preach, men still are attracted to a variety of different women. Since a client is essentially paying for a fantasy or something unreal, he will nearly always seek something real, such as the girl next door type and/or the friendly and down to earth woman. Often the aim of the client isn't only to get what he isn't getting at home with his partner, but to get what he isn't allowed to get off sex workers. The role of sex worker is to engage in safe sexual practice while attempting to keep her client for as long as possible. The sex industry can be compared to a form of speeded-up-dating, operating as a series of personal encounters or multiple one night stands, but it is more hygienic and controlled and hence safer for women.
That is why in my book Work The Sex, Nikita is bashed through dating a security guard from a local Darwin hotel and not through her sex work. I am talking about an ideal of course. No working environment within a patriarchal system can be free from expliotation. As in other working environments when we deal with the sex industry we are dealing with the fear-dominated mind of the human being and so there is always a certain degree of risk. In my brief dealings with the pornographic industry, which mainly occured through childhood and adolescent exposure to movies, magazines, my detective father's drunken ravings and the mouths and minds of the opposite sex in general, I have been exposed to: the standardisation of women's bodies, unsafe sex, the hatred of the breasts, cunt and cock, sex with children, sex with animals, violent language, violence towards women, children, blacks, asians, gays and animals, violent assault and even murder such as in the infamous snuff movies. Of course all of these things happen outside the industry all the time as well. The pornographic industry both reflects and teaches the culture about an 'anything goes, so long as I like it' approach to sexuality.
What do you see as driving the negativity and fear regarding the sex industry? Are there any positives?
JOHN: People perceive it as a threat to the basic stability of the family unit - the foundation of social order. And obvious religious fears, which are connected to self-sacrifice for the stability of the family unit. The "positives" are for individuals to decide.
Coral, is the brothel a community, or an association of independent workers? What does the 'madam' signify to the workers?
CORAL: Some girls (the women refer to each other as girls) will mix outside the work environment, but many choose not to preferring to maintain anonymity or the double-life. If done the right way the parlour work environment can be a very close and supportive community. Many of those women are kind-hearted and have a real sense of responsibility towards each other. Then others are thieves and sell out under too much pressure from long working hours, becoming victim to debts, drugs, dysfunctional relationships, seeing clients outside working hours etc. I have tried to incorporate some of these issues into Work The Sex, however since they are already so clichéd and largely not applicable to a majority of cases so far as I can tell, the sex workers that I wrote about are the good ones who basically have it under control. Firm bonds are established and these women will work with and look out for other women in a room. Work The Sex is a book where the characters all bond, a kind of instruction on how to operate ethically within the industry as well as a revealing exposé. The madam is the surrogate mother for the motherless daughters in the sex industry. These women are dealing with a lot of negative male energy and many turn to other women for comfort, which may be either in the form of lesbian relationship, female friends in and out of work or the madam - the mother/nurturer-life giver. While looking for work in Kings Cross in Sydney, I remember a great old madam came out and said that she always brought in cookies for all the girls, now I don't know what these cookies had in them, but it was the mothering thing again.
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John, who do you view as being strong feminist role models in the Australian poetry scene when it comes to writing genital prose?
JOHN: Most of the strong role models write outside the binary - critiquing issues of subjection, subjugation, diminution, patriarchy, inequality and so on. Sex becomes a vehicle for discussion, but rarely an end in itself. I wouldn't consider any of these authors to write "genital prose", though they might parody and "play" with it, in often deadly ways. Tracy Ryan explores sexual taboos and critiques the hypocrisies of heterosexual society. She is especially interested in sexual dishonesty and object-subject relations between the lives of women and how they are portrayed in fiction - especially from a gender perspective (and outside the hetero envelope). |
[Above] Work The Sex Book Cover (Design by Harry Milohis, 2002)
Dorothy Porter is interesting in her use of genre-form to challenge holistic notions of sub-culture, and to dismantle the expected "performance" of the sexually marginalised. She reclaims territory. Probably the most challenging author in this sense is Kathleen Mary Fallon, who does write a crossover "genital prose" that makes the body something active, living, rather than a receptive corpse that absorbs all readings and remains a male visualisation of the "perfect" woman. Tracy Ryan shares some ground with her here. An author like Dorothy Hewett can look at the pleasures of sex in a socially critical light, and has opened the doors for many women dealing with this material (is it possible not to deal with this material as a writer?).
What do you think of the 'victim' mentality so often applied to the sex industry? It is obviously vulnerable to exploitation and oppression. Comments?
CORAL: By insisting that women are exploited, you attempt to take their choice of not being exploited away. You cannot tell a sex worker that she is being exploited when she is happy with her work and she doesn't think that she is being exploited. You do not have the right to take her choice of work or her power to make her own decisions over her body away from her. You do not have the right to make her unemploy herself. Judgments regarding the role and fate of sex workers within the industry are often made without inside knowledge and using one aspect of the industry, such as the down-and-out-heroin-addicted-street-walker, in order to make a point about an overall industry that is both multi-dimensional and complex. The question is: why isn't it illegal and looked down upon for a working class woman to work in a factory? Where is the outcry then? She may lose fingers or an arm in machinery. She may suffer from cancer or industrial deafness. Every occupation has its physical and/or psychological payoff downside and the sex industry is no exception. But it is always the target of the misinformed, the righteous, and the sexually repressed individual. How are you going to teach these women to give up their work and a good income? Are you going to push them back into the factories and onto the streets? Are you going to allow them to sleep in your mansion in Mosman or Toorak, assuming that they don't already now live there themselves? Why not do them a favour and turn your mansions into brothels?
At least then you will be doing something constructive. It is easy for the affluent males and females who operate comfortably within a male-dominated patriarchal system, to come into a working class environment in order to tell the sex workers that they are all victims, or how to run their lives and then go back to the better side of town. Such people attempt to take the power of women away more than any perceived dangers inflicted upon them by the average paying client. We can be sympathetic to the situation of a sex worker without classing them as victims. This is simply negative reinforcement disguised as sympathy. If you really care about these so-called victims then go into the parlour and give a sex worker a nice massage and a good tip without expecting a sexual favour in return. Treat her or him and then leave, while fighting for equal wages for women. How does that sound? If you can't afford to do this, best to keep out of their business and out of their lives.
Your play Smith Street recently published in Mudlark offers yet another different perspective of what appears to be an industry with a very complex infrastructure. Would you talk about the play briefly? What kind of response did it receive?
JOHN: The play Smith Street is another deconstructive piece that examines the duplicity of law, double-standards, and the marketing of sexual identity. This marketing comes through negative "moral" portrayals of "filth" and corruption in the media, and by those outside the act itself - any form of profit made at another's expense (ie the pimp as opposed to the prostitute) is critiqued. Profit is derived in so many ways - the police (and their families) rely on corruption to give them a job. Dual standards. I co-wrote the play with Tracy Ryan, poet and my partner, with additional material by Steve Chinna. Tracy and I were living in a block of flats on the notorious Smith Street in Perth at the time. Smith Street was the main beat for prostitutes and as such had angered well-off local residents who saw it as bringing down the value of their property, attracting drug addicts and "perverts" etc. The government, afraid of the backlash, used heavy-handed tactics to drive the working women from the street - barricades, daily busts, set-ups, you name it. We watched it happening through our window. I was "recorded" (over-enthusiastic locals taking down number-plates) for talking with my own wife through our car window - as if I kerb-crawled my partner! It was bizarre. The government also introduced legislation which allowed them to do full body (and cavity) searches on any woman they suspected, without evidence being needed -- the onus was on the woman to prove herself. As usual, these laws and actions were primarily aimed at controlling women. That's why we wrote the play. Even though it's about sex workers, it's really got very little to do with sex. Sex is what the client wants, not "Angel" or any other of the workers.
In your early poetry there is often a sense of intrusion, even violation. How does the exploration of sexual and social issues in this work relate to the work you are doing in prose such as Work The Sex?
CORAL: My earlier writing was about purging myself of pornography. As a child and adolescent exposed to pornography in the form of movies or my father's stories when he was drunk, I felt I had no choice but to passively absorb it in the form of abuse. It was a very negative experience. My most active role was that of simple response to what was happening around me and to me as a girl and a woman. The sex industry is not about response or receiving abuse. It is about a woman dictating the terms of sexuality within a safe, hygenic and controlled environment. To me the situation for a sex worker is far more like therapy than sexual experience. The role-playing and fantasy is more a part of therapy, than sexuality. It is only related to sexuality and intimate physical relationships in so far as the physical aspect of the body is concerned. The sex industry is largely psychological. The body is political. My earlier work which was written throughout my twenties contains a lot of themes of domestic violence. I have touched briefly on issues of the effect of pornography and other violence on children and teenagers, and on one's ability to be intimate with another person in How Do Detectives Make Love? My heart was broken when young. I spent my twenties putting it back together again.
Now in my mid-thirties I begin with a new slate in which the pain has been transformed into some degree of wisdom and compassion for others. I have come full circle and can begin again without fear. I approach the same topics but with relative calmness and, I believe, some humor. The sadness and anger are in there too, but they arrive as caring rather than judgement. My earlier work on the topic was crying out. It was saying, these horrible things happen and it's wrong! It was almost as if I couldn't believe it or that I had to express it in order to believe it. I know for the first time that the situation is complex and the damaged self is not the all-pervading factor. It is no longer the broken lens through which I view only a world that is capable of reflecting back my damaged self. My sex writing uses the language of the sex industry to explore what is most human about us all and that is our hearts and bodies. Working in the sex industry has been in part about taking back my power, as a woman from a disadvantaged background, and as an unfunded unsupported writer in Australia.
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When did you first start to write about the sex industry and why? Tell us what is behind your book Grappling Eros?
JOHN:Grappling Eros is a book that attempts to deconstruct male sexual identity. It is an anti-genital-sex book, as you might put it. It carries directly "pornographic" material in some pieces, but the parodic elements are supposed to undo the genre. Interestingly, it has been well-received by most women who've read it, but found deeply disturbing by many men. I'm not surprised by this, as it's intended to make males feel uneasy about control, subjection, the need for victims, social profiling and so on. It's a "queer" book - a dated term now, but the term that certainly informed the writing of the book. It's about the liminal space, about the limitations of representations of the "erotic". |
[Above] Grappling Eros Book Cover (Photo courtesy of FACP Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1998)
Something that turns one person on will repel another ... what becomes interesting is the language of presentation. I am interested in the way you present related issues in your book Work the Sex - this is how I respond to it: In his book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, Charles Jencks writes of a post-modern building speaking on "at least two levels", and of the "dual coding" of post-modernism. Work the Sex is a complex engagement with the physical and psychological structures of the body - the way the body is perceived (and used) by the "public", and the interior workings, the "comforts" and discomforts, the needs and variegations of the self. It's a book about sex workers, and, as the title suggests, working the idea of sex and sexuality. It's a book about group and individual interactions, about private and public sexual identity.
A group of women speaking. One speaks to another. They all speak. A symposium. On love. Sex. The body. The world outside parlours. Starting your own business. Breaking free. The sluts are the ones who do it for nothing. Confront your sexual fears. Louis Bunuel's Belle De Jour is corrupted and displaced. Darwin, Australia, "working girls", parlours, massage, lightning, humidity, US sailors, profit, gratification, satisfaction, crossing the line. Beautiful by day? The flower opens over and over and is power, is beauty, is dentate. It's all of these. Catherine Deneuve isn't there, she can't be. But your character Roxanne might declass her.
Roxanne, in Darwin searching out the most brilliant lightning formations in the country, explores her consciousness of sexuality, and speaks her own sex through the workings of others. There are no condemnations of need, lust, or desire, outside the condemnations of individual transgression. Regarding a client we read: "Sex is psychology and vice versa. He said, 'Some of these girls go under four different names and you visit them four different bloody times and it's the same bloody one.' I smiled, 'You gotta watch 'em!' He was chewing gum throughout the entire booking. I massaged his front, my tits dragging in lace. Sharlena said, 'In this job you either learn to love men or you fucking hate them'. I said, 'In some ways it's just like nature. It's brutal but I love it.' I didn't know why."
Work the Sex is a book that works against guilt because it recognises the paranoias and concerns of the social self. It tackles gender and class and issues of social bigotry head-on, and is unapologetic for its reportage-like sincerity. But it's also a metaphoric work, a brutal beauty, even sensual sensitivity, tuning the reader's vulnerabilities. If you are shocked by this book you're missing the point - it's a moral book that challenges notions of what work is right and wrong. Work is work. Industry is industry. And occasional job satisfaction is illuminating and rewarding.
An intense sympathy with the natural world, with the nature of suffering, with being constrained, contained, caged. A psychological drama of pragmatic attempts to find a "freedom" within the need to survive, make a living. Exploitation, gratification. There's no simple take on this. Addictively readable. A feminist classic.
Are we prisoners of our own experience? Can we construct narratives without making them "fantasy"? Sexual identity and gender are shifting and under scrutiny in your prose; though the unifying narrative voice is controlled, there is rarely a clinical detachment from the material. Do autobiography and fiction blend? What is the relationship between them?
CORAL: As a creative artist and especially as a woman existing within a patriatchal system, the question is primarily about my relationship to the work. Is the literary work or the sex work real or imaginary? Did all these things happen to me or not? Or more to the point - was I a whore or not? This is of course 'the climax' of our discussion, simply because the primary question for any woman is - does she fuck? And if so, does she like to fuck - because if she does like to fuck, she is a whore anyway, just not a paid whore. Even though the sex industry is only partially about penetrative sex, people's fear of their own bodies cause them to make this their primary focus. It is after all the sex industry, when in fact I think it would be better called the mind industry.
The question for me, is really this - you are a writer but are you a whore as well? You like to write but do you like to fuck? If I said 'yes' I would be labeled as a whore (in the negative) for the rest of my life. If during my lifetime I wrote five hundred books and fucked five hundred men, the fucking is what I would be remembered for. I would be remembered for my ability to fuck and not for my ability to think. If I said 'no' to ever being a whore, I would not be believed because all women are whores. So my answer is that there is no answer.
There is no answer because patriarchy and fear already have the answers. Now I am hiding something and of course what I am hiding is the fact that I am a whore. Of course it is well-known that all women are whores and none of us can hide it for long. Once we have established that the woman is a whore (negative word for a sex worker), it reinforcces the notion that sexuality is dirty and that the physical body is mortal and that mortality is bad/negative. This fear is the foundation of both patriarchy and misogyny as they exist in society today.
Once we have established that the woman (indeed all women from infancy onwards) are whores, the next question is, does the whore like to fuck? This is the question that patriarchy insists on asking the woman throughout her life. Incidentally, this is the same question that paying male clientele ask a sex worker, but within the context of the sex industry the role of dominance is reversed as the sex worker takes control buy taking Visa. As far as answering the actual question, there is no answer, because she's damned if she does and damned if she doesn't! She is a whore regardless. The next question is: how many men has the whore fucked?
If she has fucked thousands of men it either means that she is put on a pedestal (unfuckable) or that she is available for anyone who wants to fuck her (over-fucked). Of course both of these assumptions are ludicrous, but they are often how this society is trained and taught how to see, not only sex workers, but women in general. We see woman as virgins, whores and crones. It's all in relation to their sexual availability to men and not to them as individual human beings. As long as we live under patriarchal rule where women are not awarded equal wages, then all women are sex workers, whores and prostitutes who like to fuck and be controlled during fucking. It's just that some are allowed to earn a living from it, that is, when it's legal for a woman to do so.
So no matter if I have sold sex or not, I am in reality a whore more than I will ever be a poet in this society. I am allowed to be a shit kicker in a factory more than I am allowed to be published or exhibited. I am judged more by my ability to fuck or to work alongside women who fuck, rather than to write and create art. Hence the sex industry has paid me more in a few months than The Australia Council for the Arts awarded me in ten years. Am I a sex worker? Was I ever a sex worker? Will I become a sex worker? How many men have I fucked and do I enjoy fucking them? This is asked of all women and not just women involved in the sex industry.
Any answer a women gives makes her into a whore, which is a worker of sex, which is a worker of the body, death and mortality. In many ways we hate the sex industry as much as we hate the sexuality of women, and we hate the sexuality of women as much as we hate our own sexuality, and we hate our own sexuality as much as we hate our own body, and we hate our own body so long as it has the ability to suffer and sucumb to death.
The negativity about sex workers and the sex industry is fear-based and has little basis in reality. When feminism finally leaves the university campuses and impacts upon the lives of working class women, and we get equal wages and equal opportunity rather than the vote for middle class men, which we didn't want in the first place, then there will be no whores any more. Hang on, forget the equal opportunities and just give us equal wages! Until then you may consider me a whore like the rest of them, but you never have to worry about how much my service costs, because you couldn't afford it anyway. It is far cheaper to purchase a book of my poetry.
[Above] Untitled #1 by Michelle Seelig. (charcoal on paper 2000 720mm x 560mm)
John, there are some things too shocking to be discussed even in brothels, but not, so it would seem in animal welfare community! For example; what do you think about Animal Liberationist Peter Singer's argument that it is okay for human beings to engage in sex with consenting animals?
JOHN: I have been angered by Peter Singer's stance regarding sex between animals and humans. To suggest that a dog, for example, is exercising free will when trying to copulate with someone's leg, and that this is consensual, is preposterous. The dog, having been domesticated and desensitised to the human threat, is particularly vulnerable. I am addressing this issue in an essay at present and will discuss it in more detail soon.
Coral, what is the relationship between the eye of the camera and your Writerly eye to the human form, especially the erotic body? In what kind of ways is the erotic body different to the 'nude' or 'natural' body in your work?
CORAL: I'm exploring the emotional, sensual and spiritual body of the human animal. Every single part of a paying client or a sex worker is human. The body is not about dirty sex, avoiding temptation and celibacy. It's about god. That is all the god we have right now, so we better take care of it. In my new novel which is a work in progress titled: Sleep With An Angel, a partially fallen angel from a patriarchal and rule-laden heaven stuffs up the rules of the sex industry, which always seems to have to try so hard at not being human. She adopts physical form, intervenes in a suicide, has the paying clients being treated like gods by the sex workers, then the clients don't even have to pay and because they don't have to pay, they pay even more, they all fall in love and the brothel becomes the new heaven. There will be a new way of being in the world, because this world isn't working. In my experience the sex industry is as spiritual as it is a sexual place, because it is about human interaction and physical intimacy. Why should we fear our own sexuality? Why should our vulnerability and mortality cause us to fear the body and hence divide spirit and sex, until we create a negative dichotomy within the one being? Are we that terrified of suffering and dying? Of course we are, but the way you perceive your own sexuality and therefore the way you perceive the sex industry, depends on how you deal with that fear.
The artist seeks to interpret the body as individual form, as separate from the ego. The nude woman is described as torso - the hands, feet and head are often missing. The missing body parts can signify a study of object or wordless disempowerment. In the sex industry, as in all intimate human relationships, the hands, feet and head are used more than the genitals. They are the first and last point of physical contact between two human beings. The active sex worker replaces the idea of the passive nude. She is the active nude! In the sex industry the female is the creator. She replaces the artist. She is the god. And if she is a good hostess the client will leave feeling like a god as well. As with any situation, if ethics and a sense of compassion are applied within the working environment, it can be a rewarding experience for all parties involved and a place for potential healing. It is up to the individual client but more importantly the individual worker as to what happens during a booking. There are no victims in this line of work - only humans, sometimes lonely, frightened, dumb, horny, vulnerable, drunk, naughty, insecure and even nasty. Statistically speaking, the more men we know as lovers, partners, work associates, family members or friends the more likely we are as women to experience violent crime in our lives. This is coming from outside the industry. Until we overcome our fear regarding our own sexuality, vulnerability and mortality we will not be able to offer empathetic solutions to problems that do exist for both women and men, sex workers and paying clients within the complex worlds of the sex industry.
We have to approach the problems with knowledge, dedication and compassion and not with ignorance, condemnation and fear. I work in the sex industry. Someone who tries to take away my income through outlawing the industry or calling me a victim, a criminal or worse, is far more of a threat to my rights than is a paying client. One intends to destroy my means of survival and the other provides it. I come to this conclusion from a practical as well as a philosophical and ethical stance. It is my experience that empathy comes from inside involvement more so than outside theory. What can we do? We can support the sex workers rather than condemn them. We can support each other. We can do our best to treat each other like gods and soon we will be as god. From my poem: The Parlour "..who can judge who is angel and who is not, because everything shines." Or as the angel says to the drowned whore in Holy City, "I hold your dying face and worship it".
We have the capacity to treat each other with love and respect, whether we are paid for it, whether we pay for it or whether it exists outside the workplace. We have to do the best we can in any given situation and look at the violence that is perpetrated against the world holistically. A man will deceive his wife and have sex with as many women as possible because he likes it, in the same way that a woman will eat meat knowing that a suffering bleeding cow was dragged to her agony and death inside a slaughterhouse, because she likes the taste of it. While women continue to eat the flesh of murdered animals, men will continue to cheat on their wives and visa versa. No physical act exists in isolation to the other. The sex industry is merely a product of a world in need of healing and not the cause of its violence and negativity. My book might have easily been called Work The Mind and John's book Grappling Mortality because, our fear of sex, is all about our fear of our mortal body.
About the Writer John Kinsella
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John Kinsella is the author of more than twenty books whose many prizes and awards include a Young Australian Creative Fellowship from the former PM of Australia, Paul Keating, and senior Fellowships from the Literature Board of The Australia Council. He is the editor of the international literary journal Salt. He was appointed the Richard L Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College in the United States for 2001, and where he is now Professor of English. He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and Adjunct Professor to Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. His selected poems and selected essays are forthcoming, as well as a new novel Post-Colonial and a book of short stories (co-authored with Tracy Ryan). John Kinsella is now the poetry critic for the Observer newspaper (London). |
[Above] Photo of John Kinsella by Wendy Kinsella, 2001.
About the Writer Coral Hull
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Coral Hull is the author of over 35 books of poetry, prose poetry, fiction, artwork and digital photography. Born in 1965 she was raised under disadvantaged circumstances in the working class suburb of Liverpool in Sydney's outer west. Coral became concerned with issues of social justice and spirituality from an early age. She wrote her first poem about a rainforest at age 13. Coral became an ethical vegan and an animal rights advocate who has since spent much of her life working voluntarily on behalf of animals and the environment, both as an individual and for various non-profit organisations. She is also the Executive Editor and Publisher of Thylazine; an electronic journal featuring articles, interviews and visual art of Australian poets, writers, artists and photographers. Coral holds Doctor of Creative Arts Degree (Creative Writing Major) from the University of Wollongong in New South Wales. An extensive biography, list of publications, festivals, interviews, articles and reviews can be found online. Coral currently lives between Darwin and Sydney, with her two dogs Binda and Kindi. |
[Above] Coral Hull, Elliot Hotel, Elliot, Northern Territory, Australia (Photo by Coral Hull, 2001)
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Thylazine No.5 (March, 2002) |
