by Sara Pascoe
Gage must be happy, because he arranges a room for David and Diana and says to help themselves to whatever they want, all on his tab. Neither of them exclaims, ‘That’s a bit weird, we just met you,’ or ‘Must be off, we have to go get jobs as waiters.’ Perhaps they’re in shock, I’ll allow that. Being poor, but more especially battling with debt – it can lead to terrible decision-making. It certainly did in my experience. After university I had two student overdrafts and two student credit cards that were charging me more in fines than my small income. I hated myself because it was my fault. Having bills, bank charges and loans hanging over you is a constant cloud; the worry shadows every thought. It felt like an unsolvable problem so I focused instead on forgetting, drinking or drugs, or stupid men. I would go to sleep hoping I wouldn’t wake up. I became unable to make sensible choices because I thought I’d fucked things up so badly that they were unfixable. So I’ll extend this out to David and Diana. Perhaps they are also experiencing that awful anxious madness.
David and Diana go to their new room and a box is delivered, it’s the dress that Diana was ogling in the foyer downstairs. David doesn’t freak out like I would if someone sent my boyfriend a dress. Cut to a party. David and Diana dance, looking lovingly at one another. John Gage watches them, and we watch him, waiting to see how he’ll instigate the money-for-sex situation we’ve been promised. The men have a manly dad chat: ‘Where do you see yourself in ten years?’ David replies that he would like to be a billionaire one day. I laugh at him but he can’t hear me. Diana pointedly says that there are limits to what money can buy. I throw my shoes at the screen, yelling, ‘People who tell you money has no value are always the first to ask you for money!’ This is what my mum used to shout about my dad. ‘Money won’t make you happy,’ my dad said when my mum asked him to pay child maintenance, as is the law. It was school dinners she was trying to buy, not happiness, but that was ages ago and now we’re all friends still related.
‘Some things aren’t for sale,’ Diana explains in a dress that was. ‘You can’t buy people.’ I agree with her on this. The buying and selling of people used to be called slavery. Nowadays it’s referred to as trafficking and is illegal. It continues to happen, just like murder and other violent infringements of human rights. Restricting a person’s freedom, enforced labour or, in the case of sex trafficking, pimping someone to be raped for money are some of the worst crimes imaginable. Diana doesn’t mention this in her argument, probably because she doesn’t want to ruin the vibe of the party. Gage calls Diana’s response ‘naive’, a fun way of letting her know he doesn’t consider her an equal. Then he explains that the cliché ‘you can’t buy love’ is, in fact, a cliché.
‘It’s true,’ says Diana.
‘I agree,’ says David.
Now that everyone is likeminded that clichés are clichés but also true, it is time … the moment we’ve all been waiting for, the INDECENT PROPOSAL:
GAGE
Let’s test the cliché. Suppose … I were to offer you a million dollars … for one night with your wife?
As with the earlier ‘borrowing for luck’, Diana is not addressed. She is talked about, not to. Gage’s indecent proposal is to David, not Diana. Let’s imagine this was a direct exchange. Would the effect be different if the billionaire asked, ‘Diana, would you sleep with me if I pay you a million dollars?’
Diana would now be empowered to respond, positively or negatively, rather than having to prompt her husband to answer on her behalf. Simply by asking her the same question she would be gifted autonomy over herself. This is basic manners, isn’t it? If you want to pay someone for sex, please ensure you ask them personally. These ‘man-to-man’ conversations in the film subtly reinforce the idea that men own female sexuality; it is the male to whom a man owes respect and from whom he requests permission. In real life we see this with the practice of asking a father’s permission to marry his daughter. I know everyone loves tradition – and I know that you hate me for even bringing this up – but it’s ridiculous. You going cap in hand to her daddy: ‘Can I have it?’ ‘Yes,’ says Daddy, ‘I’ll walk it down the aisle and drop it off for you.’
Some religions include gradients of belief that take patriarchal ownership literally. If you would like some chat to ruin any party’s vibe, research dowry deaths and bride burning. Thousands of women are murdered every year because the father who ‘owns’ them does not pay enough to their new keeper. Then there are irreligious heathens who simply enjoy doing ‘what is done’ and see no harm in it. But even while we’re playing, even when ‘permission’ is not given and taken in a real way, the game is still that a woman’s decisions are not her own, that they can be halted by a male relative if he desires. When freedoms for (some) women have been so hard won, why are we still performing and ENJOYING the role-play of subjugation?
I started this chapter describing a man who approached me for transactional sex. What’s different about his request and John Gage’s? Is it just the amount? In both instances a woman who has never had sex for money was asked if she would have sex for money please (to be fair to the murderer, at least he asked me directly). Gage doesn’t know the couple, he has made guests of them in order to manipulate this situation. Yet audiences have not interpreted his behaviour as predatory or even recognised his ‘indecent proposal’ as sex work. Perhaps it’s the size of the sum that creates a non-seedy atmosphere. Is it true that while I am insulted by an offer of £30 or £40 for intercourse, no one would be insulted when offered a million?
A billionaire makes this story otherworldly, a fairy tale. A million dollars makes this conversation surreal. I’d compare it to a tourist experience in Morocco or Tunisia, a family holiday interrupted by a local man, dusty and smiling, offering camels for a female relative. I don’t know if these guys are real or if they’re actors paid by Lonely Planet, but they are a vital part of the atmosphere. My mum had such a story, we all laughed about it. ‘I was tempted!’ her boyfriend said. ‘Five camels!’ But if camel is your currency it’s the same thing. We wouldn’t laugh if men offered money. It’s the ridiculousness of the mammal that makes that proposal silly rather than indecent.
Huge discrepancy in wealth creates as much of a cultural divide as, well, culture. If Gage had offered a more usual $300 for the night we’d judge his character far more harshly, we’d be able to see his intentions unobscured by the hyperbolic figure. The million also means that Gage is not taken seriously at first.
DAVID
I’d assume you’re kidding.
GAGE
Let’s pretend I’m not. What would you say then?
DIANA
He’d tell you to go to hell.
David is embarrassingly slow here, letting his wife answer for him when it was supposed to be the other way around.
Later, in bed, the couple can’t sleep. Diana worries that David wants her to accept Gage’s offer. She suggests that she would do it … for him. Love this technique, we’ve all been there. Getting your own way by pretending to believe it’s your partner’s most secret desire. ‘I thought you wanted me to leave the bins rotting in the kitchen,’ we say innocently, and the age-old ‘I got sacked from work for you.’ If Diana were self-interested, if she exclaimed, ‘I need the money, mate, so I’m gonna do it,’ audiences would not like her, they would judge her on her willingness to have sex for money. Even worse if she admitted sexual motivation, told her husband, ‘I fancy him, he looks like Robert Redford!’
Instead Diana considers the proposal (outwardly at least) as a wifely duty. For Diana to be likeable yet sympathetic, she must balance between not actively wanting to shag the man and not being completely coerced against her will. This is the sweet spot: she isn’t keen, but neither is she traumatised. Diana is under financial pressure but not starving, this isn’t Les Misérables. This middle-class couple are in difficulty but have options like driving a cab, waiting tables or going back in time and putting that cash in the bank rather than underneath their rut
ting bodies. If this film began a year later in Diana and David’s narrative, when they’re homeless beggars; if John Gage stopped his car to offer a visibly destitute woman money for sex, would Audrey still quip, ‘I’d do him for free?’
So how desperate does a person have to be for sex work to become survival sex?
* The film doesn’t make it explicit that John Gage is taking advantage of tax loopholes, but I can tell he banks offshore from his haircut. I can always tell.
Survival Sex
Some people maintain that sex is labour like any other. ‘Sex work is work,’ they insist, it’s a job. For those people, someone like me asking about ‘economic coercion’ or whether a person selling sex has ‘real’ alternatives is equivalent to me walking round Sainsbury’s checking whether staff have been trafficked from home and FORCED into stacking shelves. If we assume that no one works at Sainsbury’s for fun, that they only do so because Sainsbury’s pay them – isn’t that the same as someone who wouldn’t have sex with you unless you gave them money? In both instances, the worker does not undertake the labour for its own sake; they do not expect it to bring them pleasure, only cash. If you consider the physical undertaking of sex to be a labour just like stacking shelves, you might argue that the only difference between prostitution and Sainsbury’s is an orange and maroon uniform.
Examples of survival sex in the modern world are seen in instances like ‘sex for rent’, when people of low or no income are given shelter in exchange for sex. This is a very upsetting idea to most people. We would call this ‘taking advantage’ or abusing somebody rather than a fair exchange. The difficulty of treating sex as labour with value is that logic changes. Sex ceases to be something you should never, ever be coerced or forced into and instead becomes your last line of credit when your wallet is empty.
When there’s no financial exchange, the coercive nature of survival sex is much clearer. I mentioned earlier that I spent a day observing porn workshops with schoolboys. The workshops were created by the Great Men Initiative and aimed to educate eleven-to-fourteen-year-olds. The first exercise involved them putting together a porn storyboard starring their favourite celebrity. The kids chose Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Katy Perry. The stories involved the celebrity babysitting or coming to their school or being their mum’s friend … and then sex. One group chose Mila Kunis. The story they presented was that Mila was in Superdrug shoplifting make-up. The security guard caught her and called the cops. A policeman arrived and took Mila out to his van. She was in handcuffs and crying, begging to be let go. The policeman said he wouldn’t arrest her if she had sex with him. Mila agreed and then performed a series of ambitious sexual acts and positions.
The kids all laughed at each other’s stories, then the men leading the workshop analysed their ideas.
‘Do you think Mila had a choice?’
‘Yes,’ some of the boys answered straight away, ‘if she doesn’t want to have sex she can just get arrested.’ ‘She shouldn’t have been stealing,’ someone added.
‘Should policemen be having sex with people in their van instead of arresting them?’
A beat, then a long, resigned ‘noooooooo’ in unison. Then an ardent discussion ensued about willingness, what consent means and the complications of power dynamics. The Mila character was analysed – did she want to have sex with the policeman anyway? Does that change things? The boys knew that sex should not be a punishment and that making someone who is afraid and crying have sex is wrong.
‘Rape is when people who don’t want to have sex are made to have sex.’* The boys all knew that, assented and were then pushed to consider, ‘So is this pornography about rape?’
A short silence. A lone voice offered, ‘Yes, it is,’ but the others were unsure. In the scene they had created, Mila was not physically forced, she was active. Because this was porn, she was sexually enthusiastic. They were confused. They agreed with some statements along the way – the policeman is behaving wrongly, Mila might be afraid – but they couldn’t conclude that this was non-consensual sex. This did not look like rape to them.
What if this were real life and not teenagers’ fantasy? In 2018 in New York an eighteen-year-old called Anna Chambers was driving with some male friends when they were pulled over by police. The car was searched and a small bag of weed was found. The friends were told to go. The two policemen didn’t take Anna to the station, nor was she arrested or charged. Instead they kept her in the back of their van, restrained by handcuffs, while they performed twenty sex acts upon her. When released, Anna attended hospital for her injuries and told a nurse what had happened. Swabs and tests found the DNA of both men via the semen they had left inside and on her body. When the case got to court, the cops claimed the sex was consensual. I wonder what the boys would have made of this, if it would have filled them with the fury it does me?
It’s not impossible that an arrested person might willingly desire sex with a police officer. Perhaps they have an intense uniform fetish, maybe being told off makes them horny? People are weird and varied and we can’t ever say THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN when it comes to human behaviour. But it’s also clear that when the powerful and powerless intersect, the person on the ‘less’ side is vulnerable. A person in authority can be terrifying or manipulative or both. Guards with prisoners, teachers with students, presidents with interns – there is a reason that sex breaching a massive discrepancy of power is unsettling.
This is an instance where I don’t think anyone could prove that sex is a labour undertaken like any other. If I rewrote the pornography storyboard (sorry boys) so that Mila Kunis was given a choice, arrest or an unpaid shift at Superdrug, would anyone feel that proposal was immoral? Would we be disturbed by a stint of shelf-stacking as punitive retribution? It doesn’t seem excessive, it wouldn’t harm Mila Kunis, no matter how bored and annoyed she was. The punishment seems entirely reasonable and sensible until I remember we’ve just given a proven thief access to a storeroom full of nail varnish and dry shampoo. Swapping this around, a common trope in American sitcoms is a character eating in a restaurant who then can’t pay. The manager is angry; the character is made to go and wash dishes in the kitchen. But what if the manager was angry and wanted a blow job? Can we replace dishwashing with oral sex? They are both things you do with your body, they are both things the character doesn’t want to do, but he is forced to as recompense for a dinner he can’t pay for.
I think it’s reasonable to consider a forced sex act as something that will hurt and harm someone, while washing dishes or stacking shelves for a few hours will not. Is that fair?
A male† comic told me, while we shared a long late-night train journey, that lots of straight men were ‘actually bi’. That he knew men – some of them outwardly homophobic – with girlfriends and wives, who let him suck them off for fifty euros. ‘They pretend it’s for the money because then they can pretend they’re not enjoying it,’ Stewart told me. ‘They call me up and say, “I’m a bit skint, can I come over?” when actually they’re just horny.’
It’s so interesting what we assume about the inner lives and intentions of others. When I imagine these men texting ‘I’m skint,’ I believe they’re skint. I imagine that for these young men, fifty euros is a lot of money. Could be the difference between making rent, getting Mum a birthday present, being able to go out next weekend. ‘Afterwards they act disgusted and can’t even look at me,’ Stewart says, ‘because they can’t admit they find me attractive as that means they’re gay.’
‘Maybe they don’t want to do it but they have to because they need money?’ I ask. That’s my assumption.
‘No, they want to do it. The cash is an excuse.’ That’s his.
Stewart is a real-life John Gage. He’s not forcing anyone to have sex with him. He’s merely offering the money, making the proposal. The decision to exchange sexual favours for cash is up to them. John Gage isn’t dragging Diana into bed, he’s leaving a million dollars on the nightstand and waiting for her to hop in
of her own accord. This is choice, isn’t it? Diana and the dollars, lads and the euros. And it’s the ‘choice’ that means real-life Stewart and all the other real-life Johns can defend their behaviour because the people they pay for sex are doing so of their own volition. ‘If they didn’t want to do it they wouldn’t,’ they rationalise. ‘No one is making them.’
Let us agree that Indecent Proposal is a film about sex work. What Gage is offering is no different to a man bidding for a geisha’s virginity or a woman leaning through a car window to negotiate her services and fee. Money exchanged for erotic labour = transactional sex, no matter the amount or habitat. Interestingly, such behaviour has been observed in non-human species. Some argue that transactional sex is part of nature, a strategic form of mating that can aid evolutionary success.
* This was a student’s definition of rape, not mine.
† I had to say ‘male’ in case you presumed all comedians are women.
Nature’s Hookers
I first heard this from a BBC News headline: ‘Prostitute Penguins’, the web page declared, and away ran my imagination; cards in phone boxes depicting black-and-white curves, little wings at angles, beak agape. Little puffin pimps with hats and drug problems. A dimly lit suburban street, the silhouette of a scantily clad sea bird smoking. I chastised my imagination for flippancy and got back to serious research. ‘Adélie penguins in the Antarctic …’ the article began. The Secret Diary of a Cold Girl, I thought, then high-fived myself.
‘Adélie penguins in the Antarctic are turning to prostitution. But instead of doing it for money, dolly-birds are turning tricks to get rocks off their menfolk.’
This is journalism for idiots. I don’t think the BBC needed to point out that penguins don’t recognise human currency. I’ve looked up the study and it’s far less salacious, as truth usually is. Dr Fiona Hunter spent five years observing the mating patterns of penguins. This particular species, the Adélie, are obsessed with rocks because they are so necessary for their offspring’s survival. The male starts building a nest to attract a female, and when they have pair-bonded they collect rocks to add to the nest together. All this can be enjoyed in the documentary film Happy Feet, which I haven’t seen because I’m busy.
