By Meryl Ruth Moore

Hooker. Whore. Prostitute. Those words have a way of making people uncomfortable, especially women. One would think that reaction would inform, for in it lays the truth of the matter: there are no words more fearful for a woman to bear, because they know – everyone knows – that prostitutes occupy the lowest rung on the socioeconomic ladder. Were those words empowering, we would not flinch from them so, and yet we do. I remember the day when those words were leveled at Ashley Dupré.

I recall that day very well, for at the time I, too, was what is called in the industry a “high class hooker” without any apparent irony for the fact that prostitutes are part of the lowest possible class in this intensely classist society. How much money you charge to sell your flesh does not change that fact. Perhaps an expensive prostitute occupies a slightly higher position on that ladder, but that only means that she is experiencing a different kind of tragedy, not that she is somehow beyond it. This is something that every prostitute knows – even if she won’t say it to anyone, including herself – because we all know what the punishment is for owning that word. Sometimes it is easy to make yourself forget that when you’re breezing through the lobbies of hotels that include truffles on the room service menu on your way to a lavishly appointed suite. When we do those things, we choose different words: escort, companion, provider, or perhaps even courtesan. Anything to deflect the caustic reality.

Of course you would want to forget that you are a young woman whose ambitions seem so far away from obtainable, on your own in the world with little to support you in this unforgiving society. Who wants to have to stare that bleak reality in the face, especially when there are so few solutions available to you? When you’re being handed sums of cash – tax free! – by important wealthy men who have deigned to choose you over all other women (at least that night), it is so tempting to want to forget that you are trafficking your body to people who don’t know who you are, nor do they want to know. They don’t really want to hear your story of how you ran away from home, or how you got pregnant by some jerk who won’t support your child, or how you lost everything following an abusive relationship, and so you don’t tell them. But hey, your last boyfriend didn’t want to hear all that either, so how different could high-end prostitution be? Men expect sex after dinner anyway, so why not skip all that nonsense and get to the cold hard cash?

It’s a cynical decision, and it is understandable. Our society constantly and in great detail explains to women that their main value is in their sexual availability, their attractiveness and their willingness to conceal their individuality beneath a patina of male fantasy. Those who conform to those expectations will be rewarded – or so we are promised – and that reward is often explicitly monetized. It is no great shock to say so; one only has to look at any magazine directed at or about women to understand the message that financial remuneration comes to women who meet those standards. Ashely Dupré, in becoming a high-end prostitute was only arriving at the logical conclusion of those first principles, and it breaks my heart for I truly know what it is like to walk those steps of logic in Manolo Blahnik stilettos. But, as Dupré discovered, those promised rewards for contorting ourselves to meet those standards are not worth the price that such a Faustian bargain will ultimately cost, for society hates a prostitute more than it hates terrorists. At least society cares when we torture terrorists. There is no great outcry from the ACLU when a prostitute is tortured. Instead, society sighs and thinks that she had it coming. It doesn’t matter that she was doing exactly what society informs young women that they should when it isn’t confusing us with messages about being chaste and motherly.

I had a difficult time reading the news coverage about Dupré, because I already knew what would happen to her. She would be hissed at by the religious, ogled by the more “liberal” men, and everywhere would be countless opinions on whether she was worth the money. She would be attacked by Democrats for having the temerity to have been the woman Spitzer chose, as though he wouldn’t have been a hypocrite had she not existed. She would be leered at by Republicans, who would develop political amnesia and forget about all of their own hypocrites who did precisely the same thing. There would be the Libertarians who would agitate for legalization of prostitution and crow about their enlightened view of the capitalization of human flesh. There would be the Progressives who would say very little about any of it, because while they might support women’s rights, they wouldn’t want to associate themselves politically with a prostitute. She would be exploited by the media who craves nothing more than the money that fallen women bring, and castigated by other women who would never lower themselves to explicitly accepting money in exchange for sex. In short, she would no longer be a person; she would become a thing. A terrible thing that would be crushed as the wyrm of the news-cycle turned.

Where are you, sister? I wonder this now that the public’s interest has changed to other things. Do you dare raise your head to face the world again, knowing that you are no longer Ashley Dupré – whoever that was before all this happened – but instead, Spitzer’s prostitute? I felt so bad for you, because I know that no matter what you try to accomplish, for the rest of your life that will be your scarlet letter. That lie we are told that prompts us into prostitution is so life-destroying and vicious, and I don’t think that even well-meaning people can ever find where, exactly, the tragedy really lays in that catastrophe without coloring it with a bias that will somehow make it your fault. In the end, prostitute is still a word that means that you deserve everything that you got that hurts and nothing that might have, however ephemerally, made your life easier or given you some opportunity.

It was Dupré’s outing that made me finally decide to quit no matter what it would cost me, and it did cost me very dearly. As I had to readjust my lifestyle to that of just a regular woman who does not earn money based upon her body, I went through some radical losses. Just as before (and like so many other high-end prostitutes), I have no formal education, no past “legitimate” job experience and no health care, and I also suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to the myriad things I experienced as a prostitute. It has been very difficult to reclaim my humanity enough to even think about that period of my life, much less find the coherence of mind to write about it. It is like a gash in my sense of self that is still healing. Nevertheless, quitting was the only choice I’d ever really made in the interest of my humanity, and though my lifestyle has nothing of the plastic glamour it once did, I know that I was one of the lucky ones. I chose my exit, and thus I can set the word “prostitute” aside quietly from my identity and attempt to sort through my life’s purpose on my own terms. Dupré didn’t have that chance.

However, that’s something of a necessary self-delusion that I am indulging for my own sanity, because the truth is that you’re never really free of the hazard of losing your ability to define yourself beyond prostitution, even if you do quit. I write under a pseudonym, because I know that the consequences of having been a prostitute still have the power to destroy my life. I could lose the child for whose care I did it in the first place and lose any ability to pursue the career I am currently working toward. I don’t even want to think about what would happen to me if the names of my johns became public. Writing these words is a risk, and I do it without the courage of claiming them. That is how powerful the fear of the word prostitute is; it has the power to haunt me even when I am not that thing anymore. I wonder sometimes in my darker moments of introspection if that means that no matter what I do I will always be a prostitute. That is a difficult thought, and one of the reasons I still struggle with my mental health.

Of course, I am a different woman from Dupré and my experiences as a prostitute are my own. Yet, in my years in the sex-trade, I found that my path was already well-tread by so many other women, and despite the commercial image of singular beauty that I cultivated, I was one of thousands who conceded themselves over to the bargain and came out of it with stories to tell that might shock those who know nothing of that world. I tell them in the hopes that they will help those unfamiliar with the sex-trade to better appreciate that those women who are in it are human beings with thoughts and reasons for their path. I tell them so that those who defend the sex-trade as an empowering choice may come to understand how egregious that rationale truly is. I tell them so that women who have walked this path might not feel so alone. Perhaps most of all, I tell them so that the injuries I have sustained will have some positive meaning; so that, if I do have to bear this word prostitute, it will be according to my definition.