I was homeless by the summer of that year, and street-walking by the year after that. I got out of prostitution at 22, returned to education at 24, and the following year took a place in Dublin City University studying for a BA in Journalism. I wrote a memoir about my seven years in prostitution, which has been published all over the English-speaking world and translated into other languages too.
They vary widely in their content, but there are recurring themes. I realised that there had been a shift for her, a new clarity, and that it was in recognising the political aspect of what had happened to her that she was able to begin the process of moving on.
This unexpected aspect of writing about my experience has been, for me, among its greatest blessings. Just about every man in Germany seemed to have got the same message, and the result was social carnage. Many men arrived in groups, often as stag parties. To summarise:. The ways in which prostitution violates these pillars are too numerous to mention but, to offer just one example, it violates the most basic health and safety standards.
Women in prostitution are deliberately exposed to semen, sweat and saliva multiple times daily, with blood and urine quite frequently, and with faeces occasionally. With this level of persistent exposure to bodily fluids, a person would be unsafe in anything but a hazmat suit. Women are expected to make do with condoms, assuming the man agrees to use them.
While it is fashionable for some female academics, journalists and social commentators to declare the validity of prostitution as employment and to endorse and support this fiction in their books, articles and opinion columns, I note that they resolutely will not practise what they preach. They are not usually willing to have their own bodies used to prove their point. The zone has since been shut down after a long campaign by local residents protesting its unrelenting social problems.
