Alice Glass, survivor of ten years in the sex trade, reflects on punters prostitution-buyers , why there is no organised punter movement, and their apparent absence from the prostitution debates. The question is usually asked by radical feminists, and often there is no answer, or an answer that seems logically unrealistic or insufficient. How important are punters in informing the prostitution culture and ergo, the culture at large?
Why are they so often silent in populist realms or debates? These men are so beyond the social expectations that they seem to have nothing to lose by being openly vile; they may even imagine themselves to be mavericks. But silent of course, does not mean inactive, they scurry around quite enthusiastically, and like rats, are never more than a few feet away.
OK that is probably an exaggeration, a thread from a spectral yarn. Other than the odd woman long entrenched in the game and daily asking herself the questions, how low should I stoop, and how many of these digital feet should I kiss to cream off enough business to stay afloat? Or: how long have I been so enmeshed in this wacky and unedifying imbroglio that I cannot see myself as anything other than in relation to it?
A salient example of what the punters want; slavish servitude. Is it just for the money, or is it also the yucks? We are taught to see our value in terms of how men see us, and in relation to other women. Good old prostitution; providing a breeding ground for our most neurotic of gendered complaints. I was lambasted by another prostitute who said she was being paid to not judge her punters. And she was almost entirely agreed with by the rest of the thread.
It was one in a line of muscles snapped in my wanting to leave this horrendous industrial affair; I could fathom my body being rented, but my troth bought? Now, of course neither.
