Sex Worker Sues Brothel—And Wins
Lawsuits accusing male
bosses and coworkers of lecherous behavior are unfortunately common in
courts across the Western world. So why the ubiquitous media coverage of
what appears to be a standard sexual harassment claim in New Zealand,
in which a 22-year old woman extracted $21,000 from her employer for
"humiliation, loss of dignity and injury to feelings?”
The slight
wrinkle in this case is that the plaintiff is a prostitute, employed at a
legal and regulated brothel. According to her complaint, the plaintiff
claimed she felt debased and unsafe under the management of a brothel
owner who tried to “break and control her,” so much that she couldn’t
sleep or eat and began drinking excessively to soothe fraying nerves.
According to the New Zealand Herald,
the accused “said weekends were his ‘play time,’ when he liked to get
stoned and have sex with them in his ‘special room’...[and] on occasions
he told her details about the sex, including that he liked ‘young,
skinny girls.’” In her complaint, the unnamed woman claimed that her
boss peppered her with questions about “whether she was ‘shaved’” and “whether she would have anal sex with clients.”
The
brothel owner denied any wrongdoing, but New Zealand’s Human Rights
Review Tribunal concluded that his “self-described role as ‘protector’
of the sex workers at the Kensington [Inn] has led him to be overbearing
and exploitative,” granting the plaintiff a significant sum in damages.
But with the normalization of prostitution comes the
normal trappings of workplace law—including the thorny subject of
sexual harassment. Those in the industry say there’s a thin line between
dirty talk and unwanted lewdness. “The sexual discourse is part of the
work,” says Carol Leigh, spokesperson for the Bay Area Sex Worker
Advocacy Networker in California. “So how do you separate sexual
discourse from sexual harassment? If one is constantly called names
around one’s sexuality that are derogatory, that would fall in the
category of sexual harassment.”
The language of sex worker can
seem shocking to some, but Dennis Hof, owner of the Nevada Bunny Ranch
brothel, says explicit banter is second nature among the women who work
there. “The girls are just having fun,” he tells me. “They’ll say things
to each other that neither I nor any member of my staff would ever say
to a girl.”
When asked to comment on the New Zealand ruling, Hof
says the harassment claim shouldn’t necessarily be qualified as sexual.
“[The New Zealand case] is more about frightening this girl and
belittling her. That same thing could have happened if [the brothel
owner] was talking to a male employee. I’m drawing a distinction between
workplace harassment and sexual harassment.”
Indeed, the idea of
sexually harassing someone whose job is to be sexually objectified
presents something of a paradox. And Leigh says our puritan culture is
partially to blame for not being able to discern between crude language
and harassment (as the case of the New Zealand sex worker demonstrates,
this is less of a problem in more sexually progressive countries.) “The
difference between insulting someone sexually, harassing and attacking
and having a discussion about sex—that’s something that can be
distinguished. But it might be confusing for people in our culture who
are not used to discussing sex.”
Because prostitution is legal
in New Zealand, the country’s sex workers are afforded the same rights
as any other employee—and harassment of any kind can and should be
punished accordingly.
“The main thing that [this case]
tells me is the fact that this person is a sex worker is not a license
for sexual harassment,” Hof says. “I don’t look at that as ‘sexual’
harassment, because it could have been a female manager doing that, or a
female manager doing that to a male. This is just general harassment to
me. And it’s disgusting.”
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