Last week I watched Ken Loach’s 1966 film about poverty, Cathy Come Home. One of the characters in it is an elderly single woman who is a landlord of low-income housing, Mrs Alley, who shows unusual kindness to the protagonist and her family. In beautifully archaic grammar she says to Cathy: “Once I had a profession… I was an ’ore.”
I liked this scene immensely, not only because it acknowledged that being a landlord isn’t a job, rather a form of passive income, but also because we so rarely see an aged or former sex worker on screen. Usually, sex workers are depicted as young and often dying of disease or drug addiction or domestic violence, their job a dead end. Mrs Alley showed a life after work; when she dies it’s discovered she has no letters from any relatives, but many from her old clients.
Queer icon TS Madison, a former sex worker herself, once said on her podcast Outlaws that you always need to have a contingency plan. I’ve been told the same by many brothel and parlour managers I’ve worked under, most of whom were also former sex workers. There is a clear pipeline from working girl to manager of working girls, not only because of the experience in the industry but also because it can be hard to gain employment elsewhere due to discrimination.
Most of the women I’ve worked with who have made a career of sex work, as opposed to those just dabbling while studying or between other jobs, have either become trophy wives or transitioned eventually to running a place. I wonder if Mrs Alley retired from being “an ’ore” when she got married, trading one kind of financial security for another, or if the “Mrs” was simply a front, to give the illusion of more social propriety.
I am asked often if this is the trajectory I will take when leaving sex work—that is, whether I want to manage or mentor other workers. But the idea does not appeal to me. That doesn’t mean I have anything against it morally speaking. I think owners, managers and receptionists of in-house premises are an important part of the ecosystem, and we need to encourage more ethical people into those positions rather than demonising them. There are sex worker rights organisations that take a different view on this, however, which is why some bar sex workers who are or have been brothel managers from becoming members.
Personally, however I believe this isn’t tenable, as it denies sex workers community just because they’ve worked on both sides of the counter. It feels especially absurd when I consider the number of owners I’ve worked under who have remained sex workers, simultaneously seeing clients while also managing other women, leaving them subject to much of the same treatment as me from client and state.
Until we broaden the career opportunities for women after sex work, I don’t think it’s fair to criticise ageing sex workers for entering one of the few jobs that welcomes them with open arms. (Of course, peer-led organisations also offer that, but there are limited positions available and not everyone has the right skill set or temperament.)
I am still deciding what I’ll do after sex work, though the “after” for me right now is vague and in the distance, as I have no plans to quit for at least the next decade and maybe the next two. I am quite inspired by women who have remained in the industry and altered the way they work to adjust to their ageing bodies, such as shifting to only dominatrix work and eliminating full service. In some ways I have already adapted as I’ve aged, since I stopped doing night shifts in my twenties. My contingency plan is a work in progress.
