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with the Asian guy, Molly's relationship with her clients is very even. The relationship with Lucy, the employer, is the exploitative one. In stripping and to an extent in pornography, and in prostitution, women often feel an enormous sense of power. This isn't to say that women aren't victimized. Obviously, there are as many kinds of prostitution as there are women or kinds of jobs. And it's so class divided. The problem is that all kinds of prostitution get lumped together in one massive moral judgment.
MacDonald:
I'm sure many people would have a hard time seeing how prostitutes have power over their tricks. I don't see it myself.
Borden:
Within middle-class prostitution, particularly, there is a lot of control on the part of the women, because on some levels it's men who become vulnerable by walking into a brothel, a place where women are basically calling the shots. The woman is the one who decides when to go into the bedroom, when to begin the session, how much time to give, when to talk, when to not talkof course, she's following cues, trying to read the guy very carefullywhen to pull out the condom, when to put it on, how much more talk to have. Within a half-hour session, there's maybe ten to fifteen minutes of sex at most, and there's a powerful sense of men's vulnerability during the entire time.
One of the reasons I think there's such a sense of power is that the women see how vulnerable the male sex organ is. Men need an affirmation of their masculinity, need to feel they're still in full working order, or whatever. And that's such a vulnerable thing. An erection can happen or not happen. Actual prostitution is so much a woman coaxing it to work or controlling it or making sex into an experience that somehow is professionally complete. If a man goes to a prostitute, he knows he's going to get satisfaction on some levelwhatever that means. Whereas, if he picks up a woman any other place, he may spend a fortune, not knowing what the outcome will be or how he's going to respond if sex does happen. In prostitution, the notion of a complete sex act is some-what guaranteed. I think a lot of the reason men get so attached to prostitutesattached on some levelis because there's an understanding and appreciation of that professional service.
In the movies, prostitutes in every class of prostitutionworking-class prostitution, middle-class prostitutionare made to pay for having been prostitutes. How they pay is determined by how much they did it for the money, how much they did it for the thrill, where they started in the first place, whether they had daddy problems.
MacDonald:
You're talking about conventional films . . .
Borden:
Yes. Conventional films, and some women's films. Marlene Gorris's
Broken Mirrors
[1987] is an instance: women working in a house get assaulted and beaten up and slashed.