They call it the worlds oldest profession for a reason. As long as there has been sex, there have been women who figured out that some men will pay for it. I shouldnt even assume heterosexual men and women. There can be gigolos, gay services and all sorts of crossover. Yet as long as this profession has existed, we still live in a society that vilifies it, or wont even talk about it. One professional escort is trying to change that.
Kristen DiAngelo is a sex worker. She produced the documentary American Courtesans, in which she appears with 10 other sex workers discussing their business. Each escort shares the unique stories of how they got into the business, their success stories, and specialty services they each provide.
The film goes to a dark place as well. DiAngelo is open about rapes that occurred on the job, where she couldnt report attacker because police threatened to arrest her for prostitution before the rapist. The women in the film also speak highly of their benevolent clients, many of whom appear with obscured faces and distorted voices to protect their identities. American Courtesans was intended to provoke a discussion about the sex work industry, to answer peoples questions about escorts and perhaps to suggest more productive laws.
I got 15 minutes with DiAngelo for free. Thats worth $125 right there, more for couples. She let me live out my fantasy of asking questions and having them answered, and to be sincere for a moment she made me feel comfortable in way thats normally my job to make the subject feel comfortable. American Courtesans is now available on VOD, DVD and Blu-ray for viewers interested in hearing firsthand about professional escorts and their clients.
SuicideGirls: The furthest Ive ever gone is a strip club, but what Ive loved about going there is to celebrate the lovely women and thank them for sharing their beauty with me. Do you think thats a common attitude?
KristenDiAngelo: I do. I think thats very human. I think that its very wonderful whenever you can look at anything you think is beautiful and say, Wow, thats beautiful or I like that. I think its very common and I also think its a very wonderful quality.
SG: Im told, and I understand that not every customer in those places treats women that way.
KD: Honestly, clients, whether youre in a strip club or in a brothel or anywhere you go, they are truly representative of the population as a whole. Theres not one way or another and what you do the longer youre in the business is you garner those that treat you good and that you can respect and like also. The good thing about this industry is that, in many industries if you go to work you may have somebody you really dont like, who doesnt treat you well right next to you in your office and you have to see them every day of your life. We never have to see anybody again. A short minute, yeah, that didnt work for me, and you move on. I would say that theres both and I choose to surround myself with those men that are wonderful and phenomenal and caring and loving and kind. That makes my life good.
SG: Ive been told by critics that what Im actually doing is objectifying women who have maybe been abused.
KD: If we were to play with that train of thought, just hear me out, then we must be objectifying men that get to play football and beat their brains in because its not good for their body. Theyre definitely just using their body there, and some mental skill too. Ours takes mental skill too. Or a gymnast, young girls, and we give them gold medals, who are doing things which are really bad for them at early ages. People use both their mind and their body to generate income. They all do. I dont understand why thats an objectification. Now, it is if its somebody who is an unwilling participant, and doesnt want to be there. I even have to clarify doesnt want to be there. Many people go to work every day and dont want to be at work but its their choice. Thats what theyre doing to pay the bills. To me objectification is if you have a young girl, or even a woman of age, whos trafficked or held captive. She doesnt get to live off the fruits of her earnings or her labor. She doesnt get to participate in any decision making about her own body or her own life. Yeah, if somebodys seen one of those people, thats objectification most likely. Youre taking advantage of that person. Many women are proud of our bodies. Why should we be ashamed? Why cant we rock our bodies? If we work out all the time and eat right and do good things, what is embarrassing about it? I dont understand. Everybody has one.
SG: Being in the entertainment industry, Ive become especially sensitive to whats objectifying women in general, whether its writing about them or seeing them portrayed. So if someone accuses me of that, I worry, Oh no, am I objectifying them? Do I really have what I thought was a noble appreciation of them?
KD: Ill tell you something, people think this is weird, but we, in order to be safe, have to be able to feel peoples energy or make a snap judgment what kind of person they are very quick. I know when somebody thinks theyre objectifying me. They can think they are. That doesnt mean they get to. This is my job, my career, I run everything the way I want to run it because Im the professional. So they would have a hard time doing that. I may play a role for them, but Im choosing to play that role. But I can just tell by how youre asking these questions that in no way in you do you view women like that. You care enough to ask those questions to make sure that that isnt what you would be doing or to clarify what that is, that tells me that would never be your intent. Therefore, you arent doing that. You are appreciating them.
SG: And in the film you show some of the customers that you do consider good men.
KD: Yes. Amazing men. Amazing men. And to me, the clients are even more demonized than we are. The need for intimacy and for affection and for kindness in our society is deemed as almost nonexistent. We do the people here a huge injustice not allowing them to be human and real. I have met people who, without a doubt, I can say are some of the most wonderful people in this world. Theyre contributing members to society, theyre kind, theyre loving, theyre caring. The fact that they have human needs just makes them human.
SG: Do you really think men who are customers are more demonized than women who are objectified or belittled or attacked for working in adult professions?
KD: Well, if youre talking about women who are objectified or trafficked or really used, both of them are.
SG: Or even just the way the law treats prostitution?
KD: It goes back and forth. I really believe for us in the US, the law is more of a sledge hammer when it comes to sex workers and prostitution. What I mean, instead of aware of justice, the only time any of the prostitution laws are ever upheld is before an election because its a low cost brownie point method for political purposes. Or, if any politician contingency within the government is getting a lot of fire from religious organizations. Theres got to be a reason. If not, its not a cost effective method of policing the United States. I mean, its just crazy. So men, when they get caught in those stings, just recently Kathleen Rice, a [district attorney] in New York is running for office again. She announced running for office and started a two month sting and put 104 mens faces on a board and published it all over, hurting their families, their children, their employers, everybody around. These guys were just arrested. I dont think they were convicted yet. I doubt that all happens within a few days. So looking at that, to me that was an atrocity. It was an irresponsible use of her office. In that case, those men were hurt and so were their families and it was terrible. So I believe that men can get the bad end of it. The difference is, us who are in this industry, if we get arrested or something, we go back to work. People already thought about us like that. If a man, that happens to, his life crumbles.
SG: Your preaching to the choir with us. How do we forward this conversation with people who are quiet about sex or wont even talk about it?
KD: Well, its my hope that by doing a film, its coming out on VOD and Blu-ray and DVD, is that by making information about this industry more accessible, like real information about us, not that fake stuff. A lot of its fake because they dont have the real information. But by making that real, Im hoping that people will start a discussion that maybe were not what they think. Not the clients, not the women. Maybe were not exactly the stereotype of what they were thinking.
SG: But the really fearful or biased people, wouldnt you have to trick them into watching the movie?
KD: Some of them I think will watch it because they want to hate us. They want to say its bad.
SG: Whatever gets them in the door.
KD: We had to laugh. Our film had not even been released. Nobody had seen it except for closed groups, like private screenings and we knew who they were. We had four people come in and give us 1s on IMDB and Im going, Okay, probably theyre religious right, we got that. Then I looked at the other films that dealt with the content, same thing had happened. I was like yeah, probably. People who are going to hate us and not understand this industry are never going to understand this industry. You cant change somebodys mind who is against being open. You cant. But there are so many people out there who are reasonable. This film, I cant tell you how many educators at the college level said they want to start showing this in womens studies classes and psychology classes. We just had our first write-up from a psychology magazine saying that this was a table turner in current perceptions about the sex work industry. This lady actually went on to say that if as many women out there could take bad experiences and turn them into empowering like we did, it would be a phenomenal thing. Im hoping to get it into the colleges and to our youth.
SG: When you shared the stories of abuse and rapes that happened on the job, it made me feel guilty just for asking you to engage in a profession with risks that high, to provide a service for people like me. Is that the wrong attitude?
KD: Absolutely, and let me tell you why. I understand the risks. Firefighters have horrible risks. Police officers, oh my gosh. Many jobs have risks. We understand the risks. We take precautions and with the internet, we can talk and weve been able to even add layers of precautions on top of those. Its our choice. What will make a difference is for the laws to change to protect us. If that first guy rapes the first woman and she can call 911 and report him and get him thrown away, then he doesnt have to go through 52 more of us and then out into the mainstream harming little kids and other women. If the laws change and we have the ability to do what other people do, the same rights, things will be better but most of us are willing. Most of us want to be here. I want to be in this industry. Its my choice. Its an amazing industry and Ive had the honor of knowing people who I would have never even crossed paths with humans like this. I would have had no access, and theyve made my life better. Theyve made me a better person.
SG: Sexual abuse can be such a traumatic thing. It never once soured you on the job?
KD: Sexual abuse happens to women in all kinds [of ways]. In fact, the majority of women who are abused are not sex workers. I am the only one who had any molestation or sexual abuse as a kid out of our film, out of the 11. But we didnt want to shy away from that because thats a stereotype so one of us wanted to bring that to the table. It had nothing to do with me being a sex worker, but when people suffer sexual abuse at an early age, you learn to distance yourself from your body. Sex and love become two different things. They have to become two different things. That gave me a skill. Now I can go oh, poor me, let me do this or that, but what happened is that skill provided for me for a lot of years in a wonderful, wonderful way. So it is what it is. Im just like other people. How many women have had that? Its just where I chose to take it. I dont think it makes it wrong or right but I dont think that more women have been sexually abused in this industry than out there in the mainstream. In fact, so many women out there cant talk about it. We can talk about it with each other because we deal in this realm of sex. Most women sit there in silence, and men too.
SG: I want to go back to the sports analogy because you mention football players. Take a boxer, they are very directly enduring physical injury, paid millions to do that for our entertainment. Where is the line?
KD: Thats my whole thing. It doesnt make sense but I really believe that a lot of that is because the majority of boxers are male. The majority of sex workers are female. The laws havent always applied the same for males and females. Were a little bit behind.
SG: There isnt really a female contact sport.
KD: No, but its okay for men to do it. We have different [ideas of] whats okay for men and women and for some reason its really hard for society to see women using their bodies. Men can use their bodies. Its harder for women.
SG: My favorite girls in the movie were Erin Marxxx and Emma Dupree. Should I call them?
KD: You can call them if you want. They are amazing women, amazing! I love both of them.
SG: Now that youre retired, do you have any old clients offering you a premium for one more visit?
KD: No, because what I did is in post, I recently started working again until I get through post-production because this is more expensive than I could ever imagine. I was a little bit underneath with the post part of it. I was good with production, but it was a little bit too much. Still, the craziness is, I have clients that have been grandfathered at the same rate for 10 years and Ill never raise it. I dont raise prices on people. I love spending time with my clients.
SG: You told me, when we booked this interview, that you were a big fan of Suicide Girls. How does our alternative beauty erotica forward the conversation about sex in the country?
KD: I love the Suicide Girls and Ill tell you why, because you saw our group of sex workers. We are women of all shapes, all sizes, all looks. There is no one standard and we know that. People always think a sex worker is all about the looks. It isnt, and those Suicide Girls, oh my gosh, they are beautiful and they are beautiful in such a unique an eclectic way. Ive always been such a fan.They probably dont know that. I have a few I really like.
SG: Name favorites! We love it!
KD: Of course, Missy Suicide because shes one of the first. I have a few, Im not going to go into it because then Ill feel bad because Ill want to name all of them, but I think that they are icons. I think that they have changed the face of feminine beauty and the woman who started it, the same thing. I think that they have done an amazing thing for women and media.
Kristen DiAngelo is a sex worker. She produced the documentary American Courtesans, in which she appears with 10 other sex workers discussing their business. Each escort shares the unique stories of how they got into the business, their success stories, and specialty services they each provide.
The film goes to a dark place as well. DiAngelo is open about rapes that occurred on the job, where she couldnt report attacker because police threatened to arrest her for prostitution before the rapist. The women in the film also speak highly of their benevolent clients, many of whom appear with obscured faces and distorted voices to protect their identities. American Courtesans was intended to provoke a discussion about the sex work industry, to answer peoples questions about escorts and perhaps to suggest more productive laws.
I got 15 minutes with DiAngelo for free. Thats worth $125 right there, more for couples. She let me live out my fantasy of asking questions and having them answered, and to be sincere for a moment she made me feel comfortable in way thats normally my job to make the subject feel comfortable. American Courtesans is now available on VOD, DVD and Blu-ray for viewers interested in hearing firsthand about professional escorts and their clients.
SuicideGirls: The furthest Ive ever gone is a strip club, but what Ive loved about going there is to celebrate the lovely women and thank them for sharing their beauty with me. Do you think thats a common attitude?
KristenDiAngelo: I do. I think thats very human. I think that its very wonderful whenever you can look at anything you think is beautiful and say, Wow, thats beautiful or I like that. I think its very common and I also think its a very wonderful quality.
SG: Im told, and I understand that not every customer in those places treats women that way.
KD: Honestly, clients, whether youre in a strip club or in a brothel or anywhere you go, they are truly representative of the population as a whole. Theres not one way or another and what you do the longer youre in the business is you garner those that treat you good and that you can respect and like also. The good thing about this industry is that, in many industries if you go to work you may have somebody you really dont like, who doesnt treat you well right next to you in your office and you have to see them every day of your life. We never have to see anybody again. A short minute, yeah, that didnt work for me, and you move on. I would say that theres both and I choose to surround myself with those men that are wonderful and phenomenal and caring and loving and kind. That makes my life good.
SG: Ive been told by critics that what Im actually doing is objectifying women who have maybe been abused.
KD: If we were to play with that train of thought, just hear me out, then we must be objectifying men that get to play football and beat their brains in because its not good for their body. Theyre definitely just using their body there, and some mental skill too. Ours takes mental skill too. Or a gymnast, young girls, and we give them gold medals, who are doing things which are really bad for them at early ages. People use both their mind and their body to generate income. They all do. I dont understand why thats an objectification. Now, it is if its somebody who is an unwilling participant, and doesnt want to be there. I even have to clarify doesnt want to be there. Many people go to work every day and dont want to be at work but its their choice. Thats what theyre doing to pay the bills. To me objectification is if you have a young girl, or even a woman of age, whos trafficked or held captive. She doesnt get to live off the fruits of her earnings or her labor. She doesnt get to participate in any decision making about her own body or her own life. Yeah, if somebodys seen one of those people, thats objectification most likely. Youre taking advantage of that person. Many women are proud of our bodies. Why should we be ashamed? Why cant we rock our bodies? If we work out all the time and eat right and do good things, what is embarrassing about it? I dont understand. Everybody has one.
SG: Being in the entertainment industry, Ive become especially sensitive to whats objectifying women in general, whether its writing about them or seeing them portrayed. So if someone accuses me of that, I worry, Oh no, am I objectifying them? Do I really have what I thought was a noble appreciation of them?
KD: Ill tell you something, people think this is weird, but we, in order to be safe, have to be able to feel peoples energy or make a snap judgment what kind of person they are very quick. I know when somebody thinks theyre objectifying me. They can think they are. That doesnt mean they get to. This is my job, my career, I run everything the way I want to run it because Im the professional. So they would have a hard time doing that. I may play a role for them, but Im choosing to play that role. But I can just tell by how youre asking these questions that in no way in you do you view women like that. You care enough to ask those questions to make sure that that isnt what you would be doing or to clarify what that is, that tells me that would never be your intent. Therefore, you arent doing that. You are appreciating them.
SG: And in the film you show some of the customers that you do consider good men.
KD: Yes. Amazing men. Amazing men. And to me, the clients are even more demonized than we are. The need for intimacy and for affection and for kindness in our society is deemed as almost nonexistent. We do the people here a huge injustice not allowing them to be human and real. I have met people who, without a doubt, I can say are some of the most wonderful people in this world. Theyre contributing members to society, theyre kind, theyre loving, theyre caring. The fact that they have human needs just makes them human.
SG: Do you really think men who are customers are more demonized than women who are objectified or belittled or attacked for working in adult professions?
KD: Well, if youre talking about women who are objectified or trafficked or really used, both of them are.
SG: Or even just the way the law treats prostitution?
KD: It goes back and forth. I really believe for us in the US, the law is more of a sledge hammer when it comes to sex workers and prostitution. What I mean, instead of aware of justice, the only time any of the prostitution laws are ever upheld is before an election because its a low cost brownie point method for political purposes. Or, if any politician contingency within the government is getting a lot of fire from religious organizations. Theres got to be a reason. If not, its not a cost effective method of policing the United States. I mean, its just crazy. So men, when they get caught in those stings, just recently Kathleen Rice, a [district attorney] in New York is running for office again. She announced running for office and started a two month sting and put 104 mens faces on a board and published it all over, hurting their families, their children, their employers, everybody around. These guys were just arrested. I dont think they were convicted yet. I doubt that all happens within a few days. So looking at that, to me that was an atrocity. It was an irresponsible use of her office. In that case, those men were hurt and so were their families and it was terrible. So I believe that men can get the bad end of it. The difference is, us who are in this industry, if we get arrested or something, we go back to work. People already thought about us like that. If a man, that happens to, his life crumbles.
SG: Your preaching to the choir with us. How do we forward this conversation with people who are quiet about sex or wont even talk about it?
KD: Well, its my hope that by doing a film, its coming out on VOD and Blu-ray and DVD, is that by making information about this industry more accessible, like real information about us, not that fake stuff. A lot of its fake because they dont have the real information. But by making that real, Im hoping that people will start a discussion that maybe were not what they think. Not the clients, not the women. Maybe were not exactly the stereotype of what they were thinking.
SG: But the really fearful or biased people, wouldnt you have to trick them into watching the movie?
KD: Some of them I think will watch it because they want to hate us. They want to say its bad.
SG: Whatever gets them in the door.
KD: We had to laugh. Our film had not even been released. Nobody had seen it except for closed groups, like private screenings and we knew who they were. We had four people come in and give us 1s on IMDB and Im going, Okay, probably theyre religious right, we got that. Then I looked at the other films that dealt with the content, same thing had happened. I was like yeah, probably. People who are going to hate us and not understand this industry are never going to understand this industry. You cant change somebodys mind who is against being open. You cant. But there are so many people out there who are reasonable. This film, I cant tell you how many educators at the college level said they want to start showing this in womens studies classes and psychology classes. We just had our first write-up from a psychology magazine saying that this was a table turner in current perceptions about the sex work industry. This lady actually went on to say that if as many women out there could take bad experiences and turn them into empowering like we did, it would be a phenomenal thing. Im hoping to get it into the colleges and to our youth.
SG: When you shared the stories of abuse and rapes that happened on the job, it made me feel guilty just for asking you to engage in a profession with risks that high, to provide a service for people like me. Is that the wrong attitude?
KD: Absolutely, and let me tell you why. I understand the risks. Firefighters have horrible risks. Police officers, oh my gosh. Many jobs have risks. We understand the risks. We take precautions and with the internet, we can talk and weve been able to even add layers of precautions on top of those. Its our choice. What will make a difference is for the laws to change to protect us. If that first guy rapes the first woman and she can call 911 and report him and get him thrown away, then he doesnt have to go through 52 more of us and then out into the mainstream harming little kids and other women. If the laws change and we have the ability to do what other people do, the same rights, things will be better but most of us are willing. Most of us want to be here. I want to be in this industry. Its my choice. Its an amazing industry and Ive had the honor of knowing people who I would have never even crossed paths with humans like this. I would have had no access, and theyve made my life better. Theyve made me a better person.
SG: Sexual abuse can be such a traumatic thing. It never once soured you on the job?
KD: Sexual abuse happens to women in all kinds [of ways]. In fact, the majority of women who are abused are not sex workers. I am the only one who had any molestation or sexual abuse as a kid out of our film, out of the 11. But we didnt want to shy away from that because thats a stereotype so one of us wanted to bring that to the table. It had nothing to do with me being a sex worker, but when people suffer sexual abuse at an early age, you learn to distance yourself from your body. Sex and love become two different things. They have to become two different things. That gave me a skill. Now I can go oh, poor me, let me do this or that, but what happened is that skill provided for me for a lot of years in a wonderful, wonderful way. So it is what it is. Im just like other people. How many women have had that? Its just where I chose to take it. I dont think it makes it wrong or right but I dont think that more women have been sexually abused in this industry than out there in the mainstream. In fact, so many women out there cant talk about it. We can talk about it with each other because we deal in this realm of sex. Most women sit there in silence, and men too.
SG: I want to go back to the sports analogy because you mention football players. Take a boxer, they are very directly enduring physical injury, paid millions to do that for our entertainment. Where is the line?
KD: Thats my whole thing. It doesnt make sense but I really believe that a lot of that is because the majority of boxers are male. The majority of sex workers are female. The laws havent always applied the same for males and females. Were a little bit behind.
SG: There isnt really a female contact sport.
KD: No, but its okay for men to do it. We have different [ideas of] whats okay for men and women and for some reason its really hard for society to see women using their bodies. Men can use their bodies. Its harder for women.
SG: My favorite girls in the movie were Erin Marxxx and Emma Dupree. Should I call them?
KD: You can call them if you want. They are amazing women, amazing! I love both of them.
SG: Now that youre retired, do you have any old clients offering you a premium for one more visit?
KD: No, because what I did is in post, I recently started working again until I get through post-production because this is more expensive than I could ever imagine. I was a little bit underneath with the post part of it. I was good with production, but it was a little bit too much. Still, the craziness is, I have clients that have been grandfathered at the same rate for 10 years and Ill never raise it. I dont raise prices on people. I love spending time with my clients.
SG: You told me, when we booked this interview, that you were a big fan of Suicide Girls. How does our alternative beauty erotica forward the conversation about sex in the country?
KD: I love the Suicide Girls and Ill tell you why, because you saw our group of sex workers. We are women of all shapes, all sizes, all looks. There is no one standard and we know that. People always think a sex worker is all about the looks. It isnt, and those Suicide Girls, oh my gosh, they are beautiful and they are beautiful in such a unique an eclectic way. Ive always been such a fan.They probably dont know that. I have a few I really like.
SG: Name favorites! We love it!
KD: Of course, Missy Suicide because shes one of the first. I have a few, Im not going to go into it because then Ill feel bad because Ill want to name all of them, but I think that they are icons. I think that they have changed the face of feminine beauty and the woman who started it, the same thing. I think that they have done an amazing thing for women and media.