XII. PROSTITUTES

Another traditional thesis/notion about machismo is the association between men and prostitutes.⁹⁴ Apparently, to be macho is to have frequent sexual relations with women of the street. Our study confirms this. Observation corroborated that truckers who are interested in sexual encounters go mainly to sex workers. It was also clear that truckers seek them out because they engage in different sexual practices. However, as we shall see, the links between truckers and prostitutes do not occur because they are machos, but on the contrary, because they are not.

Napoleon says that in his profession there are those who like to go with “whores”.

There are some who like to go around with a bunch of lazy women, with whores and all that. I can’t tell you how many do it, but a lot of them like to. Some have wives, but they still like to hang out with those lazy women, with those whores.

Jesus confirms this:

What I’ve seen – not with all of them – is that if a woman appears they pick her up. I’ve noticed that some of them are kind of dirty and pick up women who hang out there, the ones that need to have sex to eat, the whores. Some of them smoke crack and I’ve seen truckers pick them up, even married truckers I know. I know others from other firms who do the same.

Rafael is more explicit about looking for sex workers.

The sex of money

One aspect mentioned frequently with regard to women who seek out truckers, is the attraction of their money. Pancho is very clear about this:

Truckers are always besieged by women and that has a lot to do with the economic factor. We always have money in our pockets because we need to eat. It’s not that we’re millionaires or that we’re all so good-looking. It’s not a physical attraction but a financial one.

Guayaba thinks it is logical for women to admire truckers.

Victor regards them like vultures on the lookout for their prey:

Carlos sees it this way:

Well, they often think we make a load of money, but that’s totally untrue and they don’t understand it. It’s not like it was before. Nowadays you live badly on the little you earn to survive.

The official excuse

If a trucker knows that a prostitute is only after his money, what does he want? we ask Pancho. He says he goes to prostitutes to satisfy his bodily needs:

Julio is more explicit and says that the trucks are “full of chicks”

Pick-up places

Truckers like to drink in brothels and, as Carlos explains, one thing leads to another:

We all go to local brothels and have a few beers from time to time. There we let out minds go…You see a woman with a nice little waist and a pretty face and bang, you’re hooked. We say hi, we sit down next to them, get in the mood, dance and then later we get it on.

These establishments are generally low class, with darkened rooms. Some are every dirty. These places often have a bar where liquor is served to clients. We visited a bar in El Salvador, in a brothel typical of any country in the region. One place we could not overlook, which was adorned with four splendid cabs that beckoned us inside, was the Wellington brothel.

On one side of the park, in a dimly lit area, is a place that appears to be among the most famous in the area, without counting the “Oro Infiel”, which unluckily for us, was closed for remodeling. Returning to the Wellington, the place looks like any local „saloon’ with a bar, music, low lighting, and of course women who try to see if anyone is interested in them. Opposite the salon, is a very conveniently located small hotel into which we saw a couple enter after leaving the bar.

The women were very attentive to all the men who entered the place. Some were aged 20 to 40, and the most “veteran” one of all was almost 50. Since nobody here seemed to bother with us, we walked through a door that we later realized led to the next-door bar called “Huracan” (Hurricane), and there the atmosphere was heavier. A trucker was coming on to some women standing the door, near his cab, whom he was touching and was even kissing one of the women’s breasts.

A woman at the bar started to eye us. My companion, ignorant of the feminine wiles of seduction, began to get nervous, especially because he was the focus of the woman’s fixed gaze. By the time we invited her to sit down, only half a pack of cigarettes was left.

When we said that our intention was to talk, the woman mentioned the sacred tenet of business that “time is money”, and told us that she would prefer to go the room as soon as possible, especially as she was working and had already ignored a client for “this pair of good-lookers”. Moreover, talking was a “come-down” for her (a loss of prestige). When we said we would pay her for her time, she became very nervous and immediately asked if we were “the law” (policemen), since he looked like a narcotics agent, while I looked like a “hick looking for a woman”.

The woman said that in general, truckers are “good people”. She also revealed that business is tough because truckers earn little money and in many cases do not have enough to pay them their fees. Some prefer to “throw five hundred pesos at a crack-head from Cieneguita to suck their dick” or “fuck her in the cab and then dump her again someplace. They don’t even have enough for the room,” she said indignantly. This is what she calls “unfair competition from crack-heads”. She added that it was common to see drivers buying crack in that area.

After a beer, the woman told us that her sexual relations with truckers were “normal”, that they lasted less than an hour and that she liked to use a condom, but if the client did not want her to, she was “not willing to lose the client”. She said although she finds it very uncomfortable, she has had sex in a cab.

Once the conversation was over and once she was convinced of our intentions, we decided to stay a while longer. At that point a large group of truckers walked in, with whom we had made contact in the afternoon, and they greeted us effusively and even bought us a couple of beers. The most interesting thing was that during their visit to the bar they did not interact with any woman. When the bar’s Chinese owner, feeling he was the reincarnation of Bruce Lee, tried to oust a frail beggar by hitting him with a chain, we decided it was time to leave.

We discovered that some of these operate as “fronts” for the sale of drugs. It was easy to observe cabs near these places, not just to visit the female “crack-heads”, but also to buy drugs.

The highways are also places where truckers can make contacts with sex workers.

It was generally possible to observe women along the road being picked up by truckers. Both during the day and at night, these women look for truckers in the parking lots or at the docks. If they agree to have sex, they will do it in the cab. However, they may also have sex in a variety of other places. During the in-depth interviews we heard that sex contacts occur in restaurants, sodas, street corners, hotels, gas stations, or in other words, as Barbas says, “everywhere, wherever you want, the place is the least important.”

From whores to friends

A more thorough analysis of the information gathered shows that truckers deny having strong links with these women. Truckers tend to conceal their relationships with them and do not pick up them up openly. Another way is to turn them from whores into friends.

There is no consensus about what a “whore” is. For some, it is a woman who charges money for sexual services. For others, it is a woman who has to feed her children, because the war left them without a father. Others regard them as friends. Truckers apply these concepts in different ways. Although they initially call these women “prostitutes”, they eventually establish friendships with them and interact socially with them as “friends” and occasionally as “girlfriends”. Enrique explains the situation:

Let’s say that truckers pass through a place and get to know a girl and the girl begins to recognize the truck and even the way that her trucker sounds his horn. Sometimes guys bring them presents from the border, where they’re cheaper, and they become friends. After a time (the women) don’t charge them. They themselves have told me.

In informal interviews, some sex workers admitted that sometimes they establish strong friendships with truckers. The relationship may develop to a point where they no longer charge them for sexual favors.

Who are the whores?

In order to delve deeper into the characteristics of sex workers, we conducted a study in Costa Rica only on the main factors that encourage the practice of vaginal sex without a condom with a client (unsafe sex).⁹⁵ We wanted to know if there was some correlation between physical and emotional violence and the capacity for dissociation. In other words, we theorized that working in the sex trade might be easier for women who have the ability to “dissociate” themselves from the experience⁹⁶, or what is known as “learned despair”.⁹⁷ We believe that women who suffered traumas in their childhood or adolescence⁹⁸ and learned to do the “numbing” associated with these, may find it easier to have sexual relations with several men.⁹⁹

We studied a number of social, demographic, psychological and cultural factors that we believed might encourage unsafe sexual practices among sex workers. The factors that were analyze were as follows:

Most of these topics were reduced in the form of indexes. To evaluate the reliability of these, Cronbach’s Alpha¹¹⁰ was used. A total of 12 independent variables were included, for which reason, after many tests, the “forward stepwise” procedure was applied to the selection of variables. Given the exploratory character of the analysis, a level of 10% was established to prove the significance of each parameter estimated.

Finally, we should mention that, once the model had been constructed, we estimated the probability of practicing vaginal sex without a condom with clients during the past month, to correlate this variable with others that provide important evidence of the complexity of the phenomenon under study.

The results relating to sexual abuse indicate that 32% of the sample were victims of some form of sexual abuse during childhood, and 44% during adolescence. By comparison we can cite the case of the United States where figures obtained among young prostitutes show that 70% had been sexually molested during childhood.¹¹¹

Determinants of unsafe sexual practice

The results obtained show, in the first place, that the resulting model excludes a variable related to attitudes towards the condom, which measure sexual abuse and the following indices: post-trauma disorders, sexual roles, sexual machismo, control over one’s health and knowledge of Aids.

We may also conclude that the resulting logistical model is highly significant, in other words, that the factors selected satisfactorily explain vaginal sex without a condom.¹¹² Information that is not shown in the table indicates that the variables considered most important in this model correctly predict the sexual behavior of sex workers in 84% of cases.¹¹³

It is possible to identify the variables that contribute most to explaining unsafe sexual practice: socioeconomic level, exposure to sex education programs, attitude towards the condom and the degree of punishment received during childhood.

The degree of punishment during childhood indicates that higher levels of this variable will contribute to more frequent practice of vaginal sex without a condom. Specifically, the addition to the index of some type of punishment during childhood, contributed to an increase of 38% in unsafe sexual practice.

Given the impact of this variable in promoting unsafe sex, it merits further comment. This variable provides an idea of the degree of violence that the sex worker suffered during her childhood. Specifically it measured physical, psychological and sexual mistreatment during childhood. Having found that this factor is so significant, one may deduce that the different forms of violence to which sex workers are subjected during childhood produces different sequels. In the area of prevention, it increases her probability of engaging in unsafe sexual practices, which implies a higher risk of HIV infection.

The complexity of the problem

The variables selected for the logistical model enabled us to establish the factors that most directly influence the sexual practice under study. For their part, the variables that were excluded show that these do not explain as much, at least directly, as those selected. But this does not mean that these latter have no validity in the study of the phenomenon.

The results shown in Table 5 show some relationships of interest.

Table 5

Correlation matrix of the variables under study

The results of Table 5 show some relationships of interest. For example, it may be observed that the physical, sexual and psychological violence suffered by sex workers during childhood (index of childhood punishment) is closely related to a low level of self-control, low self-esteem and other indicators that are summarized in the post traumatic stress index (0.4644).¹¹⁴ This means that as a result of violence -both sexual and other non-sexual forms of violence -not only from their family of origin but also from clients, sex workers suffer from psychological disorders that contribute to high-risk sexual practices, thereby increasing their risk of HIV infection.¹¹⁵

Another important correlation may be seen between sexual machismo¹¹⁶ and sexual roles¹¹⁷ with the socioeconomic level (though both variables are associated with the practice of unsafe sex, the logistical equation found indicated that there are others of greater importance). The correlations found (-0.32) suggest that sex workers belonging to the lower socioeconomic levels play traditional roles and tend to favor sexual machismo to a greater extent. This behavior, which grants more rights to men than to women, both in the sexual and the social arena, in the end helps to undermine women’s power to demand safe sexual practices.

But before jumping to conclusions about this information, let us consider the personal picture in the next chapter.

_____________

⁹⁴ Oscar Lewis, The Children of Sanchez. New York: Random House, 1961. p.43

⁹⁵ For the study we decided to select a sample of 80 sex workers in the Metropolitan Area of San Jose. In order to select a controlled quota, prior to the selection process we decided to have a diversity of women, in accordance with their workplace and the social and economic level of these places. The different places considered included: bars, nightclubs, brothels, hotels, massage parlors and guest houses. Each one of these places was classified according to three socioeconomic levels: high, medium and low. Subsequently the number of women who worked in each place were counted and we proceeded to distribute the 80 interviews required in a manner proportional to these characteristics.

Eight interviewers were trained to administer the questionnaire. Their task was to select the women, distribute the questionnaire to be filled in by the respondents and if necessary, resolve any doubts. As may be seen, the classification of the sample according to a matrix of 7*3 (7 places and 3 levels) and its subsequent restriction of the number of questionnaires per interviewer enabled us to at least minimize any selection bias that might arise in the quota samples.

The duration of the questionnaire varied from 1 hour to more/less 20 minutes. In addition to the issues of AIDS, sexual practice and basic social and demographic characteristics, the questionnaire covered aspects such as: make up of the nuclear family, sex education, sexual roles, sexual machismo, sexual abuse in childhood/adolescence and post-traumatic effects, childhood punishments and attitudes towards religion.

The gathering of data from the questionnaire took two months and there were no reports of resistance on the part of selected sex workers to filling in the questionnaire. The total duration of the study was five months, beginning April and ending in August of 1993.

It is also important to mention that in the study we used the practice of vaginal sex without a condom as a variable (dependent). This variable was measured for the 30 days prior to the interview and reported only the practice with clients. In this way, high-risk practice was classified as 0=NO and 1=YES, for which reason a model of multivariable logistical regression was used as a data analysis technique [20]. This technique is not only an appropriate procedure to analyze dependent dichotomic variables, but also permits the use of discreet and/or continuous variables, as independent variables.

⁹⁶ Dissociation is a special form of an intrusive symptom. The brain places the traumatic event of seeing the body parts out of immediate consciousness by creating a separate consciousness for that event. In some cases the victim may “forget” or develop an amnesia for the dissociated experience, but it may return unbidden in subsequent experiences with any event that symbolizes the trauma. See Raymond B. Flannery Jr. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The victims’ guide to healing and recovery. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1992.

⁹⁷ This term denotes the inability to do something to stop the undesirable events because these take place in a hostile environment. The learned despair makes these women believe that they do not have a degree of reasonable control over their lives. Passivity, routine, depression, lack of control and the acquisition of undesirable habits, such as drug use, among others, are the expected results. In this way, a chain of events whose beginning is difficult to detect, ends up exposing sex workers to high risk of infection.

⁹⁸ The INDEX OF CHILDHOOD PUNISHMENTS was based on answers to the following:
When you were raised were you physically punished with…

• Strong slaps with the hand?
• Kicks with the feet?
• Blows with objects such as sticks, whips or knives?
• Burns?
• Were you locked up in your home, bedroom or wardrobe?
• Were you verbally abused?
• Were you verbally threatened?
• Were you deprived of food?
• Were you forced to do excessive work?
• Were you forced to perform sexual acts?
• Were you ridiculed in front of your friends?

⁹⁹ The association between “numbing” and post-traumatic stress disorder has been described by dozens of psychologists. See Mike Lew, Victims no longer. Men recovering from incest and other sexual abuse. New York, Harper Collins Publishers, 1988.

¹⁰⁰ This refers to the sex workers socioeconomic situation, as deduced from her workplace. Women with a lower socioeconomic level are presumed to have fewer individual resources (economic, social and psychological) to be able to demand safe sexual practices, and therefore are more likely to expose themselves to risk of infection than those of a medium or high socioeconomic level.

¹⁰¹ Indicates whether the subject has received classes, courses or lectures on sex, sexuality or sexual education. Those who have been exposed to such programs are expected to engage in unsafe practices to a lesser degree.

¹⁰² This is based on two questions that were analyzed separately: “Is the condom not used when you love your partner?” and “Is it pleasurable to use a condom?” Presumably, a more positive attitude towards condoms discourages unsafe practices.

¹⁰³ Measures prior to the age of 12 and between the ages of 12 and 18. Includes a range of sexual abuses, from being forced to give or receive kisses or caresses of a sexual nature, to penetration. It is theorized that one of the sequels of sexual abuse, both in childhood and adolescence, is a greater risk of unsafe sexual practices.

¹⁰⁴ As a consequence of sexual abuse, rape and other expressions of sexual and non-sexual violence, not only from their original families, but also from clients, sex workers manifest a number of symptoms of crisis, both physical and psychological, which contribute to undermine their self-control. It is presumed that a higher level of post-traumatic stress would contribute to their having less self-control over their bodies, and therefore that they would be exposed to greater risk of HIV infection.

¹⁰⁵ This is related to the previous topic and provides an idea of the degree of violence sex workers suffered during their upbringing. The hypothesis is that high levels punishment during childhood helps undermine self-esteem and control over one’s body and for that reason the person is more likely to engage in high risk practices.

¹⁰⁶ This is measured by the degree to which they support activities typical of women in society, such as staying at home and raising children. It is believed that women who play the traditional roles also tend to have less control over their lives and therefore will more likely be exposed to risk situations.

¹⁰⁷ This is measured as sexual activities that are permissible in men, but not in women. It is presumed that a higher degree of sexual machismo gives less power to a sex worker to demand safe sexual practices.

¹⁰⁸ This measures the capacity of sex workers to control aspects related to their health, without leaving it „up to fate’. It is assumed that a greater control over one’s own health will encourage a more permanent concern with respect to unsafe sexual practices.

¹⁰⁹ This establishes that a greater knowledge of different aspects of AIDS, such as means of prevention and transmission, will strengthen their capacity to practice safer sex.

¹¹⁰ Lord F. Novick M. Statistical Theories of Mental Tests. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. 1968.

¹¹¹ Finklehor D., Child Sexual Abuse. New York: Free Press, 1984.

¹¹² This may be deduced by corroborating that there is a high probability that the results observed may be provided by the parameters estimated in the model (value shown at the foot of Table 4, -2*LL=0.8363).

¹¹³ With respect to the selected variables and their relation to the sexual practice under study, we can deduce several important results. In the first place, all values estimated in B have a sign in accordance with what was expected (Table 4, Column 1). The significance of this parameter may be more cl