Scandalous (19 page)

But, on the question of both sexual and financial
equality, those in power still seem just as unwilling to put
a toe in the water . . .

¹
Eva Clouet, 23, is in the second year of a master's degree in sociology –
'Gender and Social Politics'.

²
We have used the term 'prostitute' to mean men, women and transsexuals
who offer sexual services for payment.

³
In February 2006 138 second-year students of psychology and medicine at
Nantes University completed questionnaires about non-student and student
prostitution. The results of the study show that, according to this sample,
the 'typical profile' of a prostitute in France is 'a young (84.4 per cent of
those questioned), foreign (82.6 per cent) woman (97.8 per cent) who
solicits on the streets (71.3 per cent)'. This 'profile' mirrors the one
portrayed fairly regularly in the media – particularly when referring to
prostitution rings – while putting the emphasis on the most visible form of
prostitution (where the soliciting takes place in public). In fact, according to
the work of (the Nantes branch of) the 'Prostitution Mission' of Médecins
du Monde, street prostitution only involves 40 per cent of overall
prostitution in France.

⁴
Recognisable groups such as students, young middle-class etc.

⁵
Janine Mossuz-Lavau and Marie-Elisabeth Handman,
La Prostituion à
Paris
, Paris, Editions de la Martinière, 2005, p. 13.

⁶
As cited in the testimony of Sélénia (a student who worked as a prostitute
for a year on the streets of Toulouse) in E. Philippe, '
Etudiante, je me suis
prostituée
', published in the monthly
Esprit Femme
, February 2007, 21, pp.
56–7.

⁷
Pascal Lardellier,
Le Coeur Net – Célibat et amour sur le Web
, Paris, Belin
2004, p. 65.

⁸
Extract from production notes by the writer and director Yann Reuzeau for
his play
Les Débutantes – Prostituées en quelques clics
, which ran from
November 2006 to February 2007 at the Manufacture des Abbesses in Paris.

⁹
Christelle Schaff,
Prostitution en France: l'enquête
, Éditions de la Lagune,
2007, p. 50.

¹⁰
Obviously, not all prostitutes on the internet are independent: many work
for 'agencies', some under constant pressure from pimps, particularly
where 'tours' (to all intents and purposes slavery rings) have been arranged.
When a prostitute is 'on tour' she works for a pimp who installs her for a
set time in a hotel in a large Western city, and she serves a substantial
number of clients (often more than ten) every day before he moves her on
to another town. All the recruiting (usually in Eastern bloc countries) and
soliciting is carried out via the internet. In May 2000 a complementary
department was set up within the OCRETH (Office Central de Répression
de la Traite des Être Humains) to tackle criminality associated with
advances in technology. This body, the OCLCTIC (Office Central de Lutte
contre la Criminalité liée aux Technologies de l'Information et de la
Communication), is responsible for overseeing minor offences as well as
crimes involving immoral earnings of 'pimping'.

¹¹
Matthieu Franchon and Andreas Bitesnich, '
Salariées le jour
, escort girls
la
nuit
', published in the weekly
Choc
, 28 June 2007, 87, pp. 26–33.

¹²
In escorting jargon 'taboos' are sexual practices the escort refuses to
perform in the context of sex for money. Conversely, the expression 'no
taboos' indicates an escort prepared to accept every kind of practice.

¹³
Malika Nor,
La Prostitution
, Paris, Le Cavalier Bleu, 2001, p. 54.

¹⁴
This sort of voluntary amateur prostitution is in fact the subject of
Reuzeau's latest play
Les Débutantes – Prostituées en quelques clics
. It
features Marion, a 19-year-old student of medicine who occasionally
prostitutes herself via the internet to pay her way through university.

¹⁵
15 According to the Observatoire de la Vie Étudiante (OVE), in France 47 per
cent of students have salaried work alongside their studies and 15 per cent
of them work at least six months of the year on at least half time.

¹⁶
Christelle Schaff,
op. cit
. p. 140.

¹⁷
As part of my research I met a young male student who worked as a street
prostitute for two years and now uses the internet – deemed '
safer than the
street
' – to find clients. He does not have an advertisement or blog, but logs
on to gay sites to make new contacts. He feels that the fact that men – and
therefore male students – are under-represented as 'providers of paid sexual
services' is a question of supply and demand. '
The male demand for "free"
heterosexual sex is greater than the supply
– hence the institution of female
prostitution to compensate for this discrepancy.
On the other hand, there
is a much smaller discrepancy between the supply and demand for "free"
male homosexual sex. There are, therefore, fewer male prostitutes than
their female counterparts because what they are offering competes with
"free options"
.'

¹⁸
Financial help from parents and other family members represents 44.6 per
cent of student resources [CREDOC figure, 1992] – Olivier Galland and
Marco Oberti,
Les Étudiants
, Paris, La Découverte, 1996, p. 67.

¹⁹
During research, I met two female student escorts for whom financial gain
was not the principal aim of their prostitution. Both were (comfortably)
supported financially by their parents.

²⁰
Jean-Marc Philibert, '
La prostitution gagne les bancs de la fac
',
Le Figaro
,
30 October 2006, p. 11.

²¹
Jean-François Dauriac has been a regional student welfare officer for
Créteil (1992–2001) and Versailles (2001–4). In 2000, Claude Allègre –
then French Minister for Education – instructed Dauriac to establish the
current economic circumstances of French students with a view to setting
up a 'student social security scheme'. Jean-François Dauriac, summary of
notes from his report, Paris 2000.

²²
Jean-Marc Philibert,
op. cit.
– there are currently 2,200,000 students in
France.

²³
Such as Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron,
Les Héritiers: les
étudiants de la culture
, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1989; Raymond Boudon,
L'Inégalité des chances – La mobilité sociale dans les sociétés industrielles
,
Paris, Armand Colin, 1979; François Dubet, '
Les étudiants
', in F. Dubet
et
al., Universités et villes
, Paris, L'Harmattan, 1994; Stéphane Beaud,
80%
au bac . . . et après?
, Paris, La Découverte, 2003; M. Euriat and C. Thelot,
'
Le recrutement social de l'élite scolaire en France
',
Revue française de
sociologie
, XXXVI-3, July–September 1995, pp. 403–38.

²⁴
In 2006 student aid represented 6 billion euros and affected 2.2 million
students. Source: Laurent Wauqiez,
Les aides aux étudiants: comment
relancer l'ascenseur social?,
Paris, 2006.

²⁵
Claude Grignon (chairman of the OVE's scientific committee),
Les
étudiants en difficulté: Pauvreté et précarité
– report submitted to the
Minister for Youth, Education and Research, Paris, 2003.

²⁶
Ibid.

²⁷
Thomas Laqueur,
La Fabrique du sexe – Essai sur le corps et le genre en
Occident
, Paris, Gallimard, 1992.

²⁸
Parents do still keep an eye on their children's sexual activity, particularly
in connection with the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases or
of unwanted pregnancy. Michel Bozon,
Sociologie de la sexualité
, Paris,
Armand Colin, 2005, p. 54.

²⁹
Michel Bozon,
op cit.,
p. 16.

³⁰
This study, conducted by a French organisation, does not refer to the
student population but targets young people aged 18 to 25 whose cases are
followed by Social Services and who are in precarious economic and social
positions. The youth integration scheme of the ANRS (National Association
for Social Re-adaptation),
Le risque prostitutionnel chez les jeunes de
18–25 ans
(initial study), Paris, 1995.

³¹
Michel Bozon,
op. cit
., p. 25.