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Feb. 20, 2024
A Strange Exchange
In her new book Body Shell Girl, poet and sex trade survivor Rose Hunter brings us into the strange theater that takes place between sex buyers and prostitutes when money is exchanged for various sex acts. Describing the everyday reality of her ten y...
In her new book Body Shell Girl, poet and sex trade survivor Rose Hunter brings us into the strange theater that takes place between sex buyers and prostitutes when money is exchanged for various sex acts. Describing the everyday reality of her ten years in massage parlors, brothels and hotel rooms of Toronto and Vancouver, Hunter says of prostitution, “it’s really nothing to do with sex, it's this other odd category, with its own bizarre rules, a very strange sphere unto itself.”
In this episode we talk about what Hunter brilliantly captures about this “strange sphere” in Body Shell Girl (that which is often missed in the so-called prostitution debate): the million minute ways that ‘being for sale’ breaks down every aspect of your life, the survival behaviors and language you must cultivate to avoid male rage and violence, the impact of losing connection to your body when it no longer belongs to you, but also - what it is like - to be on the receiving end of stark-naked male entitlement, to be an unwilling actor in rote and porn-fed male fantasies, and to never ever being able to say no.
Credits
Host: Elle Kamihira
Produced by Elle Kamihira
Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio
Cover Art by Bee Johnson
Music by Beware of Darkness
Rose Hunter
Poet & Author
Rose Hunter is a writer, poet and sex industry survivor. Her latest book, Body Shell Girl (Spinifex Press, Australia, 2022), is a memoir in verse that tells the story of the first two years of a decade she spent in sex trade in Canada.
She is also the author of five previous books of poetry, including glass (Five Islands Press, Australia, 2017), and Anchorage (Haverthorn Press, UK, 2020). She has been widely published in literary journals in Australia, the USA, and Canada, including the Australian Poetry Journal, Overland, and Island; The Bennington Review, the Los Angeles Review, and World Literature Today, and Geist, Event, and the Malahat Review. Rose is a recipient of an Australia Council for the Arts/Creative Australia grant.
Recently her article in support of the Nordic Model approach to the sex industry/prostitution was published at the ABC Australia, and she has also been a guest on the ABC’s Radio National discussing this topic.
Rose was born in Australia and lived in Canada for ten years, then Mexico for ten more, she now lives in Brisbane/Meanjin. Rose is a freelance editor and copy editor and is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Griffith University.