by Ingrid Hein (Source: the Link, Concordia University)
MONTREAL (CUP) — Sexual fantasy and imagination: a rising demand for fulfillment has created a mass market of sex sold on television and over the phone.
But the majority of the money generated from these services is not going to the phone sex operators themselves. On a $10 9-7-6 call, the telephone company takes $4, on average, and the phone sex company takes $6, if it collects the money.
One company, employing students and mothers, pays only $8 an hour. Unemployment insurance premiums and income taxes are deducted from that.
Women in the phone sex trade say that their work is like any other job. It pays more than minimum wage and gives them the benefit of working at home, eliminating the cost of transportation and working clothes.
Debunking myths about phone sex
Telephone sex workers do not lie naked, masturbating while on the phone with callers. Television ads lie when they cast lingerie-clad women with perfectly-sculpted hair lying in a canopied bed.
They do not make tons of money and, contrary to popular belief, are not prostitutes.
“It’s just a job,” said 21 year-old Monica, who works as a receptionist and call coordinator at a 9-7-6 line. “I would rather do this than work in a restaurant breaking my back.”
Telephone sex work can be liberating in some ways, especially at first, Monica said. “Wow, I first thought, I can make him cum over the phone. My God, I made all these guys cum today.”
About 75 per cent of men will come within five minutes, she said.
There are women who look like the women in the ads, Monica said. Like any workplace it’s a mix, but women are not hired on the basis of the way they look. The important thing is that they are cheerful, good talkers and, most of all, good listeners.
“And you have to have a vivid imagination,” Monica stressed. “You have to be able to say words like ‘penis.’ It takes a while to get used to.”
Telephone sex operators work from home. Incoming calls are picked up by a receptionist and screened to make sure callers are 18 years of age or older. The calls are then transferred to one of the operators.
Dinner may be on the stove or textbooks out on the kitchen table when the phone rings. Whatever the case may be, it’s a job — not a lifestyle.
The company where Monica works currently employs about eight women. Winter is the “slow season,” with about 1600 calls a week. Business will pick up in the spring, Monica said, and the company will hire about 20 more women. Monica, who is also manager of the sex line, said she likes to hire serious- minded women, mainly students.
Monica started working at the 9-7-6 line when she needed expensive dental work done on her wisdom teeth. She was 21, in electrical engineering at university, had bills and tuition to pay, and couldn’t afford the dental surgery.
She had to get a job and telephone sex work accommodated her need to work at home so she could study while earning some money at the same time. Many of her co-workers come from similar backgrounds: students or mothers with children at home.
The good and the bad
Callers aren’t always out for a “good time.” Sometimes men call to degrade the women.
“Sometimes we get treated badly on the phone. They’re always asking for a rendez-vous, and they call us cock-teasers. Those guys are just calling to humiliate you, but in the end, you’re still in control,” Monica said. But she admitted it does depress her.
The rule at her workplace is that any woman who accepts an invitation to meet a client will be fired. Setting up dates or meeting clients is not tolerated under any circumstances. As a precaution, calls are periodically screened by management. Anyone who breaches this rule would probably be fired, Monica said.
Most of the time, working on the telephone line is more like being a sex therapist.
“Some guys just call to talk. They want advice on how to make their girlfriends cum, or talk about their sex lives with their wife.
“One woman called when her husband was having an affair. She wanted advice on what to do to get him into bed.
“Another guy called and I got him out of a serious depression. He said he hadn’t had an erection in 10 years; I made him happy. He calls every once in a while now just to say hello and thank you.”
But sometimes, she said, you have to try to keep from “weirding out” at some of the fetishes people have.
“You get all kinds. This one guy wanted to be an inflatable doll; he wanted me to blow him up. So he wore plastic bags. I could hear them.”
Nikki, age 22, says she gets some weird calls, too.
“I have this guy who calls me once a month. He wants me to shave him; I can hear the clippers.”
Nikki studies social work and puts in about 20-24 hours a week on the sex line. Her boyfriends never have any problem with her doing phone sex work, she said. “They know it doesn’t make me horny or anything.”
Monica agrees. She said her boyfriend thinks it’s great.
“But we have had to fire girls whose boyfriends don’t like it. You don’t want the guy to grab the phone or anything.”
Monica said that sometimes callers say they want to do sexual things to her boyfriend, with her permission. About 25 per cent have homosexual fantasies, but are too inhibited to tell anyone. So they tell her they want to “suck her boyfriend’s cock.”
Other popular fantasies include anal sex and two women at the same time.
There are all kinds. It’s a good thing they can live out their fantasies on the telephone, because sometimes they are with partners who don’t want to do certain sexual things. It’s an outlet, a service.
————————
Source
http://www.peak.sfu.ca/the-peak/95-2/issue5/women.html
The Peak, Simon Fraser University’s Student Newspaper since 1965, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6, e-mail: epeak@mail.peak.sfu.ca, phone: (604) 291-3597 fax: (604) 291-3786 Volume 90, Issue 5 June 5, 1995 News
