Speaker 1: So you're listening to a Mother Mia podcast. Mamma Mia
Speaker 1: acknowledges the traditional owners of the land. We have recorded
Speaker 1: this podcast on the Gadigul people of the Eora Nation.
Speaker 1: We pay our respects to their elders past and present,
Speaker 1: and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Raight
Speaker 1: Islander cultures.
Speaker 2: Hello, Sealed Section listeners, Thank you for letting me pop
Speaker 2: into your ears. My name's Holly Wayne Wright and I've
Speaker 2: got something special for you today. It's an episode from
Speaker 2: our podcast, Mid Conversations with gen X Women who are
Speaker 2: anything but hosted by me, and in this episode that
Speaker 2: we're popping in your feed, the reason we thought that
Speaker 2: you might like it in particular is it's a frank,
Speaker 2: shamefree and very interesting conversation about sex. I interviewed a
Speaker 2: woman called Antonia Murphy and her life took a very
Speaker 2: dramatic turn when her marriage fell apart when she was
Speaker 2: raising three kids in a small town in New Zealand.
Speaker 2: Lots of women make big changes after divorce, but Antonia's
Speaker 2: was kind of unexpected. She opened a legal, ethical brothel,
Speaker 2: and in this candid conversation, Antonia shares the events that
Speaker 2: led her to that what she learned about the women
Speaker 2: working at the brothel and what the men who went
Speaker 2: to the brothel wanted they were mostly men, and a
Speaker 2: great deal about sex and shame in a small town.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 2: It is our very frank mid episode with Antonia Murphy.
Speaker 2: Ask for what you want, know your ground rules, and
Speaker 2: do not budge. Age is experience, and experience is hot
Speaker 2: and comforting and kind and hot. Say what it is
Speaker 2: you need and ask for what you want. It's not
Speaker 2: always about sex. It's about touch and connection and wanting
Speaker 2: to be wanted, and for some people some of the
Speaker 2: time it's as essential as breathing. But sometimes it's about sex,
Speaker 2: of course. Just ask for what you want. Welcome to
Speaker 2: a shame free zone. What a midlife madam learned about
Speaker 2: sex from years of juggling, pimping, as she somewhat ironically
Speaker 2: calls it, with the school run and a divorce. If
Speaker 2: you have questions, I'm glad because this is an extraordinary
Speaker 2: story of love and connection and lots and lots of
Speaker 2: pretty honest sex, of what men want and what women
Speaker 2: want and why. A lot of the stories we tell
Speaker 2: ourselves about all of that are nonsense.
Speaker 4: So please just ask for what it is you want.
Speaker 2: Hello, I am Holly Wainwright, and I am mid midlife,
Speaker 2: mid family, mid blush. This is a first for us
Speaker 2: on mid Today, I'm interviewing someone who's already been here
Speaker 2: sort of. A few weeks ago, I spoke to the
Speaker 2: incredible Australia actress Rachel Griffiths about her midlife sabbatical, about
Speaker 2: having been on all ends of Hollywood, about actresses aging,
Speaker 2: about the role she's currently playing on our screens, a
Speaker 2: woman called Antonia Murphy in a show called Madam. And
Speaker 2: now today I'm interviewing Antonia Murphy herself. Antonia was raising
Speaker 2: three kids, including one with a serious disability, in a
Speaker 2: small town in New Zealand when her marriage unraveled.
Speaker 4: She's going to tell me.
Speaker 2: Today how that set of events led her to opening
Speaker 2: an ethical brothel in a tiny coastal town. I know
Speaker 2: it's not what everybody would do in that situation, but hey,
Speaker 2: Antonia has a very specific story. Sex work is decriminalized
Speaker 2: in New Zealand, so there was nothing illegal about what
Speaker 2: she was doing. But that didn't mean there wasn't a
Speaker 2: lot of judgment, and judgment is something we do a
Speaker 2: lot of unpicking today from all sides, because as well
Speaker 2: as understanding what the women who worked at the brothel
Speaker 2: wanted needed, she learned an enormous amount about what the
Speaker 2: clients and in this example, they're almost all men wanted
Speaker 2: and needed. And that is a lot more nuanced and
Speaker 2: complex than you might think.
Speaker 4: I promise stay with us.
Speaker 2: You're going to hear stories about the men who were
Speaker 2: dropped off by their mothers or their wives, a surprising
Speaker 2: fact about the preferred age of the women. About the
Speaker 2: worst thing any parent can imagine happening happening to Antonia.
Speaker 2: And generally you're going to be with me in the
Speaker 2: presence of a woman who looked at how you're supposed
Speaker 2: to carry on when you're a midlife regional mum and
Speaker 2: said fuck that. And of course you are going to
Speaker 2: hear about what it's like to have written a book
Speaker 2: about your life, have it turned into a TV show
Speaker 2: and for Rachel Griffiths to be playing you in a
Speaker 2: version of your life. Here we go, Anthony, your book
Speaker 2: is brilliant. You're a writer, of course, so you obviously
Speaker 2: know what you're doing, but the story is fascinating to
Speaker 2: put the audience in place as it were. Can I
Speaker 2: read the intro to an article that you wrote in
Speaker 2: the Huffington Post back in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 5: Oh sure, I think I know which one it is.
Speaker 5: Go ahead.
Speaker 2: I think this article kickstarted a few things. I think
Speaker 2: it was after reading this maybe that the TV people
Speaker 2: contacted you.
Speaker 4: Is that correct?
Speaker 5: An article that got optioned?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So are you right? Bye?
Speaker 2: Mom, I'll see you tomorrow morning. It's eight am on
Speaker 2: a Tuesday, and my workday probably started out a lot
Speaker 2: like yours, packing lunchboxes, making sure the kids eat a
Speaker 2: healthy breakfast, finding socks and shoes, and homework. But when
Speaker 2: my nine year old daughter Miranda kisses me goodbye to
Speaker 2: catch the school bus, she knows I won't be home
Speaker 2: until long after bedtime.
Speaker 4: That's because I'm a pimp. More politely, I'm.
Speaker 2: The Madam of the Batch, a feminist escort agency I
Speaker 2: own in the North Island of New Zealand. So let's
Speaker 2: get this part out there so a mid audience know
Speaker 2: what we're talking about. An ethical pimp, a feminist escort agency.
Speaker 4: What's that and how did it work?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 3: I mean, let's be clear, I used the word pimp
Speaker 3: in that article because I was deliberately being inflammatory, right,
Speaker 3: I could they have thought, yeah, readers, readers on words.
Speaker 3: But what I meant when I said and still say,
Speaker 3: that we were an ethical and feminist escort agency is
Speaker 3: that we were constantly guided by consent at every stage
Speaker 3: of the process. The women were always in control of
Speaker 3: who they saw and what they would and would not
Speaker 3: choose to do with that client.
Speaker 5: And that went.
Speaker 3: From making the booking to allowing him into the room,
Speaker 3: to every step of the way during the appointment.
Speaker 5: And if for any.
Speaker 3: Reason he left and didn't pay, if they had taken
Speaker 3: off their clothes or sexual contact had started, I would
Speaker 3: pay them out anyway, So nobody was ever worried about
Speaker 3: all I've got to go through with this dodgy booking
Speaker 3: because I have to pay my electrical bill kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So you are, as the listeners will be able to
Speaker 2: tell from your accent originally from America, from the West coast. Yes,
Speaker 2: But by the time you open the batch, you're living
Speaker 2: in a tiny town, like not in Auckland, but like
Speaker 2: a in a little country town in Northland, which is
Speaker 2: a beautiful part of New Zealand. And you're there, your
Speaker 2: marriage is rocky, falling apart at this particular point.
Speaker 4: You've got two kids.
Speaker 2: You do your start doing your research, knowing you want
Speaker 2: to open a an escort agency, but you're starting from nothing.
Speaker 2: How did you learn that you know the sort of
Speaker 2: rules and guidelines that you've just spelled out for us
Speaker 2: that made this a feminist, safe place to work for
Speaker 2: the women. How did you learn that's what you wanted
Speaker 2: to do?
Speaker 3: So women always exchange information with each other, whether they're
Speaker 3: talking about something legal or not. Right, I think at
Speaker 3: every stage in my life, I've always had a woman
Speaker 3: or a girlfriend who I could and get the honest
Speaker 3: truth about something. And it turns out there's this whole
Speaker 3: online community of anonymous sex workers and people who work
Speaker 3: in the business who exchange information everything about what makes
Speaker 3: a good agency to work at, somebody who protects your rights,
Speaker 3: to how to stay safe in a booking And it
Speaker 3: was they who taught me how to design a place
Speaker 3: where the women's rights were held at the forefront of
Speaker 3: everything that we did. And then, you know, this didn't
Speaker 3: make it into the book. But when I was still.
Speaker 5: Married to my husband, I sent him down to a.
Speaker 3: Couple of places in Auckland, like so called good brothels
Speaker 3: or escort agencies to check it out, and he came
Speaker 3: back and he said, oh my god, it's so depressing,
Speaker 3: Like it's you go into this place. It's sort of
Speaker 3: lit by these cheesy Christmas lights. There's like a vinyl
Speaker 3: couch that gets wiped off between bookings. He's like, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of glitzy gland me stuff that's supposed to
Speaker 3: look elegant and classy, but it's just makes me sad, like, oh,
Speaker 3: I think we could do things a bit better than that.
Speaker 4: And so the.
Speaker 2: Batch you end up opening is in a motel and
Speaker 2: you make it bright and breezy and like a beach almost, like, well,
Speaker 2: that's what a batch is in New Zealand, right, is
Speaker 2: a beach house. And so everything from the inception of
Speaker 2: what it would look like and feel like to the
Speaker 2: way that the workers.
Speaker 4: Were treated was very different.
Speaker 2: I was really interested in the process that you were
Speaker 2: just talking about about the research going and talking to women.
Speaker 4: You talk to a woman in.
Speaker 2: The sex industry who tells you that it's all about
Speaker 2: being a madam or a sex worker is all about
Speaker 2: hold your power, she said, And I'd love you to
Speaker 2: talk a bit about what that means, because to be honest.
Speaker 2: When I read examples in the book of where you
Speaker 2: helped you thought about that and implemented it. I think
Speaker 2: it's something that all women sex workers are or not
Speaker 2: could get a lot better at. Does it kind of.
Speaker 4: Mean whole know you're worth?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's part of it, and we can
Speaker 3: get into that part of it too. In that I
Speaker 3: learned a lot from the men about asking for what
Speaker 3: you want and not being afraid to ask, even if
Speaker 3: it comes off as a bit cheeky.
Speaker 5: But I think.
Speaker 3: When she taught me about hold your power, I think
Speaker 3: there's a reason why madams traditionally have been sexually unavailable
Speaker 3: to the clients for the most part, and often older,
Speaker 3: so that culturally they're considered no longer sexually interesting. Right
Speaker 3: Because I had on regularly, I would get proposition by clients.
Speaker 3: They would try to find their way in around the
Speaker 3: cracks and ask.
Speaker 5: All, will you see me? I'll pay top dollar? How
Speaker 5: much would you charge? How can I please? Please? Please?
Speaker 5: And what that's about is they feel like if they
Speaker 5: can conquer.
Speaker 3: You sexually, then they've won you over and they don't
Speaker 3: have to play by your rules anymore. So I think
Speaker 3: it's that's why it's so, That's why I think that
Speaker 3: madam position has existed traditionally, is that you need a
Speaker 3: woman in charge who is sexually unavailable and completely unmoving
Speaker 3: in her ground rules.
Speaker 2: That's interesting what you just said about how age plays
Speaker 2: into that, because it is true, of course that the
Speaker 2: stereotype of a madam in my mind is definitely she's
Speaker 2: older than the women who work who do the sex work.
Speaker 2: In your experience, I mean, I want to I'm going
Speaker 2: to get to all the things you've learned about men
Speaker 2: doing in that process.
Speaker 4: But is there an age cut off? Do you feel
Speaker 4: like not at all?
Speaker 3: In fact, when you said that, I wanted to jump
Speaker 3: in because the lady who made the most money at
Speaker 3: our agency was older than me. And the reason why well,
Speaker 3: there's a few reasons why she made the most money.
Speaker 3: She was highly professional, and she organized, and she would
Speaker 3: come in with a large Duffel bag for what we
Speaker 3: called her day at the office because she had back
Speaker 3: to back bookings of these elderly gents who would book
Speaker 3: her for two and three hours at a time, and
Speaker 3: she would put on a different lingerie.
Speaker 5: Outfit for each one, and there was very little sex.
Speaker 5: It was largely companionship. But she was really intuitively kind.
Speaker 5: She was so genuinely kind. People really responded to that,
Speaker 5: and she made the.
Speaker 3: Most money, so it really And the other reason is
Speaker 3: that a lot of these guys who come and see
Speaker 3: sex workers, if they're in their seventies and eighties, they
Speaker 3: don't want to see a lady in her twenties. They're like,
Speaker 3: my granddaughter is in her twenties. That makes me feel
Speaker 3: like a pedo. So there really isn't a cutoff, I
Speaker 3: would say in age for sex work, and quite often
Speaker 3: the older ones do better. And in fact it was
Speaker 3: a bit of a red flag for me and the
Speaker 3: other managers when we would get a new client in particular,
Speaker 3: who would say who's the youngest?
Speaker 5: Who's the youngest?
Speaker 3: Because what that means is is either a he thinks
Speaker 3: that women's quality degrades with age, which is a big
Speaker 3: red flag, or more likely B he thinks he'll have
Speaker 3: a better chance pushing her boundaries if she's young.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and there is an experience in there with a
Speaker 2: man like that. Just back for one more second to
Speaker 2: hold your power. One of the first times in the
Speaker 2: book that you like you think about doing that is
Speaker 2: when a client is trying to talk you down on price.
Speaker 2: And this is what I'd love to get to about
Speaker 2: that idea of saying what you need and what you
Speaker 2: want trying to talk you down in price. And this
Speaker 2: is when the batch has just opened, and so you're
Speaker 2: kind of like figuring it out and you were like, no,
Speaker 2: I'm going to hold it and see what happens. And
Speaker 2: of course he caves and says, sure, is that also?
Speaker 2: Is it about also not.
Speaker 4: The people pleasing the man pleasing reflex?
Speaker 3: Oh, it was really hard to deprogram ourselves from that.
Speaker 3: I can still remember.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: We had a confirmation text that we would send when
Speaker 3: people made a booking that said you must park in
Speaker 3: this place, arrive on time for your booking, do not
Speaker 3: arrive early, do not arrive late, and so on. And
Speaker 3: the first draft I looked at it and I saw
Speaker 3: that we'd started almost every sentence with please, and I
Speaker 3: was like, we got to take the pleases out of
Speaker 3: this one, because I'm not asking them, I'm telling them.
Speaker 5: So that was really a process for us to work
Speaker 5: that out.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean it became quite clear early early on,
Speaker 3: so early the men would would push back on the rules,
Speaker 3: and also they would always ask for discounts and then
Speaker 3: and then not always, but very often they would want
Speaker 3: to know, can I do this? Can I do that?
Speaker 3: How about three of this? How far can I go?
Speaker 3: How hard can I say bad words?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: With you hard? Can I fuck her?
Speaker 3: Things like that, I mean, sometimes quite gross, But I
Speaker 3: think a lot of them just thought they were being
Speaker 3: clear about the boundaries and they wanted to make sure
Speaker 3: they got the best deal possible for their money, which, Okay,
Speaker 3: it annoyed us, and sometimes we laughed uproariously about it,
Speaker 3: but also like, why.
Speaker 5: Don't we do that more as women?
Speaker 3: I don't know about you, but me personally, Like even
Speaker 3: the least I negotiated on the motel. A year down
Speaker 3: the line, it was quite clear that I had made
Speaker 3: some mistakes in my negotiation where I could have I
Speaker 3: could have had that motel ticking along at a much
Speaker 3: better clip, but I just hadn't. I hadn't pushed back
Speaker 3: with the landlord because I think I thought if I pushed,
Speaker 3: he'd yank the whole thing away, which is not the case.
Speaker 3: It's not You're not going to lose everything. If you ask,
Speaker 3: people are just going to say maybe no, And it
Speaker 3: doesn't hurt.
Speaker 2: Right, I know, but I mean such a stereotype, but
Speaker 2: I know it certainly is true of myself and lots
Speaker 2: of midwomen. I know in particular that's what they're afraid of.
Speaker 4: But I could lose it all. I don't know if
Speaker 4: I deserve it. I don't know if I'm gonning. And it's.
Speaker 2: A few of the conversations I've had on this show
Speaker 2: that have been enlightening is when people say, very often,
Speaker 2: when you ask for what you want, you get it.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: You know, but it's all about how you do that
Speaker 2: I did. There isn't There isn't a moment in your
Speaker 2: book where which i'd like to think is known in
Speaker 2: New Zealand moment but maybe not where one man offers
Speaker 2: to pay and crayfish.
Speaker 5: Is particular to New Zealand. But I wouldn't be surprise
Speaker 5: the burter is pretty calm.
Speaker 3: I mean, I can tell you for real. Border for
Speaker 3: drugs is definitely yes.
Speaker 2: Antonia and I are going to be back in a
Speaker 2: minute to talk about the kinds of men who pay
Speaker 2: for sex and the unconventional way in which she ended
Speaker 2: up with her now husband. It does involve somebody getting
Speaker 2: punched in the nose, just stepping back a little bit.
Speaker 2: You say that, and I felt a gen x camaraderie
Speaker 2: with you about this. You were sort of saying that
Speaker 2: you had quite you had an adventuress, You had a
Speaker 2: non conventional childhood, you say. I seen you rite When
Speaker 2: I was six months old, my mother's went. My mother
Speaker 2: went to the United Nations Women's Conference in Mexico City,
Speaker 2: leaving me with my dad.
Speaker 4: My father decided this.
Speaker 2: Was a good time to attend the Hooker's Ball at
Speaker 2: the San Francisco Higatt Regency with me swaddled in a
Speaker 2: blanket in the backseat of his car. It was nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy five. These things happened back then, and indeed they did.
Speaker 2: Our nineteen seventies upbringings were kind of different.
Speaker 5: I think, and whearin as she got on the next
Speaker 5: flight home.
Speaker 4: I'm sure she did.
Speaker 5: But I think the reason.
Speaker 3: Why he went to that is because my mother was
Speaker 3: sort of somewhat friends are at least friendly with Margo
Speaker 3: Saint James, who was a big sex worker rights activist
Speaker 3: and feminist in San Francisco.
Speaker 5: So they were peripherally around that scene.
Speaker 3: And I know my mother as a second way a
Speaker 3: feminist would talk a lot about the crossover between sex
Speaker 3: work and being a housewife.
Speaker 5: For example.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you about that too. But that's
Speaker 2: interesting because you also say in the book at some
Speaker 2: point that the rules you'd internalize from your dad were
Speaker 2: around like don't be a prick tease, don't wear a
Speaker 2: short skirt, don't do this and that.
Speaker 4: So it's like they're conflicting.
Speaker 2: You obviously had a sort of compared to a conventional
Speaker 2: straight lag childhood, a relatively what's the right word, I
Speaker 2: guess put me in there you go, But you also
Speaker 2: were still internalizing all that messaging that women, young women
Speaker 2: always do right about, like protect yourself, make sure you know,
Speaker 2: don't lead men on, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I think a lot of that is generational.
Speaker 3: So my dad was born in the twenties and my
Speaker 3: mom was born in the thirties. So even though my
Speaker 3: mom was a strident feminist, I think her attitude was like, look,
Speaker 3: if you you know, you show nipple and and wear
Speaker 3: a really short mini skirt, you're gonna get aggressive attention,
Speaker 3: so be prepared for that. It can make you, know,
Speaker 3: your walk home that much more dangerous. Nowadays, you know,
Speaker 3: people say, oh, it's not her fault, it's his fault.
Speaker 3: She should be able to wear what she wants, and
Speaker 3: they're absolutely right. Women should be able to wear what
Speaker 3: they want. Also, I don't think my mother was wrong
Speaker 3: that the micro mini is gonna make.
Speaker 5: Your walk home a lot more complicated.
Speaker 2: To be honest, it makes it's interesting because I have
Speaker 2: a fifteen year old daughter. You know, we would it's
Speaker 2: we're so much further along from this idea of like
Speaker 2: keep yourself safe, do your top up, as your dad
Speaker 2: would say. But there's a part of you that has
Speaker 2: learned those lessons yourself from being hyper visible at that
Speaker 2: moment where you become hyper visible and you want to
Speaker 2: kind of protect them from it, and it's it's complicated.
Speaker 3: It is complicated, and in fairness, I think we've come
Speaker 3: a long way, and we've also taken a huge step
Speaker 3: backward with the amount of pornography that is so easily
Speaker 3: accessible in everybody's back pocket and that apparently everyone's watching.
Speaker 5: From the age of ten.
Speaker 3: I know, and I saw how that played out at
Speaker 3: the batch, and it was everything from asking for sort
Speaker 3: of further and further out fantasies and it would be
Speaker 3: quite clear when a certain fantasy was trending in porn,
Speaker 3: because more and more men would ask for it. Two
Speaker 3: men who literally could not orgasm having vaginal sex with
Speaker 3: a woman because they were so used to jacking it
Speaker 3: with porn, and so they got used to this very
Speaker 3: specific touch and they could no longer orgasm with a woman.
Speaker 3: So oh, and then just like the total death of foreplay,
Speaker 3: Like how many young men would get in there and
Speaker 3: think that all they had to do was put her
Speaker 3: legs up over her head and pound away, and she's
Speaker 3: going to have nine orgasms.
Speaker 5: I mean, these ladies, they would I talk about it
Speaker 5: in the book.
Speaker 3: They at first they would say, Oh, I don't want
Speaker 3: to see it. He's so old, you know, he's fifty.
Speaker 3: He's gonna smell like old man. And then they'd finally concede,
Speaker 3: and when they came down, they'd be like, holy shit,
Speaker 3: that was the best shag of my life, Like no,
Speaker 3: no one's ever been that that courtly with me before,
Speaker 3: you know, And he kept he was so important to
Speaker 3: him that I feel good. I mean they were just
Speaker 3: like baffled.
Speaker 2: And I guess also that because that's a generation that
Speaker 2: hasn't grown up with the pawn in the pocket. It's
Speaker 2: interesting about this because I would imagine, I mean, so
Speaker 2: you were running the batch from in the sort of
Speaker 2: late teens, right the late twenty teens, and so you know,
Speaker 2: we are living in this in the iPhone world, we're
Speaker 2: living with pawn in the pocket. I imagine that Tinder
Speaker 2: only fans in those things are very much disrupted brothels
Speaker 2: and agency work.
Speaker 4: Have they No, I.
Speaker 5: Don't think so. I mean they may have. I couldn't
Speaker 5: speak to the before.
Speaker 3: Times because I wasn't in the industry before, but I
Speaker 3: will say this, something that really surprises people outside the
Speaker 3: industry is how little sex.
Speaker 5: There is in it.
Speaker 3: I mean, it may be different in the sort of
Speaker 3: street walker economy where people are paying for fifteen minutes
Speaker 3: in the back of your car or whatever. That's not
Speaker 3: the experience I can speak to. What we sold was
Speaker 3: minimum thirty minutes, most often an hour, sometimes two or three,
Speaker 3: and during that time there was like maybe five minutes
Speaker 3: of sex. So men aren't booking escorts, at least not
Speaker 3: at the price point and the time span that we
Speaker 3: were offering for the shag. They were booking for the
Speaker 3: companionship conversation. Someone to pay attention to them and make
Speaker 3: them feel like they were important and really for the touch.
Speaker 3: Like that was a huge wake up for me, is
Speaker 3: how there just seems to be this epidemic of loneliness
Speaker 3: and of lack of human touch that people are just
Speaker 3: hungry for and will pay And yeah, okay, we are
Speaker 3: only charging two hundred and forty dollars an hour, but
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen in Fungaday, New Zealand, let me tell you,
Speaker 3: that was a big chunk of less people pay check.
Speaker 3: That was a big payout, so they were that starved
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because you'd think in this porn saturated world
Speaker 2: that you know that if anything, people were more, that
Speaker 2: there's more sex. But then study after study is saying
Speaker 2: that young people now are having less sex than they've
Speaker 2: ever had. Right, And anecdotally it seems to me, I
Speaker 2: work with lots of young women. Attitudes to sex and
Speaker 2: monogamy are still quite conservative in some ways, I think
Speaker 2: more conservative than gen x is are. Don't you think
Speaker 2: I think that the intimacy and monogamy and finding your
Speaker 2: person is still very much the ideal that is upheld.
Speaker 4: What do you think about that?
Speaker 3: Well, I think a lot of things. Some of the
Speaker 3: thoughts that came up as you were talking were, it's
Speaker 3: true we were shagging so much more than kids are
Speaker 3: these days, and we had the specter of aids over
Speaker 3: our heads.
Speaker 2: I can imagine I know when as we came of
Speaker 2: sexual age with that idea and the fear around that.
Speaker 3: I can tell you I'm not gen z and I'm
Speaker 3: old and cringed to them right. But the one person
Speaker 3: who will talk to me still touchwood is my daughter
Speaker 3: who's fourteen. And one of the comments that she's made
Speaker 3: which really resonated with me, is she said, I could
Speaker 3: be photographed, Like every time I'm out in public, I'm
Speaker 3: really careful about how I present myself because I could
Speaker 3: be videoed or photographed at any time or recorded, and
Speaker 3: then that can never go away, like it can ruin
Speaker 3: your life. So I think there's more of a self
Speaker 3: censorship because kids are worried about like just that it
Speaker 3: can ruin your life, like we would do, get drunk,
Speaker 3: do dumb stuff, be bad in bed with a lover
Speaker 3: you didn't sync with, and like that's it.
Speaker 5: It's forgotten.
Speaker 3: It's washed off, like the cigarette smell on your clothes
Speaker 3: after a night at the clubs, right, they can follow
Speaker 3: them forever into jobs, any future relationship.
Speaker 5: I mean, what an enormous.
Speaker 4: Wait, No wonder that anxious. This is depressing, depressing. I
Speaker 4: wonder it's it's true, it's this. I wonder if we.
Speaker 2: Could look back on our young adulthood and think we
Speaker 2: were allowed to mess up an experiment and have adventures
Speaker 2: in a way that they're probably not. I wanted to
Speaker 2: get back to two things, well many things, but we're
Speaker 2: jumping all over the place. But when you were running
Speaker 2: the batch, so you're also parenting three young kids, your
Speaker 2: oldest Silas had significant disabilities, your daughter Miranda's little and
Speaker 2: you had a brand new baby Matisse. So you were
Speaker 2: a hustling working mother, which was one of the real
Speaker 2: impetuses for you wanting to do that. And as it
Speaker 2: turned out, so are a lot of your ladies. You
Speaker 2: even run a crache at the batch for a while.
Speaker 2: How does motherhood and sex work intersect? You mentioned it before.
Speaker 2: How does that work?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 3: I think a lot more than most people would think,
Speaker 3: because mothers need flexible schedules, and mothers who've been left
Speaker 3: alone with their kids need to make the money for
Speaker 3: the whole household because the vast majority of absent men
Speaker 3: aren't paying enough, right, so they needed to be able
Speaker 3: to make real money to run a real safe household
Speaker 3: for their kids. Sometimes they were in an educational program
Speaker 3: to launch themselves under professional life, so they.
Speaker 5: Needed even more childcare and even more of an income
Speaker 5: to pay for that.
Speaker 3: And you know, how are you going to make that
Speaker 3: work if you've only got a high school degree and
Speaker 3: the only jobs out there are for you with that,
Speaker 3: or like call center or working in a cafe for
Speaker 3: minimum wage. Like it's just that the math doesn't math, yeah,
Speaker 3: with that, which is why a lot of women, have
Speaker 3: mums in particular, have turned to sex work. And then
Speaker 3: I guess the other part of that question is like, oh,
Speaker 3: how do you reconcile your life at home with your
Speaker 3: life at the batch? But I mean, I don't think
Speaker 3: in that sense it was really much different from any
Speaker 3: working mother, Like when I'm at work, I'm at work,
Speaker 3: and when I'm home, I'm mumsy.
Speaker 2: Well, there are some really interesting scenes in the book though,
Speaker 2: when you are sort of dealing with your kids, but
Speaker 2: your phone the phone was pinging with messages, and this
Speaker 2: bit I found really interesting. Well, it's near the beginning
Speaker 2: of your book, you're talking about you.
Speaker 4: You've run quite a lot of.
Speaker 2: The text messages you got sent, and they are quite shocking,
Speaker 2: Like if you're not in that world, they're quite shocking.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to read a couple albums. So you're
Speaker 2: you know, you're doing what you're doing with the baby
Speaker 2: on your boom and everything and you and you're getting
Speaker 2: messages that are like, hey, do you have toys or
Speaker 2: suck without a condom? Show me pussy face, tits and
Speaker 2: ass And you say, is this because this is obviously
Speaker 2: early in your experience, You're like, is this how they
Speaker 2: talk when they don't have to pretend? And I found
Speaker 2: that a really interesting insight because that's exactly what I
Speaker 2: thought when.
Speaker 4: I was reading it.
Speaker 2: I don't think a lot of those messages would shock
Speaker 2: a lot of my midlife friends are on the dating apps,
Speaker 2: to be honest, they get a lot of that stuff,
Speaker 2: and that not from people who were looking to pay.
Speaker 2: But did you feel like you were getting, at least
Speaker 2: at the at the beginning, that you were getting an
Speaker 2: insight into the male psyche that was really disturbing? Do
Speaker 2: you and also do you think that is how they
Speaker 2: talk when they don't have to pretend that they respect us.
Speaker 3: Well, look, I have four older brothers, so I think
Speaker 3: I had a bit of insight into the male psyche anyway,
Speaker 3: and they would talk and say all kinds of outrageous
Speaker 3: things about women when they were around me. I think
Speaker 3: that I think probably all men think those things. I
Speaker 3: think most men say them, and I think for many
Speaker 3: men there is no contradiction between that and the fact
Speaker 3: that they also respect women and their intellect. Like, I
Speaker 3: think you can want to slap that ass and then
Speaker 3: also have a conversation about civil rights. I don't think
Speaker 3: that is necessary necessarily cancel each other out. But in
Speaker 3: terms of an insight into you know, again, I think
Speaker 3: men thought that they were being clear when they rang
Speaker 3: up and they asked for, you know, can I get
Speaker 3: a size six double D blonde please?
Speaker 5: And that. But still, even though.
Speaker 3: I knew they were not trying to be offensive, it
Speaker 3: would it would just get, it would get. It would
Speaker 3: wear you down because it was like, oh, they just
Speaker 3: think of us as a collection of body parts. And
Speaker 3: so that's why very quickly we realized like the batch
Speaker 3: ran the best way, and we had three managers who
Speaker 3: each just work two days a week because we were
Speaker 3: just it would just be so emotionally exhausting to deal
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 5: Thirteen fourteen hours a day.
Speaker 2: But that's an interesting point you make that it's not
Speaker 2: that because when you wrote you know, is this how
Speaker 2: they talk when they don't have to pretend. I think
Speaker 2: that sometimes when a curtain is pulled back a little
Speaker 2: bit on that kind of language whatever, I can find
Speaker 2: myself thinking they hate us, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: They really they hate us, and that's how they would
Speaker 2: like to see all of us all of the time.
Speaker 2: But that's a very simplistic way of thinking about it,
Speaker 2: isn't it. It's these men are messaging you for a
Speaker 2: very specific purpose.
Speaker 4: This is your job to.
Speaker 2: Find them the person who possibly is going to fulfill
Speaker 2: their fantasy. It's not as black and white as good bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I think that's a mistake that a lot of
Speaker 3: activists make when they talk about sex worker really people
Speaker 3: in general, when they talk about it without.
Speaker 5: Firsthand knowledge of it.
Speaker 3: Is you know, feminists in particular in Europe will say
Speaker 3: all selling women's bodies for sex devalues women, and it
Speaker 3: encourages men to treat us like objects to be used,
Speaker 3: and I think again, that's assuming that because a man
Speaker 3: wants sex with a woman, therefore he is a predator
Speaker 3: who doesn't see her as a valuable human being.
Speaker 5: I don't think. I don't think that's the case.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, there are jerks out there, for sure,
Speaker 3: and we had a few of them come to the batch.
Speaker 3: But for the most part, I think men have all people.
Speaker 3: I think have a need for sex and intimate touch
Speaker 3: and to feel loved and appreciated, even if it's an illusion.
Speaker 5: But I think men really feel it like a drive,
Speaker 5: like eating.
Speaker 2: There's a point in the book where you sort of
Speaker 2: run through this almost profiles of.
Speaker 4: A few of the guys. I'm just going to find him.
Speaker 2: Ben is a widower in his sixties who spent his
Speaker 2: whole life on his sheep farm. He is cripplingly shy,
Speaker 2: and he has a bit of a speech impediment. So
Speaker 2: these are kind of some of your regulars. Michael is
Speaker 2: a local salesman. Seems to be in a happy marriage,
Speaker 2: but he has an enormous sex drive, and his wife
Speaker 2: is agreed that he can regularly go to escorts as
Speaker 2: long as she doesn't have to hear about it. Eric
Speaker 2: is autistic, and he saves up his disability checks for
Speaker 2: his visits, which his mum drives him to and from.
Speaker 2: I think it's really interesting to consider this variety of
Speaker 2: people who come, and I'd love to know because, as
Speaker 2: I was just saying about hormone a lot for a
Speaker 2: lot of mid women, sex can become a bit of
Speaker 2: a battleground because your hormones might have been smashed and
Speaker 2: so your libido is low, or you're in the familiarity
Speaker 2: of a long relationship and that erotic charge is really
Speaker 2: hard to find.
Speaker 4: Did you see lots of that?
Speaker 2: Have you seen that kind of outsourcing of sex that's
Speaker 2: maybe depicted there by Michael the guy whose wife agrees?
Speaker 4: Did you see a lot of that? And does it work?
Speaker 5: Absolutely? I saw a lot of it.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting to me when people talk to me
Speaker 3: about the threat that sex work poses to marriage, because
Speaker 3: I think actually the reverse is true. A lot of
Speaker 3: men would reach out to sex workers because their wives
Speaker 3: were uninterested in sex sex had completely left the marriage,
Speaker 3: but they didn't want to divorce and lose their families,
Speaker 3: and they didn't want the risk of having an affair,
Speaker 3: which could bring with it emotional attachment and all of
Speaker 3: those complications, and so this for them was a way
Speaker 3: to get their physical.
Speaker 5: Needs met without putting their families at risk. Does it work?
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I have no way of following up and finding out
Speaker 3: if they're still married or divorced five or ten years later.
Speaker 5: I can tell you.
Speaker 3: That somebody I know and my personal life has done
Speaker 3: that and it has saved his marriage. That he says
Speaker 3: his wife told him explicitly that she was no longer
Speaker 3: interested in having sex, and they were in their sixties,
Speaker 3: and he said, I'm not ready to die yet. Now.
Speaker 2: Your own marriage, which is talked about in the book
Speaker 2: of Course with Patrice, started in quite an unconventional way too.
Speaker 2: So you were married to the father of your two
Speaker 2: older kids and you opened your marriage.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Is that the right terminology, I guess. And Patrice went
Speaker 2: at some point from being your lover to your partner
Speaker 2: when you got pregnant with Matisse, and your husband went
Speaker 2: and punished him in the nose.
Speaker 4: And then I don't know why I'm laughing.
Speaker 2: That's not really funny, but it's just it's quite a scene.
Speaker 2: And then you say that your small town turned on
Speaker 2: you at that point. To a lot of people stopped
Speaker 2: talking to you, and I wanted to hear about your ins,
Speaker 2: and then you opened brothels. So I'm sure that, really,
Speaker 2: I'm sure that really sorted out.
Speaker 4: All that judgment.
Speaker 2: How did that community handle you in a way, and
Speaker 2: how did you learn to deal with those really entrenched
Speaker 2: conservative attitudes about both your personal and professional.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if it's a blessing or a curse
Speaker 3: how completely non confrontational quies are, because nobody ever said
Speaker 3: to my face that they disapproved of what I was doing.
Speaker 3: But it did hurt when friends just stopped, like literally
Speaker 3: just didn't call back, didn't email back, just just cut
Speaker 3: us dead. And Patrice had lived in the community a
Speaker 3: lot longer than I had, and these are people who
Speaker 3: he'd cared for their kids over the school holidays because
Speaker 3: during periods of time and he was only working part
Speaker 3: time or between jobs, he like basically conducted a summer
Speaker 3: camp at his house and took care of all their kids.
Speaker 5: And they just cut us out.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that hurt would have Yeah, And you know, honestly,
Speaker 3: as an American, I'd rather they had had a conversation
Speaker 3: with me, because maybe we could have, you know, salvaged
Speaker 3: some of the friendships. But alas that was not to be.
Speaker 3: And I think I was so overwhelmed at the time
Speaker 3: with new baby and profoundly disabled child and two businesses
Speaker 3: and all the rest of it. I was on a
Speaker 3: go door to door and say, Hi, do you still
Speaker 3: want to be my friend? Like, I just didn't have
Speaker 3: time for that.
Speaker 2: I had to simplify, you know, the judgment that you
Speaker 2: were copying for both for both that and then I
Speaker 2: assumed that it was public knowledge about the batch, right
Speaker 2: like the town all knew about the batch. Did you
Speaker 2: also cop a lot of judgment about that and did
Speaker 2: you care?
Speaker 5: Well, it's hard to say.
Speaker 3: I only felt the judgment when I tried to advertise,
Speaker 3: both for staff or for clients, or when I tried
Speaker 3: to rent to premises, and I was getting blocked at
Speaker 3: every point in the way. When I when counsel tried
Speaker 3: to give us the boot, that's when I felt the pushback.
Speaker 3: The rest of the time, people really just did not confront.
Speaker 3: I sometimes felt a bit of a chill in the air,
Speaker 3: but nobody said anything. And look, you know, I've worked
Speaker 3: out that fun Today had a population about eighty thousand
Speaker 3: people of whom, let's say half were men forty thousand
Speaker 3: and like maybe a quarter of those are children. So
Speaker 3: of the thirty thousand adult men in town, I had
Speaker 3: three thousand names on my work phone. So like judgment
Speaker 3: are no judgment? They were still ringing that phone.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 2: It was obviously a service that was needed in that community,
Speaker 2: whether they approved of it or not.
Speaker 4: So you didn't.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like they're trying to run you out of town.
Speaker 2: It was just more like icy, an icy, like not
Speaker 2: looking at you in the shop.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, when we come back.
Speaker 2: Anthonya tells me about her experience parenting a child living
Speaker 2: with a disability while also running a brothel. Stay with us.
Speaker 2: Everything changed in twenty nineteen. You lost your son, Silas.
Speaker 2: He died suddenly, and that obviously changed everything. You packed
Speaker 2: up and left and went to live in France for
Speaker 2: a year with your family. And you didn't go back,
Speaker 2: did you. You've gone back to New Zealand, but you've
Speaker 2: never gone back.
Speaker 5: No, I have not been back.
Speaker 2: I assume that there's a that's a massive life before
Speaker 2: and life after moment.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I mean from Gaday.
Speaker 3: For me, it was the years when I was parenting Silas,
Speaker 3: which were really hard. I mean, I love that kid,
Speaker 3: but it is so hard and isolating to have a
Speaker 3: child who is so profoundly disabled. He was basically nonverbal,
Speaker 3: he was incontinent. He would yell nonsense words repeatedly. And
Speaker 3: so you know, people people shoot you are either really
Speaker 3: uncomfortable or they shoot you annoyed looks because they think
Speaker 3: your child is acting out. They don't realize that he
Speaker 3: can't help it.
Speaker 5: I think we have a ways to go. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's another taboo.
Speaker 3: We have a ways to go before we're fully accepting
Speaker 3: of THELED.
Speaker 5: And so there's just a lot of pain wrapped up
Speaker 5: for me in that town.
Speaker 2: I think the way that you write about with such
Speaker 2: honesty about parenting Silas, mothering Silas will make a lot
Speaker 2: of women I'm sure they say that to you already,
Speaker 2: but will make a lot of parents feel very seen
Speaker 2: because I think I think you like you. You bring
Speaker 2: You're very I mean as in all of the book.
Speaker 2: You're very honest, You're very straightforward about it. You know,
Speaker 2: you you talk about how difficult it it is and was,
Speaker 2: and I think it's a real gift that because you know,
Speaker 2: we we like to put little bows on difficult situations,
Speaker 2: don't we.
Speaker 3: Totally And thank you for saying that, because I feel
Speaker 3: like that that the book does make tries to ship
Speaker 3: away a little bit at that taboo that we have
Speaker 3: around disability, and it's bo is exactly the right word
Speaker 3: for it. There's another writer, Andrew Solomon, who writes brilliantly.
Speaker 4: From the Tree Fall from the Tree.
Speaker 5: Loved that book.
Speaker 3: He says, there's a tendency that people have of calling
Speaker 3: them pillow angels. You know these Hugh at the time
Speaker 3: was writing about I think a pair of twins that
Speaker 3: were so profoundly disabled that they couldn't even sit up
Speaker 3: on their own. They were basically lying flat on their
Speaker 3: backs with the tube in their bellies to feed them
Speaker 3: on pillows. And I can't remember if it was the
Speaker 3: mother the people around them calling them pillow angels.
Speaker 5: I thought, wow, that's so what.
Speaker 3: It is is it's a racing of the child, and
Speaker 3: it's a racing of the parent. Because look, Silas could
Speaker 3: be a real little shit sometimes like every other kid,
Speaker 3: and that's part of his humanity. He has the right
Speaker 3: to be a little shit. And I have the right
Speaker 3: to feel really unhappy about going into his room every
Speaker 3: morning and changing an adult sized Pooh, you know, and
Speaker 3: that's also human, that's part of my humanity. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: I think too often what happens is that the parents
Speaker 3: of people who are disabled, and very often into adulthood
Speaker 3: of the child end up isolated at home because no
Speaker 3: one is able to They're either ostracized or there's this
Speaker 3: weird angelic halo put on them, but either way, nobody
Speaker 3: wants to see them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and they don't want to hear They
Speaker 2: don't want to hear your story about that, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm so playing on an animal level. I think that's
Speaker 2: exactly right. I think people don't want to look at it,
Speaker 2: which is like, deep down don't want to look at
Speaker 2: that experience, which I really appreciated it being in the book.
Speaker 2: You did go back to New Zealand though, And I'm
Speaker 2: really interested in post batch life because obviously you've written
Speaker 2: this book, and this book has been adapted into a
Speaker 2: TV show which is very successful. Has Rachel Griffi is
Speaker 2: playing you. I don't know how that feels. How does
Speaker 2: it feel to have Rachel Griffiths playing you?
Speaker 5: Is it really real?
Speaker 4: It's great?
Speaker 2: But so how did life play out post that did you.
Speaker 4: You.
Speaker 2: Obviously you all went back to France. I can't imagine
Speaker 2: what a difficult time this was COVID hits.
Speaker 4: But you did go back to New Zealand.
Speaker 2: Why did you go back to New Zealand And how
Speaker 2: has life changed since you wrote the book?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean the quick reason why we came back
Speaker 3: to New Zealand is that we both have shared custody
Speaker 3: of children with partners. Of course you do short of
Speaker 3: abandoning those children, which I could never do.
Speaker 5: We need to be in New Zealand of course from them.
Speaker 3: But really the only other option I think for me
Speaker 3: would be France because the United States I feel less
Speaker 3: and less American.
Speaker 5: It's been sixteen seventeen years now.
Speaker 2: Did you write the huff Post essay and it got
Speaker 2: optioned for the movie? But had you'd already been you
Speaker 2: You've sailed through this book that you always knew it
Speaker 2: was going to be a book, really, this Batch Adventure?
Speaker 3: Oh right, yeah, so you were asking me about life
Speaker 3: since then, I always wanted to write about it, and
Speaker 3: I had been writing about it during the time of
Speaker 3: running the batche. I would jot down notes and I
Speaker 3: would talk about it whenever I could to a couple
Speaker 3: of podcasts and so on, because I thought what we
Speaker 3: were doing was really important and low key revolutionary, actually
Speaker 3: putting the power in the hands of the sex workers.
Speaker 2: Near the beginning of the book, you're like, you're in
Speaker 2: this little town in New Zealand and you're kind of
Speaker 2: going and you've got these little kids, and as discussed,
Speaker 2: you know, life isn't easy, and you're working out what
Speaker 2: to do. And you say, when you're young and w
Speaker 2: you make choices on a whim because you think everything
Speaker 2: is reversible, and then one day you realize it's not.
Speaker 2: And that's one of the things about aging that I
Speaker 2: bump up against a lot. I'm like, the choices I've
Speaker 2: made that I didn't even really think about have now
Speaker 2: led me to be in my life. For example, I
Speaker 2: live on the other side of the world to my
Speaker 2: family and all those things. When you look back at
Speaker 2: this time, at that time in your life that this
Speaker 2: book is about.
Speaker 4: How do you feel about it?
Speaker 2: Do you regret being there? Do you wish that life
Speaker 2: had been different already? Glad that it played out the
Speaker 2: way it did.
Speaker 5: I think it has to play out the way it does.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, if I was gonna tell you one regret,
Speaker 3: I'd say, I wish I hadn't dropped out of university
Speaker 3: level chemistry because I was really getting interested in endochronology.
Speaker 3: But I think, look when my husband left and I
Speaker 3: was so terrified, and I had all these kids to
Speaker 3: take care of, and Patrece, my now husband, said he
Speaker 3: would be with me and help me raise this child.
Speaker 5: But I didn't know if he was stick or not.
Speaker 3: I think something rises up in mothers in particular, or
Speaker 3: we just go nothing gonna put my babies in danger,
Speaker 3: and I just I was able to find a strength
Speaker 3: of a hundred wildcats.
Speaker 5: And I'm not flexing here like that.
Speaker 3: I think it's I think it's a physical brain reaction
Speaker 3: when a mom is backed against the wall.
Speaker 5: And I'm proud of what we did, and I think
Speaker 5: I did it because I was backed up against the wall.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I think all that bad shit had to happen.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Anthonia. It's been a really good conversation. Friends.
Speaker 2: This has been the last traditional episode of season four
Speaker 2: of mid We're going to be back in your ears
Speaker 2: in April, and until then, I want you to keep
Speaker 2: your ears free for a few little treats that might
Speaker 2: drop your way in this feed. Also, I asked you
Speaker 2: last week to rate and review and please continue to
Speaker 2: do that wherever you're listening to MID. If you like
Speaker 2: the show, If you love the show, if you have
Speaker 2: opinions about the show, tell us jump into wherever you're
Speaker 2: listening to this and rate and review. Five stars would
Speaker 2: be great. Also, if you have thoughts and feelings about
Speaker 2: what we should be talking about next on MID, we'd
Speaker 2: love to hear it.
Speaker 4: Follow us on instert and send us.
Speaker 2: A cheeky DM at Mid by Mamma Mia or me
Speaker 2: at Waynwright, Holly, and last, but not least, if you
Speaker 2: want more MID conversations about sex, scroll back to our
Speaker 2: conversation with Leslie Morgan, who got divorced at forty nine
Speaker 2: and embarked on quite the sexual adventure, or with the
Speaker 2: author Julie Cohen about coming out as bisexual as a
Speaker 2: married mom of forty. Both of those episodes are in
Speaker 2: our feed, And of course, a massive thank you to
Speaker 2: the executive producer of MID. Her name is Niama Brown,
Speaker 2: the senior producer is Grace Ruvray, the producer is Charlie Blackman,
Speaker 2: and we've had audio production from Jacob Brown.
Speaker 4: And I will see you next season. Bye,