Other Feature

e Anexpose on both
the the patrons and
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business.

by Joel Ceseau

   

the Other Press

Her four-and-a-half room Montreal
apartmentis filled with luxuries that would make
a welfare inspector fume. But her telephone is the
most impressive feature, equipped with the best
of Bell Canada’s options: call waiting, conference
calls, redial, extensive memory, a screen that
identifies a caller’s number and an extra long
cord.

Jessica is a telephone sex operator.

The long cord allows her to phone men
while she’s in the bathtub, kitchen or bedroom. It
also has a ring that lets her (and her boyfriend)
distinguish between business and personal calls.
Jessica (not her real name) says. her boyfriend
accepts her line of work.

“If (my job) bothers him, he can fuck off
because I’ve got to pay the rent,” she says.

She gets $470 a month from welfare and
makes up to $650 a month from her job.

Onenight, Jessica’s girlfriends are over for
Jamaican food and videos. Most of them have
tried her job, which is how she heard about it.

Jessica, 22, hangs up the phone. “Shit!
Robert P.” she says, disappearing into the next
room.

One of her friends explains that Jessica’s
caller is a wealthy man and the son of a well-
known Quebec businessman.

“(Robert P.) likes to be wrapped up in the
sport and fashion sections of the newspaper.
When he comes, he yells out. ‘Look, I’m all over
the news,” Jessica’s friend says.

Jessica can earn $15 for a 15 minute call.
She has worked for several companies in the past
two years. “I’m like a free-lancer,” she says. “I’m
the domination specialist.”

As ‘Mistress Gabriela,’ she says she
reprimands “naughty little boys” and will
“degrade and humiliate them to whatever extent
they wish.”

One of her regular callers is a radio sports
announcer. “His ideal fantasy is for me to bring
him to a dungeon, where I shackle him to a wall
and place a black hood over his head,” she says.

Jessica says she doesn’t think this sex
trade ghettoizes women.

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March 31, 1992

Phone

“When a guy begs to be whipped and
called a slimy pig, and then sends me cash and
perfume, Icertainly don’ tfeel like I’min the worse
position.”

Buta former Concordia Women’s Studies
visiting professor disagrees.

“The vast majority of the media,
relationships and positions of power in society
are based on the notion that women are mere
objects of sex and violence,” says Shereen Razack,
who now teaches at the University of Toronto.

She adds that callers are still in the
dominating position because they can afford to
be.

 

 

“Saying amanisapigisall very nice,” says
Razack. “butit’s the ‘pig’ who has the real power.
Women have fantasies too, but only the ‘pigs’ can
afford to pay for it.”

But Janine, Jessica’s employer, has no
qualms aboutoffering clients “girlspanking” and
“completely uncensored” fantasies.

For Janine (another pseudonym), it’s
strictly business.

“Tf (the caller) wants to act on it, he can in
the confines and anonymity of a phone call.”

Janine says she is proud that,as a woman,
she can take complete control of every facet of her
business.

“How many businesses dealing in
pornography do you think are run by women?”

Janine, who has a Ph.D. in English
literature, was more interested in making fast
money than making the grade. While travelling
in France more than eight years ago, she was
introduced to the idea of telephone sex.

She then went to New York City, where
she started her first company with a $200
investment. She then recruited women working

 

 

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