Like Mother Like Daughter
from Izwi Lethu, Issue 7, Special Limpopo Edition
Please don’t do sex work in front of your children because they might follow in your footsteps. One day my daughter who was ten years old asked me, “Why do people do sex work?”
When she asked me this question I felt shocked because I had no idea that she knew what sex work was. I replied to her in a polite way by asking her, “Why are you saying this? What do you know about sex work? Who told you that people work as sex workers?”
She replied quickly, “Mom, you always leave at night, where are you going?”
I responded to her by saying that I worked as a security guard and so I had to work at night in hopes that she would get confused and stop insisting that she knew that I was selling sex. She didn’t believe me and so we started to argue.
She said to me, “But you also carry condoms with you!”
I tried to convince her that I sold condoms at work but she didn’t believe me. She told me everything about what she knew about the Choice condoms saying, “At Love Life [an after school program at her school] we learn about Choice condoms and that they are not for sale.” She exclaimed, “They are free and are used for HIV protection during sexual intercourse!”
I just looked at her not showing her that what she was saying was making me feel very confused. Inside I was feeling embarrassed, but I didn’t want her to know how I was feeling because I wanted her to keep telling me what she knew about sex work and why she believed that I was a sex worker. She continued insisting that she knew that I was a sex worker: “When you come back from work you always bring a different guy with you.”
At that moment, I realised that I needed to change where I conducted my business because I wanted to respect my daughter. This conversation made me think about the time when I was a young teenager. I used to admire the way my mother earned a living. My mother was a sex worker and brought different clients home. One beautiful morning while sitting in the dining room at my mother’s house, I asked her, “Why can’t you stick with one boyfriend? Why do you have so many boyfriends? Today this is my father, tomorrow another one is my father. Why are you doing this?’’
It was boring me. I wanted to know the reason that she had so many different men at the house because I knew that everything happened for a reason. I wanted to know if this is the way everyone was living their lives. She answered, “I’m raising money to look after you.” A week later, I told my friend Sophia about my mom. Sophia was also interested in sex work business, so we agreed to run away from home and start doing sex work. I was gone for five months and when I got back home, I didn’t have a problem explaining to my mother what I had been doing. I just told my mother that I have followed in your footsteps! My mother was a sex worker that’s why I’m a sex worker, and I’m proud to be a sex worker. I wasn’t forced into sex work but this doesn’t mean that I want my daughter to be a sex worker.
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