I SUFFER WITH depression and have done for the majority of my life. I know why. It’s not a mystery. Traumatic things happened, lots at a young age and that’s how my brain has come to be. I do my best though, I meditate, I read, my book shelf has seen more self-help books than I should probably admit to.

But an easy tool, one that I’ve used since childhood is comedy. Reruns of my favourites. It’s the ultimate comfort, like putting on an old pair of PJs and getting under a blanket. It’s familiar and the characters say words you’ve heard a hundred times before. It’s like being with friends who just let you sit with them in silence and with no expectations.

Comedy changes a lot, though. What we’re allowed to laugh at changes and what we find uncomfortable and questionable switches over time. It’s changed since I was a child in the ’90s watching Only Fools and Horses as the homophobic and racist jokes went over my head. There’s one subject that’s always good for a laugh though and that’s those women who aren’t like your regular women. It’s the kind that get paid for sex. The whores, the trick-turners, the ladies of the night, those good old-fashioned prostitutes.

A line doesn’t even have to be particularly clever if you can shoehorn the word whore into it. And if you get an old lady to say it well that’s gold right there. An old lady calling women she doesn’t like prostitutes, or saying she doesn’t want her hair like that hookers, that will always get a laugh.

We may not be allowed to laugh at certain cultures, or events or specific demographics but women, the type of women who’ve lost their value from having sex with any man who’ll pay them, nah they’re always fair game. Anything about prostitutes can be funny, whorehouse red, perfume smells like a brothel or a maybe a girl smells like a baby prostitute. Sound familiar? They’re all pretty common comedy one-liners. It’s all fun and games when it’s about the demographic who are at risk of rape and murder on a daily basis.

Am I overthinking this? What does it matter. It’s just jokes. I just need to get over myself. Not everything is made for me, I get it. I’m over sensitive because I’m an ex-hooker and not a happy one.

But I can’t get over it. Because comedy is my comfort. When the other tools don’t work. When all I can do is lay in bed and watch box sets. One of my all-time comedy comforts is Friends. Pretty inoffensive for the most part, although I realise that could be debatable. There’s one episode of that show that I always skip, the one where Monica accidentally orders a prostitute for Chandler.

In it Chandler and Joey debate which one of them has to be the one who has to “tell the whore to leave.” She doesn’t get a name, she’s not even “the woman” just a whore who is dehumanised to the point where Chandler comments they’ll have to burn the room down now she’s been there.

It’s such a jarring moment in a show that is like a comfort blanket to me. Like a little brain dagger reminding me that I’m not quite human. Friends is over 20 years old, its been and gone but it’s a show that I’ve always watched with others as well as alone. And they laugh. Everyone loves a prostitute gag. Except a prostitute. We never win the joke you see. We’re the ones having to up our medications for our broken brains.

We’re the ones with stories no-one wants to hear because actually they’re more tragic than funny. We’re the ones who want people to know that we’re human. We’re not a special breed who can do things the normal women can’t.

A woman who finds herself in prostitution can be any woman you know. That student who rents a room above the shop, that respectable looking mother who always takes her kids to the park, that woman who’s always drunk in your local pub.  

All of those women can find themselves selling sex. On the street, in hotels, in the brothel people pretend not to know about. All women, all human, all worthy of respect. There’s no such thing as a “high-class hooker.” Just different amounts of money handed over for the exact same acts.

And once a prostitute always a prostitute? Well, no not quite. Not in the sense of actually being in it anymore. But feeling that shame, that feeling of otherness, that you’re not like other girls and not in a good way feeling, that’s pretty hard to shake.

If any woman you meet can be living a secret life, is it safer for that life to be lived outside of the shadows? Normalised to the point where selling sex becomes akin to selling bread? Let that steady stream of men in to pay for whichever service they desire without the worry of those men being arrested for doing what men have always done? Maybe those ladies of the night can finally be treated like any other worker? Their work respected and regulated.

Will that keep women safe? Well, as someone who has seen and felt how men treat women who sell sex, I would say no. Our bodies pay the price of being the product. We don’t provide a service. We are the service. Passive receptacles whose worth never increases.

Punish us? We’ve been punished enough. Over and over again for being the wrong kind of women. The kind who find themselves in a secret world where the men don’t respect them and who have to go back into the normal world where no-one respects them if they know the truth.

I think it’s time the joke was on the buyers. The ones who despite hating us, are still prepared to pay money to use us. The Nordic model could change the way it works. Change the responsibility. What does a buyer say to a prostitute? Anything he likes, he’s paying. Let’s change that. Let’s end the demand.

Jenna is a survivor of over 10 years in and out of prostitution. She has now exited and is rebuilding her life and is a passionate member of Nordic Model Now! NMN will have a stall at Scottish TUC Congress. Please visit them for more information or go to their website at nordicmodelnow.org.