Working Girls of Place Blanche

[Abartig]

Ran across this today

http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/07/15/working-girls-of-place-blanche-documenting-the-parisian-sex-trade/


http://www.agencevu.com/stories/index.php?id=783&p=150

[Prospero]

Fascinating stuff Abartig... thanks for posting

[Stavros]

I agree, it gives an important new look to this era when 'full drag' was illegal in both the US (I believe) and the UK and where arrests (in the UK) would have taken place and did, whereas in Paris they got away with it, perhaps because 'sodomy' was de-criminalised in 1791 (but gay men were prosecuted under indecent exposure laws into the 1980s). The streets around Place Clichy on the south side of the Blvd de Clichy (opposite le Moulin Rouge) by the 1970s were populated by the first wave of Latin American and some Asian girls -Rue Duperre was particularly hot as I used it many times; at the same time further east and north of Clichy working girls were found in the vicinity of the cabarets Madame Arthur and Chez Michou both of which are still there. What changed, from the 1990s onwards was the demand for accommodation which meant the run-down low-rent buildings in which the girls lived were sold for renovation. Add in the collapse of street-walking and hostess bars on the south side of Clichy and more aggressive policing and the whole scene in Pigalle has been killed off. A pity because there were some stunning girls there in the 1970s and 1980s. As for the film Gigola, Paris was famous for its Lesbian bars in the inter-war period.

[Helvis2012]

expensive book....cheapest copy goes for close to $900.

[sukumvit boy]

Wow , interesting. Thanks.

[Odelay]

Stavros, as a young pervert...

[Stavros]

Hilarious, and not so far from the truth. A relative of mine used to work in the wholesale garment trade for an outlet on the Rue d'Aboukir where it runs into the Rue St Denis -took me a few years to realise what those badly-dressed women were doing hanging around on street corners. He once made me wait for him in a cafe used by most of the local whores, I think I was 14 at the time. I also believe those weird sideshows with women and snakes in a bathtub (variations of) can still be seen on the Blvd de Clichy in the month before Christmas, certainly I saw them in the 1980s.

[sukumvit boy]

Amazing stuff Abartig and Stavros.
Gets me thinking of how even though separated by decades and oceans , we have all managed to wash ashore here at Hung Angles! LOL.
...
"I grow old.. I grow old..
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

T.S Eliot ,"The Wasteland"

[sukumvit boy]

Oops ," Prufrock" , of course.

[Stavros]

I think the point of discussion would relate then and now -from then: a time when censorship was more severe and widespread on tv and in film, when there were only a few tv stations anyway, and exposure to sex and bad language was strictly controlled -to these days when bad language is not only common in public and on the broadcast media but in some cases de rigueur especially among so-called comedians (only way to get a laugh I suppose). The relaxation of codes may be more realistic in allowing people to see what is there and has been there all along, and I am not being a grumpy old man in drawing attention to such changes. What I do wonder, from what ts friends have said to me in the past, is whether or not transgendered people are exposed -unwillingly in most cases- to sexual experiences at an earlier age than most others, and I think particularly in the case of those who become sex workers. It is a difficult area in which to engage a discussion, but I did read a feminist critique of transexuality -it is on the web but I lost the link some time ago and can't find it again- in which it was argued that aside from those whose gender status is of biological origin, most transexuals have been victims of child abuse and it was this trauma which led the person to seek a change in their sexual identity. Controversial and probably impossible to prove.

[sukumvit boy]

I certainly don't miss the old codes.
Our present day access to information and discussion , like this forum , has got to be healthier for everybody.
I guess what I miss is my lost innocence , and the sense of taboo and mystery , for ,as you say ,"what is there and has been there all along".
As to the question of abuse , I can't say offhand ,but a search of the psychological literature might turn up something.

[BBaggins06]

It is a difficult area in which to engage a discussion, but I did read a feminist critique of transexuality -it is on the web but I lost the link some time ago and can't find it again- in which it was argued that aside from those whose gender status is of biological origin, most transexuals have been victims of child abuse and it was this trauma which led the person to seek a change in their sexual identity. Controversial and probably impossible to prove.

There are a lot of radical feminists who are virulently transphobic Stavros. That sounds like something from their playbook.

[Stavros]

Sadly true Bbaggins. I did try to find the article I had read but no luck so far. I remember going to see Andy Warhol's Women in Revolt at the ICA cinema in London, must be early 80s and there was a German woman who at the end of the film shouted Scheiss! and seemed rather upset by the whole thing. Perhaps she thought it was a film about women revolutionaries, perhaps in its own satirical way, the film is just that...