I See You

This week is all about exposure. About people who want to drag the potentially darkest, most heart-wrenching moments of strangers out into the light, for the rest of the world to judge. It's the same self-righteous, sanctimonious sense of morality that has Internet "journalists" revealing the identity of rape survivors and the antis outside of the clinic filming everyone who goes in. In our case, it's not even meant to silence--the men and women who come to the clinic aren't there for attention. If anything, they want to go about their business unnoticed. It's meant to shame. To embarrass. To make sure they know that as they live their lives as best they can, there's a group of strangers who knows nothing about their circumstances or choices that is passing judgment.

There were double the number of antis that I've usually seen at the clinic this week. Mainly thirty-something men, all wearing blue sweatshirts emblazoned with "WITNESS" on the front. And all with small digital cameras strapped to their chests, filming every moment. They stood next to the clinic doors (blatantly disregarding Illinois buffer zone laws) and documented every person who approached. Across the street, another man with a serious camera on a tripod kept it trained on the clinic door, catching straight-on shots of everyone who left.

People who walked past were disgusted. One man asked if we wanted him to go smash their cameras. We told him that we couldn't encourage him to do so, but that we certainly weren't there to protect camera equipment. (Sadly, he didn't follow up on it.) Another woman asked me if what they were doing was legal. When I told her that, unfortunately, it was, she yelled "Shame on you!" as she walked away. As the cameraman turned around, I pointed at him. I wanted to make sure he knew that it wasn't we who should be ashamed.

We stood in the cold, stomping our feet and trying to pass the time. Then one of the antis, who had been trying to hand out "gift bags" filled with baby booties and scientific misinformation to clinic visitors, pulled out her iPhone and turned to film me. She stood there, ten feet away, with her camera trained on me. And so I did what anyone else does when a camera is pointed at them--I smiled and waved.

None of the escorts are ashamed to be here. We're not trying to hide what we do from the world. (It would be difficult, since we wear neon pink vests that say "PRO-CHOICE CLINIC ESCORT" across the chest.) And even more than not being embarrassed, I'm proud of what I do. If these people consider me some sort of threat to their mission, then I'm doing something right. I hope that somewhere, on some sad, secret Facebook page, there's a video of me, waving at the woman who's trying to take away my rights. Next time, I'll ask her if she wants a close-up.

Editorial Stuff

Same blog, new title. I don't get to the clinic as often as I'd like, and I wanted the blog's content to be a bit more varied. Carry on.

Do You Think I'm Wrong?

I haven't been able to return to the clinic for the last few weeks. I was out of town for work, and so this post isn't about my experiences as an escort, but a different type of bias against women that I dealt with firsthand on set.

People ask me all the time if advertising is really like Mad Men. What they're asking me is a lighthearted question about whether we really spend all day drinking whiskey and napping in our offices. And some of those things are true--there's probably a lot more bourbon at my office than there is at my dad's bank. But the not-so-funny truth of it is that things haven't improved as much as people would like to think in terms of the everyday sexism that we experience. Some of it is subtle--the kind of subtle where some would dismiss it, saying, "Well that's just someone being rude. You can't attribute that to sexism." But those are-they-sexist moments are just the filler between the times when our competency is called into question, our beings are reduced to our bodies, and our "niceness" suddenly becomes the defining characteristic of our professional abilities. And these things are not happening quietly. They are occurring in public, in front of our colleagues, in settings where it is intended to undermine us.

We were casting for a Latina actress. The first girl we saw was great--warm, charming, and handled every weird instruction we threw at her perfectly. ("Okay, so you're waving to this guy, but then you realize he's sleepwalking. So at first you look happy and flirty, but then you're confused...") As other women came through, one producer began making comments while the actresses were still in the room about whether or not they looked "Latina enough." I shushed him. Then a particularly beautiful actress came in, and he started making comments--again, with her standing less than ten yards away--about how she looked and how he wouldn't mind being the one she was waving to.

Writing it out, it sounds almost innocent. And if we were talking about two preschoolers, it would be. A girl waving to a boy she has a crush on is sweet. But an adult man talking about how he wishes a woman that he's in charge of giving work to would "wave" to him (and you could hear the quotation marks in his voice) is harassment. The actress was visibly uncomfortable, and when she left the room, I turned to him and said, "You need to stop creeping out our actresses. I'm serious." He didn't respond, and we went on with casting.

Between actresses, the director (a woman), my art director (also a woman), and I were discussing what we had liked so much about the first girl we saw, and mentioned that many of the other actresses who had come in had been much more made-up and didn't exude the girl-next-door feeling that we were looking for. And then the producer chimed in again.

"Well that's just how they are. That's the slutty Latina thing. It's just part of their culture."

I didn't have time to think before the words came out of my mouth, and if I had, I don't know if I would have been brave enough to do it. This producer is far, far more senior than I am, and undoubtedly has more professional clout than I do.

"Excuse me? You absolutely cannot say that."

If, at this point, he had tried to backpedal ("Well, uh, "slutty" isn't the right word. But you know what I mean--they tend to wear tighter clothes and more makeup...") it still would have been slimy and gross, but unsurprising--I don't count on older white guys to give particularly nuanced opinions on race and sexuality. Instead, he actually defended himself.

"You think they're not? You think I'm wrong? Just go turn on a TV! You want proof? Turn on the TV. Do it right now! Do you think I'm wrong? Do you think I'm wrong??"

Everyone else in the room was completely still. I was sitting straight up on the couch, just a few feet away from him, only somewhat aware that we're both yelling.

"I do think you're wrong. And I think you're being extremely unprofessional right now."

"Well..."

And then he just sat back. And I sat back. And a few minutes later, he left the room "for a call" and didn't return.

At this point, another male producer turned to me and said, "You know, I would have said something too if..." I don't remember what his excuse was. Something about how it might have impacted him professionally. But let's be real: between a man with 20+ years of experience and me, who do you think the repercussions would have come down on?  "I would have if..." doesn't help me, or those actresses, or anything else.

Over the course of the shoot, every single woman I worked with shared a story at some point of the men they worked with dismissing them, or launching personal attacks on them in front of the entire crew, or making comments that would be considered inappropriate in any professional context.

"Are you always this awful?"

"So you just want me here for the orgasm." (Referring to the fact that shooting a commercial is the culmination of months of work.) And then, even after being asked not to make those types of remarks, "Yeah, I'll just come in and masturbate over it." Complete with hand gesture.

"Do you even know what you're doing?"

None of these stories came up in a "what have men said to you on set?" conversation. We weren't having a consciousness raising. They were just anecdotes that people shared over the course of our two-week shoot. And yet none of the men with us ever offered a story in which they had been called incompetent in front of everyone they worked with, or been told that they weren't being "nice" enough when asking for the shot they needed.

It's a nice sentiment to believe that Beyonce and Jay-Z should be getting paid an equal amount for performing. And it's a safe one. You're not going to come across many people who will publicly argue that they shouldn't. But what the women I work with have found, time after time, is that there are plenty of people who still don't believe that we really know what we're doing, or that we belong here. Or people who would stand up against what they know is wrong if it didn't potentially have any negative consequences. We're still surrounded by men who may not say that Beyonce should be back on the tour bus making sandwiches, but they certainly wouldn't object if she were.

Alone Time

I haven't been to the clinic in a while because I had guests and was out of town, but I finally got a chance to go back this weekend. It was another slow morning; there were only two antis there, maybe because it's suddenly gotten unseasonably cold here. I guess saving women from themselves is more of a warm-weather activity.

Because it was so quiet, I had a lot of time to stand around and think about how frustrating this whole process is. If there weren't two seventy-something men trying to shove pamphlets at the women and their companions trying to walk into the clinic, I wouldn't have to be standing out there, stamping my feet and counting down the minutes until they gave up. Because if the antis aren't there, there's no reason for us to be there either. Without protesters, we would be obsolete. Which would be wonderful.

The image of these two elderly white men trying to impose their own views on the women who come to the clinic, despite the fact that they are completely lacking in context or information, is an unfortunately familiar one. It gets played out over and over again in Congress, in the courts, and in everyday life. The idea that women aren't capable of making their own decisions, that if they just had a little more time, a little more information, they would come around to the "right" answer. As if these women haven't spent hours or days playing this decision out again and again in their heads by the time they get to the clinic. As if being told by these men, "Well, honey, why don't you just give it a little more thought?" is in any way helpful. As if by bringing an unwanted child into the world, they could force it to be loved, simply because it was born.

Eventually Phil (the main old-guy anti) and his old-man friend wandered away, and then it was just us, the escorts. Eventually we left too. Because without the antis, there's no reason for us to add one more layer of possibly stressful interaction to these women's days. They're not looking for anyone to baby them, to walk them across the street, to make smalltalk as they potentially head towards a difficult decision. Absent our role as buffers, they don't want us there any more than we want to be there. These women want to be treated like adults, both by the law and by us. They want to be able to make their decisions without being second-guessed by people they've never met, and they want to go about it with dignity and privacy. So when there's no one there trying to disrupt that, we leave, and let them think, walk, mourn, celebrate, and decide for themselves.

Why You're Confused

I shouldn't have to be an escort. There's no reason that dozens of men and women should have to get up early every Saturday and stand out in the heat and the rain and the freezing Chicago winter to ensure that women are able to exercise rights that we won decades ago. And yet here I am, just a few hours after my first shift at the West Loop family planning clinic, having now seen firsthand what those women face on the short journey from their cars to the clinic doors.

All things considered, it was quieter than I expected. No shouting, no photos of bloody fetuses. Our anti-choicers obviously wanted to project a kind and gentle image, like they really were there just to help. Three tween girls handed out "gift bags" with baby booties and pamphlets in them, and I have to wonder how much of this was their own "sincerely held religion belief" and how much was just parroting their parents and pastors. One girl, during a moment of downtime, approached us with a spiel she had clearly been practicing at youth group:

"Hi, I'm Maggie. Since we're going to be standing here together for a while, do you maybe want to talk about why you're confused?"

I actually laughed out loud when she said that. I'm not confused. I know exactly how I feel. But the language was so obviously chosen to be non-confrontational, the wording so bland, that I can only assume they've tried more aggressive tactics and found them to be totally ineffective. So I laughed, and then ignored her.

It's a strange feeling, to ignore and despise these people that we're in such close quarters with; Midwestern courtesy is ingrained in my being. But I have to remind myself that they are literally there to prevent women from having reproductive freedom. They may be nice, polite people in some respects, but they are also trying to take away my rights. I'm sure that as I spend more time as an escort, any feelings of magnanimity I have toward them will fade.

Chicago still has a "buffer zone" law in effect, though I'm sure that even as I type, a team of anti-choice lawyers is writing up an appeal, using the recent Supreme Court decision as precedent. This means that within 30 feet of the clinic door, the antis have to stay 8 feel away from patients, unless they're given consent to approach them. Of course, as with so many people who fear and fail to comprehend women's sexuality, consent is a murky issue to them. When an anti yells "Hey you!" and a surprised patient turns around, they consider that consent to engage the patient in "conversation," which means spouting out a string of religious platitudes and scientific falsehoods at lightning speed while trying to shove pamphlets into the patients' hands. And, as always, those on our side of the fence would argue that the absence of a "no" is not the same thing as an enthusiastic "yes." So as escorts, we are also there as physical barriers between the protesters and the patients, because given the chance, the antis will steer them away from the clinic through any means necessary. Intimidation, lies, guilt, and coercion are all fair game. Some have even taken to wearing neon traffic vests to match ours, hoping to confuse the patients.

Over the course of the next few hours, my own most significant contribution is to tell someone where the parking meter is. But, I remind myself, maybe it is our presence that discourages a larger showing of antis. Maybe the quiet doesn't mean that they've assigned too many escorts to this clinic, or that I'm not really making a difference. Maybe it is quiet because we are there.