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October 26, 2024 42 mins

This week, Paula's guest is Antonia Murphy, known for running the ethical brothel 'The Bach' in Whangarei from 2017 to 2019. They discuss how Murphy got into this line of work, and what the whole experience taught her about sex work, consent, and the lives of the women she came across. She also discusses her advice for moving on after losing a child.

Madam, Murphy's memoir, is out now. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, I am Paul Vinnett and welcome to my new
Zealand Herald podcast Ask Me Anything.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
One thing I've learned in life is it's never too
late to learn something new. So on this podcast, I
talked to people from all walks of life to hear
about how they got to where they are and get
some advice and guidance on some of life's biggest questions.
A couple of months ago, you may have seen the
new TV series Madam, starring Rachel Griffiths. Well. Madame was

(00:37):
inspired by the real life story of my guest Today
and Tania Murphy. Antonia was the founder and director of
ethical feminist escort agency, The Batch, which operated in Fong
Array from twenty sixteen. While the TV show was fictionalized
a version of Antonia's story, she has now released the
full and true story in a memoir. It's called Madam

(01:00):
Antony a Movie. Welcome.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to
be here. It's good to have you here.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
I am just absolutely fascinated by your story. But let's
do it a quick five question. If you could go
to the pub for a drink with any one interesting,
who would it be.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Is this gonna make me sound terrible? I kind of
want to pick Peter Teele's brand. What are they doing
with AI? Why are they doing it? And why are
they all buying bolt holes in New Zealand to escape to?

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah it's interesting, isn't it. It's a bit creepy. Yeah yeah, yeah, No,
that would be And would you have a drink of choice?

Speaker 2 (01:33):
I would probably be a delicious gin martini. Oh, if
you're going to go, just go for.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Do you have a favorite bar or restaurant in the
world a seeming weird that kind of you just go, Oh,
my goodness, in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
No, that's a tough one. I think anywhere with a
gorgeous view of the sea.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah that's nice. I'm just with no fear of favor.
I possibly head the entree that is still playing in
my mind about two weeks ago. Isn't it funny or
something that happens power? And it was at the Grove
in Auckland. There you go. If you're asking me my
favorite this week.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
I'm gonna have to check it out. I've not had
proper power yet. We's ten years in New Zealand.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
I was with it was a big group and There
were a number of women there that had never eaten power,
and I said, if you can try any this is it,
and they just all went, oh, my goodness, amazing. So
there you go. Okay, so let's start by learning a
bit more about you, and then we'll chat about the
batch and ethical six week and the second segment. So
you're American, we can hear it.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Well, I'm both now I have my Kivy citizenship.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, great, Okay, that's good. So I mean, how on
earth did you end up in New Zealand? And I
suppose how one needs did you end up in Falloray
in New Zealand?

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Hmmm, well I sailed here with my then husband, and
New Zealand was downwind from California. It was a bit
more considered than that, but not a whole lot, to
be honest. I was in San Francisco and sort of
looking around and thinking, how am I going to be
able to afford to have a family here, put my
kids in private school so they won't get shot eventually

(03:06):
by a house like it all just seemed sort of impossible.
And then the never ending wars in the Middle East
and my husband at the time and I looked around
and said, hmmm, what are our other options?

Speaker 1 (03:19):
But sailing from America to New Zealand is messig Well.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
We were both big sailors anyway, okay, And then as
we sailed along and during the course of our adventures,
we talked to people and said what do you reckon
should it be? Well, at the time I didn't say reckon,
did I said what do you think would it be
Australia or New Zealand? They said, hmmm, I think you'll
like New Zealand a lot better, So.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
You are we are.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
So then how did you end up in full Array?

Speaker 2 (03:45):
It's one of the first ports of call for a
lot of boats that come from overseas, just sort of
the way the winds and currents work.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Wow. And you literally landed there and then went, actually,
this is where we'll stay.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well, we actually in New Zealand actually hazed us with
a year and Invercargo first, so we needed to get
a one year working visa and there were jobs in Invercargo,
so we moved to the bottom of the world first
for a year, and then Invercargo has some beautiful spots.
Don't get me wrong, I mean the cat skills and
Stuart Island and all that, but the weather was a

(04:19):
bit extreme. So after that year we went back to
Fungaday where the sun was shining.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Now I like him the cargo, I reckon.
I'm just one of those few people that every time
I visited, it's just had the sun out and it's
been absolutely beautiful.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
It can be absolutely gorgeous, and then these arctic winds
come in from the south that take you by surprise.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
So at one point you were on a farm. Yes, yeah,
I did the rural life, soach you.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
I loved it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
We actually moved out there because we had a son
who was quite profoundly disabled. And I found a small,
a tiny, one room schoolhouse that seemed like something out
of a fairy tale book about half an hour outside
of Fungaday. And then I sort of fell in love
with the idea of hobby farming and we got a
lifestyle block and I was making cheese and I was
making fruit wine and it was it was.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Blast yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And then you split from
your husband. You found yourself in New Zealand, divorced with kids,
as you've mentioned a disabled son as well. You know,
can you tell me what life was like for you
at this time before you started the bitch.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Well, I needed to get a new plan, didn't I.
So I had been thinking about sex work and I
and I had learned years earlier that it was the
criminalized in New Zealand. And I was amazed by that
and fascinated because sorried interrupt.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
But are we one of the few? We have one
of the few that.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
This is the only country in the world where it
is complete.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
It seems so normal to me, Well, you know what
I mean. It's not that I'm old, but it's not
that it's all I've even known, but it just, yeah,
it seems so normal.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Well, what a lot of people don't understand is there
are places in the world where it is legalized, and
that makes it sound like it's more free there, but
it's not. Actually where it's legalized, they often have a
lot of regulations in place that can actually marginalize a
lot of sex workers and sort of cast them into
a criminal area. But New Zealand is the only country
that is completely decriminalized. New South Wales in Australia is

(06:07):
as well, but not the entire country.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
So here it is.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, and initially I was interested in that because I
wanted to write a book about New Zealand and so
years previously I had gone to a brothel in Auckland
and interviewed some of the sex workers and came away thinking,
my gosh, these are just young women trying to work.
They're just at their job. It's not a whole thing.
It's not scary, it's not sleazy. At least that one

(06:30):
where I visited was not. And I sort of filed
that in the back of my memory banks. And then
when it came time to start making an income and
building a business, I thought, wow, maybe this is something
I could actually do.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
But what be you six work for yourself or build
a business because you.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
Run that business.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
Because at that time I was forty one, and also
I had just tied a third child. Yeah, so that
wasn't really on my radar.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Yeah, so you did say in the book you wouldn't
have had the guts to open up a brothel while
your mum was alive.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
Why is that?

Speaker 2 (07:02):
My mother was a very strong, wilful feminist, and she
had a lot of opinions about a woman's place in
the world and how it should not be her ability
to make her way in the world should not be
ordained by how she looked and her sex appeal.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
So I think.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Eventually she would have come around, but I think at
first that would have been a tall order for her
to accept that.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
But she was really big in a good education.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
In absolutely having a profession, and in particular so that
if some guy leaves you with two kids to support,
you'll be able to make your way on your own.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Let's talk about your son, Silas, right, so tell me
about him and what it meant for you to be
raising him like you did.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
Well.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Silas had what's called a chromosomal micro deletion, and it
took a couple of years to discover it because it's
so tiny, the little problem in his DNA. The geneticist
at Starship told us that a few years previously, no
one would have even known what was wrong. They actually,
at the time they had to send his blood sample
to Australia to have what's called the DNA micro done,

(08:11):
where they essentially print out the entire blueprint of the
genome and figure out exactly where the tiny mistake is.
But the way that manifested was that he was although
he could walk, he was and he's very cute. He
was almost entirely nonverbal, incontinent at night, was not certainly
not able to read or write. Like it became rapidly

(08:32):
clear he was going to be profoundly disabled for his life.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
And what can I tell you? That's hard.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, I mean, everyone likes the Talco big game about
how we're all inclusive, but the reality is that when
you have a profoundly disabled family member, nobody really wants
to hang out with him unless you're paying, because it
can be troubling, and it can be embarrassing, and it
can be quite confronting.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So it's a lot and a
lot on you, is the and a lot on his siblings,
I imagine.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Yeah, I think so on his siblings. I mean at
the time, they didn't know any different. So he was
just sort of a part of our lives. And he's
quite wonderful too. He absolutely adored Broadway musicals, so I
would put on, you know, Fiddler on the Roof for
a West Side Story and he bounce up and down
in absolute joy, really, which was a delight. But yeah,

(09:24):
he couldn't really like he didn't play with them as
they would have been as they did with one another.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
Silas passed away in twenty nineteen. And you know, you've
certainly talked about the grief of losing a disabled child.
I think of losing a child really would be and
so how have you coped?

Speaker 3 (09:44):
Well?

Speaker 2 (09:44):
In a way, I say this in the book, when
you lose a disabled child, it's really the second of
two griefs, because the first one is the death of
the child that you thought you had or would have,
which is the child who's going to grow up into
an independent adult and have all of those life experiences
like a career and finding love and being independent in

(10:07):
the world and perhaps having children of their own. And
then the second death in this case was actually confronting
a loss of Silas.

Speaker 3 (10:17):
I mean, what can I tell you? It exploded our lives.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
I had already been planning on selling the batch and
taking a year abroad to travel and sort of recover,
and I needed it all the more after we lost Silas.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
I mean, how important am for you? Was it that
in the TV series that Silas's character was a part of.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
That really important? And I actually spoke to the film
the television team and said, you know, please don't, please,
please don't paper this over like, don't please, don't cast
someone who's a sort of extremely cute, mildly impaired down
syndrome girl who looked delightful in every shot, because the
reality of disability is often difficult and not fun, and

(11:05):
you know, they can yell inappropriately or have toileting accidents,
and a loving family still manages to mold themselves around that,
and I'd really like to show that. And so the
young man they cast in the TV series, he does

(11:25):
not have the same disabilities as Silas, but he has
pretty significant cerebral palsy, and so they really they should
and it was somebody who was actually experiencing disability right,
not just playing it on TV. And so I was
I was really proud of them for that and happy
that they're able to show that.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah, and I want to say thank you for that.
As an evid watcher, I found it gave a level
of realness, if you like, is the way I'm going
to say it. As someone that hasn't raised or been
around that kind of disability, and I just sort of thought, Wow,
there's so much going on and it's obviously a big

(12:04):
part of your life, but equally, you show that you
can still have a life as well.

Speaker 4 (12:08):
Well.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
Also a lot of that's down to this country.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
I mean, while we're on the subject of immigrating to
New Zealand and also having a disabled child, thank my
lucky stars because in New Zealand, not only was in
Funga day, there's an incredible school for disabled children which
it was an incredible team to help care for them,
but also I had a funding for a caregiver with

(12:32):
a budget that I could disburse as I saw fit
to hire this incredible woman who cared for Silas and
became sort of his best friend and protect her. Every
day she would come out for a few hours and
help out and give us the chance to have a
normal family life. And these are the kinds of generous
benefits that are not I would not have found in
the United States, no way.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah, and we're pretty quick to beg in New Zealand
and we're certainly going through some struggles at the moment
within our health system, but also recognized the generosity of
this country. I think as yees, so thank you for that.
It means a lot. Ah, It's absolutely you weren't alone.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
No, no, I had I had Cara, our wonderful helper
for Silas and the whole team at her school in
Fungaday Bloomfield in Funga Day.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
So how did the TV show come about? Because you
wrote a piece for the Haffington Post, didn't you? Is
it your backgrounds? You're a journalist or well.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
I mean kind of.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
As my ex and I were sailing around Central and
South America, I started writing funny pieces for sailing magazines
and travel magazines.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
And they took off.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
I started hearing from people telling me that they were
spitting their coffee all over their laptop because they were
laughing so loud, and it was so incredibly rewarding. So
I started doing more and more of it and winning
some awards. And then when we got to New Zealand,
that's when I thought, oh, maybe I can take the
leap and actually try to start writing full length books.
So I wrote this cheeky, funny piece in Huffington Post

(13:56):
called I'm an Ethical Pimp.

Speaker 3 (13:58):
Got lots of cliques, got some outrage.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Then it sort of faded away, as these things do,
and twenty nineteen happened, twenty twenty happened, COVID, we went
to France, came back in twenty twenty one, and Huffington Post,
without my knowledge, reprinted it, and at that time an
American television producer saw it and rang me up and said,
this is such an amazing story.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
We really want to make this into a TV show.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
And I was like, okay, scammer for you, you want
my bank account details to click? But it turned out
he was for real, and then various production companies got interested,
and soon enough we had a TV show.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
How thrilled are you that it's Rachel Griffiths?

Speaker 3 (14:40):
Amazing?

Speaker 2 (14:41):
That I use you amazing. I've been a fan since
Six feet Under. She has such an incredible energy, such
an incredible vibe.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
Well, I was saying to before that I've been a
fan since Muriel's wedding, So that just puts me right back.
For YOUA but look, we're podcasting, so people can't see you.
You honestly look like her. Well she looks like you.
Maybe I should say because you're the star.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
Well, thank you, because she's the movie star.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
And did you meet you meet Ray?

Speaker 4 (15:09):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (15:09):
Absolutely?

Speaker 4 (15:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
She Actually she recorded my voice so she could steady
my accent, which is incredibly fastidious and I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, but that's how good she is. Yeah, you can
see the professional actor in her that It's just absolutely.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
People have told me she even walks like me on
the show. It's a little bit creepy, but very impressive.
But that's getting into character. That is truly showing a
character and what they do. Yeah, absolutely amazing. Okay, we're
going to talk.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
More about The Batch and your decision to go into
the world of ethical sex work. Next. Okay, welcome back, everybody.
I am joined by real life Madam Antonia Murphy Antonia.

(15:58):
Let's turn to the part of your memile that inspired
this TV series that I just absolutely was mesmerized with.
In twenty seventeen, you established ethical escort agency, The Batch. Okay, well,
how on earth did you end up opening an escort agency?

Speaker 3 (16:17):
Well, I needed a business.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
I needed a business after my husband left and I
needed to make an income, and I thought it would
be very interesting and cheeky and kind of transgressive and
something that I could maybe write about because I had
one book under my belt at that stage, Dirty Chick,
which was about my sort of disastrous attempts to run
a small forum in New Zealand, and so in a way,
it was like, oh, this will be fun it'll be

(16:40):
kind of cheeky, I'll make some money, and I had no.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Idea what I'd signed up for. It was so how
true was.

Speaker 1 (16:47):
The TV series as far as China started up trying
to attract women into the business, you know, like because
you're in small town Foma Ray.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
I mean, if you're talking about about real details, fact,
I'm going to say as low as twenty percent, okay,
but if you're talking about the spirit of the truth
of what I was doing, it's much higher. That they
had to change a lot of the details, in large
part because of just big budget TV and liability laws,
but they kept to this truth of the spirit of
what I was doing, and I really was.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
Grateful for that.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
Okay. So we're going to get into what ethical means
and how you ran that, but I mean, it does
fascinate me as to how you started the business, found
the premises, found woman that wanted to work for you,
you know, effectively. So how did you go about that?

Speaker 4 (17:35):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (17:36):
It was a journey, believe me.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
The first thing was finding a venue and the first
thing and I went into it completely wide eyed, saying, Oh,
I'm just going to be totally honest, because it's a
legal business, and I'm going to tell people what I'm doing.
And I was going out to Fungadai rentilations and saying
I want to start an ethical brothel, and they just
looked at me like I was out of my mind,
and a couple of them were willing to work with me,

(17:59):
but then the landlord wouldn't have a bar of it.
And it partly it was a Christian conservativism. I encountered
a lot in Northland. And then also sex work just
has this taint, this reputation that it's going to bring
with it crime and gangs and drugs and problems, and

(18:19):
so nobody wanted to have anything to do with it. Well,
my now husband calls me the pit bull, because when
I get my teeth into something, I just don't let go.
And so I just kept knocking at doors and working
at it, and eventually I met a young woman in
town who ran a sex shop in town. In the book,
I call her Christie Christy Carle Carly, and she knew

(18:43):
everybody in town. She was born and raised in Funaday
and small towns. As you know, they operate on who
you know and your connections. And so she said, uh,
I know a guy who is a commercial real estate
agent in town and give him a text.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
He might know something.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
And it turned out this guy owned a motel as
an investment, a small eight room hotel on the Hattia River,
the Marina Court Motel, and he didn't want to run
it as a motel, He just wanted the land. So
he said, hey, look, you manage the motel, you can
do your brothel there or whatever it is you want
to do.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
I don't want to know about it.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
Just keep it on the up and up, keep the
motel running, and you've got your spot. So boom, that
was part one. Yeah, finding girls to work was a
whole other kettle of fish.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah, how do I suppose you've got your one contact
who owns a sick shop? Yeah she might know, so.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
She knew a couple of people.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
But the main thing that I confronted really early on
is that decriminalized does not mean acceptable or not taboo.
So like, as you know, most people who are looking
for a job in New Zealand are going to hit
up trade me, check it out and trade me. So
we wrote an ad for workers on trade me and
it was immediately canceled and our money refunded. And they said, no,

(19:57):
trade me as a family friendly website. We do not
accept job listings of an adult nature. So then I
talked to Carly and what are we going to do?
She said, well, this town is full of solo moms
on a benefit. Let's ring up Wins because they've got
job listings and I.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
Bet you know how.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
So Wins was like, now, we do not accept jobs
of any kind, end listings of an adult nature, and interestingly,
they said something to the effect of, due to the
high wages paid in the adult industry, there is some
concern that women would feel coerced to go into sex work,
the idea being that if they were offered a job

(20:36):
that they did not take, that perhaps their benefit would
be cut, or that they would feel compelled to do
sex work because, let's face it, we were paying ten
times the minimum wage.

Speaker 4 (20:48):
Yeah that didn't work either. Yeah, so so FI, we've
got one to yeah, oh for two?

Speaker 2 (20:54):
Right, So what ended up working for us was social media. Okay,
I found some ladies on Tinder, and I'm not completely
proud of this, but we got to a point where
the bank account was so low that Carly and I
were like, we're just gonna say yes to everything. Try everything.
Doesn't work, we'll move to the next thing and try something.
So what we did is we started putting ads on

(21:18):
Tinder as straight men looking for straight women and then
if a woman, and so we sort of scraped the
internet for pictures of cute guys and just put randoms
up with fake names.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
Oh god, this is so bad.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
But as soon as the woman swiped right, we immediately
claimed clean with her. We said, look, this is who
we are, this is what we're doing, this is why
we've done it this way. Feel free to click away
or block us if you don't want anything to do
with us. If you are interested, here's what we're offering.
And I probably found three or four women that way.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
The other thing that happened was we got a piece
in the New Zealand Herald which garnered a lot of
outrage and a lot of hate clicks, but it also
got us some cover and some media and our first
crew of women camping from that. Because even with everybody's
outrage about sex work and there a judgment and their

(22:10):
feelings about it, there were still an awful lot of
single moms in Northland who thought to themselves, huh. One
hundred and fifty dollars an hour and free childcare. Yeah,
that sounds like a deal.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah yeah, and my hours. Well we're going to talk
about ethical means. But you know, well, but as you
say that, judgment and and just the taboo and everything else.
You know, there was a time when I was in
Parliament and you know, the kind of the rumor that
went round that I heard repeatedly, by the way, was

(22:40):
that in my early days as a young solo mum,
that I had been a sex worker because I worked
out of a track stop, and you know, and it
was just trying to shame me, you know, like it's all.
It was just desperately trying to shame me. And I
was like, I'm going to be honest in my mind,
I was like, well, I just gave it away for free.
I wish i'd had the.

Speaker 4 (22:59):
Young I wish I had the business sense to which
you make some money.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
It's fascinating and it's really complicated, and I think a
part of that tangle is that people are really uncomfortable
with the idea of women who are poor and solo mums.
So they should be at the bottom of the pile, right,
they should be struggling because why don't they have a
proper husband, why do they get to make one hundred

(23:23):
and fifty dollars an hour?

Speaker 3 (23:24):
That's not right. They're jumping the queue. Yeah, I think
there's a little bit of that.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah, I do too, And I mean my experience wasn't
that long ago, you know that they were trying to
shame me for something they say happened twenty years beforehand.
But yeah, it's just like this, there's this weird thing
about sex or being paid or what you're doing in
your place in society, and how dore.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
You it's immediately when you're getting paid.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
Because let's be clear, I was not extracting women from
a life of prolonged virginity after which they were going
to have one marriage for the rest of their lives.
They're all on social media having hookups on Tinger, Bumble
and Hinge and all these others, and so they would
come to me, and how many times did I hear it?
I'm giving it away for free on Tinder. Anyway, I

(24:06):
might as well get paid. It's not even good sex.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
And so in that context, then let's talk about you know,
we use you use the word ethical all the time.
And that's absolutely right. So and that and that and
that context were you consumed that there was unethical behavior
going on elsewhere and so you wanted to run something
quite different.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Well, in the research that I did, it's it's a
big topic and it's complex. But but before talking about
what other people may or may not be doing, I'll
tell you what we did, which is that our guiding
light for the agency was consent.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
Consent all the way through.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
So for example, right from the beginning, even before a
woman was quote unquote chosen by a client, we didn't
do lineups right, so we just put beautiful pictures of
them in laingerie with no faces or distinguishing marks online
and the women told me when they were available, So
say I'm available between nine and three whilst my child

(25:04):
isn't care great, she's available nine to three. Then a
man would call up and say, hey, I'm interested in
seeing Sasha or whoever at this time, and I would
find out what I could about him m hm.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
And also you can find out a lot just from
talking to him.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
You can tell if he's a native Kiwi or if
he comes from another part of the world, or sort
of what age he is, and get sort of a
vibe and how he presents himself. And then I would
take that to the lady and I say, would you
like this booking at this time? And she would tell
me if she wanted to come in, then that's not
the end of consent, because consent is a moving target, right,
it can be withdrawn at any time. So then she

(25:39):
comes in for the booking, and then when she's ready,
she goes into the service room which had a tinted
window so that she could see out, but he couldn't
see in, and she would lock herself in and so
then she would have the chance to give him a
look over and make sure, like first of all, if
I'm gonna is a small town, make sure she doesn't
know him, right, Oh, good point, And then that she's

(25:59):
okay with vibe. Yeah, And then she would open the
door and he would come in, and then I'm not
done yet, okay. Were the times would they see no, yes, yeah,
And a few times it was not. We never got like,
oh that's my dad, Oh that's my uncle. But we
got oh that's my dad mate, that my dad's mate
that I saw at the barbecue last year.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
Like that happened a couple of times.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
Yeah, well time, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
So then he comes in and it's not a bedroom
straight away, right, it's the lounge room. So we use
these two room suites for our service rooms and the
lounge room.

Speaker 3 (26:30):
And she was also not in underwear.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
She was dressed like for a nice date, and she
would offer him a complimentary beverage and they would sit
and talk first before going right to the business.

Speaker 3 (26:40):
Right.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
So that so that in so many ways, she's evaluating
him for safety, and he's getting the message in a
very sort of basic way. This is not just some
hired orifice, right, this is a young woman who is
here to have a.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
Date with you.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
And so all those little steps add up to making
a much more safe environment. That in the fact that
we had cameras when they come onto the property, we
can see their regio, you know, we have their phone numbers,
all these different and the fact that it's decriminalized, so
if there was ever a problem, we could just call
the cops.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
Yeah, yeah, you're not doing anything illegal, you're not doing
anything wrong.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
But always, always, always, when it came down to the
fact that we called ourselves ethical, it had to do
with consent and then when you talk about consent, you
get into things like how is a woman able to
freely give consent? Well, for one thing, we would never
allow women to be in debt to us. I never
loaned money. If a woman said, oh, can you can
you spot me twenty dollars for pizza, I say, I'll

(27:37):
buy you pizza. Don't worry about it, because if she's
in debt, then she feels like she can't say no.
We also had a policy that once clothing has taken,
it has come off, or sexual contact has started, I'll
pay her out no matter if she stops the booking
and he doesn't pay. So that way, if she got
a weird, squaky vibe part way through the booking, she's say, nah,
this is done, get out of here, I'm out.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
You know.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
Fun.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yes, that did happen a couple of times, generally around
the holidays.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Yeah, okay, because men would come in and often they'd
had a few drinks and then the sort of a
dodgy situation and the lady would say, no, this.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
Is not happened.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
I'm not feeling safed.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
But I didn't want her to be in a situation
where she felt like I don't feel safe, but the
power bill is due.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
Yeah, I hear you. Yeah, yeah, so that's exactly. Yeah,
you feel like you've got no choice, whereas she still
felt like she did hear a choice.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
So I guess from all of that you can kind
of infer what I have heard happens at some of
the less ethical places, things like lineups, things like keeping
women in debt, things like turning a blind eye to
drugs and so on, so that because addicted women are
less likely to say no in a booking, all those
kinds of things don't happen at every place in New

(28:49):
zealand don't even happen at a lot of places, but
happen at.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
Some Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you think that the industry
has changed.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
I'm uncomfortable speaking about the industry as a whole because
I wasn't out there taking surveys, and even those who
try to, even the NZPC, has a hard time keeping
a really close eye on exactly what's happening everywhere. Because
the thing is, the people who are trying to run
their businesses ethically and be fair to their workers and
provide a dignified space for clients, they're quite happy to

(29:20):
put their hands up and have visits from the nz
PC or from the cops or whoever wants to check
in on them.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
The ones who don't.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
Want to play by the rules are not going to
are not going to put their hands up or invite
you in.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
I'm probably going to be doing it on the DL right,
so you're not going to hear about it.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
So it's very hard to get to get an accurate
read on what's happening in the industry as a whole,
even in a small country like New Zealand.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
What would you like people to know about six weekers?

Speaker 3 (29:50):
They're doing a job just like you and me.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
I mean, you can say they're compelled to work, but
I was compelled to write this book to make money
to feed my kids. You're compelled to be se year
right now with me to earn your living. We're all
compelled to earn a living under capitalism. So as long
as people are adult and consenting of their own free
will leave them alone.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
Yeah yeah, yeah, and they could be you or me.
I mean the normal I'm not my age, but you
know that.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
Your age.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
You know, our most successful sex worker at the batch
was fifty years old.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Wow, there you go.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
Because think about it a lot of the men.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Not a lot, but we had a fair number of
men who would come to us in their eighties or
their late seventies, and they'd say, look, I don't want
a twenty five year old.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
My granddaughter's twenty five years old. Yuck.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Yeah, And they also wanted a woman who they could
talk to a bit like what are they going to
talk about?

Speaker 4 (30:41):
Twenty five year olds talk about TikTok? Yes, completely out
of their debth. I'm interested there you go, No, well
I didn't know that. So what would you like people
to know about about the clients? Ah, that's a whole
other interesting area.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
So I mean, yes, it's very easy for me to
tell you about we should feel compassion for, you know,
men who may be experiencing disabilities, or or people who've
been widowed or you know, we had one clients whose
wife had a sort of degenerative brain disease. Yes, those
are easy to feel compassioned for. And absolutely I think

(31:16):
those people have a right to intimate touch. How many
people Paula came to us because they were just normal
guys with normal jobs and normal faces, and nobody touched them.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
We're all stuck.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
Behind our laptops, and so few of us have enough
face to face contact or just human touch. There is
an epidemic I think of loneliness out there. And most
of the guys who visited us were just normal guys.
They weren't They weren't malicious, malignant narcissists, They didn't have

(31:50):
some major disability or problem.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
They were just guys who wanted touch.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
Yeah and one of the time, and wanted to experience them.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
And sometimes it was because they had very challenging professional
lives and they weren't able to maintain a relationship.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
And yeah, some of them.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
Were cheaters who needed, you know, the next new thing,
but the vast majority were guys who just wanted a
nice girl to have a spend an intimate moment with us.

Speaker 1 (32:17):
Well, So the bet Johny ran for three years, So
why did you close?

Speaker 2 (32:23):
At the end of three years, I had the option
of renewing my business lease for the motel, And at
that point it was quite clear that the motel the
batch was doing better and better, and the motel was
doing worse and worse, so it was costing me more
and more money. So if I wanted to continue running
the agency, I would need to find a way to

(32:43):
get into a commercial building in downtown Fungaday, which is
the only area of town where you don't need a
resource consent to run. And that would mean selling my
house and putting the proceeds and probably also getting investors in,
and then really being committed to being the madam of
for the next twenty years. And I didn't want to

(33:04):
do that, not only because at that point we'd gotten
really good at our jobs, and so all of the
adventured mishaps that we had in the first two years
that I write about in the book actually kept things
really exciting and interesting, and by the third year it
almost got kind of boring.

Speaker 3 (33:21):
It was sort of like running a fish and chips shop.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
Sixty minute GFY with Cynthia. Sure, no problem.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
We had this core group of regulars who we didn't
need to worry about at all. They were just nice guys.
We had a core group of healthy, reliable women who
were not doing drugs, who were just happy to come
in and work and leave again and take their money.
So there was that it had become less of a challenge.
But also I'd be honest with you, my daughter was
coming to intermediate school age, and so many of the

(33:49):
women who came to the batch I observed had been
really bright young girls in high school who were bored
in Fungaday and got into some naughty behavior because there
wasn't anything else to do, whether it was drinking or
lots of sex without adequate protection, and ended up with
a young child at eighteen nineteen twenty, and then the

(34:13):
guy leaves, and then she's stuck in small town Fungare
with no qualifications and no means of support, and the
DPB doesn't cut it, and if you get a job
on top of the DPB, you lose your benefit, and
it's just this tangle of traps and you're lonely.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
So I've been there. You're lonely too, Like it's a
lonely existence, being the single mum on a benefit, no
money to do anything or go anywhere, and you just
feel like you're in a treadmill of Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:44):
You know, I think you're right.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
I don't think the lady said that to me explicitly,
but a few of them said, oh, this is so fun,
you know, I get to come here and be this sexy,
dangerous woman and not the boring mum. Everyone thinks I
am like they're sort of expected to hang up all
the fun at twenty because they have a baby now
and life's meant to be drudgery for the rest of
their lives and yuck, that's no fun. No, anyway, that

(35:08):
was all a very long way of expressing to you
that I wanted to get my daughter out of Fungata
because I wanted her and into a bigger city, because
I wanted her to see a more broad array of
life choices. And that's not to say that I would
be horrified if she were to go into sex work
at some point, but that's I wanted her to have
all of the challenges and all of the possibilities so

(35:30):
that if she does do sex work at some point,
that that's her choice, that it's not something that she
feels backed into.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, so you literally closed it. It's not like the business. No.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
I sold it for a small fee to one of
my managers, and sadly she was not able to get
it off the ground again. No one would rent to
her and she didn't have that pit bull tendency that
I have. And then COVID hit and let's be honest,
I don't think anybody was getting a business off the
ground at that point, and so it never happened.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
So what have you been doing ses you moved to Auckland.
You've written this book obviously, which is time consuming, right.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
Not really, I knocked it out in about three months.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
You're amazing.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Well, I've been thinking about these ideas and taking notes
and sort of.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Thinking it over for the past several years.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
No, I've been doing a lot of ghostwriting and editing,
getting back to my writing. And that also is really
helpful because you know, at the Batch, even though the
managers only worked two to three days a week, they
were really long hours twelve fourteen sixteen hour days. And
as a freelance writer, I can work from home and
I can be there when my kids get home from
school and be really engaged and involved in their lives.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
So it's been awesome. Ah, fantastic.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
A parting segment on the podcast, I'd love to know
what was the best advice you were given.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
Years ago?

Speaker 2 (36:48):
My dad said to me, cultivate an inner life, because
if you have a rich inner life, then you don't
need anything. You can be in a little hut in
the woods with a musical instrument and book and you'll
be happy ass And he.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
Was really right.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
When I first came to New Zealand, I literally had nothing.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
I had no furniture.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
I managed to rent a tiny little flat with no furniture,
and in the first few days I had a bowl
that I was eating off on the ground, a bowl
and a cup, and I had a little music player
and I'd gotten some Mozart CDs from the library and
it felt really homey.

Speaker 3 (37:31):
Actually I got furniture.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Does it also mean to feel comfortable about who you
are and being at peace with you? Is it? I
don't know, I'm reading something into it.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
Yeah, I guess so. I think that's a part of it.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
But also it's just sort of if you have those
inner resources, then you don't need to buy anybody's gold
chains or fall for what they have to sell you.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
You can be completely self sufficient.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
Yeah, yeah, I like it.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
The podcast is called ask Me Anything, and so far
I've done all the asking. So this is an opportunity
if you want to take it to turn the tables
and you may ask me something.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
Well, I think you mentioned that you've been a solo
mum m right. Would you think you could have got
by on the DPB today.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
Just I don't think I got by then, you know,
like it's just just such a day to day struggle.
Like you know, I sort of people occasionally say to me, now,
you know, you must be so stress and you're so
busy and all that sort of thing, and I say, well,
you've got no idea. Stress is you know, looking for
coins down the back of your couch because you can't
buy milk. Stress is genuinely wondering whether you'll have a

(38:51):
roof over your head the following week because will you
mate rent? You know, Like, so the DPB is not enough.
It never was and it certainly wouldn't be today.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yeah, And so I think when we're going to have
if anybody wants to have a real, meaty, valuable conversation
about sex work, then that really has to be a
part of it. If we don't think that people should
have the right to do this work, what are we putting.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
In its place? Yeah, to help them achieve independence.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
And I mean, we've got one of the most generous
systems in the world, and thank goodness, we've got it,
and we can give people help. But I've been I've
been thanked and I've been criticized, and I've been all
parts of it, and I get that completely. About the
thought of someone trying to live a life on the
DPB because they have no other choices is certainly what

(39:43):
always motivated me to try and give them choices. So,
you know, one of the things I'm most proud of was,
you know, there was free education for all teen mums
because if I got them educated, they were going to
have a bigger, better life and the children would well.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Yeah, and which is amazing. But what I didn't realize
until I had boots on the ground in this situation
is the free education is just part of it. Because
do they have a reliable car to get to the education?
Do they have enough cash to buy the laptop that
they're gonna need.

Speaker 3 (40:16):
Who's going to take care of their kids?

Speaker 1 (40:18):
Yeah? Well, they study, did all of that.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
What if they've been out of school for a while,
is there a mentor who's going to help with study skills?

Speaker 3 (40:24):
You did all that?

Speaker 1 (40:24):
We did because you're exactly right. And actually even in
Fong Ray, it was one of the old schools that
so the educations we moved out and then we would
get wonderful local people who would do that full wrap
around child care. You know, it was without a doubt. Look,
it wasn't perfect, and I'm sure that there'll be. But

(40:47):
I went to pretty much every single one of them,
and everything you're saying, it was complicated. You couldn't just
go here it is.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
Say thank you, go to school it's free.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
Yeah yeah, yeah, and all at different levels of looming
abilities and so trying to work within there and then
Kittie's sack and you know, how do they cope? Say, well,
I found it really lonely, and certainly talking to some
of them, they're trapped in crummy, little damp you know
houses where you know, just get me out, yeah stuff.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
So it's the multifaceted nature of any kind of assistance
that really I think needs to be recognized.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yeah yeah, yeah, it's certainly not easy. And as you say,
people don't live their lives in one nice little, you know,
wrapped up sentence that we can then put a policy
or run something around us. Certainly, and your evidence of
that as well, so I get it. Hey, Antonya, thank
you so much for coming in today. Okay, everybody, the

(41:48):
book Madam is in stores, so this is your chance
to go and get it. You should have rushed out
and brought it halfway through listening because a it's a
fascinating book and this is a fastin. So thank you
so much for your time today.

Speaker 3 (42:02):
Thank you, Paulow.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
And that's it for another episode of Ask Me Anything.
If you've enjoyed this episode, please follow Ask Me Anything
on iHeartRadio or where you go and get your podcast.
Go and look at some of the past episodes. They
are fun. I'll be back next Sunday with another fabulous guest.
I'm Paula Bennett. Ask Me Anything. Goodbye,
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