Holly Bates House of Whoreship

So, what’s your star sign?

I’m a Leo sun, Scorpio Rising and Capricorn Moon!

What’s your sex work origin story?

I have been working through different areas of the industry for about 10 years. When I was 18 I started out doing random sugar baby gigs, and then when I was 20 my partner at the time got in a car crash (in my car) with an expired licence, resulting in hectic debt that had a deadline. In order to pay it off they started stripping and after a month or so suggested I join them (they said my titties would be sure to bring in the bucks). I did that for a year and it wasn’t for me (the titties did not bring in the big bucks). Stripping wasn’t my forte. At the time I was incredibly shy- which I’ll admit stripping taught me to mask- but I also was exposing myself in my hometown of Brisbane. The constant threat of being outed loomed over my head, as well as the toxic management, the strip club fines and the rampant whorephobia against FSSW. Working alongside my ex-partner who would earn double what I did in the same shift was also a mental toll for young insecure me. In the end I developed so much anxiety that the little money I was making just wasn’t worth it. I think I always knew that stripping wasn’t for me and that full service always was. I knew I performed better behind closed doors.

I continued to do the sugar baby thing on and off, which was essentially escorting. The difference was having to navigate the clients pretending it wasn’t [escorting], which resulted in irritatingly high levels of emotional labour. Years later I finally got into full service through brothel work. In early 2019, I went through a 5-year relationship breakdown, unshakable creative block and a quarter life crisis that led to some life re-evaluation. This led to the decision to move to Melbourne to do my Masters in Film & TV, but my hospo job at the time had reduced shifts which meant living week to week with no savings in sight. So, on a whim, I went to the nearest brothel, got a tour, got my health certificate, and started days later. As soon as I started doing [brothel work] I felt like I must’ve done it in a past life. It opened a door to a room inside my psyche that had been sitting there dormant, but present, waiting to be opened. There is something about brothel and full service sex work that feels totally instinctual to me, so in a weird way it felt like I’d finally arrived home. And I’ve been doing it ever since!

Tell me about how this film came to be.

Sex work had always creeped it’s way into my visual art practice before film, in whatever way I could gesture to it without outing myself. When I started doing brothel work it was a cultural shock to see how warm and community based this sector was, compared to how I had been conditioned to view it from the media (as well as the whorephobic narrative about brothels and FSSW from my strip-club experience). The experiences I had at work vastly contrasted what I had seen in film and TV, or weren’t out there at all- and as I hustled at the brothel to move down to Melbourne, the desire and hunger for real sex worker representation grew. It’s strange, because realistically I wouldn’t have been able to do my Masters or fund my film without sex work. In a way, my film-making career has been intimately tied to my full service career from the start.

To me the film is a documentary, which I know is not how you’d describe it…

I can totally see that! That’s interesting, I’ll come back to that.

It’s cool how the film is about everyone’s relationships, rather than our actual work or clients. I think people don’t realise how benign and boring the work of sex work can be.

Exactly. If you work regularly it can get to a point (especially if you’re near the burnout stage) where bookings have the same mental stimulation as putting groceries through a check out (as someone who's done both). Sure, you get the occasional oddball and funny story that you can’t wait to share with workers in the backrooms, but at the end of the day, when I think about the shift, I barely remember the dudes or the bookings. Clients will come in to see you after some time, it could be a week or months, and say ‘Can you do what you did last time?’ and you’ll be like ‘ Um you’ll have to remind me honey..’ because you literally might not even recognise the man. At least you might not until the health check..

The original script I wrote was actually based on a priest that came into my Brisbane brothel who confessed to me during a booking that he was struggling with his celibacy, hence the name, ‘House of Whoreship’. I received feedback that the behind the scenes worker interactions in the script were far more interesting than any of the client interactions I had written. I racked my brain trying to think of a way to show only the community and behind the scenes aspects of the workplace that would engagingly build suspense for a narrative format, while also challenging the toxic whore tropes that are exhausted in film. I had recently gone through a break-up with another worker, and with the Melbourne sex worker scene being as queer as it is- I decided that this was the perfect story device- a romantic break-up in the workplace. My break-up was bad and unresolved, which will forever haunt me- however making this film was comforting in that it was a completely different story that had a happy ending. But the behind the scenes, banal work tasks, community components of the story- that all felt really true to life for me.

But the most interesting part of being a sex worker isn’t the clients, or how we dress or how we work- it’s the relationships and care we keep within the community. I hate that as soon as you open up or come out as a sex worker, you become one-dimensional to civvies. You’re literally tramp-stamped. All they want to ask you about is the experiences with clients on the job. I’m honestly sick of talking about it. Clients just aren’t that interesting, sorry. We are more than our job, most of us have lives outside of the job because it is just THAT, a job. Don’t interrogate us about it, and if we want to share our thoughts and experiences with it- consider yourself lucky?

What has the reaction to the film been like from civvies?

I have only heard a little bit. Inside Out Festival in Toronto was the most recent experience in which I was able to engage with civvies after watching the film. The most common reaction I got was that they thought it was really wholesome. Which, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone describe a film depicting sex work in that way- so that was really, really surprising in the best way.

When I screened the final cut to my fellow Masters classmates, they said that it felt real and that the world felt real. So, I think that there’s an authenticity there felt by people who haven’t stepped into our world- and that’s probably because it’s actually a sex worker behind this sex worker story...

Behind the scenes

Photo by Kristen Augeard

...Not a john. No-one seemed to miss the fact that there were almost no client interactions on screen. A classmate said to me that they could feel the clients’ presence regardless of their absence- their energy was felt in the background. You know the job’s there- but the focus is on the workers. I think all the time that sometimes I wish people could have a fly-on-thewall experience, there’s so much humanity in this job and workers can be so beautiful and supportive with one another. When I go into the backroom and see a worker braiding another worker’s hair, or similar gestures of care, I’m always just like ‘Ahh, my heart!’ Sex work is its own little world, and it exists on its own little plane.

Sex workers often have this immediate bond right? It’s really interesting.

Yeah! It is. For me personally I felt more love, solidarity and community when I entered the sex work community versus like when I came out [as queer]. When I came out I was 19 in 2014/2015... so a long time ago now, well… it’s not that long ago but it was different.

The femme invisibility was pretty brutal and I felt like I had to fight my way in sometimes. The sex work community is so diverse in so many ways, but the embracing of queer femmes especially meant I felt like I had found where I belonged.

So, I never thought I’d see a blood-soaked sponge on film, but I’m so glad that I now have. I know lots of sex workers have sponge horror stories, so I need to ask - was that scene inspired by real life?

Ah yes, that scene is inspired by real life- it’s just not from the brothel. It’s based on my ex who I dated for 5 years and have been exes with for 4 years. We thankfully became best friends after our break-up. I haven’t had someone get my sponge out before- not to say it hasn’t gotten stuck, or I haven’t injured myself during my short-lived acrylic stages.

I had an IUD put in not too long after I started brothel work and about an hour later I started bleeding heavy.. Like really heavy. I was filling up a night-time maxi pad every 15 minutes, as well as birthing all these blood clots.

The doctor had given me her number just in case, and when I called her to tell her what was happening, she told me to go to the hospital. I had already been messaging photos of my blood clots to a group chat with my friends- which my ex was still a part of. I told them what the doctor said, and my ex chimed in and said they’d take me. They were also the only one who could drive… and even though I was feeling emotional as hell, I was relieved. As soon as I got in their ute I started bawling my eyes out, but they were super calm and despite the weirdness of the situation, grounding.

They stayed the entire hospital visit. Again- weird, but their presence was comforting. I was put in an adult diaper, given medication to stop the bleeding, and my ex called my family to let them know I was okay. I didn’t have to ask, they just knew what to do. Afterwards we had a chat. I told them I thought they didn’t care about me anymore, they responded that they did care, they had just needed some space. I had been the dumper in this situation. Years later it’s an absurd story we still laugh over, and I wanted to bring that kind of warmth and unconventionality to the film. So, I made the brothel version.

That scene is so good, when I saw the actual sponge, I was like ‘no way!’

That’s what I love about sex work workspaces as well, the boundaries are so different. I was trying to capture the subtleties and odd tools we use, because as you know things get normalized very quickly. Our idea of workplace social norms is very different to most industries. I feel like people aren’t as open minded or caring [outside the industry]. This isn’t to say everyone is like this, there are absolutely closed minded and self-involved sex workers as well, but even they empathise with you because of the work that you do, the label that you share.

Was House of Whoreship filmed at the old Number 100?

Yes! The heavily haunted 100.

Was it!?

Oh yeah. The 100 definitely was the most intense ghost experience I’ve ever had. The building had been on the market for about 8 months and it was mostly empty; it only had bed fit outs, old curtains, and the stock standard cumscented pink soap dispensers. The building was in quite bad shape because it was old and had been broken into a couple of times since going on the market. The real estate agent was super hesitant to rent it to us, but because of the break-ins and lack of market interest- the owners agreed to rent it to us so they could get some cash to go towards repairs. I rented it for a month, one week shooting, and 3 weeks of preproduction. We repaired quite a bit, and repainted the vanity rooms and kitchen. Anyway because the building had been empty for 8 months, us coming in must have felt quite abrupt to the local inhabitant. It really did feel like we were disturbing the space. I was completely terrified in the beginning, but in the end she felt like my secret guardian angel. I talked to her nearly every day of that rental month. I felt sad to leave her behind.

Was it still set up like a brothel on the inside?

They had no furniture, but the bed bases were there, built in like the stone beds of the flintstones. There were stickers on the walls, and of course the soap, but it was otherwise completely empty. It was only the little artifacts left behind. You could feel the previous workers though, there were scuff marks from pleasers on the floor, notes on the wall. It felt super special to film there. I’m still grateful for it, replicating a brothel would have been too costly for me. You need the showers in the rooms, locker room, smoking areas, intro rooms- I probably would have had to use multiple locations to film. The 100 was my saving grace, it was everything we needed.

And there was the ghost?

Yes, she’s known as Sophie or Stephanie from the information I was able to gather. The night before I had my proper first experience with her, I had a dream that I took a single light bulb into the 100 building and asked the bulb to flash if there were spirits there. The bulb went OFF. I woke up and packed some garden sage knowing that the dream confirmed my gut feeling of the energy I had felt there. The few crew members that had popped by the space didn’t want to be in the building without me, so I knew they felt it too. That day I got a couple of friends to help me move some couches into the old intro room. When my friends went to get something from the car, I took a photo of the newly positioned couches. As I did, a white orb appeared from the other end of the room and flew past my left eye, and at the same time- every single dust particle in the room whooshed at me super quickly. There was no breeze. I let out a ‘ WHOA’’ and my friend coming back heard me and asked what was happening. I told them it was nothing but they knew by my tone and face. I stayed back saging the building alone, only able to whimper the words ‘good vibes only’ (lol) as I was too terrified to say anything else. When I got out of the building it was night-time, and when I got home I was still so terrified I had to take 3 valiums to calm down. I knew the sage had done nothing but confirm the building's smoke alarms were DEFINITELY expired.

Holly Bates on set

Image by Kristen Augeard

I reached out to community channels and asked if anyone had experiences or information about a potential spirit at the 100, and got tens of messages from workers who had. That was when I found out about Sophie/Stephanie. Most workers had positive and empathetic things to say about her. They mentioned that she could be a bit spicy, would occasionally fuck with people on the stairs ( which I vaguely included in my safety model for uni), but ultimately that she loved workers, and hated clients. This made sense as to why she had flown at me in the old intro room- it was a client space. I enquired about how she appeared, and was told in photos, by moving drink cans in the girls room, dropping towels, changing the water temperature etc. Most stories I received were accounts of her protecting the workers from bad clients. So ultimately I knew I had to go back there and let her know who I was, and my intention for the space.

I reached out to community channels and asked if anyone had experiences or information about a potential spirit at the 100, and got tens of messages from workers who had. That was when I found out about Sophie/Stephanie. Most workers had positive and empathetic things to say about her. They mentioned that she could be a bit spicy, would occasionally fuck with people on the stairs ( which I vaguely included in my safety model for uni), but ultimately that she loved workers, and hated clients. This made sense as to why she had flown at me in the old intro room- it was a client space. I enquired about how she appeared, and was told in photos, by moving drink cans in the girls room, dropping towels, changing the water temperature etc. Most stories I received were accounts of her protecting the workers from bad clients. So ultimately I knew I had to go back there and let her know who I was, and my intention for the space.

The next day I bought a bunch of flowers and took it to the room she supposedly looked over, which was room 4 ( we filmed the shower scene in this room) and sat on the mattress I had brought in the day before. I apologised for the sage, explained my intentions, and read her the script. The first couple of times I spoke to her, I would look and talk to the bunch of flowers placed in front of the shower. When I left the room the second time, I checked whether the shower fan was on, because both times the air in front of the flowers looked like it was vibrating and moving- like a mirage. It was off, and the next time before I spoke to her I checked again just in case. This time the air was completely still, and just before I decided I must have imagined it all, the door to the room swung back and forth, and I thought ‘ THERE you are’. The very few windows were barricaded and there was no breeze. She kept me on my toes!

The next day I bought a bunch of flowers and took it to the room she supposedly looked over, which was room 4 ( we filmed the shower scene in this room) and sat on the mattress I had brought in the day before. I apologised for the sage, explained my intentions, and read her the script. The first couple of times I spoke to her, I would look and talk to the bunch of flowers placed in front of the shower. When I left the room the second time, I checked whether the shower fan was on, because both times the air in front of the flowers looked like it was vibrating and moving- like a mirage. It was off, and the next time before I spoke to her I checked again just in case. This time the air was completely still, and just before I decided I must have imagined it all, the door to the room swung back and forth, and I thought ‘ THERE you are’. The very few windows were barricaded and there was no breeze. She kept me on my toes!

In the three weeks of pre-production I spent a lot of time there alone, staying some nights until the witches hour (3am). I wanted her to get to know and trust me before everyone else arrived, and I also needed to face my own fears of her. I only told a couple of people, my 1st AD being one of them, and we decided not to tell the cast and crew so it didn’t create an environment of fear and paranoia. In the end I just told people that any weird energy was because the building was old, and carried 40 years of client energy with it. The day I said goodbye to her and handed the keys back to the real estate agent, my bedroom lights started flashing just like my dream. They flashed on and off, at random, in different erratic rhythms for about 4 months before stopping. I thought my dream was perhaps from binge watching the last season of Stranger Things, but this weirdly tied the whole experience together and deepened my love for her. The 100’s fiercest protector.

In the three weeks of pre-production I spent a lot of time there alone, staying some nights until the witches hour (3am). I wanted her to get to know and trust me before everyone else arrived, and I also needed to face my own fears of her. I only told a couple of people, my 1st AD being one of them, and we decided not to tell the cast and crew so it didn’t create an environment of fear and paranoia. In the end I just told people that any weird energy was because the building was old, and carried 40 years of client energy with it. The day I said goodbye to her and handed the keys back to the real estate agent, my bedroom lights started flashing just like my dream. They flashed on and off, at random, in different erratic rhythms for about 4 months before stopping. I thought my dream was perhaps from binge watching the last season of Stranger Things, but this weirdly tied the whole experience together and deepened my love for her. The 100’s fiercest protector.

Did you look at filming anywhere else?

Yes, first I contacted a few brothels that weren’t 24/7 to enquire about shooting in their closed hours. I would never shoot in an establishment while it’s open. Shooting during open hours comes with the danger of exposing and outing clients, workers, or management.

So many people in film school don’t get that. During my time there I was continually asked “why aren’t you just working in documentary if you want true depiction of sex work?”, and I was like well, there’s [the issue of] being outand the complicated repercussions that come with that. You can promise documentary participants safety while shooting, but what about after? Where’s the aftercare and protection once you’re out there? There’s also the editdocumentary has power in that because it’s ‘real’ footage, people take it as truth even if it’s been edited and manipulated. It just doesn’t feel like a safe medium for sex workers.

Also we’ve just been exploited, stigmatized and discriminated against enough…

So much! It’s always the voyeuristic view. The way we’re exploited, stigmatized and discriminated against directly reflects what people think of us- and what they think of us, comes from the media. Clearly civvy documentaries aren’t shedding tangible truth about our lives.

Yeah that’s what I love about House of Whoreship. I know you describe it as post-Rom Com but yeah it’s kind of almost a documentary but without being exploitative.

Thank god!

So since the release of House of Whoreship, you’ve been totally out as a sex worker right? What’s that been like for you so far?

It’s been a mixed experience. On one hand, I didn’t expect my family to take it so well. I knew from my parent’s upbringings, and the fact we have little to no family in Australia- they wouldn’t disown me. However I definitely expected some level of distaste or pushback... In hindsight I guess I was training them for this moment for years, especially if you look at the progression of my art practice. Not having to lie to them anymore, and live a double life- it’s taken a massive weight off my shoulders. I know I’m beyond lucky, because most sex workers don’t get a response like that from their family.

On the other hand, it’s been a little bit exhausting. Whenever my film comes up in conversation, people take it as an open invitation to interrogate me about being a sex worker… when the whole point of making a film was so I didn’t have to explain it. As there’s not many ‘out’ sex workers, civvies rely on you to be their sole source of information about the industry.

I feel an obligation to do my community and industry a service and do the labour of informing civvies, but it’s so draining. An acquaintance said to me the other day ‘ Oh you’ll like this person because you’re a sex worker.. They’re really into all of that’ , as if being a sex worker is now my entire personality. There’s so much more to me than being a sex worker. I don’t pigeon hole my friends into an identity because that’s how they put food on the table. But people have no problem or second thoughts with doing that for us. We’re all just trying to survive under capitalism.

My whole position in coming out as a sex worker, has been that sex work films need to be made by sex workers, and so I wanted to lead by example… because if I didnt, how long could I wait for someone else to do it? I have no regrets, I’ve never felt more connected to my community and motivated in standing up against how we are represented. Contributing to that representation on screen feels like a fulfilling life’s mission to me. It can just be exhausting sometimes.

House of Whoreship’s US premiere was at CineKink film festival, could you go?

I legally couldn’t because I’m out, which was a consequence I knew I’d have to face. America doesn’t allow entry if you have any history of sex work in the past 10 years. Funnily enough though I did get stuck in the states twice when I was recently flying in and out of Canada. Both of my flights were cancelled until the following day, so I was booked into a hotel near the airport on a temporary transit visa. I felt like I cheated the system and got in! Before coming back to Australia, I spent a full day in San Francisco before my flight, which was special and bittersweet. I had been there years earlier, and so I went to all my favourite spots one last time and said goodbye mentally- it felt like a rare opportunity to do so.

Right - a very unfortunate consequence of being out. Because often sex workers who aren’t face-out, can get into the US… as long as they are strict about not taking certain things in their luggage…

Oh! That reminds me! So the first night I attended Inside Out in Toronto, I met director Alex Conetto who made a short film called Safe Word. His film was about a sub and domme relationship. He asked me if I was going to show in America. I was like ‘I hope so!’ He asked me if I was going to attend if I did, and I told him about their entry laws, and he was like ‘Oh can’t you just say...’ and I was like ‘No, no, I CAN’T… They won’t let me in.’ I told him all about it, you know, how they [don’t let sex workers in] search your socials, use facial recognition, and search your luggage when you get there, how if they find a matching set of lingerie that’s reason enough for them to believe that you’re going there to work… Anyway, he was shocked, it wasn’t like he didn’t believe me, he was just shocked.

He went back to the US before coming back to Toronto for the closing party. I ran into him at the party and he walk like 'OMG, it happened to me, you were right!' I'd heard about it the sex work laws, affecting civvie actors as well but when he went back to the States apparently border security were like:

'What were you doing in Canada?'
he said 'Oh I was at a film festival,'
they were like 'Oh for your film Safe Word????'
he was like 'How did you know that?'
and they were like 'we're the US government, we know everything.'

*Gasp* OH MY GOD.

YEAH. He was like ‘Um okay…’ and they let him through. ‘Safe Word’ does center around a sector of sex work because it involves a transactional sub and domme relationship, and yeah I was thinking ‘I’m not happy you had that experience, but I’m a little bit glad. So that, you know I’m like not making this shit up, this is real.’

I’ve heard from many sex workers that entering the US hasn’t been an issue, but I’ve also heard of people being interrogated at the border. Usually people who aren’t face-out get away with it but it’s just tricky…

Exactly and there’s different categories. Selling sex on screen is okay in America, as long as you don’t do it in real life. Angela White seems to have no issue coming back and forth because she’s a porn star, and neither do so many OF stars. What is this legal and societal difference between what’s on screen and what’s happening behind closed doors? It baffles me.

I’m curious - what’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten from the backroom?

A worker once said to me ‘ Never grit your teeth through a booking’ - and that’s advice that really stuck. When you’ve grown up with a dominating heteronormative patriarchal narrative, you’re not really conditioned to be able to stand up to men or assert your boundaries- rather the opposite. I found when I was a baby worker I let clients get away with things just because they had paid me- and navigating between what was the job and what was a boundary crossed was a fine line to tow. Clients will always try shit, but I don’t silence my own comfort for the sake of theirs anymore. This advice was key to that.

Are there other aspects of sex work that you wish you could share with the civvy community?

This comes straight off the bat of a conversation I had with the House of Whoreship writers in our weekly workshop which is leading up to a web-series. We were discussing what aspects of sex work we’d like to see represented on screen, and the first thing that came up was money. In terms of the generalised viewpoint people think, either you’re doing sex work because there must be really amazing money, or it’s because you’re really desperate and have no money and there’s no kind of grasp of any space in between. Especially in a brothel environment, there’s very very different perspectives in terms of earning. No one is getting equally paid by the hour, and a lot of workers charge different extras based on their own boundaries or personal situation. Everyone is working against each other, but somehow there is a unified sense of solidarity and community despite that. Some brothels are of course cattier than others, and there will always be a Regina George that passes through trying to social climb in the backroom by gossiping or shaming- but she never seems to last long from my experience. I think in the wider community there are issues around representations and discussions of ‘ the high earner’ vs. ‘the low earner’. Low earners can get interrogated by civvies and high earners about why they do sex work in the first place. This issue is highly ableist and whorephobic and would be really important to cover, so we can get rid of this response dichotomy where people either think ‘you’re disgusting,’ or ‘good on you, you’re making bank. But sorry, you still don’t have any rights…’

Yeah, people refuse to see sex work as a job or think about the reasons that people get other jobs [and apply it to sex work]. It could be that it’s flexible, the hours suit them, the location is good, they like the work, which is always overlooked… Rarely is it actually acceptable to say ‘oh I actually enjoy doing the work of sex work’ without having to explain yourself.

Yeah and even if you don’t enjoy it, that’s okay too. When clients ask me if I’m going to do this forever, or when am I going to get a real job, I’m like ‘well this is the best job I’ve ever had!’ and you know I’m not shitting on any other job, but I have worked in hospo and retail my entire life as well, and being your own boss and not working for a big company while getting paid minimum wage per hour, having older gross customers flirt with you for free… That doesn’t feel any more empowering than doing sex work.

But back to what to share with the civvy community, I think it's really important for mainstream audiences to see sex worker stories to inspire empathy and education. Showing how we share a community has the biggest potential to do this I think. This issues of the whorearchy would be important to cover. I'd really love to show the nuances of queerness and performativity in the industry, as well as how magical workers can be. So many workers have different rituals that get us in the space for work, and get us out of the space after. There is something a bit ethereal about that I really love. But honestly there's so much I'm not saying here, because we are so under or misrepresented I really wish we could show them everything sometimes (without revealing too many secrets).